Like her, I used to be a hard worker with long hours and when I think back to the diaries I kept back when I was her age they are filled with those few moments during my days when my co-workers and I would have a little unauthorized fun behind the boss’ back. And whine about long hours and hard work? I did that too. Whine about my boss? Ditto. So I’m putting myself in the penalty box for forgetting that hypocrisy isn’t a flattering look for an old broad like me to wear.
Monday I went to a showing of 40 prints and drawings done by sculptors. Many of these art pieces were the preliminary drawings to the sculptures residing outside in the park. (See the photo above. It's a huge place covering many acres.) The show was held in a gallery near the annual Butterflies in Bloom exhibit that I’ve been going to since Don passed away, to honor all my April sadiversaries. I didn’t know what to expect since I had over-heard a couple of women talking about how the drawings should not have been shown in public, let alone in conjunction with an exhibit that draws so many children into the sculpture park. “Why, one of the drawings had a woman contorted in such a way that her ‘ya-ya’ was showing!” I had a pretty good idea what her ‘ya-ya’ was but I was visualizing a scene in an episode of Sex and the City---the one where Charlotte poses for an artist who was doing a series of vagina paintings. The gallery opening in Sex and the City was full of huge canvases of bigger than life, primary colored vaginas hanging all over the walls and the Sex and the City girls were trying to figure out which one was Charlotte’s.
As I wandered the gallery at the sculpture park I kept wondering if the “offensive drawing” had been taken down. Most of the nudes I was seeing were quickie sketches, abstracts or light studies and far from titillating or in-your-face obscene---in my arty-farty opinion. Then I found it, a pencil drawing and it made me laugh right out loud at its understated presence. If I hadn’t been looking for a ‘ya-ya’---don’t you love that crazy euphemism---I would have missed it.
After the seeing the prints and drawing I spent an hour in the conservatory with the butterflies. I had worn a red blouse that seemed to please the Common Morpho which are anything but common with their iridescent blue, flashing wings. They have a three inch wing spread and as soon as I walking into the tropical setting, several Common Morphos set their flight paths towards me and within a foot from landing on my blouse they saw the error of their ways and pulled upward, away from the “flower” that wasn’t. Around and around the conservatory they’d go, always reacting the same way to my blouse when they came near. I was a Common Morpho magnet the whole time I was there. If you happened to see my last year’s post about the Common Morpho you might recall I have a special bond with this subspecies of butterflies. In my twisted widow’s mind I associate them with Don’s spirit soaring. This year, it was like they were saying to me, “You’re back! We missed you!” I miss you, too, Don. It's good to see you so foot loose and fancy free from the broken body of your last twelve years on earth. ©
