THE ART OF LIVING




People, events, and experiences seem like art in a museum I once walked through. I remember seeing an exhibition of impressionist paintings --- when you see them in apparent physical reality it is nothing like an image in a book or on a screen. The richness of the brush strokes, the vivid colors; the paintings caress you, pull you in, and yet are still a projection.

Something seemed to happen between me and each painting, a communion; we were each as alive and real as the other. After all, I am nothing but a painting of impressions, as are we all. When I felt it was over, like an orgasm concluding lovemaking, I walked away from a painting. I did not feel loss, but consummation. That painting and I had never been separate and never would be. And at last, I left the museum. Filled with all the art I merged with, even as the images no longer danced before my eyes.

So it is with all the apparent people, places, and things in this dream of a life. Lovers, friends, families, landscapes, cities; all of the unfathomably awe-filled and wondrous sights and sounds and experiences are  drifting leaves of memories blowing in the wind of my imagination. All that touched my heart, all the emotions, the memories of pain and happiness that now bleed together like watercolors in a rain of tears, dissolving into a feeling where there are no longer opposites like sadness and joy, only an ocean of emotion that has no name.

I stand on air, looking at this landscape portrait of what is, brushstrokes swirling in the colors of love, a masterpiece signed by life itself.💓

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