Tableau

Leslee’s view of Josiah McElheny’s Endlessly Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism is much more orderly than mine, showing the linear repetition of shiny bottles reflected ad infinitum toward a distant vanishing point. From my angle, I saw a chaos of bottles reflecting bottles reflecting other bottles, the clean geometry of classical perspective being replaced by a self-referential visual clusterfuck. From her taller height, Leslee saw the forest; from my shorter one, I saw the trees. I suppose that’s how it is touring a museum with a friend: the two of you can’t step into the same exhibit twice.

As challenging as it can be to understand a single work of art, singly, adding another perspective can sometimes clarify matters. Viewed on its own while you’re on your own, a single work of art speaks a given language; viewed alongside other works and in the company of other views, that same single work might say something else entirely.

When Leslee and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on Friday, we were intent on seeing “El Greco to Velasquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III,” and we did. We hadn’t planned, though, to juxtapose the 17th century works of visionaries such as El Greco with the 20th century Spanish realism of Antonio López García, but we did. How better to understand El Greco’s almost hallucinogenic Toledo landscape than by considering it against López García’s almost photographic Madrid? And how better to appreciate multiple artists’ versions of Mary’s immaculate conception than by viewing them before considering López García’s multiple perspectives of a less-than-immaculate bathroom?

Upon exiting the Antonio López García exhibit and on our way to lunch, Leslee and I passed the reflective bottles of McElheny’s “Endlessly Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism,” which are contained in a reflective case situated incongruously between the Museum’s upscale first floor restaurant and the stairway leading to its more moderately priced basement cafeteria. Perhaps by reflecting upon the shiny bottles of twentieth century Modernism, you can better decide where to eat? The MFA’s two dining venues provide another sort of tableau, with a dazzling parade of culinary choices being another kind of aesthetic object reflecting ad infinitum toward a digestive rather than visual vanishing point. Shall I have pizza or stir-fry, or soup, salad, or sandwich? In this century more than previous ones, we live amidst a dizzying array of choices. Is it any wonder we occasionally have problems seeing the forest for the trees?

On the wall opposite the reflective case containing Josiah McElheny’s Endlessly Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism, along the hallway across from the Museum’s restaurant and on the way to the stairway to its cafeteria, Jim Lambie’s RSVPmfa offers a dizzying array of geometric patterns interrupted by three-dimensional objects–chairs, sequined handbags, and the like–erupting from the starkly flat visual pane into the lived space of passersby. Viewed on its own, RSVPmfa is psychedelic enough, its black and white zebra stripes seeming to swirl with your every step: an optical illusion writ large. As luck, chance, or astute curating would have it, Lambie’s wall seems most interesting when viewed reflected in McElheny’s mirrored case, the endless repetition of last century’s RSVP becoming Postmodern when viewed as an unintentional tableau. Sometimes the best way to view one object is by considering it alongside another radically different one.

Click here for my photo-set of these two juxtaposed works; you can find Leslee’s photos from our day at the MFA here. Enjoy!

 

Dreaming of trees

I’d love to think at least one of the giant bronze baby heads planted outside the Huntington Street entrance of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is dreaming of trees. Titled “Day and Night,” the installation was sculpted by Spanish realist Antonio López García and consists of a pair of bookended baby heads: one awake, the other sleeping. Today, both heads were showered with windblown crabapple blossoms.

If you, too, wish to dream of trees, click over to 10,000 Birds for this month’s installment of the Festival of the Trees. There you’ll find enough tree-related links to keep your eyes wide open.

Click here for my photo set featuring Antonio López García’s big babies. You can see their conception here and installation here. Enjoy!

 

The wheres and whys

This morning I walked Reggie first thing upon awaking, recognizing we both feel better when we begin our day on foot. Reggie rests more quietly–he’s less antsy–after he’s been walked, and I feel more alert and alive after our strolls. Taking a walk makes it easier for me to come back home, have breakfast, and then write in my journal, even if I haven’t seen anything on my walk worth writing about. The simple act of getting out and getting moving pulls me away from my laptop’s virtual world and pushes me into my neighborhood’s actual one, and that’s a good thing.

