Heather King's Blog, page 43

LOURDES, A DOCUMENTARY

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

Lourdes (2019), a documentary directed by Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai, centers on the small town in southern France where the Virgin Mary appeared to teenager Bernadette Soubiros 160 years ago.

Today over three million people visit Lourdes each year, including 100,000 volunteers and 80,000 malades: the ill and/or  disabled.

The film could have gone two ways. The first would have been to veer saccharine, pious, sentimental. The other—keep in mind that the film-makers’ previous film was about a male porn star—would have been cynical and sneering: Look at these poor deluded souls, actually believing in God.

But the documentary goes in a different direction entirely.

The opening shot is of various hands—some work-worn, some beringed, some wrapped with rosaries–stroking, touching, caressing, the walls and ceiling of the grotto. 

“When you are at Lourdes,” the message runs, “you can show yourself as you are, in all your grandeur and all your weakness.”

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

ALL SPIRITUAL ADVENTURES ARE CALVARIES

I read a lot.

One of the many books on my bedside table these last weeks has been the 614-page Bernanos: An Ecclesial Existence by Hans Urs von Balthasar.

This is quite a bit headier than my usual fare: British lady explorers from the Victorian age; memoirs about dysfunctional families, cults, and people who move to remote islands to raise bees or train otters or brood; biographies of painters, composers, and writers; fiction by Edith Wharton, Thomas Hardy, Chekhov, Raymond Chandler and a zillion others; nonfiction about Indian airport slums, snails, the craft of writing, mesquite trees. A lot of books lately about Africa.

For spiritual reading, I have a ton of old favorites: de Caussade’s Abandonment to Divine Providence, Augustine’s Confessions, Joseph Schmidt on Therese of Lisieux, Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, anything by Caryll Houselander, Dorothy Day, Madeleine Delbrel.

But really I depend on the Office and that day’s liturgy. I have never been drawn to dense theology. I like Bernanos because he was a novelist, a somewhat curmudgeonly layperson who thought we should all strive to be saints, a faithful son of the Church who was driven crazy by much of what goes on in the Church, a husband and father who was more or less perpetually broke, and mostly because he wrote Diary of a Country Priest, which if you haven’t read you really should, no matter your persuasion.

If you come to the Church as a sinner, you don’t need a lot of theology. There’s no deeper “theology” than to be the recipient of unmerited mercy. My own conversion took place through the heart, in the gut, not through the intellect. Last week was the feast of one of my all-time favorites, St. Mary Magdalene. I read a commentary that day by a guy, striving as guys so often do, bless their hearts, to be “down with the women,” that basically said Mary Magdalene is often portrayed as a penitent prostitute but to reduce her to this trope is an offensive disservice to women the world over, etc blah.

And I was like, Why? I was never a prostitute–I gave myself away for free–but to be a penitent prostitute, to have a humble and contrite heart, to realize that your desire for love is genuine but that maybe you can start to channel that desire in a way that requires true passion, as in sacrificial suffering, is a beautiful, profound transformation that is bound to order your life from that day forward.

You don’t come to an understanding like that, through reading theology. You come to it through prayer, and again, through really kind of terrible suffering. Which is why I’m drawn in my reading to books about people who have in some way suffered for what they love. That’s what speaks to me.

Which brings me back to the Bernanos book. The way the book came into my possession was that a few months ago I posted on FB a quote from Bernanos to the effect that sin is the failure to love. And this very kind, very generous guy from Connecticut messaged to tell me about the Balthasar commentary.

People are always sending me youtubes, podcasts, book suggestions. I try to honor their thoughtfulness by at least checking the thing out. So I looked up the Bernanos book and the cheapest one used was fifty bucks or something like that, which I reported back to the guy, not so secretly relieved that I’d be off the hook. At which point the guy offered to lend me his copy–I’ll mail it to you, he said.

Well then, okay.

So he sent the book and since he had made the effort, I made a decision to make the effort and read the book. Which was really pretty stupendous. I can’t believe a person could write even one such book, so dense with thought and research, in a lifetime, though of course von Balthasar wrote a ton of them.

Nonetheless It took me several weeks, as I could only ingest small does and because I read about fifteen other boks in the interim. I put Post-Its on pages with passages I like, as I always do when I read.

There were probably fifty Post-its by the time I finished yesterday. And then, as is my habit, I sat down and typed out the passages on my laptop, which is kind of laborious as I have some kind of keyboard learning disorder such that I have never in all these years become a fluent typist. Also my keys stick, no doubt because I’ve dropped so much food and dripped so much coffee over them.

As I was typing this morning, I thought: Why do you insist on this cumbersome process? I could have bought the book myself if I really wanted to read it, and underlined. I could have pretended to read it, kept it for a respectable length of time and sent it back with a nice thank you note.

But there’s something in me that is always reaching for the incarnational, for lack of a better term. I’m not sure why: I just love having these huge files of quotes. They often came in very handy. From tying them out, I remember them better: not verbatim, but the gist of, and can then word search later. I feel like I’m honoring the author somehow, his or her hard work. I’m saying thank you.

