A WordPress Site

Category: Art

A Detour

Am I growing more fearful and cautious with age? Admittedly I paused and had second thoughts. Tikka and I were out for a walk and at the beginning of the trail a sign had been added to the one listing the rules of the trail — "Warning, Alligators on Trail". I looked at Tikka, tail wagging happily, wondering if she would make a tasty morsel. I am not comfortable with the idea of meeting an alligator, despite the fact that we did summer in southern Louisiana as a child, despite acknowledging that knowledge of the presence and habits of alligators, rattlesnakes, copperheads and water mocassins were part of my youthful lexicon.

No, Tikka and I were not out for a hike around Knoxville. If there are alligators on the trails in the Smoky Mountains I truly do not want to know. We were in Arkansas, at Lake Dardanelle, near Russellville, in the area between the Ozark National Forest and the Oachita National Forest. We were really just passing through; having pulled off the highway on a whim, we discovered Bona Dea Trails and Sanctuary. It was a nice place for a mid-day walk after a couple of hours on the road. We took the three mile loop trail, through sometimes dense wooded wetlands, lazy streams, the sounds of insects, frogs and birds. It was green and humid and beautiful. It was completely unfamiliar; not like New York woodlands or wetlands, not like Amazonian wetlands either. It was simply itself, contained and quiet. Tikka with her harness and six-foot leash (maximum by regulation) met toddlers in their harnesses and six foot leashes, a happy party for the small folk. We saw no alligators on the trail, although there were some in the water.

But we really weren't in Arkansas to spend time exploring the national forests, although that could be a vacation well spent. We were on our way to Bentonville for art, to see a Dale Chihuly exhibit, a slightly roundabout route to Texas. And the exhibit was fabulous, filled with things expected and unexpected, with new insights. I was struck by the way some of the familiar forms, the nested vessels above, reminded me of a hollow tree we had seen at Bona Dea, how the familiar can be re-envisioned and become new.

Not everything was beautiful, but everything was fascinating. Perhaps it was the memory of that mid-day walk, but the piece above reminded me of the colors of water and trees, of swampy greens and mosses, of sunlight glistening on wet stones and scales,

Perhaps I am getting better at semi-solo travel, or travel with dog. We have a good routine. We rise early, Tikka eats while I have my coffee and read or write. We take a walk. She loves to ride in the car and her presence reminds me to look for interesting places to stop and stretch our legs. This is a vacation rhythm that suits me well: read, a nice long hike or walk, a mid day or early afternoon siesta, venturing out again, perhaps some time looking at art, or drinking coffee in a café watching the passers-by, another walk. I'm not sure I want to hike all day, or if I do I need a day or rest afterwards. I can't spend a day in a museum or a craft fair either. I grow too easily overwhelmed. I need time to process. But just wandering and sitting, seeing a place, talking to people; this too is just as important as the hike, the art. There is no rush through life. At the moment I can simply relax.

August 3, 2017
Word-Less Wednesday

The other daylily bloomed. The photo was taken in the reflective glow of mid-day sun. This particular plant is also recovering from its questionable beginnings, so I am sure it will survive.

The remaining photos are from my trip to Asheville last week. I loved Asheville and will go back. Most of these photos are snippets and small details from my morning walks. As usual, I am not very good at photos that give a sense of the entire place, but of the little bits that draw my eyes, such as these grates in a building Tikka and I walked around every morning and evening. These small details made me smile every time I saw them.

I suppose this is not surprising. When I was 7 my parents took us to the Alhambra. All I remembered of that palace was the detail of one particular tile floor. When I returned as an adult, I saw and admired much more, but I did not feel that I had truly returned to the Alhambra until I found the floor that had haunted my memory for decades.

Art was everywhere, not just in galleries.

Here, I love not only the mural, but the sculpture of cats on the wall. Art of the everyday.

Tikka and I walked through here every morning, and often again in the evening. During the day the stands are populated with artists selling prints, etchings, jewelry, and tie-dyed baby clothes. Both in the early morning silence and during the daily hustle and bustle, it reminded me of many walks in Madrid, of similar venues, and similar gatherings of dawdlers, buyers, and sellers. It felt like home to me in an odd way.

I have an iron just like this, but of course on a more useable scale.

