After some effort...

After some effort, my move to Brooklyn seems to be progressing:



I'm reminded of the joke about the chicken and the Barnes and Noble store. To wit: what did the chicken say when he found himself in a Barnes and Noble?

Anyway, enough progress was made for me to scoop up my youngest daughter and go to Lincoln Center to see the next-to-last day's performance of Swan Lake by the ABT. Wow, what a sumptuous spectacle that was. Really, just stunningly beautiful. And around the middle of the fourth act, just when I was feeling a great kinship with my boy, Eddie Degas, the prima ballerina, a woman named Michelle Wiles, tripped right in the middle of her solo and fell smack down on the stage.

And I'm not talking about missing a step and fluttering off in some unexpected direction, ballerina-like. I'm talking about hitting the canvas like something out of the World Wrestling Foundation. Whammo!

Anyway, Ms. Wiles, showing a significant level of pluck, popped back up and continued her solo in a more than satisfactory manner. And at the end, I am telling you, the place went bananas.

Which brings me back to painting. I can't, for the life of me, get the title Ballerina with Banana out of my mind. Perhaps when I'm done with the cheerleaders.

This would, of course, be something by Eddie D:



This would, of course, be titled Painter with Banana:



And this, I want to tell, is the beginning of Cheerleader with Banana:



I mean, you have to start somewhere.

But the real question is: Can you feel it? The answer, at least on this end, is: Yes...I can feel it. I can feel this painting coming the way, when you are bodysurfing, you feel the pull of a big wave before you actually see it. It's the way all my paintings come at me. First I come up with an idea, then a name that makes me giggle, then I prattle on about it for a couple of weeks, biding time until I start to feel the pull of the water.

Then the wave comes.

I could not be more excited. I might actually make my July 4th deadline.