Similarly, Mass for me is always richer when I’ve walked to church, and richer still if I’m tired. A garden has a whole other dimension to it when you do the work yourself, by hand, without power tools, in silence and prayer. I believe that we consecrate a place by bringing our body and blood to it, and that a eucharistic exchange takes place when we bring our body and blood to the place where someone we honor or admire has brought their body and blood–Holywell Cemetery in Oxford, to name just one example, where I knelt before the grave of Kenneth Grahame, author of my most treasured childhood book: The Wind in the Willows. I believe that little acts avail; that somehow, somewhere, they “register”: console someone, encourage someone, help alleviate someone’s suffering.

I guess in some way it’s a “practice,” though to me it’s just the way I live (a way of life, by the way, that’s been modeled to me by my truly incredible friends, who are way more self-giving, hardy, and faithful than I will ever be). Many many hours on the phone listening, receiving. Many hand-written thank you notes. Innumerable email replies, return texts, replies to blog, FB or Instagram comments, and even so I slip, I miss, someone is hurt, someone feels slighted or overlooked.

Or that’s what I imagine anyway: I’m sure this all means way more to me than to the other person.

The reason I bring it up, though, is that at some point I realized that–inefficient, time- and labor-intensive, and slightly insane though such a way of life is–it is also kind of the Kingdom of God.

I mean who even has time to write a blog post like this? While eating an Orange Blossom Espresso chocolate bar, no less, from a package of super cancy chocolate and coffee that arrived FedEx the other day without a note: WHO SENT THEM TO ME?

Anyway, since I’ve copied out my quotes, many of which are very much to the point, I figured I’d share them. So here you go!

“Each of us is in some way or another, and in succession, a criminal and a saint.”

“The role of the poor in human society…is comparable to that of the woman in the family, or, even better, to that of those older aunts who remain unmarried. Not infrequently these are the ones responsible for the honor and prosperity of many households. It is their lot to atone for the faults of each family member, and in the end they go to their graves gnawed by the remorse of having been a burden to everyone.”

“I have always striven to awaken those who sleep and to keep the others from falling asleep. This is a labor that does not bring in great profits or great honor but instead closes off many possibilities of employment. No matter!”

“You will know a tree by its fruits: this is what Scripture teaches you. A certain kind of justice is known by its fruits, even when it adorns itself with the name social…That justice that is not according to Christ, in other words, justice without love, quickly becomes a rabid beast.”

“If the good Lord really wants you to bear witness, you must expect to work a lot, to suffer a lot, to have ceaseless doubts about yourself, whether in success or failure. Because, seen in this way, the writer’s profession is no longer a profession: it’s an adventure, and above all a spiritual adventure. And all spiritual adventures are Calvaries.”

“Come what may, we must never count on anything except the sort of courage God bestows day by day, penny by penny as it were,” and this courage is usually accompanied by the sting of anguish and fear. The courage to confront what we must derives from an interior decision and invites others to follow in this decision. But such a decision creates persons who are essentially solitary.”

“The writer’s vocation is often—or, rather, is at times—the other aspect of a priestly vocation.”

“My house is surely not what they expect, but it belongs to them. It is open. I’m happy that I build my life so poorly that anyone can just walk in as you would into a windmill. And, if I may be allowed to continue the comparison, I would add that I don’t regret having gone such a long way across the sea, because in this country I’ve found, if not the house of my dreams, at least the house that best fits my life, a house made for my life. Its doors have no locks, its windows no panes, its bedrooms no ceilings, and the lack of a ceiling makes it possible to discover in it that in other houses remains hidden: what the backside of the beams, girders, and rafters really looks like; the pink-spotted pale grayish gold of the smooth, worn tiles; the thick patches of shadow that the daylight can barely gnaw at and that seem to grow even blacker in the light of our lamps; the uneven ridge of the walls where phantom rats run, nowhere else to be seen and strangely respecting our corn and manioc; the extravagant bats and those enormous May-bugs, armored with black steel and yet so fragile that the least drop of insecticide hurls them to the ground like bullets, stone dead. Of such a house I suppose one could say it is an open house!…We are in the hands of every passerby just as we are in the hands of God. And may we—my books and I—always, together, remain at the mercy of every passerby!”

“We have been created in the image and likeness of God because we are capable of loving. The saints have a genius for love. But do please note that this particular genius is not like that of the artist, for instance, which is the privilege of a very small number of people. It would be more precise to say that the saint is the man who knows how to find within himself—and make well up from within the depths of his being—the water of which Christ spoke to the Samaritan woman: Those who drink of it shall never thirst again.It is there inside each one of us, this deep cistern open to the heavens. Its surface is indeed cluttered with refuse, broken branches, and dead leaves that give off the stench of death. Or it beams the cold and harsh spotlight of the reasoning intellect. But, underneath this diseased layer, the water at once becomes so limpid and pure! Still a little deeper down, the soul finds itself in its native element, infinitely more pure than the purest of waters: the uncreated Light that bathes the whole of creation—in him was life, and this life was the light of man.”

