I've been busy...

Watching general conference with sickie Russell... I offered him tampons to stave off the runny nose, but he opted for manly TP.

Russell's sweet parents Gary and Carla took us to see the world's biggest movable radio telescope! It's in a valley in West Virginia, and the the whole town has no wireless devices or cell phones or anything of that nature because the dish would pick it up!!!

Imagine Dragons concert!!!

BYU v. UVA game. This was the only pleasant memory from that game. If you were there, or tried to watch it on tv, you know why.

Sunday afternoon trip to the Botanical Gardens! My favorite picture of us :)

A list for my next boyfriend

Written in the style of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, the early 20th century wit who mailed a hilarious reckoning of his "equipment for starting on a journey to fairyland" to his fiancee, Frances Blogg, in 1896, I tally the following items, which encumber--nay!-- embolden me as I set out to win the heart of you, Next Boyfriend.

1st. A Washington Nats hat, faded red, accidentally purloined from the bossman. It witnessed Bryce Harper's first major league home run from a vantage point about 2 inches above my own one absurdly pleasant evening this spring. Should you hail from the West, without the necessary appreciation for the Capitol's magnificent underdog team, I preemptively assert to you, No, it does NOT resemble the Walgreens W.
2nd. An Ikea desk, which unfolds from the corner of my room and will probably be bigger and more beautiful than your desk. I like to sit at it and look cute and hey, you knew I was bookish before our first date, so don't blame me for having the more magnificent study furniture. When my computer swallows up my entire final paper or internship cover letter 30 minutes before the due date, as it is wont to do, I feverishly hope you will manfully assume the task my roommate Kathryn has hitherto performed of hugging me when I bang my head down on the desk, sobbing, before a Blue Screen of Death.
3rd.  A copy of Love Letters of Great Men, from which the inspiration for this list sprang. You may not be the type to wish to read it and write in the style of those immortalized inside of it, but good things will happen to you if you dare, I promise you.

Can't bear to be parted from it.

4th. A number of museum postcards and art reproductions once nearly mailed to friends but decidedly, selfishly, retained.
5th. A number of post-it notes reciting my favorite scriptures arranged around my mirror, containing everything good and generous and holy and wise that isn't located on those postcards.
6th. A pair of screwdrivers, Phillips head and the other kind, which are fitted to girl's hands, and will seem quite unwieldy to you. There was something so comforting, empowering even, to request a women's tool kit for my 21st birthday. What a beautiful sense of security it gives one to reflect that, if one should ever buy a painting, or poster, or shelf, and it should happen to need screwing, one is ready; one stands prepared, with a defiant smile! (One will still need your help should one desire to pound nails into our brick-infused wall, though).

7th. At last count, a collection of 39 pairs of shoes, the remains of one Miss Christensen's bursts of spontaneous love for self, which, such is the perfect order and harmony of that mind, occur at startlingly exact intervals of time. Every 4 weeks. You may rear your head up in disbelief at that number, but trust me when I assert that every pair is your friend. The hiking boots render me excited to hike Old Rag with you. The Chuck Taylors put me in the bouncy, playful, sarcastic mood you find hilarious. The blue heels, well... no man has ever yet had any objection of any kind to the blue heels.
8th. A series of papers, most still in manuscript form, upon which my entire graduate GPA rests. Though written in the suffocatingly dry style of art historical research, they act as windows to my passions, and shall point you in the direction of 30 minutes of happy Lindsey speeches (complete with those ecstatic hand gestures, which everyone who has learned to teach about paintings unconsciously adopts).
9th. A Chosen Marathon finishers medal. It is part of my new regime, and the only new and neat-looking thing in this entire Museum. My friend Kathleen and I are teaching each other secrets of endurance swimming and running in order to pair it with a 70.3 medal this summer.
10th. A soul, hitherto anxious and silly but now happy enough to be confident in itself.
11th. A body, equally happy when absorbing cookies, butternut squash, gummi worms, and oxygen to its own perfect satisfaction. It is happiest swimming, I think, the pool under the Pentagon being the most convenient size.
12th. A Heart- mislaid somewhere. Have you located it yet?

