about the moments of self induced pain and about the explanation of the letters HC on a limited edition print.

Almost burned my tongue now, licking the outside of the lit, hot metal lamp. I should not have tried that. I did. Now... okay, the tongue is actually burned. Just the right half of the front (as I do not have a tip of a tongue). The pain is going to go away. It is okay. Managed to finish about 75% of what I wanted to get done today. At least on that one project, long overdue. The other project... oh and then the other one... Managed to burn myself out this weekend. Not just the tongue after all. The brain, the eyes the back. Right about now should be the time when the greatest ideas grab me by both hands and feet, stick their fingers in my nostrils as if i were a bull and tear me out into the meadows of never explored thought. But the only thing my head is hearing right now is that pounding of my brain mixed with the steady going air conditioning. We went from high to low to vent. It feels as if I had spent the last 48 hours in front of this screen, or at least at this table, in this room, the window invisible to me. The real thing at least. As I have opened and closed hundreds of virtual windows. It feels as if I have managed to disappoint so many in the last few days. It is so bad that shopping starts to feel like a possible therapy. And that's a really bad sign. That's a really bad sign. Especially when there is not enough money to pay the therapist. And there are such beautiful rare things that whisper and sing my name. They are so stunning and important and really, really worth it. I will not eat them. I will only look at them, maybe once a year. Maybe twice. Maybe all the time in my mind. Maybe I will just imagine how they are memories of moments that were so incredibly different than what I am experiencing right now. I know there is a fresh bottle of excedrin in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. It is behind that middle door, the middle mirror. I am going to go over now. I will open that door. A glass of water in one hand. I will make sure to take two of these little round soothing white inventions by the masters of western marketicine and I will then try to get that remaining 25% of the day done. And may it cost me some sleep. At least the pain will not be there. At least I will not feel that it is there still. I will be like the old man in the painkiller commercial. I will be like the actor who plays the man who runs a marathon after his knee, hip, foot surgery. With a gigantic smile I am going to enter the zone again and I am going to kick some... ach I will just move some more vectors around, then let some more ink bleed into the pages of a little book that does not belong to me. I will then just pass out and dream of a continuation of this beautiful day. Because it is a beautiful day. It will be a beautiful night. This is the beautiful life in a beautiful time. For some. Somehow. In some mysterious ways. Oh, and H.C. on a print means Hors Commerce. It describes a workhorse of a print. It is the print that actually gets to see people. It is the print that gets to see admiration and joy and rejection. It is not the print that actually gets to go home. It is the print that stays at the gallery. It stays at the gallery until all the good ones are gone. Then the H.C. is sold as well then... mostly after the APs, the Artist Prints are sold, I guess. The H.C. is the fruit everybody handles and nobody wants to taste... no it is the representation of the idea. Not as distant and abstract as the picture in a book. Or a picture in the mind. It is the working print. It is equal to all the others... it is just the one that gets touched and handled... a lot... My tongue is fine now. Maybe it was not burned after all. Maybe I could now try to lick the light bulb. Now here is a nice story to remember. Isn't it?