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During last Monday's snowstorm I went shopping for art supplies. As I trudged to the art store, I saw a poet I know walking down the street. "Hey Nancy, what are you painting today?" he called out. "A picture of myself in a snowstorm," I said. "How are you going to keep the snow from melting?" he said.
Good question.
The beautiful men were out today. They were cleaning the streets and riding the trains. They were bustling through skyways and playing guitars and drinking coffee and wearing shoes and writing novels and handing out leaflets and sitting on benches and eating hamburgers and driving cars and dancing down Hennepin and reading books and waiting on tables and sporting fedoras and working in offices and whistling tunelessly and smoking cigarettes and flirting with women and getting arrested and hailing cabs and climbing barricades and walking through art museums and shopping in gift shops and starring in movies and talking on cellphones and frequenting bars. They were everywhere doing everything today, the beautiful men.
Yes indeed...it was a VERY beautiful day today.
A Persistent Quirk, oil on masonite, diptych, 34" x 31" x 1/2"
For a few moments yesterday I thought that if I'd painted Window I by George Tooker I could have died happy.
But then I remembered that dying happy was never one of my goals, so I went back to painting my own paintings instead of one painting by George Tooker.
The Insomniac, graphite on bristol paper, 15" x 22"
I was once dating a man I Iiked very much. He was handsome and bright and financially stable. We were both in the arts; we liked the same coffee houses; we read the same authors; we lived in the same part of town. Our sex life was amazing: wild and tender, sensuous and quirky, never boring.
He was the perfect man for me...except for the part about not sleeping.
I need a good night's sleep in order to function well in life. The best nighttime sleep is in the arms of someone you love, don't you agree? But this man was not a sleeper. He barely slept at all. Instead, he spent the entire night staring at me while I slept.
To make matters worse, he woke me every half hour to tell me how beautiful I looked when I was asleep. At first he'd say. "You're so beautiful when you sleep." And I'd say, "Thanks" and slip back into slumber. Then he'd wake me again and say, "You're so beautiful sleeping in the moonlight." and I'd say, "Thanks." Half an hour later he'd wake me again and say "Have I ever told you you're beautiful when you sleep?" and I'd say "Yes." After the fifth or sixth time he woke me I'd have trouble getting back to sleep, especially since I knew he was staring at me.
I know some of you are saying "This problem is the kind of problem I want to have, good-looking people waking me all night to tell me I'm so beautiful when I sleep." Before I dated this man I might have agreed with you, because not everyone thinks I'm beautiful when I sleep. But after ten days of being awakened constantly all night, I wished it would stop. I felt like I did when I was in the hospital recovering from major surgery and they kept waking me every half hour to check my vital signs.
On the two-week anniversary of our romance, I awoke on my own to find him sitting beside the bed. He was scribbling on a piece of paper. At first I was relieved that he'd finally stopped waking me up all night, but then I grew suspicious.
"What are you doing?" I said.
"I'm writing a poem about watching you sleep," he said. "So far I only have the title."
"What's the title?" I said.
"Silent Night," he said.
"That title has already been used," I said. "It's the title of a Christmas song."
"That's the only title I can think of," he said.
"Why don't you call the poem 'So Beautiful When You Sleep?' " I said.
"Because that's not what it's about," he said.
And that was the end of that.
A friend of mine from the '80s called me last weekend. "I just saw your doppelganger eating lunch in Loring Park," he said.
"Interesting," I said.
"I tried to talk to her but she ran away."
"Uh huh," I said.
"It was your doppelganger, right? It wasn't you?"
"No, it wasn't me."
"Because if it was you and you ran away I'd be really pissed."
"It wasn't me," I said.
The next day I was clothes-shopping with a friend of mine from work and she said "When I was at the downtown library I saw your doppelganger walking out of a bathroom. She looked exactly like you except she had blonde hair."
"Interesting," I said.
A couple of days later I ran into one of my ex-boyfriends at Whole Foods.
"Nancy," he said. "Yesterday I saw your doppelganger working at a coffeehouse on Grand Avenue."
"Really?" I said.
"She looked exactly like you except taller and younger."
"Which coffeehouse? I want to go see her."
"Oh, she wasn't working at the coffeehouse. She was a customer working on her laptop."
In the next few days my doppelganger was sighted driving a MINI Cooper near Lake of the Isles, dancing at Lee's liquor Lounge, buying milk in Chanhassen, starring in a 1970's situation comedy, and eating Swedish meatballs at Ikea.
My doppelganger sure is one gal about town.
One of my not-boyfriends just told me I'm not a good listener.
He could be right. I might not be a good listener.
It's hard to be a good listener when your mind reverberates like a room full of radios.