Heather King's Blog, page 13

DIBS AND DABS

THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF LITERATURE

“Regarding, for instance, our strange immobility in the onrush of man-made climate change: the alarm is being sounded right and left. Economists and statisticians have one view of our failure to act, historians another, political scientists a third. The internet is bristling with opinions, informed and otherwise. But does anything come closer to helping us feel our way into the granular, organic complexity of the trap we’re really caught in than the sleepwalking heroes of Shakespeare?

Consider these dynamics. A good man, curiously enthralled by a conniving inferior, is hijacked by illusion and destroys what he loves most in the world (Othello). A young man of uncommonly lucid mind, who sees quite plainly the crime that must be righted, is somehow unable to pull himself together and do what must be done to halt the slow-motion disaster unspooling around him (Hamlet). A solipsistic striver, overcome with a self-loathing horror of his own ruthlessness, babbles to reassure himself of “a prophecy” that will save him even as he walks to his doom (Macbeth). A fourth, wailing eloquently of treachery and wrongdoing, is too entranced by his own elegiac grief to avail himself of more earthbound or statesmanly measures to save his kingdom (Richard II). A fifth, finding the mute dignity of the truth less gratifying than the shameless and flowery lie, banishes the truth-teller and, in doing so, brings down almost unimaginable ruin (King Lear). All five of these situations give fresh angles on the players and dynamics and moving parts of our own slow-moving planetary tragedy, as no statistics or policy analysis ever could—the ghastly awareness, in real time, of a demon-haunted present, the conflicting information, the false sources, the foolhardy hope and the lie not spotted in time, the hidden motives of power and the passages where self-importance and self-interest and fixation on trivia shade into inertia or ignorance or tragic self-deception. A work of artifice, intent on pushing the audience into a predetermined direction or point of view however well-intended, is incapable of suggesting a way forward through a dilemma of any complexity without being preachy and simplistic. But in helping us think with the world, instead of about it, art—which has no agenda other than being itself—always reminds us that all human-created systems are contingent, for if we wade around inside a great work of art, all sorts of rifts appear, ambiguous open spaces free of opinion and preconceptions, where light breaks through unpredictably, revealing trapdoors and hidden connections—and even possible escapes. Is it too much to say, in our worn-out and trampled landscape, that one of our most neglected paths might now be the only way out? Or that art may be the last untrodden and inviolable way of the psyche remaining to us?”

–Novelist Donna Tartt, in Harpers 

SAY YES WHEN YOU MEAN YES AND NO WHEN YOU MEAN NO

How ‘Misinformation’ Becomes Common Knowledge | The Free Press

“Fear of being punished by a crowd is…an innate human response to the dangers of being ostracized, to being cut off from friendships and privileges that are critical to survival. We are born with a need for social acceptance. That need is what drives knowledge falsification and preference falsification. 

Each of these—misrepresenting what you know and what you prefer—is a special form of lying.”

“Summer was also the time of these: of sudden plenty, of slow hours and actions, of diamond haze and dust on the eyes, of the valley in post-vernal slumber; of burying birds out of seething corruption; of Mother sleeping heavily at noon; of jazzing wasps and dragonflies, hay-stooks and thistle-seeds, snows of white butterflies, skylarks’ eggs, bee-orchids and frantic ants; of wolf-cub parades, and boy-scout’s bugles; of sweat running down the legs; of boiling potatoes on bramble fires, of flames glass-blue in the sun; of lying naked in the hill-cold stream; begging pennies for bottles of pop; of girls’ bare arms and unripe cherries, green apples and liquid walnuts; of fights and falls and new-scabbed knees, sobbing pursuits and flights; of picnics high up in the crumbling quarries, of butter running like oil, of sunstroke, fever, and cucumber peel stuck cool to one’s burning brow. All this, and the feeling that it would never end, that such days had come for ever, with the pump drying up and the water-butt crawling, and the chalk ground hard as the moon. All sights twice-brilliant and smells twice-sharp, all game-days twice as long. Double charged as we were, like the meadow ants, with the frenzy of the sun, we used up the light to its last violet drop, and even then couldn’t go to bed.”

