Rainy Days and Mondays

Hmmm, I wonder how many blogs I can name after Monday songs? Whenever I come back to New York, its always raining. But I love New York, and I can actually say I feel like I'm home today. Coming back from a long holiday weekend, I feel renewed and ready to turn over a new leaf. I'm going to forget about the past and just concentrate on living in the present and planning the future.

My family drove up with me yesterday, and we had a relatively uneventful trip, except for taking a wrong turn and driving through downtown Washington D.C.! It was our first time using the GPS trip planner. But we enjoyed driving through the mall and seeing the Capitol Building, watched over by an enormously full harvest moon.

We arrived in Harlem around 11 and took another hour looking for a suitable parking place. Then I stayed up for another hour working on my paper. I guess it was all too much excitement because I couldn't really sleep and ended up finishing my paper early in the morning, rushing out the door to class, only to arrive and be told that our teacher wasn't going to collect them until the afternoon.

But that left me free to take a look at the American paintings on display at Sotheby's. There is a gorgeous N.C. Wyeth, "Indian Love Call" (pictured above) and a heartbreakingly beautiful Maxfield Parrish painting of a farmer plowing a field below an enormous barren tree.

My Thanksgiving break was really nice, but I wish I would have spent more time with my family! I've finally realized that there is nothing more precious than my family, and I'm never going to waste time chasing imaginary dreams when I could be home with them, surrounded by love. I was able to spend a little bit of time with my brother, who is going through some really hard times in his life right now. He's made so many good choices lately, compared to his youth, that its hard to watch right now as his past catches up with him. But all debts must be paid eventually, and all I can do is pray for him.

Anyway, later this afternoon I spent a few hours looking at portrait miniatures with the leading American expert, Elle Shushan, who was just full of tantalizing stories about the artists lives. I'm going to have to read up on those people! As if painting a 1 inch portrait on ivory with watercolors and a 1-hair brush isn't crazy enough, apparently some of those artists lived some very colorful lives. Did Charles Willson Peale really poison his son slowly with arsenic because he was jealous of his miniature-painting skills? Yikes!