Too Paranoid

I begin to wonder if my anxiety is greater than the situation demands. If the hackles on my arm are raised, I tend to be deliberate in my actions. But I'd rather err on the side of caution. I didn't want to get paint on a good denim shirt, and the gallery was warm, so I stripped down to a tee-shirt to do some painting. I look like a hick, baseball cap and jeans, painting the pedestals, but this is actually a considered action. Had taken a book home from the art library and tackle some essays on Picasso and Braque that I started reading before dawn, sitting in my Selma Alabama rocker next to the cookstove. The essays are tough going, because they're filled with phrases like "indeterminate paintly tesserae", but I'm interested enough to plow through them, and after a while I don't pay any attention to the academic-speak, I can understand it well enough, hell, even I'm getting that way, when I docent through the Carters. 1907 through the teens, the birth of modernism, the way P and B slammed the door on representation. Altered the way we saw things. So many factors at play: cave art, African art, the atom, stress failure analysis, the desire to shock, and a healthy dose of libido. Just at full light, a flicker out the south windows, and it's a Pileated Woodpecker, one of my favorite shows, so went over and cranked up the computer, so I could watch outside through my writing window. A completely gray day. Oddly, snow to the south of us, but a bit too warm here, where a uniform cloud cover seems to trap some heat. The woodpecker selects a tree 30 feet out from me and does its peculiar little hopping backward down the tree thing. It uses its talons, that's probably not the correct word, barbs? as breaks. Little hops, checking for bugs under the outer bark. These birds are great fighter pilots, they fly down among the tree trunks, and even in brutal winter weather, they find their mark. I love them for that intense flash of red, color in a colorless world, and the fact that they just go about their work. It's all about finding bugs. I type that, then laugh, go get a drink, roll a smoke. What bugs were we talking about? A chink in your armor? Why do armor and amor look so much alike? Just a few questions, before you go. Where were you on the afternoon of January 19th, what was the sub-text of what your daughter said on the phone, how the hell could we ever trust you to be an expert witness? My argument is only that what is seen is a construct.