–an excerpt from CIDER WITH ROSIE, a childhood memoir by Laurie Lee

SEDUCED

“Thus says the Lord: I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart” (Hosea 2:13).

Dateline: July 8, 2024: Quality Inn and Suites I-10, Indio, California

They don’t say what KIND of quality…and when they say I-10, turns out they don’t mean near the freeway, they mean ON the freeway…

Some people this time of year go to a refreshing beach, or a lake where they can fish and listen to the loons, or to a cabin in the piney mountains. I chose the Coachella Valley, which promises to top out each day this week at over 110 degrees. Yesterday the high was 115 and the low, which means around 4 a.m., 82.

Today will be high 120/low 88.

You know when you’re baking cookies or roasting a chicken and you open the oven door to check how things are coming along and the heat rises up to your face? That’s what it feels like in the desert, except the heat envelopes your entire body. And often there’s a wind.

Just try to get your mind around a wind that’s blowing 110-degree air.

It’s almost bizarrely entertaining, minus the awareness that after about five minutes of exposure you’d simply keel over and die.

Stopping for gas, you get to see some of your fellow travelers in the flesh. There they are, happily roaring along in their gigantic tank-like pickup trucks, scarfing down heat-lamped burritos, giant hanks of beef jerky, and bags of chemical-dusted taco chips. Gaily swilling Monster Energy drinks. Buying cigarettes, lotto tickets, condoms, bullets…

Aside: I get the distinct impression many of the large vehicle drivers dislike my little olive green Fiat! I am no slow-poke, trust me, but just the sight of my vehicle seems to incense them. They’re always scorching up on my rear, tail-gating when they could easily pass, and then clearing my back bumper by about two inches when they do pass.

God forbid I should pass one of them, which they take as a direct attack on their manhood, and which incites them to try to drag race. Please! No, be my guest. You go first. You can win. You win. No really, YOU win! Have another Red Bull!  

No but my heart goes out to la gente. If you stick to the main byways of life, there is so little beauty: No beauty in food, in architecture, in design. Thank heaven since no-one in their right mind would purposely travel to the desert this time of year the Quality Inn and Suites are mostly deserted. I asked for a room at the far end cause a guy was running what sounded like a pile driver at the other end (can you imagine using any kind of power tool in this heat?) and the back of the place is just piled with crap: pipes, old air conditioners, stray end tables.

THE VIEW FROM MY HOTEL ROOM WINDOW

Here’s the thing: the chambermaids were pushing their trolleys in this inferno and in the lobby an old lady was running a mop around the vending machines (you can buy a Dinty Moore beef stew in a cardboard container for $5.25 I noticed) and they both totally accommodated my request for ice and went out of their way to lead me down the right hall and the old lady whipped out a plastic bag to put it in. Just to walk an extra 15 feet in the blast furnace is a huge effort so I was touched to the core.

I used to spend tons of time researching and poking around and finding a charming little town in which to stay, or a little museum or a garden or Point of Interest, something of beauty, something to lighten the load of traveling. But these days—let’s just say I can relate ever more strongly to St. Thérèse of Lisieux who, when faced with the choice of a pretty pitcher or an ugly chipped one, chose the latter.

I used to think, Good Lord, what a masochist! Isn’t life hard enough without willfully insisting on the ugly thing?

But I’m not insisting on the ugly thing, and I don’t think Thérèse ever was either. It’s more that the hot, hard, ugly thing puts you in solidarity with everyone who doesn’t have a choice (and also is the path of least resistance as you get older and tireder and it’s all you can do to pack and drive).

