John Henry - Part Seven

John Henry

Part Seven

            To never see “ever again” the PEOPLE of this estate... is OK by me.  ‘Characters of the estate’ I would like to say but I never became engaged enough to have them ...become characters... to I.  SEE the painting again becomes the... footpath... ‘to I’:  I SEE the painting again... along a footpath that... wanders from three halos noted and NOW ‘are glow’ on that footpath.  These halos noted are ‘my mistake’, the ‘AND’ questions... developing from the discernment... by I... following the ‘mistake’... that Sara/Sue ‘knows’ about the painting.  These ‘AND’S’ are then linked to the third halo of ...let I call them... the bulleted listing of MY position ...to-on-about... (?)... ‘the painting’.

            In order to properly get rid of my mistake... I did not drive away from Albany and ‘go back’ to Vermont.  No... and although only a skimpy hour or so had passed ...since... I ate the club sandwich... I drove back into Albany to... go to Van’s Vietnamese restaurant on Central Avenue and... of core purpose to I... I drove there by driving DOWN Clinton Avenue... to North Lake Avenue and then maneuvering into a parking lot between the two avenues and ‘next to’ Van’s.

            I went to the restaurant.

I ordered a shrimp bun (Bun Tom Nuong).

I ate that while bemusing myself ...to myself... about my mistake ...so thereby erasing that mistake.

Paying, tipping, toileting and then departing... ALL THE TIME ‘taking in’ and ‘appreciating’ the setting and it’s sights... that actually have little to do with the restaurant but ...HAVE A GREAT DEAL TO DO WITH washing my whole self of a WASP estate’s painting... found in an old high school girl’s bedroom.

How and why can this be washing?

The Clinton Avenue of Albany is NOT a well to do upper middle class WASP residential enclave.  That Avenue peels-off-left from Central Ave. and ...in old... abandoned... urban sprawl...; deteriorated and desperate... nineteenth century - Civil War and earlier... GLORY it goes ‘down to the river’ with ‘untouched’ garret after garret after cellar after three or four residential floors after back yard ‘pens’ and ‘privies’ and ...:  It is an antiquarian’s paradise of ‘abandoned’ ‘old’ ‘estates’ traveling straight to the river for miles.  THAT’S HOW, why and WHAT I... seek to... like a bar of soap in the shower’s soap hole... WASH WASP AWAY.  The restaurant is the... in the center of it... dining novelty; the bun is a good bun.  I always go there.  It is a singular source for Vietnamese dining... in a 100 mile radius of the region (?).  BUT:  It is Clinton Avenue that is the ‘antiques show’.  Oh... I do know well... and can tell tales of... the ‘things’ that I have found ‘along there’.  Such a straight line of old abandoned garrets I-the-antiques-dealer simply cannot ‘see’ elsewhere.  And the best features?  No one is ‘ever there’ and... nobody cares.

            From the ‘bottom’ of Clinton (where ‘urban renewal’ HAS ‘been done’), I wandered north on the west side of the (Hudson) river to Schuylerville.  The ‘no one is there’ (from the antiquarian vantage) continues up the river on this, the New York side too.  I was WASP washed and mistake free by the time I ‘headed east’ across the Schuylerville bridge.

            The actual mistake was a vanity that probably amounted to nothing.  Simply, when I said ‘John Henry’ I was being TOO ‘informed’ and TOO ‘of knowing’ as an utterance about the painting.  I should have... in Sarah/Sue’s presence, been more ‘what?’ ‘huh?’; a play dumb.  BUT the subconscious epiphany of it being a true ‘John Henry’ was an internal ‘too much’ for me and I ...was TOO indicative of my ‘I know’ by saying ‘John Henry’.  NOT THAT THIS was ever consciously picked up on by Sarah/Sue but ...unconsciously... it WAS for she did... from HER vantage... forth come about the painting in a manner salted and peppered slightly with HER feeling (undeclared) that I ‘know’.  THAT is my mistake; giving out THAT ‘information’.  In the end, while eating the bun, I ‘it didn’t matter’.  THAT’S because she already (from her perspective) was WAY AHEAD of me ‘on’ the painting.  She, for example, ‘knows’ ‘how much it’s worth’.

            That’s where the ‘ANDS’ come in.

            I snuffed the mistake well:  “It’s a nice little painting.” I say.  She then lead me on the footpath through the ‘ANDS’.  My clam shell remained closed tight.  She supplied the ‘What do I do’:  I ‘got out of there’.

