Weeks ago, artist Michelle Provenzano sent along news of her show at <a href="
http://www.kunstfort.nl/index.php”>Kunstfort bij Vijhuizen in the Netherlands. Admittedly, I got sidetracked. According to the Kunstfort page, the show ended 8 July, but I may be wrong as my Dutch is so weak we might say I have none at all. Despite this terrible character flaw on my part, some exciting things may be deciphered.

Kunstfort has its own YouTube Channel, where some text is in English.

You can have a fantastic look at the exhibit space –

– and a chicken.

Miss Michelle is working in shadows – on kites and in space.

We find ourselves at an interesting moment in art history, which I am wholly unqualified to describe. Pretend I’m stuttering. I probably am: there is the artwork itself, sometimes with a performance aspect, maybe repeatable but maybe not. This is two things. I am almost saying what I mean about it.

One step away may be video or photography of these objects and events, but this is documentation and not necessarily art. It is suspect as historical record. No, really. The images we see of Miss Michelle’s work are not art – unless they are.

A very modern step further is the internet art show. The online gallery may change its exhibits but, as everyone knows, the internet is essentially forever. Depending on the medium or media in which an artist works, a show may be said have no end now, regardless of what happens to individual items on Google Images. Don’t anyone say appropriation!

Thus, if Miss Michelle has a show near you, you must go see it for yourself and refuse to rely on anyone else’s eyes, even mine.

Exciting stuff: the artist, the shadow kite, the drawing on the walls, floor and ceiling; a language barrier defeated by objects. I like the feeling of weightlessness and traveling over surfaces. Your mileage may vary.

As a footnote: when I see this, I want to quit my job and go back to art. I long for the studio, the ideas, the shows, the frantic creative drive, study and purpose. The possibilities of interactive media excite me. It’s like living on the edge of starvation, isn’t it?

The aurora australis from space.

So beautiful you could die of happiness.

Before Miss Sasha was born, I picked her first name and her father picked her middle name. When the time came to sign her birth certificate, her father was off on a bender of some sort. I didn’t know how to spell her exotic French middle name, so I guessed and guessed wrong. Dad said, “Great. You named her Bicycle Seat.” Of course, I really hadn’t. I could spell that. Years later, the Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm) adopted Miss Sasha, and I took the opportunity to correct the misspelling on the new birth certificate. Live and learn.

In May and early June, I heard a whole bunch of people use a phrase over and over. I tried hard to keep a straight face. It is really important to note when communicating with the other humans that what you’re saying is not what the other humans hear. It can’t be. You have your own way of stringing together words that is uniquely yours. My next door neighbor sits outside on warm evenings with a cell and a pack of smokes, and for a couple of hours seems to say nothing more than, “Like…like…you know what I mean?” and I can tell by her inflection she believes her friend does. I don’t have a fucking clue what she means without the ordinary clues provided by nouns and verbs, and I have to say, this neighbor provides me with a very unsatifying eavesdropping experience.

She says one thing. I hear something else. That’s fairly standard.

The phrase I heard everywhere in May and June was “come to Jesus,” as in people were having “a come to Jesus moment.” My brain is of course uniquely mine, but in this case, I’m not sure, so as a public service, I’m saying this in a reasonably public place.

When you say “come to Jesus,” I hear –

I’m just sayin’.

I had a dream about us. You’re a green fuzzy Muppet and I’m a Tiffany lamp. We go bicycling and sip chocolate milk. One of us wears an ascot, though neither of us has a neck.

**

It’s serious, and it’s not: just before I open my eyes, I don’t know when I am. Time’s the thing. Will I open my eyes in Hartford, starving, teenaged and pregnant? In New Brunswick, as the driven other woman or so sick I wish I were dead? In Boston, despondent and alone? In what apartment, with what gut-churning fear? Me, as I am, I never wake up back in time, so why should I think I might? With my eyes open, I am here, now, with so little to fear I should rest easy. Yet, I hardly sleep at all.

