Today my friends had planned to go off to some dark bar. By friends I mean lunatics, or slightly insane artists and poets. And since drinking is not my thing, I decided not to join them.
So there I was at the train station which looked like the inside of a whale's ribcage, climbing up the stairs, in search of a lady's room. When I turned a sharp corner and found myself in this dark blue room with soft velvet walls. But the dark velvet was all at once water; a brown sandy toned water with magenta sprays. In fact I was being pulled into a tide then held buoyantly under it (Underwater Vision,1889, pastel on paper) Suddenly I felt a large tentacle slip up my back. I shivered and was 'engulped' by this hood like sea creature. Its' zap had sent a charge up my spinal cord. My not-so-hairy neck hairs stood straight up. I was paralyzed.
Then I felt a wooshing of warmth. I was inside an iridescent sac and I was glistening myself. My skin felt all bumpy and stung slightly although it now felt like a dull pressing into my connective tissue. Or a seeping. The weight made me so sleepy I nodded off, until I was awakened by this putrid odd sweet smell. Gagging I felt the walls of a hole closing in around my head, expelling and at the same time choking me. So I did the oddest thing. I tensed my tongue and started twirling it up into the rippled walls, more poking than licking.
I guess I was expelled. Or spit out. (Spider,1887,Lithograph) I cringed my swollen eyes to find I was looking at a giant smiling ten legged spider. A spider with a cat nose mixed with a monkey muzzle under googly eyes. His long legs ambled toward me in a rhythm that matched his wobbly grimace. For some reason this French surrealist film pops into my head and I know my escape is to poke his eye ball with a needle. My palm reaches to the wall behind me, thinking this was still a velvet wall, so maybe it is really also just a pin cushion, there must be a needle in here somewhere I say to myself, as I frantically fiddle for it, moving backwards as evenly as possible. Only to palm a tremendously soft and lovely pearl shaped thing, that in my excitement for pearls, I bring around to see if it really is a pearl, which it is, a magnificent pink vanilla pearl, so I faint.
When I come to, I am being interviewed, or rather "given the once over" by a very piercing lady, in a yellow shall. (The Yellow Shall, 1900, pastel on paper) She seemed to be lost in thought, and it made me very embarrassed, since she would not stop examining me and thinking about, I don't know what. We stayed in this dance for an entire movement, until finally I felt a change of position was allowed. I adjusted my chin, and, there on the side table was this vase with wildflowers. (Wildflower in a Long Stem Vase,1910, Pastel on paper) It was the richest nestling of colors, pungent red and yellow anemones, vivid blue cornflowers and tiny lace white flowers suspended on top of the arrangement. Within the flowers was more darker depths of black pollen and turquoise petals. My spirit was drawn into this bouquet. It pulled me into it, as I imagine death would. Like I was all at once dissipated into tiny little 'me's' and further from my body.
At which point, the guard told me not to press my cheek against the glass, and step away from the art. She spoke English, which surprised me since we were in Paris. But maybe it was because I was a teenager, or she could see it was my first time visiting the Musee D'Orsay, that she made an effort.
