get happy in six words

Valentine's Day is a day I usually choose to rapidly pass over, reminding myself that ignorance is the true bliss. This past V-Day, though, I was alternately amused and touched (and sometimes just grossed out) by the New York Times proposal to its readers to 'sum up a relationship in six words.' Obviously, I was not alone as there are now over 3,500 succinct new love idioms with people still posting as recently as yesterday. (And, yes, I did post one... and no, I am pretty sure you will never guess it.) They run the gamut from forlorn to love-lost to passionate to sexual to lonely to comic to sweet and tender. Here is a sprinkling:

Blind date. Still blinded. Great love.
I'm editorial. He's advertising. Print it.
He screwed up; now she's mine!
Met on train. Still on track.
Guitarists rock, but then they roll.
He's usually right, but I win.
Home is wherever I'm with you.
Dog approves; maybe this guy's good?
We have the same operating system.
She fed me. Me wed she.
We'll make great dog owners someday.
It's always wonderful. With selective amnesia.
We can finish each other's sentences.
They felt they'd met somewhere before.
Slow-dancing in the kitchen without music.
Me not angry when you naked.
Swimming deep waters holding your hand.

This clever idea for disciplined self-expression apparently first appeared on Smith magazine's website. They are also doing similar six-word catchphrases for other themes. Even before checking out their website, I was thinking that it would be fun to do something similar today. However, I want to throw a wrench to the monkey... just to see what he might do with it. Rather than creating my own phrases, I will speak through the personas of some of your favorite (or perhaps vexing) celebrities and other oldies-but-goodies in our very own version of "What would the VIP say?" And rather than re-hash that over-done theme of love, I was inspired to choose the topic of pessimism/optimism after seeing today's Times pronounce that the nation's mood is currently at the lowest it has been in about two years.

What is (or would be, if you happen to be dead) your current mood or outlook? (in six words, of course!)

Lindsay Lohan: Took necklace. So sue me! Shit.

Kate Middleton: Fairy tale is actually quite stressful.

Ernest Hemingway: Six words? This is too easy.

Kate Hudson: I'm pregnant! Next role: porn star!

Robert Plant: Now and zen, entering the out door.

Descartes: I think, and sometimes I over-think.

Charlie Sheen: Riding mercury surfboard to bi-winning gnarly-ness!

Johnny Cash: Black train caught man in black.

Shakespeare: "That it should come to this!" (Yes, that's really him... not me being Will. There's no way I could top him...and also, yes, there is another so very obvious 6-word phrase from the Bard...)

Paula Abdul: I'm speechless! Simon touch me again!

Lady Gaga: That's retarded. Sorry. Not. Just dance.

Michel Foucault: Repression, discipline, surveillance -- heterotopias offer escape.

Joan Rivers: My face is plastic eternally, bitches!

Bonnie and Clyde: Kill, steal, dodge, ambushed -- true romance!

James Franco: I am the Renaissance. Forget Leonardo.

Jim Morrison: Far out -- black outs are life.

Hugh Hefner: Life's not complicated. Get some blondes.

Odysseus: Calypso seduced me; I swear. Mmmmmm.

Dr. Dre: Chronic's mine. No haters. Peace out.

God: What was I thinking? Oh god!

pears

Yes, tomorrow is Earth Day, but I'd rather think about this day proximally and obliquely. I teach this way too, believing there is much to be seen in the circuitous journey that enhances our understanding of the original 'text.' And so the pear. Last year, right about this time, I read a short book by Yann Martel called Beatrice and Virgil. Ostensibly, this is a novel about a struggling playwright and a menacing taxidermist, yet beneath the metanarrative lie questions about the Holocaust and our shared memory of horrific large-scale trauma. With many barely veiled references to Waiting for Godot, the two main characters (a donkey and a monkey) in the writer's play wander around their striped country, starving and asking questions and waiting. At one point during a particularly poignant discussion of what they would eat if they had any food, the subject of pears comes up. When Beatrice reveals that she has never eaten a pear, Virgil proceeds to describe the appearance, the taste, the aroma, and the experience of eating a pear as best he can. Nearing the end of his long portrait/reminiscence of a pear, Virgil pronounces: "Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark."

And I, too, have found there is something about a pear. The ancient Chinese believed pears were a symbol of immortality... and even more, the pronunciation of the Chinese word for 'sharing a pear' is the same as that of the word for separation. Thus, there developed a custom where lovers should never cut apart a pear to share amongst each other because it was thought to lead to the kind of separation hauntingly heard when the word, pear, issued from one's lips.

There is something about pears and suffering.... something that connects the two. There was a story in the newspaper (The Boston Globe, I think) a year or so ago about a Polish man, Catholic. He was 22 and the year was 1943. September, autumn. He had been wrongly suspected of being a resistance fighter and imprisoned at Auschwitz. He was working in a grain storage warehouse, stealing bits of food when he could, just trying to survive. And one day she walked in... or was escorted. But she appeared just like that -- in his world -- utterly unexpected. A dark-haired strikingly beautiful Jewish girl. Cyla. And the gravitational pull was immediate. One little wink at first. And then moments. Moments while she repaired grain sacks and he transported grain in and out. Moments to say a word or two, sometimes more. But the love unfolded. Because it was already there in full power from that first moment. He figured out a way to escape. He got hold of an SS uniform, changed the name on the guard's pass. He told Cyla, "Two days from now, an SS guard will come to find you. He will order you to come with him. Don't worry. He will be me." Two days later and he came for her, came to the laundry where she had been reassigned to work. And they managed to escape. And then so much walking... through forests and fields and up hills and over rivers and down roads in the darkest shield of night. For more than a week, they walked... until she begged him... begged him to stop for she had become too weak to continue walking. But at that point they were so close -- to his uncle's house. And with a little more effort, and with his carrying the weight she no longer could, they arrived. And his mother was there. Overjoyed but deeply fearful. The girl. The girl was a problem. How could they live? Where would they live? How was it possible? You see, it wasn't. And they knew they must be separated for a time. He would hide in Krakow. She would hide in a nearby farm. And there would be a time -- long in the future, untold, impossible really -- but they didn't know that... or didn't admit the knowledge. And so they spent their last night together under a pear tree, speaking words that only that pear tree could bear, could lift up. But the words remained there... with the pears.

And so I have observed. Pears. They appear in conjunction with the Holocaust, with the fear of separation, with the inevitability of separation. And yet the pear is the sacred tree, the 'gift from the gods' that Odysseus notices at the palace of the Phaeacians. "Esto es 'le pera'" is a Spanish expression, used most often by adolescents to remark upon a legendary experience. In Korea, the white flowers of the pear tree represent the innocence in young women's faces and yet the destined-to-fall delicate petals are viewed in their evanescence as a denotation of melancholic but inescapable endings. The pear exists in between these poles -- of deep, everlasting affection and devastating endings. A swan song, indeed. The pear is the tragic beauty of the fruit world.

