My grandfather had a poster hanging in his study my entire childhood. I loved it. My Dad passed it on to me when my grandfather died. And I think that poster, more than any other single thing in my life, has helped me manage personal catastrophes and my own royal fuck-ups simply…very sincerely, mind you, yet without much ado or extraneous worry.
It’s a detailed drawing of a bridge that has given way under the weight of a train crossing it. The steam engine has fallen into the river below. A group of people are standing on the bridge looking down at the wreckage. Above the wreck and destroyed bridge, placed squarely in the middle of the open sky above, is a caption that reads simply, “Oh Shit.”
