Five years passed, and we had thoroughly researched the soul transfer device. I took most of the notes, and Meva formally put everything in her secret journal. We concluded our experiments, having grown weary of research, and put the soul transfer device in storage under the bed.
With the diversion of research over, I noticed Meva spent long hours staring out the window. She was looking at the baby gardens, now barely visible under a thick patch of weeds.
One day, Meva went outside to draw shapes in the soil using sticks. She told me it was a new art theory she was working on called Drawshapism. Then she pushed sticks into the ground and call it Stickism.
Not to be outdone, I piled rocks up in front of our cabin and called it Rockism.
Soon her stick artworks began to fill the yard, leaving little room for my rock expressions. With no place left on our property to properly display my art, I decided to pioneer a new undiscovered genre of fine art. I plucked pinecones from the surrounding trees and re-hung them from the branches. I called it Pineconeism.
Meva thought I was mocking her art. I asked her why she didn't think I was just mocking Rockism. She claimed intuition. She said that Pineconeism was redundant and derivative, which infuriated me.
Out of spite, I tied the pinecones onto the exact place from where I plucked them, inciting more criticism from Meva. She said she couldn't tell if the pinecones were growing naturally from the tree, or if I had plucked and tied them back onto the branch. I feigned offense and yelled, "You do not have an eye for art or you would recognize Pineconism when you saw it!"
She declared a new form of Pineconism, where the artist did not pluck the pinecone from the branch and retie it before declaring it a work of art. I thought this was obviously silly, and said as much. She yelled, "You are just jealous of my superior form of expression, Tzurk! You know that I have discovered an authentic movement known as Pineconism!"
"You are not even making art, Meva!" I yelled. "What you are doing is called NATURE, not art!"
She glared at me, "That is what all stupid people said about great art when it was first discovered! They did not have the mind to understand such things. I am shocked to know that you are one of those people!"
I pointed to the ground, "Fine! I just discovered Groundism! It is when the ground is just the ground. In fact, the whole world is already my work of art because it is all covered with the ground. I will sign my name to the world."
I snapped a stick from the ground, and signed my name to the ground.
Meva’s face turned red with anger, "You just broke off one of my stickist artworks!"
"Well, there weren’t any other sticks I could use to sign my name!" I shouted back, "Someone picked them all and stuck them into the ground!"
That night, Meva moved out of our bed and set up a pile of clothes to sleep on in the corner. I saw the stupidity of our fight and said so. But she would not talk to me, and would not return to our bed.
That night I did not sleep. When we slept together, I rested my hand on her hip. The empty space she left in the bed was haunting. I kept looking over at Meva in the corner, and could not believe I acted so stupid to her. I realized that she was really trying to be an artist. She needed to create. She hadn't started Stickism to spite me. She was expressing herself. I was the fraud. I was the one acting in spite.
That lonely bed was a warning that if I continued to disrespect my treasured wife, I may just end up alone… forever.
The next morning, I saw her stirring, so I went and lay down beside her. I apologized to her and admitted my spite.
She held up her hand to quiet me. "I curse my love of art. I put it before you. I forgive you, but I don’t want to pursue Stickism or my fraudulent form of Pineconism anymore."
She took my hand and placed it on her hip. She said, "I have a new form of art. I call it Tzurkism, and I will only ever be a Tzurkist!"
"And I am a Mevaist. I will only be obsessed with Mevaism forever!"