i finally went to see the tezuka exhibition at the art gallery on wednesday night, after a good day of shifting bits of text around the page. balance, right?

all those tiny, perfect, original drawings — page after page, yellowed with age — of astroboy and kimba and the other creations of a forty year career. the brush marks of still-white paint, drawn over with corrections. it made me want to weep, or draw. either.

i was wilting and hungry halfway through, so i went down to the gallery cafe and ordered chai: no longer listed as “chai latte” on the menu, thank god, and no longer delivered in a picardie glass. it came in a fat little teapot; pretty good tea service for three bucks. the sun had gone by then, on late-opening wednesday, so i sat at the counter against the big window, feeling the evening chill come through the plate glass. and i had to draw it, this perfect teapot. the priapism, sadly, is all my fault.

at a home decor shop yesterday, as i flipped through my notebook for window measurements, the shopgirl pointed at my drawing. “that’s really good,” she said, “do you do art?”

“um, sort of,” i said. i told her about astroboy and how i was compelled to draw after.

“i used to do fine arts,” she said, “but then i realised that there’s no money in it, and i would prefer to do something for people who told me what to do, and then paid me. so now i’m studying design.”

“that is so weird,” i said, “because i studied design, and every now and again, i think that i should be doing art, like drawing or printmaking.”

we talked about art schools. she gave me a price on roller blinds. it’s always PMS368 on the other side.