(no subject)

pixel is visiting this weekend. It's time for Artscape, and more particularly the Artscape Art Car Parade, and so sometime in the middle of last night Pixel and a couple of his friends snuck into our apartment and fell asleep on the couch, the floor, and the guest bed.

I had asked to go along for the parade, although (to be honest) I wasn't entirely sure why I wanted to. I suppose it seemed like one good way of spending time with Pixel. So this morning I dropped my car off at Camden Yards and rode over to the American Visionary Art Museum in The Cat, Pix's artcar. They had the street alongside the museum blocked off, but as soon as they saw us they hastened to take the barrier down and let us in. There were a lot of artcars there, ranging from your basic painted car with stuff glued on it to an enormous, fluffy poodle. (Don't ask.) We wandered up and down for a while, looking at the cars and talking to people. One particularly amazing car was completely covered, top to bottom, with bottles (mostly in that amazing cobalt blue glass) and broken china. Pixel spent a fair amount of time trying to convince people that this thing would never make it through the parade, and was apt to instead leave a trail of broken glass behind it for other cars to drive over. He was much-listened-to - he seems to be a big guy in this community, which is sort of a weird concept for someone who's known him since he was a hyperactive nineteen year old.

Then it was time to caravan over to Artscape, so we cranked up music from the Muppet Movie on the CD player and joined the procession. There were a few folks down by the museum who were there on purpose to watch the artcar caravan, but once we hit downtown we were catching people by pure surprise. I loved watching the reactions of people on the street - the delight, the bafflement, the slackjawed wonder. Artcars make people's faces light up, and it was a lot of fun being part of that - even though I'd had nothing at all to do with the construction or decoration of the car. I perfected my pageant wave, and Pixel and I sang through "Movin' Right Along" a half-dozen times or so.

We assembled outside of Artscape and drove through the festival at a crawl. Pixel sat halfway out of the car, driving with one hand and one foot. I kind of wanted to do the same, but wasn't completely sure of my climbing-out-of-car-window skills, so I stayed where I was and kept working the pageant wave, occasionally making eye contact with Pix through the caulked-shut sun roof and grinning like a fool. Every time we stopped, or even slowed, people would cluster alongside us trying to read the car. "Is this your car?" And I would point at Pixel, in his "No Comment" shirt, and they'd shake their heads in amazement.

I'm having a hard time conveying just how fun this all was. I think I was getting high off all the people - the ones in a festival mood, looking to be delighted, and the ones who were just going about their business shopping or sitting on their front steps smoking, when suddenly they were unexpectedly faced with whimsy. It was fun to be part of it all, fun to be with Pixel, just goofing off, fun to be part of something that got such reactions. Fun to be with people who spent so much time figuring out how to amaze and delight.