Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp 1

Something About Flowers

a novel of Art, Beauty & Love

Photo # 01 [Images]

I open the closet door, drink in hand, and reach for the box. It's heavier than I remember, all
these photographs, so I set my glass on the bookshelf beside me and slide this box from the stack.
She has already tried to organize these boxes once, but I quickly jumped in and told her I'd take
care of it. We won't be moving after the wedding, but I understand her point that I should really go
through these boxes of loose photos and papers, some dating back to elementary school.
The photo box is on top, right where she left it. They need pictures for the slideshow at the
rehearsal dinner, she said. As I slide the old gray box toward me, I can feel a corner start to tear.
Quickly, I reach around to support the other side and gingerly I carry it across the room to the
kitchen table. I’ve just about made it when the top slips under my fingers and I spill the
photographs across the table.
Hundreds of photos, pictures from the last thirty-some-odd years of my life, old family
polaroids, class pictures, ex-girlfirends, all the way up to my most recently published. A lifetime of
memories. I sip my drink and start sorting.

Photo # 02 [Diaphanous]

I once had a girlfriend, Daisy the poet, who collected words. She would stake them out, lay
claim to them through her continued occupation of them, as if she were a wildcatter, a
homesteader, a green Californian climbing mountains in Skagway on his way to the golden Yukon.
In this way, she came to possess certain words; they were hers only. Diaphanous was one, so that
she wrote of diaphanous emotions, diaphanous dialogue, diaphanous moans during lovemaking.
When I look to the gossamer clouds caressing the moon's light, and think of it as
diaphanous, I am not harkening back to the Greek of Euripides, but to Daisy's English. There are
days when, because I remember her lips on my neck, her warmth emanating from her back as she
snuggled with me at night, I feel indebted to her, as she has allowed me royalty-free use of the
word. She will always own this word, even as Vincent van Gogh owns sunflowers.
And with sunflowers my journey begins.

Photo # 03 [4th Grade]

In fourth grade, Mrs. Cook, our new art teacher, brought in a bouquet of sunflowers. They
were in a giant pottery vase on the little plastic art cart she wheeled into the room. I always
enjoyed snooping in her cart, looking at the different paints, crayons, pastels and pencils she had
on there. Her cart was a cacophony of colors, a symphony of aromas- sharp and pungent paint,
spicy and sweet tea Mrs. Cook made from berries and leaves herself.
We didn't have an art room in my elementary school, so Mrs. Cook lived from her cart,
wheeling it from room to room. Well, she had a small storage closet down the hall from the library,
stacked high with shelves of supplies. I was always jealous of the amount of paper she had, all
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kinds of beautiful drawing papers, a hundred different sizes, it seemed. I was limited at home to
drawing on the back of this big computer paper my aunt got at work. The paper was green and
white rows on one side, invariably printed with all kinds of insurance figures my aunt's company
used, but the other side was blank and became my sketchpad.
On the day of the sunflowers, I was really excited by the contents of that cart, eyeing a
brand new, unsqueezed tube of bright chromium yellow paint. I pictured picking up the tube,
removing the cap, piercing the foil cover with the tip of my paintbrush and squeezing a glistening
pile of sunshine into my plastic paint holder next to tart Prussian blue and smooth Indian black. I
could imagine the damps tips of my brush dipping into the yellow heaven like my fingers into the
icing of my birthday cake, but instead of eating it, I'd squish and swirl it onto the palette, mixing it
with white to make it pale, with black to give it texture and clarity. I envisioned painting those
sunflowers, completely unaware at the time of the history behind my vision.
Mrs. Cook was very precise for an art teacher. Our previous teacher, Miss Trout, had been a
young hippie, free with her requirements and praise. I wanted to be like Miss Trout, to spend all
day thinking about pictures and colors and mosaics, shapes mixed with lines, curves, and dots.
Even then, at the age of eight, I was an iconophiliac, with the desire to represent the world around
me in pictures.
Unlike Miss Trout, Mrs. Cook was rigid, a woman of rules. She would not let us mix
noncomplementary colors, we could not choose our medium or materials. We learned color, form
and composition as if they were a sacred trinity. So, too, with the sunflowers, a long discussion of
the petal, the stem, clinical nearly, but I didn't care, because any fool could see that an art lesson
starting with sunflowers as the model will, before it ends, involve squeezing a tube of chromium
yellow.
So when the drawing paper was passed out and Mrs. Cook asked us to find our special
drawing pencils, I figured we would be sketching out a plan on which to base the painting of the
sunflowers. It made sense, I figured, sketching leading to painting. We had only painted from
drawings with Mrs. Cook, even though we had two years' experience painting still life with Miss
Trout. I wondered if Mrs. Cook understood what we had already learned, and that we were more
advanced than she gave us credit for. But, as with any lesson in any class, I followed the teacher's
instructions.
We were seated at big tables, five students per, and Mrs. Cook placed a strip of paper towel
on each. She then doled the bouquet out, one flower to each table. I thought this would be some
sort of warm up, we would watch the flower up close, she would gather them back up, and we
would go on to paint the whole vase. Children, she started, I want you to choose one petal from
your table's flower and focus on it. Then I want you to draw that petal on your paper. We have, she
checked her watch, fifteen minutes to complete this.
I looked quickly up at the classroom clock. Only fifteen minutes left until recess! How could
we paint? We wouldn't have time. I could feel hot tears of disappointment in my eyes, but I refused
to show her. I would just draw the stupid petal and be done. I sketched a curve, an opposing
curve, traced a hint of a line down the center and was done. I raised my hand. Yes, Joseph? Mrs.
Cook was across the room talking to Mary Beth, the best artist in class. I'm finished, can I paint it
now? The look on her face told me we weren't going to paint sunflowers that day, or any other day.
In fact, I don't remember ever painting anything again.
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Photo # 04 [Becoming]

