I’ve lived with the third-floor views from my apartment’s windows for the last five years. In two weeks I will be moving away. These paintings are documents of my time in this place.

A year ago, I was about to move to my new place. I’d ordered postcards to advertise/commemorate my old place on Lituanica. There was to be a show at the Rainbo Club that August. It didn’t happen, as so many other things didn’t.

Every place I’ve lived has had an impact on my work, but the little apartment on Lituanica marked one of the major transitions in my life. It was a change from cohabitation back to single life. There is no going back from the decision I made. It determined the course of my life going forward.

I remade my life without the expectation or hope of being with anyone ever again. There were a few slips, but for the most part, I’ve kept to myself these past six years. It’s been a productive time, a time of coming to terms and making peace with my limitations as a person among other people.

Before moving to Lituanica, I’d held on to some expectation of a traditional marriage/relationship situation, but that expectation died after five years of trying to fit myself into a mode I seemed allergic to.

That crummy little apartment allowed me to be myself, for better or worse. I wanted to celebrate it with a show of paintings and drawings done there. But the world had other plans.

When I look at the pictures that were to make up the Rainbo show, I don’t pine to move back——I like my current spot much more——but I recall what that place did for me. It was crucial. It mattered. It pointed a way forward.

p.s. RIP Monte Hellman, one of the true greats of the movies.