life and art

Over coffee on State Street, we talked about art. At least, I interpreted everything through the lens of art, or people engaging in art, or, more precisely, people allowing their own art to flow.

It is the kind of conversation that you can have when you’re not worried about something hugely more important – as in your kids getting to their orchestra rehearsal on time, or your own employability.

Or maybe it is all hugely important and we just don’t understand this early enough, when we can still do something about it. Like go paint a canvas, or write a memoir.

It was just an idle conversation. I did not immediately get out my paintbrush afterwards. That would have been foolish.

But I did take stock. There in that coffee shop, where students look like the murals on the walls and the murals on the walls look like Italian frescoes and none of it is genuine but all is calm and, in fact, quite beautiful.



two pairs of sandals and two books



three coffee cups

a musing

Should you be scared of hornets? Wasps?

Even if their bite has no punch to it? No substance?

Reading a quite lovely morning post on Ann’s blog today and then the comments that followed made me wonder about this.

And wouldn't you know it! Today, I came across this:





Harmless, unless you get too close.

return

I thought long and hard about what should be included in today’s post.

On the surface, posting would have to be counted as easy: I was in Chicago for the day.





I even met a young couple who had set up shop baking the most exquisite pastries. They're from Palermo, in Sicily. With a story. Just not my story.





But in fact, I had only three things on my mind and they were not the buildings of Chicago, nor the Pasticceria Natalina.

I was preoccupied with saying goodbye to daughters (especially the one who was heading back East)…





..and with returning home, on the road that I know better than any other – I 90 – winding its misty, rainy way back to Madison...





I did make a brief stop at Ed’s farmette, to see how the rains had benefited the plant life out there. Indeed, things were looking good.





(That's two. The third? It's just one of those things.)

And so I came home.

market watch

I like movement. My own, sure, but also of those around me. Man, watch her navigate that street! Look at that guy push his way to the front!

Markets are the best for this. No one is still, life is not boring.

For a farmer, I suppose selling food is almost restful. Compared to planting, tilling, reaping, this is easy stuff.

For me (and yes, I have said this before, numerous times), there’s something immensely beautiful in that final act of presenting the produce. Here it is, I'm showing it off for you, the best of the best.






Just a few photos today. My daughters are distracting me (in the best ways!) and so I’m hardly remembering that I have a camera banging my hip during the market runs. The one above and the next two down are from the Westside Community Market and the last two are from the Farmers’ Market on the Square. All are of women farmers, or their daughters. A coincidence? Possibly. Or could it be that they struck me as especially beautiful this week, the week of daughters?

a thousand bugs

I am a newcomer to Wisconsin. Barely twenty-five years old. A babe. Newly partnered. Married even. Still working on my dissertation (never to finish working on my dissertation, but I do not know this at the time).

We are renting an apartment just at the edge of west Madison. Cornfields outside. (These days there are endless suburban homes growing in the once fertile corn soil.)

It’s August. Watch that corn grow!

The night is warm. We’re young, we stay out later than one would now.

But eventually we roll back to our wee little apartment, with the view of endless sky.

Turn key in lock, open door, look up. A million bugs cover the ceiling. Grain gnats, I call them, but who know what they are. They moved in by way of the small openings in the screen. This is their home. I am the outsider.


Almost thirty years have passed since that day with the bugs.

I am in my condo now.





Daughters, born, schooled, departed, are now back home on a brief visit.

The condo is almost finished. Almost almost. But there are no screens on my large glass doors.

Night is cool, the sound of crickets is so enticing. I crack the door to the fantastic balcony and doze.

Near midnight, I wake up. A thousand, no, a million bugs cover the spotlighted ceiling. Baby mosquitoes? Flies? Who are you? What are you doing here?

I’m not proud of swatting them, but swat I do. For hours. I knock down and break things (good bye ceramic woman of Russia), I wipe up bug corpses, I leave splotches on the freshly painted ceiling and walls.

Mosquitoes, flies, grain gnats. There is no such thing as a pristine wall, a clean slate, an untarnished surface. Not for long, anyway.

