"You know the deadline is near. Where's your painting, Jefferson?" a female voice said to me.
"What painting? I just got added to this class. I didn't know that was an assignment. Can't you give me an extension, if only for that reason?", I pleaded.
"No. You're capable of catching up...and so much more...," she insisted. I hated how she implied things without finishing the thought. What was the secret to the and so much more?
"But that's not fair. I wouldn't have had nearly as much time as them. Mine'll be crappy and thrown together as a result," I expressed while looking around the room at the other students' works of art in progress.
Many of them were intricate portraits of people, places, things. One of them, a fairly common-looking oil painting with no real spark to it, was of a saxophone with a red ribbon tied around it. I imagined it was Charlie Parker's, though it may not have been. I thought the red ribbon looked a lot like the HIV awareness one, and if this was not the message the artist was conveying, I thought about how it would surely be misconstrued as such. I wanted to tell the painter my theory, but thought the awareness message was better. People should think that's what it was. I would have called it "Raw Jizz Jazz". How cynical and inappropriate of me.
Another, a dark depiction of the face of a very sullen-looking woman, seemed to have eyes that peered right through me and made me want to ask it "why so sad?". I imagined she was a gypsy or some southern creole slave with no name that mattered. Perhaps she was overworked -- like me -- and longed to dance barefoot in the rain. Probably completely off center with my guess there as well. I remember saying to myself in the dream, I always see something other than the obvious or the intended in everything.
"Fine. It'll be done. . . ", a surrender in a no-win situation, after much delay. I turned to the teacher (whose face I could not see), and sighed.
"That's more like it. You can do this..." she reassured me. I hate motivators, too. I wanted to be a jerk. YOU DO IT, THEN.
"By the deadline though. . .?" I whined instead. How rhetorical. I knew the unyielding answer - times infinity.
"Yes. A body of work. By the deadline," she emphasized with gritted teeth. She didn't have to stress the point, I thought.
"And I assure you, it'll be a masterpiece, young Da Vinci." she reinforced, with a smile in her voice that knew many things that I am not privy to.
My alarm clock intervened in reality. I woke up thinking: Oh. Right. Work. Ugh. (Expletive).
- kj
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