Monday, November 4, 2013
Leaf Lessons
Ripe and bright yellow,
Eager to take this morning’s
Quiet chill sunshine fully to heart,
Hundreds of leaves are diving,
Spinning, floating, tumbling
To earth, to rest, to death.
Some are languid, broadside, ambling
Left to right, even lingering in the
Red Japanese maple awhile.
Others plunge with serrated knife edge or
Point directly down and flutter around a
Determined, descending stem.
Some let go and fall every which way;
Some dance, swoop and flip.
A few drop like stones, impossibly dense, or
Spiral in perfect geometry.
Though complex, tenacious, and beautiful,
All will fall, today or perhaps tomorrow;
All will fall.
Look: I will be
the laughing, twirling, joyful one,
All the way to ground.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
“Désiré” by Breughel
I am looking at a Breughel, not a Rubens, from my window seat at Désiré de Lille Tea Room. I would frame the artwork better by switching my own seat with the two ladies at a nearby table. Petite, well dressed, mature women. They both have silver hair, cut short and youthful. I think they are sisters catching up on family news, not just the what of it, but the why and the how, going deep inside the family stories to make meanings of new alliances and old fractures. They are wearing skirts and low heels. One wears glasses, one does not. The window begs to be bordered by their warm russet and brown brocades.
If they sit here in my place at the window table, the word Désiré will be just above their heads as read from the outside looking in. How would Breughel frame this? Will that word become the title of the entire piece? I like Breughel’s busy composites of folk sayings or parables. Each tiny scene is an illustration of some human foible. What is going on in my Breughel?
A woman walks into a shop labeled with a blue fluorescent sign. It might be a jewelry store. I can’t quite see from this angle. The name of the store is clear however. It is Choice. What is she going in there to choose?
Another woman, dressed in brown with short dark hair and glasses, walks out of a shop with a package over her arm. She is purposeful, stepping into the flow of pedestrian traffic to her right with eyes only for the next steps of the day. What is in her bag?
There is a large Buddha statue in the window of the shop she has just left. Buddha is holding a lit candle in his lotus-flower hands. The shop is called Rituals: Home and Body Cosmetics. Above and behind the Buddha is a board with writing on it. It begins . . . “Onze filosofie . . .”
Two women in slacks and short coats with their collars up walk a medium sized black poodle. We see only their backs as they walk from the center of the canvas off to the right. The woman on the left is older, perhaps the mother to the daughter on the right, the one with longer hair and slighter build. They aren’t touching, but their bodies say intimacy.
Two young men in shirt sleeves unload flats of water onto a hand cart just to the left of the center of the scene. Their bare hands grip the heavy trays.
A boy in a black coat is running, running through the scene. He is not alarmed, just late. Late to pick up a package from a shop closing soon? A package he has promised his mother he will bring home, but he was talking on his cellphone so long that he’s late. The twilight is shading down on him and soon that sharp scimitar, Magritte’s moon (in Breughel’s painting!) will be hanging over his head.
Tequila tempts passersby two or three at a time. Tequila’s final letter, the “A” is designed to look like the top of a minaret. The door of the minaret, as well as the spaces within the letter “e” and the letter “q” are filled with a deep pink, almost red color. What is Tequila offering besides a blush of intoxication? Costume jewelry, scarves, bags are visible along with an elephant and a giraffe. Outside on a pole a deep pink package tied with matching ribbon beckons with an exchange of imagination for possession.
The clerk of Tequila keeps busy in the tiny, spot-lit shop: folding and unfolding scarves, organizing small leather wallets in a display box. A mother and daughter, arm in arm, pause, turn away, and then turn back and enter the minaret’s door. They are darker than Northern Europeans. Are they from a minaret or from tequila? Drawn by the aura of the bustling shop, another woman enters.
A little family doing passagiata –two tiny girls, and mom and dad. A shopgirl on her cellphone making plans for the evening.
Which of us is Icarus, falling from the sky with melting wings from the dizzy heights and fiery sol?
Behind the tingle of the minaret’s door, is it the young woman in houndstooth trying on a scarf?
Or the young girl behind the Buddha who has just blown out the candle?
Or the young blond woman with a stiff-legged walk?
Or the woman with graceful packages pausing beside the “60% Off Sale” sign?
Or is it me?
The young man carrying two suitcases, one red, one grey, crosses from left to right and then from right to left ten minutes later. Where is the woman who belongs to the soft things in the red bag? Is she lost, or is he?
This tea room is really a series of rooms, each one lined in framed mirrors and deeper, deeper into the perspective of distance mirrored back smaller and smaller.
Tequila! Tequila! Number 11, the magic windows, the magic door. Did the woman whose face I never see put one irresistible gem among the fake chains and baubles?
The boy in the black coat runs across the scene again, in the opposite direction. On this little street, Schrijnwerkers Straat, are we at the fold of time? Every action will have its mirror, its reverse, sooner or later?
It’s almost dark; our reflections go deeper within the lighted windows and enfold one another across the narrow street.
No one goes in or comes out of Hush Puppies despite the pastel-bright colors splashed across the windows. Perhaps Breughel’s eyes cannot see into pastels. We’ll ask Renoir for his view.
If they sit here in my place at the window table, the word Désiré will be just above their heads as read from the outside looking in. How would Breughel frame this? Will that word become the title of the entire piece? I like Breughel’s busy composites of folk sayings or parables. Each tiny scene is an illustration of some human foible. What is going on in my Breughel?
A woman walks into a shop labeled with a blue fluorescent sign. It might be a jewelry store. I can’t quite see from this angle. The name of the store is clear however. It is Choice. What is she going in there to choose?
Another woman, dressed in brown with short dark hair and glasses, walks out of a shop with a package over her arm. She is purposeful, stepping into the flow of pedestrian traffic to her right with eyes only for the next steps of the day. What is in her bag?
There is a large Buddha statue in the window of the shop she has just left. Buddha is holding a lit candle in his lotus-flower hands. The shop is called Rituals: Home and Body Cosmetics. Above and behind the Buddha is a board with writing on it. It begins . . . “Onze filosofie . . .”
Two women in slacks and short coats with their collars up walk a medium sized black poodle. We see only their backs as they walk from the center of the canvas off to the right. The woman on the left is older, perhaps the mother to the daughter on the right, the one with longer hair and slighter build. They aren’t touching, but their bodies say intimacy.
Two young men in shirt sleeves unload flats of water onto a hand cart just to the left of the center of the scene. Their bare hands grip the heavy trays.
A boy in a black coat is running, running through the scene. He is not alarmed, just late. Late to pick up a package from a shop closing soon? A package he has promised his mother he will bring home, but he was talking on his cellphone so long that he’s late. The twilight is shading down on him and soon that sharp scimitar, Magritte’s moon (in Breughel’s painting!) will be hanging over his head.
Tequila tempts passersby two or three at a time. Tequila’s final letter, the “A” is designed to look like the top of a minaret. The door of the minaret, as well as the spaces within the letter “e” and the letter “q” are filled with a deep pink, almost red color. What is Tequila offering besides a blush of intoxication? Costume jewelry, scarves, bags are visible along with an elephant and a giraffe. Outside on a pole a deep pink package tied with matching ribbon beckons with an exchange of imagination for possession.
The clerk of Tequila keeps busy in the tiny, spot-lit shop: folding and unfolding scarves, organizing small leather wallets in a display box. A mother and daughter, arm in arm, pause, turn away, and then turn back and enter the minaret’s door. They are darker than Northern Europeans. Are they from a minaret or from tequila? Drawn by the aura of the bustling shop, another woman enters.
A little family doing passagiata –two tiny girls, and mom and dad. A shopgirl on her cellphone making plans for the evening.
Which of us is Icarus, falling from the sky with melting wings from the dizzy heights and fiery sol?
Behind the tingle of the minaret’s door, is it the young woman in houndstooth trying on a scarf?
Or the young girl behind the Buddha who has just blown out the candle?
Or the young blond woman with a stiff-legged walk?
Or the woman with graceful packages pausing beside the “60% Off Sale” sign?
Or is it me?
The young man carrying two suitcases, one red, one grey, crosses from left to right and then from right to left ten minutes later. Where is the woman who belongs to the soft things in the red bag? Is she lost, or is he?
This tea room is really a series of rooms, each one lined in framed mirrors and deeper, deeper into the perspective of distance mirrored back smaller and smaller.
Tequila! Tequila! Number 11, the magic windows, the magic door. Did the woman whose face I never see put one irresistible gem among the fake chains and baubles?
The boy in the black coat runs across the scene again, in the opposite direction. On this little street, Schrijnwerkers Straat, are we at the fold of time? Every action will have its mirror, its reverse, sooner or later?
It’s almost dark; our reflections go deeper within the lighted windows and enfold one another across the narrow street.
No one goes in or comes out of Hush Puppies despite the pastel-bright colors splashed across the windows. Perhaps Breughel’s eyes cannot see into pastels. We’ll ask Renoir for his view.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Organic Sedimentation: Earth 2013
The first session of a quilting Block-of-the-Month class called “Fearless Improv” did more than introduce me to my ego-deflating “gremlin” and motivate me to build a stone wall (of fabric). The introduction by Stitch Your Art Out’s co-owner and quilting diva Kimberly Davis also empowered me to start another project, a rather wild and ill-conceived project, but something that had been haunting me all the same.
To the top of my imagination rose an “end of bolt” piece I had been compelled to purchase last summer from a home design workshop in Rhode Island. This fabric was calling my name. It has a creamy background with machine embroidered fish, starfish, and shells scattered on the sand. After cutting out several fish and shells, I went hunting for their environment among the treasures in my stash. Many fabrics auditioned, but only eight made the finals. I began to see this project as a banner with horizontal slabs of fabric studded with sea creatures—a cross section of sea floor.
I placed the last hand stitch almost exactly two months from the first cut. The banner is called “Organic Sedimentation: Earth 2013.” Without the burlap sack that once held organic coffee beans, it would have been called simply, “Sedimentation: Earth 2013.” The word “organic” printed in large block letters hints at the ironic tone that evolved along with the project. In addition to composing the piece with hunks of odd fabrics, I added—along with the fish and shells—scraps of other fabric images appliqued on each of the eight layers of sedimentation. For example, a small Santa Claus sank to the bottom layer. Images of planets, cars, lizards, and a kitten settled down through the sediment and stuck at various levels. I selected a backing fabric chosen by a child’s bright imagination long-ago. Each layer of sediment was machine quilted with different thread and in a different pattern as if time—not color and texture—separated them. The binding is a tale of sedimentation itself with various hues and patterns following one another.
As I was machine quilting the heavy banner, I felt a strong desire to add small objects to raise the sedimentation of human detritus above the nearly-flat surface of the quilted banner. Two dimensions were not enough to express the three-dimensional scene I envisioned. In about an hour, I collected from closets, attic, shelves, and drawers what I needed: lanyard plastic tangled with beads, tiny lego blocks, shark teeth, lace, bits of Christmas tinsel, pink buttons, small metal clips and bolts, and a plastic horse and rider. Junk? We humans are really good at it!
