art fair

It is that time of year again. So hot and sticky and about 100,000 people
come to town for art fair. The booths are spread up and down all the
streets for several blocks. Little white tents that house painted ,
scultped and knitted treasures. It isn't like I can afford to buy any of
it. Some of it is really beautifulk though. There is one guy who paints
pictures of water. Being water is my greatest phobia, they sort of freak
me out. They are beautiful but empty scenes of a neverending ocean.

Last night I had a water dream again. I was walking with a group of
children. One of the little girls, a beautiful little black girl with
pigtails fell in the water. It had been raining and the waters had risen
and flooded everything. I jumped in the water and grabbed her hand and we
were both pushed uot towards the entrance of the area we were in. Out the
door I could see the river, vastly overfilled running very fast into
drainage tunnels. I was barely holding on the the wet concrete rim that
kept us from getting pulled into the river. The children were screaming.
I saw one pulled past me into the river but I couldn't grab her as then I
would have let go of the other little girl. All I could see was the water
gushing into the drainage tunnels. So fast and relentless. I knew if I
got pulled in there I would never get out. I realized I was dreaming at
this point and fought to wake up. I actually started biting my hand to
wake up. When I was awake, I realized I hand my hand in my mouth and I
had bitten it pretty hard.

Later I had another dream that made me wake up sobbing. I was an
adventurer. I was climbing things and jumping far and fast. I had an
enemy chasing me with his helper but they were no match for me. I had my
little helper and we were so cool, so good at what we were doing. My
enemy came up behind me and I think I stabbed him in the chest. He fell
off the thing we were climbing up and died. Then his helper climbed up.
His helper was just a little boy who looked very sad. I pulled him close
to my chest and hugged him and told him that we would take care of him and
love him. He started to cry and thought that he had died. I told him no
that he was still alive. Then he said something like, this must be heaven
cause I have never been so happy, except I thought I'd have lazer eyeballs
in heaven. I guess it is one of those things that make more sense when
you wake up all groggy. I cried because it made me so sad thast the
little boy had never known anyone to love him. I loved him so much and
wanted to take care of him forever. I guess however that in a perfect
world, all little boys would like cool superpowers thus the lazer
eyeballs. I think dumpling has professed a desire for lazer eyeballs once
or twice.

Another funny thing dumpling said once: He thought cows peed out milk. I
said no, it comes from thier boobs. This (as opposed to the pee idea ??)
totally freaked him out and he wondered around disgusted by the idea for a
couple of days. He also in all seriousness thought that brown cows have
brown milk. He was little of course-about four.

So back to the art fair. Herds of people-hundreds and hundreds of them
wonder around in the hot sun/pouring rain (both of course are required for
a good art fair). The merchants sit at thier booths piled high with
whatever stuff they happen to be selling. Entertaining stuff-crazy
lifesize super realistic scultptures of peopls. These things are so
realistic as to be disgusting, moles, wrinkles, pot bellys, all the
imperfections we as humans possess. Yuck. Also twenty foot tall metal
animals-two ponies, last year there was a spider and other stuff too.
Some really pretty work with nudes. I guess I like that stuff myself as I
think the human figure can be really beautiful. One lady had taken nudes
and then messed with the negatives to get make pictures where all that was
left was color and an outline of the original nude. Very abstract but
quite pretty. Another guy had very neat stuff in which he took photos and
cropped them into pieces and then overlayed them and replicated them.
Like you put the nude and some furniture in a blender and out came this
sort of wierd yet cool picture. Very nice stuff. Lots of digital
manipulation in the photos as well. I saw one other booth with some
nudes but I wasn't as enthused about them. They were mainly of two very
pretty, very thin models, taken outside in a variety of locations. It
seemed wierd to mix the extra detailed complicated network of trees and
clouds and outside stuff with the simplistic symmetric/antisymmetric
figure studies. It just didn't fit so well together. But then again what
in the hell do I know about art! :)

The booths remind me of when I was small at the flea market.
Every weekend I'd help mom and grandmaw set up thier antiques-mostly
grandmaw. We'd get up at six, drive out and get donuts, then drive to the
flea market. Off would come the sheets and she would turn on the lights
and put all the jewlery in the cases. Suddenly a tiny piece of a big grey
sullen cattle barn where the flea market was held became a tiny department
store. Little maniquin heads wearing sparkling jewelry, a lady' head
planter turned into a pin cushion to hold amazingly elaborate hat pins. I
would help grandmaw on Fridays when she moved in the tables and boxes and
unpacked most everything. I think that is why I am so good at moving now.
You cram all these items neatly into a small space and have to quickly
pack and unpack them. Fridays we would set up big card tables, and put
nice table clothes down. Then all the stuff would get placed on the
tables, artfully of course. We would cover it with sheets and go home to
return bright and early the next morning. I would uncover the items and
turn on the lights and once grandmaw was up and running I was free to
explore.

I have no idea how I didn't become a child abduction statistic. I
wondered around alone in isolated scary places for most of my childhood
just seeing what was there. What's around the next corner. I vistied all
the muesuems in the area-then the life science mueseum was free. The
Kimbell was really dull-how many cowboys can anyone person want to see. I
got asked to leave the modern art meusum as I was touching the paintings.
I was only about eight and there was this amazingly big pink one with
gradients that ran the length of it. How could you not touch the silly
thing?

I spent the most time however at the horse show facility next to the
cattle barns where the flea market was. I saw the Paso Fino, appalossa,
palamino world shows. The arab regionals. The welch pony world shows. the
paint horse youth world show. I saw hunter/jumper stuff and a bit of
dressage. I saw the world cutting horse championships four years running.
Lots of reining and quarter horse events as well.Quite an education for
the horse obsessed girl. The entire time I wondered around noone ever
asked me to leave ( well except when I was shoplifting at the home and
garden show across the way from the horse barns-my brother started that).
I would just wonder from stall to stall peering in at all thses yummy
smelling horses and everyone took for granted that I was supposed to be
there. In retrospect I think I was like a little shadow that just ignored
the people and thus they ignored me. A tiny little something that is
behind the scenes and belongs. I was so alone with myself and I really
didn't mind so much. How odd.