For Beatrice and Virgil, their pear is a non-existent longing and a dark reminder of deprivation and danger. They are starving, live in a treeless criss-crossed world, don't have any pears. They are in a state of longing, silence, and waiting. What do pears both possess and lack? The shape of a pear is... pear-shaped. A pear lacks structure as much as it holds its own in a roundly uneven, blushing little body. Eric Satie expressed as much when he titled a musical composition Trois morceaux en forme de poire (Three pieces in the form of a pear). Perhaps there is a form -- just a form we cannot quite describe or comprehend. So, how do we get inside of the pear to the 'incandescence' we know to be within?

Many feel that the fruit that Eve picked from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden was not the apple, but was the fig. Still others believe it to have been a pear. One such person is the artist Samuel Bak. Bak uses the pear as symbol repetitively in his work. Stone pears crumbling like a memorial in ruins.... the landscape behind in flames.... the sky full of smoke. Pears in harnesses, restrained, bound. The pear on an altar in front of a boy half made of stone... this pear painfully left lying next to a pair of boots. Whose boots? Or the painting called Envelope which is a painting of a pear collapsing, and yet full of other bulging pears... repetition... the creation of something in its own image... what lies within and yet cannot be reached... can only be repeated. Only these paintings can "speak the unspeakable" as Bak has said of the Holocaust.

Samuel Bak, Reflection (2003)

Samuel Bak, Present Absence (2003)

Samuel Bak, Sanctuary (2001)

Samuel Bak, Purification (2001)

I was lucky enough to work for a while as an intern at Pucker Gallery on Newbury Street in Boston -- this is how I became familiarized with this amazing artist. Bak also explains:

As a child, I had a feeling that if Adam gave up Paradise in order to taste the fruit that would give knowledge and a capacity to distinguish between good and evil, it must have been a pear. I felt that an apple, which in my childhood memories was usually something very sour, had nothing in common with the sensual, wonderful taste of a pear. (See Pucker's website for more Bak paintings.)

And perhaps that indefinable shape of a pear is very much a human shape. And perhaps it is this unusual shape, its momentary ripeness, the grace and yet weight of a pear -- all of which lead us to seeing it as man's very humanity. The pear, once fallen, always leans slightly, never finds a secure foundation upon itself or a settling upon the ground. So, St. Augustine relates to us in his Confessions a story. He and some friends once snuck into a neighbor's pear orchard. They greedily ravaged the trees of their fruit and later abandoned the fruit to rot. For, as Augustine explains, it was not their goal to eat the fruit, but merely "to destroy it." He was quite aware that this particular neighbor did not even possess the best pear orchard and that there were much tastier pears to find elsewhere... probably in his own orchard. Augustine uses this tale to bring up a discussion of mankind's inclination to sin... with no fortuitous gain. Within man's deepest impulses, there exists something out of balance... like the pear, rocking back and forth upon its unlevel, unsteady seat.

Oh, the clumsiness and inelegance of the pear. Oh, its blushing humility. Oh, its subtle perfume. Oh, its tempting transient sweetness. Oh, its white inner glow. Oh, its hidden juiciness. Oh, its improbable grace. Oh, the white delicacy of its flowering tree.

When the apple is ripe, it is picked. When the pear is ripe, it falls. Under a pear tree, we find ourselves amidst desire and entering awakening.

[Janie] was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid. (Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God)

Only a pear can say what no human can. And when a pear is transformed artistically, it speaks both more forcefully and more inaudibly. As Picasso said, art is "un instrument de guerre..." Art is not made to decorate our living-room walls, but "is a weapon, an instrument of war, in defense against the enemy." And this little pear too. This little pear. This little pear in your hand. Does it have to be a weapon too? This sweet little pear. Must everything be a weapon? A defense? Must we always be on guard? Where can this pear... where can we be safe?

xylography

Xylography is the art of woodcut wherein the artist takes a block of wood and carves out the parts of the design that will not be inked. This obviously requires an ability to foresee a thing in reverse. It takes a special kind of person to be able to create an image in its negative state. (Think of the negative of a photograph. My favorite such image is from Hitchcock's Rear Window.

 
During the opening montage, after the camera scans the neighboring apartments outside of Jeffries' window, it returns to sweep over the interior of his apartment, giving us non-verbal insight into the man behind the camera. At one point, we see a photographic negative of a woman before then being shown the cover of the fashion magazine on which the image was memorialized.)

1933 Indy Winner, Louis Meyer, film negative

Wood engraving is quite an ancient printmaking technique. Originating in China and Egypt in the early centuries A.D., woodcut made its way along trade and knowledge routes to Europe where it was used to print upon textiles. One of Europe's first paper mills was built in Xativa, Spain (now known as Jativa or St. Felipe de Javita in the ancient city of Valencia) in 1151. As this was under the time of the Muslim conquest of Spain, it follows that Arabs brought paper-making to Europe. In fact, the word 'ream' has its origins in the Arabic word, rizmah meaning "a bundle."

Still, because of paper's costliness, its fragility, and its associations with the Arabic world, it wasn't mass produced in a way as to enable woodcutting to truly develop until the 1400's, coinciding with the advent of the printing press. Interestingly, paper-making has a strong historical association with the clandestine and transgressive. The Italian feudal family, the Fabriano's, established a monopoly over paper-making in 1436 and first fined those caught making paper, then later banished them from the city limits and confiscated all of their property and assets. This will come into play again in a moment.

When paper finally became more available and less insubordinate, there followed an explosion of woodcuts -- of both religious and everyday scenes. Quality dropped as popularity rose until the Wolgemut family in Germany refined the art in their workshop in Nuremburg. At the time, Nuremburg was the hub of book publishing in Germany. The Wolgemut workshop was commissioned to engrave many a book illustration, including the Nuremburg Chronicle in 1491.

Page from Nuremburg Chronicle, 1491, featuring Constantinople, woodcut with hand coloring

This illustrated world history sophisticatedly integrated text and image, which together often did not present a unified message to the reader. For example, an early page in the book contains text presenting and then discounting Greek creation theories. Yet, the image on this page subversively critiques this critique by centering the imagery around the Greek letters for hyle, a concept that there is some consistent matter or energy underlying the materiality of all things. (Those Greeks were ahead of their time -- think atoms or the potential energy from the Big Bang being stored and released in later events...) The book is most famous, though, for its cityscapes which lost accuracy and verisimilitude the further the locations depicted were from Europe.

Turkey (looking like a medieval German city), from Nuremburg Chronicle

It should come as no surprise that out of the Wolgemut workshop came that apocalyptic and melancholic woodcutting master, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528).

