An email from me to Audrey's favorite author, and the author's reply.

Just to say thank you Inbox
Phillip Barcio
to tim
Apr 14 (20 hours ago)
From: Phillip Barcio Mailed-By: gmail.com
Date: Apr 14, 2009 2:48 PM
Subject: Just to say thank you

Mr. Sandlin,

When I first met my second wife she amazed me, initially by agreeing to be seen with me in public and secondly by encouraging me to keep writing. During one particularly melodramatic episode up in Chicago when the rejection letters were first starting to pile up from agents and publishers, Audrey wrote to you, her favorite author, and asked for some encouraging words she could share with me.

I admit I cannot remember exactly what you said, only that it translated into, "Tell him not to give up."

That letter is in a pile of other treasures stacked in boxes back in Indianapolis in my dad's storage barn. If we ever get settled out here in San Francisco maybe we'll send for it.

Anyway, I just got my first article published. It only took eight years.

The publisher asked me for the names of ten people I would like a copy sent to, you know, in lieu of monetary consideration, you know, because of the economy.

Yours was the second name that occurred to me, after my father's.

The magazine is called Tikkun. It's a spiritual/political magazine, but I don't mean to insinuate anything. I hope they don't try to get you to buy anything or subscribe or anything like that, or to change your religion. Let me know if they do and I'll go put a turd in their mailbox. Turds are plentiful and should be used for something.

The article is about an artist, and about what it might mean to be a saint nowadays, a subject I intend to drink more on and maybe write some more about later, and one I thought you might think was interesting.

Thank you for the encouragement. I wanted to share my success with you because your words, whatever they were, meant a lot to me. It mattered mostly that you took the time to respond. You are a good man.

Sincerely,
Phillip Barcio

Reply
Tim Sandlin
to me
More options 10:38 am (9 minutes ago)

Hey Phillip,
When I read your first sentence I thought you were some guy stuck in Chad with fifty million dollars he needed help getting out of the country. I'm glad I kept reading. Thanks for the kind words. I'm happy for you and I hope this is the first of many. If those guys want to send me a copy, my address is Box xxxx, Jackson, WY 83001.
Tell your wife she chose well.
Tim Sandlin
307-xxx-xxxx

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!

I love the smell of inert gas in the morning.

Mark Twain pointed out that "A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."

I would like to add that a man who has an airbag deployed in his face smells something he can smell no other way.

Whatever preconception the phrase "inert gas" used to conjure up in my mind, I now realize inert is a relative term and in no way relates to scent.

On the bright side, the Dodge Behemoth bestowed upon me by Enterprise Rent-A-Tank still has that "new monster truck smell," an aromatic delicacy Audrey and I can expect to enjoy for the next two months as the kinks and dents and wobbles are worked out of our poor little Prius.

To all of you information gatherers out there who have been on the fence about whether to invest in a Hybrid Electric Vehicle, let this be a lesson to you. We paid $13,000 for our used Toyota Prius four years ago. After my accident last week, the Geiko insurance adjuster informed us the damage came to $9,400, a number that did not require totaling the car since it is not even 70% of the car's estimated current market value of $13,400.

The Prius is worth $400 more today than it was worth four years ago. A rarity in the automotive world, to say the least. Considering our $500 deductible, we're still down $100, but who's counting?

Underground Music

The streets sing to me. Pigeons sirens horns little children freestyle but its the cable car that somehow steals the show. The same predictable riff. Ding ding ding. Man, but it gives me chills. Makes me realize exactly where I am.



I go underground and the underground whines, "What are you doing here?

Don't you belong in the sun or under the stars or whatever?

Well as long as you're here, I might as well play you a song."