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Show Moon -114 learned, is a thing people sometimes resent, and you had every reason to resent my happiness. The gifts of the world were shaken up and pressed together like the Bible says, and every moment was layered and dense and terribly important, grabbing me by the shoulders and shouting, "Look at me!". When I saw a sunset fluttering like a wild necktie over a strip of sky above the buildings, I called out, "Oh wow!" and waved to the people milling around me to look up and see. Td ' walk to the subway with a student Td just met and by the time we reached the token booth Td know, say, that she slept only with redhaired men, and she'd know that I used to dream of being a dancer. No one wasted any time holding back who they were. That eagerness to connect spilled like a mountain river, swept me on a wild ride into my work. I drew everything I saw: Trees in Central Park grappling like a troupe of contortionists. Water towers, a floating sky-city of Medieval wooden turrets. Gargoyles snarling over the doorways on Fifth Avenue. Intricate wrought iron grates clawing at windows. Explosions of steam and light in the rain. A ring of people around a street mime, their faces open and rapt as children's. A doorman hunched in the wind. A dog walker with a fan of poodles, Irish Wolfhounds, Yorkies. Bag ladies hunched over their misshapen bundles. At school we drew from live models and I came to see the human body as so intricate, I despaired of knowing it, not in one lifetime. We studied anatomy, the way a person stays alive under the skin, the interplay of bones and sinew, muscles braided together like a range of foothills. And there was the infinite variety of gesture, expression, and underneath it all the hidden spark keeping in motion that complicated package called a human body. Easier to manage were |
