The stuff of life

From Frick to Hyde

I’m at The Frick Collection Wednesday.
Rembrandt. Van Dyck. El Greco. Monet.
Upper East Side. Manhattan.
Population: 1.6 million.
Followed by a $60 chicken caesar salad.

I’m at The Hyde Collection Sunday.
Rembrandt. Van Dyck. El Greco. Picasso.
Glens Falls, NY.
Population: 14.5 thousand.
Preceded by a $12 breakfast platter.

The best diners are cash only and leave a pot of coffee on your table.
And I’m just as home in those diners as in a Michelin Star restaurant.
And I enjoy them just the same.

These paintings, the ones in Glens Falls, many of them have their arms folded.
Well, the figures depicted in them do. Christ. An angel. Arms folded.
Gently unamused.

I’m at my grandparent’s house today.
Population: 2
I mowed their lawn.
Followed by spaghetti. $0.

I sat down to draw something because I found oil pastels and they have a sunroom that’s impossible not to draw in.

My grandmother sat down and drew something too.
I’ve wanted her to do that for years.
Today, I forgot that I wanted her to.
And she did.

Saturday I’m painting with forty kids in Lake George.
In a few weeks I’m painting on an estate in the Hudson Valley.
In July, it’s The Hamptons for one of the top art fairs in the world.
I’ll DJ my own art exhibition in September.

In the last week I’ve felt unparalleled joy and crushing heartbreak.
Scalding anger, warm love, cool confidence.
The temperature dropped with mine.
The nights are cold again.

I enrolled a new client and became a new client.

I gave a talk today. I recorded a lecture too.
I will attend a retreat this weekend.

I have a country song being considered by a record label.
I got the news at the gym listening to rap.

One of my businesses is being sold.
My podcast launch is any day now.

Do we ask for things or simply decide to receive them?

I find myself celebrating the mundane while simply acknowledging the bigger stuff the way we acknowledge a guest we knew was coming.

The bigger stuff.
Even that doesn’t feel right.
The mundane is the big stuff.
It’s the stuff of life. Isn’t it?

If we look at total volume, all that little stuff would accumulate to way more stuff than the big stuff.

The countless pebbles of each day fills more space than a rock here and there.
I’ve been really enjoying the pebbles of each day.

At those museums, I found myself looking at everything. Reading everything.

I found myself just as amused with the choice of frame or the plants in the garden or the way the sunlight filters through a perfectly opaque skylight as the art on the walls.

My curiosity only seems to grow with age.
Everything is becoming more wondrous.
I find myself asking how, why, when, what?

I’m gently amused by it all.
And I’m amused at how amused I’ve become.

It’s all the stuff of life.
I welcome it all.

I welcome everything around me.
Everything within me.

And, gosh, there is still some ugliness within me.
And, for the first time ever, I love it.

It only becomes a problem when I reject it.
When I cast it away.
When I pretend someone else is responsible for it.
When I numb it.

But when I love it?
Well, it’s not so ugly at all.
For what we love becomes beautiful.

So I love it.

The work of masters.
The children’s splattered paint.
The city oysters.
The diner pancakes.
The joy. The anger.
The beauty. The ugliness.
The beauty. The beauty.

I love it all.

The stuff of life.