the art of looking

when there aren't enough hours in the day

Apr 14, 2023

“So I said to myself — I’ll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New-Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.”

It's a cold Saturday, and it seems like all of new york is huddled around, staring at close-ups of flowers. It’s opening weekend for the georgia o’keeffe exhibit at the MoMa, and I’m astounded to learn that her large scale paintings are not allusions to sexual organs but are literally just flowers. The exhibit is titled: "to see takes time” and o’keeffe’s flowers are meant to stop you — so magnified that you’re forced to take the time to look.‍

It’s a topical exhibit, as cherry blossoms and daffodils are starting to line the parks of new york, and I make a mental note to start looking at flowers on my morning walks.

I get back from the MoMa and immediately want to crawl into bed. It’s 7pm and I have to be at flex mussels at 9. I open the window to cool the apartment, and start to plot out my schedule to not be late: if I don’t faff around, I can sneak in a quick nap but I can’t waste a single second. In a rush, I accidentally knock over the cactus plant I have on the windowsill -- this marks the third time in a week that I’ve spent cleaning up an accident I made. The other day I spilled coffee over my laptop, before that I had knocked over and shattered a glass from my cabinet.

As I’m on my knees with a dust pan, I’m reminded of a concept my colleague, will, explained to me a few months ago called spinning plate theory: in life you have all of these different plates for all the areas of your life, a plate for work, a plate for friends but the point is that they’re all spinning at the same time.

It’s a precarious and impossible task — you can only focus your attention on one plate at a time, and thus you can’t possibly spin them all as fast as you’d like at once, but your job is to make sure that none of them ever stop spinning and fall.

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On thursday, I get a text from charlotte to come drink on her roof — it’s 80 degrees this week so the idea of sitting outside looking at the new york skyline with a glass of cold sauv blanc is so tempting. The day before I had declined a sidewalk dinner in favor of finishing work and going for a run, so I really should go.

But I just got home from work and had planned out the entire night to the minute — I have a call at 7.30pm and then some notes I have to send out, plus a few emails I’m definitely overdue on.

I do the mental math — if I crank out these notes quickly maybe I can catch them before the sun sets, but 51 minutes into my 30 minute call I know that I’m not going to be seeing my friends tonight.

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I’ve been grappling with the idea lately that I don’t have enough time in the day to get everything that I want to do accomplished to keep the momentum going— there’s so much to do in the workday and then I have to find time to make something of my life, to journal, to take care of myself, to respond to texts, to talk to my family let alone see my friends or have a spontaneous weeknight drink.

I keep catching myself googling productivity hacks — there’s a reddit thread about how to save time in your everyday life: pre-walk on the subway platform while you’re waiting for the train, set checkpoint timers in the morning to keep to a schedule, plan a workout class to force you to get out the door.

Tiktok tells me that to change your life you have to be disciplined, and to be disciplined you have to go into it alone. I watch a girl put her hair into a claw clip, she takes out a 5 minute journal, then drinks an entire bottle of water. To change you can’t stay the same, the audio says, you have to leave the old you behind and with it, the people from your past in order to move forward. Spend time alone, quit drinking, stop going out. If you take time to be with yourself, you can be alone but never lonely.‍

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I like to picture georgia o’keeffe living in the same city as me, magnifying her work until her fellow new yorkers are forced to stop, to slow down, to take it in.‍

Last night, my friend jacqueline texts me out of the blue and it's the happiest I've been all week. I’m realizing that I don’t want to wait until my friend plate comes crashing down before I’m forced into giving it attention. Spending time alone to build a future is noble and good, but if there are only little moments that we get to devote to each of our spinning plates, I want to know that I’m a good friend.

At the start of the o’keeffe exhibit, there’s a placard that explains that the name “to see takes time” is actually a fragment from o’keeffe’s letter to a friend. “Nobody sees a flower - really” she writes, “it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”