"Sometimes I find pieces of you still stuck under
my fingernails. I gripped the love we had so hard
I still can’t feel anything through the burn scars
touching your face left on my hands. Hands that
tremble so steadily that the world mistakes them
for an earthquake deep within the soil. I am planted
there, in your dirt, my tendril-like roots reaching for something
I know I could flourish from. I want you to know that
the night still tastes bitter on my tongue, words I
could not voice crowding the corners of my mouth
like sticky caramel.
I wish you would remember how sweet the taste of
them was. They were all for you. They always were."
- but now your brain is hazy and my memory has gotten lost in the fog (featured in my upcoming chapbook, What Happens When You Leave A Writer)// Haley Hendrick (via haleyincarnate)
You did not see this year turning out this way, and the plans that seemed steady have fallen out of place, but even here, even now, you have not fallen from grace; this glorious unmerited favor that shows up everyday, reminding you: you are Loved…even while you feel this way. And it is okay to say, “this is hard.” It is okay if things are not the same. It is okay if there are feelings that are strong, but they are confusing and too hard to name. For more than you were made to sort through all of this, you were made to trust and let go. You were made to go through every stage it takes to learn, to heal, to grow. — Morgan Harper Nichols
you are constantly trying to build a foundation that you are satisfied won’t crumble beneath you, but sometimes you need to just move on and keep building upwards. you have the strength and wit to tackle anything that comes your way, but in order to get to the top you must not be afraid to leave the foundation behind.
Behind the scenes at major art museums, conservators are hard at work, keeping masterpieces looking their best. Their methods are meticulous — and sometimes surprising.
The painting conservation studio at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is filled with priceless works sitting on row after row of tall wooden easels, or lying on big, white-topped worktables.
The studio is where I first met Senior Conservator Ann Hoenigswald years ago as she was fixing the sky on one of Claude Monet’s impressions of the Rouen Cathedral in France. Bits of paint had flaked off over time, and Hoenigswald was carefully mixing her blue to match the old master’s. Seeing the painting outside of its fancy frame, it felt like being inside the artist’s studio. (I greatly wanted to try my hand at filling in some tiny bare spot in Money’s sky, which had once been covered by paint. Of course, the thoroughly professional Hoenigswald politely refused to hand over her brush.)
Conservators must take classes in studio art, art history and chemistry. Sometimes guidance comes from artists themselves. For example, Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, asking for specific shades of paint — Prussian Blue, Ultramarine, Geranium Lake. Painters in earlier centuries rarely left such clues.
