But Is It Art?

I have a question that I’m hoping to solve by the end of this essay. The answer will reveal our (my) thoughts about objective knowledge – boo! Boring! I know, I’ve lost you already. Reader be warned: if you can’t talk about politics or religion you won’t want to talk about this topic either – art.

I can’t begin with what art is, though if I had my way we would. Admit it, you’d hate me if I started there. No, you’re going to make me subtly weave my views throughout the paragraphs, using words like “perhaps” and “maybe” to soften the blows of my opinions. Fine! That’s okay because at this point (paragraph two) I’m not exactly sure what my opinions are.

The question we’ll be answering is whether art has to be real in order to be art proper. What do I mean? Does it have to reflect life. Real life. Real people, not caricatures. Not drones. Not Superwomen. Not fantasies. If you’re not concerned with the parameters of art in the slightest now is your cue to leave. Go on!

Good, you stayed. Welcome. Let’s talk a bit about what I don’t mean. Think nursery rhymes, classic Disney. This is good stuff, but I think it’s accepted that Sleeping Beauty isn’t art. It’s… entertainment of a kind. A tale. We can use the word “art” to describe it in passing, but as for true art I have loftier aims. Call me a romantic.

Or a realist, which is what we’re discussing. Is realism (that is, being true to life) just a genre in art or a prerequisite for art? If it’s the former, comics and sitcoms and fables become art (no doubt these things can be done artfully and enjoyed). If it’s the former, then there’s a principle of exclusion on the table.

So what’s non-art? Let’s posit a starting definition: that which takes life and makes a show of it in order to prove some point. This is in contrast to displaying the grand show of life as an end in itself. Politics, propaganda, allegory – these all have persuasion in mind. Art has a different calling, a higher calling, the difficult and rare purpose of illumination.

Take melodrama for example. We’re good students, right? Let’s look it up. Melodrama: a sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to the emotions. Sounds like fun to me! But I have questions, mostly about exaggerated characters and appealing to the emotions alone. Lest you think me entirely square, I’ll say outright that I have no qualms with exciting events.

Exaggerated characters… like Maleficent? The arrogant queen of Sleeping Beauty, her modus operandi is just evil – evil for the sake of evil. We know nothing of her background, her intentions, the mean words her dad used growing up. Just flames and fury. There’s a place for this, I’m certain. Just like there’s a place for Superwoman, but perhaps that place is not in art. Note the use of non-confrontational “perhaps”!

Instead of arguing against one-dimensionality in art, let’s attack it in general and see what happens. Is there much difference between flattening a character into one dimension and stereotyping? I don’t have to argue for the wrongness of stereotyping, right? Black people are loud, artists are moody, politicians are crooks – these things 24/7 and these things only. “Exaggerated characters” leave me with the same feeling. Like a real person has been jammed into a box for the sake of convenience.

Is that a sort of propaganda? Where symbols are used to further ideology? We agree that real people are made up of ideas, feelings and volition that have the potential (and tendency) to war and contradict. What becomes of them if they are only one unwavering belief, impenetrable by circumstance? C’mon, give us a weakness! A tick, an insecurity, an inconsolable lust for approval. That’s an exciting event!

I’m getting farklempt just thinking about it. What gets us more in the gut, Sleeping Beauty or Othello? I know, that’s a low blow. It’s an unfair comparison. Let it represent two models of suspense – one where the good guy beats the evil queen and gets the beautiful girl; one where the general is driven to agonizing jealousy by the devilish, proud soldier and the innocent wife is slain. That gets to our emotions. The fact of the truth, not mere plot points.

Yet not everyone’s complicated shades of good and evil can be or should be explored. There’s no need for the maid to express her struggle of belief and unbelief with the one line of dialogue she has. Mere admixture isn’t enough to make it real, either, like doing a 180 in the last chapter that is uncharacteristic, coincidental and forced. No, if art is going to illuminate life, it should do so in the same way truth comes to us personally – layer upon layer unto the final a-ha.

But does it have to illuminate life to be art? Real life, real people. Fine. But is it necessary – is it a prerequisite? Perhaps it’s a question of simple honesty. Imagine ordering ice cream and ending up with frozen yogurt (ice cream aficionados understand the seriousness of this offense). I can hear it now: “Hey, you said this was a book about people!” If art is going to depict people, relationships, suffering – then it ought to depict the essence of those things.

Busted! Did you see it coming? You weren’t hoodwinked by my passive “maybe’s”, were you? Objectivity, alas! Before you hit the ground running, consider the losses and gains. If we accept realism as a prerequisite for art, we don’t lose possibilities. The potential for detail and nuance remains infinite as usual. If we’re loyal to life, we gain truth, “lies that tell the truth” as Pablo Picasso famously put it.

Non-art is still kosher though, don’t worry. We don’t always have to be so serious, right? Right! You won’t find me blasting chick flicks because the characters are flat (I have different, deeper, multi-layered reasons for blasting chick flicks). Breathe a sigh of relief – Superwoman is permitted. But is it art? I’m being liberal with my opinions now – a lot has happened since paragraph two.

Can any other discipline bring us to places we’ll never see? People we’ll never meet? It requires honesty – not mockery, not fantasy, not exaggeration – it requires justice to the whole being, even (and especially) if that being is full of wrath or indecency. Art as illumination demands that nothing be put above truth – not dogma, expectation – it demands that quiddity be our god.

