A Day to Remember Forever to Remember [sample]
by Charles L. Mee
Planet Earth.
The back wall is beautiful light blue
and puffy white clouds pass through from left to right
in the shape of
dinosaurs
and whales
and monsters
We see a half dozen cafe tables
and then some other things here and there,
things like:
a parrot
some plastic butterflies
17 pearl necklaces
the plastic head of a baby doll
11 spoons
some red lips
5 trumpets
a dozen sneakers of different colors
a tree branch covered with stars of different colors
or 5000 more of your favorite things from assemblage and installation art.
Just Google “assemblage” and choose your favorites.
The bride and groom enter
and look around here and there.
And seeing no one,
they sit at one of the cafe tables.
Now some other people enter,
and they, too, look around,
maybe one or two of them acknowledge the presence
of the bride and groom
with a smile and a nod,
and then take their places at other cafe tables:
a woman who is one immense piece of standing candle wax
with a half dozen tiny lit candles where her head should be;
a guy with flowers growing out of the top of his head;
a guy with an ultra white face,
wearing a fluffy pink skirt around his neck
and extra eyebrows of purple, red and blue;
and a woman wearing a body dance tight
so it can be painted with random black and white splotches
light green here and there
with purple writing on her arms,
her face painted white with an oyster shell over one eye
and black X mark over her other eye
with a red splash over her mouth and part of her nose
and purple hair.
And one of them speaks:
ONE OF THEM
I would eat tarte tatins
and drink Chateau Neuf du Pape
and sometimes a glass of rose
sitting in the garden in the afternoon
and, if it wouldn’t hurt too much
or become a habit leading down the path to hell
I’d like to have just one cigarette every day
or even one every other day
with an espresso, in the café
one of the cafes
and then I’d drive out to the hospital
where Van Gogh spent that year
painting the cypresses and the olive trees
and you think:
he was crazy
and pathetic
what a tragedy
how he suffered
but you know
he turned out a hundred a thirty paintings
or a hundred and forty paintings
or, like a hundred and forty three paintings
like he turned out a painting every two and a half days for a year!
that’s where he turned out The Starry Night!
I don’t even mention the olive grove
or the field with the red poppies
and that’s what I would do
I would be a painter if I could even just hold a brush right if I just had enough talent to dip a brush into some paint and slather it on the canvas
because that is a perfect life
you just get up in the morning
and you get your cup of coffee
and you wander into your studio
and whatever catches your eye is what you do
you think
oh, that painting I was working on yesterday
that could use a little splash of red up there near the top and so you dip your brush into the paint
and you splash some red
and then a little yellow
some green here over on the right
you think
okay
I could put a sailboat up there in the sky
and then you have another sip of your coffee and you notice the little ceramic vase
you had been working on the day before yesterday and you think
I could put some kind of flat, muted purple
right there where its stomach bulges out a little bit and then you see that drawing
that fell on the floor
off that table down near the other end of your studio and you go to pick it up
and you just can’t resist
doing a little something to it
adding a little picnic table to the landscape
and by the time you finish that
you find yourself down at the other end of your studio near the door out onto the terrace
so you go out onto the terrace
and sit at the little table there overlooking the vineyard because by then it’s time for lunch
and your husband brings you a sandwich
and maybe a little glass of beaume de venise
and after lunch
you make love for the rest of the afternoon.
That’s the life I have in mind.
And now a few more people enter—
someone with a face painted by Jackson Pollock
and clothes painted in brightly colored squares and rectangles and triangles by Matisse;
someone with a bright deep blue shirt covered with glitter;
and someone with nothing but flowers for clothes.
SOMEONE SPEAKS
I like dingleberries.