Durer, Knight, Death, and Devil, 1513

Haunted by a dark take on life and an interest in the spirit within matter, Dürer (and Grünewald though more for his paintings) would later become an important inspiration for the 20th century German Expressionist movement.

"Why has God given me such magnificent talent? It is a curse as well as a great blessing."
"As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art." (Dürer)

And if it is simplicity that is sought, then it makes sense to turn to xylography. For what could be a more honest material than wood. Woodcut allows only the most essential marks, and requires a commitment to the material as one wrong cut will ruin the entire piece. Further, there is a sense of what is evident by what is cut away... the presence in absence:

Absence (by Luljeta Lleshanaku)

The moon
nicotine of a kiss...

A sideways glance
like the mast of a pirate ship
beyond a distant island

Albrecht Durer, St. Jerome in His Study, 1514

And in the persistence of wood, in its honesty and practicality, in its symbolic quality as rebirth, regeneration, the tradition of woodcutting has come to be deeply intertwined with German national identity. In 1936, as Germany marched towards perhaps its ugliest and darkest national moment, Wilhelm Waetzoldt wrote that Dürer's Knight, Death, and Devil:

...does not speak equally loud and clear to all times and all persons. Dürer's high thinking epoch perceived the triumphant organ sound of print. Fainthearted generations on the other hand heart more the harmonies of memento mori. Heroic souls love this engraving as Nietzsche did and as Adolf Hitler does today. They love it because it personifies victory. It is of course true that death will one day conquer us all, but is is equally true that a heroic man wins a moral victory over death. This is the eternal message of this print, the spiritual bond that unites Dürer's time and ours. Dürer's clarion call sounds to us across the centuries and finds once more an echo in our German hearts.

Thus, the role of the past becomes "to justify and validate the present... The print is ascribed a transhistorical essence whose 'truth' proscribes interpretative disagreement." (Keith Moxey, "Impossible Distance: Past and Present in the Study of Dürer and Grünewald," The Art Bulletin, Vol. 86, No. 4 (Dec 2004), pg.754)


Of course am I now reminded of the fantastic exhibition at the Guggenheim of late: Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918-1936.... in which was depicted the antithetical tendency away from Expressionism's "painterly and ideological chaos... backward in time... [towards] the 'modernity of the past,' the sudden but powerful attraction that German art history exerted over practitioners in the 1920s." (Kenneth Silver, "A More Durable Self," in Chaos and Classicism (New York: Guggenheim, 2010)

But to return more directly to xylography. The Expressionists loved it for its requirement for physical labor, its physical involvement with the medium, the Germanic spirit seemingly rooted in the material, its revealing the nature of the wood -- its grain and texture -- as much as the image desired by the artist. For:

In the beginning was the woodcut... They are like folksongs and folktales in which something of the sublime awe still lingers...something of the grace that helped even the crudest craftsmen during the Middle Ages to turn out his stammering to the praise of God still floats over them; in them the clumsy outlines grow out of the wood itself....(Mannheim Kunsthalle, 1920)

Form evolves necessarily out of material; it is not projected onto a emptiness (as with paint on canvas). The image becomes part of the material, and thus part of nature. Man's agency in the world cuts into existing space and nature; the 'new man' who is to transform the world was similarly to intervene in the world through an understanding of the medium (a sensitive take on what that world was and needed... rather than forcing upon that world a misguided vision.) Whatever their motivations, the woodcuts of the Expressionists remain powerfully understated.

Lyonel Feininger, Cathedral (Kathedrale), 1919

Erich Heckel, Männerbildnis (Self-Portrait), 1918

Erich Heckel, Beim Vorselen, 1914

I mentioned that the subversive nature of woodcut and print-making would be re-introduced and here we are at that point. For Heckel's art was deemed 'denegerate' by the Nazis and in January of 1944, his studio was bombed, set ablaze, and all his blocks and plates were hopelessly demolished.

And then there are Ukiyo-e  (浮世絵 literally "pictures of the floating world"), Japanese woodcuts which depict landscapes and historical tales. Ironically, these woodcuts use the solid medium to express the very opposite sensibility -- that of the ephemeral and the impermanent.

Hiroshige II, Cherry Blossoms

Evening Snow at Edo River

Hiroshige, Reeds in the Snow with a Wild Duck

Now we reach a completely different vein of influence. For these particular Japanese woodcuts were to inspire Art Nouveau artists and others such as Van Gogh, Klimt, and Toulouse-Lautrec among others. Whistler's moonlit Nocturne series were directly inspired from Ukiyo-e woodcuts.

Whistler, Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Cremorne Lights, 1872, Tate, London

James Whistler, Nocturne in Blue and Silver: Chelsea, 1871, Tate, London

Whistler hoped for these paintings to possess the lack of narrative content, the arrangement and the harmony of musical compositions.

Nocturne (by Eugene O'Neill)

The sunset gun booms out in hollow roar
Night breathes upon the waters of the bay
The river lies, a symphony in grey,
Melting in shadow on the further shore.

A sullen coal barge tugs its anchor chain
A shadow sinister, with one faint light
Flickering wanly in the dim twilight,
It lies upon the harbor like a stain.

Silence. Then through the stillness rings
The fretful echo of a seagull's scream,
As if one cried who sees within a dream
Deep rooted sorrow in the heart of things.

The cry the Sorrow knows and would complain
And impotently struggle to express --
Some secret shame, some hidden bitterness --
Yet evermore must sing the same refrain.

Silence once more. The air seems in a swoom
Beneath the heavens' thousand opening eyes
While from the far horizon's edge arise
The first faint silvery tresses of the moon.

And so the woods remain, "lovely, dark and deep." (Frost) And in our thematic xylographic moment, we live in wood, in the dark mysteries of the woods from whence the medium originates, in the simple, unpretentious honesty that it represents. For, from a single, simple block of wood echoes the memory of spirit, of fairy tales, and of sound itself. "The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach." (Henry Beston) And in these echoes, there is much to hear.

i'm sorry and i'm sorry

People often react badly to the phrase, "I'm sorry." At least this has been my experience. I think I need to be more specific here. If said as a genuine way to communicate remorse for a misstep or wrong against another person, then it is usually accepted. He yells something in anger at her during an argument. His comment moves way out of bounds of the context of the disagreement. She is immediately wounded, as he knew she would be... for it was part of his intention. Two hours later, he apologizes -- "I'm sorry" -- and she, having also calmed down after a long walk, accepts.

However, let's consider a different scenario. Your best friend and co-worker is sitting slumped at his desk. He mindlessly organizes papers into piles without even checking to see what they are all about. Clearly, something is wrong. When you get a chance, you pull him aside and ask if he needs to talk. He proceeds to explain how a woman he used to date is getting married. He just heard last night from a mutual friend. He knows she was someone special, someone he would never meet the likes of again. Yet, at the time, he could not commit to her. He wasn't ready -- timing getting in the way as it so often does. And now he aches through and through. He knows he has lost something irreplaceable. He pauses and finally finds himself able to lift his eyes up to meet yours. You look at him supportively and say "I'm sorry."

