Fun Home Art Projects!

Hello again! Break out the crayons, dive into the construction paper, and haul out the paint thinner, because it's time for a fun home art project!

This week is a little early for Easter, but the supermarkets don't seem to mind starting the celebration now, so neither do I! This week we're going to paint eggs! Doesn't that sound like fun?

Start out with an egg. Have your parents boil some water and put it in. Make sure that your parents put the egg in the boiling water. I remember my brother when I was young - he put the egg in himself. The egg got too hot in the water and was about to explode. My brother screamed - it was a yell which rocked our house to its foundation as he plunged his young forearm into the boiling water to grab the egg. Flesh dries in water - dries in its slow burn, char creeping over fingers and down to the hand, turning to dead black ash the skin up to the elbow. The pain made him squeeze the egg until it broke. Egg shell and hot yolk flew everywhere, raining down from the air onto his writhing body as the family came to his side just in time to see the last glimmer of his hope of becoming a concert pianist fade away.

Okay!

After the egg is hard boiled, drain the water, let the egg cool, and take it out of the pot. Don't eat it! If you eat it you will feel the shell splinter between your teeth, the gritty crackling sound as you eat that which is not meant to be eaten. Chalky shell coats and lightly cuts at your tongue. You will taste sand for days. One shard is stuck in the back of your throat. You cough. You hack. You can't get it loose as it stays there blocking your windpipe. You knew you weren't supposed to eat it. You knew. You knew but you did anyway and this is the thought that runs through your head as you cease breathing and fall to your knees, your vision beginning to black around the edges like your vision of the world did as you grew up and found nothing in adult life but disappointment.

Well!

Now you're ready to paint. Get some watercolors and a brush. Think of what you'd like your egg to look like and start painting. Keep painting. You must keep painting. Your brushstrokes move the room around you and for once in your life you find something over which you can have control. The brush is abrasive against the egg, and you hear a faint scratching sound. A picture on the egg is taking shape, but NO! The egg is too small for what you see, what you must put on the egg. So you throw the egg against the wall to hear it shatter. There is a dent in your wall from doing this every Easter since you realized that nobody will ever understand exactly what you're trying to say. They will always get it just a little bit wrong. Just a little bit because we are truly all our own island with our own lonely language which nobody else speaks. Take your brush and go to the dent and paint the face of the person who is most responsible for your torture. Here you will have painted the face of God.

And now you're done! Enjoy your egg.