(6) Locked in Fiendish Conundra

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After a time, I was more or less forced to reconsider my logical options.

I had known since relatively early childhood that the most preposterous-sounding things could turn out to be true.  How could I forget my icily formal mother and her strained, pained attempt to maintain her dignity while she described--with evident distaste, to a couple of boys who were really much too young to care--what were then known as "the facts of life?"

Somehow her manner of speaking gave me the impression that whatever happened between the mommy and the daddy took place in a hospital.  This lack of context about how certain things got where they did created additional elements of confusion. 

Thus, my overall reaction was...guffaws.   Loud ones; astonished-yet-delighted ones:  "You mean you laid an egg?   And then Dad went to the bathroom on it??!!"

Having gone through this as a primary formative experience, I knew better than to just dismiss out of hand the things that authority figures said, no matter how badly out of whack with common sense they might sound.

There was also a small but nagging matter of physical evidence.

I had gotten far enough into the physics book to have read the part about television sets, and the three kinds of phosphorous their screens contain:  red, blue, and green.   Now, if my television set had any trouble depicting school buses or rain slickers or bananas, I had certainly taken a long time noticing this deficiency.  I conceded that (although possibly by some quirk that I didn't yet understand) the physicists had me on that one.

But did this mean my paintings with the "hypothetical additive" color combinations had gotten everything wrong?  Were they irremediably flawed?  Were they, in their deepest, innermost essence (here I experienced the beginnings of a shudder)...metaphysical hooey?

© COPYRIGHT 1993 ROBERT WINTER.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.