more magritte

sorry for running on, but i really enjoyed this exhibition and wanted to show you a few more personal highlights.  this was Lou's favorite painting, and one of mine as well.

i hope this won't sound foolish, but, often when i ponder the big questions in life... like why are we here, what does it all mean, how should i live... i often employ mental metaphors to try to answer the unanswerable. i think that's what all great art does.  it goes beyond words to imply or lead us to an understanding of life's many mysteries.

this painting made me think of a metaphor i often use to deal with the conundrum of whether we can ever really understand those huge philosophical/spiritual/metaphysical questions about life.

i don't know if this will make sense or not, but when i'm trying to comprehend my place in the universe i imagine myself as an a tiny acorn and wonder if it's really possible for me to understand the giant oak.  obviously, i'm the acorn and the universe is the oak.  if i'm lucky, i will grow to become the oak and maybe then i'll comprehend what it all means (but probably not).  while i'm an embryonic acorn, though, can i really know what it's like, what it means to be the oak?  can we ever completely understand the big thing we come from?

i think and hope that mediation or prayer, and, for me, looking at life through my camera, may allow this to happen in small doses.  we can catch a glimpse, a sense of what we emerged from, what we are constantly becoming and what we will return to when we depart our physical bodies.

while this painting was titled Clairvoyance by Magritte,  for me it's more like an awakening... patiently pondering the little things in life and slowly coming to an understanding of the bigger stuff, what is and will always be.