Final Magic Hour

These photos are really important to me.  This was one of the last days we had on Skillman St.  The times at Skillman were full of change.  I was living a different life there.  It wasn't like any time before it.  It was when Emily and I fell in love.  Skillman St. taught me a lot of lessons.

This backyard made me feel wonder.  It had a timelessness to it that only comes from well written fairy tales or something.  Some people have all the luck.  Those people are us.  It's never just luck though.  Everyone earns it. 

What a weird place.  We should have checked passports at the door.

These are artifacts of those times.  I'm not sure what one might make of them if they didn't already know.  Some clues we left behind are pretty clear, others rather mysterious.  I hope they are appreciated, but it doesn't really matter.  I remember as a child I would leave behind misleading clues.  Maybe I'd fashion a little doll out of sticks and leave it in the woods like in the "Blair Witch Project" or build a harmless wall of leaves that blocked a seldom used trail.  I'd cover my tracks, walk backwards in the sand, and tie strips of fabric to branches at random.  Once walking back from sledding in the park, I got a bloody nose.  Instead of trying to stop it, I left a long line of bright red blood spots in the snow thinking someone might try to follow it through the park.  It sure was creepy.  Sometimes these clues had a purpose, but most of the time it was just to keep my hands busy, just to leave a mark.  I'd leave little totems around my school too.  Once we were reading a story about the KKK in English class.  I made a tiny little KKK man out of a scrap of white paper and left it near the black board.  The next day when we came in our teacher had a serious look on her face.  She found the tiny paper man and was very upset.  I told everyone in the class I did it and I didn't know why.  I didn't do it because I liked what it represented, it was a monster.  It didn't seem like it was wrong, but all the teacher saw was a symbol of hate, a symbol made by one of her students.  It was a mistake, I guess.  Mysteries scare people.  I guess I got a kick out of the idea of freaking someone out in the woods.  Philip Guston painted hooded figures quite a bit, and supposedly he hated the Klu Klux Klan.  Art critics sometimes say his hoods are masks, and the artist is wearing the mask, hiding.  Maybe that's true, but it's probably not so clear, it's just a mystery.