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THE OPPOSITE OF INSPIRATION IS . . . EXPIRATION?
For a solid week, ever since the pep rally, I've been painting watercolors of trees that have been hit by lightning. I try to paint them so they are nearly dead, but not totally. Mr. Freeman doesn't say a word to me about them. He just raises his eyebrows. One picture is so dark you can barely see the tree at all.
We are all floundering. Ivy pulled “Clowns” as her assignment. She tells Mr. Freeman she hates clowns; a clown scared her when she was a little girl and it put her into therapy. Mr. Freeman says fear is a great place to begin art. Another girl whines that “Brain” is just too gross a subject for her.
She wants “Kittens” or “Rainbows.”
Mr. Freeman throws his hands in the air. “Enough! Please turn your attention to the bookshelves.”
We dutifully turn and stare. Books. This is art class. Why do we need books? “If you are stumped, you may take some time to study the masters.” He pulls out an armful. “Kahlo, Monet, O'Keeffe.
Pollock, Picasso, Dali. They did not complain about subject, they mined every subject for the root of its meaning. Of course, they didn't have a school board forcing them to paint with both hands tied behind their backs, they had patrons who understood the need to pay for basic things such as paper and paint. . .”
We groan. He's off on the school-board thing again. The school board has cut his supply budget, telling him to make do with the stuff left over from last year. No new paint, no extra paper. He'll rant for the rest of the period, forty-three minutes. The room is warm, filled with sun and paint fumes.
Three kids fall dead asleep, eye twitches, snores, and everything.
I stay awake. I take out a page of notebook paper and a pen and doodle a tree, my second-grade version. Hopeless. I crumple it into a ball and take out another sheet. How hard can it be to put a tree on a piece of paper? Two vertical lines for the trunk. Maybe some thick branches, a bunch of thinner branches, and plenty of leaves to hide the mistakes. I draw a horizontal line for the ground and a daisy popping up next to the tree. Somehow I don't think Mr. Freeman is going to find much emotion in it. I don't find any. He started out as such a cool teacher. Is he going to make us thrash around with this ridiculous assignment without helping us?
