After being hunched over my drafting table for hours, my stiffening, aging joints demand attention. It is time to take a break, stand up, stretch and go for a walk. Once downstairs, I put on a hat, pick up my sketchbook and kindle and pop them into a small knapsack.
Every morning has its share of routine chores: get-newspaper, retrieve-garbage-cans, check-weather, wash-breakfast-dishes, etc., etc., etc… But then, there are mornings when chores get interrupted by the force of an unexpected event… as recently happened to me on a November morning, not long ago.
After spending a good part of the afternoon gardening, I enter the small bathroom on the first floor of my house to wash up. A miniscule speck of something appears on the far wall. Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell. My brain, similarly conditioned by multiple past experiences, salivates at the sight of specks on a wall.
As long as I can remember, I have always been attracted to cacti. I believe I imprinted on these bizarre plants during the accumulated hours of spellbound time passed as a kid in darkened movie theaters, transfixed by the endless procession of desert-strewn cowboy-and-Indian Technicolor westerns.