ManicDDaily

Feeling both happy and sad tonight:  happy because I went to a large art store early this evening – Pearl Paint – a large art store.  There is nothing like going to a large art store in a self-justifying, tax-deducting, frame of mind for delivering a certain wondrous satisfaction.  Forget about the visuals, though those are pretty great (nearly every imaginable  tint displayed in nearly every conceivable medium)==simply enjoy the smells–the paper, the graphite, the charcoal, the slightly musty cinderblocks–

Then, I was taken out to dinner by a wonderful friend.  There is nothing like a really good Frenchified restaurant for making you feel as delicious as the food–yes, a lot of the other customers look slightly bored and eminently self-satisfied, and at least 65%, or more, of the women are dressed entirely in black (it’s New York!  It’s Soho!  Who cares that it’s 90 degrees) but hey! you’re in navy!  And you’re not bored at all!  And the wine was really quite good, not to mention the frise salad…

What makes me sad, of course, is my heightened sense, at the moment at least, that this is a world in which people die before they are ready, that they are swept away from the wine and the frise and the beautiful multi-aquamarine pencils.    It’s very hard for me to get this out of my head at the moment.  I am quite sure that I will get it out of my head.  Humans – American humans especially – have evolved for that.  But it’s sticking with me for now, like a perverse oatmeal next to my ribs, a knowledge that’s probably useful, still uncomfortable.

What to do about it?  Maybe be more vegetarian?  (As in not trying not to cause extra deaths yourself.)  That sounds doable but a bit superficial.

Maybe the answer is to be more grateful, more alive.  To be thankful, for example, that my host let me steal french fries off his plate.  At least until he rotated it slightly so the french fries were on the far side.

(Hey, did he actually do that?)

Hmmm…..