I mean zillions of people, farmworkers, service people, live in the Coachella Valley and are keeping the place afloat and I like the idea of just being anonymously, quietly, hiddenly in the mix for the night. Setting up my little crucifix and praying and thinking of the people who work here at the hotel and the people who stay here, passing through, passing on, sojourners in this vale of tears (Indio is apparently home to Burning Man, a what sounds like infernal event involving tens of thousands of loud people): maybe at night looking up for a second and seeing the moon, or the stars. Wondering…

If I don’t get a walk in each day I kind of lose my mind so I set out at 5 this morning, which because of the heat is when you have to set out this time of year. An old guy was sitting on a bench in front of the Holiday Inn next door sucking on his morning cigarette in the semi-dark, and we gave each other the high sign. People up this early are either addicts of some kind needing their fix, weirdo loners, or dog walkers. We recognize and accommodate each other, and I love the feeling of being part of this particular little communion.   

It’s pretty hideous: Golf Course Drive, the traffic on the 10 vrooming by, the pesticide-laden smog. Then again, dawn was breaking over the mountains and that was beautiful even if the temp was already around 90. I headed toward what seemed a residential type street and happened upon banks of gated condos on both sides: Aliante, Tierra Tago, names like that.

A crow cawed from the top of a street lamp and I came across this desert creature who had probably been run over by a car and crawled up to the sidewalk to die. RIP.

Then I treated myself to a Starbucks to bring back to my air-conditioned room!

Where I will soon pack up and head to St. Andrew’s Abbey for a week-long retreat. The drive is 7-plus hours from Tucson and I stopped in Indio for the night to break up the trip and am glad I did. This way I can arrive in time for noon Mass at the monastery and not be frazzled and edgy and drained.

I had a thought about the Holy Trinity the other day: maybe there are three so they can spell each other. So they can sleep.

I’ve also been thinking about Jesus’s question to Philip, when he, Jesus, tells the disciples that he’s the Way, the Truth and the Life, and Philip says, “Show us the Father,” and Jesus replies, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (John 14:9).

Genuinely wounded. Bewildered. How can you not know me, trust me, believe absolutely that you are loved?  That I am in the Father, and the Father is in me?

Of course he’s posing the question to each of us.

SAMENESS VS EQUALITY

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

The Measure of My Days (Penguin Books, $15), by playwright and Jungian analyst Florida Scott-Maxwell, is a minor classic.

Here’s how it starts:

“We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience, almost beyond our capacity at times, but something to be carried high. If it is a long defeat it is also a victory, meaningful for the initiates of time, if not for those who have come less far.”

Her 70s, she avers, were relatively serene. Her eighth decade is another matter altogether: 

“Another secret we [elderly people] carry is that though drab outside — wreckage to the eye, mirrors a mortification — inside we flame with a wild life that is almost incommunicable.”

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

MAXIMILISM

I’ve been reflecting that the fruit/logical end to a culture based on power, property and prestige is an overweening cheapness, ugliness, homogeneity and banality; an oppressive force, monstrous in its seeming blandness but actually evil…militatating against vigor, humor, creativity, curiosity, interest, enthusiasm, spirit, life. Come, it says, fall asleep….

Understandably we want to anesthetize ourselves against the pain…blend in…belong to a tribe…It is probably one of the greatest gifts of my life that my own efforts in that direction led to an addiction so deep that I was faced with the choice either to quit or to die…

Of course I still have my own myriad ways to “fall asleep,” distract myself, avoid being awake. (And of course I also avail myself of the bits of culture that appeal to me: Is anyone else watching Wimbledon for the next two weeks?)

In the midst of it I march and careen and lurch about, eating my rancid snacks, inwardly laughing at my own jokes, and walking, always walking. Walking is the last redoubt or one of them against the “noxious paste,” the ooze in which so many sinners are mired in Dante’s “Inferno,” that wants to suck us into the depths of what can seem like a contemporary hell…

The treasury of art and museums in Washington DC were almost overwhelming. At the end of the day, what I remember best was chancing upon a little gallery tucked away to the right of the entrance (if you’re looking out to the street) of the East Building of the National Gallery. It’s called “The Nabis: Bonnard, Vuillard and Their Circle” or something like that and two small Vuillard paintings absoltuely captured my heart.

