Donut
Posted Jun 9, 2005
Last Updated Jun 21, 2012
“DONUT”
by
Denise Vosburgh
What did the aftermath of a divorce hold anyway, at the age of twenty-seven? She’d been working menial jobs, grateful she had only herself and a four-year old, to support. Art school was fading, unfinished, like a canvas half bare, receding in the distance.
Hurry, this part of life is only a phase. Not to worry: “prince charming”, the lottery; talent agent discovery is just around the corner. Everything will get better. It’s summer!
“Slow down? Spend two months in the Northern California wilderness?” So it was arranged with a phone call. Arlene and Nathaniel would sublet their two rooms in the large, shared San Francisco Victorian, and help to build a cabin in Mendocino county for two sun-filled months.
“Heaven forbid, I should learn to use a hammer.” Deborah smiled at Arlene’s joke, but refused to help unload the car. “It’s every woman for herself up here. Except when it comes to the construction, of course.”
Arlene knew Deborah would lighten up after seeing the chain-saw she’d brought. “I decided on this one because the salesman said I could fell a redwood with one hand while holding back a small child with the other. So goes the equipment list for two single “Moms”.
No electricity, solar heated showers, afternoons only, and outdoors at that. NO baking. No television. No electric wood lathe free-lancing in the garage for extra money. (Might not miss that.) Lots of free time.
Now, that is exactly how Arlene found herself walking trails and finding rare sea shells in-land, far from shore. Could it be there’s more to life than catching a trolley to work, paying for day care (though Montesorri wasn’t bad), and planning a brave return to school, nights to finish a B.A.?
There, on the hill, not far from the old country school where she had often walked, her gaze was drawn to an isolated tree. So unusual and perfect was a circle, formed at eye level where the branches had divided and then grafted to each other, she gasped.
Arlene immediately thought of her art teacher and almost felt his appreciation of this beauty so far from the city. The hole in the tree pulled her closer, and as if via a portal, she drifted visually through, aligning her sights upon the sky-line of San Francisco, 180 miles away. The imaginary view was so complete she smelled salt water, until the tree bark demanded her focus by its sheer unusual state of being the shape of a donut.
“Oh, you mean the private school on Zenia Road,” Deborah was making NO-bake oatmeal cookies with cocoa. “Hey,” she grew intense. “I’ve never seen the tree you describe, but the caretaker promised me a baby peacock, left from before the school changed hands.”
“I can help catch one”, Marvin released rolled cookie dough onto wax paper. He was visiting from the city. Although never married, he enjoyed Deborah’s two children and of course, Nathaniel. He’d been picnicking in Golden Gate Park with Arlene and camping in the Trinity Alp’s seemed the perfect next step to extending the relationships. Arlene thought meeting in art school and picnicking wasn’t quite enough upon which to base a sketch let alone a marriage. Having a guest drive 300 miles to spend three days in a sleeping bag was fun, though, so here was Marvin rolling out cookies and chasing peacocks.
Truthfully, Arlene felt an affinity for her teacher, Reseau. She told herself it was because he was French and handsome. Yet sometimes it seemed like more, because in class she could fell his glance on her hand almost as if guiding the brush. Her strokes became choreographed like a dance, the canvas bounding gently and the thick paint slushing together into intricacies of color and texture with and exactness and economy of strokes, indescribable in words.
Although the class often painted and drew from a model, sometimes imagery of objects and personages not present in the room would appear in the strokes. Often times it was within the negative spaces between forms that Arlene would find the medium had a life of its own, using her as its vehicle of expression.
This morning it was too hot to hammer nails and the fear of sawing in half some innocent by-standing child drove Arlene and Deborah to consider an outing to Salt Pond. Sometimes after a hot, dusty drive, the “beach”, thought never crowded, offered varied entertainment and there was always someone willing to drop, like a stringless marionette from the 18-foot high rock into the pond’s depths. The target was to touch the swirling coolness radiating from the spring 40 feet beneath the surface. One night Arlene had come, all alone, on the full moon to test her courage. Naked in the muted light, she jumped from a rock. It was high enough to be socially unacceptable for a mother, although any teenager could handle it, hands-down and blind-folded.
Today Deborah, Arlene, Marvin, Nathaniel, Thomas, and Cameron, ages 30, 28, 36, 4, 2, and 6-months, respectively, all simply trekked onto dry sand, towels in tow, and acquiesced to the heat five feet from water’s edge.
Spread out on a towel illustrated in Warner Brother cartoon characters-on-a-rampage. Arlene began sketching. Coolness touched the edge between water and bushes, while on the opposing shore a crust of sand baked by the revenge of summer’s sun lie crisply. It crumbled in thin strips whenever someone jumped in or splashed, recording the events of the day in ripples like an earthquake seismograph designed by nature.
