It really is time to take my search for the artist to the experts who might know or who would at least know how to know.

I think his name is Mathewson.

Why he wrote his name so differently everytime I don't know. Why we hid or edited our past so highly I do not know. Herbert is called George, Pat is really Frank, Anne Green is really the mother of the children and not the sister. My mothers mother is irnorant, arrogant and probabley suffers from what might be called a mental 'condition' but she is brave.

Growing up I did not know my grandfather was from a 'broken' family. So was my grandmother. Her father ran off to Los Angeles or something. Said he was going to take her with him but she needed to get her sweater. She runs in the house to get her sweater and he drove off. He was gone. She had her sweater in her hand. She was looking down the road. He was driving out of her life even when she had her sweater. Oh yes, the broken family term.

I have written it down, but these are not the story lines we lived by, these are tiny pieces gleaned somehow from whisps and whispers. Puffs of history captured. They are not so good or so bad, but just screaming from being unspoken. To me that's how it feels. It just has a bad fung shui. Story line is very good. The people, all of them, are brave.

And so, we felt our lives were clean, better, yes better, unseen, as to not be 'like the others'.

We were not allowed to see our own humanness, our mistakes, our failures. Our unperfect parts. These pieces of human living were not allowed to be lived in the fabric of our venier. Truly, I was told we were pretty close to perfect. We did things right. These words were not told exactly but greatly implied in what was not said, or thought.

We were nice people doing nice things and thinking nice thoughts. Nice meaning, highly edited.

Actually, my brother, sister and myself all present as if we were raised by alcaholics. Children of alcaholics keep secrets, and know what not to say. We were that. Be nice. Pretend.

Nothing was really bad it was just a bit of a lie. Lies of omission. It remeinds me of wonder bread. Wonder Bread, which we ate all the time, will not kill you, it just is not as complete as you were told it was. It won't kill you but it can cause your death.

What if the past were gone? No, I can't imagine that would work. I fell off a sweaty pony once and knocked the past out of me. I had amnesia for an hour or two. Very strange and lonely.

Maybe it is the pretending that the past is known, maybe it is not fully celebrating the unknown, leaving room for the cracks it creates, like growing moss between stepping stones. It can be beautiful.

Drake sailed by what he could not see. My own father, partaking in the tradition of not being known, sat in his white chair in the front room. Sometimes with a dog on his lap, sometimes with a grandchild, sometimes mostly with a newspaper. I sailed by him.

Stories of the fathers fathers father: my father's father's father farmed and named Larkin Valley. He came to this country via the potato famine express. His wife died when the last son was born. It is said a housekeeper stayed with them after that. There were five or six boys. It could not have been an easy life. He lived not far from where Patricks grandfather went when he did not come home from the Korean War. My friend Patrick, not my bother Patrick.

We are made of history, known and unknown. I wonder if the mandate of not being seen, fear of being noticed comes from my great grandmother Anne Green. If she was seen for who she was, divorced, she would have lost her employment. I wonder if it just comes from being immigrants?

When I was in junior high school I came home from school and tossed my coat on the bed. My mother reacted urgently, Never put your coat on a bed! Hang that up!

She had that tone in her voice of one about to yell Fire! I think it startled both of us. I sure did pick up the coat with a tone like that in the air... We sort of looked at each other. like, what had just happened... Why? I asked her. Why can't you put a coat on a bed?

I don't know , she said. Your grandmother was always insistent about that. Never put a coat on the bed.

So we called her, my mother's mother and we asked... Why not put the coat on the bed?

Once when she was a little girl she went to a friends house and put her coat on the bed. She came home and put the coat on her own bed. And a bed bug infestation broke out. Bed bugs everywhere. It was terrible. Tons of washing to do, before they had washing machines, lots of bites and it took forever to get rid of them. The bugs were in their hair. It was terrible. And there was the guilt of she was the one who brought the creatures in. Guilt and bugs in 1911.

So here we were, my mom and me, in about the same year the first painting came into the house, 1966. Urgently removing a coat from a bed 55 years later. To this day I will not put my coat on a bed. It just has an uncomfortable feel to it.

