Perfectionists Must Never Use Brushes...

The last phase of Project Wood is nearing its end, but its an end that keeps moving further and further away. First you paint the white, then you make the shelves orange, then you make the trim blue, and then you go back and go over the splashes made by each of the distinct steps, and then over the splashes from the corrections, and so on, and so on, before you eventually go mad from all that and the hours of applying masking tape. Oh, the masking tape! It's madness! Absolute madness! Sticky, icky, relentless madness!

On an unrelated tangent: Fireworks are popping, or were until a few moments ago. It's fitting, as it's November the Fifth. It's the anniversary of that attempted explosive change of government yet again, and the world outside is reeking once again of smoke, while a very bright full-ish Moon is peering down in perplexity upon the smokey landscape. It's not an exaggeration, for once there is no rain on Fireworks Night, and it reeks out there. It reeks in here. It reeks everywhere! Smoke is permeating the country from all the revolting bonfires. Bleuch! I never could understand the appeal of this rotten cold and smelly event. Perhaps it's yet another aspect of innate human masochism peeking through the veil of civilization? Perhaps it's just that people like burning things and making loud noises? Why do people like to burn things anyway? It's such a malodorous waste of material.

Painting and burning are actually two examples of just how primitive our methods can be at times. How do we change the colour of something? We slop appropriately coloured slime all over the object and then wait for it to dry. How do we make heat? We burn something to a crisp and wave our hands over it. It really is just like being in the old days all over again. Maybe it's good to have primitive aspects to our lives, but I really wish that painting and burning weren't amongst them them. Music is pretty primitive and not hideous, after all. Let's keep music. And frisbees.

At some point in the process of painting something with several colours, you really need to throw away any slant for perfectionism that you have and say that it's good enough. As a perfectionist, it hurts to say that, but no matter what you do, there will always be a problem caused by the last thing you did, or the storage conditions, or sheer random luck. Perfection is practically impossible. Instead of going mad, it becomes time to stop, and think of fountains, weirs, forests and mountains. Ah, the real world of the old Greek elements... Earth, Wind, Fire, Water and the other one. Yes, yes, I know the fifth one was really Aether. It was a joke! Sheesh...

O.