Magdalena,
Remember that time you asked me to do something hard for you? You said if I could find a way to do it, you’d tell me your secret?
Well I picked up some work, I think it might do, painting a mural on the three storey east wall of the feed store on Euclid Avenue. I showed the shopkeeper a six-color sketch of Frida Kahlo. At the periphery were narcissus flowers tangled with barbed wire. Between her brown-black hair and the pale yellow and white flowers I indicated slivers of brickwork that were to show through. At the corners, hearts pierced with daggers and hearts pierced with feathers, across the bottom a banner with script: “My Bird, Wings Mending.”
The following week, handful of broken chalk stubs in my pocket, I climbed the ladder just after sunrise. I drew out lines and curves and intersections of lines. Marked locations with an X. Traced petals with a radial sweep about my elbow, wire with a sweep about my shoulder. Down the ladder and up again, I marked the place where one shape overlaps another. Deviation of jawline. Pupil, concentric with iris, occluded by eyelid. Crease of mouth, droop and reunion of earlobe. The sun rose to midday and the wall fell into shadow. Down the ladder and up again. I drew in daggers and feathers, symmetrical as I could muster. Silhouettes of cross-guards. The banner, curled and counter curled. The script in careful letters.
The next morning the chalk lines were sagged by dew but still visible. I blocked out base layers of color. The damp brick lubricated the paint and made it easy to press into the crevices of the wall. Over the course of the day I progressed from light colors to more intense ones, flowers and sclera and banner and skintone and stamen and stem. In the afternoon, down the ladder and up again, dagger steel and barbed wire, rachis and vane, iris and eyebrows, hairline and lips. Down the ladder and up again, shadows and tresses and pupils and script.
Finally done, I thought, I closed my paint in the long shadows of the waning day. I returned the ladder to the storage space of the feed store and asked the shopkeeper as she was locking up if she’d like to see the finished mural. Just then a customer arrived for salt and layer feed. I went outside to wait and I started writing this letter.
Several minutes later the customer exited the store, followed shortly by the shopkeeper. I walked with her into the shade that stretched from the east wall to the underbrush along the bridge. There was a chill already in the September evening.
Then the shopkeeper told me she was sorry. She told me she seen me working hard, and that it was a pretty painting, she said, but it just wasn’t what we had agreed on. She said she couldn’t pay me for it. I was rubbing the dried paint from my fingers. I looked up and was dumbstruck. On the wall, wreathed flowers and hearts and feathers and letters, I had painted a portrait of you.
When I started this letter, I didn’t know if this mural was the hard thing. Now I realize it can’t be. Nothing automatic could be hard enough. I hope someday I can still earn your secret.
Fondly,
Nobody Knows