The Beauty of Biking In the Rain

It was tricky week, overall. I am in that hazy amorphous period of one life's phase winding down while another is still winding up. I don't do well with ambiguity, so I spent more time than I like to admit hunched over the computer avoiding real life by staying plugged into the screen.

But. Redbeard and I went to go see the Van Gogh exhibit at the Art Museum tonight, a last minute decision when we realized it was in its last weekend. And sure, we're eating hot dogs and cornflakes lately to make ends meet but art is food too. And when else do you get a chance to see in person, in living color, world-famous pieces you may never see again, 3-D, textured, close enough to breathe on.

 It was like getting my brain power-washed with color and light.

The story of Van Gogh's moods and internal struggles was threaded throughout, along with his own family. I feel for the guy, toremented, ravaged by demons that chances are we have meds for these days.

But, his medicine was the sunlight of Arles (it's one of the few places I've been in the world and I have to say, the quality of the light really is spectacular); sheaves of wheat; poppies in field and bowls; the forest's undergrowth. And who among us will say that any of those don't have healing powers?

I was captivated thinking about his family, too, especially Theo, always sending him money and art supplies and finding him new doctors. Vincent went down in history but what about Theo?

I guess Theo got the solace of a family and a wife and respectability and stability and a career and children. Vincent, for him, the landscapes, the irises, the wind moving across the grassy fields, that was it, man.

I like to think that despite his demons he had moments of being totally absorbed by stunning, everyday beauty. Looking at the painting called Trees and Undergrowth, how can you doubt it? I hope he got to say what he wanted to say about the world, about what he saw and felt, how his mind worked.

From a letter he wrote to his sister, Wilhelmina: "I believe that at present we must paint nature's rich and magnificent aspects. We need good cheer and happiness, hope and love. The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant color, well-arranged, resplendent."

I love that. The beauty of the world as revenge for everything the world has cost you.

When we left the museum, the hot soupy evening had turned into a stormy night. People idled in the doorway, opening umbrellas, discussing what to do. Redbeard and I felt that in honor of Van gogh we should charge out into the rain with our arms open, and we did so. We stood on the pavilion at the top of the hill that overlooks the wide river and the highway, and a vein of lightning cracked in the sky. 

Saturated with Van Gogh, his horizons and close ups and frames, everywhere we looked we saw a painting: the lights of cars sliding down the highway across from Boathouse row, framed by the columns of the pavilion; a white blossomed tree highlighted against a purple colored stormy sky, the mists and lights of the city in the background; the leaning grasses; the gnarled trees along the bike path; the white streetlight illuminating the leaves of a tree as a girl passed underneath.

We rode along the river, faces thrust toward the raindrops, the river pierced with raindrops turning it mottled and matte, instead of its usual dark patent sheen. "I feel so alive," Redbeard called out jokingly, but he meant it too.

This Is A Love Letter

 My goals for the months in Paris were modest: I wanted to be taken in a by a ragtag group of expatriate merrymakers and bons vivants. I hoped to be discovered and taken under the wings of whoever the 2005 equivalents were of Hemingway and whoever those buddies of his were – I was vague as to the historical details. I wanted to be swept away by art and romance, sit around a table in a bistro drinking wine and smoking long cigarettes and wearing berets and cradling baguettes to accordion music and every other French cliché you can think of. And if I fell dramatically in love with a ravishing Frenchman and never came home, well then, so be it.             

             Like every journey, my trip was not as I had envisioned while safe at home. Although at first I was entranced (Outdoor markets, dangling veggies and meats! Quaint and ancient cobblestone neighborhoods! The toilets flush with buttons!) as I settled in I found it reminded me a lot of New York or any other big city. Glossy stores, shopping malls, dog feces, homeless men sleeping in subway tunnels.

             I was also surprised at how lonely I was. And yet, walking among the towering curlicue-d buildings, consulting my pocket size book of Plans de Paris to navigate the geometric scribbles of streets, watching winter give way to spring, staring into the inky waters of the river, loneliness seemed somehow beautiful and appropriate. Before I left, one of my poetry teachers advised me to spend lots of time staring from bridges. He was totally right.

             And although I never did locate the throbbing epicenter of the romantic expat literary lifestyle, just when I start to give up on it, I would walk into a fleeting whiff of that scent, a memory in the air. Vestiges of the bohemian Montmartre artistic vibe were still around, though many had been shellacked with a generous patina of tourist-friendliness, polished to smoothness by so many people’s love for them.

             And while I never did spend a night in a dark cafe pounding a table with literary greats, it still seemed their ghosts lingered everywhere, as if I had just missed them. And when I walked through the threshold of the cheery, dingy yellow façade of Shakespeare and Company, I felt like I had found the porthole to their dimension.