Just as suddenly, his air turns irritated and affronted. He turns away, turns back to his desk and starts re-shuffling the papers hastily and cursorily. "It's not your fault," he spits bitterly back at you.

"I'm sorry" can close doors as often as it can re-open them. I've thought long and hard about why there are such divergent reactions to this seemingly innocuous phrase. I recall my grandmother having an article posted on her fridge after her daughter had died in an accident. It listed all the things not to say as messages of condolence. I seem to remember "I'm sorry" as being one of them.

I'm sorry can be said as to express completely its opposite -- a total lack of regret as in William Carlos Williams' poem, This Is Just To Say:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Part of the problem seems to emanate from the fact that we, as English speakers, possess a limited number of phrases to address situations that are vastly different in need and response. The sociologist, Erving Goffman, categorized these phrases (including I'm sorry, Excuse me, Pardon me, etc.) as part of "remedial interchanges." Basically, these are first steps in acknowledging a transgression of social norms dictating accepted behavior... whether that violation was directly linked to you or not is where the problem seems to arise. In their article about the difference between I'm sorry and Excuse me (and the related challenges of explaining these differences to those for whom English is a second language), Ann Borkin and Susan Reinhart summarize I'm sorry:

I'm sorry is basically an expression of dismay or regret about a state of affairs viewed or portrayed as unfortunate by the speaker. It is not necessarily tied to occasions in which the regrettable state of affairs is the responsibility of the speaker; it is not necessarily tied to situations in which the regrettable state of affairs adversely affects the addressee; and it is not necessarily tied to situations in which there has been, or might be, an infraction of a social norm. In short, I'm sorry is not necessarily a remedy, as Goffman defines the term. (Ann Borkin & Susan Reinhart, "Excuse Me and I'm Sorry," TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Mar, 1978), pg. 60)

I have always felt a painful rejection when I have said I'm sorry to express a sort of universal sympathy, and yet have been misunderstood, misinterpreted... the comment's intentions being more along the lines of being sorry that one human did something to another, or that one human has to go through something painful or isolating. This is not the sort of sorry that is meant to express responsibility. It is meant to express compassion, shared humanity, empathy.

I don't know as many languages as I would like, but I do speak enough French and Spanish to get along. I have always appreciated the Spanish phrase, lo siento, as a much better way to express empathy and to distinguish this kind of support from an attempted remedy when one is at fault. The best translation I can give for lo siento is "I feel it." I love this phrase because, so often, as in the second scenario given at the start of this entry, it is exactly what I want to express. I feel it. I feel your pain, your mistakes, your regrets. I feel it and them and you and, very simply, I am here for you, as a human who goes through exactly the same things. In short, it seems to express to the listener the kind of intimate simpatico that he needs in his moment of weakness or doubt. For it is in those moments that we feel most alone.

The Japanese are considered to have an "apology first" culture. Apologies are easily and generously given, and forgiveness just as quickly accepted. In addition to having multiple ways to verbally express apologies and remorse -- all with subtle differences in terms of the seriousness of the event, the formality of the occasion, and the position of the addressee -- the Japanese use a variety of bows in place of saying I'm sorry. While the video is rather ridiculous and perhaps a parody, the ability to express regret, fault, or empathy through physicality is fundamentally attractive to me. The bow expresses our humility and simultaneously brings us closer to the intended receiver. I am humble before you -- not out of guilt, but because I am human. I have always thought that the phrase from the Bible, "The meek shall inherit the Earth" is not meant to be taken with meek as submissive and spineless, but rather is meant to imply a meekness which aligns with gentleness, humility, and tolerance. The most human kind of qualities. The kind of qualities we seek to embody in our very best moments.

The 'long ojigi' bow in the video brings us to the question of public apologies. According to Richard Joyce in his article "Apologizing," we live in the 'Age of Apologizing wherein:

The Pope has led the way, apologizing for almost a hundred actions perpetrated (or permitted) by the Roman Catholic church throughout the centuries -- from the Crusades and the Inquisition, to the treatment of Galileo and women (I understand numerous mea culpas will mark the millennium.) The Portuguese president has apologized for an episode in the fifteenth century, wherein thousands of Jewish refugees were forced to flee or convert (December, 1996). The American president has apologized to American victims of radiation tests (October, 1995), to victims of the "Tuskegee" medical experiments conducted between the 1930s and 1970s (May, 1997), and to African leaders for the whole slave trade (March, 1998). On December 11, 1997, the American Secretary of State apologized to African leaders for the international community's failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda. And so the list could go on, taking in apologies in South Africa over apartheid, in Australia regarding deeds of colonial racism, and from the German government concerning certain episodes of World War Two. (Richard Joyce, "Apologizing," Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Apr 1999), pg. 159)

When is something too big or overwhelming or too long-buried in the past to apologize for? Is this ever the case? Can an unrelated individual apologize for a group, a nation, the 'international community'? I don't have the answers to these questions, but it brings me again to the limitations of the verbal apology. History holds on -- deeply, physically, spatially -- and holds on for a long time... perhaps infinity. In that case, the time limit on apologizing never runs out. If we are to "be slow to judge," as Mrs. Curren reminds us in J.M. Coetzee's Age of Iron, then we must also be slow to understand and to resolve. Yet, at the same time, words do run out, do have a time limit, do seem to lose their effectiveness after years, decades, centuries of weight. Perhaps, then, it becomes more appropriate to apologize without words... for, in doing so, we do not become stuck in the perilous maze of language, but can express broader connectivity. One of my favorite examples of this was Christo's wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin in 1995.

Without words, or rather by using the language of space and time, Christo transformed the sublime into a collective moment of silence. The wrapping of the Reichstag spent time within a moment, shared it publically, and thereby presented the community, the nation, the world with a chance for a new spatial beginning.