Going north on 101 after Marin and all of that, you enter a tunnel. Yellow tiles fly by, the rails of lights above flash and pass, tail lights of cars in front line up. Sounds are different. There is a mountain on top of you and to the sides directing the sound of air to create the woshing noise. The tunnel cruves a bit and when you have traveled far enough into it there is a straightening, and you are suddenly gifted with a vision of what comes next, the bridge, the city, the fog, the sea, the bay. The sight of it all is still surrounded by tunnel. It is a round view. Like looking through a telescope. It is a bit like the green flash at sunset. Bam it is there.

San Francisco can not be separate from the nature it was carved into. It is a natural entrance, where the sea meets the bay. It is the place Drake sailed by, missing completely, because of the fog that is San Francisco. No one on his ship saw it. You can not see through fog.

It is said that my great grandmother on my mothers side came to San Francisco in 1850. Her name was Anne Green. She married Mr. Ginder. Mr. Ginder left. Her mother then came to watch her children while she worked at Wells Fargo Bank. She collected stamps. I have old envelopes with Wells Fargo addresses full of stamps. She had to use her maiden name to work and could not say her children were her own as divorced or married women were not allowed to work. She said her children were her brother and sister. I have her secratary. It is a solid piece of furnature. I wonder at all it held before. It has a mirror. I look in it as I go out. I say good bye to myself. It is just a habit.

Annie Green could not be seen for who she was or she would lose her job. She hid. She worked. She collected stamps. She lived at what my grandfather,her son, would call Two Dozen Dolores Street.

My gradfather took great delight in writing his name in cement. I knew this about him. And so one time, after his death, I went to find Two Dozen Dolores Street. First I stopped at 2400 Dolores and walked around the block. Looking down I could not find his name anywhere. I went to 1212 Delores Street and almost missed it. I knew him when his stroke was bold. He wrote in block letters during the time of me, but there twice passed as I looked but not seen, there was some little timid scratching.... Herbert George.... right in front of 12 12.

Everyone called him George. George was his name. His legal name was Herbert. And did he go by Herbert as a child? Why did George write Herbert in the cement? When did he become George? My grandmother called him George as if that was the only name she ever called him. Somewhere between the cememt and getting married he became George.

Same with my grandfather on my father's side. One day at their house I look at the mail that has come in. It says Frank Larkin. I ask Who is Frank? Papa is Frank. No Papa is Pat. Every one who does not call him Papa calls him Pat. No, his real name is Frank.

So my brother is named after his grandfathers. My brother is Patrick George Larkin. In time, when he was old enough to be unnerved, I aked him. Do you know who you are named after? Sure he does, he is named after his grandfathers. Right I say, Frank and Herbert. What! Who are Frank and Herbert? Exactly.

Found Painting......... Reds, Lots of Reds

This is the painting I found at Jimmies. This is the one that was in the back, away from the others.

I am standing in my own doorway taking off memories, not of exact events or people, but memories like puffs of smoke from the stacks. Wispy creaking non-formed puffs of ghost feelings. Undressing a past that was of perception and not exactly reality. Even this picture is slightly different than I remember it, and yet it is my illusion I live from. This picture is like the San Francisco skyline but not exactly in the way I remember it. I live from deep inside my mind where not even reality can penetrate.

My grandmother, on my mothers side, had a dresser with a big round mirror and draws on the side. She always said, "Don't open those drawers." About a year after her death, I stood in front of that dresser. I put my hand on the drawer knob. I was going to open the drawer. I stood there feeling a slight terror, a five year old's terror. What if she comes in? I just let myself feel it. I stood there in that feeling. What if she comes in! Don't open the drawers! You know you are not supposed to!

Her room was like Junkie Jimmies. Short on light and full of things. The shades over the window glowed with the afternoon light it did not let in. Her tall dresser with the little nook for shoes underneath and the picture of Jesus praying on a blue rock watched. It was a square place where the dust was quiet.

My hand was on the knob, I pulled on the drawer. She is dead. She can not swing open the door and appear. There can not be the sudden pie shaped flow of light from that door. No light will come and find me doing something I was told not to do. She can not open that door. She is dead. Gone. Dead. Not here. Dead. Not here. I open the drawer.

