Okay, I confess, I haven't written since Tuesday sometime. My brain shut off when we were getting ready to come to Lexington with all the last-minute planning and packing, all that driving, the endless driving, and then being here with Ann, going to the track and yarn shops and all. It's been exhausting but fun. Today we're going to a distillery (they give samples at the end of the tour) and then out to dinner with Ann's friend Anne and her mom who's in town for the weekend too. I think the Ann/es are trying to dilute the "visiting parent" factor by getting us together, hoping that we'll talk to each other and give them a break for a minute. It might work. Anyway, here's three writings that I cranked out this morning while waiting to wake up.
April 15--Emile Frechon, Kabylie Tribeswoman. She sits there with those clear brown eyes staring right through me. She knows the effect they have on me. Her lips are barely pursed, just the slightest degree, like a promise of passion. Her hand holds her headcovering, the bakua, away from her face for a moment to make that luscious promise, but the tension of those fingers belies how quickly she can draw it across her face, sealing me out forever. How can one so young be so aware of the way a man reacts? She pulses with life and promise. I am lost.
April 16--Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, Monsieur Boileau. Monsieur Boileau sits at the table, neither black nor white, blending in. Blending into the melange of the cafe, of the quarter, of Paris. In this time, Paris is the real melting pot that America claims to be. Those hapless helpless souls who are too black or too creative or just too different from their staid families can flee to Paris where they fit in. Look at me, a grown man with the legs of a boy, in love with "the green fairy," I am accepted. I am part of the milieu, even a tiny bit famous. They love me here and they will love Monsieur Boileau too, once he loses that American accent and his need to be white.
April 17--Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, Angel from the tabernacle in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. Bernini. I spit on him. He holds himself above the rest. Just because the Pope commissioned him to sculpt for the new chapel. I have seen him, Bernini, carousing with strong drink and loose women. I have seen with my own eyes the man who is supposed to be the big family man with his arm over the shoulder of a whore, his hand holding her nipple which thrusts eagerly into his hand. He has daughters older than her, I know this, but still he plays at night in this pool of sin while spending the day in the purified air of the Vatican. Look, look at that angel there on the left. That is the face of the tavern girl, I am sure of it. I would bet that beneath that angelic robe held so modestly to her chest is a thrusting nipple just begging for his touch. Hypocrite.
Well, I was on a roll this morning, wasn't I? Must have been inspired by not winning most of the races I bet on yesterday. In fact, I nearly perfected the art of choosing the horse that would come in dead last. It's a gift.
--Barbara
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