Routine

♦

I was dumber than ever. I was finally making good stuff. The cock would crow at quarter to seven every morning like clockwork. I never went down there; I never touched the chickens; I never touched the eggs in their dirty shells, but sometimes I ate them cracked and cooked French omelette style. 

You can get hungry when you are like this. I needed concentration and understanding. I needed the clucking down there to please quiet down once I’d already woken up and had my fill. I toyed with the idea of herding the birds back into their coop, but on top of being busy, I was not decent. I was painting these days wearing just a white apron and my white underwear. I kept mostly to myself, so as not to sexually frustrate anyone.

The easel was positioned to point towards the window. From where I was standing, I could see gray sky and the upper two-thirds of many trees and the lazy indication of the brick building on the other side of the property line. It was all, more or less, a miserable thing to paint every day; a more miserable man would have painted it, but I told myself, Robert, this is a whole lot of who cares, and the best part of the yard is the creek, and you can’t see that from here anyway, and I said Robert, everyday I said, Robert, you will take this piece of paper and you will paint Robert again.

♦

And so that is how I ended up with a bunch of watercolor me-like impressions hung up all over the house. And I know that the walls became a bit overly crowded, in that they became utterly covered. But the walls are overdue for a paint job anyway, which I am not equipped to provide; you could not imagine me with a paint roller in my hand, dripping with some pitiful eggshell shade; I am sure you remember when we were first introduced; whoever introduced us embarrassed me by saying I was a painter; you (thank God) half crinkled your face and stared back through to something, which I took as permission to privately dispose of the true earnestness of your tone (which was almost a sad thing to do) as you said, a painter! Of houses? And we all pretended to have a good laugh when the person who introduced us corrected you.

So it does bother me slightly when I invite you here again, after what has been what one what might call casually call “so long,” and I get dressed beyond my underwear and apron for the occasion, and I take a break from my work (—I did not, as you have suggested, decide to have you here today just because I don’t know what to do with myself anymore, since the walls are all full now— there is more wall space in the second floor bathroom)— it bothers me slightly when I invite you here today and, after just briefly taking stock of me, you begin to take stock of the place, and the paintings, looking around with that coy critical eye you can both hide and ham up at the same time, which protects you perfectly from all angles; you look around at all the paintings, and you do not bother to say anything at all about their artistic merit, nor do you even bother to say something slightly condescending (perhaps along the lines of, well, Robert, you certainly have been working hard here). You just look at the paintings carefully, and then you look at me and you say, well, I suppose I should be flattered, Robert, but I can’t say that anyone would say this was advisable. I repeat back, flattered? And you stare at me pink-cheeked and serious, which bothers me more than anything else, and you explain that, yes, it is primarily flattering that your dear painter friend has elected to paint a few hundred portraits of you and hang them all over his walls. 

Of course, all of these are pictures of me, not you; this is why I have to tell the whole dumb thing now. I have no idea how you could ever think my self-portraits were anything but. I am tempted to call you a narcissist for making such a baseless and self-centered assumption; I do not call you one, though, because I know you would only point out that many would say that it is even more narcissistic for one to stay inside for weeks in an apron and underwear painting oneself hundreds of times over. 

Anyway, my artwork has never been photo-realistic, but I have always thought that I am proficient enough at conveying general shapes and colors and ideas to make all of my necessary subjects identifiable. You have agreed with me on multiple occasions, I remember. I do wonder where you got mixed up this time. After I clear things up for you, instead of laughing at the misunderstanding, you (probably a bit sour that this particular misunderstanding hadn’t been one of your own orchestrations) just ask me if I had been in the routine of using a mirror while I painted myself.

I sort of mumble that I did try to use one the first few times,  but it terrified me; I had dreams a small monster might run out of it. I found it much more enjoyable to paint myself while staring out into the air outside, into my face in the back of my head.