A Little Treat.

The final art project I worked on in Indianapolis before moving to San Francisco was a mural celebrating Mother Teresa in the alley behind Halstead Architects in Fountain Square. A true collaboration between many of my artist friends and I, including my dad who painted flowers on the ground in front of the image, the mural featured the following quote by this indelible soul:

"If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world your best and it may never be enough;
Give the world your best anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway."

Late one night as we painted a man passing through the alley approached us, read the quote and broke into tears.

A stripper who lived in the house behind the alley came over and asked if she could help. We gave her a section of the wall to cut loose on. She painted flowers and a spider and tiny mushrooms and a shining sun.

I lived at that time on a street called Prospect. Almost everyone on the street was an artist or a musician. We called ourselves the Prospectors. Almost all of the Prospectors chipped in on the Mother Teresa mural one way or another, either with their time and talents, by loaning me a laptop or a ladder or brushes or paints, or by bringing food and beer over at two in the morning.

One of those who chipped in, Darren Chittick, took over the Fountain Square Mural Project from me when I left. His unrestrained self-expression on the piece let me know I passed my baton on to the right runner.

Cru Warren, the artist who spent the most time working with me on the mural, didn't live on Prospect Street at the time. Cru and I got to talking while painting and realized his lease was up at the same time as Audrey and I were planing to leave for California. Without hesitation we pulled our house, an 1890s Victorian Farmhouse that Audrey and I and our parents spent five years restoring, off the market and rented it to Cru and his girlfriend Danielle.

Audrey and I know every splinter and crack in that house. We waited out countless tornados huddled in the tiny root cellar with Pico and Eli, listening to the walls creak, in awe of their tenacity to stand in defiance of more than a century of Indiana wind.

We couldn't have passed it on to better hands. Cru and Danielle take care of the squirrel family who lives in the walnut tree and their two little dogs guard over the back yard.

This is the 50th post on Notes From the Drain, my online record of our transformation since leaving Indiana.

To commemorate this milestone, here is a video shot yesterday half a block away from our San Francisco home, a garage Audrey and Pico and Elijah and I rent for $1650 a month on Balmy Alley, the most mural-filled block in the most mural-filled city in America.

Or as we call it in The Mission, El Paraiso!