The Dusty Prayers of Paintbrush Poets

The De Grazia mission is empty, except for a few dust covered benches and flickering candles.
Adobe walls feel fragile to my fingertips; I let my hands wander across the smooth surfaces, across the cracks, across the flaws.
Bright painted aluminum flowers are attached to the door frame, and the fence surrounding the building. The desolate ache of this place, is eclipsed by their eternal, metallic beauty.
There is something completely "calm" here. Just leaning against the dried-cactus doorway, the sunshine beaming across my eyes.. I like this simplicity, I like the way this place was built - built not to last.
Inside the mission, fading paintings cover the walls.
De Grazia was an impressionist. His work flows, it moves, it is unashamed and uncalculated. When I look at his paintings, I feel what he was feeling - you can see the emotions of his mind.
Words spill out of his paintings.. silent potent words. Words like, "fatigue", "alive", "strength" - poetry woven into the slightest of brush strokes.
I like that rawness, I like that urgency.

I sit down for a moment on a very old wooden bench.. my blue jeans, make a stretching sound. My eyes scan through the old mission.
How long will this place last?
Already it is crumbling, already the brilliant colors of paint have faded and dulled, already wind and dust and time have have taken their toll.
Seriously, how did he expect this place to last?

Last. Endure. Exist.

I looked again over the dusty paintings.
The imperfections in the works.. the quickness, and the disregard for detail.
I see motion in De Grazia's artwork, the urgency of color. His paintings seem to plead with me, "NOW! Now is the beautiful moment! Touch me, look at me, watch me before I fade like a comet through the black sky!" Like prayers for my wounded mind - his paint stains my perception.
Everything about the mission looks aged - everything here seems to be decidedly confident in its inability to remain.
How calming.
How absolutely reassuring.
How persuading.
I too have an inability to remain.



...a reflection of human existence; a beautiful, subtle reminder of our own frailty, and at the same time our own brilliance!
Sitting there, surrounded by dust and paintbrush poetry, I could almost feel time moving across my body - along the cracked adobe of my skin, through the dry cactus of my veins... the impermanence of that place echoed my own faltering, stammering, smile. Fleeting.
So beautiful, and yet so momentary!
Nothing here was ever meant to last.
Everything, everyone, every thought, every painting, trees, houses, machines - designed to fade to dust.
god I love that..
I love that we are all just pieces of motion, pieces of the moment, pieces of reality.. god I love that.
I find myself persuaded to live and breathe, and die in peace - that is existence: shining like a flame, and then disappearing into the wind.
beatiful.

What a wild, crazy blue-sky day.





(Andrew Tipton)