Art Heals: Serendipity

Novelty. In search of.  If I were to post an online ad, that would be it.   There is a sameness to my life at this moment, a predictability that stretches time like taffy.  After sixty-eight days of quarantine, I know exactly how the hours will shake out.  My tasks are tedious.  Conversations with friends have become routine (“what’s new” doesn’t start a talkfest like it used to). I’ve even gotten used to the stresses (grocery shopping, self-imposed deadlines, and that weird adaptation of FOMO where I feel guilty for not having a sourdough starter).

The only variety in my life comes from my daily walks.  Every afternoon I set my red-shoe shod feet on a quest for serendipity.

Which brings me to Horace Walpole and the year 1754.  (Well obviously not my well-shod feet, but my meandering mind.)  Anyway, Mr. Walpole,  who prided himself on being something of a wordsmith, was writing a letter describing an apocryphal tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip”  (Serendip being the name for Sri Lanka in those days) in which the traveling princes were always making accidental discoveries, unrelated to their actual quests. Describing these happy accidents, Walpole coined the term “serendipity.”

So, as I traipse along the paths and arteries of my downtown neighborhood, I am in constant search of something novel (something not followed by the term coronavirus).  Being a curator, I find I am trying to assemble my visual impressions into artistic categories—actual outdoor art--sculptures on museum grounds, statues in front gardens,  that Barbie installation in the Dupont yard (cover your eyes, some of them are nude).  Architectural art is another category.  Looking up,  I find caryatids with really strong shoulders holding up the government ( well, at least the government buildings), gargoyles conveying their displeasure as they spit, and of course those muscle-bound wrestlers grappling with snakes, bears and each other that  mark the most innocuous of buildings as arenas of combat.

But mostly I wait for serendipity, the accidental discovery of something that was placed in my path for no reason other than to give joy to the maker and bring joy to me.  I don’t stumble upon it every time, but when I do, I can quote Archimedes, whose cry, Eureka, means “I have found!”  

I give you my shoe, and some serendipitous sidewalk art.  Art Heals.