It feels like Sunday afternoon although it’s actually Sunday evening. I woke up at 4 o’clock today. Yesterday was 40 days after my uncle’s death and it’s a custom of Filipino Catholics to gather and commemorate the occasion. According to Filipino/Catholic lore, it’s the moment after death wherein the soul leaves the earth. Is this a sensitive topic? I’m not religious at all but I’m also not as adamantly against it as I might have been when I was younger. It’s just that all the ceremonies with family have taken up an enormous amount of energy and time.

Still, waking up so late gave me such anxiety. I was shocked and, I have to say, angry at myself because it was a waste of a day. I think it was necessary and inevitable, though. As if my body was forcing me to recover from the toll of the past few days. I hope it’s a sign of transition back to being more productive. Also, I think the separation from my family is helpful. It’s easy to get swept up in all that ceremony and forget about individual feeling.

Anyway, something I discovered to my surprise and delight this week is the art of Marlene Tseng Yu, which are on display at the Godwin-Ternbach museum. It’s unfortunate that the exhibit is often empty but that quality’s also made viewing the art a more intense experience. Yu’s colors are just beautiful and vibrant. Her paintings are large scale abstractions that, as the title would suggest, are evocative of nature. They look like the dramatized interiors of split rocks that are just so shockingly and surprisingly beautiful to discover as a child. And the paintings are huge and so easy to get lost in. There’s one painting being exhibited in a tiny room that’s arranged so that it curves around the viewer sweeping them up in its warm hues. It’s kind of silly but the exhibit really is a nice respite in Queens College. Definitely check it out.