Painting and pineapple

Thursday over lunchtime, I bought a painting.

Let me back up. Last weekend, the local newspaper ran an article that a new art gallery had opened downtown. The place specializes in student art, which means none of it is very expensive. This sounded interesting, so I announced that I was going to take a look. I also took the shopping list with me, for afterwards.

When I got back home several hours later, Wife asked me about the gallery with genuine puzzlement. "In all those years, I never had the slightest idea you would be interested in something like that." (Gosh, I'm really not sure what to say in reply. Could this have something to do with not being very observant?) Then she asked, "Are you planning to buy any art?"

I hadn't decided. There were a number of pictures that caught my eye, in particular three good-sized paintings of flowers. I don't mean paintings of a bunch of flowers in a vase; I mean individual blooms on the model of Georgia OKeefe, although clearly the painter is someone else and has her own style. They weren't cheap, but I was thinking about them.

But then the second thing Wife asked is, "Why didn't you get any more canned fruit? It was on the shopping list."

It would have been easy to say I forgot or didn't notice, but I told her the truth instead: "I didn't take that seriously, because we've already got so much canned pineapple stockpiled in the garage. Why on earth would we need more?"

"Yes, but I want some variety when I have fruit for breakfast. And you can't tell me it's going to spoil, because it is canned. So the money won't go to waste if you buy more now." She was very smug at this point, as if she had succeeded in proving something that boxed me into a corner.

I don't remember exactly what I said in reply -- it was something about it nonetheless being silly to buy more when you still have lots -- but I was having trouble taking her objection seriously.

She meant it, though -- she really wanted more canned fruit in the house. And a couple of days later she came back to the topic, complaining about how miserably stingy I am over canned fruit, even though I had the nerve to be contemplating buying original art.

Then Thursday I went back downtown over my lunch hour and bought one of them, a striking orange Geoffrey's iris, done in oil against a dark background. I had to squeeze the boys into the back seat when I drove them home that afternoon, and explained that it was so the painting wouldn't get damaged. Son 1 texted Wife that we were on the way home and that I had bought a painting, and she texted back rather pissily about how I thought fruit was a "cash-flow issue" but I was willing to squander money on art. But of course, she added, "It's all his money, isn't it?" (Even in the abbreviated text, the pouting voice came through loud and clear.)

Wife didn't fight with me that night -- she spent the whole evening in bed saying she had a headache -- but I fully expect it some time. She's going to demand that I explain why I'm not willing to buy her more canned fruit, and yet am willing to buy a painting. I also know that there is no way she will ever understand the reason, so I will have to find something to say to make her drop it. But I do have a reason, so I'll tell you instead.

It goes like this:

In the first place, this is a silly argument, because beautiful art and canned fruit are absolutely incommensurable. Art adds joy to your life every single day you look at it; canned fruit doesn't add much even when you are eating it, and then it's gone. Indeed, from a certain perspective you could almost say that the painting costs less than the food, if you amortize the cost over the number of days that you will see it; that's a bit of a stretch as arguments go, but it's no more absurd than many of the arguments Wife makes.

Art is fundamentally more important than food, and just as important. Granting that food nourishes the body, art nourishes the spirit. I concede that food can be prepared artistically, and I would be willing to sit still to listen to that argument if Wife were to make it. But we are talking about bulk purchases of generic canned fruit here -- surely as ugly and disspiriting a way to acquire and consume food as any known to man. Trying to convince me that I am doing something wrong because I forego what is ugly for the sake of what is beautiful is a little peculiar, at best.

Besides all this, the fact is that if we were talking about anybody else I probably would have picked up the blasted fruit without thinking about it. What irritates me about this request from Wife is that I know it is driven by her compulsion to stockpile and hoard. If you remember the cleaning project back in the beginning of 2009, you will know how bad this is. (The story starts here and continues for 7 more installments.) Even now, we can't even walk through our garage because of the stacks of stuff she has acquired that she can't bring herself to get rid of. She routinely buys and stores things that she will never, ever use -- "just in case." And I have gotten to the point that I am fed up. I have aided and abetted this sickness for far too long. The only thing that has stopped it since July is that we have divided our money and she can no longer afford to spend that way. And so I have no desire ever to go there again. So long as I am living with Wife, I would rather buy too little and have to go out to the store on the spur of the moment for the odd loaf of bread, rather than to continue to stockpile.

And the painting really is beautiful ....