Street Scene

I'm using up all the extra square canvases I have from the Machias Show painting street scenes. This is the third one after Adams Street and Wilson Street. I don't know the name of this street. It's one of those that escaped the 911 mandate a few years ago. When I first moved here there were almost no street signs, but when we got 911 emergency service, the town had to identify all locations. I took my camera with me last week to photograph this place after I discovered it on a dog walk. It's not even five minutes from my house, yet I had never ventured up that hill. It gave me a view I had never seen before. The sun was getting low in the sky, as it does now at about four-thirty, casting the long shadows I love so much. The tree in the background is beginning to turn color. Fall is here.

Another sign of Fall is the harvest of all those backyard vegetable gardens that appear every Spring. My new neighbors presented me with a bag full of new potatoes, cherry tomatoes, and the giant zuccini so prevalent in September. It was a very nice gesture and I must remember to reciprocate with eggs, once the chickens have produced enough. They don't lay as many this time of year as they do earlier.

Two nights ago we had a huge rain storm, as did many areas along the coast, and I woke up feeling wet sheets on my feet. There was a leak in the ceiling and big drips were still falling. I imagine the place on the roof where the shingles blew off last year is the problem. I called Will, glad that it wasn't my responsibility. There's a lot to be said for not owning a house.

Amazing Printer

I bought a new printer last week and have been fooling around with its various functions. The thing continues to amaze me. I scanned this old photo into the computer and published it here. It's me as a senior in high school with my boyfriend, Don. We are about to leave for the senior prom. The picture was taken forty-four years ago.

I can remember that night pretty clearly. It's the same brain behind the same eyes, looking out from a very different body. I remember that red dress, bought especially for the occasion, along with the long white gloves. I spent much of the afternoon getting ready, sitting under the dryer with big rollers in my hair in order to achieve the bouffant style of the time. Don picked me up wearing a rented tuxedo and bearing a wrist corsage--an orchid. We went to the country club where the dance was held in his father's Plymouth and had a wonderful, magical time.

I am still in touch with Don. We struck up a long-distance relationship about fifteen years ago. We've visited each other a few times, flying across the country in order to do so. Our teen-age romance became a friendship based on a common history. We shared the experience of first love and that has bound us together despite our separate lives. Now we share news of the weather, the political situation, our daily routines. It's companionable, and in many ways extraordinary. It keeps us connected to the people we were then. Almost all of our lives have been lived apart from one another. All we have in common took place in less than a year. We never talk about that time, but it's the glue that keeps us together.

I don't know what else to think about that. It just feels important.

Interesting

It's quite interesting to look at the painting alongside the photo.

Watercolor

For a change, I decided to try painting in watercolor. Sabrina took this picture over the week-end while it was raining and I downloaded it so I could paint it. I couldn't have chosen a more difficult subject to try out my old skills. Watercolor is something you have to keep at, and I haven't done it since I went to Rockport a year and a half ago. Even then I couldn't do it very well.

This painting looks a little better in the photo than in life because you can't see all the labored brushwork that is so disasterous in watercolor. I did manage to get the idea of the wet road, but it was far from spontaneous. I am disappointed with my effort and don't know if I want to work at regaining the skill I used to have. I have come to rely on the forgiveability of other mediums. It seems like defeat to give up, but is my former expertise worth fighting for? I think I will paint this same picture in oil and see how I feel. If I run true to form, I won't rest until I have done at least something in watercolor that proves I have not permanently lost it.

I am distracted by the sound of Beethoven's Symphonie Patetique on my CD player. It is beautiful beyond words. I have been particularly sensitive to music lately. I've been listening to The Psaltery on the tape player in the car, masochistically turning up the volume and immersing myself in words that cause me to feel nostalgic, synical, and teary. I am overcome with grief for the subjects of the songs, for the people who wrote the words, for myself, and for the human race.