lucy wightman

After my heretoforementionednocommentspityparty, I woke up with some positives yesterday.  Firstly, a fabulous individual would like to commission a painting; secondly I sold a book on Amazon.  Now I can’t find the book but this still counts as a positive.  And it sold for more than the cost new.  Granted I have eleven dollars to my name right now.  Oh wait, I think today is February 2^nd!

Feeling a tad fierce, I decided to write down everything I did yesterday in a spiral bound notebook.  Have you ever done this?  For me I really don’t know what I do on a given day.  Now I don’t know if I am this productive every day, or if by writing it down I was guided by my version of monitoring. 

I got up at 5:30 am, a good time to work on the photographs of the Drowned Hogs swim.  Sunlight is a tough companion to the computer monitor and comes into the house from all four sides of its box.  In order to post photographs to my web site I have to watermark them and decrease their quality.  I learned the hard way when ‘someone’ in a bridal party downloaded every single photograph I shot of Bridezilla et al.

I dropped the Hull Times CD off and commenced work on Zelda, the local town mannequin whose broad red and green stripes harkened back to Hull’s carnival ambience in its roller coaster days.  Zelda and I are getting close.  She has a flexible torso but her legs are stuck together permanently.  In order to paint her innermost thighs requires artistic gynecology.  I learned that she is metal inside with some composite wood material around her, so the masking I did for her graphics became part of her skin.  Horrified, Zelda begged me not to subject her to the sander again.  I had no choice.

Facing my drawing board again, I dragged out my laminator and magnets, attempting to devise some affordable and shameless self-promotion for my images, both digital and paint.  Any prospective customer making the effort to spell out ‘wightman’ and worse – ‘photography’ only to find a down web site is poor marketing I realize.  That person will certainly not try again. And having a Verizon phone that is turned off until my next opportunity to use someone else’s phone to call Verizon makes utilizing any shred of what I have to offer impossible.  But the spiral notebook looms.

Washing all the curtains in the front room seemed likely at this juncture.  Done.  I hung the airy white curtains wet before leaving to see my friends B & G.  It just so happens that the B in B & G is Barbs who knows more than the planet about curtains and such.  I arrived late after losing an entire curtain. 

On the way back home, and before photographing the moon, I decided to call Susan (middle name seraphim) and wish her a happy birthday.  Regretfully, I fell asleep before calling later for Susan’s granddaughter, Susan’s birthday gift four years ago.

The moon and where the f-ing hell is my curtain?  Oh it probably went in the washing machine with the ‘dry clean only’ set, 4 pairs, and eight in total, used to block out the sky and the ocean and the light from my existence.

Things became strange on my way home from B & G’s house.  As I’m sure you all know, it is the Wolf Moon, and the largest full moon of the year.  It rose over the ocean and I was prepared with my tripod etc.  Ah yes, the foot for the outdoor tripod is missing, and seeing that I have eleven bucks and all the stores were closed made for some quick action.  Finding a small piece of driftwood I held my breath watching the camera not fall.  I came out of the beach brush with burs, not the imagined shards of glass I felt. 

Once home, my nagging determination to retrieve the 8^th curtain remained, but it was too cold and dark to go into the basement.  I am sure that curtain is down there anyway.  I let Winkle out for a final leg left and there was a very odd smell, but not altogether unpleasant.  It was then I noticed the neighbor’s motion light coming on repeatedly, but nothing obvious was setting it off. 

I turned the television off since The Bachelor saga was done and the rose ceremony saved my girl Vienna.  I responded to Haley’s post “pillow stain” on Facebook by posting a screen shot of Torri’s final and illegal download from Limewire.  I thought that Torri having downloaded “In Christ Alone” by Brian Littrell on May 15, 2006 could reciprocate Haley’s pillow stain cross.

Winkle was in the customary position under one arm (he prefers to be carried up the stairs) when I noticed the small rainbow maker Shirls gave me casting light on the wall.  The punched tin sconces in the living room once threw heart shapes, even though there are no heart shaped cut outs.  Last night they were throwing perfect rectangles.  The motion light kept going on in the windless dark. 

And then there was the familiar yet completely, utterly unexplainable sound at the wall….behind the set of frames, where our umbilical cord hangs in the buckskin bag.  It is a heavy display; the repose angel we photographed, the bloodied belt, the journal where on May 15^th she wrote in blood ‘it is so close to the end,’ the photograph where she is standing at the ocean’s edge and now looks so lonely, the candle holders that Gigi gave us, all the mass cards from others, the gold dish we made at camp Wyonegonic, the googley eyes I found on the beach, the rock with two perfect hearts engraved on its top, and that painting that I really didn’t paint entirely myself.

Having my phone, I try jostling Mr. Winkle to again try to record the sound.  He is annoyed.  I take him upstairs and come back with the camera in video mode.  I can hear the sound from the stairs.  When I walk closer it almost whines before fading out, and when I touch her photographed face it stops even though the sound is not that high.  No, it is behind the painting I will always keep.

You see, I painted her face without realizing it.  Almost 4 years ago, my friend pointed it out to me, and when she did, our phones collided with this sound and then turned themselves off.  I have eleven dollars.  If you were to offer me ten thousand I could not repeat the face I painted with that free stroke and use of texture. How three or four movements with paint on the end of a bunch of hairs can represent so accurately a person’s essence is way above my ability.  Faces are the most daunting for me, and often end in 120 layers of acrylic before I realize I am creating a sculpted relief.

I hear a low and kindly demanding ‘rrrr’ from upstairs.  Winkle would like to be airlifted to his sleeping area.  I retreat upstairs, and once in the bathroom notice how the motion light across the street is on again.  I stare until it turns off, and I watch it come back on, but nothing is moving.  I wanted to see up the street, and went to the other window.  I observe darkness, and the absence of human and elemental activity.

Then something small and bright comes over the top of my head in a luxurious, slow arc.  The moon is full on the other side of the house while over my head and down the middle of my nose is debris, way up there, where it met its atmospheric demise.  Its quarter circle pleased me. 

It is now Tuesday.  I have my spiral notebook.  “6 to 7 am – looked for 8^th curtain.”  I do not have that 8^th curtain.