**

We have no common language. You, sweet as sunlight, slip in the side door. Later, I remember strawberries in crystal cups.

**

It’s serious, and it can’t be: I see your face and others behind it. You see a thousand years.

**

You breathe and breathe, and you breathe without me. On a breeze, I arrive like rain.

**

It’s serious, and it’s nothing: your names are yours, while mine tear off and scab. Time’s the thing. One day, I will hear my true name. Then as now, will words pass between us?

**

I have a dream about us. You are a dollar store gift bag and I am a box of rubber bands. We go dancing and load squirt guns with apricot nectar. One of us will leave, though neither of us will ever go.

This morning, my horoscope, which usually stops inches short of Run screaming, Ta! Flee! Flee! said something unusual. I don’t recall the exact words. Sort of The relationship will develop but not the way you think. I thought, ‘Huh. Perhaps Cablevision will declare glasnost.’ Every morning I walk to work, an older man with a beatific smile jogs past me at a good clip. This morning, he grabbed my hand and asked with a heavy accent, “We run?”

I thought he meant around the puddle in front of me, so I said, “Sure,” and started running. We ran across the Albany Street Bridge, through traffic and past the vile candy-scented construction latrine. My bookbag flapped heavily across my back. The temperature was already above 70. I was not sorry to jog past the portapotty. He had a solid grip on my wrist that didn’t feel threatening. I laughed because the sun was shining, because running feels so good, because it was utterly thrilling to let the antic unfold.

Tata: Why are we running?
Man: I don’t speak English.

I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Under the Route 18 overpass, he let go of my arm and we walked through a narrow space between traffic and a concrete barrier.

Tata: What is your language?
Man: I am from Russia. Everyone in America should study Russian. I tell everyone in Russia they should study English. What do you think of my English?
Tata: Sounds pretty good to me! I study Italian.

I stretched the truth. So sue me.

Man: At the university?
Tata: Years ago. I see you every day. Where are you –

A backhoe whirled out of a sidestreet about ten feet away. He grabbed my arm again and we ran up Albany Street. I was overjoyed. My heart raced. We stopped when he felt we are safely out of the construction zone. By then, his voice was positively operatic.

Tata: Where are you going?
Man: I lead minyon at synagogue. You know what is synagogue?
Tata: I do! And that’s a beautiful one. I have to go in the other direction.
Man: What is your name?
Tata: I’m Ta.
Man: My name is the same as the first craftsman of the United States.
Tata: Your name is Paul Revere?

He did the thing that will make me cheery all day.

Man: Arnold, like Schwarzenegger!

He flexed a bicep. He took my hand and kissed it. He turned left and ran to prayers.

I turned right and skipped across four lanes of traffic because I could.

This story starts with a fire at Sharkey’s apartment complex on Tuesday afternoon and ends here, in this newly tidy corner of my BandAid Pink bathroom. Isn’t the tile ghastly? It is! However it looks on your monitor, it’s ten times worse in real life, where I gaze upon with my real eyes. Ew!

Sharkey: The apartment two doors down and up a floor caught fire yesterday.
Tata: Get out! What happened?
Sharkey: Well, the management turned off the gas so nothing else would blow up. Can I use your shower?
Tata: Of course, dahhhhlink. But…um…
Sharkey: Yes?
Tata: It’s strictly BYO Rubber Duckie.

About forty-five minutes later, Sharkey opens the bathroom door as the kittens, parked at threshold and mad with curiosity, do a double-take. They see me on the couch, so who’s that guy? They’re not the only ones with questions.

Sharkey: Woman! What the hell’s going on in your shower? Do you use all those things?
Tata: Damn right, I do. I’m middle-aged. I schedule Daily Slathering Time, without which I’d look like Tut’s mother.
Sharkey: Mercy!
Tata: If they don’t turn the gas back on tomorrow, pick up my keys at the store and shower again.
Sharkey: Danke schon.

