Eating Ice-Cream and Walking with The Joker

It's odd when you get off of something for awhile and then go back to it.

Something happens and it is as if you're attempting to return to an old love, but once you get there you realize things have changed too much and you are no longer able to appreciate what you once found glorious.

I'm having a comparable experience now.  This time it isn't a paramour who has me down.

It's a former favorite ice-cream.

The brand shall go unnamed, but either the recipe or my tastes have changed, drastically, since I last tried this product.

There were occasions last summer when I'd buy a half-gallon of this particular ice-cream and eat damn near all of it in one evening.  A beautiful gluttony.

The shock of sugar never fazed me then as it has tonight.  I should have bought a box of sugar cubes and eaten them like a horse; I'd be more satisfied, and not quite as ill as I feel right now after just one bowl of my ex-favorite ice-cream.

What if one didn't have to fall in love with anything, including ice-cream and women, to begin with?  The attempted recovery of something profound and sweet wouldn't be necessary, and life would be that much less complicated and disappointing in the end.

Well, that's all I have to say on ice-cream and women for now.

If you don't live in the Pacific Northwest, you missed out today. I took a long walk this afternoon.  I should walk more every day, but in the winter I'd rather not.  I don't like the blustery cold of winters around here.  I tend to keep my trips short and to the point then.

There is no joy in wet weather any more.  I'm beginning to understand why old folks move to warmer, dryer climes to live out the string.

I'd like to do that too, I think, but today I settled for a rare gorgeous spring day here, and I walked.  I walked and walked and brooded about things.

I have several important projects confronting me over the next months.  It'll be a challenge to see if I can bring them to completion in the manner I envision. 

The cool part about working with other artists as an editor is you know what they're bringing to the table, and you have a good idea of what your own contribution amounts to within the context of those relationships.

It works inversely when you're doing it for yourself, no matter the medium.  You're on your own.  Painting is like that, obviously.  The painter is naked with his muse.

Editing is a collaborative endeavor.  It has more in common with film making and theater than anything else.

I admire painters.

I even like Buddy Dooley a little, because, well, he just does it--damn the torpedoes, and there is nobody in the world more solitary and seemingly happy about it than Dooley.

That's enough of an off-key tune about art for now as well.

There is just one other thing on my mind tonight that seems even remotely worth talking about.  I watched The Dark Knight last night.

That's right, the Batman flick.

I'm not much of an action or super hero guy, so I deliberately ignored this when it came out.  I recalled that a lot of young people I worked with back in 2008 really admired Heath Ledger, but being somewhat out of the loop on such matters it wasn't clear to me why this particular actor touched so many.

Ledger's unfortunate accidental death from an overdose of painkillers saddened a lot of the young people I knew then.

I watched the movie last night.

I get it now.  Heath Ledger as The Joker.  The guy was brilliant.


TS