But it wasn't all art and frivolity. I appreciated the availability of trash and recycling receptacles. Attractively designed as well.

The craft fair was fun. Walking around the downtown area, exploring galleries and shops, eating very well, and watching people was also fun. The glass scissors above are by Rick Beck. They are very large, although I don't really give you any references except that they rest upon a table. From my favorite gallery, Blue Sprial 1, where I walked around in a happy daze. Apparently my taste leans more toward studio craft as art, and perhaps the avant-garde.

Or I just like giant scissors and irons.

July 26, 2017
Promise

Wednesday there was some excitement at the (new) house:

A painting was delivered. I was very excited. Although it had nothing to do with the work that is being done in the house, or the reason I have not yet moved in, I was happy to be able to get the painting up before the furniture, and very happy to see it on the wall.

(the artist discussing his work)

Later in the day, I began to question myself. It was the anniversary of George's death, a date I know well, and I even, perhaps stupidly, used as the alarm code on the old house. At that time, when I put in that alarm, it was perhaps the only number that mattered, the date of loss, of untethering. Not so much anymore. But I had forgotten. I wouldn't have thought about it at all except for a series of family emails commemorating the loss. I wondered if perhaps there was something wrong with me that I did not remember, did not hold that date close, did not feel pain or loss. For me that time is past, but it is also important to gather around to support each other in our individual paths and struggles.

Intellectually I can say it is an interesting coincidence, that this painting in this house, this expression of future movement, should be installed on this date. George would have found it humorous. But George is gone and I am here, and, although he is always with me, life is about moving forward and letting go, even of love. In fact love itself is a kind of letting go, of not holding on too closely. You know, of course, that we don't love people less because life moves on without them. Love is like that. It makes us more ourselves than we ever knew we could be, but it also gives us strength and resilience, at least if we let it, so that we can overcome great wounds, even when that wound entails the ripping away of a part of ourselves. There is no life without relationship, just as there is no life without suffering, and to thrive we must share in both. To convince ourselves otherwise is to live in denial, which, is perhaps, not to fully live at all.

For me, at least, it was better to hang a painting.

The past makes us who we are. The people we have loved, and who have loved us, are our personal saints. They are woven into the fabric of ourselves. But we are not our pasts. It is the future that beckons, and the future is what we have been made for.

May 12, 2017
Life Interrupted

I found myself back at the Knoxville Museum of Art the other day, once again spending time with the Jered Sprecher exhibit. I adore this set of 8 paintings and the space they create, a multi-layered space where one can reflect on the passage of time, memory, technology, and how our lives seem to blend together seamlessly but are in truth made up of many random elements seemingly all kind of mashed together but actually layered and filtered by our experiences and our connections.

Or perhaps I am just more inclined to notice the liminal spaces of life right at the moment seing as my own life seems to be buffeted about by forces outside myself, even if those forces were set in motion by my own actions. The truth is I did not anticipate how chaotic life would be with my house on the market, although I probably should have known better. An oversight. But then, I wonder how many new ventures we would undertake if we actually clearly anticipated the toll and turmoil involved in reaching our goal.

My experience with the Hyde Park house was completely different – even though we were living in the house, even though we were packing to move – but the situation was different as well; the area had not yet recovered from the housing crash of 2008, and we had few showings. I deliberately set the price of this house competitively, wanting to sell quickly, but was still surprised at the amount of interest. I'm not complaining mind you, but I am still, at times barely maintaining my equilibrium.

And yet, despite the disruption, despite the fact that very little is routine at the moment, despite the fact that my life is, in fact completely interrupted while at the same time going full tilt with several new projects in the works, I am finding that this time of exhaustion and chaos is also a time of great creativity. My mind is experiencing an explosion of creative expression, with ideas for garment sewing, for embroidery and fiber creations that border more on art than the kind of practical things I have been dabbling with in the recent past, and I have been writing and sketching and trying to capture fragments of imagination. I didn't realize how much my space, the space that was our space, the space that was always meant for a specific thing, was not my space. I didn't realize any of this until I was not only ready, but actually willing, to let go. The freedom of chains unbound is exhilarating, even if the chains were invisible, so invisible that I had perhaps grown complacent and forgotten they were there.