Of course, I can just keep the glass door closed after the sun sets...

friends and lovers

Biking to work. Hot, hot now, to the point that grasses appear permanently stuck in ther yellowness.

Pause by the lake. France? No, Madison.





After teaching, I’m there again, by the lake. Looking at the familiar Madison Union Terrace tables and chairs. And people, engrossed in each other (can’t be the food) leaning into them, right there, by the water.





Pick up a box (okay, four boxes) of sushi in the early evening and head west, to Spring Green. American Players Theater – we have been going there for years. And years. (Remind you of Central Park’s outdoor theater?)

Two people (each with white hair) walk down to the stage. They hold hands.





The show starts. Shakespeare. Much Ado About Nothing. Why hadn’t I ever noticed how mean Claudio is to his beloved? I notice now. Her tears, her frustration.

We drive back in that familiar string of returning cars. In the forty minute ride back to town, the ipod is plugged into the ancient tape recorder of the car and familiar stuff comes on. We’re used to singing together, daughters and I.

Such a bright moon ahead, just over the road.

For I can’t help, falling in love with you...

how to impress the urbane urbanites without really trying

They come for their handful of vacation days home to Madison.

They have become big city women. Their homes are in D.C. and in Boston. I am the small town kid now. I woo them back here with the smell of meadow flowers and the sounds of evening music on the Square.

The day is hot. I finish teaching. We set out on a seventeen mile bike loop along the southern borders of Madison.

It never fails to shake up a city slicker – how quickly Madison, the town, sheds its urban veneer and turns into splendid countryside.



the beginning of the bike loop



a mile or two later...


They have done this loop before, but they ooh and ah and laugh as butterflies circle their faces and birds provide an ongoing soundtrack of the best country music.





In the evening, we sit at a table and munch on crab salad and trout served on roasted summer corn. The Chamber Orchestra is finishing its season. We are finishing a week of bliss.





Happy birthday, little S.! To another great year for you in the nation’s capital, from one who watches you proudly from a small green corner here, in Wisconsin’s capital.

the ride in

Last week I grabbed rides and took the bus. Today, I biked to work.

Oh, I knew it would be good. I know my paths. Swing behind Borders, turn into Shorewood, not much traffic and then – you are by the lake. Morning light, dipping tree branches, water flowers, the occasional boats.

Tell me you would not like to pass this every day on your way to work:

real?

Well, yes. It's a pot, with flowers. It's on my balcony table. It has the colors of the Mediterranean.

ButI'm forced to hide behind it. Work. Teaching, this week.

I'm here, but necessarily, I'm (temporarily) preoccupied. Hiding. But not out of sight.

(note: the plant is real; the rest? only a reflection)

from behind the willow

It’s my favorite photo, of the dozen or so that I took today (I know, a paltry amount; it says something about the nature of my day).

Why?

I like the idea right now of being hidden, peering from within.

two markets and an airport

It wasn’t until 3 at night that the last of the weary travelers arrived at the condo. Her suitcase came later. Or, rather, before anyone was up, I drove to our airport to retrieve it.

I mention this because the episode speaks so much to the kind of place I live in. Flights get delayed or canceled. Suitcases don’t necessarily travel with you. The airport is within a hiccup of where I live. And as you approach the terminal, you see not hangars and warehouses and car rental barracks. You see this:





Naturally, by mid morning I am ready for the Saturday markets.

I have two markets just outside my door. I choose the Westside Community market for today (the other, the Hilldale market, gets my business Wednesdays morning). And for old times sake, I also scoot down to the Madison Farmers' Market at Capitol Square.

We’re market nuts, all of us. We go because of the quality foods, sure, and we go for that stubborn adherence to the fresh and honest: what we buy got ripped from the fields just this morning, yes, of course. It better have been.

And then, there’s that link to the soil. A personal connection to it (via the farmer). It makes us feel better about the lives we lead – disassociated as we are from producing much of anything except paper and ideas and most often not even that.

We take the produce out of the framer’s hand and it’s almost as good as getting dirt under our own nails, except you don’t have to scrub your hands and apply lotion to any calluses afterwards.

