Hillcrest 81

The other day Evan and I found ourselves sleepy in San Luis Obispo. We were at Borders and it was cool outside so they had the heater on. You could see people drifting off quietly to sleep with books in their hands. We folded up shop, hopped in the car, lowered the windows and drove around Cal Poly for a while. The old library parking lot is now another God damned building, the old sheep field is now a fucking baseball stadium, because some major league ball player contributed two million dollars. Do you think if I became rich and famous and contributed twenty million, they'd tear them all down again, give the sheep their field and the library users their parking lot back? But I digress.

We ended up parking in a small lot near the Administration Building thinking we might walk down to the student store to restock our pens. Evan had just taken a handful of his daily pills and besides still feeling sleepy from Borders, was now feeling a tad woozy. Keep in mind, school was out of session, only a few cars were to be seen anywhere on campus. Before getting out, Evan leaned his head back and dozed. About two minutes later, Lovely Rita's twisted half-cousin, tapped on the window, gave a hand signal to roll down the window, and demanded we put money in the meter, since we had turned off the ignition. We must have been his only opportunity the entire day to demonstrate authoritarian behavior. I put two quarters in. They gave us something like 8 whopping minutes. Evan refused to roll down his window and murmured something under his breath that sounded a whole lot like... But, again, I digress.

While Evan resumed his nap, I pulled out my sketchbook, an old pen, and drew the building across the street. It's been about two years since I've sketched anything. I took an unofficial life drawing class a year ago, back when I was Mary Magdalene on different meds, and I just didn't have the patience to draw the lines. I tried willing the lines into existence, but it just didn't work. "I'm drawing a breast. Why am I doing this? What does it all mean?" was the dialogue that rushed through my confused head. Robert Densham, my instructor, was very understanding, and I owe him so much more than I have been able to give him in return. I must have been flying pretty high, because he would sometimes call during the week to make sure I was okay. I convinced myself at the time that he made those calls because that's just what he does, but the truth is, he's most unusual, and a very caring person.

So, with pen in hand and notebook open to a blank page, I sketched what I saw, which was the building across the street.

It's a rusty sketch. The chimney looks pregnant and the walls are definitely not up to code, but it's the gist of "Hillcrest 81" and the beautiful, greening mountains behind. Today they would be glistening in rain. When I scanned this page into the computer, I was shocked to see how irregular it was, which is really what I sat down to write about. In the notebook, the irregularities seem organic and, well, sketchbook-like. The expectations one brings to a sketchbook are completely different from those that accrue to the flat rectangular computer screen. I click a button and draw squares, rectangles, triangles, even faultless circles. But, in the sketchbook, my rollerball rolls this way and that until I'm mostly satisfied. These thoughts are not new or original, but they are nonetheless true and timely. The stuff that fills rainy afternoons.

posted by Amie Barnett | Sunday, January 01, 2006