Once the binding was hand sewn, I moved my tax documents off the dining room table and spread out the banner to place and attach the objects. My collection was excessive and only about half of the items made it onto this piece. I am not sure if the placements are fanciful or cynical; maybe a bit of both. A red plastic cowboy about the size of a seam allowance now stands astride the planet Saturn with a nano-revolver in each hand. Is this humor, or is it a commentary on aggressively competitive space exploration? Fresh water fish leap to consume bright bits of trash, and a sardonic starfish sports a nautical button in the dead-center of its body. Not far off, a disembodied head smiles blandly on the multilayered scene. My (least) favorite piece might be the yellow plastic band that actually tripped me up on a sidewalk in New Jersey recently. I took a five-point dive and I bear the scars of this object’s innocuous/hazardous/careless placement in my path. The same could happen to any fish or mammal or bird anywhere on earth; there is yellow plastic enough for all! The banner is very personal, not at all pretty, quite heavy, and possibly unique in the history of the planet. My gremlin desperately wants me to hang it in the laundry room and forget about it.
Last fall I created another “environmental art” piece—a banner inspired by Hurricane Sandy. I wanted to suggest devastation with a theme of broken glass and destructive winds. I cut heavy brown paper shapes and then found fabrics to bring color to the glass and menacing heft to the wind. I gave this piece to my son, an environmental engineer who lives in New Jersey. He hung it in the third floor hallway right outside the room where I sleep when I visit. I love it, but my gremlin thinks I am the only one.
If you knew my father and mother, you would recognize elements of their crafts in my work. He was an upholsterer and she grew up in the garment industry in New York City. I’ve lived my whole life around sewing machines, fabric, paper patterns, and big shears. Buttons were the best rainy Saturday amusement we could imagine! As they started a family, my mother continued to sew clothing for me and my sister, until we were old enough to create our own dresses and suits and gowns. My father found recreation and relaxation from upholstery by collecting shells, driftwood, and leaves and creating unique objects with them: vases, baskets, mirror frames, ornamental magnets, and small sculptures. He was a master of improvisation! We often laughed at my father’s “projects,” as he called them, and this has been fuel for my gremlin. If I laughed at what he made, I deserve the same for my “projects,” don’t I? I see the similarities now, and I regret not appreciating his art more fully while he was alive. The creative inheritance and skills I learned from both my parents are alive in my work. Perhaps I am not improvising at all, but simply living and creating in the family tradition.
To the top of my imagination rose an “end of bolt” piece I had been compelled to purchase last summer from a home design workshop in Rhode Island. This fabric was calling my name. It has a creamy background with machine embroidered fish, starfish, and shells scattered on the sand. After cutting out several fish and shells, I went hunting for their environment among the treasures in my stash. Many fabrics auditioned, but only eight made the finals. I began to see this project as a banner with horizontal slabs of fabric studded with sea creatures—a cross section of sea floor.
I placed the last hand stitch almost exactly two months from the first cut. The banner is called “Organic Sedimentation: Earth 2013.” Without the burlap sack that once held organic coffee beans, it would have been called simply, “Sedimentation: Earth 2013.” The word “organic” printed in large block letters hints at the ironic tone that evolved along with the project. In addition to composing the piece with hunks of odd fabrics, I added—along with the fish and shells—scraps of other fabric images appliqued on each of the eight layers of sedimentation. For example, a small Santa Claus sank to the bottom layer. Images of planets, cars, lizards, and a kitten settled down through the sediment and stuck at various levels. I selected a backing fabric chosen by a child’s bright imagination long-ago. Each layer of sediment was machine quilted with different thread and in a different pattern as if time—not color and texture—separated them. The binding is a tale of sedimentation itself with various hues and patterns following one another.
As I was machine quilting the heavy banner, I felt a strong desire to add small objects to raise the sedimentation of human detritus above the nearly-flat surface of the quilted banner. Two dimensions were not enough to express the three-dimensional scene I envisioned. In about an hour, I collected from closets, attic, shelves, and drawers what I needed: lanyard plastic tangled with beads, tiny lego blocks, shark teeth, lace, bits of Christmas tinsel, pink buttons, small metal clips and bolts, and a plastic horse and rider. Junk? We humans are really good at it!
Once the binding was hand sewn, I moved my tax documents off the dining room table and spread out the banner to place and attach the objects. My collection was excessive and only about half of the items made it onto this piece. I am not sure if the placements are fanciful or cynical; maybe a bit of both. A red plastic cowboy about the size of a seam allowance now stands astride the planet Saturn with a nano-revolver in each hand. Is this humor, or is it a commentary on aggressively competitive space exploration? Fresh water fish leap to consume bright bits of trash, and a sardonic starfish sports a nautical button in the dead-center of its body. Not far off, a disembodied head smiles blandly on the multilayered scene. My (least) favorite piece might be the yellow plastic band that actually tripped me up on a sidewalk in New Jersey recently. I took a five-point dive and I bear the scars of this object’s innocuous/hazardous/careless placement in my path. The same could happen to any fish or mammal or bird anywhere on earth; there is yellow plastic enough for all! The banner is very personal, not at all pretty, quite heavy, and possibly unique in the history of the planet. My gremlin desperately wants me to hang it in the laundry room and forget about it.
Last fall I created another “environmental art” piece—a banner inspired by Hurricane Sandy. I wanted to suggest devastation with a theme of broken glass and destructive winds. I cut heavy brown paper shapes and then found fabrics to bring color to the glass and menacing heft to the wind. I gave this piece to my son, an environmental engineer who lives in New Jersey. He hung it in the third floor hallway right outside the room where I sleep when I visit. I love it, but my gremlin thinks I am the only one.
If you knew my father and mother, you would recognize elements of their crafts in my work. He was an upholsterer and she grew up in the garment industry in New York City. I’ve lived my whole life around sewing machines, fabric, paper patterns, and big shears. Buttons were the best rainy Saturday amusement we could imagine! As they started a family, my mother continued to sew clothing for me and my sister, until we were old enough to create our own dresses and suits and gowns. My father found recreation and relaxation from upholstery by collecting shells, driftwood, and leaves and creating unique objects with them: vases, baskets, mirror frames, ornamental magnets, and small sculptures. He was a master of improvisation! We often laughed at my father’s “projects,” as he called them, and this has been fuel for my gremlin. If I laughed at what he made, I deserve the same for my “projects,” don’t I? I see the similarities now, and I regret not appreciating his art more fully while he was alive. The creative inheritance and skills I learned from both my parents are alive in my work. Perhaps I am not improvising at all, but simply living and creating in the family tradition.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Summer 2013 in Three Moments
#1: “Distance Plus Motion”
From my moving kayak this morning, I saw
two ranks of trees sailing in opposite directions across a hillside where
yesterday there stood a solid wall of green.
The upper stand of trees sailed slowly south, while the lower sailed
majestically north, a verdant voyage
challenging my notion of the land and
animating a façade once stiff with wood.
#2: “Morning Marvelous”
This morning’s marvelous is quiet and small:
an owl contemplates life and resists entropy,
a bit of orange flashes among the trees,
a red boat floats against tall reeds.
I turn my boat towards home and small bubbles rise to show the way.
At my doorstep, a yellow butterfly.
#3: "Short Summer Summary”
Traveling, unpacking, checking boxes on a list, transitioning, walking, waiting to begin, purchasing, arranging, moving, stirring, contemplating, anticipating, waiting to end, escaping, fixing, sewing, puzzling, walking, watching, making new lists, paddling, finishing, filling out forms, turning things on, reading, turning things off, supplying, connecting, preparing, giving, walking, packing, returning.
From my moving kayak this morning, I saw
two ranks of trees sailing in opposite directions across a hillside where
yesterday there stood a solid wall of green.
The upper stand of trees sailed slowly south, while the lower sailed
majestically north, a verdant voyage
challenging my notion of the land and
animating a façade once stiff with wood.
#2: “Morning Marvelous”
This morning’s marvelous is quiet and small:
an owl contemplates life and resists entropy,
a bit of orange flashes among the trees,
a red boat floats against tall reeds.
I turn my boat towards home and small bubbles rise to show the way.
At my doorstep, a yellow butterfly.
#3: "Short Summer Summary”
Traveling, unpacking, checking boxes on a list, transitioning, walking, waiting to begin, purchasing, arranging, moving, stirring, contemplating, anticipating, waiting to end, escaping, fixing, sewing, puzzling, walking, watching, making new lists, paddling, finishing, filling out forms, turning things on, reading, turning things off, supplying, connecting, preparing, giving, walking, packing, returning.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Watching Me Watching You
As I approached the Amtrak ticket window at Newark Penn Station this morning I smiled at a woman already in the queue. She carried a handbag and rested her other hand on a neat black leather backpack atop her suitcase. She returned my smile. In some strange recognition between strangers, we acknowledged each other as equals, “Hello” answering “Hello.” “In a pinch, you can turn to me.”
The exact same encounter happened to me at the Amtrak counter in Boston's Back Bay station four days ago. Women recognize their peers in age, class, and circumstances almost instantly. It's part of a survival instinct when traveling alone. Just like instinctively noticing where the exits and restrooms are, women will identify the peer who will be a potential ally if danger approaches. Later that same day, as the train approached my station, a woman entered the train and seemed quite anxious. She asked if the seat next to me was free and we chatted until I got off ten minutes later. She was apprehensive about this train ride, her very first. “People in Texas don’t have this opportunity,” she said. I reassured her and she seemed relieved as much by my presence as by my words.
On both ticket-purchasing experiences in recent days, I observed a woman in difficulty at the counter. For the ticket agents, these may have been just samples of many long narratives that unfold during the day. In Boston, the protagonist was an international woman with minimal English trying to buy a complex ticket that might have been impossible. She was short, dark-skinned, and elderly—three strikes against her in addition to the language barrier and limited resources. She was holding a zippered coin purse at the counter and I wondered if she would pay for her ticket with small bills or possibly even with coins. The agent must have expressed doubt about the feasibility of her desired route, because the customer responded in broken English, “I go this way many time.” The agent tried again and then wrote a number on a slip of paper, handed it to the woman, and asked her to wait while she sold tickets to the few of us with immanent departures. I saw the price of $148.20 on the piece of paper and then my narrative boarded a train and diverged from hers.
At Newark Penn Station this morning, the woman facing her trial at the ticket window was young, white, and blonde. She had five or six bags at her feet. Not suitcases, but canvas and plastic bags with their handles tied together. She was in an extended conversation with the agent. She told him she had just been released from rehab in a mental hospital and she needed to get home today. Her voice was urgent and highly distressed, almost panicked. She rested her cheek against the palm of her hand and pleaded with him. He asked for her name and typed it into the computer. Perhaps she had a reservation but no identification? He couldn't give her the ticket without ID. When he asked for a phone number, she quickly gave him a number and told him that her ex-husband was at that number and he could give any information needed. The agent ultimately directed her to the police, “Go around the corner and turn left.” She hooked all the bag handles with her fingers and walked off. When I left the ticket counter, I was relieved to see her in conversation with a policeman. I felt some tug to get involved, but I didn't.
Meanwhile, off to my left was a row of men who may or may not have had tickets, but who were sitting along the outside wall of the waiting room on a bench marked (as they all are) “Seating for ticketed passengers.” They were watching, too. They were not watching the big board for their track number to appear. They were not watching the lines at the ticket windows to pick the fastest one. They were watching out for one another as they stepped outside and then returned to the warm station and the benches. They were also watching the passengers sitting on the other benches. I wondered if they were watching to see if someone dropped something that they could pick up and use or sell, but when a package of cigarettes fell out of the pocket of a passenger opposite me, one of the watchers got up and gestured to the man until he saw his cigarettes and retrieved them.
Another of the watchers called out, “Blossom! Blossom!” and I looked to see who might respond. I was not quick enough to catch sight of Blossom passing by.