Thursday, I was helping a customer at the family store when Sharkey appeared, borrowed my keys and went off to ablut. He returned just before closing time, smelling better, though Sharkey always smells pretty good. We have this in common: smelling good is our hobby and we take every opportunity to practice it. It’s practically a public service.

Sharkey: I knocked over all the bottles when I scared the cats.
Tata: That mental image has too many verbs.
Sharkey: Consider setting up a Hydration Buffet in your living room.
Tata: Know how folks hollow out Bibles to hide guns? My Bibles hide firming lotion.

Friday, Siobhan, whose father has been in the local ICU since Tuesday and whose sister is getting married in three weeks, emailed plaintively.

Siobhan: Help!
Tata: What’s in it for me?
Siobhan: I need help with an errand.

Previously on Poor Impulse Control, Siobhan almost died in February and since then can only walk a little way before things get dicey. I checked the tags in my underwear and remembered Siobhan carried that person through years of depression.

Tata: Reporting for duty! Where are we going?
Siobhan: Bed, Bath & Beyond.
Tata: Awesome. I have coupons and need stuff from there!
Siobhan: I’ll pick you up at 7:30, you selfish bitch.
Tata: Can’t wait, sweetie!

We go the supersecret back way and Siobhan parks close to the store.

Tata: How big do you want these storage boxes?
Siobhan: Ten of the biggest they have.
Tata: Show me how big.

Siobhan looks at me through her eyebrows. Then holds her hands almost as far apart as they go.

Tata: What shape? Square?
Siobhan: Oblong.
Tata: Rectangular?
Siobhan: Here’s a whole lot of cash. Get out of my truck.
Tata: If you leave without me I’m keeping the money.

I got a cart and marched merrily through the store’s narrow aisles to the back, where America stops to talk on its cell phone. Hyperventilating, I found a very young store employee and asked the $64,000 question: Got plastic stuff coffins? He led me to a display, where we found a number of giant plastic whatsises insufficient for Siobhan’s needs. Making do, we stacked two large thingamabobs in my cart, and he dragged eight flatter ones to – he said – Register 5. I thanked him and dashed off to find a Euro Style Shower Caddy with at least four more attractive descriptors. Then I doubled back for square glass canisters and found my youthful employee friend, who pointed me to a set that wouldn’t actually solve my problems but would be a good start on solving a few of them. I was quite happy and, after a few accident-enhanced attempts to navigate the tiny aisles, promised to injure myself less on the way out.

In fact, I was overjoyed. I despise shopping but love to leave a store with a project in mind, and it was at the peak of my I Know What To Do! Happiness that I discovered a man on a 12′ ladder and burst out laughing. The man on the ground directing him saw my face and immediately forgot about the man on the ladder. I hope nothing terrible happened to that fellow. The man formerly directing traffic 12′ up – or as Siobhan later read off his nametag “Paul” – directed me to Register 5 and led the way. My eight storage containers rested atop a 3′ x 4′ x 3′ laundry dolly and we dragged them to a register with a teenaged cashier. I liked this boy immediately. He was a little odd looking but cheerful. By now, everyone within the blast zone of my laughter and two-cart container parade was smiling.

Tata: This and these are for my girlfriend. She’s waiting in the car and cursing my ancestors. These and this are for me. I have coupons. Isn’t this exciting?
Harry: So…separate orders?
Tata: You’re adorable! Thank you so!

