lady (as is)

today at my favorite thrift store (sacks thrift avenue) i found this lady. as soon as i saw her i knew i wanted her to be one of my found relatives. as a bonus, the frame the picture came in was cracked, and so the ladies at sacks had affixed one of their cautionary "as is" stickers. in the past i have bought objects there just for the 'as is' stickers, the most famous being the ceramic orange i bought there years ago which bore a sticker that read "apple as is, $.50. i loved that orange so much because it had been labeled to suggest it was some kind of inferior apple. i brought it to a poetry reading i did so i could tell the story as a kind of preface to something i was reading. the woman emceeing that night was really boisterous and obnoxious and when i was finished reading she was trying to hurry me off the stage, and as i was gathering up my stuff she said "don't forget your orange" and rolled it off the chair it had been sitting in onstage. it rolled across the stage and over the edge and then shattered on the floor. i will never forget the collective gasp that the audience let out. after all i had only told them ten minutes before that it was one of my most beloved and cherished objects. but even though i lost the orange that night, in another way i think it really found kind of value it could have never achieved if i had not brought it that night.

maybe when i go to new york i'll bring lady asis.