Faldoni, parts 3048 - 3051

 3048. Being unable to write a letter resulted in Faldoni losing interest in learning to write and so he inevitably turned his attention to what he should have been dong all along; painting pictures. He had only the walls of his cell to use as his canvas, and he decided to use his one remaining wall that was still blank, to paint one large work.

 3049. This last painting was not going to be a series of little portrait heads as he had been working on all along. His new work was going to be one big image covering the entire remaining wall. He wanted to paint a picture that would sum up all of his feelings and ideas about life.

 3050. He wanted do a work which would make anyone who would see it later feel how tragic his situation was, how wrong his fate, how great his paintings might have been if only he could live a few more years. In short, there was nothing you could name that Faldoni did not want to put into his painting. When it was finished the viewer was going to see truth and falsehood, joy and sorrow, love and hate, and everything else of importance you can name.

3051. And so, like the problem of writing his letter, the painting not only did not get painted, he was unable to even begin on the preliminary drawing. It was as if you attached a boulder by ropes to a little dog, and tried to get him to pull the boulder up a long hill. The little dog my try for all its worth to move the boulder, but the boulder will not move, it will not even quiver. The task is too great by far.