In a previous life, when I believed in big cities and big systems - or at least when their thirst for obedience remained slumbering, smoldering, before the inferno - January Sundays would often find me making the pilgrimage to a temple of Beauty.
Semi-confident shoes - not of a tourist, but not of a resident - ascending the escalator from the subway, always on the left. Stand right, walk left.
The National Gallery of Art: What a building. The fountain, topped with a statue of Mercury, echoing gently in a great marble hall, ringed by orchids in the dead of winter, splashed warm waters under a dome a hundred feet above. What a room.
Treasures of the world were collected and lovingly displayed in the vast galleries. Mary received the startling good news many times over, saints prayed, Daniel was delivered from the lions, a circus traveled Pablo’s dusty road.
Hopper’s quiet scenes of domestic misery, Vincent’s vase of roses, pre-revolutionary French garden parties, haughty faces of forgotten nobles, and Mrs. Picasso’s eye outlined with staggering beauty in two brush strokes all played on the solemn walls.
Many encounters with art remain a mystery to me. I swim through oceans of implication, symbolism, and emotion, impossible to understand. Maybe that’s the point. Jung talked about artists working close to the dream state, clanking away in the deeps of the subconscious, ironworkers and underwater welders building something not understood - except that it must be done.
Some paintings in the gallery had an articulated point. “That’s the angel Gabriel” or “note the lateness of the hour. Napoleon’s been working hard.”
The abstracts, even if explained, often went right over my head. I still loved them. (Well, some were dumb. The emperor doesn’t always have clothes, but isn’t always naked, either. An art gallery seems to find him walking around in boxer shorts emblazoned with goldfish. Why? Because. “Time” or something. )
My favorites were the paintings that seemed to be telling me something I couldn’t quite grasp - a recently forgotten thought lingering in the eithers.
The impressionists were apparently ridiculed at first. You’re just painting impressions of the light on the river. Lame.
Vincent was like… “What?”
(Leave it to me to make a gruesome art joke. Besides, wasn’t Van Gough a post impressionist? Tacky, AND misinformed of me.)
Hopper and Scheeler, not impressionists, fell into this category for me of presenting a glimmer of something, and letting the viewer figure it out.
Scheeler’s painting of industry
Hopper’s “Cape Cod Evening”
(Hey blind friends, in the interest of length of this post, I’m not doing an alt text here, but if you’d like one, let me know, and that could be a fun series!)
Vignettes
The more I look, the more I see these scenes in life. A glimmer of something, but I can’t figure it out. Here’s three from fifteen hours on the road yesterday.
Danville, 113 Miles
The windshield wipers need to be replaced. They blurred the rain on the drive home last night. Danville, 113 miles loomed out of the dark, the green and white sign a disconnected pixel in a wash of black.
I kept the radio off, letting the Nothing be there, rushing up to greet me in a swish of rainy tires and an empty howl of wind, monotonous in the quarter open window.
The audiobook of the gray morning asserted the Stoics once said that everything can be deconstructed into bits, even music, reduced to illogical opinions about the world. Time to give up our slavish reactions
More blackness. More nothing.
I relented.
Bubblegum pop on the stereo. Dua Lipa will do. Others, not so much. Oh wait, this Madonna song reminds me of that girl Sarah. She thought I was stupid, but did bring me a box of chocolates once. This song came on in the grocery store when we were getting snacks for a city adventure. What’s Marcus Aurelius got to say about deconstructing that?
A gas station swam by the window, cold white and green lights. A single pickup truck refueled at the pump. The store was open, lonely. Inside a thousand candy bars in garish wrappers, colors as much a mockery of the day as the contents are to nourishment. Maybe they’ll get us through in the meantime. Outside the road stretched to infinity, or at least to Danville. The tires swished on. We’re all trying to get home.
Get Rich or Die Trying
A million cubic feet of concrete, a mighty river, asphalt yarn snaking in the Devil’s knitting basket. A million signs, a million roads, converging, diverging, don’t take the one to ruin. There are no narrow ways obvious. My little red car zooms up a familiar ramp of the interchange, untraveled in a year.
I have returned home for an hour, but somehow, that me is dead and gone. A husk of a man pushes the accelerator, burning. Hopefully something good is left when the flames abate.
The signs on the casino are gray, the sky is gray, the cars are gray, the clouds are low, and now sports betting is available everywhere. GET RICH.
The old slot canyon on the southbound lanes rumbles with midday traffic.
Trash litters the road. Or are they broken idols, rusting in the poisonous rain?
A broken head croaks roadside. Easy to dethrone me when you never even came close, fool.
I set my jaw, and change lanes, another stitch in an intricate puzzle.
I used to live here.
Dinnertime on the Road
How many times I’ve stopped here - the trading post at the edge of the wilderness, an oasis of travelers in the night, with the cheapest gas around, and an all night kitchen. Now it’s in a car that works.
“Order 454”
“That was fast, thanks!”
The pavement outside the windows is rainy, the table inside only slightly grimy. Toasted cheese matches TMZ on TV, talking about celebrities acting like junk food.
Huh, that guy’s still hosting. …Why?
It’s hard to look away. It’s so easy to aim down. Like the toasted sub available nationwide, they’ve perfected the art of empty calories, and we keep buying.
Legitimized, the elite trash talkers opine on humanity. Maybe they really are elite? I chew thoughtfully on the iceberg lettuce and questionable tomato blend of the sub.
I used to aspire to that life.
I brush the crumbs away, roll up the trash, and walk out the door. I can’t tell if that’s my past laughing or future calling. Maybe it was just a semi truck on the highway.
It’s a dark and rainy night. Who knows if this will work?
The car rolls forward.
In closing
Like the paintings, I don’t know why these scenes matter. Maybe they don’t. Perhaps there’s a glimmer there. At the very least, I hope you’ve enjoyed your time at the gallery.
Josh