Studying her surroundings consumed Arlene’s attention. Artists are observers. Sometimes she found herself observing from somewhere inside, not always the same place. It was as if there was a way to know what it would be like to be inside the observed within the moment of observation.
In the present scenario, there was a leaf floating near her and the impression almost had a sound to it. There, where the surface of the leaf met the surface of the water, between two thin layers, a single molecule thick each, resided an entire universe. It sang with activity and she could almost capture it with her charcoal.
Difficult to believe, it had been nearly three months. The cabin was finished except for glass in the windows, plumbing, electricity, interior walls, etc. Details, details. Anything was better than a tent, although Nathaniel already had plans. The tent would go in the old back yard, next to the chicken coop, for the peacock, upon their return to S.F. At four Nathaniel already had plans, as well, to attend S.F. Art Institute to become an architect. Details, details.
The return trip coincided with enrollment for a workshop with Reseau. If she could afford the paint and time off, Arlene was determined to go. Money from Deborah’s family had made the summer not profitable, but, survivable, with a bonus for safeguarding toddlers against being sawn in half.
Reseau was late for class, barely, and Arlene knew he would act as if everyone else had been slightly early. She had worn her usual paint-stained pants, although she had been tempted to wear her French peasant-girl smock, to appeal to Reseau’s love for his homeland. She had brought sketches from Mendocino, hoping to lure him into a conversation about her summer. Surely he, who had not been out of the city for years, would ask questions about the beautiful California countryside.
Minutes before he entered the room the air had been handing thick with silence. Suddenly there was an outburst of conversation in pairs and trios. Thirty seconds later, he entered, laden with a huge portfolio. He smiled and nodded hello to everyone as a group, singling out one or two, but not Arlene.
Immediately he opened the portfolio. “Before we start I’d like to share my summer with you and then, please, you with me.” His French accent was charming but challenging. He displayed one colorful pastel after another of landscapes, people, objects, and events, from all over the world. Could they be from books or photographs?
There was a quiet murmur from time to time in the class, almost a sighing. Arlene enjoyed his works and these particularly, like a world tour through his sensitive eyes. Suddenly she gasped as he said, “ . . . and this is my latest.” From his portfolio emerged an exact rendering of a “donut shaped” hole in a tree on a California hillside. Moreover, there within the hole was a portrait of someone, whom most everyone recognized, and upon whom the artist was now bestowing a warm and thoroughly knowing smile.
1449 words
by
Denise Vosburgh
What did the aftermath of a divorce hold anyway, at the age of twenty-seven? She’d been working menial jobs, grateful she had only herself and a four-year old, to support. Art school was fading, unfinished, like a canvas half bare, receding in the distance.
Hurry, this part of life is only a phase. Not to worry: “prince charming”, the lottery; talent agent discovery is just around the corner. Everything will get better. It’s summer!
“Slow down? Spend two months in the Northern California wilderness?” So it was arranged with a phone call. Arlene and Nathaniel would sublet their two rooms in the large, shared San Francisco Victorian, and help to build a cabin in Mendocino county for two sun-filled months.
“Heaven forbid, I should learn to use a hammer.” Deborah smiled at Arlene’s joke, but refused to help unload the car. “It’s every woman for herself up here. Except when it comes to the construction, of course.”
Arlene knew Deborah would lighten up after seeing the chain-saw she’d brought. “I decided on this one because the salesman said I could fell a redwood with one hand while holding back a small child with the other. So goes the equipment list for two single “Moms”.
No electricity, solar heated showers, afternoons only, and outdoors at that. NO baking. No television. No electric wood lathe free-lancing in the garage for extra money. (Might not miss that.) Lots of free time.
Now, that is exactly how Arlene found herself walking trails and finding rare sea shells in-land, far from shore. Could it be there’s more to life than catching a trolley to work, paying for day care (though Montesorri wasn’t bad), and planning a brave return to school, nights to finish a B.A.?
There, on the hill, not far from the old country school where she had often walked, her gaze was drawn to an isolated tree. So unusual and perfect was a circle, formed at eye level where the branches had divided and then grafted to each other, she gasped.
Arlene immediately thought of her art teacher and almost felt his appreciation of this beauty so far from the city. The hole in the tree pulled her closer, and as if via a portal, she drifted visually through, aligning her sights upon the sky-line of San Francisco, 180 miles away. The imaginary view was so complete she smelled salt water, until the tree bark demanded her focus by its sheer unusual state of being the shape of a donut.
“Oh, you mean the private school on Zenia Road,” Deborah was making NO-bake oatmeal cookies with cocoa. “Hey,” she grew intense. “I’ve never seen the tree you describe, but the caretaker promised me a baby peacock, left from before the school changed hands.”
