WORDPAINTING A BEACHFRONT MURAL (9/12/2011, 3.31pm-4.05pm)

Concrete beachfront seating mural divided into visions and dreams and advertisements a few feet wide. These graykiller paintings have been done by local people and businesses. I saw them being prepared under the sweatsheen sun a few weeks ago; one is helpfully memory-jogger-dated 6/19/11. The beach and vision-attacked seating was a boiling contrary hive of laughing shouting jumping praising appraising paintsmear bodies creating their tribal community naïve artburns. The colors are vibrant and eyegrabbing; all-shade rainbow palettes construct an everchanging static vista of dream faces and ocean scenes and nonexistent eerie salamander-like animals and dogs and awestruck celebratory singing fish and horses and men and women and footprints and skylines and flowers and clenched solidarity-urging fists and pianoplaying and trees and islands and kiteflyers and Biblical scenes and windows to other mindworlds and insects and welcoming immigrant borders and footballsize globes and mushrooms and sleeping dreamers and aliens and sharks and octopi and lions and skyscrapers and snowcap mountains and skiers and rabbits and streams and stars and moons and books and cryptic dream transcriptions and handshadowpuppets and cloudsleeper babies and Mona Lisa and John Lennon and ice cream and feet and erupting volcanos and scissors and skeletons and dinosaurs and fairies and mermaids and Daliesque surrealist grindscapes and skullhead snakes and bees and houses and suns and sons and daughters and mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and hearts and minds laid bare on an endless imagestorm kaleidoscope groping for some sort of winning inner truth or thought-tide externalized and communicated. The previous panel about an artist creating their own truth, that Gene kicked in anger before falling over when I mischievously pointed it out to him in May, has been painted over. I don’t know who flowed these colorslick flickershows or if they were given an idea to create around, though I would assume they were (I could check but really don't want to know, preferring instead to impose my own subjective spinterpretation on the pictures) as dreams are a constant recurring theme-thread: dreams of a new better tomorrow, dreams of peace, dreams of world purity, dreams of sweet dreams, ugly and scary somnambulistic nightmare-dreaming dramas, silent primal screams of nightfight terrors. Spirituality is presented often too, looping artistic representations of New Age and religious tropes past and present, naïve atombased stabs at everlasting serenity and wisdom and salvation or maybe just unwitting dimly-remembered-echo paintings of the eternal rest in peace to be found on the other silent side of the forever-wailing wall of death, each oily snapshot numbered, 1-151 with some having won prizes in their teen or whatever class; win a prize for turning yourself inside out and upside down truth and guts and brains and heart laid out in a hundred-and-a-half internal romantic panoramic slices, everyone’s a winner but the dreams will only grow sadly thinner and more jaded and hazy with the unbeatable fading effect of the beating sun’s unstoppable scandalous ultraviolet vandalism as the end of the where-did-it-go year runs at us at full grinding-halt gallop.

FURBLUR

I can see a couple of wee squirrels from where I am sitting. Chicago is squirrel central. Seen them eat anything from old cold pizza to chicken Mcnuggets; they're not fussy or healthy eaters, hell no! I love that lolloping galloping archback run they have, the wee black eyes in the brown face, scamper, scuttle, white-and-brown tailflick, forage, sniff sniff sniff ground, stop, wait, alert, sense something in the air, look round, listen to the wind, hear a sound, fly off up a tree or into a garden never to be seen again.

WAITRESSES OF THE AREA

One is blonde, a totally gorgeous wee honey lighting the day up wherever she walks and whenever she talks, and is training to be a massage therapist. I told her she looks, to me, like a young Cybill Shepherd. She didn’t get the reference. Oh well.

One is from Louisiana, has tattoos, wears neon-red lipstick, loves Bukowski, and reeks of raw bad-girl-gone-mostly-good energy.

One is lovely, studies English at Loyola, loves JK Rowling and liked my stories about the Edinburgh café where she wrote the first Harry Potter book. Says I’m the first Scotsman she’s ever served. I believe her.

One is pretty and bespectacled and end seems endearingly kooky. Says she’d love to hear some of my work read out to music, picking up on its rhythmic intonations.

One just graduated Loyola as an actor. I haven’t seen her in anything yet, but confess I don’t get out to the theatre much at all.

One is inattentive and furtive-seeming for no clear reason; you know how you just feel that way about some people. She just seems like she can’t be bothered and should be doing another job.

One is black and very beautiful, another Loyola girl, works on Tuesdays and bears the name of a continent.

One is Hispanic and very attractive and drives a white car. Gave me a jump-start one time and saved me a lot of trouble by doing so. Said she feels like she’s been married twice with two deep relationships she’s been in.

One is attractive and wears glasses, studies Science at Loyola and has a super-intelligent gaze that looks like it could cut through steel or split the atom. I made her laugh and she told me I was an easy table.