I have many pictures of Kellee throughout her pregnancy but these are two of my favorites. Kellee was the most beautiful pregnant woman ever - this openly confirmed by her. 

Eliza’s water birth was two words: fast and furious. And dark, so there are no shots of the labor (though I do have audio) glorious as it was. Kellee was like a blow fish. On exhaling she would blow (powerful, fierce) bubbles in the tub that looked like they blew her whole body back. Kel, did they?

And then life joined us. A big, healthy, cry and some hugging and whimpering by us girls (see below). Cheyanne the gentle presence, Pam the quiet mom, Haven the Haven, which is what you want at a birth, and me. Photographer, long-time friend. Aunt.

Eliza’s first experience in this world was the long embrace of her parents. Those first few minutes where we all backed away and let the new family of three feel their new life.

It was the best of books, it was the worst of books. I began reading Tale of Two Cities with a bias: I had tried to read it before and failed. But it’s a classic! Revered by history and scorned by modern youth – usually good signs, right? Knowing the stakes it held for me as a lit person and general know it all, I finally set out to finish the beast. Friends encouraged me, The first half is boring, they said, then it gets good! The first half?

Scene: Paris and London, the French Revolution. Characters? A handful of virtuous gentlemen, a couple of scoundrels and one celestial damsel. Golden-haired, faints much. We’ll come back to her. Tensions run high between the ruling and the ruled: vengeance is of principal import (there is even a character by the same name, The Vengeance), wine is dry and sour and people take to the streets often for good and bad reasons. Justice depends on position, passion and group instinct – not law.

Dickens, known for relentless wit and detail doesn’t want for either in Tale. So we’ll start with the good: Tale of Two Cities is one heck of a story. A cruel, maddening imprisonment; the savage episodes of a revolution; attics and graveyards; unrequited love. It takes us far beyond the lives we lead. When an aristocrat runs over a peasant boy in his carriage, tossing a coin to the parents for their loss, the reader mourns with a powerless people much to the praise of Dickens’ prose.

But for all of its artful turn of events, the manifold coincidences that bind the characters fate, one might expect simple language. Don’t. This is Dickens, King Verbose and father of all wordiness; I say this as a compliment – and a warning. Make sure the dishes are done. Laundry too. Say goodbye to your spouse for the evening. Sitting down for Dickens takes commitment. There are two sides to this.

Allow me to voice a plea: be clear, Charles, be clear. Subtlety, ambiguity, abstraction – bring it on. But convolution is another story. When I’m forced to consult Wikipedia, the no-no line is officially crossed. Adoring readers chiefly admire this quality, which they call words like “layered” and “sinuous.” I call it words like “confusing”. And worst of all in the criticism word bank: forced.

When children write stories it goes something like this: Jane gets a puppy. Because she was sad. Because she lost at backgammon. Instead of getting a puppy to heal the wounds of competition, Jane had to lose at backgammon in order to justify Fluffy. Because it’s a plot point. This is Bad Stuff 101, consequently smashing the characters to smithereens – feeling people become automatons; meaningful actions reduced to necessities of a labyrinthine plot.

Take Lucie. Remember, the angel-girl? Flaxen-haired, ever-gracious, industrious. Cardboard. I have big problems with this little lady that are deeper than the lens of post-modernity. It’s not her domesticity – more power to the domestic arts! I’m all applause for her station. But let’s be real – she’s a fantasy. Worse, a delusion. I won’t condemn her. Her husband already has when he notes that “no cares and duties seemed to divide her love for him or her help to him […] [he] asked her ‘What is the magic secret, my darling, of your being everything to all of us, as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much to do?’”

Gag. Real women, real beauty, reality – aren’t like that. Am I right? Just to make sure, I highlighted the passage and read it to a few friends, a few colleagues. I asked my own husband for good measure. In the end we all agreed: male fantasy. 

So the question remains… Is that okay? Is melodrama a valid form? Is soap opera a valid form? If art ought to reflect life, I have serious questions about Dickens’ extremes. I’m fine with unchanging, flat characters in nursery rhymes and Disney (see: Maleficent of Sleeping Beauty) or playing a minor role. But as one of the principal characters? The Golden Thread as Dickens calls Lucie Manette – that which binds them all together and justifies their sacrificial deeds?

Speaking of sacrificial deeds, Tale of Two Cities is known and loved most for its ending. Knowing this gave me momentum as I trudged through to the second half, the purportedly better half of the text. Sydney Carton, lawyer and resident jackal, crops up in the last chapter to perform an astounding feat of courage, effectively dying for the girl and her equally irreproachable beau. Or does he?

We open to Sydney Carton with these words: “I am a disappointed drudge. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.” Ah, the depressive neighbor learns to love. Good stuff, right? But all we know about his change of heart is a most grandiose monologue to Miss Manette that’s delivered about mid-book. It’s intended to express unwavering love but all I see is boredom and obsession. Judge for yourself:

“For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. And when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.”

As he walks to the gallows, he quotes from the book of John and gives a soliloquy so emotionally tender I for a moment thought a fellow convict was speaking. Change of heart? Right then and there? Perhaps. But in light of what was sowed, the harvest is abrupt. It’s unearned. Forgive me, history! It’s sentimental.

But I finished the book. I finished it! Both halves! Which is a far, far better thing than I have ever done.

Melancholia. It’s a metaphor for depression. No, it’s meaninglessness and spiritual death. No, better, fuller  – it’s both.

