The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light by Claude Monet
I’m on a plane again, flying west again.
I was in LA with my cousin Ha Jung, who is probably the sweetest person in the world. She dropped me off at LAX this morning and now I am here, somewhere above the Pacific Ocean.
Once again, I am at the same time looking forward to what’s to come and feeling the difficulty of leaving. I hope I never reach a day where I can leave a good thing without missing it.
Our days in LA were full and went by quickly. We watched sunsets, went to art museums1. Some nights we made dinner together—steak, asparagus, and mashed potatoes; mapo tofu with onions and mushrooms—and other nights we ate out—dduk guk and seolleongtang in K-Town, milk bread and wagyu in Playa Vista. On our last night together we went to a screening of Decision to Leave. Director Park Chan-wook was there and did a Q&A after the film ended, and it was special hearing him explain his creative vision behind the film’s artistic last scene, in which our male detective searches unsuccessfully by the shore for the woman he loves, though, ironically, she is right by him and he just can’t see her.
One thing we both want to do is get better at appreciating art. We aren’t particularly sophisticated. She did take an art history course in college, and I have Gombrich’s The Story of Art at home (as well as a few other art books I haven’t gotten around to reading). But there is a lot that goes over our heads.
At LACMA there was a Rothko—White Center. Ha Jung had a better interpretation of the painting than I did, particularly regarding the seeping hues of red, since she remembered how Rothko had died. We talked about colors and symbolism. Outside the gallery, the museum’s staircases were supported by these bright red industrial pillars that extended straight upward for several stories. We liked to think the red was a symbol of love.
After visiting LACMA, we drove north to hike to the Hollywood sign. This was the best day of my stay in LA. The hike was gorgeous. I kept repeating words like iconic, amazing, and beautiful. I couldn’t help myself.
As we walked up the mountain, the trail winded and curved. We rounded a bend and were met with a picturesque view of the city. We stopped in admiration, then continued on. At some points we faced away from the view, and at others it was obstructed from our sight. But it was always there—it was only our perspective that was changing. And as we hiked higher, the view, when we could see it, only got better.
There was a moment: we were climbing ever higher and Ha Jung asked me a variant of that fork in the road question. If you are faced with two roads, one that is well traveled and leads to a secure and established destination, and one that is less beaten with no sure end in sight, which do you take? I answered the latter and so did she, and we laughed because it was so perfect and so obvious. This not-so-hypothetical choice was why we were there together in that moment. She took the road less traveled, moved to LA, away from all her family and all her friends. And I made a similar decision: it’s why I was there enjoying the view on the side of a cliff in California, rather than studying for midterms in Pittsburgh.
Now that moment has passed. Now it exists only in memory and in writing. But it is permanent, fixed in time: everything that ever has been will always be.
As we continue on, our views and perspectives will continue to change. But what is good and beautiful remains true: it is always there, even in times when we don’t see it. I only hope I will grow to see it clearer.
At the Getty we saw the Monet which I included at the top of this post. It is part of a series of paintings that capture Rouen Cathedral in different lights (see here for a beautiful interactive). There is an associated quote by Monet: Everything changes, even stone. I like to interpret it this way: the cathedral is constant, but it appears to change because it looks different in different lights. In line with the theme of this post: the beautiful thing does not change, only our views and perceptions do.
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