Baker Beach

It took me a week to feel at home enough to hang paintings. I have a friend who understands these things.

I texted her, “Hanging paintings…”

She texted back, “I imagine you beginning to breathe…”

And so I am, beginning to breathe. And so must you, imagine me taking a deep breath. Imagine me sketching a picture at Baker Beach, folding the laundry, finding the post office on Geary, making toast of the rye bread from the Russian bakery around the corner. And you can imagine me hanging paintings.

This was the first one I hung up.

It’s one of my Dad’s. Later this week, perhaps, I’ll tell you the story of the day my Dad began painting, but for right now all you need to know is that my Dad loved paint. And he loved black.

I never use black. I like to deepen my shadows with blues and purples. He tried it once it humor me. But it was a failed experiment.

I wasn’t living in the house when he painted “Squares” but I can see him in the shed on the old shower stool, choosing colors, and one by one scraping them thick onto the canvas. Laying new colors over others too gregarious, perhaps, in their hue, he would finish by frosting the edges with black.

I like how it seems to be glowing out of the middle. And that’s where I put it, in the middle.  I need a little glow coming from the middle of my apartment.