Got in a big argument with my dad today. He wanted me to take over his trucking business, but I said no. So he said, "You can't keep living at this house without paying your way. You can either step up and begin to learn to run the family business, or go out and get a job somewhere else." I said "No way! I hate jobs!" And he said, "I'm not going to support you if you're just gonna sit around. The world doesn't care if you LIKE work or not: you either do it or die. Nobody ever said freedom was free." I said, "'Support'!? In what way are you 'supporting' me? You already own this house, and all I do is sit in my room quietly & drink & smoke & paint. How is that bothering anyone?" He said, "If everyone just painted frescoes all day, we'd ALL go broke and starve." And I said, "But no one in our tribe wants to be a painter but ME; so how is that a problem? I'm only following my calling." Then he said, "Oh yeah? You think nobody else would paint or write bad poetry all the time, if they didn't need to make a living to feed their family?" This made me pause. "Are you serious?" I said, "Do you really believe that EVERYONE secretly wants to be an artist, but they're all just doing awful wage labor because they didn't have the opportunity to pursue their calling?" And my dad said, "Of course!" So I said, "Then that means you yourself would rather be composing music or telling jokes in a nightclub than owning & operating a trucking company?" And he said, "Abso-LUTELY!" Then I said, "Well that makes me almost feel sorry for you. Honestly I've pretty much loathed you till this moment, but now I sorta pity you." And my dad said, "Well you SHOULD, cuz I made a lot of sacrifices for this family!" Then I said, "But you CHOSE to have a family; so why blame your offspring if you now consider the family-man lifestyle a mistake? I myself know with a surety that I would not raise children well (I'd probably take after YOU), so I don't pursue that path in life: I just smoke & drink & paint." Now my dad said, "Having a family is a duty to one's country and to GOD. It's not something that one has a choice in. If we all followed our whims, like you do, then the human race would never survive: we'd all die of starvation. For the world doesn't care about your art. The world has one simple law: Whoever doesn't WORK doesn't EAT." Hearing this, I shook my head and said: "Fine, I'll starve. If the only way that humankind can persist is to deny the impulse that makes life worth living, because we insist upon enshrining the natural given of doom instead of boosting one another, then maybe humans SHOULD die out. Maybe our whole species was a fluke that should never have occurred." Then my dad picked me up by my lapels and forced me over to the front door, and he used my body to bash open the door while tossing me outside violently. Then he yelled: "I never wanna see your face again, you little freeloading piece of trash!" Then he stomped away to my room and fetched my canvases & paints & brushes and launched them out of the house & onto the front lawn. Finally, "Good riddance," he shouted while slamming the door.
One of our neighbors saw this scene and, when the coast was clear, walked over and asked if I was OK.
"I'm alright," I said. "I just need to find some cigarillos and spirits so that I can get back to smoking & drinking & painting."
"I have plenty of staple goods at my place," said my neighbor; "do you need somewhere to stay?"
"Yes, thanks!" I said. Then my neighbor helped me move my painting supplies into a studio at his house. And many of the local ladies came to visit me there, and there was a bed set up where they could pose and I would paint them.
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