Art

<h1>Art</h1> There is a piece of art in front of you. What sense will you use to observe it? [[Sound]] [[Taste]] [[Smell]] [[Touch]] (if:visits >= 5)[[Sight]]

What reverberations could this piece make in your ears? A few simple answers float to the top: murmurations of discovery, metallic rings, the holding of breath with careful inhales. But none of these feel quite right to you. They feel simple. This piece before you isn't simple. You begin to hear conversation. Discussions from its subjects: He's beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Looking into him I see myself, feel my own being glancing back at me. I desperately want him. Their voices are soft, secretive. They acknowledge the voyeuristic position of their feet. They are like you, and it's electrifying. To hear their teeth click together, their tongues salivate at his body, to get a flicker of blood rushing through their heads, it's euphoria. [[Return?->Title]]

You imagine placing it in your mouth, wrapping your tongue around it, letting your tastebuds commune with it. It would shortly dissolve, begin to pill and crumble with all the moisture and heat. Funny how different a museum and mouth are, although both are temporary stations of white walls, designated entrances and exits, and exchange their goods over time, putting them on display. But mouths are for consumption, museums for digestion. It would taste of its ink, a flavor you are unacquainted with as of now, but suddenly feel an urge to let linger on your tongue. Would the subjects be distinct in taste? Surely not. But what if they could be? What if the primary individual, the man who has it all, gave a sense of iodine. Perhaps the woman looking on, expression untraceable, would leave behind lemon. You imagine the displays around them, covering the authenticity in artifice, would be processed, dull, salty. Like the gas station snacks your brother would bring you after school. It would taste delicious. [[Return?->Title]]

You try to conjure its scent in the metaphorical sense. Looking past the stale, conditioned, curated air of the museum, the lingering impressions of burned coffee from the cafe and cleaner from the unseen caretakers of the place, you find something. It isn't a menagerie of chemicals used in development, and it isn't putirid. It's a pure kind of aroma, one of lime and latex. Friends of yours talked about being nostalgic for the dentist, a horrifying notion to you, but it was second nature to them. Their mother was a dental hygienist. She would come home to them (the twins) and wrap her arms around them, the stench of fillings and mint and filtered water wafting off her. What you feared comforted them. You understand it now, looking at this art. You are comforted by its smell, its precision. It stings your eyes. [[Return?->Title]]

Touching this would be the most intimate connection you think. The brittle paper, moments away from becoming dust, hovering above your finger tips. You'd pray that the ink wouldn't smear. Just as the piece itself notes: touch is necessary to understand, without it we cannot learn. It would feel soft, like your childhood dog or the skin of your mother. Something organic and something tender all at once. These things are rare, and you think it a shame it's several feet before you, a line preventing you from that intimacy. You are deserving of it you think, but another man has designated your distance. Instead you are only left to feel your own nails digging into your palm, a sharp pain centuries away from the tenderness of the art. [[Return?->Title]]

[[<img src="https://images.pdimagearchive.org/collections/images-from-the-champion-text-book-on-embalming-1897/20850642031_1a4e51593b_o.jpg?width=1000&height=800">->credits]]

bgMusic: https://audio.jukehost.co.uk/h8sAOsDHlRv0PvSM3h2q9iqhZib186Xc.mp3

<strong>Art</strong> A game made by Caroline Paige Stanton Photograph from the Public Domain Image Archive: <em>"Dissecting the Thoracic and Abdominal Cavities"</em>(1897)