21 May 2020. Toy Store Window.
It was after a day of rain last week, at the end of the afternoon, and the sun had come out, with that beautiful late afternoon light. This figure, tall and narrow, making his way up Solano, now paused in front of the toy store window. Still covered in a white tarp, even though the rain had stopped. He called out to me, just after we'd passed, "Do you have a dollar?" The opening unexpected, and so immediately direct.
The tarp was pulled up over his head, formless, which I knew would be hard to convey. And his face--I only caught a glimpse--narrow just like his figure, reminding me later of what C had read from Out of Africa--the young Maasai warrior, standing on one leg, his other foot propped at the knee. Stark and elegant. But this man was an American, destitute, wandering the streets. If he shared any such lineage the connection was ghostly...
_____
Started the drawing yesterday afternoon, on new paper, which felt so different--even though I'd used it on the Analects for many years. Maybe the tooth--the way it holds the pencil marks, or maybe that the plain 20 lb. bond is nicely slippery in a way I've grown to like.
Reworked many times--the Strathmore rag is resistant, holding all the changes, so that a skein of lines from all the previous drawings remains--and I lose my way. But this is where it stands for now, so let me accept it, even when the results are so impossibly ambiguous.Which is what I want, in a way--that loss of intention, but still it's a challenge in the moment, as I try to hold on...
Maybe because I'd read about Susan Rothenburg this morning--she died in Galisteo, New Mexico. I'd imagined her life there many times, having always admired her paintings--and the parallel way she spoke about them. As direct as asking for a dollar--and just as accepting... As in the story...
____
Original introduction, with first version of the drawing (Prophet of the Toys):
My last angel--if I can be the one to refer to him that way. My last friend, better said. Standing in front of the window of the toy shop on Solano. Five Monkeys, always bright inside, with track lights aimed down at the color-filled array, shelves brimming--so that each grown-up who enters shares in the return--the delight in possibility. An untrammeled sense of play, where the biggest challenge is being ready to have fun...
Trying to remember my father's toy store, for that year or two, in San Diego--right downtown. Long before the days of malls and shopping centers--on a regular city block, alongside the office supply and sewing machine repair. I was about five, and desperately wanted a model train set--there they were, right on the shelf--but was told that I 'd have to earn the allowance money to buy it. Which I did. A kind of lesson, I knew, but which seemed very much in contradiction to my father's urge to have the store in the first place--two great wishes pulling in opposite directions...
