Benched Week 87: unicorns in the garden

I opened the solid, wooden door of Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio, and entered a little hesitantly. Expecting to find a docent hovering near the historical building’s entrance, I waited, feeling like I had intruded into someone’s home while they were napping upstairs. I wandered a bit, reading little displays. A bench in the living room beckoned, so I took a seat.



Overhead, muffled voice accompanied creaking floorboards. Perhaps James was getting up from that nap.



James Thurber (1894-1961) was a cartoonist, essayist, playwright and humorous author. Despite losing an eye in a childhood game of William Tell gone tragically wrong, he had a wry view on life. His work was steeped in satire, but a gentler sort than today’s sharpened swords of irony.



His cartoons have an odd looseness to them. His friend, Dorothy Parker, said they had a “semblance of unbaked cookies.” I like Thurber’s dogs, in particular. I find that my go-to drawing when I’m leaving notes in hotels or drawing for kids on planes is a something similar. There’s something disarming about a silly dog.




This one is mine.








 





He credited his mother for giving him his sense of humor. Years ago, while researching the childhoods of creative celebrities,  I discovered a delightful story about Mrs. Thurber.  One time, when dignified visitors had come to the house, she descended the stairs in her dressing gown, wild-eyed and hair disheveled, saying that she had just escaped from the attic, where she had been locked because of her profession of love for the postman!

There’s some serious playfulness at work there.




Outside, I found a shady side-yard, where two stone dogs kept me company. And across the street, a ring of bushes surrounded a statue of a unicorn, eating a lily. That image came from one of Thurber’s many fables, in which a husband tries to convince his wife that he has seen a unicorn in the garden.






It’s a nice analogy for Thurber’s created world – where the whimsical and the unexpected bump regularly up against every day life. (Just like with another of his creations, Walter Mitty.) And in my art, I strive to make the whimsical nibble at the edges of the world’s seriousness.



On my way back to the hotel, I passed under an imposing piece of sculpture at the Columbus College of Art and Design. But I’m happier thinking of ART in lower-case letters. Art as the unicorn in the garden.

Or a slightly goofy dog.

Benched Week 86: pears of wisdom

 












 Bill greeted me with a pear. I had come to turn one of our occasional chats at his farm into a bench-sitting, and the bench on his back porch was littered with the fruit he had just picked. So he offered me one.




More than that, he handed me the picker and said, “You’re tall. You should be able to reach the ones I couldn’t. Make yourself useful.” So for the first time in my life, I was plucking Bartlett pears off of branches and dodging the ones that volunteered to try to bean me.

















Bill looks every bit the part of a Pennsylvania farmer. And so he was, growing up – that is, before he became the head of the Education department at Bucknell University, across town, as well as a nationally respected consultant. Farmer and professor: it’s as incongruous a combination as the peacock that roosts in one of his trees.



At 87, he’s still mentally sharp and active. As we sat down, I directed our conversation with a simple question: “To what do you attribute your long life?” Knowing Bill, I knew he’d answer me with stories. As with all of us, memories gather with the passing years like pigeons on a silo.



He answered simply: “My work ethic.” Then, closing his eyes – as he often does when remembering – he explained.

As a nine-year-old farm boy, he was milking cows two days a week, barely strong enough to carry the buckets of steaming milk back across the snowy field from the barn. And at age twelve, he was mowing fields of hay with a team of horses. His mother and he would haul it into the barn with hay forks. “I was exhausted beyond words,” he said. “But then she would get me a glass of cold buttermilk and we’d chat a while. And then she’d say – and I’ve never forgotten this – ‘Do you suppose, Bill, we could get one more load of hay in the barn?’”



Just one more load. That became a life motto for him. Just focus on doing one more thing. Then before you know it, you’ve done much more than you expected.

It’s an ethic that drives me, as well. I try to push the boundaries of what I can do. Go a little farther than expected. Give myself an extra challenge – whether that’s trying out pastel on foam core boards or adding one more event to an already full month.

But when is “one more load” one too many? Lately, I’ve been thinking more about the mixture of work and life, even turning down a few gigs to spend more time at home. It’s a question Bill has thought much about over his life as well. I shared with him some of my struggle with this. And he listened and answered with the insight and affection I appreciate so much in him.
It’s hard to get the balanced answer to life’s big questions -- without the wisdom of family and friends. And as Bill has taught me, those friendships are sweet.

As sweet as a hand-picked pear.

Benched Week 85: longing for simplicity

The sun was bright on my center-city Philly bench. We had just come out of the dark stuffiness of the church where my brother-in-law, Bernie, is an organist. He had treated us to a brief tour, as well as a sample of the music he could perform on the powerful instrument.



The sanctuary had been impressive in its complicated, ornate decorations and statuaries of saints.



But once outside, a bit removed from the extravagance, I felt a familiar longing for simplicity rising up within me…



…one that only grew stronger at our next stop, the Japanese House and Gardens in Fairmount Park. The house, modeled on a 17th century Japanese design, is starkly beautiful. Or boring, depending on the visitor.