“The visible Church is actually what we can see of the invisible Church, and this visible part of the invisible Church varies with each of us. For, the less worthy we are of knowing the Church’s divine reality, the better we know what she has about her that is human. If this were not so, how could you explain the odd fact that those who are most entitled to be scandalized by the flaws, the distortions, and even the malformations of the visible Church—I mean the saints—are precisely the ones who never complain about them?”

“A hero gives us the illusion of surpassing humanity. But the saint does not surpass it: he assumes humanity; he strives to realize it as well as possible.”

“Never again forget that what still keeps this hideous world from falling apart is the sweet conspiracy—always attacked yet always reborn—of poets and children. Be faithful to the poets, remain faithful to childhood! Never become a grownup!”

“Would you…allow me to say…that what the Church needs is not critics but artists?…When poetry is in full crisis, the important thing is not to point the finger at bad poets but oneself to write beautiful poems, thus unstopping the sacred springs.”

In the novel Rȇve, Simone Alfieri declares to Ganse that she does not believe anyone “has ever quite succeeded in uprooting totally the little child he once was…In any case, if such a thing still exists within you, don’t let go of it. It isn’t very likely that there’s enough of it to help you live, but it will surely be of use to you to help you die.”

“Our vocation is not at all to oppose injustice but simply to atone for it, to pay the ransom for it. And, since we possess nothing other than our wretched persons, we ourselves are this ransom.”

“A true writer is only the steward and distributor of goods that do not belong to him, goods he has received from certain responsible consciences in order to pass them on to others. If he fails in this duty, he is less than a dog. In my opinion, this is only one aspect of that universal collaboration among souls that Catholic theology calls the communion of saints.”

“I picture the silence of certain souls as being like vast places of refuge. Finding themselves at the end of their rope, wretched sinners enter there gropingly, with their last drop of strength. They can sleep in peace and then leave refreshed and consoled, with no memory of the great invisible temple in which, for a short while, they have laid down their burdens.”

To that last point, at Mass this morning, the priest wound up the petitions with “For all the people who need our prayers, and of whom we may not know.”

And now, I need to write a thank-you note, walk to the Post Office, and return that book.

SKID ROW MARATHON

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

Each Monday and Thursday, at 5:45 a.m., LA Superior Court Judge Craig J. Mitchell meets his people in front of downtown’s Midnight Mission for a run through the gritty streets of downtown.

By “people,” I mean fellow members of the running club he founded in 2012, and the subject of the 2017 documentary Skid Row Marathon. Each year, he takes upwards of 50 people from the homeless missions and shelters of LA, flies them halfway across the world, and brings them to run an internationally-recognized marathon.

The documentary profiles four runners—Rafael Cabrera, David Askew, Rebecca Hayes, and Ben Shirley—who end up getting clean, sober, off the streets, and into full, productive lives. During the course of the film, they run a marathon in Accra, Ghana, and another, bigger one in Rome.

When the documentary ends, the Club is about to embark for Jerusalem. “We took 44 people from Skid Row,” says Judge Mitchell by way of an update. “Obviously it was very meaningful. Many of our people were baptized or re-baptized in the River Jordan.”

The Club has also run marathons in Vietnam, Ecuador and the Galapagos. This coming January Judge Mitchell will take 55 runners from Skid Row to Egypt.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

THE BEAUTY WITHIN

First things first: Please consider signing up for my next eight-week Writing Workshop–August 7 through September 25. Flyer in sidebar and at THIS LINK.

If you want to write and have never written seriously or steadily before and are thinking to yourself: How do I start? I won’t know enough to attend the Workshop: WELCOME!

If you’ve got cartons of notebooks, photos, diaries, and journals and have been thinking for years of wresting them into some kind of shape and maybe writing a book: WELCOME!

If you’re a published author who’s stalled a bit and are looking to jumpstart your juju: WELCOME!

Craft. Community. Critique. A celebration of the vocation of the artist–

Feel free to email me with any questions: hidking719@gmail.com.

BUT READ ON!

The Archdiocese of LA is offering a podcast series called Beauty Within that is kind of great (you can read the transcripts if you’d rather which I often do).

It’s a series of interviews with cloistered nuns in Massachusetts that lay on a shelf for decades. Here’s how the whole thing came about:

This is John Masko. I’m a Physician, a psychiatrist. But conversations that follow have little to do with formal psychiatry, except in so far as psychiatry — depending on one’s perspective — counts the broad range of human thought and emotion within its purview. No, the topics at hand, for the most part, are in another arena.

But let me backup for a moment and describe for you the circumstances surrounding these interviews. There’s a monastery of Catholic nuns, they’re called Cistercians or Trappistines in Wrentham, Massachusetts, not far from my home. They have a chapel on the property for their worship and there’s provision for the public to attend services. One day I did so and was assaulted, or so I felt, by the behavior of these sisters. I heard laughter coming from the hidden areas beyond the chapel after the service and had an immediate complex reaction, the leading edge of which was bemused irritation.

