I’ve only had two art history classes in my life, but they obviously exercised a huge influence on my imagination. I sometimes think in terms of images I’ve seen; maybe another way to say this is that the study of art history primed me to notice moments when art imitates life. Great paintings wouldn’t have the power to enchant us if they didn’t contain archetypal material, and that sometimes creates a feeling of recognition when you least expect it.
I’ve written about this before. I had lived in my last apartment for many years before I realized that the view of the roof lines on the opposite side of the street reminded me very much of René Magritte’s The Dominion of Light, especially at certain times of the day. Peach-colored sunsets have more than once made me think of Maxfield Parrish’s extravagant and billowing clouds. I was looking out my back window one summer day late in the afternoon when the quality of light on the opposite wall reminded me of Winslow Homer. I wasn’t even sure what I had in mind when this happened—possibly the light on the sail in Homer’s Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)—but that wall definitely looked like Homer.
Recently, I was on a downtown street near the courthouse when I was stopped in my tracks by a view of mixed architectural styles and roof lines visible from where I was standing. It instantly brought Thomas Cole’s The Architect’s Dream to mind, and although the elements in the real-life view didn’t match those in the painting point for point, there was enough similarity to make it seem that the painting had, in a manner, sprung to life before my eyes. A long, horizontal, arcade-like building, a pediment, pyramid shapes, a massy square building with rounded arches, a Gothic steeple—all were there in a jumble, just as in the painting.
A similar art-related experience I’ve had more than once is to see a painting that creates a feeling of déjà vu that I can’t explain. Sometimes I feel that I may only have encountered the place in my imagination and not in reality at all. A Pre-Raphaelite painting of a solitary knight pausing in a forest may remind me of reading King Arthur for the first time, just as a moonlit scene of an Italian bridge may bring to mind a place encountered in one of Mary Stewart’s novels.
I once took an online quiz that was supposed to tell me “which famous painting I was.” Whatever the result, was I was flattered by it—I believe it may have been something by one of the Impressionists. But if you asked me a different question—“Which artist could best paint life as you are now living it?”—I would have to say Picasso, and it would be the style of painting in which the same face is depicted from several angles at once. Of course, a Hillmanian would have a perspective like this, but more than that, I think modern life (as I experience it, at least) creates a feeling of time speeding up in some places and slowing down in others that often leaves things a little out of joint. I experience myself much as I always have, but I seem to be caught in a crosswind of dimensional planes that leaves me goggling at the unlikelihood of it all. I’m ahead of myself in some areas and lagging behind in others; my elbow may be in one place, my foot in another, and my shoulder in another plane entirely.
I never particularly identified with Cubism before, but life and art have some surprising corners. I just saw an article that mentioned some sort of a hole on the edge of the Milky Way that’s been identified by a Harvard scientist. It’s far too vast to be caused by a star, she says, and the culprit may possibly be “dark matter.” Don’t you just know it! Dark matter interfering not only with the galaxy but with my nice Impressionist life and skewing the whole thing Cubist! Just wait till I get hold of the sucker . . . There won’t be a wormhole small enough for it to hide in.
Sunday, June 16, 2019
Sunday, June 9, 2019
Storm to the South
A little while ago I watching a storm cloud move across the sky south of me. I thought I could almost see a funnel cloud in the middle of it and imagined having to hide behind the counter in the cafe if it veered in this direction. The sky got darker, there were rumbles in the distance, and then it rained, but that was all. It’s been a rainy spring here but nothing very far out of the ordinary so far.
I like thunderstorms, but they’re usually milder here than the ones I remember from growing up in Florida. There, the rain assumed a tropical intensity, and lightning seemed to split the sky wide open. Some years ago, I was riding Amtrak through Iowa, and I clearly remember the thunderstorm that blew up as we were sitting down to dinner that night. With the flatness of the land and lack of buildings it was possible to see a long way, and we had an unobstructed view of the storm, which seemed notable for the intensity and frequency of the lightning but was after all probably nothing unusual for the northern plains.
I remember thinking that I hadn’t seen a storm like that since Florida. I don’t know if the spring storms are more intense over Iowa than they are over Kentucky or whether it’s the wide-angle views that make storms seem bigger. It was fun to watch the storm from the safety of the dining car, just as it’s always enjoyable to sit in a dry room, preferably in a cozy chair with a book in hand, and watch rain fall.
Not so fun to be caught out in a storm in a place like Texas or Oklahoma, though. It’s safe to say that a career as a storm chaser is out of the question for me, since my instinct is to go away from a storm, not toward it. A couple of years ago, I was on my way to visit a friend in the Dallas area, and just south of the city, I ran into the blackest, most ominous cloud I’ve ever seen, really downright Dante-esque if you can picture what a storm cloud rolling out of Inferno itself would look like. I was alarmed but noted that no one else was pulling off the road, so, like them, I just kept going until I drove out of it some twenty minutes later. There was no thunder with this storm, but driving into it was like running into a solid wall of water, and it stayed that way until I drove out from under the cloud, back into normal reality, twelve miles from my friend’s house.
Why is this mythic? Well, all natural phenomena are part of the fabric of myths and have their own gods and goddesses (we were just talking about Iris, the Greek goddess of rainbows, last week). In modern life, we talk about weather in scientific terms, and even if you watch The Weather Channel for hours at a time, as I’ve been known to do, you’ll hear hardly a mention of Thor, Aeolus, Zeus, or any other weather god from the old stories, though Old Man Winter may sometimes be mentioned in a whimsical way.
