Coffee shop painting.

There is a painting of the Garden of Eden. It's staring down at me, bowling into me like a mac truck.

I thought at first that it was just of Eve, her figure draped in white, her hand grasping the fruit of the tree of knowledge and her head hung in anguish. But as I looked again, drawn to it, I saw Adam, behind her, entwined: her arm is her arm, his leg is her leg, her clothes are his clothes, and it struck me that this is not a picture of anguish, but of ecstasy. And it was not one person alone involved, but there was an unspoken partnership, a going together into this event that made it possible. And it was not forbidden, at least not the entering it. Not from the outside, it looked good, it always looks good.

But the fruit is still on the tree- there is still the chance to turn away, to take a step back, to leave things as they are.

If only everything in life was like that, suspended in the moment where you could turn away from the decision that, now looking back on it, you know will change your life. But in the moment you experience only the goodness of it, never the evil, never the backhandedness, never the fractures.

If only we could live in still life.

Edit* I don't even like art.