Over the past few weeks, despite my various commitments and responsibilities, I have found myself almost aching for uninterrupted time at home doing nothing. Not a fancy vacation, not binge-watching Netflix with mint chocolate chip ice cream, not even catching up with friends and family over the phone or in person. I’ve just wanted to sink into the daily act of living, without any excited or nervous anticipation of events, without feeling pressed for time or in a rush. My mind and body have felt deeply tired and I’ve craved the repetition of days spent doing all the small regular tasks needed to maintain a healthy and ordered life.
On the one hand I think this is rooted in a desire to feel more aware of the “ordinariness” of my own life, because whenever I manage to do so I feel more gratitude for things I often take for granted. On the other hand, I think it’s connected to my sense that rituals and commonplace activities in our lives can help to sustain a sense of peace or groundedness in an otherwise chaotic world. It has got me wondering how we might all take another look at the everyday, and find meaning in the mundane.
I can’t recall the first time I saw the late 19th-century painting “Shadows” by American artist Charles Courtney Curran. But I do remember immediately thinking it was like a subtle treatise on the beauty of our mostly unspectacular lives. A brown-haired woman in a brown dress and white apron is hanging bedsheets on a line outside. The shadows of tree leaves and branches in the background are cast on the canvas of laundry like a drawing. The sunlight on the sheets is captured so well that you almost feel the warmth on your own skin and can imagine the freshness of the day. If I were to approach this painting from a different perspective I could riff about the historical context of “women’s work” and domestic “ideals”. But that’s an essay for another day. What draws me to this particular painting is how Curran, knowingly or not, has turned the most routine task of laundry into a creative encounter with nature. He has in this instance transformed a tedious activity into something we can see with fresh wonder.