Look Closely

A profusion of roses in July. A roomful of expectant children’s faces on the first day of kindergarten. The nave of a Gothic church. The paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts. It is easy to discern beauty in the expected places.

Out of my mid-November window, the sea and sky are composed of myriad grays, nameless (in our language) and yet distinct from one another. I wander into my yard and spy fragment of color in the dull leaves and grasses. Beacon-like, they conjure images of girls in colorful party dresses long after midnight. Their fiery crimsons, burnt oranges, and breathlessly screaming yellows have hidden dormant under summer’s conventional greens. Now it is there turn to flicker briefly before being frozen, buried, and turned to rot by rain and time. I think of a friend who is facing a milestone birthday. I think of the splendor that sometimes flares before decay, its assets brought into sharper focus on its cusp. Beauty can be sharper, more intense, more poignant, in the face of its own mortality.

I’ll end by a quotation from Dylan Thomas: “Time held me green and dying / though I sang in my chains like the sea.”

A Thousand Words

How many times in life do loved ones and friends state a decision, and then behave differently? How many times do we hear another say "no" when an underlying YES shines through that person's eyes? How many "maybes" actually mean "no, but I'm not brave enough to say that?"

I could write a treatise on the confusion, disappointment, pain and deception that is caused when people do not say what they mean or mean what they say. It would be an angst-ridden exercise.

Instead, I tried to capture this phenomena in a painting, which was enjoyable to paint and whose end product delights me. Instead of feeling depressed about humanity's indecisiveness, instead I feel protective and a little amused.

What If?

Many, many times we hear adults say that they wish they could re-experience the joy, enthusiasm, and innocence of childhood. It is easy to forget that childhood is often a place of painful inhibition and insecurity, a walking-on-eggshells game of trying to provide the “correct” emotional response in the landmine world of adults. It is not always the carefree days we prefer to harken back to.

But what if adults made a conscious effort to enjoy those very things which brought pleasure and joy in childhood? What if we felt free to eat cookies – or cookie batter – without apologies and excuses? What if adults felt free to roll down hills, spin until dizzy, howl at the moon with our dogs, or have soft-serve ice cream for dinner on a summer evening?

What if otherwise creative adults stopped making excuses for not writing, painting, singing, or dancing? What if we stopped banishing those delights to our past as things that we “used to do?” What if ignored the fear of being judged and stopped hiding behind Perfectionism long enough to send a bit of art (a poem, a song sung out loud, a photograph) out into the world? Would this sharing help others be less afraid to share poetry, even if they’re not T.S. Eliot, a painting if they’re not Picasso, or a photograph if they’re not Dorothea Lange?

What if those who read this share their unique art with the world, and report back on the joy and amusement that has been added to the world?

Can Cooking Be An Art form?

You select recipies, combining the best features of old favorites with new interests. You choose high quality ingredients, including fruits, meats and fish in season, and the appropriate herbs and spices to set off flavors. You assemble the ingredients in ways that can be savory, flavorful, piquant, comforting, or which evoke combinations of these traits. You may pay attention to presentation in order to evoke a mood, selecting color and material of serving dishes and plates, choosing the lighting that will emphasize the mood you hope to capture with the meal. Again I pose the question: can cooking be an art form?