Ariel

All of a sudden, I was bound in a big, childlike hug. I strained my neck backwards to see Arielle, although I couldn’t remember her name at the time, and Im pretty sure she didn’t remember mine either. Where did I know her from? Obviously it didn’t matter; she seemed excited to catch me leaning against the rod iron fence outside. I was reading Freud while I waited for the evening shuttle home.


The girl released the hug and I saw she was wearing one of those horizontally striped tshirts you find in the little boys section of WalMart. On top of her dyed-red hair sat a cap with a purple muppet face on the front. His white circle eyes stared at me and the hat’s flat brim was his gaping mouth. Arielle’s own eyes are kind of spacey, and you can tell she’s not fully with it, but you find a lot of that at art school.
  

She excitedly showed me a square paperback book, perfect bound with smooth, guillotine-cut edges. Apparently her mom (but not really her mom, a woman her dad dated and is the closest she has to a mother figure), suggested the book to her. She said everyone was reading it in the seventies. It's about God and yoga and being in the "here and now". The middle is full of really intricate line drawings that look like something you'd see on a punk rock poster. The cream colored pages have lavender type and photos of old gurus. 
  

We were talking about theories of where to find happiness when my shuttle arrived. I told her she should come visit me in the Student Activities office some time.

I was working late the next night and sure enough, she strolled in with the same purple monster staring at me from atop her head. I'm pretty sure she was wearing the same shirt too, and definitely the same quirky smile. 
  

"Can I get your opinion on something" she asked, holding up a cardboard portfolio.

"Yeah!" I said, gliding away from the computer in my rolley chair. 

Three large pieces of paper with torn edges emerged. One drawing spanned across them all.

"It's my take on the Garden of Earthly Delights," she said as she laid them next to each other on the carpet. 
  

A highlighter pink woman floated sideways in a sky painted maroon-purple. She was covered in intricate line drawings that reminded me of the guru book. Wrinkled cigarettes, Marlborough boxes with gold centers, and clusters of pills colored with a light green watercolor wash crowded the pages. There were little cartoon -like figures, some that looked like naked people, others that looked like strange animals. Neon vibrated everywhere. 
  

"My teacher said I use too much color" Arielle noted, which made me sad because I found the chaotic hues very appropriate. 
  

Tonight she was making a second version of the drawing in the form of a wheel. We talked through the technicalities of constructing it, and I gave her a large piece of foam core to mount it on. She began measuring and I got back to my computer, listening to her talk about her weekend, saying, “I’m so tired! I gotta stop doing some of this stuff.” We both couldn’t help but laugh a little. “It’s too expensive and too much of a hassel to get anyway.” We agreed that there’s better things to focus on. 

I was on my cell phone when she took a break from her work and snuck up behind me just as she had the night before. But her surprises are only loving, and she began to smooth her hands through my hair, sending goosebumps down my legs. I love that feeling. I momentarily tuned out the voice coming from the phone at my ear to crane my head back and give her a smile of approval, not that she needed one.