Claude Monet | The Manneporte near Etretat | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org)
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Postcard Story – The Manneporte Near Etretat – Claude Monet – 1886 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Second Sister’s Spouse – 03/13/23
…and she, not old, but also now not young, came as far as she could go along this side path and then realized, after a time, to her surprise, that instead of immediately tuning around and hurrying off, she had stopped without thinking, for that was not ever in her mind. And, yes, she was surprised she had stopped, and more surprised for the quiet within her … soul … Was that really it? … For in her stopping, with the quiet within, she … heard the muted pounding of the waves upon the rocks and the sand … and she heard the seagulls, such a sound of loneliness, a sharp note … of protest … to whoever would hear or listen, that their flight upon the shore was so all alone and temporary. For their flight, even as they pass overhead, seen or unseen, sometimes seen, sometimes just the shadow, and many times nothing at all … the sad shrillness of their call, the cry against being alone, a protest it seemed that their flight was passing, fleeting, and vanishing, within the air, within the distant sound of the teasing rhythm of the waves against the shore … at times mocking. And the view, now with eyes wide open, pulled deep inside by the vacuum within the soul, a vacuum, an emptiness, a loneliness of its own, created by the absence of the normal noise within, a noise from nowhere but always seemingly there, somehow now banished somewhere, a moment not of her doing, seeing now the restlessness of the sea, alive and in motion forever, yes, and the massive rock, the arch weathered into shape by an eon of wind and waves, is … now … only an illusion of permanence. And when one lifts eyes to the clouds, one also sees and hears their sure, inevitable silent movement of their passage and … with all the perpetual ceaselessness of the waves, the massive rock, and the clouds in a wisp of time moving on – all this good, yes, to see when the eyes are opened by the quietness of the soul … to see and live anew once again … and not as a passing shadow … but as a breathing, wondering, fully open, and seeing sentient being … not an illusion … but a …
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