restingmotion

48 Hours: Part Two -- Seeing

Friday afternoon in Chicago, mid-April.  My friend Patti, her husband Norm, and I are at the Art Institute of Chicago.  I have asked that we see the new modern art wing, and we have been wending our way through the galleries, finally arriving on the third floor.  Looming ahead of us in all its majesty is a painting, Bathers By A River, (1909/1910, 1913 and 1916-19170 Henri  Matisse.  Photo courtesy of Wikiart.org, here. 

The painting is huge.  These figures are far taller than I.  At first, my mind already beginning to be overflow with sensory input, I pause, slightly as if unable to completely register what I am seeing. I haven't read the plaque.  I see a blending of images, I see reflections of the lush tenderness seen in Three Bathers with a Turtle,  I see echoes of the lyricism of Dance; But I also see cubism, and intense feeling of danger. I wonder if it is a modern painting "after Matisse" but of course it is not. I've seen pictures of this painting before.  I should recognize it from that alone, but I am unprepared for the impact of the painting itself.  The painting seems to overwhelm me with the fractured lines of human experience, the sharp edges of innocence and experience overlapping each other.  I try to back up far enough to take a photo but I cannot get the right perspective. I want to stop here, not to rest exactly, but to be pulled in, to simply exist for a moment in the space this painting creates.  The finish on the canvas itself, the depth of the colors -- the pure presence of the piece is far more overwhelming than a mere picture can convey.  But of course I cannot stop here.  The gallery is just beginning.  There is no place to sit, no wall upon which to brace myself, only the doors, which keep opening when I want nothing more than for time to stop.

 

So of course I wander.  Eventually I find a room with a bench.  I see paintings by artists whose work I love, but, having already been in the galleries for some time, I am dangerously close to being overwhelmed, close, in fact, being inundated in a tide of sensory overload. There is too much beauty, too much power and I feel like a small child in a candy store,  my eyes unable to find a suitable place to rest, as everything around me is competing for their attention. I momentarily catch a glimpse of an ethereal Picasso, although I am not quite sure that "ethereal" and "Picaso", have ever merged so coherently in my imagination before.  I need to stop and I find a place to sit, briefly, calmed by this landscape by Heinrich Campendonk.  My nerve endings feel slightly less frayed, but I realize I can absorb nothing further, so I leave the gallery to sit and wait by the elevators.

 

It has been a good visit to the museum.  We started with Rembrandt portraits.  I am not a lover of portraits generally, but these are exceptional, each with a character, and a point of view, each subjects gaze filled with humanity, either inviting you in or holding you at bay.  Either way the portraits are compellingly human, and one wishes to get to know each of these characters better.  Aside from the portraits themselves however, I was struck by a comment in one of the notes. Tthe curator was discussing Rembrandt's use of costumes, and mentioned that in the artist's time, painters were considered mere craftsmen, not artists, and this struck me in light of my own recent post on self-definition, art and the role of art and craft in creation.  I was struck by the idea that Rembrandt also might have struggled with that idea of artist vs craftsman.  Of course this should be no surprise, because Rembrandt was also human, because this struggle is one of the basic human struggles, just as it is a basic human characteristic to judge and categorize, and perhaps to idolize the past, forgetting that our heroes were indeed just like us.    Today, I think I am not alone in thinking of painters as artists, and yet I am also pretty confident that there are layers of perception and categorization, and we too categorize painting into "craft" and "art", dismissing out of hand broad categories that we deem closer to the former than the later.  It seems that this is one of those questions to which there are no firm answers.

 

(Barbara Hepworth, Two Figures (Menhirs), 1954/1955.

 

After Rembrandt we had moved over to the modern wing and starting with contemporary works, some of which seemed breathtakingly beautiful while others were more puzzling.  Some pieces seemed very dependent on having a basic understanding of the intent and process. Other pieces were more transparent.   I took more pictures downstairs, mostly to remember, but I learned long ago that taking photos and actually looking are often mutually exclusive.  The struggle to find the balance point between recording and experiencing, between movement and stillness seems to be the ongoing struggle.  How does one manage?  I remain uncertain.  

