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In yesterday’s New York Times: a painting long relegated to the “school of Velazquez,” with a deep-cleaning, turns out to be the work of the master himself.
Art conservation belongs, to me, in the same poetic category as wreck diving, digging up cities in the desert, recovering heisted jewels and putting together skeletons. In another life, I think I would be very happy as a conservator, but I fear it is a little too late in life to learn the trade, and also I have somewhat poor fine motor skills.
I drive by his house and I remember that he’s dead, although saying I’d forgotten isn’t quite right.
I liked him a lot. He was tall and a little bear-ish, mild-mannered, dark-eyed, an easy laugh, a consummate musician and music lover. He dated a few girls I knew and they all talked about him like he was the love of their life. And I believe that was true, at least true at the time.
His pretty old Civil War-era house on Shiawasee road was the last place I saw him, in the summertime a year before he died. It is banked by a long weedy yard and high firs on both sides, which gives the place the feel of a play stage, where an actor who plays Paul and an actress who plays me stand on a square porch, lit by a moth-flickering porch light, and drink Budweisers together and discuss Los Lobos.
When I drive by the house, it sends a flush of strange, surprising anguish over me. I guess I forgot the house was back there. That night I dream that I see him at a party, the same brilliant, gentle, totally Tennesee-charming fellow as always. I say to him, “I thought you were dead,” and I struggle to remember who went to the funeral. Maybe one of them will be at the party, too, so I can confirm what I’d thought for four years to be true.
“Yeah, well,” he says. “So what?”
Because it’s not that I forget, when I think about Paul, that Paul died. I just forget that death is forever.
The Night Train 