every color bleeding from a blurry windshield

and if everything was bruised and torn and the sky sank its spoiled teeth into the earth and ripped like a dog, depraved and frothing, and if we were standing there, if we were standing there in the middle of it all, could you doubt for a second that it was beautiful? even when the earth is being crushed between a giant's fingers like blackberries, dark juice running in rivulets down swollen fingers. even when my ribs have been splintered and my lungs are heaving in the clogged gray air. even if we find ourselves at a house party at seven in the evening, rummaging through the medicine cabinets of people we barely know for anything to relieve a headache, and the next room over someone's yelling at their kids, and the stench of beer and someone's perfume steeps in the air, and you can't remember quite how you got there or how many days you've been telling yourself you'll find a way to get out- even then.

because somehow you are standing here. and somehow you are running through the parking lot at the end of your first concert, trying not to get hit by a car but mostly thinking about the euphoric numbness in your ears and the taste of cotton candy still simmering in your throat, and then you’re on the train and it’s past midnight and you have school tomorrow but there’ll never be this moment again. and somehow you’re sitting on a bench downtown, splitting ice cream with your crush, and she offers her earbud to you, and the sun is spilling through the trees like honey with the smell of almonds and jasmine wafting through the air. it's a fairly mundane way to spend your friday afternoon, but there's something a touch ethereal about it in the moment. 

once you read an article about the failings of modern art. the primary flaw, in the author's words, was that modern art sought to ask the question "what is art?", but of course there can never be a satisfactory answer to a question so broad and somewhat useless. you've been to the MOMA. you've seen the shapes and colors wrestling on prints, the wall-to-wall paintings that look like someone attacked the canvas with a knife, angry gouges of red and blue oozing out of the pale backdrop. there are sculptures of airplane chairs and solid slabs of color, and you don't want to think about what it must've cost the museum to display them.

but the article was wrong. modern art does not seek to ask "what is art?", it seeks to answer it, and the answer is "everything." every color bleeding from a blurry windshield on the rainy city streets, every half-ripe fruit that falls from the trees in your neighbor's yard, every tired face on the shuttle from the airport in a city that you don't recognize at 2:00 AM. every time you wade barefoot through the dewy summer grass; every time you see the morning glories braided through the fence in spring; every time you stand freezing on the pier and watch the sea calmly slapping against the wooden barrier, sending a spray of saltwater up through the air just as the clouds part and the droplets catch in the sun, and you think "oh" like you've had an epiphany, but it's not something that can be put into words. and yes, even the earth turned inside-out, bruised and torn and falling to pieces.