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Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp

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Something About Flowers a novel of Art, Beauty & Love Photo # 01 [Images] I open the closet door, drink in hand, and reach for the box. It's heavier than I remember, all these photographs, so I set my glass on the bookshelf beside me and slide this box from the stack. She has already tried to organize these boxes once, but I quickly jumped in and told her I'd take care of it. We won't be moving after the wedding, but I understand her point that I should really go through these boxes of loose photos and papers, some dating back to elementary school. The photo box is on top, right where she left it. They need pictures for the slideshow at the rehearsal dinner, she said. As I slide the old gray box toward me, I can feel a corner start to tear. Quickly, I reach around to support the other side and gingerly I carry it across the room to the kitchen table. I’ve just about made it when the top slips under my fingers and I spill the photographs across the table. Hundreds of photos, pictures from the last thirty-some-odd years of my life, old family polaroids, class pictures, ex-girlfirends, all the way up to my most recently published. A lifetime of memories. I sip my drink and start sorting.

Photo # 02 [Diaphanous] I once had a girlfriend, Daisy the poet, who collected words. She would stake them out, lay claim to them through her continued occupation of them, as if she were a wildcatter, a homesteader, a green Californian climbing mountains in Skagway on his way to the golden Yukon. In this way, she came to possess certain words; they were hers only. Diaphanous was one, so that she wrote of diaphanous emotions, diaphanous dialogue, diaphanous moans during lovemaking. When I look to the gossamer clouds caressing the moon's light, and think of it as diaphanous, I am not harkening back to the Greek of Euripides, but to Daisy's English. There are days when, because I remember her lips on my neck, her warmth emanating from her back as she snuggled with me at night, I feel indebted to her, as she has allowed me royalty-free use of the word. She will always own this word, even as Vincent van Gogh owns sunflowers. And with sunflowers my journey begins.

Photo # 03 [4th Grade] In fourth grade, Mrs. Cook, our new art teacher, brought in a bouquet of sunflowers. They were in a giant pottery vase on the little plastic art cart she wheeled into the room. I always enjoyed snooping in her cart, looking at the different paints, crayons, pastels and pencils she had on there. Her cart was a cacophony of colors, a symphony of aromas- sharp and pungent paint, spicy and sweet tea Mrs. Cook made from berries and leaves herself. We didn't have an art room in my elementary school, so Mrs. Cook lived from her cart, wheeling it from room to room. Well, she had a small storage closet down the hall from the library, stacked high with shelves of supplies. I was always jealous of the amount of paper she had, all

Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp

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kinds of beautiful drawing papers, a hundred different sizes, it seemed. I was limited at home to drawing on the back of this big computer paper my aunt got at work. The paper was green and white rows on one side, invariably printed with all kinds of insurance figures my aunt's company used, but the other side was blank and became my sketchpad. On the day of the sunflowers, I was really excited by the contents of that cart, eyeing a brand new, unsqueezed tube of bright chromium yellow paint. I pictured picking up the tube, removing the cap, piercing the foil cover with the tip of my paintbrush and squeezing a glistening pile of sunshine into my plastic paint holder next to tart Prussian blue and smooth Indian black. I could imagine the damps tips of my brush dipping into the yellow heaven like my fingers into the icing of my birthday cake, but instead of eating it, I'd squish and swirl it onto the palette, mixing it with white to make it pale, with black to give it texture and clarity. I envisioned painting those sunflowers, completely unaware at the time of the history behind my vision. Mrs. Cook was very precise for an art teacher. Our previous teacher, Miss Trout, had been a young hippie, free with her requirements and praise. I wanted to be like Miss Trout, to spend all day thinking about pictures and colors and mosaics, shapes mixed with lines, curves, and dots. Even then, at the age of eight, I was an iconophiliac, with the desire to represent the world around me in pictures. Unlike Miss Trout, Mrs. Cook was rigid, a woman of rules. She would not let us mix noncomplementary colors, we could not choose our medium or materials. We learned color, form and composition as if they were a sacred trinity. So, too, with the sunflowers, a long discussion of the petal, the stem, clinical nearly, but I didn't care, because any fool could see that an art lesson starting with sunflowers as the model will, before it ends, involve squeezing a tube of chromium yellow. So when the drawing paper was passed out and Mrs. Cook asked us to find our special drawing pencils, I figured we would be sketching out a plan on which to base the painting of the sunflowers. It made sense, I figured, sketching leading to painting. We had only painted from drawings with Mrs. Cook, even though we had two years' experience painting still life with Miss Trout. I wondered if Mrs. Cook understood what we had already learned, and that we were more advanced than she gave us credit for. But, as with any lesson in any class, I followed the teacher's instructions. We were seated at big tables, five students per, and Mrs. Cook placed a strip of paper towel on each. She then doled the bouquet out, one flower to each table. I thought this would be some sort of warm up, we would watch the flower up close, she would gather them back up, and we would go on to paint the whole vase. Children, she started, I want you to choose one petal from your table's flower and focus on it. Then I want you to draw that petal on your paper. We have, she checked her watch, fifteen minutes to complete this. I looked quickly up at the classroom clock. Only fifteen minutes left until recess! How could we paint? We wouldn't have time. I could feel hot tears of disappointment in my eyes, but I refused to show her. I would just draw the stupid petal and be done. I sketched a curve, an opposing curve, traced a hint of a line down the center and was done. I raised my hand. Yes, Joseph? Mrs. Cook was across the room talking to Mary Beth, the best artist in class. I'm finished, can I paint it now? The look on her face told me we weren't going to paint sunflowers that day, or any other day. In fact, I don't remember ever painting anything again.

Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp

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Photo # 04 [Becoming] We are in Mark's studio: Mark, myself, several assorted friends of his, my buddy Mike and enough beers and bonghits to provoke good conversation. "Across the Universe" is playing from fresh vinyl, and though I despise the classic rock mindset everyone has suddenly developed, I appreciate this album. Mike and I are discussing taking more computer science classes after our PASCAL class is out of the way. "It's the future, man, you know it." He isn't insistent, but he has convinced himself that a life working for IBM or Cray or some supercomputer corporation is a dream. Live in Westchester, marry a hot chick, have kids, make money, learn golf- all laid out for him, just his ready to take. I'm not so sure. "I’ve already designed some computer games, I’m in." I say. Though Mark is engrossed in a conversation with Johnny about Hendrix, his eyebrow betrays his interest in my conversation. "Dude," he says to me, "Since when does a binder full of graphed-out sketches a computer game make? Just more of your Dungeons & Dragons fantasy world, isn’t it?" "It's not something we can make yet. Computer intelligence is not where it should be. I mean, it's fucking 1984, and where's our flying cars?" "The Turing Test isn't where it's at, man." Mark, two years older and acting a million times smarter. So what if he knows the Turing Test, who doesn’t? I had torn apart the code for Eliza back in high school, using it to write a program to ask Clare out to the prom. She loved it. "How can we create an artificial God if we can't simulate a simple human brain?" "You are so on the wrong track. You're not going to design computer programs like Mike will." Mike leans back and smiles. Everyone thrives on Mark's attention and covets his favor. I watch Mike and can foresee his Armonk dream. Why can he be on the path and I can't? "You’re not a programmer." Mark’s proclaims. The record ends and Johnny fiddles with the turntable, putting on The Police's Ghost In the Machine. Not a programmer? Sure, not just a programmer, Menagerie Studios is more of an ambition- run a company, develop games, manage other people programming. "Fine. I'll be president. Menagerie can be as big as Atari someday. I won't be huddled over some machine debugging code." "No, not at all. You're an artist. You'll be creating, drawing, painting." Like him? His disciple? Who's he, my father? He's on this Godfather kick and I just have to obey? "I'm not an artist, I'm a photographer. A journalist. I document my world, the world around me." "You're an artist. I can prove it. Here's the test, The Artist Test." "Artist test? What are you talking about?" "You want a Turing Test, I'm giving you one, the How I Know You're An Artist, The Artist Test." I decide just to listen, we're all stoned, he's rambling, no need, no energy to argue. "If you fool people into thinking it's art, then you're an artist." "So it's all a trick, this art thing? You, you're a trickster, playing artist?" "Oh, no, not me. I don't play at art, I am an artist." He speaks in circles, spiraling around me. "So you're an artist, you want me to be an artist, but we won't be the same?" "Eventually, sure. But you're not an artist first, so you'll have to become one." "When do I start?" "Now." End of discussion.

Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp

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Photo # 05 [Kingpin Rusty] I am driving home from New York, across the George Washington Bridge into Jersey, looking at the rich old spires of Paterson, splitting the Delaware Water Gap, shooting through the hills of Scranton toward Binghamton and up to Syracuse. It drizzles as I drive, my windshield wipers marking the minutes, the miles. The funeral is over, I have seen Yasmin and we’ve settled our unseemly business. I am no longer under her thrall. I have no idea where June and I are going, but I do know I can face the future without worrying again about Yasmin's interference. It is just past twilight when I pull into my driveway. There is a green Civic parked back by the studio, and the lights are on inside. June had been in a minor accident during my trip, she must have borrowed a car from someone. I am in no mood for her, not even to have sex, so I don't walk back there. Instead, I go in the front door, dump my bags on the floor and crash on the bed. I wake up an hour later to sounds of glasses tinkling in the kitchen. June must have seen my car and is pouring some wine. It's become something of a ritual for us, a glass of wine and some music after a day of work. June will carve out some time for me, sneak away, lay in front of the fire, or if it's a warmer night, light candles and we relax, just like a couple. But this night, I am still drained, still not in the mood for a bubbly June and her trying to cheer me up. I am still infected by Yasmin, even with her latest betrayal fresh, a bitter taste in my mouth. I walk out into the hallway. "June? I'm not..." I look at the breakfast bar and it's not June standing there. It's a young woman, long brownish blondish hair swept back behind her neck in a simple loose ponytail. She's smiling, looking at me like she's known me for years. She picks up a glass to offer me, I see the bottle is not wine, but Jameson's. "David Bryant, I presume?" "No, I'm sorry, you must be thinking of someone else." I brush the girl off. April, this must be, and so this is the girl June invited to use the studio, an art student, she's put two and two together and has found out who I am. Not that David Bryant is some construct, some ironic twist on the anonymous nom de plume. It's not. Joseph David Webster is my name, on my birth certificate, named after my papa, David, and my grandpa Joe. As a freshman, in one of those grandiose gestures, my buddy Dan, this amazing and troubled kid who got me deeper into the Doors and Kerouac and Dylan than I would have possibly on my own, this regular guy from Queens, starts calling himself Enoch while we were playing Dungeons & Dragons in the big basement lobby of our dorm. At first, it's limited to his character, a halfdwarfish cleric/fighter, but then he starts calling himself Enoch on the VAX, at bars, everywhere. Apparently, it had started for him back in high school, he was Enoch the Bohemian to his ragtag group of friends. Names are very important to guys, names are power, we recognize, and we continually create for ourselves new ones. Of course, the best nicknames are bestowed upon you by fate, for good or worse, like when Steve found a blue construction helmet with a "Becker" taped inside and here I am thinking about him drinking at Third Base and just the image of him says Steve Becker to me. I am David Bryant, or at least, for about 15 years I was. To some people I am still, like Eddie of the Cruisers fame, I have disappeared from the physical body people recognize as the once-sortof-famous photographer David Bryant. But it's the words David along with Bryant that are linked to

Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp

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the work, not me as a person. I spent a lot of time and effort to divorce myself from that person I had become, and when I came to grips with Rose's death, I was forced to retroinvent this Joe Webster guy again, the guy I had grown up as, just to be normal. "David Bryant" came into being one late night, a bottle of Jameson's, a basketball, some Doors and Dylan cassettes and Enoch's boombox. It is July, freshman orientation, and we're on our own for the last night. Liquor, pot and babes were the plan, though we could only score one of them. So, Dan and I, regular old freshmen, bribe some old dude to buy a bottle of Jameson's. Dan has the romantic notion that Irish whisky fueled the Irish poets to greatness, so it will fuel us. I have one tape, a bunch of songs from the radio, pop and rap and rock, Kurtis Blow and Tears for Fears and Madonna and whatever else. Dan has about five- cheapass TDK D-90s filled with tunes, the workhorse of our musical 80s. Jim Croce is on, the only prerecorded cassette we have among us, his Greatest Hits. I know "Time In a Bottle" from the radio, but on comes "Bad Leroy Brown." Instantly I am transported back to 1974 and I am on a tour boat with a youth group from my Burnet Park youth group. We are on the Erie Canal where it connects into Onondaga Lake, and the skipper of the deal has a big black transistor radio strapped up under the canopy and "meaner than a junkyard dog..." is blaring away. "Danbo," I say, using his newer, alternate nickname, "I need a name like that. Leroy Brown. Badass. Like George Thorogood, bad to the bone. Nobody messes with a Leroy, especially not Leroy Badass Brown." Dan looks at me like a confused junkyard dog, wondering why this puny white boy is trying to be badass Leroy-style, trying to conceptualize a blend of "Joe Webster" and "Badass." Clearly, it isn't working. The song is over, so I rewind the tape to listen to it again. Danbo is dribbling the ball, the lights above the court are coming on, I take a swig of the Jameson's we've transferred into a Mountain Dew bottle and for a moment, I feel that I can be someone else, I can leave behind little Joe from Syracuse and become... somebody. "All right, man. You wanna be someone new, let's do the pornstar name thing." "What's that?" "It's what your pornstar name would be, you know, if you were suddenly going to grow and be buff and cool and shit." "Fine. What's my name?" I'd never considered being a pornstar. Well, except for that one time, when I was taking pictures of Clare in her bedroom, she was modeling some lingerie, stripping slowly while I snapped away, she wouldn't get all the way naked until I did and she grabbed the camera and started shooting me. We had some hot sex that day. "You take the name of your first pet and the street you grew up on." My grandma had a dog named Queenie when I was born, and we lived on Beard Ave. Queenie Beard? No fucking way. "Like how young?" "The first pet of your own." "My first dog was Skippy." "Skippy... ?" "Bryant. I lived on Bryant Ave. in Syracuse." There are moments in every man's life when, confronted with the completely ridiculous vicissitudes of what seems to be a serious conversation, a choice is to be made. Of course, the nature of choice is usually one of dichotomy, or, if fortune's smile is less strong, dilemma. I prefer the relatively clearcut idea of the dichotomy- a good choice on one hand and a bad one on the other. However, this is a most certainly a dilemma. I could stay "Little Joe Webster" or I could

Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp

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become "Skippy Bryant." Little Joe never gets mint chicks, never sees women slinking across a room burning desire into his soul with her eyes. Sure, I had a girlfriend in high school and I had made out with a girl yesterday at the mixer, but she went home early for her sister's wedding and Clare is at college herself, slinking her way into some other man's heart, I'm sure. Skippy gets nothing, unless he's gay or an original preppie from Eton or some shit. Blue collar all the way and into chicks, I am neither. "D, how solid is the pornstar thing?" He hates me calling him D, the most foreshortened of all nicknames, from Daniel to Dan to D, the only thing shorter would be a blank space, a moment of silence for the person formerly known as D. "First of all, if I am being reduced to an initial, please give me the courtesy of E." He swishes a deep outside jumper from the right side, knowing full well my elbow injury prevents me from effectively making rightside jumpers. I was fine from the left, as a righthander I would square up more to the baseline than on the basket, a weird alignment, sure, but one which gave my twisty elbow a chance at sinking a shot. To replicate that angle from the right side, I'd have to face the left sideline, and that was too much. "Secondly. What's wrong with," he pauses until I'm lining up my shot. I cock back my arm, adjusting for elbow, the ball lined up with my ear and shoot "Skippy?" The ball caroms off the top of the backboard and over the fence into the brush. I look at him and he looks at the ball. The rule is shooter retrieves errant balls. "I loved Skippy, he was a great dog, but I'm not doing gay porn." D is thoughtful, not openly idiotic, not the kind of guy who sees the phrase "gay porn" as bait for months of ragging on his buddy Skippy Bryant. "Ok, then, just go with another dog. What were some of the others?" We consider Patches and Sam and Freckles before settling on Rusty. Rusty with no last name. I am reborn a badass. Rusty is a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, like that kid in Rumble Fish, he would just as soon stab someone with a switchblade as look at him. Rusty is the kind of kid who was smaller than everyone else, but who ran the show. Kingpin Rusty.

Photo # 06 [Flight West] Yasmin is from Iran, she is Persian, she says, purring her syllables like a cat, a luxurious and spicy name for a faraway country. She did not come to America from the East, from Europe as I would have expected, she did not trek west with the fiery sunrise, did not fly over the rugged deserts of the Middle East. Instead she arrived via Los Angeles, Australia, Thailand, Pakistan, Afghanistan. She had not traversed the fertile Mediterranean plain, did not slip through the Italian Alps, Germany or France on her way toward the Atlantic. She did not awake to the great, shining Golden Light of Liberty descending into New York. She traveled Far East into the land of tomorrow, and delighted herself with the going backwards in time, arriving in that singularly fantasy Disneyed world of California. Her story of escape is as harrowing as any I've heard, and it seems in the past two decades I've had occasion to hear too many. Sarajevo, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Eastern Europe, Cuba, Nazi Germany. Live in any urban area in America and you know a person who has escaped brutality at the hands of a totalitarian regime. Yasmin grew up in Shiraz, and in 1979 her parents went from relatively obscure members of the middle class, her dad a professor, her mother at home with newly teenage Yasmin and several younger brothers and sisters, to criminals, infidels. Suddenly, the

Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp

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Islamic Revolution swept into even their small corner of the world and as an intellectual, a Baha'i at that, her father was immediately a target. He was arrested, but let go after a few days. Scared, the family paid a large sum of money to be smuggled out of the country through Pakistan on their way to Australia and in the middle of the night they left their lives, everything but what they could carry and drove. They crossed the border and night and two days later were abandoned by the smuggler in the middle of a desert of what turned out to be Afghanistan. Because of the war with the Soviet Union, they could not make it across the border from there into Pakistan, so back to Iran they went. Several months later they paid another smuggler, but this time left from an area closer to the Pakistani border and they made their way to Karachi. It took six months but after a brief stop in Thailand, they made it to Australia. In the meantime Yasmin’s paternal grandparents had fled, to Los Angeles, and lived there with one of her uncles. They convinced Yasmin's dad to leave Australia and come to America. One would never know looking at her that she wasn't born in America. She certainly had a better sense of style than the Madonna or Flashdance lookalikes, she never wore jeans and pink sweatshirts like a lot of the girls did, but other than her olive skin and golden eyes, you'd think she was Puerto Rican or Italian and you wouldn't be surprised if she were Greek or Lebanese, some Mediterranean beauty. I never really understood why she ended up going to college in Buffalo. She wanted out of California and there was some cousin in Manhattan with the same last name who was attending school in Buffalo, so she used his address for in-state tuition somehow. Suffice to say, I didn't ever delve that deeply into that part of her life. The details. I think I fell in love with Yasmin the moment I saw her, totally and uncritically drank in the pure idea of her, and it took me years to unfall. Photo # 07 [Model love] The thought of Kingpin Rusty makes me smile, involuntarily, which April interprets as friendliness, perhaps a chink in the armor. I see her eyes flash lightning, strangely reminiscent of her Yasmin’s in that one way only. On first impression, I feel she has none of Yasmin’s overbearing elegance, none of that particular otherworldly grace, the willowy fluidity. Instead, she is effusive, energetically expressive. April does not wait for me to speak another word, instead she walks toward me, holding out one glass of whisky for me. I decide quickly that the best course of action is to indulge her in her little discovery, maybe offer her an autographed copy of the Flower Series book, get her on her way. I had originally planned on drinking anyway. "When June told me she had met a photographer, was working on a collaboration, I didn't picture this..." She looked around my cottage, my artifacts, my collections. I don't want to steer her so I stay silent, sipping Jameson's. "I thought it was a woman at first, you know," she looks at me, "Like a little club, someone her age, someone she can spend time with, maybe another mother with kids off at school." I nod, appraising the tenor of her voice, the direction of her pacing. "I had no idea," she pointed down at a contact sheet "That she was a model, too." My first foray in sensual photography since moving back to Syracuse, June beside the creek outside Toma’s Grill. Hadn’t those put away, filed deep in a private spot? April has either gotten them from June or has been rummaging through my stuff. I still don’t want to start talking, so I give her a yeah, so? look. "Hey, her life is her life. She wants to do nude modeling at her age, more power to her." She doesn't seem to be upset over the implication that June’s nude modeling in my home probably

Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp

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means a lot more than just nudity in terms of, uh, engagement. I wonder how close April’s mother is with June, whether June would confide in her about an affair, whether April would be in on the conversation. Obviously, she's got some inkling that June and I have a thing, which doesn't seem to bother her. Instead, she seems to be reaching for a new idea, slowly advancing on me, taking a step, picking a book off the counter, taking a step, looking at a print of Yasmin, taking a step, standing in front of me. "Do you fall in love with all your models?"

Photo # 08 [Symboliste] I lead Yasmin into a side room, just a couch, some chairs, a coffee table, subdued lighting. Just through the doorway, she leans in to kiss me, but the door is open, people milling in the wide corridor between viewing rooms. I shake my head away, point her to the couch, reach to close the door. The spontaneity of her embrace has evaporated and I feel completely sober, in control. Yasmin sits on the couch, demure, reposed, expectant. I watch her. I know I can sit beside her, I can offer her my comfort in this difficult time, but she has betrayed me again and again. I cannot offer her forgiveness and I cannot allow her to tempt me. I wonder how I have allowed her to hold sway over me for all these years. When I first met her, she dazzled me. I fell in love with her, and when we finally slept together, I thought she was mine forever. But she never cared about walking through my world, she always floated above me in a haughty cloud. Even now, she expects me to come to her, to sit beside her on the couch, to reach out to her, to touch her, to press her lips against my lips, to fill herself with me. She would claim it is her right to tap into my love for her, that she has staked claim to the deepest parts of my heart and she can mine my recesses when she needs. I have always allowed her to do this, but now, the first time I have seen her since Barcelona, I have no more love for her. I am empty of Yasmin and she will not pour herself back into me. "David, please, sit with me." She pats the soft couch beside her. I look behind me at the door. "What if someone comes in? How would that look at your husband’s funeral?" Appearances are always important to Yasmin, but the strong words are what actually bends her will. She nods her head accepting my decision. "You're right. But sit here," she points to an armchair at her end of the room. I hesitate, but I see no reason to deny her. I sit. I am not looking forward to a showdown with her. Today I am here instead as the prophet and guardian of Mark's myth. Yasmin is staring off into space, not talking, and I have nothing to say to her. As she composes herself, I watch her beauty grow and begin to shine. It's as if from the swirling maelstrom of grief she builds herself up, using her pain as a strong substructure, adorning it with the beauty she's always possessed. Can beauty exist in the world without pain? Must we walk, if not rush, to the precipice, fling ourselves on the brink of disaster in order to feel the beauty of life? Do we need that visceral thrill of danger to feel? The art of self-destruction is the only fodder for real art, Mark, told me once, over the smoldering bong and warming bottle of Yukon Jack. He was older, wiser, a painter, dating my fantasy Persian girl. I was compelled to listen to him then. Now, his words haunt me.