We are in Mark's studio: Mark, myself, several assorted friends of his, my buddy Mike and
enough beers and bonghits to provoke good conversation. "Across the Universe" is playing from
fresh vinyl, and though I despise the classic rock mindset everyone has suddenly developed, I
appreciate this album. Mike and I are discussing taking more computer science classes after our
PASCAL class is out of the way.
"It's the future, man, you know it." He isn't insistent, but he has convinced himself that a life
working for IBM or Cray or some supercomputer corporation is a dream. Live in Westchester,
marry a hot chick, have kids, make money, learn golf- all laid out for him, just his ready to take.
I'm not so sure.
"I’ve already designed some computer games, I’m in." I say. Though Mark is engrossed in a
conversation with Johnny about Hendrix, his eyebrow betrays his interest in my conversation.
"Dude," he says to me, "Since when does a binder full of graphed-out sketches a computer
game make? Just more of your Dungeons & Dragons fantasy world, isn’t it?"
"It's not something we can make yet. Computer intelligence is not where it should be. I
mean, it's fucking 1984, and where's our flying cars?"
"The Turing Test isn't where it's at, man." Mark, two years older and acting a million times
smarter. So what if he knows the Turing Test, who doesn’t? I had torn apart the code for Eliza back
in high school, using it to write a program to ask Clare out to the prom. She loved it.
"How can we create an artificial God if we can't simulate a simple human brain?"
"You are so on the wrong track. You're not going to design computer programs like Mike
will." Mike leans back and smiles. Everyone thrives on Mark's attention and covets his favor. I
watch Mike and can foresee his Armonk dream. Why can he be on the path and I can't?
"You’re not a programmer." Mark’s proclaims. The record ends and Johnny fiddles with the
turntable, putting on The Police's Ghost In the Machine. Not a programmer? Sure, not just a
programmer, Menagerie Studios is more of an ambition- run a company, develop games, manage
other people programming.
"Fine. I'll be president. Menagerie can be as big as Atari someday. I won't be huddled over
some machine debugging code."
"No, not at all. You're an artist. You'll be creating, drawing, painting." Like him? His disciple?
Who's he, my father? He's on this Godfather kick and I just have to obey?
"I'm not an artist, I'm a photographer. A journalist. I document my world, the world around
me."
"You're an artist. I can prove it. Here's the test, The Artist Test."
"Artist test? What are you talking about?"
"You want a Turing Test, I'm giving you one, the How I Know You're An Artist, The Artist Test."
I decide just to listen, we're all stoned, he's rambling, no need, no energy to argue. "If you fool
people into thinking it's art, then you're an artist."
"So it's all a trick, this art thing? You, you're a trickster, playing artist?"
"Oh, no, not me. I don't play at art, I am an artist." He speaks in circles, spiraling around me.
"So you're an artist, you want me to be an artist, but we won't be the same?"
"Eventually, sure. But you're not an artist first, so you'll have to become one."
"When do I start?"
"Now." End of discussion.
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Photo # 05 [Kingpin Rusty]

I am driving home from New York, across the George Washington Bridge into Jersey, looking
at the rich old spires of Paterson, splitting the Delaware Water Gap, shooting through the hills of
Scranton toward Binghamton and up to Syracuse. It drizzles as I drive, my windshield wipers
marking the minutes, the miles. The funeral is over, I have seen Yasmin and we’ve settled our
unseemly business. I am no longer under her thrall. I have no idea where June and I are going, but
I do know I can face the future without worrying again about Yasmin's interference.

