Picasso in the drawer

No work from the artist today. No practical work, anyway. A cold desert wind blows like a mistaken lack of talent through the face of her labour instead. Work within will not have rested. I am sure of that. Only on the outside is inertia. It did get me thinking, though. When was the first time I became aware of art? What first directed me towards this captivated sideline? It could have been when I was five. There was a bureau-style desk in my grandmother's house in the far north, and in one of the three wide bottom drawers, a book, an encyclopaedia, lay there, waiting as if only for me. It was as if the drawer had been built especially for such a book, as if the book represented not exactly evil but something contentious and troublesome. Something artistic, even. Anyway, I opened the book and found inside it, somewhere in the middle, one or two large reproductions of Picasso's earlier Cubist work - art existing in its own right and not just as representation, the blurb probably said - and these images immediately unsettled me: they gave swiftly internalised heebie-jeebies. They frightened. They shook. In fact I slammed the book shut as if I had glimpsed my first pornography - lewdly compelling images of carnal self-destruction - and not visual releases from the imitation of reality. I think I slammed the desk drawer shut and didn't go back to it for weeks. But I did in the end. And again. Now, I view this kind of work not exactly regularly but with a kind of respectful nostalgia. And how will I feel about this artist's work when it is done? I am the artist's husband after all. Will images be found and drawers slammed shut? I think I know already how I will feel. Elated.