Enamorada

I fell a little in love with Pablo Picasso in Malaga. The last time he ever visited his birthplace was at 19 but they still claim him as their own and the museum there is a beautiful collection of his work. I was mesmerized. Some of his works are like Sesame Street cartoons- comical with eyes too big for their faces and their bodies in a jumble- a puzzle for the mind to put together. I can imagine the woman bather tangled up in a wave is me when I was thrown into the pebbles and shells at the Malaga beach by a large wave- my top coming off and then me frantically putting it back in place- long limbs and wide eyes. A mess.

Then some are so gripping and stirring that they disturb the core of one's expectations. Something hurt responded to the daggers in his paintings and I felt like that was beautiful- art is meant to be relatable and I related. I think the anti-conformist and anti-academic nature of his work is so liberating. I love the idea that beauty does not have to be conventional and not what the infamous they declares it to be. Beauty is not always definable. It is like life. It's multifaceted with layers and complications and not all its works are pleasing ascetically but it's still art. It has its own beauty even if you can't discover it at first glance- like the bather. And sometimes you do see it- it is subtle like the romantic woman with the melancholy eyes whose body becomes an outline and fades out into lines- strokes- space. It doesn't look like he had a plan but the end result is stunning.

Someone wrote me asking what the next plan is for me- after the play I was in- and I thought of all the ways I could answer- I could have written that I have another part- a real part this time- it's small but she's a character with a backbone and I want to play her- but that's not a plan- it's just a part. I could have written that I'm here till the end of June with a break most likely in the States and then back here to Madrid again. But that's not a plan either. It's just the progression of my life at the moment. So really, it comes down to that- my life is being lived in the present and all plans are hypothetical, theoretical, slightly crazy and mostly just dreams.

Sometimes I think I'm much like that woman in the wave- tied up in knots- and I have to remind myself that that too is a story. It's okay to be a jumble. It's okay to be a puzzle. And then sometimes I think I'm the melancholy woman who can't quite find her body behind all the lines and that's okay too. Each moment is a picture; a work of art in the story that is life.

If perfection is relative does that make it impossible? Perhaps but impossible in a hopeful way- in a way that there is no joy in pursuing the unobtainable. Go for what brings you joy- God and love and life. And the result can be what it was meant to be without a grid and without carefully met expectations. That is not to say there is no planning and no buying some paint and canvas but it's not always what you think it need be. That's what I was reminded of in the museum in Malaga. And that's why I fell a little in love with Picasso- for telling me everything I feel and putting into a painting for me.