The gardens, viewed from that porch, were like a natural sedative, inviting the viewer to sit and be still. And ponder.



I’ve been pondering much in the last three weeks, since my mother-in-law passed away. In the days that followed, Alison and I had the difficult task of emptying an apartment, filled with the both the memorable and the mundane. There’s something strongly sobering about seeing a life reduced down to a pile of things.

Turning my gaze inward, I have come to realize since then the “things” that matters most to me are my creative expressions: the gifts of my art, my writing, my photos. The rest of the trappings don’t need to be clung to. Pass ‘em out when I pass on.



In the meantime, I want to stay centered on the important. Surprisingly, Francis of Assisi is helping me with that. I found a statue of him hidden in the garden outside the church. And turning to the web, I found this quote of his, which I then wrote into a photo I captured of simple, textured stain glass in the sanctuary.



There’s a reduction I can live with. And live by. A simple credo: use my talents to bless others. It’s why I write this blog. And why I fuss with photos of your mugs.

 

In art terms, it’s a focal point. It’s that one point of contrast, that one splash of color that adds meaning to seeming randomness, that puts an exclamation point to an ordinary scene. It holds it all together.

Simplicity, then, isn’t severity. It’s a narrow archway into a new, wider landscape of “things.” But this time, hopefully, it’ll be the things that last.

Benched Week 84: break up the bricks

During my first photography course in art school, I had a “you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me” moment. A fellow student brought in his series of photos, every last one focused on a different crack in a sidewalk. I don’t know if this was a serious attempt at minimalism or a last-minute desperation play, but I thought it was exceedingly silly.

This came to mind the other night when I was sitting on a bench in the historic district of Fernandina Beach, Florida. Surrounded by picturesque buildings, I wondered if I could zero in on just a portion of a structure and make it visually interesting.





 



















It’s harder than I expected. Taking away the broader context of a recognizable landmark, one finds fewer tools in the toolbox: color, shadow, texture, and angles become all-important.



Tinkering with framing reminded me how I love the interplay between hard and soft elements, between the geometric and the organic. A bare wall is blandly regular. But throw in a shadow from a tree – or better yet, the brilliant green of a palm – and a wonderful dance begins between something established and something developing. The immovable meets the unstoppable.



This is the interplay at work in creativity. For ideas to thrive, they need what I call a loose framework. Boundaries, if spaced too tightly, can leave no room to play; but having no walls at all actually inhibits the imagination.

Take summer. We all know how daunting it is for kids to go out and manufacture fun in the wide, empty plane of summer. They need a framework. Not the wall-to-wall schedule that so many parents submit their kids to. But just enough structure to ignite their imaginations. To help knock the rust off of those grounded spirits.



Like this idea by a friend of my son. She drew up this visual list for her kids as a guide toward what to do when they’re bored. I love this so much. I wonder how I never thought of doing it myself! (Not to mention she is a potential scribe in the making!)



This is the interplay at work in our lives. We all have frameworks. The question is whether we have space inside those walls to play. I know that when life becomes so restrictive, when it’s like you’re bricked into your schedule or your responsibilities or your grind, it’s not so easy to push the bricks back. So, maybe it’s time to add some little surprising accent. 

Paint a mural on that imposing wall.



Or at least hang a crazy towel in the window.

Benched Week 83: the green nearby

To my delight, Savannah lived up to its reputation of charm.   As my brother and I walked the streets early in the morning, cameras in hand, exquisite houses presented themselves at every corner, as if permanently dressed for a debutant’s ball.



This, I had expected. What came as a delightful surprise was the green. The copious lavishness of green. The city planners, far ahead of their time, dictated that twenty four square parks be evenly set throughout the city so that no one would live more than two blocks from open space.



And because of that, Savannah could be called The City of Benches. I’ve never seen the likes of it. Not just public benches. (Forest Gump’s bench was famously set in Savannah.)



But private ones, as well, tucked onto porches and in quiet, semi-hidden gardens.









Within the green, like a kind of antebellum nesting doll, were the trees. Long-limbed live oaks, draped with Spanish moss.



And on those trees were the most fabulous of things, new to me: resurrection ferns. Dry and brown for long periods, they refresh to a brilliant green with rain.



What a perfect metaphor for vacation. We often frame vacation as a break from something. It’s just as much as a reconnect to something. Paul Theroux, the accomplished travel writer, put it well:
“Travel, which is nearly always regarded as an attempt to escape from the ego, is in my opinion the opposite: nothing induces concentration or stimulates memory like an alien landscape or a foreign culture.”

We spend much of our life making life manageable and predictable. Travel shakes us awake, reminding us that there is a world of surprises outside our little spotlight of focus. Another journeying writer, Pico Iyer, delights that the joy of travel is seeing everything in a different light. And from a crooked angle.



Which makes me thankful for this blog.



I realized in Savannah that this habit of sitting and noticing is the reason why my frequent travel hasn’t lost its ability to surprise. My benches give me the rain I need to keep my ferns regularly refreshed.

It’s what we all need: open space close to where we live.