Leaning against the information booth in the center of the waiting area and looking out over all the benches and all the people was a uniformed policeman. He scanned the room attentively. What would happen if he were not watching? And the three young soldiers in buff camouflage uniforms that I saw as I came down the escalator at the Port Authority bus station on Tuesday morning? In the universe of humans watching other humans, we may have turned the page from watching to surveillance.
The exact same encounter happened to me at the Amtrak counter in Boston's Back Bay station four days ago. Women recognize their peers in age, class, and circumstances almost instantly. It's part of a survival instinct when traveling alone. Just like instinctively noticing where the exits and restrooms are, women will identify the peer who will be a potential ally if danger approaches. Later that same day, as the train approached my station, a woman entered the train and seemed quite anxious. She asked if the seat next to me was free and we chatted until I got off ten minutes later. She was apprehensive about this train ride, her very first. “People in Texas don’t have this opportunity,” she said. I reassured her and she seemed relieved as much by my presence as by my words.
On both ticket-purchasing experiences in recent days, I observed a woman in difficulty at the counter. For the ticket agents, these may have been just samples of many long narratives that unfold during the day. In Boston, the protagonist was an international woman with minimal English trying to buy a complex ticket that might have been impossible. She was short, dark-skinned, and elderly—three strikes against her in addition to the language barrier and limited resources. She was holding a zippered coin purse at the counter and I wondered if she would pay for her ticket with small bills or possibly even with coins. The agent must have expressed doubt about the feasibility of her desired route, because the customer responded in broken English, “I go this way many time.” The agent tried again and then wrote a number on a slip of paper, handed it to the woman, and asked her to wait while she sold tickets to the few of us with immanent departures. I saw the price of $148.20 on the piece of paper and then my narrative boarded a train and diverged from hers.
At Newark Penn Station this morning, the woman facing her trial at the ticket window was young, white, and blonde. She had five or six bags at her feet. Not suitcases, but canvas and plastic bags with their handles tied together. She was in an extended conversation with the agent. She told him she had just been released from rehab in a mental hospital and she needed to get home today. Her voice was urgent and highly distressed, almost panicked. She rested her cheek against the palm of her hand and pleaded with him. He asked for her name and typed it into the computer. Perhaps she had a reservation but no identification? He couldn't give her the ticket without ID. When he asked for a phone number, she quickly gave him a number and told him that her ex-husband was at that number and he could give any information needed. The agent ultimately directed her to the police, “Go around the corner and turn left.” She hooked all the bag handles with her fingers and walked off. When I left the ticket counter, I was relieved to see her in conversation with a policeman. I felt some tug to get involved, but I didn't.
Meanwhile, off to my left was a row of men who may or may not have had tickets, but who were sitting along the outside wall of the waiting room on a bench marked (as they all are) “Seating for ticketed passengers.” They were watching, too. They were not watching the big board for their track number to appear. They were not watching the lines at the ticket windows to pick the fastest one. They were watching out for one another as they stepped outside and then returned to the warm station and the benches. They were also watching the passengers sitting on the other benches. I wondered if they were watching to see if someone dropped something that they could pick up and use or sell, but when a package of cigarettes fell out of the pocket of a passenger opposite me, one of the watchers got up and gestured to the man until he saw his cigarettes and retrieved them.
Another of the watchers called out, “Blossom! Blossom!” and I looked to see who might respond. I was not quick enough to catch sight of Blossom passing by.
Leaning against the information booth in the center of the waiting area and looking out over all the benches and all the people was a uniformed policeman. He scanned the room attentively. What would happen if he were not watching? And the three young soldiers in buff camouflage uniforms that I saw as I came down the escalator at the Port Authority bus station on Tuesday morning? In the universe of humans watching other humans, we may have turned the page from watching to surveillance.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Sounds of Place: Budapest Keleti Station (2007)
The Budapest train station called Keleti is gigantic and beautiful. Inside Keleti Station today it is confusing, hot, and crowded, and we are waiting for an overnight train to Krakow. I have loved train stations for a long time because of the vibrant aura of travelers setting off on a journey or arriving at a destination. Grand Central Station in New York City is a very special train station for me. It represents my claim on my own life, starting a new existence right there at the center of the universe!
Centered in this station in Budapest, between tracks and ticket booths, there are two old-fashioned “big boards” with metal cards clicking over to display the times of arrival or departure of the trains along with the origin or destination, notes we can’t understand, any delays and how long, and finally, the datum that completes each line, the track number.
Every couple of minutes, the board begins to transform itself. One by one, beginning at the top, each element of the line of information will begin rotating to repeat, momentarily, the line below it. For just a blink of an eye, the two lines are identical, and then the elements of the second line begin to flip to bring up the train just below it. This movement is nearly constant as track numbers and other information is updated. At any moment, some element is flipping through all of the small metal cards with all of its potential readings to stop at the exact right one.
The “big board” entertains us in anticipation of the track posting which will catapult us into action towards the arriving train. The sound of all that clicking mesmerizes us, rivets our attention. This sound is like rosary beads clicking, like many fast, small marbles snapping against one another, like thick, flexible plastic cards shuffling, like heavy dry leaves rustling in the wind in October. It is similar and yet unlike any of these. If the mechanical big board holds still and silent, for even a moment, everyone watching it is still, we all stop breathing for an instant, for a heartbeat, until the rapid flipping begins again.
I tried to figure out who or what is behind this hypnotic system, but can’t quite imagine! This system predates computers, but is it computerized now? Of course, the next iteration of big boards will be digital displays, practical, but not as dynamic or interesting to watch.
In addition to this repetitive, resonant sound locking on a brain frequency that immobilizes us, we are also enchanted with the names of destinations that flip through our sights each time a line moves up the board. Potential destinations from this spot in Budapest flip over each other, revealing and concealing jewels and tapestries, markets and minarets, rich aromas and strange twisting cries. Today we are NOT going to Nagykáta, Zűrich, Sopron, Hatva, Moszkva, Szolnok, Sűlysáp, Koŝice, Pëcs, Graz, Berlin, Zagreb, Hamburg, Belgrade, Thessalonika, Dormond, or Bratislava, or any of the places with names so complex I couldn’t capture them from the short glimpse on the big board.
Our train finally appears at the bottom of the big board as the departure time of 18:30 takes the bottom line below 18:25. Before we are assigned a track number and achieve the top line, I am already nostalgic for the sound of the big board at Keleti Station in Budapest.
Centered in this station in Budapest, between tracks and ticket booths, there are two old-fashioned “big boards” with metal cards clicking over to display the times of arrival or departure of the trains along with the origin or destination, notes we can’t understand, any delays and how long, and finally, the datum that completes each line, the track number.
Every couple of minutes, the board begins to transform itself. One by one, beginning at the top, each element of the line of information will begin rotating to repeat, momentarily, the line below it. For just a blink of an eye, the two lines are identical, and then the elements of the second line begin to flip to bring up the train just below it. This movement is nearly constant as track numbers and other information is updated. At any moment, some element is flipping through all of the small metal cards with all of its potential readings to stop at the exact right one.
The “big board” entertains us in anticipation of the track posting which will catapult us into action towards the arriving train. The sound of all that clicking mesmerizes us, rivets our attention. This sound is like rosary beads clicking, like many fast, small marbles snapping against one another, like thick, flexible plastic cards shuffling, like heavy dry leaves rustling in the wind in October. It is similar and yet unlike any of these. If the mechanical big board holds still and silent, for even a moment, everyone watching it is still, we all stop breathing for an instant, for a heartbeat, until the rapid flipping begins again.
I tried to figure out who or what is behind this hypnotic system, but can’t quite imagine! This system predates computers, but is it computerized now? Of course, the next iteration of big boards will be digital displays, practical, but not as dynamic or interesting to watch.
In addition to this repetitive, resonant sound locking on a brain frequency that immobilizes us, we are also enchanted with the names of destinations that flip through our sights each time a line moves up the board. Potential destinations from this spot in Budapest flip over each other, revealing and concealing jewels and tapestries, markets and minarets, rich aromas and strange twisting cries. Today we are NOT going to Nagykáta, Zűrich, Sopron, Hatva, Moszkva, Szolnok, Sűlysáp, Koŝice, Pëcs, Graz, Berlin, Zagreb, Hamburg, Belgrade, Thessalonika, Dormond, or Bratislava, or any of the places with names so complex I couldn’t capture them from the short glimpse on the big board.
Our train finally appears at the bottom of the big board as the departure time of 18:30 takes the bottom line below 18:25. Before we are assigned a track number and achieve the top line, I am already nostalgic for the sound of the big board at Keleti Station in Budapest.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Ring the Bell
At Jinming Temple on Saturday I held three smoldering incense sticks in the sticky humid air and bowed in four directions to the Buddha, beginning with the East. I inhaled the smoke and then opened my hands and heart for a blessing.
A few hours later, I paid two renminbi to sound the massive bell in an inner courtyard of the Confucius Temple. A small log was wrapped in red cloth and suspended by two ropes. I pulled it back, posed for a photo, and released the log toward the bell and the boom reverberating through flesh and bone and air. I paid another five renminbi to hold mallets and play three rows of graduated bronze bells, a very big drum, and a Chinese zither. My five minutes on that stage were not enough to perfect my style, but to confirm a vision that this might have been my role in a past life at this temple.
On Monday, I climbed every available stair in the weaving workshop garden; the geometric and smooth ones as well as the water-shaped, rough and uneven ones, filling all my frames with texture. I looked and longed toward the roof garden that was inaccessible to my ascending desire.
I confess that I am the one who touches sculptures despite signs that say “Do not touch,” and on Tuesday, I touched the lucky turtle, and the elephant, and the camel, and the lions. They were stone both before and after, but I was not.
At the gate of Linggu Temple on Purple Mountain, I ate slippery cold noodles of bean paste with shredded carrots and cucumber, sauced with sweet, pungent, and spicy. Though I held my sticks upside down, no one noticed my splashy style.
Today, I plan to touch silk and jade, perhaps to great excess. When the antiphospholipid antibody syndrome rings the final bell in my head or heart, I will be ready.
A few hours later, I paid two renminbi to sound the massive bell in an inner courtyard of the Confucius Temple. A small log was wrapped in red cloth and suspended by two ropes. I pulled it back, posed for a photo, and released the log toward the bell and the boom reverberating through flesh and bone and air. I paid another five renminbi to hold mallets and play three rows of graduated bronze bells, a very big drum, and a Chinese zither. My five minutes on that stage were not enough to perfect my style, but to confirm a vision that this might have been my role in a past life at this temple.
On Monday, I climbed every available stair in the weaving workshop garden; the geometric and smooth ones as well as the water-shaped, rough and uneven ones, filling all my frames with texture. I looked and longed toward the roof garden that was inaccessible to my ascending desire.
I confess that I am the one who touches sculptures despite signs that say “Do not touch,” and on Tuesday, I touched the lucky turtle, and the elephant, and the camel, and the lions. They were stone both before and after, but I was not.
At the gate of Linggu Temple on Purple Mountain, I ate slippery cold noodles of bean paste with shredded carrots and cucumber, sauced with sweet, pungent, and spicy. Though I held my sticks upside down, no one noticed my splashy style.
Today, I plan to touch silk and jade, perhaps to great excess. When the antiphospholipid antibody syndrome rings the final bell in my head or heart, I will be ready.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Sitting Still (Auracular Spaces #2)
“Matter, it was discovered, can be used to tell time.
‘A rock,’ said physicist Holger Müller, ‘is a clock.’”
Harper’s Magazine, “Findings” March 2013
I am sitting still in a small park on a compact university campus in downtown Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China. The temperature is in the 90’s and I am inclined to remain motionless while humid currents circulate around me.