I should mention that by virtue of my work, I have super-sensitive antennae. For me, there are a hundred styles of laughter as there are types of smiles, ways to raise eyebrows, and so on. And this was a joyous laugh, a pure laugh, the kind I rarely hear and almost never give myself. It’s like hearing a pure clear note from a trumpet when you’re used to playing and listening to kazoos.

I thought to myself, “What right has she to have such a pure soul, a heart unencumbered by the usual baffles that we place between our inner self and its expression?” She has run away from life. She’s probably been cooped up in this prison for decades. She’s led a loveless life, surrounded by a bunch of frightened, confused unloved ladies. So, where did — where could that sweet note, that pure Clarion laugh come from?

So he ends up sitting down and interviewing a bunch of these nuns and what they have to say is very deep.

Here, for example, is Sister Hannah Maria, a woman from Norway, is 47 years old. She was a journalist and later a journalism scholar in Scandinavia.

Sister Hanna Maria:
It’s a daily being confronted by the truth of God, which is not apart from me. It’s not different from me, not apart from me, but it is to go into my heart and to meet God in my heart. And also by repeating the Psalms day out and day in. They are so rich. There is no mood where you can’t find yourself in the prayers of the Psalms. So whatever mood I’m in, you go to the office and the day is… The office, the liturgy for us, it’s like the spine. It’s like the skeleton of a body. It’s what keeps the day for us. And it is what keeps us up.

John Masko:
The framework.
Sister Hanna Maria:
Yeah. A skeleton, I find a better image. Because it is movable. I think of framework as a little bit square. But that might be just a mistake in my head.

John Masko:
No, I think you’re right. It is a better metaphor.
Sister Hanna Maria:
So you always get something and there is a newness in it. But to come to that, I think another key is the simplicity of our life. And as I said, the cloister, we are sheltered enough to move towards single-mindedness. It doesn’t come easily. Doesn’t come quickly. And I think you have to work with it all your life. But here, this life of the monastery is ordered to help you to do it.

John Masko:
To come to single-mindedness.
Sister Hanna Maria:
Single-mindedness, right. And that is the simplicity, the poverty, the simpleness of our life. It’s very, very simple. And what I’ve found is that it opens me up to see and hear, and smell, and touch, and taste much more than I did before. Because when you just pour in, it’s too much, kind of thing. It’s too much. I often feel that even in the monastery, “oh, it’s too much. God, stop this. Can’t you give me a little rest? Let me just pause a little bit here now so I can get what you’re telling me. What is this about?” And he says, “no, go on, go on, go on.”

My experience–over many years but especially here in Tucson–resonates with all of the above. Take the flora, for example, which at first glance is seriously reduced in scope and kind from the more or less riotous pageant in Southern California.

Oh cool, lots of cactus, I thought at first, but not very deeply. I knew the cholla, the barrel, the candelabra, the what I simply called prickly pear–opuntia when I was feeling fancy–that had been in my back yard in Pasadena.

Turns out there are over 40 kinds of prickly pear alone, which began to dawn on me when I went shopping at Old Pueblo Cactus the other day and asked for “the purple one.” Turns out also there are several purple ones–the one I wanted is the Santa Rita. I also got a load of the fact that cacti are not cheap. And the next morning when I was putting out the recycling I took a close look and realized there are at least five different kinds of cacti–all different shapes, sizes and personalities–just growing in the alley! From which I can of course take cuttings if I’ve a mind to, which I do and will.

That’s just one small example of what happens when the external choices, distractions, and pageant get even slightly toned down. So now I’m going to read up on the cacti of Southern Arizona, and the Sonoran desert, and so much else in this new geography, climate, culture.

People are asking me things like, So have you found any great restaurants? and Where do you shop for clothes?

I laugh! I eat very very simply. A piece of chicken, some Israeli coucous, a salad of butter lettuce, avocado and black olilves. I love to cook and am halfway decent at it, but for myself I go for simple. (As for clothes: ebay).

Yesterday I finally took a day off and went to a movie theater for the first time since COVID (Summer of Soul). The screening was at noon and I walked the .7 miles in the sun down Speedway to The Loft, an indie cinema in which I felt instantly at home.

Walking, way more than shopping or eating out (much as I enjoy both those things) is how I become one with the neighborhood. I walk every chance I get: to Mass, to the dentist, to the library, to the corner market, to the PO, and mostly just to poke around, get some exercise, look at the sky, study the plants, smell the smells, commune with the birds, and wish “the people” well. I’m always aware of the poeple around me, whether on foot or bike, working in their years, walking their dogs, and am alert to smile and say Hello unless they look curmudgeonly, troubled, or in despair.

