Artisan – an online art book by Dan Joyce

©2016

Post 6

Man’s Meaning

I didn’t quite get Glenn at first. He just lay around his house all day painting and playing guitar. His girl said he had an online business, but that couldn’t possibly pay for a whole house I figured. He could be a drug dealer. She smoked weed and popped pills like they were candy, but he only had a glass of wine once in a while, no dope. And he was very bothered by her addiction. Then she told me. He had been married several years, a daughter and a family. One day his wife was working at a flower shop and took off with a fireman, never really saw her again. Then his lucrative career in software ended as the market crashed around the new millennium. I got it. I understood almost exactly where this lazy middle-aged man was coming from. He had had it. He had the career, the family, and lost it. As men, so many of us, seek that as though that is all we want out of life, the job, the car, the family… But he had all that and watched it take off on a Harley with another man and a pink slip he didn’t deserve. He had all that men want and knew that it isn’t all that. Then never sought it again. Only to prophesize and study life through the arts as if somehow paintings and music will provide his answer, knowing that whatever it may be, it will someday all be gone.

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