Art, in this manner, can perhaps serve a critical role... a role more significant than an aesthetic purpose. As Suszi Gablik describes it*, art can enable us to share participation spatially and socially, thus transforming us somehow. In this sort of third space, you can "close your bodily eye, so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye.  Then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react upon others from the outside inwards." (Casper David Friedrich) In short, we can share the burden.

go natural

I was not alone when I first saw the new Wendy's ad for their 'Natural Cut' french fries and wondered what the heck that meant.  According to a recent article on Yahoo! Finance, what it means is that "inside the processing plant, the potatoes skip the step of getting steamed at such a high temperature that the skins burst off. Wendy's spuds go straight to the high tech cutters where they're sliced." Au naturel, indeed. The thing I started considering is... what exactly is "natural"? Is it a word like "authentic" which, for anyone who has taken collegiate or graduate level anthropology or sociology courses knows, is something people, nations, and adventurers seek and, in fact, seek to create... nullifying the authenticity ipso facto. Indeed, Theodor Adorno thought long and hard about authenticity. In his foreward to Adorno's The Jargon of Authenticity, Trent Schroyer describes how:

His basic thesis is that after World War II this philosophical perspective became an ideological mystification of human domination -- while pretending to be a critique of alienation. Use of existentialistic terms became, Adorno argues, a jargon: a mode of magical expression which Walter Benjamin called an "aura." In the aura of existentialism the historical need for meaning and liberation was expressed, but in a way that mystified the actual relation between language and its objective content. Adorno's critique focuses on the jargon's incapacity to express the relation between language and truth, in that it breaks the dialectic of language by making the intended object appear present by the idealization inherent in the word itself. The jargon, therefore, falls into an objectivism that conceals the difference between philosophical reflection and the in-itselfness of the object of reflection. Such objectivism loses the intent of reflection to maintain a self-consciousness of the mediation of fact through the thinking subject. Consequently, in the jargon objective consciousness is compressed into self-experience, and an idealism results.

In short, the 'authentic' becomes an empty term, an aura that one can seek through 'authentic' tourist experiences, but is ultimately jargon detached from meaning... and therefore lacks the presentation of any kind of truth. Similarly, 'natural' has become more convoluted syntax than language characterized by direct, unobscured meaning.

I am always telling my students to define relative terms. You can't just write "George and Lennie do not have a normal friendship" if you don't define what is this 'normal' of which you speak, I tell them. Similarly, natural (and especially in the vague haze of positivity in which we so often are smacked with it) presents the same problem. Does 'going natural' imply 'going native' (which is most definitely a more offensive, and yet more directive term)? Does it mean natural as in everyday? Or as in artless, ingenuous, unpretentious? Is it only a term which we are to relate to our diet? As in, eating organic, local, whole foods?

Even if we limit the phrase 'go natural' to the world of food and consumption choices, we are still left with much that is up in the air. An Australian company, Go Natural, assures its audience that natural is all about ingredients, but can still include "foods from the super healthy through to the extremely indulgent." Well, it seems we are in a process of definition by negation. Natural becomes what it is by what it is not... which still leaves us in a rather big void. It gets even more confusing if we try to turn to the process to define natural. A July 1, 2010 article on supermarketguru.com explains how both artificial and natural flavors are created in laboratories. In fact, it turns out that:

The distinction in flavorings -- natural versus artificial -- comes from the sources of these identical chemicals and may be likened to saying that an apple sold in a gas station is artificial and one sold from a fruit stand is natural... Artificial flavorings are simpler in composition and potentially safer because only safety-tested components are utilizes. Another difference between natural and artificial flavorings is cost. The search for 'natural' sources of chemical often requires that a manufacturer go to great lengths to obtain a given chemical... Furthermore, the process is costly. This pure natural chemical is identical to the version made in an organic chemist's laboratory, yet it is much more expensive than the synthetic alternative. Consumers pay a lot for natural flavorings. But these are in fact no better in quality, nor are they safer, than their cost-effective artificial counterparts.

Mark Bittman, and his many food manifestos, recently posed a similar question on his blog. In his own attempt to evade the difficult question, he redirected readers to Marion Nestle and her "Food Politics" blog. In her March 25 entry, she asked the question "Are processed 'junk' foods in trouble?" Her suggestion buoys the theory of the attraction of 'authenticity' in the implication that 'natural' has become more of a marketing technique than a word with weighty meaning.

But, I am not here to try and solve this puzzle. Rather, I wanted to try an interesting thought experiment and hope that you too will shed some light on your own personal definitions of 'natural.' Going to the authority of dictionary.com, I found 38 definitions for the word. Who knew natural was so unnaturally complicated? In order to fulfill tomorrow's theme and 'go natural,' I thought I would suggest a more proactive path to take with each of these various definitions in hope of elucidating the term and bringing it back out of its jargony-soupy-haze into a word and phrase we can more clearly grasp.

First, we start with natural, the adjective...

1. existing in or formed by nature (opposed to artificial)

"GO NATURAL": Go outside and sit on a rock. Having been a geology minor, I can tell you that rocks are assuredly "formed by nature" -- water, wind, air, salt, weight, time... so we are pretty safe on this one. If you can't find a rock big enough to sit on, at least pick one up. Hold something incontrovertibly natural.

2. based on the state of things in nature; constituted by nature

"GO NATURAL": Hmmm, well, this one already takes us on a more confusing, windy path. Isn't most everything and anything 'based on the state of things in nature'? The example sentence in this case suggests that this definition has to do with natural happenings... "Growth is a natural process." Well, not for everyone, I would argue. I've met some pretty immature 30-some-odd-year-old men. Perhaps we are meant to take this more concretely. In that case, I say, throw that rock you were holding. That would be an act 'based on the state' of that rock. And, if you were sitting on a rock, well, just remain sitting comfortably until we can sort this all out.

3. of or pertaining to nature of the universe: natural beauty

"GO NATURAL": Easiest one yet. Go to the nearest bar. Get tipsy enough that your spinning matches that of our tilted globe. Find the nearest 'natural beauty' -- this could be a 'natural blonde' or a brunette... doesn't really matter... you won't remember anyway. Drop her (or him) your best pick-up line, something along the lines of: "Was that an earthquake or did you just rock my world?" Take said beauty home and enjoy all things 'pertaining to the nature of the universe.'

4. of, or pertaining to, or occupied with the study of natural science: conducting natural experiments

"GO NATURAL": Please look back at #3. Need I say more? Continue conducting natural experiments.

5. in a state of nature; uncultivated, as land.

"GO NATURAL": This one might prove an interesting and worthy experiment. Try -- and I am speaking in all seriousness here -- to find a tract of land or piece of the earth near you that is uncultivated and existing in its utterly 'natural' form. This one, of course, requires you to recognize that uncultivated bears the suggestion of lacking human meddling. On the other hand, uncultivated can also mean lowbrow or artless... in which case, return to #3.

6. growing spontaneously, without being planted or tended by human hand, as vegetation

"GO NATURAL": For some reason, this one reminds me of Sam Shepard's eerie gothic play, Buried Child. Says Hallie, the rejected matriarch of the unforgettably dysfunctional family:

You can't force a thing to grow. You can't interfere with it. It's all hidden. It's all unseen. You just gotta wait till it pops up out of the ground. Tiny little shoot. Tiny little white shoot. All hairy and fragile. Strong enough. Strong enough to break the earth even. It's a miracle.

Go read the play. Even better, go see it. It will haunt you for weeks. You will never forget it.