Nothing is going to happen quickly. And yet everything is changing incredibly rapidly. Roughly five weeks until I must be out of one house; roughly eight weeks until I am into another. Multiple and overlapping timelines. Have you ever noticed how change seems to barge in like a March wind, stripping away our self-satisfied sense of comfort, piling disruption atop discomfort, and yet bringing with it new joys, new blossoms? Do we fool ourselves that we want security and comfort, when that is really death? When you look at human history, our shared nature is change; our shared nature is the struggle between the desire for security and the need for change. Do we push on or do we hunker down? When we finally chose to push through the barriers, be they our own internal biases or worldly constructs, we are following the path nature itself has set for us; creating something new.

paintings by Jered Sprecher. All photos by me.

March 21, 2017
Ch..ch..changes…

There is something I haven't told you.

Change is afoot. It began in Arkansas. No, that is not quite accurate because it began before I went to Arkansas, but I only became aware of the shift in Arkansas. It seems so long ago now, but of course it is not, merely 2 months. Two months that seem in some ways like a whirlwind and in others like a lifetime.

My last day in Fayetteville was drizzly and gray. I had hoped to visit at least one of the state parks we had camped at when I was a child. But of course it was December and the parks were closed. Instead I walked around Lake Fayetteville, a little over 4 miles of paved trail around the lake, but I took detours, wandered at will, and walked slightly over 5 miles, returning to my car chilled and happy.

It is amazing to me how going someplace else, someplace outside of your normal purview, brings you closer to yourself. One stretches sides of oneself that get neglected in the routines of everyday life, and although it sounds completely banal to say so, the everyday and the extraordinary almost become transposed in an odd way that brings us closer to ourselves. Strange that, the way that the place where we feel most at home, most secure, and I am a homebody if anything, is sometimes so secure that we lose some essential part of ourselves.

So there I was, walking in the cold, mid-40's drizzle, on a Sunday afternoon in early December. I was a visitor to Northwest Arkansas. I knew no one, although I would smile and chat with the few other walkers and bicyclists I would pass, and some part of me felt perfectly comfortable and safe. Ostensibly, in a very real way, I was not. I was a middle aged single woman on a wooded path in a mostly deserted space, a woman not from the area, whom no one knew, and no one knew where I was. I have not forgotten this aspect of existence, and it is always present. But if we think of it we become paralyzed. Although I don't believe I had ever been to Lake Fayetteville before, I had spent time in this area as a child. The geology, the flora, the sense of the place was familiar to me and it felt like home. Truthfully it felt like an echo of home, an imagining, because I haven't been in Northwest Arkansas in 43 or 44 years. The people, the towns, the environment has changed; it is no longer the place I knew even though echoes of that place still exist.

As I thought about Arkansas, as I thought about how I'd love to go back and hike the trails I hiked as a child, explore the familiar places, I began to question myself. Why is it, I wondered, do I feel more secure in a land of memory, in a land of fleeting familiarity, familiarity that is in fact an illusion, than in the place I currently live. I don't go hiking in the Smokies, although I often think about doing so, and they are much closer to home. Honestly I am no safer in Arkansas than at home, perhaps less safe. What is it about memory, about personal history, about the illusion of knowing something that lulls us into false security? And of course this got me thinking about home. Why is it that we are willing to cling to something that we know is not right, just because it is familiar, rather than risk change? I am just as prone to this as anyone else.

It was at this moment that I realized that I was ready to let go. The house I live in is, in its own way, a chain, tying me to the past. It was never intended to be a permanent space, we knew we might only be here temporarily. Miriam's words echo in my mind, from before we moved: "It is only a three-year grant" she said, as well as my response "Three years is a lifetime for your father." How prescient those words proved to be. Not quite two years later he was gone. But I wasn't ready. I needed time. Last summer I was still not ready. The thought of moving made me sick, even though there was a house on the market I thought I potentially liked. Then I painted the house, rearranged the furniture yet again, ostensibly getting it ready in advance, but also looking forward to enjoying this newly revitalized space for another year or so. My intention was to begin looking for a new place in January 2018, a time that fit into my neatly organized plan: I would make a decision about moving five years after George's death. But as I walked around Lake Fayetteville, I realized I was ready to let go, ready to move on.

