Monday after Easter.  Back into the trenches of life.  To call it problem solving is an understatement.  Circumstances develop, life itself demands particular “solutions” –or things fall apart, or so it seems.  Easter is a story, a compact microcosm of ideas and emotions, a miniature of life itself.  Betrayal, trial, abandonment, suffering and the ultimate indignity, to die.  Then “BOOM,” resurrection, the ultimate vindication, not just to get a Mulligan, a bonus-go-around, but to live in the acclamation of the universe.  Something unexpected, underived, ex nihilio, stupendous.

This is my thinking about the Easter story.  A Japanese word for resurrection is Yomigairi.  Since hearing the word a life time ago, the music of the

syllables continue to haunt me. Thus I inserted the character for the word in the heading of these paragraphs. The Japanese is mated with the abbreviation for the Latin, to-come-back-again.

The Milwaukee Art Museum is a repository symbols pointing to the vast range of human experience.  The curated work concentrates meaning.  Moreover words are inadequate containers for all that is entailed in this collection of work.  Nothing can substitute for one’s presence in the “presence” of a piece of work,

I must admit that the exhibits of

contemporary work were underwhelming.  Art can be indifferent to beauty and indifferent to meaning.  Art I think, is a concerted attempt to “tell the truth.”  Truth is a slippery matter.  There is rarely a simple side.  I confess that much that I viewed in passing evoked a WTF response in my spirit.  Best not to over think it, I keep telling myself. Truth does not come easily.  Art is a truth telling exercise relative to a place and to a time, to a form-of-life.

Three photos captured while at the Art Museum.  No. 1 of my best friend and dearest companion. No. 2 one of the WTF pieces  No. 3 a gull perched on the breakwater by Lake Michigan.