Page of Cups · Cups · Water

A young page stands on a strip of yellow sand. Behind him the sea crosses the card in low teal waves, and above the water the card goes pale and empty, no sky, no sun, no sail. Dressed for court: a turquoise cap with a puff at one side, a long drape of the same blue falling past his shoulder, a turquoise tunic scattered with pink tulips on their stems and hemmed in red, rose sleeves and hose, tan boots. One hand rests on his hip. The other holds a gold cup at chest height, fingers closed around the stem. A fish has put its head over the rim and turned to face him, the same blue as his cap. He looks at it, composed, a small smile held.

Nothing sensible arrives this way, and it arrives anyway.

Pages carry messages; this one carries water. The card is read as feeling that shows up unannounced and in the wrong form: a dream that will not leave, an unaccountable tenderness for a stranger, a line of a poem surfacing in the middle of the accounts. A whole sea behind him, and what he is handed is one cup with one surprise in it. He does not drop it.

Upright, that is the gift: imagination, sweetness, the nerve to take odd news seriously. The apprentice’s openness, which is also the artist’s.

Reversed, the same water turns inward. Feeling that stays a daydream and never becomes a made thing; the fish described to everyone and never lifted out; tenderness so unguarded it sours into moodiness. The question is whether he is still listening, or performing.