I find myself sunk into the couch on a windy winter’s night. A mug of ‘nog warms my hands while The Polar Express plays on TV. Earlier tonight I dragged the painting supplies down from the top shelf of the closet we never open. I figured I’d paint a snowy scene from my past.
Medford Massachusetts. A day-long snowstorm is dwindling to an end. It’s the dead of night and I’m trudging back to my college dorm. Two feet of snow bury the road, cars, and trees. There isn’t anyone around. The street lights hum softly, only interrupted by the crunch of my boots. I stop and stare out into still silence, a moment outside of time that feels like it could last forever. After a while I take a photo, just to stretch infinity a little longer.
Now when it comes to painting, I’m no free-styling Bob Ross. I need a reference photo, and for my painting, I needed the photo from that night. I started in the Cloud, scrolling through years of selfies and dog vids, past vacations and seasons’ iterations. No photo. “That’s fine,” I thought. Clouds are mostly air so it’s silly to expect one to securely store anything. Next I brought out my flash drive with everything from my old phone. Something physical, reliable. Well, that didn’t work either. Shit.
That brings me back here, on the couch as I watch Tom Hanks voice basically every character in The Polar Express, a movie that while still enjoyable, looks like it was animated with the computing power of an electric toothbrush. I put the painting supplies back in the closet an hour ago, the dust outline of its usual spot still undisturbed. I’m a little heartbroken the photo is lost and that forever didn’t last as long I’d hope. My memory still retains the image, but as time passes there’s a lot of life that slips through the cracks. I don’t know how long I’ll remember the numbness of my face or the snow shaking off the branches into the pile below. I wish I had a painting or a photo of that night, an external, eternal, unburdening reminder. Until then, I really got to get better at painting.
