Killer Kiwi #5
Free and easy, said my art teacher. A spirit of play. That’s what I want you to draw. Something like that in the city.
Okay, I thought. I went to the Sheep Meadow, because it was easy to get to. And free. I went early in the morning, with my sweatshirt hood up around my ears, as it was cold. I sat down in a spot that I hoped wasn’t too wet with the dew and opened my sketchbook and attempted to be inspired. Free and easy.
I held a green pencil loosely, like a Ouija board planchette, but nothing came. I looked around the park. I looked, trying to make them inspire me, but everyone and everything was tied up and under strict orders from management. Dogs on leashes. Trash in brown cans with hard plastic tops. Women on budgets. Babies on anti-depressants. Joggers on diets. Everyone on cell phones. Eight in the morning in October in Central Park and it wasn’t happening. I looked across the park to the apartment buildings off 59th. They looked expensive and difficult. I dated a girl once whose parents lived in one of those apartments. The parents were also expensive and difficult.
The park in general was difficult today, although it wasn’t the park’s fault. It was the city’s, for standing too close. The park was trapped, boxed in. The park went to a bar and got drunk and said something bad, and then there were four linebackers on all sides of him looking straight down and thinking about how its face would feel on their fists. And the linebackers were 110th St and 59th St, and 8th and 5th Avenues. Just crowding, crowding.
I loosened the strings on my sweatshirt hood because I felt too closed in by the whole thing. I should move to somewhere with more space. Like...Africa. Or...the moon. Except on the moon everyone’s pictures from art class would look the same, so that wouldn’t be very good. I should move back to Connecticut. No, that was the worst idea yet. I would stay in New York and I would pass my art class even if it was very stupid.
I was still in the park. I didn’t like this assignment. Free and easy. It sounded like a feminine hygiene commercial. A spirit of play. I thought of picking up a stone and tracing around it and calling that finished. Or my right hand, filling it in to be a peacock or a turkey like kids do. Except even my right hand was always doing boring city work. It had to write business letters and sign credit-card receipts. Sometimes I dropped things between the stove and the fridge and I made my right-hand fingers fish them out. Not much playing to be had. I put the green pencil away and sat with my hands loose on the page.
I looked again at the meadow, at the paths that lead down to all that cute shit, the zoo and ice rink and the old guys playing chess, and it looked all wrong. Babies on leashes. Dogs on anti-depressants. I made a telescope with my left hand, the hand that never got any respectable jobs, and looked again. Even worse. Babies on diets. Dogs on cell phones. And the sky purple and damp behind black morning branches.
Oh, hell, I thought. I slid my left hand, still curled into the telescope, onto the sketchbook and traced around it with a pink pencil. I drew in the white moon on my thumb and a long scar by my wrist. Outside the hand I drew the apartment buildings off 59th, impenetrable and stone and with very tall, serious doormen. Inside the hand I drew the park, very small, but I drew it upside down, because that’s how it was that morning. I drew the dogs on diets and the joggers on leashes and the mothers in trash cans with hard plastic tops. Then I slammed the book shut. Because my ass was getting wet from the meadow. And I had to go to class.
Okay, I thought. I went to the Sheep Meadow, because it was easy to get to. And free. I went early in the morning, with my sweatshirt hood up around my ears, as it was cold. I sat down in a spot that I hoped wasn’t too wet with the dew and opened my sketchbook and attempted to be inspired. Free and easy.
I held a green pencil loosely, like a Ouija board planchette, but nothing came. I looked around the park. I looked, trying to make them inspire me, but everyone and everything was tied up and under strict orders from management. Dogs on leashes. Trash in brown cans with hard plastic tops. Women on budgets. Babies on anti-depressants. Joggers on diets. Everyone on cell phones. Eight in the morning in October in Central Park and it wasn’t happening. I looked across the park to the apartment buildings off 59th. They looked expensive and difficult. I dated a girl once whose parents lived in one of those apartments. The parents were also expensive and difficult.
The park in general was difficult today, although it wasn’t the park’s fault. It was the city’s, for standing too close. The park was trapped, boxed in. The park went to a bar and got drunk and said something bad, and then there were four linebackers on all sides of him looking straight down and thinking about how its face would feel on their fists. And the linebackers were 110th St and 59th St, and 8th and 5th Avenues. Just crowding, crowding.
I loosened the strings on my sweatshirt hood because I felt too closed in by the whole thing. I should move to somewhere with more space. Like...Africa. Or...the moon. Except on the moon everyone’s pictures from art class would look the same, so that wouldn’t be very good. I should move back to Connecticut. No, that was the worst idea yet. I would stay in New York and I would pass my art class even if it was very stupid.
I was still in the park. I didn’t like this assignment. Free and easy. It sounded like a feminine hygiene commercial. A spirit of play. I thought of picking up a stone and tracing around it and calling that finished. Or my right hand, filling it in to be a peacock or a turkey like kids do. Except even my right hand was always doing boring city work. It had to write business letters and sign credit-card receipts. Sometimes I dropped things between the stove and the fridge and I made my right-hand fingers fish them out. Not much playing to be had. I put the green pencil away and sat with my hands loose on the page.
I looked again at the meadow, at the paths that lead down to all that cute shit, the zoo and ice rink and the old guys playing chess, and it looked all wrong. Babies on leashes. Dogs on anti-depressants. I made a telescope with my left hand, the hand that never got any respectable jobs, and looked again. Even worse. Babies on diets. Dogs on cell phones. And the sky purple and damp behind black morning branches.
Oh, hell, I thought. I slid my left hand, still curled into the telescope, onto the sketchbook and traced around it with a pink pencil. I drew in the white moon on my thumb and a long scar by my wrist. Outside the hand I drew the apartment buildings off 59th, impenetrable and stone and with very tall, serious doormen. Inside the hand I drew the park, very small, but I drew it upside down, because that’s how it was that morning. I drew the dogs on diets and the joggers on leashes and the mothers in trash cans with hard plastic tops. Then I slammed the book shut. Because my ass was getting wet from the meadow. And I had to go to class.
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