             After long weeks and months of the alienation that came from knowing only superficially the language that floated through the air, to find rows of English-language books waiting for me was like a reunion. I only bought one book there-- a fat collection of short stories by Carol Shields-- but I was captivated and spellbound by it in a way that no other book has done for me before or since. In the disorienting, French-language hustle and bustle, these words in English tasted exquisite to me. I savored and drank them like a thirsty person given water.

             By the Seine, skeezy drageurs in leather jackets would patrol the walkway along the river, looking for girls to hit on.  They said “Il faut profitez,” meaning, let us live to the fullest, while we can, drink deeply, live for the moment, squeeze all the juice from this thick fruit. It was a line of course, but I agreed with the sentiment, even if at the time I could never quite make it work. I never felt that I was doing the whole European adventure thing quite right (too timid, too broke, too studious…)

             But when I discovered that bookstore! Its old craggy wood shelves; narrow staircase; the bored, hungover-looking traveler sitting at the front register -- I felt like I had made a great and personal discovery. And the clues upstairs to the travelers who were welcomed there overnight: flea-bitten blankets hastily put away; outside the window, set on the roof just below the windowsill, the remains of a true bohemian feast— bread and crumbs in a plastic bag, a half-finished bottle of wine.

             A hand-painted quote above a door said “Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise.” And it made me feel welcome there in the crowded book-filled haven, in a city which could indeed seem inhospitable and too fast, and where I did indeed feel strange.

             The crazy white-haired guy haunting the cluttered shelves, ancient, hunched,  I later learned was the famous George Whitman. He was like the ghost of all those greats come alive, just shuffling through. He was a link to them, and just as he had dined with them and invited them in, his shop invited me in as well.

             I went to a reading there of an American poet. At the end she suggested that aspiring writers in the audience could mail her their poems, which I did. I will never forget what it was like to listen to the voicemail she left me asserting that I had talent, and that she would allow me to come to her apartment for her to critique my work.  I was riding an escalator. My insides felt like bees.

             I remember, at the reading she read a poem about being invited to play tennis with Elizabeth Bishop, how young and awed she felt. I could relate.

             So this is a love letter to the ancient guy named George Whitman and the little store he owned on the banks of the river Seine called Shakespeare and Company, and all the strangers he welcomed, and all the stories he was a big or small part of.

             Also this is a drinking-straight-from-the-bottle toast to the things we do when we are twenty years old, the courage it takes to up and leave, even for a little while, to learn a new city, a new language, a different world.

             To the back alley cobblestone romance that always seemed to be just out of reach, just around the next corner.

             To the outsize expectations that led me to Paris to chase whatever I thought all those famous literary dudes were chasing:  color and shimmer, bright lights, transparency, vigor, blood pumping through the veins, sex, aliveness, everything,  and to digest it and proclaim it to be good.

             To the chemical high that those who were in love with the written word back when we were young and foolish can still remember, can still almost taste on the tips of our tongues, and which leads us on still…still typing, still scribbling, still pulling over to the side of the road to jot down some notes.

             A love like that changes you in ways you only realize as time goes on.

             And isn’t that why we do these sorts of things, tell stories, write poems, make a storefront into a bohemian legend – so that even when we die, we live.

             Rest in peace George Whitman, ghost of giants. Wherever you’re going, I hope you’re welcomed as an angel in disguise.

Groping Toward the Light

             Here’s a recent interview at The Paris Review with artist Gabriel Orozco. It includes many important reminders about what it’s really like to be on the front lines, making stuff. 

o   Orozco on the sense of freedom and challenge:

“You feel free when you are painting. You feel that you are concentrating on something very particular that is very difficult, but that you enjoy doing it, even though you know that you are probably going to fail, because it’s very difficult to make a good painting.”

If I’m not mistaken he is referring here to what positive psychologists call a state of “flow,” or what Martin Seligman would call one of the “gratifications” – the things we do that we get totally absorbed in, which we can’t totally describe as pleasure because we are so caught up while we’re doing them we aren’t really registering anything but the task at hand -- we’re concentrating, we’re working, but we’re also playing.

o   Speaking of play and exploration:

“I say, Oh yes, that is interesting! I try not to judge myself or analyze too much why I might be attracted to that one thing at a particular moment, as opposed to another. Instead I try to explore it and see what it is. I begin to play with it.”

The Boyf and are totally obsessed with this show on Bravo called Work of Art, which is basically like any other reality show with a prize at the end for the person who is judged to be “the best,” only this one is about visual artists. But you can see this tension come up again and again, between being told by producers “Make something! By this deadline! Out of a CAR!” (or whatever random task they’ve dreamed up that week) and the way that making something that is actually something requires a certain amount of looseness, go-with-the-floweyness, playfulness, experimentation. And at the same time, you also see those parameters motivate them, push them, put some hustle in their bustle. The arbitrary rules become a container for that vast ethereal creative spirit.

o   On trying and failing:

“Trial and error is a part of the work. So that is how the “Working Tables” [his recent exhibition] came about, as a way of showing off the trash or mistakes I had produced. It’s a bit like exhibiting all the little experiments with the thought that maybe someone else will be able to make use of them somehow. I think it is important to show the possibility of failure.”

