Mirage

Good morning.  I write too many desultory things here of late, though sometimes, I think, I can make a clever remark, but I feel no cleverness this morning and don't wish to write the bad stuff in my head here for public consumption.  Being creative sometimes requires one ramble about in the world.  I was excited to do that yesterday, and I did, but nothing much came of it.  One thing, I think, but I shouldn't write it down. 

I did get up and go the the distant Farmer's Market.  It wasn't as crowded as I remembered it to be, and the crowd that was there seemed rather dull, an army of working class families milling about clothed in the uniforms of their type.  I stopped into some of the downtown shops that were now full of Christmas.  I mean, Christmas is only two months away.  People wandered the sidewalks with their paper cups of coffee and I wondered about that.  How can you enjoy a cup of coffee while you walk?  I estimated there were in this small town eight Italian/Pizza restaurants, six Mexican, two steak, and a scattering of others of no origin.  On Main Street, there were at least six coffee shops.  I'd guess in hindsight that estaurants outnumbered retail shops. It may have been about equal. 

I didn't stay as long as I might, and I was back in my own hometown just before noon.  I had a small breakfast with mom in the morning, a hardboiled egg and some yogurt, but I was in the mood for another large breakfast, so I headed to the place I used to think was so good.  

People were standing in line to get a table.  I skipped the line and took the last seat at the counter.  I sat in front of someone's discarded breakfast plates for quite awhile squeezed too tightly between patrons on either side of me, elbows in, shoulders hunched.  Service was taking too long, and I was about to abort when the waitress came to take my order.  I got the "Traditional," eggs, home fries, an English muffin, and bacon.  

It's not my favorite breakfast place any longer.  It was far from worth the $20.  

I went back to my house and dumped the images from my SD card into the computer.  I waited for them to download and then scrolled through.   Nothing much there, maybe nothing at all. I was drowsy and falling asleep as I scrolled, and I was of a mind to scrap my plans for the in-town markets and to take off my clothes and lie in bed for a nap. But, seeing that I had made no good photos in the morning, I caught a second wind.  I'd need to make something of the day.  

Second market.  Vintage clothing.  You might find an old Cure concert t-shirt for a few hundred dollars.  Q told me I should get an antique Kurt Cobain t-shirt.  Then I'd be really and truly hip.  I think he was setting me up, but it sounded at the time, really, like a capital idea.  I wandered through the pop up sun shade stands and rolling racks of discarded clothing for a couple laps when I heard my name called.  It was my tenant.  

"Come her," I said.  

I had spied the most marvelous looking girl and showed her to the tenant.  

"Good god, I want to photograph her."

"Do."

"I don't have that confidence anymore." 

She was at a long table full of old and random jewelry.  I couldn't make myself quit watching.  She picked through glass topped cases of old rings, examining each one before either putting it back or putting it into her little plastic shopping basket.  She was thin and wearing oversized baggy workman jeans whose ragged bottoms dragged the ground around her untied black tennis shoes, the jeans slung low on her hips exposing her jutting hip bones and smooth, ivory skin.  She wore an asymmetrical black top cut high on one side, rising just shy of her right breast so that there was a large swathe of ethereal skin to behold. Her hair was many shades of blonde and cut to frame her face, her bangs cut short, her sides shoulder length.  She was probably six feet tall and moved gracefully but, I noticed, uncertainly, making quick, secretive glances around her.  

"I'm going over there for a coffee."

"I'll catch up in a minute."  

I wandered the market again, and when I got back to where I started, the beautiful girl was still going through the jewelry cases.  It was a very long table with a huge crowd.  I'd hung around long enough.  I didn't have a studio.  I didn't have a project.  There was nothing to do.  I walked on.  

The tenant was sitting at an outdoor table with one of her good friends, a woman who makes her living painting watercolor flower arrangements.  She is an Ashkenazi Jew from India and we ended up talking about the troubles of our time.  The Ashkenazi is an insider connected to a certain class of other insiders making up much of the artistic circle of Gotham.  I've never been a fan, but sitting outside in the shade in the late afternoon air was nice.  I sat facing the street, gazing out at the crowds on the sidewalk when I saw her again.  She was walking with an older woman.  I elbowed my tenant and nodded my head in the girl's direction.  

"That must be her mother."

"Ha!  Good thing you didn't ask her!" 

"She looks like a model."

"I'm sure her mother must think so, too."

"She was merely a mirage."

"Most things are."

Back at my mother's, I made a cocktail, and we sat out until it got dark.  Neither of us was terribly hungry, so I made a simple dinner of tuna fish sandwiches and soup.  Later, sitting on the couch, I fell asleep.  Had I been watching a show?  I couldn't remember. It was nine. 

"Whoa, I'm not half the man I used to be.  I'm beat.  I'm going to bed."

I took an Advil PM and a Tylenol and passed out straight off.  And then I had the most horrible dreams. When I woke this morning, it was from the pain in my neck.  I could not get comfortable and so I rose, but the PM had yet to finish with me, and so here I sit, writing with an over the counter hangover, a crippled body, and a less than stellar mind.  

Hate on me about the girl, if you like.  I don't care.  There are certain kinds of beauty that immobilize me.  The cretins among you who can only sexualize beauty. . . are sad.  There are things by which I am frozen.  The lines of certain sailboats, a Meisterstuck pen, a Leica M camera, the crown of the Chrysler building.  Some forms are certainly divine.  But human physical beauty is so transient it bundles joy and despair into one breathless moment.  Take a look now at any of those ancient athletes you once ogled.  The Greeks and Romans knew what they were doing when they carved them into stone, giving them a life absent from Egyptian art and of much of art to follow.  They were stricken. 

And so that's my tale told groggily. I'll regret having written it later, I fear, but you buy the ticket and take the ride. 

There are other markets today.  I may go.  I don't know.  One grows tired of such things.  I should photograph flower shows and coin collector clubs.  Maybe make a study of canal fishermen.  There are a million things if you only have the chutzpah.