Going Underground

 

Paradise Lost 100 x 100 cm acrylic on paper

GOING UNDERGROUND

                                                                      Now I am quietly waiting for

                                                                      the catastrophe of my personality

                                                                      to seem beautiful again….

                                                                                       Frank O’ Hara

How long have you been taking time off?

Love the outfit: way too tight Led Zep t-shirt,

garden clogs with air-holes, those

radically frayed hand-me-down cargo shorts….

No need to even the score or seize the upper hand. Who’s

keeping track? Certainly not your drinking buddies, currently busy

sprinkling hash over tobacco. The ultra-skinny old dude

with Jimmy Page hair? He’s ordering vodka shots. Sometimes life is  

entrepreneurial (whispers an inner-voice) waiting in its shop-front window,

a sex-worker in Amsterdam; other times a Vermeer girl off in a

shadow, double-checking her shopping list. Meaning? Mean-

while outside of your skin it is spring, so why not stand barefoot

on sun-warmed carpets? Strip clothes off, go walking—

more or less in that order—and surprise the neighborhood—not

the first time a master of your own disaster: Old Hippie

Let’s it All Hang Out Yet Again, shared on Facebook and thousands “like” it.