“I can help catch one”, Marvin released rolled cookie dough onto wax paper. He was visiting from the city. Although never married, he enjoyed Deborah’s two children and of course, Nathaniel. He’d been picnicking in Golden Gate Park with Arlene and camping in the Trinity Alp’s seemed the perfect next step to extending the relationships. Arlene thought meeting in art school and picnicking wasn’t quite enough upon which to base a sketch let alone a marriage. Having a guest drive 300 miles to spend three days in a sleeping bag was fun, though, so here was Marvin rolling out cookies and chasing peacocks.
Truthfully, Arlene felt an affinity for her teacher, Reseau. She told herself it was because he was French and handsome. Yet sometimes it seemed like more, because in class she could fell his glance on her hand almost as if guiding the brush. Her strokes became choreographed like a dance, the canvas bounding gently and the thick paint slushing together into intricacies of color and texture with and exactness and economy of strokes, indescribable in words.
Although the class often painted and drew from a model, sometimes imagery of objects and personages not present in the room would appear in the strokes. Often times it was within the negative spaces between forms that Arlene would find the medium had a life of its own, using her as its vehicle of expression.
This morning it was too hot to hammer nails and the fear of sawing in half some innocent by-standing child drove Arlene and Deborah to consider an outing to Salt Pond. Sometimes after a hot, dusty drive, the “beach”, thought never crowded, offered varied entertainment and there was always someone willing to drop, like a stringless marionette from the 18-foot high rock into the pond’s depths. The target was to touch the swirling coolness radiating from the spring 40 feet beneath the surface. One night Arlene had come, all alone, on the full moon to test her courage. Naked in the muted light, she jumped from a rock. It was high enough to be socially unacceptable for a mother, although any teenager could handle it, hands-down and blind-folded.
Today Deborah, Arlene, Marvin, Nathaniel, Thomas, and Cameron, ages 30, 28, 36, 4, 2, and 6-months, respectively, all simply trekked onto dry sand, towels in tow, and acquiesced to the heat five feet from water’s edge.
Spread out on a towel illustrated in Warner Brother cartoon characters-on-a-rampage. Arlene began sketching. Coolness touched the edge between water and bushes, while on the opposing shore a crust of sand baked by the revenge of summer’s sun lie crisply. It crumbled in thin strips whenever someone jumped in or splashed, recording the events of the day in ripples like an earthquake seismograph designed by nature.
Studying her surroundings consumed Arlene’s attention. Artists are observers. Sometimes she found herself observing from somewhere inside, not always the same place. It was as if there was a way to know what it would be like to be inside the observed within the moment of observation.
In the present scenario, there was a leaf floating near her and the impression almost had a sound to it. There, where the surface of the leaf met the surface of the water, between two thin layers, a single molecule thick each, resided an entire universe. It sang with activity and she could almost capture it with her charcoal.
Difficult to believe, it had been nearly three months. The cabin was finished except for glass in the windows, plumbing, electricity, interior walls, etc. Details, details. Anything was better than a tent, although Nathaniel already had plans. The tent would go in the old back yard, next to the chicken coop, for the peacock, upon their return to S.F. At four Nathaniel already had plans, as well, to attend S.F. Art Institute to become an architect. Details, details.
The return trip coincided with enrollment for a workshop with Reseau. If she could afford the paint and time off, Arlene was determined to go. Money from Deborah’s family had made the summer not profitable, but, survivable, with a bonus for safeguarding toddlers against being sawn in half.
Reseau was late for class, barely, and Arlene knew he would act as if everyone else had been slightly early. She had worn her usual paint-stained pants, although she had been tempted to wear her French peasant-girl smock, to appeal to Reseau’s love for his homeland. She had brought sketches from Mendocino, hoping to lure him into a conversation about her summer. Surely he, who had not been out of the city for years, would ask questions about the beautiful California countryside.
Minutes before he entered the room the air had been handing thick with silence. Suddenly there was an outburst of conversation in pairs and trios. Thirty seconds later, he entered, laden with a huge portfolio. He smiled and nodded hello to everyone as a group, singling out one or two, but not Arlene.
Immediately he opened the portfolio. “Before we start I’d like to share my summer with you and then, please, you with me.” His French accent was charming but challenging. He displayed one colorful pastel after another of landscapes, people, objects, and events, from all over the world. Could they be from books or photographs?
There was a quiet murmur from time to time in the class, almost a sighing. Arlene enjoyed his works and these particularly, like a world tour through his sensitive eyes. Suddenly she gasped as he said, “ . . . and this is my latest.” From his portfolio emerged an exact rendering of a “donut shaped” hole in a tree on a California hillside. Moreover, there within the hole was a portrait of someone, whom most everyone recognized, and upon whom the artist was now bestowing a warm and thoroughly knowing smile.
1449 words
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