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Show Moon -143 walk, had to think, "Left foot, now right, now step down, watch that car." Still, I never lost my balance, never fell, not even when I crossed ice on the sidewalk. That makes me not quite the same as you, doesn't it? I had advantages you'd lost, like having a job. Doing paste-ups was not the grand culmination of four years of art school, but I got to rub shoulders with vibrant men whose lives were the spun sugar stuff of images. My boss, Peter, was a brilliant man with dirty fingernails and hair that fell over his eyes, just like my fellow students at the League. On his office walls were his surreal landscape paintings, with glowing lemons and oranges in the sky instead of suns and moons. He often called me into his office. Once, after I was seated, and he had positioned himself in his customary slouch behind his desk, it went like this: "Water." I waited. I was used to this. He leaned forward to convey his urgency. "Water." "All right." "We must have water! Water everywhere! Waterfalls, lakes, rivers, great troughs in the sea." "Okay." "Which will it be? The study is in. Water is what makes people feel good and then they buy. Put water next to a pack of cigarettes, and you'll have them thinking, 'Purity. Baptism. Healing.'" I waited some more. "So what do you think? What kind of water shall I use?" |