Yesterday, the children and I talked about Picasso and cubism. I loved the brightly colored lids from their baby-food-bottle-turned-paint-receptacle containers.
We discussed how that technique is kind of like a puzzle with all the pieces mixed up.
We listened to happy classical music tunes of organ and peppy trumpet in the background.
I loved watching them dip into their new paints, feel the way the brushes met the paper, the blending of colors -- a curiosity of integration.
(the beginnings of their paintings -- to be cut up and put back together, jumbled, to imitate Mr. Picasso)
It made me want to sit down with my own blank canvas and see what story came out of me.
Do you ever have the joy of something so simple, like a collage of brightly colored mini paint pots? (It reminds me of the line in one of my favorite movies, "You've Got Mail," where Meg Ryan's character mentions how much she loves fall and would send her friend a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils...you get the idea.)
My life feels a bit of a jumble these days.
My father, someone I absolutely adore and respect and love and share so much with, has been diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma.
It is the kind of news that makes your heart stop.
And then it keeps beating and you are trying to figure out why because how could it be beating when it wants to break?
When it feels so heavy?
When everything feels so surreal, and then so frighteningly real, and then back to reeling in disbelief that you are actually in a particular situation that you have dreaded all your life.
You know when you look at Picasso's cubism paintings and you are trying to figure out what went where or how to discern it or what it means (at least, that is what I do when I look at those)?
I feel like I am there, but in real life. I am standing, trying to discern what it all means, where it is going, what it was meant to be, what the whole message actually is.
I feel like I'm standing in pieces - pieces of feelings and emotion, pieces of memory and anticipation of potential future nostalgia, pieces of the unknown -- not knowing if it will be put together again how I'd like or if I have to make a new beautiful picture with what is leftover.
I know this.
Pain is part of beauty is part of growth is part of joy is part of pain.
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