Neues

Today the Neues Museum. Like everyone else on the planet, I've been captivated by the beauty of the Nefertiti bust all my life but also fascinated by the process, how it was made, materials used and as the only so well preserved example of Egyptian art, also the only opportunity to maybe get a feel for those things. It's finally sunny out, warm but not quite enough for naked day at the park. Taxi to the museum. It's a lovely building displaying fragments of relics chronicling the habitation of the region as well as fragments of the museum itself so similar to plaster fragments of Egyptian temple walls assembled in place, missing bits filled in with plaster, so too fragments of the museum that was largely destroyed in WW2 float within a matrix of exposed brick or other new materials. Sadly  I learn the museum once exhibited the only fully intact Egyptian temple to survive into modern times, sculptural details and polychrome decoration preserved like a mummy for centuries only to be destroyed during the war, a mere seven decades ago with nothing but a rendering and a reconstructed scale frame to document its existence. Still, the surviving collection is extensive and impressive. The bust is even more remarkable in person, subtlety of detail, refined contours, barely visible lines and bags at the eyes, one glass eye inject, startlingly lifelike and then there's the coloration, bronzed skin burnished smooth, hints of rose around the cheek as if from the sun, deeper rose brown on the lips. Astonishing, so perfect, flawless, so natural, the work of a truly gifted artist and she was incredibly beautiful. The crown too coated with a blue pigmented material, slightly more textured than the skin, translucent almost like ground blue glass worked into the wet plaster like fresco, variations in depth causing subtle variations in saturation. Additional brightly painted decorations in flat paint, more like the skin but without the burnished luster. The colors must all be mineral derived, organics would most certainly have oxidized and faded over the centuries. The spectrum of colors is impressive knowing they were minimally processed found materials competed with today's standards. The museum and sunny day are a good distraction from the persistence of Matthew. While I know the cold turkey solution is the only way for me to break the addictive thought patterns and obsessive need to be with and in contact with him, I still can't stop thinking about him, wondering where he is, how he's doing, missing our conversations, his texts, wondering if he's forgotten me already, has he found some new interest, does he hate me, feel anger about ending it, if he's enjoying freedom from my influence and so untethered, where his desires propel him. Would we even still like each other? I realize again it's not really Matthew I miss so much as the feelings I had with him, the familiarity, the connection, knowing someone out there thinks of me sometimes. Right now, I'm completely isolated. I don't even know myself, what I want, what I want to be doing. I feel I'm wasting my precious time here and wondering what's the point.