It is just past twilight when I pull into my driveway. There is a green Civic parked back by the
studio, and the lights are on inside. June had been in a minor accident during my trip, she must
have borrowed a car from someone. I am in no mood for her, not even to have sex, so I don't walk
back there. Instead, I go in the front door, dump my bags on the floor and crash on the bed.
I wake up an hour later to sounds of glasses tinkling in the kitchen. June must have seen my
car and is pouring some wine. It's become something of a ritual for us, a glass of wine and some
music after a day of work. June will carve out some time for me, sneak away, lay in front of the fire,
or if it's a warmer night, light candles and we relax, just like a couple. But this night, I am still
drained, still not in the mood for a bubbly June and her trying to cheer me up. I am still infected by
Yasmin, even with her latest betrayal fresh, a bitter taste in my mouth.
I walk out into the hallway. "June? I'm not..." I look at the breakfast bar and it's not June
standing there. It's a young woman, long brownish blondish hair swept back behind her neck in a
simple loose ponytail. She's smiling, looking at me like she's known me for years. She picks up a
glass to offer me, I see the bottle is not wine, but Jameson's.
"David Bryant, I presume?"
"No, I'm sorry, you must be thinking of someone else." I brush the girl off. April, this must be,
and so this is the girl June invited to use the studio, an art student, she's put two and two together
and has found out who I am. Not that David Bryant is some construct, some ironic twist on the
anonymous nom de plume. It's not. Joseph David Webster is my name, on my birth certificate,
named after my papa, David, and my grandpa Joe.

As a freshman, in one of those grandiose gestures, my buddy Dan, this amazing and troubled
kid who got me deeper into the Doors and Kerouac and Dylan than I would have possibly on my
own, this regular guy from Queens, starts calling himself Enoch while we were playing Dungeons
& Dragons in the big basement lobby of our dorm. At first, it's limited to his character, a half-
dwarfish cleric/fighter, but then he starts calling himself Enoch on the VAX, at bars, everywhere.
Apparently, it had started for him back in high school, he was Enoch the Bohemian to his ragtag
group of friends. Names are very important to guys, names are power, we recognize, and we
continually create for ourselves new ones. Of course, the best nicknames are bestowed upon you
by fate, for good or worse, like when Steve found a blue construction helmet with a "Becker" taped
inside and here I am thinking about him drinking at Third Base and just the image of him says
Steve Becker to me.
I am David Bryant, or at least, for about 15 years I was. To some people I am still, like Eddie
of the Cruisers fame, I have disappeared from the physical body people recognize as the once-sort-
of-famous photographer David Bryant. But it's the words David along with Bryant that are linked to
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the work, not me as a person. I spent a lot of time and effort to divorce myself from that person I
had become, and when I came to grips with Rose's death, I was forced to retroinvent this Joe
Webster guy again, the guy I had grown up as, just to be normal.
"David Bryant" came into being one late night, a bottle of Jameson's, a basketball, some
Doors and Dylan cassettes and Enoch's boombox. It is July, freshman orientation, and we're on our
own for the last night. Liquor, pot and babes were the plan, though we could only score one of
them. So, Dan and I, regular old freshmen, bribe some old dude to buy a bottle of Jameson's.
Dan has the romantic notion that Irish whisky fueled the Irish poets to greatness, so it will
fuel us. I have one tape, a bunch of songs from the radio, pop and rap and rock, Kurtis Blow and
Tears for Fears and Madonna and whatever else. Dan has about five- cheapass TDK D-90s filled
with tunes, the workhorse of our musical 80s. Jim Croce is on, the only prerecorded cassette we
have among us, his Greatest Hits. I know "Time In a Bottle" from the radio, but on comes "Bad
Leroy Brown." Instantly I am transported back to 1974 and I am on a tour boat with a youth group
from my Burnet Park youth group. We are on the Erie Canal where it connects into Onondaga
Lake, and the skipper of the deal has a big black transistor radio strapped up under the canopy and
"meaner than a junkyard dog..." is blaring away.
"Danbo," I say, using his newer, alternate nickname, "I need a name like that. Leroy Brown.
Badass. Like George Thorogood, bad to the bone. Nobody messes with a Leroy, especially not
Leroy Badass Brown."
Dan looks at me like a confused junkyard dog, wondering why this puny white boy is trying
to be badass Leroy-style, trying to conceptualize a blend of "Joe Webster" and "Badass." Clearly, it
isn't working. The song is over, so I rewind the tape to listen to it again. Danbo is dribbling the
ball, the lights above the court are coming on, I take a swig of the Jameson's we've transferred into
a Mountain Dew bottle and for a moment, I feel that I can be someone else, I can leave behind
little Joe from Syracuse and become... somebody.
"All right, man. You wanna be someone new, let's do the pornstar name thing."
"What's that?"
"It's what your pornstar name would be, you know, if you were suddenly going to grow and
be buff and cool and shit."
"Fine. What's my name?" I'd never considered being a pornstar. Well, except for that one
time, when I was taking pictures of Clare in her bedroom, she was modeling some lingerie,
stripping slowly while I snapped away, she wouldn't get all the way naked until I did and she
grabbed the camera and started shooting me. We had some hot sex that day.
"You take the name of your first pet and the street you grew up on." My grandma had a dog
named Queenie when I was born, and we lived on Beard Ave. Queenie Beard? No fucking way.
"Like how young?"
"The first pet of your own."
"My first dog was Skippy."
"Skippy... ?"
"Bryant. I lived on Bryant Ave. in Syracuse."
There are moments in every man's life when, confronted with the completely ridiculous
vicissitudes of what seems to be a serious conversation, a choice is to be made. Of course, the
nature of choice is usually one of dichotomy, or, if fortune's smile is less strong, dilemma. I prefer
the relatively clearcut idea of the dichotomy- a good choice on one hand and a bad one on the
other. However, this is a most certainly a dilemma. I could stay "Little Joe Webster" or I could
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become "Skippy Bryant." Little Joe never gets mint chicks, never sees women slinking across a
room burning desire into his soul with her eyes. Sure, I had a girlfriend in high school and I had
made out with a girl yesterday at the mixer, but she went home early for her sister's wedding and
Clare is at college herself, slinking her way into some other man's heart, I'm sure. Skippy gets
nothing, unless he's gay or an original preppie from Eton or some shit. Blue collar all the way and
into chicks, I am neither.
"D, how solid is the pornstar thing?" He hates me calling him D, the most foreshortened of all
nicknames, from Daniel to Dan to D, the only thing shorter would be a blank space, a moment of
silence for the person formerly known as D.
"First of all, if I am being reduced to an initial, please give me the courtesy of E." He swishes
a deep outside jumper from the right side, knowing full well my elbow injury prevents me from
effectively making rightside jumpers. I was fine from the left, as a righthander I would square up
more to the baseline than on the basket, a weird alignment, sure, but one which gave my twisty
elbow a chance at sinking a shot. To replicate that angle from the right side, I'd have to face the left
sideline, and that was too much. "Secondly. What's wrong with," he pauses until I'm lining up my
shot. I cock back my arm, adjusting for elbow, the ball lined up with my ear and shoot "Skippy?"
The ball caroms off the top of the backboard and over the fence into the brush. I look at him and
he looks at the ball. The rule is shooter retrieves errant balls.
"I loved Skippy, he was a great dog, but I'm not doing gay porn." D is thoughtful, not openly
idiotic, not the kind of guy who sees the phrase "gay porn" as bait for months of ragging on his
buddy Skippy Bryant.
"Ok, then, just go with another dog. What were some of the others?" We consider Patches
and Sam and Freckles before settling on Rusty. Rusty with no last name. I am reborn a badass.
Rusty is a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, like that kid in Rumble Fish, he would just as soon
stab someone with a switchblade as look at him. Rusty is the kind of kid who was smaller than
everyone else, but who ran the show. Kingpin Rusty.