At this moment, I could swear “Paul” turned on his heel jealously, but said, “Don’t leave. I’ll be right back to help you take all this to your car.” I stared after him briefly but smiled at Harry and gave him my undivided attention. Perhaps I was the first person all day to look him in the eye and listen to every word, but absent-minded customers plainly missed out. With a wicked gleam in his eye, he grabbed his price gun and twisted himself over and under a counter and a display. I never took my eyes off him and don’t know how his bones didn’t shatter. I handed him Siobhan’s vast cash stores, and we moved on to my pile of problem-solving purchases. By now, even the other customers inconvenienced by the size of my stuff watched with amusement, especially when, not seeing “Paul”, I pushed two carts from Harry’s register without any of my own bags. As a traveling attractive nuisance, I could have waved debutante-style and thanked my director to amuse everyone within earshot. Harry chased me the ten feet, calling the name he’d read off my credit card. Several cashiers between us said, “I’ll help!” “Can I help with that?” before “Paul” reappeared and took the laundry cart behind me. By now, I was saying, “Just a person…just a person, leaving…” as I pushed the cart out the door and turned around to see “Paul” staring as he asked in slow motion, “Where’s your car?” I turned back to my cart, sailing off through mall traffic into the parking lot. I skipped off after it and caught it halfway to Siobhan’s truck. Somehow, the laughing and chasing didn’t catch her eye. Five feet from the rear bumper, I yodeled, “Siobhan, sweetie, would you please open the door?” The tone, an octive above my usual, alerted her to the presence of a stranger.

Siobhan: Hello…”Paul.”
Tata: Thank you so much for helping us!
“Paul”: There’s no room in your truck for the containers.
Siobhan: I was taking a call and expected the shopping to take longer.
Tata: Stand back, “Paul”. We’re professionals.

Siobhan grabbed a messy pile of shipping boxes from the back of her truck and tossed it on the ground. She and “Paul” negotiated the stacking of empty plastic hoositses in the back while I stuffed my bags into the passenger seat legroom because I easily fold in thirds. “Paul” took the laundry cart and headed back to the store. We smiled and waved as he walked the forty feet to the sliding door. I grabbed the pile of cardboard off the ground and a knife and we resorted to the PeeWee Herman voices.

Tata: Hey, Boxy! What would you like to do today?
Siobhan: (Tearing tape and folding) I’d like to lie down!

This morning, I assembled the shower caddy in only one Jonathan Richman Album Time Unit and thought of Georg as I used all my wits and freakish upper body strength to install it. Georg can do absolutely anything. I’ve seen that, and the travails of the week may have been just a bit too much. So when I found myself stymied by the geometry of getting a lengthy pressure rod past a dangling disco ball and a bank of cat boxes, I asked “What would Georg do?”

I hope Georg might do this, though I’m sure she would have replaced that tile.

I stood for a long time in my kitchen, torn, staring out the window at the small lawn, the parking lot, the trees opposite. Twilight softened the moments between breaths as I tried and failed to think. The kitchen disappeared. My yoga pants and t-shirt that read “I like chicks (with big dicks)” disappeared. Everything fell away. I was dressed in black, wearing a maroon beret and speaking in a voice rough and gravelly like Charles Aznavour, because if you’re going to have a cinematic existential crisis, you’ve still got to rock it so old school you fart Rive Gauche dust.

Tata: Le sigh!

I could only think of one philosopher to quote in my hour of desolation.

Tata: “While a void is expressed in this recipe, I am struck by its inapplicability to the bourgeois lifestyle. How can the eater recognize that the food denied him is a tuna casserole and not some other dish?”

Then, in my torpor, I observed movement on the lawn, which was merely a bourgeois construct and not cool and delicious. I went from Aznavour to Electric Youth in no seconds flat.

Tata: Bunnnnnnnnnnnnnnny!

Genuine lapin.

Like! It’s baby bunny season.

This bunny would fit in my hand, which is half the size of yours.

Le sigh. I look great in a beret and angst.

Until recently, one moment in Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc made no sense to me. It all happens very fast, as we know it would not in real life, where suffering may seem to have no end. Joan is chained to the stake and the flames are rising. One tongue of flame scorches her face and she wrenches her head aside. In the next moment, she stares Heavenward, accepting, as fire consumes her. Then the girl is gone. Hallelujah.

This evening, a gentle rain falls, whispering and musical. The kittens have chosen windowsills at either end of the apartment, though they have several times switched sills for views and breezes. Whole wheat bread baked with a salt and sage crust, perfuming the living room; now pumkpin custard steams slowly in a bain marie. Last night, I made yogurt, and I have food for the week. On Friday evening, my hairdresser and cousin Carmelo offered glad tidings.

