Yesterday afternoon I visited Artery for the first time. Arvin gave me a tour of the ground and upper floor spaces. I met one of the young artists on exhibit for two weeks. She is a student of University of the Philippines, as the other three artists also are. She was sitting in the foyer at the top of the stairs, waiting for visitors and friends to come see her works.

This afternoon I saw the same galleries from our front balcony. (Artery and our house have full-length windows.) The young artist was again in the foyer.

Should I ever meet that young woman again, I must remember to tell her, "I know the feeling."

The same thing used to happen to me whenever I had works on exhibit or was sitting in a book store during a launch. Sometimes there were hordes of people, sometimes there were only a few, sometimes there was no one. It is an uncanny feeling--it is like being your own spirit sitting beside your coffin in a funeral parlor.

I even used to tell myself that the people who come to my exhibits and launches are the same people who will come to my funeral wake after I die.