A Figure, Seen from the Back, Forever Approaching

[Image: “Mind Your Head,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

We will be leaving Las Vegas on June 1 — headed first for the Grand Canyon, and then for a Grand Tour of California: Joshua Tree, and then over to San Diego and on up the coast to see the redwoods in the north. (We’ll do a little jog east for Yosemite and Tahoe, somewhere in the middle.) Neither of us has spent much time in the state before — no time at all since we’ve been together (pushing 30 years now)… so we’re looking forward to making its acquaintance, even for just the month we’re there. I wonder if we’ll recognize each of the sights we’ve always imagined, separately and as one?

Of course, with less than two weeks left before we hit the road again, this time for 100% unknown territory, I approached whiskey river this week not with trepidation, but with a certain, well, mindset — my mind’s eye turned to horizons never before seen. And found:

Imaginary Paintings

1. How I Would Paint the Future

A strip of horizon and a figure,
seen from the back, forever approaching.

2. How I Would Paint Happiness

Something sudden, a windfall,
a meteor shower. No—
a flowering tree releasing
all its blossoms at once,
and the one standing beneath it
unexpectedly robed in bloom,
transformed into a stranger
too beautiful to touch.

3. How I Would Paint Death

White on white or black on black.
No ground, no figure. An immense canvas,
which I will never finish.

4. How I Would Paint Love

I would not paint love.

5. How I Would Paint the Leap of Faith

A black cat jumping up three feet
to reach a three-inch shelf.

Smooth, and deceptively small
so that it can be swallowed
like something we take for a cold.
An elongated capsule,
an elegant cylinder,
sweet and glossy,
that pleases the tongue
and goes down easy,
never mind
the poison inside.

6. How I Would Paint the Big Lie

7. How I Would Paint Nostalgia

An old-fashioned painting, a genre piece.
People in bright and dark clothing.
A radiant bride in white
standing above a waterfall,
watching the water rush
away, away, away.

(Lisel Mueller [source])

Closer to home, such as it is, I spent the last week forcing myself to read a book by an author with whom I was completely unfamiliar. Now, I am typically a generous reader — inclined to give every author the benefit of even many doubts. This particular author — let’s call them X — has apparently had a very successful career so far: numerous novels, a Pushcart Prize for short stories, many loyal readers. The book I read was the first of a new series with an intriguing premise: a young true-crime reporter, a woman at that, in 1880s New York City. All of which hinted at the prospect of a quick, light read, very much what I was looking for after Richard Powers’s The Overstory…

Obviously I’m being a little coy about not identifying X or even X’s book. That I caught up with it, took it by the shoulders and turned it around — only to wince at what I’d committed to — well, yes, I was very, very disappointed. But disappointment isn’t an objective perception; it has more to do with the expectations brought to an experience than it has to do with the experience itself, and to this extent it reveals a flaw between one’s own ears — not necessarily (in this case) a flaw between an author’s.

All that level-headedness and high-minded professionalism aside, I can’t resist wrapping up this post something as follows:

Imaginary Paintings (cont’d)

8. How I Would Paint X’s Book

Gray corseted prose,
draping shirt-cardboard figures.
Statements of the obvious
cribbed from Wikipedia
and offered to the reader
in colored-cellophane drapery,
as though transparent giftwrap
could transfigure misshapen contents.
A finish line staggered across,
breathlessly, panting for refreshment.

(JES)