me & art: a pretty good list

1. Art and I have had a tenuous relationship. Art the creative endeavor, not the person.

2. Students, take out your texts. Answer all the problems correctly, in the correct order, and in less than 20 minutes. If you can't do the problems in 20 minutes or if you get anything wrong, your work will be worthless. Worthless.

3. I wasn't read-to as a child by my parents, so I made up my own bedtime stories based on the muffled television shows I could hear from my bedroom. I'd spin tales starring John Boy, Bob Newhart and Barnaby Jones. Most of the time, they came to rescue me from my life by revealing that I'd been stolen from my real parents.

4. My real neighbors: Mr. Shoemaker who fixed televisions; Mr. Overstreet who drove a truck delivering Pepsi; Mr. Name I Don't Remember who drove a truck delivering Wonder Bread. And even though she wore steel-toed shoes to her work in a warehouse, my mother thought we were better than our neighbors because my father wore a suit, and not Carhartts, to work. And because we had a very incomplete set of Harvard Classics on our one short bookshelf.

5. Students, take out the picture you've chosen to draw. Now draw a grid on the picture and a corresponding grid on your canvas. Now copy each square exactly as you see it. Do each one perfectly, or your work with be worthless. Worthless.

6. French Club: making fondue, watching French films (not movies), and going to New York City for a Monet visit. I liked fondue, films and Monet, but I didn't understand how these would get me a job.

7. The only A's I got in my freshman year as a mathematics major in college were in French and English composition. I stayed a math major because I knew how to get the right answer in math.

8. I've always journaled. There were no wrong answers in my private pages. My partner will burn my journals when I die. She promised.

9. Last Christmas I watched my six-year-old niece Madison play with a makeup kit my mother had gotten her. She spread eyeshadow on her lips, blush on her lids and lipstick onto her cheeks. When she proudly showed my mother her face, my mother said, "You've done it wrong, silly girl."

10. A friend told me a story from my childhood where I showed up to school in second grade wearing pantyhose. When she'd asked why I was wearing pantyhose, I'd told her that proper young ladies wear pantyhose with dresses.

11. My muse is a little girl, eyeshadow on her lips, blush on her eyelids and lipstick on her cheeks, and she is wearing adult-sized pantyhose which bag around her ankles. When she's around, my creative juice moves and grooves. When she's not, well, it's all worthless. Worthless.