Some people like the idea of reverting to the old nature religions that tend to personify natural events and give them human qualities. My enjoyment of nature isn’t diminished by hearing it spoken of scientifically. The science of weather is complex and fascinating, and the forms and characteristics of the old myths play around the edges of my imagination when I watch weather programs or look at a storm through a window. Is there some reason a scientific approach has to clash with having an imaginative relationship to the world? Not that I can see. I can listen with interest while someone describes the dynamics of a tornado and still find that the archetypal twister in my mind is the one that carried Dorothy to Oz.
I like thunderstorms, but they’re usually milder here than the ones I remember from growing up in Florida. There, the rain assumed a tropical intensity, and lightning seemed to split the sky wide open. Some years ago, I was riding Amtrak through Iowa, and I clearly remember the thunderstorm that blew up as we were sitting down to dinner that night. With the flatness of the land and lack of buildings it was possible to see a long way, and we had an unobstructed view of the storm, which seemed notable for the intensity and frequency of the lightning but was after all probably nothing unusual for the northern plains.
I remember thinking that I hadn’t seen a storm like that since Florida. I don’t know if the spring storms are more intense over Iowa than they are over Kentucky or whether it’s the wide-angle views that make storms seem bigger. It was fun to watch the storm from the safety of the dining car, just as it’s always enjoyable to sit in a dry room, preferably in a cozy chair with a book in hand, and watch rain fall.
Not so fun to be caught out in a storm in a place like Texas or Oklahoma, though. It’s safe to say that a career as a storm chaser is out of the question for me, since my instinct is to go away from a storm, not toward it. A couple of years ago, I was on my way to visit a friend in the Dallas area, and just south of the city, I ran into the blackest, most ominous cloud I’ve ever seen, really downright Dante-esque if you can picture what a storm cloud rolling out of Inferno itself would look like. I was alarmed but noted that no one else was pulling off the road, so, like them, I just kept going until I drove out of it some twenty minutes later. There was no thunder with this storm, but driving into it was like running into a solid wall of water, and it stayed that way until I drove out from under the cloud, back into normal reality, twelve miles from my friend’s house.
Why is this mythic? Well, all natural phenomena are part of the fabric of myths and have their own gods and goddesses (we were just talking about Iris, the Greek goddess of rainbows, last week). In modern life, we talk about weather in scientific terms, and even if you watch The Weather Channel for hours at a time, as I’ve been known to do, you’ll hear hardly a mention of Thor, Aeolus, Zeus, or any other weather god from the old stories, though Old Man Winter may sometimes be mentioned in a whimsical way.
Some people like the idea of reverting to the old nature religions that tend to personify natural events and give them human qualities. My enjoyment of nature isn’t diminished by hearing it spoken of scientifically. The science of weather is complex and fascinating, and the forms and characteristics of the old myths play around the edges of my imagination when I watch weather programs or look at a storm through a window. Is there some reason a scientific approach has to clash with having an imaginative relationship to the world? Not that I can see. I can listen with interest while someone describes the dynamics of a tornado and still find that the archetypal twister in my mind is the one that carried Dorothy to Oz.
Sunday, June 2, 2019
The Knight of Cups Has a Message for You
Often I feel that I’m reacting to things I see in the culture, just playing with repetitions and coming up with associations. I rarely see myself as someone who “starts things”—for instance, I didn’t start the phenomena of modern beverage cups and bottles in scenes of medieval settings on famous TV shows—but I did have fun taking pictures of my own coffee and tea cups and putting together little montages with them (see Wordplay’s Facebook page for the photo essay). That’s how I got from a water cup at breakfast to an image of the Knight of Cups from the Tarot, a symbolic progression that may or may not mean anything but was fun to do.
Cups have a symbolism of their own, and I was playing in my montage with the idea of being “offered something.” The tricky thing with symbols is that they often contain more than one meaning, and even opposite meanings. A cup can represent refreshment, potential, receptivity, and a number of other things, but it can equally represent the opposite of any of those—it might contain poison, for instance, instead of refreshment. A closed container could represent “keeping the lid on something” rather than an offering.
Now, I will plead guilty to starting a word association game with the word “iris,” but I was only doing it on my Facebook page for fun, so if you start seeing it everywhere suddenly, don’t blame me. It was the montage of the cups that actually morphed, more or less organically, into the iris montage. I paired an image of my iced tea cup at McDonald’s with a photo of a partial rainbow that I took a couple of weeks ago because they had a similar “arch” (or “arc,” I guess, if we were still talking about Game of Thrones). Naturally, being a myth person, I then started thinking about who was the goddess of rainbows in Greek mythology, and she, of course, was Iris.
So I found a painting of Iris that looked old enough to be in the public domain (and honestly, that was my main criterion): this was Guy Head’s Iris Carrying the Water of the River Styx to Olympus for the Gods to Swear By. Iris happens to be holding a pitcher, which is not a cup, but close enough, and although she appears to be having a major wardrobe malfunction, she seems to know exactly where she’s going and to be heading there with all possible speed. The treatment is suitably dramatic and even includes several repetitions of curved arches in the rainbow itself, the stone, the reflection, the drapery, etc., so the painting is all over the arches theme in just about every way conceivable.
