Barcelona - Commissioned Graffiti (photo by Lady)
UNINTENDEND CONSEQUENCES DOWN AMONG THE SINNERS
“I feel like I’m cheating, taking photographs. I’m just shooting what I see.”
But it’s what YOU see. It’s what YOU selected out of everything else going on at the time. It’s your eye. It’s just detail in somebody else’s existence.
You’re the editor. You’re taking one detail and saying, ‘Hey, this is worth looking at.’ It could be a photograph, it could be a painting, just about anything. But you’re the selector. Conductor.
* * *
You’re an attractive woman.
“I am? I’m gonna go take a look at myself.”
What do you see?
“I don’t know. A girl-woman.”
Well, you are a girl-woman. Don’t you see yourself that way in your mind?
“I guess so. Yeah. And you’re raising me.”
No, not raisin. You’re more in the grape area.
“Ha ha.”
Well, there’s my grape joke. Trouble is, it’s not tellable. I’ve got a chicken joke, and a knock-knock joke. I’ve gotta get a tellable grape joke…
“You have many.”
…of my own. I got three grape jokes.
“Uh huh?”
What’s purple and lies on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean?
“Hm?”
Moby Grape.
What’s purple and lies in the North Atlantic Ocean?
“Huh?”
Grape Britain.
“That’s terrible.”
And what’s purple, and punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison?
“Hm?”
Statutory Grape.
“That one’s OK.”
I think my favorite bad taste joke of all time is the little boy comes walking into the kitchen, licking his fingers, saying, ‘Mom, remember that soft spot in Baby’s head?’
“Ugh.”
That goes along with my own line. Children belong — in cages, or soup cans.
“That’s terrible.”
It’s absurd.
* * *
“Anyways, I think we ought to talk more about ME, the girl-woman.”
Does that mean you’re going to grow up to be a woman-woman? If you had a sex change, you’d grow up to be a man-woman.
“What is a girl-woman?”
Don’t ask me. I don’t understand women of any age or size or genus.
* * *
My ten pounds I’ve gained have gone straight to my face. Gonna have to grow my hair long and straight down, so just this thin slice of face remains.
“Is that why they grow long hair? To look thinner?”
That, and to hide. And like Veronica Lake, to look mysterious. She hid one eye behind her falling hair, and seduced you with the other.
“I don’t know. My world is so far removed from that. World no longer seems mysterious.”
It *mystifies* me.
“I have found magic in revelation. Mystery uncovered. Horror revealed, tho, too.”
Your basic magical mystery tour.
“Well, no. Cuz there’s no more mystery.”
Ah… You’re wrong. How do you think we got together?
“I followed your clues.”
They weren’t left by me.
“Oh hoh yes they were. I saw your GO AWAY mat. I thought, ‘CHALLENGE!’ You left clues. Artwork. Poetry.”
I left a lot of clues along the wayside, then.
“That’s what art is. CLUE. It’s the CLUE to YOU.”
I dare say folk put my stuff together, they’re gonna have a hard time placing me.
“You’re a scientific primitive.”
Darned right.
* * *
Ah, your fingers are cool, but not cold.
“That’s because I warm them up in my crotch.”
Aha. Finger warmers.
Barcelona (photo by Lady)