Brooklyn Museum of Art

there is this one painting in which the trees, tiny buds on the canvas are shaded just so. there is this shadow behind the trees in which i picture myself crawling under, tucked into the shade of New Mexican afternoon. In front of me would be the men on horseback, their mustaches drooping, laden with moisture in the late-afternoon sun. pointing southward, they are a compass of sorts for these roaming men to whom watches and maps are unnecessary objects. all they need: trees, shade, sunlight, their horses. and those straw hats -- I can feel their bristles brush against my skin. The men, I bet, have rough hands; they have been out farming all day long. Do they long to go home to their wives and children? In this picture it seems they are never going home. They are forever trapped in this image of perfection, of lazy sunlight and shade, an endless forest behind them leading to nowhere, nowhere. if i could be under those trees -- but i wouldn't stay. i'd run toward those hills, run away from those men and their foreboding facial hair -- we all end up southward, in this New Mexican ground -- run toward the unknown, toward that ever-present horizon, another chance---

the bell sounds. i have stepped too close to the painting. in the room next to me, the security guard waves her index finger in the air, back and forth, frowns disapprovingly.