They and I do not live on the same food. I must be fed the sublime and beautiful in order to survive. I must linger there as my soul is sated, as the hippos linger long in the lake while the summer sun bakes the mud around them. I am not here at the MoMa to look. I am here to be fed life.
Life is here to be had.
Impressionism is probably my least favorite form, but to stand here directly before the masterpieces is to transcend all form. This is to be in the midst of creation itself. And that he strove with monumental effort to find enough beauty in the world around him that he would be able somehow to endure and to go on living and to keep alive the hope that his life would be infused with the love which could heal him. He painted these paintings to stem the tide of pain-the pain we all experience if we are alive to the truth of this world. I stood today close enough to touch the thick gobs of paint he smeared from the tube in his insistence upon the possibility of proving that the light is truly alive and the human spirit no matter how tortured does have the ability to participate in creating a thing of beauty.