Whether we are pasting photos of our parents into the gesso or not, all artists are of course doing that same thing: We are burying our past selves within the work, pieces of which rise to the surface without our permission like bodies in a flood. I think oil painters are the worst—that we shovel the most shit onto the canvas. But—not everybody has a shovel. Watercolor painters, for example, aren’t adding or shoveling but rather removing the occlusions of what we perceive as reality to expose what lies underneath, like wiping fog off a car window. Pencils burnish, create an impression, a frottage; ink is a violent stain; charcoal, a cloudy exhale; acrylic, a plastic advertisement; photography, a viewpoint. Sculpture is architecture. They’re all different, these mediums of representation. I started working with oil because it takes the longest to dry—some of my paintings are so thick they won’t be dry for a thousand years.

This was, strictly speaking, my biggest problem. In the morning, the air was so humid that the gesso looked like it was sweating, though I knew it was dry. Panic rose beneath my ribs: There was no time for this kind of humidity. Even Liquin couldn’t stand up to this weather—not with the quantities of paint I was using. If the first layer was applied under these conditions, the rest would be affected, and the final product could be melted, unstable, even after months of drying—months I didn’t have. That exact quality I was so attracted to—that heavy, damp shit-shoveling—it was a condition I could no longer afford.

I needed a solution. Today.

When in doubt, I always leave the studio and go for a walk. I’m not an exercise fanatic, but this is a solid, unwavering truth: Leaving the studio makes everything better. I locked up and walked down the driveway, past Arts and Crafts, the Theatre, and Sports, and onto the shore of the black lake.

It stretched ahead for a mile, maybe more. I stood on the only visible beach, which ran about half a mile, from the Mission to my bungalow. The licorice lake was lined around the soft curve to my left with pointed evergreens and thickets of shrubs, and a grassy hill rose opposite me, on the far shore. The water moved heavily, with windswept waves that were never placid. To my right it wrapped around the corner to the east, where a peninsula jutted out sharply and cut off the view.

I wondered where Carey had walked into the lake in her cement-filled boots. Was it here, close to the Mission? Was it in front of their house, number seven? Did she take one of the canoes and roll out of it?

I took off my shoes and let my feet touch the incoming swells.