Somehow i;m going to try to encompass from when I left England to now. Things are complicated, but now less so. Life feels like a constant hacking through deep woods, like those jungle scenes in movies. I was paralyzed from my involvements with people, namely my family and friends who, while in close proximity to them, I retained a cordiality. I’ve learned through this blog to hold my tongue, at least until the car has made it out of town. I don’t have beef with anyone, just, I’m thinking, and sometimes people can take things so personally, and I don’t know.
Landed in Orlando on the 20th of December, England was supposed to have left the EU, but they extended again. Now since, they have put a nail in that coffin, so it seems moot. My mom picked me up from Tampa I think. I’d taken an uber to a greyhound, and a greyhound to Tampa. I spent a couple nights in crystal river, before driving to Titusville with my dad one morning to pick up Grammy for Christmas celebrations. From there the three of us drove back to Crystal River, at least I think that’s how it worked out. Grammy spent a couple nights there, then we all went up to Panama City where my sister and her husband and two kids live. What I knew of Grammy was that she had an appetite for the dark, a few christmases ago she talked us through how she would commit suicide if she chose to, and emphasized that if she chose that, it would be her choice and that would be okay and not reflect on any of us. I knew that Grammy was having trouble periodically in her house in Titusville. While I studied in Philadelphia, periodically, I would get a call from my mom telling me Grammy had slept in the shower last night, or stuck on the toilet. On the way to Panama City, we were dealing with incontinence, and pulling over all the time, but it wasn’t so easy to get Grammy into these bathrooms from inside of a raised up truck. She’s good for about two outings, after that she has trouble getting up and walking. She was tired even before Christmas.
Christmas came and went. Cami curated a Christmas for her two year old, and for her four year old, one they might remember in the deep heart. Otherwise, in our camp of my two parents and Grammy, and I, it was pretty dismal. It was cold and wet, cloudy; I got a big ugly fever, and a fever blister in my nose. I’d had fevers in England too, the world’s on fast forward and we’re pounding coffees and dreading the ends, breathing in polluted air strands that we formed, and some formed by parallel offenders, and I’m just saying this because I’ve had four fevers in the past six months. I prefer fevers to colds, because you can sweat them out, starve them, and generally feel very alive while battling them. I got a shirt and some candy, as I have every year for the past while. Grandma Donna was there too; the cast was mom, dad, Cami, Joshua, the two kids, me and Grandma Donna, and Grammy. Donna and Grammy stayed in their own condo on 1, and mom and dad and I stayed in one on the 8th floor. We drove Grammy back to her house after Christmas. Even though she had a rough time, she chalked it up to traveling, so we left her house.
I’d garnered this idea up that I would live in her house after she died. Her ex-husband had died, and his house was sold, even though it was really nice and on the Indian River. I would’ve loved to have lived there. I thought it was fitting in some way. I related to that old man, Ed, my dad’s dad. But the house was sold. I thought the difference was to be proactive on the next one. Artists are seeking out the opportunity for loaded silence. That’s why dreams are so special, like and orchard for paintings, the dreams grow and ideally can be ladled out into meaning through action, and paint, or dance or whatever. But the idea of living in Grammy’s house after she died, or perhaps even when she was around, would be choice I thought; a type of art residency. Well, since she was in poorer shape, I proposed my idea this Christmas, and pushed it a bit.
Turns out, after Christmas, I was asked to live with her for a few days by my parents, and to take her to medical appointments. We wanted to figure out what was the cause of this lethargy. I obliged, and hoped to get to know her a little better- to see how she lived. I stayed in the guest bedroom and made friends with the cats I was allergic to. The stay was riddled with sneezing and tissue breaks. Grammy’s day to day was reading articles, and writing letters to pen pals. I was there simultaneously for her doctors appointments and for my art residency. It was a mess. I took her to her doctor, who couldn’t see her. It seemed like she was going to die within the week. I was instructed to go to the ER, and I did, and we were checking in, and checking her blood and I began to cry. They took her back, and I stayed for a while and I think she was having a UTI, among compounding diabetic problems. They stuck a long probe into her nose, twice to test for flu, a test I learned from my dad would earn the hospital $2000 from the insurance company, and wasn’t necessarily necessary. She stayed the night there for two or three nights. I did the thing of living in her house alone, but this was not how I pictured it. It never is. But in hindsight that’s how it will have been I guess. I ran errands for her; went to her reserved church luncheon and said goodbye to her friends on her behalf, something I did not anticipate doing, and returned her library books. We were closing up shop in Titusville. The drawing I thought I would do didn’t happen. I worked on digital paintings, and embarrassingly got distracted by cheap wine in can coolers. I took lots of pictures too. I picked her up from the hospital and lived with her for a few more days. Seeming stable again, I left back to Crystal River. I needed a shower and clothes. I thought it would be a two day trip or so, but the medical stuff kind of trapped me, and I stayed for 6 days. I drove back to Crystal River.
