A True Artist

About 20 minutes ago, realising I had not checked for snail mail today, I popped out the front door to find a young girl with a red bag, and her father and small brother, gathered at the bottom of the garden around my letterbox. They were as surprised to see me as I was to find them there. Uh-oh, I thought, lecture or sermon? Well, shame on my suspicious mind because it turned out to be all about Art.

For the young girl, rendered shy by my unexpected audience participation, pulled an A4 sheet of paper from her bag, folded it and popped it into my letterbox. I duly opened my letterbox, still not sure what was going on, fished out the delivery and opened it up to find myself in possession of a piece of original art. Of course, I duly praised it. The father informed me that I was tonight's lucky recipient of the very last picture in the red bag. Their mission accomplished, the humble artist and her support team moved on.

So there we have it - art for the sake of art, pure and created in joy, delivered free of charge to common citizens, with no name, ego or any conditions attached. I think there's something in that for all of us.

Otherwise, I put in a good, solid day of writing, or rather, of dismantling and rewriting. I also got stuck into my copy of Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente, which is due out in April. You might recall that I, and a few others, received copies at WorldCon along with a request to blog reviews. So I read the first part of it out in the backyard, sitting on my Xmas swing with a cup of peppermint tea, and all I can say at this stage is that once I pulled myself from the world she has created, I had an overwhelming urge to throw away all my keyboards and vow that I would never ever again utter the words 'I'm a writer'.