As he watched the afternoon shadows creep across the historic building’s river rock and brick facade the old man reminded him of Van Gogh’s iconic Spring 1887 self-portrait except his red was grey, his beard was a goatee and his crown was closely cropped. The hint of gauntness and the apparently dormant fierceness of his exterior contradicted the mournful, earnest green eyes that calmly watched the building as if it were a living thing in a state of perpetual activity. He held a small brush with an almost invisible hint of paint at a relaxed ready in his right hand for so long that the paint must have surely dried, flaked and been carried away in the light summer breeze long before another invisible hint of paint was carefully, albeit blindly, reapplied by the man whose needful eyes never looked down. The young man, sitting on an unusually clean bench in a square ordinarily overwhelmed by alcoholics, junkies, the mentally ill, the down-on-their-luck, urban nomads and hopelessly lost individuals served by the dedicated volunteers housed in the 19th century Romanesque landmark’s cramped third floor office, returned to Twitter, Instagram, email and Facebook. After 20 minutes the young man looked up and the old man was carefully placing his brushes in a small wooden box with an almost invisible smile beneath his goatee. “Look,” he said, nodding toward the small canvas. The young man stood and peered over the old man’s shoulder at a fading, but impeccable pencil sketch of the building with 5 small features embellished with paint. “That stone was today!” he said triumphantly, pointing with the butt of the last brush. The stone, one of the river rocks comprising the lower facade, was precisely located but apparently imperfectly reproduced. The old man sensed the young man’s doubt: “Imagine binoculars with a million lenses and every millennium they align into single image: the fissure in the stone moves like a clock’s hand but on average it lives...THERE.”

Copyright 2014 by Robert R. Mitchell

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