Before I tell you about Lars Von Trier’s master cast – Kirsten Dunst more darkly enchanting than ever as Justine, Charlotte Gainsbourg coming to full blossom as Claire – I’ll give you a one-word synopsis: honest. Okay, more than one word. Honest, haunting, beautiful, visceral, hard to watch, hard to forget.

This is a film about two sisters and the end of the world – nothing brings out who we are like the apocalypse. We begin with cosmology in slow-mo: horses falling to the ground, a frozen, porcelain bride floating down a river, a fiery planet eclipsing another. Then we’re at a wedding where it’s business as usual: the trifles are observed, the jelly beans counted, Justine and Michael cut the cake. The mother of the bride gives a speech: “I myself hate marriage,” she begins. Nothing brings out who we are like family.

Claire and husband John (Keifer Sutherland) orchestrate the evening as bride Justine takes a bath. She’s supposed to be happy. They made a deal. The evening (and the bride) unravels. Highlights: tears, wine, stoic glances, telling off her jerk boss and “consummating” her marriage on a golf course with a stranger – an expression of contempt that conveys what’s been brooding all evening: it’s all meaningless.

When Justine returns a few months later to the home (the decadent castle, rather) where the wedding took place, she’s in a stupor. “It tastes like ashes,” she says crying over meat loaf, her favorite dish. John, the scientist and Man of Reason has his head in the clouds – he’s watching for the planet Melancholia, whose orbit is scheduled to come astonishingly close to (but not collide with, he thinks) the surface of the Earth. Claire’s a hot mess, the glue that keeps the show going melting fast as Melacholia threatens to swallow the show whole.

And it is a show: the stunning aesthetic of Melancholia is rich and subtle – glorious yet natural. They’re in a castle overlooking the ocean, yes, but you never get the sense that it’s unreal. We even forgive the sisters totally different accents, Justine (the title of Part One) from somewhere in California and Claire (Part Two) a charming London-Paris blend. Trust me – it works. Maybe because the sisters’ ideologies are so opposed.

As death approaches, Justine becomes more lucid and present than ever (she’s bathing again), as Claire clings to her happy life but buys poison just in case. In the final scene – beautiful, stomach-turning, expected but surprising – the sisters meet their match, the planet Melancholia; Claire covers her ears and screams and weeps. Justine sits Buddha-style, expressionless. Who has more integrity? Depression or denial in the face of a world bound to be an ash heap?

Melancholia  is about being consumed – by depression, by tradition, by bitterness – it’s a metaphor and a reality. If you enjoy thinking about life at all, you will enjoy Von Tier’s latest depiction of family, meaning and death.

Watch the trailer here.

Can I possibly transcribe what I am thinking on this morning? Is it time?

This is a question I have asked myself for years - decades - in all of my journals, real and digital, adolescent and… less adolescent. How can I write this? Can I really write this? I suppose all writers gripe about words in the same way.

But with that griping is an implicit hope still, that though words fail to fully express the essence of things, the attempt does in fact scrape the surface somehow. And that’s beautiful.

I guess that means I’ve got some explaining to do.

Eliza was born. It’s difficult to explain because it’s utter unlikeness to any other thing. There is no simile, no metaphor resplendent enough, I’m afraid. All I know is that it relates to a cluster of thoughts/images/feelings I’ve been having for my whole life. Thoughts regarding the corporeal, the physical. The real.

Two years ago I watched Roger prepare a fish. “Prepare” is a nice way of saying gut. This experience has been burned in my mind ever since (not because I’m vegan, but it’s related). I hope you don’t laugh when I say it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I really hope you don’t laugh when I say I was reminded of it when Eliza was born.

Again I ask myself, how can I explain this? And why should I even, after all? What is the most concise way to put it? What is the abridged version of this thought I’ve been secretly hoarding? I don’t know. I guess that’s why I’m writing.

Jean Pierre Jeunet understood this when he wrote the scene of Amelie Poulain at the market, closing her eyes and dipping her hand into a bucket of.. what was it, dried beans? Devendra Banhart too, when he wrote and sung The Body Breaks. A grandmother understands it when she blows on the back of her young granddaughters hot neck on a summer evening.

The body, the earth, creatures. Food. These things fascinate me, comfort me, intrigue me to no end, humble me prostrate. The supple pop of a pomegranate seed, the rattle of a cat’s purr like a drum roll, a lone orchid in the midst of a dense and wet forest - the heavens, the seas, Matt’s veins on his chest meeting to make the shape of a heart. These are things beyond knowing.

Lately I’ve been craving a long, long hike. I feel it’s necessary in order to understand Eliza’s birth, in order to breathe clean air in and out and let my eyes and mind wander. I need to feel the ground beneath my feet. I need to feel alive. The other night Matt touched my face and said with all the gentleness in the world, “You’re going to get old.” I cried for 10 minutes and finally squeaked out, “I’m not ready.” My body is too full of power and warmth to imagine it beyond the abstract.

The first time I read the Bible I remember being floored by the concrete details. Oil, incense, stone, sand, fish, water, feet, wood, blood, bread. The fabric of my dreaming for so long. And a corporeal God - God with us! Last night as I read Morning and Evening, the closing words cut me to the heart and stole my breath: “Rise, for the Lord is risen.” This physical fact is beyond all my comprehending - too deep, too strange, to high, too wonderful. Too real.

