“When I see them now they are not sepia, still, losing their edges to the light of a future afternoon. Caught midway between was and must be. For me they are real. Sharply in focus and clicking. I wonder, do they know they are the sound of snapping fingers under the sycamores lining the streets? When the loud trains pull into their stops and the engines pause, attentive listeners can hear it. Even when they are not here, when whole city blocks downtown and acres of lawned neighborhoods in Sag Harbor cannot see them, the clicking is there.” 226
se·pi·a /ˈsi
piə/ [see-pee-uh]
–noun
| 1. |
a brown pigment obtained from the inklike secretion of various cuttlefish and used with brush or pen in drawing. |
| 2. |
a drawing made with this pigment. |
| 4. |
Photography. a print or photograph made in this color. |
| 5. |
any of several cuttlefish of the genus Sepia, producing a dark fluid used naturally for defense and, by humans, in ink. |
–adjective
| 6. |
of a brown, grayish brown, or olive brown similar to that of sepia ink. |
It’s the end of the book, certainly, and a circling back to where it all started– Joe and Violet peacefully in love. But it’s aged now. I think the use of sepia imagery here is a blunt, visual representation of time passing. Things grow stale with time. Their appearance changes, gets dimmer, darker. Like the brown of the sepia. But they’re not sepia–they’re memories preserved in the mind the way they once were. Memories are clear enough to show the images of what once was, but they’re not tangible. They start to blur around the edges. That’s how this book read… like a memory that is clear but old. It made sense, even when jumping around between years and fragments of memory and realization. But it still had that contained-in-the-mind sort of blurriness around the edges, right down to wondering who the narrator truly is. Who is this person, this voice, longing for the love that Violet and Joe share? Is it a part of Violet, or is it another pair of eyes altogether?
You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.
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