Photo # 06 [Flight West]

Yasmin is from Iran, she is Persian, she says, purring her syllables like a cat, a luxurious and
spicy name for a faraway country. She did not come to America from the East, from Europe as I
would have expected, she did not trek west with the fiery sunrise, did not fly over the rugged
deserts of the Middle East. Instead she arrived via Los Angeles, Australia, Thailand, Pakistan,
Afghanistan. She had not traversed the fertile Mediterranean plain, did not slip through the Italian
Alps, Germany or France on her way toward the Atlantic. She did not awake to the great, shining
Golden Light of Liberty descending into New York. She traveled Far East into the land of tomorrow,
and delighted herself with the going backwards in time, arriving in that singularly fantasy Disneyed
world of California.
Her story of escape is as harrowing as any I've heard, and it seems in the past two decades
I've had occasion to hear too many. Sarajevo, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Eastern Europe, Cuba, Nazi
Germany. Live in any urban area in America and you know a person who has escaped brutality at
the hands of a totalitarian regime. Yasmin grew up in Shiraz, and in 1979 her parents went from
relatively obscure members of the middle class, her dad a professor, her mother at home with
newly teenage Yasmin and several younger brothers and sisters, to criminals, infidels. Suddenly, the
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Islamic Revolution swept into even their small corner of the world and as an intellectual, a Baha'i
at that, her father was immediately a target. He was arrested, but let go after a few days. Scared,
the family paid a large sum of money to be smuggled out of the country through Pakistan on their
way to Australia and in the middle of the night they left their lives, everything but what they could
carry and drove. They crossed the border and night and two days later were abandoned by the
smuggler in the middle of a desert of what turned out to be Afghanistan. Because of the war with
the Soviet Union, they could not make it across the border from there into Pakistan, so back to Iran
they went. Several months later they paid another smuggler, but this time left from an area closer
to the Pakistani border and they made their way to Karachi. It took six months but after a brief stop
in Thailand, they made it to Australia. In the meantime Yasmin’s paternal grandparents had fled, to
Los Angeles, and lived there with one of her uncles. They convinced Yasmin's dad to leave
Australia and come to America.
One would never know looking at her that she wasn't born in America. She certainly had a
better sense of style than the Madonna or Flashdance lookalikes, she never wore jeans and pink
sweatshirts like a lot of the girls did, but other than her olive skin and golden eyes, you'd think she
was Puerto Rican or Italian and you wouldn't be surprised if she were Greek or Lebanese, some
Mediterranean beauty.
I never really understood why she ended up going to college in Buffalo. She wanted out of
California and there was some cousin in Manhattan with the same last name who was attending
school in Buffalo, so she used his address for in-state tuition somehow. Suffice to say, I didn't ever
delve that deeply into that part of her life. The details. I think I fell in love with Yasmin the moment
I saw her, totally and uncritically drank in the pure idea of her, and it took me years to unfall.