And that is about all the property of which an inventory can be made presently. My tastes are stoically simple. A book, some passions, scant vestments, and my own self. What more does a woman need?

Flat head. Oh yea. The simplicity of the name caused its escape.

Bob Marley, on good men.

Fall always puts me in a lovey mood, reminds me how fun it is to hold hands and take jacket-covered walks together. Here's a few things I've liked about love lately:

“He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can. He isn’t going to quote poetry, he’s not thinking about you every moment, but he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break. Don’t hurt him, don’t change him, and don’t expect for more than he can give. Don’t analyze. Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he’s not there. Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.”

― Bob Marley

Click here for a beautifully illustrated essay about the infamous love affair between photographer Alfred Stieglitz and the visionary painter Georgia O'Keeffe.

 

Speaking of love, guess who turns 3 this week??

Tiny boyfriend!! I've been watching him for more than half his life! It's still strikes me as so random that the thing that will get me through the last year and a half of my master's degree is a little boy I'm unrelated to, whom I'd never have met any other way. I'm sure in ten years this job will seem like a blip on my career radar, but I am grateful for this blip because it has brought so much love into my life, at a time when I really needed it. 

Hooray for tiny boyfriends! And boys that bring you ice cream in the middle of the night when they find out you're neck deep in homework! And boys that will forgo analyzing the minutae of football games to ask you deep questions! (although this weekend it wasn't hard to turn away from our school's craptacular showing at the annual Holy War). Hooray for dancing boys and the blogging boys that bring them to you (Aaron!)

Hooray for boys everywhere!

Story of my life.

This:



to this:



Every 3 weeks or so.

Swoon-worthy Swimming Video

I particularly appreciated THIS  little bday
note from JBro. Seriously. I love my people.

I had a FANTASTIC birthday yesterday (pics to follow shortly thanks to the talented Ashley Crist who flew out and surprised me this week!). Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday through texts, emails, FB, calls, flowers, cards, and attendance at my burger bar + brave party last night! I am rich with friends!

So, I am catching up on my tv during Cobb's nap right now and caught this surprise on the USA Swim trials last night. ADORABLE. Way to snag a winner, Annie!





PS I LOVE watching swim, the sport I lettered in, in high school. Only in swim do I know more about what's happening technically on the screen than any other sports fan watching with me (apart from Kathy and Kim Gardner, my two East Coast swim buddies).

Happy Friday, everyone!

Dear Pretend Diary That's Actually Not Even Close To Private,

Feeling a little low tonight, and guess what I did with that feeling?

I deleted numbers out of my phone! One of modern life's most poetic and purposeful, though simplistic, acts. The following is my paean to this evening's act of daring: my drawing (or rather, erasing) of certain people's lines in my sand... phone.

I rarely delete numbers. Ok, a few times out of rage, but I honestly can count those on one hand, and still have fingers left over. The majority of my scant deletions actually stem from sheer undiluted disinterest. I know we will never see one another again, you served a purpose in my life at one point in time and I in yours, and that time has passed. The only way we will meet again is if we randomly move into the same family ward in 30 years. No, strike that-in the past, the quickest way to come off my phone is if your name is just one letter in the alphabet ahead of a person whose number I ACTUALLY dial frequently. YOU, Jess-B-Not-Jess-Clayton, must be booted out so I can get to my bestie faster. Sorry.

The result of this lax attitude towards deleting numbers means that I have (correction- I HAD!) a few former fellas and friends in my little phone for whom I bear no ill will, but tonight... they are gone. Snip snip snip. That's the sound of my last electronic string to them being cut (unless we're fb friends. Which reminds me, my list needs a good pruning...).

Ahem. Good-bye former flames. I remember the good times, and hopefully learned from the bad. Hope you and your wives and kids, or you and your Master's degrees, are doing well :)

Good-bye old work contacts. None of us work at the bakery any more, let's be honest: that was kind of a he**hole. We've made it through and we're on to bigger and better things! Viann, you were super cool. Go become a doctor now.

Not even sure who that person was/is, that was back in the day when I didn't enter people's last names in my phone... oh the follies of youth.

And there you have it. A clean break with the past. All is right in the world. Feeling great.

