Been (Photos)

Detroit, Detroit, Saudi Arabia.

Boy (Photo)

We have a Spontaneous Visual Meme going round. I'm tagging all of you who have a difficult subject to photograph. Thanks to
Moira
Herhimnbryn
Jean. (I'll do one next week, already have a theme going there.)

Boy was not my dog, but a neighbor's dog. He seemed much bigger, then. Love all the critters. Cat just fits better in our life as lived. My mother put me in bonnets, because I was bald, and everyone thought I was a boy.

Detroit was one of those border cities, many Canadian families have alternated generations across the river. My parents are both naturalized US citizens, my father's father was born in the states. I spent much of my time over in Windsor, Ontario, and often wished I lived there rather than in a big, dirty, industrial city. My sense of humor, my accent (which I can't hear), and my deeply felt sarcasm are true Canadian.

Undercurrent (Photo)

This is one of those photos that says a lot more than it seems to.

Sister-in-law, myself (birthday), Uncle M (father's brother) and his (second wife) Aunt A, Aunt E (mother's sister, standing) and her husband Uncle E(standing). My mom standing, hands on shoulders of her mum. Picture taken by (?) ( I may have cropped out my father and my brother (not the one married to SIL) took the picture. Picture of Last Supper and ubiquitous '70's sunburst clock on wall. White bread stack, potatoes, baked chicken, mayonaise, and ballerina cake on table.

I once made fun of my D's new very suburban and mormon in-laws for serving an entire meal that was orange. I think this kind of meal is why I noticed.

If you just love the kitsch of it all, try the Gallery of Regrettable Food.

Live

We were told the Blue Pigs would be putting on a show. I imagined guys in pig costumes, or maybe blue animals. Trooped into the cafeteria/meeting room, the small stage was full of amps and musical gear. When the police came out (in uniform? Not sure, can't remember) and did loud sound checks, I put my fingers in my ears, my aversion to loud noises combining with my fears of the unknown. Whoever thought that a Detroit Police rock band would play in an inner city Catholic grade school? After a couple of songs, I was in love, and whoever booked them was obviously a genius. They were talented and contagious, endearing. It was Motown and it rocked. My first experience with live music, live performance.

Taken by family to hear the Irish Rovers, I was blown away. Actual people creating glorious music in front of my eyes. I had no words for it, just wanted to sing along, to dance to it all. I would later prefer more authentic stuff, question my earlier taste. Still, they made beauty, and it is what it is.

My first paid-for-by-me concert was much more exciting in anticipation. A work friend wanted to see the Beach Boys. Not my choice, but I was eager, imagined comfortable seats and engaging music, seeing their faces. Yeah, right, in an arena. The Boys were obviously bored and uninvolved, as was I. Mike Love tried to get a bit of charisma going, give him credit. I came out deaf and disappointed. Let's not even go into having Culture Club tickets foisted on me by a group of college friends. Boy George played to the wings, and the playlist was unknown to me, and monotonous. So when Tanya twisted my arm to go see The Police, it took some major twisting. Joan Jett opened for them, and was booed. I was not hopeful. We were at least on the floor of the arena.

They weren't bored. They seemed to hate each other ~found out later they really did~ but such energy they put into it, they were excruciatingly talented, the songs were power, and Sting was audible through the amplification. I was utterly blown away, and still consider it a miracle that I heard them on their Synchronicity Tour. A point of amazement and pride.

Music concerts would always be rare, occasional fairs or street musicians would constitute my live musical fix. When D worked at a ticket outlet, we went to hear the symphony several times, including one with Christopher Parkening. Nothing like music that raises gooseflesh and lives on in the heart.

I found They Might Be Giants. I have seen them eight different places. I had no idea, seeing them live the first time, only having heard their recordings, that they would be a great dance band. They rock. I have never been disappointed. (Well, the one time they were at a July 4th stadium extravaganza, one in a series of 'entertainments' including a children's choir and frisbee catching dogs, but it wasn't their fault.) They have a confetti cannon. They goof around. They are deeply talented, and very fun, and they let their audiences sing along. And we do. Loudly.

The best music is live, and surprizing, unexpected and impressive. Like a stamp, these moments shape my emotional world. My usual musical taste is thrown out when I heard a good band live, the interaction reaches out past my filters and drags me in, skipping.

