It’s one of the diseases that pleases!

My father had a car with the brand name of Barracuda; it was made in 1966. I remember that the rear top of the car was formed by a huge, glass dome that made the car an efficient oven during the day. When I laid under the cupola on a starry night, the automobile became a serviceable spaceship.

Dr. Hayes gave me a sample of his barracuda; it tasted fishy, like some sort of sea creature.

The promotions were for two different women, one from New York and one from San Francisco. I feel a bit sorry for the San Francisco Laurie Anderson; it’s most unfortunate that she has the same name as her famous counterpart. I suppose the name is the female equivalent of Robert Smith ...

It seems like the obvious solution—if there is a problem, of course—is one I came up with decades ago: additional data provides disambiguation. In this case, the New York artist might use her middle name, so if I saw a Laurie Phillips Anderson poster I’d know which Laurie Anderson was performing.

I use my middle name as a tip of the epithetic hat to Glenn Albert Rinehart, my late father. I also do it to avoid being confused with a hundred other David Rineharts.

I’m overthinking this non-problem. I’m sure most of the Laurie Andersons in the world are quite satisfied with their name. And I wasn’t at all confused about the today’s two Laurie Andersons; it’s probably been decades since the east coast model used a hand-lettered poster.

I decided to photograph the absurd installation, so I unpacked my backpack to reach the camera stowed conveniently under everything else. As I fumbled with the camera, battery, lens, light meter, et cetera, a man came in, took one look at the urinal, then proceeded to urinate in the sink. After he left, another man came in and reached the same logical conclusion.

If my studio was at 1890 Bryant Street, I might designate one sink for personal hygiene and the other for urination. Fortunately, my studio is in a building built in a more sensible era, at least when it comes to urination.

The woman in the hallway in front of me kept the fingers of her right hand against the wall, and brushed them against the surface of the alleged art as she walked. She didn’t seem to be conscious of what she was doing, and treated textured paintings the same as panes of glass. Most curious.

I couldn’t figure out what she was doing, or why. She didn’t seem to be drunk, although that’s always a possibility. She may have been a bit insane, but who isn’t? I guess she was simply demonstrating more creativity in experiencing the pieces than was evident in the works themselves.

Some combination of heat and dehydration led me to become interested in the miserable little plants clinging to life in the dry sand. As a pulled out my camera, I briefly meditated on Alfred Barr’s unanswered and perhaps unanswerable question, “Why do all photographers have to photograph bushes?” My love of tedium can’t be ignored, but that’s not even close to a universal explanation.

I chose thirty-six photographs for nostalgic reasons; that’s the number on one roll of Leica film and on three rolls of Hasselblad film. I haven’t used film in a decade, but the number thirty-six still has a certain resonance.

And then it happened. In a moment of aesthetic weakness, I failed to demonstrate the courage inherent in my lack of convictions. Specifically, I gave into the temptation to run the tedious images through a computer filter. As a result, Thirty-Six Modest Shrubberies Observed About Decker Island ended up looking like someone made after their first drunken encounter with a computer graphics program.

To conclude with a possibly relevant aside, let the record show I was sober during the entire shrubbery debacle. Perhaps that should tell me something, but I have no idea what it is.