Last Summer, when my cousin Lulu was visiting, we wandered down to Denver's annual chalk art festival. It's a lovely event: They close off some of downtown's busiest streets, and artists come from across the region to spend three days on their hands and knees, covered in sweat and sunscreen and chalk dust of every color imaginable.
I think they might also spend some time on their knees praying for good weather. But that afternoon, as we cozied up in a diner booth a few blocks away (enjoying what might actually be the world's greatest pancakes,) those prayers were heartily ignored. It rained. Hard. One of those sudden, vengeful thunderstorms that never struck me as unusual until I'd spent a summer living somewhere with less passionate weather.
The rain came down so hard and fast we kept waiting for the clouds to twirl us away to Oz. And in those few violent minutes, all that rain and all this beauty and all those hours turned the sidewalks into a brilliantly jumbled tie-dye, before the magic swirled away forever.
I wonder how those artists feel. Some of them come back, year after year after year, filling the same 24 square feet with vision and sweat and love, over and over and over. They must have made peace with the temporary nature of their masterpieces, accepting the serialized ruination of a football field's worth of art.
I cleaned my house this morning. And, though I wouldn't call my tidy front room museum-worthy, there is real satisfaction when that job is well done. But three adorable little thunderheads provided an impressive rainstorm this afternoon. And it looks like a post-play-date apocalypse over here. I haven't yet given up hope, but I would really like one of those artists to come share the secret to lasting inner peace in the face of inevitable destruction....