Most people don’t want to say hi, which is fine. But I try to move through the world in a way that takes the world into account. Which makes me feel part of my neighborhood even if I still don’t (and may never) know anyone (which is not for lack of me being as friendly as possible without being pushy and weird). I think I read somewhere that introverts, silent and alone in crowds, still feel very much “part of” or maybe more a part of than if they talked. And I have absolutely found that to be true. I usually pray a Rosary when I’m walking, and lost in wonder and gratitude, thereby imagine myself to know and support everybody! Hey! Hi, it’s me, your lowly servant!

On the way home from the movies I stopped at Starbucks to use part of a 10-dollar gift certificate someone had given me (venti iced Americano, thank you), and then at a ramen place on the next block. LA has insanely great ramen on practically every street corner so, not that I’m any great ramen connoisseur, I had hesitated. This was okay–not great but not horrible and I was grateful for it.

Speedway, by they way, the closest main drag to my home, is terrifying, whether driving on, walking along, or especially, crossing. And back home, safe and sated, I suddenly thought of how St. Thérèse of Lisieux had preferred the cracked, ugly pitcher to the pretty one, or had chosen the ugly one rather. That had always struck me as slightly if not highly unnecessary. Isn’t there enough suffering and privation in this vale of tears; enough times when we don’t get our way? But suddenly I thought of how I’d chosen Tucson over a more glittery, culturally hip, conventionally beautiful place. Partly because it’s cheaper but also or the same reason I’d chosen to live in Koreatown–another terrifying-yet-glorious place–for 18 years.

I distrust too much comfort and ease. I distrust the herd. How much of why we live in a certain place has to do with wanting to project a certain image, to have an idea of ourselves? I have no self, apart from the “skeleton” of prayer, Mass, writing, walking, observing…

And even the cracked, misshapen pitcher is too much! It all comes too fast, is too much to take in, is so weird, so interesting, of such abundance–40 kinds of prickly pear alone! The days already getting shorter! The new hummingbird feeder arriving soon by mail!

Here’s another fringe benefit of silence, solitude and the search for the beauty within: People also ask all the time: Are you lonely?

My response: NO!

NOTOCACTUS MINIMUS
COURTESY WIKICOMMONS

I WAS SICK AND YOU VISITED ME

Last week in morning prayer, on the Memorial of St. Henry, I came across this passage that struck to the marrow:

Second Reading, Office of Readings, Common of Holy Men

From a homily on the Acts of the Apostles by Saint John Chrysostom, bishop

There is nothing colder than a Christian who does not seek to save others.

You cannot plead poverty here; the widow putting in her two small coins will be your accuser. Peter said: Silver and gold I have not. Peter was so poor that he was often hungry and went without necessary food….

Each one can help his neighbor if only he is willing to do what is in his power…If we had a garden, we would much prefer trees with fruit—pomegranates and olives—to trees that are for pleasure, not for utility, and any utility these have is small.

Such are those men who think only of their own concerns. In fact, they are even worse: the trees are at least useful for building or for protection, whereas the selfish are fit only for punishment. Such were those foolish virgins who were chaste, comely and self-controlled, but did nothing for anyone. So they are consumed in the fire. Such are those men who refuse to give Christ food.

Notice that none of them is accused of personal sins. They are no accused of committing fornication or perjury or any such sin at all: only of not helping anyone else. The man who buried the talent was like this. His life was blameless, but he was of no service to others.

How can such a person be a Christian?

The next day, July 14, was the optional Memorial of St. Camillus de Lellis, priest. I read his biography in Robert Ellsberg’s All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses For Our Time.  

Turns out St. Camillus was a huge gambler and wastrel with an “intolerable temper” who in the course of his carousing developed a hideous sore on his leg that would plague him for the rest of his life. He had a spiritual awakening, sought to join the Capuchins but was denied entry because of his disability and, determined to serve the sick and the poor, and returned to the hospital at San Giacomo in Rome where he’d once been treated.  

He was ordained in 1584, allowed to form an order—today, The Camillians or Clerics Regular, Ministers to the Sick—and  combed the poorest, most destitute and vermin-ridden parts of the city looking for patients to treat. The brothers served faithfully during the Bubonic Plague.

From that day’s Office of Readings:

“His imagination was so vivid that, while feeding them, he perceived his patients as other Christs. He would even beg of them the gift of forgiveness for their sins…

To enkindle the enthusiasm of his religious brothers for this all-important virtue, he used to impress upon them the consoling words of Jesus Christ: I was sick and you visited me.”

The remains of St. Camillus are buried in the altar of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Rome, along with the Cross which allegedly once spoke to him, asking: “Why are you afraid? Do you not realize that this is not your work but mine?”

SANTA MARIA NOVELLA: THE WORLD’S OLDEST APOTHECARY

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

Santa Maria Novella, Florence’s 600-year-old cosmetics and perfume store, has an intriguing history.

It all began in the 13th century when Dominican friars converted the adjacent church of Santa Maria Novella (then known as Santa Maria delle Vigne) into a monastery. They set up an apothecary in the convent’s infirmary.

By the 16th century, Catherine de Medici had become the operation’s main patron. Acqua della Regina, a scent developed in her honor, was given to Catherine before her departure for France in 1533. A variation, Acqua di S.M. Novella, remains today the company’s signature fragrance.

