I recall really liking the large art room forever scented with wet clay, tempera on dried paper and bins of chalk pastels. But mostly, I liked the wall of windows poorly blocking the bitter winds off Lake Michigan. Those windows were so valuable in a land where winter lasts more than six months, brings walls of white, and rarely if ever, brings the cold sun. But the day we watched a film on Japanese art, we huddled in a dark corner while the reels projected tea bowls, flower arrangements and gardens of rock, gravel and enlarged goldfish on the grey concrete wall. Thankfully there wasn't a Q and A after the movie, again we were six, we probably would have preferred to watch Harold and the Magic Crayon.
After the movie, Mrs. Johnson brought out a narrow rolled-up piece of paper. Pulling the rolls away like some scroll, she held a painted bouquet and pointed to a flower, misshapen and blurred, "this" pointing with purpose,"this" she said, "this is wabi sabi, see how it isn't as pretty, it looks like a mistake. But it isn't, it makes the others look prettier because it isn't perfect." And it isn't an exaggeration to say those words have stayed within my heart and head ever since, it looks like a mistake. But it isn't. And so has this, "wabi sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."
Okay, let's back up a bit. This scene might seem too idyllic to believe. Too much like a Wes Anderson film where the kids perform their written one act plays including amazing set designs. Sure, as much as I want to see my life as The Royal Tenenbaums, including the soundtrack, it just wasn't. I'll give you another version of this era. Why not give you another view of my learned aesthetics at age six. Let's start with my mother. Perhaps my mother's greatest maxims for raising her daughters were, "There will always be someone better looking, thiner or with a better nose. Get over yourself." Now, given this maxim in the mind of someone with a healthy dose of self-confidence and wit, you see the realism: Work with what you have. Given this same maxim in the mind where all you see are thick glasses, wiry hair and your short and slightly awkward frame despite your panache even in first grade to put together an outfit, you hear those words differently. Those words rest as weights. Those words you hear as someone is and always will be better than you. You just cannot grasp the use of wabi sabi for all the moles on your face.
But thankfully with a few decades under my belt alone in front of a mirror, good therapists, a better sense of humor and years in Italy where women learn to truly work confidence into the genetics they inherit, you learn to hear those words as you think they were intended to mean, accept your imperfections, no one and nothing is perfect. I will be honest, I forget this a lot. Some days I only see a reflection of unintended imperfections. Thank god for Lena Dunham. God, I love her and all her imperfections she so effortlessly exposes.
But back to Mrs. Johnson's hard work at treating us as adults gracing us with all of her exposure to art theory. Despite her films, I never really developed as a visual artist. I have had my stints at attempting. My favorite job in college was showing slides for Art History classes, four years of "audited" art history is a great place to start. But like first grade, it was all theory. One summer after a semester of showing hours of Rothkos on a wall in and out of focus, I thought I would attempt to paint. I spent hours with colored pencils first, then tempera on thick paper before paint on canvas. Once while finishing a "piece" of three colored squares on a large canvas outside, (truth be known, squares were truly all I could really draw), my father honestly and astutely said, "Well," while watching me finish the last corner, "it's a good thing you like to paint what you can." Agreeing with him, I thought I might try collage.
I spent an entire month before heading to teach in Rome in my parent's basement with a razor, aerosol can of glue and a stack of discarded art magazines and old children's dictionaries. For one month straight, I only listened to Radiohead's "Kid A" and made endless amounts of "still life" scenes with torn definitions and phrases. I even made a color wheel of monochromatic shades of each color, postcards to send from Rome, and a Christmas card with a poem on the back. Seriously, I think the card had three squares of color and a Christmas tree. Again, work with what you have. Which is why, I prefer to paint with words. I have a lot of them.
Regardless of my varied personal attempts to be a visual artist, it hasn't truly been my dream. My dream has been to be a poet. And like my other fellow writer friends without books published, we sometimes question our dream. I recently had the fortunate opportunity to spend a wonderful week with a good friend who has been finishing her first book. I am so proud of her. She is also 38 and she too has had the dream of being a writer since, like me, we first put together sentences or stanzas on a page. (Follow her progress and insight at her own blog, http://jaimestathis.wordpress.com)
Jaime has been living in a small cabin with a wood stove outside the mountains of Taos, New Mexico for three cold months. Writing. Writing everyday and finishing her book, so we had a lot to talk about. But after days of talking about our writing, our goals and going for walks into the cold winds under all that sky, all that amazing light the sky in Taos holds, we wanted to head to town. So we decided to head to Santa Fe to see Georgia O'Keeffe's museum. Truth be known, we thought we would just head to the large flowers and find some calming pastel spring. But instead, we found ourselves in a dark corner, just like so many years ago in art class, watching a video on Georgia and her life. While hearing the voice of Gene Hackman give the biography of places and schools Georgia attended, an early painting by her was shown of ill-shaped lighthouses with a thick muted sky. It was all Wisconsin in scene and place, but what I could not stop thinking was: it's so bad. In my head, I said, Georgia O'Keeffe wasn't very good? All I could see were imperfections. Gene Hackman's voice continued and dates were thrown around and Jaime and I kept looking at each other with wide eyes and fingers counting as we did the math, Wait, Georgia was our age when she was getting serious about her art. Wait, we said, she was old. (okay, older when she started to really work at art.)
Walking around the museum, I didn't see the flowers. I saw lighthouses shadowed by large massive petals and stark skies with adobes grounding the scene. Every picture I turned to see was once a lighthouse, once something misshapen and re-worked into something balanced and beautiful. Years of work, years of dedication and years of finding a place in nature that spoke to her gave Georgia her voice in paint. She didn't seem to let the lighthouses of her youth keep her from painting large canvases of poppies. Or to use her own words, "I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do."
And I can tell you this, for the first time, I could really understand those words I heard so long ago in art class on wabi sabi, "nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect." The imperfection in those lighthouses were so beautiful to me because Georgia didn't stop there. She didn't stop painting because she wasn't very good at first, she kept painting because it was her dream. And sure, the flowers of O'Keefe might seem about as perfect in visual imagery as anything we have had the pleasure to gaze upon outside of nature. But now, I keep thinking of those lighthouses in each flower. Those awkward beacons of light of her schooled still lifes in Chicago when Georgia was practicing to paint what she saw in her head. To get it right. To get close enough to making what she saw in her head real to others. And thankfully for us, what she saw and learned to create was really beautiful.
Interestingly enough, Georgia O'Keefe wasn't really fond of poetry, except Japanese haiku poets. I don't have a lot of haiku to share with you in honor of O'Keefe, but what I do have is a poem about loving imperfections.
Enjoy.
Astro in the Skyline
At first he picked me up in what his wife
left him. My fate to fall for a man who drives
a mini-van. At least he didn't chew
his words, smell of olives and sawdust
like the last guy. He arrived right on time,
but when he tried to unlock the door,
it stuck. He swore it was already funny
when he dove up looking like a carpet cleaner,
tired, but shaven. And sometimes it's that easy,
the awkward sexy moment when a man offers
his gloves in a hail storm, you fall
for him, his ill-fitting sweater, uneasy pause
before speaking, the way one person might see
you like the capital of Nepal, or an island in Japan.
