Conversations with children

Tie your shoes, your hair's a mess, where's your backpack child? Did you not see the bus, it's coming around the corner now. Run!

I love you.

More MA

I'm at the MoMA with my friend Cat. We've been talking about what it means to be 'modern' art. Does modern mean 'new' or does it denote a certain period of art?  Honestly, this debate has already been addressed and largely resolved by the houses of criticism (ie literary circles and university circuits).  The name alone of the institution ("the Modern Museum of Art") quite succinctly summarizes the conclusion I'm reaching for.  (ie. It's a period/movement designation.)  But what does it mean exactly to be of the "modern" movement of art?

Walking around I realize that the art in this building is about story telling. The works here reflect back at their audience not much, typically, in the way of an aesthetic ideal.  Rather than delight the sense of wonder vicerally, the artists here use, well honestly, anything as a basis for creating a  perspective on societal values, lifestyles, desires, obsessions.  In some cases succeeding so well at this that their own perspective in turn becomes yet another salient point upon which new perspectives can be formed. An example that comes to mind is the popularity of Warhol's soup cans and pop art.  So catching, his work later becomes itself the focus of other works, embedding itself into the way we view culture and consumerism until it too, is a offered up as a product of consumerism.  (Warhol print grocery bags anyone?).  Perhaps even going so far as to influence how consumerism (this would be the people who make Campbell's soup, and are personally responsible or share some general responsibility for the continued creation and propagation of Campbell's labels and commercials) sees itself.  Though this is admittedly a bit of a reach.

(Strange.  In the middle of typing, imaging the Campbell board of directors surrounding a large table, while a small group of ad men presents the latest and greatest soup can label, I suddenly understand why group dynamics tend to lend themselves to worse product outcomes -- because in a group setting, the main focus, although ostensibly on the work product that the collective is tasked with creating, often times switches to other aspects of group dynamics.  I'm thinking especially of group political influences such as ego and the need for acceptance and approval by your peers.  At the point where the group dynamic is focused around social acceptability and personal influence (perhaps indirectly), then the actual work product suffers.  This is why committee decisions are often inferior to individual decisions -- an individual acting alone has less social pressure, less need to exert energy persuading others or dealing with the egos and opinions of others.  Instead he/she can focus on the creative goal.  Not that groups can't also accomplish this mindset -- there just has to be a strong, focused leader that is able to assert enough of a lack of an ego that the cultural norm for the group becomes refocused around creation and pursuit of good work product.)

But back to MoMA.  I liked the stories that the pieces of art told.  There's a piece on the 4th or 5th floor, in the first open foyer, an antechamber of sorts to the permanent collection, that holds a large steel work.  I can't remember the title, but it's composed of a set of steel crossbeams, with 4 chairs set in various poses on the beams.  Each chair is painted a different color - red, yellow, white and black.  The title of the piece denotes an emotion for each chair - anger, fear, sadness and death.  The positioning and form of each chair plays further upon the symbolic meaning given each one -- the 'angry chair' has no back, and is all feet; there's no where to sit down on it.  The black chair is impaled through the back by one of the steel cross beams; the yellow chair is about to fall.  Without the placard however, it would have been quite hard for me to discern what the intended message of the piece was. It's like a riddle or puzzle with a clue to interpretation.  The MoMA is filled with such pieces that rely on a clue or a hint to give a deeper meaning to the piece.  In fact, some pieces consist only of the title -- there was one work of art, a few words written on the wall, that the artist had merely spoken from one person to another.  This conveyance of idea via spoken word (who knew?) counted, to him, as the work having been created -- the museum then implemented the work per their own discretion.

In contrast, the old masters from the renaissance period's titles are often less than enthralling.  Amy, my roommate,'s favorite piece from the Frick Collection (visited the day after the MoMA) was entitled "Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat, Evening".  It was a gorgeous rendering of a boat on a river in France at sunset.  The sky was a brilliant yellow and the artist had filled the entire canvas with this sunlight.  It was the brightest painting in the entire south wing of the house.  There was no hidden meaning behind it; literally.  It's a a painting of a packet ship arriving at the dock.

So to be modern means to hint suggestively at things that are not.  To create from things symbols that may otherwise not exist; to serve as a critique or a shout out on some facet of how we used to/do art.  It's a redefining of what "art" means, questioning even our understanding of appreciation.

But even though it's been questioned, art still exists .  People still make drawings of ships arriving at harbors (don't they?).

What do you call the pieces that come after modern?

