ELI  DINER   
painting - printmaking

You are fascinated by the advertising signs.

Gigantic billboards showing you all you can ever desire.

Everyone there is so beautiful - truly beautiful - and if you bathe and dress, perfume yourself and drink like them (they never eat)  you will look alike.

 

And maybe

in a moment of magic I may manage to absorb a bit of this Hollywoodean beauty,

that never ages or perishes, gets fat or wrinkled,

like any synthetic material from a good vintage.

 

A man stands naked in front of mirror and an easel, a bit fat, a bit old, observing and feeling - this is also erotic,

Erotic despite it all.

 

And I take a piece of charcoal and draw, time and again,

pressing and drawing and smearing,

erasing and touching and drawing once again,

with my hand and fingers and elbow, until the charcoal enter the paper

and merges therewith.

 

Once in a while you return to the mirror, to the charcoal and the paper,

working and watching how the body dimensions

or some facial features and body parts grow beyond their normal size,

acquiring the proportions and texture of those billboards

in black and white,

modest yet certain of this belly and this wrinkle,

my shortsightedness and my semitic nose

right to exist for.

​

E.D.

December 1994