Eeek
I frighten myself sometimes.
Not like in the old days when I’d sometimes stuff a whole $20 bag of crack into the stem and hit it, hard, hoping to blow out my heart—and failing, left only with a big goofy grin and an inability to grasp small objects. No, not frightening like that.
Not like the other day when looking around the apartment, the words, “You’re decompensating” popped into my head. That’s just plain scary.
Not like this morning, when during the first gool sleep I’ve had after a second week of unrelenting sleeplessness, rather than choke the living shit out of the church van driver for incessantly blowing his horn outside my window at 7:15, I sat down and wrote a letter beginning with Dear Pastor and including phrases like, “My faith teaches me” No, that’s just spooky.
What I’m talking about is like this afternoon at the Park Ave Arts Festival, where they close two miles of Park Ave, line it with artists and Bloomin’ Onion stands and I sniffed out four of the five best in [name of medium] winners and a couple of runners-up completely unaided.
There was a woman painter who does wonderful things with acrylic andmanages to make them look like the paint isn’t really plastic. Or the pencil drawing lady with a great talent for light and shadow. A photographer and, naturally, a watercolorist rounded out that bill.
Extra points for the watercolorist because I named his prices from across the street. Well, the originals. His prints were simply too low, or I was too high. Then again the prints were unframed, so that could be what threw me.
Then there was the newcoming in oils, a medium I ordinarily don’t care for. A slightly chubby college student/house painter from named Matthew from Brockport.
My sponsor, a retired art professor, was entirely unsurprised by this. He just kept up a running commentary, “Oh yeah, this or that’s part of why I voted for him/her.” He judged the show yesterday morning.
It’s stuff like that that makes me go, “Eeek.” How can I pick this stuff out like that?
Later, explaining that I like to play, “What do they do in real life” I pointed to a tall, aging woman with bottle blonde hair cropped severely at the prices mid-point between her earlobe and shoulder. She wore a navy top and peach, peach I tell you, leather pants. As she stood talking with a couple and idly scratching her ass—left cheek—I said to my sponsor, “She’s either a docent or the guard dog at a large and pretentious gallery.”
“The latter,” replied my sponsor.
Eeek.