Want, want, want. Want to make things, want to make progress. Want to make money, just being honest! Want to be freed from my wanting. Want to love deeply.

Want the house to be liveable, comfy, cozy, simple but not bare. Not cold. These things take time. And money. It’s amazing how much thought goes into decorating a home… I wonder how many hours I have spent just thinking. Searching through Design*Sponge.com archives, dragging and dropping the images I connect with into my “home” folder. Trying to create a unified idea, principle. A common thread for each space and the whole space with just enough balance and contrast.

Looking at friends’ homes, asking questions, observing the details, the choices. Garage sale-ing, thrifting, hacking off sticks from palm branches to put in vases, eyeing people’s garbage. Checking out craigslist’s free page every day. Twice a day. Okay, more than twice a day.

Laboring, laboring, laboring. Cleaning out the dingy storage shed and painting that godforsaken thing white. Now it almost looks sort of nice. Moving around the accent rugs, accent blankets, accent lamps. The pieces of my rubik’s cube. And more thinking. More searching, more flip-flip-flipping through Potter Barn catalogs and IKEA catalogs, cataloging all the ways to make a space look effortless.

The blemishes… the pieces of furniture that just don’t seem to work, the odd shapes, colors, conflicting textures, these things haunt me as I pass like them like ghosts. The great successes are soon forgotten, but there have been some. Some ways in which I’ve been able to bring to fruition the longing, the work, the ideal. Through trial and error, yes. But in home decor errors are expensive.

I have divided each space into it’s own Thing, complete with unique obstacles, challenges and latent glory. It’s easier to tackle that way. The bedroom is really my heart. Lightest of light grey (Behr’s Gentle Rain) has been my daydream for years. Darkest of dark blue is next, but I don’t dare contemplate the home of our latter years. Not yet!

I am learning what textures and relationships I am most pleased with - the natural, raw and untamed as well as the utterly linear, smart and utilitarian. I am learning what pitfalls I am prone to, like my strong penchant for cream. I am learning to experiment - with black, with glass, with unexpected combinations. I read recently to never assume something won’t match —- this was amazing advice. I have been blessed to follow it, placing antique chessboards beside metal cookware with astounding results.

On the d*s page, it inquires… I want to: decorate a room, plan a meal, mix a drink, plan a party. In truth I want to do all of these things. I want to plant a garden too, a modest one, upright in pallets, I want to host vegan Thanksgivings, new-season summer, spring, fall, winter gatherings and eat outside, I want to take long walks with our guests, I want to know them, I want to sit opposite a friend on a microfiber chaise lounge and talk with wine under sheepskin, I want to watch my plants grow and thrive, I want to use words and images on my walls and counters and shelves in a way that intrigues like art, I want to curate, I want it all to come together - perfect like a puzzle after so much labor. I want to hear Matt’s piano, I want to hear Bach down the halls.

I want, I want, I want.

“I like to think of decorating as curating. I am attracted to certain kinds of objects, and I like to arrange them in a way that tells a story visually or creates a mood or feeling. This is a vignette I created in my back room. A honeycomb in glass, antlers, a ball of twine, chipped pottery I bought at a junk store on a road trip, seashells collected from around the world, postcards of dinosaurs. None of these things would seem to go together, but when arranged together, they all tell a story. It is about history, creation and beauty in natural objects.” -Paige Morse talking about her home on d*s

Got a chance to spend some time with Moo & Woo on a warm fall evening. Wet grass. Sisterhood, youth, sun rays. Chickens.

“Why do you get to climb the tree?”

“Maybe it’s because I’m the older sister?”

Dear Coldplay,

I came here to talk… I hope you understand. I can’t, I can’t get through. I’ve been trying hard to reach you ‘cause I don’t know what to do. I’m so scared about the future and I want to talk to you. So let’s talk, let’s talk. Nothing’s really making any sense at all… 

I’m going back to the start. I’ve gotta tell you what a state I’m in. I’ve gotta tell you in my loudest tones. Nobody said it was easy. It’s such a shame for us to part. Nobody said it was easy – no one ever said it would be this hard! You’ve put me down upon my knees.

I beg, I beg and plead. If you go, if you go and leave me down here on my own, well I’ll wait for you. When you love someone but it goes to waste, could it be worse? I’ll always be waiting for you. You know I love you so. Blame it on a rush of blood to the head.

The truth is, I miss you. Yeah the truth is, that I miss you so.

-Anastasia

It’s been six years since you died and my thoughts of you are deep and penetrating but infrequent. We were kids together. Like cousins our affection was sincere but mostly founded on instinct and proximity. We never had the chance to grow old and apart but I think we would have – I would have watched as you became a strange and helpless adult and wondered what more I could have done. But we all knew you wouldn’t make it.

I can’t feel my legs, you said to me once, crying in my lap and shaking, drool on your face, hands in tight fists. I gave up on you in that moment, something I avoid admitting as I look back to those dark exchanges, your once-lively eyes so blank and fulfilled – getting exactly what you wanted but at the cost of your life. I’m letting you die, I said to myself, and three weeks later you did.

The papers announced the tragedy – son of a millionaire, a real shame – but we didn’t read them. They weren’t for us. We – the wrong crowd who seduced you – grieved in the only way we knew how, in that continual cloud of smoke, the fog that kept us together and apart at the same time. Every so often a loud cry would escape us, the sharp fragments of some image or memory having cut through our stupor. We were just like bellowing puppies, young and tender and full of feeling.

