Philistines

Philistines Philistine: a person who is guided by materialism and is usually disdainful of intellectual or artistic values It was a beautiful fall day so we decided to go for a ride. I had read that a new exhibit had opened at the deCordova museum in Lincoln. Though Steve is not a great museum aficionado, he does appreciate interesting exhibits and outdoor art and the deCordova had both. So off we went, excited to be on the road again. I pretended that we were heading somewhere out west or down south or up north, to spend the week meandering. But though it was just a day trip the ride was still lovely. The museum itself was tucked into a quiet neighborhood, hiding behind the twists of a country road. As we entered the driveway I could see enormous sculptures surrounded by woods and could hear the soft sounds of chimes and children laughing. We parked and pored over the map trying to decide where to start. We began outside since we don’t often get the chance to wander in sculpture gardens. Some were huge and overwhelming, others small and intimate, yet others downright weird. As we passed each one I would read its plaque to see if the name of the piece would give me a hint as to the creator’s intentions. Most of the time the title seemed to have nothing to do with the piece at all. Shatz told me that he was tempted to come to the museum at night and switch all the signs to see if anyone would notice. Surrounding the sculptures were meandering trails through gardens and woods, and kids and dogs running through it all. It was wonderful. After a while we went to get some lunch before venturing into the indoor museum space. After we ate I visited the restroom--that was my first mistake. I opened the door to a voice that seemed to be speaking to me. Confused, I looked around to see if someone was talking on a cell phone, but no, the voice was definitely talking to me. Suddenly I realized that it was a recording, but that didn’t make it any less strange. And let me tell you, being in a stall while hearing a voice say, “You can do it. You’re a magnet for success. Your existence matters. You’re fascinating and interesting. You’re a winner. People like you,” is not exactly conducive to the business at hand. I ran out of there. It wasn’t until we entered the exhibit, How Deep is Your, created by the artist Julianne Swartz, that we figured out what was going on. “These whispered reassurances, emitting from invisible speakers are audible from the comfort of a black couch situated in a lobby and you can hear them, disconcertingly, in the bathrooms, too. They’re part of a work called, Affirmation,” Sebastian Smee pointed out in his Boston Globe article, “Works as Fragile as We See Ourselves” 9/15/12. We walked into the main exhibit space and found ourselves surrounded by various configurations of tubing, wire, feathers, wooden blocks and prisms. Things hung from the ceiling and sat on the ground. They climbed up walls and went around corners. There was a blue line that seemed to travel along one room and into another. Pieces of wire dangled aimlessly, bits of string hung or were pasted on wires, little lights blinked on and off. There was a tube that bent into the wall and sat there. We were a bit confused. Later I read Smee’s critique of the show and found out that, Most of Swartz’s work is about forms in space and how we perceive them. It’s about materials and textures. It’s about gravity, air, light, shadow. Oh. Shatz and I stood there looking at a pile of the blocks scattered on the floor and began to laugh...uncontrollably. We both knew what the other was thinking, “They call this art? They paid how much for all of this????” I tried to hold in my laughter but we all know how that works—the more you hold it in, the more it sneaks out. Suddenly I noticed one of the young security guards looking at us with a smile on her face. Our eyes met and then I quickly walked away. She was either laughing with us or at us art-ignoramuses who couldn’t tell a Picasso from a Monet, but I’d like to think that she was on our side. The giggling continued to burst out of me making me feel like an ignorant yahoo, until I reached a big white funnel. It was the exhibit’s main advertising image so I already knew that I was supposed to stick my head into it. And so I did. I could hear the Bee Gees singing, How Deep is Your Love followed by John Lennon singing All You Need is Love. I pulled my head quickly out of that funnel and ran out of the gallery with my laughter following me. Smee may have written that, Swartz’s work is ultimately about love, but for us it was about disbelief and a bit of lunacy. What can I say? Having discovered that we’re basically artistic louts, we’ll probably end up buying one of those dogs-playing-poker pictures to hang over the fireplace and we’ll make sure to include an Elvis on painted velvet as well. After all, as brand new Philistines we have reputations to establish.