Mark posted from India today about blogging and diary-keeping, and I posted a lengthy comment in response. I think it’s natural for bloggers to occasionally ask themselves why they started (and continue to keep) a blog: why keep a blog when it doesn’t seem to be accomplishing anything? Yes, some bloggers become famous or at least popular via their online writing; some bloggers get book deals or make money from their sites. Most of us, though, do not. Blogging is something we do primarily for our own satisfaction; if we were looking for something else from our online writing, we’d give up, discouraged, the moment we discover New York literary agents aren’t pounding down our doors with book deals and expensive pens in hand.

The only reason I continue to keep both a journal and a blog is I see each kind of writing as being a spiritual–not a commercial, professional, or even practical–practice. I write journal pages and blog posts the same way I sit in meditation: the act of writing or sitting is its own reward. Any positive consequence of sitting, writing, or blogging is an accidental side-effect: a result (good or bad) that’s beside the point. Long ago, I gave up any hope or expectation of achieving “enlightenment,” figuring that sitting quietly, breathing, and lightly gazing at the floor in front of me isn’t a bad way to spend an occasional half-hour. I’ve given up, in other words, any hope or expectation that meditation will give or get me anything remotely practical; instead, I figure if I’m here in a human, breathing body, I might occasionally spend some time simply experiencing what it’s like to be breathly and embodied.

Writing is the same kind of practice for me. After eating breakfast in the morning, on most days (when I’m not in a frantic hurry) I don’t have much better to do than sit a spell while I finish my morning juice or tea. Given I’m typically in no hurry to attack my to-do list right after breakfast, I might as well do something rather than nothing with that time…and scribbling into a notebook is the “something” I’ve chosen. You might reach for the newspaper while you finish your morning coffee, or someone else might flip on the television before showering and getting dressed. I reach for notebook and pen: nothing special.

Were I a perfectly faithful journal-keeper, I’d have no need for a blog…but an online audience keeps me honest. If I skip a day or two, a week or two, or a month or two in my journal, no one but me will notice. But if I disappear without a post or picture for several days or more, presumably someone in cyberspace (I tell myself) will notice. On many days when I just don’t feel like I have anything to show or tell here, the expectation of an awaiting audience (whether they’re actual or merely imagined) makes me show up rather than slacking off.

Ultimately it is that fidelity and discipline–that entirely quotidian commitment to show up more days than not–that keeps me blogging. Practicing anything (meditation, writing, or other) by oneself is no less fruitful than practicing with a community, but many of us are more likely to show up consistently if we know other folks–including folks whose names and stories we know–will be showing up as well.

So these days, I blog about Keene to remind Mark what it’s like here while he spends his academic sabbatical there. The rest of the time, I blog about my environs to remind myself time and again what it’s like to be “here” even as I remain close to home, steeped in the here and now.

This is a more-or-less exact transcript of this morning’s journal pages, written after I’d walked Reggie, made a quick check online, and ate breakfast. If you’re interested in this topic of blogging and journal-keeping, I’d highly recommend Mark’s post as the push that set my mental wheel in motion.

 

Sitting pretty

It’s hard not to snap a photo of a bird that’s sitting pretty and all but posing for you.

I find it fittingly ironic that mere days after arguing the utter artlessness of the photos I post here, Hoarded Ordinaries took home two Blogisattva Awards, both of them for visual rather than literary merit. According to the folks responsible for this year’s Blogisattvas, which recognize “excellence in English-language Buddhist blogging,” Hoarded Ordinaries is noteworthy for its “Clean, Straightforward, Unaffected Design” and “Creation or Use of Graphics in a Blog.”

I should promptly point out that the presumably clean, straightforward, and unaffected design of this blog has nothing in particular to do with me: Hoarded Ordinaries looks the way it does because when I moved my site to WordPress last year, I picked an off-the-rack template designed by Vanilla Mist (a.k.a. Patricia Muller). I don’t know if Muller is a Buddhist, but I think she deserves more design credit than I do for any presumed “Buddhist” virtues underlying the look of my blog.