 

 

Sometimes what really struck me, and what I remember, cannot be captured by photographs at all; the photographs simply serve as a memory cue of sorts.  The Brice Marden above, (Study for the Muses, Eaglesmere Version 1991-94/1997-990) seems to float in space, to almost dance across the room.  In my photo you can see some of the layers of paint, of color of movement.  But the effect in the afternoon sunlight is magical.  And yet, as much as this painting alone is worth entry into this gallery, it is only one player in a complex dance.  As Brice Marden's painting shimmers and floats, it shares a space with the sculpture shown below (Katharina Fritsch, A Woman With Her Dog, 2004).  At first the light softness of the painting and the feminine pink sculpture seem to go together, at least upon initial impression, perhaps merely due to color alone and subject matter, but where the painting is soft and yielding, the woman is simultaneously soft and yielding in color and form but hard and brittle, like the shells from which she appears to be formed.   Easily broken perhaps, but not without causing pain.

 

 

And yet there is more.  Also in this room are some smaller works, strong and singular in their line and impact, occasionally stark.  Although there may have been works by other artists, I specifically remember two works by Gerhard Richter, Davos, 1981, and Venice, Staircase (1985). The harsh simplicity and tension in the smaller Richter works  stood both in opposition and in harmony to the Marden and Fritsch.  Standing in this room I felt challenged by the contrast of  permanence and impermanence, hard and soft, yielding and unyielding, dance and isolation. It is exactly this, this conversation, this play of art and ideas, of emotion and space that struck me about that particular afternoon, that I remember to this day.  In retrospect, I wonder how the effect of this room, these works affected my reaction to the Matisse seen at the top of this post,  as shortly after this we left the second floor and rose to the third.  Next time I walk into the gallery and see the Matisse, will my reaction be different?  How does the conversation between art and viewer evolve over time?   Echoes of previous encounters remain a part of us, but time shifts, our emotions and understandings change, and yet art to continues to pierce through our defenses.

 

 

The Good, The Bad, and the Merely Meh....

It is possible I am coming down with a cold.  It is also possible that I merely have a sore throat due to sinus drainage from allergies.  I am hoping for the later, but am not yet convinced.  I have had more colds this winter-into-spring-that an any time since the first winter I moved to Knoxville and started spending more time with a certain 5-year old, un-accustomed as I was to school-yard germs.  I am ready to be home, and in my mind that alone, the fact that I am not home, is the source of all these niggly little upsets.  Perhaps not, but please don't burst my bubble.  The thought of home is a good reward.

Despite my scratchy throat, today is a good day. Despite my tendency toward petulant self-pity, I cannot help but smile. The sun is shining.  I went for a walk.  I've scanned, shredded, and carted away several boxes of old paperwork that I refuse to move one more time. I had a bowl of red curry soup for lunch and the spice of the curry cleared my sinus while the creaminess of the coconut milk base soothed my scratchy throat.

I read quite a few good books in April although not perhaps books that led me into deep thought.  Sometimes thinking is overrated.  One needs simply to be allowed to enjoy.  I had not read anything by Kate Morton or Belinda Bauer before, but I shall seek out their other novels.   I thought that Ta-Nehisi Coates managed the almost impossible in The Beautiful Struggle.  There is one point where he seemed to encapsulate perfectly in poetic prose that moment of self-realization and actualization, when a child begins to come into him- (or her-) self, when a person stands on the cusp of knowing who they are in the world.  He does this, and he reminded this reader of her own childhood and the childhood of her friends, touching on the universality of humanity, while also laying bare the fragility of childhood and the fragility of experience.  Coates childhood was not my childhood, could never be, and yet in one moment he simultaneously tied us all together and shredded all my myths.  By making me feel what we had in common, he also made me feel the shattering differences of our experiences and what we can never share. A book worth reading again.