One is the title image above; the other is called “The Yellow Curtain,” c. 1893.

I am a thousand percent opposed to “minimalism” in interior decor. My whole life, whatever space I’ve inhabited, and even while drinking, I have spent a ton of time, thought, and effort into building and feathering a little nest (a friend once described my apartment as a grotto). Shelves full of tchotchkes, icons, postcards, holy cards, votive candles, Christmas ornaments in July etc are what “sparks MY joy” (vomit) and, chacun à son goût of course, but everyone I’ve known with an anodyne monochrome “aesthetic” (admittedy, a grand total of two) has a soul to match.

Anyway, so these homey domestic scenes of Vuillard with their rich but muted colors, their curtains concealing hidden treasures, their mirrors back-reflecting the rest of the room, their evocation of extravagant and carefully-tended inner lives, spoke to me.

Meanwhile, back in Tucson, I have just checked a book out of the library called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig that is filled with inventive names for various emotional states we generally DON’T have a name for.

Right away I came upon “chrysalism”: “the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.”

Yes!

Even better, and maybe this is a separate word, is being indoors during a thunderstorm with the French door to your bedroom open and looking out through the screen to a yard full of twittering birds, waving agave fronds, snapping tree branches, the sound of rain on mesquite, sidewalks, and asphalt, the gentle humidity and the sublime smell of creosote, wet warm earth, juniper, and desert flowers.

A super special treat: this last rain the hedgehog (and other) cacti threw a pageant. In the ensuing couple of days seemingly overnight heavy with buds, and the day after that, when I crept out at dawn, all up and down the neighboring streets was a riot of bloom.

The next day, two at the most, the blooms look like wet tissue paper, fading away almost instantly to “nothing.”

A metaphor for life…but to my mind that brief burst of bloom speaks of God’s preference for maximilism, too.

MY WAY

Every once in a while I see the things people post on Instagram or Facebook while they travel.

Almost always they’re selfies, with the traveler (usu. female) in a fetching frock, sunhat, and groovy tote. Strolling along a sunlit tropical beach. Eating bouillibaisse in a striped sailor’s jersey in Marseille. Chatting gaily with colorful local characters in Greece, Australia, Thailand. Packing smartly, effortlessly hailing cabs, whisked to whatever airport in air-conditioned limos.

My own travel is an entirely different affair. I look upon travel as sacred obligation, pilgrimage, and mosty penance. Taking a picture of myself is the absolute last thing I want to do or post, and when anyone asks to take a photo with me I have to restrain myself from snarling and make a grim, heroic effort to smile and comply. Not that I hate the way I look. Nor is it that especially whilst traveling I am far from my best. It’s just….why?

No, everything has been pared down over the years. Nowadays I barely even take pictures of the landscape. And when people start larking on with the names of “fabulous” restaurants in the area where I’m going, I hardly know what to say. I couldn’t care less. I will look up the nearest local Catholic church, the gardens, and the museums.

I’ll go to Mass. I’ll look at the flowers and trees. And I’ll walk.

The pilgrimage starts the moment the gate to my house is locked behind me. Over the years I’ve developed a weird aversion to, or refusal to purchase, or a habit of simply not buying food at an airport. I saw a bag of pistachios for 17 bucks at the Norfolk VA airport the other day!

It’s kind of a game: pack a bag of snacks the night before and then, like someone whose plane has crashed in the Andes, that’s all I allow myself (with the addition of pretzels or Trader Joe’s-like Speculoos cookies, and a Diet Coke or apple juice on American) till I land and can find a market.

This most recent trip, I bought a bag of dried apricots, half a large bar of dark chocolate with candied ginger, a bunch of shelled pistachios, and two pieces of olive bread toast with butter wrapped in aluminum foil, the latter of which, trust me, tastes pretty darn good when unwrapped at Dallas-Fort Worth around 9 am Central when you have been up since 3:45 Pacific and completed the first leg of your journey.

