THE NOT SO GREAT GALA

What the hell was I thinking? What the hell?

Do you ever lose sight of yourself for a moment? Of who you are, the truth of yourself, what you are capable of? I'm on this journey of finding and losing and finding and misplacing. I really should be better at it by now.

My friend was winding her neck with blind fingers with her beautiful pink scarf, bubblegum collar. Yum, yum, could eat it. I looked further across her as her hands conjured her neck invisible and saw the crowd, a huge group of one-handeds in pockets, one-handeds around stems of glasses, heads tossed back, Oh reeealllyyy? You really think he knows how to balance colour with form? OOohhhh, you do, do youuuuuu? Ha ha! The same joke repeated in multi fold variation throughout the crowd, all of them snortling into their wine, guffaw, guffaw. Why is it that when you get a group of artists together they find it necessary to effect airs? But then I think of weddings and funerals, reunions and business conferences, sporting events or random meetings in the street, and it all boils down to the same shit.

I can't stop, I said to my friend. I kept driving past the gathering that we'd planned on attending for a week. I kept on going.

It was an award night for a local art show, a wonderful event actually. And the crowd wasn't actually guffawing, it was simply gathering, sharing and chatting, although I'm sure there was a certain level of bullshit. There always is. But it was me that was the problem. You see, it is just so overwhelming for me to have more than five people in one spot. Even four is an awful lot. And when they all look so well groomed and have the hand in the pocket thing going on and they don't move, but stand in place as though they were poured of cement, well, I get the willies. And they looked so adult and I felt so kid, and so it goes even this late in the game.

I drove right past but turned around at my friend's insistence. I parked and repeated, I can't go in, so we sat and talked in the car for half an hour until she finally wound her bubblegum scarf once again around her neck and clicked her door open. It was time to be adult.

But you see, the crowd, it had a din. It was humming at a frequency that made my belly slip. Garblegarblegarble...it was unmistakable. We made way through snortles to the wine table, my friend leading all goddess of hips rising from sea, and I was all hungry fingers behind her, wishing I could reach up and hold her scarf. Back to the periphery, her with wine and me without, we paused to assess the situation.

Frig, Lesley, if you want to stay and talk with people that's OK but I can't. I've got to go! And as I made to leave she laughed and shook her hair out, long flaxen seaweed, and breathed, I am not in the mood for this either!

We crossed the road and sat on rock, we did, as the energy lost itself in the crowd, anemic and faltering. She and I sat alongside waterfall and renewed conversations that were twenty years old. She looked to the water. I looked over to the train tracks that ran just opposite the falls, tracks that bridged the river, tracks that we once rushed over in dare so long before, would we live or would we die? We lived. We looked and listened and lived while the din droned on.

Later we made our way to the exhibition hall and I shyly took in out of peripheral two of my photographs that made it into the juried show. True, I didn't win a ribbon, I hadn't grown up any and wasn't able to endure the crowd, but somehow sitting on the opposite side of the road on rock, with water, with train, with friend, that was the right place to be.

Now, let's see if this lesson can stick.