And do you know what else feels great? Let me tell you a story. During finals last semester I received a voicemail from an unknown number. The voice was male, roughly my age. He greeted me by name and then proceeded (rather nervously) to tell me that he had had a great time with me and was wondering if he could take me out for hot chocolate or... dinner or something... soon. Mind you, I hadn't a CLUE who this man (he identified himself as Nick at some point in the VM) was; his number most certainly did not occupy one of the coveted semi-permanent slots in the LC Address Book. Nevertheless, I was intrigued. I listened to the message again, giggling at his very clear smitten-ness with this "Lindsey"--my alter ego?-- and then I heard it: something about taking me to dinner at a restaurant in Provo. And in a second, it clicked. NICK. I had climbed Y mountain with him during homecoming at BYU in 2008. He was a stranger, a friend of a friend, who just happened to be in the Santa B parking lot when Jess Clayton and I were setting out on a girl date to the Y, which we were all too happy to turn into a boy date. The evening was very memorable (but that's a story for a more private diary...). And apparently I had given him my number. And four years later, he still had it in his phone, and in his nervousness at calling and getting a second date with some other charming Lindsey, he had dialed me.

Young and innocent and on top of the world!
Aka Y Mountain.

I take it as a high compliment that I was still in his phone :) Maybe he's a slow deleter like I am. I can't remember if I called him back or not. I think I texted him to alert him of his mistake. Didn't want to embarrass him too much or let him think this other Lindsey didn't have a good time with him, too! I hope he marries that Lindsey. I hope that, one quiet evening, just before he realizes she's the one, he finally gets sick of scrolling past this OTHER Lindsey's name to get to his sweetheart's name. Hopefully I get deleted at that moment. That's ok by me. It makes for a great story.

LIFEBLOOD!

Due to some weird security thing, I have been locked out of all my Google products (Gmail, Reader, Blogger) for the last three days. That felt like an ETERNITY. Holy cow I have learned where my real addiction lies. Everyone, beware. The things that you put on the internet that you thought were basically carved into stone are, in fact, still just simple electronic digits on a tiny chip that can be gone--poof!-- in an instant.


Ahem. Adding to that rather solemn declaration, I wanted to show you this tragic video, it is officially the first Katy Perry song I love:



Do you have one that got away? I have One with a capital O, and then a few others-sort-of-I'll-give'em-a-lowercase-o. I let myself think about them this week; my Valentine's day was one of nostalgia, coming after I taught a Relief Society lesson where we all dug really deep into the reality of the healing power of Jesus Christ in times of heartbreak. I don't have any real regrets about any of those boys in my past. Either the timing wasn't right, one of us wasn't ready, or we were meant for someone else. And that's the way the cookie's gonna crumble, every time but one! I just felt like taking the holiday to try and glean some knowledge about myself, where I am, what I want, what's holding me back. I think I'm doing ok. I can love with a heart and a half, and I will get the chance to love someone abundantly someday soon. Heaven help that dastardly slow boy, wherever he is. Literally. Heaven- HELP HIM!

Hope you had a good one. I had some incredible friends looking out for me this week, even from across the country. So grateful for love in its many beautiful forms.

Only the girls in my Relief Society will know exactly what this means. Love to you all!

Weekend Thoughts on Romance (written backwards)

In the spirit of 500 Days of Summer, I'm going to relate my developing thoughts about romance to you, backwards, starting with my much-older-and-wiser thoughts of today.

----------------------------------------------------------
(Monday) Yesterday was a day of reckoning... not really, but it felt like it. We had a combined meeting about dating (quel suprise.) and for once this subtle monster of a topic pricked, not amused, me. I'm feeling the strange need to change the way I think about love and romance. Does anyone feel like they've successfully done this before? During the talk they advised us to throw away the "high school and college rules" about dating. Yikes. To me, that means setting aside dreams of falling in love like all my friends fell in love. They got married at age 21 and 22 and 23. I know I won't have a 21 year old's love story, I'll have at least a 26 year old's love story. I just don't think I know what that looks like, or how to prepare for it. I got the message yesterday in church that such preparation should include not getting excited about dates 1, 2, and 3 and to start dating your friends? Mmm ok. Overall the talk made me kinda sad, which means I'm probably immature. So sue me, I like my little romantic dreams of man sees girl, man chases girl, woman and man fall in love, have a few mishaps on the way but ultimately become beaming man and wife and endure to the end (very important last step).

