The Old and the New

During March and April it is cold one day and warm the next or it is near freezing in the morning and 80 degrees by afternoon, the time of year when the old and the new converge. This series of paintings begins with one that expresses my feelings about living in this early spring in these chaotic times–exhaustion. I am this poor lady nodding off in her chair, too tired to make it to her bed, remembering what it was like when the news cycle was finite and truth didn’t depend on the mood of the speaker.

Then I think about what it would be like to sit against an ancient wall and rest my joints like the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet: “I am a-weary, give me leave awhile: Fie, how my bones ache! what a jaunt have I had!” I am also reminded of Joseph Campbell’s description of aging. He said that it was like driving a jalopy: you are riding down the road on a sunny day and hear a crash. “Oh my, there goes the fender.” Then the next day: “Wow, my muffler just hit the road.” Each day something else bites the dust. But one can always bring home flowers. There is beauty even in diminishment.

Yes, I never tire of spring. I needed to follow the burden of beauty in the previous painting with the inception of beauty commanded by the flying flower goddess…is this Persephone, the one just coming to the surface after her winter sojourn with her husband Hades in the not-so-merry land of hell? (Well, this past winter kind of felt that way, anyway, a real-life version of Dante’s Cocytus imprisoning traitors with Satan in the center if this frozen lake; the traitors in this case being sky-high heating bills.)

Finally, I appealed to the Quan Yin, the revered Bodhisattva of Compassion in Chinese Buddhism. She is also known as the Goddess of Mercy. I am posting this on Divine Mercy Sunday, the Sunday after Easter, that the Polish saint, Faustina, created, a chaplet of repetitive prayers that appeal over and over: “For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have Mercy on us and on the whole world.” We need a lot of this. A whole lot….