The old man was not sure what to do about the sprinkling can. He was a painter. Perhaps you have seen samples of his work.
The can was in the studio, against the wall, below one of the horizontal bars, of the sort utilized by the dancers in their exercises.
A large mirror was on the other side of the room.
It is not really clear what the sprinkling can was doing there, but one supposes that there were plants about the studio, and it doubtless had its humble horticultural role.
He was very fond of the dancers, and often painted them. To be sure, who would not be fond of the dancers, such lively, exquisite, graceful young women.
Sometimes I think it is only an old man who truly understands how beautiful women are. One sees them when young, of course, naively, almost innocently, through the frames and flames of delight and desire. How blessed and precious is that vision! How unpredictable, and different, and marvelous they are! Now when one is old, or even middle-aged, one understands the wings of summer and the finite tracks of the morning, and the unrelenting parabolas and meridians of time, the ineluctable trajectory of seasons, the imminence of cold winds, readying themselves in their factories and burrows beneath the horizon, understands the messages of falling leaves, of the shortening of days, the coming of winter, of the ineluctable desolation.
Understanding these things the older man, or perhaps even the middle-aged man, sees young women in a very special way. He is no less aware, of course, of their beauty and desirability than the newest creatures, rising even now to the crest of the turning wheel, young creatures vigorous and curious, startled and enraptured, hearing for the first time the pipes of Pan. But he sees their beauty not only with the eyes of youth, but, too, beyond that, with the wondering poignancy of an aware, condemned creature, one frailly and briefly, for so short a time, ensouled.
Surely wisdom is a treacherous, venomous gift, one arriving in its own time, not always welcome, and surely uninvited, but, too, it is one not without its pleasures.
It is through the eyes of wisdom that one sees time, and bodies, and souls, like falling leaves.
And thus the old man, or I suppose even the middle-aged man, sees women in a special way, sees them not simply in their flowering but also in their journey, in their passage, sees them even now against the onset of winter, and, thus, in this way, he not only sees them, but knows them, cares for them, and loves them.
In this way he can understand them, in a way the young man doesn’t, and, in my view, shouldn’t.
The dancers painted by the old man are still with us. Don’t we wish we knew them as he did, as they fussed with their costumes and shoes? They are still there, alive in their way, thanks to his work, and love, alive and busy, oblivious to us, as we look on, in the paint and canvas. I suppose they are not immortal, even there, no more than mountains or pyramids, but we still have them with us, thanks to him, at least for now. We would have liked to see them perform.
So what has this to do with the sprinkling can?
A great deal, actually.
You see, the old man had painted this picture, of these young dancers, at their work, and exercises, just one of many pictures, and they, as usual, not even noticing him really, or not muchly so. And he had the sprinkling can in the picture.
That is where the problem comes up.
Should that sprinkling can be in the picture or not? What is the point of a sprinkling can in a picture of dancers? Surely it does not belong there. So he paints it out. But now he is troubled. This is supposed to be a realistic picture, as honest to sprinkling cans as dancers, and art should be truthful, and the can, after all, was there. And so he paints the can back in. There it is again now, right there, in the picture. But who is master, the painter, or the sprinkling can? Is he to be a naive naturalist, a mindless realist, at the mercy of accidents, of posters, cracks in walls, of furniture, wherever it might be located, and sprinkling cans? Certainly not. An artist is not one of those new-fangled, obnoxious machines that can’t even hold a brush, a mere device, a mechanism, that routinely, dispassionately, docilely reproduces an image of whatever it happens to find in front of it. So the can is painted out. Good riddance! Or pretty good riddance! The artist is master. And does not a true artist inevitably, as the saying is, dip his brush in his own heart’s blood? And in what richer color could he paint? Is he a spineless employee of reality, one of its minor clerks, or is he to be its reshaper, a demiurge molding worlds to his own pleasure? Certainly. So the sprinkling can does not have to be there! He agrees with that. It does not have to be there, and he has painted it out. But now he must ask himself a serious question, one quite compatible with his own emboldened, volitional sovereignty. To be sure, the decision is his. The question, of course, is now: Should the sprinkling can be there?
In the end it is there, because he wants it there, because it is right that it should be there. In its way, it had an aesthetic obligation to be there. It has an artistic duty to discharge, and will discharge it.
He paints the sprinkling can back in.
Why should he have done that?
Remember the girls, and the world, and darkness and light, and spring and summer, and fall and winter. Remember the barracuda, the leopard, the smile of a baby, the stain of rain on a brick wall, the sun behind clouds, the snort of a horse, and its pawing, the growl of the lion, voicing its warning, the hawk in flight, high, so beautiful, so terrible, the shadow of a tree on rocks, the rodents of time, so patient; recall night and day, and the absurdity of it all, and the infinite, transient preciousness of it all. And the sprinkling can is a part of this. It is a mundane artifact, perhaps, but does one effect anything critical on that score? Is it not beautiful in its simple, complacent way, humble and unassuming, and is it not very real, as real as moons and stars, and pebbles and molecules, in its metal and shaping, and surely it hints of plants, and flowers, and growing things, and their joy and doom, and it is there, after all, somehow, in the studio. And does it not, as it happens, have something to say, somehow, in its own way, about dancers, and differences, and the ways of the world, about the large and the small, and the important and the unimportant, which is so important, and about life? We think so. Not only the girls are beautiful but small things, as well, the sound of the shoe on the smooth wood, the rain splashed on the window, the piano, not in such good tune, the sharp reprimand of the régisseur.
And so I think, all in all, the old man was right.
And the sprinkling can remains in the picture.