Sunday Scribblings - Yes

YESterday at Barnes & Noble, while racking my brains over whether to buy Dwell or InStyle and eventually deciding to spend my money instead on a caramel brulee frappuccino, I watched an older woman browsing the art magazines. You know the type: mid-50s, dark hair with reddish highlights, obviously dyed, lipstick a little too dark, eyeliner a little too heavy, some kind of red wool jacket with those cutesy buttons -- Laurel Burch? giraffes? cats? Anyway. She picks up one of the magazines with a huge splash headline, The Best of Drawing! One of those issues that promises to yield up the mystery of great art to the common person, to reveal that secrets that will transform your stiff & stodgy still lifes (?) of vases of flowers into fluid renderings expressing love, anguish, and desire, earthshaking beauty. I see her flipping the pages, pausing to read some, flipping past others. Thinking. Hoping. It won't work, I want to tell her. That magazine won't change your life. If you want to draw, you have to practice looking. Just look, draw, look again, and keep on trying. Or at least I'm pretty sure that magazine won't work any better than buying Dwell or Instyle will transform my fluorescent-lit apartment or my dowdy wardrobe into anything more glamorous than it really is.

She doesn't pay any more attention to my advice than I do to myself. Holds onto the magazine, keeps browsing, picks up a couple of other magazines, Somerset Studio, Cloth/Paper/Scissors, stuff like that.

A few minutes later, a few art student types come by, in black, pierced and expensively tattered: if I were still in school, I might know them; they might remember me. They are looking at Inked and Juxtapos, fantasy magazines, crap like that. Still, they are young, sure of themselves. One points to the drawing magazine, "There's one I need to get," he snickers. Not meant to be unkind. But the older woman suddenly holds her magazines closer to her chest. Hiding. Thinking that maybe this was a stupid idea. Maybe she should just return the magazine to the rack... as soon as these assholes leave, of course.

Suddenly I want something for her. Don't do it, I think, as hard as I can, while pretending to be absorbed in my caramel brulee frappuccino. Don't put it back. Keep the magazine. Hold onto your hopes. Don't stop trying.

And I am glad to see her head to the register instead.

Sunday Scribblings

Thin Ice

On the way to the pond Saturday night. B. is driving. I'm in the front seat. We stop at an intersection to turn left onto a two-lane highway. I looked to the right to check traffic, and for some reason, he's pissed. "What's that for?" he asked. "I'm driving. None of your looking is going to stop another car if I make a mistake."

I must have looked surprised. "You know," he said, "you need to just trust me."

I started to make the usual protests. Of course I trusted him. We are friends. Good friends. If I didn't trust him, why would I accept a ride? I could have just walked home and gotten my own car. But then there was that look I stole. Just checking. I always check. Even with Frank. Even with my friends. My friends do it, too.

Made me wonder: Is there anybody I could be with where I would feel like I didn't have to look?

Instead I practiced not looking for the rest of the ride. It was hard. Very, very hard. I'm not sure I could ever do this with anybody.

Briefly back.

I'm not sure what momentary lapse of rationality made me think that I could maintain any kind of project of my own with any kind of consistency through the mad rush of fall fund-raising events and class reunions. As you can see, I failed.

The reunions and the fund-raisers worked, pretty much, just barely, sort of, kind of. Well, maybe not as well as everyone would have liked. Money is tight, and everyone expects the axe is going to fall. I can only hope that I'm just cheap enough and just productive enough that they'll decide they can't live without me. C is nervous, though, and if she goes, her boss will do his part to turn me into a resentful old woman long before my time.

No more word about Provence. B. tells me that if that's where I want to go, I need to make it happen myself. Probably true.