(5/10/07) strawberry-flavored art criticism

(Entered in my paper journal at 6:40 AM at the Starbucks on 56th Street and 6th Avenue.)

Dream 1

I stood before a painting. R and L stood behind me and were talking about going to see the double-feature movie Grindhouse. I was happy that they would finally go see a movie I wanted to see.

I was painting on the canvas now, painting on black lines in between thick patches of color, browns, tans, etc. R and L complimented my work. I stood back and tried to explain what I had found incomplete in the painting.

The room was wide and empty, comfortably light and dim with natural light. L sat in a lovely velvet chair which had its back to me and which faced the painting. She crouched toward its back to look at me while she explained why she liked the artist of the painting.

I felt very complimented and relieved that L finally liked an artist that I liked. But I decided to stay tactfully quiet instead of screwing up the situation by annoying L with one of my insights.

The painting became one brown canvas. Then there was a Monet-like view of an ocean at sunset, just the ocean and the sky, with an orange profusion at the center of the horizon, and roiling greens, golds, yellows, pinks, oranges in both the ocean and sky.

I looked at L. Her face was being crawled over by little kids. I sat on the floor to L's left as she sat forward in the chair. She wasn't really sitting: her back was partly leaned over the back of the chair as little kids climbed all over her top.

One of the kids, an Asian girl, about two years old, was putting her fingers on a painting, which seemed to be a Caravaggio-style still life, but possibly of modern vases and candy dispensing machines.

I thought to tell the girl not to touch the painting, especially as her fingers seemed so sloppy. But I saw that she was pulling strawberries out of the painting, and this was how she got her food. The girl walked up to me (I was still sitting) and handed me a strawberry. It was small and narrow, almost rectangular. It felt rough and mineral in my hands and tasted both gardeny and sugary-sweet.

After I swallowed I threw both my  arms in the air and cried, "Stronger!" in a cartoony fashion. I thought this would make the girl want to eat more strawberries. She looked at me calmly for a second, like I had made a very good point. She then walked away from me, possibly back to the painting.

There was a table to my right. I sat by one of its thin, dark, brittle legs. At the bottom of the leg was a denim wrapping, like thick cuffs on jeans. A hole had been torn in the denim. I lay on my left side to look at it. The hole was bursting with strawberries. This is where the girl stored her food to eat later.