Composition with lines and dots

On some days–especially cold rainy ones like we’ve had all week–I have to work a little harder to find a laugh. My latest trick is pretending I’m an art critic narrating the repetitive activities of my day.  Last night, for example, I assumed the identity of my puffed-up college art history professor. He pronounced “Van Gogh” like this: “Van- GAH-HAH.” Like he was choking. Every time a painting by the Dutch artist came up on the screen, I had to suppress a laugh akin to the one that would overtake me as a kid at my grandmother’s Baptist church in rural North Carolina. Think Maya Angelou’s scene in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. (“Preach it!!!!”)

Bending down to sweep up the dinnertime detritus from the floor, I cranked up my old professor’s 1/10 British Accent (he’s American but studied at Oxford). Here’s what he (we) said about the scene I found under the table:

“Here we have a still image from a performance piece by two American  artists–ages 3.5 and 6 years. We see that several black beans have escaped–one-by-one–from the entrapment of their pressed quesadilla enclosure. These legumes noirs have come to a place of quiet repose on the floor, among a forest of contrasting vertical steel dining chair legs. The orbital form of the frijoles and the shaftlike metal tubes erupt from the overly patinaed tableau of the floor. We endure the unbearable tension of the soft legumes, vulnerable and poised for certain destruction.  For we know that the artists’ feet are mere seconds away from squashing the beans as flat as the tortilla from whence they came. Yet, like the phoenix of lore, the beans will rise from this perilous life to be be reborn as smears against carpets, sofa cushions–or bedspreads. From there, time will only tell when they will be carried next: into the rapids of the Maytag or–atom by atom–onto the clothes of couch-sitters or the slumbering artists themselves…”