Thank you to Nadia Gerassimenko, editor of Moonchild Magazine, for publishing “Proto-Indo-European today.”  Here’s a link. A fortune teller told me my father would die, so I painted his oil portrait, and he died two years to the day of that prophecy. Even though I have this picture of my Pa, I also have a picture in my mind of the last time I saw him. The story is about that. I don’t want to talk about the story, but I’ll tell you about the painting.

Images in this blog post are details of the portrait. I did a series of paintings back then of people in my life. I don’t know where any of those works (but one) are now, as each was given as a gift to the subject, and some people go and keep going. Each was given along with a bit of verse as a document to travel with it.

One of the poems I always remembered, a friend long past’s, D.H. Crosby’s, went:

Should the moving man scratch it, if it’s damaged or peeling or ripped, I must patch it, only I do the healing; beat me to Peter and I’ll come collect it, to remember you sweeter in our long absence; if I am the first to whither to truth, consider this my goodbye:

Amedeo’s eyes were almonds,

Filled with pearly light;

Pablo’s eyes came from his mirror,

Dark as anthracite.

When you look upon this face,

And see yourself so young, so true,

Know it was fashioned by a soul

Who gave her eyes to you, in blue.

I guess if I have anything at all to say that sums things up, I would say paint pictures, but write poetry, too.

I think I took slides of each of those portraits, before giving them away. I will post those if I find them. I think they are in the attic by the old slide carousel machine.

When I am old, I will paint again. I love how painting stops time in so many ways.

Thank you for dropping by, and for reading “Proto-Indo-European” over at Moonchild Magazine.

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