Alice lives here

I had a poem for here in the Blog today which I wrote yesterday morning. But, it’s so yesterday. I hear myself asking myself – “What about Monday, kid?”

I went to the San Diego Museum of Art later yesterday afternoon. I’m a member and get to walk in for free. I hadn’t been for a while, and there was a new exhibition I had not yet and wanted to see – “From Monet to Matisse”. Heavy on Impressionism, touches of Fauvism and other things. I was so struck by the profound beauty and the “right-here-now” presence of magnificent painted art. Like I’ve been in the past, and like I was yesterday. Tears, even, of gratitude, getting the chance to be one with art yet another day.

And – fun fact – even with all those insanely masterful French and English cats and kitties, the painting I spent most my time with yesterday was Alice Neel’s “Mildred”. I’d never seen it in the Museum before, and I’ve been taken by her work for about forever in my own life as an artist. Alice was basically your New York City girl, and she was a mother of two sons, whom I can picture from a number of her paintings. So the gift of an actual Alice Neel in San Diego on Mother’s Day, her and me both artists, way cool. And I bet she’d dig this, being the crazy commited radical woman artist and mom that she was. After I left the museum I walked over the sort-of-famous Cabrillo Bridge all the way to 5th Ave and heard some yelling out from a wide-open-windowed drinking establishment. I looked into the space and on a large tv screen saw members of The Padres high-fiving and being all kinds of happy on Mother’s Day. What they call a “walk-off.”

So I walked off back to my car parked way far away, there were mothers all over the place and I tried to make eye contact with all of them in a “thanks” kind of way. And eventually drove back to my room and in a shared kitchen made a hamburg and watched some Padres highlights on the computer monitor, then another episode of “Newsroom.”

Oh, here’s yesterday’s poem, waving its hands wildly at me:

“Cold and windy, windy and cold. Bright orange flowers sing in the silence. Dawn arrives on all our hopes, to which she laughs. She’s just arriving.”

Dawn didn’t know about Alice.