Play

"There are two things at play here, right, the balance between confidence in your own certainty and the certainty of your own doubt."

Internal monologue of blogger, wrt a potential misspelling.

Controls

His/her approach to relationships resembled, to a large extent, a primate who's first happened upon a remote control.

The approach is cautious.  The first tentative stab at a button push results in surprise, and a hasty retreat.  Curiosity soon overcomes the cautiousness and initial alarm, and he treads forward with resolve.  At first he's selective with the buttons that he picks, pressing one, waiting for a response, then pushing another.  The reaction is often immediate, but no longer alarming.  Until he hits the one for the radio, the television's blaring, the kettle on the stove is about to burn a hole in the ceiling and burst your eardrums what with the sound of escaping steam.

He's out of control.  Nothing will turn off right, buttons that used to mute the tv now ups the furnace to 100 degrees.  In frustration, he mashes the buttons, bangs the remote against the floor, and then hurls it against the wall.

Explosion.

Halloween socks in December

I have a pair of striped fuzzy socks that I bought at a Walgreens for a few dollars. Cheap. They were a spur of the moment thing, me trying to celebrate a holiday in a fashion that would be out of style before they made it through the laundry a week later.

I've never been good at celebrating things in a timely manner.  And holidays have a way of ending quite suddenly. In my mind, pumpkins go to rot November 1; Christmas trees turn brown and give up their needles December 26. there's some disconnect with reality, however that keeps me from acting on holiday feelings when I feel them. Frankly I'm impressed I managed to even buy these socks that year - I have a strong suspicion that they were actually a bargain post Halloween sale. They say knowing yourself is the first step to happiness.

And wearing these socks must be one close step behind that kind of happiness. They're fuzzy, black, yellow and orange striped. Or yellow with black and orange bands, depending how you bend your brain around. They're puffy and fill up my shoes, surrounding my ankles in a spouting bed of Halloween themed grass.

A midnight black pair of socks with bright bands of candy corn yellow and pumpkin orange dancing their way across the street in a pair of winter rain sodden boots.

Christmas is coming, ya'll.

home for the holidays

It's the 24th. I'm at home for the holiday, desperately whacking my way through a bug list about a mile long.  Dolly and her male counterharmonic are crooning about the timelessness of this particular Christmas.  Hard to say for a season that's just now starting, but I'm sure that the upcoming December 25th will be memorable.  Thanksgiving is waddling it's way to a close and I'm already wishing it was January 2nd.

I don't want to just get through the next month.  No, I want to transcend it on a cloud of self-actualized oblivion.

There was no turkey this year -- just a ham, some spaghetti squash, flaming coffee, skewered tempers and a movie about infectious diseases.

I didn't give much thought to coming home for Thanksgiving until it had already been mostly planned out beneath me.  Work, cooking classes, food, dinners, friends coming into town.  All I had to do was get myself there.

Now I'm at home, my last night in town and I'm hating myself for not getting more work done earlier in the day.  My dad's on the sofa, reading a magazine, while my sister's off with a mutual friend.  Her and I talked, a few days ago.  We talked about New Years and New York and new plans and old dreams. I cried myself to sleep when it was finally over, distraught over the thought of the coming month.

Well, here it comes. Howdy December.

The shopping cart

Victor worked the late shift at the corner store on weeknights.  The store was an establishment with a small footprint, dingy, occupying a crowded corner on the avenue between 29th and 28th.  The low slant in the awning above the entry way kept most potential customers at bay, not that Victor minded.  There was a small deli counter, where they sold hot pressed paninis and toaster ovened bagels.  That toaster oven was pure genius, in Victor's mind.  It put their establishment a step above the knish place a block and two slanting awnings away that had only a microwave for heating up their potato cakes.

In the mornings, Victor worked as a janitor for the city parks.  Responsible for the cleanliness of one, albeit small, corner of his grand city.  They had given him a set of keys to the trash bins, a broom and dustpan, and a well-starched forest green uniform with creases in the sleeves.

His schedule had a rhythm to it; unchanging and steady.  He'd wake up early, heat up a leftover panini that he had brought home from the deli store the night before, and button up his uniform to make the long trek to the park.  It was a few blocks from the deli, but about two miles from where he lived on the east side of town.  When it got colder out, he'd take his bike, but on a day like today -- sky a tepid blue color from the lifting morning haze -- he enjoyed watching the rest of the city lazily come to its senses.

