In Which I View Art

I went to the city's art museum today. I usually thrill to art museums, and I am particularly fond of this art museum, because it is free, and because I believe a free art museum is a treasure without price, or at least without a price that I have to pay.

So I went.  But for the first time in as long as I can remember, I grew impatient.  Maybe it's because I had my family with me, and families are nothing if not destroyers of solitary joy.  At its best, an art museum is that singular combination of refuge and spaceship, harbor and port.  But maybe it only works like that, for me, if I am alone.

But maybe it's that I am middle-aged, and the middle-aged grow weary of trying to be people we are not.

Today, as I strolled around gazing at the art, reading the miniature disquisitions on intersections and interrogations and indictments and influence, all I could summon was irritation.  Does art-speak have to be so smug?  Have we really lost faith in the power of art to communicate without a varnish of insufferable prose?

I am glad, after all, that I did not enter academia.

Jewel Box

The Jewel Box is a glorified greenhouse tucked into an odd corner of an urban park.  It costs a dollar to enter, and the price is right- there is a reason it is not numbered among the park's main attractions.  You enter the greenhouse and find...a greenhouse.  Plus toilets, a drinking fountain, and an scattering of sad white chairs that scream"busy wedding venue."

But in winter, on a weekday during the daytime, it is quiet and light and warm and smells of blooming.

I write this post to attest to the payment of my dollar.  The requisitioning of my white chair.  My open eyes, my breath.

My Time

Is everyone at my stage of life this jealous of their time?  In a burst of irony, I spent 15 minutes yesterday penning an enraged screed in response to a Target returns department customer survey, railing against their policy of UPS drop off.  Really, Target, really?  You force me to take 25-30 minutes out of my day to print out a label, pack up my item, and drive to a UPS store and back, all to return an item you shipped to me damaged?  Your error, not mine?????

The fact that I can still summon an instantaneous, righteous blaze of anger about this speaks less to the petty injustices of late-stage capitalism and more to how scarce a resource time seems to me now, that any unwanted demand on it must be met with full-scale resistance.

I must now take a caesura to feed the baby.

***

I'm back.   I am only able to come back because I have taken today off.  If I had not taken today off, I would not have been able to start this post, let alone finish it, and I would have had to farm out feeding the baby.

I wonder if this is an American affliction.  Do people in other developed countries, which ascribe more cultural value to leisure, and less to work and motherhood, feel less vicious about their time?  

I know for certain it is a female problem, insofar as it is a burden that falls disproportionately on women.  When I look at my husband and all the things he doesn't have to deal with (most cleaning, most meal planning, all finances, taxes, any major life decision, any research regarding major and minor life decisions or medical conditions, all research and hiring regarding home repairs and household acquisitions, buying clothes and kid stuff, presents, birthdays, doctor's appointments, making sure we have toilet paper), I think that must be nice.  

I also wonder what I would do with more time if I had it.  I have some inkling, because the nature of part of my work is cyclical, so I have periods in which the onslaught of the demands on my time relaxes slightly, as well as periods in which the inundation is furious I just try to close my eyes and think of England.

But when I do have slightly more time, I definitely waste a good portion of it.  I putter.  I fuss.  I contemplate changing careers and meal planning and uprooting my life and cleaning the toilet.  I read back page articles on New York real estate and follow Internet rabbit holes to learn what kind of rabbit I am, or how to make my peace with cheese.

I'm also creative, in a way I'm unable to be when my life is stretched like a drum head over my allotted hours.  I might write, or plan workshops, or invite over a friend.  I might take a new route home, or go someplace I've never been.  But I simply have no space to make space most of the time.

Hence my rage against UPS drop off.  I want my time to be mine to waste.

I am sorry that it has come to this; I'm not sure how to fix it.