A Messy Star For Blades

Letting go of an attic find that’s kept me tethered to the heavens

In autumn of 1994, my family moved across town from a cozy Brady Bunch rental on Vesper Circle to a bigger home on Valentine Drive. We traded backyard pomegranate and kumquat trees for spindly palms and a fence line of Taylor junipers which, along with a thick cinder block wall, separated us from the neighbors.

On moving day, my parents mobilized help from daycare families whose children my mom cared for. They arrived with rolled up sleeves and coolers of beer, ready to give over an ample chunk of their Saturday. I was well acquainted with most everyone, but two of them especially since they’d recruited my younger brother Mike and I to join their softball team.

I was still fresh home from my Army enlistment. My high and tight was growing into a less military hairstyle, but my language and behavior was still purposely crass. Four years of trying really hard to be bad, to be hardcore and intimidating, to strike fear and inflict pain, would take many, many years to exit my bones.

Spring 1994, just months before I got out

Moving back in with my family after living wild and free was my first major humbling moment as a new civilian. I hated it at the time—because what if I wanted to bring a date home, or drink to oblivion, or watch porn? But I now see this moment as the sort of soft landing I needed to snap back to reality. To undo what had been done to transform me into a violent and harmful weapon. I needed to be home to become myself again.

Most of the entire upstairs living area was mine. It was a wide open second floor with one small walled-in section. It was as long and wide as the house’s footprint. A 70’s era bar with padded rails sat in one corner, and in others, extra furniture left behind by previous tenants—including a king sized bed and a couple dressers. There was a small but usable full bathroom, a large pane window to allow in natural light, and locked access to a half furnished attic. I agreed to share the space with my brother, and I claimed the private nook as my own. His “room” became the common area where we watched nightly episodes of Beavis and Butthead. We went in halves on a mini fridge and I filled it with beer.

I regularly explored the rental’s attic. It had, at some point, been someone’s secret space, and there were curious artifacts to inspire stories of their endeavors. The rafters also contained an assortment of dusty boxes that, for the most part, I left alone.

During one foray in the dark space, I stepped carefully along thick beams and across crevasses of pink fiberglass towards a deep corner of the house, dodging exposed nail ends that would pierce my skull if I wasn’t careful. Once there, I figured I was directly above my parent’s room. I imagined the chaos that would ensue if I fell through the ceiling and onto their waterbed. I double checked my footing, shouldered into a beam for some leverage, then reached for what I sought out to inspect—a stack of old canvas paintings.

I tilted each painting into stray rays of light that cut through seams in the roof. One piece struck me enough to carry it back into the bedroom for a better look. I set it on my bed and sat down with it. I’d never seen anything like it.

By all rights, it was not a good painting. Nothing about it was done with the sort of detail that exuded a particular craft or skill or handiwork. Not to my untrained eye, anyhow. It was more of an I could do that sort of piece. Still, even at a young 22, it hit me like a punch. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

The scene was pastoral. In the foreground was an off-center windmill, and further in the distance sat a barn and silo, both with reddish roofs. Yellowish brush, perhaps wheat, framed the bottom of the scene, while wispy clouds filled the upper section. The clouds, however, were a reminder that this was a painting—they were made by fast taps with a large brush. Nothing about them seemed cloud-like, although it was unmistakable what they were meant to be. I recall this as a profound detail—that the painter chose to keep the clouds in the present. As if to say, “I painted these with this here paintbrush,” while allowing the rest of the dreamy scene live beneath it.

The artist’s signature sat in the bottom right. A. Blaine Riley written in a fine script from the days when folks had artful handwriting. Not too small, not too big. Just right, in fact, and somewhat hidden in the subtle mix of blue and brown scrub.

At the very top of the canvas, above the clouds, the artist had painted shades of darker colors that mirrored shadows in the bottom section. I remember thinking there’s a storm coming. That the person painting the scene is too far from cover and will surely get wet.

I brought my eye closer to the windmill. Four long swipes of the brush for its legs. A messy star for blades. A minor dab for the vane. I wondered if the painter leaned in while he painted. Or did he sit in close with a squinted eye? Did he hold the end of the brush for a softer touch, or did he grip it like a pencil, like a surgical instrument, to ensure exactness and accuracy?

I hung the painting on the wall of my new room. It became a conversation piece with guests, easily drawing in any nearby eye. I regularly stared at it and considered what was coming. Not only in the scene, but also in my own life. Was I walking toward the windmill, or away from it?

The painting tethered me. It has adorned the walls of everywhere I’ve lived in the thirty years since. It’s a piece I’ve never grown tired of. But it’s also a piece for which I never have felt any sort of nostalgic connection. I simply like how it fashions my internal dialogue.

For the past couple years this painting has lived in a portfolio bag in the depths of my tiny closet. I recently pulled it out and was overcome by its gasp—it needs to breathe again. I believe that art, like energy, like me, wants to be in motion. It wants to be seen, to be discussed, to be admired or cajoled or dismissed. Like me, without movement it becomes stuck. Like me, it wants to be free. Like me, it wants to be let go of, to be sent off into the world, to risk, to reel, to wish. It wants to be set aflame and reminisce about the scars. To drop to knees and be delivered to the heavens. I’d been nourished for three decades by this attic find, by this striking and sad and hopeful image. But it had become stifled and heavy. It was time to let it go.

A few months back, while in the throes of cathartic downsizing, I listed A. Blaine Riley’s unnamed painting on Facebook Marketplace for $400. Turns out there’s a collector’s market for Riley’s work—prices range between a couple hundred bucks and many thousands. I’m not trying to get rich, and I figured $400 was a nice starting point.

I still don’t really understand Facebook’s algorithm—I’ve got thirty or so items upon for sale and I tend to only get inquiries about one. For weeks I’ll field questions about one particular item’s availability, maybe some thoughtful questions about its dimensions or condition. Then, hopefully, at some point I finally sell it. Sometimes this effort is too much to bear and I grow increasingly sick of all the empty curiosity. So I pull it from the mix, delete the ad, and donate the thing to the local thrift store. Good riddance! Regardless, until the item’s listing comes down, it’s the only one that gets any action.

Last week I received a message from a potential buyer of the painting. She asked for a viewing. She’d travel to Carrboro from Raleigh to see it, about 45 minutes each way, and she was only available today. We set up a meeting in the co-op parking lot and connected at the planned time in a sunny spot. The windmill and barn perked up in the midday glow. She took the frame in her hands like a face. She didn’t pull it in or out. She looked in silence, her gentle fingers barely holding on.

“My husband was from Argentina,” she said. He’s passed now, but he always spoke of wide open spaces. He dreamed of going back to this kind of place, but he never did.” She let the painting lower, then looked to the distance, past the cool train tracks and toward an adjacent tree line. “I imagine this is where he is now,” she said.

She looked at me and told me she hadn’t expected the painting to speak to her as it was. She asked if I would I take less for it. I told her I’d take whatever she wanted to offer.

I went home and read a piece about deepening my relationships with my thoughts and emotions. Then I wrote these things down on a piece of paper, hoping that, like the windmill, they too will become part of me:

I am better off letting go. I am free to release, and thus experience the joy and expansiveness that exists within me. This letting go is a giving—a passing along of that which is sacred and protected.

I am not that which I hold in my hands. I am not my hands.

Attic find by A. Blaine Riley