Perils of Archiving…part 1

Odd things do surface when one embarks on archiving (and cleaning out) files that have been sitting in untouched splendor. This is an orphaned unnumbered page from my never finished detective novel, Max Sees Red, circa 1978. Max, my protagonist, is driving upstate to rescue his friend Robby ….

Robby that son of a bitch, he’s too nervous to know what’s good for him, he’s had it too easy, going from oil to oil. It’s been nothing but one straight line for him starting with his home and school and now writing his books. 

 Sweet Robby, if you only knew dirt under your fingers from hard work and not just because you can’t be bothered to wash your hands.  You know, Robby, my father’s hands were always dirty when he came home from the plant and he was always washing them and washing them. Planted permanently in his palm was the dirt of making thousands of Dodge cars. I said to myself, there’s got to be another way.  So what do I end up doing? Shit, I end up a painter. Color and oil under my fingernails all the time.  Goes to show ya, you can’t travel too far.  Yah, no assembly line for me I says, so now I got my quota.  Twenty paintings a year or else.  Boy, that was a good curve, slow and easy like they say. 

Those impressionists don’t know how lucky they were.  First the tube of paint get invented and they are able to get outside. Who has the time now? You got to have a lot of time to get an impression of something.   Wonder what would have happened if the car had been invented before the tube of paint.  No Monet.  It sure could have fucked things up. Or maybe not.  Maybe we would have come to it another way – that the boot is as important as the tree…. 

Renoir never did like the way Matisse used black.  Renoir, the sunshine kid, eh? He was the John Denver of his day.  What a sight Renoir and Cezanne spending an afternoon in a porno parlor.  Renoir knowing it all, Cezanne uptight, paranoid, but really digging it. Oh yes, this is your territory, your scene Cezanne. I can see you right behind that big rock all excited and letting those “little sensations” get to you and turn all the frustrations that you couldn’t shake off to color to shape a wonder.

 Max, you romantic ass, next thing you’ll be voting and teaching school.  Be sensible and get back to asses and tits and straight lines and drive.