Friends mentioned that they had participated in a program from the local library. Anyone with a card could borrow a piece of art to grace their home for a season. They were reproductions but even a copycat of magnificence can engender joy. What a perfectly splendid idea for spreading beauty. Probably the painting herself was pleased too, with a fresh audience to exclaim her praises.

 

"Moira, do look at what is in my living room!  Can you believe the colors? The brush strokes? Come closer, but don't touch."

 

Perhaps even the most discerning collector slides into indifference over a Matisse after it has hung on the wall for a decade. Gushing takes effort and eventually it is unsustainable. I suppose that is the genius God embedded in children. By the time you could potentially get bored of your three year old's antics they turn four and are full of surprises. 

 

I wonder what happens if you sequester loveliness. Does it melt? Like ice cream that you hide in the closet lest your mother insist that you share? Maybe it wafts away, like a contralto too skittish to sing in public, so she meanders into the field away from ears. 

 

There was a video of van Gough brought back from the grave, plunked in a gallery crammed with visitors gasping over Starry Night and The Potato Eaters. As Vincent realized that they were talking about his work, his face bloomed like a sunflower, and tears spilled over like the banks of the Seine. 

 

He had, albeit long ago, created them. Van Gough was intimately aware of the lines and spaces. Presumably he cherished each piece like his own sons and daughters. But even a French landscape has a limited capacity to please with a solitary witness. Somehow the aptitude for wonder expands with each pair of eyes, seemingly without any chance of being depleted. 

 

Maybe hoarding beauty ruins it for us as well.