Drawn and coloured during a sleepless night, now being commented after the next vigilant one -- a dark scene really, this thing that I had to do -- but a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
Pimpernels! Happy colouring colours. A cutesy bird (more sugar!) more like a dove than not. And a nice hangman's knot, which the painter had to tie first to get it right, all those intriguing loops and curls. (And had to untie later, finding it a little tempting.) But there is something liberating, sugarsweetly medicating in the thought that one doesn't have to live really, merely drag along on this Via Dolorosa from bad to worse. This could all end anytime. If one has the possibility -- and does not take it -- life is more of a choice. Or with Nietzsche: The liberating view that Life can be taken lightly, be seen as an experiment, and "not a duty, not a calamity, not a trickery". The manners, the watercolour hues in this otherwise frightening scene (choices are frightening stuff when taken to the bottom) are thus as gentle as possible, hopefully bringing balance; the thought being that in ev'ry job that must be done there is an element of fun and
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way.