I landed in Dulles that day around 4:30, took an hour-long train into the city, checked into my hotel and set out around 6 pm for my daily walk and a (largely fruitless, as I may have mentioned) search for provisions. By the end of the week, I had added to my horde a bag of olive oil crostini and a hunk of Dubliner cheese, half of which I ended up ferrying back to Tucson.

In between I ate blueberries, yogurt, a pear salad, an apricot croissant, a delicious salmon dinner, and a bunch of Panera food at the catered Retreat for Artists in which I participated over the weekend.

And walked about 100 miles mulling, pondering, inwardly arguing, despairing, exulting and praying.

So as not to make my hostess rise at 4 am to give me a ride, I’d booked a 3:45 pm return flight from Norfolk to Tucson through Dallas, knowing the whole trip such a move was dicey as the later in the day the higher the chance of delays.

Sure enough, the Dallas to Tucson leg was five hours late–I rebooked and left at 11:30 pm instead of 7 (a mere 4 1/2 hours late). I almost folded during that time and bought an $11 sushi which I knew would be tasteless, hard and dry (as is true of all airport food, or all the airport food I’ve ever had), but made do with a Starbucks dark roast and nibbled away at my remaining cheese, crostini, pistachios, and apricots. I had one square of chocolate left–again, like those people who are stranded on Everest or shipwrecked! It tasted delicIous and I was quite proud of myself, and grateful.

Meanwhile I had already walked a few miles that morning and walked more through DFW which is now like an old friend. One of my favorite spots is way at the end of C terminal, like Gate 40 or so. There’s a place you can sit with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides and look out over a freeway and a bunch of airport utility vehicles and watch the workpeople in their orange safety vests yukking it up and getting shit done.

From there if you feel like strolling, you can walk all the way to Gate C1, which has got to be a third of a mile, and then there’s a long walkway between C and D terminals which is usually pretty deserted, has windows on both sides, and again has a friendly view of freeways. If you wanted to you could just sit by the window, charge your phone from an outlet, and contemplate the state of the world and your soul.

If not, you can walk to Terminal D, and if you feel like it, bang an immediate right, which will take you to the chapel AND to a large bank of seats (no outlets, though) that are also almost always deserted, and that look out over a bunch of airplanes. I love these melancholy views and semi-deserted spots in the midst of so much humanity, and the people-watching is stellar. It’s simply unbelievable who walks by: large families with the women in saris; people who look on the verge of suicide; a barefoot young man with a lapdog sprinting to…?

All the while I was toting around a probably unconscionable weight of carry-on luggage as I will not check a bag unless under duress and would have been fine except I’d had books shipped to sell at a talk I gave which I’d been assured would go like hotcakes but of course hadn’t so rather than put someone to the trouble of shipping them back had shoehorned them into my luggage.

I mean, really, what am I going to take a selfie of myself eating four-day-old Dubliner cheese and bowed down like a beast of burden at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport as I look forward to a 12-hour plus trip home? My introvert self having been around people nonstop for a week and thus depleted to within an inch of its/my life?

Praying, however, the Rosary!

The truth is this is what travel is like for practically everyone so why don’t we just tell the truth and make a joke of it? As The Misfit in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” says: “It ain’t no pleasure in life.” Granted, the guy’s just shot a family dead, but the underlying thought is sound.

No but seriously, in fact there’s something about airports, even being stuck in them sometimes, that I totally like. The airport becomes your world so that every little detail, event, smile or mean word assumes a huge significance. Then again, no-one can get at you or to you at an airport. You’re suspended in place and time, and you have to descend into a kind of larval state simply not to lose your mind. I always tell myself I’ll read but there’s constant noise and you’re in constant angst as to when and whether your plane’s going to leave and all the stuff you have to do (and that you pray will go right) once you land.

