Art Appreciation

I have never taken an art appreciation course. Appreciating art always came naturally.

I can get into the media, whether oil on canvas, bronze, paper, or chrome remnants from retired Harleys. I can appreciate how artists from other times told the same story over and over again, each in their own way. I can appreciate how artwork from a certain historical period reflected the big ideas of the time. What I mostly love about art, though, is that before something is a painting, or sculpture, or installation, there was a seed of an idea in someone’s imagination and a willingness to experiment with it; to risk screwing up in order to create a new beauty or say something bold.

I really like finding art in unexpected places. Museums are great, but discovering art as murals on the sides of abandoned buildings or along the pristine, cream colored halls of a company’s headquarters, tends to give me greater pleasure.

In the office where I have been working, I am never bored walking to the break room, and I may linger outside of the rest room just to stare at the walls. There is incredible art everywhere. Not only do I like the pieces, I like how they are placed. Each piece is perfect for the size of the space, and somehow each image, even their titles, seems to have special meaning for me.

Just outside the break room there’s a print by Sol Lewitt, Arcs from Four Corners, featuring concentric arcs in four quadrants, each quandrant in its own color palette. Eating food can be that simple and at least as colorful. Outside the women’s restroom, there is a collage by Robert Rauschenberg. His flair for combining images and textures really works for me. In one corner, I can see the bottom third of a horse, from all four glorious knees down. On the other side, he’s placed lovely flower blossoms, and in the center, a sundry assortment of art supplies. It seems so right to think of a woman taking her impression of this beautiful mish mosh with her as she retreats from office fluorcents into a quieter space. There’s a wonderful Miami Vice colored piece by Sam Cady outside the men’s rest room, one of his Highway Fragment series; a bridge, banked and ready to unravel, connected to nothing.

Right before you get to the east conference room, there’s a tall, narrow swatch of sand colored parchment, like a piece from a scroll, unbound and framed in a thin strip of black metal. It’s an etching by a contemporary Italian artist, Amaldo Pomodoro, Like hieroglyphics, but not as pictorial as signs pointing to King Tut’s tomb, the paper rectangle is meticulously filled with complete rows of different sized slash marks from top to bottom. I think there’s a hidden message in the markings, a poker game type of warning suitable for a 9:00 meeting like, “Hold your hand close to your vest.”

The public art is great in Chicago too. Towering sculptures by Picasso and Calder cast shadows over some of the main plazas and pedestrian walkways downtown. Earth Mother, a sculpture by Miro, stands in a mediating sort of pose between a church and an office building. And there is an abundance of hidden treasures, works of art that hang in atriums and lobbies, behind information desks and in front of elevator banks. People walk by them every day on the way to their desks. I sometimes wonder if they take as much pleasure from them as I do. Are they aware that between their Starbucks stop and booting up their computer, they are walking past the heights of an artist’s imagination and daring?

A favorite of mine is a set of large paintings on the ground floor of the 55 East Monroe Building. I don’t have any reason to go to that building, but if I am walking to Symphony Center or to Michigan Avenue, I will walk through the lobby anyway, specifically to visit the work of the Zhou Brothers; two large pieces in red and gray. Walking by them feels like witnessing cave paintings on acid, a self-contained story of life and death, pared down to their essence. I take a deep breath each time I look up at them.

Being moved by art, and being surprised and delighted by where you find it, is no small thing.

Holding the Space

Last Friday, I drove to Green Bay. I wasn’t going to a Packer Game. I went to see a friend who I am afraid I won’t be able to see again.

A dubious example of being a rare individual, my friend was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago and had seemed to have licked it, except that it came back with a vengeance last spring (Men are diagnosed with breast cancer one seventh as frequently as women). As I understand his condition, it is pretty much eating up his spine.

Before I left home, I was very conscious that I did not want to be a bundle of emotions around him. The last thing I wanted to do was put him in a position of taking care of me when he had to share the dance floor with his own thoughts and emotions.

In the nearly twenty years that I’ve known him, we have maybe spent thirty days together. We lost touch for probably ten years. Yet, from the beginning, we had a real heart connection. When I stepped down the short flight of stairs of his sister’s split level, which they had made into a sort of suite where he could get around with his walker, all that mattered was catching up.

