Beautiful Discoveries

Sometimes it's right there in front of you

ARTLYST, Pollock on Tour, Malaga, Spain

There are tiny mounds of snow dotting the yard. I see them through the window of the shed this early morning. They are like drops of dirty yogurt. The slow melt reveals larger and larger patches of grass, and underfoot the ground is squishy, saturated by several recent winter storms. And now, I dream of birdsong, a sign of change. But I only hear the crows, the big ones that hang around here in the tall trees in winter. No robins, no wrens, no bluebirds. Not the birds of spring. Change is coming. But not yet.
 
Why long for change? Why not simply savor this gray, soggy winter day as it is? Ah yes, the age-old struggle of being present. Seeing, really seeing what is right there in front of you.
 
A recent social media post got me thinking about this. It was about the great artist, Jackson Pollock, the anniversary of his birthday, and someone had posted an old photo of Pollock standing beside Mural, what might be his most famous, most influential painting, displayed at the Stanley Museum of Art at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. The work is a masterpiece. It is a breakthrough in art, the most dramatic of his unique drip style, completed on canvases stretched out on the floor, 160 feet of surface. It is said that Pollock stared at the canvas for many days before he decided to begin his work, and finished it in a fury of teal, yellow, and black brushstrokes, what Pollock described as “a stampede of every animal in the American West, cows and horses and antelopes and buffaloes. Everything charging across that goddamn surface.”
 
For years, I made trips to Iowa City when my stepdaughter lived there. I hung out in the coffee shops, Prairie Lights Books, and music revenues like The Mill. I walked along the river near the museum. But never knew of the Pollock painting. I’m not a Pollock scholar in any way, but I am an admirer. And his most famous work was just steps away from me, waiting to be taken in, and I missed it.  
 
The adventurer and author Alastair Humphreys writes about this in his book Local. After traveling the world, bicycling around the globe, hiking through Spain, Humphreys decided to write about the adventures that were right down the street. He wondered, “What surprises are waiting to be discovered on your doorstep?” Humphreys spent a year investigating a small map around his own home. The book is a celebration of curiosity, a reminder that wonderful adventures, incredible moments await us—just down the street.
 
The Jackson Pollock was right there.
 
I live in Chicago, and sometimes I forget that there are incredible things to experience just down the highway from my home. Yes, I’ve been to the Art Institute, seen the Picasso in Daley Plaza—the fifty-feet tall statue that looks like an orangutan’s face, and the countless other experiences one of the world’s most vibrant cities has to offer. Yet, I’m certain, there is something right around the block that I have missed. 
 
I don’t frequent Iowa City much now. My stepdaughter has moved to Denver. But maybe someday, I’ll hop in the car and head west. And along the way, maybe there are other magnificent things just waiting there for me to see.

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David W. Berner is the author of several books of award-winning fiction and memoir. His forthcoming memoir, DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME, is due out in the summer of 2024.