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Polar bear with carrot

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Sunday scramble


I have a bit of a writer's block. One of my lowest production months in the last two years. Literarily speaking. Little fleeting profundities squirm through my clenching grasp and leave me shaking hands with empty space. My last attempt at humor left a family member pretty alienated and me feeling like a jerk.

I spent all of my available cash on a very nice painting someone actually left in a trash can at a storage facility. Now I am  gasping for oxygen once again like a flounder flopping on the sidewalk. I draw some small comfort from the realization that if I was to die right now and leave this mortal coil, I will at least die with the best shit.

I am currently sitting in my little cubicle at the Del Mar Antique Show. Yesterday was a wash out and I am trying not to mentally call it a day today which ain't much better. Met a lot of friendly folks but friendly don't exactly pay the mortgage.

Del Mar is strange. Always one of the best shows for traffic but also a particular strain of east county clientele with the tank tops and the budweiser tattoos. The dentally and mentally challenged. I put a deal together for an alcoholic friend who desperately needed a drink, out of pure Sommers altruism, not pulling a nickel out for the host. But have mostly sat on my hands and fretted. I have had really good shows here in better times and it is good advertising so that the good folks in San Diego remember that I still exist up thar in backwoods Fallbrook.

This is my first time back to the venue in a year. Last November I had the memorable trip to the john at Del Mar with the surprise ending wherein I discover that I am pissing buckets of blood and that Mr. C was back after all of these years. So I have residual heebie jeebies in the joint. I am ensconced at the front of the room which is great for exposure but also has the ghastly smell of fried onions wafting through all weekend.

There are quite a few regular blog readers in the biz and I get approached by a guy who challenges my low down liberal ways. Tells me he was smoking j's with the dead back in the Haight but found the error of his ways somewhere along the line and became a card carrying conservative and is hoping for my eventual redemption. Which is all well and good, I am too. But then he goes on to disparage Hillary and suggest she wear a bag over her head. Do republicans all hate women? The way they go on about Pelosi, Boxer and Clinton, you'd think there were some deep mommy issues. Hillary ain't a bad lookin' dame. Why does any woman except maybe Madame Palin anger their conservative souls so?

I am all for discussing issues and for dissenting points of view but when the antipathy is centered on a person's looks, I get a little cold. Although I must admit I once asked why they printed Barbara Bush's portrait on the dollar bill.


It's a little weird. After all of these years in the biz I can usually tell how I will do at a particular show when I first get out of the car or step into the hall. You can say self fulfilling prophecy but I think it is my razor sharp intuition or alien reptile brain clicking into gear.  More often than not my sixth sense gets borne out.

Anyway, here's hoping that some person of remarkable taste and/or sympathy will walk through and save my ass today.  Have a nice day yerselves.

By the way, fellow Fallbrookians. Jerry Morris, my favorite postman, a guy who has delivered my bills for 17 years, got broadsided by a sheriff's deputy last week, thrown out of his truck onto a fire hydrant and now has a broken pelvis. Jerry is a great guy and here's hoping for a speedy recovery.

2 comments:

NYSTAN said...

stop trying to rationalize irrational actions....dope smokers who wake up one day and realize they can make decisions for themselves....duhhhhh......who gives a rat's ass? they (we) should be telling our shrinks all this instead of posting it-the internet makes a lousy mistress and a lousier therapist.
You will sell a painting and the past will be erased again till tomorrow. How do I know?
Either Jesus told me or I read it in a book, or....I made it up....you decide.
Not anon.....
Great day here in NY....sat on a bench behind the Metropolitan Museum this morning with a neighbor. The dog slept on our feet and warmed her bones.

Anonymous said...

As your $90 dollar an hour therapist, I need to direct you towards the infinite sales of a self created reality in the cosmic flow of life. Through optimum therapy you will create an image of yourself selling a painting at the precise moment that the illusion of life merges with reality, thus the World will continue to turn and you will feel a blissful but modest awareness in your inner conscience that will gently awaken your id so your alter ego can pacify any paranoiac images conjured by your super ego in any future sales of paintings, thus you must abandon your grasp to be in touch with the inner child who controls all your sales. You must eliminate any real or imagined fears and deal with your fragile ego, conquer your primal weakness, your selfish need to rely on the dependance of family, loved ones and art collectors to have any marginal success in the art world.

fuck it, it's easier to fire one up!