A Breathtaking View

January 21, 2011

Last Friday morning my beloved and I went to the deYoung Museum in San Francisco to view an exhibition on Post-Impressionism. Before you become impressed by my interest in any kind of impressionism you need to know that my wife is the cultured one in our household and I only went along because that’s what you do when you love someone. You get up before the crack of dawn and drive twenty miles through rush hour traffic only to walk at a snail’s pace through a museum of old paintings while desperately searching your sleep-deprived, caffeine-starved brain for something insightful and profound to say. Let the good times roll! And you do all this when you’d have been perfectly content to have spent the entire day lounging around the house in your stretchy pants and old sweatshirt flipping between Bravo and the Cooking Channel. These are the kinds of compromises and sacrifices you make on a regular basis when you’re totally crushed out and smitten sideways by your so much better half.  I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking “Anita, you give and you give and you give. What utter delight and bliss it must be to be married to you.”

That’s right. A rich fantasy life is a healthy thing. Keep dreaming.

But back to the museum. Along with a small group of friends we were allowed in early before the general opening to the masses and then given a private tour of the exhibit before the crowds of ‘common folk’ descended. As we moved from room to room we had the chance to view original works of  Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Paul Signac who worked some kind of magic with dots! I realized in fairly short order that I’m no particular fan of Renoir nor was Cézannea particular thrill but all in all there were some remarkable paintings including this one titled “Rest” by the Danish artist, Wilhelm Hammershoi. As we art aficionados are prone to say, “something about it spoke to me.”

But my appreciation for this piece was little compared to what I felt when rounding the corner into one of the rooms I suddenly found myself standing directly across the hall from vanGogh’s “Starry Night over the Rhone.” Let me search for a word here.  Awesome. Powerful. Stunning. Magnificent. Breathtaking. All that and then some.

Among his full body of work vanGogh created several paintings featuring a starry night sky as the primary subject and while this wasn’t the most famous one (“Starry Night” came later in his life) I was none the less transfixed by the incredible energy and boldness of the night sky with every star casting light downward, becoming illuminant on the ripples of water. It truly was breathtaking, and while I used that word once already, the exquisiteness of this painting is double worthy of its application.

I stood across the room about 15 feet away for some time and then as the others standing in front of it began to flow toward the next painting my beloved and I walked up to the painting and stood as close to it as the tape boundary line on the floor would allow. I’d crossed a similar line earlier that morning in front of another painting before I was swiftly  reprimanded by a rather cranky man with a walkie-talkie and an attitude and was acutely aware his eyes were still burrowing into the back of my skull. Even from the position I held on the permissible side of the line I was close enough to vanGogh’s painting that I could have reached out and touched it were it not for Mr. Cranky Pants with the walkie-talkie. An original painting by the incredibly gifted extremely tormented Vincent vanGogh and I was within inches of a canvas into which he’d poured his energy and talent. It was….and here comes number three….breathtaking to consider, but still I became aware of something as I stood within an arms length of the painting that surprised me and then left me feeling a little dissatisfied. Standing that near to the painting the brilliant starlight reflecting downward through the deep blues of the night sky that had first appeared hauntingly captivating to me when viewed from across the other side of the room now looked like nothing more than an accumulation of small splashes and dare I say it, rather ordinary dabs of paint in varying shades of yellow and blue. The sense of awe in being so close to something vanGogh had physically worked on was still there but it was only when I returned to my former position on the other side of the room that the painting again took. my. breath. away. Breathtaking. That’s four.

By this time our friends had drifted into the adjacent gallery room and so we turned and began to walk away to join them but at the point I reached the threshold of the opening to the next collection I turned back and stood, transfixed once again by the painting of a starry night. Then  from out of nowhere I became teary-eyed and understood at once that there was more going on inside me.

So here I am. Maybe you are too. Nose pressed into the canvas of our lives, having lost sight of the bigger picture. There are days that come to us all when all we see are the dabs and splashes. Our lives look like a mess.  Nothing more than randomness and happenstance. No plan. No purpose. And when that’s all we can see then all we can feel is uncertainty, heartache, sorrow, doubt, and fear. What takes us to that place is different for us all. Coming to the self-awareness of being gay and overwhelmed with what that might mean and what it might cost. Coming out to others and walking safely through the emotional landmines of their reactions. Being blind-sided by the unexpected end of a relationship. Confronted by suffering and loss, whether someone elses or our own.  Whatever it is, it doesn’t feel good and it doesn’t look pretty. Not from here. Not now. Yet even from here our hearts tell us something that our eyes have yet to confirm. It tells us to take our comfort because no matter what it is we think we see or know from here, the painting is just as beautiful as it’s always been and the light that cuts through the darkness just as radiant as it once appeared. Our vision may be too narrow at this moment and our view too restricted, but there’s a gentle voice assuring us that the painting remains the same and that one day, from another angle that only another day somewhere ahead can provide we’ll see the painting again in all it’s fullness and it will be just as breathtaking, no, even more breathtaking than we now remember it to have been. That’s five and six.

Posted in Faith, Grace Meditations, Storytelling