The Day I Met Picasso
David Pacheco
It was raining, and I was bored. BORED, BORED, BORED! I picked up my
cat, Doppler, by the tail, and swung him around my head a few times, but
my boredom was not abated. Doppler purred as centripetal forces
stretched out his body until he was seven feet long and two inches
thick. PURRRRrrrrRRRRRrrrrrRRRRRrrrrRRRRR.
I put Doppler down and he snapped back into his regular cat shape
(SPROING!) and immediately started cleaning himself with his tongue and
industrial-strength solvents which scalded his skin and left burns marks
in the shape of maps that detailed the location of my importance on the
scale of things.
I pushed him away in irritation. I was BORED! I had no patience today
for my cat, with his cleaning and his purring and his endless demands
for tuna and 'just one more' game of Go. "Stay away from me, cat! I
have no time for you today!" I intoned in my most furious tone of voice.
He cocked an eyebrow at me and went back to his cleaning. This
infuriated me! I was angry! I was no longer bored! I had something to
do! I stomped over to where Doppler was sitting, intent on giving him
what for, and then he rolled over on his back in a little patch of
sunshine that chose that moment to shine through the windows. He looked
so cute! I couldn't stay angry at him, of course, so I scratched him
behind the ears and went back to being bored.
"What should I do, cat?" I mumbled absent-mindedly as Doppler purred,
eyes closed. His Zen-like contentment seemed to provide some
inspiration, so I imitated his natural detachment from the material
world: I lay in the sun, took a nap, marked the couch as my territory,
spayed myself... but I couldn't concentrate, so I botched the job
horribly. I was still bored.
BORED!
I wandered through the rooms in my apartment, looking for something to
do. The kitchen? Cooking would imply cleaning up afterwards, and I was
in no mood right now. The living room? My eyes scanned through the
books on the shelves... I had read them all so many times I practically
knew them by heart, and besides I could never remember which book opened
the secret revolving door that led to the Room of Despair.
The dining room had nothing to hold my interest: I tried to see each
painting on the wall as if it were brand new, as if I were slowly
walking through Spain's Museo del Prado during an exhibition of the
greatest paintings in the world and -- for some reason -- a dining
table. I critiqued each picture in turn, as if I were a connoisseur of
the arts... sad clown... masterful brushstrokes, I can almost embrace
his pain. Dogs playing poker... marvelous attention to detail, look at
the ace of hearts in the schnauzer's paw. Jimi Hendrix... sublime to
the point of ecstasy, the black velvet providing a wonderful quoi that
very clearly je ne sais, a stunning portrayal of one of rock's greatest
players. But it was all hollow, a meaningless exercise that relived my
boredom not a jot.
How about the hallway? Depressing. The skull room? No, I had just
come from there. What about the oubliette? But the oubliette is so
BOOOORING! The Room Which Holds the Doorway to Hell and Must Never be
Entered? LAAAAME! The Chambre des Richard Simmons de la Morte?
BOOOOOORING! The shed? BOOOOOOOOORING!
Oh, if only Picasso were here! Then we could really have some fun. We
could go bungee jumping off an aeroplane, we could tango by accident, we
could sandblast off our fingerprints, if only Picasso were here! We
could ski down a mountain of chocolate cocaine, we could fill fish
corpses with sugar and give them to needy children, we could see how
many bites it takes to get the the center of the human heart, if only
Picasso were here! We could do so many things, and then Picasso could
paint them on my body, if only he were here!
Just then, the doorbell rang. I fled from my boredom, opened the door.
It was Picasso! I embraced him as one embraces denial in the face of
inevitable death. "Pablo! You are here!" I chanted gleefully.
"Yes, yes I am," said Pablo.
"YAY!" we both exclaimed, clapping our hands and hopping like big things
on springs.
Doppler rubbed himself against Pablo's leg. Picasso reached down to pet
him, but I pulled him back: Doppler's coat was covered in cyanide, and
old trick he had learned in the Boy Scouts. Doppler knew how to hold a
grudge... he scurried off, his evil plan foiled for now. Picasso and I
hopped some more.
Breathlessly, I asked him, "So what do you want to do?"
"I don't know. What do you want to do?"
"I dunno, what do you want to do?"
"Hmmmm... hadn't thought much about it. What do you want to do?"
Half an hour later we were no closer to a plan, so I told Pablo about
all the things we could do if he were here and now he was! We could fly
a plane into a vat of pudding! We could snort lemon juice and pepper up
our noses! We could invent apostrophes and use them with wild abandon
in our conversations! We could fix feathers to our arms and charge too
much money for dental work! We could do ANYTHING! The world was our
oyster, Picasso was a jar of Tabasco, I was the eager throat, waiting to
swallow them whole!
"How about a movie?" Picasso said.
"A movie?"
"Yeah, a movie. I've got a bit of an ear infection."
So we settled on a movie. Pablo made me giggle by constantly referring
to the movie's country of origin as the "United States of Generica". It
was fun. I can't remember the movie name, but it had a mouse in it, and
Rutger Hauer, and several wide, long panning shots of the outdoors, so
it couldn't have been all bad.
Then Picasso had to go home because it was a school night. As we stood
on the porch and kissed goodbye, he slipped into my pocket a list of ten
things he couldn't stand about me, which made me cry. I resolved to
never speak to Picasso ever again as long as I lived: he stormed off
angrily, and as I later found out, went straight over to Hermann
Göring's house (my enemy!) and wept in his arms until 4am.
