Heather King's Blog, page 63

THE TAILOR OF GLOUCESTER

“But it is in the old story that all the beasts can talk in the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the morning (though there are very few folk that can hear them, or know what it is that they say).

When the Cathedral clock struck twelve there was an answer—like an echo of the chimes—and Simpkin heard it, and came out of the tailor’s door, and wandered about in the snow.

From all the roofs and gables and old wooden houses in Gloucester came a thousand merry voices singing the old Christmas rhymes—all the old songs that ever I heard of, and some that I don’t know, like Whittington’s bells.

Under the wooden eaves the starlings and sparrows sang of Christmas pies; the jackdaws woke up in the Cathedral tower; and although it was the middle of the night the throstles and robins sang; and air was quite full of little twittering tunes.

But it was all rather provoking to poor hungry Simpkin.”

–Beatrix Potter, The Tailor of Gloucester

DUST MOTES AND CIGARETTE SMOKE: A PAINTER WEIGHS IN FROM BROOKLYN...

From a reader:

Heather,

Painted some snow-filled pots two days ago in my icy backyard.
Beforehand I was thinking about the capitalism that is grinding up all
social cohesion and about the american-led war against all the
little/ancient societies of the globe. Thinking, what in god's name
can be done? How to fight back?

Then, during painting, how I would never want painting to be part of
any political struggle except on its own insignificant terms - just
observing/participating-in whatever little corner of existence I find
myself in - a fence, some brown reeds, steaming humps of snow.

And after: how it's really just us, the devil, Mary, and the child in
her womb in whatever little corner of the world we're in. And she
seems to know almost nothing, just a little corner of Palestine, not
even about sex. While the evil one seems to control everything, know
everything (is probably reading this email), twist everything…

But her victory is so obvious, so utter. Even the brilliant, huge
counter-refomormation paintings seem to miss how _completely_ she
crushes him (she's the one we call "terribilis," not him). Yet the
truth is shot like radiation through everyday material: the warm
shadow in the folds of a crumpled tissue, the broken pencil point left
on a church pew, dust motes in light, the microclimate of a hot
sidewalk. In short, our millennia-old, common existence, which we're
now mostly too busy to notice, but which menaces us and loves us
still.

Then again, there is a dull horror to the everyday - old wounds that
should have healed but haven't. STUPID misunderstandings that no
amount of explaining seems to be able to overcome. Anger buried and
exhumed. THe sudden awareness of lost years.

We don't live on light and dust motes alone, as much as I sometimes
wish we could. There is the whole social dimension. THe need for
justice. The need to keep talking, keep trying to understand and to
make clear. The Not Yet.

Anyway, here is a painting of a plant and some objects in my studio at
night. Thanks for your openness, your willingness to talk to
strangers, your beautiful photographs, and for LA (never been there
except to smoke a cigarette outside the Amtrak station - I'll never
forget the thickness of the light, smell of the plants and the heat of
the sidewalk!).

I'm also attaching the snow-filled pots mentioned above.

Merry Christmas!

Matt (brooklyn, ny)
See more at http://mkkirby.wordpress.com/.

DUST MOTES AND CIGARETTE SMOKE: A PAINTER WEIGHS IN FROM BROOKLYN

I’ve been going over my posts from the last ten years. This was first published on December 24, 2013. I liked it so much I’m giving it another go. Wishing you all the joys of this wondrous season.

From a reader:

Heather,

Painted some snow-filled pots two days ago in my icy backyard. Beforehand I was thinking about the capitalism that is grinding up all social cohesion and about the american-led war against all the little/ancient societies of the globe. Thinking, what in god’s name can be done? How to fight back?

Then, during painting, how I would never want painting to be part of any political struggle except on its own insignificant terms – just observing/participating-in whatever little corner of existence I find myself in – a fence, some brown reeds, steaming humps of snow.

And after: how it’s really just us, the devil, Mary, and the child in her womb in whatever little corner of the world we’re in. And she seems to know almost nothing, just a little corner of Palestine, not even about sex. While the evil one seems to control everything, know everything (is probably reading this email), twist everything…

But her victory is so obvious, so utter. Even the brilliant, huge counter-refomormation paintings seem to miss how completely she crushes him (she’s the one we call “terribilis,” not him). Yet the truth is shot like radiation through everyday material: the warm shadow in the folds of a crumpled tissue, the broken pencil point left on a church pew, dust motes in light, the microclimate of a hot sidewalk. In short, our millennia-old, common existence, which we’re now mostly too busy to notice, but which menaces us and loves us still.

