Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior with a Young Woman Reading, c. 1900, oil on canvas. There is a line from The Great Gatsby that has followed me for years. "I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life." The first time I read it, I understood it instinctively before I understood it intellectually. I think we all know that feeling.The strange experience of standing inside a moment while also watching it unfold from somewhere j

You walk into an art museum with no real plan. You’re not looking for anything specific. You’re just looking. You stop in front of a painting that almost pulls you in. Almost. You lean closer. You tilt your head. Something’s missing. Maybe it’s blue. Maybe white. Maybe pink. Maybe it’s just not the shade you were hoping for. And for a moment, you feel that familiar urge — the one that whispers, if only it were a little different. But you don’t yell at the painting. You don’t