Feast Your Eyes!

As one of my favorite literary characters, Auntie Mame, once said "Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death". She was a person who lived in the moment and made the most of the tough moments. Even, having to...gasp...get a job during the Depression, she did so with a cheerful attitude and never forgot to have fun. She also collected art, and artists, and a wide array of modern furniture, but with the idea that if they were all gone tomorrow...oh well. Which brings my thoughts around to the idea of possessing beauty. At one point I remember standing in front of a beautiful painting in a Santa Fe gallery done by John Axton and just being mesmerized by it. It truly spoke to me. It was large but simple, a group of rocks and shore line off a Northern California coast, and it had a powerful sense of serenity, haunting and still. I really really really wanted that painting. But the price tag said $8000.00. So it was not to be mine. I have purchased more affordable art over the years including a prized piece of James Watkins pottery, and I treasure having them in my life. Yet, lately I notice that the urge to own beauty has diminished in me. Maybe it's that second half of life thing.  I would rather just see beauty, even for a moment. beauty in art, beauty in nature, and savor that. It comes it goes. I actually feel sorry for those billionaires who buy a rare Van Gogh just so they can horde it away, hide it in their lair, with alarms and guards surrounding it, rather than donate it to a museum and say "I want to share this wonderful painting with all of you." Most beauty is for free anyway, even in the Flatlands. Drop by an art show, watch a group of folkloric dancers, look at a thunderstorm approach, notice the seasons change, even admire the texture of an old, faded door. There's always a feast for the eyes somewhere. The Auntie Mame of our family, Glenn's Aunt Marien, would sit out on her patio at Buffalo Springs Lake, glass in hand, watching the sun go down over the water, and declare: "FAN-tastic!" Every day I want to see something that makes me say that.