My body isn’t there any more when I paint, except insofar as I need it. It works well, trained to the steady touch, the precise twist of the fingers. I don’t have to think about anything except the way that brilliant orange rubs up against the dull dark red, dots it but doesn’t bleed into it, how I can thin it a little so it’ll blend a bit with the white down below that vaguely, but only vaguely, suggests a sun-dappled grassy surface.

What do you do when you feel like you are living at the end of the world?