This is easy to forget when working with the creative animal. There is so much emphasis on product, is it good, is it marketable, was it a waste of my time? It’s easy not to value the scribbles, the doodles, the ones you crumple up and throw away. It’s hard to just follow something you’re interested in and see where it leads. We want detailed GPS directions, we want some disembodied voice to reassure us that yes, we are in fact headed somewhere, there’s a plan to all this, somebody smarter than ourselves knows how this all works out in the end.

What would people say if they knew we were drawing the map as we went, and it’s not even to scale? And what if we get sick of the map and start sketching the local flora instead?

Orozco might talk about

o   Pushing your own boundaries:

“When you are making work you are not trying to repeat yourself, but to revolutionize yourself.”

I had a poetry teacher who urged us never to write the same poem twice.

o   But what if we get lost and it’s all a spectacular failure?

“Your own process of experimentation… is going to be full of errors. It’s important for me to make that very clear—that I will try to fail in that sense, and I will try to disappoint in that sense—because I am doing something that is new for me.”

What are you doing that is new and uncertain today? What quiet whispering interest are you following even though you have no idea where it leads? What are you managing to fail at today? What can you experiment with, even though you might later crumple it up and throw it away?

We Can Dance If We Want To

I promised someone that if she started writing again, I would too. She’s two to three posts ahead of me already, and yet I’ve found it hard to get started, and here’s why.

            It’s frightening to put yourself "out there". It’s scary to tell the truth about yourself and your life. Especially for those of us who are so invested in making it seem like we have it all together, we know what we’re doing, we have a plan, darnit. Especially for those of us who are allergic to rejection.

            Last night I watched Celebrity Rehab Revisited in which they played a clip of one of said celebrities. She was returning to ballet class after a long time away. The teacher told her that for anyone who is a dancer, it doesn’t matter how long they’ve been away, they can return to the barre at any time and they are home.

            This struck me as a beautiful way to talk about the way that we pursue creative things. This struggling addict/porn star/dancer/person, it was too late for her to become a star ballerina (the implants didn’t help either), but the teacher’s words reminded me that people dance for other reasons than to be a star. You dance because you like it. You dance because when you do, you feel at home.

            This is what it’s like for people who have been into writing, too… people such as myself. Although I learned a lot about writing by studying it as an academic subject, it also changed writing for me. What used to be a private, primal, personal act that I did for reasons that I didn't fully understand, became twisted up with grade point averages, approval, certificates of merit. It was about people liking you or not, approving or not, and that was maybe not good for me because what I found I loved even more than writing was the approval of others. The writing was the meat and potatoes, the approval and ass-kissing was the blow. It was easy to write because you wanted to be a star.

            But I think writing here on a small corner of the internet will be good for me. Since I’ve been gone I decided to go to grad school to become a school counselor. There were many reasons, but one was that I decided to stop fighting myself. For many years I was trying not to be what I already was. So, fine, so I'm sensitive, so I understand people's feelings, so I want to help people. So what? I thought it might be better if I were some other way. 

            Writing has been the same for me. I’ve been fighting that, too. It might be better not to write, instead to learn how to be a bookkeeper, a naturalist, a puppeteer. It might be better to fight against myself. Oddly enough, it was that scourge, standardized testing, that got me thinking differently about it.  I’ve always minimized what people have called my “gifts” -- that whole Marianne Williamson fear of adequacy thing -- but seeing that delicious high verbal score there in black and white, on the GRE report, which is ostensibly an objective measurement, it made me kind of go “Hmmmm”. No seriously, it seemed to say, this girl knows about words.  So why fight it? Why knock myself out trying to be above average at numbers when I'm already above average at words? Why force yourself to be a right-y if you’re just naturally a lefty?

            I worry that when I write I am too intense, too serious, too sincere, too sentimental. I know the style is to be hip and sarcastic, full of irony and bite, frenetic with cultural references. And yet I also know from all my studies that you can’t write for other people. Other people only confuse things, taking turns telling you either that you are too clever or too dumb to live. They offer you big, snowy-white piles of praise and a razor. They promise you that you’re going to be a big, big star.

            You can’t write for them, and you can’t write to prove to yourself how desperately clever you are. Your best audience, your ideal reader, is one of your oldest friends: what writers who write about writing often call “the page.” It is your best, most honest critic, because it never says anything at all. It will silently accept anything you say. It gives you infinite room to keep going. Even if everyone else laughs in your face it’s still there, silent as ever. It doesn’t matter if you’ll never make it to Lincoln Center, because you’ve already made it home.