Waterhouse

John William Waterhouse. Yesterday I went to see an extensive show of this artist's work at the Groninger Museum. I took a three hour trip because that's just how much I've liked his work. I was excited and filled with anticipation. I thought about the beauty and color he portrayed in his "stories" on canvas, thinking, "At last I will see these stories come to life!".

Exactly the opposite feeling awaited me as I gazed at each, technically perfect, painting. More, what filled me was the feeling of being in a crypt. His models (or should I say model because he seems to use the same woman for every face) were all posed like mannequins, beautiful and graceful mannnequins, but dead to the world. Everything was perfect, from the veins in his marble to the weave of his rugs and yet...nothing, no soul, no life breathed there. In fact, I was surprised to find that I like his paintings much more in print then in real life!

He does get some life going in his landscapes, then he drops in a model from the studio and the birds stop singing. The wood becomes dead and nary a leaf can be heard to fall from a tree. Not surprising then, that the one painting that struck me was "Saint Elalia", which can be seen here: http://www.johnwaterhouse.com/view.cfm?recordid=76 (One of these days I'll figure out how to post outside images here.) She is truly dead and yet he brings more life to this painting than to all the other "live" models. His studies have more life in them. Pity he couldn't carry that over to his finished paintings, or "killed" it in the process.

So, once again, I am reminded that perfection and control does not result in beauty, no matter your skill in reproducing the real. Because real is not perfect, it is flawed, it is unfinished, it is faulted and it breathes life. This can not be captured by turning all to stone, immovable and unchanging. Leaving the mausoleum, oops, museum I strolled through the Saturday market and was restored to life, all the more poignant for this contrasting point of reference.

Revelations

I'm back from America and my grandfather's funeral. This is not my first touch with death by far, though each time it is a journey, at times arduous but in it's own way life-giving, for how much more can one appreciate life than when faced with it's final chapter? We have this vessel, into which we pour all our experiences and then one day the vessel is empty. Where does all that experience and knowledge, wisdom and folly go? The very nature of existence has caused man to invent answers and defend those answers sometimes by the sword.

When I was six years old I lost someone whose presence I never doubted to be in. In that moment I awoke, I began to see and hear and know the miracle that we are alive. To be given the gift of awareness of one's own existence at that age is a revelation.

That we live in this form that breathes, thinks, creates language and so many, many other things, is truly a privilege. Forget how or even why we are here or what happens when we are not, and see this: that we exist, now, in this moment in time. Open your hand in front of your face and look at it, look at the space around it, feel and hear the air come into and go out of your lungs and know that at this moment, right now, you are here. Amazing.

So I choose, at this time of grieving, not to dwell on what has been lost, but what was given, giving what I can in return, and accepting gratefully this gift of life, filling this vessel. My goal is that my glass will be more than half full, it will be brimming over, and in the end when it is spilled, know that I have savored every drop, bitter and sweet.