getting stuff fixed

Art Burshy had issues this week in his bath room.
Basically his boiler went out of order, and he had no hot water anymore.

Well, no panic for Art Burshy, our artist can deal with this type of practical discomforts.
He called the landlord to see that they would come to fix it, and after trying a few times he actually got a woman on the phone. She asked him several questions that Art answered with the greatest politeness...they were obviously gonna solve the issue.

Fortunately it was spring so he did not need the hot water for heating his house. Although spring this year has been extremely cold so far. Art even started wondering whether this global warming of the planet is again a kind of marketing campaign for some producer. A producer that will soon surprise us with his magic solution for global warming, and earning a shitload of money by selling a cure for an issue that does not exist.

Well, even though spring is a bit cold, the heating is not such a big issue. As Art gets a bit older he does really enjoy heating up his apartment, though.
Art even enjoys dancing naked in the heated house, acting silly, mimicking ballet and getting all carried away. Some time ago he discovered that the neighbours opposite of his apartment could actually see him. And initially with retrospective shame he wondered how many times they would have seen him performing his naked Swan Lake performance.
Nowadays he actually does not mind anymore; what could happen if they see him?
Sure they have seen other naked people before.
There is no law forbidding you to dance naked in your apartment, and shocking your neighbours.
What is the worst that could happen?
And after some time he actually started liking the idea of the neighbours seeing him...to execute his RIGHT to dance naked in front of them.
Art started thinking that at some point it could also be a good statement against the current social obsession with nudity and sex... Nowadays if an artist makes a beautiful portrait of a naked body, it directly creates loads of attention and negative response, considering it as some sort of porn. At the same time the whole Internet is swamped with hardcore porn movies and pictures, but as it is not in our face every day we do not really seem to care.

Back to the reflections about hot water...
Well, clearly the current situation meant that Art had no hot water for showers. He started writing down  all the options for the time it would not get fixed:
1. Was this the moment to start having cold showers. Art had heard that a cold shower is actually a very healthy habit, and helped relaxing your body. Was this maybe a sort of sign from some divine entity to make a change in his life.
Well, as (a)Art does not believe in classical view of an almighty God, and (b) after all it is just a small issue of not having hot water, he decided it was not a meaningful event causing him to change his life so dramatically.
He actually could not imagine cold water would be good; at moments he could see himself even dying in the shower under and freezing cold spray of liquid ice drops.
2. He could also just have no showers at all...creating a spiritual freedom of his body, freedom to be dirty...and smelly too probably.
3. It could be a reason to call old friends that did not live very far, asking if he could have a shower at their place, or
4. Aaah, yet another option; he could go to a public swimming pool! Directly he imagined himself diving in the large pool, and everyone running out of the water when the water turned slowly yellow and brown from Art's dirt. It would be nice, and he would have all the pool to himself.

Art snapped out of his lovely reflections, stopped writing and went on with his life. The day passed and nothing happened really; he called the landlord and nobody responded.
5 days later suddenly a handyman stood in front of his door. Art had kind of survived reducing his contact with cold water as much as possible. He had washed himself with a small wet towel, shivering from head to toe. And after several tries, and a regular "someone will come tomorrow" from the landlord, his moods got as dirty as his skin.
A small smile cracked his face, as he realised misery might be over soon....he even gave the handyman a cup of coffee (not too luxurious, as he worried that the handyman would like it too much and stay longer than needed).
Finally after 5 hours of unclear activity in the bath room the handyman came out. The man in general did not look very joyful; it must not have been his dream to become a handyman. This time he even looked less pleased, with a big frown on his forehead.
He explained Art that someone else needed to come to fix the issue....

Well, maybe good not to describe the language that somehow came from the moving lips of Art Burshy. The handyman however looked unmoved, as if he got immunity for words over all these years where he had to solve the shit of others. And then he left, leaving Art was even more puzzled than before...

Art Burshy took his notes with options from before.
He realised that he lost his joyful pleasure from the time he was first confronted with not having hot water, and all related trouble still seemed quite innocent and small.
Things now really got so bad that he didn't see the humour of it anymore.
Somewhere soon this boiler needed to be fixed, and all space for humour had left through the door.

It was like a list of nice things-to-do becomes loses its inspiration when you have to do them under time pressure.
The moment you realise that you have too little time to do everything, pleasure and energy walk out of the door.
Time pressure turns joyful initiatives into painful energy sucking burdens...
So Art did what one can do best in such cases, back to bed !