In 1612, the friars began selling herb-based tinctures, balms, and tonics to the public.

In 1866, the property was confiscated by the Kingdom of Italy and, according to wikipeida, “passed into the ownership of Cesare Augusto Stefani, the nephew of the monastery’s last director, Damiano Beni.” One senses another compelling backstory there.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

SEND ME A POSTCARD

One perk of ADVANCED AGE is that the daily arrival of the mailman, for me anyway, never loses its luster.

The mailperson, almost inevitably a man in my experience, is right up there in my mind with the local librarian and the priest as a consoler, a bringer of sustenance, a conduit between my cloistered little world and the world at large. I have come close to tears in my occasional outbursts of gratitude and wonder that the guy reallly does show up, mostly, rain, shine and here in Tucson, almost dangerous heat.

“Eh, it happens every summer,” he shrugged with a smile when I waylaid him the other day to breathe my thanks, then ducked his topeed (is that a word? topee-ed?) head, and walked on.

Some days the mailbox contains but a flyer for some fancy horse-boarding stable addressed to the previous tenant, or the sixtieth ad for Spectrum cable, or the weekly specials at some local grocery store. Or a bill. Or something in the way of a snafu that requires a few 800 phone calls, or a lengthy session online.

And then some days the mail is like Christmas morning.

That happened yesterday.

I received a check and a nice note, for starters, from the one person who’s definitely signed up for my next Writing Workshop.

I received a used book, Ring of Bright Water, which is a memoir about living in a remote spot in coastal Scotland with an otter by an aristocrat named Gavin Maxwell who was definitely eccentric and perhaps slightly mentally unstable. Apparently this is a classic but I’d never come across it before.

I opened the book at random and found: “Mijbil had in face displayed a characteristic shared, I believe, by many animals; an apparent step, as it were, on the road to travel-shock death, but in fact a powerful buffer against it. Many animals seem to me to be able to go into a deep sleep, a coma, almost, as a voluntary act independent of exhaustion; it is an escape mechanism that comes into operation when the animal’s inventiveness in the face of adversity has failed to ameliorate his circumstances…I came to recognize it in Mij when he travelled in cars, a thing he hated; after a few minutes of frenzy he would curl himself into a tight ball and banish entirely the distasteful world around him.”

Some of us have another word for this coping mechanism: drinking.

Anyway, I can’t wait to dig in, though I have many books on my nightstand I need to plow through first.

One of these is called Scraps of Wool: A Journey Through the Golden Ages of Travel Writing, compiled by Bill Colegrave. Here I’ve come across many old favorites: Bruce Chatwin, of course; Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mary Kingsley. But I also have a whole new long list of other books to check out: Isabella Bird’s A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, Wilfred Thesiger’s The Marsh Arabs, a biography of the short tortured life of Swiss-Russian writer, explorer and vagabond Isabelle Eberhardt.

Another is the apparently hard-to-find and therefore expensive Bernanos: An Ecclesial Existence by Hans Urs von Balthasar. This also arrived by mail (on a previous day) from a reader in Connecticut who lent me his copy! Larded with fantastic passages and quotes, among them: “I never have time to write; but I have made it my duty to receive anyone who shows up at my house, and it happens all too often that I have to lose a whole hour in the company of an idiot.”

Also, “[E]ach of us is in some way or another, and in succession, a criminal and a saint.”

Finally, I received in the mail yesterday a card (printed by the United States Holocaust Museum, “View of the countrysde in Csobanka, Hungary, as the Hungarian Labor Service conpany 109/13 departs on the morning of April 20, 1942”) from a friend in Northern California. Our is an epistolary friendship–we’ve never met in the flesh–but since at least 2016, when she first wrote to me, we have exchanged anecdotes, reflections, and (mostly from her) book suggestions. Ann is the one who told me of Clare Kipps’ Sold for a Farthing, and for that alone, has my eternal and undying gratitude. She always has some interesting tidbit of thought, or a surprising insight, or a fantastic, little-known book she wonders if I’d like.

She ended with this quote from Camus’ The Plague: “What we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in people than to despise.”

THE GLOBAL GARAGE SALE

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

Lately I’ve been reading a lot about “stuff.” How much of it we have, what we do with it while we’re alive, what happens to it when we die.

The latter is actually a big problem. In the olden days, people would pass down their heirlooms, furniture, and household goods and the recipients were thrilled to get them. But today no-one wants a 12-piece dinner set, or a set of sterling silver, or a heavy oak table with eight dining room chairs.

To me, the point isn’t how many or few belongings we own but how much we love and care for them.

The problem is that very likely no-one else cares for them. There’s a name for the favor you’re supposed to do your relatives and friends by getting rid of your belongings before you croak. It’s set forth in such books as “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter,” by Margareta Magnusson.”

Again, I get it—but there’s something peculiarly Western about the notion that your person, your belongings, and the space you inhabit are a burden on the rest of the world.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

One thing I really liked about being married was having a guy around the house with a toolbelt.