“What does your tattoo mean?” a girl behind me at the grocery store asks. She’s impressed, even reverent. I want to show her my savagery and where it got me – where it got us – that scared look in your mother’s eyes that I saw too many times. It’s for a friend, I say seriously, he died. She’s just more impressed. At your funeral people showed up who didn’t know you, some daring to wear that same respectful grin as though you died in a blaze of glory. Anyone who watched you die over the months and years knew it was nothing more than waste.

We were a pack. That much we had, though there wasn’t so much trust between us as there was a natural agreement – our combined money bought more dope – though we hesitated to admit it, groping in secret for better reasons to be together. When you died we had to confront our lives, and there were fights and blood because the reflection of ourselves in one another was clear for the first time. Some changed and disappeared. Others went headlong into excess.

How can you, I asked your closest friend, the one who was easiest to blame. How can you still do that? When we stood over your casket I assumed a silent pact was made. But with track marks on his arm and those familiar black eyes he asked, what else am I supposed to do?

I didn’t have an answer.

Recently I discovered my long, enduring relationship with stress. Formerly, when the topic was brought up I wouldn’t think much of it. Well I don’t have that much stress, I’d think. I’d been functioning at peak stress for so long I considered it normal. I didn’t even think about what stress really was.

A month or two ago, I overheard my husband listing out the things we do. The things I do, that is. Full time wife, full time work, full time school, photo business, tutoring once a week, constant drip of showers and weddings of which I am a large contributor, working out 4x week, 2 studies through church, the dance of food prep and dishes. A few people turned to me with a deadpan stare. I am sure it was returned. I had never thought of it in list format.

When we first got married Matt was chatting with a friend on his Wall. She asked how married life was and he explained, adding at the end that “Ana is much more active than I am.” I remember thinking… what? I am?

Even a few days ago I was talking with my friend on the phone and she said, “Sometimes I wonder how you do it.” I didn’t think anything of this. Literally, nothing. Just - blank. Though I am not altogether ignorant of this aspect of myself. 

“Maybe that’s why I sleep so well,” I said jokingly. “Full speed ahead until I crash.” 

“You’re like the energizer bunny. Or maybe it’s age - you’re just young.”

I paused to consider. Hmm… age, perhaps, perhaps. In that moment was the first time I actually pondered the question… How do I do it? At what cost?

In connection with this, I over the past year have realized that I don’t seek out my friends. Plain and simple, I don’t make plans. I gladly jump at the opportunity, and so I see them frequently enough. But rarely do I initiate - very, very infrequently. This is a problem, a major character flaw. I will even miss them horribly as though there is nothing, nothing I could do about it. Part of this is my knowledge that my time is completely booked.

In my first two years of college I struggled with time management. I spread myself too thin, never totally effective at anything. I was late, missed things, was double-booked. Lots of apologizing. I also accomplished a lot. But alas, on the whole it was haphazard. 

I was determined to overcome it and generally did. Having an intuitive, simple, aesthetically rational device to store things in did wonders. I used to use a Moleskin monthly planner. Now I use my iPhone. For me it made all the difference in the world - seeing the whole month before me, understanding it spatially. Yes. 

Though my life is not at all without leisure. I don’t plan my leisure, but grasp for it when I see the chance - the small gaps that appear. Typically I read. Hike. Sometimes I just sit on the couch and stare into the nothingness for a good 15 minutes, jumping up once I feel sufficiently recharged. I am very protective of these times. I think inwardly I understand how necessary they are. I am also protective of my 8 hours of sleep. Implicitly, I have realized for a long time that I cannot live my full life without them. 

Yesterday I watched this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfl55fHhLik&feature=youtu.be. The guy weirded me out, but I was laughing. Many people think I’m a J because I’m headstrong and perpetually on a mission. But no, I am a P. A busy P, committed to doing thousands of things at once.

My college now is self-paced. This has done wonders for me. I can do things on my terms, in my time. I create the timeframe instead of having one imposed from without. And I actually believe I get A LOT MORE writing done in this fashion than if I had traditional deadlines. It’s all about flow. It’s a song that only I know, and would articulate to you now if it wouldn’t take so much time!

Speaking of so much time. I usually only watch movies when I am sick. And then I watch marathons, zoning out completely and being totally sedentary for long spans of hours like a sick animal. It’s in this way that I burned out Matt’s laptop. Poor thing. Normally, it takes a lot of cajoling to sit me down for 2 hours. Stir crazy is not the right word. 

I take a nap on Sunday, usually 3-5 hours. I have wondered why I always do this, never needing a nap or feeling tired during the week. Upon considering this subject in more detail I have realized my body requires that nap to charge for/release energy from the week. Interesting.

Something you should know about Matt and I is that we ruthlessly tease each other, especially about our quirks. Through this past time I came to realize a horrible, reoccurring tick of mine that obviously indicates stress. Sometimes I stop in the middle of what I’m doing, close my eyes and do this crazy, neurotic exhale. The first time he teased me about this I laughed and laughed and laughed. Then the days passed and I realized how often I do this. All. The. Time. The reason I exhale is because I’m holding my breath like interval training.  Which is precisely how I treat most tasks, come to find out. I also hold my stomach in tension - constantly. 

I’ve had some serious, reoccurring health problems that I was discussing with the energizer bunny friend. She asked, “Are you stressed?” with a slight twinge in her voice like it wasn’t a question. “I don’t think so?” I answered, honestly unaware of my workaholic nature at that point.