Then again, there is a dull horror to the everyday – old wounds that should have healed but haven’t. STUPID misunderstandings that no amount of explaining seems to be able to overcome. Anger buried and exhumed. The sudden awareness of lost years.

We don’t live on light and dust motes alone, as much as I sometimes wish we could. There is the whole social dimension. The need for justice. The need to keep talking, keep trying to understand and to make clear. The Not Yet.

Anyway, here is a painting of a plant and some objects in my studio at night. Thanks for your openness, your willingness to talk to strangers, your beautiful photographs, and for LA (never been there except to smoke a cigarette outside the Amtrak station – I’ll never forget the thickness of the light, smell of the plants and the heat of the sidewalk!).

I’m also attaching the snow-filled pots mentioned above.

Merry Christmas!

Matt (brooklyn, ny)
See more at Matthew Kirby

POT IN SNOW
MATTHEW KIRBY

FRENCH FRIES AS MUSE

From an interview in Insight, the magazine of The Sisters of Life, with Dr. Michael J. Brescia, Executive Medical Director and co-founder of Calvary Hospital, to talk about his experiences at the Catholic palliative care facility and hospice in the Bronx.

I heard that you were responsible for a famous invention.

I joined the VA hospital in the Bronx because they had a lot of soldiers coming back from Vietnam who were dying of kidney disease. One day I was feeling very desperate; I had about ten men upstairs in the VA. These were all young folks, but they were all going to die.

I’m down in the lunch shop with my colleague, thinking about the problem. There are two french fries lined up side by side on my plate. I take a bite out of my hamburger and a blob of ketchup falls down perfectly in between the french fries. It was like Gabriel whispering in my ear. “Don’t move it! Don’t move it! Not yet! There’s the answer.” I looked at my plate and I thought, “It’s like a vein and an artery in the wrist. I wonder…if I connect this vein and artery with a fistula, would this vein, and all the other veins, actually change and become like arteries? Then we wouldn’t just have one artery; we’d have 200 arteries! We could keep putting the people on the blood-cleansing machine indefinitely!” I ran upstairs and said, “We’re going to do a fistula.” Would you believe it – it worked! That was 50 years ago, and they are still using it.

PERSHING SQUARE ICE RINK

iv>

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

The Bai Holiday Ice Rink Pershing Square has returned for its 22nd anniversary season.

I know because I attended the grand opening, which took place from 11 to noon on Thursday, Nov. 14.

From top to bottom, the event, atmosphere, and zeitgeist were quintessential LA.

The setting: a balmy 67 degrees. The rink, at 532 S. Olive Street: surrounded by palm trees and skyscrapers. The main sponsor: Bai, an antioxidant infusion drink. Another sponsor: the North American tour of Disney’s “Frozen: The Broadway Musical.”

A chorus from Grand Arts High School, right down the street, gave us “Jingle Bells.”

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

THE TOOLS FOR GOOD WORKS

The decorations are up, the Advent breviary is in use, I've descended into the psychic darkness that inevitably descends this time of year. While at the same time I'm filled with a sense of ragged, inexplicable joy.

I've also been reviewing, culling, and reformatting my posts, one by one, from the last ten years--so that is a task. I look forward to the updated website/blog being up in early 2020.

Meanwhile, here's the link to a recent podcast I did with Deal Hudson of Ave Maria Radio re my new book RAVISHED: Notes on Womanhood .

I've also been exploring the possibility of becoming a Benedictine oblate at St. Andrew's Abbey in the high desert outside LA.

Among the myriad other gifts (and responsibilities and obligations) such a commitment would engender is the fact that oblates can be buried in the abbey cemetery. This is a prospect that appeals to me deeply.

All around we hear the call to arms, to hatred, to violent action.

