I spent most of my childhood in Jamestown, NY, and lately I’ve been thinking about one of the houses where I lived, a middling two-story on the northside. The place had its peculiarities, like the dining room’s upright piano, ramshackle and olive green, the psychedelic pinks and blues pervading my sister’s bedroom, and, off the master, the miniscule office. An enormous Ben Franklin woodstove squatted in the basement. The basement also included a bedroom—mine, a finished box surrounded by unfinished gloom: cold concrete, naked ceiling joists, small windows harboring spiders, egg sacs, and grime. I liked my room in the daytime. At night, I very much didn’t. My siblings slept upstairs. Off my little brother’s bedroom was a balcony without a railing. On a wall in his bedroom hung a painting. [Read more…] about Real Art
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