I also find it amusing that my “creation or use of graphics” here on Hoarded Ordinaries should be deemed somehow inherently Buddhist: two years ago, when I was creating and using graphics exactly as I do today, one of the folks behind the Blogisattvas pointed out that Hoarded Ordinaries didn’t actually qualify as either a “Zen” or “Buddhist” blog. I wonder what has changed between now and then to make the “look and feel” of Hoarded Ordinaries seem suddenly (and award-winningly) Buddhist? Have the pictures I post suddenly become more intrinsically Zen-like, or does the fact that I now have a category tag pointing to Zen posts make my site more overtly Buddhist? Perhaps I should ruin the presumably clean, straightforward, and unaffected design of Hoarded Ordinaries by tacking a label at the top proclaiming that it now boasts “New and Improved Zen Flavor,” given how the word “Zen” makes even household cleansers seem cool.

I never was one of the popular girls, I’ve never understood the politics behind awards ceremonies, and I certainly have never entered much less won a beauty contest, so this year’s Blogisattva Awards and the suggestion that the look of Hoarded Ordinaries is downright pretty has left me a bit flummoxed. I guess the appropriate response is to smile and thank the Academy, Buddha, and all the little people who stood beside me on my way to the top. For good or ill, it seems that as a Buddhist blogger I’m more effective (or at least more award-worthy) when I’m choosing blog templates and posting pictures than when I’m actually talking about Buddhism. If nothing else, I guess these two awards go to show that when it comes to the Zen of Buddhist blogging, silence is better than holiness, especially if you’re lucky enough to sit pretty.

 

Art

I’ve already posed the philosophical question of whether graffiti qualifies as art, so I won’t go there again. But given today’s Photo Friday theme of Art–and given the fact that it’s snowing again here in New England, so I didn’t take any photos on this morning’s dog-walk–I’m taking this opportunity to re-visit several more images I snapped on my way to the Cambridge Zen Center this past Sunday.

Annette recently shared a humorous video that tackles the vexing question of What Is Art? It’s a question I ask in a slightly modified form in a Literary Theory class I occasionally teach online: before we address the subject of literary theory, can we first determine exactly what literature is?

It helps, of course, that one of the books we read in this same class–Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction–begins with a chapter titled “What is literature?” It either does or doesn’t help that Eagleton duly refuses to answer his own question. “What is literature,” Eagleton asks; “What do you think it is,” Eagleton responds, as do I. One coy way of answering Eagleton’s question is to note that literature is a field of inquiry focused on questions that have more than one answer. Whenever students press me for “the answer” to Eagleton’s question, I note that my copy of the book doesn’t come with an Answer Key, the question “What is literature?” being a question I ask because I’m genuinely interested in discovering some decent answers, not because I’m looking for students to read my mind.

After we spend about a week grappling with the most basic of literary questions–how, after all, can you move on to the sticky task of interpreting literature if you don’t even know what literature is?–I’ll eventually observe that I personally think the very discussion and debate we’re engaged in is in large part what defines “literature.” Given a blank brick wall, most folks won’t find much to argue or analyze; given a brick wall with some sort of image painted therein, we can begin to pose (and debate) questions such as why is the image there, what does it mean, and what value or significance does it have in our lives?

And yet, even this answer is incomplete and unsatisfactory, for it ignores issues of intent. If audiences define art, then an accidentally spilled bucket of paint can qualify if onlookers subsequently wonder why or to what purpose said paint was spilled. Right now in New England, many winter-weary folks are shaking their fists at the sky and wondering “Why”: does that mean Yet Another Snowfall could qualify as Art if enough of us got together and started debating its meaning?

Things are complicated even further when I realize I have contradictory views about my own blog, which may or may not qualify as “art” or “literature” depending on whom and how you ask. If you were to ask me if my written posts qualify as literature, I’d probably say yes…but if you were to ask me if my posted pictures qualify as art, I’d probably say no. As a writer, I see my words as being consciously crafted to communicate an artful intent: yes, it does my writerly heart proud to think that someone might read my words and ponder issues of meaning or significance in response. But as shutter-snapper, I don’t see the pictures I post as having the same intentional import: the fact that I shot this rather than that is almost always accidental, and art (in my mind at least) is about authorial intention. If I snapped an interesting image by accident, would that image be art, or simply fortuitous? In my mind at least, the pictures I post are illustrations, but they aren’t art, for they don’t rise to the same level of conscious craft that my carefully chosen words do.

