(CREATIVE NONFICTION)
103 POUNDER STUDIES THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
SEAN PRENTISS
103 POUNDER STUDIES THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
SEAN PRENTISS
In art class, Art Teacher slides a transparency on the overhead projector, as the projector’s fan whirls in our darkened high school classroom. Before us explodes three paintings jammed together into one, each filled with bright colors, tightly drawn humans, most of them naked, tan sprawling fields, dark forests, and things, or shapes, or creatures, beyond comprehension.
Art Teacher talks about this painter, whose first name, we juniors and seniors can barely pronounce. Hieronymus, Art Teacher says, repeating it so we might remember it.
Art Teacher tells us, Bosch was born five hundred years before you, tells us, He was an Early Netherlandish painter, tells us, Bosch painted about human’s darkest fears and primal desires, tells us, This might be on the final, tells us, Write this down in your notes. Art Teacher asks us to study this triptych, study Bosch’s intent.
Art Teacher asks, Who has a guess? What was his intent?
College Bound Girl argues It’s a warning against earthly delights. She’s dreaming toward her first semester at Clarion University.
Before she can elaborate, Quarterback caws, It’s a painting about my Friday night, and he dreams only as far as Friday night.
Punk Kid scoffs in the corner, mumbles, It’s a moral warning about where we are headed in this era of Bush, as he dreams about a Dukakis presidency.
I’m too tired for guesses or dreams. Tired from months of wrestling practices, months of starving, purging, all to make 103 pounds. Tired of laxatives, of sweating off the weight. Then once I’ve made weight, binging all the weight loss away until I’m here, bloated at 109 pounds, even though I haven’t eaten or drank in fifteen and a half hours. Where to find six pounds to lose when I can barely lift my pencil to take notes?
Art Teacher tells us, No one knows. The secret’s lost to Bosch, who we know little about.
But even this fatigued, I know exactly what “The Garden of Earthly Delights” is about.
If I wasn’t so tired, I’d tell Art Teacher and College Bound Girl and Quarterback and Punk Kid that they’re all wrong. All I have to do is what Art Teacher tells us to do—read these paintings, left to right. If I wasn’t so hungry, I’d stand, go to the board, borrow Art Teacher’s pointer and say, Bosch must have been a wrestler.
I’d explain: That left panel is Bosch, emaciated, after earning his Danish championship, medal dangling from neck, Girlfriend holding his hand. I’d ask, Do you see? It’s so clear.
I’d continue, The center panel is hedonic moments of blueberries, strawberries, and grapes dangled into a ravenous mouth. An orgy of food. What else could it be? How could it be any other thing?
The right panel, I’d say, is about a belly so full that the stomach’s skin wrenches and aches. Or it is a season’s worth of nightmares of starvation, nightmares of death by dehydration. Or it is Bosch’s darkness of hunger, the worry of stepping onto the scale tomorrow morning, watching it hover not at 103 but only dip at 109.
Then I’d stop talking. In the darkness, I’d step into projector’s light. Let it illuminate me. I’d remove my shirt. I’d show them the artwork of a starved body: ribs like sharpened ridges, chest sunken. I’d ask College Girl to follow me into starvation, Quarterback to see where not drinking water for a day takes you, Punk Kid to binge with me: tomato pie, French fries, ice cream, and, most beautifully, water guzzled. Then I’d pull my shirt back on and slump, exhausted, back into my seat.
Instead, I don’t say a word. I just stare at the center panel, at one man, emaciated like me, reaching into a tree to grab a hanging apple. Though it’s only a painting, though it’s hundreds of years old, I can feel my fingers on that apple. I can taste the earthly delights on my tongue.
Art Teacher talks about this painter, whose first name, we juniors and seniors can barely pronounce. Hieronymus, Art Teacher says, repeating it so we might remember it.
Art Teacher tells us, Bosch was born five hundred years before you, tells us, He was an Early Netherlandish painter, tells us, Bosch painted about human’s darkest fears and primal desires, tells us, This might be on the final, tells us, Write this down in your notes. Art Teacher asks us to study this triptych, study Bosch’s intent.
Art Teacher asks, Who has a guess? What was his intent?
College Bound Girl argues It’s a warning against earthly delights. She’s dreaming toward her first semester at Clarion University.
Before she can elaborate, Quarterback caws, It’s a painting about my Friday night, and he dreams only as far as Friday night.
Punk Kid scoffs in the corner, mumbles, It’s a moral warning about where we are headed in this era of Bush, as he dreams about a Dukakis presidency.
I’m too tired for guesses or dreams. Tired from months of wrestling practices, months of starving, purging, all to make 103 pounds. Tired of laxatives, of sweating off the weight. Then once I’ve made weight, binging all the weight loss away until I’m here, bloated at 109 pounds, even though I haven’t eaten or drank in fifteen and a half hours. Where to find six pounds to lose when I can barely lift my pencil to take notes?
Art Teacher tells us, No one knows. The secret’s lost to Bosch, who we know little about.
But even this fatigued, I know exactly what “The Garden of Earthly Delights” is about.
If I wasn’t so tired, I’d tell Art Teacher and College Bound Girl and Quarterback and Punk Kid that they’re all wrong. All I have to do is what Art Teacher tells us to do—read these paintings, left to right. If I wasn’t so hungry, I’d stand, go to the board, borrow Art Teacher’s pointer and say, Bosch must have been a wrestler.
I’d explain: That left panel is Bosch, emaciated, after earning his Danish championship, medal dangling from neck, Girlfriend holding his hand. I’d ask, Do you see? It’s so clear.
I’d continue, The center panel is hedonic moments of blueberries, strawberries, and grapes dangled into a ravenous mouth. An orgy of food. What else could it be? How could it be any other thing?
The right panel, I’d say, is about a belly so full that the stomach’s skin wrenches and aches. Or it is a season’s worth of nightmares of starvation, nightmares of death by dehydration. Or it is Bosch’s darkness of hunger, the worry of stepping onto the scale tomorrow morning, watching it hover not at 103 but only dip at 109.
Then I’d stop talking. In the darkness, I’d step into projector’s light. Let it illuminate me. I’d remove my shirt. I’d show them the artwork of a starved body: ribs like sharpened ridges, chest sunken. I’d ask College Girl to follow me into starvation, Quarterback to see where not drinking water for a day takes you, Punk Kid to binge with me: tomato pie, French fries, ice cream, and, most beautifully, water guzzled. Then I’d pull my shirt back on and slump, exhausted, back into my seat.
Instead, I don’t say a word. I just stare at the center panel, at one man, emaciated like me, reaching into a tree to grab a hanging apple. Though it’s only a painting, though it’s hundreds of years old, I can feel my fingers on that apple. I can taste the earthly delights on my tongue.
Sean Prentiss is the award-winning author of Finding Abbey: the Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave, which won the National Outdoor Book Award, Utah Book Award, and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, and the author of Crosscut: Poems. He is also the series editor for the Bloomsbury Writers Guide and Anthologies Series. Two books, Environmental and Nature Writing and Advanced Creative Nonfiction (2021) are written by Prentiss. Prentiss is co-editor of The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction and co-editor of The Science of Story: The Brain Behind Creative Nonfiction.