He asked me about my life. I talked excitedly about the blog I had started and about my desire to go to Maachu Piccu, how I wanted to find a partner, a soul mate. He showed me photographs stored in his laptop. It became sort of a game for us, together, to figure out which directories different pictures could be found. He showed me photos of one of his recent motorcycles, which he named Tango, and pics from his “50 states in 30 days tour.” We looked over photos of some of the artwork he had done, now, mostly in storage. He showed me a photo he took of his own shadow. I couldn’t help but smile. I had posed for a similar shot of myself at a Chicago beach barely two months ago.

“Aren’t you going to ask me about my tatts?” he teased me, referring to his collection of Varga Girl style inked pin-ups conspicuously displayed on both forearms.

“Well yes, I was going to get to that.” I laughed.

We had dinner together in the TV room part of his suite. I had a glass of wine. Then we went into his bedroom where he stretched out on his bed and we watched a blu-ray DVD on Alaska. It was kind of like going on vacation together. “The narration got a little corny sometimes, but the scenery was mind-blowing,” I said afterwards. He agreed. We called it a night at 8:00.

The next morning, he was hit with a terrible bout of nausea. We chatted for a bit then decided he should take a nap. He woke up an hour later. We both realized he needed more than a nap’s worth of sleep. I kissed him and drove back to Chicago. It was a shorter visit than I had hoped for, but I am so glad I went. It was perfect.

Whatever grace I lent him by witnessing his life without hovering over his challenges, he gave back to me in equal measure. He has always listened to me in such a way that I couldn’t help but feel seen and heard.

Holding the space for another person to be totally himself, to reveal all the love and fear, hope and regret that wants to be seen, and still allow for some pieces of his story to stay in the shadows – holding that person in your heart fully, in the moment, wherever they’re at in their life – is no small thing.

From "No" to "Yes"

Last Sunday, I made sure I got my weekend errands done before 1:00. I did my grocery shopping, collected the empty water bottles from my car’s backseat for recycling, and reconciled my records of the past week’s debit card transactions with the bank’s. I wanted to get these things done so that I could go swimming.

Not that I’m a budding Michaelina Phelps or anything. I don’t do laps. It’s just been so hot and sticky lately, the thought of splashing around at the Hamlin Park pool seemed like heaven.

I put on my suit and stepped into a very worn set of shorts and peeling bluish flip flops, and I packed for my close to home day at the beach. I had one of those over-sized beach towels with the kinds of crazy colors you’d never see hanging in anyone’s bathroom, a couple trial sized tubes of SPF 30 lotion – sports edition (i.e. waterproof), a small boom box, a book, and a bladder blaster-sized can of Arizona Iced Tea. Yep. I was ready for serious water frolicking.

When I got to the park, only a short walk from my apartment, I hit the path that winds between one of four baseball diamonds and an open green area. Couples and small groups of twenty-somethings had set out blankets for some sunning and dogs were walking their owners to the dog park on the other side of Ernie Banks Field. I smiled at everyone enjoying their summer Sunday then tripped up the cement stairs of the recreation building. I was trying to remember whether the ladies locker room (and access to the pool) was on the left or right on the information desk when I saw a large portable chalkboard with the message, “Pool closed until 4:45.”

What was this about? I walked up to the clerk at the information desk and asked. She told me that I should call later to get updated information on when the pool would open. The engineers might not clear it for opening until even later than 4:45. “What was the exact nature of the problem?” I demanded to know. I held my loaded tote bag close to my side and shifted my weight with exasperation. The lady at the desk took a sigh as big as the deep end of the pool.

“A child,” she whispered in a confidential way, “went to the bathroom in the pool.”

Oh my God. Maybe I won’t go back to the pool the rest of the season, I thought. As much as I hate hearing “no,” I felt grateful that someone was holding to the rules on this one. I might have indulged myself in disappointment, but I let it go.

I walked back to the grassy area. I spread a lightweight blanket, and then my beach towel, on the ground. I placed my boom box down and turned the receiving dial until I found the broadcast of the ball game. My can of Arizona Iced Tea was still cold. Good. I stepped out of my shorts and applied sun block to my arms and legs and as far down on my back as I could reach. I stretched out on my stomach with my head over my book; a true story of a scientific discovery that was as easy and engaging to read as fiction. I heard the Mexican fruit ice vendor making his jing-a-ling sound as he rode his oddly customized bicycle cum freezer around the park. When I finished each chapter, I looked up at the blanket thirty feet away and exchanged winks with a little white dog that was part of his family’s outing. Summer afternoons are beautiful, I thought.