A dark haired woman picks up a long bamboo pole and begins to swat at the plum-sized yellow fruit suspended in bunches above her head in the branches of a tree. Her companion picks up the fallen fruit and rubs it with water from a jar. She then places it on the seat of a wheelchair already occupied by a slight immobile man in white pajamas. He may not be aware that he has become a basket for the ripe fruit.
The two women are slightly heavier and quite a bit darker in flesh than many of the other women in this city; they may be ethnic minority Chinese employed as home health aides for this elderly and seemingly incapacitated man. Three animated elderly people sit on a bench nearby eating the same fruit. The two trios are linked by the sweet ripe fruit, but nothing else.
Two school girls pass by arm in arm. Workers traverse the path just beyond the low railings with small wheelbarrows, tools, and pallets of water behind bicycles.
The clicking sound of high heels draws my attention to a slender woman in a long-sleeved black dress with a spine overtly zippered from neck to hem.
I hear a flute somewhere behind me in the middle air.
Another wheelchair approaches the bench to my left. A young adult male pushes an older man. After transferring the older man to the bench, the younger one sits beside him and turns his full attention to his cellphone. The older man enters the park’s ambiance in the role of witness.
The wooden benches are built to seat two comfortably, but they are occupied one by one by one.
This park strays toward the wild side with soft low grasses that are not trimmed between the paths. The shrubs and trees are carefully randomized to present every shape, texture, and size with limbs growing horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and fractally. Greens go forth as leaves, fronds, tufts, fingertips, feathers, sprays, needles, fans, ferns, shoots, and every other possible projection and extension to form a thick and light-entrapping tent. Fallen and falling leaves become part of the appealing pattern.
Pensive notes from several flutes at a distance play hide and seek among the leaves.
This garden has many more paths of patterned tiles than necessary to pass through it in any direction. The trails criss-cross and converge at a five-pointed, off-kilter star deliberately far from the notion of center. The tiles inscribe skewed triangles and irregular four or five-sided geometric shapes. This park makes a deliberate statement about beauty and order, reminding me of the Wallace Stevens line, “The Imperfect is our Paradise.” Inside is a pause outside the ordinary. Though all sides have low boundaries, no glance in any direction gives up the secret of its size and shape. Peripheral vision is quiet on the subject, making no guesses.
A woman with silver hair and red shoes scribbles in a notebook. Three brightly dressed girls take photos of a baby sitting on a bench. A pregnant woman listens to music through headphones.
An organic breathing space offering the privacy of intimate public rooms, this botanical sanctuary presents two objects for visual convergence. One is a bronze head on a large, slightly irregular stone block. The other is a water-pocked stone in the shape and size of two horses kneeling nose to nose. Formed of elements and momentum, the stones beckon like evidence.
I am still . . . sitting . . . and then . . . the flutes draw my themes onward.
The park takes another breath and recomposes space and time around the flight of a single white butterfly.
‘A rock,’ said physicist Holger Müller, ‘is a clock.’”
Harper’s Magazine, “Findings” March 2013
I am sitting still in a small park on a compact university campus in downtown Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China. The temperature is in the 90’s and I am inclined to remain motionless while humid currents circulate around me.
A dark haired woman picks up a long bamboo pole and begins to swat at the plum-sized yellow fruit suspended in bunches above her head in the branches of a tree. Her companion picks up the fallen fruit and rubs it with water from a jar. She then places it on the seat of a wheelchair already occupied by a slight immobile man in white pajamas. He may not be aware that he has become a basket for the ripe fruit.
The two women are slightly heavier and quite a bit darker in flesh than many of the other women in this city; they may be ethnic minority Chinese employed as home health aides for this elderly and seemingly incapacitated man. Three animated elderly people sit on a bench nearby eating the same fruit. The two trios are linked by the sweet ripe fruit, but nothing else.
Two school girls pass by arm in arm. Workers traverse the path just beyond the low railings with small wheelbarrows, tools, and pallets of water behind bicycles.
The clicking sound of high heels draws my attention to a slender woman in a long-sleeved black dress with a spine overtly zippered from neck to hem.
I hear a flute somewhere behind me in the middle air.
Another wheelchair approaches the bench to my left. A young adult male pushes an older man. After transferring the older man to the bench, the younger one sits beside him and turns his full attention to his cellphone. The older man enters the park’s ambiance in the role of witness.
The wooden benches are built to seat two comfortably, but they are occupied one by one by one.
This park strays toward the wild side with soft low grasses that are not trimmed between the paths. The shrubs and trees are carefully randomized to present every shape, texture, and size with limbs growing horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and fractally. Greens go forth as leaves, fronds, tufts, fingertips, feathers, sprays, needles, fans, ferns, shoots, and every other possible projection and extension to form a thick and light-entrapping tent. Fallen and falling leaves become part of the appealing pattern.
Pensive notes from several flutes at a distance play hide and seek among the leaves.
This garden has many more paths of patterned tiles than necessary to pass through it in any direction. The trails criss-cross and converge at a five-pointed, off-kilter star deliberately far from the notion of center. The tiles inscribe skewed triangles and irregular four or five-sided geometric shapes. This park makes a deliberate statement about beauty and order, reminding me of the Wallace Stevens line, “The Imperfect is our Paradise.” Inside is a pause outside the ordinary. Though all sides have low boundaries, no glance in any direction gives up the secret of its size and shape. Peripheral vision is quiet on the subject, making no guesses.
A woman with silver hair and red shoes scribbles in a notebook. Three brightly dressed girls take photos of a baby sitting on a bench. A pregnant woman listens to music through headphones.
An organic breathing space offering the privacy of intimate public rooms, this botanical sanctuary presents two objects for visual convergence. One is a bronze head on a large, slightly irregular stone block. The other is a water-pocked stone in the shape and size of two horses kneeling nose to nose. Formed of elements and momentum, the stones beckon like evidence.
I am still . . . sitting . . . and then . . . the flutes draw my themes onward.
The park takes another breath and recomposes space and time around the flight of a single white butterfly.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Travel Anxiety #1: Zip it Up!
Travel anxiety takes many forms. We are packing for a two-week trip to China and three months at our cottage in Rhode Island. I am very familiar with the many forms of travel anxiety this week! One form is a manic energy for doing laundry, for packing pretzels and nuts into ziplock bags, and for watching whole seasons of Scandal on demand. The mirror image of this is a deep lethargy brought on by the long list of phone calls to make, including stopping two newspaper deliveries and checking in with our credit card security department so they won’t cancel the card upon seeing charges in two or three countries while we are in transit. The confusion of packing for Nanjing—sometimes referred to as one of the “little ovens” of China—along with cool nights in Rhode Island, and a wedding in New York has my head spinning. I’m packing tee shirts made in China to bring for our Chinese host’s new baby. I’m trying to guess what sandals I’ll want to wear on an evening a month from now.
My husband and I are book people. Before we both had Kindles and iPads, we packed three or four heavy paperback books to read and exchange. Now we shop the online store and load up the e-readers with books recommended by our friends and hope that we’ll always find an outlet (and our cords and adapters) when we need a charge to keep us supplied with our psycho-literary fix. The thought of being delayed somewhere without a book . . . that's anxiety!
I have a new four-wheeler suitcase. My old, bright red two-wheeler has been roughed around for six or seven years. I’ve been envying the four-wheelers for some time. These pieces of luggage seem to float along beside the travelers allowing a side approach for narrow passages (into bathroom stalls, for example) and easily gliding to a front-on stance facing the counter of the newsstand when purchasing Reese’s Pieces or The Atlantic Monthly before a flight. An ache in my shoulder and back from pulling my two-wheeler with an accessory backpack through airports hastened this upgrade.
My new suitcase has three shallow zippered compartments on its topside, a zippered main compartment, and one of those expansion zippers that increase the depth of the bag by another two inches. My back pack has three zippered compartments and a small front mesh pouch, also with a zipper. I’m not even counting the zippers on the insides of both bags, or the zippers in my wallet and cosmetics case, or the quart-size ziplock bag with my travel liquids. Let’s say, I have about a dozen or more zipped areas available for expressing my travel anxiety. And that’s not even counting my Eddie Bauer “SPORT” slacks with 4 zippered pockets. Travel anxiety? When asked, I will deny it. When observed, I will fake it. I love to travel, so why am I creating so much activity around the contents of all the little segmented compartments of my baggage?
My checking and rechecking of the stuff in all of these sections and partitions approaches an OCD symphony. Dollar bills for the water machine? Bandaids and tea bags? Slippers, pajamas, pens, pencils, paper? Phone charger, camera charger, extra batteries? Even at the airport, finally relaxing with a cup of hot tea, I’m unzipping, zipping, and checking little side pockets and pouches to find my travel notebook, Dramamine just in case, and the tiny card that has the codes for remote accessing my home phone voice mail. And this is all before entering the security line! After going through the strip search of airport security, there is no turning back and my anxiety muscles begin to flex for the new challenges ahead!
My husband and I are book people. Before we both had Kindles and iPads, we packed three or four heavy paperback books to read and exchange. Now we shop the online store and load up the e-readers with books recommended by our friends and hope that we’ll always find an outlet (and our cords and adapters) when we need a charge to keep us supplied with our psycho-literary fix. The thought of being delayed somewhere without a book . . . that's anxiety!
I have a new four-wheeler suitcase. My old, bright red two-wheeler has been roughed around for six or seven years. I’ve been envying the four-wheelers for some time. These pieces of luggage seem to float along beside the travelers allowing a side approach for narrow passages (into bathroom stalls, for example) and easily gliding to a front-on stance facing the counter of the newsstand when purchasing Reese’s Pieces or The Atlantic Monthly before a flight. An ache in my shoulder and back from pulling my two-wheeler with an accessory backpack through airports hastened this upgrade.
My new suitcase has three shallow zippered compartments on its topside, a zippered main compartment, and one of those expansion zippers that increase the depth of the bag by another two inches. My back pack has three zippered compartments and a small front mesh pouch, also with a zipper. I’m not even counting the zippers on the insides of both bags, or the zippers in my wallet and cosmetics case, or the quart-size ziplock bag with my travel liquids. Let’s say, I have about a dozen or more zipped areas available for expressing my travel anxiety. And that’s not even counting my Eddie Bauer “SPORT” slacks with 4 zippered pockets. Travel anxiety? When asked, I will deny it. When observed, I will fake it. I love to travel, so why am I creating so much activity around the contents of all the little segmented compartments of my baggage?
My checking and rechecking of the stuff in all of these sections and partitions approaches an OCD symphony. Dollar bills for the water machine? Bandaids and tea bags? Slippers, pajamas, pens, pencils, paper? Phone charger, camera charger, extra batteries? Even at the airport, finally relaxing with a cup of hot tea, I’m unzipping, zipping, and checking little side pockets and pouches to find my travel notebook, Dramamine just in case, and the tiny card that has the codes for remote accessing my home phone voice mail. And this is all before entering the security line! After going through the strip search of airport security, there is no turning back and my anxiety muscles begin to flex for the new challenges ahead!
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Auracular Spaces #1: London and Libraries
I remember the first time I realized that there is an invisible mist or essence around me and other people, an aura of sorts. It looks like empty space, but it is inhabited with sensory receptors and meanings.
I was sitting in one of six chairs at a heavy oak table. My work was spread out in front of me, and my molecules and meanings were also spread out, maybe eight inches all around my body, maybe even farther. It must have been farther because when another person took a seat opposite me and began to spread out his work and his molecules and meanings, mine were disrupted. I tried to continue thinking, but my processes had been punctured. I made the reasonable request that the person move to another table and he was offended. That chair was empty, the space was free. Wasn’t it? No, it was most certainly occupied, though he could not see or believe that it was.