Which shouldn’t surprise me. My father, mother and step-father, (and sister) are all workaholics. Throughout my life my mom usually worked two jobs. My dad and step-dad both reveled in overtime. This is an important piece, I feel. It unlocks why I think it’s normal anyway, to be going, going, going…

And it is normal for me. So what am I going to do about it, you ask? Long story short: I’m not going to lessen my workload. I feel utterly unfulfilled without all my endeavors big and small. It’s a part of me. Constant, hard work makes me feel fulfilled. And it makes my vacations even sweeter, though if you ask Matt he will probably say I don’t take vacations at all (my idea of a successful vacation = doing as much as possible). 

But I am going to change things. A LOT OF THINGS. It is necessary. Recently all my stuff snowballed. I won’t go into detail but suffice it to say the dishes were not done! My priorities compounded and were vying for my # 1 spot like they sometimes, rarely, can do. I made it out just fine, I always do. But the dishes were not done, and I’ve spent the last week playing catch up. I also had some apologizing to do. 

I’ve been committed to health and for a while now. In all the books and studies I’ve read, there has been much mention of stress, the one topic I have glanced over without second thought. Truly I considered myself to have a relatively low-stress life. Which is true in some respects. We’re not poor or dying. But today is the day I come to terms with the fact that I must implement stress-relieving strategies in my life. 

The first is on the spiritual plane. This is so obviously implied to anyone who knows me, but for the reader from the outside, there it is. Psalms, trust, prayer, meditation. Devotion twice daily, worshipping with my husband. This is the total bedrock of my life, so that is the principle means by which I will explicitly deal with the stress that is there. I am still trying to convince myself of that.

The second means is physical. I’m not sure of all that I’m going to do but it involves hot cloths and pedicures. I’ve always balked at those things thinking they were.. you guessed it, a waste of time! But I realize now how important it is to STOP and take care of yourself. My sister and, actually, energizer bunny friend again, take really good care of themselves. They have special cold and hot water skin care regiments and comfortable shoes and healthy cuticles. I am coming around.

We were visiting a friend at Whole Foods one day and he was showing us all the peppermint and spearmint and eucalyptus chunks. He said something about people gently inhaling a scoop of something every morning. Maybe I will look into that. So funny to even think of it. Hopefully I won’t monotonize it and thus empty it of it’s stress-reducing value. The tendency is great but I am determined.

I can remember “learning how to deeply breathe” at therapy when I was a teenager and thinking - this is total bullshit. When perhaps everything but that was bs.

The only physical stress-relieving mechanism I have right now is the shower. Another friend was teasing me the other day (we lived together) about taking loonngggg showers. My sister does the same thing. I didn’t think anything of it. I now realize it has been a way for my body to relax - yes I am one of those that jacks the heat up really high. Last week (stress climax) the clock even fell off the wall from the steam. Interesting all that we do unconsciously. I didn’t make the connection.

So part of what I’ve learned is that I can handle being under a lot of stress. Which I always thought was the opposite. However in truth I felt I couldn’t handle a lot of stress because I was already under so much stress that any additional stress was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Funny how it’s all coming to light.

This semester my husband is taking a class that he gently told me I could not take. But!!!! I was appalled, jealous, longing! I want to come!!! I’ll do anything! He is a wise man. “But I do like the idea of having a free night,” I said, already fantasizing about all the things I will jam it full with. “I like it too,” he said, probably hoping I’ll take a breather.

And perhaps I will. I think my one saving grace has been my passion for reading. I have loved the escape factor, it’s been an enduring force in my life. It’s a true love, a true passion. Perhaps I’m not only escaping my circumstances, but my bodily stress as well. A time to simply lay down, often outside, and just use my mind. I have never crazily exhaled while reading. 

Wish me luck!

-it’s late. I’m up because I slept the day away, finally resting after three weeks of. Work. Breeeathe.
-matt sleeps. We are learning to love. And with all the hope in the world he says, ‘I want to love you,’ which is so much better than ‘I love you.’ isn’t it? Though he says that too.
-this is an unnumbered list.
-reading fulfills my thirst for wonder. ‘what do you like about it?’ matt asks me in re Harry potter. ‘it’s a world!’ I say feebly. A world!
-crickets on the bed, in the bathroom sink, in my shoe. Meet your fate!
-getting there… Closer to manifesting my thoughts and feelings and being in words and images. Closer, closer. Reach!
-lots of newness on the horizon. Prospects, traveling, books. I’m going to read moby dick after Jane eyre, which is just wonderful, but you knew that. Then the hobbit.
-Ammerman flowers on the table. Time and life pass, people standing before you are not married and then - they are. But a mist. Crickets hop in the distance.
-I want to make something beautiful and true, is that too much to ask?
-just. Keep going.
-dad! Dad? Is your phone dead? Are you dead? When you die I will feel as confused about you, as I always have.
-I’m done making things I hate. Remember last time I said that?
-I am the perfect blend of melancholy and contentment. Like floating down a river on an earth with no people. Just me and the quiet slush plop

-time to pray

it’s saturday night and i’m suddenly

taken up with the urge to list every

book i’ve ever read. but the dishes are done

and i only do things like that when they’re not

and when i’m taken up with the urge

to flip the bird at the grind. 

i sure get taken up a lot

twice in once stanza!