Developing the discipline to move from “no” to “yes” is no small thing.

For the Birds

I woke up this morning at 6:06. My clock said 6:12, but I set my clock a little ahead of real time so I can have five minutes or so of just BEING before moving. My alarm was set for 6:25, but it is not unusual for me to wake naturally just a few minutes before my programmed wake-up time. It’s as if setting my alarm is only a ritual I perform in order to go to sleep feeling secure that I won’t “miss anything” important. I almost never do. My body knows when to stir itself awake.

When the read-out on my old GE clock radio flashed 6:23, I turned the volume dial all the way to the left, just before the “wake to music” cue would shock the ease of my dream space with something from my favorite station’s play list or a foreboding traffic report. For a few minutes, I simply stretched my legs and wondered what part of the floor the book I was reading before falling asleep may have landed. (I almost always knock it out of bed.) And I was listening to the birds.

The birds outside my window were having a helluva talk this morning.

I could discern the distinct sound of one bird prattling on to what seemed to be a small group within hearing range. Three or four different voices called back. Each spoke at his own pitch. Each had his own way of slurring some of his cries and registering others as a staccato sort of tapping. Hu-eeet, Hu-eeet. Ah-ah-ahh-ah-ahhh. They obviously didn’t believe in texting. It was a sort of joyous noise, a song of familiarity. What did they talk about? Where they found food in the neighborhood alleys? Did they talk about lost loves, or other yearnings? Ee-ee-eee, hu-eet. Were they discussing the weather? Were they warning each other not to get caught in the pulley of an electric garage door? Their exchange seemed excited at first, as if they hadn't seen each other for a long time. Then their calls grew longer as did the pauses between their back and forthing.

I don’t wake up so that I can get ready for work. I don’t wake up in the morning so that I can meditate or write in my journal. I don’t wake up in the morning so that I can make apple pancakes and take my vitamins...although I may do all these things.

I wake up precisely for this moment. I wake up so I can hear the birds, so I can hear the birds talking to each other when everything else in the world is cotton on cotton quiet.

Waking up to the simple, satisfied chirping of a sparrow is no small thing.

Night at the Lesbian Karaoke Irish Bar

Last Saturday, I asked a friend if she would go to a neighborhood street festival with me. It would be full of fun music, overpriced beer in plastic cups, great tasting food from the not so heart healthy menu, and lots of kiosks of hand-crafted jewelry, which we would invariably ooh and aah over then figure out if we could make something similar ourselves. One of the headlining bands, I explained, did rocking covers of 80’s music like Talking Heads and Huey Lewis.

“Count me in,” she said. “Afterwards, can we go to the lesbian karaoke Irish bar? It’s close to my place.”

I pondered this for a second. I am not a lesbian, and I am actually not a big karaoke fan, but as she described the experience, I couldn’t say no.

“It’s really great,” she went on. “A lot of lesbians come to the place, but gay guys and straights come too. It’s also popular with Native Americans. Everyone really feels free to be themselves and everybody really gets along well with each other.”

After several hours bouncing between the three stages on Roscoe, four beers, one Italian beef sandwich apiece and lots of banter about the abundance of high-end strollers, equipped with multiple hide-away cup holders, we headed to the Lincoln Square area.

When we walked into the bar, the owner, a middle-aged woman with jet black hair and the most striking yellow-green eyes I have ever seen, greeted us. It was around 10:30 and still easy to find an open stool. A half hour later, that would no longer be the case.

My friend lugged the bar’s bible, the binder with laminated sheets listing all the song titles, to our stools. There must have been hundreds, maybe thousands of titles. I joked about performing, and mispronouncing, the Elton John classic, “Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza,” but I was quickly chickening out of making my karaoke debut. No shortage of other talent, though.

There was a bride to be, coyly accessorized in a plastic veil, and her entire posse sitting close to the mic along with a variety of regulars who attended a local music school. Ringers, most of them. I noticed the bar started filling up. There were ladies on dates with their best lady friend, logo-tee wearing straight guys shooting darts and slamming down shots of tequila, gays, fresh from Halsted Street Market Days (another street fair that took place that day in Boys Town)…and the parade of karaoke stars began.

