-after Claude Monet’s Charing Cross Bridge series

It’s not accurate to say we know
what we see. Truth is, few understand

the physics of color. What Monet knew
had little to do with science. He was

intent on getting the bridge, and everything
that gave the bridge context, right. Language

isn’t accurate enough. To depict the world
with color and form—to make a place

and moment of time a composition—is
no more precise a vocabulary. Vision

tends to end up being an imposition
more than a recognition of how the fog

consumes much of the bridge, as if nothing
is able to fully connect one side

of the Thames to the other. Distance
often asks too much of us, and Monet

found ways to accept that insistence. His
endlessly varied harmonies of color

wrote a new definition of accuracy. The bridge
is more than a construction passed over

by trains and imbued with shifting colors
with the time of day. It becomes, for the artist,

a lexicon of light and all that light does
to this world. At times everything is more

certain, and we want to stand on the bridge
and compose a tune, humming, that the sun,

glittering in the river, inspires. Other times,
we want to be nothing but a faint music,

too distant or muted to be identified,
drifting along with the soothing mist and fog.