A Dot On the Painting.

A dot on the painting

It was staring at the beautiful blend of colors. The technique was on point. All the right things in all the right places. I could feel it. It was pleasing to all my senses. The gallery was quiet. The temperature was optimal. The sound in the room was at a muted tone where you could really focus in on the beautiful aesthetics around you. I was certainly feeling it.

I sat and stared at the painting for a solid 15 minutes. It was captivating. I couldn't remember an experience like this before. I felt present and alive.

Then I noticed something interesting. A tiny black dot on the lower half of the painting. More towards the right and not too close to the center. Was the dot intentional? Was it paint or some other dark substance? Immediately, I was taken out of the presence I had before hand. I felt as if the “critical bug” had bit me. I was also curious. This one tiny dot seemed to have thrown off my prior mesmerized memorization. It turned into a new experience. This time, something slightly uncomfortable.

It was if my whole world was changed by one tiny thing. One tiny insignificant thing. But was it really insignificant if it has made so much of an impact? It’s amazing how one tiny thing can simply ruin the totality of something else. Much like seeing a tiny fly swimming drunkenly in the glass of red wine you were about 75 percent through finishing. I wanted to regain focus of how I was experiencing the painting before I noticed the dot. Was it even possible? Was that fleeting moment I had beforehand only meant for that specific time in the past?

That’s the thing. I was trying to simply “reproduce” the experience and the supposed mindset I had before I noticed the dot. It was the mind trying to grasp for pleasure. For comfort. For the watered down nostalgic substance of the past. Was I consciously trying to hold onto the mesmerizing experience I had before hand? Was I creating suffering by resisting this slightly uncomfortable experience that came into fruition?

I still appreciated the painting for what it was, but part of me was simple displeased that I could never see it the way I saw it beforehand. I was resisting what is and trying to force a consciousness based on what should be. The thing is is that it will never be the same and that is alright. Was that dot destined to appear in my consciousness and bring about a new sense of awareness that thrust forth an existential quandary? Was my subconscious combing the visual desert in front of me? Maybe I was meant to go to this specific art museum on this specific date at this specific time to experience a proverbial fork in the road or a mildly robust revelation. In any case, I would walk out of the museum with a new “outlook” on perception and life.

When I moved my way through the rest of the museum, I felt a sense of bewilderment as well as an overwhelming warmth of contentment. I didn’t feel boastful or prideful, but I felt more and more comfortable with this ever presence amorphous serpent of uncertainty. This uncertainty that was just out of the reach of my control. Just outside of my current level of consciousness. I didn’t feel the need to try to discipline or condition myself into trying to experience a piece of art the way I thought it SHOULD be experienced. I was allowing thoughts and feelings to come on through without getting too attached to the. I was allowing things to exist as they were and as they are. I wasn’t too keen on trying to take apart of analyze the art around me. Some of them caught me more than others, but why was that. I could have easily been as fascinated in the marble sculptures than the colorful paintings from modern artists. I could have easily been led astray by the vibrancy of the high contrast religious art around me. What was pulling me? What was pulling my strings? Another moral quandary, I thought. Did it really matter what I thought of all this art around me? Did it really matter if it was tasteful or not?

I was out of my head. Not out of my mind. I was out of trying to postulate and promulgate thoughts based upon on my own conditioning and intellect. That was getting in my way. Was I getting in my own way? Well, yes.

The specific pieces of art that drew me dealt more with what I felt and less with how I really “thought” about them. Why would it really matter what I “thought” about them if thought is essentially constrained to the past. Of the past. So I listened. I paid attention to how I felt without the need to judge, criticize or sculpt like a piece of clay.

Did it really matter if it was "good" or "bad" art? Did it make me a feel a certain way? Was I paying attention to that fleeting moment? Was I conditioned to believe what was suppose to be good or bad art by what I was taught in the past? Would that make my perception distorted and disconnected allowing for more conflict?

I came into to see a painting and I got a lot more than I expected. It was an experience. I knew me trying to replicate this experience was silly and absurd. I felt as if I needed it. Did I think I needed it? Well, that could possibly be. (Probably) If I thought I needed it, what would that actually mean? If I became too attached to the thought of “ I thought that I needed it” then that would mean I would be more dependent on that thought(s) hence more constrained to the past. If I was looking for a meaning or an answer in that experience, then I would be fishing for a dead concept formulated in the past. I know that that experience cannot be reproduced with me trying to reproduce it. Will something like it happen again? Maybe. That’s the great thing about allowing things to happen. To allow the impermanence of uncertainty to permeated the presence of which you preside. The presence that we reside in now. Yes, now. The one that exists as you read this.

The dot started out as a slight annoyance. I could have resisted it and let it eat me up inside. I could have let it bounce around in my consciousness like a pinball. The slight discomfort in my awareness started as a seed and sprouted to become a tasty presence plant. From that acceptance of what was, I melded into “what is” without the effort or will of trying to guide it or change it. Did the dot allow me to open up my awareness or did I allow the dot to guide me into the unknown?

I can really only say that I am uncertain if I am certain and that uncertainty will always be certain in every moment of presence.

DG