White Eyrie


It never bloody fails.

       There I was, studiously watching the placings, trying to be constantly aware of the overall pattern, taking particular care not to put clashing colours too close together. I'd taken such pains over the last lot of galaxies - unlike some so-called artists, I like to position each star by hand. You can call me radical, but I loathe the latest methode computeroise, splodging suns anywhere the bloody machine tells you they should go - and I was so pleased with the unity, the (as it seemed to me) harmonic swirling effect I'd created. As cosmic creations go, it was quite charming, with a neat juxtapositioning of barred, globular and plain spiral galaxies forming a cute 4-D image. O.K., so maybe it wasn't great art, but it sure as hell beat some of those truly naff bodgejobs that drunken proles buy in a hurry and then regret for the rest of the week!
       And I was just about to sine and seel the piece, when I noticed it. To upper right and foreground of centre, in an ordinary spiral galaxy a star that I'd originally designed to be white, had turned yellow.
       Now, there are those among us who'd say, 'Who gives a pwukit? One star in several billions? Who's gonna notice?' Well, I noticed. It offended my sense of artistic precision. It was most emphatically not what I had intended. And why had it changed colour, anyway? they weren't supposed to - at any rate, not that fast.
       Needless to say, I was not happy. I took a closer look.
       It was a small star, pretty insignificant, really, with a minor planetary system around it. Nothing of any importance. Zooming back out, I examined the galaxy from all angles, as critically as I could. No, it wouldn't be missed.

       I erased the irritating star, and its planets. It didn't leave much of a gap; no one would miss it.

       But isn't it just typical? There's always something, isn't there.....?


Joules Taylor, 1995 (© 1999 WordWrights.)



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