(Sunday) The question burning in my soul as I go to sleep is, what romantic dreams do you retire over time, and which do you retain?

(Blurred for her privacy,
trust me, it's darling!)

(Saturday) It was probably on a Saturday just like this one, three or four years ago, that I was sitting on Jessica's bed, strolling through facebook, when I suddenly came across a new, darling picture of our friend Genna and her then-boyfriend-now-husband Andrew. She has ahold of his suspenders, looking flashy and sly in high heels, while Andrew displays his characteristic sarcastic smirk that clearly says "I'm whooped and I'm happy... but if you ask me I'll deny everything." I cheered out loud for their cuteness, and Jessica looked at me with the strangest smile and remarked, "You get crushes on couples. You love couples!!!!" And I guess I do.

(Friday) In the car on the way to the outlets, I discover that my friend Summer also gets crushes on couples. I'm glad I'm not alone. I shouldn't be alone. True love gives off more love, and it's good to bask in it. It's called empathy. It's enjoyable! It's hopeful! It's energizing! Etc. (Fast-forward to Monday: I think I need new, older couples, or a new, older boyfriend, to show me what to be excited for anymore?)

Adorable card I found on some blog somewhere...
Yep that's as rigorous as my attempts to establish copyright go. Oops.

(Saturday night) As a 26-year-old Mormon, I have seen good friends make great matches hundreds of times over! I still love their stories, I don't think I'll ever get tired of them. I know some of you might be rolling your eyes at me, thinking, "Linds, it's not all fun and games, this marriage. Get over it." Got it. Heard the spiel. Yes, marriage is hard, all of life is hard. But that's not what I'm blogging about today. I'm talking about that adorable energy, that synchronization that real love turns on between two people. I REVEL in that stuff! I REJOICE in it! I even get SQUEALY for it! It gives me hope. I have the audacity to hope for real love, even as the statistics of failure come crashing down over my head. 

(Saturday morning) The fabulous blog A Cup of Jo featured two adorable engagement videos sent to her by readers- of course I eat them up. I used to not be a fan of people taping their engagements (I liked the idea that such a moment is meant to exist in the couples' memory alone), but these two tapes have me singing a different tune. These videos get me started thinking about how I always get crushes on couples...

(Monday night) I return to my new question: how do I change my ideas about love for the better?

[Enter an earnest, outgoing, Mormon Joseph Gordon-Leavitt look-alike. Problem solved.] 

Probably the most self-indulgent post I'll ever write, but it's Vday. Love me.

I love love.

Everyone does, it's magical, so that's NBD.

I love dating!

Not so many concur with that one.

I really do. Getting dressed up, daydreaming about them before the date and after the date if it goes well, giving someone your full attention, seeing how they put their best foot forward (or don't :), etc. It's all great stuff! Sure, there's the whole three-day-agony when he doesn't respond to your text, and of course, breaking up or being rejected absolutely sucks, but such is life. Dating's so worth it, getting to know someone one-on-one. Such a great thing.

Whenever any downtime occurs, I just tell myself he obviously isn't worth the worry and move my focus elsewhere. Being 25 1/2, almost a decade into my dating career, I've done that quite a few times now, just as I have broken a few hearts, brightened a few boys' weekends, and even gotten to change a few lives, and be changed myself, for the better.

In Institute last week our teacher challenged us to think about all of our best and worst decisions, and what made them so. Both my best and worst decisions involve relationships (and charity and pride, respectively). I can say with confidence, though, that there's only been a single date in the almost TEN years I've been dating that I regret going on. That's a really good track record I think.

It sounds cheesy, but I really do feel like I've learned from each boy/guy/man I've dated, even if none of them have become my true love quite yet. I remember when I was a sophomore in college I made a list of every boy I'd ever been on a date with. There's no way I can recreate that list now, five years later, I can't remember them all... but I do have some highlights. :) The following is a grossly, unfairly, stereotyped survey of select guys I've gone out with, because it's V-day and I'd like to remember that it's not because I haven't given things a shot with a variety of fantastic and not-so-fantastic menfolk. We all nickname our crushes: "Library boy," "volleyball boy," "motorcycle man," etc., please don't judge me for having had this list in such a format in the back of my head. Is your list really any different? (Especially you marrieds??) How do you feel about YOUR list? I hope you can take pride in it, it's a pretty important thing to be content with.

