I... I don't know why I'm typing this out on this little screen, my thumbs aren't what they used to be and the light is doing something funny to my *macular degeneration* but I can't sleep. It’s 2:14 in the morning and I’m sitting in the doorway of the spare room. We’ve lived in this house since seventy-six, back when the mill was still open and you could actually get a decent cup of coffee at the diner without the young girls looking at you like you’re a ghost. My wife, Martha, she always called it the "guest room" but we never had guests. Not really. It was meant to be my studio. That was the deal we made when I sold those canvases in the city. Just a few years of "real work" to get us settled, I told her. Just some *stability* for the kids. I was a damn good accoutant, too. That’s the funny part. People think numbers are boring but there’s a real *symmetry* to a double-entry ledger that satisfies a certain part of the brain... maybe the part that wants to feel in control of the chaos. I spent forty years looking at the hardware store's books and the cattle rancher's losses and I guess I just became part of the furniture in this town. "Artie the Ledger Man." That’s me. A walking *redundancy*. I sold my soul for a steady paycheck and a pension that barely covers the heat in this drafty old place. I remember the last painting I sold—it was a triptych of the shoreline, very heavy on the impasto, almost felt like skin. I got four hundred dollars for it. In 1974, that was a lot of money. I used it to buy the furnace. Every time the heater kicks on with that low rumble, I think, *there goes my talent, keeping my toes warm.* I went to the city last Tuesday. Well, not THE city, just the big town three counties over where they have the hobby shop. I didn't want to go to Miller’s General here because old Pete would’ve asked what I wanted with a set of brushes and a jar of turpentine. He’d probably think I was finally going *senile* or trying to huff the fumes. "Hey Artie, you finally lost your marbles?" I can hear him saying it. So I drove an hour and a half, my hip aching the whole way—it’s a *degenerative* thing, the doctor says—and I bought an easel. A cheap one. Flimsy wood. I felt like I was buying something illicit, like a teenager sneaking a magazine under his shirt. I set it up tonight. In the middle of the spare room. The room is so white it hurts. I never painted it. I always said I’d wait until I had the "vision" for the space. Forty years of waiting. The floorboards creak right by the window where the light should be good, but it's dark now, obviously. I’m staring at this blank canvas I bought and it’s like it’s mocking me. It’s a *tabula rasa* but I’m seventy-eight years old and my "rasa" is mostly just regrets and a list of people I’ve outlived. My hands are shaking. It's not Parkinson's, just that *essential tremor* people get when they realize they've spent their entire lives being "responsible" while their real selves just withered away in the basement. Martha used to say, "Arthur, go in there. Take an hour." But I couldn't. How do you go from calculating the *depreciation* on a tractor to painting the way the light hits a bowl of fruit? It’s a different kind of math. It felt like... like I was cheating on the life I’d built. If I started painting, I’d have to admit how much I hated the ledgers. And I couldn't afford to hate them. We had braces to pay for. We had the roof. Now the kids are in Denver and Martha’s at the cemetery on the hill and I’m just... here. With a room full of nothing. It’s almost funny if you think about it long enough. I'm the only person in this county with a dedicated "emptiness chamber." I tried to pick up the brush about twenty minutes ago. My fingers wouldn't close right. It’s like my body is staging a *somatic* protest against me. I used to be able to blend colors until they looked like a dream, now I can’t even remember if you’re supposed to put the oil or the gesso down first. I’m sitting on the floor—which was a mistake, I’m going to need a crane to get back up—and I’m just looking at the dust motes. They’re the only thing in this room with any life in them. People in town, they think I'm this solid, dependable guy. "Old Artie, he’s got it all figured out." They don't see the *nihilism* that comes with a blank canvas at 2 AM. I keep thinking about that triptych. The man who bought it, he was a lawyer. He probably still has it. Or his kids do. It’s probably hanging in some office in a building I’ll never visit, while I’m here in a house that smells like mothballs and stale tea. I sacrificed the *singular* for the *mundane*. That's the diagnosis.