So it’s curious that, at the Westside Community Market, the one right outsied my door, I should first go not to the farmers’ stands, but to the booth with Potter’s crackers. The young cracker guy was so enthusiastic about his crackers last week (consider: roasted corn and onion, or basil walnut pesto, or rhubarb cinnamon…) that it all rubbed off on me. I positively skipped the whole way home after eating his crackers. It's like getting a massage: the glow lasts for a whole ten, fifteen minutes afterwards! (Only it's cheaper to go with the crackers than with a massage. )




And there are other bakers at this market – a whole little band of them who do scones and muffins better than anyone else in town.

I do not neglect the real stuff either. The stuff that grows and causes nails to get dirty. Tomatoes. Cucumbers. Flowers. I pick carefully. It all must look good, smell good and the sellers must appear like they’ll recognize me six months hence.









The downtown market, on the other hand, is familiar ground. I feel like it’s a child that has become famous and there’s nothing left to do but check in and say hi every now and then. Maybe ask for an autograph. These guys are doing well, here, on the Square!

No matter. A quarter of a century of market going in Madison has pushed me there, downtown, and I am not likely to turn my back on it all simply because I have a market now just outside my door. There are many hours in a Saturday morning. And one can never have too many market experiences. Hands stay clean. Refrigerator is full, flower vases are stocked for the week.

painters

Two of them. Not the kind that paint houses. Canvases. They don’t know each other and neither has met me, but we’re friends.

They’re Ocean readers – and so they know far more of my life than I of theirs.

A year ago I complained to one (lili) that I could not imagine her because I hadn’t a clue as to what she looked like. The next week I got in the mail a sketch she had done of herself.

Yesterday, the other (dande) sent me a couple of prints of his paintings. As a housewarming gift. Stunningly gorgeous.

None of my friends (the kind that I actually have met) paint canvases. Some dabble in photography; hey, the whole world now dabbles in photography – you practically can’t help it, every gadget you get has some pixel or other attached to it.

But lili and dande actually put paint to canvas and the results adorn galleries and great spaces.

It struck me how important these two have become in my days. Sometimes I write a post with one or the other in mind, though they don’t know it, nor is it entirely obvious, if they should be reading.

Their words – in comments and longer emails -- are songs to me, coming as they do from their artistic souls. I listen to them carefully, I think about what they have to say.

This post is for the two of you – lili and dande. With thanks.

(the photos are a study of one bee today, making her way through the flowers on my balcony)

home

I went back to the loft this afternoon, handed over the keys and said good bye.

No big, protracted spin through the two years there. No last photos of dusty interiors. No pausing to take one final whiff of warehouse air. None of it.

I was matter of fact: here are the keys. I want my deposit. Good bye.

But moving is more heady than that. You’re out of that place now. What memories are pounding away at you? What love do you recall? What pain?

I go over to the waterfront – just a few steps (the loft is near Madison’s southern lakes). Fishermen. My best buds! (I know none of them, nor they me). I’ve loved you in the summer, I’ve loved you all winter long (it’s unreciprocated – they really do not know who I am)! I’ll miss you every waking minute of my condo days!




(Surely an exaggeration)... Sigh...


I’m done with the move. Boxes unpacked, feet up, computers on. Tomorrow, my daughters are flying over to inspect the place.

Restless. I drive to the quiet of the meadows and fields. The sun is low now. A few clouds, open fields, a band of sunflowers, standing tall on this hot, dry evening.




Back at the condo now. I hear a knock on the door. Come up to the rooftop. We’re just talking and watching the lightening move across the sky.

I go up with a glass of rosé and talk for an hour, another hour, until my eyes cannot take it anymore. I drift in and out of the back and forth. Shadows create perfect images of our little circle, there around the twelth floor table.




I have moved. Finally.

the day's chores

One person may be so intensely preoccupied with lecture preparation that she may not have the time to write long posts this week.

...Even though she thinks nothing of getting up early, so very early, before her morning class early, to go to the Hilldale market, where another person, considerably smaller, younger, and with a more charming array of tasks, is engaged in sorting through flowers.





