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2005-02-14 @ 2:04 a.m.
running fences, crazy roses and gates that open to nowhere


Today when I went into the grocery store, it was buzzing as usual. I headed over to the floral department, since I knew that would be THE place to be the day before Valentine�s Day and I was not disappointed. The place was jammed with roses of all different colors and descriptions. Why go there? Well, if you read my diary with any regularity, you probably know that my chances of getting roses from any kind of boyfriend/spouse/or some sap who utterly loves me tomorrow, are about as likely as Paris Hilton not using the word �Hot� in a sentence. So I thought I would buy one for myself. I really miss flowers in the winter.

I made my way through the rows and rows of roses in vases, roses with teddy bears, roses with boxes of chocolates, roses with frilly attached Valentine�s card, until I came upon about 6 knee high containers full of single stemmed roses. They would really be all that I could afford...maybe. The roses in them were really unusual looking. There were some really huge ones that looked like silk (I had to feel them to determine that they weren�t) and then there were these other ones, the likes I had never seen before. They were mottled looking, like say red roses with deep pink splotches on them. And then white roses with red splotches (sounds like measles, huh?). But they were really unusual looking.

And I know roses. My Dad used to have about 20 rose bushes around the entire perimeter of his house in California, and guess who used to come over and take care of them? Moi. And they always looked fabulous if I do say so myself. So I was looking at all these flowers, wondering if I wanted one of the splotchy roses or one of the fake-looking ones. Suddenly a guy who worked there, who was restocking one of the bins, asked me if I needed any help.

(Oh man, probably way more than you�ll ever know, honey.

But I politely said not really, and then he decided he needed to sell me on the idea of buying a rose since, you know, in case 3000 horny men who want to get laid tomorrow night didn�t buy up the rest of them...so he started to talk about the flowers. We agreed that the fake flowers looked fake and then he started in on the splotchy roses. He first told me that only THEIR store carried this special brand. (�Brand�? For a rose? Ya mean, like Captain Crunch? Or Lays Potato Chips?). He then told me they were called a Crazy Rose.

Crazy Rose? I cracked up on his ass when he said that and said, �Do you mean a rose to give to someone who�s crazy, like your spouse or your boyfriend?� He kind of looked at me momentarily pained, like maybe HE just broke up with a CRAZY girlfriend or maybe he thought I was CRAZY, but instead he told me, �No, its for someone you�re CRAZY about!�.

Oh that. Fortunately I didn�t pursue that, as in, Oh you mean CRAZY like that blonde chick in �Fatal Attraction�? Or CRAZY like I keep stalking you and parking outside your house at night and leaving dead sparrows on the hood of your car CRAZY?

I ended up not buying one. I figured I could spend the money elsewhere, in a less CRAZY manner.

That is not to say, I don�t like Valentine�s Day and am all depressed about not having a honey. Not really. Married Guy did give me a tin of chocolates once, but other than that I�ve never really had anyone on Valentine�s Day. And all that yearning for someone to love crap? I do that 365 days a year, so why bust a gut for one day in particular?

I actually would like everyone to feel good on Valentine�s Day. Last Thursday when I went to �A�s group, I had a purse full of Valentine�s Day cards. Everyone but one person in my group is single and I intended to give out the cards. They were just a bunch of Valentine�s Day cards I have bought over the years and never used. So was I going to give them to the people in the group from me? Oh, hell no. I�m too shy to do that. I was actually going to attempt to do something a little more philanthropic.

Once, several years ago, I went to a Women�s Love Yourself Seminar (and no its not THAT kind of self love). It was run by a couple of hippie chicks and it was in February and what they did was give everyone materials to make a Valentine�s Day card. At first we all thought...how fun...yay. Creative, creative. Well, that my reaction at least, since I like doing artsy things.

