Chiaroscuro

I had to take art history twice in college (for a reason other than failing haha), but I'm glad I did, even if I yawned a lot more the second time around. All the drilling gave me a word to describe what I saw this morning: chiaroscuro. It's Italian for light-dark and describes a technique that makes the stunning feature of a painting what is in deep shadow and what is most definitely not. Think Girl with the Pearl Earring, or The Mocking of Christ, or Sacred and Profane Love.

It is what I saw this morning. Light and the absence of light. It filtered through the leafy green trees, sparkling off puddles at my feet. A rainbow of color sliced through a wispy waterfall ahead of me, and rays of sunshine lit up the nooks and crannies of the cliffs on either side of me...while leaving others in darkness. Portions of the creek, too, held blackness, mysterious still water. Even the spring green of trees in shadow was muted and lackluster. The light had something to work with because of the darkness.

Coming around a corner and seeing that was one of those moments where I was startled to a stop and couldn't move for a while. To have continued right away would have been some sort of blasphemy. I was in awe. I also very much liked that I had a word to attach to what I was seeing: chiaroscuro. Not just light and dark, but light-dark. A good word for the moment, for the day, for life. As I stood there, encapsulated in a beautiful moment of light, I was thinking of where my mom was. When I woke up this morning she had already been gone for some time. I had to ask Maryah where she went. "Pennsylvania, to visit Grandma Nancy." I pursed my lips at that. If I had known she was going, I probably would have gone with her. I felt a little guilty. Too late now, though, I thought, so may as well keep moving.

So even as I breathed in a beautiful moment, shrouded in mist and early morning chiaroscuro, drenched in wonder and endorphins, my mom was confronting death in a claustrophobic elderly care home. She was visiting the woman who gave her life, who had made her eat her veggies and who took her to church. Not that there was not light in her morning. To the contrary. My mom as a person is alight, and my grandma, despite the demons wreaking havoc in her mind, is going to heaven and that is light. Light and dark coexist. That's why I like chiaroscuro. It's one word to describe the two. And it's why I liked the scene I saw this morning.

Even if I don't use the two exact words, I write about light and dark a lot. I almost want to apologize for harping on them. It's kind of a theme here. But it's the theme of the world, isn't it? It's the theme of us. Everything in life is light-dark. Everything is chiaroscuro.