The Narrative of a Still Life

My first exposure to famous artists and their paintings was through a board game.  Yes, my grandmother gave me the ever so popular Masterpiece for Christmas in the early 80s and needless to say, you may not have played this game of bluffing and negotiations while buying and selling famous works of art and I am guessing you might not have ever heard of it either.  As the youngest of three by five and seven years,  I had to begin negotiations early with trying to get my brother and sister to play any game with me let alone, Masterpiece.  

Needless to say, I learned to play quite well alone.  But mostly, I would pull out the game, spread out the heavy papered replicas of Van Gogh, El Greco, Monet and study them.  Study might be a stretch for a five year old, let's say stare.  Rarely would I even read their titles, just look at color.  Years later while showing slides for Art History classes during my undergrad, I often had a faint sense of deja vu while focusing on some Dutch master hadn't I seen this before?

Oddly enough my favorite paintings as a child were mostly Dutch masters and especially still lives.  The open table with an apple, a melon and a candlestick seemed odd and unfitting but balanced and serene.  Perhaps a childhood spent mostly in the woods walking the quiet dales of Northern Michigan tend to lead to an aesthetic of Northern European minimalism.  Symbolism is something you find in your backyard of orchard, moss and barbed wire instead of a book preaching you of some sky of God.

I recently returned to the cold woods of Northern Michigan for Thanksgiving.  Late November in Leelanau county can be flat light, incessant winds and boarded up summer homes.  As if life is put on pause.  The view all around was a monochromatic still life.  And really while I was home for a long weekend, I stayed pretty close.  Walked a lot in the cold wind, went for runs along the lake and spent a drizzled afternoon with my parents searching for Petoskey stones dodging the waves coming in strong off of wintered Canada.  If the scene were painted, the palette would be a variation on grey.

Yet regardless of the flat light and rain flirting into snow, it was such a calming time.  I did not question every action or analyze my mental state.  I merely walked into a still life with the backdrop of barren trees, muted leaves under snow and the faint hint of evergreen on hills.  For the first time returning home I had an absence of looking for some piece to myself in the portrait of my past.  Many of us do this, look to our past selves or place and try to make sense of what we've become.  Isn't there some image or memory that will unlock this state of absence, longing or loss?

But that is the trap of nostalgia--to believe your past holds more weight or power than your present.  I prefer a progressive verb, such as we are all becoming.  Our bodies house our hearts which travel around with us.  Why keep it in the drawers of your youth, the closets of your past? Or at least this is what I am trying to do.  Unearth a heart and know it is already home.  In me.  And it's hard.  It's hard to change a lifetime of practiced images or views of yourself.  But maybe like an artist or traveler the key lies in changing the angle of perspective.   It's amazing how just moving your underwear from back pack to dresser drawer can give you a sense of being placed, or being home.  To be able to see your home in November as vacation.  To see yourself not broken, but becoming.  No matter what still life you thought you would see yourself placed in.

Enjoy your place today.

Elegy for a Stone Unskipped

It is a cool morning where I imagine him

laying in bed. The first light is the only thing

he cannot name.  Unlike wisteria, its scent a clock

that ticks and wakes him with the wind

as the mourning dove, whose song

coos young Carl out of bed for chores. 

Head full of flowers instead of milking cows 

or prayers. Petals are nothing

but bed curtains for young lovers, shaming

his father working verbs into rows 

of repent, weed, and preach.

He leaves the farm, alone in a city

with nothing but inked drawings of aster,

otter and toad.  Wakes each day

to the dumb dove, he wants to claim

as pigeon. He sees himself perched 

as bird, muted grey and begins

to label himself a vagrant species.

Linnaeus knows language is not a song

for birds, warbles eludes him all day

like the scent of his mother’s hair.

Sunday he walks to the sandy shores

of the Oresund, rests on a rock, tries not 

to notice or name the algae or mollusk 

washed by the tide, takes a stone 

to feel his own weight

in his palm. To hold the holding

of his father’s voice calling him back

for lunch. He rests the rock on his desk,

dried and dulled on a pile of papers

where it remains. Nameless, even to the sun.