No. 90.  Diminution.  Well, he thought, big is big, and bigness clearly has its majesty, but small was where he felt most at home.  It was harder, admittedly, to find the heroic in smallness, though many had  done so (Paul Klee, William Blake, Turner in his watercolours, Goya in his etchings).  In the case of his new painting, he had exerted almost too much control over it, fussing until his urn-by-the-sea became an apple-by-the-sea and then suddenly sprouted extensions that made the red globe into a jar with paint brushes stuck in it.  It occurred to him that without troubling himself for much longer, he could make the brushes into a fuse and then he'd have a rather jolly red bomb resting by the shore.  Why would he want that?  Because of its inexplicability, he thought with satisfaction.

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