No. 201. The Egg. Perhaps it was his sculpting of the large chocolate valentine rose that had awakened in him a desire to make more single iconic, nay archetypal, objects. At any rate, he had come this week to the egg--the exquisite, impossible, morphologically perfect egg. The challenge of the egg reminded him of the reverence still afforded the 4th century B.C. Greek painter, Apelles of Kos, whose reputation still stood, twenty-five centuries later, upon his apparent ability to draw quickly and perfectly, demanding shapes like circles and ellipses (he is also remembered for a portrait of Alexander the Great which nobody has ever seen). Plus there was a whiff of the transcendental in all this. While not in any sense a religious man, he had found himself inexplicably and, in a way, annoyingly touched by something he had recently found in a book of youthful essays by Hungarian Marxist critic George Lukacs called Soul and Form. As an epigram heading up one of his essays, Lukacs had quoted the 14th century German mystic, Meister Eckehart. "Nature makes a man from a child, and a chicken from an egg," Eckehart had written, "God makes the man before the child and the chicken before the egg." And while this had struck him as good biology if dubious theology, it had stayed with him from his library to his studio. "Have you ever seen a large sculpted egg before?" he asked his mannequin and studio assistant, McDowell. "Not that I can recall," replied the mannequin. "Of course," he added, "I'd never spoken, listened, or recalled anything at all before coming here!" "We ought to make one in marble," he suddenly cried aloud. "Why not?" said McDowell. "And paint it brown," he added. "Sure," said McDowell.

No. 200. The Chocolate Rose. Galvanized, first, by the fact that this would be the 200th view into his Tabletop Studio and, second, by the fact that it had recently been Valentine's Day, Abigail, his next-door landscape painter, had suddenly presented him with a bouquet of chocolate roses, each bloom meticulously wrapped in bright red, rose-like foil. He appreciated the gesture (though he carefully discounted whatever erotic fervor that may have been nestling at the heart of Abigail's gift), and while he didn't much care for chocolate, he did rather enjoy the fake blossom's chunky, ottoman-like shape and density. Encouraged by the amusement of his increasingly sentient mannequin--now named McDowell--he had set about carving a large version of one of Abigail's florid blooms in wood. Both he and McDowell found it charmingly absurd. He did rather worry, though, about Abigail's suddenly popping in with a cup of green tea or something. He didn't fancy her company, but he had no desire to hurt her feelings either.

No. 199. Dummy Crit. He was tired. He needed a vacation. The realization came to him quite forcefully when, in the course of a moment's contemplation of the calligraphic painting he was working on, he heard a voice over his shoulder suggesting some minor but important changes in the work's composition and even some ideas about improving the dynamics of his drawing. These unsolicited hints, it turned out, were emanating from his wooden anatomical mannequin. The upsetting thing was that for a mannequin, its suggestions were actually quite helpful.

No. 198. Green Bird of Happiness. He was so desperate for Spring that he decided to make himself a songbird. He thought he might carve one from wood. Or build it in tin and then paint it. In the end he did neither because, as it turned out, the bird he has envisaged already existed. He found it in the alley beside his studio. It was very large, about three feet high, and made of metal--cunningly made, he thought. It bore a little hexagonal hole in its side that had once clearly accepted a huge key (now missing) that had probably caused it to jump about in a fluttery, bird-like manner--or maybe even sing. The bird had rusted here and there, and some of its exquisite blue-green paint had flaked off. The top of its head had been painted a soft cherry-red. He hauled the derelict bird into his studio and heaved it up onto a wooden platform so he could study it . The bird was superb in every way. It was of course mysterious--not the least of its mysteries being its sudden appearance in his alleyway--and yet not remote or off-putting in any way. It was a Bird Familiar. It was an adjunct bird, a bird that completed him and set his restless desires to rest. It filled his yearning heart with peace. There were times when he was certain he could hear it singing.