A survey of Lindsey's love interests (Future husband, you get to feel proud that you bested all of the following):

Eldorado HS soccer player (my first date :)

I stayed good friends with all these guys,
I don't think they'll mind being the
visual content of today's post :)

HS prom date who moved into my singles ward 5 years later and announced over the pulpit that I made a great date
The Hobbit (he was 5'5"... and VERY confident, so manly!)
BYU football players 1, 2, and 3
BYU Swimmer
Harvard Tennis Player
Utah Football player
BYU Rugby player (the most gentlemanly of all the athletes)
Guy who got married and became the 1st counselor in my singles ward bishopbric... AWKWARD.
Skiier Boy
Guy who introduced me to Jack Johnson (my very favorite boy of all time... sigh. Win some, lose some.)
Guy who studied Computers at the Y and had zero social skills (worst date EVER)
BYU Mascot ( he didn't know I knew!)
Harvard MBA
Afghanistan EOD Officer, (owner of the most interesting boy award).
BYU JD
BYU MACC
BYU MBA
Yale JD
Boy who gave me the extra set of keys to his car (schwing!)
Drummer in a jazz band
Future prophet
Princeton Prepster
African do-gooder save-the-world type
Hill staffers 1, 2, and 3
Most beautiful guy I've ever seen (congrats to his new wife :)
Boy who liked techno and wanted to wear a Batman suit the first night of his marriage
Shakespearean actor
Guy who let me drive his dad's Corvette
Rich surfer boy from the OC, sweetest guy ever
Orthopedic surgeon
My second cousin (JK... although my best friend tried to set me up with him once :)
FBI Agent
Dental students 1, 2, and 3 (GO UNLV!!!!!)
Florida boy (I'll always wonder what happened to him...)

I'm still missing a collegiate lacrosse player. They've always topped my list of boys I wanted to date. Well, them, and THE ONE of course, whoever the heck he may turn out to be. I've still got time!

I need to end this post on a less braggy, more V-day appropriate note. My friends and I were recently talking about our "types," and I was surprised to find that the other girls had no idea what their types were; the men they've dated vary too widely. I was surprised because my type has remained consistent since high school, maybe even junior high, when I first began to love boys.

I'm going to tell you what I told these girls, the same thing I told my stake president in 12th grade when he wanted to set me up, the same thing I thought to myself at age 11 when the class clown asked quiet little me about the necklace I was wearing: I love funny men, the kind that can entertain a roomful of people but especially the girls. The ones that like asking girls questions. He can even be a little high maintenance, I like maintaining someone :). Find me one of those, universe, make sure he loves God and family and learning about the big wide world, and we'll be in business. Thank you in advance, so much.

Happy Valentine's Day, my friends. If you have someone to love, do so with all your heart. Such is the sweetest gift life has to offer.

Lord Frederic Leighton. The Painter's Honeymoon. 1864. MFA Boston.

Goodbye, boys.

For the first time in a really long time-- possibly EVER-- I am ok with the thought of being single for a long time.

I lead a good life. I have a multitude of blessings seeping in on me every morning, not the least of which is independence. I have people to love and listen to and be understood by, possibly my most important need and want. I am still on track with my Heavenly Father, he's telling me so right about now.

I have a firm, and dissaprooving, understanding just how brutal Satan is, how he chips away or sometimes jackhammers away on whatever ails you, your whole life long (HE IS A JERK.).

More importantly, I also see and feel how sweet and unique the blessing of a close relationship-- friendship, even-- with Jesus Christ is. I understand a bit better how one's honest friendship with the Savior brings a level of calmness, confidence, and charity to one's daily life that absolutely cannot be picked up elsewhere. I really love going to the temple every week since I have recieved my endowment and just enjoying the spirit and the community that is there.