After that, I started thinking about other meanings and associations of the word “iris,” which is, of course, more than a goddess’s name. It’s the part of your eye that surrounds the pupil, and it’s the name of a flower. It was also the name of a show by the Cirque du Soleil that I saw in Los Angeles some years ago, my one and only time of seeing that famous troupe, and quite an experience it was. The theme of cameras, lenses, and “seeing” was evident in the show, which had a Hollywood theme, though I really don’t remember the details, just the overall impression of the spectacle. One of my favorite moments occurred before the curtain went up, when I was idling in my seat, and a performer opened a hidden, circular window at the top of the stage (I was in an upper balcony) and looked out at me momentarily before snapping it smartly shut. I had the impression of having been “winked at.”
So I put together Iris of the rainbow and pitcher with a photo of my own eye and added in a logo from Cirque du Soleil’s Iris (though the one I chose is a stark black and white and hardly does justice to the jumble of color and motion I remember). Lastly, I added an image of Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, which probably needs no introduction to anyone, as famous and beautiful as it is. I have sat or stood in front of that painting at the Getty Museum for many minutes at a time on more than one occasion—seeing it was one of the highlights of the first weekend I ever spent in Los Angeles. Curiously, I had somehow gotten the impression that irises are a symbol of healing but when I did some cursory research to confirm that before posting the image to Facebook, I found plenty of other symbolic meanings for the flower but nothing related to healing. I’m now curious about where the healing idea came from and feel that it may have been from something I saw in the museum, though it was so long ago that I’m not sure.
So we now have a rainbow goddess with trailing drapery, a highly acrobatic circus spectacle, a structure of the eye, and a flower, and if you thought I was going somewhere specific with all that, the answer is “not really.” It was all in play, in keeping with the theme of this blog. But if “the eye is (indeed) the window to the soul”—watch out. It could be yourself you see reflected in that photo essay. Maybe Wordplay itself is all just a gigantic Rorschach test—you never know.
Cups have a symbolism of their own, and I was playing in my montage with the idea of being “offered something.” The tricky thing with symbols is that they often contain more than one meaning, and even opposite meanings. A cup can represent refreshment, potential, receptivity, and a number of other things, but it can equally represent the opposite of any of those—it might contain poison, for instance, instead of refreshment. A closed container could represent “keeping the lid on something” rather than an offering.
Now, I will plead guilty to starting a word association game with the word “iris,” but I was only doing it on my Facebook page for fun, so if you start seeing it everywhere suddenly, don’t blame me. It was the montage of the cups that actually morphed, more or less organically, into the iris montage. I paired an image of my iced tea cup at McDonald’s with a photo of a partial rainbow that I took a couple of weeks ago because they had a similar “arch” (or “arc,” I guess, if we were still talking about Game of Thrones). Naturally, being a myth person, I then started thinking about who was the goddess of rainbows in Greek mythology, and she, of course, was Iris.
So I found a painting of Iris that looked old enough to be in the public domain (and honestly, that was my main criterion): this was Guy Head’s Iris Carrying the Water of the River Styx to Olympus for the Gods to Swear By. Iris happens to be holding a pitcher, which is not a cup, but close enough, and although she appears to be having a major wardrobe malfunction, she seems to know exactly where she’s going and to be heading there with all possible speed. The treatment is suitably dramatic and even includes several repetitions of curved arches in the rainbow itself, the stone, the reflection, the drapery, etc., so the painting is all over the arches theme in just about every way conceivable.
After that, I started thinking about other meanings and associations of the word “iris,” which is, of course, more than a goddess’s name. It’s the part of your eye that surrounds the pupil, and it’s the name of a flower. It was also the name of a show by the Cirque du Soleil that I saw in Los Angeles some years ago, my one and only time of seeing that famous troupe, and quite an experience it was. The theme of cameras, lenses, and “seeing” was evident in the show, which had a Hollywood theme, though I really don’t remember the details, just the overall impression of the spectacle. One of my favorite moments occurred before the curtain went up, when I was idling in my seat, and a performer opened a hidden, circular window at the top of the stage (I was in an upper balcony) and looked out at me momentarily before snapping it smartly shut. I had the impression of having been “winked at.”
So I put together Iris of the rainbow and pitcher with a photo of my own eye and added in a logo from Cirque du Soleil’s Iris (though the one I chose is a stark black and white and hardly does justice to the jumble of color and motion I remember). Lastly, I added an image of Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, which probably needs no introduction to anyone, as famous and beautiful as it is. I have sat or stood in front of that painting at the Getty Museum for many minutes at a time on more than one occasion—seeing it was one of the highlights of the first weekend I ever spent in Los Angeles. Curiously, I had somehow gotten the impression that irises are a symbol of healing but when I did some cursory research to confirm that before posting the image to Facebook, I found plenty of other symbolic meanings for the flower but nothing related to healing. I’m now curious about where the healing idea came from and feel that it may have been from something I saw in the museum, though it was so long ago that I’m not sure.
So we now have a rainbow goddess with trailing drapery, a highly acrobatic circus spectacle, a structure of the eye, and a flower, and if you thought I was going somewhere specific with all that, the answer is “not really.” It was all in play, in keeping with the theme of this blog. But if “the eye is (indeed) the window to the soul”—watch out. It could be yourself you see reflected in that photo essay. Maybe Wordplay itself is all just a gigantic Rorschach test—you never know.
