CCXVI - what is life

It's hard to learn about the universe, the grand physics ordering all these swathes of gas, cosmic oddities, powers and chunks of rock, that immense sphere of prolific fusion energy, our star, our ancient blue planet, out of the immaculate conditions of iterative solar and terrestrial formation, the mysterious, bewildering, brilliant start of biological L I F E, its grubby attempts to endure and survive through all the turmoil and skulduggery its host land musters out of its own nature, its tremendous, single-minded persistence, its collective ancestral will to live and will to power, spanning cycles of generations, life and death, its devastatingly wonderful machinery powering evolution of familiae, genera, species, and the meagre skinflint of that ape, homo sapiens' trampling on this earth, and not be blown away, just blown away by it all.

I've said this before, yet this always takes my mind away: one part in two billion of the sun's energy falls on the earth. Out of that sliver of juice, all of life as we have it is given. I honestly can't deal with that knowledge.

CCXV - snowflake

I was at the National Gallery on Saturday. I actually find the National Museum more ... lovely in its old timey way (they also had an exhibit with impressionist art in 2012). It was my second time to this exhibit with the National Gallery. They brought in paintings from the Musée d'Orsay. The interesting thing about this particular style of painting, the so-called impressionists, is that originally, most of their kind were rejected by a kind of uppity panel of Parisian art jurists, who were more used to the classical style of the great David. So Napoleon III, nephew of that Napoleon, started a Salon des Refusés for these rejected artwork. And you know, by and large, the public became enamored with this slightly surreal new style of painting, more dreamy than the romantics, a little bit less stark than the realists, a kind that went after essences and spirits of things, presented in a little haziness, melding life and mystery, all in a painterly style, giving up slightly the high techniques of the old masters, but only to escape their stuffiness, to present better their ideas of the imprecise interplay of light and shadow, a more fluid interpretation of the elements in a scene. They had the great geniuses on their side, Delacroix (perhaps he wouldn't mind being lumped with this lot!), Manet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Renoir, Signac, Monet (I don't personally like Monet, but he is definitely one of this group). I find that I think about the art better when I went this second time. The first time, I kinda was a little driven to making sure I traversed every corner, taking photos of everything I liked. It was like chasing Pokémon. I enjoyed just being a goer-thinker this time. You know, there's a little in every painting that reveals new things to you. Everything is important, everything fits into the composition, makes the ghost in the machine. And so often you realise it's you that kinda wakes up to the magic of the painting, like you can feel yourself growing up as the painting shows you who you are, what you know about life, beauty and art, skill, love and technique. Art, books, music ... you have to take out something deep inside your soul to grasp their deep architecture, rhythms and resonances.

Take this painting (Gustave Caillebotte, Rooftops in the Snow [Snow Effect]), 1878). I didn't think much of it at first, and to be honest, I think you'd forgive me, with all the other artwork that was on (there were what, three Manets and three Cezannes?). But you know, it kinda occurred to me that this was a view of reality for someone out there. People lived in this world, going about their business, occupying these homes, working their little occupations, building their little lives. Once in a while, waking up to cold, dark snowbound days. What if there was a war, yeah they'd have to gather as conscripts, fight to defend their towns and cities, go far, far places to die to a cruel, remorseless bullet, bleed to death on a hill, or in a mud filled gutter. What if you were a snowflake falling on this city, and that snowflake became a man. Could you do it, could you shoot another man in this picture, his blood spilling out onto the snow, forever changing the fabric of this painting, the strings that weave together into this world? I don't know, I don't think I could. Whatever the casus belli.