Disguised As Artist

It's really hard for skinny guys to look cool in puffy winter coats. There's something about the profile I cut around this time of year that I really don't like. The bird-legs spoil the effect; not that I'm trying to impress, but it'd be nice to have a warm coat that I loved, and not this puffy aesthetic abomination.

Though I am warm.

And then there's the goofy winter hat I got in Yunnan that is the warmest, most awesome thing to sit on my head, though functional, makes me very self-conscious in public. People stare at the hat. It's not red, and it doesn't say, "Go Buckeyes!" and it makes me look like I'm about to go for a sleigh-ride in a Norman Rockwell painting.

I've actually got an identical problem with the goofy summer hat I acquired in the same province. It's a giant cowboy hat. There were two different styles circulating in the village; I started to go with the classic Western cowboy hat, but our guide nodded me toward the authentic one. This thing is a massive tower that says, "Hey look, guy in goofy hat!" wherever I go. I'm not brave enough to wear it, though I really love the way it keeps the sun off.

I did the art thing last night, went to some openings. I'm usually a champion eater at these things, loading up a towering plate of food and shoving my way through like I own the place. Last night however, a more cautious, almost birdlike behavior emerged. I nipped at the food table surgically, and my stomach was appalled at the weak offering: one mini-peanut butter cup, one sushi roll, one piece of broccoli, and what looked like about ten grains of rice. What was this? A growing apprehension?

Ah, the old ghosts. I was anxious about facing them, looking somewhere, anywhere for a friend, someone to back me up. But we all must face the music on our own, and that's how it was: these benchmark moments where you stare eye-to-eye with the past and say, "Ah.."

Don't blink.