Alex de Campi: Gojira!

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10.6.05 Steal This (Fragments of Abandoned Novels, Part II)

When I was little, my mother and I had a game. It was called "Which painting would you steal?" It was pretty simple. We went to an art museum, and then we would go get ice cream. Black Cherry for me, Pistachio for her. While we were eating the ice cream, Mom would ask me which painting of all the ones we saw that I would steal, and why. It was never "buy". Always "steal". My mom was pretty smart, and one of the best educated people I ever met. But she knew us Clares, how good we were at pushing the self-destruct button whenever things started going well. We'd never get beyond poxy suburban houses and secondhand cars. And if we ever wanted paintings, we'd have to steal them.

It's her fault, really. I worked hard in school and thanks to that and a track scholarship, got into a good university. And then instead of majoring in something useful, something that might get me a job, I studied Art History. That's what she gets for dragging me to all those museums as a kid.

I think of her every time I cut a canvas from its frame.

( 1:21 PM )

2 Comments:

Track scholarship ? come on girl... it was all brains that had you running from WFS pre-'89, not those long gams of yours... that and the gaggle of lemmings called classmates (guilty as charged)

By P. Burke, at 2:00 PM

Uh, Paul, the above is a work of fiction. That's why it says "fragments of abandoned NOVELS."

By Alex de Campi, at 3:12 PM