Sunday, May 26, 2019
You Know Nothing, Word Play
I heard that Game of Thrones fans have a petition on Change.org asking for a re-write of the final episode, now that the juggernaut that is GOT has, at least for now, come to an end. I had a chance to watch the episode twice, and while I was prepared not to like it, honesty compels me to say that—know-nothing though I am—I thought it was rather impressive. Elegiac, tragic, bleak, shocking, solemn—all of those things, with happy endings few and far between. From my understanding of the show, events were leading rather inexorably toward something very much like what happened, though I was sorry that one of my favorite characters was among the casualties. Hasn’t GOT been doing this type of thing from the beginning, getting you to like people and then doing them in? When ruthless people jockey for power, people die—I believe it was Cersei who pointed that out.
However, the people calling for a rewrite could be on to something. As I understand it, people feel that some of the characters veered into unexpected directions that weren’t consistent with previous actions and that destruction of the Night King in Episode 3 this season threw a wrench into the logical unfolding of later events. I liked an article in which someone explained the problem in terms of the standard exposition/rising action/climax/denouement structure we all remember from school. The basic argument is that the climactic action came too early in the season and forced the last few episodes to produce a second climax when one should have been enough. Though I’m recalling that in The Lord of the Rings, there were several big battles before the final climax, I can’t argue with people who know GOT better than I do and say that all the big buildup was toward a confrontation with the Night King.
While this is purportedly the end of this iteration of the series, we all know of cases in which characters were killed and shows ended only to be resurrected later. I think I feel what a lot of viewers are feeling, which is how big a hole the killing off of so many major characters left in the program. It was as if half the oxygen had been sucked out of Westeros, leaving a huge vacuum. Grief feels that way, and I think a lot of viewers are likely in mourning over the loss of characters they’ve come to know over eight seasons. I was surprised at how sad the scene in which Tyrion finds Cersei and Jaime in the rubble of the Red Keep made me; I had never even seen GOT before the end of Season 7.
I disagree, however, with people who feel that Jaime’s actions in returning to his sister were inconsistent with the direction he’d been going in. I admired him for returning to King’s Landing and not abandoning his sister. As strange as their relationship was, it seemed to be a central fact in both of their lives. While he had been moving away from her (and might have continued to do so if he had lived), in the final push, blood was still thicker than water. From what I understand of Ser Jaime’s character, he never would have been able to live with himself afterward if he hadn’t been with his twin in the final crisis. I thought he behaved very honorably.
I also disagree with those who think that Brienne of Tarth acted out of character by crying when she and Jaime parted and then writing down his story in the final episode. What, can’t a girl be a knight and have feelings, too? Don’t you suppose she suspected it might be the last time she’d ever see him? Was there anyone in a better position to fill in his page after his death in the annals of the realm? Brienne had moved into a position of power on the Council by the end of the episode and was obviously going to be a key player in the future of Westeros — is she any less a knight for looking off into the distance occasionally and thinking about someone who isn’t there?
Having said all that, I confess, if I had written the final episode, I would have done it differently. I find the whole Daenerys/Jon Snow finale too thorny a problem and would leave that for someone else to rewrite if they could (to me, Daenerys did seem, if not mad, then increasingly ruthless and unlikely to change direction). I would have had someone come along after Tyrion left the ruins of the keep, find Jaime barely breathing, and then spirit him away to some secret place for healing. Well, what of it—wasn’t Jon Snow brought back from actual death? These things can be managed—it’s show business, after all. I would have had Jaime find his way back to Brienne in time for GOT II, and they would spend the rest of their lives trying to figure out how to be together, which might not be as simple as settling down together in a castle somewhere. Both seemed to me to be very independent, complicated people. There’s enough material there to fill a number of seasons just in that subplot alone.
Well, there you have it, and if anyone calls me, I’ll be glad to undertake that re-write—for a small fee. And by the way, three cheers for the survival of Tyrion, one of my other favorite characters. Watching him moving those chairs around so noisily in the Council Room gave me hope for the future. A little compulsiveness never hurt anybody.
I also disagree with those who think that Brienne of Tarth acted out of character by crying when she and Jaime parted and then writing down his story in the final episode. What, can’t a girl be a knight and have feelings, too? Don’t you suppose she suspected it might be the last time she’d ever see him? Was there anyone in a better position to fill in his page after his death in the annals of the realm? Brienne had moved into a position of power on the Council by the end of the episode and was obviously going to be a key player in the future of Westeros — is she any less a knight for looking off into the distance occasionally and thinking about someone who isn’t there?
Having said all that, I confess, if I had written the final episode, I would have done it differently. I find the whole Daenerys/Jon Snow finale too thorny a problem and would leave that for someone else to rewrite if they could (to me, Daenerys did seem, if not mad, then increasingly ruthless and unlikely to change direction). I would have had someone come along after Tyrion left the ruins of the keep, find Jaime barely breathing, and then spirit him away to some secret place for healing. Well, what of it—wasn’t Jon Snow brought back from actual death? These things can be managed—it’s show business, after all. I would have had Jaime find his way back to Brienne in time for GOT II, and they would spend the rest of their lives trying to figure out how to be together, which might not be as simple as settling down together in a castle somewhere. Both seemed to me to be very independent, complicated people. There’s enough material there to fill a number of seasons just in that subplot alone.
