Man in Cafe

If someone asked me to paint my life on a canvas for them- they’d find a man sitting outside a cafe staring into the abyss. He’d probably live somewhere above the sound of ceramics colliding with the sink and afternoon chatter that meshed together into a soothing ambience. It would be his idea of an ocean sound; something to both wake up to and go to sleep that he could rely upon like the tides coming in and going out. He’d have a one bedroom “flat,” and they’d call it a flat because he’d probably live in London. Or maybe he’d return to Tokyo and it would a similar setting, just more neon. Handing over the canvas to the person who asked, if they knew me even in the slightest, they’d nod and say “Yep, that’s you.” The details wouldn’t really matter really. They’d just know that from that one picture, they could paint the rest if they so wished. Perhaps the little white card just underneath the canvas would say something like, “Man in cafe in cityscape 2012 Oil.” Say I was to bet on my life being an image for anyone to identify me with, I’d push in my life sayings- the whole $4.12. The point being, a portrait of my life so easily identifiable with who I was and where I was going could not be so starkly different than the picture that is today. I’m not saying we sit within a painting our whole lives, but if we did, I’d embarrassingly had been living in the wrong one.