Quiet Intesity
Happy Valentines Day
I once wrote a letter to you where I had written that I found you lived with a quiet intensity. You seemed confused and asked me what I meant. At the time I stumbled on my words, unable to articulate how much I like looking in your eyes. I think i've found a more proper way to ascribe this quiet intesity. It's a bit silly but I saw a video on my phone where in an interview a man was asked what his favorite piece of art was. He answered with Johannes Vermeer's The View from Delft.
Apart from saying it was the most beautiful painting he'd ever seen, the man described The View from Delft as having "a quiet but radiant power". As I looked at the painting to see the same radiance, the power and intensity suggested to me was one that drew the me in from subtlety and inquisition. There is nothing flamboyant or dramatic about the composition, the colors are muted and the scene itself serene, yet its this very stillness and resistance to flamboyancy that it makes its quiet assertion of a scene that doesn't need to shout in order to leave a lingering effect. There's no clamour for attention, no flashy theatrics, instead a real magnetic pull, a subtle force that squeezes you and invites you in. This is not to say that I think you're a subtle or quiet person but that your pull is not gestural and the colors of your character refuse to comply to the bells and whistles of cheap ornamentation. Your radiance doesn't seek to dominate, it envelops, lightening everything by simply being.
The other night, as I sat around the pink tiled table of your kitchen I thought of that painting. I felt your radiance and it felt good.
You are as beautiful as the color green. You are jazz. You are the View from Delft. You are the sweetest wine. You are the last train to Richmond. You are unapologetically you and I love you for that.
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