Most every week, I play guitars with my buddy Ugo and a rotating cast of cats at the osteria ai Preti. It's a pretty historic Verona joint on the University side of the river, traditionally a hangout for leftists and students and with the usual scattering of grizzled wine drunks nursing their bianchini as the thin fingers of late morning light creep in through the bar windows.

The manager is Claudio, a real madman. He's always busting my balls for being American but you can tell he digs me; we dig each other. Once I heard him sing "he's a poet, he's a picker" by Kris Kristofferson in heavily accented but nearly perfect English, banging away on an out-of-tune classical guitar. He says he loves the way I sing Fabrizio.

Claudio's always kidding me about Obama, how Obama's paying my way here in Italy. "Obama ti ha pagato la spesa, la bolletta della luce, le scarpe, la birra!" ("Obama paid for your groceries, the light bill, your shoes and your beer!) The list of things Obama pays for changes each time we see each other. Sometimes Ugo and I stay late with Claudio and Piero the bartender after all the ragazzi are gone and I feel like a cool and favored cat in this far-off reality.

So I've been giving Claudio my cards for a couple of years now and he's always telling me I should have an art show at the osteria. I've been resisting, not much interested in spending a ton of money and burning myself out, but I figured this year, since I've got some new stuff in the works, I could hook it up.

All October and into November I'm stressing out, trying to juggle teaching thirty lessons a week and drawing. There's a fair amount of wall space to fill. Of course I get myself into trouble with ambitious ideas that chew up more time than I'd imagined. There's a good few pre-dawn sessions which take me back to the C'Ville days when I used to do that all the time.

I'm going to show pages from my new comic about Mom, the two big pieces from Amore, Dove Sei?, some Tanguy Houseplants, the full-color paintings I did of Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and Cheney, some new, more conceptual stuff as well. Should be a good spread.

Lawren and Phoebe will do the food, Ugo, Luca, and Luca's brother Umberto will join us for a bit of music. The opening is Monday, November 23. Lawren helps me a ton, in a hundred ways, with aesthetic suggestions, framing ideas, with the hanging itself. We get everything up on Sunday, all in good order.

Of course, I have to work all day Monday, totally ragged out after several days in a row of non-stop effort and strange hours. By the time I make the show, around nine PM, I am spent. There's actually a big crowd. Tomaso Cinti emailed everyone on his Onirica list and of course Phoebe, the Mayor of Verona, got her friends to turn out. My tiny fan base of osteria ragazzi are there too, so it's raucous and gratifying, more or less.

We hang until the wee hours and I finish off the night with a grappa, infuriating L. who throws the cell phone at me in the street and storms off. Can't say as I blame her. I've been pretty withdrawn and at loose ends lately. Productive sure, but it can't be easy for her living with me these days.

I'm just terminally sad, I guess. Everything I do I'm doing for my Mom, but I'm not sure I have the same gusto any more. Doesn't mean I can't be inspired, can't be effective as an artist. It's just that I'm always getting stopped in my tracks by this sadness, this wan sense of futility.

OK, my show was fun, but what do I get for it? And why am I striving in this seemingly futile effort to pay my bills by means of my talents? This was all Mom wanted for me and she never got to see it happen. She would probably have known what a let-down all this is, how I find myself showing art in a bar, selling little, complimented by everyone but still unknown and unsupported.

Thanks anyway, Claudio-you're a good man. Sadly, Obama didn't pay for the framing- I did.