11.19.2003 - 6:03 p.m.

My body was in the computer lab, sitting on one of the central tables while the students typed, my feet on a chair and my chin resting on my knuckles. My hands smelled sharp and bright, like the clementine oranges I peeled and ate four hours earlier at the breakfast meeting. Not a lot of talking to do while I was there. Big Things were happening over my head, and I bent over my sectioned fruit, ducking as if one of those things would catch me unprepared.

Work, and life, has been like that lately, full of eggshells and fragile citrus skin.

Later, a minute ago, in the aftermath of another meeting, I�m talking with the boss and a coworker about those moments that take you out, those activities in life that let you rejuvenate and center and create, that disintegrate the masks between �mundane� and �priority.� The discussion put me in mind of some of the philosophy classes I�ve taken, floaty and academic and interesting, but quite possibly pointless.

�But even the most cynical, pragmatic person has to value art,� my boss believes. �You can say �I just drive my car, eat when I�m hungry, drink when I�m dry,� and that�s fine, but the only reason you have that car is because someone, sometime, thought at a higher level. And that�s why you need art.�

Which I�m not sure I agree with. There is a category of things, activities, that make me happy. That feel in my head like the chunk of a peg into a perfectly-sized hole. I think I need those things to take me away, the way a whisper drowns a shout, the way a car radio silences doubt.

I need art to keep me light enough for the eggshells.

-stonebridge

previous | next