And with that came a brand new relationship and recently as a great surprise he has become a father again.
And when people look puzzled at him when they discover this, he just replies: well, don't worry, it's not my first but my third midlife crisis by now.
So Art actually loves children, probably as they are as unadapted as himself.
But when children are this small Art somehow sees them as little aliens with many faces;
"they do not speak your language but do control your life";
"in a way they are the worst little dictators as everything in life gets organised around them, just to keep them happy."
"whenever you take care of them nothing can be planned; you can spend whole days just keeping them happy"
In addition there is this permanent threat... a sudden and perpetual attack of crying and screaming.
The worst is that these moments can often not be anticipated or explained;
from one moment of completely happiness the child all of a sudden dives into room-filling sadness, crying, screaming and disaster.
And the worst: it can not tell you what you can do to solve it...
So this afternoon he is taking care of the boy again and...yes it happens:
at the most unexpected moment his baby-son starts to cry...and continues...and screams...and can not be comforted.
Art feels stress and frustration filling his veins, some dark red hot feeling climbing up his neck...while he tries to remain calm on the outside.
He realises it's his dark side about to take over.
If he was not and artist he would never dare to admit these things, but sometimes in these situations he feels he is out of control and like doing something to his son, scream back to him or...
Fortunately he recognises it and knows how to intervene, and then just puts the child down for a moment until his brain is taking over again...but these moments are still not his favourite, and confront him with his limitations.
So, later when everything has calmed down it makes him wonder, he can not imagine that other people never have the same.
There is really no rational reason to be angry; the child is just unhappy and is not able to explain why...so why does it create so much stress with Art...
At the same Art is now a bit older than the first time he had kids.
And he has done quite some soul-searching, especially as part of his art.
And recently he had been fascinated by the 'dark side' in people.
Behaviour that is triggered and comes up when people are under stress, depressed, furious, hurt, drunk or in other extreme mental states.
Art feels that everyone has these dark sides and some are just better in hiding it than others.
Then he looks his son in the eyes and concludes:
Well son, sure I am not perfect, but worst are the people that deny having a dark side...wow, these are really lost.