Photo # 07 [Model love]

The thought of Kingpin Rusty makes me smile, involuntarily, which April interprets as
friendliness, perhaps a chink in the armor. I see her eyes flash lightning, strangely reminiscent of
her Yasmin’s in that one way only. On first impression, I feel she has none of Yasmin’s overbearing
elegance, none of that particular otherworldly grace, the willowy fluidity. Instead, she is effusive,
energetically expressive.
April does not wait for me to speak another word, instead she walks toward me, holding out
one glass of whisky for me. I decide quickly that the best course of action is to indulge her in her
little discovery, maybe offer her an autographed copy of the Flower Series book, get her on her
way. I had originally planned on drinking anyway.
"When June told me she had met a photographer, was working on a collaboration, I didn't
picture this..." She looked around my cottage, my artifacts, my collections. I don't want to steer her
so I stay silent, sipping Jameson's. "I thought it was a woman at first, you know," she looks at me,
"Like a little club, someone her age, someone she can spend time with, maybe another mother
with kids off at school." I nod, appraising the tenor of her voice, the direction of her pacing. "I had
no idea," she pointed down at a contact sheet "That she was a model, too." My first foray in sensual
photography since moving back to Syracuse, June beside the creek outside Toma’s Grill. Hadn’t
those put away, filed deep in a private spot? April has either gotten them from June or has been
rummaging through my stuff. I still don’t want to start talking, so I give her a yeah, so? look.
"Hey, her life is her life. She wants to do nude modeling at her age, more power to her." She
doesn't seem to be upset over the implication that June’s nude modeling in my home probably
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means a lot more than just nudity in terms of, uh, engagement. I wonder how close April’s mother
is with June, whether June would confide in her about an affair, whether April would be in on the
conversation. Obviously, she's got some inkling that June and I have a thing, which doesn't seem
to bother her. Instead, she seems to be reaching for a new idea, slowly advancing on me, taking a
step, picking a book off the counter, taking a step, looking at a print of Yasmin, taking a step,
standing in front of me.
"Do you fall in love with all your models?"

Photo # 08 [Symboliste]

I lead Yasmin into a side room, just a couch, some chairs, a coffee table, subdued lighting.
Just through the doorway, she leans in to kiss me, but the door is open, people milling in the wide
corridor between viewing rooms. I shake my head away, point her to the couch, reach to close the
door.
The spontaneity of her embrace has evaporated and I feel completely sober, in control.
Yasmin sits on the couch, demure, reposed, expectant. I watch her. I know I can sit beside her, I
can offer her my comfort in this difficult time, but she has betrayed me again and again. I cannot
offer her forgiveness and I cannot allow her to tempt me.
I wonder how I have allowed her to hold sway over me for all these years. When I first met
her, she dazzled me. I fell in love with her, and when we finally slept together, I thought she was
mine forever. But she never cared about walking through my world, she always floated above me
in a haughty cloud. Even now, she expects me to come to her, to sit beside her on the couch, to
reach out to her, to touch her, to press her lips against my lips, to fill herself with me. She would
claim it is her right to tap into my love for her, that she has staked claim to the deepest parts of my
heart and she can mine my recesses when she needs. I have always allowed her to do this, but
now, the first time I have seen her since Barcelona, I have no more love for her. I am empty of
Yasmin and she will not pour herself back into me.
"David, please, sit with me." She pats the soft couch beside her. I look behind me at the door.
"What if someone comes in? How would that look at your husband’s funeral?" Appearances
are always important to Yasmin, but the strong words are what actually bends her will. She nods
her head accepting my decision.
"You're right. But sit here," she points to an armchair at her end of the room. I hesitate, but I
see no reason to deny her. I sit. I am not looking forward to a showdown with her. Today I am here
instead as the prophet and guardian of Mark's myth.

