Not necessarily in that order.
The more balanced and un-frustrated I get, the better I have my anger under control. Nevertheless, when a co-worker woke me up at 5 AM Saturday or was it Sunday morning, then hung up without what I considered sufficient apology or self-identification (I recognized his voice) for pressing the wrong button on his cellphone, my black heart immediately decided to break his neck and drop him down the elevator shaft at work to make it look like an accident. Just like that, the plan was hatched fully formed. Only afterwards did I feel sorry for him for having to work at that ungodly hour. When I told that to my wife, she suggested he just wanted people to feel sorry for him, and had probably called all our co-workers doing that.
The harp transport grows more complicated. It looks like we leave as planned this Friday night, take the train (complete with car) to the other end of Austria and drive from there, refreshed, the following morning. We already bought a toll sticker to use the Swiss freeway; then we found out that going via non-EU member Switzerland would cause considerable customs problems, requiring documentation that is hard for us to get on such short notice. So instead, we’re going via Germany, it seems, which is 100 km longer but in addition to eliminating the customs documentation problem as we can stay in the EU the whole time, also skirts the Alps rather than going straight through them. Which is good, as it is starting to snow here. No telling what the weather will be like at the end of the week, but I have to think this is a better solution.
We’ll see.
What else, creativity. I painted two pictures this weekend that I’d been carrying around in my body for a while. I say two pictures, actually a diptych. And, I say “I painted” when actually the brush painted them. Or something else. Not me. My mind was blank the whole time. My hands squeezed paints out of tubes, mixed in turpentine and linseed oil, devoid of thought.
I like how they turned out – half abstract half not. Everything different than expected – color, form.
gosh. breaking your colleague’s neck is insufficient punishment – you should just do the same thing to him! retaliate!
Also, Alpha says it would be selfish of me to break his neck. She wants to “strangle him with a thin wire” first.
To make calligraphy is to practice zazen. So when you are working on calligraphy, if someone says, ‘Please have a cup of tea,’ and you answer, ‘No, I am making calligraphy!’ then your calligraphy will say, ‘No, no!’ You cannot fool yourself.—Shunryu Suzuki.
That seemed to me to be about why the paintings worked.