i’m not going to read everything is illuminated

and i’m not sorry

even though i feel like i should be. it’s too damn

snarky and smart and experimental

you should know i get a lot of joy out of saying damn.

nothing better than the perfect word - 

that would be fine if you didn’t mention that to my in-laws.

now i’m washing my hands with chekhov and conrad

scrubbing off that aestheticy molasses - thick and necessary if  there’s no real meat

running back to my go-to men, my boyfriends

not smug uptown grad men

too damn smart for their own damn good

who wilt in the fervent heat

of real men like forrest gump. 

matt’s girlfriend is lemon-zested desserts

and we joke all the time, all the time

until i cry and then we look at each other like

oh my

not even mad or sad

just a hint of truth too close, the slightest inkling

that you don’t think i’m nice.

if amelia could talk she would say this!

and that! and this! and that! but she doesn’t yet

so she just grunts and squeals and moves her

thumbs she’s just discovered.

and cries probably becauseit sucks when people think

your crying is so cute and they just smile right in your face.

if i read poetry i think in poetry

it’s my native tongue, after all - 

“integral, not tacked on” - 

says the man who is at once my grandpa

and my father and my brother

and my dumbledore. you can’t die -

you just can’t. okay?

i saw you singing once - dare i even mention it?

no. suffice it to say your eyes were closed and the pain

of your whole life was sitting on your brow

when there was no one in the room but you and God.

how i found myself a fly on the wall in that moment i

don’t know, but i took that image with me, your face

like crying without tears, and stowed it away

forever.

sometimes i see my friends in true essence

boopie twirling about, inner-girl in full force

and i want to weep or sink into the floor at least

or something, something to show how

i see you and i love you.

we were looking at a book.

of images, just stuff. dark stuff,

nude stuff, children, women,

migrant workers and whores. and at

the same moment you said,

“that’s sad” because we saw something 

immoral and horrible and heart-rending

i said “that’s beautiful”

and i learned something about myself in that moment

and about the world too.

When you’re gone I’ll repeat your name three times like Beetlejuice in order to raise you from the dead at a moment’s notice. What if I forget the meaning of life? How long to leave the chicken in for? How to love the sick and the ugly and myself? When I one day find myself in your shoes, I’ll peer out from behind my glasses, transforming young women with one knowing look into little girls, pouring out that pure and approving mother-love that all women need and only women can give.

This is what I think about during your pauses. You’re talking and I’m watching, taking mental notes and think-chanting remember this, remember, remember, but it’s not only the words that I want. I want every gesture, every pregnant pause that introduces a new thought like a moment of silence. Important and necessary, your pauses are like the kind used in poetry and comedy and between lovers – a word I now use without blushing as a direct result of observing you over the years and imitating as needed.

At present you’re el natural but I’ve seen the whole gamut – everything from cleaning-attire to evening-out via methods of beauty that have been lost like ruche and lipstick. Also pantyhose and perfume, which are all constant, necessary pieces of your repertoire but have nothing to do with your real beauty. You are the only person I have ever believed when they said that beauty comes from within.

You’re on your throne – the brown recliner. Rumbles the cat purrs in the distance and we swoon on cue, things like swooning and loving deeply being such a part of the womanness we share. Thousand dollar paintings surround us, and other things we never had, you’ve assured me on so many occasions. There was a ping-pong table in my living room. Proof. Like ancient Egypt I’m convinced of your past life through relics and testimony alone, resurrected objects of significance like the photograph that sits before us, framed in ornate gold like tomb treasure.

“This picture was taken when I was 19 years old. I had already been married, had a child. Was divorced. This pose – looking out, not really looking at the camera – it’s like I’m here but you can’t see me. I remember riding the subway and looking out the window thinking to myself, I can’t take this anymore.”

The young you is all bangs and eyeliner like Bewitched. “Back then, in the year 1964, things were… very different,” you say, your eyes scanning an invisible memory, both of us aware that my only knowledge of back then comes from I Love Lucy reruns and photographs like this one. The girl in the photo is gorgeous but sad. I can almost see her beneath your skin, somewhere behind your eyes if I look back far enough, though the only trace left of her despair is the calm of having survived it.

“I’ve put on a couple of parties in my life. The first really big party that we had to have – I’m being facetious now – was when my husband was killed and we had a funeral. And because he was so young, there were 600 people. The church made dinner for about 300 hundred of them. That was something.”

 The moment I have ever let myself feel bad for you – a widow with two cats and a cane – is the same moment I am rebuked by the thought of your joy. Impenetrable, otherworldly, your joy is like an angel’s or like a statue of the Buddha. If you were an angel you wouldn’t be the Michelangelo version – a plump, winged baby – or a line drawing with u’s for eyes and o’s for a mouth. You would be like an angel of the Bible – muscular, resplendent, borne inflexibly toward God and thus terrifying to behold.

“Our days of glory outnumber the days that we’ve spent under affliction. They’re like a breath – like a moment. Even now at sixty-five, when I look back at when I was nineteen. I realize how many years have gone by but… it seems like it was –” you stop, fix your eyes on mine with an uncanny compassion, like I’m sitting naively at the end of a long tunnel, unaware of what’s to come with no way to warn me – “only yesterday,” you finish, light pouring easily from your eyes.

Days of glory, days of affliction, the relation between the two – this is angel speak, a dialectic I covet like a pre-teen longing for high heels. There are credentials necessary to speak on these things with any real authority. Natural prerequisites. One of them is age – easy enough. But the real prerequisite is wisdom. “We come to knowledge through suffering,” you’ve said, matter of fact like math. We come to knowledge through suffering. Recite, believe and repeat.

