This year, most of my prompts come from a blog scavenger hunt Holly Jahangiri (the real one) hosted last May. I told her I couldn’t participate because I was all eat up with Story A Day May, but that I would use her hunt list as prompts this year. So I am.

If you don’t follow Holly’s blog, you’re missing some mighty fine stuff.

And now, today’s story.

Hunt For a Fresh Perspective

The patrons who come to my showings must hate themselves. They never understand my art, they persist in trying to impress me with how deeply they “get” me, I always deflate their pretensions–the one about their getting me and any other I can reach, and they keep coming back for more.

“In the directionless chiaroscuro of this piece,” says one, “I experience the interconnection of the world, with the positive and negative consequences attendant thereto.”

“Do you, now?” I say. “Because that has nothing to do with it.”

Another says, “I can see you deeply, deeply understand the confusion inherent in the human condition.”

“I believe I deeply, deeply do. I’ll have to paint that someday, because I haven’t yet. Would you sit for the portrait?”

“Your palette expresses the limits of the intellect that attempts to grasp the infinite.”

“You would know.”

“Did you paint all these?” This, from a beautifully dressed old gentleman with a puzzled expression and a small girl clinging to the hem of his suit coat.

No, these are all Rembrandts was on the tip of my tongue, but the small girl was regarding me solemnly through eyeglasses that literalized what I had thought to be a metaphor: the lenses looked like the bottoms of soda bottles.

So, instead of my usual snark, I merely admitted that, yes, I painted all these.

“Amazing,” the old man said, and edged along to the next on display.

The little girl stayed where she was and crooked a finger for me to bend down.

Her eyes were massive, behind those lenses. Half afraid I would fall into them, I bent to her level.

“Don’t feel bad,” she said. “I don’t see very well, either.”

I sold slightly less that opening than usual. Apparently, insults are part of my value, and my bitterness deserted me the rest of the evening. Fortunately for my bank account, the old gentleman and his little attendant never came back.

I’d outdo myself abusing everybody else and give all the profits to Guiding Eyes for the Blind if they did, though.

~*~

I’ll be at a convention this weekend (and on the lookout for doors for future Thursday Doors link-ups), so Saturday’s and Sunday’s stories my be late and may be even shorter than this one. But they will happen.

MY PROMPT TODAY: 10 comments, one share, #HuntforaFreshPerspective

MA