Well, there you have it, and if anyone calls me, I’ll be glad to undertake that re-write—for a small fee. And by the way, three cheers for the survival of Tyrion, one of my other favorite characters. Watching him moving those chairs around so noisily in the Council Room gave me hope for the future. A little compulsiveness never hurt anybody.
Sunday, May 19, 2019
Elegy for Lost Items
The big adventure I had this week was having my cell phone taken from my locker at work. This is a $10 phone, folks, not an expensive iPhone, but it did cause me the aggravation of having to deactivate my service, buy a new phone, set it up, reactivate my service, find out how to get a list of any phone calls that may have been placed to or from my phone while it was out of my hands, and stop by the police station at midnight to report the theft (a police report is required if you want to request your own phone records—not sure if this is a requirement if someone tries to get them through FISA).
It wasn’t the first time I missed something that I thought I’d left in my locker and will hopefully be the last—but you never know. I liked the other phone better, even though all it really did was make and accept phone calls, but they don’t produce it any more, so I had to accept an upgrade, which I did, more or less ungraciously. It does have several pleasant-sounding alarm tones to choose from; lets you turn Wi-Fi definitively off, so you don’t connect to the Internet without meaning to (admittedly a drawback on the other phone); and caused me to stroll through Target, where I fell in love with some decorative pitchers that I don’t need but enjoyed looking at.
I don’t know about you, but it strikes me as odd that someone would take a $10 phone. It reminds me of the time I was staying at Extended Stay in SoCal two years ago and someone stole my cell phone charger (a $7 item) out of a zipped compartment. I remember racing over to the closest Walmart to where I was working and buying one on my lunch hour, the one and only time I’ve seen Knott’s Berry Farm (which was in the vicinity). When I made a police report in that case, the officer seemed not to understand the fact that it wasn’t the value of the item that mattered but the fact that someone at the hotel had gone into my room and stolen it. This time, I did at least get the feeling that the officer frowned on the whole lack of security around the lockers—he asked if the store had security cameras.
Naturally, things like this put you in a bad mood. I don’t ever recall giving anyone permission to disrespect my personal space or the sanctity of my possessions, but people seem to have peculiar ideas about what they can get away with these days. We do still live in a country of laws, but you would never know it by either reading the news or listening to me recount the things that have happened to me in recent years. Prosecution is always an option, of course, but—gosh, what a drag. Still, you can’t let people get away with things because otherwise they have no incentive to stop.
I guess this post is about the unwanted and overweening presence of Hermes, the trickster, who has appeared and reappeared in various forms in my life and is one of the reasons why Hestia has such an appeal for me right now—Hestia being somewhat the opposite of Hermes. That’s probably why the sight of a simple pitcher could stop me in my tracks: an object purporting to be nothing but itself and hearkening to be filled with iced tea or lemonade and placed on a summer table with a vase of flowers. If I were a good Buddhist, I suppose I’d be thinking along the lines of, “The pitcher is already broken/Nothing is permanent,” but heck, I don’t even have the pitcher yet, so let me at least enjoy the idea of it whole and perfect and sitting on my table in my nonexistent house. I guess I’ll go ahead and post the picture, so you can see what I’m going on about (I have no place to put a pitcher right now, even if I bought it).
Enjoy the pitcher/picture, and if you happen to see the person who took either my charger or my cell phone, tell them I haven’t forgotten them. To everything there is a season (to quote both the Bible and the Byrds).
It wasn’t the first time I missed something that I thought I’d left in my locker and will hopefully be the last—but you never know. I liked the other phone better, even though all it really did was make and accept phone calls, but they don’t produce it any more, so I had to accept an upgrade, which I did, more or less ungraciously. It does have several pleasant-sounding alarm tones to choose from; lets you turn Wi-Fi definitively off, so you don’t connect to the Internet without meaning to (admittedly a drawback on the other phone); and caused me to stroll through Target, where I fell in love with some decorative pitchers that I don’t need but enjoyed looking at.
I don’t know about you, but it strikes me as odd that someone would take a $10 phone. It reminds me of the time I was staying at Extended Stay in SoCal two years ago and someone stole my cell phone charger (a $7 item) out of a zipped compartment. I remember racing over to the closest Walmart to where I was working and buying one on my lunch hour, the one and only time I’ve seen Knott’s Berry Farm (which was in the vicinity). When I made a police report in that case, the officer seemed not to understand the fact that it wasn’t the value of the item that mattered but the fact that someone at the hotel had gone into my room and stolen it. This time, I did at least get the feeling that the officer frowned on the whole lack of security around the lockers—he asked if the store had security cameras.
Naturally, things like this put you in a bad mood. I don’t ever recall giving anyone permission to disrespect my personal space or the sanctity of my possessions, but people seem to have peculiar ideas about what they can get away with these days. We do still live in a country of laws, but you would never know it by either reading the news or listening to me recount the things that have happened to me in recent years. Prosecution is always an option, of course, but—gosh, what a drag. Still, you can’t let people get away with things because otherwise they have no incentive to stop.
