do you have anything you want me to photograph?  i asked her.  i take those pictures with her phone.

i thought i'd have you take some pictures of me holding my paintings.

oh, ok.

i go to the restroom, and she positions her wicker chair and picks out some paintings.  i get her phone and line up the shot so it's just her and the painting with white wicker chair and white wall.  as soon as i point the camera at her she gets like a super sour look on her face.  i mention it.  she gets a progression of weird expressions ranging from sure weird uncomfortable smile to kayser soze wandering eyes to mild spanish inquisition right back to sour puss with a soupcon of tex avery's cartoon dog.  i have rarely seen that much expression range in such a compressed period of time, and yet, nothing useable.

i start making noises and flapping my arms until she smiles.  then move the camera into place (and i mean quick) and she's right back.  can you possibly stay amused longer?  i ask.

she changes to a picture of venice.  i want to go back to venice, she says.

tell me about venice, i say, hoping it will soften her expression.

i want to go back, she says, because that bitch i went with totally monopolized everything and i didn't get to see anything. 

ok, look, i say, the point is to tell me about venice, get all misty eyed about it, maybe improve your expression, not to make it worse.

you're taking the pictures, she says, if you can't get good ones it's your fault.  [she's kind of joking]

oh honey, i grew up with you, i know it's my fault.  [i'm kind of joking too, kind of]

i want to go to the small shops that aren't in the town square,  barbara would only lt me go to the shops in the square...

were there any gondoliers?  i ask, what were they like.

and then she starts talking about muscle-y guys posing and showing their muscles.

mission accomplished.

maybe it was earlier.  i was telling her i had heard someone talking about michaelangelo.  she said she had always been fascinated by the fact that he could draw a perfect circl free-hand.  and i was like, did he do that too?  because in art history the story was that giotto was the man who could draw a free-hand circle.  it was early renaissance, geometry and perspective were just coming to the party.  michaelangelo painted the sistine chapel, sure, but he didn't want to.  what he felt was his greatness was to free the figures from the block of stone.  i looked it up:  did michaelanglo draw a perfect circle?  googl came back giotto drew a perfect circle...

well, you know sometimes people say things and they don't know what they're talking about.

yes yes, but that wasn't the point, i say.

what was the point?

the point is that i remember that from what like 30 years ago art history when i haven't thought about it since.

was that high school?  that's more like 40 years--  30 years ago you were 23.

24.  

so you've got a fabulous memory.

no, i don't.  and that's not the point either.  the point is.  that art history from high school just stuck in a way that almost nothing else has for me and i thought it was kind of remarkable.