Our Big Move To France

I spent a few hours wandering about in the impressive Museum Beaux Arts in Lille.

I don’t know if it is something about this museum in particular, or maybe it’s just my frame of mind, but with the assault on women’s rights in my country of America, and my PTSD daily  triggered because our government is literally run by rapists… but what I kept noticing in this museum were all of the women on every wall. In paintings. In sculpture, marble and wood. They all seemed to be staring right into my soul.

Across decades and centuries, these women share their lives, the sacred and the profane. Our experiences are simultaneously universal and personal. We know that the circumstances of women have improved in our modern times and yet these women whisper to me, “Nothing has changed.”

And not just wealthy women having their portraits painted in their finest attire. Not just images of women painted as allegory. But real women living authenticly, captured on canvas, telling us the stories of their lives.

After those hours, I felt part of this eternal sisterhood of struggle, of just trying to live our lives and not be treated as a man’s property, of getting shit done on a daily basis and absolutely making the world work.

Through time and distance, my soul is uplifted in solidarity.

And the title of this painting should be, “Why is he asking me where is fucking socks are?”