2014 June 2 I fear others are unsettled when they find you've dwelled on them; I take some care towards being accurate, although not extreme care (when it comes to facts) and while I often mis-remember, never include any outright lies.
I am staying at my friend K's house. Everything here is well-situated. I arrived tonight. I rented my place out on airbnb to a girl making a documentary about African migrant workers in Guangzhou. She is Chinese although has lived in Los Angeles for a number of years. We didn't speak at length and I didn't mention that I spent the summer of the Beijing Olympics in Shanghai teaching English to a group of engineers before returning to New York and driving to LA for graduate school. It's a deceit, perhaps, to think this might be a point of connection. I got the job through a Shanghainese woman who taught kindergarten with my mother at P.S. 173 in northern Manhattan. The girl (she is 34) just got back from her travels and stayed with her sister before moving to my place. Now her heavy camera equipment is in front of the fireplace. I got a piece of wood from Home Depot and had them cut it to the perfect size for a large desktop, and sanded it, and covered it in a few thin layers of polyurethane so that she could have a proper desk. I bought special highly-concentrated cedar spray online to get rid of the ants. The morning she arrived, I found a centipede in the sink (I think because it is an old house). She asked whether I have cleaning-supplies she can use: I told her I clean with a solution of water and distilled vinegar, although she may do as she wishes. The owners made a documentary about The Shining. They live next-door with their small curly-haired son. They have a beautiful blue-eyed cat. They planted two kinds of sage out front (neither of them culinary) and I have a small patio with a lemon tree. I hardly use this area although L, my landlady, gave me two plastic sky-blue adirondack chairs when I moved in, and I have plans to grow herbs and succulents there.
I ran into K at a party a few weekends ago and when I mentioned I was renting on airbnb, she asked where I would stay. I said I was purchasing a futon for my studio and it would be OK: I joined a yoga place with a shower. She asked whether this was something I wanted to do, and I said yes: I want to live, for a while, with the objects I make, although I was nervous about the air-quality; the windows are high and narrow, covered over in plexiglass and screwed into the wall so you have to open the door to the street if you wish to let air in. She said she would be traveling so that if I wanted, I could alternate between my studio and her place. It's serendipitous, really; it's quite close to where I work.
K left me a printed list of specifications, something she must leave for all her guests. She included a note on top right in her small neat hand asking me to water her plants. She would like me to bring them to the sink and let them drain so that they don't ruin the wooden countertops. She also asked me to collect her mail. I will go collect my mail at my house myself every couple of days. It's quite convenient to be here: to be lifted up an out of my life and spotty systems of organization and into the smooth operations of another. I can pick up where this other person has left off but don't have to decide where the pots and pans will go and what kind of dish-soap to buy. I was looking for the wine-opener and, being unable to find it, noticed the top the fridge is covered in thick dust. This surprised me for she is rather neat. There is a chocolate santa-claus wrapped in foil contained in a glass jar on the kitchen-table next to a small container of potting-soil and some spices. When you open the cabinet, a waft of spice enters the air. Her liquor and her books are kept in a large closet. Inside the closet, on the wall to the right, is a framed poem:
On the wall at the foot of the bed is a small painting I made of the back of the artist Mary Kelly's head, so K must look at this each night as she falls asleep: although I have difficulty imagining this, and wonder whether, at times, she takes it down, or perhaps forgets its there, the way we do, with things that are always around us. I made a few of them and K got this one in exchange for coming to my studio a number of times to speak with me about my work. She would sit with her head on her hand, to the side, so that her ear could listen. It was this strong act of listening that so startled and captured me. They were odd to make - uncomfortable: although my desire to make them overrode any anxiety that might ensue. I had been compelled to paint them after sitting in Mary's psychoanalysis class in the spring of 2009. We were in a seminar class-room with tables set into a rectangle and a white-board up-front. She stood at the front looking through notes kept in sheet-protectors. I remember hardly following the soft intonations of her voice, so that, instead, I heard only a fluttering of words intercepted by by the soft bird-like sound of her clearing her throat. She might have had an ongoing illness that prevented her from using her notes outside of their sheet-protectors in order to prevent any inhalation of dust. I had read some of what we were reading in college, but nothing sticks, and so I began simply watching her, and the movements of the classroom while she taught, which lead to this meditation on her hair. Maybe it has something to do with noticing how another has ordered her life. Her hairdo is static. She typically wears black. A professor I admired in college also typically wore black. She had short hair and shiny lace-up shoes and each word that came out of her mouth, then, seemed to me lovely. There is no confusion about how one appears in the world.
After making the paintings, I remember discussing them with Mary. She told me she had begun to do her hair like this after she had children in order to get it up out of her face, although she didn't mention anything else about it: why this method in particular. And it is particular. It is no quick up-do, but seems a remnant of a previous time that then clashes with her contemporary clothing.
K, when she saw the paintings a few years later, said I ought to follow-through with this kind of work. Another professor suggested I turn my eye back on myself and make a study of my eyebrows. Another professor confessed that she noticed she herself had a predilection to wear her hair in a ponytail. Some people when they see the painting think it is a chair, or simply a group of lines with liminal blue, but if they know Mary, they know it is her.
I had forgotten K had been in Mary's class. We gave a presentation together, with S. and C.; I spoke of my father's fox-hunting, an issue of deep importance to me then.
Last weekend, I went to a party that related to my job and Mary happened to be there; we greeted one another in a friendly manner although when I began to speak of my life, she seemed distracted and dislodged herself to speak with our host. Mary is a public figure which adds to the difficulty of writing about her but likely has something to do with why I even began. I've fixated more on her appearance (how she appears in the world in physical form - her presence) than I have on her work, which seems an injustice, considering her contribution.
This morning, I made coffee and an egg, and after, sat in the chair by the window. It's in the corner with casement windows on both sides. There is a small table next to it with a clock. When you are reading, you hear it's slow dull movement forward: but there is a comfort in it. In the bathroom, there is a delicious sweet-smelling bottle of scent from Florence.
(In September, K gave me a piece of almond-oatmeal soap wrapped in plastic. I had left it in the bathroom. I remember leaving the soap but hadn't thought much of it. She said: "I didn't wish to steal your scent.")