Fiction

I read Amy Tan's The Opposite of Fate, in particular her advice to writers, involving compassion and seeing another's point of view, her own issues with her difficult mother, and culture clashes. I have a difficult father, estranged completely for years, we never had any kind of peace or understanding. He is referred to in other essays, as I skirt him as a subject too painful. I try to starve my lifelong anger. I want it to settle and fade. But her words urged me to do more, to tell his story, inasmuch as I can. Let it be fiction, but let it help me understand a rather stupid and emotionally disturbed man who fathered me as well as he probably could. I cannot write his cadences, in his voice, although I hint at it, because I find it is too much like chewing on aspirin. Nor can I write it as a first person narrative, his sexuality is far too personally unsettling for me to handle. Ever. I can let go of my bitterness, but he remains galling. So here it is. Forgive the mess.

There was a farm and the vegetable stand family business, a large house that implied better days. A couple of French Canadian Catholics, of uncertain devotion, nameless now, who had sons. They expected the older boys to raise the younger ones. First Oscar, the eldest, the bully, the favored one, manipulative and powerful, ready with fists. Then loud but gentle Art, who did his best to make peace and protect the younger ones, when he felt like it, but he enjoyed tormenting them with words. Norman, slow and tall, he believed everything he heard and had a deep simple faith, and deep superstitions. Milton, challenged the authority of Oscar, and hated him. Smarter and faster than the rest, he took charge of the youngest brother, René. René was slow, but wanted to make himself better, wanted to be liked, wanted to play a musical instrument. But he was often injured because he was daydreaming, or tormented by his brothers for being dumb. One year younger, the only sister, Madeline. Red haired, doted on by their father, bossy and no brighter than the rest of the boys, she was paired with René for everything. He was held back starting school so she would go with him. The relationship between the two was forced close, unhealthy, twisted. (Take that as you will, I prefer not to speculate further, but I would not be surprized at your guesses.)

So in 1929, brother and younger sister were sent to an English-speaking public school in rural Ontario, where they would learn the language they would speak the rest of their lives outside the home. At home, only French, not educated French- River Canard French, illiterate French. They were sent because that was the law, lip service only. Working the produce stand was more important. None would get through high school, René would get to sixth grade then out. The year his father died.

He was a good looking young man, black hair and a ready smile, if you didn't notice the strain. He would talk with anyone, glib, if not bright, loud laugh and spoke with his hands a lot, had one song that he could sing, off-key. Dated a lot of girls, once. He had odd jobs, as well as working at his mother's business. He joined the Army in 1949, on the American side- his father was American by birth and he readily got his citizenship. He would have been 18 in 1941 (Was he afraid, or did his parents object? None of the brothers served during the war, they were able bodied, and Canada did have a draft, didn't they? Assume that they had no interest in going, and were not required due to farm deferment.) But perhaps guilt, perhaps not having another path, René joined, safely after the war. The American Army, not in itself all that unusual, his father had been born in the States, and immigrated to Canada. Border towns like Detroit and Windsor are like that, generations weaving back and forth. René obtained his American citizenship and joined the Army, and then, a mystery. He injured his left hand and they had to amputate his left index finger. The story is something he never tells. So what happened?

He hates the Army, hates the order, hates having to do what he is told, taunted for being stupid and inept- which he is. Hates the bullying and being the butt of every joke. He finally has plans for his life, having met a little redhead two months before. They met through his brothers' friends, he was in love with the quiet shy tiny girl. He'd just proposed, and she'd agreed, he is 27 and getting old, finally he is loved and worthwhile! So one night he goes out with a guy who will buy him drinks, maybe one of his brothers, maybe Milton, and he gets plastered. It would not take much, none of the brothers have a head for alcohol. He gets belligerent, and they get into a fight, he passes out. Or they get a bright idea of how to get out of the Army, and a knife or gun is produced. When he wakes up the next morning, his hand is a mess, and he drags himself to the hospital, where they amputate the index finger, and start him into rehab. He is ashamed of himself, but he never tells how it happened, perhaps he does not quite remember. His new fiance visits him in the hospital, flashing the little diamond ring around to keep the nurses from flirting with him. Shame and pride together. She had made him candies, too bad they were wintergreen flavored- she probably didn't know better than poisoning him. But he hadn't had too many, and he threw the rest of them over the bridge into the brook as they walked. She will depend on him, and her religion means she will stay with him.

