Saturday… we get an early start and the paintings start coming down off the walls. I put plastic sheeting over them and staple it to the wood stretcher frames so they’ll be ready for traveling. There are 18 paintings coming back with us, the largest measuring 6 feet x 6 feet, 9 inches (183 cm x 206 cm). I remember mom used to ask, “why do you paint so large?”, and I told her it was easier than painting small and minute; you get to use bigger brushes. It is – the materials just cost more.
Soon, the walls are completely bare in three rooms of the house; I can’t remember ever seeing them completely bare like this, except maybe when we moved in. I was 8 years old then and I really don’t remember that.
The house might look more empty… if it weren’t for all the clutter everywhere else. Just overwhelming clutter still. After a few hours, we’ve hardly put a dent in any of this and I know we’re not taking that much furniture back with us. Dad said he’d had some friends help him and that they cleaned up quite a bit before we came down. Well… we’re here now and there’s very little evidence of that.
Books stacked up on top of each other horizontally, on top of low bookcases about 3 feet high, the spines turned sideways so you have no idea what the titles are. I go through a few of them… the Time Almanac from 1994, World Almanac from 2001, how many books on “natural folk remedies” do you have here?… and give up.
Dad says to take any of these that I want, also any CDs, DVDs (Erin grabs a handful in passing – Goldfinger… score!)…and, oh look, VHS tapes! There’s nothing here and not a whole lot of time. I guess the plan is to let the estate sale people deal with whatever’s left and there will be a lot to deal with. Erin and I start boxing up all my stuff; by mid-afternoon we’ve hit it hard and go out for a break and an Internet connection.
It’s while we’re sitting in Cantina Laredo on Royal Lane for a late lunch… we see the news on the 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Nepal. Just unbelievable devastation in Kathmandu. We have a friend from Colorado who’s there to climb Mt. Everest, again, and knew he had just arrived at Everest Basecamp earlier in the week; we quickly wonder if he’s OK and see that he is. You can read his first-hand account of the earthquake and the events of the last few days at the link below. It’s a very compelling read…
Seeing the first images of the destruction left behind by the earthquake online puts everything back in perspective. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone in Nepal.
***
The reunion that night is definitely the highlight of this trip and a necessary respite from the work we’re doing at the house and from some frustrations that are starting to mount, chief among them being the communication connection issues (and no, Mercury is not retrograde). It’s great to see all my classmates from those years at St. Mark’s, most of whom I haven’t seen in 43 years. You try to place the faces in the present with how you remember the way they used to look when everyone was 14, 15 years old. We trade stories…
Brett, who was one of my best friends all through high school, reminds me of a truly awful trip we made to Lubbock to check out Texas Tech University during our senior year and how we spent most of a Saturday afternoon in a muffler shop waiting room with our host who was getting work done on his car. Yes, I remember that too. Brett ended up going to University of Texas in Austin.
Paul and I talk about the French class we took in 8th grade from a teacher who I remember – now that a long-forgotten memory has kicked in – looked a bit like Jeanne Tripplehorn with glasses and everyone apparently remembers as being “nice”. He also reminds me that I came up with a cartoon character for the middle school paper and that has been long-forgotten, now unearthed as well.
We talk to just about everyone there and find out what’s going on in their world and I’m surprised to learn that there’s a good-sized contingent of the class who now lives in Colorado so I hope we will stay in touch. The one thing we don’t see, and it’s not until we’re leaving that Erin points it out: no one there is checking, looking down at, or is otherwise glued to their cell phones. In fact, no one is even taking pictures or selfies with them. The cell phones are nowhere to be seen.
Special thanks to Marc and Wendy for hosting the reunion at their beautiful home. It was a very memorable evening.
***
Once Erin and I get back to the house for the night and I have a chance to see all the work we’ve done, I’m glad we worked as hard as we did during the day. I can already feel an energy shift as the focus moves toward finishing up the packing and leaving early Tuesday morning. It feels like we’ve been kind of jogging along since we arrived Friday, at a faster pace then we’re used to at home in Colorado as Dallas in no way could be described as laid-back, but by the time we get home from dinner with our friends Jeff and Pat tomorrow night, it’ll be an all-out sprint to get everything done and get on the road and we’re both already more than a little stressed.
“Perspective” and all previous albums from Nights on Venus are available as MP3 digital downloads on CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon MP3, and the NoV website.
The new 4-song EP, “Santos“, will be coming in a couple of months, mid-to-late June.
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Craig Carrington / Nights on Venus 