crabs

today i went to a class on lucian freud.  one of his models, the benefits supervisor, spoke in an interview.  she said that she thought she looked, in his pictures, like a 'fat crab'.  it made me laugh.  partly because i realised that she, the model, was a real woman.  i had never really considered that the models in his paintings could be anything other than strange bodies. somehow i didn't conceive of them as real people with clothes and opinions. opinions on versions of themselves that are, actually, not them.

when i am at home, and worn out, i go to the south bank by waterloo bridge.  i like to sit on a bench by the river and watch the lights merge and separate on the water until i feel that i am no longer myself but a trembling light that dances and merges with them.  - i would like to be there.

tonight i reread it and i think that maybe the tragedy of romeo and juliet stems from the impossibility of reconciling the lovers' desire to flee together into the darkness with the audience's desire to have the lovers forever in view.  the treachery of the stage.