When I returned home I was chatting with a friend, and I mentioned this realization, this acceptance that I was ready to move forward to the next stage, that I have in fact built my own life and the only thing truly keeping me from fully occupying it required a very physical letting go of the old life. I have changed this house; made it more mine, but the house itself was never "my" house, it was a place that fit a specific need, the needs of a dying George. It was always a house of letting go and moving on, and now it is time to do just that. I won't lose the past; it is a part of me always. Our pasts are always wedded to who we are, but we don't have to be chained by them. And so I will be moving. I honestly don't know when yet. But in the past few years I have built a life, my life, and now it is time to step into it fully.

February 9, 2017
Two Books, Two Paintings, Elusive Connections

I finished reading Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle last night. I had never read it before. Although the book was written in the 1940s and is set in England in the 1930s, there are aspects of the story, aspects of Cassandra's telling of the story, that, although not quite timeless, seem to exist outside of time. Cassandra's thoughts, the way she tells the story, are unique to themselves, and they are simultaneously modern and at the same time seemingly incomprehensible to modern readers. It is a story of place, of people, a story of first love, of bad decisions and good decisions, and how we are shaped by our circumstances to a large part, but again only partially. It is a story of capturing not only a place, but one's voice, and discovering who one might be.

This morning, as I think about the novel, I am also thinking about the exhibit of the work of Jered Sprecher that opened last week at the Knoxville Museum of Art. The paintings have been much on my mind. I was fortunate enough to attend an opening reception, and I've been back to see the works twice. With each visit I see differently. In fact, the work resonates at some frequency in my brain such that as I move through my days and thoughts, new connections are made and fleeting images from Sprecher's work flash through my thoughts and I am compelled backward (to the exhibit) and forward as well. Which is, of course, exactly what art should do, in whatever medium.

This morning I am thinking about a series of paintings from the exhibit, a set of six that were created, and displayed, as a group, a small exhibit within the larger exhibit. I did not take any photos of these pictures, and have not found them online. No matter, flat photographs show nothing of the depth of technique or the layerings of meanings. The photo above is from the Knoxville Mercury, which did an article on Sprecher and the exhibition, and the paintings I am referring to are visible only in part, on the sides of this photo. This actually works for me, for my purpose here, because one of the aspects of this grouping of paintings that struck me is the layering of images, of places and things, combined with a sense of time both occluded and revealed. You can see the lines going across the paintings, described as being inspired by the lines of a printer across the page, and fading ink. This sense of modern versus ancient, of what is hidden and what is revealed, in fact a sense that the hiding and the revealing are transient and elusive are captured in these paintings.

This morning this idea of what is revealed and what is hidden is refreshed in my head by Cassandra's own journey in the novel, by what she sees and writes, and what is revealed, often much later, only through the process of writing, of introspection, of interaction and relationship, and the sudden moment where one cries "Oh!". Revealed and yet elusive.

I am also reminded of a book I read last week, Jess Walter's The Financial Lives of the Poets, which is interesting in its sense of capturing a time and a place, but less successful in terms of that sense of being able to transcending its own time and specific circumstances. It is a novel that captures very well that sense of panic and hopelessness of its period, of the post 2008 housing crisis, job crisis, that sense of desperate hanging on. It is a novel of bad decisions, drawn in sharp relief, and eventual redemption. The main characters could in many ways be everyman or everywoman, young people filled with hopes and dreams, trying to fulfill their own dreams of what they can be, but making decisions based primarily on the yearnings within themselves looking for fulfillment, working past each other out of their own need rather than together with a sense of relationship and common purpose. Cassandra and Rose make equally poor decisions in I Capture the Castle, but they manage to grow up and redeem themselves more quickly whereas Matt and Lisa's lives break into many pieces before they begin to find some sense of comfort in each other, and the book only ends with that hint of redemption, of finding, but without guaranteed resolution.

