Guernica

Pablo Picasso painted the instant that the world changed. Now, standing on front of Guernica, January 19 2009, MLK Jr. Day, the immediacy of the moment is again overwhelming. Picasso’s deconstructed, cubist, realism represents today's reality. Tomorrow, there is a chance for change, at 12 noon Barack Obama become the 44th president of the United States of America. Tomorrow, we will have a chance to reconstruct a better reality; a reality, where tentative cease fires are strengthened and made permanent, where allies are friends, not merely brothers in arms. Tomorrow, in this moment of change, I am boarding a plane to India to serve--as best I can, the Tibetan population that has been brutally persecuted. The horrors that have confronted them, and all of us, cannot and will not be undone. We have a chance to change the reality in which Picasso’s Guernica was created, and reconstruct a new, better, reality.

A short note from Dad

Rah,
In reading your blog I recall my reaction to seeing Guernica for the first time in the long room in the back of the Prado. I had never understood or really thought much about modern art before seeing that work. Did you get a chance to visit the valley of the fallen? It is F. Franco’s monument to the fascist soldiers killed during the Spanish civil war. Although I am generally not a fan of fascism it is pretty impressive.

love
Dad