Art

The White Orchard

I am a bit too distracted tonight to read.  My mind just won't focus enough to allow me to buckle down for serious homework or grading.  I am bored with TV and movies.  I am restless, restless, longing to be elsewhere or doing something meaningful or frivolous with somebody who matters.  Maybe it's the moon hiding up there behind that layer of clouds....

In my random search for something to do that would not involve getting in my car and roaming the night-dark countryside aimlessly or spending cash I don't have, I glanced over the icons on my Chrome dash.  No.  Not Twitter.  Not up to paring my thoughts down to 140 tonight.  Also don't want to sort through the clutter of the streaming feeds which are bound to be full of the stupidity and depressing non-choice of politics.  Not a mind-killing game like Angry Birds, either.

What to do?  The trip out to the car and the unrolling dirt roads and dodging of poaching rednecks is starting to sound better and better....

Then I saw the unassuming icon for the Google Art Project.  Yes.  This.  I clicked it, and I was taken to an image of a painting from the National Gallery in London called The Ambassadors.  It was from the time of Henry VIII and was by Holbein.  I looked at it,  pulled up its history, read about it, and moved on to other works that gallery had put online.  I could feel that thing that howls inside me demanding that I take it out of here, show it something other, let it out to dance and learn and frolic start to grumble less and pay attention more.

I moved from gallery to gallery, ending up as I have before in the Van Gogh Museum.  The image above is one of my favorites they have of his.  There is something about these trees that makes me think of Their Eyes Were Watching God and springtime and lying under the cherry blossoms in Japan on a day when it is still just a little too cool to be outside but everything is so full of glory that your heart wants to explode with it.

Soon, I guess I'll try to go to bed.  I don't sleep well on moon-sodden nights; I never have and I have no idea why.  Maybe there's something inside me that needs to be out dancing in it (ha).  For a little while, anyway, I have managed to make the unquiet thing peaceful by feeding it art.  No small accomplishment.

(if you are running Chrome, I highly recommend the Art Project app.  if you are not running Chrome....why the heck not?)