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The Old Normal

Okay, so I’ve been in a little bit of a grouchy funk the last couple weeks. It’s probably the normal end of year burnout but yet it seemed a little deeper. Last night I actually got eight hours sleep and this morning, without that fog, I was able to think things through. I know what is bothering me.

Yesterday I was moved to tears by a stranger who stopped traffic on Blackhawk to move a six inch turtle. I had swerved around him on the way to the high school for drum line practice. Also, thank God for those who are not late everywhere they go–who can actually stop and do the thing that was in other’s minds to do. One small step for turtle-kind.

You know you are sleep deprived and a little sensitive when you get choked up because you can’t find your way out of the high school parking lot. Why are there no pass through areas? I’m so embarrassed, again. It’s like I’m dropping him off around the block.

This morning, I got the call–the middle school jazz ensemble concert at the zoo: rained out. Not that I wouldn’t have trucked over there and paid the admission and troopered around the park looking for the pavilion to hear my son play keyboard bass on two numbers. . . but the truth is. . . I was actually okay with the rain. Recall that we had the Calvin Kotrba show at the band concert ten days ago–how many middle school lasts can we survive?

So here is the deal–I spent the better part of my fifth through eight grade days pre-mourning my sister going off to college. Our little family unit would never be the same. Never be the same. Never be the same. You can see how hopeless I am.

The rekindling of that haunting mantra. Only this time it’s my son. I can’t stand the thought of it. Never be the same. Only four more “normal” years.

But even normal is elusive. I’m losing control. The routine is dissolving. For 11 years we’ve been practicing from 6:10-7:10. Next year we will have to leave at 7:10. We will require a new routine and the truth is I’m not happy about that.

I like the old normal. Never the same. . .

Remember how your sister actually moved to Texas and lived with you. . . after college
Remember how even after Casey moved years later you ended up roommates. . .
Remember how much fun it is to be with your mother now that she is not waiting at a barstool at the kitchen window watching you kiss your boyfriend goodnight when you should have been home two hours ago. . .

It’s hard. Okay I don’t really need to go back to toddlerhood. Baby times were taxing too.
But this is a good place. I’m not ready to move on.

Recall that I have also spent many a graduation party hiding in the bathroom with tissues. For other people’s kids. I guess it’s in my DNA. Now I’m pre-mourning my own kids going off. . .

So–there is nothing really to do. Hope that my child starts acting like a little shit so I’ll be more ready for him to leave?

Beyond that I guess you just have to be there–even if you are blogging when you would have been at the zoo concert. I think this same thing happened last year.

So–here’s another prayer. . .

Lord, help me to be present
to enjoy every stage of my children’s lives
help me to spread the message about how fast time goes
and how we shouldn’t sweat the small stuff,
in piano, and in life.
Help me to remember that there are good times ahead-they’re just different,
and while you are at it. . . help me find a really good book two video of my piano kids so I can turn in this dang teacher trainer application.
Amen.

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Mona Lisa discovery

Mona Lisa

Leonardo’s famous portrait has long been thought to be of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant. It is thought the Renaissance master painted it between 1503 and 1517 while he worked in Florence, and then later in France.

However, Cotte has used Layer Amplification Method (LAM), a process of projecting a series of intense lights on to the painting and measuring their reflections to see how it was created.

Cotte, a LAM pioneer, explained in the BBC Two documentary The Secrets of the Mona Lisa: “We can now analyse exactly what is happening inside the layers of the paint and we can peel like an onion all the layers of the painting. We can reconstruct all the chronology of the creation of the painting.”

After reconstructing the layers found underneath the surface of the Mona Lisa, Cotte said: “I was in front of the portrait and she is totally different to Mona Lisa today. This is not the same woman.”

Instead of the front-on gaze of the Mona Lisa, this hidden portrait shows a woman looking off to the side. Cotte also claims the secret sitter has a larger head and nose, bigger hands and, importantly, smaller lips than those used for the famous Mona Lisa smile.

The change in sitter could be the key to a totally different history behind the portrait. Andrew Graham Dixon, the art historian presenting the documentary, claims that “if this computer image represents the original portrait of Mona Lisa, it was a portrait her husband never received. Instead, Leonardo went on to paint the world’s most famous picture over the top.”

Some historians, however, are reluctant to believe the hidden portrait is of another woman. Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford, says Cotte’s claims are “untenable”.

He told the BBC: “[Cottes images] are ingenious in showing what Leonardo may have been thinking about. But the idea that there is that picture as it were hiding underneath the surface is untenable.

“I do not think there are these discreet stages which represent different portraits. I see it as more or less a continuous process of evolution. I am absolutely convinced that the Mona Lisa is Lisa.”

The history of the world’s most famous painting has been riddled with identity crises, however. Within decades of the Mona Lisa being painted, speculation began that there were a pair of similar portraits. In 1584, an artist named Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo wrote that “the two most beautiful and important portraits by Leonardo are the ‘Mona Lisa’ and the ‘Gioconda.’”