À long time ago Plato the Ancient Greek compared the way we try to make sense of things with observers of shadows on a cave wall trying to figure out what’s going on. (If you do an Internet search on “Parable of the Cave” you will get a MUCH more detailed and lucid, though less concise, explanation.)

Here is an assortment of items on a card table my ex-wife gave me a week or so back. I propped up my latest diptych drawing on top of a drawing of my High School sweetheart on top of my laptop, but otherwise left the table as is. Chaotic as it looks, you can tell much more about me and my life than you could watching shadows of my antics on a cave wall, but much less than there is to know. I submit this for study by anthropologists and sociologists, amateur or otherwise, who happen to be reading this: What kind of person am I? What are my prospects for the future? Do I deserve to live?