2004-05-07 - 10:00 a.m.
I’ve been painting my house, and it’s about time. I was so thoroughly sick of looking at the washed-out pastel mint of the primer coat—which, because it is a primer coat should have been covered long before now—that finally I just said to myself, “That’s it, Buster. Time to get off your butt and get this place painted.” The finish coat is a dark, low-luster sage—which fits the character of this place so much better that I intermittently go stand at the bottom of the hill simply to admire the change.
My brother doesn’t think much of my painting technique, however. He and Deb (who is another painter, helping him on a project a couple towns over) stopped by last evening, just about sundown. They are standing in the drive looking at the side of the house when I open the door and walk out. “How do you like it?” I ask.
“I like the color just fine,” says my brother, who, having mixed it, takes the opportunity to compliment his good taste. “We’re just wondering (and here he points to the new kitchen addition, which isn’t yet painted) …you going for a two-tone effect?”
Actually he’s not pointing to the addition as a whole but just the part which is a glossy bone white along the bottom.
“Oh that... ”
“Is that oil?”
“Yeah.”
My brother looks back at the old part of the house that is painted the beautiful, low-luster acrylic sage—the part that Deb has continued appraising the whole time. She says, finally: “You can see where it’s flashed.” And it’s true; at a slight angle, you can see shiny splotches in the finish that I hadn’t noticed before.
That’s what comes of spot priming with glossy paint and overlapping dry brushstrokes.
*******
I’ve been in a funk lately. More than a funk, actually, and it’s from my own doing, which makes it all the worse.
Apropos this state of mind, the other night I was talking with a friend about end-of-life issues. It started from a conversation she had had with a friend of hers whose father is dying. We got to talking about making wills and decisions that shouldn’t be left to others. It was weird because I had been talking with my mother about the very same thing a few days before.
At one point Anne told me about another friend of hers whose mother committed suicide right after the family’s Christmas reunion.
“She never gave them any indication”
“That’s how it is, more often than not.”
“But wouldn’t that be horrible? She blames herself for not seeing it.”
“Your friend’s mother might have wanted it that way, to make that last Christmas a gift.”
*******
I was sitting at the picnic table off the back of the house after I got done painting. I was just relaxing and looking at the world, watching a bumble bee doing its drunken flying thing across the grass when I noticed purple after-images of dandelions imprinting on my vision like myriad little suns. When I tried to duplicate the effect, I could not. The phenomenon was not something available to me by force of desire or will, but was simply a happy convergence of things in the space-time continuum, granted by happenstance.
*******
Last night we had a thunderstorm. I unplugged the computer, darkened the house, opened the French doors off the kitchen and stood watching the lightning flash across the valley. The cinematography was erratic, but the sound was superb. And though the film was dark, it revealed (in flickering stop-action frames) the world exposed in a stark negative light.
Beau stretched out on the lawn while Chance cowered at my side until the rain, starting with a mere intermittent ticking on the tin roof above us, built into a steady torrent and forced a close to the show. I called Beau in, shut the doors and went to bed, falling asleep to the sounds of a distant war.
*******
This morning was all misty light and birds singing and fresh rainwashed air. I have been out taking pictures. And now that the sun is shining, I should get back to painting. (First, though, I need to do some dishes because all that's left are the big spoons.)
