{ Life is art (DAY 461) }

“What is the world? What is it for? It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched. Assess it like that. And when you’re done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe.”  ~ N.D. Wilson

There’s been this inexplicable desire in my heart the last few days to photograph the simple things.  While I was making dinner the other evening I saw my dad working in the yard and I had to stop and take pictures of him.  It was so every day and rather boring you could say but I knew that if I didn’t capture that moment, one of thousands that my dad has worked, I would regret it.  Because as I grow older I realize more and more that the everyday make up the true life.  Yesterday I went outside to take some pictures for the post I was going to write and instead felt drawn to photograph these irises.  For days now they have been opening their glorious fully crowned heads and whispering to me.  Memories float from them.  How the woman who was like my second mother and the only long term mentor to me, besides my own sweet mum, loved irises.  Before she passed away, almost four years ago, I searched to find the last of the seasons irises to take to her bedside.  That was the last time I saw her precious face this side of heaven glowing because the veil was thin.  Even now tears are springing to my eyes.  Irises were her favorite.

Also for some reason they remind me of my grandpa.  I have a set of beautiful note cards printed with Monet’s famous iris paintings.  Did he buy them for me?  Was it that I sent him letters on them?  I can’t quite remember but they make me smile because they remind me of someone I love.

One of those Monet painting prints hangs on our wall with perpetually fresh irises but when the real ones come out I stop for a little longer and linger to see them.  The way they shimmer mesmerizes me.  Don’t even get me started on the hues and shapes.  I’m not surprised that Monet couldn’t resist them either.  I wonder what it was he saw.  I wonder what memory they triggered for him.  Life is art….all of it.  It’s the day in and day out movements and repetitions that matter and that make up such a large part of the whole.  Please take the time today to pause and soak in the beating, throbbing pulse of life all around you.  Relish the moments that seem ordinary.  For there are simply no ordinary moments.