And yet, as a literary critic, I also know that authors themselves are often the least credible source when it comes to interpreting their own art, which again suggests a certain element of accident (or at least surprise) when it comes to creative matters. If an author or artist was thinking Idea A when she or he crafted a given work, does that preclude the possibility that Ideas B, C, and/or D might be appropriate interpretations as well? It seems the very questions “What is art” and “What is literature” are themselves rather artful and literary, inspiring as they do a complex internal debate that appears to be ongoing. My copy of Terry Eagleton’s book definitely does not come with an answer key, and I ask these questions because the more I think about them, the further it seems I am from actually answering them.

 

More than a day late and much more than a dollar short

I’ve been woefully lax when it comes to observing my own four year blogiversary, which happened on December 27. In previous years, I’ve marked the day by writing a retrospective entry that included links to my top five or ten favorite posts from the previous year. This year, I was preoccupied instead with compiling links for the New Year’s Festival of the Trees post, so the day came and went without me as much as mentioning it.

In past years, I’ve tried to summarize what I’ve learned from X many years of blogging. This year, I’m not sure I’ve learned much of anything. When I first started blogging, I had idealistic notions of how my blog could and would reach lots of readers, change lots of minds, and ultimately Change The World. Four full years later, I’m less idealistic. Four years of more-or-less faithful blogging later, I’ve given up on reaching lots of readers, changing lots of minds, and ultimately Changing The World. These days, I realize the world is the world whether I like (and blog about) it or not. Rather than trying to change myself, my readers, or the world at large, these days I mostly try to content myself with what is.

So this year, instead of trying to decide upon a handful of favorite posts from 2007, I’m taking a “Festival of the Trees” approach. Here is a whole forest of links, clustered into loose categories: a retrospective that is more than a day late and much more than a dollar short.

Posts about blogging:

Bloggers love to talk about blogging, what keeps them from blogging, and what they hope to attain or achieve through blogging. In 2007, I didn’t refrain from such meta-bloggery.

Futuristic contains within it a post titled Ad infinitum, which discusses the challenge a long-time blogger faces trying to re-see the same world in different ways, day after day. Sustained attention features my thoughts on place-blogging as inspired by the ASLE conference in Spartanburg, NC this past summer. Plain Jane mundane is as close to a Hoarded Ordinaries Blogging Manifesto as I’ve ever written, which is why it has a prominent spot on my “About” page.

Day trips:

One of the things I love about living in New England is the sheer number of cool places there are to explore here…and one of the things I love about blogging is the excuse it gives me to wander with a camera and a double-dollop of curiosity.

In Spring fling, I take a trip to the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA; in Hannah, get your axe, I explore the Hannah Dustan monument in Penacook, NH; and in Unwind, I visit the original scroll-typescript of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road during its exhibition in Lowell, MA. Madonna with musket focuses on the statue of Molly Stark in Wilmington, VT; The sphinx’s riddle describes a walk in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA; and The sky’s the limit chronicles a trip to the JFK Library in Boston, MA. With destinations like these so close to home, this past year I hardly needed to venture to places as far-flung and diverse as New York and Spartanburg…but I did anyway.

Zen:

“Open your mouth, already a mistake.” This Zen saying points to the utter ineffability of the present moment that Zen practice seeks to capture: as soon as you’ve described This Present Moment, it’s already past. This, of course, poses a problem for a blogger who practices Zen, and in 2007, I made many “open-mouthed mistakes.”

Birthday Boy describes an April visit to the Providence Zen Center to celebrate Buddha’s birthday. Open meadow mind focuses on the formal meditation practice I do when my schedule allows, and Black Friday describes the walking meditation I do whether or not I have time for formal practice. Strength describes my favorite fruit of meditation practice, and Instead of apple picking talks about the Zen of literal fruit.

Life as Lorianne:

One of the coolest things about blogging is the way it provides you with your own personal time-capsule. For many years, my Mom has kept a diary in which she writes a one- or two-sentence summary of each day’s events; whenever she wants to know when a certain thing happened, her diary is the first place she goes. For me, my blog serves as an electronic diary: one way I as a writer keep a finger on my own psychological pulse.