This morning I read the following in Esther de Waal's Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict :

"St Benedict will not allow us to evade change, and he has no illusions about what is involved in facing up to growth. Conversatio is simply commitment to facing up to the demands of growth and change. One of the specific ways in which the Rule helps with this comes in Chapter 4, "The Tools for Good Works.' There are seventy-three of them, most of them short, sharp injunctions fired at us one after another, without even an opening paragraph. At the twenty-second St Benedict is saying, 'You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge. Rid your heart of all deceit. Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when someone needs your love.' "

THE CEMETERY AT ST. ANDREW'S ABBEY,
VALYERMO, CA

A GLASS PANEL HOMAGE TO LOCAL FIREFIGHTERS

THE THREE FRONT PANELS
credit: Robiee Ziegler
Here's how this week's arts and culture piece begins:

Artist Anne-Elizabeth Sobieski’s family lost their Pasadena home to fire when she was 17. “I was frozen. I don’t know how much time went by. We just watched as the roof fell in, and one by one, every room burned.”

Ever since, she’s had a special heart for firefighters. So perhaps it was only fitting that she was chosen by the LA County Department of Arts and Culture (formerly the LA County Arts Commission) to design the fused glass panels for the newly built Santa Clarita Fire Station 104.

“The county’s awarding of public art projects is really an outreach to the community, which I think is the most beautiful thing in the world. They provide arts education programs, fund teachers and individual artists, work with the incarcerated, give apprenticeship grants, and much more. They invite people like me who have never done a public project before.”

From the beginning, she had to consider how she needed to design the panels so they’d look well in glass. Judson Studios, based in Highland Park, is the oldest family-run stained-glass studio in America. She hired them to team up on the proposal and to fabricate the panels.

Her initial proposal focused on the landscape, the history of Santa Clarita, and the community for whom fire tends to be traumatizing.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

THE SRIRACHA SAUCE EMPIRE

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

Sriracha sauce is a crown jewel of Southern California foodie culture.

You’ve seen the plastic bottles. They’re filled with bright red sauce, emblazoned with a rooster, stamped with text in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Chinese, and topped by a green squirt cap. For many, this blazing hot chili product is a staple condiment.

Enter David Tran, CEO and founder of Huy Fong Foods. In 1979, Tran fled communist Vietnam on a Taiwanese freighter named Huey Fong. “I didn’t have a plan,” he says. He came to the U.S. because we were the only place that would have him. He ended up naming his Sriracha empire after that boat.

He washed up in the LA area and decided to try his hand at hot sauce.

He was born in 1945, the Year of the Rooster. So he bought a blue Chevy van, stenciled his own rooster logo on the side, and drove his first bottles to Asian restaurants and markets around town.

Over time he grew his company from a 5,000-square-foot facility in Chinatown (1980), to a 68,000-square-foot facility in Rosemead (1987), to its current state-of-the-art 650,000-square-foot compound in Irwindale (2010).

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

COAST TO COAST

I always laugh when people say "I hope you enjoyed your retreat!" or "your vacation!"

I do enjoy it, all of it, but my life and my travel are almost militarily disciplined and at all times retain a pilgrimage aspect. I often fast in my way, I always walk miles. This last trip to NYC was no exception.

And it was a beautiful trip.

Why, however, did I make it? Even I don't fully know.

Maybe my goal was simply to lay eyes on the faces of my friends: Patrick, Tim, Matthew, Anthony. Maybe it was so I could go to Mass and pray at St. Vincent Ferrer, surely one of the loveliest churches in NY, if not all of creation. Maybe it was to pay my biannual visit to the Conservancy Garden in the upper NE corner of Central Park.  Maybe it was to walk the streets of Manhattan (and Queens, and Brooklyn), and to leave a little of my body and blood there, and to pray for the people and places among whom I walked.

Maybe I just had to savor a taste of the East Coat autumn.

All of this was made easier by a $213 round trip ticket and the fact that, because I write for Magnificat, I'm allowed to stay at the Dominicans' Holy Name Building on E. 65th, around the corner from St. Vincent Ferrer, for a generously small stipend (as who but the wealthy could ever afford a Manhattan hotel for a week).

Never will I get over the miracle of travel, especially air travel. How is it possible that a person could awake in a bed on Lexington and 65th and on the same day retire for the night on a bed in Pasadena, California? I'm always super anxious, afraid I won't make it, or something will go wrong, the upside of that being insane gratitude for every "tiny" thing that goes right. Oh, the downtown Q train showed up as promised. Oh Penn Station is still there! Oh United is going to honor the boarding pass it issued me! Et cetera.