            Once out... I held safely the ‘what is this painting’ and ‘how did it get there (to the CAMP).  She didn’t have to tell me... and... she could not (can not)  tell me... because SHE... doesn’t know ‘these’.  I do.  Those ‘ANDS’, odd as they be, gave me special insight into this painting

            It is funny how things-of-self take odd turns.  Here, I have special insight into this painting because of ...going swimming when I was very young.  In Maine, in the foothills of the White Mountains and these mountain’s continuance across Maine, are found a recluse of streams that ‘come down from the mountains’.  They are small and remote; in wilderness locations.  Their waters are ice cold, ice clear and ice pure.  The ideal for swimming are small, remote, ‘unknown’ ‘pools’ of this water usually found right below a ‘falls’ (and I mean a rather small ‘falls’; more of a rippling drop over ‘some rocks’)... that due to the spring flood torrents... has ‘carved out’ a ‘pool’ that is ‘big enough’ and ‘deep enough’ (six feet) to ‘swim in’.  From ‘the earliest that I can remember’ to NOW I ‘have been swimming in them’.  I know where they are and ...go there... to swim.  This life long action has been matured as I age because:

            I have never been able to ‘find’ an ‘anywhere else’ that ‘has swimming like this’; ice cold, ice clear, ice pure... IN the remote and private ‘down the mountain’ setting (‘nothing else up there’).  That includes me ‘trying’ places in... places... like “WYOMING”.  With this Maine mountain ‘pool’ swimming under my belt as ‘known’, I, due to the lack of ‘others like it’ have actually ‘studied’ it.  This means I having a perpetual rumination about ‘it’ AND a noting of ANY source of reference to IT.

            ONE of the reference sources is ...American 19^th century PAINTING and PAINTINGS of the ‘pools’.  This is because the ‘pools’ are, from my swimming and study, known to me to be unique AND... AND... AND... ‘difficult to capture’ in photographs and PAINT.  Camera ‘shots’ are insanely ‘fall short’ of ‘capturing’ the natural charms.  A painting... for most efforts... gets bogged down in failing to capture the obsessive natural details that nature enshrines these pools with.  FEW if any artists succeeds in ‘capturing’.  Asher B. Durand’s own obsessive painting skills point toward the inner-eye portrayal I seek.  But he didn’t actually paint ‘there’ (the ‘pools’).  Through study and admiration I sought and seek painters and their paintings.  And I ‘found one’; a painter who did ‘try’ and ‘paint’ the ‘pools’.

            This was John J. Enneking.  He ‘painted’ the ‘pools’ and, in my studied opinion, did a pretty good job of capturing the ‘pools’ ‘like I swim in’.  The reason he painted ‘these’ is because ‘he was up here’ (in Maine).  He ‘had a summer place’ ‘up here’.  So would have actually seen the pools, gone swimming in the pools (?) and ‘tried to paint them’.  He had a studio in Boston.  John Henry Twachtman had a studio in the same building.  He visited Enneking at his summer place in Maine.

            Enneking ‘painted’ ‘on the lake’ above his summer place.  Too.  The lake is where the CAMP is.  IF one went to the lake in 1876 to 1880... one ‘could not miss’ the farm turned “CAMP” ‘on the lake’.  Twachtman visited Enneking in Maine ‘up there’ too.  He painted ‘up there’ too.  The railroad station had stage service going right past Enneking’s summer place to ‘the lake’.  That’s how ‘it’ (the painting) ‘got up there’:  Twachtman, visiting Enneking, went to the lake, TO THE CAMP, probably stayed there and... painted the little painting ...of the camp’s back yard... in the back yard.  He then had it framed inexpensively in the village at the head of the lake... and gifted it to the owners of the “CAMP” where he been staying... as a sort of hospitality payment (Twachtman was ‘always a little short’).  They; the NEW OWNERS (from Albany, NY?)  of the farm turned ‘CAMP’ were socially compatible with Enneking and Twachtman.  They all; artists and summer people would have ...had a swell time... on the lake... in the summer... at the “CAMP”.  The painting would have hung in the CAMP ever after with no one paying any attention to it for... at least one hundred years.

            I know this because I go swimming there.  I know the ‘pools’.  I know the paintings of ‘pools’.  I know the painters who were ‘up there’.  I know the lake, the paintings of the lake and the painters who were ‘on the lake’.  I know the history of the “CAMP”.  I know the CAMP as it is today.  I know the subdivision of the CAMP property.  I know about the robberies.  I know the painting was ‘moved’ (‘removed’?) from the CAMP.  I know that the painting depicts a nocturnal moon lighted view of the rear of the CAMP just beside the  second well in the back yard and is a view from right beside the shed attached to the barn that is ‘where you come out of the woods’ (now a dirt road going to the other camps ‘along the shore’).  I reviewed all this while I ate my bun at Van’s.  That’s why I said “John Henry”.  It was a mistake.  It didn’t matter I concluded.  Then I went home.  I called the lawyer’s roost and made an appointment to ...have, again:

            “A woman at the roost wrote all that down.” (Part One).  That’s where the bulleted list comes in; the what am I ‘hired to do’...

             About this painting.

            I saved the receipt for my bun at Van’s.