Probably the biggest change in my personal life in 2007 was the baby-step I took toward leaving Keene, NH, which I described in Bipolar. In The end of an era, I talked about another rite of passage in my personal life: the long-overdue demolition of my favorite abandoned factory. No escape describes the panic attacks I sometimes feel in crowded places. Soft in the middle features me letting it all (or at least my belly) hang out as I talk about my shifting attitudes toward my body.

Love, marriage, and not-always-happily-ever-after:

One of the things I’ve chronicled over the years I’ve been blogging is my 2004 divorce after nearly 13 years of marriage. When I first separated from my ex-husband, someone told me it takes three years to get over a marriage…which means 2007 was the year of my “getting over it.” Although I can’t say with certainty whether a person ever fully “gets over” nearly 13 years of water under the bridge, I did in several posts re-visit what I learned from a dozen years in an ultimately unsuccessful marriage.

Three years looks back on my post-divorce experience, Until death describes my unsettled reaction to a friend’s engagement, and Don’t do the math offers some learned-the-hard-way advice to the soon-to-be-married. Wholesome offers my thoughts on older, long-married love versus the younger, newlywed kind.

The sporting life:

With the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series, the New England Patriots remaining undefeated during the regular season, and the Boston Celtics finally back on top in the NBA rankings, 2007 has been an amazing year to be a New England sports fan. In June, J and I traveled to Atlanta to see the Red Sox; in December, we saw both the Celtics and the Patriots. In between, we’ve been to a handful of hockey games, with Hat tricks describing fan behavior at a Boston Bruins game and More than a few good men describing a collegiate match-up between Boston College and Northeastern University. And in Field of dreams, I explore the love affair many of us have with America’s pastime, this time played by a summertime collegiate league.

Ways of seeing:

This last category is the catch-all for posts I couldn’t classify elsewhere. When you come down to it, all of my posts are about “ways of seeing” in one way or another. There’s the literal seeing I do through my camera’s view-screen, then there are the ways that regular writing can sometimes lead to insight. After you’ve kept a blog for four full years, you learn to appreciate the everyday world as it transpires over time.

Four years later, I’m still exploring the backsides of buildings, as I described in Like a weed, and I’m still fascinated with the fall of light on my living room floor, as I explored in A certain slat of light. Four years later, I’m still walking the dog in woodsy places, as I described in Stalking; four years later, I’m still fascinated by mannequins and shop-window reflections, as illustrated in Holiday reflections. I’m still traveling to new places and trying to find my perceptual feet, as I describe in Out of proportion, and I’m still snooping in other people’s yards, as I explained in The leaves of others. Four years later, in other words, I’m still doing the same thing I did when I began blogging, regardless of whether I’ve learned anything or remain consistently idealistic about the experience. At the end of the day, even if you’re a handful of days late and a bucketful of dollars short, I guess that itself matters for something.

If you’re in a retrospective mood, you can read my inaugural blog entry, where the experiment began. I’m not sure what exactly I’ve learned from four years of experimenting, but you can read previous retrospectives here (2004), here (2005), and here (2006). If you follow any of today’s links, you might notice that I’ve recycled photos for this entry: a Lazy Blogger’s approach to an illustrated post.

 

Festival of the Trees, #19

It’s a New Year, so what better way to celebrate the 19th edition of the Festival of the Trees than by looking back on the trees that were. Marja-Leena offered an arboreal version of the year in review by posting the trees of her year. In a similarly retrospective vein, Granny J shared images of dead and dying cottonwood trees, and sarala touched on another kind of arboreal loss in a review of John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce focusing on the tragedy of North American deforestation.

While we’re on the topic of deforestation, Kilroy has moving (as in video!) proof of how professionals topple trees without destroying nearby buildings (or crushing nearby video-bloggers). And if loggers are going to fell trees to make paper anyway, Julie Dunlap reviews a handful of books about trees that belong on any tree-hugger’s shelf.

Trees felled by age, storms, and even foresters’ axes are one thing…ornamental trees attacked by college students are another. Here in New England, December, 2007 began with news of an arboreal hate crime masquerading as a college prank. You’d think that in the typically tree-hugging People’s Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts, college kids would be more “green”…but apparently Ivy League pranksters have no particular fondness for Japanese maples and crabapples.

