Scenes from the Met

Irony, thy name is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

So anyways, I spent a fun day walking around the Met. They have an awesome exhibit of Van Gogh's drawings up right now. This was actually the second time I've been, I went a year or two ago when they had an exhibit of Da Vinci's drawings. That time I just went in for the exhibit and left though, this time I spent a few hours walking around and saw a ton of art...a surprising number of Rodin sculptures, the Asian art area, the European painting section (Renoir, Degas, Manet, Monet, a couple by Van Gogh and Seurat) and the modern art section, which was mostly kinda crappy aside from the one Pollack, a couple Warhols and some of O'Keefe's work. On the whole, quite enjoyable.

Things have cooled off with Stef. I've been reading (and re-reading) Letters to a Young Poet, by Ranier Maria Rilke. Um, I just realized those two things don't really have anything to do with each other. Let me refocus here.

So Stef is kinda confused (there's a shocker) and I'm backing off there. Well, she's not really confused so much as she is...still in a relationship. Yeah, it's weird, don't ask. We'll hang out, I still like spending time with her and it's cool but I'm not going to push her. Yeah, it sucks, but whatever. The reason why I bring up Rilke is because there's a passage in it where he mentiones that life is about living the questions, not looking for answers. And in a lot of ways, that was something I'd come to myself in the last year or so, about life: the point isn't to find the answers, the point is the question itself. Rilke believes that in living the questions, you will eventually find one day that you've found the answer, that it was inside you all along. Trust in life, because when you are ready for experiences, they will come your way.

At the same time, that line of thinking can be dangerous because it can lead to complacency, to a sense that if you just sit back, things will happen for you. I don't think that's what Rilke meant to say. But there has to be some kind of trade-off between active and passive, between contemplation and action. Fate, or fortune, or god or whatever will bring you to a point, and will give you all the tools you need to succeed. All you have to do is take the step.

Yeah, I don't always believe that. I have good days and bad days. But I'm hoping the former will outnumber the latter in the days to come.