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The Artist on Comm Ave [1]

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Date: 2023-05-05

The Artist on Comm Ave

Leaving the Public Garden and the statue of Lafayette, I cross the street to Comm Ave, and....immediately to my left I come across…son-of-a-bitch…Lafayette...a green shirt leaning over Lafayette like it is what it was meant to do, and to be doing this day. This scene is solitary, unbothered. Okay, I'm baited.

"Can I take your picture?" I say.

What's it for?"

"Just for me."

"What, you just like taking pictures?"

“Yeah, well, yeah. I was a photographer in Vietnam, and I just bought this Nikon, so I’m getting started again..."

"My brother was in Vietnam; he did work for the government; he was everywhere; he had an open visa to go anywhere; he worked on radar and such, secret stuff; he used to write to me about it; finally he got whacked."

"Wow."

"Yeah well he was gonna get it eventually, doing that stuff. You wanta take a picture, okay."

"Okay, just do what you do, and I'll get it." The green shirt leans back over the easel again. Click.

"I can send you a copy if you want."

"You can? I can pay you for it..."

"No, that's okay, I print it myself with my computer, 5x7." Shit, I coulda used some recoup. But, nah, I didn't start this for the money.

"Oh, not that big."

"That's the size I've got; it's okay."

He leaves the painting and goes into his knapsack. Click.

"How long have you been painting? Are you from Boston?"

"Oh yeah, I've been painting about 20 years."

"Wow, this is really good stuff."

"You think so?"

"Are you kidding? I admire anyone into the arts; this is great."

"Well you just made my day; sometimes I get depressed and wonder if it's worth it."

His name is Jim, and he has what seems to me enormous hands, long fingers, artistic, flexible. And with those swollen knuckles, probably arthritic.

Finally he's found what he was looking for, an old notebook held together with about six elastics in two wads. And now he's writing his address.

"You paint other places?" I'm thinking he's so talented, and this spot seems like such a cliche. I'm thinking of landscapes, Monet.

"Oh yeah, I used to have a girlfriend near Harvard Square. I used to paint there, but it's dangerous there, I wouldn't paint there again." Click. "Hey, you think it's 11:30?"

"Yeah, just about...it was 11:20 when I was by the statue."

"I've gotta go soon."

Click. "Yeah my brother wrote me once from Vietnam about the German and Japanese tourists who used to go there specifically to watch the wounded being brought off the choppers..."

I near-gasped as my expression dropped and I took on a more serious air as my mind went back there.

"He said it was really disgusting."

I'd gone to the DaNang hospital to cover a story during a Billy Graham Crusade for the troops, and it'd been requested that he visit a so-handsome 6-foot-something young Marine who'd stepped on a mine and lost all of his limbs. When I walked in with them one of Graham's aides had relayed that the Marine had asked that no pictures be taken, and so I'd stood bedside, looking at the young guy's stunned yet stoic face as they prayed together. Tears made 2 straight lines down his cheeks. A story, and no picture. I hadn't recalled that for so many years, and I hadn't recalled that when I left, alone and engulfed with the saddest of thoughts, I'd seen two late-teen or early-twenties girls, giddy and running down to the helopad...

"They're coming in," she danced sideways, then backwards trying to get her friends to hurry up. A scene I now knew I never wanted to recall.

He hands me his notepad-paper address.

"Hey, can you do something for me?"

"Sure."

"Can you take a picture of the statue for me..."

“Sure." Just as I have it in my painting?" "Sure."

"I've never had that," and he guides me over to a line-up spot as I start to line it up myself.

"I think if you stand right here, on this stain, see? The line of the gate has to be just off-center with the horse's leg or it looks too contrived."

Ahh, a hint from an artist, from an artist's eye. "Yeah, I see it, I got it," looking back at his picture and back at the statue. Click. "Hey, you said you get depressed...don't you get great feedback painting here?"

“Yes, I do, from the tourists...but the students, I'm so damned glad Emerson got rid of their dorm, it was right over there."

"Yeah, I know."

"The students used to walk by and say negative things."

"What? Look, this is great stuff." What assholes.

"Well, you really made my day; you made it all worth while."

Click. The last picture I wanted; the artist's tools.

"You know my brother was in Afghanistan, during the Soviet war there. It was later he got whacked. I knew they were gonna get him eventually, doing all this secret stuff."

"Wow."

"Well, I hope to hear from you." I am wrapping up the visit,

"Oh, you're going to."

"I know that."

"I'm gonna print them this afternoon and mail them in the morning."

He follows me up Comm Ave about 20 yards, talking more about his brother and how much I'd helped his day. We banter a little more as I walk, and pause, and walk, then I say, "Hey, you've gotta leave, and I've got lotsa stops to make, and if you keep talking I'm coming back to take more pictures." My plan was to shoot the Common, the Public Garden, up Comm Ave and down Newbury, then over to Copley Square and the neat buildings and the fountain denizens.

"Okay, okay you're right. Nice talking to you."

"Nice talking to you," and he turns and I turn and we are each alone with our day again, with our life. When I get home I'll write him a note, and tell him we are all the same, we who try to capture things...if a day goes by, if a moment goes by...you can start to think, what is the worth of it. But I'll write and tell him he is an artist, and to always try to remember that.

Just up Comm Ave, I like that, a canopied balcony. That'll add about two-fifty to the rent. Click. You know, I've gotta start telling people I worked for the eff'n circus.

[END]
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