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Dog Beach at low tide
Saturday, August 28 1999
Ah, it was to be a day for kicking back and relaxing. Even the thankless slavedrivers of my workplace know that at a certain point workers need a weekend or else they go postal, undoing all the capitalist gains won by having pushed them so hard.
In the morning, Kim and I were watching another workplace perk videotape, As Good as it Gets. (Not unexpectedly, I found I could relate to the cranky old protagonist played by Jack Nicholson.) Towards the end of the flick, for whatever reason, I was suddenly inspired to paint a picture. I ran off and grabbed a 24 inch by 48 inch piece of fine-grained particle board I'd been saving in my computer room and commenced to doodling in black acrylic with a large cheap brush. Before long I'd created a larger-than life face crammed into the top of an emerging composition that I eventually balanced with a begging hand. Though at first I had my doubts that the painting was ever going to be any good, Kim said enough encouraging things to keep me going.
When I paint a picture, there's often a point after which the painting seems to be doing all the important (if hard to define) things that it needs to be doing. This point can come minutes into my work or it can never come at all. But after that point, it's nearly effortless for me to continue working on it; the painting almost seems to be painting itself. That point, that "sweet spot," had come for my newest painting by nightfall. It's always nice to discover there are still some good paintings left in me.
While Kim was off at work, I took Sophie and a boogie board down to Dog Beach. I was thinking about maybe doing some stereotypical Southern California recreation. But the ocean water was still rather cold, even at this late stage of the season. Furthermore, I kept worrying about Sophie getting lost or in trouble as she ran about the beach and through the shallow waters of low tide. She enjoyed interacting with the other dogs for a time, but after she'd had her exercise and pissed out all her pee, all she really wanted to do was hang out with me.
Among the various people and dogs, there was an annoying little eight year old blond girl. Extremely agitated by far too much Captain Crunch and the proximity of so many jubilant dogs, she was prancing around on her hands and knees barking like a dog. For some reason she took an unusual and disconcerting interest in Sophie.
South of Dog Beach there was a rock and roll band set up on the sand playing fairly quietly. They sounded a lot like Bad Religion. If Sophie had suddenly turned into a six pack of beer, I would have hung out and listened for awhile.
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