I hadn't actually paid much attention to my picture before, but I now began examining it more closely. It was of a scene in a forest and depicted some large tree trunks rising toward the sky. For the first time I noticed quite a number of things in the picture which I hadn't noticed before.

For example, a small group of children, who appeared to be Indians, were in a line weaving through the trees. I also noticed some carvings on one of the trees. Under the carvings was a fresh carving, in the process of being made, of a bat hanging upside down. A chisel being used to carve out the bat was poised in mid-air as if an invisible person were holding it. I somehow had the impression that a bat itself was making the carving of the bat.

The picture was about 2/3 of a meter high and about a half meter wide. I held the picture in my hands and noticed that part of the picture had been burnt on the left corner. I recalled that I myself had recently been practicing burning pictures for their effects on collages. The the burnt effect of the picture produced a certain effect which didn't hurt it, although I had thought it had hurt it at first glance.

About half way up the picture on the left side was a picture of a car and a truck. The car had been painted with such detail that it almost looked like a photograph. I then looked out a window and saw a car (exactly like the one in the picture) parked in an outside garage about 25 meters away. A truck was also sitting there which looked like the one in the picture. I could hardly believe my eyes.

I picked up a pair of binoculars to see more clearly and looked through them at the car. The detail was almost exactly like the picture.

A very pretty waitress (probably in her early 20s) walked up and seated us at a different table. I still had my picture and I began trying to read the name of the artist who had painted it. It looked like it was "Moivet" and appeared to be an obscure French painter whose work I hadn't looked at before. I thought so much symbolism was in this painting that I should probably look up some of his other works to see if they had as much symbolism.

Part of the picture which depicted the car and truck had come off from the rest of the picture and it appeared as if indeed a photograph of the automobiles had been attached to the rest of the painting. It had blended in so well before with the rest of the painting, it had been difficult to tell.

I spoke to the waitress in French, since I knew she spoke French, and I asked her if the picture was the same scene as the scene out the window. She didn't seem to understand me, so I picked up the picture, told her to come with me and walked back to where I had first been.

I asked her to sit down in the seat where I had been sitting and I pointed out the window to the scene outside. I had already begun to surmise that the photograph had indeed been taken of the scene outside and then attached to the painting. I was somewhat using my questions simply as an excuse to talk with the girl. I pointed to the picture and asked her in French if it was the same as the scene outside.

She couldn't seem to understand exactly what I was saying. I knelt down behind her and put my chin on her right shoulder, pressed my face against her soft face and pointed outside. I could also feel how soft the white sweater was she was wearing.

Looking outside, I noticed some other cars had pulled up which were partially blocking our vision. The car I wanted her to look at was yellow with green license plates. I said, "La segunda amarilla. La licencia grun."

I was trying to say in French "the second yellow car" and "the green license tags." I couldn't remember for sure whether "grun" was the French word for "green." It seemed as if "grun" might have been a German word.

The girl was soft and I was quite attracted to her. She was barefoot and her feet appeared to have become somewhat soiled from walking around the restaurant, but that didn't particularly bother me. I noticed some other men sitting around and thought they were probably becoming jealous of my being so close to her.

I said, "Wait a minute."

I walked over to the table, picked up the binoculars, handed them to her, and asked her to look through them, but I was beginning to think it really didn't make any difference. I had already achieved my purpose of getting close to her and it no longer mattered what she thought about the picture.

Copyright 2005 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com