I guess this post is about the unwanted and overweening presence of Hermes, the trickster, who has appeared and reappeared in various forms in my life and is one of the reasons why Hestia has such an appeal for me right now—Hestia being somewhat the opposite of Hermes. That’s probably why the sight of a simple pitcher could stop me in my tracks: an object purporting to be nothing but itself and hearkening to be filled with iced tea or lemonade and placed on a summer table with a vase of flowers. If I were a good Buddhist, I suppose I’d be thinking along the lines of, “The pitcher is already broken/Nothing is permanent,” but heck, I don’t even have the pitcher yet, so let me at least enjoy the idea of it whole and perfect and sitting on my table in my nonexistent house. I guess I’ll go ahead and post the picture, so you can see what I’m going on about (I have no place to put a pitcher right now, even if I bought it).
Enjoy the pitcher/picture, and if you happen to see the person who took either my charger or my cell phone, tell them I haven’t forgotten them. To everything there is a season (to quote both the Bible and the Byrds).
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Worlds Collide
I know I’ve talked before about my love of HGTV but am not sure I mentioned how much I enjoy looking at not only regular homes but also tiny homes. While I suppose I’d rather live in a regular house in the long term, I can also imagine being happy in a tiny home, at least for a while. I know ya’ll have heard all about this movement, which has been fed by a widespread wish to downsize and simplify, and although some of those tiny homes can be quite pricey, living in one would certainly cut down on cleaning and maintenance. Dusting the furniture is infinitely more manageable in an oversized dollhouse than in a mansion, and washing the dishes is a breeze when you can’t have more than two plates on the table.
I have some experience with living in small spaces—from dorm rooms to a sleeping bag—and while I was horrified a few years ago at the thought of living in less than 200 square feet, I now find that laughable. Living in your car will definitely adjust your ideas of space, but even before that, I was intrigued by the idea of tiny houses purely from a design perspective. It’s the spatial equivalent of haiku: how do you get the most out of a small amount of space? How do you put in everything essential and nothing that isn’t and do it with style? You have to think through every square inch and carefully consider what you need and what you don’t. If you can make items do double duty or fold away when you’re not using them, so much the better. And you will almost certainly have to think creatively about how to accommodate ordinary tasks.
Because I work with appliances, I know that there are tiny washers and dryers that would remind you of the play kitchens you had as a child except that they actually work; you can even get a combo washer/dryer that does the work of both in a single machine. In fact, a lot of the tiny home kitchens, with their miniature sinks, quarter-size fridges, and built-in ovens, remind me of the exact toy kitchen that fascinated me as a child (I had one with a tiny sink that actually worked if you put water in the tray in back). You can also place a fully functioning bathroom in a space the size of a small shower stall, albeit what you have is basically a bathroom inside a shower. There is something about the idea of miniaturizing things that is intriguing in and of itself. (Ever noticed how difficult it is to walk by an elaborately furnished dollhouse without looking inside? It’s ourselves, writ small. Why is that so interesting?)
Beyond all that, I just find the thought of living in a tiny home cozy—I’ve never been one for big, drafty houses. Of course, I’m imagining doing all of this by myself. If you were to try to share a tiny home with a partner or a family, I’m sure the lack of space could become an irritation very, very quickly. I understand that many people who’ve attempted the tiny house experiment have found it didn’t work for them and ended up going back to more conventional housing. I imagine it’s usually the lack of privacy and personal space that does it.
All of this shows what a preoccupation with Hestia concerns I have right now, which is not at all surprising given the circumstances. I fantasize about houses all the time, how I would furnish them, what colors I would use, where I would plant the flowers. With all of the Game of Thrones ruckus going on, I thought it might be a good idea to turn my attention to something else for this week’s post, scaling down, as it were, from the big picture to the small, from the epic to the domestic. Sometimes these things get mixed up with each other: early this morning, I dreamed I had moved into a compact, modern apartment that had lofted sleeping spaces and then realized Jaime Lannister was my roommate. We were looking out the window together when I woke up, still in my car.
Yes, folks, there are times when morning comes a little too soon. The only thing to do then is to head over to the coffeehouse for hot tea, banana bread, and blogging. Which I have done.
I have some experience with living in small spaces—from dorm rooms to a sleeping bag—and while I was horrified a few years ago at the thought of living in less than 200 square feet, I now find that laughable. Living in your car will definitely adjust your ideas of space, but even before that, I was intrigued by the idea of tiny houses purely from a design perspective. It’s the spatial equivalent of haiku: how do you get the most out of a small amount of space? How do you put in everything essential and nothing that isn’t and do it with style? You have to think through every square inch and carefully consider what you need and what you don’t. If you can make items do double duty or fold away when you’re not using them, so much the better. And you will almost certainly have to think creatively about how to accommodate ordinary tasks.
Because I work with appliances, I know that there are tiny washers and dryers that would remind you of the play kitchens you had as a child except that they actually work; you can even get a combo washer/dryer that does the work of both in a single machine. In fact, a lot of the tiny home kitchens, with their miniature sinks, quarter-size fridges, and built-in ovens, remind me of the exact toy kitchen that fascinated me as a child (I had one with a tiny sink that actually worked if you put water in the tray in back). You can also place a fully functioning bathroom in a space the size of a small shower stall, albeit what you have is basically a bathroom inside a shower. There is something about the idea of miniaturizing things that is intriguing in and of itself. (Ever noticed how difficult it is to walk by an elaborately furnished dollhouse without looking inside? It’s ourselves, writ small. Why is that so interesting?)