A couple days later she called us, admitting that she no longer felt fit to live alone. Years ago I remember seeing her with her dentures out. She put them back in; and I remember her saying staunchly that she was going to die in this house. And she pointed to the big crooked oak tree on her back patio, it was leaning towards her house, and she said “that’s the tree that’s going to kill me”, and gestured a falling motion and laughed. Well, since then she has assumed a different attitude; sometimes I perceive it as straight fear, fear of time running out. Within this fear I can see fire in her eyes, growing cold, I guess like icy lighting.
I was on a reddit thread where EMTs were relating their professional stories, and they agreed on how arbitrary it is to accept or reject death, like some people freak out and others take it calmly, but that the variation could be seen within the same person had it been and hour prior or later it seemed to them. Like the experience was only good or bad depending on the person’s state of mind at the time, rather than relating to their lives lived as a whole. This rings so true to me, like my uncles death by cancer, how the cancer swirled inside of his guts like egg drop soup, amorphous. That’s life, organic stuff and cancer, mostly empty space with the chance meaning, chance object.
I could be projecting. In my time with Grammy, and since this episode she has moved into my parent’s house, and then into her chosen assisted living home in Cedar Creek in Crystal River, and in my time cleaning out her house, I’ve leaned that she harbors secrets more closely than I anticipated, or her inner world. Perhaps she has erected walls, curated her personhood to me as grandson like how my sister curates Christmas for her kids. So often smart people want to talk about common denominators, instead of the spiney bits. Her drawers are full of photos of family. Her sculpture collections are half pine cones, which is at once disappointingly unexotic and charming, she loves pinecones. This stuff, however, is not her, and I am aware of the foolish grasping that could transpire should I choose to associate the things for her body. The Moroccan sculptures, the paintings from Larry, her late youngest son, the NASA posters which lined her walls and ceilings. I’m collecting them for still life paintings and collages, but I understand that I could find more interesting stuff in a good thrift store, and it’s being a little bit poor now that motivates me to paint these rather than a good ceramic piece that would look right done in oils in the tradition of William Nicholson. No, these bits and bobs for utter lack of a better term are loaded insofar as they have come easily to me, and it’s not wise to exhaust energies in the setup. It’s good to take it as it comes, no greener pastures. So I’ll paint my Grammy’s stuff, but happily divorced from notions of meaningfulness or true love.
Speaking of true love, Frances got bored with dealing with me. I applied to some grad schools but I probably won’t go even if I get in. I was stressed out. I ignored her for two weeks straight, calls and texts. I was feeling on call and the conversations didn’t usually work out well. I’d introduced insecurities by kind of asking for the relationship to open up. I was strategically throwing little wrenches in the gears, sabotaging our closeness. I was teasing at the threads, for a break, while still being nice when it counted. I realized this counts as grooming and as gaslighting, so I felt bad. Ignoring her was the only thing I wanted to do I guess.
She ended up texting my mom and brokering the breakup through her. I kind of like that actually. I still like Frances, especially because the breakup has seemed to have gone well, but there’s only one thing I’m passionate about, and that’s painting; and anything else is kind of like a game and at its worst a distraction. It’s rude to say this to someone’s face, because it’s not personal, and never solicited, but it is generally useful to know and I’m happy to have discovered that a good way to put a stop to the song and dance of commitment-to-distraction is to ignore it until you meet on the next plane down. I’m thrilled to continue to call Frances one of my best friends. I talked with her yesterday about art. I hope we can stay close forever. Now I feel like I’m gaslighting in my own diary egads.
Living with my parents has been tempered by my side jobs. I had one side job where I went to Jacksonville to pick up Shaun Thurston so we could go camping together in Georgia. When we pulled up, there were two girls from Quebec unloading their van, so when we got out of the car I cooed to them in sweet song, ‘bonjour’, and they replied laughing ‘bonjour’. We stayed for three nights. It was clear Shaun needed this, as he admitted frequently. The Hostel In The Woods, it was called, and we paid a hundred bucks apiece. We slept in a treehouse with two plywood walls and two screens ones. We, throughout. the day learned to get in where we fit in, raking leaves and chopping wood. Periodically we would cross paths with the French Canadian girls and get intertwined for a few hours. They left after the second day or their rubber-tramping adventure through the southeast. Everything was sweet about them, and I remarked from my heart how that was the best relationship I’d ever had. I loved them and they loved us, and we loved them, and there was nothing not to love, and Shaun loved them, and they were both cute and lovely. I swam in the lake for one of them, while she and Shaun talked on the shore.
Shaun and I left the next day, or the one after. It rained so hard one night, that we transplanted and slept in the library- a geodesic structure without flooding problems. The next morning Shaun and I both got on projects that resulted from the storm. A guy named Mark and I got on a broken screen door, and Shaun got on fixing a length of boardwalk that had been broken from a fallen tree. Mealtimes at night upon not working from the outside perspective might’ve seemed masturbatory, there was a circle of gratitude which elicited elations of the dirt and the heartsong from the garden, but after a days work out there, it was easy to stridently relay ones own gratitude for muscles and tendons, those which you noticed through the beautiful work, unanticipated but welcome, in the beautiful heart full day.
