3 fans

he had three fans

basically:

one of his daughter's friends,

a guy he met at a swap-meet,

and a homeless woman who

had one of his postcards in

her shopping cart. if he could

he would gather the three together

and scold them for liking something

of his that some would call a gift

and others would say robbed the creator

of the time it took to produce someone

so lacking in other "talents."

all he knew is that,

when looking at one of his paintings or another,

something was missing -

the something that defined genius

or facility or a deeply perceptive

way of organizing the world. he wanted

what he lacked. he was thinking that,

if he could just focus on - let's say

the foreground of a landscape so that others

could see that he really "got it" that he understood

all the layering and foreshortening and all the other

artistic tools it would take to render space in a coherent

fashion and to fool the eye if you will - he could

die happy and know he wasn't a charlatan

at least for the three that liked what he did.

things became fuzzy for a time and it was probably some

synaptic shorting-out that disabled his reason and his memory

to recall the lessons taught by the masters of his youth -

the guy that ran the scout-house, or the guy that

conducted the baseball team, or how about the one-legged

man who coached ball AND taught school. they didn't really

know that he could do anything but pitch badly and run slowly. they

thought he was just a kid looking like all the others - concerned

with the snow cones at the concession stand or the razzing from opposing

players with whom he attended classes. there were foreign things at work

in this world of suburban experimentation with housing and schooling - there was

the sense that the elders of the previous generation knew that they had

somewhow spoiled a whole generation of misfits who couldn't do

anything and never really wanted for anything. there was a generational

remove from the land and from agrarian reform and a connection with the dust from

which one came and to which one returned.

pictures became important - more so than the printed word. the flickering pictures

holding a whole generation in a spell - hostage with no ransom set nor expected. this artist guy (with the three fans) - he knew how little he really knew. he knew that he lived inside a vast grid and that one move in any direction and he would be hurled from the grid, never to be seen again. he so wanted to leave the grid and live on his own, but connectivity was his craving

and everything he touched he demanded to know intimately - like being close to something would salvage the remainder of his tattered inner-workings (won't stoop to use the word soul).

at the end - after many intervening years, when one-by-one all the he believed, felt, and loved had been snuffed out or exposed as a lie - he was shrunken down into the footprint of his own cadaver - starving for meaning, resolution, and love. he took his only possession at the end and, unfolding it carefully, plunged it deep deep

into his chest.

(c)jim hill (4-12-2012)