Sometimes It's a Wonderful Life

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It is like the first act of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with a different George. For most of the act, the disparate parts of Seurat's painting each have an isolated, independent existence outside the painting, which they are destined to compose. They function as separate atoms, until "piece by piece," Sondheim starts "putting it together." We gasp at the picture, not because we did not expect it, but because, while expecting it, we did not believe it. So hard is it to trust our dreams of life being whole and beautiful that we focus on the particles, wintry as they are. When the picture comes together from time to time, we somehow knew that it could happen and yet, at the same time, could not imagine such a wonder. Call it the suspension of belief.

These past weeks have been a time of big talk about big matters--the meaning of votes, the authority of courts, the stability of the Republic. But most of us live in bits of small talk about nothing much, the accumulation of which, when well intended, staves off the cold.

There's George, standing with his family by the piano while his friends close ranks around him, and Harry breaks through the crowd to say a few words. Gets us every time.