Beyond all that, I just find the thought of living in a tiny home cozy—I’ve never been one for big, drafty houses. Of course, I’m imagining doing all of this by myself. If you were to try to share a tiny home with a partner or a family, I’m sure the lack of space could become an irritation very, very quickly. I understand that many people who’ve attempted the tiny house experiment have found it didn’t work for them and ended up going back to more conventional housing. I imagine it’s usually the lack of privacy and personal space that does it.
All of this shows what a preoccupation with Hestia concerns I have right now, which is not at all surprising given the circumstances. I fantasize about houses all the time, how I would furnish them, what colors I would use, where I would plant the flowers. With all of the Game of Thrones ruckus going on, I thought it might be a good idea to turn my attention to something else for this week’s post, scaling down, as it were, from the big picture to the small, from the epic to the domestic. Sometimes these things get mixed up with each other: early this morning, I dreamed I had moved into a compact, modern apartment that had lofted sleeping spaces and then realized Jaime Lannister was my roommate. We were looking out the window together when I woke up, still in my car.
Yes, folks, there are times when morning comes a little too soon. The only thing to do then is to head over to the coffeehouse for hot tea, banana bread, and blogging. Which I have done.
Sunday, May 5, 2019
Celebrating the Derby with Wordplay
Q. Wordplay, have you ever been to the Kentucky Derby?
A. Yes, once, a long time ago. It’s something like a right of passage in Kentucky to attend the Derby infield festivities, and I did it back in 1981. I haven’t felt the need to do it again.
Q. Why not?
A. Lots of mud, long lines to the bathrooms, long lines to get in, heavily inebriated people everywhere, not much to do except play cards and sit around. You have to go out of your way to get over to the fence and see the horses go by. That is pretty spectacular, but it doesn’t last long. Don’t get me wrong, everyone should do it once—it’s one of those “once in a lifetime” things. It’s nothing against horses (what beautiful creatures!)—I just didn’t like the infield experience.
Q. How does one act at the Derby?
A. Not sure there are many rules in the infield. However, most people try to be creative in their hat-wearing, whether they’re in the infield or the seats. Millinery creations span the full range from comical to haute couture and can be quite stunning, in several senses of the word. I believe people tend to plan their outfits around their hats, rather than the other way around. At least, that’s my perception. As far as the rules for the gentry (the folks sitting in the boxes and reserved seats), you’ll have to ask someone else.
Q. What does one eat on Derby Day?
A. There are certain Kentucky specialties you can expect to see on most tables—ham and biscuits, May Day pie, grits casseroles. A Kentucky specialty that originated at the Brown Hotel in Louisville is the Hot Brown, an open-faced sandwich with a Mornay sauce. There are many variations on making it, but as far as I know, the original recipe uses turkey and not ham, bacon, and some of the other things that are sometimes added. It’s delicious and has about a million calories.
Q. What’s a May Day pie?
A. There is controversy about the name “Derby Pie,” which is copyrighted by Kern’s Bakery. It’s often used as a generic reference to the pie that has become associated with the Kentucky Derby, so they had to find another name for it, and the one I’ve heard most often is May Day pie.
Q. What’s in it?
A. It’s like a transparent pie (a chess pie) with nuts and chocolate chips.
Q. What does one drink on Derby Day?
A. Mint juleps, no question. These are made with bourbon, ice, sugar, and mint. Ideally, you sip them from a julep cup sporting a sprig of mint; your goal is to sip in a sophisticated enough manner to keep the mint sprig from getting tangled up in your millinery couture.
Q. Do you personally like juleps?
A. No, I confess I don’t. I had one at the Derby that year and thought it tasted like something you’d put on your lawn to kill weeds. I don’t like the combination of mint and bourbon and would propose something that tastes better for an official drink if asked, something like a Kentucky Mule. But that’s never going to happen.
Q. Why not?
A. Tradition.
Q. “F@&#!* tradition.”
A. Have you been watching Game of Thrones?
Q. Yes.
A. Have you noticed how similar the GOT logo looks to this year’s Kentucky Derby logo?
Q. No, I admit that escaped my attention.
A. And (speaking as a mythologist) they both resemble the lyre of Orpheus. I just noticed this myself. See?
Q. Yes, I do see.
Q. How do you pick a horse to bet on?
A. I’m not the best person to ask, but I’ll tell you my system. I pick a name I like and then check the odds. If it looks like a decent payoff if the horse wins, great. If it doesn’t, I might pick another name. This is especially true if no single name jumps out at me. Sometimes, I just fall in love with a name, like Smarty Jones, and go for it despite the odds. Of course, the last time I even went to a race was about 17 years ago, and the most I ever won was about $7. Usually, when I pick a horse, it’s just for the fun of it—I have no money on it.
Q. If I get invited to a Derby Party, what would an appropriate hostess gift be?
A. Well, I’ve been told I give good gifts, so I may be able to help you here. Useful gifts are always welcome, so why not take a hint from an official Kentucky Derby gifts website and consider something like these little hand soaps made with actual frankincense and myrrh? A Biblical theme will get you points with many hostesses here in the Bible Belt, but if your host or hostess doesn’t roll in that direction, you could take them a bottle of their favorite wine or perhaps an inexpensive kitchen gadget, like a cheese knife or a set of kitchen towels. By the way, here’s a picture of the soap.