I write from the United Lounge next to Gate 74 C at Newark's Liberty Airport. I came early for my 1 pm flight, partly because I couldn't bear the suspense of knowing whether or not I'd make it from downtown Manhattan, and partly because you can get free juice, coffee and food here, plus your own space more or less to work in. (My United Visa provides me with two free passes a year).

Here are the moments I'll take home with me: after a freezing cold, blustery day in Brooklyn, first having a new head shot taken, then wandering around Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden till I was shaking with cold and exhausted, stopping at the falafel truck on 65th and 3rd Avenue before returning to my room with a hot chocolate, a falafel plate with rice and salad, a warm piece of pita, and a rice pudding and DEVOURING the second best meal I had the whole week. Trembling with gratitude.

The best meal was at Morandi in the Village with my friend Tim, whose highly recommended first novel, Cornelius Sky, was published this year. The plan was for me to take him out but of course he insisted on taking me out, which I mention simply because I seem to be surrounded by people who give me 500% more than I ever seem to give them. The meal was stupendous but the meal took second place to the conversation, communion and camaraderie.

Tim is also a NYC Transit bus driver. His route begins at 72nd and Amsterdam at 5:07 on weekdays and takes him and his riders across Central Park and over to York. I met him at the beginning of his shift another day and rode over to Madison and that, too, was a huge treat.

Then there was the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (meh), Dia Beacon, the Noguchi Museum and the Socrates Sculpture Park.

*****

Now I'm safe home, with major jet lag, and headed to Pershing Square in downtown LA this morning for the grand opening of ice-skating season.

Last night I gave a talk at the Valley Hunt Club (!) for the Pasadena chapter of Legatus.

The fun NEVER STOPS.

RICHARD SERRA, DIA: BEACON
CENTRAL PARK AROUND E. 66TH, DUSK

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

IN THE COURTYARD AND INSIDE THE NOGUCHI MUSEUM
I've been in NYC the past week and my time has been rich, fruitful, and jam-packed.

It's also been a bit overshadowed by the visit I paid to the probate attorney the day before I left, which was also jam-packed but not in a fun way. (Not that NY has exactly been "fun" either--is anything, ever?--but that's a different discussion). 

Like perhaps most of us,  "admin" is not my favorite activity. But I've been trying hard to remember to be insanely grateful that I have anything, of any kind, TO administer.

To that end, I looked up the etymology  and found: "late 14c., aministren, later administren, "to manage as a steward, control or regulate on behalf of others," from Old French aministrer "help, aid, be of service to" (12c., Modern French administrer)."

Note: on behalf of others. So let me try to administer with patience and love.

Anyway, one of documents the attorney gave me was a sheet with six different situations, each more outlandish, hypothesizing gruesome medical situations, that just COULD come to pass.

Then you're supposed to choose which of about fifteen different medial treatments you'd want, or not want: thorny decisions that I am hardly in a position to make even now, in full possession of my faculties.

For example:

"If I am in a coma or persistent vegetative state and have no known hope of recovering awareness or higher mental functions: I want OR I do not want: Minor surgery: for example, removing part of an infected toe."

I mean just try to wrap your mind around that. First, I thought, well for heaven's sake, no, at that point it's a little late to be worry about an infected toe. But then again, you don't just want to be lying there like a big hunk of gangrene. What if it were an infected leg? Or torso? Does a person feel pain in a vegetative state? On some level does he or she still want to "look nice?"

Situation B: "If I am in a coma and have a small but uncertain chance of regaining awareness and higher mental functioning: I want OR I do not want Chemotherapy: Drugs to fight cancer."

Well let's see. If I were in a coma, I probably wouldn't care all that much that I also had cancer. But what if I miraculously "came to," only to realize that if I had made the "right" decision, I wouldn't now have Stage 4 melanoma or whatever!?

Sitaution E: "I have an incurable chronic illness that causes physical suffering or minor mental disability and will ultimately cause death, and then I develop a life-threatening but reversible illness: I want OR I do not want Pain Medications: even if they dull consciousness and indirectly shorten my life."

I mean at that point I would want a quart of gin and/or a gun. Although in general I am for going through life (and death, for that matter) with as little pain medication as you can possibly muster. I like being awake, even though that means you're awake to suffering.

Because suffering invites us to ask the right questions, to figure out what is truly important in this crazy world, and to live accordingly.

And did you get
what you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on this earth.

--Raymond Carver

Me, too.


SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK
QUEENS