March 10th, 2009
Billy's Bakery - There is a horseshoe hanging above the doorway, and I can't take my eyes off it. Mint tea, buttercream cupcakes. A man is sitting in a window seat at his table singing an 80's song playing above us all. He has his knee up, holding his iPhone. A much younger man of asian decent is seated next to him. Are they dating perhaps? There is an elderly man at the other end of the table.
The window seat man, in his 50's from the looks of it, is wearing a brown fedora with a matching brown strip of ribbon with off-white piping lining it's brim.
He changed position and is now leaning all up in the window.
The asian and I just made eye contact.
They are both leaving now.
"It sounds like that is even a stretch for me" says the older man as he leaves the table. I could not make out the asian man's response as they exit.
Here I tune into the friends that accompany me at my table. They are discussing how specificity has been the word of the month.
Out beyond the doorway there is a red van that reads "Doro's Annex, Inc." parked on the street. A man entering Billy's Bakery just blocked my view and I shift my eyes to the elderly man who remained at the table as the brown fedora window seat man and his asian friend got up and left. He was not a friend of theirs.
The old man is reading. A 400 page book by the looks of it, about a hundred pages left. He just lifted a chunk of his red velvet cupcake into his mouth with a metal fork. He has yet to take his eyes off the book.
I can't help but take notice that his head bobs. I am not sure why this happens to certain elderly persons. I decided their neck muscles are straining greatly to support their head, these muscles are weak, deteriorating due to the process of aging and having gone through so much. These muscles, now so close to the end. I've heard the human head weighs 7-8 pounds.
My attention returns to the book he is staring down at. The napkin holders on our table are blocking my full view of the book. He is using his hand to support his forehead as he is lost in the pages of his mysterious reading material.
He just started a new chapter. I can tell because of the formatting of the text on the left page he is currently reading as I peer over the napkin holders praying my spying goes undetected.
He is gone now. He flipped through his index and got up, pushing his chair in. I missed the scene of his exiting through the doorway out onto the street. I was distracted by a conversation I over heard my three fellow friends were engaged in.
It is so sweet smelling in here I could throw up.
March 18th, 2009
"Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering." -Carl Jung
Dominique Nahas has very distinct hands and forearms. These pairs are so delicate, their gestures so whimsical? Pristine? Dainty? You get what I'm getting at. His voice is almost just as gentle. His collared button up long-sleeved tinted blue shirt is too large for him. I know this because of that seam that connects the arm of the shirt to the shoulder part, that seam that makes a band around the end of the shirts arm and dives into and back out of the armpit area, you know the one... anyway this seam should lie just on the angle created by the meeting of the shoulder to the upper arm. Instead, if the shirt is too large, the seam falls somewhere too low, resting on the upper arm and not up at the shoulder where it should be. Larger men and women often wear shirts in this fashion. I never find it benefiting to their appearance. It only emphasizes the fact that you are large. I wish he'd wear the correct size shirt. Perhaps he usually does. The only other time I have seen him was in Florida giving a lecture, wearing a suit jacket that could have been hiding the same problem. I'll never know.
I am still entranced by the femininity of his hands and arms. Unlike his reddened face, the skin tone of these parts is fresh and glowing, completely flawless. There are no signs of immense amounts of dark hairs spread across his arms. In fact from where I am seated maybe 4 feet away, I notice no arm hair at all. There is so much youth captured in those hands and arms that is lost in his grayed diminishing hair and the wrinkles that branch out from beneath his eyes. Eyes magnified by the sharp rectangular lenses of his dark brown frames, a combination of metal and plastic supporting glass.
"If artwork isn't pulsing with vitality, it isn't art. In fact it is dead." -Dominique Nahas
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