young woman peeling apples

In the mid-nineties, my first years in the city, I often walked from my apartment on the Upper West Side across Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, usually for no other reason than to visit my favorite paintings. Among the paintings I frequently visited, I loved none more than Young Woman Peeling Apples by the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Nicolaes Maes.

The young woman looks down at her work, which, given the full basket by her side, it seems she has just begun. The serenity of her downward gaze suggests that this work does not trouble her. Shadows mute the rich reds and golds of her sleeves and the tapestry covering the table next to her. What is the source of the light that haloes her but the young woman herself, radiant in her concentration?

This painting evokes the feeling of making art, particularly those rare occasions when the external world falls completely away, and nothing exists beyond the mind and hands. Even when plans and worries clutter my mind, the act of writing calms my thoughts, and I feel a stillness like that of the young woman peeling apples. The words arise from that stillness.

There is so much to do that keeps me from sitting long enough to experience that stillness. I have again gotten off track from my plans for my writing: I had projects to complete in order to finish the spring semester, and last Saturday I had a birthday to celebrate. But maybe I don’t need as much time to experience that stillness as I imagine is required. Since my birthday I have made it a practice to write every day, even if it’s only just a few sentences in my journal. Writing those few sentences daily has been enough to help buoy me through what has turned out to be an unexpectedly difficult week. (The difficulties began, of course, the day after I completed the semester’s work.) And look! It may have taken me three days to write these 396 words, but here they are.

I’m glad, too, that among the ways I celebrated my birthday was to take the Q train to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to visit my favorite paintings, especially the young woman peeling apples. Afterward, I just had to write about her and reveal to myself, and to you, why I love her so.

I had planned to write about the antidote to my dread of reference questions (a dread that is diminishing, by the way); that will wait until next time, which will be Tuesday after next—the day after Memorial Day. In the meantime, as always, take care!