A father and son came to commemorate their late mother and wife’s death, she who had loved this place in the woods. The energy changed, as Shaun pointed out to me. They brought booze and weed, and it became broey, and the co-providers became ‘hippy-chicks’, which is not to put down our two guy guests, for they were high level hippy guys, but there was a change. Shaun seemed half-baked, not quite done with his orbit, but our initial plan had reached its fulfillment, even though I could tell he was flirting with staying another day, I don’t believe it would have helped him nor I, as the hard deadline would loom over us as the soft one had not. Quick and painless, that’s the way it is anyway.
I went to Tallahassee on this sojourn too, to start a mural for an old MMA gym I’d painted for since I was in early college in that same town. Since the owner had moved locations, he requested I paint in the new one. I painted through the nights, as to avoid his Jiu Jitsu classes. The motif was a dragon poised for a fight, among the words ‘Jiu-Jitsu’. I didn’t finish before I was called to deliver paint to Tampa for my friend Cosby and Sarah’s mural festival wall. It was offered to me by them that since I was delivering the paint on short notice, I could share their wall with them. I had already tried to get a wall with the festival but was turned down. I delivered the paint, but it became clear that if I were to share their wall, we would make a camel (horse designed by committee) type of thing, and it wouldn’t be useful to any of us professionally. I felt slighted by the guy putting the festival on because he had rejected me before, and then when I came down rejected me again, and I knew he had blank walls, but he was holding out, and shifting artists around that had terrible talent, and I became mentally frustrated and began to spiral. I ate dinner with Cosby and Sarah at a Vegan place I couldn’t afford, and this was another demerit, the last stitch. I desperately tried to draw thumbnails that Cosby liked so we could start a wall together, or that I could get one alone, but Cosby’s brain was mush from jet lag because he’d just flown in from Spain. I folded and we transferred the paint, and I left town.
Back in Crystal River, I resumed my day-labor jobs. I’d already painted all of my parent’s exterior house. I was now working on their neighbor’s house, more exterior work, and grandma Donna’s house, interior work. I had my hands full anyway, didn’t need a half-and-half mural again with Cosby and Sarah- this time in Tampa (last time was in Atlantic City).
My professional persona is that of Rasputin. I’ve made sure through schooling that I have mystic powers and a large member; but no-one wants to do business with someone who can screw them hard, and it’s a rude game to do polemics while someone else is trying to advance their careers, say by having a mural fest.
After Tampa Cosby and Sarah came through Crystal River. I offered them $20/hour for help with these painting projects. I wanted to move on with my life, and I had too much on my plate already, Florida-wise. All of the house painting got done.
I inherited the car, Grammy’s little red car. I can’t afford it, but my parent’s said they would help until I could take it on fully. I’m going to take it up to Philly, where I’ll have to pay for parking and insurance and gas and maintenance. I’m going to need a job. I really look forward to getting a job. I hope I can get a job. I really want to get a job at Sherwin Williams. I could even drive for them. I could drive to work and drive for them, but my goal is to work at the counter, mixing paint and learning about the different properties of paints and thinners, and tools, chatting with professionals and hanging out with color swatches, and learning them, and having income and an in store coffee maker, and a place to think, and time to think and draw and learn.
I’m in Tallahassee now. I came back to finish up that mural in the gym. I’m so tired. I got through another fever last week. It’s been between going to trips out to Titusville to clean out Grammy’s house and house painting work. I’m getting a little, and I mean very little painting done on my own time. I slept in the MMA gym last night in my hoodie and shorts and socks. I used a two inch training mat as my blanket. It requires a nocturnal schedule to paint this mural, but last night I slept. It’s so overwhelming.
On my way out of my parent’s house I wrote an entry into their guestbook, talking about how our relationship is informed by economy to a regrettable extent, and how my worth to them is measured in labor I can provide, mediated by money. I, for example didn’t get to tell them anything about my trip to England. They asked how was it, with the TV on, blaring sounds which I detested, and I spoke in a small two-second valley of silence in between diction from a newscaster and said “yeah, it was really good”. Then I tried to extend it, by saying “I wanna talk about it later”, but the newscaster had begun to speak again, and it didn’t matter anyway. No matter how much my parents can relay to me that I am useful to them, and they do, by words and money, thanking me for helping out with Grammy, (I gave her insulin shots for a couple weeks, and moved her stuff around and helped with logistics, bank accounts and all that), they lack the tools to begin to address me as an an emotionally active person. And I have my shell, and they have theirs, too, compounding the problem of ever crossing the impasse. I’m glad I have painting, painting is my parents and partner, and sometimes I can meet people through the objects I create, meet them on the other side of my shell.
To go into Freud a little, if the Ego is the callous developed by the ID rubbing against the world, then the painted surface is the physical ego. Meet me on the other side of the callous.