As I was reading Walter's book last week, I was reminded of the painting above, also by Sprecher, titled Bloom. This was the first echo that drove me back to the museum, the way a memory of this painting popped into my head, although I think it did not carry great weight in my imagination that first evening. Birth, rebirth, flight, memory, the breaking apart and the joining together, the movement of air, our own fractured view of reality — circling back upon itself to birth, rebirth, redemption. We cling to the moment of beauty, as if that can save us. Instead we drown. The blossom, in all its fragility, is also the source of a new birth, a new seed, and its own death. Over and over again, like the beating of wings.

top photo courtesy of Knoxville Mercury, here.

bottom photo courtesy of Gallery 16, here.

February 2, 2017
Now for Something Pretty…

When I was sorting through photographs recently I discovered a small cache of pictures from my trip to New York with Liana last February. Included were some snaps from the Vigée Le Brun exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. Since I had recently written about a different visit to an art museum, and a different kind of painting, it seems like we are due for a bit of an antidote. Even though that trip was over 7 months ago, I thought I would share the photos I took here now.

I had forgotten that the Vigée Le Brun exhibit was in New York. We had gone to the Met to see something else (which I will write about later), but once I saw the banner I remembered that Frances had a wonderful post about Le Brun, here, and I was eager to see the exhibit. But by this time, we were quite tired (or at least I was quite tired) and I was not as intrepid as Frances. There was no listening to museum tours, no thoughtful analysis, just a meandering look and a pause. If you are looking for a more informed post, follow the link above.

The photo above is of the most formal portrait that I photographed. It is a commission for the marquise de Rougé, and she is shown with her two sons and her dear friend, the marquise de Pezay. It is an exception to the artist's oeuvre, and yet, even in this formal composition, it captures everything I love about Le Brun's portraits. Notice the warmth of the composition, the love and affection in the faces, and the fact that they are painted with a warm and understanding eye. The composition is classical in form, and yet the subjects are anything but. Here is maternal affection, friendship, loyalty, love for and by children, captured seemingly simply, but in reality not such a simple task, in a portrait that hits all the right notes for a commissioned work, and yet moves beyond them in its very humanity.

Then let us move from the formal to the personal. This very intimate portrait is of the artist's daughter, Julie Le Brun. Its very nature is both personal and introspective. And yet, in its simplicity there are layers of meaning. We see the child in profile; she sees herself (as do we) in not quite full frontal, perhaps three-quarter, profile. In this view we see both the child as she is and the child as she perceives herself to be, while simultaneously seeing the innocence of childhood, of the child as we wish her to be, and the same time that preternatural wisdom of childhood, an aspect of childhood that does not always make us comfortable, reminding us that children are perhaps aware of something which we have forgotten (and are eager enough to sooth over and deny). It is always hard, in a portrait, be it a painting, or in a more modern sense, a photograph, to capture the multifaceted nature that each of us possesses, and yet Vigée Le Brun shows us something of that here, of the self, internal and external, visible and invisible, and how they are both interrelated and reflected in our lives.

A later picture of the same daughter, as if startled by an unseen or unanticipated visitor. The portrait was modelled on Santerre's portrait of Susanna at her bath, and it was a familiar subject that was to some extent popular and increasingly secularized in the eighteenth century. Notice that this portrait is considerably less innocent than some earlier versions, where, although the voyeurs were far from innocent, Susanna herself is often portrayed with a lack of awareness. This Susanna is aware that she is being watched, and Le Brun perfectly captures that sense of being on the cusp of adulthood, of that almost liminal state where a child is both still child and yet adult, in fact actually neither. We must also remember that a girl of 12 or 13 was considered a woman and could be married, even though we find that shocking today. It is a painting of great tenderness, yes, and of both maternal affection for, and awareness of, the child that was and the woman that will be.

And lastly there is this portrait of a small boy with a gun. Boys are not as common in Vigée Le Brun's paintings, and as I recall the identity of the boy has not been established. This painting has haunted my thoughts (yes it is true, even though I had forgotten that I had taken the photograph). It is the boys eyes that have stayed with me, soulful childish eyes, and the reminder as seen in the gun, that the world intrudes. The utter humanity, affection, and love is evident, as it is evident in all of her paintings, and although I find the painting unsettling I do not know that the subject would have been considered unsettling at the time. And yet….

Contrast the boy with the girl above. Look at the sheer affection with which each is portrayed. Here is humanity in all its glory and all its weaknesses, captured with compassion and love and yes, an intentional, albeit subtle, subversion of form and expectation that continues to enlighten and confound the viewer even today.

