Shorter Posts

Pay attention, she’ll move soon. I fumble for the mechanical pencil, open the sketchbook, catch the shape of her back and head. Wait! She moves. No, no, the lead’s jammed in the barrel, no time to fix it, use the pen.

“Welcome to Delta Airlines Flight 4057 to Seattle. We will begin boarding soon.”

She sits almost straight up. Pay attention to the slump of her head. Polka-dotted pants? No time, remember colors, fill them in later. What’s her story? Is Jayne still alive? The hospice workers should be with her today.

“Flight 4057 to Seattle pre-boarding now. Passengers needing assistance, and
active duty US Military personnel welcome to board.”

She’s flying to Seattle. Grandchildren? Something prim about her, pretty hair, but pink socks? Seattle’s just a stop on my way to Whidbey Island. Stop thinking, pay attention, draw!

“Boarding now for 1st class passengers.”

Her body looks OK, but the angle of her head doesn’t. Start another sketch, skip the details, draw faster, not much time, the slump looks better, but I’ve lost her face. She stands up, pockets her book and disappears into a line of passengers.

“Main cabin passengers now boarding.”

I close my book, put the pen away and join the queue.

Hours later on the Island, the hospice workers have gone back to their own homes. Jayne slumps in bed. Her husband Tim, my brother, props her up on pillows. I can’t bear to draw her. We hold hands. She talks in a whisper, but soon she falls asleep.

Tim and I and her other caregivers, Ruth and Jake, their children, share a bottle of Spanish wine. I paste the label and the bee in the sketchbook two days later, after I’ve flown back to California, after saying goodbye to Jayne for the last time.

I know the truth.
Forget all other truths.
No need for people
anywhere on this earth
to struggle.
For what? Poets?
Lovers? Generals?

Look: it is evening,
Look: it is nearly night.
The wind is level now,
the air is wet with dew.
Soon all of us will sleep
Beneath the earth,
We, who never let each other
Sleep above it.

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)

None of us are strangers to darkness. I don’t mean the darkness that ends each day with the sun setting in the west like a postcard photograph. I don’t mean the even darker darkness of Nature, the rising rivers that overflow towns, the winds that roar throughout the night uprooting trees and blasting our homes into splinters and heaps of bricks and twisted metal.

I mean the darkness of other humans who invade our lives against our wishes. I mean drones and tanks and guided missiles that deliberately annihilate human beings and destroy their hospitals, schools and homes and churches. I mean lawmakers and politicians who regard the murder of children as the normal, acceptable costs of “doing business” in freedom’s land and bravery’s home.

We’re supposed to light candles, not curse the darkness. Sometimes it feels impossible not to curse darkness; there’s so much of it. And lighting candles seems so useless and inadequate: do prayers and candles ever bring back the ones we love from their graves into our arms?

Candles come in many forms. Every Spring, tulips bloom and then their petals wither and collapse back into the earth. I hope a year from now we all will still be here to see again the light they bring into our lives.

Perhaps the title of this painting seems inaccurate. After all, the image many people have of California, especially those who have never been here, is one of beaches, Hollywood, palm trees, convertibles and sunny skies. When I painted this scene from the side of a hill years ago however, I was more interested in other visions of this state that has been my home for more than half of my life.

But that was then, and I haven’t returned since to the hillside to see what the view looks like now. Undoubtedly Route 160 still exists, and so does the power plant and, in the distance, the Antioch Bridge crossing the San Joaquin River. Without the slightest doubt, there are more cars on the freeway.

Perhaps the lunar landscape carved out by dirt bikes and ATVs in the center of the painting still exists. But California being California, I imagine the orange trees and everything else have all been plowed under and paved over with housing tracts and strip malls. Does a hillside still overlook the view? I wonder if I should return and paint it one more time.