...then you could look inside and see what's on my mind...

We all have secret places.

As a child, the long, leafy branches in my yard’s old climbing trees were my foremost refuge. During teenage angst, a park would provide enough vastness to let my soul roam free. In adult loneliness, the interior womb of my warm car was perfectly soothing.

While places cultivate freedom, I am reminded that things can provide a similar refuge too.

This painting is that sort of refuge. Coral Wedge hangs in the halls of KC’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

I quite simply covet this painting.

A part of my heart feels empty that it doesn't possess it. I wish it would hang in my living room - if it did, I would toss my television and save a lot of money on digital cable.

I remember distinctly the first time I saw it. It was in 2004, and I wandered the small, modern galleries of the Kemper for the first time. This painting by Helen Frankenthaler is a permanent piece that always hangs in the same northwestern spot - waiting to greet me, to bring me closer to heaven, to captivate me.

Since that day I've visited the museum countless times, but always under the guise of discovering a new exhibit, secretly hungry to spend time with my beloved.

In September, I went and sat on the bench directly opposite this piece in the middle of the room. I tried surreptitiously to write in my journal with sharpie ink about the beatific object in front of me, but a rule-abiding guide thwarted my ritual, forcing me to capture thoughts of its beauty in pencil. It wasn't quite the same love letter I'd planned to permanently pen, but it'd have to suffice in graphite.

Mind set, surrounded by the cavernous white walls, I sat awkwardly upright and wrote:

There's something therapeutic about sitting in front of this painting.

Every time I see this painting it just makes me stop and wish so badly that I could own it - or that I would have created something that brilliant.

It's so simple, really. Orange sort of seeping on to burnt pumpkin where it soaks up into the canvas - peach where you could just about lick it off the page.

Two things never cease to strike me -
1. The way it almost looks like a woman’s inner-most sacredness and
2. The thin, irregular line of cotton candy pink hitting up against a sort of alabaster-tan mix, color irregular and personal, like any woman's own features would be.

Light, yet scratched in dry, rough strokes, the mysterious column of gray lies...inviting question as its surroundings betray it in their own lightness, calling attention to its charcoal vastness, increasing into something suspended in time.

Lightly, from the pinnacle, a stalactite convergence of tan, gray and pink marries perfectly. Meanwhile, a blood red trail falls down the page - steadily guided by gravity and its own weight. It is like a small valve was opened and this unbroken line was borne down the page - giving life to the unclear murkiness of ground below it.

That day was holy, full of revelation.

Today I revisited the museum, secretly hoping for the same creative refuge at the end of the year. I came bent on self-realization, looking for a benchmark of my past.

Still, I wandered around dutifully, studying all the newness that had arrived, nodding in appreciation of the other artists, all the while my mind tugging on my soul’s sleeve.

Is it time to see IT yet?

I turned the familiar corner. We faced each other. I sighed, sat on the cool bench and closed my eyes.

This is what will greet me heaven.

I flopped open my black journal and quickly popped back up, remembering protocol and lumbering over to grab the gangly older guard and inquire about a pencil.

Slowly I sat back down, preparing to write a sonnet, soliloquy or love song to the object of my affection. After all, this was the last page in my journal – it is hallowed ground and deserves appropriate subject matter.

Again I closed my eyes and mused.

How appropriate that we’d be in this moment together.

I looked towards the sky then again closed my eyes, breathing in and out for a minute or so. I wanted to capture this moment like a lightning bug in a jar.

Then, appropriately centered, I scratched:

My last humble little page. Still and final like this advent season. How fitting that your requiem be written inside the holiest of my places, at the Kemper, in front of a painting that makes me feel like I could touch heaven if I stood on my tiptoes…