While my compatriots madly storm the stores like paratroopers to corner the market on toilet paper, I ordered art supplies—a full set of pastel pencils nestled in a sleek cherrywood box with brass hinges. We each have our priorities. It was a rare bucket-list kind of moment. No AmazonPrime to defray the cost. Despite the quarantine, the package arrived from Britain, outer wrap shredded, but the inner sanctum, a bubblewrapped cardboard coffin, kept it safe from harm. The pencil box delights me when it opens like a double harpsichord with a full keyboard. The pencils on the upper tier scream a rainbow arpeggio to the palate of the modern age, while the somber earth tones beneath strike a darker chord of the past. Both sets are necessary to render the face of art. The dilemma I face is whether or not I should use my last half-bottle of alcohol as a blending agent, or to sterilize my hands from the virus? And I have only the one pad of paper. It seems we are a nation of assholes, grasping the wrong end of the shitstick. Who will be left witness the subtle arias of those pencils, or any art, for that matter, if the curve doesn’t flatten soon?
No comments:
Post a Comment