wit

What follows is a comment on a cartoon my friend, Joey, posted on FaceBook:

 a family is traveling

 and the young boy in the back seat states that he needs to pull over, because -

 he has ennui.

My Response

" I inherited weltschmerz from my dad; he picked it up in Germany during the Hungarian 

crisis -we would pull over, but my sense of dread and foreboding only increased. Pulling over

 at state rest areas was the only relief - An der Grenze. I knew you'd understand, Joey - 

this cartoon, so innocent, brings so much emotion to the surface for me. As always, it's either

  

Being or Nothingness. No Exit next 37 miles!"

I'm not posting that cartoon here. You can construct it better in your own mind. Instead I've included a meditation on my favorite Revolutionary war heroine, Molly Pitcher. Molly Pitcher invented the Molly-Toffed cocktail, which was instrumental  in several pitched battles of pitched bottles. She also invented the curve ball - a means of firing artillery around a corner. 

Don Quixote faces off with the entrenched commercial interests of the chief city of the "empire state of the south". When I first read that motto in the World Book encyclopedia ca 1968, I was a bit taken aback: I'd never heard that motto before. We were the Peach State, the Peanut State, The State of Denial - but this ascription toward empire was news to me. It says something about the South -

that Georgia is its Empire State.  

Above is a photo of a photo my dad took of his mother and sister preparing dinner shortly after his father died. I guess this (its context of grief) from the date on the print, knowing that my dad had returned from Europe around this time. The lighting in this image is so wonderfully balanced. Note, at the top, the light bulb which hung down from the ceiling. This photograph has so many right things going on with it. I often wonder how my dad didn't go into photography professionally. I know it has to do with expectations. He grew up in a family where the possibility of being creative as more than a hobby was foreclosed. 

I painted this 14 years ago. I am painting Kierkegaard now.

Otherwise, I haven't changed.

This is where I'm from.