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Yasmin shifts in the couch, making herself comfortable. Freshman year I would pretend to be asleep just to listen to Mark fuck her on the other side of the room, my sight blocked by our desk hutches. I fell asleep to Yasmin's soft moans, imagining how hard and throaty they would be if it were me with her instead of Mark. Over the next year, I secretly took photos of every sketch he drew of her, every stroke of his brush on the canvas of her body. When he asked me to document his studio, like those old pictures you see of Picasso or Matisse in their studios, surrounded by dozens of works both complete and in progress, I readily agreed, so that I could openly look at my Yasmin collection. Mark was determined to be famous, to relaunch the cult of the painter, to drag postmodernism outside and beat it to a bloody pulp. It's already senseless, he once proclaimed, and now it should die in the gutter. I pictured his metaphor, the body of postmodernism like Harrison Ford, cool as he aged, and still worshipped by nubile women and old maids alike. But didn't Poe die in the gutter, I rebutted, unrecognized, unappreciated? Mark had no response beyond throwing his hands in the air like Federman. Someday you will learn, he promised. Still, his future biographer would require of photographs of his early work, the unrecognized genius in the midst of creating and shaping his future, so I shot his studio and focused my lens on his Yasmins. "What if I don't want to self-destruct?" I ask, perilously. "The artist has no choice. He risks everything he has worked for if he lives beyond his natural course. Look at Dali. A cartoon of himself when he died." We were listening to the Doors, some bootleg on red vinyl Mark had bought in the Village our last time in New York. "Morrison got it right. He lived as a symbol." "He's not a cartoon? Self-indulgent fuck wasting talent and dying in his own piss? Talk about cartoons." "The good part of cartoons are just symbols. Morrison lived his life symbolically." "How can you do that?" "He did it. Not just a singer, not just a rock star, he became a symbol for decadence, extravagance, excess." "Archetypal, then." "Come on, man, there's a program, an agenda. You do it or you don't- it's not like you're going to study Jungian psychology first and then decide to live. You live first and then someone labels you an archetype. After you're dead. They all die young, not fade away, not rust, not putter into a fucking flaccid old age." "So what? Anyone can do it. Big fucking deal. You can do it, I can do it. Bubba down the fucking hall can do it. "Then you do it. I challenge you." Mark sips his beer like Brando sipping an aperitif. "You want me to be a symbol?" "Come on, Joey, no. Don't be a symbol- live your life symbolically. Become an artist, grow into this role." "I told you before, I'm just a photographer. I shoot sports. How do I become an artist?" "You create art. Don't document the ugliness of reality around you, shoot beauty. Hell, you could shoot women for the rest of your life and be an awesome artist. That's what you should docarve yourself this little niche. Beautiful women, nude. You'll get more pussy than any rock star."

Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp

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Photo # 09 [Trout] I am sitting in my car beside a trout stream on the third day of trout season in April. It is completely overcast, not cold but rapidly cooling, not raining yet, but I can feel a downpour about to start. That's the thing about being forty, you feel rain in the bones. There are three or four cars scattered about, trout fishermen and women, real enthusiasts wading with neoprene boots, the more casual fishers standing on the banks casting, reeling, casting. I am on assignment, gathering troutfishing scenes for a book on trout fishing which someone is writing. I don't even know who the author is, only that I am being paid decent money for a combination of black & white and color shots. Like always, I am thinking of secondary revenue streams, so I brainstorm some ideas while I wait, with a notebook before me- calendar, poster, limited edition prints of the four trout of Central New York, the quadruplicity of brook, brown, lake and rainbow. Of course, I could expand the series to include steelhead and salmon and sell them in more shops, but for now I am only thinking of the four trout I can shoot here in these local creeks. What would a diehard trout fisher, of which there are thousands in the area, buy? Meanwhile, I am waiting for two things- one, for someone to catch some fish, and two, for dusk so I can shoot some atmospheric shots. I had been out Saturday morning, Opening Day, also April Fool's Day, and shot dozens of the typical opening day scenes- kids with trout dangling from stringers, awaiting mom's frying pan later that afternoon; meltswollen streams and waterfalls being conquered by brave, lonely fishers; shots of dawn with silhouettes of rod, reel, arm, body. It had been a great morning, and because I had collected those needed shots I could now spend my time making interesting choices for the next two weeks until the collection was due to the publisher. But before I can follow through with my ideas, the rain breaks, and all the fishers are scampering into conversion vans, breaking down lightweight 10-foot poles and tossing them into the trunks of their subcompact cars, packing up and leaving. Within 15 minutes, I am alone in the rain, my windshield completely blurred by the falling rain, the insides beginning to fog. A wasted afternoon, I decide to pack up and drive home. I start the car and pull slowly forward. Even though all the fishermen have left, I practice the etiquette of peace and silence. The fishing area is public, maintained by New York State. The stream curls eastward and bends back slightly westward here, as it flows from south to north. The road follows generally the course of the mutinous stream in a tight valley, crisscrossing it a multitude of times with small bridges. It is essentially a smoothened version of the stream, flowing with intermittent traffic. Here where I am on the driveway, the area between the stream and road is shaped like a flattened football filled with grass and two wizened crabapples. My favorite feature of the entire valley is the abandoned railway above the stream, 50 or 80 feet from the water, carved into the nearly vertical slope. At one time, I think I remember reading, it was the longest private railway in the U.S., dedicated solely to taking passengers from the village out to the Auburn RR spur at the north end of the valley. Whenever I drive through here on the way home, I feel transported back in time, to the era of mills and railroads, and if the weather creates cloudy, hazy conditions, and the light diminishes quickly, I go back in time ever farther, sightseeing in some primordial time just after the mighty Laurentide ice sheet has retreated north. My mind still full of the thought of a saber-toothed cat, I glance over at the stream and I am startled to be gazing into the eye of a small waterbird. Great Blue Heron, I think, instantly, but the evidence before me seems to contradict that assessment. A heron, for sure, the smallest I have ever

Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp

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seen in the wild, its sinuous neck completely absent in an accident of perspective between fluffedup chest and long beak, This heron, I am sure it is not a crane for the shape of a heron's beak, head and neck is sleek, elongated, never rounded like a crane's, instead of being the blue of the sky or of slate, is completely white with a black and white head. Against the gray greenblack of the fluidly translucent water, it is startling in contrast, like a Matisse cutout of a heron pasted into a photorealistic landscape background. I brake, stopping completely, and instinctively push the car into park. without ever unlocking my gaze from its one blackrimmed gold glassy eye. I reach for my camera on the passenger seat while clicking the power window autoslide on my driver's door. It purrs down like a glass cascade, silent but filled with purpose, and I notice now that the downpour has stopped, or is stopping and only a few drops come in the open window. Like a Brancusi sculpture, this bird is unmoving, frozen in the timespace continuum, halting pasts and presents while it apparently awaits with the dignified repose of a nineteenth-century statesman the photographer's ready signal. With my telephoto lens I begin shooting, autoadvance, and within a few seconds the bird has decided I am not a threat and in a flash takes a stab into the water, coming up with a quickly-swallowed crayfish. He proceeds to step gingerly along the shore until he was hidden behind the banks. A few minutes later I'm driving through into town, thirty photos richer, I feel a nagging hunger- I had skipped lunch- and decide to stop into Toma's for a bite. They are located on the creek, a couple miles upstream of where I was parked earlier. I walk in only a few minutes after opening, so the place is empty, bustling with servers and managers and bartenders making preparations for a busy Monday. A lot of restaurants are closed Mondays, and perhaps even Toma's is, but tonight is the basketball game, the championship, so there's a chance for a crowd, and with a crowd comes activity. I choose a spot in the bar near the rear corner, a tv above, far enough away from the door so the cold wind won't blow in and disturb me, but not completely away from the bustle, the energy of the place. The barmaid catches my eye as I sit and continues racking the last few glasses she has. She's a good-looking woman, not too young, but not wrinkled and gray. In fact, if she weren't working here, she's the exact kind of woman I'd expect to meet in here, somewhere between 25 and 35 years old, looking younger than her actual age, not tiny and thin like a runway model, but having a few pounds to shed before she will be happy with her bikini. She finishes up and walks over. "Let me get a Guinness and a bar menu?" She nods, not saying anything and starts pouring the pint. I watch the beer foaming into the glass, captivated by the cascading bubbles, so similar to the effervescence of the stream earlier. Apparently the bar menus are not nearby, so she turns and heads into the kitchen. I look around the room. It's decorated rather sparsely, not too many prominent signs for beer or liquor, and the ones which are on the wall are classy, like an antique Jameson's mirror. Interspersed throughout the space are paintings of flowers- violets blanketing a creekbed beneath a stand of willows, a beautiful, nearly abstract painting of a pink tulip so close it could be a series of any sensual curves. My pint ready, the barmaid delivers it and my menu. I open my wallet and hand her a ten, but she waves it away. "I'll start a tab if you're eating." She says. "Ok, yeah. Let me get...." I open the cover, knowing I'm going to order a fish fry, I pretend to check it. "You have a good fish fry?" "Yes, we do."

Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp

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"Cool. Let me get one, extra tartar sauce on the side." "Fries, slaw?" she asks as she writes the ticket. "Of course, what good's a fish fry without chips? And slw too." I smile, feeling it a little. I like how her bangs slide down across her brow, the distracted pinning of them back out of her face, the slight smile she gives as it all happens. I like a woman who plays with her hair, the touching of hair, tactile and sensual. I want to reach across the bar and pin it back for her behind her ear, to stroke her cheek, to go on from there, but she's already turned toward the kitchen and I'm left with my pint and ESPN. Mark would have already known her name, have already talked about the angle of her neck she would have in his painting of her, have discussed how the light refracted like a rainbow in her eyes, all this before the Guinness finished being poured. Mark was like that, an impresario all the way, attracting women without effort, flirting with minimal provocation, scoring with ease. Me, I always needed some sort of connection first to get the woman interested. I could not just smile and use "I'm an artist" to score women. I had to find out if she liked art, what kind, spiel off some interesting anecdote, bring in five or ten contemporary allusions, that kind of thing. Unless she showed overt interest, my route was meandering, never direct. In the absence of the cute barmaid, my eyes follow the various other busy workers, noticing interactions and routines in an abstract pattern. I am only interested in the various intersections, when two people unexpectedly bump into each other, or near-miss, or a conspiratorial, gossipy conversation in front of the coat rack, or a conspiratorial, flirty touch behind the cash stand, or, a casual caress as waiter passes waitress. I am more interested in the interactions photographically than personally or socially, so I don't give the staff's intentions any more thought than to quickly map out interrelationships. At the far end of the bar is an interesting turn, the lobby melds into the dining room and on the wall is the humongous pink painting of abstractly shaded curving pink lines. My sense leads me to expect it to be landscape in orientation, but it is vertical, the classic portrait size perhaps 36 by 64 inches. Next to it hangs the kind of stylishly printed white card one sees in museums and galleries, no doubt offering sales information. On a wall across the opening to the dining room is another large painting, purple violets and blue irises against a background of green sun-dappled leaves. I intuit the form of the flowers since it's painted in extreme close-up, so that the curves of the flowers are not so much shapes, but textures. I can feel the flower, velvety in a tactile sense, so that my fingers are anticipating touching it, almost eating it. That's it, I can almost taste the flowers on my lips, my tongue, like delicate flesh, a sensual tactility. The painter is definitely a woman, I decide, because a man cannot immediately envision the synesthesia required to transpose a flower and flesh. The barmaid is coming, carrying my fingers in one hand, the dips in the other. I see her dangling earrings, a brief sparkle of light, crescent moons of dull silver or shiny pewter, handmade I believe, with an excellent Celtic-style design. They hang far enough below the lobes of her ears to be noticeable, but not flashy. With her hair pulled back out of the way, they dangle like silver apples to be plucked, but again, my inability to attract her interferes with the completion of the image. She sets the food down workmanlike, no culinary flourish, obviously not engaged at all in the idea of talking with me. "Anything else I can get now?" She asks me with obvious obligation. "No, but I was wondering about your earrings." Unconsciously, she reached up with a hand to touch one, pendulating with the brush of a fingertip, a brief smile then none. "Are they, uh,

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handmade? They're too nice to be store-bought." It is just enough flirting to signal interest, but innocuous enough for her to deflect easily. Her choice all the way. "Oh, yes, thank you." A complete smile this time, and a lean with her elbows on the bar. "June Smith makes them, you know," she makes a graceful sweep with her eyes, her hair, her neck, her shoulder arm and hand. I keep my eyes on the swaying moon. "The artist who painted these flowers."

Photo # 10 [Diversion] "No, April, I haven't. I..." She hands me the glass of Jameson's, finally. I drink half in one gulp, the cold of the ice cubes a shock against my lips. Involuntarily I watch her body. "So you don't love June?" The look on her face is so much more than her age, more than what, twenty? Twenty-two? How old would she be? A lot younger than 40, anyway. I drink some more Jameson's and April takes the sound of the ice chinking against the tumbler glass bottom as an answer. "Doesn't matter. I think she loves you. But, you're not going to wait for her anyway." "April, I don't even know you, I have a nice friendship with your mother's friend, you know..." I have no idea where I'm going with this, but I'm trying to divert her attention. "Sex? That passes for friendship these days?" She walks back over to the Jameson's bottle, picks it up and points it toward me. I nod. She walks over and pours a full tumbler. "Can we be friends?" Before I can respond, she laughs. I laugh along with her. "You're funny.” I say. “And to answer your question, it's not a matter of waiting for June to be available. It's never that simple. She's married, has a family. I think I want that, and she's not the one to provide me with it." I am not baiting this girl here in front of me, dangling some future broken promise. I only want to divert the line of conversation, but as with streams and rivers, it is not so easy to create diversions so I should do some preparatory work digging a new channel first. "Anyway..." I walk over to the couch, motion for her to sit and think about the channel I will be excavating in advance of a discussion about June, with June. "How's that one poem go? April showers..?" "I'm not named after the Chaucer. I'm named after the line in Eliot." "I don't know that one..." The Jameson's is interfering with my ability to think, to revisit my high school British Lit class and dredge up any poetry.