But when we were done with our respective masterpieces, she said that these Valentine�s cards were, in fact, for ourselves and that we had to write something nice inside of them to ourselves. Huh? What could I ever possibly say to myself in a Valentine�s Day card? grumble, grumble, grumble. How totally stupid. grumble, grumble, grumble. But then I decided to just do it. I wasn�t in a very good place at the time, so it was pretty difficult saying something like �You�re the cream in my coffee� when I really felt like: YOU SUCK, but I did it. After we finished writing our romantic self proclamations, we had to stuff them into envelopes and give them to the facilitator.

So this all happened around February 4th or so, and I kind of forgot about it. I mean, I knew that the envelopes had been stamped, but I quickly lost track of things, especially since that earthshaking event known as my birthday, was coming up.

But then on Valentine�s Day, I got a big red envelope in the mail, opened it up and there it was....My Valentine to myself. And you know what? It actually felt pretty good to get it! Whee! And what nice things it said! Double whee!!

So I had originally planned to possibly spring this idea for a self-Valentine�s Day card in �A�s group Thursday, because if ever a group of people ever needed some validation on their self- worth (yes, even me, or maybe I should say, especially me) it was them. But then Hershel the new guy stepped up to the plate and started talking and we didn�t have our usual awkward silence when the group first starts. damn. So the Great Valentine�s Day Card Caper didn�t quite come off. Oh well, maybe next year, if the group is still around.

Today was bright and sunny out. I really wanted to do at least some of what I had planned to do yesterday for my birthday. The original plan, of course, was to go to the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, but that got dashed all to hell by poverty. So I had to settle for a jaunt around our local art museum. I had told �A�, that in an effort to circumvent my disappointment, I would just pretend that our local art museum was MOMA by squinting my eyes and walking around it 3000 times. You know, since its about 3000 times smaller than the one in NYC. And, that was, in fact, what I did today. I squinted except for the part where we have our one and only Jackson Pollock print. I am totally in love with that, so I had to just stand and gaze lovingly at it for like 10 minutes, while the nearby security guard was probably wondering if he should call for back-up for the crazed catatonic woman in Gallery 2.

Our museum did have a couple of new exhibits. One involving a guy painting tree bark. Ummm, interesting. The other one had woodblock and lithograph prints including a really intriguing one called �The Printer�s Devil� by Richard Mock. It was very bright and lively. I liked it. I was also looking at this other painting by Richard Motherwell, which was basically a big ol� blob of black in the middle of a huge sheet of rice paper. I could see my reflection in the glass covering the painting, and it looked kind of cool, seeing my face peering out from the middle of a black blob. I wish I could paint a big ol� blob of black paint in the middle of a huge sheet of rice paper and make it look cool.

On the way home, purely in keeping with the art theme for the day, I stopped and picked up an issue of the New York Post. I had seen a news story on television about a massive art installation in New York City this week called The Gates. Its 7500 gate-like structures built throughout Central Park (23 miles long) which support long strips of saffron colored fabric which flap in the wind. It was put together by artist Christo and his partner Jeanne Claude, who have done other such artistically inspired gargantuan feats as cover entire buildings in fabric, and islands in fabric.

I even saw one of their art installations out in California called The Running Fence. It was a giant canvas colored fence which ran through the hills between Sonoma and Marin Counties and disappeared into the ocean. I lived in Sonoma County at the time and got to see it first hand since it crossed on either side on Highway 101. My Dad and I also drove out to the coast and saw where it ended, as it dove its way into the Pacific Ocean. It was so cool.

So I asked my friend �G� down in Manhattan if he had seen it, because not only does he remember the Running Fence in California, he had also purchased 68 feet of the material when the fence was taken down...you know, just to have a piece of art history. So as we were chatting online he quickly sent me several pictures of him at the opening of the show Friday and also one picture of the show from some window overlooking Central Park. Hope he doesn�t mind me using this. Thanks �G�




Not sure why I�m so excited about all this. Guess because I�m an art girl. The show is only going to be up for 37 days though. Not sure if I will be able to get to NYC within that time frame because of my continuing poverty situation. Oh well, at least I got to see the Running Fence running into the Ocean. And what could be better than that?

HAPPY VALENTINE�S DAY!

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