After he had left, I was still a bit bored so Doppler and I took my
giant robots out for a walk and accidentally destroyed Tokyo.
THE ENB!
-dp.
Welcome to the United
States of Generica!
Please visit our Gap store!
Lisa Chabot
>So we settled on a movie. Pablo made me giggle by constantly referring
>to the movie's country of origin as the "United States of Generica". It
>was fun. I can't remember the movie name, but it had a mouse in it, and
>Rutger Hauer, and several wide, long panning shots of the outdoors, so
>it couldn't have been all bad.
>
>Then Picasso had to go home because it was a school night. As we stood
>on the porch and kissed goodbye, he slipped into my pocket a list of ten
>things he couldn't stand about me, which made me cry. I resolved to
>never speak to Picasso ever again as long as I lived: he stormed off
>angrily, and as I later found out, went straight over to Hermann
>Göring's house (my enemy!) and wept in his arms until 4am.
>
>After he had left, I was still a bit bored so Doppler and I took my
>giant robots out for a walk and accidentally destroyed Tokyo.
After this excellent posting, I unfortunately cannot restrain myself
from asking, was one of the 10 things on Picasso's list the way you
always think he's saying "United States of Generica" when he's
really saying "United States of Guernica"?
..
.. er, it's how I first read it
..
--
All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
_Archer's_Goon_
Lisa Chabot
>So we settled on a movie. Pablo made me giggle by constantly referring
>to the movie's country of origin as the "United States of Generica". It
>was fun. I can't remember the movie name, but it had a mouse in it, and
>Rutger Hauer, and several wide, long panning shots of the outdoors, so
>it couldn't have been all bad.
>
>Then Picasso had to go home because it was a school night. As we stood
>on the porch and kissed goodbye, he slipped into my pocket a list of ten
>things he couldn't stand about me, which made me cry. I resolved to
>never speak to Picasso ever again as long as I lived: he stormed off
>angrily, and as I later found out, went straight over to Hermann
>Göring's house (my enemy!) and wept in his arms until 4am.
>
>After he had left, I was still a bit bored so Doppler and I took my
>giant robots out for a walk and accidentally destroyed Tokyo.
After this excellent posting, I unfortunately cannot restrain myself
from asking, was one of the 10 things on Picasso's list the way you
always think he's saying "United States of Generica" when he's
really saying "United States of Guernica"?
..
.. er, it's how I first read it
..
--
All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
_Archer's_Goon_
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From: l...@netcom.com (Lisa Chabot)
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Scott Dorsey
>
>After this excellent posting, I unfortunately cannot restrain myself
>from asking, was one of the 10 things on Picasso's list the way you
>always think he's saying "United States of Generica" when he's
>really saying "United States of Guernica"?
I like to be in Guernica,
Okay by me in Guernica,
Everything free in Guernica.....
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
xian
klu...@netcom.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
> I like to be in Guernica,
> Okay by me in Guernica,
> Everything free in Guernica.....
...Firebomb me in Guernica
--
xian
http://www.mustachesummer.com -
Promoting Cookie Duster awareness.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
David Pacheco
> Lisa Chabot <l...@netcom.com> wrote:
> >
> >After this excellent posting, I unfortunately cannot restrain myself
> >from asking, was one of the 10 things on Picasso's list the way you
> >always think he's saying "United States of Generica" when he's
> >really saying "United States of Guernica"?
>
> Okay by me in Guernica,
> Everything free in Guernica.....
I guess the rain's down in Guernica.
To answer the original question: no.
But I will confess that #3 was that whenever I say the worse
"pistachio" in front of a jury, my tongue gets stuck to the roof of my
mouth.
-dp.
For DAYS.
Scott Dorsey
David Pacheco <david_...@lineone.net> wrote:
>In article <7oql92$k...@dfw-ixnews17.ix.netcom.com>, klu...@netcom.com
>says...
>> Lisa Chabot <l...@netcom.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >After this excellent posting, I unfortunately cannot restrain myself
>> >from asking, was one of the 10 things on Picasso's list the way you
>> >always think he's saying "United States of Generica" when he's
>> >really saying "United States of Guernica"?
>>
>> I like to be in Guernica,
>> Okay by me in Guernica,
>> Everything free in Guernica.....
>
>I guess the rain's down in Guernica.
The rain in Spain is mainly on the insane who remain sustained on Novocaine.
wenchpoet
Pears
The last time anyone knew
the whereabouts of Mary she had
taken a basket of pears into the meadow.
Mary sat eating pears she peeled
carelessly with her fingernails
and then smoothed down with
a scouring pad.
She had seen it done this way --
smoothing down skinned pears with
a scouring pad -- on TV, one morning during
that sudden calm before the manic phase
of her clinical depression.
The chef on TV was from Paris.
He said all the educated women
he knew, did this to pears.
Scoured them, gently.
Mary scoured her pears until they bled.
The juice dripped down to her belly,
and ran down between her legs, down
into the grass of the meadow where
she sat, contemplating her
dissertation:
Still Life as Virtual Reality
in Picasso's Guernica.
Mary knew that the chef was
probably lying.
Still, she peeled and scoured
and bled her pears, one by one,
until the basket beside her
was virtually empty.
c 1993
T.L. Kelly
(aka wenchpoet)