Today I'm kind of continuing on yesterday's theme. What makes the good great and the great spectacular? How does that journey happen? Today we visited the Uffizi Gallery here in Florence. But before that, we had to get from Rome to Florence. It wasn't a big adventure, but it was a little adventure that taught me some stuff. Which of course I'm going to tell you about.
So, first we got ourselves to the train station, which, thanks to Aaron's immaculate planning for us, was just a few blocks away. We arrived there a bit later than intended, and went to buy tickets. Ack! There were tickets on the fast train, standing room only, for 45 euros each, or tickets on the one slow train of the day for 17 euros each, which was scheduled to leave in twenty minutes. Obviously the cheaper tickets seemed the way to go; only we had tickets to visit Uffizi at 2:30, and wouldn't be able to make it on time. The gallery tickets had been paid for already, and having talked to Aaron, he had strongly suggested that taking the faster train would be the more successful option. And generally he's right about these things. So, like the obnoxious teenager that I possibly haven't completely grown out of and the wise and patient father that my dad likes to think that he is, we very responsibly discussed the options . . . about four times. We had plenty of time, because the ticket machine wasn't reading the card and the line for the real-live person ticket-seller was looong. Anyway, when we realized we couldn't get the thing to work, we split up and I went to call the hotel to see if we could change our gallery reservation while mi padre got in line for the tickets. It turned out that the gallery tickets could be delayed, and we got tickets for the slow train just before it left.
Why am I recounting all this? I guess it's that it gave me the opportunity to do the opposite of what I thought would work best. And it really worked out better. Why was I thinking standing room on a 1.5 hour train would be a good idea? Why did I let myself get tangled up over some tickets? It's true that my dad sometimes has a reputation for being slow, for being, dare I say, a trifle irresponsible with commitments. Probably the worst thing about that is that people don't always trust him to make the best choices. And sometimes that's probably fair. But it was really good for me to go a different way today. It was good for me to not push my own agenda. I could have. But instead we got a lovely afternoon ride and met a ton of people. I had my little Italian phrase-book out practically the whole time, and I got to ask people all kinds of things about where they lived, where they were from, what they liked to do, where they wanted to travel, and if they had any candy. What could be better than that?? We got to the Uffizi two hours late. And you know what? It worked out fine. It doesn't always, but this time it did. And it made me realize, that sometimes the best opportunities in life come to us when we have the courage to do something different. Especially when that something different is someone else's idea entirely. An extra brain can be a valuable asset if we take advantage of it.
Which brings me back to painting. We talked a lot about Renaissance art today. The Uffizi is set up in a sort of chronological order. You start with the flat-planed, gold-laden altar-pieces of the late middle ages, and progress through the developments of the Renaissance until you hit the high-classic pieces of Durer and Titian. As we paused between galleries, my dad commented that it sure seemed to take them a long time to figure stuff out. It seemed to him that figuring out something like linear perspective or shading for roundness of figures should have been figured out much sooner, but for some reason it had taken these dudes hundreds of years. We talked about how so much art development happened because of social development. Who would Michelangelo have been without Giotto and Ghirlandaio to learn from and discover with? How could Leonardo perform his experiments in color gradation and perspective without the camaraderie of his cohorts? They would have been great artists even without that social aspect. But they wouldn't have been—couldn't have been—spectacular. The Renaissance happened because people talked. And thought and learned together, alongside one another. And beginning today, I want to be more open (if you know me, you know this is hard hard for me—I have such trouble with change)—but learning with and from other people is what gives me the chance to stretch. And I want to be stretched . . .
. . . out on a mattress asleep. Which I will now do because I'm exhausted. Goodnight!
No comments:
Post a Comment