 

But not all the book were keepers. I took a couple of bags of books I don't think I will want to look at again to the second-hand book store, including a few items from my April reading list. Included were  the Dan Brown, which was entertaining enough (meh), the Mary Higgins Clark, which I found to be the weakest of the Under Suspicion series.  But then I am really not a Mary Higgins Clark fan to begin with, so I am probably also not a good judge.  I also sold Master and Margarita, which was good, and may well be one of the great books of the 20th century, but which didn't really resonate with me.  I won't read it again, unlike the other "great" satiric 20th century novel The Tin Drum, which I adored and will read again and again.  Also on the "meh" list is  The Beautiful Edible Garden.  It is one of three books I have been reading as I think about my garden and my dreams for its evolution, and it has pretty pictures, and great bones if one doesn't know much about garden design, but it doesn't really offer enough substance to be useful, nor does it offer any options or information for readers in areas other than the author's California planting zone.  

Otherwise construction and planning and packing continue apace.  The first Saturday Market Square Farmer's market was last weekend.  I tried to go early but only partially succeeded.  It was already crowded when I arrived at 9:15, but I still enjoyed walking around and shopping.   

I didn't buy the bread, although I ran into a friend, who did.  We chatted and shopped and decided to go to brunch.  I intended to return to that first stand to purchase some of those wonderful white Japanese turnips you see in the top picture but instead we dawdled and chatted and by the time I got back, all the Japanese turnips were gone.  Alas.  I tried some small red turnips instead, which I had never had before. They were delicious, a mild turnip with an almost buttery roundness to their flavor..

Here is my small haul.  The red turnips are on the right with the beautiful greens.  I also bought rainbow radishes, which I am still eating.  The radish greens got a little wilted while we chatted and brunched, but it didn't really matter as I prefer them cooked anyway. The beef knuckle bone went into a pot of stock, which simmered away in the slow cooker most of yesterday.  In fact, a ladle of fresh stock, the remainder of the greens, and some left-over steak made for a lovely soup when I finally returned home for a late dinner.  I had worried about over-buying.  Instead I may have not purchased enough as everything is now gone, except a couple of radishes and some eggs. 

One final good thing.  The tile installers finished the tile in the powder room.  The painters  need to return and repaint the trim, which is supposed to be black and not blue.  The schedule calls for black.  But even that cannot dim my enthusiasm.  Trim can be repainted.  The tile and the sink make me very happy. Eventually, the black trim and the wallpaper will make me even happier.  

 

 

 

 

Necessary Accounting and an Update

April has been an interesting month.  I have been looking forward to the arrival of May, mostly because it signaled, in my mind at least, the beginning of the end, the countdown to returning home.  Of course things are never quite so simple.  I learned yesterday that my return will be delayed, and so I ended April with a bit of a whimper, and a need to pull inward for a bit, a need to resettle my rapidly fraying nerves.

 

But there were good things in April as well.

1. I reconnected with this blog after a month-long sabbatical.  I believe the break, and may own process of remodeling and reconstruction, of uprooting and reconsidering, has given me new focus that is reflected here as well as elsewhere in my life.  
2. I committed to posting daily, or almost daily, updates on Instagram.  This works for me personally, as a way to focus on good things happening, and occasionally not so good.  I see the two formats, Instagram and Blog, as different aspects of a personal journal/blog/scrapbook and I keep that I will maintain this format at least for a while.  I am trying to avoid duplication between the two sites, but so far that has not happened, and avoiding all duplication may be an unrealistic expectation, just as avoiding duplication and repetition in life is unrealistic. 
3. I finally removed the old subscribe button and added a "subscribe by email' on the side of this blog.  I should probably add a link to Instagram as well.
4. I've settled more into being comfortable with myself, who I am and who I want to be.  This means that I am also far less concerned with what anyone else thinks.  That realization and self-acceptance, has allowed me to become something more of a social butterfly than I had ever thought possible.   I'm still an introvert, but I'm also definitely a social introvert.  And no that is not a contradiction in terms. 
5. Many plants that I put in last spring, unsuspecting as I was of the impending disaster area that my yard would become, survived the winter and the demolition and reappeared this year, a joyful reminder that life carries on. 

