The serpentine line, or the line of Grace, by its waving and winding at the same time different ways, leads the eye in a pleasing manner along the continuity of its variety. —William Hogarth
Line. An Element of Design often thought of as one-dimensional.
Today is Janie’s birthday. Early this morning was the full Wolf moon.
It was 17 degrees this morning as Susie Grace—my She-Wolf dog!—and I headed out to hike. The temperature is not lost on me. I’ve been waking up many times at 1:17 AM and randomly looking at the clock after lunch many days this past year at 1:17 PM.
I tried to write a tribute to Janie for my blog post for today. I was unable to finish it even though I had written a number of pages. I have come to know that when something doesn’t work out, the Divine has a reason. When I decided yesterday my tribute wasn’t going to happen, I wondered if it is because I needed to write it on the seventh anniversary of her passing, which is next year, although the full moon on this day seems to be significant.
This is the 4th full moon in the many months that represent the full moon in the sign of Cancer that will continue through 2022. The last time this occurred was in 1776 and is now being called the U.S. Pluto Return.
Crazy wonderful synchronicities . . . the numbers 117, the full Wolf moon . . .
I could see the smoke rising from my bedroom chimney as we departed. As we rounded the corner of the house, the moon came into view, setting over the Jemez Mountains. It took my breath away.
The reverie was interrupted by the neighbor next door. He is in his bathrobe watching the moon set.
“Hey, Kim! Look at that,” pointing to the moon.
“Yes, I see that. It is gorgeous.” I continue walking with Susie Grace out to the road.
Oh, no. Here come Jan and Osa back from their hike. Thankfully, she turns and goes the opposite direction and down into the Green Belt.
I stop and watch the moon in its seven final minutes of glory.
I imagine it to descend for that seven minutes and that the time is approximately 7:14 AM, as it disappears behind one of the highest peaks from my perspective.
Sweet Jesus. It looks like an enormous pearl, striated in gray.
I want to drop to my knees.
The mountains are snow-covered. Some wisps of clouds dapple the sky, and the horizon is softly pink with some hints of yellow above, likely due to the sun, which will rise in another 15 minutes or so. On its final nod, the pearl melts into a band of nearly blue turquoise behind the aubergine snow-covered peak.
Pearls were once a synchronicity of mine when I lived in Ohio. I thought of the demilune table I started painting many years ago using an image from a French decorative arts book of the 17th-19th centuries. I never finished painting it. The demilune languishes unfinished in storage.
Much like life. Unfinished and scattered.
Actually the pearl synchronicity goes back to my childhood when I found a book in the library at Garden City First Baptist Church titled, A Pearl of Great Price. I think the book is in a box also in storage. I stole it from the library and never returned it!
As the sun was coming up and I was telling Janie, Happy Birthday in Heaven, memories of Italy came flooding back. One year Janie and her husband traveled to Italy; she sent me a postcard and brought back olive oil. I asked her then, “Which was your favorite city?”
“Florence.”
She said, “You and I are going someday!”
In reminiscing of Italy, I thought of Florence, the Galleria degli Uffizi, that houses Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. The crowds were so extreme in Florence the day I decided to enter the Uffizi that I didn’t go. A friend of mine said to me later, “How could you not go?!”
Even though I bypassed the Uffizi, I opted for other museums, one being the Palazzo Pitti where I found the most Divine representation of pietre dure, designed with inlay of stone seashells and sealife, and of course, pearls. Pearls symbolizes being ‘born of water’, born of Spirit, water being the closest vibrational energy to the Earth. So, the pearl represents the physical world made manifest in the Spiritual world. It is the only gemstone found inside of a living creature. Pearls are also symbolic of wisdom gained through experience.
Upon my return this morning, I went straight to my bookshelf and pulled out my old Art History textbook, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 10th Edition. On page 10 is a reference to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and it being a good example of the Design Element of Line. Primarily because of a gentle, undulating but firm line as seen in the central figure of the goddess in Botticelli’s Venus.
No discussion of Botticelli can be fully meaningful without some reference to the environment that peculiarly encouraged him–the circle of Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Platonic Academy of Philosophy. Here, he studied the philosophy of Plato, . . ., for scholars had not yet developed the critical sense that would distinguish between Plato and . . . mystics of Alexandria. It was this spiritualized and mystical Platonism that Botticelli absorbed, believing that it was close to Christianity in essence and that the two could be reconciled.
Gardner’s Art Though the Ages, 10th Edition, page 721.
I had forgotten all of these particulars about the Birth of Venus. I found an image of Venus on-line and was able to zoom in. The physical aspect of her lovely ivory skin, hazel colored eyes reminded me of Janie, minus the long hair! But the part that struck me most profoundly was that, to me, she is a pearl inside of the scallop shell.
Botticelli gave us the Heavenly Venus. Her lovely figure, strangely weightless and ethereal, is the intellectual and spiritual apparition of beauty; at the same time, she personifies the human soul. The Birth of Venus is an allegory of the primal innocence and truth of the soul, before its birth into gross matter, its fall into lesser being. Here, the soul–naked as truth is naked–is blown upon the winds of passion but is soon to be clothed in the robe of reason . . . The beauty of the pagan goddess becomes the beauty of the perfected soul.
Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 10th Edition, page 722.
Janie would roll her eyes at the parallel I just made. However, I am not the only friend who would have thought this. Everyone loved this girl from Walnut Grove. She was one of a kind.
These past six years have been impossible in reconciling why she had to say goodbye to this life. She and I discussed the Spirituality of our life. I find comfort in the Scripture that I know she was aware . . .
Romans 8:28
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
King James Version (KJV)
Happy Birthday in Heaven, Janie Love.
–Kimberly B. Gray, Santa Fe, New Mexico. All rights reserved.
Kimberly B. Gray 