Swimming laps early in the day you glide into the wall, touch, turn, catch a breath and reach into the next stroke. Then it’s back the other way until you come to the wall at the other end. It is sort of a metaphor for life. The repetitious business between the walls could be experienced as either a necessary tedium or timely little spells, too brief for enterprise but just right for connecting one dot to the next, to question one idea or affirm another. Life it seems is tedium or business until you meet an obstacle. Then you must alter your course, change direction and try to make another buck before you come to another wall. I like it because I know, whatever it is that has my attention, it won’t be long before I need to adapt. Even if it’s back to the same redundant thing, it is a change and even if that is an inconvenience, I know it is good for me.
My time was nearly up. A glance at the clock, do the math and I knew there were only 4 or 5 more turns before time to climb the ladder, walk the walk and face the new day. After 45 minutes of nearly non stop swim, being horizontal in a gravity free, fluid medium feels more natural than walking back to the locker room. The last lap always generates the same idea; I don’t have to quit with this turn. I can slip in another couple of laps with no one the wiser. Sometimes I do just that, like getting more than I paid for.
Barely out of the water and my mind took an unauthorized detour from one metaphor to another. Life also delivers like a famous painting. I thought of two in particular. Albert Bierstadt was famous for his sweeping landscapes of the American West. ‘Lander’s Peak’ (1863) unique with the same combinations of sky and clouds, mountains, valleys and running water you find in all of his work. You can’t absorb the whole view in a single sweep. After scanning all the elements you study a little closer to see if maybe God himself isn’t beaming down on his creation from behind a cloud. Look and admire all you want but there is a rift between the eye and Bierstadt’s brush strokes. It keeps you at a distance, you can’t be drawn into it.
I can only guess how many short research papers (1,000 words) we had to do on famous painters. One I did was on Bierstadt. For those folks who took a Humanities Survey Course and played in the jazz band, thinking that constituted a liberal arts education, they should go back to their alma mater and ask for a refund. I had to write a paper on Andrew Wyeth also, at the time an American master, realist painter and a legend in his own time. If not his best work, ‘Christina’s World’ is his most recognized painting. A young woman is seated on the ground, turned away, looking up across a field toward a house and barn. Painted (1948) when I was in grade school, using few colors, few objects and subtle transitions, it is as compelling as any Bierstadt landscape. You can see individual stems of grass. With her head turned away, all you can glean is that she has on a plain dress, appears to be emaciated if not crippled and speaks to the melancholy of human experience. Unlike Bierstadt’s landscape, I couldn’t help being pulled into the untold story, to identify with the image and the feel. God was some other place and there was nothing eternal, only the moment.
Both are famous, priceless paintings that say so much by the way of the eye. Both can be framed as metaphors for this life, just through different lenses. I identify with Christina’s World most. I can almost smell the dry grass, hear the sounds of insects and summer’s passing. It draws from the human condition and its temporary, fleeting nature. Maybe I’m just drawn to imagery that reminds me how fragile this life is rather than how grand something else may appear.
Tomorrow will be a new day, a new chance to choose; should I shrink under the weight of boredom or come to the wall, breathe, touch, turn and stroke with new eyes and the chance to get more than I paid for. I’ll be in the water by 7:00 a.m.
My time was nearly up. A glance at the clock, do the math and I knew there were only 4 or 5 more turns before time to climb the ladder, walk the walk and face the new day. After 45 minutes of nearly non stop swim, being horizontal in a gravity free, fluid medium feels more natural than walking back to the locker room. The last lap always generates the same idea; I don’t have to quit with this turn. I can slip in another couple of laps with no one the wiser. Sometimes I do just that, like getting more than I paid for.
Barely out of the water and my mind took an unauthorized detour from one metaphor to another. Life also delivers like a famous painting. I thought of two in particular. Albert Bierstadt was famous for his sweeping landscapes of the American West. ‘Lander’s Peak’ (1863) unique with the same combinations of sky and clouds, mountains, valleys and running water you find in all of his work. You can’t absorb the whole view in a single sweep. After scanning all the elements you study a little closer to see if maybe God himself isn’t beaming down on his creation from behind a cloud. Look and admire all you want but there is a rift between the eye and Bierstadt’s brush strokes. It keeps you at a distance, you can’t be drawn into it.
I can only guess how many short research papers (1,000 words) we had to do on famous painters. One I did was on Bierstadt. For those folks who took a Humanities Survey Course and played in the jazz band, thinking that constituted a liberal arts education, they should go back to their alma mater and ask for a refund. I had to write a paper on Andrew Wyeth also, at the time an American master, realist painter and a legend in his own time. If not his best work, ‘Christina’s World’ is his most recognized painting. A young woman is seated on the ground, turned away, looking up across a field toward a house and barn. Painted (1948) when I was in grade school, using few colors, few objects and subtle transitions, it is as compelling as any Bierstadt landscape. You can see individual stems of grass. With her head turned away, all you can glean is that she has on a plain dress, appears to be emaciated if not crippled and speaks to the melancholy of human experience. Unlike Bierstadt’s landscape, I couldn’t help being pulled into the untold story, to identify with the image and the feel. God was some other place and there was nothing eternal, only the moment.
Both are famous, priceless paintings that say so much by the way of the eye. Both can be framed as metaphors for this life, just through different lenses. I identify with Christina’s World most. I can almost smell the dry grass, hear the sounds of insects and summer’s passing. It draws from the human condition and its temporary, fleeting nature. Maybe I’m just drawn to imagery that reminds me how fragile this life is rather than how grand something else may appear.
Tomorrow will be a new day, a new chance to choose; should I shrink under the weight of boredom or come to the wall, breathe, touch, turn and stroke with new eyes and the chance to get more than I paid for. I’ll be in the water by 7:00 a.m.
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