A bridesmaid (apparently no newcomer to a microphone) started things off with a killer version of Killing Me Softly. Then the bride belted out George Michael’s Somebody to Love. Everyone joined in on the chorus as she twirled her veil with her fingers. A tall twenty-something, baring more than a few piercings, belted out Dolly Parton’s Jolene. Everybody was very tolerant when a young guy felt compelled to go counter-crowd and do Springsteen’s Born in the USA. About an hour into the songfest, someone did an artifcially inspirational number from a contemporary musical I wasn’t familiar with.

“Damn” the woman next to me pounded her palm on the top of the bar. “They should outlaw this song from karaoke bars everywhere.” In her mid-twenties, with cornflower blue eyes, pale skin and non-descript brown hair styled in a mullet, she went on to explain. “I come from a small town in Ohio. They sang this damn song at our high school's graduation for four straight years.”

Those of us within earshot patted her shoulder in consolation. Yes, there ought to be a karaoke law of some sort.

While I did not close the place down, during my night at the lesbian karoke Irish bar, I ended up hearing quite a cavalcade of memory joggers sung by every kind of person you could imagine. After a day in Stroller Village, this was especially heartening.

Seeing that there is a place for EVERYONE, a place of laughter and belonging, is no small thing.

Ahhh Choo (Thank You)

Last week, I started a new temp assignment. Temp jobs often involve unpleasant work environments loaded with special challenges. I have worked temp jobs where I had nothing to do; not a fun way to spend an eight-hour day (less lunch). I have worked temp jobs where there was too much to do; usually an understaffed project with an insane deadline. I have also fielded assignments that involved performing tasks no one on the payroll wanted to do, jobs that were crazy to assign to someone with NO EXPERIENCE with the company. Once, I had a week-long assignment shredding highly sensitive financial reports for a Fortune 500 Company. The company knew nothing about me except my social security number and the “who should be called in emergency” contact I had to supply on their HR forms. Go figure.

So, I had hardly been at my new gig for more than thirty minutes – I had been walked around and introduced, shown the locations of the bathroom and break room, been given a map with building evacuation procedures then invited to my “cube” to wait for the IT guy – when I sneezed. I succumbed to one of those three-in- a-row types of fits when you can’t help but close your eyes and scrunch up your face.

Maybe I had stirred up dust while rifling through drawers that had been inactive for months. I am not sure, but my sneezes were uncontrollable. With eyes wide shut and a sort of groping hand, I reached out and -- surprise – found a box of Kleenex®

I couldn’t believe it. Exactly what I needed. Exactly when I needed it. At a temp job.

I felt compelled to continue my exploration of what would be my daytime home for the next five weeks. I was amazed. In addition to a gray and white box of Kleenex, I saw:
• Two waste paper baskets under the desktop; one lined with dark brown polyethylene for real garbage along with a corrugated box for recycling paper.
• A low profile grayish two-drawer file cabinet on wheels. It had an orange and brown colored cushion on the top which could be used as a chair for visitors who came to my cube.
• A narrow dark gray metal standing closet, with three drawers for personal belongings and a tall compartment, big enough for a coat and standard sized umbrella.
• Four black file bins on my desktop, two 2-piece horizontal ones, one 7-piece vertical one (presumably seven for each day of the week), and one horizontal-vertical combo design.
• A View Sonic monitor on a swivel arm that could actually be adjusted to a position where I could read the 1792 entries on my spreadsheet.
• Two additional file holders, mounted on the wall just to the left of my monitor, for files I need to get to quickly.
• Two metal door storage areas, with locks, above my desk to the right of my monitor. An under-cabinet fluorescent mounted underneath one.
• An upholstered chair with back support and arm rests, on casters, capable of navigating a 360.
• A small white board near my closet, primary colored dry-erase markers and an elementary school style black felt eraser.
• Two light-weight head sets. They both worked, too.
• A stapler, tape dispenser, and Polycom office phone.
• 15 clear-headed push pins scattered against the cube wall to the right of my monitor.
• About 10’ of fake walnut grained desktop, nearly 6’ high walls/partitions, with shallow windows near the top on three sides affording me a view of one neighboring cubicle, the closest networked printer, and a corner window for the building where I could gauge the weather.

Wow, this is some place, I thought, though, I probably didn’t need two working headsets. Honestly, they had won me over with the box of Kleenex. I was aware of how grateful I felt that the office manager, or whoever it was that placed a box of tissues in my workspace, considered it, like a stapler or pad of post-its, a required office supply. Having a box of Kleenex within arm’s reach while a sneeze is gathering momentum is no small thing.