I'm a little worried about whether or not this is an appropriate statement to make on a blog, but for once I'm going to let it be my journal of what I really think and feel and am going through. I talked with my mom this week about our very deepest fears and worries (which we both, oddly enough, came face to face with this week in the form of very bizarre, very deeply affecting dreams :)

I realized that my fear used to be not getting married young. (As you can probably guess, that's caused me a lot of panic and pain the last five years). In my defense, this is not just some foofy desire I had because I was all princess-y and marriage obsessed. I genuinely have felt, for most of my life, that I was MADE for someone. I am not meant to be single, and I will be a dang good wife. I have felt inklings of what it will be like to support and sustain someone through thick and thin in my relationships with family and close friends, and that is so delicious to me. I just want it, and for the last five years, I have wanted it to be now, or since it's obviously not now, starting tomorrow...

... but, as I talked to my mom, I realized that my real desire is to have a family. It doesn't matter so much when that is. I know the caliber of family I plan to raise: the kind that can cross the proverbial 21st-century plains together and arrive with everyone intact and in tune on the other side, with confidence in their voices and hands, a song a prayer and a laugh on their lips, and love in their eyes. I know the type of marriage I hope to share at some future point with a very, very good man. I am beginning to understand the type of esteem I hope to hold him in; I've heard it in the voices of some of my favorite women as they discuss the enduring obedience to God and quiet dedication to family that their husbands display every day (I literally want to stand up cheer for every good man, good husband, and good father that I know, as in college football game-clinching OT TD volume cheers). I'm so proud of all of you that are hanging in there. I'm so here for all of you that are having a rough go of it. Like I said, Satan is a jerk, and boy do we have to stick together, invite the Savior in, and not let Satan get an INCH on us!

I saw the most beautiful thing on Sunday: a dad sat on the end of the back pew at church, beside him in a little wheelchair was his tiny little daughter (I'd say under 3 years old!) who had some special needs. All stake conference long, he grinned at her, rubbed a little stuffed penguin up against her cheek, let her reach up with her tiny hand and turn his face this way and that. He took every chance he got to make her laugh. You could see plain as day that she was one of his most priceless treasures, and that he was her favorite person in the ENTIRE world! Just watching that reminded me how worth the wait, how worth the fight, these things are.

I have no idea where I got the dumb idea to title this Good-bye boys. Consider that a moment of melodrama from a now mid-twenties girl. Hello, men is more like it. They've got to be out there somewhere. Making the right choices, moving forward across the plains, same as I'm trying to do. Guy, I guess I'll meet you somewhere on the road. Hang tough.

Thanks for reading.

If Mona Lisa Smile and Texas Chainsaw Massacre had a baby...

...it would look something like this chilling American-art-world opinion piece (Thanks dad! I'm still shuddering! So scary. And awesome.)

vs.

(^Only time you'll ever see Obama OR a Dark Knight illustration on this blog. Mark My Words.)

PS *****GIRLY ALERT****** The following two posts made me cry (good cry) so I'm posting them for all the girls out there, who have the same abundant amount of free time I've apparently enjoyed this last week, and who are tired of reverting to Little Women or A Walk to Remember in order to get their feminine cry session over for the month.

Post 1- Jayci, my darling, unique, creativity-infused friend from Palo Verde, became a mom earlier this month! Hers is the most touching, honest, and beautiful post I've ever read on any friend's blog before about motherhood (note to all: it's the play-by-play of the day her son was born.) I really appreciate hearing and thinking about the sacrifices of motherhood from a real-time vantage point, from a real-life colleague and friend. I'm so proud of her and so delighted to see just how sublime and how worth it those sacrifices are, to those who wait and plan for it with their families in the proper, patient, and faithful way. Congrats, Reeder family!

Post 2- The love story of one of the brand-newly-married authors of theapronstage.com, a blog by four Mormon women in various stages of adulthood (one of whom I know from my singles ward out here). The line about cake vs. bread also had me shamelessly in tears in front of the computer... well, that line, and the two beautiful pictures. If you didn't know already, I am a MAJOR sucker for weddings; I cry at pretty much all of them, I save all my friends' wedding announcement photos, I don't really ever get tired of reception/engagement/bridal shower gossip, and if I come across a wedding photo album on facebook, you better believe I click through each and every photo... even when I don't know the couple! (Ok, that one sounded a little pathetic. Like you don't have your own guilty pleasures! :) After reading this post, can you blame me? True love has the ability to lift up anyone who gets around it!

