Reality is perceived through your own body
Vimalakirti Sutra 

One time, with E 14, we ate blueberry-cream-cake that was off. 

Starbucks, Boulevard Montparnasse, Spring 2006. A clochard lets down his trousers  rubs his ass against the window and does a number 2. I remember his blue beard and  thinking This is really happening and how two years earlier with L at this film festival  near the Champs-Élysées we had seen a short film from Belgium showing a similar  scene and how we both got up and left the theatre. We found each other standing  outside. As usual we did not have seats next to each other. At home, L cooked chai.  With soy milk. We sat down cross-legged on the glass floor, which was also the ceiling  of the studio I had rented on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and listened to songs by  The Innocence Mission. I wonder why they are showing things like that? L  said. Maybe because that’s a reality today, I said. It’s good to be here, he said and  smiled. We both smiled. 

I came here with him on our first date, before the Spider-Man 2 movie, we ordered plain  rice & Malai Kofta. to share. I remember this now because she sees one of the waiters  carrying a big bottle of Kingfisher to one of the tables. You never drink? he had asked  and I had said No. Then I did my thing, spoke of Veuve Clicquot as the only possible  exception, went as far as to specify how eating strawberries brings out the taste of the  champagne more. Stealing? Appropriated from Pretty Woman, taken out of Richard  Gere’s mouth. The one time I remember my mother saying something to my face that  didn’t hurt was at the movies. You are a bit like her. The breakfast scene: Julia, Richard  & lots of empty chairs, Julia wearing a cotton white oversized bathrobe, the table is long,  the table is rectangular. Richard is sitting where father sat, father never read The Wall  Street Journal, Julia flutters her wings, a croissant in her right hand for balance, she  eventually sits, not on a chair, on a porcelain plate very close to The Wall Street Journal.

The main attraction of a penthouse is to have complete privacy from any overheard  disturbance. E 17 is surrounded by sky and a terrace only. No plants. No children. No  swings. 

She watches The Hours on DVD. I saw it first in a theatre in Bangkok, I had to stand up  for the national anthem, paying homage to the king. For some reason I fled the theatre  before the credits started running. This time she lies on my sofa and listens to the commentary made by the three actresses. How art affects life. That every woman  expresses art or the hunger for perfection differently. 

WRITING 

COOKING 

GIVING A PARTY 

I STOPPED LANGUAGE WHEN I WAS WITH HIM.  

My language not unlike his string of lights had been taped against doors, the fridge and  living roomwalls of E 17. I had entrusted him with the house key before leaving India for Paris to renew my visa. Over the phone he kept repeating L’s name and that he had  found a photograph with a man in it. E 17 was alive when I returned. For some reason,  Sushila hadn't cleared the garbage. Blue plastic bags tied together with yellow cotton  thread filled with empty baby bottles of Bagpiper Whiskey. abandoned babies  embracing, 

He was an alcoholic & suicidal, a liar, a thief, an avoider. depressed. weak. beautiful. no  education. beautiful. violent when drunk. beautiful. people pleaser. coward. beautiful. 10  years later, someone will describe him as a ‘Con Artist’. 

What compells someone to fall for a Con Artist? 

CAN ARTISTS BE COWARDS? 

John Hamm described Don Draper as a coward. 

James Baldwin wrote “The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover.  If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.” 

Can you find the matching pair of monsters? 

She buys a memory game. She can play it solo. It is an excellent game for developing  concentration skills and memory skills. It contains 72 monsters. She will practice  finding pairs of matching monsters.

In an homage to my beautiful Con Artist (lover)(boyfriend)(coward) (king)(puppy dog), I fired all the memories I had collected on my travels: the peace festival in Ubud after the terrorist attacks, bombed cars in the streets of Kuta; D, the photo journalist from America (we had sex in the freshly painted bathroom of an orange colored beach house and became cornflower-blue); the Balinese family, the night train from Bangkok, a ferry to Koh Pha-Ngan. Young American princes: J, the Wall Street millionaire, who lost all his money; M, the folk singer, who travels cheap, his parents reside on Madison Avenue; west-coast-M, the didge player, who hates his parents therefore takes their money; me, after a full moon party, without shoes. 

I tore up all the photographs. I got rid of my photo albums. I took my poems off the  wall. He couldn’t handle my art, mistook it for reality. I couldn’t handle him. I wanted  to be as pure as he was, if that meant erasing content [my education, for example], if  that meant living without ambition, if that meant living without lipstick, and forgetting  who I was, if that meant leaving E17, 

Why don’t you like my house ?

I like, okay! But not in daytime, too much light.

Con Artist stands for confidence artist. 

She LOVEbelieved his lies.

Late 19th century (originally US): abbreviation of confidence, as in confidence trick.

Conning = something that emerges from living in society
[B Madow]
[Osho]
[E14]
[Summer 2019: Someone describes the president of the USA as a Con Artist.]

Con artists are helping society to become more conscious. 

Conning is their way of expressing their art, their hunger for perfection a better world.