As I walked through the large Chihuly special exhibition hall at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston today, a small girl in the arms of her dad turned to him and said, of the room with a glass ceiling filled with different types of colored glass:
It’s bright but why is there glass in the ceiling? That doesn’t make any sense!
It was, in simpler words, my exact thoughts about a majority of the Chihuly exhibit: it’s incredibly colorful and impressively crafted, but in my opinion, gets rather old quickly. Or, as a small schoolboy said to his teacher:
It’s like the Star Wars planet of Felucia.
Exactly. My mom, on the other hand, who worships Chihuly like Evangelicals love Jesus, was immediately smitten with the series of brightly-glassed rooms. Her journey through the Chihuly special exhibit took more than twice as long as mine. In the time before she finished — and in the extra time when she went back for the second time — I managed to peruse every item in the gift shop, trade eyes with the cute brunette (you know who you are), watch a bit of the documentary, trade eyes with her again, look at old people, continue looking at old people, and write the following poem, dedicated to the Ladies of the Dale Chihuly Glass Exhibit:
We still take all sorts of pictures
non-flash, assured,
and whisper witticisms
with loose-fitting smock
shirts and LL Bean tag scratch
and speak to ourselves
there is such beauty in the world,
at least here if only today.
If only…
And we will read
imprints of walls and heart
to become experts in a science
of comprative linguistics:
like nothing seen before.
How phallic, but softly thought
that Dale made these all
for me.
If only…
Sparkling glass glaze and light
preferentially accepted
thrills our pupils pale eyes in anticline.
To tell our husbands they’ve missed out
as we live our lives lost love
amidst luminations and shape,
not at normal non-places of
residence while we are
at least here, if only
Ladies of the Dale Chihuly Glass Exhibit.
