If You Make Things, You Are My Sister. Medieval Painting

Marvelous work, nicely presented. I’ve dabbled, er, meddled, um, futzed around with — at any rate, I’ve bluffed and hamfisted my way to a check by doing decorative painting. It’s not the same sort of work as in the video, mind you, but it requires a similar appetite for tedium. I have such an appetite for certain kinds of interesting tedium that it’s crowded out all the regular tedium from my life that regular people enjoy. The Intertunnel is a wonderful and terrible thing for people like me. It’s full of stuff like this video. Durn inneresting.

It has to take the place of leisure. If you add paying attention to such things to regular leisure, there’s no productive time left in your life. Occasionally, I try accurately describing my life to an acquaintance, because they’ve asked nicely enough, enough times, and a look comes over their face that is equal admixture of: You’re nuts, and: You must be fibbing. When I see that look, I always regret telling the truth, and go back to small talk. I’m on something along the lines of three decades now of relatives of all shapes and sizes arriving at my house and wondering aloud, in a horrified tone: What do you mean there’s no TV? Terror-stricken, they are. Me, I figure you must think you’re going to live to be ten thousand years old if you watch an episode of 2 Broke Girls or a Jacksonville/ Tampa Bay game. 

I wish I could live to be ten thousand years old, so I could try my hand at all this wonderful, tedious stuff. Life’s short, so you look at it in wonder and affection, and then move on. That Evangeline Table’s not going to sand itself, you know.