“It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way.
So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”
- Claude Monet
It was a crazy busy day...it included a two hour drive through traffic...a forgotten wallet and all sorts of must-dos pushed over the side.
I didn't have time for this.
It was decadent...and dreamy...a morning with Monet and some friends??
My heart said YES...and I've gotten good at following those whispers so I made it happen.
Two of my childhood friends were going to meet me in San Francisco.
Waking up, I heard about a terrible accident on the Bay Bridge...so I called my friends and said that I would take a different way into the city in the hopes that I could get the tickets...and a chance at signing up for the docent led tour.
They had really only one way over to the city so they would be late...we'd cross our fingers and hope it worked out.
As I was driving, I realized that I left my wallet at home.
Busted.
So, as I'm driving I'm considering all the pockets in my car that might have some money stashed away...I'm wondering how I will pay for parking...and decide I can mooch off these people who have known me for more than a few decades.
They know my slumber party secrets for goodness sake.
They've seen my dad in his underwear...they would pay for parking.
I made it to the ticket counter and pleaded my case.
Would she let me buy tickets if I could tell her my credit card number?
Would she set aside tickets?
Finally, I figured out a way to get the tickets...got the spot for a tour and had time to look around.
I was sitting in a world class museum...by myself...with nothing but time.
It was a long deep breath of goodness.
I paused in reverence of those who think to make museums and create galleries and find the art that belongs.
It takes vision and money and talent to create a space like the DeYoung Museum...
and as I was soaking up all that hard work I was so very grateful.
Breathlessly, my friends arrive.
We join the tour with seconds to spare...and we are plunged into hues of purples and blues and yellows and greens and Monet's garden of agapanthus and lilies and waterlilies floating under a Japanese bridge.
We learn that Monet painted every day, starting at 4am...and that these later years were filled with sorrow and loss.
His wife of thirty years dies.
His son dies.
World War One is tearing his country apart...and killing a generation of Frenchmen.
All through the sorrow, he paints.
He paints the same scenes over and over...noticing that it is never the same...always changing...forever a mystery...
intangible in its impermanence...tantalizing in its mystery.
Yes, Monet had his garden...and it was his garden that he considered his masterpiece.
His paintings were attempts to capture the beauty and freeze it for the moment.
Standing amidst these waterlilies and weeping willows I realized that Monet didn't paint when everything was working in his life.
He painted when everything wasn't.
He painted through the sorrow...during the joy...as he was going blind.
He just painted.
His Herculean efforts to find a way to cherish the passing beauty...to acknowledge the sacred in the ordinary...to SEE what his days offered him...worked its way into my heart.
It finally dawned on me that the crappy times, the boring times, the shockingly horrible times are just exactly that...
times.
Like the waterlilies and the light...it is ever changing.
Waiting for the right minute isn't a thing.
There is no right minute.
There is only this minute.
Make time for it, because then it's gone.
Hanging out with some Monets today brought my heart some peace.
It suffused me with joy.
What a gift.
After we finished with the exhibit, we walked over to the Japanese Tea Garden.
It wasn't Monet's garden but it was just as beautiful.
Because we had eyes that were ready to see.
We lingered amid the bonsai trees.
In the middle of a giant city...we sat in a literal zen garden...and the calm enveloped us.
There's a lot of hard out there.
A lot of tragedy...sadness and cruelty.
But then are waterlilies.
And azaleas...
And friends.
Not to mention Monet.
It's awful and amazing.
At the same time.
So, today, I'm grateful for Monet...museum makers...and moments with friends.
I'm grateful for the ordinary nuisance of traffic...a forgotten wallet...a maze of annoyances that peppered this day...because without them, it wouldn't have been today.
My one and only April 30, 2019.
Never to be repeated.
Grateful for this moment right now.
Big. Deep. Zen Breaths.