7. having undergone little or no processing and containing no chemical additives

"GO NATURAL": Buy certified-organic ingredients and make a meal that contains no additives or preservatives and has not been processed. Take it slow and enjoy the process. Taste food as it is meant to be tasted. Savor the meal and the people with whom you share it. Make it for your husband. Or your wife. Or your children. Or your grandmother. Or your best friend. Or, if you can't find or think of anyone else, that natural beauty you picked up in a bar the other night. Who needs fast food when you can turn it into another winning pick-up line! "You be the Dairy Queen and I'll be your Burger King: You treat me right, and I'll do it your way."

8. having a real or physical existence, as opposed to one that is spiritual, intellectual, fictitious, etc.

"GO NATURAL": Plan a canoe trip. There is nothing more concretely physical than paddling all day against the wind, over the rapids, under the blazing heat, of portaging up and down mountains with a canoe balancing on your head, of sitting by the campfire at night becoming mesmerized by the flames as they pop and spark blue into the darkening night. Of course, in my humble opinion, while certainly not fictitious, this experience can also become highly spiritual. There goes all hope of separating those two.

9. of, or pertaining to, or proper to the nature or essential constitution: natural ability

"GO NATURAL": Try to remember what you were intrinsically good at as a child. For me, it was swimming, swinging all the way across the monkey bars unassisted, assuming a rather annoyed stance with arms crossed and lips pouting (hopefully not too often -- sorry Mom and Dad! :) ), being independent, and creating, directing, and acting in elaborate films with the neighbors. I think I was also a decent writer, because I never experienced intense pain of the scholastic variety.

10. proper to the circumstances of the case

"GO NATURAL": Check with a lawyer on this one. In my case, this would be my cousin. And I'm sure he would have some snarky reponse at the ready. And, yes, he does really like the word snarky.

11. free from affectation or constraint

"GO NATURAL": Go back to aforementioned lawyer in order to witness the total opposite: completely affected and constrained behavior and language. Yes, I just made a joke that stereotypes lawyers. It's okay. I'm a blonde, so I get it. And being completely comfortable in my own skin and hair color, I can even make those jokes and then laugh at them.

Three blondes were walking through the forest when they came upon a set of tracks.

The first blonde said, "Those are deer tracks."

The second blonde said, "No, those are elk tracks."

The third blonde said, "You are both wrong. Those are moose tracks."

The blondes were still arguing when the train hit them.

12. arising easily or spontaneously

"GO NATURAL": This one accords the perfect opportunity to smash your alarm clock and sleep until you wake naturally tomorrow. This is definitely the way life should be, the way we all should greet the day, pulled out from within, rather than being shocked out of a perfectly good, but totally unrepeatable, dream to an obnoxious, bleating alarm clock's incessant beeping. Try this tomorrow... but don't yell at me if your boss flies off the handle when you are three hours late. ("Oh!! 9am? I thought the meeting was at 9pm and I was just 10 hours early!) Also, you might need to go out and buy a new alarm clock.

13. constant with the nature or character of

"GO NATURAL": Isn't this what we would otherwise call consistent? Perhaps this is meant to address something like the natural course of a river, the natural reaction to a joke, or natural selection. In this last case, we sometimes give it the misnomer, survival of the fittest. Speaking of survival of the fittest, there are these cool races out there. They go by various names: Tough Mudder, Warrior Dash, Lashing Your Eyeballs to Prickly Cacti and Running Through Hot Coals... Anyway, train for one... because 'you do not whine - kids whine.'

14. in accordance with the nature of things: It was natural that he should hit back.

"GO NATURAL": Gotta love the example here. Is that ever natural? I guess I can think of scenarios... not ones I want to detail here. Sounds rather 'eye for an eye' though. Being as I am not sure I know what "the nature of things" is and being as I can only pose questions that help us to ponder that very phrase, I think... for #14... perhaps you should go back to the bar... I'll meet you there. I'd like a gin and tonic, Bombay Sapphire if they have it, with a twist of lime.

15. based upon the innate moral feeling of humankind

"GO NATURAL": Now we are getting into C . S. Lewis territory. For in Mere Christianity, his thoughtful consideration of religion and his explanation of how he went from an atheist back to a Christian, he reflected: "If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own..." his theory, of course, being that if all these religions and civilizations developed the same moral systems independently, then there must be something greater guiding all of us. Even if you are not Christian or not the least bit religious, this is still a wonderful read. Read Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis.

16. in conformity with the ordinary course of nature; not unusual or exceptional

"GO NATURAL": Become ordinary. Become one of the anonymous in the masses. Become a face in the crowd. This may sound facetious, but there is actually quite an art to be cultivated here. Yes, become a flâneur. For when you participate in the text of the street as it writes its symphony, you can also detatchedly observe and, in such, become a sort of narrator. Thus, there can be a power in your very unexceptionality. Expect a future Tomorrow's Theme to deal directly with the art of the flâneur.

The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world -- impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. -- Baudelaire

17. happening in the ordinary or usual course of things, without the intervention of accident, violence, etc.

"GO NATURAL": Oh sure, now you tell us that you were just kidding about it being 'natural' that he should hit the other guy back. I knew I had a funny feeling about that one... and the accident thing? What about natural disasters? Geez, I suppose there is no accident there. Actually, I guess you could argue there isn't. I mean, in those cases, we (i.e. humans) are often the accident. I took a great course in college in the Geology department about just this sort of thing. I don't recall the course's title. I think it was something like: "Freakin' idiots who build million dollar homes on the narrowest spits of land where they are obviously interfering with the natural process of beach erosion or other lame-o's who build similarly expensive homes on top of cliffs which have a history of landslides or in flood plains and then are surprised when they wash away"

18. related only by birth; of no legal relationship; illegitimate

"GO NATURAL": Whoa! Slow down there, buster! Did we just slide from lovely thoughts of your natural brothers and sisters to the entire issue of illegitimacy in the same dictionary definition? And did you know that illegitimate also used to mean acting in plays that were technically called 'musicals' because they added a couple of fluff songs in order that they weren't categorized as being straight-up dramatic plays?... reason being because only certain playhouses were legally able to put those on. Go write such an illegitimate play. Or just go to Broadway and see a real musical... or perhaps an illegitimate one.

19. related by blood rather than adoption

"GO NATURAL": True, but this is where taking natural literally gets stupid. Adoption is a beautiful thing when done right and carefully. It's unfortunate that generous, loving parents exist who want to raise a child and can't because of an adoption process that is unwieldy, extremely expensive, and way too time-consuming. Go give some love. Become a mentor... or a Big Brother... or any similar such organization.

