Between spits, the painting...

I’m in the dentist’s chair. The hygienist leans over me. She’s talking. She’s describing a painting she saw at the art museum. She doesn’t like it. It’s ugly, she says. It’s big. It dominates the room. It’s all black and grey and brown paint. It’s thick. She hates it.

As she describes it, I recognize it as an Anselm Kiefer painting. I love that painting. I remember standing in front of it for some time on more than one occasion. Ugly? Maybe. But beautiful in the ways that matter. If you stop, you can spend time with it. You can live in it a while. You can come back to it and not have exhausted it. That makes it a good painting in my book.

Between spits into the bowl, I tell her I know that painting. I like it. I think it’s good.

She gets all worked up. It just seems like a mess, she says. Why do you like it? she wants to know.

And here is the problem. Words. Because a painting isn’t about words. If it were, it would be a poem or a story or something like that. It’s a painting. But she wants to know why I like it. She wants words.

She asks, What does it mean?

I don’t know. What does the Grand Canyon mean? What does the ocean mean? What does freshly mowed grass mean?