SELF PORTRAIT: Throwing Armfuls of Air into the Air

We haven't talked in five months and we both look like different people, but it's the same, same, same.

I want to go!" I explode. "I don't want a tamped-down spirit!" I realize these are the first words I've uttered outside my head this entire meal. Mom beams at me. He cant talk her out of this. There are no surftards there, I know it. Probably only kids whose blood glows. Only revolutionaries.

Nor that he's regarding my face with the same intensity I am his. We're two paintings staring at each other across a room.

Was the sky always this shade of magenta?

What is bad for the heart is good for art.

And I see that his brown eye has a splash of green in it and the green one a splash of brown. Like Cezanne painted them. Impressionist eyes.

Are you an artist?""I'm a mess is what I am," he says, holding on to the building for support. "A bloody mess. You 're the artist, mate." Then he's gone.

No I contradict myself. Picasso he do too. He say pull out your brain, yes, he also say, 'Painting is a blind man's profession' and 'To draw you must close your eyes and sing.' And Michelangelo, he say he sculpts with his brains, not his eyes. Yes. Everything ia true at once. Life is contradiction. We take in every lesson. We find what works. Okay, now pick up the charcoal and draw.