20. based on what is learned from nature rather than on revelation

"GO NATURAL": Since most of us probably aren't having revelations on a normal basis, this one seems relatively attainable as is. But get this. There's an intriguing circularity here that I am not sure you are aware of. On dictionary.com, the "what" in the above definition is underlined. That interested me and when I clicked on it I came, not surprisingly, to the definition of what. The 15th is my favorite: "British: don't you agree?: An unusual chap, what?" ... but it is the 17th that completes the circle: "the true nature or identity of something"... the what, the how, the who, the natural! Do something circular in honor of not having to have revelations... perhaps hula-hooping.

21. true to or closely imitating nature

"GO NATURAL": Wait. Is this for real? What happened to "formed by nature," and "in a state of nature," and "in accordance with the nature of things"? I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery because, in this case, imitation is sincerity itself. This means that there is no distinction between a natural blonde and a 'natural' blonde. I guess this means we should celebrate with another blonde joke.

BLONDE: "Excuse me, what time is it right now?"

WOMAN: "It's 11:25PM."

BLONDE: (confused look on face) "You know, it's the weirdest thing, I've asked that question thirty times today, and every time someone gives me a different answer." 

22.  unenlightened or unregenerate

"GO NATURAL": Considering that we all want to be enlightened, I suggest that we try to become more enlightened. Seriously, I think this one reflects badly on us. I mean if being unenlightened is the normal, the natural state of things, then perhaps we need to change normal altogether. Sit under a Bodhi tree and unfetter yourself from the wheel.

23. being such by nature

"GO NATURAL": Well now dictionary.com is getting all snarky on us. Defining a word with itself? That is one of the first no-nos of vocabulary building. Speaking of which, those who have a stronger vocabulary tend also to have a higher IQ. Pull out those cards and work on some vocab. I'm just saying... or read Schott's column in Times: Schott's Vocab... and be introduced to unusual lexicon in a more palatable way.

Go natural, indeed. I'm going to stop at 23 because the ensuing definitions have mostly to do with music, cards, color, or Afros... no I'm completely serious on that last one.

Anyway, it is way too nice outside and in anticipation of 'going natural' the best I know how, I am going to reintroduce myself to natural sunlight, natural forces like the wind, natural sounds like birds and kids playing outside, and natural processes like me moving my feet back and forth and swinging my arms... a.k.a. walking... or in this case, strolling, ambling, or promenading... so that I can invite other natural tendencies... like my natural tendency to think and over-think and digress... and to thank god that I wrote this entire entry about 'going natural' without mentioning nudist colonies... until now... shoot!.... so, off I go... until tomorrow... when we meet again... naturally!

letter to yourself

In her book, The Poet's Pen, Betty Bonham Lies has innumerable suggestions of prompts to use in a writer's notebook and, more importantly, to use as a way for students "to look at themselves through the somewhat distancing lens of language." (Betty Bonham Lies, The Poet's Pen: Writing Poetry with Middle and High School Students (Portsmouth, NH: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1993), p. 33)

Tomorrow, I borrow (and slightly alter) such a prompt from Ms. Lies and encourage you to attempt a similar exercise... pondered is good; written is better.

Write a letter back to yourself from the you of 5 years from now.

Dear five-year-ago self,

To write to you is to write to a me that I no longer completely recognize. To put words down for you to read is to let you in on the secret of how you have grown, of what has emerged, of what you have left behind.

My needs are not yours. Yours included deep and lasting love, stability, more freedom of expression, and greater self-actualization. As I write to you today, you are more integrated, more perceptive (inwardly and outwardly), more accepting... and even, I would say, simpler... in that beautiful circularity where a transient simplicity is attained only after passing through a challenging complexity. You participate in 'peak experiences' (à la Maslow) wherein you fully release to feel "limitless horizons opening up to the vision, [where you have] the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before..."

You have rested and relaxed into the very essence of your being making others, and you, more comfortable with you... and easing you into the flow of life.

And yet, there are consistencies. I know the aches you are feeling now. I still feel those. They mutate and shift shapes and transform, but they still remain within your core. Yes, you are still sensitive. Acutely so. It's okay -- stop fighting it. You have always known, but not always trusted, that this is a rudimentary aspect of your being. Though sometimes a flaw, it is -- like most flaws -- also a profound strength. Your sensitivity enables you to observe closely and mindfully. It endows you with the quality of being a good listener. It lets the world permeate you to dangerous intensities where you feel a sort of cosmic pain and weight. Yet, it also carries you to lofty and distant peaks from whose purview you see the sweep of time and space, mountains of the genuine, crystal lakes of honor, grasslands of shimmering virtue, winds tickling the expanse with gentle, generous love. Yes, you feel deeply. But it still does not take you much to be moved... perhaps just the weightlessness of a hummingbird appearing and disappearing before you, its wings fluttering so rapidly as to be almost completely still, to be hovering in space with utter effortlessness.... the manifestation of pure grace.

Yes, you are still sensitive. However, what you have been able to do is to direct that sensitivity more towards the needs of others, less towards those insecurities that still haunt you now. You will grow from those, move on. If time is like a river, than I am merely wading further down in the calm pools lit by blue twilight. You will move through the rapids. You will move towards me. You are moving towards me.

Your fears are not my fears. You fear sometimes that you will not be understood, will give love that will not be returned, will reach and reach and never arrive. You will be loved -- deeply and profoundly. You will arrive, though you will then continue on towards new goals, but with a greater sense of direction and meaning and ability to give back. You will never be completely understood. You know that now. Don't hold on to that fear. Love is not rooted in understanding, but in trying to understand... the road always more important than the destination.

"The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul..."

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"It was a strange kiss. It was a beautiful kiss.
It seemed to last a long time.
It seemed to last a lifetime."

- Christian Hawkey

"And it seems like the time when after doubt
   Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
    And be my love in the rain."

- Robert Frost

"A mere eyelid's distance between you and me.

It took us a long time to discover the number zero...

I want to kiss you."

- Amy Uyematsu

I am here. You are there. Don't be afraid - I am here. Trust in the leap. Trust in the space between eyelids. Trust that the river's rapids will ease into the tranquil pools where I am now standing... bathing... gliding onwards. Don't thrash. Stop clenching. I love you without completely understanding you. I am so glad to be the me you are moving towards.

"The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
             Is lovely yet...
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

- William Wordsworth

Until we meet... again...

Yours,
The future you

pop-up

 
"All around the Mulberry bush,
the monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey stopped to pull up his sock.
Pop goes the weasel!"

For the longest time, the phrase "pop" would most likely take the listener's brain back to something from his childhood -- the nursery rhyme, pop-up toys themselves, a jack-n-the-box, soda 'pop', or even that feeling of sudden dread quickly erased by amusement when a slightly older cousin would 'pop' out from behind a door to scream 'boo!' or to end a long overdue game of hide-and-go-seek.

