Inside the Museum

Inside the Museum

An azure canvas stretched out above and before me like the peaked and pointed ceiling of a marquee.  Grand enough for the White Queen’s garden, it knitted the edges of the horizon down to the earth in a garter stitch of green trees.  With a watermelon stain on the sleeve of my white linen shirt, I was unsuitably attired for the brick and mortar museum, but this one welcomed me without dress code or ticket, for it recognized me as a regular. My hand lazily draped across the steering wheel of my car, I watched as the famous painting kept changing before my eyes, in thrall to the spell of magic that serves to set this museum far apart from all others. 

 For Whistlejacket cannot gallop.

 Mona Lisa never laughs.

But above me, in swirls of icing white, this masterpiece was at once pirate ships and lions... architectural triumphs of turrets and towers...the thunderous waves of a ill-tempered sea.  One moment it was covered in ivory cream, with only the faintest hints of sky peeking through, but before I could sigh, the white was away, boiling and bubbling in a kettle of blue, tumbling and swirling across the enchanted mural at the bidding of the unseen hand of the Artist.  

I drove along in amazement.

How fortunate we are to have such wondrous works available to us every day of our lives, colours not limited by man’s imagination, textures unearthly, patterns sublime.  They line our pathways, adorn the composition of our days, they encircle our very existence.  How is it we cease to notice? 

 Walk through a forest and count the variations of green.  Run your fingers along the bark of a poplar tree.  Count the stars tossed across a navy blue sky. Watch the lightning slice the darkness.  We, each one of us on planet Earth, spend our days in a museum of grand wonder.  We simply must open our eyes.

It is free.  

It is real. 

It is ours.


Image via Pinterest
Artist unknown