restingmotion

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. 

 

 

Word-Less Wednesday

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

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

 

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

Art was everywhere, not just in galleries. 

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

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

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

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

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

 

Or I just like giant scissors and irons.

 

 

 

 

 

Promise

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

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

 

(the artist discussing his work)

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

Life Interrupted

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 paintings by Jered Sprecher.  All photos by me.

 

Ch..ch..changes...

There is something I haven't told you. 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

Two Books, Two Paintings, Elusive Connections

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 top photo courtesy of Knoxville Mercury, here.

bottom photo courtesy of Gallery 16, here.