Speaking of the nursery rhyme... are those some of the strangest lyrics you have ever heard? The general consensus is that they are mere nonsense (which is, of course, the "safe" interpretation.) It's interesting, though, to discover that Victorian who's who (them again!!) were quite concerned about the pernicious innuendos inherent in the song (which, by the way, has spent a significant portion of its life not as a children's song, but as a rather vogue dance...yo, let's pop the weasel!) In an 1841 educational charity's journal article, the perturbed author wrote in a dither:

The want of school songs is still so great that, in several recent numbers of the Monthly Paper, correspondents have felt themselves justified in offering very questionable verses to be sung to the meagre melodies of ephemeral street or negro songs. Last, and worst of all, there is one gravely put forth for "Pop goes the weasel," an air so thoroughly debasing in its character, that almost every species of ribaldry and low wit has been rendered into rhyme to suit it. There is nothing more contagious and pestilent than some kinds of harmony.

Well, we all know how 'contagious' particularly annoying song lyrics can be ("Tik tok on the clock, but the party don't stop"); however, it appears we have safely entered an era when all that is coarse, salacious, risqué, and 'thoroughly debasing in character' is not only enjoyed immensely but deemed perfectly appropriate to share with and teach to our five year-olds.


Of late though, the phrase 'pop-up' has gained a distinctly more seasoned and, indeed fetishizingly hip, aspect. The movement from childhood memories to adult dining choices (skipping thankfully over the profusion of computer pop-up ads with which you have to deal every day) has proven both swift and perhaps long overdue. For where could the trend of pop-up restaurants and stores take hold better than a country founded upon manifest destiny -- always racing after the newest, the cutting-edge; always racing after what thrills in the moment, always pushing and chasing after the last and greatest frontier. In this case, it isn't the 'first' that matters at all, but, in fact, only the very last.


And so, to stay au courant, to sail ahead of the curve, one now remains alert to what will pop-up and then disappear, what must be sampled, experience, bought not only because it is the newest but now (exquisitely, electrifyingly!) because it will just as rapidly vanish. Sweet honey-dripping, lip-smacking, drool-inducing deliciousness of the exquisitely ephemeral.


Most every major newspaper in the country now lists pop-ups as part of its Weekend Events section. This weekend in L.A., for example, the skate-alt-beach culture magazine Foam is hosting a party with pop-up shops with proceeds going to Japan relief. This party and its shopping frenzy will take place at the swank destination of a Venice parking lot, no less. Talk about temporary. Talk about L.A. and its cult of the car.


The social website, Ning, has a new page devoted to all events, restaurants, and shops popping-up in London. Pop-up retail has long been materializing in big-box stores like Target, KMart, and Kohl's as popular designers like Vera Wang, Paul & Joe, Zac Posen, and Alexa Chung create looks and make-up and styles that have made over-sized, chain stores trendy again. Those in NYC may be following the website, Socially Superlative which claims to put you on the front lines of the ever popping-up and down battle by helping you "Be the First in the Know."


And so we jump on the bandwagon of massculsivity, of planned spontaneity (omg!!! I mean just look at this very blog's tagline -- thank god I am so on trend!), of "nowism." Perhaps initially derived from poor market conditions (pop-ups require little overhead and no long-term commitment), the pop-up power is passing now to branding and marketing firms wise enough to take advantage of the trend. Agencies like Alt Terrain offer nontraditional guerilla strategies with street teams, online postings, ambient media, and even 'cultural influencer marketing' -- this last working on the age-old knowledge that word-of-mouth 'buzz' from those in-the-know is much better than paying millions for a Superbowl ad.


So what's the latest? Well, it certainly seems appropriate to take a look at some of the buzz-worthy pop-ups in New York City, our very own 'global city' in the sense of Saskia Sassen's sociological take on the term wherein cities are:

sites where the many different cultures of resistance, subversion, contestation of power can become present to each other, aware of each other, in a way they cannot on a plantation or in a small town where the diversity is lacking. Cities have become international spaces for a diversity of actors and subjects. They have of course always been so, though perhaps a bit less than today and in a different way from today. Cities are new frontier zones where actors from many many different types of struggles and national origins can come together. (Saskia Sassen, "Women in the Global City: Exploitation and Empowerment," LOLA Press No.1)

There is Limited Time Only, a new pop-up venture by James Beard Award winning chef RJ Cooper with a "20 course journey menu nightly from April 27-May 8."

There is What Happens Now, from Dovetail's John Fraser... an experience that will last for only 9-months with a menu and decor that shifts thematically every 30 days... right now, life once again imitates art as the current theme revolves around the atmosphere and creative interpretation of Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party.

Auguste Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881), Washington D.C.

And the Guerilla Culinary Brigade will most likely soon be hosting another Feast, so get on their mailing list to be kept abreast.

Despite the appearance of breezy aplomb with which it seems these experiences pop up and then dissolve like mist, Alan Phillips (operator of the aforementioned Guerilla Culinary Brigade) addresses the sweat, blood and tears that lies behind the veil of finesse and facility. Those who make it through the obstacle coarse of challenges, he ultimately deems "either clinically insane or very stupid." Welcome to the club.

Time and identity are again re-arranged and metamorphosed when a 1920's Speakeasy bar will pop up this weekend on Wooster Street.

Blink and you will miss all of this and not be part of the here-today-gone-tomorrow refreshed, re-envisioned, transient vanguard. And it makes one wonder what we are striving for. With 'creating a moment' being the goal, what is lost of those places, restaurants, experiences that build and develop and prevail? Why are we so enamored with whispering secrets of the cool, the "in," the exclusive in each other's ears as high school cliques revive through a sort of pop-up in-crowd? Why has even our branding gone 'underground' through guerilla tactics borrowed from warfare where surprise attack, ambush, and awareness of vulnerable targets have created countervailing strategies of the counter-insurgency?

Perhaps, like so many forces in opposition, the prevalence of pop-ups may make us appreciate the long-lasting sustainability of brick-and-mortar firm realities... such as Delmonico's in New York City or the Union Oyster House in Boston.

The reliable, the persistent, the survivors clinging onto abiding existence: these all speak of a strength of endurance that we may yet still value, despite the lure of the always new and always temporary. For in that beguiling unexplored territory lies a potential snare... that what others will say when they look back at us is that we lived in "a culture that chose to bury itself in order to definitively escape its own shadow..." that like the mirage of Vegas when we witness it "rise whole from the desert in the radiance of advertising at dusk, and then return to the desert when dawn breaks..." we are participating in a moment, an experience, a bursting bubble that is only that which it effaces and it "effaces any support and any depth, and that it is this liquidation, this reabsorption of everything into the surface.... that plunges us into this stupefied, hyperreal euphoria that we would not exchange for anything else, and that is the empty and inescapable form of seduction." (Jean Baudrillard, trans. by Sheila Faria Glaser, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), pgs. 92-94)