I wrote this post last night when it was late and I was tired. I did read it this morning, and fix glaring errors but avoided reading too closely. I got in late. I slept late. I need to wrestle Moisés into a carrier for his annual trip to the vet, and bring Tikka home from boarding. I decided somewhere along the line it is better to just post.
It is late in Atlanta's Hartfield-Jackson Airport and I am waiting for my plane. It is well past my bedtime, and I was supposed to have been home hours ago. I am sure that my face looks as punch-drunk-tired as I feel. But mine is but one exhausted face in a crowded gate filled with exhausted faces, all waiting hopefully and patiently for any news that we may indeed be flying soon. This is not the first time I've been stuck in this airport, or on this airline, (Delta) but I am continually grateful for the airline staff that go the extra mile to keep us updated on what is going on (and what is not), cheering us onward, and making sure that there are snacks and plenty of water at the gate. I have just learned that we are being moved to another gate and another plane, a plane that was originally scheduled to go to a different city. We will get home tonight. I hope the people who were scheduled on the flight we usurped make it home tonight as well, although at the moment that seems iffy, as ice conditions in their city has reduced traffic to a trickle..
But exhaustion aside, I had a lovely weekend visiting may aunt in San Antonio. It was cold in San Antonio and I did not walk along the river as much as is my wont, walking as necessary exercise rather than indulging in lazy strolls. I used the hotel gym on one particularly windy and sleety morning. I stayed in a new place for me, a place that felt like a home away from home, which had a lovely library where I spent one morning drinking coffee, journaling and browsing through an interesting selection of art books.
I had great visits with my aunt. I did walk along the river walk when the weather warmed slightly and the biting wind calmed. I wandered the farmer's market. I ate at a restaurant I have been wanting to try for a few years. I even managed to spend extra time in one of my favorite museums, and how can that not be a boon?
In fact, it seems to me that every time I go to the McNay I see something different. It feels simultaneously familiar and yet new. Sometimes I wonder even if I love the place itself as much as the art. I'm not always sure I can tell the difference.
I enjoyed being at the museum but I can't say that anything leapt out at me, at least not art specifically. On this morning I was somehow struck by the way the gray heaviness of the light outside the windows reflected into my vision of the art in the museum. I was almost more entranced by the light and the placement of the art, the way one picture played off other works in the room, the rather dark day and the stead gray light through the windows. I had wandered through half the museum, not quite aimlessly, but in a foggy bubble, noticing the space, the play of light, the artful placement of create a sense of conversation between art and space, before I saw this painting by Robert Rauschenberg, Black Mail. I suppose it too is rather dreary, but it really captured my attention. After I sat down to look at it further I noticed that the mirror was actually a mirror. That it is both a painting and a collage and I that tickled me even further, that little bit of reflection, of peering inward and outward simultaneously in the middle of this painting.
But then I noticed the floor, and the way the muted colors of the floor complimented the colors of the painting, and I was once again fascinated by the intersection of art and space and light. I sat on the bench thinking about floor and painting and the window in the corner, a window with a sculpture in front of it, thinking about all of this together and how it made something more than any one piece. I kept staring at the corner, at the floor, and the painting. I took a picture of the floor. I took a picture of the window. That was not meant as insult to Rauschenberg, but somehow everything came together in a way that made me very happy, as if something was shifting in my perspective. The Rauschenberg lightened as if in conversation with its setting. Walking back out through the museum it was, once again, like seeing something old become new again.