September 27, 2016
Diving Into The Wreck

I remember the first time I saw a painting by Anselm Kiefer. We were in the Albright Knox museum in Buffalo NY and the ginormous painting was in a stairwell. We turned a corner and there it was. George headed up the stairs, somewhat oblivious I suppose, and was surprised, upon reaching the next floor, to find that I was no longer with him. I was rooted in place, awed and overwhelmed. In fact, George had to come back down the stairs and wait patiently while I took in that painting, even though as far as he was concerned it was just an enormous, and enormously ugly, painting. Museums trips were often like that with us. George would have to wait patiently while I slowly took in a single piece of art, and I would patiently traipse from room to room with George who always eager to see more and more, after I had already surpassed my absorption limit and was museumed-out. It was good for both of us.

I still have that reaction every time I see a painting by Kiefer. They are immediately recognizable, and to me they have a palpable physical presence that extends far beyond their place on the wall. I am also aware that this feeling is not necessarily shared by all. Kiefer's paintings are not beautiful. If I had all the money in the world, I would still not want a Kiefer on my wall. They are, in fact, almost painful to see, drawing us deeply into the darker sides of human nature, to the stranger that exists in all of us. And yet, or perhaps because of this, they are extremely necessary. Art is not about pretty escapism, although it can be, art is about something far deeper, far more elemental. I would say art shows us the path to grace, but that path is not an easy path, and to get there we must also face the fact that we are not who we pretend to be.

I went to SFMOMA while I was in San Francisco. I never intended to wander through the entire museum, just to stop into two or three galleries. I did not go in search of Kiefer, but upon arrival that is where I found myself, and in fact, it is where I spent most of my time. I did step outside of the moment long enough to take some photos, although my quick smart-phone photos do not do the works justice, hoping I might eventually pull my thoughts together.   I am not writing about the works in the order I saw them, or even all of what I saw or thought on that day. It would be too much, even for me.

As I walked into the gallery, this painting drew me toward it, although it was not the first painting I saw. Notice the Wagnerian theme, the twelve pillars of straw, like torches, burning yet unconsumed as they tower above a world in ruin, a culture consumed.

It is significant that the pillars are made of straw, and that Kiefer has incorporated actual straw into the work. We like to think we are building for the future, that we are building of stone, and that the stone pillars we erect are built on a bedrock of truth and justice. But this is actually rarely the case. These are the stories we tell ourselves as we congratulate ourselves on the back, only to be shocked when the world burns around us and we see how ephemeral we and our beliefs really are.

All of this filtered into my first impressions of the painting. And then I looked at the title, actually later, after walking around the gallery a bit. It reminded me also of the painting above (the name of which I did not write down).   The portraits are all of great German thinkers: philosophers, writers, novelists. They symbolize the ideas on which German culture is founded, and prides itself. But they also all symbolize ideas that were taken and twisted into something outside their original intent to fuel the Nazi ideology.

Kiefer's art specifically focuses on German culture, and the perversion of that culture under the Nazis. It is both historical but morally important, and it is relevant to far more than just Nazism. All of human history has its dark sides, all civilization, all religions even, can be and have been turned into something they were never meant to be, all in the name of good. Kiefer reminds us to be vigilant.

I personally believe that people are good, that most of our lives are good, and I am pretty happy most of the time. But happiness is not a drug, and we must remember our darker selves. Only by acknowledging the darkness can we ensure that the light will continue. Looking at these paintings I am reminded that we all understand ourselves, and our world, our pasts and our futures based on our own experiences and understandings. History is filtered through the eyes of the historians. We need primary sources, but it is rare that we find sources from both sides of any human struggle. The story of history is often told by the victors, and it is written and rewritten time and time again. We must remember that it was always a choice, and that there always was, and always will be a might-have-been. Cling to the joy, the longing for cleanliness and purity and innocence, but do so with honesty and vigilance, lest the tide carry us away.

The title of this post comes from a poem by Adrienne Rich. I last read the poem quite a few years ago, but it popped into my head while I was writing this post. I will share it with you here:

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.

Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

    – Adrienne Rich

September 6, 2016
Scattered Thoughts on Saturday Morning

The knockout roses in the yard have been throwing out a few scattered blossoms. It seems early, but I am attempting to cast my fretting-cap into the wind and simply enjoy.

The last of the "Meet the Candidate" luncheons was held on Thursday. As usual, it was lovely, and I very much enjoyed meeting the conductor for this week's symphony performance. The luncheon was held in a stunning mid-century modern house in South Knoxville, and as we were driven up the steep, narrow, and winding gravel driveway I could not help but think of my former home in Hyde Park. The weather is better in Knoxville, but I don't miss my driveway at all. Seeing the house however did spark a few moments of almost-regret. There were many similarities between this house and my former house, and some differences too, but the similarities were enough to spark memories. After all, for a long time I had simply assumed that the Hyde Park house was my forever-home, and there had been a brief moment of insanity, shortly after George's death, when, discovering that the Hyde Park house was back on the market, I had considered buying it and moving back.

As I said, it was madness, and I am grateful that I did not succumb. I'm not convinced that I believe in forever homes anymore, if I ever really did. What I loved was the home we made together, not the place itself. I suppose that is what I see as key. Places are just places. It is not that they are unimportant, but they are considerably less important than people. Home is with the person or people you cherish, and who cherish(es) you in return. The Hyde Park house was our home together; but it was home because I shared it with the person I loved and who loved me. It cannot be my home now. It would be a shadow house, built on memory and death. I don't mean George's death by that, but death to the spirit, the way defining oneself by the past tends to close the door on possibilities and therefore on life.

The luncheon house reminded me that I can't really do strict mid century again. I probably never could. It was George's house and George's style. Accommodations were made, as in all relationships. I suppose, since I was young when I married, and the house came with the husband, I've always assumed it was my style as well. And of course there are aspects of mid-century design I like, but not a whole house. I am far too eclectic. And I want deeply cushy chairs that I can curl up in cat-like. There you have it.

Thursday I met the conductor. Last night I attended the symphony. The performance was fabulous.

I've been feeling badly about not yet reviewing the Knoxville Symphony performance at Big Ears, and it does still plague me. It was a fabulous concert, and the orchestra got good reviews in the national press. Since that concert I have been thinking the orchestra should be doing more work like the pieces they performed that evening. We have an excellent orchestra, with talented and sensitive musicians, artists who are willing and capable of find the beauty in the new as well as the familiar. At big ears, I had been blown away. In the Dessner, the orchestra perfectly balanced the fine tension between sweetness and severity in the piece, and Phillip Glass' Cello Concerto #2, was stunning, performed with what I can only describe as a sense of delightful joy. That may not have been what the musicians felt as they were playing, but it was what the audience, or this member of the audience, experienced. It is easy to overplay the Glass, to make it too severe, and rob it of joy. That performance created the perfect meeting of modern and classical, minimalism and lush romanticism. It appealed to the head, but also to the heart, and there were moments when I was brought to tears, and a moment in the fourth movement when I could not avoid the chill the music brought down my spine.

And yet, in a way I got my wish. It seems to me that this week's concert had everything one could wish for. The lush beauty of Dvorak; Elgar's Enigma Variations, stunningly, and movingly performed; and a new work, Adam Schoenberg's Finding Rothko. In Finding Rothko, the orchestra reproduced that sense of music as something that creates a living space, a space you are invited to inhabit. The orchestra pulled it off beautifully two weeks previously with John Luther Adam's Become Ocean; a performance in which one could hear and feel the waves, feel the water rising around you, filled with power, and powerlessness, and even serenity. Finding Rothko was similarity well performed. Like a Rothko painting, except with music instead of color, one is drawn into the experience through subtle layering of sound and musical shading. The performance was almost like inhabiting a Rothko painting, like a vivid color experience of the same intense feelings that are engendered when one inhabits a Rothko space, such as the Rothko Chapel in Houston. Stunning.

April 16, 2016
A Few Highlights from My Morning Walk

I used to think my routine morning walk, through my routine suburban neighborhood, was boring. And I suppose that it can be, but it doesn't have to be. I've shared pictures from my walks before, and there is always more to see if one is simply mindful.

From the plethora of blackberries blooming along the edges of wooded areas

To the glories found in individual gardens.

May 11, 2015