dueling artists

Salvador observed in direct sunlight an impatient man at the next table blow off the waiter with a solitaire backhand wave. On the next clean white canvas of the sketchbook he furiously drew in black a mans giant head with matted hair being swept out to sea riding a wave on the back of a hand. He flipped the sketch and shut his eyes to a blank page, but Dalí's eyes were forever open. It would've been torture to another man.

His companion, a hungry artist twice as young, sketched a man in solitude lunching at a cobblestone outdoor diner. He payed attention to detail with the patterned cobblestone and the pronounced pristine crease in the diner's pants. When he was finished drawing he signed a name nobody knew at the bottom in handwriting no one could decipher, then nudged the man with closed eyelids.

"That is splendid, señor"! Salvador lied. "You captured his chins"! That part he truly loved. He would file those trailing chins away and use them in his next sculpture. In a flash, he gathered up his camera from the black case under his chair and snapped one shot of a large woman's shadow strolling slowly across the way carrying a basket in her right hand. Her broad shadow gave him ideas for his next creation, and he wondered if the hand-basket she carried might be full of Hell.

"May I see yours, señor"?
Dalí feigned horror. "No"! He leaned in his chair, camera on his lap and pretended to look away in thought. The young artist rose quietly, slipped on his jacket, fetched his pad and pencils. "I bid you farewell, mi amigo", he laughed, chuckling at this familiar song and dance. Salvador watched his friend walk away until he was out of sight. He called the young man's name under his breath and softly begged for his return.

Dalí opened his eyelids in an unknown time, leaving his possessions behind to search for new shadows.

Drawing Hands,1948
by M. C. Escher