Nothing happens.

It is just a drawer with somethings in it. A little prayer book, a fancy brush. Hankies. Hair clips in a hard plastic box. It is just a drawer.

I shut it. I open it. I shut it. I open it. I am waiting for the fear of being discovered to go away.

I am daring her to appear.

Behind the Picture

The signatures change from picture to picture, from front to back.

Lack of technical knowledge is keeping me from posting the image of the picture I found at Jimmies. I am watching myself not jump into the world of the 'experts'. I am enjoying the flavor of not knowing, the softness of wondering. Sometimes when you know, or think you know the world becomes smaller, possibilities fall off.

Patrick came over last night. His father's father went off to the Korean War and when he came back he did not return to the east coast where Patrick's father waited with four other siblings, he, Patrick's father's father, ended up in the central valley of California. Started a new family there.

Behind Patrick as he talks about it, behind Patrick as he gets to the part of the story that says, we never heard from that grandfather, and then my aunt married a New Yorker who moved to LA and researched him out of the woods. She tracked him down. Called him up. Said Hello. And he was found. Behind Patrick as he spreads out the circumstances of his own fathers certain reluctances, the pictures hang on the wall.

Patrick's sister went out to meet with the grndfather, father of their father. She said he was a nice guy. She said Patrick looks a lot like him. She said they went fishing. She said she had to pick him up off the floor a couple of times. He drank. He drank bad.

Patrick has a soft voice. He is from the south. He talks from the breath of a sigh. Gentle southern sounds. Nothing ever sounds ugly when Patrick says it. Sometimes she had to pick him up off the floor. Sometimes the sky holds pinks and golden rays at sunset.

Maureen has a jump in a get it done way of movement that actually frightens me. In our family we moved slowly and subtly. We moved with the grace of erosion, slowly as to not be noticed. I am sure this goes along with 'not being seen'. Maureen has sensed this about me I am sure. I don't think she has the exact words or would even use the word frightened, but she does know I say 'no' alot.

I am getting nowhere in finding out the artist's name or even in finding out how to find out the artist's name. I need to call Maureen. Four.....four........ five, before the number is dialed I see her coming up my front stairs. Behind my eyes, where evaporative thinking takes place, the sort of thinking that leads you to thoughts you might remember or pay attention to, that place that sort of narrates what you see, that place thinks....... How did that happen? How did she get here that fast?

"Oh," she says, coming through my front door which is pretty much always wide open. I like the view. "Are you on the phone?"

No, I tell her, No not really.

Well she says, There is a cooking class today down at the co-op and I wondered if you would like to go.

"Cooking class?" That's different. "Well, I have this other thing I am working on. How do I figure out who painted these paintings?"

"Toss it in the car. Linda will know. Linda at Empire Furniture. Then we can go to the cooking demonstration. Red potatoes and rosemary. I am kind of excited about it."

Empire Furniture is a big place. Full of amwars, old oak dressers. Mirrors. I always wonder about mirrors and all that they have reflected. Statues. For all that is in there the place is beautifully maintained. Wood is polished, cut glass bowls sparkle. The wooden floor creaks as we walk on it. I always wonder about creaks, like small terriers, barking a small alert. I wonder too much. Too easy to fall into a romantic idea of the past. A place where you can never be sure. Dim, wispy with time, fleeting and gone and yet shadowy in the present. The past is a common event. Dust under the rug. Still here.

Linda has a desk near the front door. Big, wooden, and clean. We have come at a good time. Not to many customers and so she has time to spend with us. I know Linda from before. She came to a few of my talks on intuition. Maureen has seen her more recently. I discover that Maureen has a secret life of going to garage sales and selling things of value, treasures that she finds to Linda.

Maureen shows Linda the painting. Maureen wants to get to the cooking demonstration. Potatoes and rosemary.

Linda looks at it. We have brought the small one. Hyde Street. She says she is sure it is of value. But has no idea of who might have painted it. "But you know what?" She says. "Take it up to Junkie Jimmies. Watch his face when he looks at it and listen closely to what he says. He is a crook. But he knows his stuff. He would be a good place to start."

