Monet. His art is a metaphor for my journey. I spent the day staring at his collection at the museum and I was profoundly moved. I never thought I liked him. That is not until I witnessed him for myself.

Things aren’t always what they seem. And my life in it’s collective this far, is like an impressionist painting. Up close the wonderful inaccuracies, imperfections and subtle ways of movement are what is dictating my compass.
The way that Monet creates swirls and crashes them into one another is the way my daily hours interact with one another – creating a temperamental and unpredicatable path. Rich and honest – no pretentiousness. It is in the brushstroke that the real story lies. The truth is in the rising, textured inches of sloshed paint and texture.

What are we looking for when we stare into them? Some portal that may open up into a world of catharsis? Some universal understanding of a momentary clarity? And, does that door open in the light parted behind the morning buildings or the orange at dusk's horizon? Perhaps it is in the unbenounced darkness of his grounds or deep blue waters. Maybe it's all relative.

My eyes strain over the grain of spectrums reflected back at me. The small slivers of violets juxtaposed with pinks. From afar the breeze is tickling the grassy knolls and the flurries of snow are still swirling up and around a dense winter. It is painting made that of molecules breathing life into me today.

I want Monet to paint me purple with a violet haze. Deep blue around my atmosphere and orange at my core. A photograph would capture me still in a moment, but his language would translate my essence – deep, wounded but hopeful. I am bursting like a ripe fruit from the inside out oozing a dark sweetness and damp with new birth. I have always been but today most keenly reminded that I am a walking piece of dotted color pulled out from his gardens and co-existing with the collective – participating in his macro feast for the eyes. I am spilling over the lines and onto other accidental pages where an entire other world exists. I blend suddenly with her white and his red. And the messiness of it all is warm and right. I am boundless in a world of boundaries and I have become a foaming tide.

I am a whisper. I am effervescent and transparent – no longer afraid of the vulnerability that renders. I rejoice in my newfound fragility. I am holding my breath within a ceramic cup - delicate and beautiful; next to a blue flame I go unfethered.

I bask in the coolness of pale yellow and warm my fingertips at the sharp edges of deep orange.
I am an organism floating on those lili-pads staring at my tiny reflection in a never-ending pond - floating beside peaceful droplets of dew - followed by my black, smudged shadow.

Thank you Monet for your light and honest renditions of our world around and within us.