The image in my mind of what my aura looks like, if it could be seen, is something close to what we see in magnified images of zooplankton: an undulating misty gel that floats around my solid flesh and bone, spreading like a three dimensional halo with indistinct boundaries and a very delicate, sensitive skin just one scintilla thin.
That is just my personal space. There are many kinds of auracular spaces, both personal and communal; human and natural. There is also a resonance between the individual spaces and those larger spaces that are also filled with meanings and sensory experience. More than a resonance even, it is a visceral attraction, a kind of magnetic allure. We go to certain spaces—and we create certain types of spaces through architecture—that tickle and amplify the auracular sense.
In work-a-day life, the zooplankton don’t register in awareness and I’m not attuned to my aura while commuting from station to station. On the other hand, in wandering time and thinking time, the aura unfolds and glows with sensitivity . . .
We strolled up the Strand, past the Inns of Court to St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was closed, so we used the opportunity to have a bit of refreshment and conversation, and then took the tube to Westminster and enjoyed a leisurely stretch of time meandering around the tombs and chapels of the Abbey centered around the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor (c.1002-1066). Mosaics here date from 1268. Old cathedrals always evoke in me questions of sacred space: what architectural manifestations realize the worshipful thoughts of cultures and generations? What exactly were those populations worshiping, and why do we (I) visit these spaces in awe? Sacred space may be a species of what I am calling auracular space.
And a cathedral may be a species of human enclosure that seeks to replicate the experience of awe felt in some natural spaces. In his diary of 1832, the twenty-two year old Charles Darwin speaks of the rain forest of Brazil in these terms.
Whilst seated on a tree, & eating my luncheon in the sublime solitude of the forest, the pleasure I experience is unspeakable . . . . I can only add raptures to former raptures . . . . I was led by feelings ... to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul ... [W]hilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind. I well remember by conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/diary/1832.html
Human feats of soaring; enclosed space of stone or steel and glass are attempts to replicate that experience in human settlements. St. Chapelle in Paris filters light through colored glass to achieve a related effect, not soaring height, but visually intense and stimulating space. Is the effect of a place like Stonehenge thought to be the same? Was it an attempt to evoke other senses or to evoke spirit directly?
After Westminster we search out the underground Cabinet War Rooms where Churchill and his advisers spent the most dangerous days and nights of WWII. The rooms are preserved just as they were at the end of the war. Broadcasts of Churchill encouraging the citizens of England are tremendously moving in several rooms where photographs of the effects of German bombing surround the listener. Especially after seeing Copenhagen the previous evening, we can’t help but be awed by evidence of the devastation and extremity of war. In this space, I realize that I don’t fully appreciate my father’s perpetual retelling his landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day and liberating Europe with the First Infantry. This was the defining experience of his life.
Exhausted by so much concentrated viewing, listening, feeling, we take a respite in a low-ceilinged pub with another version of bitters and fish and chips and then return to our hotel for a rest and planning for the evening. By the time we get re-mobilized, a movie seems the best idea and we take a London cab (quite the luxury experience!) to see a film called The Last September about the final days of English imperialism in Ireland as “the troubles” were beginning to erupt. Some fine performances, but a very difficult script, confusing, gaps, etc. We walked home and found a late snack of hummus and nutty wheat bread at a local mini-mart just before closing.
We missed breakfast time at the hotel on Saturday morning, but that’s vacation! We walked to the nearby British Library and in far more beautiful, indeed inspiring, surroundings, had a brunch-time snack. This library, opened within the past two years, is a sacred space of a different kind. Its modern design wants a little exploring before full appreciation dawns on the explorer. The feature that transformed it from a building into a work of art for me was the six-story glass tower of books at its centre. Called “the King’s Library” this collection of 65,000 volumes from George III’s library is a stunningly beautiful, and yet practical, column that defines the core public space in the entire building. To be in the presence of this commitment to the history of human thought seems to me a kind of worship. I could sit here, in the fullness of this presence, and read and talk all day.
We spend deeply-felt time in the hushed and darkened manuscript room noting the qualities of documents such as the Magna Carta, the letter of King John listing the “liberties conceded by him to his subjects” in 1215, as well as many handwritten manuscripts of our favorite literary figures: Yeats, Joyce, Woolf, Auden, among others. In this room, you can put on headsets and press a button to listen to the recorded voice of many of the figures who did public broadcasts in the early years of radio. We both listened to Virginia Woolf’s broadcast from April 20, 1937 of an essay called “Craftsmanship.”
This power of suggestion is one of the most mysterious properties of words. . . . Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. . . . they are so stored with meanings, with memories . . .
[Words] hate anything that stamps them with one meaning or confines them to one attitude, for it is their nature to change. Perhaps that is their most striking peculiarity--their need of change. It is because the truth they try to catch is many-sided and they convey it by being themselves many-sided, flashing this way, then that. Thus they mean one thing to one person, another thing to another person; they are unintelligible to one generation, plain as a pikestaff to the next. And it is because of this complexity that they survive. (203, 206)
We also spent some time with a real printing press and heavy metal pieces of type in another room. We are both attracted to the physical object of “book” as an important experience rapidly diminishing in importance in our globalized world. What does it mean if the texture and subtleties of paper, color, and weight are no longer associated with the process of reading or learning? Does it mean anything? We have always been subject to changes in technology that have one generation lamenting the loss of their valued experiences while another embraces new modes and values. Some say we gain the very fullness of association that Virginia Woolf lauds through our new web-based technology where links create a finely threaded network of meanings, echoes, memories, and potential futures. Have we lost very much as we gain this speed of technological association? I think so. It feels different to experience the associations coming via synapse firing in one’s own brain than via hypertext links across the internet. Loss or gain, is anyone measuring this?
It was hard to leave the rich auracular space within the library that resonates at the same frequency as my own aura. Vincent and I had our first date in the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. He was sitting outside on the steps between the stone lions waiting for me, wearing a red shirt. I approached via 41st Street and saw him first. We sat beside one another in the main reading room for hours. The compatibility established in that afternoon will last us a lifetime.
I was sitting in one of six chairs at a heavy oak table. My work was spread out in front of me, and my molecules and meanings were also spread out, maybe eight inches all around my body, maybe even farther. It must have been farther because when another person took a seat opposite me and began to spread out his work and his molecules and meanings, mine were disrupted. I tried to continue thinking, but my processes had been punctured. I made the reasonable request that the person move to another table and he was offended. That chair was empty, the space was free. Wasn’t it? No, it was most certainly occupied, though he could not see or believe that it was.
The image in my mind of what my aura looks like, if it could be seen, is something close to what we see in magnified images of zooplankton: an undulating misty gel that floats around my solid flesh and bone, spreading like a three dimensional halo with indistinct boundaries and a very delicate, sensitive skin just one scintilla thin.
That is just my personal space. There are many kinds of auracular spaces, both personal and communal; human and natural. There is also a resonance between the individual spaces and those larger spaces that are also filled with meanings and sensory experience. More than a resonance even, it is a visceral attraction, a kind of magnetic allure. We go to certain spaces—and we create certain types of spaces through architecture—that tickle and amplify the auracular sense.
In work-a-day life, the zooplankton don’t register in awareness and I’m not attuned to my aura while commuting from station to station. On the other hand, in wandering time and thinking time, the aura unfolds and glows with sensitivity . . .
We strolled up the Strand, past the Inns of Court to St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was closed, so we used the opportunity to have a bit of refreshment and conversation, and then took the tube to Westminster and enjoyed a leisurely stretch of time meandering around the tombs and chapels of the Abbey centered around the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor (c.1002-1066). Mosaics here date from 1268. Old cathedrals always evoke in me questions of sacred space: what architectural manifestations realize the worshipful thoughts of cultures and generations? What exactly were those populations worshiping, and why do we (I) visit these spaces in awe? Sacred space may be a species of what I am calling auracular space.
And a cathedral may be a species of human enclosure that seeks to replicate the experience of awe felt in some natural spaces. In his diary of 1832, the twenty-two year old Charles Darwin speaks of the rain forest of Brazil in these terms.
Whilst seated on a tree, & eating my luncheon in the sublime solitude of the forest, the pleasure I experience is unspeakable . . . . I can only add raptures to former raptures . . . . I was led by feelings ... to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul ... [W]hilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind. I well remember by conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/diary/1832.html
Human feats of soaring; enclosed space of stone or steel and glass are attempts to replicate that experience in human settlements. St. Chapelle in Paris filters light through colored glass to achieve a related effect, not soaring height, but visually intense and stimulating space. Is the effect of a place like Stonehenge thought to be the same? Was it an attempt to evoke other senses or to evoke spirit directly?
After Westminster we search out the underground Cabinet War Rooms where Churchill and his advisers spent the most dangerous days and nights of WWII. The rooms are preserved just as they were at the end of the war. Broadcasts of Churchill encouraging the citizens of England are tremendously moving in several rooms where photographs of the effects of German bombing surround the listener. Especially after seeing Copenhagen the previous evening, we can’t help but be awed by evidence of the devastation and extremity of war. In this space, I realize that I don’t fully appreciate my father’s perpetual retelling his landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day and liberating Europe with the First Infantry. This was the defining experience of his life.
Exhausted by so much concentrated viewing, listening, feeling, we take a respite in a low-ceilinged pub with another version of bitters and fish and chips and then return to our hotel for a rest and planning for the evening. By the time we get re-mobilized, a movie seems the best idea and we take a London cab (quite the luxury experience!) to see a film called The Last September about the final days of English imperialism in Ireland as “the troubles” were beginning to erupt. Some fine performances, but a very difficult script, confusing, gaps, etc. We walked home and found a late snack of hummus and nutty wheat bread at a local mini-mart just before closing.
We missed breakfast time at the hotel on Saturday morning, but that’s vacation! We walked to the nearby British Library and in far more beautiful, indeed inspiring, surroundings, had a brunch-time snack. This library, opened within the past two years, is a sacred space of a different kind. Its modern design wants a little exploring before full appreciation dawns on the explorer. The feature that transformed it from a building into a work of art for me was the six-story glass tower of books at its centre. Called “the King’s Library” this collection of 65,000 volumes from George III’s library is a stunningly beautiful, and yet practical, column that defines the core public space in the entire building. To be in the presence of this commitment to the history of human thought seems to me a kind of worship. I could sit here, in the fullness of this presence, and read and talk all day.
We spend deeply-felt time in the hushed and darkened manuscript room noting the qualities of documents such as the Magna Carta, the letter of King John listing the “liberties conceded by him to his subjects” in 1215, as well as many handwritten manuscripts of our favorite literary figures: Yeats, Joyce, Woolf, Auden, among others. In this room, you can put on headsets and press a button to listen to the recorded voice of many of the figures who did public broadcasts in the early years of radio. We both listened to Virginia Woolf’s broadcast from April 20, 1937 of an essay called “Craftsmanship.”
This power of suggestion is one of the most mysterious properties of words. . . . Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. . . . they are so stored with meanings, with memories . . .