Mary's family wasn't too thrilled, but she was 25, they could hardly say much about her choice. They married in April 1949. He talked her into having a birthday cake for his sister at the reception, since Madeline's birthday was the next day. He didn't want to make his sister jealous. Mary wouldn't refuse him, she didn't make him mad like everybody else did.

It was a hard first year, but at least he got to live next to his sister. Then he would find work in Detroit, at a copper tubing factory. Hot dirty work, but there were benefits and a union, the guys all called him Frenchy. He found them a small place, with a closet that would be room enough for a crib, his first child would be born in September 1950, a son. Dave would barely survive the first year, with constant infections, bronchitis and whooping cough, rheumatic fever and ear aches. Now if he can just figure out the trick so's he can make enough money, do good in life, keep his family alive. They find a small house and the family loans them money to get started. Three years later, a second son, smiling and happy and healthy, is born. His wife wanted a girl, but there will be more children. She is not as nice to him now, but that is just being pregnant, not getting enough sleep, right? He almost hit her, and she scared him bad, told him if he ever hit her she would not be there for him to hit again. He can't ever hit her, who would he be without her? So he yells until he feels better, and they go on. She's smarter than he is, he needs her to read, and keep his house clean, and make a life with, damn her for all that. He depends on her, and it is good to depend on people, right?

It is 1960, and Mary has had a late miscarriage, and she cries over the loss of her daughter. René is scared, because she makes him mad a lot now, his boys are in a good Catholic school, and they think they are smarter than him. He's got a good job, works eight hours every day, but it's getting harder. He is scared that if Mary has her baby girl, he won't matter to her anymore. But he wants her to be happy, and the next year she is pregnant again. This time it is a girl, born the day after his sons are confirmed. Her family were looking down their noses at him, aggravating him, making him mad, at the party. His sons are growing up and won't need him much longer, Mary sat with her sister Evelyn talking way too long, what were they talking about? They got quiet when he came near. Now he is waiting at the hospital, a blizzard raging outside, February 1962, and the doctor comes out to tell him he has a daughter. He dreams of a frilly sweet daddy's girl, tiny like Dave when he weighed no more than a cat, who would love him more than Mary, fuss over him and crawl on his lap, ask his advice and giggle. The next morning he sat with Mary when they brought in an 8 lb baby to them- how could this be a girl? She nestled into her mother's arms, Mary beaming that she had her girl "at last!" But when he reached out and held her, she screamed. When he shook her like his boys, and she screamed louder. He handed her back, his face flushing red with rage and shame. His wife was already defending the daughter, already excluding him, shutting him out. He swallowed it then, but could not forget. Could not understand.

(The rest of this is my story, and I need to tell it elsewhere. Where I will take responsibility for my own sins. He may be dying right now, and I await the news as a prisoner awaits reprieve. I cannot like the man, still do not want to talk to him, even if that were possible. But when he can no longer hurt me, I can give real forgiveness, freely, with all my heart. It is given, on probation, now. No more hurts. It is not my fault I could not be what he needed or wanted, his jealously and insecurity, his emotional damage are not my responsibility. His sins against me are no less sins for his intellectual and social deficits, but he can plead diminished capacity. I do not wish him in hell, or to whatever drags on his soul. For the sins against me, I will not hold against him past his death. What he holds against himself should he ever look into himself- is up to him. Poor man.)

Art

Saint Veronica Giuliani*. A huge portrait of her, gently bleeding (she was a stigmatic) hung in an ornate frame in my mother's living room. I knew it had belonged to her mother, and I accepted this as sufficient reason, and do not ever remember being told her story. The print was dark and looming, although she had a pleasant look on her face. My first exposure to art. I had never looked it up before, to see if it was a print of something famous, it's not. I would recognize it at once. It disappeared from the wall after I moved out, with a vague reference about it falling and the glass breaking. I miss her, and I would like a copy, although not on my wall. My mother liked pretty art, religious art that told a story, and not much else. She was one of those who saw abstract art as 'what any child could do'.

