Just like mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of healthy fungal networks, paintings are the fruiting bodies of my solitude. Disturbing solitude has the same effect that tilling soil has on fungal networks: bad.
“Painting and magical powers seem very much the same. Sometimes I’m unable to paint a thing. … I tried and tried, but nothing I did seemed any good. They were copies of paintings I’d seen somewhere before … and not very good copies either.”
– Ursula, Kiki’s Delivery Service
The Signpost in the Shade is a pair of paintings painted for a very special pair of people in our lives on the occasion of their wedding.
Storytellers as they are, The Signpost in the Shade, is a story written by the bride for the groom on his birthday, about a month before they got engaged.