Turn the knob on the easel, easing the top ledge downward. Pause when it kisses the canvas. Adjust it one more millimeter and push the top left corner of the canvas to make sure it won’t budge. Stare at the whiteness and consider abstract art. Consider Jackson Pollock and formless splotches. Wipe your dry hands on your apron and glance at the mason jar of paintbrushes. Wonder which one to choose.
Pick up the smallest paintbrush and run your fingers over the spindles. Press it against the canvas. Change your mind, put it back in the jar. Take a sip of your drink, also in a mason jar. It’s Jameson, neat, double. The last of your liquor. Think of driving to the store, but remember your car is almost out of gas. Swish the Jameson around in your mouth and smile as it sears down your throat.
Choose the largest paintbrush, the footlong wooden one with no flecks of dried paint.
Coax out a glob from the tube of acrylic labeled “By the Ocean” and another from “Nairobi Dusk.” Mix them together with your brush. Frown as they turn each other to shit. Throw the paper plate pallet in the trash and try again, with a fresh plate. This time, line up all of your paints (ten of them, from the cheapest set at the art store) and squeeze a pea-sized portion of all of them onto the plate. Make sure they don’t mingle.
Clean your brush in the third mason jar, the one filled with water, and watch as the liquid turns murky. Think of highschool science class and the word turbid. Return to the pallet and choose a shade of green. Paint one thick, slow, vertical line in the center of the canvas.
Feel the emptiness of your apartment, decide to call it a studio. Just for this afternoon.
Make an oval, also in green, and connect it to your line. Step back so that you can admire your work. It’s a plant, but you don’t feel like painting a plant so you fish the first paperplatepallet out of the trash and peel a lemon rind from it. Drop the rind in the garbage, mush your brush in the paint.
Trace your plant with “By the Ocean” and “Nairobi Dusk” and watch it wither and die. Think: this is better. This is expression. Pick up your jar of Jameson and take a swig, except it is the murky paint water. Swallow it anyway and chase it with Jameson.
Crumple up your pallets. Leave the painting to dry.
Presently 