I drove back to Jacksonville where I made a quiet entrance. I set to fasting after Christmas dinner, though I didn't know how exactly to fast properly. I spent three days in healing, without food or water, reading Faust. It felt secretly wonderful. I now know to never fast without water.
I broke the fast at the end of the third day with water, then on Monday morning with fruit and nuts. I began working at 8am with Cal Ogelsby, a local to Jacksonville and a latent-realized mural artist. Cal has developed a habit of gorging on huge workloads of painting projects. Sometime last week, through a mutual friend, I made a proposal to Cal that if he found himself in deep, he could surely drop me a line. Somewhere in the midst of a dark, long stretch without stimulus, I received a text message from Cal; "...down to do some work on Monday...?"
So we met in front of a store in five-points. Cal explained the job, we were to paint the facade (which had a purple coat over the the whole of it), and paint a sign too. We began by setting up two levels of scaffolding, which was a new experience for me. "What heavy equipment!", I thought.
The practicality of the scaffolding became clearer and clearer throughout the day. Somewhere during the painting process, Cal mentioned that his dad was a general contractor, and I felt that my understanding of him grew exponentially with this fact. Cal was a tall country boy that had eaten a lot of hallucinogens. He was passionate and bright-eyed. He was joyous. I enjoyed spending time with him. His painting method entailed many checkpoints, so the work seemed to unfold in a linear fashion, which as an employee I greatly appreciated. There was a time for set-up, a time for brush-work, blocking in, cutting back, somewhere in there we took separate lunch breaks, more cuts, more blocking in. It was a huge task. As the night grew long, I began to finish up all of the cuts on the wall. Cal had a lot of work left with the lettering that he started. I wanted to leave this to him, as the commissioned artist. I slept on the sidewalk and woke to an outstretched hand. I reached out and grabbed the hand, two twenty-dollar bills sat within its palm and was transferred to me as I was pulled to my feet. "Help me get this scaffolding down."
The following morning, Cal picked me up outside of CoRK. Today's job was at a Montessori School. I slept on the way out, it was an overcast and cold morning. We arrived to a locked gate. Cal had the key. Next to the locked gate sat a type of dinosaur- an articulating boom lift. It was beautiful. Cal couldn't wait to try it out and hopped in the basket and began reading manuals. I unlocked the gate and began unloading paint, scaffolding, tarps, and brushes in front of the three mural locations.
The three mural locations- The school was elegantly designed. It seemed to realize and meet the 'fantastic' expectations that I harbor for this exotic education/lifestyle choice. The lawns were manicured and organized in an easy-to-process-if-not-zen way. Things within the six foot fence enclosing the school seemed very distinct from one another and I felt that this morning was sacred and beautiful. Cal drove the lift (it drives!) from the front gate into the parking lot inside of the gates, yelling to me to join him in the basket. What a funny sight. I got into the basket and up we went. Cal was already familiar with the height and weight distribution so up and up we went. We played with the different buttons and levers. The lift consisted of a base with four wheels attached to a drive train and steering column, a head (which I can thing to compare to the top-part of a military tank), which housed weights and a motor and revolved around the base in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree radius, a pneumatic elbow for twenty feet-worth of elevation, another pneumatic elbow for another twenty feet-worth, a sheathed extension arm for ten lateral feet, a pneumatic wrist which could extend another ten feet, and a basket which could swivel left and right from the end of this long, outstretched dinosaur-robot arm. There we were, two under-qualified (define) artists in the middle of a parking lot 50 feet above the ground, playing in the basket of a rented articulated boom lift.
I set up scaffolding as Cal drove the lift into place. The task at hand were three murals, each of which were perched in the eves of the primary education buildings. The murals were planned and prepared by the school. They represented cultural diversity and other good things. Cal had already worked on one of the murals (each 4 foot by 4 foot sections) in a day prior, and from it gave direction on how the others would come into fruition. We used pouncing techniques to transfer a to-scale print-out of one of the murals (hands, cupping a potted plant). The other, central mural, was my designated project. Based on math, my job was to transfer a sketch of two circles (globes) suspended in front of sixty international flags onto the wall. I used measuring tape, a level, and a calculator and had all of the shapes up quickly. I find this type of process-based prep-work very beautiful and healing. I blocked in colors before we took a lunch break. The rest of the day flew by. I blocked in many flag colors, which placed next to each other, create a symphony of colorful geometric shapes, or maybe more like a quilt. We called it a day a few hours after the sun went down. I felt tired.
The sun hadn't come out in over a week and I drifted into a light sleep as we drove back towards Riverside. I heard Cal exclaim "2015!"- a punchline. I laughed out of the subconscious and into what seemed a parallel subconscious. Through the windshield of the truck, from the center lane of an eight-lane highway, in the dark cold night, we approached three bridges, one layered above another, stacking one hundred feet into the air. Each bridge, a highway and full of automobiles like the one we were in, expressing themselves in amber streams of light. The sound of wind pouring in through cracks and gaps in the panels of Cal's pickup truck. I hadn't realized the future would sound so familiar as wind. Cal dropped me off at Cork and I got out of his truck without my cell phone. I took a bike ride after I realized I was alone. Five points, Brooklyn, Downtown, The Landing, Springfield- the town looked mostly the same- strange faces out at bars. I went in to a couple of them, ones that I was familiar with. I didn't talk much. When the new year came around, I was standing next to a funnel cake stand, looking out at the Saint Johns River in anticipation of a firework display. 2015 rolled in with less pomp and circumstance than the end-of-the-world 2000, or the end-of-the-world 2012, which was a welcome change. I went home after the firework bursts began to extend their welcome. On my bed I thought, "If a resolution is to be made, be it one of happiness". I slept in the following day, and made only one errand to visit Cal to retrieve my phone.
Cal met me again in front of Cork the following morning. We drove to the Montessori School to begin painting. It was a teacher-planning day and we talked with a couple of teachers about the Montessori Method. They together walked us through examples of exercises designed for three-to-five year-old's number relationship comprehension skills. I was very fascinated and slightly envious that I was not educated this way, before I checked this self-defeating thought. (Who am I to be jealous of the I which I am not?) The teachers left the school in the afternoon, and Cal and I painted for hours in silence. The sun's rays still remained behind miles of cloud and the air was cool and heavy with precipitation. In the basket of the articulated boom lift, postured above manicured gardens, presumably planted by young geniuses, I painted colored geometric shapes. I felt that I could be painting the crest on a mid-evil castle, or the altar of a church, or likewise the symbol for an alternative future-civilization. In short, it felt surreal. Again, lunch, again, nightfall. We packed up around 10:30, and went to the bar to have two rounds of drinks.
My parents came into town the following morning. I woke to a text from my mother saying that she and my father were 'on their way up'. I got my basket of drawings together, and went out to our agreed-upon meeting point- under the bridge at the Riverside Arts Market, where I set up a small display of drawings for passers-by, busker style. I did not talk with very many people, but did find time while sitting to write a return letter to a pen-pal. I had a conversation with a bright ten-year-old named Jacob about beetles, gobies, (some of my favorite subject matter), and boomerang hunting. I missed several calls from my parents, but in short time found them. We took a walk around five points, and I showed them my current exhibition at Brew. From there, we took a walk to Black Sheep, a great local restaurant, and had lunch. We split up and met back shortly at Cork, where I gave a tour and made introductions among friends. I loaded up a backpack and hopped in my parent's car whereupon we drove together back to their home in Crystal River and I write to you now.
Here, in the comfort of my parents home, I will seek perspective and contemplate.
