a drawing

The shading around the outside casts a third dimension, a negative space sinking down into the page. This seems a visual black hole inscribed into the page. The lines do not escape; the figure's gravity pulls the page's whiteness down through the darkening gray into the razor-thin line; the event horizon and the vanishing point. That's when I lose the bigger picture. That's when I get lost, as I so often do, in the minutiae.

Pause.

Bob Ross would add a happy little shrub right in there, between the boulder and the fallen tree, sprucing up the lakeside. There, just there, is the pastoral landscape to rejuvenate my senses. Breathe that mountain air. Feel the breeze swept down the mountain into this lush western landscape, filled with evergreens and scrub grass. The crisp azure water, rippled by the sunlit wind. A two-dimensioned paradise, I suppose, without any way to enter in.

Pause.

Recall, the year before I was born and already there was a sequel: Superman 2 starts with General Zod, Ursa, and Non standing trial for their crimes against Kryton, sentenced to exile in a two-dimensional prison sent out among the stars, hurtling through the endless universe, frozen in time but able to beat their feeble fists against the pane of glass that imprisons them. The opposite of a Bob Ross painting. Not completed in 30 mins. Nothing pastoral about the endless absolute zero of the space between galaxies. Until you catch the jet stream of baby Kal-el's rocket and ride it down to earth, soaking up the rays of this yellow sun...

Pause.

Almost a cliche to say, "The spinning blue-green marble."

Perhaps: The anomaly where something crawled out of the void. The rock that managed to sprout. The stone that sprung water. The tiny miracle in the expanse. But I'm reminded of what Carl Sagan said: If we're the only ones in the universe, it seems an awful waste of space. Still, our little spinning blue-green marble seems to have slipped past the emptiness and filled itself with all sorts of pastoral oddities. Happy little tree by the river. Gold light spinning the leaves out of trees. Wide blue cloud dappled skies. Anxious little apes draping themselves in delusions, searching for that perfect pastoral restoration...