Staring at the Sun

Why do I do this to myself? Why--when things could be going better in general--would I decide to read Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Irving Yalom? And then I spend the entire day reading it? Ugh. No housework, no studio time, no useful work....just reading about THE end.

Yalom finds greatest comfort in an existential approach: "You were nothing before you were alive, and this does not bother you. You won't feel it when you are gone either." BTW--he is paraphrasing philosophers like Epicurus and Nietzsche here, not making things up on the fly.

Finally, at about 4:00 pm, I became so terrorized by this pursuit of comfort that I called my good friend Betsy and asked her to come over. Yes, I am a death wuss.

The painting is Philip Guston's Source, which features his wife, Musa, as the sun.

This post has taken the place of another I intended to write that would have been called Fear of Rutting Season, on the topic of my terror of hitting deer on the road at this time of year (not deer sex). I nearly "bought it" 3 years ago about this time on the way to Louisville, but at least the poor terrorized deer escaped unharmed. Here is my painting about that particular paranoia, titled Strange Wheel, in which I quote Philip. It's easily my most hated painting (by others), but I don't care. It covered over an especially noxious attempt at abstraction--real double-duty.