Illness passed. Life is good

At roughly six pm on Wednesday, just as I was sitting down with some friends at our favorite Indian place in the East Village, I received an email from the Boys in Brown announcing that the painting mentioned below had, in fact, been delivered.

We had, among other things, ordered one of those things called something like phumkuht, or something not even remotely like that (I'd been drinking beer for quite a while at this point, hoping to blunt the uneasiness also mentioned below, so it's hard to remember obscure Indian culinary terms). It kind of a curry thing baked in a large ceramic dish. Just before you put the thing in the oven, you drape some dough over the top and kind of pinch it down around the sides.

The result, you ask? The result is that the bread puffs up while cooking and comes to the table looking like a huge muffin. You tear open the bread and use it to scoop up the innards.

All of which brings us to the question on the table.
Yes it does.
Okay. But if you don't mind us asking--what is the question on the table? Because so far this sounds like a story about eating at an Indian restaurant.
The question on the table, albeit unasked and perhaps not even immediately self-evident, is this: How big a nightmare do you think it would be if the UPS boys actually failed in their mission and managed to send my relatively expensive painting someplace other than it's designated target? Do you think they just say sorry and write you a check for the thing? My guess is no. My guess is that it's a year's worth of hassle and lawyers and angry clients who have neither the painting nor the money ('cause let me tell you, I spend that shit as fast as I get it).
Wow, that's irresponsible of you. Don't think you should put it in escrow, or something?
No, I just spend it once I get it.
Wow, that's irresponsible of you. What happens if the painting gets lost?
That's exactly the question we are grappling with.
Like Meredith Whitney wrestling with the next big prediction?
Exactly.
Anyway, all that said, I'd just like to clear one thing up.
What?
I still have the guy's money. All that stuff about spending it was just me fucking around. Being flippant for humorous effect. I could have given it back if I'd had to.
Good. That makes me feel better.
But it would have hurt quite a bit.
I can imagine.
Can you? I'm thinking of pain along the lines of what that guy felt in the first Alien movie when they're all sitting around the table and suddenly the baby alien just tears up through his chest.
Through tarmac, to the sun again?
Something like that. Anyway, that's roughly how painful it would have been to give the money back.
And then there'd still be the year of lawyers and such.
Exactly.
So I guess you were delighted to receive notification of delivery.
I was.
Made the phumkuht taste all the sweeter?
Yes it did.

And then the next day I went to the Neue Galerie on the 86th and 5th and stared, transfixed, at the portrait of Adele Bloch by my boy Gussy Klimt.

And that single act made the whole trip to New York one big tax deduction, didn't it?
Yes it did. Because I'm working on a painting of a golden bull and nobody, as everybody knows, does gold like my boy Gussy.
Nobody.

And then I went to the guitar show at the Met, then somehow got back to Troy. Where I slept til 9:15.

Life is good.
Yes it is.
Illness passed?
Yes it has.
I'm reminded of that famous line.
Which one?
The one that goes "The line between utopia and naivete is a thin one."
That's a good one.
Yes it is.