Yasmin is staring off into space, not talking, and I have nothing to say to her. As she
composes herself, I watch her beauty grow and begin to shine. It's as if from the swirling
maelstrom of grief she builds herself up, using her pain as a strong substructure, adorning it with
the beauty she's always possessed. Can beauty exist in the world without pain?
Must we walk, if not rush, to the precipice, fling ourselves on the brink of disaster in order to
feel the beauty of life? Do we need that visceral thrill of danger to feel? The art of self-destruction is
the only fodder for real art, Mark, told me once, over the smoldering bong and warming bottle of
Yukon Jack. He was older, wiser, a painter, dating my fantasy Persian girl. I was compelled to listen
to him then. Now, his words haunt me.
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Yasmin shifts in the couch, making herself comfortable. Freshman year I would pretend to be
asleep just to listen to Mark fuck her on the other side of the room, my sight blocked by our desk
hutches. I fell asleep to Yasmin's soft moans, imagining how hard and throaty they would be if it
were me with her instead of Mark. Over the next year, I secretly took photos of every sketch he
drew of her, every stroke of his brush on the canvas of her body. When he asked me to document
his studio, like those old pictures you see of Picasso or Matisse in their studios, surrounded by
dozens of works both complete and in progress, I readily agreed, so that I could openly look at my
Yasmin collection.
Mark was determined to be famous, to relaunch the cult of the painter, to drag
postmodernism outside and beat it to a bloody pulp. It's already senseless, he once proclaimed,
and now it should die in the gutter. I pictured his metaphor, the body of postmodernism like
Harrison Ford, cool as he aged, and still worshipped by nubile women and old maids alike. But
didn't Poe die in the gutter, I rebutted, unrecognized, unappreciated? Mark had no response
beyond throwing his hands in the air like Federman. Someday you will learn, he promised. Still, his
future biographer would require of photographs of his early work, the unrecognized genius in the
midst of creating and shaping his future, so I shot his studio and focused my lens on his Yasmins.

"What if I don't want to self-destruct?" I ask, perilously.

"The artist has no choice. He risks everything he has worked for if he lives beyond his natural
course. Look at Dali. A cartoon of himself when he died." We were listening to the Doors, some
bootleg on red vinyl Mark had bought in the Village our last time in New York. "Morrison got it
right. He lived as a symbol."
"He's not a cartoon? Self-indulgent fuck wasting talent and dying in his own piss? Talk about
cartoons."
"The good part of cartoons are just symbols. Morrison lived his life symbolically."
"How can you do that?"
"He did it. Not just a singer, not just a rock star, he became a symbol for decadence,
extravagance, excess."
"Archetypal, then."
"Come on, man, there's a program, an agenda. You do it or you don't- it's not like you're
going to study Jungian psychology first and then decide to live. You live first and then someone
labels you an archetype. After you're dead. They all die young, not fade away, not rust, not putter
into a fucking flaccid old age."
"So what? Anyone can do it. Big fucking deal. You can do it, I can do it. Bubba down the
fucking hall can do it.
"Then you do it. I challenge you." Mark sips his beer like Brando sipping an aperitif.
"You want me to be a symbol?"
"Come on, Joey, no. Don't be a symbol- live your life symbolically. Become an artist, grow
into this role."
"I told you before, I'm just a photographer. I shoot sports. How do I become an artist?"
"You create art. Don't document the ugliness of reality around you, shoot beauty. Hell, you
could shoot women for the rest of your life and be an awesome artist. That's what you should do-
carve yourself this little niche. Beautiful women, nude. You'll get more pussy than any rock star."
 Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp 10

Photo # 09 [Trout]

I am sitting in my car beside a trout stream on the third day of trout season in April. It is
completely overcast, not cold but rapidly cooling, not raining yet, but I can feel a downpour about
to start. That's the thing about being forty, you feel rain in the bones.
There are three or four cars scattered about, trout fishermen and women, real enthusiasts
wading with neoprene boots, the more casual fishers standing on the banks casting, reeling,
casting. I am on assignment, gathering troutfishing scenes for a book on trout fishing which
someone is writing. I don't even know who the author is, only that I am being paid decent money
for a combination of black & white and color shots. Like always, I am thinking of secondary
revenue streams, so I brainstorm some ideas while I wait, with a notebook before me- calendar,
poster, limited edition prints of the four trout of Central New York, the quadruplicity of brook,
brown, lake and rainbow. Of course, I could expand the series to include steelhead and salmon
and sell them in more shops, but for now I am only thinking of the four trout I can shoot here in
these local creeks. What would a diehard trout fisher, of which there are thousands in the area,
buy?
Meanwhile, I am waiting for two things- one, for someone to catch some fish, and two, for
dusk so I can shoot some atmospheric shots. I had been out Saturday morning, Opening Day, also
April Fool's Day, and shot dozens of the typical opening day scenes- kids with trout dangling from
stringers, awaiting mom's frying pan later that afternoon; meltswollen streams and waterfalls being
conquered by brave, lonely fishers; shots of dawn with silhouettes of rod, reel, arm, body. It had
been a great morning, and because I had collected those needed shots I could now spend my time
making interesting choices for the next two weeks until the collection was due to the publisher.
But before I can follow through with my ideas, the rain breaks, and all the fishers are
scampering into conversion vans, breaking down lightweight 10-foot poles and tossing them into
the trunks of their subcompact cars, packing up and leaving. Within 15 minutes, I am alone in the
rain, my windshield completely blurred by the falling rain, the insides beginning to fog. A wasted
afternoon, I decide to pack up and drive home.
I start the car and pull slowly forward. Even though all the fishermen have left, I practice the
etiquette of peace and silence. The fishing area is public, maintained by New York State. The
stream curls eastward and bends back slightly westward here, as it flows from south to north. The
road follows generally the course of the mutinous stream in a tight valley, crisscrossing it a
multitude of times with small bridges. It is essentially a smoothened version of the stream, flowing
with intermittent traffic. Here where I am on the driveway, the area between the stream and road is
shaped like a flattened football filled with grass and two wizened crabapples.
My favorite feature of the entire valley is the abandoned railway above the stream, 50 or 80
feet from the water, carved into the nearly vertical slope. At one time, I think I remember reading,
it was the longest private railway in the U.S., dedicated solely to taking passengers from the village
out to the Auburn RR spur at the north end of the valley. Whenever I drive through here on the way
home, I feel transported back in time, to the era of mills and railroads, and if the weather creates
cloudy, hazy conditions, and the light diminishes quickly, I go back in time ever farther, sightseeing
in some primordial time just after the mighty Laurentide ice sheet has retreated north.
My mind still full of the thought of a saber-toothed cat, I glance over at the stream and I am
startled to be gazing into the eye of a small waterbird. Great Blue Heron, I think, instantly, but the
evidence before me seems to contradict that assessment. A heron, for sure, the smallest I have ever
 Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp 11

