Promenade

Since becoming decidedly self-involved, starting a blog seems like a natural development in the life and times of Joe Gurba. I have named the blog thus because I have been giving serious thought to changing my name to Calvin St. Calvin. And since this really is for an audience of one (myself) I figured the title appropriate. I will use this podium to either pontificate shamelessly or engage in biting diatribes concerning individual people, songs, pieces, works, events, or places that light my wick.
All that said, forgive me. Forgive me. Reader, if you are there, forgive me. Forgive me, God. I love the sound of my own voice. So much.

Let the most likely short lived and soon to be neglected 'blog' adventure begin!

Today I was grabbed by the ankle by a particular painting. The author of this piece is Marc Zakharovich Chagall, a Russian Jew from Belarus and naturalized in France. He was prolific and we will leave it at that.

This painting is titled The Promenade. The gentleman is Chagall himself and the woman is Bella, his wife, whom he had married in 1915. The Promenade was painted in 1917-1918. Chagall was overjoyed, jubilant, and his life was built in rejoice. The bright colours are so bold and intelligent. But above all, the image conveys such mystic romanticism evocative of a waking dream, lucid and exuberant.

The Promenade strikes me to the quick. It is in this moment meeting me exactly where my life resides. I am to be married in a few short months and my Bella, Bethany, seems to want to pull me into the very ether of joy. There has been such an undoing between myself and world's worries on her account. I feel as if I am coming unpinned from the turf and given over to a view possessed by stronger colour, stronger senses, and more formidible existance. In a word: floating. The Promenade isn't a painting that will fling someone into this majestic hinterland, no, not by any means. The Promenade is a painting for those of us who have been so fortunate as to taste and see this sort of contentment.

Joe Gurba