Balance this with school trips to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). I cannot remember the first time, they all run together, I basked. Meandering from room to room, stunned. There is a painting of St. Peter's basilica in Rome, such a sense of immense space, which I conflate with an image, photograph probably, of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. I imagined myself there, in that immensity, and I yearn for it still. The tiny lapis figures in the Egyptian cases, the waxy translucence of real, and ancient alabaster. A mosaic of fish from Greece, the wooden medieval Madonnas with their weirdly adult and often grumpy babies. The suits of armor. The bright modern sculptures that invited exploration, or Oldenberg's electrical outlet of giant proportions. I could not understand how one would not be awed, delighted and amused.

My love, talent, was to gaze. I sat before an Italian renaissance painting of a young girl asleep on every one of my many visits. Or of a German expressionist sculpture of a woman, actually almost certainly a man, but I saw it as female, solid and thick, but rushing forward with a sword held over her back, ready to swing. Such a sense of solidity and movement, paradox holding her together. I entered a gallery, and startled, at a Segal figure, white plaster, lumpy, such the improbable presence of someone very real. This was not mundane, not safe, not about being pretty, but about expressing the inexpressible.

I saw naked men! Actually it confused me more than satisfying my curiosity, since it appeared that they had Three somethings dangling down, and the concept of intercourse from that angle.... it boggled in my head for a very long time. But any kind of naked was fine by me. Still is, to tell the truth.

Several classmates told me I had a double, in one of the French expressionist paintings at the DIA. And I do, several. Insight struck, that was my genetic heritage, those beautiful French girls gathering nuts were my cousins. I felt less ugly, less alien.

So when I went to Wayne State, the campus adjacent to the DIA, lived just off campus, worked at the Main Library just across the street.... I spent a lot of time there. I ate lunch next to a copy of Rodin's Thinker on the steps. I puzzled over the strange awkward portraits in the Early American wing. I learned to tell the greater from the lesser works, and keep my personal preferences separate. I came to love them all, and to "get" the new works- well, mostly. Got to see special exhibitions, Diego Rivera, El Greco, the art between the World's Fairs, Boucher.

Then I moved to Salt Lake, and a great void opened up in my life. Natural beauty in the wide high desert, mountains, dramatic canyons. But the art, the human interpretation, was.... small. The galleries there were... nice. D and I stumbled upon the Sister Wendy series, it came on right after Dr. Who. I was sent a dumpy buck-toothed nun with a beatific smile to remind me of my love. I was a work of art -modeled for art classes at the U, got tattoos to make my art permanent- paid for in pain. The growth of the internet had given me some access. I took pottery classes- but I am at best a craftsman, not ever an artist.

When I finally took D to the DIA several years ago, we were both awed, him for the first time, me all over again. To be in the presence of the very old, the larger than you expect, the vibration from the subtle colors on the canvas, feeling the weight of soaring steel, cannot be known from a screen or book. I stood before a painting that was explained to me as a kid, that I have sought and contemplated ever since. It is about seven feet by three feet, red, dark intense slightly varying red, with a single narrow intense white line down the center, top to bottom. I'd like to think I would have found it myself, without it being pointed out to me, but I was urged to it by a docent. Standing before it is like standing before god. It was not just me, I made D stand there, and he was struck by the power of it as well. I think it is the idea of heaven being right here, if only you will look. Be silent and let it draw you in, the sacred is beside us always.

Then there is Oldenberg, who blows everything to such a size, Wonderland like, and I laugh. There is no Tao without laughter. God from all angles. Buddha's eyes. An ivory carving of a girl in a rice bowl, as she looks inside the bowl. The best art does not just look at us, but also directs our gaze deep inside.

Now I am exploring the art of Boston, human habitation over hundreds of years. Collectors and crowds. Political and public art. I am back to puzzling over what it means, and where it fits. Where I fit.

*St. Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727)

She was born in 1660 at Mercatello in Urbino and became a Capuchiness at Città di Castello when she was only seventeen. Because the bishop who confirmed her had prophesied that she would one day become a saint, she was given a hard novitiate which was further complicated by illness.

In 1694, the crown of thorns was imprinted upon her forehead and in 1697 she received the stigmata; but what is most remarkable is that towards the end of her life she seems to have had an accurate mental picture of the physical constitution of her heart. She even drew a chart on which she indicated the position in the heart of the several emblems of our Lord's passion: a cross, a chalice, a crown of thorns, three nails and seven swords. On her death, the heart was examined by two professors of medicine and surgery before a committee of notable ecclesiastics, and a formal testimony was made that a number of minute objects corresponding to those shown in St. Veronica's plan were to be found in the right ventricle.