I promised my friend I'd go to his opening. He is a painter. On the way to the gallery, my boring walk reminds me of something but I cannot remember what. So, i sway down the street together with my annoying lapsus. As if it were not enough, I sense somebody, or something, is also pacing, just behind me, hastening to reach me. I am taken in by some opposite of the walker's deja vu, almost an apres vu, I guess. For some unfathomable reason something is discreetly occupying almost one point nothing of my deficient shadow.

Anyway; I arrive at the gallery a little late. There is a bearded eulogizer already speaking in the middle of the huge chamber. He exhorts a dithyrambic clatter I have rarely witnessed. His rant addressed to no one. The room is empty. I, absent by the entrance, my painter friend, transfixed in a corner.

The speaker warns us of the enormous dangers of our false humility as represented in the great masters' paintings. We are cautioned about the nefarious effects of replication, complication and even postplication. He informs us that the long forgotten seven pillars of wisdom are currently perforating a most deplorable background of insufficient eternity, The New York Times is often mentioned and countless isms are evoked, on and on.

I look at the painting nearest to me. It is St. Peter; crucified. He stares at me pleadingly, nailed upside down but somewhat slanting at an even more painful angle, his blood-soaked hair surpassing the painting's frame drips, shaping a steaming acrylic puddle on the floor. I really cannot help Pete right now, I shun his gape and embarrassed by my Roman descent I try to reach my friend crossing the hollow around the nervous critic.

I ask my friend what on Earth he did to the dying saint. He says that's not his painting and he never painted undead Jews. Ok then, but where is his stuff? Next room, he tells me. I go back there to check.

Here, another immense hall and one awfully small painting hung in the distance, on the opposite wall. I begin to walk forward to see my friend's work. The painting though, keeps drawing itself back, preserving its initial remoteness in spite of my physical advance toward it. I remember I have also forgotten my eyeglasses home so I give up this uncanny chase and return to the first room.

The speaker is still going strong; this time we learn that the matter in general excels in its sad nature and that the same sadness engulfs our flesh, while we, the ignorant bearers of such a wretched scourge, are being carefully tailored by a vast array of quantumoid conspirators, to fit the terrible chasm isolating the figurative lessnessness from the more abstract lessnessless and...

I cannot see my friend, perhaps he left, but there he is, gun in hand. I ask him what his painting's title is, what's it about? He laughs...


(to be continued)

...........................................................