Faucets in the Sky: 2011
I’ve come to the troubling realization that all of the memories I hold dearest are someday going to be gone. These memories came and went so swift that I had no chance to capture them in picture or record them on paper. Sooner than I’d like to believe I will become old and forget these incredible moments and it will be as though they never happened. Because of this realization I have started the attempt to capture some of the more important ones in paintings before I forget them. I’d like to share the one I’ve always held so much higher above the rest.
In highschool it wasn’t uncommon for me to be awaken in the middle of the night by Dylan. We weren’t official, per-say, but the love between us seemed to make that point moot. It was 2 a.m. and a school night (not that it made any difference) and I was to pick him up at once because there was an adventure to be had.
He wouldn’t tell me where we were driving. After an hour I started asking more frequently and I began to think that he didn’t know where we were going himself. Suddenly he tells me to pull over. We’re somewhere on the one, in half-moon bay I suppose, right next to the jagged coast and I very reluctantly stop the car. I had never pulled over on a freeway before, especially on the prospect of using it as a parking spot.
We start running. I didn’t think to wear sensible shoes and the muddy ground and the overgrown plants made me want to turn back. I couldn’t see anything. The light from a nearby construction site faintly illuminated a boxy structure looming in the distance which outlined the defining coast. We approached it and he told me we were going inside. I am not one to adhere to spontaneity but I had run too far to turn back then.
I forget how we got in, exactly, but we managed to make our way inside the structure. It was an abandoned army bunker made during world war two to protect the coast from the Japanese. The history of the place didn’t sink in because of the late hour but just then he took out his phone and used it as a flashlight to show me the walls. They were covered in intricate graffiti art. He slowly walked around the room, letting the picture unfold as he illuminated one section at a time. He told me his friends did it all. He might have helped with some of it, I can’t remember exactly what he said.
But the point of him bringing me here was not to see the walls. We were to go to the roof. I said no, knowing I would go regardless. I was in flip-flops and found myself scaling the side of a cliff trying to weasel my way through a hole in the building no bigger than the size of my head. I was scared half to death. At one point I handed Dylan my flip-flops and insisted I would do it barefoot because I could get better grip.
We made it to the roof and the sky was becoming blue. I pieced together that he wanted to watch the sunrise here with me. I also pieced together that he hadn’t factored in the fact that the sun raises in the east. We were bundled up in clothes inappropriate for how cold it was, sitting in silence, apart from each other. I forget what happened specifically but we weren’t together at that time, some fight or argument had laid a damp mood over the whole trip and after climbing to the top of this building we were forced to sit with it.
I sat next to him. Too scared to lean on him and far too scared to ask him for warmth. He was on drugs, I thought. I should have known. I never know it seems. I always look for the best in him and assume his best intentions but I knew he was on drugs. I didn’t know which but I knew it was one of them. I didn’t care at the time as I usually would. All I wanted was to put my head on his shoulder and for him to want me to put my head on his shoulder. But if he wanted that he would have given me some sort of sign by now. There was nothing, he was trying to tell me something with his silence and with bringing me here. It was in his language that I’ve never been able to understand.
We were still silent. The sky kept getting brighter, but no brighter than just bright enough to see the horizon. He says to me without moving his head: “I see faucets in the sky”. I sat and I stared. I stared at that horizon for what seemed like hours. I focused on the clouds, then the ocean, an then blurred by eyes but nothing looked anything more than what was right in front of me. I couldn’t see any faucets in the sky but I desperately wanted to. He said that it looked like the rain coming down was dripping from faucets in the clouds. I hadn’t noticed the rain. I put my head on his shoulder. I can’t remember what exactly gave me the courage to do so but I did, he didn’t move, but it was enough for me.There we sat until the dim blue sky became white.
This is a painting of what I think Dylan might have seen that morning. This will always be one of the most special, subtle, and extraordinary moments of my life.
