I spent Sunday standing around at a modern art museum, incredibly bored and occassionally answering queries about the nearest bathroom -- until I found a badge, evidently dropped by a patron after paying for admission. I twisted the thin, malleable metal until it broke into many small pieces and then cupped my hands, closed them together, and shook, enjoying my makeshift maraca.

The sound of a wailing baby then accompanied my off-rhythm beats, providing museum-goers with a disjointed cacaphony that would have made even Alban Berg cringe. The child's mother had brought nothing for her son to pass the time. Couldn't she have waited until he had at least absorbed conventions for beauty before bringing him into an art museum?

The damning isolation he must have felt as she, and everyone around her, ascribed a hidden value to passive objects hanging on the walls surely overwhelmed the similar sensation the skeptic feels at Mass. The constraint of his mother's loving arms prevented him from creating his own happiness and seeking his own fleeting purpose.

For hours he must have suffered from an unbearable existential angst; I can hardly blame him for screaming.

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