To some, it was a tin can down by the river, where a homeless person might camp. It was actually a double-wide trailer, 20’x 60’, perched diagonally on a hill next to a ravine. One third of an acre, dense with bramble bushes and apple trees, faced southwest toward Yakutat Harbor. Trees blocked the few neighbors and the Pacific Ocean sparkled in the sunlit distance. A little-known county park, James William Thornton County Park, was two blocks from the trailer, non-descript and decrepit. It was nothing more than a crumbling, concrete boat launch and an outhouse but it provided free access to the beach. No one knew about it and no one ever came. I considered it mine. Huge warning signs said Private at either end of the one hundred meter stretch of sand, stating that this private property extends to the lowest of the low tideland flats KEEP OUT. If you wholly wanted to feel free you kept your eyes on the water and didn’t try to follow the seagulls’ footsteps too far along the sand. The rich people in their mansions at either end probably had the water police on speed dial.

James William Thornton County Park was the scene of the crime, my first crime. I waded into the freezing cold water that gave you hypothermia and death in less than five minutes, and climbed into my kayak. My kayak—how sweet a sound!—my dear sweet bucket list item from Craigslist. It rocked violently back and forth. As it turned out, getting into a kayak was the hardest part. I knew nothing about kayaks, had never even been in one, but was going to match myself to the picture in my head; a serene Pacific Northwest tribal seer paddling along as dolphins crested, all communal, guiding the kayak while eagles soared overhead, calling out their encouragement, echoing off the pine trees. I was an old, white, entitled, educated female, without a drop of Native American anything; and I would kayak and paddle all day. I would never get cold, no goosebumps on my skin. I had dark brown hair all long, thick and flowing, casually tossed to look sexy. My mental image of myself was a bucket list image, fifty years in the making. I would make reality conform, even if my hair was short and skunk-striped gray.

The following account of art in the fast lane may feel like a pinball wizard. I don’t think linearly and never did; why should I try to be straight in telling it?

The weight of mom was heavy. The weight of me, heavier. My own brain was crushing me, thoughts followed by doubts. I had never in my entire seventy years been free of everything, and I didn’t know what to do. Nothingness was eerie, and addictive.

First things first, I cut my hair. No need to hold on to the hippie chick nor free-spirited artist ideal; long-haul covid had made most of my hair fall out anyway, and with so little hair it wasn’t much of a statement, but still. My back slowly healed from lifting mom in and out of bed. Left hip was taking longer. Right leg shin tendon from that old motorcycle accident didn’t deserve the attention it was getting. Someday I wouldn’t dread Buy-Mart’s parking lot but right this minute it was all I could do to walk with a swishy-butt, tits pointed straight ahead, not bending over or dragging my leg, its default position for the last three years.

I thought he was joking when he nervously looked into the field and said be quiet. It was pitch black and late at night. We had flopped onto the side of the dirt road to rest, exhausted from bicycling in the heat all day, still hours from the next town and food and water. How could there be anyone here, in the middle of nowhere? I was flat on my back, me and the ants, and breathed slowly. Armando stiffened. We got on the bikes and rode, glad the moon had sunk. Much later I learned that Medellin, Colombia was in the middle of a cartel war and, at that time, according to Time magazine, the most dangerous city in the world. That dirt road we were travelling led to FARC,  paramilitaries, kidnapping, cabals and assassination. Youth has no experience and no fear. I loved the velvet black night and the thousand stars overhead, and didn’t think about AK-47s or what a prize a white, American female would make.

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I loved punctuation, commas, capitalizations, the beauty of correct spelling. Everything. What a shame the art form didn’t survive the twenty-first century and computers. Now I hardly punctuate at all, delighted to small-case everything, a small-but-mighty rebel yell. I cut my hair some more, unevenly, so it would spike up in places like Billy Idol's. Every time I washed my hands I dried them in my hair, the minerals slowly contributing to that stiff straight-up look. My look peaked at four days pretty regularly and I took a selfie.

I had become a stalker of my own work, and a triangle of MiaCiaos, set like a compass around Seattle and connected by fast, smooth highways—what could be better. Sometimes the loneliness was suffocating and driving around seeing my work in public spaces took the pain away. The paintings were lit up and hung gallery-style and even from a distance through the big windows you knew they were unusual. If I wasn’t me I would think MiaCiao had deluxe, first-rate art. Sometimes it was hard to remember I had painted them, especially when my throat became constricted, so fine and museum-like were they. Once, I even went in, and just stood there, to the consternation of the wait staff.

Girl with Bird was sold to a quiet man, an accountant, small and fragile-looking. He would be the bird in that bird-and-girl painting. His top-floor condo was neat and orderly, and in desperate need of some flagrant color. The view from the expansive windows was stunning, all of Seattle and Puget Sound spread out below. I got dizzy looking down at the skyscrapers. Mt. Rainier with its high altitude clouds blowing sideways hovered to the south, a space ship in the sky. The art patron probably never held a hammer in his life so I offered to hang the painting. We moved his cool-gray sofa forward to get to the wall, and he helped hold the painting up. He wasn’t as frail as he seemed. The large 48" x 60" oil on panel depicted a girl sitting on a beach, red towel over one leg, with a brightly colored parrot on her shoulder. It was ideal in size and color, vibrant yet somehow contained. It was just right for his space. We slid the sofa back. The viewing distance was perfect. The wall with its shades of gray dramatized the reds and yellows and made me ridiculously giddy with glee. He moved to his cubbyhole office and wrote a payment check in small, cramped handwriting, his bony shoulders scrunched in concentration. Then he stood, me a full head taller, as I thanked him and started for the door. A little lightheaded from the beauty of it all, I laughingly said the girl in the painting would have a wonderful time looking out his big windows. He looked at her, over the sofa, her green eyes gazing across Puget Sound, then at me in fear-tinged astonishment. That turned into fright. His mouth dropped open, formed an Edvard Munch scream. It was so unexpected I gasped, my mouth imitating his, a mirror image of horror. Maybe he never played make-believe. I hope he doesn’t have nightmares about the suntanned, pretty girl in his living room. She was bigger than he was, and already full of life.

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I could swim. I was a certified scuba diver. I got married underwater. It was the sixties and we were collectively out of our minds. Before pollution, before climate change. Mary and Louis Leakey were discovering humankind’s australopithecine ancestors at Olduvai Gorge. There is a photo of me at age five, sitting in a chicken pen, sketchpad in lap, drawing the chickens with a look of intense concentration. I was going to be a great artist.

The marriage was shot-gun and didn’t last. Divorced one year later, ignominiously, in the breakroom of the restaurant where I worked as the handy-dandy, all-purpose dishwasher/kitchen cleaner. The French maître d’ of the exclusive, private golf club in Boca Raton, Florida had taken a chance on an eighteen year old runaway with no prior job history. I was earnest and convincing, convinced him of my worth, that I was the "man" for the job. The health inspector said it was clean as a hospital, the cleanest restaurant he’d ever seen. They hired me as a groundskeeper on the golf course during the summer, when it was too hot to play golf and the club shut down. I pulled weeds in the heat so I would be there to resume washing dishes in the fall, a good dishwasher apparently hard to find. It was my first and last job. The papers-serving guy looked like he might cry so I cried for him; then laughed, hoping to cheer him up. He ran for the nearest exit.

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