[Words] hate anything that stamps them with one meaning or confines them to one attitude, for it is their nature to change. Perhaps that is their most striking peculiarity--their need of change. It is because the truth they try to catch is many-sided and they convey it by being themselves many-sided, flashing this way, then that. Thus they mean one thing to one person, another thing to another person; they are unintelligible to one generation, plain as a pikestaff to the next. And it is because of this complexity that they survive. (203, 206)
We also spent some time with a real printing press and heavy metal pieces of type in another room. We are both attracted to the physical object of “book” as an important experience rapidly diminishing in importance in our globalized world. What does it mean if the texture and subtleties of paper, color, and weight are no longer associated with the process of reading or learning? Does it mean anything? We have always been subject to changes in technology that have one generation lamenting the loss of their valued experiences while another embraces new modes and values. Some say we gain the very fullness of association that Virginia Woolf lauds through our new web-based technology where links create a finely threaded network of meanings, echoes, memories, and potential futures. Have we lost very much as we gain this speed of technological association? I think so. It feels different to experience the associations coming via synapse firing in one’s own brain than via hypertext links across the internet. Loss or gain, is anyone measuring this?
It was hard to leave the rich auracular space within the library that resonates at the same frequency as my own aura. Vincent and I had our first date in the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. He was sitting outside on the steps between the stone lions waiting for me, wearing a red shirt. I approached via 41st Street and saw him first. We sat beside one another in the main reading room for hours. The compatibility established in that afternoon will last us a lifetime.
Friday, May 3, 2013
One Foot On the Ground
What comes to mind when you hear the phrase, “one foot on the ground”?
“Where is the other foot?”
In a literal sense, the other foot might be poised in the air, in liminal space, neither here nor there but utterly capable of landing fore or aft, higher or lower. The literal quickly gives way to the metaphorical, however, and I begin to imagine that other foot in seven-league boots at the end of a telescoping leg worthy of Dr. Seuss and extending across several pages to land quite anywhere in this galaxy or another.
Well, that isn’t exactly my story!
I have strong roots in several specific places and I love my home and family, but there have been times when I’ve been beguiled by the idea of reincarnation. At those times, I have felt strongly that my spirit sailed with explorers on uncharted seas. Seated at the very tip of the bow of a sailboat on a 360-degree plate of Atlantic Ocean, I tingled with the excitement of recognition. Maybe today we would make safe landfall, but if not, if never, this extraordinary elation might be enough. Sleeping out alone under the stars, albeit on my own farm, I felt the earth at my back and the deeply bright universe meeting me as surely as the familiar local views approaching through the windshield of my Prius. I would have lifted both feet willingly if my call to be taken by extraterrestrials had been answered in those nights.
I have one foot on the ground, a solid foundation for building a nest, loving children, and serving a community, but the other foot is a rambling rover. It has walked in heavy boots in the fresh furrow and in red high heels up and down the avenues. It has been tickled with my fancy for crossing bridges literally on foot, and humored my delight in walking down the middle of the street (not to be confused with the middle of the road). My itinerant foot has helped me cross many a line in the sand when that foot wasn't stuck in the mud or in my mouth.
It was on both my feet that I walked into the woods near Walden Pond where Henry David Thoreau created a small base for his peripatetic musings. With one foot on the ground, I appreciated his encouragement to keep the other firmly in the air along with scores of castles thriving in the celestial atmosphere. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
My nomadic foot has had a more profound influence on my career than its steadier mate. I embarked on an adult career path as a school teacher, one of the steadiest jobs in town. I heard my peers declare in our mid-twenties, “I have secured tenure and my own classroom, and I never need to do anything new for the rest of my life!” I nearly tripped over a foot bent on skipping off that path where a dim horizon spooled off slowly like a narrow rope.
Taking risk after risk walking in different shoes has rubbed my skin raw in some spots and built up calluses in others. There were some years when I willingly soaked both feet in lukewarm water and rested for the next incitement. Fortunately, we now have a term for the zig-zag career path I’ve had a hard time defending as an early adopter. This generation of workers who build skill sets that can be transported across professions is called “Generation Flux.” All in all, I’ve felt extremely fortunate to work and walk in locations as diverse as farm fields, hospital corridors, classrooms, and Rockefeller Center with people ranging in age from pre-school to the 95-year-old senior partners in a NYC law firm.
These essays are witness to life when my rambling foot has been ascendant, taking me around the block, over the mountain, or to another continent. It is written in a state of mind produced when—shoelaces, buckles, and velcro be damned—that foot has been given free rein to lead me a merry chase down a grassy lane, subway steps, jetway, or simply along a train of thought. My walking foot adopted a motto from Thoreau and infused my life with it: “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life . . . and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
I’ve been on a journey—not entirely footloose, but not tethered or blindfolded either—and these are the souvenirs that I’ve collected along the way. Some are as ephemeral as the rainbow I embraced with naked arms in an outdoor shower, and some are the same souvenirs that you carry with you because every time I put one foot forward, my human experience is both similar to and different than yours. This is not a chronological narrative of one or even of several travel adventures, but you will find many stories and anecdotes where vivid characters will do a holographic dance in front of your eyes. Behind your eyes, I hope you will experience the curiosity and wonder of not knowing where that foot will land next, and maybe even feel the tingle in your own mobile appendage.
“Where is the other foot?”
In a literal sense, the other foot might be poised in the air, in liminal space, neither here nor there but utterly capable of landing fore or aft, higher or lower. The literal quickly gives way to the metaphorical, however, and I begin to imagine that other foot in seven-league boots at the end of a telescoping leg worthy of Dr. Seuss and extending across several pages to land quite anywhere in this galaxy or another.
Well, that isn’t exactly my story!
I have strong roots in several specific places and I love my home and family, but there have been times when I’ve been beguiled by the idea of reincarnation. At those times, I have felt strongly that my spirit sailed with explorers on uncharted seas. Seated at the very tip of the bow of a sailboat on a 360-degree plate of Atlantic Ocean, I tingled with the excitement of recognition. Maybe today we would make safe landfall, but if not, if never, this extraordinary elation might be enough. Sleeping out alone under the stars, albeit on my own farm, I felt the earth at my back and the deeply bright universe meeting me as surely as the familiar local views approaching through the windshield of my Prius. I would have lifted both feet willingly if my call to be taken by extraterrestrials had been answered in those nights.
I have one foot on the ground, a solid foundation for building a nest, loving children, and serving a community, but the other foot is a rambling rover. It has walked in heavy boots in the fresh furrow and in red high heels up and down the avenues. It has been tickled with my fancy for crossing bridges literally on foot, and humored my delight in walking down the middle of the street (not to be confused with the middle of the road). My itinerant foot has helped me cross many a line in the sand when that foot wasn't stuck in the mud or in my mouth.
It was on both my feet that I walked into the woods near Walden Pond where Henry David Thoreau created a small base for his peripatetic musings. With one foot on the ground, I appreciated his encouragement to keep the other firmly in the air along with scores of castles thriving in the celestial atmosphere. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
My nomadic foot has had a more profound influence on my career than its steadier mate. I embarked on an adult career path as a school teacher, one of the steadiest jobs in town. I heard my peers declare in our mid-twenties, “I have secured tenure and my own classroom, and I never need to do anything new for the rest of my life!” I nearly tripped over a foot bent on skipping off that path where a dim horizon spooled off slowly like a narrow rope.
Taking risk after risk walking in different shoes has rubbed my skin raw in some spots and built up calluses in others. There were some years when I willingly soaked both feet in lukewarm water and rested for the next incitement. Fortunately, we now have a term for the zig-zag career path I’ve had a hard time defending as an early adopter. This generation of workers who build skill sets that can be transported across professions is called “Generation Flux.” All in all, I’ve felt extremely fortunate to work and walk in locations as diverse as farm fields, hospital corridors, classrooms, and Rockefeller Center with people ranging in age from pre-school to the 95-year-old senior partners in a NYC law firm.
These essays are witness to life when my rambling foot has been ascendant, taking me around the block, over the mountain, or to another continent. It is written in a state of mind produced when—shoelaces, buckles, and velcro be damned—that foot has been given free rein to lead me a merry chase down a grassy lane, subway steps, jetway, or simply along a train of thought. My walking foot adopted a motto from Thoreau and infused my life with it: “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life . . . and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
I’ve been on a journey—not entirely footloose, but not tethered or blindfolded either—and these are the souvenirs that I’ve collected along the way. Some are as ephemeral as the rainbow I embraced with naked arms in an outdoor shower, and some are the same souvenirs that you carry with you because every time I put one foot forward, my human experience is both similar to and different than yours. This is not a chronological narrative of one or even of several travel adventures, but you will find many stories and anecdotes where vivid characters will do a holographic dance in front of your eyes. Behind your eyes, I hope you will experience the curiosity and wonder of not knowing where that foot will land next, and maybe even feel the tingle in your own mobile appendage.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Kayak Chronicle #2
After yesterday’s rain there was bright sun, crisp air, and a stiff breeze on the water at 7:45 a.m. I pointed my boat up river into the wind—choosing to have the “uphill battle” while I’m fresh and then glide easily home afterwards. This choice might just be a life strategy, too. I can see it more clearly on the river than anywhere else.
Today I paddled farther than ever before, stretching to go a little bit farther, just to see what’s there. I went far enough to see three blue chairs poised between the white birch shade and the water shadows. Those three blue chairs could become a destination in themselves, but today I went beyond the chairs to see the dock with the fairy lights.
Note to family with “MELENEY” painted in block letters on a float north of Edgewater beach, just off the beach in your own neighborhood: “Your sailboat—RI0334S—is restless. What do you think it is doing when you are not looking? Do you think it is resting peacefully just off shore waiting blankly for you to return? It is not. Your boat is restless. It pivots gracefully around the tether like a young horse, golden in the early morning light. The other sailboats are resting; your boat is not.”
Watching the little ripples on the water gives no clue whatsoever to the random movements of this boat. The breeze holds steadily from one direction and yet the filly swings her head to a different drummer. She is restless and yet, she is also thoughtful and deliberate. And unpredictable, so I keep my distance. Perhaps I seem the same to her or to any other observer—a blank entity, resting on a paddle, floating in the current? But I am most active and alive, filled with intentions and processes. If asked, “What are you doing just sitting there?” I would say, “I am writing a book.”
I balance the paddle across my boat and let go to see what happens next. If home is at 12 o’clock and the direction I’m heading now is toward 6 o’clock, the head of my boat swings counterclockwise slowly to 11 o’clock, silently unwinding me.
No ducks today.
A few days ago I took my own storm to the water and paddled uphill in both directions. There was a stiff wind, but my internal turbulence trumped its force. “What puzzle did I bring to the water, hoping for a solution by throwing my being into propulsion?”
Learning to share is a lesson we repeat over and over for toddlers and children, but as adults we need to keep learning it over and over as well. As the oldest of five children, forced by circumstances to share everything, I may be more sensitive than others. Sharing is more complex than we think, and out on the water in my own initiative, I can contemplate sharing at a safe distance. It calls for mountain climbing effort to reach the peak where a gift is set entirely free from expectations, and all inconveniences are forgiven. I find myself caught in a misty humid morning at sea level. I brought no joy; I found no meaning.
Today I paddled farther than ever before, stretching to go a little bit farther, just to see what’s there. I went far enough to see three blue chairs poised between the white birch shade and the water shadows. Those three blue chairs could become a destination in themselves, but today I went beyond the chairs to see the dock with the fairy lights.
Note to family with “MELENEY” painted in block letters on a float north of Edgewater beach, just off the beach in your own neighborhood: “Your sailboat—RI0334S—is restless. What do you think it is doing when you are not looking? Do you think it is resting peacefully just off shore waiting blankly for you to return? It is not. Your boat is restless. It pivots gracefully around the tether like a young horse, golden in the early morning light. The other sailboats are resting; your boat is not.”
Watching the little ripples on the water gives no clue whatsoever to the random movements of this boat. The breeze holds steadily from one direction and yet the filly swings her head to a different drummer. She is restless and yet, she is also thoughtful and deliberate. And unpredictable, so I keep my distance. Perhaps I seem the same to her or to any other observer—a blank entity, resting on a paddle, floating in the current? But I am most active and alive, filled with intentions and processes. If asked, “What are you doing just sitting there?” I would say, “I am writing a book.”
I balance the paddle across my boat and let go to see what happens next. If home is at 12 o’clock and the direction I’m heading now is toward 6 o’clock, the head of my boat swings counterclockwise slowly to 11 o’clock, silently unwinding me.
No ducks today.
A few days ago I took my own storm to the water and paddled uphill in both directions. There was a stiff wind, but my internal turbulence trumped its force. “What puzzle did I bring to the water, hoping for a solution by throwing my being into propulsion?”
Learning to share is a lesson we repeat over and over for toddlers and children, but as adults we need to keep learning it over and over as well. As the oldest of five children, forced by circumstances to share everything, I may be more sensitive than others. Sharing is more complex than we think, and out on the water in my own initiative, I can contemplate sharing at a safe distance. It calls for mountain climbing effort to reach the peak where a gift is set entirely free from expectations, and all inconveniences are forgiven. I find myself caught in a misty humid morning at sea level. I brought no joy; I found no meaning.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Driving in Italy
The seaside community of Fano was described as a “sleepy little town” in our guide book, but we found it to be fairly large with energetic crowds of vacationers and vigorous street life. In fact, from our room at Hotel Roma, Viale Dante Alighieri, we were immersed in street life for about twenty hours a day! Just as we thought things were calming down around 3 a.m. on our first night, there was a horrendous metallic crash just outside our window. We were surprised not to hear shouting from the drivers involved (a crash sound is always followed by shouting in our experience). In the morning, litter from the event and a crumpled guard rail remained as evidence of the nocturnal collision. On our second day we were sitting at an outdoor café less than a block away when we witnessed another accident on the same corner. Needless to say, our departure from the hotel in a rented car was rather stressful given the record of one accident per day on that corner!!
After a long morning walk north along the waterfront of Fano, we departed with vague directions for reaching Urbino. Driving in Italy requires quick decisions based on sketchy information. Everyone else knows where they are going, and there are far too many traffic circles! We are used to 4-way stop signs or traffic lights. Even though I know that traffic circles are demonstrably safer than, say left turns against oncoming traffic, I still prefer the full stop to the ambiguous glide. It seems to me that traffic circles bring on a collective, and very literal, agoraphobia.
Highways in Italy are kind to the landscape. They are built with many bridges and tunnels in order to accommodate the hills and valleys. These roads seem soft, unlike those where a bulldozer rearranges the earth to make a straight new thoroughfare.
Urbino’s signature is “Emozioni in forma di città,” and we learned it the hard way. The drive from Fano to Urbino seemed quick compared with the time it took us to locate the conference site once we arrived! We quickly found the location of the “Seven Deadly Sins” meeting we had attended eleven years before at the Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo, but that entire campus is now under construction. That didn’t hinder people from sending us to three or four buildings based entirely on rumors. An hour later, when two recommendations converged on the fact that we needed to go to another campus 5 km out of town, we were not surprised, but were disappointed that we would not be within walking distance of Urbino.
The Sogesta campus is isolated from any village by 5 km of very steep, curvy, narrow roads. Even after we found the main building, it was difficult to find the registration desk for the conference. On the other hand we were able to register for our room right away and discovered that it was air conditioned!! We both remembered a torrid room facing the afternoon sun at the other campus.
I had a wonderful pranzo in the cafeteria (chicken, vegetables, salad, fruit, wine) and then took a nap. I hope to do the same every day! Being isolated on this campus all day was frustrating, so we decided to take an excursion to Fermignano, reportedly closer than Urbino. As we approached a stop sign just outside the town, I shouted to Vincent to stop, and so he did, causing the car behind to hit us.
The driver got out and began shouting at us in Italian. When Vincent got out of our car, looking a little dazed and confused, the other driver got progressively more and more angry at my husband’s silence. Finally, after two long minutes of this shouting and pointing, I regained the presence of mind to say, “No capisce Italiano.” The formerly aggressive driver shifted his tone and began to apologize (I think). Vincent and I were both shaken by this episode although neither car was damaged at all. We tried to go to a grocery store in Fermignano, which, of course, was closed, so we cautiously drove right back to the campus parking lot and went to our room to compose ourselves before dinner. I felt a little like a character in the short story, “The Appointment in Samarra” by Somerset Maugham. After all of our efforts to avoid the “crash-a-day” we witnessed in Fano, “fate” followed us all the way to Urbino, and came close enough to give us a fright!
We had a very nice dinner on campus with our friends, and found a ride into Urbino for a nightcap afterwards. Vincent offered to drive, but fortunately someone else won that joust. We sat outside a café in the Piazza de la Republica, drinking Campari while water sparkled from the fountain like a curtain of jewels.
After a long morning walk north along the waterfront of Fano, we departed with vague directions for reaching Urbino. Driving in Italy requires quick decisions based on sketchy information. Everyone else knows where they are going, and there are far too many traffic circles! We are used to 4-way stop signs or traffic lights. Even though I know that traffic circles are demonstrably safer than, say left turns against oncoming traffic, I still prefer the full stop to the ambiguous glide. It seems to me that traffic circles bring on a collective, and very literal, agoraphobia.
Highways in Italy are kind to the landscape. They are built with many bridges and tunnels in order to accommodate the hills and valleys. These roads seem soft, unlike those where a bulldozer rearranges the earth to make a straight new thoroughfare.
Urbino’s signature is “Emozioni in forma di città,” and we learned it the hard way. The drive from Fano to Urbino seemed quick compared with the time it took us to locate the conference site once we arrived! We quickly found the location of the “Seven Deadly Sins” meeting we had attended eleven years before at the Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo, but that entire campus is now under construction. That didn’t hinder people from sending us to three or four buildings based entirely on rumors. An hour later, when two recommendations converged on the fact that we needed to go to another campus 5 km out of town, we were not surprised, but were disappointed that we would not be within walking distance of Urbino.
The Sogesta campus is isolated from any village by 5 km of very steep, curvy, narrow roads. Even after we found the main building, it was difficult to find the registration desk for the conference. On the other hand we were able to register for our room right away and discovered that it was air conditioned!! We both remembered a torrid room facing the afternoon sun at the other campus.
I had a wonderful pranzo in the cafeteria (chicken, vegetables, salad, fruit, wine) and then took a nap. I hope to do the same every day! Being isolated on this campus all day was frustrating, so we decided to take an excursion to Fermignano, reportedly closer than Urbino. As we approached a stop sign just outside the town, I shouted to Vincent to stop, and so he did, causing the car behind to hit us.
The driver got out and began shouting at us in Italian. When Vincent got out of our car, looking a little dazed and confused, the other driver got progressively more and more angry at my husband’s silence. Finally, after two long minutes of this shouting and pointing, I regained the presence of mind to say, “No capisce Italiano.” The formerly aggressive driver shifted his tone and began to apologize (I think). Vincent and I were both shaken by this episode although neither car was damaged at all. We tried to go to a grocery store in Fermignano, which, of course, was closed, so we cautiously drove right back to the campus parking lot and went to our room to compose ourselves before dinner. I felt a little like a character in the short story, “The Appointment in Samarra” by Somerset Maugham. After all of our efforts to avoid the “crash-a-day” we witnessed in Fano, “fate” followed us all the way to Urbino, and came close enough to give us a fright!
We had a very nice dinner on campus with our friends, and found a ride into Urbino for a nightcap afterwards. Vincent offered to drive, but fortunately someone else won that joust. We sat outside a café in the Piazza de la Republica, drinking Campari while water sparkled from the fountain like a curtain of jewels.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
I Love Maps!
I love maps. Maps are affordable gateways to movement and transformation; the intrinsic pleasure of stretching out an arm and reaching deep into the universe to grasp a star or a starfish. They are finite in shape, size, and data, but infinite as sinkholes into a jungle, desert, city, pyramid, marketplace, river, cave, museum, tundra, or fireside. Love of maps is similar to love of travel, and Pico Iyer describes that joy as “the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle.” (www.salon.com, March 18, 2000).
I love maps. When I taught seventh grade in my twenties, I petitioned AAA to donate a classroom set of USA road maps. I created individual student assignments to write directions from, say, Ypisilanti, Michigan to Portola, California. Each student would slowly read his or her directions while everyone else traced the route at their own desks. The goal was to skillfully guide everyone in the class from the starting point to the destination. It was a lot of fun, everyone participated, and I hope they learned something about giving (and following) directions! When my own two children were about middle school age, we bought a white van, customized it with a plywood seat/convertible bed, and set out across the country. Each day, one of the kids would be in charge of maps and directions, letting us know where we were, how far to the next destination, what crossroads or major intersections we should encounter, etc. That was a long car trip for young adolescents and I devised quite a few activities in addition to maps to occupy them through long stretches between territorial targets. There were no seatbelts in the van, the air conditioning stopped functioning before we hit Texas, and we had more than a few battles over who sleeps in the tent vs. the van!
I love maps. Several years after being lost on a highway near the wrong Las Vegas, I was clutching a subway map and learning the byways of Manhattan. One of my first assignments upon joining a small publishing house at the very bottom of the pecking order was to go to the map room of the New York Public Library and identify maps for a book called Christianity Comes to the Americas. It was a plum of a mission; I was the proverbial “kid in a candy store.” With the authority of being “on assignment,” I looked at many more maps than necessary, completely fascinated by early perspectives of territory and experience. I recently came across this quote attributed to Christopher Columbus, “For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.” (www.brainyquote.com) Columbus does not, however, disavow using stories which long-preceded maps as inspiration for exploration. Philosopher Michel de Certeau comments on the evolution of present day maps from narratives. “Maps of medieval times, which were really illustrated stories telling of journeys made and of memorable encounters along the way, were gradually supplanted during the early history of modernity by spatial representations of the earth’s surface.”*
I love maps. While I am out in the world spinning my own narrative thread, I often integrate a variety of maps. I superimpose maps one on another: for example, a simple grid marked only with numbers keyed to an index of site names is superimposed in my mind with a full color map that has little pictures of churches, monuments, tramcars, fountains, ships, etc. On a trip to Helsinki, Finland, I collected and carried around four maps: a guidebook map cut with a razor out of the big fat travel book, a color grid of streets, a tram map superimposed over light grey streets, and a sketch of the city with destinations of interest highlighted. I studied my maps frequently, seeking the layered knowledge of the city they offered. I was a visitor to Helsinki, but when a city dweller knows her or his city, it becomes a series of layered internalized maps, many more than my four maps of Helsinki. For example, one layer would be a map of daily routines; another might be be a map of significant sites in this person’s life as lived in this city.
I love maps! My most recent map purchase is a world map called, “What’s Up? South!” by ODT, Inc. It is based on the simple premise that our typical representation of north at the top of a map is somewhat arbitrary. How strange and unfamiliar the continents look when the whole scheme is reversed! I should have learned this lesson years ago from my favorite Sesame Street animation and jingle, “That’s about the size of it.” It’s a lesson about relative sizes to be sure, but the refrain of “where you put your eyes” is significant when considering the perspective of a snail versus the whole universe, and those of us wandering in between, both near and far.