Still, I did get a bunch of reading done during my trip and especially at the airport, including the first third of Paul Scott’s The Jewel in the Crown (Scott descended into alcoholism and nervous breakdown-land with the strain of writing The Raj Quartet and I have just ordered a biography of him) and most of Saint-Exupery’s Wind, Sand and Stars, and months of back issues of the Times Literary Supplement, to which I just re-subscribed.

I arrived home around 1 a.m, thanks be to God, rose at 5 and by 7:15 am was at Larry H. Miller Fiat/Dodge dealership, where I spent another 3 1/2 hours waiting while they fixed my passenger side window, which was stuck down ($587 to replace a something or other, not the window but the mechanism). This was of the absolute essence, as it’s over 100 degrees practically every day here in Tucson and also I’m driving through the desert to St. Andrew’s Abbey above LA a week from Sunday, and these days you never know what will be wrong, whether they’ll have the part or have to order it, etc. So getting that fixed was another huge relief.

Now all I have to do is spend a couple of days raking, sweeping, watering, filling birdfeeders and writing my column and I’ll be almost caught up!

Underneath all the surface activity (or inactivity)…my heart is kind of bleeding for our country, its people, its government, its spirit. One thing about leaving home is that you are exposed to points of view and ways of thinking and life that are not shocking, exactly, but deeply depressing. One thing about airports and car dealerships is that you are forced to see if not listen to an endless stream of incomprehensibly demoralizing crap from television screens (in fact, unable to bear the TV voices any longer, after a while I went outside the dealership yesterday and sat in the broiling sun).

Why would anyone want to watch a wrestling match or cheesy home improvement show when they could be schlepping miles through an airport, starving to death, in existential torment/loneliness, quivering with excitement at the prospect of making it through a whole day on cheese, crackers and dried fruit, and weirdly, triumphantly joyful because it is all, all, all an offering; a laying down of body, blood, effort, heart for the citizens who are barricaded in their homes with their arsenals of weapons, for the suburbanites whose lives are so circumscribed they look upon a person who takes a simple walk around the neighborhood as a dangerous oddball and a threat, for the drug-addled ranting on the streets of Washington, DC (“God is delivering us from Babylon–WHITE PEOPLE!“).

For the many friends and strangers who hosted me, took me out to eat, listened to my talks, fed me, accompanied me to Mass, guided, helped and welcomed me.

Thank you, thank you, and thank you again.

The thing about travel, or this mode of travel) is that it appeals to my attraction for extremes. Extreme (if mostly self-imposed) discomfort (under the best of circumstances); extreme gratitude and relief upon returning home.

I don’t know WHY everyone doesn’t do things MY WAY!!

DUMBARTON OAKS GARDEN, GEORGETOWNDUMBARTON OAKS PERENNIAL BEDPRAY FOR US

INFLUENCER

From a recent NYT article about how influencers are having a harder time these days making a living:

“A small number of creators shot to fame, propelling the occupation to the top of career wish lists for many teens (and adults). But behind the scenes, creators say the job is grueling. They need to constantly produce compelling posts or risk losing momentum. They spend their days planning, filming and editing posts while also working to make inroads with advertisers and interacting with fans.” 

“’It is a lot more work than most people realize,’ says Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg.”

I thought, Minus the working to make inroads with advertisers, that’s what I’VE been doing for the last 15 years!  

On another front, the annual Catholic Media Association conference took place last week.

From an article in today’s “Always Forward,” the daily newsletter of Angelus News, media arm of the Archdiocese of LA:

“Angelus won a total of 22 Catholic Media Awards for work published in 2023, including First Place honors for its daily newsletter, Always Forward, and columnists Heather King and Greg Erlandson. 

The awards were announced at the conclusion of the 2024 Catholic Media Conference, held June 18-21 in Atlanta. 

The awards’ judges praised Always Forward on its layout and graphic design, diversity of reading content, strategic placement of ads, and even its “beautiful name.” Always Forward is curated by Angelus multimedia editor Tamara Long-Garcia.

“Features like global reading links, Photo of the Day, and social media links at the bottom enhance reader engagement and encourage return visits,” the judges wrote. “Overall, these thoughtful touches contribute to the success of the publication and keep readers coming back for more.”

