August 2 I’m coming up on my last days of being able to look at these paintings. I haven’t visited them every day like I intended to but, walking in today, I have the feeling of coming back to a familiar place, and when I compare that feeling to how I felt the first day, still a little jet-lagged, not remembering in which part of the church they were, I realize that I’ve cultivated a relationship with these paintings that I can carry with me for years. It seems to me that the world is more open to our involvement in it than we tend to believe. One has only to stay a moment longer, return two or three times more, and the attention we pay is returned manyfold. Hopkins said that what we look hard at seems to look hard at us. What do we look hard at these days? Our phones. And our phones look hard at us. But we could just as well look at other things with equivalent hardness. Suddenly, to “look hard” seems the wrong phrase. We should look softly, for longer, and more often. To look hard at something makes that something skittish. Better to look softly, obliquely. When I walk up to the chapel this morning, I realize that I approach these paintings the way one approaches a horse in a pasture, a fitting metaphor, I suppose, considering that there is a horse in one of the paintings. In the way they’re hung, the paintings themselves invite this obliquity. They refuse to be stared hard at, head-on.
The Cerasi Chapel (August 2)
The Cerasi Chapel (August 2)
The Cerasi Chapel (August 2)
August 2 I’m coming up on my last days of being able to look at these paintings. I haven’t visited them every day like I intended to but, walking in today, I have the feeling of coming back to a familiar place, and when I compare that feeling to how I felt the first day, still a little jet-lagged, not remembering in which part of the church they were, I realize that I’ve cultivated a relationship with these paintings that I can carry with me for years. It seems to me that the world is more open to our involvement in it than we tend to believe. One has only to stay a moment longer, return two or three times more, and the attention we pay is returned manyfold. Hopkins said that what we look hard at seems to look hard at us. What do we look hard at these days? Our phones. And our phones look hard at us. But we could just as well look at other things with equivalent hardness. Suddenly, to “look hard” seems the wrong phrase. We should look softly, for longer, and more often. To look hard at something makes that something skittish. Better to look softly, obliquely. When I walk up to the chapel this morning, I realize that I approach these paintings the way one approaches a horse in a pasture, a fitting metaphor, I suppose, considering that there is a horse in one of the paintings. In the way they’re hung, the paintings themselves invite this obliquity. They refuse to be stared hard at, head-on.