Q. Oh, wow, you weren’t kidding.
Q. Is there any mythological reference connected to the Derby that I should be able to drop if I get invited to a cocktail party or someplace like that?
A. Well, there is the traditional Pegasus Parade in Louisville as part of the Derby festivities, and as you know, Pegasus was a winged horse in Greek mythology. A very nice image for the power of the horse.
Q. Pegasus, wow, that’s so cool! A horse with wings—like an angel, right?
A. Just remember: horses are real. Winged horses are not. Some people get confused about this.
Q. You mean . . . There aren’t any winged horses?
A. No. Sorry. But that hostess soap is real.
A. Yes, once, a long time ago. It’s something like a right of passage in Kentucky to attend the Derby infield festivities, and I did it back in 1981. I haven’t felt the need to do it again.
Q. Why not?
A. Lots of mud, long lines to the bathrooms, long lines to get in, heavily inebriated people everywhere, not much to do except play cards and sit around. You have to go out of your way to get over to the fence and see the horses go by. That is pretty spectacular, but it doesn’t last long. Don’t get me wrong, everyone should do it once—it’s one of those “once in a lifetime” things. It’s nothing against horses (what beautiful creatures!)—I just didn’t like the infield experience.
Q. How does one act at the Derby?
A. Not sure there are many rules in the infield. However, most people try to be creative in their hat-wearing, whether they’re in the infield or the seats. Millinery creations span the full range from comical to haute couture and can be quite stunning, in several senses of the word. I believe people tend to plan their outfits around their hats, rather than the other way around. At least, that’s my perception. As far as the rules for the gentry (the folks sitting in the boxes and reserved seats), you’ll have to ask someone else.
Q. What does one eat on Derby Day?
A. There are certain Kentucky specialties you can expect to see on most tables—ham and biscuits, May Day pie, grits casseroles. A Kentucky specialty that originated at the Brown Hotel in Louisville is the Hot Brown, an open-faced sandwich with a Mornay sauce. There are many variations on making it, but as far as I know, the original recipe uses turkey and not ham, bacon, and some of the other things that are sometimes added. It’s delicious and has about a million calories.
Q. What’s a May Day pie?
A. There is controversy about the name “Derby Pie,” which is copyrighted by Kern’s Bakery. It’s often used as a generic reference to the pie that has become associated with the Kentucky Derby, so they had to find another name for it, and the one I’ve heard most often is May Day pie.
Q. What’s in it?
A. It’s like a transparent pie (a chess pie) with nuts and chocolate chips.
Q. What does one drink on Derby Day?
A. Mint juleps, no question. These are made with bourbon, ice, sugar, and mint. Ideally, you sip them from a julep cup sporting a sprig of mint; your goal is to sip in a sophisticated enough manner to keep the mint sprig from getting tangled up in your millinery couture.
Q. Do you personally like juleps?
A. No, I confess I don’t. I had one at the Derby that year and thought it tasted like something you’d put on your lawn to kill weeds. I don’t like the combination of mint and bourbon and would propose something that tastes better for an official drink if asked, something like a Kentucky Mule. But that’s never going to happen.
Q. Why not?
A. Tradition.
Q. “F@&#!* tradition.”
A. Have you been watching Game of Thrones?
Q. Yes.
A. Have you noticed how similar the GOT logo looks to this year’s Kentucky Derby logo?
Q. No, I admit that escaped my attention.
A. And (speaking as a mythologist) they both resemble the lyre of Orpheus. I just noticed this myself. See?
Q. Yes, I do see.
Q. How do you pick a horse to bet on?
A. I’m not the best person to ask, but I’ll tell you my system. I pick a name I like and then check the odds. If it looks like a decent payoff if the horse wins, great. If it doesn’t, I might pick another name. This is especially true if no single name jumps out at me. Sometimes, I just fall in love with a name, like Smarty Jones, and go for it despite the odds. Of course, the last time I even went to a race was about 17 years ago, and the most I ever won was about $7. Usually, when I pick a horse, it’s just for the fun of it—I have no money on it.
Q. If I get invited to a Derby Party, what would an appropriate hostess gift be?
A. Well, I’ve been told I give good gifts, so I may be able to help you here. Useful gifts are always welcome, so why not take a hint from an official Kentucky Derby gifts website and consider something like these little hand soaps made with actual frankincense and myrrh? A Biblical theme will get you points with many hostesses here in the Bible Belt, but if your host or hostess doesn’t roll in that direction, you could take them a bottle of their favorite wine or perhaps an inexpensive kitchen gadget, like a cheese knife or a set of kitchen towels. By the way, here’s a picture of the soap.
Q. Oh, wow, you weren’t kidding.
Q. Is there any mythological reference connected to the Derby that I should be able to drop if I get invited to a cocktail party or someplace like that?
A. Well, there is the traditional Pegasus Parade in Louisville as part of the Derby festivities, and as you know, Pegasus was a winged horse in Greek mythology. A very nice image for the power of the horse.
Q. Pegasus, wow, that’s so cool! A horse with wings—like an angel, right?
A. Just remember: horses are real. Winged horses are not. Some people get confused about this.
Q. You mean . . . There aren’t any winged horses?
A. No. Sorry. But that hostess soap is real.
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