“When Harvey was killed, I was given another life,” you said to me once, and I cried for the suffering of the whole world and the reality of death in general while you smiled. It was midnight on a Tuesday and we were discussing my problems. Case in point. Like Abraham you were destined for children later in life, to nurture and tend to the youthful as you prepare for death – a thought I run from and stuff deep down so I don’t have to feel it yet.

“Sometimes you’re so close and so ready, you could just reach out and grab his hand, and it will be totally seamless.” You said this to me a few years ago, and my go-to consolation – You’re only in your sixties! – dissolved in light of your pact of peace with death. I can remember thinking ho-ly shit and being terrified, too young and too athletic and too proud to really ponder the hand of God reaching into this life and pulling us, you, me, anyone, into the other.

“There are some birthdays that loom on you,” you say. “Thirty is one of those. And then everyone says fifty, but for me it was sixty-five. You know, you just know, that you’ve lived the majority of your life. And if you don’t have it at sixty-five you’re not going to get it. And you are who you are.”

In general, your generation is known by my generation as cranky in the uttermost, stiff with annoyance that others exist. We dismiss them because they can’t use technology – they dismiss us because we can’t live without it. There is an incommensurable gap that leaves the younger without perspective and the older without compassion. “They will die in the wilderness,” you always say, big-eyed and tight-jawed like a parent who’s more disappointed than angry. We are who we are.

“Is my mom’s hair white?” Jennifer once asked me as you swept by, all radiance, cane in hand. “I thought it was more blonde-white,” she said as I nodded, gentle as possible with this delicate news. “When did that happen?” she said, looking on with subtle horror like you were aging all at once in fast motion.

I have the opposite problem. To me you are eternally sixty-five, young enough to drive alone but old enough to always leave early and to roll your eyes at the greed and indiscretions of men, condemning them with that heavy look, those black eyes that x-ray all things. “Things were very different,” you say softly, trying to somehow get the point across through repetition like with foreigners and children.

“A young girl who would have a child and run away from home didn’t have too much of a future. My husband – my first husband – he was a German. His parents were born in Germany. I’m a baby boomer, right after World War II. Born into the Jewish faith, the last person a Jew would ever consider being with, from my family, would be a German. And here I was. I ran away with a German.”

Being German is different than being a German. Like the difference between being Jewish and being a Jew. When it comes to the subtleties of language, the meaning is not as much in the words as it is in the story we all know. Being German is like being five foot six, being from Minneapolis, being a subscriber to the Wall St. Journal. But being a German, being a Jew, is like being a woman, being devout, being poor. It’s not of you, like a mere trait. It’s in you.

“Because my parents were first generation Americans they wanted us to blend in with the society. And they were religious, in a traditional and ritualistic way, but they weren’t – they weren’t convicted of their religion in their mind and their heart. And when that’s not present and all you think about is wanting to belong to a certain culture, life passes you by.”

I can picture you sitting in a synagogue, sheepish and out of place like a bird with a broken wing. Surrounded by a family and a culture that would disown you. Your father worked seven days a week on Halstead Street – Jew Town was what it was called. Your mother hit you because you were the oldest and sent you to therapy because you stuttered but they always said, “We need to see your mother.” That didn’t happen. These details coalesce to form the girl in the gold frame. They also explain the grandmother in the brown chair.

Your 60’s eyes are downcast in a familiar and awful way, like a teen prostitute or a beaten dog.  “I was pretty hopeless, pretty desperate,” you say darkly and we exchange a meaningful nod. The man you were living with at the time – not your first or second husband – a photographer, the author of the photo, that man – you are wearing a little cover-up, something that belonged to him. That any woman, ever, someone’s daughter and sister and friend, should wear a little cover-up belonging to a man that hardly knows her – this is the hopelessness of the world, the desperation we understood in that nod.

“I always liked art. I always appreciated beauty so I took art classes, history of art classes; I hung around with photographers and artists and went to the Art Institute of Chicago. If you come from a big city and you’re interested in art – you’ve got places to go. Architecture, wonderful parties. But no, that was as deep as I got. An artistic, intellectual knowing. But not what was really going on inside me.” You touch your heart. And smile.

I imagine there are stories like this one that never get told because the people in them didn’t change. Sad girls in gold frames become bitter old ladies that people only frame out of obligation. Not so with you, sitting there with cat in lap and hand on heart, beaming brighter than any nineteen-year-old could hope to beam, not because you were never cruel or lied or hated, but because you admit it.

“You usually have to climb mountains to talk to people like that,” a friend once said as we left your house, all levitating after hours of conversations like this one. These talks are like falling down the rabbit hole, happening upon something secret and magical, a hidden world in which everything – every adornment, every providential word – appears to have been holding it’s breath for your arrival. You sigh and rest your head, closing your eyes and looking like you probably will at death – content, restful. Finished. And then you look at me sharply, saying a thousand things without words with that penetrating, intimate, motherly look.

Marilynn, Marilynn, Marilynn.

When you’re gone I’ll repeat your name three times like Beetlejuice in order to raise you from the dead at a moment’s notice. And when I one day find myself in your shoes, pouring out that pure and approving mother-love that all women need and only women can give - if I give it freely asking for nothing in return, it will be because of you.