An article from the Boston Globe suggests, though, that it may be unnecessary to be kind to individual trees in an age where we can genetically design their replacements. O brave new world, that has such trees in’t!.

Picture perfect trees

Poised on the cusp of several seasons, December was an image-rich month for trees in the blogosphere. Fotokew shared an image of lingering autumn leaves, Anthony McCune shared the secret (or perhaps we should say squirrelly) lives of trees, and Arboreality shared images of snow while educating us about the annual phenomenon of leaf marcescence in oak trees.

Dr. Omed’s Tent Show Revival continues to be a source of inspired images, first a pair of pictures showing burr oak parts (the second of them looking enough like a Buddhist mudra as to make for an apt arboreal altar icon), and next a series of Tulsa trees toppled by an ice storm. Wandering Around Kansas also illustrated the effects of ice storms on trees, and CBS News featured video on efforts to save the “Survivor Tree”–a nearly century-old elm that survived the Oklahoma City bombing–from similar ice damage.

Elsewhere in the December blogosphere, 3rd House Journal shared pictures of New England birches while Jean Morris featured the same species across the pond; Jean also blogged a photo-mosaic showing a tree’s twiggy complexity. Similarly breath-taking (or breath-inspiring?) are FrizzyLogic’s images of solstice tree moments, and Kim Nixon shared a similarly lovely moment in mist woods. Trees serve as the literal backdrop of several closeup images of bracket fungus appearing on A Passion for Nature.

In the category of “trees over time,” A. Decker blogged a series of images showing the many moods of two trees. Through the deft wielding of an artist’s pencil, Ester shares the shaded nuances of a couple of bonsai trees. Urban Extension featured a trio of tree posts: two about otters and oaks, and a third about an ancient walnut.

Festive trees

December is a bittersweet time for trees. Denuded of fall foliage, deciduous trees here in the Northern Hemisphere are no longer the focus of visual attention; featured in holiday celebrations, evergreens typically have to die to become decorative. QAZSE laments the violence inherent in the Christmas tree harvest, and other bloggers suggest more eco-friendly alternatives. Here in New England, the village of Waban features a live evergreen as its Festive Holiday Tree…and Universal Hub posted an image I’d snapped of this same tree reflected in a puddle of snowmelt.

Elsewhere, bloggers snapped images of other creative re-interpretations of the traditional Tannenbaum. The Jersey Exile, for instance, shared an image of a Gloucester Christmas tree made from lobster traps while Blaugustine posted two pictures of a live urban tree bedecked by sunlight for the holidays. (I can’t seem to permalink directly to Blaugustine’s two relevant posts, so you’ll need to scroll down…or click here and here for pictures alone).

Evergreen mortality notwithstanding, Jim Hession shared the frustration (shared by many of us) of erecting the perfect Christmas tree. And when it comes to perfect Christmas trees, GrrlScientist posted proof that New York City’s Lincoln Center Christmas tree might take the prize, at least by night.

Poetic trees

In the realm of poetry, Dave shared translations of five tree poems from Renaissance Spain, which struck me as being both tree- and mother-centered. Apparently if you Love Your Mother (whether she be Mother Earth, the Virgin Mary, or dear old Mom), loving trees is a natural corollary (a lesson lost on certain Ivy League pranksters?) Kim Nixon compared the hurt of poems not making the cut to the woodpile left in a tornado’s aftermath. 3rd House Journal illustrated in words and pictures the connections between trees and neural networks. And Beloved Dreamer shared the sense of loss and longing evoked by a memorial wreath fading at a crossroads: even evergreens eventually point to mortality.

Mythic trees

There are real trees, there are trees in our dreams, and then there are trees that take root in both worlds. Karen Dowell shared the rich folkloric history of the rowan tree, also known as mountain ash or caorunn. Terry* featured an article by Nalini M. Nadkarni on unsung arboreal heroes. Pat Doyle explored the Feng Shui connection between trees and spiritual healing. Artistic Journeys has featured an ongoing re-vision of the traditional Tarot deck, many of the cards depicting trees such as this image of strength.

