I'm beginning to appreciate the woman in the next building who posts all the
stupid affirmations. Yes, they're always stupid, but they do get me thinking.
(Though I doubt that's her intent.) Today's saying clearly owes a debt to one I
love, from Auntie Mame: "Life is a banquet, and most poor sons of bitches
are starving to death!" Now, that one I can sink my teeth into (sorry). But
today's UnThought of the Day doesn't have nearly the implcations of endless
choice: "Life is a great big canvas. Throw as much paint onto it as you
can!"
Well, yeah, if you want your life to turn out like something by
Jackson Pollock. I suspect quite a few of us don't, though certainly we all have
Pollock-y days. And Calder days, too, where everything is just barely balanced and
one more weight would upset the whole thing. But overall, some of us shape our
lives as we want, while some do fling random paint.
href="http://mechaieh.diaryland.com">Mechaieh, who has always struck me as
living a very carefully constructed life, would be a Monet -- all the colors make
shimmering sense when you look at them together. Some lives are murky and muddy,
like Goya (or maybe I don't mean Goya; Sister Wendy I'm not). It's tempting to
call SwooP a Titian and Baf a
Cassatt, but those are just superficial -- I don't know either artist (or either
person) well enough to know if that works on other levels. Though I suspect
href="http://weetabix.diaryland.com">Weeabix may really be a Rubens, but
again, I'm speaking from ignorance. I've definitely met a few Dalis, which can be
kind of scary in a real person.
I'm not sure what my 'painting'
would be like, but I think it would be representational, have colors ranging from
rich jewel tones to iced pastels, and lots of fine detail and visual jokes to
search for. I realize I've just described myself as a Where's Waldo picture. Maybe
instead I could be that painting -- who's it by? I know it's very famous -- that
shows a room whose walls and ceiling are hung thick with other framed paintings.
In fact, I seem to remember seeing a parody on the original, where are the
paintings have somethiung odd about them. That would be me. Sister Wendy?