There is something peacefully satisfying about looking words up in a real print-and-paper dictionary. Hardcover is even better.  A part of me always feels slightly vindicated when finding a specific word within what is, essentially, one huge list of words.  Even when I don't find the word I want, I find joy in the distractions along the way.  Discovering which words the publisher has decided to illustrate has also never ceased to intrigue me.

I have a dictionary at work that I found in a pile of used supplies. For a short time it was kept in one of the overhead cabinets in my cubicle, but I've learned to simply never put it away.

judged at the museum

Yesterday, a friend and I went to a local art museum for their Thursday night event.  It was opening night for a photography exhibit, local quartet Jelloslave was lending their funky, jazzy music to the air, and the museum offered prize drawings, a cash bar, and other free activities. Not to mention the fabulous people-watching.
Running with the photography theme, one activity was creating cyanotypes.  These involve laying two- or three-dimensional objects on treated paper and exposing the paper to light.  The finished product is a blue and white image.  
I'm usually excited for free activities, and my friend and I set to arranging objects on transparencies before heading into the darkroom.  However, when we got to the doorway of the adjoining room and saw the line of people waiting to process their creations, I lost interest pretty quickly.  We hovered in the doorway while I weighed a take-home-art experience against the wait in line in order to create said art.  While I debated, two men approached and asked if we were the end of the line, to which my friend replied, "No, she's deciding whether she wants to wait in line."  One man looked at me and said, "Really?"  He sounded surprised or taken-aback.  I felt judged by his reaction.  Making eye contact, I responded, "Yes. I just don't know if it's worth it."  Then I stepped aside to lay my collection of items on the nearest table and said, "I don't care enough, to be honest."
He did not seem to know what to say or how to react.   Fine.  Good.  
As my friend and I walked around a gallery later, I remarked that I wondered if the man thought I was not appreciative of art, or not open to new experiences, or just impatient.  We agreed it would have been interesting to see his reaction had we told him that my bachelor's degree is in Studio Art.  While I don't like being labeled or judged any more than most people, I do like being honest and speaking my mind, which is what I did.  The finished prints that I had seen were fuzzy-edged, the objects were picked-over so I did not feel very attached to what I had arranged, and standing for five to fifteen minutes in a crowded, too-warm room did not appeal to me.
I felt more creatively stimulated exploring the photography exhibit, which we hadn't even made it to yet. Facing The Lens: Portraits of Photographers proved to be an immensely better use of my time at the museum and with a dear friend.

jumbly thought webs

Know what's unpredictable and awesome?  Those moments right before drifting off to sleep where my brain is still somewhat lucid but is starting to lose contact with reality.

The other night, my eyelids were closing as I began to drift away from my crossword puzzle into dreamland.  Suddenly one thought stood out from the jumbly web of randomness my subconscious was busy creating:

"What if I am one day the sole hope for the continuation of the human race and its procreation?"  

Insert a microsecond of internal anxiety. 

Next thought: "The Duggars exist, so that will never happen."

Insert relaxation and sleep.

highlights

• Making an art museum security guard laugh
• Being complimented on my toenail polish
• Spending Edward Hopper's and my birthday with his most famous and most parodied work, Nighthawks
• Seeing A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
• Being moved to tears in multiple museums by beauty and wonder
• Amazing Fajitas Combinadas con Res y Pollo at Nuevo Léon
• New original art for my walls, made by up-and-comers
• Sharing laughs with strangers
• Free sweet soul music in a park
• Running through a summer rainstorm in a sundress
• Smiles from strangers
• Reconnections with old friends
• Long walks in new places
• New perspectives
• 
  

My Birthday with Seurat

Today, I visited the Art Institute of Chicago for the first time. Four hours wasn't enough to do the museum justice, though my eyes and brain were overwhelmed by the time the museum closed.  Following my tradition of taking notes of things I see in new museums, I traversed the galleries with my pencil and small notebook, recording significant works and making comments.

The AIC is home to one of my favorite paintings, which, surprisingly for me, is an impressionist work.  Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884, painted from 1884-1886, is...all day I've struggled to find the perfect adjectives for it.  Large, magnetic, magical.  None of the combinations I've tried so far have done it justice.  Ever since first seeing a picture of this painting, I have wanted to see it in person.  Today, I did.  Below are the notes I scrawled in my notebook while in gallery 240.

Georges Seurat

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884

1884-86

Has red & blue & orange border -- Seurat restretched painting in 1889 to add border.  Provides visual transition between interior of painting and his specially designed white frame (reproduction here).

This one keeps making me tear up.  It has always been a goal of mine to see this.  It's beautiful, intricate, engrossing, magical.  I want to be able to step through the frame and spend the day there.

Listening to 'Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want' by Elefant. (Remake of song playing in Ferris Bueller when they show Cameron viewing the work.)  Once the song was followed [in shuffle mode on my ipod] by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 'Hysteric.'  "You suddenly complete me."  Good lyric for this experience for me.

The gallery room is strangely noisy.  Thankful I had already been listening to music.  I can still hear sounds of the din through my playlist.  Thursdays from 5-8p are free.  I knew immediately when it was 5, due to the suddenly higher # of visitors.  Checked my phone clock and sure enough: 5:03 pm.

I'm enjoying watching people's faces as they view it [the painting].  Or as they enter the gallery and initially see it.  It commands one wall, with doorways on either side.

I lent my pencil to a lovely, smiley old couple with European (German? Belgian?) accents.

Spent 30-40 min. in gallery 240.  Time to move on so I don't regret not seeing others.  In the hallway 4 steps up from gallery level, the painting's astoundingness still chokes me up as I turn and view it.

trains and cheese monkeys

There was a man on the train yesterday (Jeff? Jeb?) who gave up his seat so that a family could sit together, and in so doing, sat next to me.   I felt like that was a bummer, but it ended up being a bigger bummer than I had predicted.  Jeb wanted to know where I am from, what I do, whether I want kids (REALLY? None-a yo’ bizness, old man), and wanted to tell me all about these things in his life.  Great.  His job – rebuilding houses and renovating the interiors – could be interesting, but not the way he told it.  Though he loves his job, he is a terrible storyteller.  And I probably wouldn’t care about his kids or their jobs on a good day, but especially not on three hours of sleep.  I eventually stopped trying to hide my yawns from him, hoping he’d open the book he held and let me sleep.  At one point, he said, “This is probably boring to you.”  I tried to leave a significant pause before halfheartedly saying, “No, it’s not.”  And danged if he didn’t pause, then pick right up where he left off.  Touché, Jeb.   

Thank God for the phone call he received, which gave me time to pull my book out of my bag and begin reading.  Once he was finished with his call, he turned to me and said, “…but to finish what I was saying….”  Thankfully he said only a couple sentences, then also pulled his book back out (it had been relegated to his bag once he saw that I was receptive to small talk) and opened it.  He looked at the pages for a few minutes then smiled at me and said he was going to the observation car.  Thank goodness.  My earbuds went in, my seat reclined, and I settled in for a nice drowsy read until I slept.

The book I began reading, The Cheese Monkeys, by Chip Kidd, has this observation in the first chapter: “Small talk is small in every way except when you try to get around it.”  Too true, Mr. Kidd.  I smiled when I read it, and crossed my fingers that I was done with the worst of the day’s banalities.

sandwich tears

Once, someone I knew offered to make me a sandwich.  The gesture sent me behind the closed door of the bedroom, sobbing into the duvet.

I am woeful (yes, woeful) when I realize that simple interactions can fill me with such pain.  Thinking of that makes me scared to face the world.  You are the only one you can count on to care about yourself, right?  It's a frightening and lonely thought.