In the realm of American history, EHT of the American Presidents Blog shares the story of Presidential trees…and the connection between Presidents and trees goes far deeper than that legend about George Washington and an ill-fated cherry tree. And blogging from Malaysia, Lye Tuck-Po recounts the transformative experience of entering a rain forest for the first time. In the natural world, the mythic one, and the histories that transpire in between, trees loom larger than life. That’s a lesson we can carry from any year into the next.

The February, 2008 festival of the trees will be hosted at Ginkgo Dreams. Please send any and all tree-related links to kelly (at) ginkgodreams (dot) com with “Festival of the Trees” in the subject line, or use the automated submission form. The deadline for February submissions is January 29.

 

Best gift ever

It’s not everyday when someone sneaks around behind your back to orchestrate the perfect present. J initially struggled to figure out what to get me for Christmas, and perhaps my giving him Patriots tickets for his birthday didn’t make matters any easier. But about a month ago, he claimed to have the Perfect Idea. “You’ll never guess” was all he’d say about the gift-in-the-making; all I knew was at several points he surreptitiously mailed envelopes I wasn’t allowed to see.

Those envelopes, it turned out, were addressed to artist Bren Bataclan, whose “Smile Boston” project I’d blogged when it took a road trip to Keene, NH after the flood of October, 2005. I didn’t claim the smiley-faced painting I found at the Keene State College student center back in 2005, figuring that someone else needed a smile more than I did. But the first time I visited J’s house, I smiled to see a Bren Bataclan painting in his living room: not one he found, but one he’d bought. On the secret checklist of “good traits” and “bad traits” every woman keeps when she first meets a man, I silently checked one in the “good” column: “Supports local artists.”

I knew Bren Bataclan painted whimsical, brightly colored characters; I didn’t know that he also accepts commissions to paint cartoon-like pet portraits. Now that I’ve seen Reggie’s cartoon alter-ego, I have to say the pairing is perfect. Reggie’s personality has always been goofy, and his orange poofiness is a perfect subject for painted whimsy. Bren perfectly captured the big, silly fluffiness of a dog he’s never met, thanks in large part to the various photographed portraits J took and secretly sent in those envelopes I wasn’t allowed to see.

In my opinion, the Perfect Present is one you never even thought to ask for, something you wouldn’t have bought yourself but you can’t imagine living without once you’ve received it. J’s commission of this portrait perfectly qualifies. “Loves me, loves my pet” is one of those good traits I’ve silently checked on my secret checklist of good and bad traits, and this year’s Christmas present merely highlighted that fact. It’s not everyday that someone transforms your beloved baby into a whimsical work of art.

Thanks to J for photographing Reggie posing alongside his portrait, which is still wrapped in plastic to prevent him from licking his likeness.

 

The weight of words

It’s the fifth week of the semester at Keene State, the fourth week of the semester for SNHU Online, and the third week of the semester at Granite State. In other words, this week I’m feeling the full brunt of being a multi-institutional adjunct instructor, burning the proverbial candle at both ends to keep all my juggled balls aloft and moving.

I’m tempted to say that like Mother Hubbard, my blog-cupboard is bare, but that’s not true. It’s not that I don’t have things to say, pictures to share, or ideas for blog-posts: there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all.

At times like these, I feel more like a bricklayer than I do a writer. While my poet friends concern themselves with the crafting of fine delicate trinkets–the work of literary watchmakers or jewelers–I’m daunted by the sheer weight of words as I try to keep on top of a perpetually renewing paper-pile. There’s no time to help my students craft fine delicate sentences; instead, we’re in the business, my students and I, of building weighty walls of prose, and that means schlepping a lot of words.

It’s tiring work, this building with words, brick by brick. At the end of one of my marathon teaching days, my feet ache with the weight of language, and I come home wanting nothing more than to sit on my couch and say nothing. On grading days when I’m home with dog, laptop, and the ever-present paper-pile, my head and neck feel the weight of words like a yoke as I plow, ox-like, through the furrows of other people’s prose, pen in hand.