Back in the car, Maureen is engaged in the task. We deviate from the task a bit to get a burrito. We live in a small town. Medium, small. It takes less time to get where you are going than it does to eat a burrito. So we arrive a Junkie Jimmies, placed chewed on burritos on the console, grab the painting form the back seat and get ready to spring from the car, when we notice a man standing in the door way. He has his back pack placed in the planter. Taking off his jacket, he begins to take his shirt off. We stop what we are doing. We look at him. He is undressing in the door way in a calm meditative manner. We are on 101. Traffic is going by. Lots of cars. And calmly, thoughtfully, and somehow privately, he is unbottoning his shirt. As his shirt comes off and he begins to work on his belt Mauareen remembers that there is parking in the back. We do not wish to walk through his private reality. It would be rude.

Junkie Jimmies is full of many things. One thing that is missing is light. Knives from the war. Figurines with a pop culture slant. Popluar Mechinics from 1962. A man with not exactly all of his teeth is buying some silver coins while his girl friend watches. They are both impressed with the wisdom of his purchase. We stand there. We look around. Jimmie is also behind a desk. A book keepers light over the space in front of him creates a square puddle of light. Glasses and magnifing glass ready. The furniture around him, the display cages to the left of him, the filing cabinets to the right make a nice clean little pen for him. The furniture creates the Space of Jimmie, where deals are made. Jimmie makes decisions within that pen type space.

The silver coin buyer leaves. We show Jimmie the painting. He says no. He does not know who painted it but he has another one by the same artist. It is in the back. He turns his attention to someone else. Maureen and I look at each other. Another one? In the back?

Properly ignored by Jimmie we walk in a side room he has. Paintings all over the walls. Almost a gallery. We can see the man outside, the one with the meditative private place, through the window and he is shirt off, pants on, one foot up on the planter box untying his shoe now. I can not see if his other shoe is off. It is still his private place, Jimmies door way on 101. Maureen and I search the walls for the painting by the same unknown to us artist. We walk the whole room. We don't find one. I carry Hyde Street around like a purse.

We go back and stand at Jimmies pen. He is talking with some one else. Answering questions but not in a deep conversation. We wait our turn to ask him questions. Our turn comes. No, he says again, moving his glasses to on top of his head. No, I have no idea who the artist is. I ask him if we can see the other painting that he has. He leaves his decision making place to get it. He goes behind a curtain. That is the 'back' where the painting is. Not the side where we looked. Not in the almost a gallery we searched. He brings it out, turns it around and puts it on a chair in front of us.

It is on canvas. It is in reds and blacks. All of mine are in blues and grays. It is like the one of the San Francisco skyline at night. Similar. My unknown artist has put shapes in the same place. A little bit like a one story birthday cake with fat candles on it. It is of a foundry in Los Angeles at night. San Francisco skyline has bay, buildings, tall buildings. This one has road, buildings, tall chimney's. Smoke from the chimneys. Mine has clouds from the skyscrapers.

I look at it. I understand something about my paintings now. Something without words. Some kind of passionate something. I don't really understand how I feel. I want that painting! I do. I want to take it home and put it with the others. Something would be more complete if I did. Reds and blacks. A foundry at night. Power. Mission? Is that the right word? Industry? Purpose?

I grew up looking at San Francisco. Like the space Jimmie sits in , it is a place where decisions are made. Woman on Mission street choose oranges from markets in the day and at night, behind every window, under every street light, people are choosing, doing, on a mission, like the man with the private place deciding that his shoe needs attention next. Or like the smoke from the foundry, big decisions, the type made in tall buildings. Gross National Product decisions.

I turn the painting around. It says, Los Angeles, 1937. 1937? Jimmie says he bought it in Sacramento at a garage sale. From the back I can see it has a tear in it. I tell Jimmie, It has a rip. Jimmie says It does not matter. I take that as fact because that is how he said it. And no to me it does not matter I want the painting.

So, I ask him. Do you want to sell this painting? No he says quickly. No I don't .

Can I take a picture of it? He is doing something back there in his space. Not looking up. He does not have all of his hair. He is an older guy. But you know he is paying attention to everything. He does not have to look up.