Somehow... love is still about studying.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Lovers in the Snow, Roy Moyer, 1980, American Art Museum. While perusing the other Smithsonian art museum's online collection, I was brought to a standstill by this contemporary painting. Always a sucker for unusal compositions, I was captivated by the yawning yet inviting circle of white. I enjoyed the "hunt" my eye had to go on to find the small, innocuous couple in love blending into trees on the side. Why do you think the artist would place them there, instead of in the middle of the painting? Perhaps as if to say,"Keep passing by!...But if you happen to catch a little bit of our tenderness on your way out, we won't care. We've got each other."

Painter's Honeymoon, Lord Frederic Leighton. ca. 1864. Sigh. It's GORGEOUS!

One of my all-time favorite Victorian paintings! While meandering through the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston last spring, I fell in love at first sight with this scene. Apparently, to THIS artist, love quite literally equated with art. Oh what a life he must have lead. Notice the amazing details of her silks, and how her curving body just leads your eye right into their touching cheeks and back down to their clasped hands. LOVE!

The Green Stripe, Henri Matisse, 1905. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark. You may be wondering why this fierce-looking image earned a place on my blog during the love post, well I'll tell you. This is actually one of my favorite legends in art history (I heard it in my Intro to Humanities class, where I was first enchanted by art history's powerful emotions). The Green Stripe is a picture of the artist's wife. How would you like to be rendered that way by your honey? Well, we don't think she minded. See, Henri Matisse was a Fauvist, meaning a "wild beast" of an artist. He was given that name by a critic because of the crazy way he used his colors. He pioneered the use of colors not as they are found in nature, but rather, as symbols of his own personal feelings. Green, as it turns out, was Matisse's color for love! He painted his wifey with a green line down her face because he wanted to show that he loved her. (Incidentally, the Oriental-looking bun and kimono outfit were just a fad. Japan had just recently opened up to Western traders, and French women were crazy about "Japonisme" fashion at the turn of the century). Green's my favorite color, too, Matisse (well, green and grey). I was actually bent on getting an emerald engagement ring for like a year after hearing this story- emeralds, carat for carat, are actually more valuable than diamonds, did you know that?

Happy Single Awareness Day (Happy SAD Day??)

Untitled, Clyfford Still, 1935, The Hirshhorn Museum. Sad indeed. 'Nuff said. Thought I'd throw it in :) I want to know what that slightly anthropomorphic stick on the right side of the canvas is... a memory? A demon? A hat stand?

Indian Love Call, Hassel Smith, 1961, Hirshhorn Museum. I really have no idea what this one's about but it's grey and about Indian love, so I figured I'd throw it in the SAD category. Once a week I go and eat at the Mitisam Native Foods Cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian (the newest Smithsonian museum) and it is just delightful to see all of these different cooking methods and weird types of food (today I had bean succotash, last week I got delicious pumpkin and butternut squash soup with hazelnuts). Apparently their love calls are just as unique as their foods are.

Girl in Satin Dress with Roses, Gelatin Silver Print (aka a very old, senstive photograph) by Gertrude Kasebier. No Date. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. I decided she's me this season. Real, all dolled up, and waiting patiently.

As you can see, I sat and amused myself today at work by doing a little impromptu research on how artists have depicted love over the ages, since this Saturday is the day I take the GRE and we all know how much I looooooove studying my brains out even after I've graduated college. JK, Saturday's Valentine's Day. AND GRE day. Which means that after I flog my guts out on a $175 test of DEATH, I get to come home to a big, fat, heart-shaped box of chocolates. Also, there is a distinct possibility of me setting my GRE study book and fatty stack of flash cards on fire that evening. Chocolate by firelight. Ah it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside to think about it. If I were an artist, and had to illustrate what I feel love is to me today, it would be a glowing, golden orb spray painted on a subway train: fleeting, but happy and warm, wherever it is. (Obviously, I am on the right side of the museum business. Much better at critiquing others' work than doing my own) Happy V-day, yalls. If you're reading this, chances are you're someone I love.