Water Lilies

Flowers Of May

Everything measurable passes, everything that can be counted has an end. Only three things are infinite: the sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears. - Flaubert

I’m totally drawn. 

Here at the Musee d’Orsay, I’m charmed by a gigantic depiction of water with weeds waving in the depths on a surface covered with paint. It’s Monet’s Nympheas bleus, a naïve impression of drifting blue water lilies carried by ripples in a pond.

I trace with my eyes the seemingly hurried scrawls and patches, the rough brush strokes highlighting the round edges of the lily pads. The latter are suspended loosely in a circle, some drifting further away from the others.

Beyond are textures and details of color. The lines are free, detached from literal forms. There is a little square of blue. Here a streak of yellow. Almost a close-up of a shapeless surface. Lavender is interspersed with green.

There is no horizon or bank. Water spills over the unfinished borders of the canvas in mysterious shades and shapes. It looks like freedom. It is infinity, like the firmament.

I can imagine the water emptying into the river and the river running down the valley and through the big city and emptying into the sea and the sea returning to land somewhere as a river and the river becoming many streams that empty into a river that flows into a sea.

Above and below, near and far – lilies and water all commingle in a mystical, harmonious way.

An infinite, limitless fragment.

The Illusion of an Endless Whole.