This year marked the sixth time weekly Angelus columnist Heather King was awarded First Place for her column “Desire Lines” in the “Arts, Leisure, Culture, and Food” category. Judges praised her writing as “clear, unapologetic, honest, [and] exposed.” 

Erlandson’s column, which won first place in the magazine “General Commentary” category, was described as “excellent work in a crowded field,” and “a joy to read.” 

Et cetera. So up with Angelus News, score one for the home team, and all, all glory to God.

CONEFLOWERS, FRANCISCAN MONASTERY, WASHINGTON DC

COURAGE

From Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, of The Little Prince fame:

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it” (quoting his friend Henri Guillaumet, who flew the mail between Chile and Argentina and on Friday 13 June 1930, while crossing the Andes for the 92nd time, crashed his plane due to bad weather and walked for a week over three mountain passes before being rescued).

“Guillaumet was one among those bold and generous men who had taken upon themselves the task of spreading their foliage over bold and generous horizons. To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one’s comrades. It is to feel, when setting one’s stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.

There is a tendency to class such men with toreadors and gamblers. People extol their contempt for death. But I would not give a fig for anybody’s contempt for death. If its roots are not suck deep in an acceptance of responsibility, this contempt for death is the sign either of an impoverished soul or of youthful extravagance.

I once knew a young suicide. I cannot remember what disappointment in love it was which induced him to send a bullet carefully into his heart. I have no notion what literary temptation he had succumbed to when he drew on a pair of white gloves before the shot. But I remember having felt, on learning of this sorry show, an impression not of nobility but of lack of dignity…

And when I heard of this meagre destiny, I remembered the death of a man. He was a gardener, and he was speaking on his deathbed: ‘You know, I used to sweat sometimes when I was digging. My rheumatism would pull at my leg, and I would damn myself for a slave. And now, do you know, I’d like to spade and spade. It’s beautiful work. A man is free when he is using a spade. And besides, who is going to prune my trees when I am gone?’

That man was leaving behind him a fallow field, a fallow planet. He was bound by ties of love to all cultivable land and to all the trees of the earth. There was a generous man, a prodigal man, a nobleman! There was a man who, battling against death in the name of his Creation, could like Guillaumet be called a man of courage!”

IMMORTAL THOUGHTS: THE LATE WORKS OF GREAT PAINTERS

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

“Immortal Thoughts: Late Style in a Time of Plague” (Thames & Hudson Ltd, $21.95) is a book about the art of painting and the life of the artist.

It’s about aging, decaying, dying, and the stubborn tenacity of the creative urge.

Author Christopher Neve, a British artist and writer (“Unquiet Landscape: Places and Ideas in 20th-Century British Painting,” [Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2020]) was spurred by the COVID-19 lockdown, his own increasing age, and his sense that the earth itself might be dying.

To ride out the pandemic, he returned to his isolated childhood home in the British countryside. He gazed upon the flowers, trees, and birds he loves, knowing that one day this particular countryside will be no more, and knowing, too, that his appreciation was sharpened by this very ephemerality.

Could it be, he began to wonder, that many artists produce their ripest, most innovative, 

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

AT THE RENWICK GALLERY

“Maybe a lonely life keeps resonating, keeps ringing out, until another lonely person turns an ear in that direction, at the exact right moment. Maybe that’s what we do to learn the ways of an exquisite loneliness: we listen.”
–Richard Deming, from This Exquisite Loneliness; What Loners, Outcasts and the Misunderstood Can Teach Us About Creativity

“What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience.”
–Hannah Ardendt, from The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”
—Walker Evans

Loneliness, staring, prying, not being here long, travel, fatigue…yes! These are subjects much on my mind.