At this point in the semester–the simultaneous fifth week, fourth week, and third–I ask myself why I require my students to write so damn much, a question I’m sure they’re each individually asking. The answer, unfortunately, is always the same. If you want to become a bricklayer yourself, you have to lay your own wall, brick by brick; if you want the benefit of learning from an older, more experience bricklayer, she needs to watch and oversee your progress. It’s long, grueling work, and there are no shortcuts. By week seven, six, and five, we all will be stronger and more callused, my students and I. Between now and then, though, all we feel is the slow grind of a heavy haul.

 

Art elsewhere

Sometimes, even in a museum-rich city like New York, you have to head outside to find art elsewhere.

This past Saturday began with a trip to the Museum of Modern Art, and it ended with me slipping away from a largish band of blog-buddies to walk the streets of Manhattan alone. I suppose it must seem odd that I’d traveled all the way to New York to visit friends who I then promptly ditched, but I think those friends understand my sometimes solitary ways. I love museums, but I need to sample them in small doses. Sometimes the sheer stimulus of being around that much art, especially if I’m in the presence of energetic, articulate folks who have so much brilliant stuff to say about that art, is a bit overwhelming. So on Saturday, after a leisurely gallery-stroll and languid lunch, I was ready to slip the bonds of sociality and hit the streets, alone.

In case you haven’t figured as much, I love to walk city streets alone. Walking with dear friends is wonderful, but walking alone is something else entirely. It’s not as if I prefer walking alone to walking with friends; it’s just that I sometimes need to spend time by myself. When I’m with friends, I still look around, notice things, and take pictures, but sometimes the presence of another person is simply too distracting. If I’m focusing on a friend or group of friends, it’s easy to overlook what’s going on around me, and somehow those anonymous goings-on help me feel grounded. In an odd, paradoxical way, being alone in a group of strangers sometimes seems more comforting to me than walking with a group of people I know. When I’m with people I know, I’m always aware of the personal interactions between us, and with that comes the usual insecure angst that most folks left behind when they graduated high school: “Do these folks like me?” “Am I talking too little, or too much?” “Am I making a fool of myself, or am I coming across as an obnoxious know-it-all?”

When I walk by myself in a sea of strangers, I don’t have to consider myself at all. Nobody knows who I am, and no one cares: there’s absolutely no need to wonder how my behavior is affecting anyone else. When I walk by myself in a sea of strangers, I don’t have to worry about what to say, who to heed, or how to act. There’s no need to worry or wonder about the irresistible human tendency toward cozy cliques and covert couplings: alone, I needn’t insinuate myself into any group. When I walk by myself in a sea of strangers, I am free to act as an entire, unthinking Eye, simply observing the people, places, and things around me with no thought toward how a figment called “I” fits into the scene.

And so on Saturday, after I’d slipped the cultured bonds of both art and friendship, I walked some five miles along Manhattan streets, heading up to, through, then across Central Park, circling back to Sixth Avenue, and ending at Times Square. I had no definite destination, just the soothing rhythm of my own feet underfoot. As I walked, I took a few but not many photos, my focus being the purely physical sensation of walking unencumbered: first this foot, then the next. Losing myself to the moment, the motion of my own strides, and the mood of anonymous faces around me, I forgot everything I ever might have known about art, friendship, and the cozy cliques and covert couplings they each sometimes inspire. Losing myself to the moment, motion, and mood, I simply watched the city and its denizens transpire around me, the raw materials of awareness culminating in my midst.

That’s when I happened upon Art Elsewhere. Where but in New York could you flee a museum to find the ultimate painterly moment: a bride and her just-married husband loading wedding presents for their departure, the sumptuous folds of her dress matching the intricate wrinkles of a renovation-wrapped facade? Where but in New York could you watch such an intimate moment–a couple’s first cooperative endeavor as man and wife–without anyone paying the least attention to you, the sight of brides and their just-married grooms seeming so commonplace, everyone’s grown indifferent to the wonder of it all?

If Vermeer were here, he would have painted this girl with a wedding dress instead of a pearl earring; if Picasso were here, bride and groom would be rent into angle and plane. Instead, passersby simply passed, and only one anonymous blogger–an Eye, unthinking and entire–stopped to snap the scene. This, too, is an artful moment, catalogued in the museum of the mind.

Click here for a photoset from Saturday morning’s trip to MoMA, before I fled the scene to find art on the streets of Manhattan. Enjoy!