It was early November, about 5:30 am in the morning.  A cool 53 degrees with a sharp, intermittent breeze that cut through his three-day beard.  The walk was a long one today - he arrived at the park a little past 6:10.  The small plaza that occupied the majority of the park was quiet.  There were a few homeless men sleeping on the benches on the north side of the square, under the large maple tree that shone with its late fall dress of burnt copper.  The meteorologists had been predicting a cold winter, and this tree was celebrating the fact like a spoiled red haired child.  At the other end of the plaza, there was a small walking garden with benches where couples liked to spend their time.  It had a habit of collecting random articles of clothing -- last week it had been a turquoise sweater and a pair of oxfords.  The week before he'd found a fedora and a pair of woman's socks.  The west side was shady, and cool this morning.  There was an almost full shopping cart at rest in the grass beneath the trees, on the western side of the south-central fountain.  There was a slight slope down from the the fountain on the north side of the inner walkways; the cart appeared to have rolled from one end to the other until it came to rest against the stone curb of the central walk and one of the many public trash cans.  It was rusty and heaped with plastic bag bundles of various shapes, all covered with a layer of grime.  There was usually an owner of the cart somewhere nearby, but this one looked as though it had been momentarily forgotten.

Victor took his broom and dustpan off his shoulder and began sweeping the plaza, beginning at the eastern end of the park, and working his way south.  It was 10 o'clock in the morning before he finished his loop, picking up trash and sweeping off the non-occupied park benches.  The day had brightened considerably, cooling off a bit as the morning fog burnt off.  With his broom and dust pan over his shoulder, he began the walk home.  

The next morning at the plaza was quiet again, the overcast sky drizzling melancholy into the early shadows.  The shopping cart from yesterday was still there, knocked on its side in the wet grass, its contents spilled haphazardly onto the lawn.  A ratty blanket and a few stuffed plastic bags were slowly soaking in the drizzle.  A second shopping cart was perched next to the first cart on the walk, with a few bags piled up beside it.  From his side of the plaza it was hard to tell, but Victor was fairly sure they were previously occupants of the cart now toppled into the grass.

He sighed and began sweeping the east side, slowly making his way clockwise down towards the south end of the fountain.  It wasn't the mess that Victor minded so much as the uncertainty.  Regardless of their contents, he assumed them to be prized, if to no one else the their owner.  Or previous owners.  It was commonly known that the majority of shopping cart owners were mentally ill; not so much persons down on their luck as just out on a mental limb that no one had wanted to climb after them on.  

But what to do with them?  One lonely shopping cart was harmless, but once a crowd began to form (of carts, that is), it suddenly became his responsibility. He glanced northward toward the maple shaded trees, then headed in that direction.  

The park's night time inhabitants were no where to be seen this morning.  The cold drizzle and plunging temperatures must have driven them to seek warmer shelter elsewhere.  Victor sighed, and turned, with growing unease, of how to deal with the problem spilling into the grass on the southern end.  

He removed the trashcan lid, and hefted the first of the bundles into the can.  It was surprisingly lightweight, and looked to be filled mostly with plastic bottles -- a few used Coke bottles (though really, you didn't see many of those these days) mixed in among a plethora of water bottles.  Aquafina, Poland Spring.  Victor wasn't sure what those words stood for, but his grasp on the English language was tenuous, even on better days.  In Romanian, aquafina passibly translated to 'fine water'.  Someone had forgotten to leave the space between the words -- as it was it passed for marketer's Latin.

The last of the trash bags disappeared into the waste bin.  These had been a bit heavier than the first, but Victor made quick work of them.  He pushed the carts out of the north park entrance and left them sitting outside the gates to the park, hidden next to one of the entrance posts.  

He returned to finish sweeping.  On his way back to pick up his broom where he had left it beside the trash can, he realized that even the heaviest of the bags had failed to make a sound when tossed in.  Nor had there seemed to be a lack of space, even though he had dumped a full two carts worth of bags.  

The trash can was a more modern design, a tall solid cylinder of heavy molded steel with two large holes cut on the sides to allow trash to be tossed in. Curious now, he removed the heavy steel cover, propped it carefully against its side and peered in.  There was no sight of the bags he had just tossed in, just the billowing black of a newly opened trash bag.  With trepidation, he reached down to feel for the bags he had certainly just placed there himself.  The back of his neck tingled, his ears filled with a rushing sound, and suddenly Victor found himself hurtling over the event horizon of a black hole.

In the plaza, the rain picked up and began to soak through the wooden handles on the dustpan and broom, propped beside the waste bin on the western side of the south fountain.