When I was an aspiring teenaged writer, Hemingway was all the rage. The sparse style and macho preoccupations of his novels didn't move me, but his memoir "A Moveable Feast" enthralled me. It was my introduction to the romantic view of 1920s bohemian Paris.
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then
wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for
Paris is a moveable feast.
Rereading this book recently, I smiled to see again in the first chapters two guiding thoughts that have stayed with me all these years. The first was a practice I found equally useful in writing university papers and later in "managing complex administrative projects over time." (a nifty phrase I invented for my resumés). Of his self-imposed daily stints over a long cup of coffee in cheap cafés, Hemingway wrote, "I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day." In my working life, I'd make a simple note-to-self, "START HERE" with some bulleted to-dos, and found this a sure-fire way to instantly pick up where I left off. In a less structured way, I try to do the same with a painting in progress.
The second thought is less advice than observation and recognition of a gift.
A girl came in the café and sat by herself at a table near the window.If you have the eye, the artist's eye that sees and remembers, you do indeed have a whole feast of images perpetually in your memory bank. I've thought of Hemingway's encounter whenever I've recalled My Little Chinese Lady.
She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they
minted coins in flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair was black
as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.
....She had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry
and I knew that she was waiting for someone. So I went on
writing...The story was writing itself, and I was having a hard time
keeping up with it...and I watched the girl whenever I looked up.
I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are and
if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris
belongs to me, and I belong to this notebook and pencil.
In my first years of retirement, I settled into a routine of taking the bus Wednesdays to the library and Saturdays to the IGA -- the same bus I'd taken to work, but an hour later. It wasn't long before I noticed, on almost every bus trip, the most fascinating Chinese lady. She was perhaps in her early 80s and must once herself have had a face like a newly-minted coin. What she had retained were glowing eyes, sparkling with intelligence, and an infallible sense of style. Regardless of the weather, she was always turned out in a dashing brimmed hat, beautifully coordinated coats, jackets or sweaters, her jade pendant and earrings, darkly pencilled eyebrows, and deep scarlet lipstick. (Should I mention -- I'm sure she pretended they didn't exist -- the support stockings and Sensible Shoes?)
I watched for her on every trip and felt disappointed if I didn't see her. I caught her occasionally glancing incisively at me and wondered if she found me with my Goretex jacket, heavy walking shoes, and plaid shopping cart as fascinating as I found her. Once, for some reason, maybe just an accident of the bus schedule, I missed her for almost two months -- and then one day, she was "back." As I sat down in the only empty seat available, right next to her for the first time ever, she looked at me drily and said, "Long time, no see."
From that time, we were fast friends -- well, in so much as fellow bus riders without a fully shared language can be. Certainly, she spoke more English than I did Chinese, and we were able to moan together about rainy days and achy arthritic knees (hers and JT's), whether or not I was "going to liberry" that day, and -- I think but am not 100% certain -- she once told me, with a wicked grin, that she was 92 and her husband was 76!
One of the sketchbook games I play is to try to record from memory people's faces or garments or actions. More than once, I tried to capture her, never quite managing those bright intelligent eyes...
Then JT regained his driver's license, we moved, and I no longer took the bus to the store or library. Recently, remembering back over a year, I tried another sketch and came close:
Then I was tempted to see if I could really catch her in paint, and my hunch was right. Here's "My Friend on the Number 8 Bus" (copyright 2013).
The VanGogh-ish background covers two unsuccessful attempts to get the hat to fit. And those of you who don't like the centered image (...and I know who you are...) might take note of the currently trending Duchess of Cambridge portrait. (Yikes! is that a role model?)
I'm quite pleased with the likeness. Even if you'd never seen her before, you could use this image to pick her out of a line-up....waiting for the bus...
...for wherever you go, the Number 8 bus is a moveable feast...
(...and I know who I are, too!) But in this case I am not at all bothered by the centering.
ReplyDeleteA lovely story, Kelly, and you have painted a very lovely lady. That said, I feel that she became much younger in the painting than she appears in your second sketch. Personally, I am taken by that sketch despite it's lack of the colors we both love. The sketch shows her beauty, but we see it wearing some years; the painting shows her beauty perhaps as a younger woman. However, I do love your palette. And your story: the Number 8 bus as A Movable Feast, the faces as newly minted coins. “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ernest Hemingway