Favorite Painting Companionship Ideal Involving, Of Course, Big Hair

I had a hangover yesterday and so went to the library as an alternative to laying on my air mattress moaning. I returned Fingerprints of the Gods and got dizzy looking at books from the oversize stock department. Notables included illustrations of birds, initiation rituals of various cultures photographed and spoken of condescendingly, and a David Hockney retrospective. I don't know anything about art. The things we had on my walls growing up were usually in a Comfort Inn continental breakfast room color palette, behind brass frames, and from Thrifty's. I know I like David Hockney because he does paintings of pools so evocative of summer that I can almost smell the chlorine and hear the electricity buzzing, and because of Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy. I first encountered the picture in thumbnail form in Harper's Bazaar, a magazine I've kept a subscription to since age 14, when we had to sell magazines for a fundraiser and I sold Harper's Bazaar to myself.

Could I possibly want anything more than the life depicted in Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy? To dip my bare toes into the extra deep pile shag, a cat balancing on my crotch, awash in light, thinking nothing other than, "She designs the textiles and I design the tea dresses"--enviable hair textures in an enviable apartment in an exciting decade-- this is living! I love their creative collaborations and their love for each other! I love this painting! I'm freaking out! Will someone be the Celia Birtwell to my Ossie Clark someday, or vice versa? Will we wear luxuriant green clothes and spend any time that isn't spent standing bathed in perfect light and love coming up with brilliant premise after brilliant premise, turning them into magnificent reality after magnificent reality? Until then, I am Percy, a weird, stiff-looking white cat with my back facing the audience, inserting myself into the lives of the fun creative couples I know, allowing my happiness at being included to mingle sometimes with jealousy.



I already regret that cat metaphor, don't you?
Can I just have a bunch of Celia Birtwell/Ossie Clark dresses in which to languish and be my loner self? See figure A, below: