Capitolo Otto

This last week has been filled with goodbyes. Dinner at the Dakota with Wendy and Ian while Dylan, Simon and Stuart played in a half-empty house. Dinner with Maria and Freddy at the Starlight while Simon went to Dylan's birthday party. Many of the people at the KVUU congregation told us what great people they thought we are and how much they would miss us. They also wished us the best on our adventure. Finally, Simon invited many of his friends to come over to the house this weekend to eat pizza and cupcakes and run around the house like banshees one more time.

The Italian painter Umberto Boccioni sums up our feelings with a tryptych titled The Farewells: Those Who Go and Those Who Stay. From the MOMA (NYC) catalog:


Set in a train station, this series of three paintings explores the psychological dimension of modern life's transitory nature. In The Farewells, Boccioni captures chaotic movement and the fusion of people swept away in waves as the train's steam bellows into the sky. Oblique lines hint at departure in Those Who Go, in which Boccioni said he sought to express "loneliness, anguish, and dazed confusion." In Those Who Stay, vertical lines convey the weight of sadness carried by those left behind.

The Farewells

Those Who Stay

  

Those Who Go