So here I am in downtown Washington, DC, much of which seems to be under construction. I made my way to the Enid Haupt Garden yesterday (which I remember with great fondness from my last (only other) time here), but it’s now overshadowed by cranes, surrounded by flotillas of bulldozers, and punctuated by the continuous beeping made by ginormous tanks that apparently we’re not capable of noticing visually and thus must warn of their presence aurally…It was still beautiful, and I’m grateful to the people who care for it, which included a lady about my age in a wide-brimmed hat who was dragging a heavy hose around in the 90-degree heat.

Before that, I walked from my hotel near Union Station to the Renwick Gallery, passing the White House en route (very unprepossessing landscaping–couldn’t we afford better than red petunias?), and saw a wonderful exhibit called “Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women.”

I’m not sure why everything now needs to be “subversive,” though it’s (perhaps unintentionally) true that true subversion, or one form of it, means silencing the exterior “voices” (insofar as possible) and going about one’s quiet, painstaking business of making things that are beautiful and that derive from deep, individual heart and thought.

Fiber art, and all things that have to do with sewing, needlework, weaving, thread, and textiles, seem to be having their day and I myself am fascinated by the subject. I’ve probably mentioned the fantastic podcast Haptic & Hue, and there seems to be a plethora of books about the integral part that the mostly behind-the-scenes work of mostly women has played in the history and advancement of civilization.

(In fact, today I plan to visit the National Gallery in part to see another exhibit called “Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstractions).”

But back to the Renwick Gallery: “Cotton, wool, polyester, silk — fiber is felt in nearly every aspect of our lives. The artists in Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women mastered and subverted the everyday material throughout the twentieth century.

The thirty-three selected artworks piece together an alternative history of American art. Accessible and familiar, fiber handicrafts have long provided a source of inspiration for women. Their ingenuity with cloth, threads, and yarn was dismissed by many art critics as menial labor. The artists in this exhibition took up fiber to complicate this historic marginalization and also revolutionize its import to contemporary art. They drew on personal experiences, particularly their vantage points as women, and intergenerational skills to transform humble threads into resonant and intricate artworks.”

You can see more of the works (and way better photos) HERE.

THIS WAS UPSTAIRS, IN ANOTHER EXHIBIT, BUT I LOVED IT

So now I have all kinds of new artists to research, explore and enjoy.

After the Renwick, I made my way to prayer and noon Mass at the Catholic Information Center. That was an oasis. Deeply grateful.

Interesting fact: Washington DC has nowhere to buy groceries! Or snacks, or beverages…There’s a “food court” (corporate, shudder) in Union Station but you can walk for blocks and blocks…miles it seems north and east of Capitol Hill and search in vain for…oh you know, a little market where you can get a yogurt, and a box of blueberries, and maybe a hunk of bread and a bit of cheese. I finally found Capitol Hill Supermarket yesterday which was both insanely overpriced and deeply uninspired.

Not that I’m exactly a foodie, but I tend to eat picnic-style, a handful of this and a handful of that. Luckily I have my bag of dried apricots and a bag of pistachios. But normal people–if you had a family, even in a fast-food food court you’d have to spend at least 100 bucks just for lunch. Plus no wonder we have an obesity problem, as so little tastes like actual food and thus we are always “hungry”…

Then again, we could all look upon the lack of actual, plain, honest food as an opportunity to fast for the suffering of the world, which is on ample, ample display as I walk the streets of our nation’s capital.

Blessed June 19th, feast of the 10th-c. hermit St. Romuald as well as a federal holiday to commemorate the ending of slavery.

Or has it ended?…for any of us?…

THE UNSUNG SAINTS BEHIND THE GREAT SAINTS

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Jan Tyranowski (1900-1947), Catholic layman, served a crucial role as spiritual adviser to the young Karol Wojtyla, who later became St. Pope John Paul II.

An eccentric figure with white-blond hair and a distinctive, high-pitched voice, Tyranowski lived with his mother and several cats across the street from the Wojtylas in Poland.

Then there’s Jacqueline De Decker, Mother Teresa’s “Spiritual Powerhouse” in a surgical collar, and Léonie Martin, “difficult” younger sister of the universally beloved St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.