The oil pants were stacked next to the space heater so they wouldn’t freeze and get ruined. The paints were old and battered but well taken care of, speaking of a time when money had been spent in more plentiful amounts then it was now. Next to them was a series of brushes, carefully cleaned and arranged according to size. Brent used an old knife instead of a spatula, he found it worked just as well and he had never had any problem roughing it when he had to. He had known people in art school who had insisted on only the finest materials and had insisted that roughing it would damage the quality of the work. Brent had been willing to admit that good paints, over poor ones, and good canvas was important but he had become just as good with an old knife as one of the blunt spatulas they sold for artists to use. He liked to think of it as a testing of his boundaries and abilities as an artist that he could work on a short budget and in difficult conditions. Sometimes when he thought of the elaborate studios with their fancy lighting that he had been in he started to laugh.
Clothing was something of less importance to Brent then his paints but society frowned on not possessing any, and besides it was growing cold, so there was a box off to one side of his space that had some clothing neatly folded. When he wanted to wash them he would go to the laundry mat and search under the washers and driers until he found enough quarters to wash and dry his clothing. At one time he had just tried washing them and bringing them back to air dry but there hadn’t been enough air circulation to dry the clothes in his basement. They were not the clothing of a homeless man mostly because he didn’t want to look like one. He didn’t mind the lifestyle but he did mind being labeled and he really didn’t like being offered charity. That was one thing that he never did, he never begged, it didn’t seem right. He also didn’t like the way that people treated homeless people and had no interest in enduring that. When he got dressed in his slacks and button up shirt with his long over coat anyone on the street would think him just another business man in the city. The city swallowed up humanity like a creature and formed instead a single entity that rarely changed, even in the dead of winter. It was an easy place to blend in and never be notice. People would notice the details of a homeless man because they were a smaller community, but a businessman was a mindless corporate drone who could pass through walls without comment.
Brent was always very careful when he went up to the world above. He didn’t want to be discovered and dragged from his precious shelter. Technically he was trespassing but no one really had cared yet and he was hoping they never did. There was an art gallery nearby and they knew him by name there, not his name, he never liked giving people his real name when he was out wandering around, but they knew him by name just the same. In the art gallery he went by the pseudonym Michael, and they loved him even though he never bought anything. He would just wander the halls of the gallery and look at the pictures and sometimes make a comment about one of them that showed a broader knowledge of art then most art critics. For that the gallery owner was willing to forgive him for never actually pouring money into her businesses coffers. They were in no need of money anyway, they made enough money off of people who knew nothing of art but wanted to look the part. The owner of the gallery felt that the class of the establishment rose every time that Brent walked in simply because he knew and truly loved the art that she sold.
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment