restingmotion

Two Prints

I recently rediscovered a photo I had taken at the opening of a new exhibition of contemporary prints at the Knoxville Museum of Art back at the end of January.  I returned to the museum this week to refresh my memory and perhaps to explore whether my thoughts had changed or evolved.  The exhibit is closing the end of this week, so I do recommend seeing it I you have a chance, although the works are part of the permanent collection and will resurface again. 

 

What I discovered is that thoughts and impressions do indeed change, but certain things do not.  The print I loved in January remains my favorite print of the lot, even though there are many fabulous prints, including examples by artists whose names are more well-known.  I am too old to think that this means anything significant.  My attraction to this print is not really about the quality of the print, although I do think it is masterfully done., All the prints are fascinating, and I am not qualified as a critic.  The fact that I am drawn to this particular work is as much about me and what I bring to the conversation as it is about the artist and the print itself. 

This is the print I loved, the print I still love, and I have actually been back to look at it on multiple occasions.  The print, titled Building,  is by James Surls.   I love the depth of it, which is imperfectly captured in this photograph.  Notice how the artist utilized both sides of the paper, so one sees depth to the print itself. Imagine the complexity of that process: these are not random bits on paper, the dual printing adds layers of complexity, but also enhances that sense of randomness I see in the print. But it is very hard to make something appear random, easier for nature than for orderly human brains. What I particularly like is the way it speaks to me of memory, of things past and things present, old and new and how our past shapes and organizes our perceptions of the present and the future.  This print speaks to me of home, of self, of holding on and also of letting go, and how we never quite manage either. Our pasts, our expectations, our experiences, shape us and are always there floating in our own personal ether, sometimes up front, sometimes further back, a part and parcel of who we are. And yet there is a certain sense of disruption here, of uprootedness.  One is grounded but just because who we are, our past, is always with us, does not mean we do not sometimes flounder, does not mean we have control over how we are shaped.

 

Oddly, this print also reminded me of another print, one I had seen at an exhibit at the McNay Museum in San Antonio back in August.   The prints are nothing alike.  The artists' work is nothing alike, and yet, even in this last visit to the Knoxville Museum, that connection came to mind, a connection not so much between the art itself as between the feelings the works evoke in this particular observer.

This print, titled Headed to the Promised Land, is by Juan Mora.  Where the first print was light and airy, this print is dark and heavy.  And yet, they both speak to experience and memory and the things we hold onto in the face of disruption.  Mora's prints, at least the ones at the exhibit in question address the experience of the immigrant, and this experience of holding onto culture and the past, while simultaneously being very uncertain about the future.   In both prints there is, at least to me, a sense of how the past and expectations shape our present, a tacit acknowledgement that who we are is shaped by all the bits and pieces of our lives.  Mora explores how we hold on to our pasts, explores fear, and the unsettledness of facing the unknown, acknowledging that we cannot imagine or seek the future, or even salvation, as separate from our fears and hopes, from the compounding of our experiences. And yet the bundle of the things that we deem necessary for life, for security,  also burdens us, and holds us down.  We must carry it with us, but we must also lighten our load, allow our stuff to fall by the wayside. If you look closely, you still find hope in this print, you still see that, although the things that we hold on to are both a part of who we are, it is not our baggage that will get us where we are going.

 

Two prints. Two cities.  Six months between my encounter with each.  An older artist and a younger one.  The Surls work is 20 years old, made when the artist was middle-aged.  Mora is young.  Both works speak to the experience of transition. I recognize that the connection is extremely tentative, and yet I remain compelled by something I am not sure I understand, I am not sure I need to understand.

Weekend in NY

I'm a little scattered this morning, and the post I was planning on posting this morning, that I had started writing and then abandoned is just that, abandoned.  I took photos in a rush, which is always a mistake, and now I am unhappy with myself because I must go back to the source and take new photos.

I'm not too unhappy however, because I am having a wonderful time in New York City.  I flew in Saturday, and went to the Ballet that evening.  Walking up the stairs to the balcony lobby in he David Koch theater and seeing that space filled with colorful balloons, creating a buoyant wonderland of color floating through the room, was a magical moment in and of itself. The installation is by Jihan Zencirli and I felt like a child playing with bubbles as we walked around it, as did many others apparently, wonder on their faces, people pulling their friends over and snapping selfies with balloons during intermissions.  Young, and old alike smiling, momentary glimpses of childish glee on the most carefully composed of faces.  And yes, the ballet was stunning as well, an all Balanchine program, beautifully performed.  I haven't been to the ballet, to a really good ballet in years, and I don't have the words for it, except to say that magic happened all around.

Sunday it rained, quite heavily at times, but we were out in the morning, exploring, wandering,  Trying to stay dry, not always successfully. We had thought we would go someplace and be promptly indoors, but it didn't quite work out that way.  By 1PM, tired, hungry, and also a bit wet, we decided to retire to the hotel, where we could while away the hours with a drink and a nibble.

We had tickets again that evening, again at Lincoln Center, but this time at Alice Tully Hall, a part of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's series. Somehow, out of pure dumb luck, I think we may have gotten some of the best seats in the house.  We were up in the balcony, so not close, but the sound was marvelous.  We could hear every note, separately and also as a part of the whole, combining, and blending, merging into the conversation of the music.  The music was just that, a conversation between the performers, exactly what chamber music should be, something I had not been aware I had really been missing (I had not gotten tickets to one small venue in Knoxville this year, a decision that might have been a mistake).  Best of all, in the final piece, the Dvorak quintet #2 in G major, for two violins, viola, cello, and double bass, they performed the original scoring, with five movements, and it was just stunning.  The two slow movements add a balance and a depth to the piece that is not as evident in the four-movement version.  The soft notes of the double bass, played by Edgar Meyer, in the second movement were breath-taking, as in fact was the entire, stunning, performance. 

The rain was finally lifting so we decided to walk.  We stopped at the same restaurant we had eaten in the night before, Remi, just a couple of blocks from our hotel, but this time we were seated by the window, looking into he courtyard/pedestrian walkway.  I was entranced by the view of the courtyard and the play of light through the window, the reflections, and shadows. I'm not sure I captured it here, but I hope you get a little bit of the feel of the place.  

We walked back to the hotel through a series of pedestrian walkways, stopping to take some photos, then stopping for a grand mariner in lieu of dessert at the hotel bar.  I was entranced once again by the really rather mundane view out the window, the play of light and color, shadow and shape of the lights and the buildings, Applebees and all.  Greater America and New York combined, high and low and everything in between, melting together.

 

Christian Dior: Couturier du Rêve

I can't even begin to describe, or share the wonder that was the Christian Dior Exhibit.  It was by far the most spectacular and magical fashion exhibit I have ever seen and I am very happy that I was able to go.  If you have the opportunity to be in Paris before January 7th, I highly recommend it.

We went during a holiday in France.  Would I have changed my mind had I known?  Probably not; this, after all, was the weekend I had.  But the lines were long even though we had purchased tickets in advance, and the crowds were thick, especially during the early parts of the exhibit where there were drawings, pictures, accessories and a wonderful collection of miniatures of the gowns, many of which we would see later in the exhibit.  Those rooms were packed and barely moving.  I'm not particularly claustrophobic about small spaces, but the pressing crowds, the inability to move, and the fear of stepping on someone after I tripped over a couple of people who were crouching down to take photographs were not happy-making, and I progressed through those sections quickly, finding a nice open, quiet, corner, to watch the crowds (endlessly entertaining) and wait for Liana, who has far more patience, and who glided through the space like an island of calm in a sea of turmoil.

Luckily however many others have gone to the exhibit as well, and Susan has just posted a wonderful review of the exhibit, far more comprehensive than I am likely to write, with great photos, including much from these early rooms.

Mostly I just wanted to look at the clothes.

I admit to being shallow that way, but it is more than that.  With infinite time, and quiet and space, I would love to pore over the details, but I don't have the patience for the crowds.  So I'll simply share a few photos, a small hint really of what was there.

I loved this embroidered raffia dress, and especially the detail at the bottom, the areas without embroidery, which gives the dress a very modern feel, a nod to the truth that our work is both always unfinished, but also just a whisper away from decay.

Although work by the various designers for Dior was mixed with the originals to suit the various themes of the exhibit, there were also rooms dedicated to each designer who has worked for the house.  

 

I have always been particularly fond of Gianfranco Ferré, both his work for his own house and when he was at Dior.

But each designer has brought their own stamp to the tradition.

But these segments were very congested, and often dark as well.  My photographic successes are merely snippets here and there.

By the time we reached the magnificent final room, I was worn out and tired of the crowds.   This final photo of the dream finale is Liana's.  

 

 

This Is Not The Post I Planned To Write

I am sporadically working my way through the photos I took in Scotland, but progress is slow. I am still working on photos from the third day of my trip.  The plan was that I would post as I sorted, a plan that was not, perhaps, highly focused and organized, but worked, given my over-extended fall schedule and the fact that I tend to keep adding things to an already full plate.

The second day we went to Holyrood.  Frankly I found the ruins of Holyrood Abbey far more interesting than in the palace itself, although parts of the palace tour were, indeed, fascinating.  

And yet, as I was sorting through photos, thinking of how I would put them together, my thoughts went astray, wandering in a rather unanticipated direction, my mind fabricating connections between disparate and unrelated images.  .  

The above photo was taken at the fashion exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland.  I didn't record anything about its provenance because I was, and am still, attracted by the combination of pattern and texture.  Further, as I added this photo to my pending folder, muddling over whether I wanted to write about the Abbey or the fashion exhibit, the columnar nature of the pattern and the combination of smooth and shiny with the rough, fluffy and bumpy texture of the skirt reminded me of the abbey itself, with its soaring columns standing next to piles of stones and broken walls, visual reminders of collapse, as well as  the contrast of the grand and ambitiously uplifting design with sometimes very rough and uneven workmanship.   In some ways the outfit struck me as a modern interpretation, in fabric, of what I had seen in stone. 

But the jacket also reminded me of something else entirely, something unrelated to my Scotland trip.  It reminded me of this painting by Anselm Kiefer, Shulemith, which I saw in San Francisco in August of last year.  When I first saw this painting I thought of something sacred: dark and disturbing, yes, but also sacred.  Since then the photo has been sitting patiently  in my pending file, waiting for me to write something, and it seems odd that it would pop into my head now, drawn to my attention perhaps more by the colors of a garment than the nature of the work itself.  

 

The Abbey also had a sense about it of a being a sacred space, but my initial response to the abbey was not as visceral as my response to the painting. In fact, that palpable sense of holy ground initially seemed to have faded, trampled by thousands of feet.  But it still clung to the walls and the corners, the in between spaces, almost lurking, waiting to catch one by surprise and snap one out of oblivion. The abbey is filled with light, seems to masquerade as a place of light, a space settled into itself, almost where the cares of the world had been worn down and faded away. But that is an illusion.  Light and dark live together here, holiness and the ravages of time, etched into the stone with nearly nine-hundred years of human history:  love, loss, fear, joy.  Still, I cannot explain, perhaps I can't even fully comprehend, why these two things, the abbey and the painting, Shulemith, have welded themselves together in my thoughts.     

The Abbey was founded in 1128 and built over the next century.  It was also repeatedly destroyed by wars and mobs, vandalized, neglected, rebuilt, sometimes Ill-advisedly, replacing wooden beams with heavy stone work that the structure could not support, and in that sense it is a testament to belief and faith and humanity's need to build structures to honor and worship, to offer glory to our Gods (and yes, I am saying it that way intentionally).  And yet we often fail.  We humans cannot build without also destroying, we cannot rise above our natures, and our greatest impulses are always brought crashing down around us.  And yet we try again. The sense of holiness of a place arises not from lofty human ambitions, but actually from human failings, a testament to the struggle, a testament to our very humanity.  Yes, the ruins of the abbey are about soaring arches, actually both physical and metaphysical, our desire to reach for that which is greater than ourselves, our tendency to elevate ourselves too highly, and our tendency to fail in our efforts.

But how does any of that relate to the Kiefer painting?  I have read that the structure portrayed in Shulemith is a Nazi Monument, the Hall of Soldiers, by Wilhelm Kreis, except that Kiefer has altered the scale.  Rather than soaring, the arches have been shortened, and the walls are scored by soot and ash.  The monument, which was probably grandiose and inhuman in its original scale is, as portrayed here, still stark. But it is no longer a soaring monument but an oven, stark and dark and filled with death. The monument to the German soldier, the God of the Aryan ideal, has become a symbol of horror. In its heaviness and almost palpable sootiness, emphasized by the thick layering of the paint, the structure is both inhumane and because of its inhumanity it is horribly and unnervingly human.   And yet there is hope.  Deep in the center of the painting are the flames atop a platform of steps, a symbol of hope and transfiguration, a hope and transfiguration that comes only after acknowledging and facing our own denials and deaths, our own complicity in the human condition. The abbey as well is a symbol of hope, of our history with all its failings, and of our desire to rise above them.  But we cannot rise up without remembering the past, and making our peace with it, acknowledging the fact that we are complicit as a very fact of our being, and yet we can rise.  We traipse through life, and yet we too can rise.

 

 

 

 

 

Morning Melancholy

 

While I was in San Antonio I spent some time looking at an exhibit of nineteenth and early twentieth century French art glass at the McNay Art Musuem.  The McNay is one of my favorite small museums, and I try to go by each time I am in town.

This time the glass captured my attention, probably because I had just seen an entirely different collection of glass, glass created using entirely different techniques, in Arkansas at the Chihuly exhibit.  As I studied the small pieces and read the information posted, I thought about art and skill and fashion, how we hold ideas in our heads.  Looking at these small pieces of glass, I was thinking that some of them can never be recreated, the technique has been lost.  I'm certain we did not intend to lose that knowledge, those particular skills.  There were wars, people died, so many things changed.  We value different skills now, but sometimes we don't even know what we lost until we have lost it.

 

I remember back when I was in my early 20s, talking to artists in the Woodstock community of New York state.  I remember being told that only mouth-blown glass was true art, that fused glass, glass formed in molds, was inferior, was not art.  Did the first person who fused glass together and carved it think that?  No.  I suspect not. 

 

Of course we know better now, know that art and beauty come in many forms, in many guises.  Hopefully we know we are as apt to lose them as we are to hold on to them, and that those two desires, two results, are interrelated.  Hopefully we know that we can hold to tightly and crush the life. We can hold too loosely and not realize that what we truly valued has been lost. Or do we?

 

Seeking the Quiet Space

On a quiet block, in the quiet Montrose neighborhood of Houston, there sits a rather severe looking building shaped much like a Greek Cross, or is it an octagon superimposed on a Greek cross?  It could be easily missed, and yet it is a space I treasure, a space of profound holiness.  

 

This is the Rothko Chapel.  Commissioned by Dominique deMenil and completed in the early 70s as a non-denominational chapel, open every day, open to all, it has become a center for interfaith dialogue.  The interior consists of a quiet, some would say somber, modified octagon containing 14 paintings by Mark Rothko, paintings that are mostly black, or almost black, a blackness that I see as rich with depth and color and texture, rich with meaning.

 

I get that many people do not appreciate this place, and yet many do.  The world is big enough for many understandings of what is holy.  As I grow older I increasingly understand that every moment, every place and object holds its own share of that holiness, but we all too often are too preoccupied to see.  And yet, for each of us there are places or spaces that are totems of holiness, places to which we yearn to return. For me, the Rothko Chapel is one such place. There are many who find peace in the reflecting pool, the Barnet Newman sculpture and the stand of bamboo, and there are those, like me, who find peace in the meditative silence and darkness of the chapel itself.

 

I discovered the Rothko Chapel the summer I turned twenty.  At the time I had never experienced anything quite like it, and I was the only person, other than the docent, present in the space.   I didn't know much about Mark Rothko then, but the paintings seemed to embody blackness, not as a slick of color on a canvas, but as an act of absorption, an act of containing all of experience and holding it in a holy reverence.    I felt a profound sense of peace, a profound sense of contact not only with the divine, but with humanity, a link through all people and places and things through some divine thread.

 

When I was twenty, that sense of peace was something new and powerful for me and it was something I yearned for but which always seemed out of reach.  The only way I knew to find it was to return to that one place.  And I did return several times that summer, several times each summer I worked in Houston, each time I returned to Houston.  I took George to the Rothko chapel before were married and we shared our experiences of profoundly layered depth and peace.

 

Although it had been many years since I had spent any time in Houston, I had not forgotten.  When I planned my loop trip, beginning with Chihuly in Arkansas, I realized I could easily loop through Houston and end with Rothko.  It had been an emotionally overwrought summer and I felt deeply in need of a quiet meditative space.  I planned an afternoon, and I stopped in.  The space was as meditative as I remembered, the paintings as rich with meaning.  As I sat quietly, contemplating not so much the space, but the act of art, contemplating the colors of blackness, of darkened shades of color, I felt this attempt to reach out and into all that was and is and will be, all of human history and potential.

 

I also realized that I no longer need to seek out holy spaces to find that inner peace.  It lives in me and with me and it always has, although I have not always been receptive to its presence.  Even now I am not always receptive, and it was true that I had needed to distance myself from my daily routines in order to distance myself from my own emotional turmoil.  But I had reconnected with that peace long before I arrived in Houston, and I will continue to carry it with me.  Sitting in contemplation I recognized that I tend not to give myself enough space for gathering in and reflecting back.  I tend to think of that time to fill personal needs as wasted time, but it is in fact not wasted, as it is that time that fuels all the rest, that times that keeps it all from spinning out of control.

 

I did not really sit at the reflecting pool on this visit, but I have.  It was raining lightly.  Perhaps I was feeling petulant at the wetness, although I do not melt.  I watched a small child splashing a toy in the water, in the shadow of the obelisk, and I contemplated space and the way we interact with space, both the spaces we intentionally create, and the way our presence has shaped and formed even those places we label as "wild" or "natural". Our every thought, our every action simultaneously shapes and is shaped by the world.  How then do we decide what is holy or sacred and what is not?  How can we?  
 

Photo of the Rothko Chapel from Wikipedia, here.

Photo of Dale Chihuly's Niijima Floats, from the Facebook page of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, here.

 

 

Crystal Bridges

Not many words today.  Rather, I thought I'd share some photos from the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville Arkansas.  Designed by Moshe Safdie, I found it interesting in its own right.

This was not my first trip to Bentonville, and yet I had come to a place in some ways completely different from the place I had seen before.  That first Bentonville was a very small town, a town of less than 6,000, smaller even than my own hometown.  There was no Crystal Bridges Museum, no Walmart, although there was Walton's 5 and 10, now the Walmart Visitor's Center.  The town itself is worth exploring, with a lovely historic district, reminiscent of other old southern towns, but I don't remember it specifically and I did not take the time to explore. This may be my loss.

Ahh, things have changed, as they do.

I like the way the museum echoes the colors of the place. In some ways it is jarring and modern and opposed to my childhood memories.  In others it is revealing of its environment, celebratory even.

The way it works with the landscape.

Notice how the screening both hides, but also reveals a subtle shading, a building of color upon color and a sense of place.

I didn't spend much time in the permanent collections.  I could go back although I dont know if I ever will.  As I mentioned previously, I reach my saturation point early with art, and need to step back.  Even in a small museum, it can take me days to see and absorb. Notice the Chihuly chandeliers above. And the Sol LeWitt below.

The LeWitt faces the water, faces the view seen in the second photo above.

This last photo is looking out over the museum from the grounds, just before second part of the Chihuly exhibit, "in the Forest".  I don't think the outside exhibit was my favorite, but perhaps I was already reaching my saturation point, perhaps I was too easily distracted by the museum itself.  It was all certainly worth the detour.

 

 

June Books and the Pleasures of Reading

I've  been thinking about the pleasures of reading.  In part this is simply because I have occasionally found myself curled up with a good book, the world receding from active thought.  I don't have a boat or a pond or a lazy glade in which to read, but this painting by sergeant perfectly captures the mental escape provided by a good book. (photo taken at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art)

 

Which reminds me that I have been remiss in maintaining book lists, partly because keeping the list is not as fun as time spent reading, but also because I still struggle with the idea of even keeping a list, even though there is some aspect of my nature that can't relax into the next novel until I've caught up with my accounting.  The fact is that keeping a list has proven useful, serving to remind me of when I read a book, perhaps even that I have read a book, at least before I get through it a second time wondering why it seems so familiar (see Rules of Civility).

 

Of course there are good reasons not to keep a list as well, especially when one does so in order to claim bragging rights.  The point is never about what you've read, except inasmuch as what you have read, if you have read it well, becomes a part of who you are.  I see already that the above statement is misleading as I've just said that what you read doesn't matter and in the same sentence stated that you become what you read.  That may give me pause.  There are many things I've read which I sincerely hope do not define me. Lucky this is not the case with the books I read in June.

 

Perhaps there is a purpose in writing a book post as well in that it forces me to think about the books I've read after the fact, when they are no longer forefront in my memory and my emotions are apt to be swayed.  It also  allows me to make a pretty collage.  Well, at least the previous months' reading materials yielded pretty collages; June's collage is mostly brown.  Did the colors of the book covers affect my thoughts on the reading?  No, but it is interesting that my favorite book, Lincoln in the Bardo is blue.

 

Both of the two theology texts are required reading for EFM year 4.  Since I will be taking EFM mentor training, and these book are on the schedule for the next cycle, I shall keep them.  Of the two, Timothy Sedgewick's The Christian Moral Life is my favorite as it made me question my beliefs and think about the way I live my life in retrospect to the principles I profess to believe.   My Neighbor's Faith is fairly light reading, and I did not find it either deeply theological or thought provoking, consisting as it did of brief personal stories.  However, since one of the themes of year four, besides theology, is about deepening one's faith through interfaith dialogue, the book can be enlightening and perhaps even upsetting for those who do not have friends of different faiths or have not been inclined to engage others on matters of belief.  Unfortunately I will have to buy a new copy of My Neighbor's Faith as Moisés peed on it as a very pointed protest at having been forced to move, and rather than dry it out and live with the urine-scented pages, I discarded the book.  I know at least one person who does not believe that there is any valid reason for interfaith dialogue and who would applaud Moisés's actions. I however disagree.

 

As I look at this collage, it strikes me that three of the books, Lincoln in the Bardo, Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, and Unbroken, all deal, at least in part, with how people come to terms with change and stress and trauma in their lives, with grief and strength and fortitude, with creativity and passivity and their benefits and consequences.  To some extent my reading of each was informed and influenced by my readings of the others.   But only Lincoln in the Bardo remains on the list of books I will read again. 

And David Foster Wallace? I'm glad I read the book; the essays were brilliant riffs, often entertaining, often far too personal, making them at times uncomfortable to read.  It is not my favorite volume of his essays,  yet my perspective on the author will never be the same.

 

More Chihuly

We went to Arkansas to look at Art. 

It proved to be a worthwhile detour, making the drive not just an obligatory drive, but an opportunity for exploration.  And the exhibit proved to be worthwhile as well, including the familiar, and the unfamiliar.

There were, of course, expected shapes and forms, still ethereally beautiful.

But there were also unanticipated delights.  The beauty of simple shapes, columns of glass, patterns inspired by weaving, by baskets and native American blankets.  Chihuly is a collector and a creator.  This is not surprising.  I don't know an artist or even a designer who is not also a collector or gatherer of things.

You can see how the blankets have influenced the designs.  But that is only a hint of the way that the things we see and love are transformed into something completely different, in a different medium, but equally beautiful and equally useful.

This.  This transformation of idea into object, this cross-pollination of influences.  This is what is fascinating; this is why it was worth driving to Bentonville.

I hadn't realized that Chihuly had started with weaving. Even then he incorporated glass into his works, but he hadn't yet discovered the magic of molten glass.    "One night a few years later, I melted some glass in a little oven and blew a bubble....As soon as I blew that bubble I decided I wanted to be a glassblower."

It seems no surprise then that he is also fascinated by baskets, by the way old baskets collapse and reform over time.

But I had never made the connection, one that seems so obvious now.

Even the colors and textures are transformed through glass.

Chihuly's drawings were mounted throughout the exhibit.  In and of themselves they are beautiful. You see the inspirations.  You see the idea on paper.  And then you can go directly and see the result.  It remains mind-bending.  A. B. C.  I can see the progression, and yet I understand nothing.  It is like holding a soap bubble in my hand.  I think I have it, but the moment it touches the skin it bursts.  

 

 

A Detour

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

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

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

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

 

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