Good Advice

Since I started writing down my mindful meditations, I have tried to pay extra keen attention to things that affect me, things that change my mood or outlook, or simply things I’m grateful for. Keeping an eye out for these kinds of things has brought up memories of my father and some paradoxical advice he tried to impart.

My father died when he was 62. I was in my mid-twenties and going through a divorce. He was not around much when I was growing up as he worked very long hours, but his presence was oh so constant. We didn’t go to many ballgames together or to the park. He didn’t teach me how to drive or mentor me in some important life skills, but I knew he loved me very much.

Starting when I was about thirteen, he used to pull me under his arm and repeat an odd phrase. “Don’t worry about the little things. It’s the big things that are important.” Then he’d add, as if confiding something more profound to me, “Don’t worry about the big things. It’s the little things that are important.”

So, what was he trying to tell me? What was I supposed to be wary of, I wondered, the BIG things or the LITTLE things? Was he simply telling me, “Don’t worry”? What was I supposed to be getting out of this advice?

In a not atypical teenage way, I suppose, I’d dismiss his thought. Must be on drugs, I’d say to myself. This had become my catchall phrase whenever someone spoke or acted in ways I couldn’t understand.

Throughout my life, I’ve had an uncomfortable reaction to getting advice I didn’t know what to do with. My mother, for instance, who is now 88, likes to dispense recommendations automatically like a two a day standing order for Advil. Her directives often feel like criticisms and could range in topic from how I should style my hair to what route I should take driving her on errands. Generally, I remember that the unsolicited opinions or advice she gives are more about her than about me. But still, I’ll bristle when my mother, or a friend, or co-worker, or coach for that matter, feels compelled to give advice that has little to do with who I am and what I value.

Advice can often seem contradictory, hard to follow, or not true for me and my life.

Then I remember to look beyond the words and focus on the vibration of someone’s counsel. I think about my father’s love floating on top of his paradox, and I’m okay with whatever sentiment is expressed.

Accepting the gift of someone’s advice without feeling compelled to take it is no small thing.

Member Appreciation Day

Last Wednesday, it was Member Appreciation Day at my gym. They had colored balloons tied to most apparatus, off the chart discounts on tanning bed time (no thanks), and free coffee and bagels at a table near the front desk. You would think, being health conscious and all, they might not be pushing a “No carb left behind” policy, but I thought it was a pretty nice gesture.

And besides slashed prices on power bars, there were other ways the club demonstrated appreciation. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was helpful and respectful.

Maybe this shouldn’t be so surprising, but I have been dirty looked off equipment when personal trainers were making the circuit with their clients. I have waited in line for towels or other services until intra-staff gossip sessions were brought to a close. This was a new experience entirely.

I had just claimed a piece of equipment that builds strength in your torso and lower back. You sit on a kind of stool connected to weights and swivel it nearly ninety degrees from right to center for so many repetitions then do the same thing on the left side. Barely a few seconds after sitting down, I noticed a man in his twenties, totally buff, wearing a fitted red knit tee and black spandex pants. He was smiling at me. After holding back to see how I wanted to situate myself, he approached me. “Are you sure,” he asked, “You want to set the seat at level one? Maybe that would be too high for you.”

Looking at the notches where the seat was pegged, I recognized I normally did this exercise from a position one notch lower. “Thank you,” I said and he walked over to chat with another trainer.

A few moments later, he approached me again, equally conscious not to be intrusive.

“Do you use this piece of equipment often? It would really be a better work-out for you if, when you turned towards the center, you moved slower and not let the weights clang down. You should stop your rotation just before the weights touch. It’s harder on your abs, using this kind of control” he added, grinning. “But that would be the best way to work all your muscles.”

I blinked. Smiled. He approached me in a very respectful way and his instructions were the perfect mixture of clear and polite. I wasn’t his private client. I didn’t ask why he was offering a little coaching, but he saw I was curious.

His smile opened up and he announced, “It’s Member Appreciation Day.”

Damn, I thought, why don’t they do this all the time? Why don’t all people treat each other with respect and a sincere willingness to help? In a way, we’re all members of the same club.

Balloons could be optional, but treating everyone in our club of human beings as if every day was Member Appreciation Day would be no small thing.