Often in the evenings, the two would pass the time by reading and working on various projects. Jack particularly liked to make model sailboats.
03.31.2021
This dining room setting is a straight reference to the apartments that my wife and I lived in for the first six and a half years of our marriage. The building was a great brick structure built in the early part of the 1900s. We first lived on the bottom floor, and after three years, our upstairs neighbor moved and we decided to move upstairs for the views. We loved it. It was our daughter’s first home and was an easy walk from the school and my wife’s studio. Many an hour were spent working on art projects in the rooms there, especially over the winters.
Jack begins to work on his model sailboats here, taking another step in pursuing his dream of sailing out to new adventures in the wide world.
And there were afternoons they spent together in marvelous museums, changing the way that they looked at the world.
03.30.2021
I am imagining these two friends wandering around town, enjoying their time together. Here they stretch their minds with a visit to a museum. Living in Kansas City, I am so thankful for the opportunity to be able to visit the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum with such great convenience. It is free and open to the public, and that fact alone has transformed how I approach spending time there. Perhaps it’s just thriftiness, but if I pay to go to a museum, I often feel compelled to try to see every single piece of art. By the time I am half through, I have already overrun my capacity for visual stimulation and am ready to go. My favorite thing to do is to pop in for 30 minutes and spend that time focused on one or two spaces, being honest about what I am drawn to look at, and taking more time to reflect and notice details.
On rainy days, Jack and Sebastian would go to their favorite diner for lunch. They ate slowly as they watched people moving about the street under umbrellas.
03.29.2021
This picture of Jack and Sebastian hanging out by the window in their favorite lunch spot is channeled directly from my long-standing enjoyment of the classic American diner. With a menu based on eggs, breakfast meats, and bread items, the unending fill-ups from a Bunn coffee-maker, and an atmosphere that accommodates a slow sit on your own or a caloric stockpiling with friends, I don’t think I’ll ever shake the charm of the setting.
This particular illustration made me think of a diner that a friend and I went to a couple of times in Hopkins, Minnesota. We were living in Minneapolis at the time, and there is a bike path that we used to follow out of the city-proper to this small community turned suburb. The original main street was still populated with shops, restaurants, and a cinema. This great diner was the perfect place to rest our legs and fill up before the ride back into the city.
Some days when they were not working, they would go to the spillway and watch the water as it slipped from the lake to the river below. Jack would often daydream about braving that slope in a sailboat and the chance to journey down the river to adventures in the sea beyond.
Reflection 03.26.21
Noblett Lake lies in the Mark Twain National Forest in southern Missouri. As a kid, my family sometimes picnicked and hiked there on weekend outings. I remember often standing near the dam and watching the water run over the brown wall to the river below. I loved it. It felt ancient to me, like the ruins of the Ozarks, and somehow the presence of ruins opened to the imagining of so many other possible adventures.
I like the quiet beholding that Jack and Sebastian are in the midst of here. Those moments are some of my favorite in life, when seeing something beautiful and solemn wakes something interior and brings with it a sense of wonder that we are here at all.
At lunch time, Jack would often run to the nearby hot dog stand. He would order a hot dog with ketchup for Sebastian and a cup of relish for himself.
Reflection 03.25.21
From the moment I dotted the eyes on this silly hot dog vendor’s face, this illustration has truly cracked me up and cheered my heart. Thinking of Jack and Sebastian’s daily work in the lamp shop, I started to get hungry and sent Jack off to find lunch. He ended up at this hot dog stand with a jolly owner and ordered the usual.
I grew up in a small town in southern Missouri, and if there was a hot dog stand in that corner of the state, I never saw it. Numerous cinematic moments set in New York formed a romantic vision for me of what it would be like to walk down the street and give a couple of dollars for the chance to walk away with a hot dog in-hand. I can’t tell whether the vicarious experience of the purchase or the friendly presence of this vendor pleases me more.