The Pink Door

The Pink Door For years whenever I would give anyone directions on how to get to our house the last direction would be, “and we’re the only house on the street with a pink door.” When we bought the house the door was blue. I liked it so I’m not quite sure why I decided to change it. I must have seen a rose colored entry on a house somewhere and liked it so when we repainted the house I decided on a change. You don’t see many pink doors so it was also fun being a bit different. Through the years each spring I would buy flowers to hang near our front entrance and would always make sure that they matched our door. Otherwise I never gave it a second thought. I mean who spends much time thinking about their door? You buy it, install it and forget about it. Until you need a new one. For a few years now we’ve known we needed a new one. We could see daylight along the bottom that crept in along with the cold air. We had already replaced all of our windows and had seen what a difference that made in our heating and cooling bills, but somehow we kept putting off buying a new door. But then we noticed that the sliding door to the porch needed replacing as well so it was time to think doors. We got the names of a few contractors and were thrilled to find out that the cost of replacing both doors and a fence in the yard wouldn’t force us into selling a child (or a dog). I was happy because we were in the midst of spiffing up our place for Lisa and Matt’s wedding and I thought a new front door would add a bit of class to the joint. That was the good news. The bad news was two fold: first, our chosen contractor considered us small potatoes. He would have to find time in his schedule to fit us in between his larger jobs and that wouldn’t happen quickly. Second, we would have to choose a door style. I didn’t mind the first as much as the second. Shatz and I usually make quick decisions when it comes to major purchases. But if the purchase involves an aesthetic element, we’re doomed. We once spent days choosing wallpaper for the small bathroom and kitchen of our first condo. I ended up sobbing over books of wallpaper, visions of flowers and stripes galloping through my brain. So I told Steve, “I want a door just like the old one only I think I want to change the color. This time I want a red door.” In reply he dumped a pile of catalogues on me and said, “Choose.” It was then that I found out that there is no such thing as a simple door. I sat poring over the books in increasing frustration, deciding finally to drive around the neighborhood and look at doors. That proved to be quite an education. Have you ever noticed people’s front doors? The range of colors is rather limited, mostly dark, muted shades except for a really lovely lilac door on Norfolk Street that I’ve always admired. Everyone plays it safe when it comes to color. But there are myriads of styles. There are doors with lots of glass, no glass, a bit of glass or stained glass. There are brass fittings, iron hinges, mail slots, no slots, kick plates, screen doors. There are stained wood doors, doors with mosaics, doors with knockers. There are wreath hangers, no hangers, signs, and door bells. I was getting very confused. I went home and chose a door as close to the style that we already had and pointed it out to Steve, “That one. In red.” However it turned out that my chosen door was in a catalogue that one of the contractors that Steve had not chosen had left behind. I learned that each contractor only dealt with certain manufacturers and that the door that I wanted only came in white. When I begged Shatz to ask our contractor if he could get it in red, it turned out we could---for a price that was equal the price of the door. Or we could paint it ourselves. Remembering some of our less than successful paint jobs there was no way that we were going to dabble in red. So white it would be. The day our new door was installed was only the beginning. We had to take down everything that had been on our old door: our number, knocker, curtains, mezuzah, wreath holder—how could there be so much on a door?—and then put it all back on the new one. We had to buy a lock and install it. And we ended up painting it anyway because the white paint that it came with was pretty cheap looking. So it took a day to install it and two weeks to finish the job. The last thing I did was hang a summery wreath to give the door some color. Already I missed the pink. But it is nice and new and no errant breezes come shooting into the house. And the next time we call in professional painters to paint the house I will ask for, “One red door please!” It’s still fun being different.

Changes-the Sequel

Changes: The Sequel Forgive me if I seem to be dwelling on this topic lately but like unwelcome company, change seems to have moved in and refuses to move on. And though I understand the whole, “only a rock never changes” concept (which my daughter the newly minted geologist would certainly have a problem with—listening to her wax eloquent about a rock’s life history is akin to listening to a soap opera) there is such a thing as too much change too fast. I hate myself for feeling that a rut seems a comfy place to settle into, but the older I get, a rut is the only thing I have energy for. My kids have been major, abrupt change-meisters lately. Usually kids leave in stages as evidenced by some moms that I’ve been talking to whose kids have just left for college. When they tell me that they feel like they’ll never see their kids again, I assure them that their offspring are only in stage-one leaving—they still come home for holidays and vacations. They’re gone long enough for you to miss them but they return for extended stays. Mariel left for college but came home for the holidays. Even when she moved to Arizona it was for graduate school so she came home for holidays and summer vacation. But now she’s gotten a job that will take her to Houston and so the party’s over. Now she has a full time job and a separate, full time life. There will be no more long, leisurely vacations at home with mom and dad (and Snoopy). Lisa stayed in Boston for school and jobs so that even when she and Matt moved into their own apartment it felt like she never really left. But now that they’ve moved across the country, I’m feeling a bit lost and bereft. I wake up on Friday mornings wondering excitedly if we’ll be seeing the kids during the week-end, but then I realize that we won’t be seeing them at all for a while. But we do SKYPE every week and we will see them on Thanksgiving and then hopefully we’ll travel out west this spring and, and ……..So why am I still sighing? Thank goodness my job keeps me so busy that I don’t have time for a proper mope. And ironically it’s change that’s keeping me busy. I’m at a new site with new people doing new things—very un-rutlike. It’s taken me a couple of weeks just to find my way to the bathroom. I turn left when I should go right, go up when I should be down. Almost a metaphor for my life. I used to complain about the lack of room at my old school but now I would give anything for that space. We had our own classroom and office space whereas here we use the school’s class rooms for our evening classes. That means that there’s no place to leave papers, or books, or hang maps and word lists and everything has to be in its exact place when we leave. We even have our own clumsy rolling white boards to use which we cart in and out when we come and go. The only spot that we can truly call our own is the office. At first I was worried that I wouldn’t even have a desk to work at, but thankfully I found one. A girl’s got to have somewhere to put her coffee cup. I’ve done battle with a new copy machine and some strange printers that I’m about ready to strangle and toss on the junk heap. I’m constantly looking for simple things like staplers and markers and paper. It’s amazing how much we take for granted the ease of finding our stuff and knowing how to work the machines we live with. But the hardest change is my new schedule. My hours are now 1:00-9:00 pm. Our classes run from 6:00-9:00 and so by the time 8:00 rolls around I’m ready to fall asleep on my feet—and that’s a bit difficult to do when I’m teaching. Our students all come to school from full time jobs and families without complaint, so I feel ungratefully guilty to be kvetching about my lack of energy. Then there are the times when I’ve psyched myself up too much and I become the Energizer bunny. But at least it combats my students’ yawns and occasionally my own. There’s just so much you can do to make a reading class scintillating at nine o’clock at night. I knew I was finally adjusting when I managed to fit the last piece of change into my life—the gym. I had been sleeping late every morning, ignoring the alarms that I had set, falling blissfully back into my pillow. But last week when I changed my closet over to winter wear, all it needed was one pair of snug jeans to get me moving. So this week I’m back to morning classes and people I haven’t seen for four years, who assumed that I had died. And I almost did. I’d forgotten how challenging the daytime aerobics instructor, Kathleen is. She worked me over and spit me out. And as I lay there trying desperately to find the energy to peel myself off my mat, I felt nostalgic for the trusty old rut that I had left behind.