This postAn hour or two ago I opened Gmail and happened to notice this news bulletin above my messages: “Liz Taylor can keep Van Gogh painting.”
My first thought was, “But what if he doesn’t want to keep painting? She can’t do that to him!” And of course a corner of my mind knew that Van Gogh was dead, but my imagination concocted a world — complete with a Starry Night sky — in which Van Gogh was still alive, chained up in some Dutch dungeon, commanded by Liz Taylor to paint away. Then I wondered if it was some kind of new fantasy novel, one of those alternate history kinds of things. You know — Van Gogh accidentally paints a time warp into one of his paintings and ends up in the middle of the 20th century, where a young Liz Taylor runs into him and realizes she can make big bucks by getting Van Gogh to pump out dozens of new paintings. Or something like that.
But then, sadly, I realized what the sentence really said. I still like my version better.
