Postcard of the Day

 

Bow Tie Tuesday

Well, I forgot to take a proper picture of the bowtie before I took it off.  So here's a pixely blow-up of the meeting screenshot I sent the coworkers (still the guys, tho now I'm not the only woman).

( Here's the full screenshot. )

So the big crazy thing here is that I just splurged big-time and bought a painting.  It's a painting I made an offer on a long time ago, and since then have been settling for a print of, but hadn't forgotten, and recently saw was still available.  It feels all daring, having just splurged on the stove, but then this is a wholly different sort of thing, and when I saw Saturday evening on my phone that they'd taken my offer this time, I was so happy.

Supposedly Gertrude Stein said something like you can have clothes or you can have art.  I think about that often, though not usually about art, per se, but just about how one has one's resources, money-wise-speaking, and their finiteness can only do so much, but one can ---and, like, should--- decide based on what one wants, values, is delighted by, is enriched with.

Now I dunno if the light on wet pavement cracks in the actual paintings is as magic as it feels in her pictures of her stuff online, but soon I'm going to have the actual oil version of the centerpiece print on the wall next to me.  And this time there's none of that knee-jerk self-recrimination.  If I see it and it really isn't all that, I can get out of it.  But I don't think I'm going to want to.  Now I *do* keep feeling some obligation to ask myself if some self-recrimination isn't called for, but that's way different from being flooded by the raw ugliness, and having to fight out from underneath it.  And it sure seems like the difference is that this time it's art.

The shovel in the garage is a shovel, but the shovel in the museum is art because of how we're looking at it.  We're looking at it, perhaps most importantly, not for its utility.  It's the non-utilitarian thing.  For its own sake.  So the way I so absolutely don't need the painting to serve some function and can't use it for anything practical is part of the glory of going for it.

I feel like I used to know that thing very well, and then I lost track of it, for quite a while.


The actor who beat Matt Amodio on Jeopardy! and then won a bunch of games himself was just felled by a retired person from Oregon I like, so far.  I hope people are hanging in there with our new host, whom I also like.

Back in the office again tomorrow.  Work stuff is, what's the good word for it--- absorbing.  Yet I'm setting it aside better when I'm not at it.  I could work all day and all night, now that I can work at home; a long time ago this person called Devra, who was working remotely, talked about the stress of that aspect of that work.  She also had a few other chestnuts/nuggets that stuck with me.  Funny, I didn't particularly think of her at the time as wise.

Enough!  Happy BTT.