As I sit and gaze at my paintings, I often pause at a painting on a board not far from the dinning table in my livingroom. On one side it shows the tiled cover of a utility duct in one of Motovun’s stores, but on the other it has my rendering of the sacred word, “Aum” (“The Last of My Jokes on Abstraction,” May 23, 2011). More often than not, the board is turned so that the tiled cover of a utility duct is not showing. As I have been doing since the painting appeared on the wall a bit more than a year ago, I spell the word out loud each and every time my gaze pauses on the painting: “Aaauuummmmmm.” The whole house reverberates for a while. Having done this who knows how many times the last few days, I turned the board around a short while ago. I must admit that I feel a bit guilty, though. Whenever I spot the tiled cover of a utility duct, I now spell the sacred word in my mind.