Go ahead he says. I use my cell phone. It is all I have. My camera is at home. My burrito is in the car. The car is in back. And it is time to go. I take a picture.

The signature is hard to read. Matheson? Mathieson? What is that dot? Mathejon?

How do you locate an artist when you do not know the name? I googled, "San Francisco Artist". Yes, there are lots of them.

The paintings that had always been on the wall, place holders, just being there, sort of like wall punctuation, breaking up the space. I had always looked at them and wondered, I did wonder about the man who painted them. His life so different from the lives I thought I knew as a child. No one in our family did anything like paint, or drugs, or live in a garage. When I started looking at the pictures that is what I thought. We, our family, did things right. We stayed under the radar of ever being seen as, well what would you call it, 'the unfortunate?', 'the troubled?', the one with a story that others could tell in a hushed voice? The was something in the air we lived in that asked us not to be seen. Stories about people who were seen were unfortunate. I think that is what we breathed. Trouble comes to those who stand out. Unfortunate stories are told about them. Stories of disapproval.

I wonder, did he have a family somewhere? Before I thought about the paintings I imagined he was a traveling sort of fellow. No family. No children. But now I wonder. Now I know that I do not know. Everyone has a family. Somewhere. Everyone has a place they had to leave in order to go somewhere else. Don't they?

If he earned his living selling art, if his life had highs and lows, and he sold his art for food and rent, which is how my dad got the picture, if he was the kind of guy who could just, 'turn them out', there should be lots of his paintings out there. Did he live in San Francisco or just arrive there in the 60's like so many other people?

I am sure there is something I could put into google that would make this artist come right up but I have no idea what it is. Somewhere, just the right words, the letters in the right order, his first name, James? Henry? Not Steven. I do not think his first name would be Steven. I don't even know his last name.

I do not know how to do this. There is only one thing to do......... Call Maureen.

Mountain Stream on Hyde Street

or: Who Painted these Paintings?

My father died in 1993. My mother in 1997.

I have many of the things they acquired as I grew up. I have things that have traveled our history. Things that seem to hold the history. Things that get in the way of my life and yet they are amazingly difficult to toss. Where do you toss history while lives are fading?

But their passing has gone into another stage with me. Personally, inside of myself, I call it decade grief. It is when you are sad because you are not sad anymore. Decade grief.

And to celebrate this stage called decade grief I began tossing things. Some things. Other things, the items that made my eyes happy I have a place for. They do not get in the way of my living. They celebrate life with me as they capture the sunlight as it moves through my home. They help tell me what time it is and give evidence to the earth moving around the sun as the light shifts.

Things. Time. History remembered. History evaporating. And then there are the paintings.

Four of them. The largest called Mountain Stream is the one my dad brought home first. In 1966. I was 14. I remember it as if I were younger. I would guess I was 10 but due to the date on the back of the painting, I was 14. Knowing that my memory is scewed there are the facts.

My father paid $300 for the painting. It is large. My mother was upset that he paid so much for it. I imagine it was about 2.3 times their mortgage payment. And in their conversation about the painting, its apparently surprising arrival, it's price and its possible future locations I heard and remembered some information about the artist.

My father said it was an unusual painting. The artist used a knife to paint. I imagined a switch blade. My father had a shoe box full of switch blade knives. I could see how they might be handy for a sudden urge to paint.

My father said the artist was living in his partners garage because he had no other place to live right now. I recall that my father might have said he was a junkie. I recall that my father and his partner had found this guy to be 'a nice guy' or something redeeming. Apparently not a go to jail sort of junkie but a collect him up and put him in the garage junkie.

I can not exactly remember my dad's partners name. He called him Trig. Trigamome? What was his full name? I am not sure. I do know Trig also raised poodles. I just recently in my remembering put these two things together creating a picture of a man and some poodles living in a garage under one of those many two story houses in San Francisco. Most are very big garages. Some had enough area for a room downstairs, a car, washer and dryer and a small herd of poodles. You could collect an artist into a home like that. So now that I am in the stage of being sad that I am no longer sad about their deaths I decided to see what these paintings were worth.

I look at the signature. It is hard to read.