Carmelo: This weekend is the beginning of Gin & Tonic Season. I’ve just bought my bottle of Bombay Sapphire.
Tata: Oooh! You mention this in case I’ve been hunting without a license!

In two hours, Carmelo made that nest atop my head into a streaming vision of blond highlights falling in soft curls, but before we get there, we have to go back in time. Press Play and read on.

After work Friday and before my appointment, I cleaned the cat boxes, tossing the stinky litter into the dumpster, and with the garbage went my keys. I stood there for a minute; I stood there for an hour, wanting someone to fix this for me. When that didn’t happen, I stared at my keys. Then I threw my head back and laughed. The thing was nearly empty. I jumped up, threw a leg over, and dropped inside. Neighbors, standing some yards away and staring, all stopped talking. I threw my keys over the wall to the street. Then I jumped back out, cleaned up and changed clothes, and went to the salon. When told of my adventure, Carmelo smiled but did not laugh. He said, “Thank God you don’t smell.” I looked around but there was no film crew.

That was the day Carl’s father passed away, which shocked me. It didn’t seem right so soon after my father died that anyone else should suffer as we did, though everyone hurts and few of us see it coming. So as bad as I felt Friday, I felt worse Saturday reading that Steve Gilliard was dead. For me, this felt like a last straw, and I stood in my kitchen, sobbing about a person with whom I’d exchanged a few emails, but whose common sense and insight had long felt to me like a smooth worry stone and a bright crystal ball. The long night of pain was over for one starry soul. Hallelujah. Then I set up bread dough, which did not rise.

This morning, I got up early because I don’t sleep anymore and went to Costco. My shelves were little ghost towns, scenes of unchanging emptiness. I walked through the aisles, blank and staring, picking up things I needed and passing others. Something burned out of me and cast itself on the wind. I knew this when I picked up tapenade and heard myself singing Leonard Cohen‘s Hallelujah, a song I didn’t know I knew, out loud in the refrigerator aisle. These lives well-lived, these people fall in light, and out come these words of sorrow and benediction. Hallelujah. I did not fight the sensation of walking through the warehouse store with a spotlight over my newly-blond head, and I sang quietly without a thought to what anyone else might think. It was as if I were the only one there, in this cloud of white light with my grief and loss –

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

– and of course, the tapenade is a little salty.

Sometimes, the beauty of the whole world spreads out before us as undeniable as night and right as fresh air. A jewel, a moment we hold in one hand and turn this way, that way; if we give ourselves to time and rest gently on the breeze, we become, endlessly. There is no need, no more.

I had a dream about us the other night. You’d invited me to your city for dinner and I traveled a long way to meet you. Who knows why, but I thought we would be alone, and in a way, we were. In Ecuador, two friends and I found a restaurant like this one, where surfaces appeared to roll one into the next, floor into wall, and shadows made by candlelight softened all angles. In the dream, the empty restaurant formed a soft, billowing envelope around our table for six. One of my friends from your city sat down next to me, but I could not take my eyes off the woman touching your arm.

This woman took only polite notice of me, but I saw everything about her, from her slender wrists to her skin’s honeyed hues. Her hair hung long and sun-bleached, while her eyes were the color of the sky where it meets ocean. I knew at once she was your lover of some years and she didn’t worry when your key was late at the front door. My presence meant nothing to her. I wondered about you, and why I had come so far, but it’s not that mysterious, is it?

You had to show me what I observed in impassive silence. I have been here before, in the pillowy time before you tell me you love her but it’s not enough, she doesn’t understand you like I do. You can’t leave her, but you can’t live without me, you’ll say. You’ll beg me for solace with a wicked gleam in your eye. There is no reason for joy before we strike this bargain. You love me and I will be yours now for years to come.

Naturally, I ordered dessert.