seen in the wild, its sinuous neck completely absent in an accident of perspective between fluffed-
up chest and long beak, This heron, I am sure it is not a crane for the shape of a heron's beak, head
and neck is sleek, elongated, never rounded like a crane's, instead of being the blue of the sky or
of slate, is completely white with a black and white head. Against the gray greenblack of the fluidly
translucent water, it is startling in contrast, like a Matisse cutout of a heron pasted into a
photorealistic landscape background.
I brake, stopping completely, and instinctively push the car into park. without ever unlocking
my gaze from its one blackrimmed gold glassy eye. I reach for my camera on the passenger seat
while clicking the power window autoslide on my driver's door. It purrs down like a glass cascade,
silent but filled with purpose, and I notice now that the downpour has stopped, or is stopping and
only a few drops come in the open window. Like a Brancusi sculpture, this bird is unmoving,
frozen in the timespace continuum, halting pasts and presents while it apparently awaits with the
dignified repose of a nineteenth-century statesman the photographer's ready signal. With my
telephoto lens I begin shooting, autoadvance, and within a few seconds the bird has decided I am
not a threat and in a flash takes a stab into the water, coming up with a quickly-swallowed
crayfish. He proceeds to step gingerly along the shore until he was hidden behind the banks.

A few minutes later I'm driving through into town, thirty photos richer, I feel a nagging
hunger- I had skipped lunch- and decide to stop into Toma's for a bite. They are located on the
creek, a couple miles upstream of where I was parked earlier. I walk in only a few minutes after
opening, so the place is empty, bustling with servers and managers and bartenders making
preparations for a busy Monday. A lot of restaurants are closed Mondays, and perhaps even Toma's
is, but tonight is the basketball game, the championship, so there's a chance for a crowd, and with
a crowd comes activity.
I choose a spot in the bar near the rear corner, a tv above, far enough away from the door so
the cold wind won't blow in and disturb me, but not completely away from the bustle, the energy
of the place. The barmaid catches my eye as I sit and continues racking the last few glasses she
has. She's a good-looking woman, not too young, but not wrinkled and gray. In fact, if she weren't
working here, she's the exact kind of woman I'd expect to meet in here, somewhere between 25
and 35 years old, looking younger than her actual age, not tiny and thin like a runway model, but
having a few pounds to shed before she will be happy with her bikini. She finishes up and walks
over.
"Let me get a Guinness and a bar menu?" She nods, not saying anything and starts pouring
the pint. I watch the beer foaming into the glass, captivated by the cascading bubbles, so similar to
the effervescence of the stream earlier. Apparently the bar menus are not nearby, so she turns and
heads into the kitchen. I look around the room. It's decorated rather sparsely, not too many
prominent signs for beer or liquor, and the ones which are on the wall are classy, like an antique
Jameson's mirror. Interspersed throughout the space are paintings of flowers- violets blanketing a
creekbed beneath a stand of willows, a beautiful, nearly abstract painting of a pink tulip so close it
could be a series of any sensual curves.
My pint ready, the barmaid delivers it and my menu. I open my wallet and hand her a ten,
but she waves it away. "I'll start a tab if you're eating." She says.
"Ok, yeah. Let me get...." I open the cover, knowing I'm going to order a fish fry, I pretend to
check it. "You have a good fish fry?"
"Yes, we do."
 Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp 12

"Cool. Let me get one, extra tartar sauce on the side."

