The canvas has undergone a few transformations. I'm not convinced that the current version will be the final take, but "Carnage" is coming together—slowly, quietly, and without much fuss. Yet, I still struggle with the whole concept. How can one be truthful about something one is afraid to acknowledge, let alone capable of understanding? In its essence, it's the same for all of us, and yet, the details are unspeakable.

A child would be able to point out each element of the painting and delight in a "Where's Wally?" kind of exercise:

Where is the gun? Jesus? The two Thieves? Crosses? The child climbing in the sky? The leopard killing the crocodile? The dead person with the red T-shirt? The forest on fire? The hissing mountain lion? The cub? The Leviathans? The knife fight? And so on. My godson, who understood the first version of the painting immediately, would start many of his answers with "Obviously...!"

He might ask at his next visit why there now is a black silhouette of a guy in the centre-right. The guy is bleeding a big blue teardrop from a small broken red heart. It is big enough to encompass most of his body, a little red bucket, a green shovel, and a black gun on the sand. What happened to the heart? And why is the water red? Why is the whole canvas dripping in red?

I don't know. I still don't know! Did Leonard ever come close? For now, I'm with Rodriguez, who visited briefly to ask, 'How many times can you wake up in this comic book and plant flowers?' His song 'Cause' might be the saddest song I've ever heard, but man, flowers! Where do I put goddamn flowers in this already disjointed cacophony of a painting? Shall I put them in the mouths of the three hanging bodies? Oh, Nina—it's not just "Mississippi God Damn!" It's everywhere! And our learning and growing from all of this? "Too slow! Too slow!"

'It ain't pretty. It ain't subtle—what happens to the heart. No fable here. No lesson. No singing meadowlark....'

And I still care too much about what happens to the heart.

Cordula