There’s always some niggling thing or two around the house that needs fixing, and around which I can become weirdly paralyzed. I’ve become obsessed in my new rented home, for example, with replacing four Venetian blinds with bamboo blinds. This shouldn’t be that big a deal. It basically requires unscrewing the old hardware, a thingamajig in each upper corner of the window, installing a new U-shaped metal thing, 4 screws each, 2 in a pinch, and setting the blind on it secured with a wing nut.

I called one handyman service, took photos, exchanged several emails with the guy and it turned out he wanted 75 bucks an hour. “And ‘we’ can just go back and forth to the store if we need supplies.” For seventy-five bucks an hour I could walk to Home Depot by myself. Plus the blinds, as he had to know having probably installed hundreds of them, come with their own hardware.

Disheartened, and feeling, rightly or wrongly, that the guy was banking on my (granted) abysmal ignorance, I then decided to figure out how to take down the old blinds myself. Turns out there’s a little door-like flap that flips up on one side and then the whole thing comes out. So the other morning I took down the blind in the kitchen and thought if nothing else I would wash it. The house was “detailed,” as Rusty the gardener puts it, before I moved in, and an excellent job, too, but that one little detail was missed.

Anyway so I took the blind out front, laid it down on the patio, and brought out a pail of water and a sturdy brush. Poured on a river of ammonia, started scrubbing away. Oh wonderful, the dirt’s coming off nicely. Whoops! So was the white paint! So several slats got stripped down to silver, which actually looked kind of cool except that you’d have to strip them all which would take forever plus they’d probably heat up like a gas barbecue in the sun.

Meanwhile I got out my Makita drill, watch out. I bet you didn’t know I had a Makita drill. It didn’t turn on but I remembered how to charge it, and put in a very small bit, and drilled into these two ineffective nail holes I had put on the side of one of the cupboards above the sink to mount this tin painted made-in-India egglplant geegaw with two hooks on which I like to hang a couple of potholders.

I hadn’t been able to get the nails to go through the wooden cupboard—they would just bend—and the holes in the geegaw were so small I couldn’t use a bigger nail, so I’d settled on nailing the nails in as far as they’d go which wasn’t very far, then bending them upward and flat against the eggplant. Not horrible but pretty horrible as I could see the bent-up nails and this drove me crazy. Anyway so I drilled in with the Makita and that paved the way for the nails to go in flush and Bob’s your uncle!

Meanwhile I looked at youtube as to how to install anchors and screws and ordered a little set from ebay of four different sizes as I believe that at the very least I can figure out how to hang up my coatrack and my two candle sconces.

That still leaves the blinds, though, which I could probably do but would take upwards of ten hours. LA is lousy with expert 25 or 35 buck an hour handymen: Tucson, apparently, not so much. So then I had the bright idea of taskrabbit—Tucson seems to at least have  taskrabbit, thus I will try that when I have more strength and maybe I can find someone to hang the blinds.

Also the new 50-foot expandable black hose that uncomfortably resembles a writhing snake and is supposed to inflate to three times its length, doesn’t. So I’ll limp along with this and probably need to get another traditional-style 100-foot.

Also WD-40 did not work to loosen the apparently welded-by-the-sun-into-stone lock on the side gate. Walmart was out of powdered graphite probably because no-one else in Tucson can loosen their locks either. So that’s another thing.

Then I realized that, after my most recent Windows update, the touchpad on my Lenovo laptop didn’t work. So to test it out I turned off the Bluetooth on the external mouse, too. And realized too late I had left myself with NO mouse and thus no way to turn the Bluetooth back on! That was scary.

After panicking, unsuccessfully googling many different relevant phrases on my phone (no Bluetooth no touchpad; turn on Bluetooth without mouse etc.), I restarted the laptop and typed “Bluetooth” into the search bar and when the Bluetooth screen shows up,, turns out you can then hit Tab and that’ll toggle the on/off Bluetooth and then you hit the space bar for On! So then I had my external mouse and somehow, after many searches, uninstalling, restarting the computer and on and on, I also got the touchpad to work again. More or less serendipitously. The touch ID where I used to be able to sign in with a fingerprint still doesn’t work.

As if that all weren’t enough excitement, it is monsoon season. June through September, roughly, is when it rains—if it rains—in Tucson. So it’s been fascinating to watch it unfold.

So far what happens is that for days it’s hot and humid and a kind of pressure seems to build. And then the pressure just hangs there, day after day. Then, suddenly, the sky can go from full-on fluffy cumulous cloud sky to lowering and gloomy in a heartbeat. And then it rains. Sort of. Not for very long, where I am, thus far. And then instantly it’s humid and hot again.

Last night for example I watched the gorgeous blood-orange sunset. Clear sky. Hot but not unbearable. I went to bed and to sleep and around 10 heard the profoundly welcome and exciting sound of…rain! Outside my window! So I leapt from bed, opened the door to the patio, and it was pouring. I mean a real dousing, verging on deluge. Oh grand, I thought. The plants will be so happy! It was even coolish, or cooler, such that I left the door open so the fresh breeze would come through the screen, and turned off the A/C.

