Scum. It’s in the lips; frothed with hair but it’s there; you know, you live with it.
Over sixty years with this same face, this same body. I’ve watched it grow bigger, harder, softer, sadder, hairier. Now I even grow tufts like foxtails inside my ears. I’m falling, failing from the effects of gravity, cell deterioration, laughter, weeping and plain boredom. Watch the cracks deepen, the flesh putty out, slowly turning into aged meat. Put that all in, Scum; make it visible. Death’s stalking just around one of these hours. Maybe yesterday.
I finish off the blue jacket; decide to leave out the hands, after all. Darkness is pushing me down, pinning me. I can’t believe it; here I’ve been painting over four hours; actually painting some of the time, blubbering, yammering the rest. The family will be home soon.
I lean back and look. It’s not a bad painting; still too much self-pity. I’m like one of those donors jammed into the bottom corner of a medieval painting. Only I’m all alone in the center of this canvas, begging to nobody, everybody; praying for everybody, nobody. Definitely obscene, in the deepest sense, unbearable, not to be seen.
I clean up; pack away the box. I need new pig’s bristles; the ivory black’s almost gone again, too. I use too much black in my painting. I can’t catch myself doing it, but the paint’s going somewhere; I’m not eating it. I’d better watch that.
EATING BLACK: CONCENTRATED SEARCH FOR COLOR,
OR, PERHAPS, THE LACK OF LIGHT IN WHICH TO
BURY THE NIGHT. BUT NIGHT IS ONLY A LACKEY;
COLD AS NO HEAT, SLOW MOLECULES. I FACE
BACK TO BLACK, NO ONE, NOWHERE.
3
Slum Landlord
I work outside today, Saint Valentine’s Day. It’s cold but I’ll take any sunshine I can get. I feel all cramped up painting inside, as if I’m cut off from life. I’m happiest out in streets, fighting crowds, cursing cars, yakking with people; it all gets into the work.
My painting’s got to be part of life, not just about it anyway. I’m OK inside for a while, sharpening up my personal carving knives, digging into myself, getting close, but then I’ve got to break out and muck around. In some strange way, I have the feeling I’m most alive when I’m painting, as if the other time is a kind of waiting. I don’t know what I’m waiting for but that’s the way it feels.
I’m working down on the Rue Princesse in the Latin Quarter. I’ve just started on a woodworker’s shop, menuiserie-ébéniste. The owner of the place comes out. We get into some standard everyday talk about ‘lost-artisanship-craftsmanship, world-going-to-hell’, all that tired jabbering. He asks me to put his name on his sign; it’s weathered off. I think he wants me to climb up over his door and do some actual, honest-to-God painting up there, but he means in the painting; that’s fine with me.
The painting’s going to be mostly browns and some dark blue-grays, with a light bulb hanging inside, lighting raw wood and sawdust; yellow-ochre hollow spaces. I’m doing the place almost face on, slight angle left. There’s a big old carved doorway on the left I want to finagle in somehow.
The door’s closed when I do the drawing. Halfway through my underpainting, the concierge comes out, jams this door open.
She’s an old gal, new face painted on. New face has nothing to do with her real face; hair cut gamine, bright red. She looks terrific, like a clown. There’s still a good body there too; moves easily, holds herself straight; thin freckled legs. Nobody with freckles is ever old. She’s maybe seventy and packing some fifty pounds of libido; comes on and chums me with ‘Oh-la-la’ old-fashioned-girl-style press; hands all over me. I love it.
I ask if she’ll stand in the doorway so I can paint her into my picture. She runs her fingers through the red straw hair; bony, bent fingers. She leans in the doorway, arm cocked against the wall. She’s wearing a blue-flowered dress. I paint it orange, need an orange accent. I gussy the dress up and make her about forty. Wish I could do that for myself, for everybody. No, there’s a time for each of us.
EACH TO A TIME A TIME FOR EACH—
WE WADE THROUGH OUR LIVES, THROUGH
MINUTES, HOURS, DAYS, MONTHS, YEARS
TILL WE GASP FOR AIR, DROWN IN TEARS.
She can’t believe it when I’m finished; a thing like this takes me maybe five minutes. One thing, I really can paint: good, fast, powerful. I might just not have enough aesthetic, or maybe too much – somewhere in there. I can spin around, fall down and begin painting anything in front of me, wouldn’t shift my eyes. I love it all, can paint everything; no damned discrimination. There are fifty paintings within a hundred yards of anywhere I’m standing. I know it. I could spend the rest of my life painting self-portraits, or stone walls: I might just do that.
Take my milk pots. I’ve painted sixteen milk-pot paintings already this winter. Who the hell wants paintings of milk pots? Thank the Good Lord our weather’s getting better; get me away from those pots. I’m beginning to smell sour milk on my nostril hairs all the time. It’s like when I was painting fish and they kept rotting on me. I get to be manic about these things, find myself falling into them, out of control. It’s unreasonable.
THE ONLY FINDING OF SELF
IS LOSING IT SOMEHOW.
This old gal’s looking at my painting and crying. Her face is beginning to run off into the street, makes me want to take my brush and touch her up. I’m also afraid she’s going to ask the price. I’ve sold more paintings for less than canvas cost because people want them and have no idea what’s involved. Rich people should pay me five thousand dollars apiece for paintings; make up for the ones I sold at ten. Only trouble is rich people don’t usually like my paintings, remind them of a whole bunch of things they want to forget. This gal slips a five-franc coin into the paint box; makes me feel like a real turd.
LACK OF TRUST
SPIRITUAL RUST.
An American’s been standing behind me. He’s watching the whole show, smiling, very catlike, very dignified. He’s young but there’s much dignity there. His clothes are old: worn cuffs, bed-pressed pants, very neat; carries an umbrella on a sunny day.
The concierge goes away. I start painting seriously again, trying to forget those five francs.
‘That was really nice, man.’
I knew he was American all the way, even with the umbrella and all the dignity. He has swimmy blue blinking eyes; contact lenses. He tells me he likes my painting; stands in the sunshine watching me paint; not much talk.
I’m up on the sidewalk leaning against the Hôtel Princesse; painting’s coming along fine; beautiful shadows falling across the wall. I’m painting a GAZ box now; lovely things those GAZ boxes, especially in early, almost spring morning, clear light.
The American comes up beside my paint box, wants to get something with the five francs. What do I care? Five francs; if he wants them, OK. I nod, smile, trying not to break the magic; I’m deep in the middle of things; I’m lost, floating in light and air, thinking and dreaming at the same time. But I might have to wipe out the old gal after all, too sharp and the top right feels
