Intersections

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this is a painting that no longer exists.

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I got up and went to work and came back home sick after only two hours. I have some kind of cough. 

It brings me to my knees.

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My wife is obsessive compulsive, like me. But different. She does art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Is it art yet? Let's do it some more and see if it is. 

She takes something and makes it art. And then she puts some art on it again. And then once more. Or twice maybe. 

Over and over and over.

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She is knitting socks of late. Intricate and mysterious and warm and colorful and vibrant and, yes, odd.

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I am instant gratification man when it comes to art. Or almost anything. Give it to me now. 

There. It's art. 

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Next!  

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I watched Tom Hanks in Castaway again last week. There is this moment, right before the plane he is on smashes into the middle of the vast Pacific ocean, where Mr. Hanks is in the airplane lavatory, trying to splash some water on his face in the tiny stainless steel sink. He pats the water off his face and then holds up his thumb, which sports a band-aid.

Slowly, grimacing, he peels it off and stares at the injured thumb.

In the blink of an eye he will be smashed up into the overhead, then flung around in the belly of the plane, then smashed into the sea, nearly drowned, nearly eaten by the screaming turbine of the wing-mounted engine, and then cast adrift in a tiny, leaking life raft in mountainous seas in the middle of a storm in the middle of the night in the middle of nothing.

After that, he doesn't think about his thumb any more.

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It's all about perspective.

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If my life lacks sufficient stark terror, I tend to obsess over my little injured thumb.

"Ooooh. It hurts."

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