Observe

Tomorrow Jami is back in town. Three whole days together here.
For right now, I have to get some sleep. I'm working at the hospital from 7 am to 4pm, and even now I know that I'm not going to get as much sleep as I'll need.
Still. We've been apart for 16 days now and it feels like a month or more.
When we would walk around the track at Agnes Scott I'd spend time looking up at this observatory. What kind of school affords such a building? What would it be like if Columbia Seminary had an observatory like this? In the 19th century the seminary had a chair of life sciences or something like that. Life Sciences! I think Woodrow, the professor who liked evolution, who the powers that be tried to get rid of (did they? I can't remember) was one of the holders of that chair. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the chair disappeared with him. Any one can endow a chair for any reason. I suppose that the seminary could have a chair of animal husbandry and ethics - or environmental ethics. Speaking of endowments, how is the painting of the endowment going. I continue working on it, applying layers of paint, changing the composition, adding and subtracting elements. My goal is a gray pulpy mass resonant with meaning. Both parts of that sentence are vital: not just a gray pulpy mass; not just resonant with meaning. I've got to arrive at the right tone and texture of gray: the world is full of grays. In the new wing of the High Museum there is a large Anselm Kiefer. Kiefer was the hot artist of the mid-90s, but his cachet is still pretty high. He paints big and complex. The first of his paintings I'd seen in person was at the Guggenheim: a wonderful, encrusted, combination of straw, paint, lead, and God knows what else that was as big as a house. The High now has one of his works, a large gray painting with great impasto swirls of paint depicting waves breaking on the shore at night with the constellations over head. I'm going for more gray, more pulpy, more meaningfully resonant - but not that big. I need to be able to fit it in my car.
Did mention Jami is flying in tomorrow? Her arms are bound to be tired.
I love her.