*According to Tim Ingold (“Up, Across, and Along” p. 48, accessed online at http://www.spacesyntax.tudelft.nl//media/Long%20papers%20I/tim%20ingold.pdf) who reports on de Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life. 1984: 120-1)
I love maps. When I taught seventh grade in my twenties, I petitioned AAA to donate a classroom set of USA road maps. I created individual student assignments to write directions from, say, Ypisilanti, Michigan to Portola, California. Each student would slowly read his or her directions while everyone else traced the route at their own desks. The goal was to skillfully guide everyone in the class from the starting point to the destination. It was a lot of fun, everyone participated, and I hope they learned something about giving (and following) directions! When my own two children were about middle school age, we bought a white van, customized it with a plywood seat/convertible bed, and set out across the country. Each day, one of the kids would be in charge of maps and directions, letting us know where we were, how far to the next destination, what crossroads or major intersections we should encounter, etc. That was a long car trip for young adolescents and I devised quite a few activities in addition to maps to occupy them through long stretches between territorial targets. There were no seatbelts in the van, the air conditioning stopped functioning before we hit Texas, and we had more than a few battles over who sleeps in the tent vs. the van!
I love maps. Several years after being lost on a highway near the wrong Las Vegas, I was clutching a subway map and learning the byways of Manhattan. One of my first assignments upon joining a small publishing house at the very bottom of the pecking order was to go to the map room of the New York Public Library and identify maps for a book called Christianity Comes to the Americas. It was a plum of a mission; I was the proverbial “kid in a candy store.” With the authority of being “on assignment,” I looked at many more maps than necessary, completely fascinated by early perspectives of territory and experience. I recently came across this quote attributed to Christopher Columbus, “For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.” (www.brainyquote.com) Columbus does not, however, disavow using stories which long-preceded maps as inspiration for exploration. Philosopher Michel de Certeau comments on the evolution of present day maps from narratives. “Maps of medieval times, which were really illustrated stories telling of journeys made and of memorable encounters along the way, were gradually supplanted during the early history of modernity by spatial representations of the earth’s surface.”*
I love maps. While I am out in the world spinning my own narrative thread, I often integrate a variety of maps. I superimpose maps one on another: for example, a simple grid marked only with numbers keyed to an index of site names is superimposed in my mind with a full color map that has little pictures of churches, monuments, tramcars, fountains, ships, etc. On a trip to Helsinki, Finland, I collected and carried around four maps: a guidebook map cut with a razor out of the big fat travel book, a color grid of streets, a tram map superimposed over light grey streets, and a sketch of the city with destinations of interest highlighted. I studied my maps frequently, seeking the layered knowledge of the city they offered. I was a visitor to Helsinki, but when a city dweller knows her or his city, it becomes a series of layered internalized maps, many more than my four maps of Helsinki. For example, one layer would be a map of daily routines; another might be be a map of significant sites in this person’s life as lived in this city.
I love maps! My most recent map purchase is a world map called, “What’s Up? South!” by ODT, Inc. It is based on the simple premise that our typical representation of north at the top of a map is somewhat arbitrary. How strange and unfamiliar the continents look when the whole scheme is reversed! I should have learned this lesson years ago from my favorite Sesame Street animation and jingle, “That’s about the size of it.” It’s a lesson about relative sizes to be sure, but the refrain of “where you put your eyes” is significant when considering the perspective of a snail versus the whole universe, and those of us wandering in between, both near and far.
*According to Tim Ingold (“Up, Across, and Along” p. 48, accessed online at http://www.spacesyntax.tudelft.nl//media/Long%20papers%20I/tim%20ingold.pdf) who reports on de Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life. 1984: 120-1)
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Kayak Chronicle (#1)
When my father died at age 91 in April of 2012, I received a small inheritance from the sale of the house that held nearly all of the life wealth of my parents. My brother Andrew, the executor of his will, hosted the five sibling beneficiaries on the anniversary of Dad’s landing on Omaha Beach, and wrote a check for each of us. I knew that my parents—my mother in particular—would have wanted me to appreciate at least part of this inter-generational gift through some adventure, transforming the solid foundations of home into flight, laughter, and new horizons. As I drove for three hours from New York to Rhode Island, toward a little blue cottage on Narrow River, the kayak bloomed into my life.
About a month later, on the very day that the mango-and-flame-colored boat was delivered, a Friday, my husband Vincent helped me attach the little wheeled contraption to one end to roll the boat down to our neighborhood beach to launch it. This was the first water craft that either of us had owned. We each wobbled around on the water for about twenty minutes while the other watched from shore. It was an awkward birth.
The next afternoon, Vincent delivered me to the beach and then went home. I spent about an hour paddling up and down about twenty feet off the shoreline. It was Saturday and there were weekend jet ski people and speedboat people out there making waves that rushed into collisions, multiplied, and collapsed into me. It was a lively scene from “Storm At Sea: The Kayak Disaster Movie.”
Skip Sunday and Monday.
On Tuesday, I intended to get up by 7 a.m. and try a new solution to the kayak transportation issue. I wanted to be completely independent in moving my kayak from the driveway to the beach and back again. If I am dependent, I know I won’t be going to the river as often. I created an auxiliary transportation device out of our son’s skateboard taped with bubble wrap as a cushion to protect both the board and the boat. Bungee cords from Ocean State Job Lots and an old green towel completed the scheme. After testing on the driveway, I abandoned the ragamuffinly, towel-ends-dragging contrivance and arranged another assist from my patient husband. I vowed to give this another try when it was not 90 degrees out. After all this, I forgot my paddle at home and had to walk back to get it.
When I finally got out on the water, it was approaching 9 am and the sun was shining unabashedly. The water was still and green, thick and opaque. My paddles and a black duck created only the slightest turbulence. Once I got into a rhythm of not dipping too deep, I found myself gliding with minimal “point oscillation” (front end of kayak pointing left and right as I dipped the paddle on opposite sides of the boat). Finally, I understood what salespeople were saying about my 9-foot boat being very stable, and that the longer, thinner boats “track” better. Ah-h-h, yes!
No other boats were active that morning, save for a solitary motor boat with a standing driver racing inexplicably up and down a short section of the river for about fifteen minutes. The wake from this boat reached me in sheets of flexible mirrored surfaces. I let my boat face the curves coming at us quietly like “shining from shook foil.” Not long after, the intense sun chased me back to my beach and a call for help to get home.
On Wednesday morning I set my alarm clock for 7 a.m. and, even so, the sun was up way before me. I remembered the paddle, but almost forgot the cellphone and life jacket! I was on the water by 7:30 a.m. and found that I could comfortably trace the shade along the east bank of the river where tall trees would hold slumbering shadows in their arms for another hour or so.
Alone with black ducks (Anas rubripes) and dragonflies (Anisoptera), this fourth expedition was the experience I had been hoping for . . . gliding without knowing effort; floating without sensing weight; and just being a bundle of elements continuous with elements above and below, inside and outside.
I set myself the challenge of sliding between two buoys on which serene black ducks were perched. I focused on not hitting the sides of the boat with the paddle, not splashing, not making any noise at all. Slowly, I drifted between the ducks without making eye contact. If I don’t make eye contact, I don’t exist. For one brief instant while crossing the line between two ducks contemplating morning, I became a black duck looking at the same quiet water, feeling the same light breeze ruffle my feathers.
Shortly after I crossed that line, the duck on my right broke the spell, lifted off the float, and skimmed in a wide arc through liminal space; not quite air, not quite water. I placed my palms flat on the water on both sides of my boat-skin and felt a synesthesia of temperature and texture: air . . . water . . . thick, warm, deep: breathing water; floating on air; which is which, both . . . and . . . I am, I am.
When my father died at age 91 in April of 2012, I received a small inheritance from the sale of the house that held nearly all of the life wealth of my parents. My brother Andrew, the executor of his will, hosted the five sibling beneficiaries on the anniversary of Dad’s landing on Omaha Beach, and wrote a check for each of us. I knew that my parents—my mother in particular—would have wanted me to appreciate at least part of this inter-generational gift through some adventure, transforming the solid foundations of home into flight, laughter, and new horizons. As I drove for three hours from New York to Rhode Island, toward a little blue cottage on Narrow River, the kayak bloomed into my life.
About a month later, on the very day that the mango-and-flame-colored boat was delivered, a Friday, my husband Vincent helped me attach the little wheeled contraption to one end to roll the boat down to our neighborhood beach to launch it. This was the first water craft that either of us had owned. We each wobbled around on the water for about twenty minutes while the other watched from shore. It was an awkward birth.
The next afternoon, Vincent delivered me to the beach and then went home. I spent about an hour paddling up and down about twenty feet off the shoreline. It was Saturday and there were weekend jet ski people and speedboat people out there making waves that rushed into collisions, multiplied, and collapsed into me. It was a lively scene from “Storm At Sea: The Kayak Disaster Movie.”
Skip Sunday and Monday.
On Tuesday, I intended to get up by 7 a.m. and try a new solution to the kayak transportation issue. I wanted to be completely independent in moving my kayak from the driveway to the beach and back again. If I am dependent, I know I won’t be going to the river as often. I created an auxiliary transportation device out of our son’s skateboard taped with bubble wrap as a cushion to protect both the board and the boat. Bungee cords from Ocean State Job Lots and an old green towel completed the scheme. After testing on the driveway, I abandoned the ragamuffinly, towel-ends-dragging contrivance and arranged another assist from my patient husband. I vowed to give this another try when it was not 90 degrees out. After all this, I forgot my paddle at home and had to walk back to get it.
When I finally got out on the water, it was approaching 9 am and the sun was shining unabashedly. The water was still and green, thick and opaque. My paddles and a black duck created only the slightest turbulence. Once I got into a rhythm of not dipping too deep, I found myself gliding with minimal “point oscillation” (front end of kayak pointing left and right as I dipped the paddle on opposite sides of the boat). Finally, I understood what salespeople were saying about my 9-foot boat being very stable, and that the longer, thinner boats “track” better. Ah-h-h, yes!
No other boats were active that morning, save for a solitary motor boat with a standing driver racing inexplicably up and down a short section of the river for about fifteen minutes. The wake from this boat reached me in sheets of flexible mirrored surfaces. I let my boat face the curves coming at us quietly like “shining from shook foil.” Not long after, the intense sun chased me back to my beach and a call for help to get home.
On Wednesday morning I set my alarm clock for 7 a.m. and, even so, the sun was up way before me. I remembered the paddle, but almost forgot the cellphone and life jacket! I was on the water by 7:30 a.m. and found that I could comfortably trace the shade along the east bank of the river where tall trees would hold slumbering shadows in their arms for another hour or so.
Alone with black ducks (Anas rubripes) and dragonflies (Anisoptera), this fourth expedition was the experience I had been hoping for . . . gliding without knowing effort; floating without sensing weight; and just being a bundle of elements continuous with elements above and below, inside and outside.
I set myself the challenge of sliding between two buoys on which serene black ducks were perched. I focused on not hitting the sides of the boat with the paddle, not splashing, not making any noise at all. Slowly, I drifted between the ducks without making eye contact. If I don’t make eye contact, I don’t exist. For one brief instant while crossing the line between two ducks contemplating morning, I became a black duck looking at the same quiet water, feeling the same light breeze ruffle my feathers.
Shortly after I crossed that line, the duck on my right broke the spell, lifted off the float, and skimmed in a wide arc through liminal space; not quite air, not quite water. I placed my palms flat on the water on both sides of my boat-skin and felt a synesthesia of temperature and texture: air . . . water . . . thick, warm, deep: breathing water; floating on air; which is which, both . . . and . . . I am, I am.
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