Fifteen minutes later the rain abruptly stopped. And when I again stepped outside to survey the scene, it was like a sauna. It’s a very strange phenomenon, one I’m not used to, to have rain without a subsequent cooling off. Nope. The earth had instantly sucked in all the water and in the pitch dark was simply radiating heat. But that, too, was exciting—partly because the smell is simply heavenly: a mixture of warm hay, tobacco, roasting chilis, creosote…a rich loam, spiced with desert.

And people ask me how I fill my time here!

CHAMBERS OF WONDER

“Social media” isn’t all a cesspool waste of time.

Poking around Instagram lately, for example, I’ve found tons of wonderful painters, photographers, curators. And then just weird stuff like the Museum St. Wendel, a sort of compound in St. Wendel, Germany based on the cultural and historical heritage of St. Wendalinus. Here’s a description of one of their upcoming exhibitions:

Pfannoptikum
The rolling museum by Katharina and Rüdiger Krenkel
July 30th, 6:00 pm

In the summer exhibition 2021 in the Museum St. Wendel, the two are represented as individual artists: Katharina Krenkel with small crocheted sculptures that are arranged into a still life, Rüdiger Krenkel with the sculptures “Bag snail” made of marble and “Käpsele” made of round steel.

The objects in the “Rolling Museum” are inspired by the Chambers of Wonder and Curiosity Cabinets of the late Renaissance and Baroque periods, the forerunners of our museums today. In these a wealthy prince collected exotic artifacts, handicrafts, scientific equipment and inventions, alchemical and scientific curiosities and other treasures.

In this tradition, the sculptor siblings Katharina and Rüdiger Krenkel integrate their small sculptures made of wool, stone, metal and wood into their own private collections of found objects from all over the world and contrast them with them. The name of the project is explained by this Panoptikum: The “Pfannoptikum” was created from a former Pfanni sales van. With this moving cabinet of mirrors, the two artists now mingle with the showmen.”

I mean who does not need a cheering “bag snail” these days?

I also listened to a truly solid homily by Fr. Patrick Dooling of San Carlos Cathedral in Monterey, CA, on today’s Gospel: a prophet is without honor in his native place. (You can find it here if you scroll down to Mass for July 4, 2021).

Fr. Pat is a friend and I was reminded all over again why. One of the things he says is that more than ever we need the new-old, and why not cultivate the habit of, whenever we read or see or hear something beautiful, passing THAT on, (I added to myself, instead of the absurdity, hatefulness, lies, and ideological insanity that currently hold sway and that if we allow them to, can take up so much of our energy and time).

On that note, the Holy Father’s prayer intention for July is

Social Friendship:
“We pray that, in social, economic and political situations of conflict, we may be courageous and passionate architects of dialogue and friendship.”

My first thought was Oh good, I can now give free rein to my desire to expound upon….oh forget it, even mentioning what I want to expound on is gossipy and unnecessary.

Because after I heard Fr. Pat’s homily, I realized–No. Say the good things men need to hear. Get rid of all malice, slander, etc. [Eph. 4:31]. I do think some people are made to be social, cultural and religious commentators, and can do so on a regular basis without putting themselves in spiritual danger. I’m very probably not one of them. Plus can we not also be passionate architects of dialogue and friendship by broadcasting goodness, beauty and truth?

In fact, broadcasting beauty takes a lot more effort, heart and time than the other. In that regard, I recommend to you a blog by Altoon Sultan called Studio and Garden. Altoon is a distinguished and widely-acclaimed visual artist who for decades has lived, gardened, photographed and worked in and around a 200-year-old farmhouse in rural Vermont.

I followed Altoon for years, then she took a lengthy hiatus, and now, to the world’s great benefit, she is back. She might to do a post on cobwebs, or lichen, or the turned wooden legs of old chairs, sofas and dressers. She might offer a recipe for raspberry tart, made from fruit grown from her garden. She periodically forays into her native NYC and shares what she’s seen at the galleries and museums she visits there.

Take two recent posts, for example: “At the Met: Animals” and “At the Met: Abstraction, Modest and Monumental.”

Anyone who has ever written a blog, or written, period, knows that a tremendous amount of work goes into even one such post. The winnowing down and deciding which artworks of to include. The taking, editing, sizing, positioning, captioning of the photographs. The painstaking writing of the commentary for each of eight or ten works. Altoon’s reflections on art are never fussy, academic, high-brow, abstruse. They’re always lively, engaging, interesting, accessible, and human, delivered in such a way that both the, say, professionally-trained working artist and the curious layperson can find something fresh, exciting, and new.

Altogether the effect is of a life deeply thought, felt, and observed; disciplined, focused, ordered–and incredibly generous.

That’s the kind of life I want to aim for. So let’s be passionate architects of dialogue and friendship! Let’s cultivate our own personal chambers of wonder-and broadcast beauty.