Day 13: Awesome is an Art Form

One thing I want to do before I die is go to an opera at the Met.  I want to be overwhelmed with the music, swept up into the narrative, cracked wide open and exhale only the collective emotion so cathartic it cleanses what’s pent up inside. 

Anna Netrebko, Anna Bolena, The Met 2011 [go here for tickets]

Or stand in the tiny Sistine Chapel, and marvel, breathless at decades of exacting toil, which was merely meant as wallpaper.  Or sit in the Royal Albert Hall and openly weep as a lifetime’s opus is delicately offered by expert hands.  Spend weeks in the Louvre, get positively lost in the Guggenheim.  Troll ancient libraries, breathing in the intellect laid bare on withered pages.  Wonder at codex’s so timeworn, were the glass not protecting them from my breath, they would but crumble to dust.  Ache to touch silks and porcelains so thin and antique, their productions almost incomprehensible to me.  To revel in a lost world of creative genius, crying out to something greater, something more worthy and important and vast, than my fleeting existence. 

Art is not just something old, something other people have deemed beautiful.  Art is… art is beauty, indefinable.  Art reminds me that I possess beauty.  I am a poem, written by the greatest Author to ever exist.  I am a work of art, in a world of beauty; a world that would not be complete without me in it.  Right here.  Right now. 

So today, though I’m not touring the Hermitage or Ufizzi or MoMA, nor listening to the Royal Philharmonic; I am looking at the little bits of art all around me.  I am seeing in my world tiny pieces of beauty.  And I remember that I am a beautiful work of art, by the Master Creator

These words, which are not mine, inspire me today:         

I think everything in life is art.   what you do.  how you dress.  the way you love someone, and how you talk.  your smile and your personality.  what you believe in and all your dreams.  the way you drink your tea.  how you decorate your home.  your grocery list.  the food you make.  how your writing looks.  and the way you feel. 

life is art. 

Joining us for our 21 Days of Awesome?  Click on the links below to catch up, or refresh your memory :

Day 1: Awesome

Day 2: It’s Who I Am

Day 3: What Awesome Is Not

Day 4: Quieting the Shadow Voices

Day 5: Expansive Engagement

Day 6: Awesomely Thankful

Day 7: Heirlooms

Day 8: A Line in the Sand

Day 9: The Little Things

Day 10: These are a Few of My Favorite Things

Day 11: Anchored Motion

Day 12: Too Much