I planted the both the iris tectorum (at the rear) and the other plant with purple flowers last spring.  I don't know what the busy plant in front is, with the small purple flowers, but I love it.  Luckily I know where I got it, so I may have to take a snippet of the plant with me when I go shopping for more.  Much as I would like to be playing in the small garden bed now, I have been forcing myself to hols back.  As you will see below, too much is yet to happen.  And yet the blooming of the garden gives me great joy, and this small side bed is the one off-limits area of the garden, a constant source of renewal, and a reminder of both what my garden once was, and what my new garden might be.

 

In fact, I was actually looking at a photo of last year's garden earlier this week, when I was re-reading a post from April 2018.  I remember the garden fondly. and I suppose it is a good sign, a sign of my increasingly equanimity and recovery from the shock of upsets that started this project, that I no longer despair at what was lost but am beginning to look forward to what may someday be.  (a long someday in the future I might add).

But of course that garden disappeared in November and much has changed in the intervening months, and although I am thrilled with my contractors and the increasingly evident results, the process has been more than challenging.  I am now at the point where I sometimes feel stretched thin, nigh unto snapping, balancing my joy with the results against my own almost permanent state of high-strung nervous overwhelm.  Of course I won't snap.  I am more resourceful than that.  But my limits have been tested, and, at this point, I occasionally feel like every nerve ending, physical, emotional, psychological is at the point where it will soon vibrate at some frequency that I cannot control.  And then I calm.  The garden helps me calm.  The small progresses. Instagram is good for that.  An ongoing record of my happy places. 

 

This was the front yard Monday morning.  A little over half of the driveway had been removed.  The remainder was removed Monday afternoon (shown below).  And now we start the process of replacing the hardscaping.  To me this looks like progress.  The house is no longer surrounded by a shattered driveway, deep clay-filled trenches, and piles of gravel.    The outside work will not be finished by the time I move in.  The house itself is closing in on finishing time, but the yard is just beginning.  I have come to terms with the idea that my five-year plan became a one-year plan.  I may need four years in recovery.

If I had known all this, would I have started this project?  The kitchen appliances were failing and needed to be replaced.  One reason I bought this house was to marry my love an old house with the kitchen of my dreams.  Still, had I known, would I have bought this house?  Probably yes.  I fell in love with this house and I wanted to do this.   I have no one to blame but myself.  That said, there is a big difference between knowing in one's head that things may get out of hand, and actually living through the experience when they do. The entire experience is certainly forcing me to focus far more closely on what is important and what, quite simply, is not.  We'll see where that leads in the long run.

At the same time, exciting things are happening, and I hope the excitement begins to overtakes the overwhelm.   Between the time I started this post and the time I finished, I was once again at the house.  The countertop was installed in the guest bathroom. I love how it is turning out, love how the warm matte black of the soapstone fits with the black cabinet and the Mexican tile.  I love the texture of the stone surface itself, it just calls out to be touched, to be caressed.  I wanted to just stand there and pet it.  I find the tactile appeal of the stone itself, its textured surface, its veins and lines to be very warm and calming.  It may not be the most practical of vanity surfaces, but this is just a guest room, not the main bathroom, so it will not get heavy use.

When I don't have guests, this may just be one of my calm places.  I can stand here, fingers gliding across the sensuous warmth of the stone, looking out the windows on the neighborhood I love, at my neighbors walking their dogs, and let my tensions melt away.