Turquoise Contemplation

Ich hatte mal ne türkise Vase - Once I had a turquoise vase 38 x 28 cm

Many years ago - more than 30 for sure - I visited the relatives of my friend Alan and his mother had a red flower infront of a turquoise painting. I never forgot that color combination. I loved it.

So, Alan, this is to you!

CONTEMPLATION

                                    If you look long enough into the abyss

                                    the abyss just might look back.

                                                                  Friedrich Nietzsche                                              

On a good day when I

look at a work of art

I experience a state of mind

I call ecstatic contemplation.

I am lifted up to a pleasant mountain

pavilion fluffed with scented cushions

and here’s a water pipe, thank you so much, loaded 

with a cutting-edge substance, and the tip

of this pipe, connected to my mouth, 

is held in place there by a half-naked girl

whose twin sister is down at the other end

giving me, shall we say, a lovely foot massage?

But no, I don’t think that’s what art does;

I think that’s what middle-age does.

Otherwise multitudes of robust

consumers upon whom our economic  

health depends would abandon shopping malls

and theme parks and KFCs and we would have

to wait hours to get into the Dallas-Ft. Worth

Museum of Fine Arts on a Monday evening,

the Cowboys playing the 49ers at home to empty seats.

We would have to book the Prado, the Uffizi

years in advance. Ecstatic contemplation

is an out of body experience, and

there’s a hidden risk to self-esteem.

It’s not meant to be easy. First,

you stand back and wait for a Russian aesthete

to cell phone photograph his hot-panted

friend teetering on her spike-heeled tight-

rope athwart the “Primavera,” say, or a

little garden scene by Leonardo as if it

were a new Jag or Porsche. Then, after

they depart, you find yourself, if all goes well,

cut off, out of the world, lost in a dream

of perfect skin—those Italian masters were

notorious voluptuaries, and even Mary, virgin mother  

of God, looks hot—shimmering silks and fabrics    

in intricate golden lit folds and creases. If you stand   

there long enough the picture waking from its

own dream will notice it’s being noticed

and start to contemplate you; vaguely androgynous   

angels with rainbow wings will take you in   

if none too ecstatically, and it’s like that line

in the Rilke poem: You Must Change Your

Life the Archaic Torso says to the Great Poet, i.e., thou art

a dud compared to me, a slob, and my maker wouldn’t waste

five minutes of his valuable time rendering you—

or, as a certain king once put it, “it’s now or 

never,” so there’s no time to waste.

Omar Faruk Tekbilek - Ayasofya