Open Vistas

 

In December of 2020 I came up with the strange idea of reading everything in an issue of a magazine and then writing about it for a blog post.  Now, with 2020 hindsight and a terrible, disabling case of “writers block”, I set out to do something like that again.  After reading the entirety of the May 30 issue of The New Yorker, I sat down to write. I started, but then froze up again. The read-it-all tactic to help thaw out wasn't working. Finally, here’s what I came up with.   

The cover of the magazine features an illustration called “Open Vistas” and the artist is Cannaday Chapman. My initial impression of it was of a woman in a hat gazing off down the way.  On closer scrutiny: Two women sit at an outdoor table with their café-au-laits and powdered beignets, one is wearing a large hat and sunglasses and is looking away as she stirs her coffee.  Her companion has her sunglasses hung on her shirt while she studies her cellphone. A sign saying Jazz Club hangs from the building backgrounding the scene, which features a balcony and balustrade along with the national flags of USA and France. They could be in New Orleans. Now I am interested: I learn that Chapman had illustrated the book “Feed Your Mind”, about the Black playwright August Wilson.  I watched a short video produced by Pittsburgh Public School Librarians about the 2019 book and learned that Wilson grew up in Pittsburgh and loved the public library. In fact, he spent so much time in the library they awarded him an honorary high school diploma! (He’d dropped out of school in the 10th grade after, among other outrages, being accused of plagiarism for a piece he wrote that apparently was considered too good to have been authored by him.)  I recently learned that the writer Annie Dillard also grew up in Pittsburg.  They were born 3 days apart, in April of 1945!  

Now there you go.  I hadn’t even gotten past the cover and I’d learned that I could miss the forest (New Orleans) for the trees (a large hat), and also that two great writers entered the world days apart in a city I’ve recently become interested in.  I love these epiphanies. Annie Dillard's second book called "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" was published in 1974, when she was 29. The book is entirely about paying close attention, to anything and everything. There are epiphanies. She is out "stalking" or what one might call hiking or walking. My sons are always inspiring me one way or another; this time Jon led me to realize that I hadn’t really read Dillard, just as initially, I hadn’t really seen the cover illustration.  Taking the time in both cases to closely look and listen pays off. Here are some quotes from that book:

[about praying mantis egg cases]: “If the eggs survive ants, woodpeckers and mice- and most do- then you get the fun of seeing the new mantises hatch, and the smug feeling of knowing, all summer long, that they’re out there in your garden devouring gruesome numbers of fellow insects all nice and organically. When a mantis has crunched up the last shred of its victim, it cleans its smooth green face like a cat.”

“Fish gotta swim and bird gotta fly; insects, it seems, gotta do one horrible thing after another.”

“Somewhere, and I can’t find where, I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?”  “No”, said the priest, “not if you did not know”.  “Then why,” asked the Eskimo earnestly, “did you tell me?”  If I did not know about the rotifers and paramecia, and all the bloom of plankton clogging the dying pond, fine; but since I’ve seen it, I must somehow deal with it, take it into account.  “Never lose a holy curiosity,” Einstein said; and so I lift my microscope down from the shelf, spread a drop of duck pond on a glass slide, and try to look spring in the eye.”  

This New Yorker issue also reports on LARP (live action role playing), thalassotherapy, big wave surfing, Sara Nelson and the power of women and unions, philanthropy, bicycling, and more.  Adam Gopnik has a review of a book called “What’s Good, Notes on Rap andLanguage”, described on the dust jacket as “a love letter to the most vital American art form of the last century”.  My son Jon hopes I find something of the genius he’s found manifested in rap, in hip hop. Occasionally I will decide to listen to a new album release all the way through (I must be obsessed with completeness…). I give it my undivided attention and let my body move with the music. Invariably, I love the records and marvel at the flourishes of genius manifesting in them. Most recently, it was “Gaslighter” by The Chicks and “Raising Cain” by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. Maybe it’s time to give Nas a close listen, find the feeling.

That’s a short report on reading and reflecting and writing some of it down. I hope you choose to closely observe regularly, but I know how distracted we can become. Cannaday Chapman entitled her cover illustration “Open Vistas”.  That sounds like a fine way to consider the world, nothing closed out. What we see, feel, hear, taste, smell; all coming at us. There is also a power within and for some of us that power feels like a tightness, a controlling presence, and can feel like a punch to the gut. That power within is of my life, has accumulated, taken up residence, has set my tuning, and can grab hold of a day, can result in getting lost, distracted.  It can render me deluded, seemingly creating experiences suggesting I'll never write again. But look: (I just this morning saw) a turkey waddling by my front door! I walk out there and notice the iridescence of it’s feathers.  I’ll never forget noticing the color of a pigeon’s eye.

We are new in Salem and things to do are piling up.  Here’s something I did!  A small accomplishment but it made me feel good and I did need some pictures for this post.  Maybe someday we’ll sit together on our deck and listen closely to one another, in the evening with the LED lights quivering. 

Evening splendor on the deck

detail of project connections

We love our outdoor lighting

Ace hardware has the goods