"Fries, slaw?" she asks as she writes the ticket.
"Of course, what good's a fish fry without chips? And slw too." I smile, feeling it a little. I like
how her bangs slide down across her brow, the distracted pinning of them back out of her face, the
slight smile she gives as it all happens. I like a woman who plays with her hair, the touching of
hair, tactile and sensual. I want to reach across the bar and pin it back for her behind her ear, to
stroke her cheek, to go on from there, but she's already turned toward the kitchen and I'm left with
my pint and ESPN.
Mark would have already known her name, have already talked about the angle of her neck
she would have in his painting of her, have discussed how the light refracted like a rainbow in her
eyes, all this before the Guinness finished being poured. Mark was like that, an impresario all the
way, attracting women without effort, flirting with minimal provocation, scoring with ease. Me, I
always needed some sort of connection first to get the woman interested. I could not just smile and
use "I'm an artist" to score women. I had to find out if she liked art, what kind, spiel off some
interesting anecdote, bring in five or ten contemporary allusions, that kind of thing. Unless she
showed overt interest, my route was meandering, never direct.
In the absence of the cute barmaid, my eyes follow the various other busy workers, noticing
interactions and routines in an abstract pattern. I am only interested in the various intersections,
when two people unexpectedly bump into each other, or near-miss, or a conspiratorial, gossipy
conversation in front of the coat rack, or a conspiratorial, flirty touch behind the cash stand, or, a
casual caress as waiter passes waitress. I am more interested in the interactions photographically
than personally or socially, so I don't give the staff's intentions any more thought than to quickly
map out interrelationships.
At the far end of the bar is an interesting turn, the lobby melds into the dining room and on
the wall is the humongous pink painting of abstractly shaded curving pink lines. My sense leads
me to expect it to be landscape in orientation, but it is vertical, the classic portrait size perhaps 36
by 64 inches. Next to it hangs the kind of stylishly printed white card one sees in museums and
galleries, no doubt offering sales information. On a wall across the opening to the dining room is
another large painting, purple violets and blue irises against a background of green sun-dappled
leaves. I intuit the form of the flowers since it's painted in extreme close-up, so that the curves of
the flowers are not so much shapes, but textures. I can feel the flower, velvety in a tactile sense, so
that my fingers are anticipating touching it, almost eating it. That's it, I can almost taste the flowers
on my lips, my tongue, like delicate flesh, a sensual tactility. The painter is definitely a woman, I
decide, because a man cannot immediately envision the synesthesia required to transpose a flower
and flesh.
The barmaid is coming, carrying my fingers in one hand, the dips in the other. I see her
dangling earrings, a brief sparkle of light, crescent moons of dull silver or shiny pewter, handmade
I believe, with an excellent Celtic-style design. They hang far enough below the lobes of her ears to
be noticeable, but not flashy. With her hair pulled back out of the way, they dangle like silver
apples to be plucked, but again, my inability to attract her interferes with the completion of the
image. She sets the food down workmanlike, no culinary flourish, obviously not engaged at all in
the idea of talking with me.
"Anything else I can get now?" She asks me with obvious obligation.
"No, but I was wondering about your earrings." Unconsciously, she reached up with a hand
to touch one, pendulating with the brush of a fingertip, a brief smile then none. "Are they, uh,
 Something About Flowers- work in progress- Michael Patrick Brewster @brew7vwp 13

handmade? They're too nice to be store-bought." It is just enough flirting to signal interest, but
innocuous enough for her to deflect easily. Her choice all the way.
"Oh, yes, thank you." A complete smile this time, and a lean with her elbows on the bar.
"June Smith makes them, you know," she makes a graceful sweep with her eyes, her hair, her neck,
her shoulder arm and hand. I keep my eyes on the swaying moon. "The artist who painted these
flowers."

Photo # 10 [Diversion]

"No, April, I haven't. I..." She hands me the glass of Jameson's, finally. I drink half in one
gulp, the cold of the ice cubes a shock against my lips. Involuntarily I watch her body.
"So you don't love June?" The look on her face is so much more than her age, more than
what, twenty? Twenty-two? How old would she be? A lot younger than 40, anyway. I drink some
more Jameson's and April takes the sound of the ice chinking against the tumbler glass bottom as
an answer. "Doesn't matter. I think she loves you. But, you're not going to wait for her anyway."
"April, I don't even know you, I have a nice friendship with your mother's friend, you
know..." I have no idea where I'm going with this, but I'm trying to divert her attention.
"Sex? That passes for friendship these days?" She walks back over to the Jameson's bottle,
picks it up and points it toward me. I nod. She walks over and pours a full tumbler. "Can we be
friends?" Before I can respond, she laughs. I laugh along with her.
"You're funny.” I say. “And to answer your question, it's not a matter of waiting for June to be
available. It's never that simple. She's married, has a family. I think I want that, and she's not the
one to provide me with it." I am not baiting this girl here in front of me, dangling some future
broken promise. I only want to divert the line of conversation, but as with streams and rivers, it is
not so easy to create diversions so I should do some preparatory work digging a new channel first.
"Anyway..." I walk over to the couch, motion for her to sit and think about the channel I will be
excavating in advance of a discussion about June, with June.
"How's that one poem go? April showers..?"
"I'm not named after the Chaucer. I'm named after the line in Eliot."
"I don't know that one..." The Jameson's is interfering with my ability to think, to revisit my
high school British Lit class and dredge up any poetry.