Meanwhile, on campus, someone turned the sprinkler on the lawns of Bascom Hill. We are so dry here, in Madison! So dry! Who appreciated this most? Maybe these guys, who suddenly find themselves in close proximity to their beloved mud. For slinging, I guess. Children arrange bouquets of flowers, wasps sling mud. It's in the nature of things.

changes

Stay away long enough, and you’ll appreciate how the world moves forward in your absence.

Take State Street. It’s been a while since I walked down Madison’s pseudo-pedestrian byway. (In my mind, any street that permits: buses, motorbikes, delivery vans, spaced-out drivers who think the rules do not apply to them – is not a pedestrian street proper. It is a mixed bag. State Street is a mixed bag)

I walk, I admire.

What, this Paris fad has made it to Madison? Can’t we adopt great baguettes and lunches with a glass of rosé wine instead?



I’m betting it wont catch on. Agreed?

work

As if the move didn’t wipe me out completely. Today, the week of summer teaching begins.

The Internet has redefined nearly everything I do. But nowhere have I felt its impact as much as in my job. I can now, for the most part, work at home (or in France, or in Greenland. Maybe not Greenland. Iceland for sure.) The cursed aspect of it is that it all happened after my kids were grown.

But, teaching requires a hike to campus and today I started practicing that hike from my new abode. I can walk (a tad long). I can bike (a tad lazy today). I can take the bus. So many options! Thrilling, really. None require the use of a car. Fantastic.

I get to campus late. The afternoon sun has been a fixture here, in the Midwest for days. Weeks, even. I haven’t experienced rain in Madison at all this summer. (Irrelevant comment: I’ve been away; relevant comment: I’ve been here for a while now.) It’s such a pretty sight – a quiet campus, with only the occasional hard working student, taking her late day readings outside.





Oh, wait. She’s engrossed alright. Relishing the light, the moment of stillness. But note the telltale sign of orange on the cover. She’s found her quiet spot to take out the book (HP).

I’m not a Potter nut, but I love hoopla in principle, so much so that I would have been at Borders watching all the craziness at midnight last Friday, except that I fell asleep.

Read on, ye woman of Potter. What better way is there to spend a warm, July late afternoon?

uninvited guests

They’re what makes your day move forward, the economy grow and your unfinished mess get kicked under the bed. What more could you want in life.

Mine were especially welcome. I have grown weary with the packing and unpacking deal. I have lost my sense of the appropriate. Sometimes I am not even rational. I pick up a clock, look at it, toss it with a shrug into the waste bin. Time should not matter.

And still, there is the loft to clean, the condo to organize, the class to teach -- the usual plethora of unfascinating activities, ones I must not lose track of.

But the uninvited guests change things for me. I turn on an internal engine for them. I rush. I get things done.


It is the hour of the visit. They come, they admire (so sweet), they place a special bottle in my new wine cooler. They leave. I look around me and there is not a box in sight. Pristine, almost. Wouldn’t you say? A corner of my personal heaven.




Oh, the paintings aren’t up and there are stacks of this and that most everywhere (and please do not look under any functional piece of furniture), but there are also neat, empty spaces which demonstrate resolve on my part to make this not an embarrassment but an opportunity to surge forward and present well.

If you're looking for something productive to do with your evening, become an uninvited guest. If I know and trust you I'll give you the special elevator code. And I'll love you forever. Really.

markets

Waking up in a new city is better than great. Get going. Explore. Breakfast in a café! Fantastic.

Waking up in my new condo is not significantly different. It’s six! In an hour the market opens. Right across the street. Reason enough to live here.

I go early. Before the official opening at 7.

I take pictures. The sun is just touching the tent tops.


And then I get a scold. Don't take pictures without persmission!

Whose? In anticipation of the perfect shot?

We have a brief exchange, but it is pointless. I never argue much with people who find themselves within range of my camera without wanting to be there, even if I have all the rights under the sun conferred upon me.

But it caused me to consider this: when I was in Nice, a million otherss were there with me. Most everyone eventually made it to the market. 99% took photos. Imagine a vendor shooing away someone with a camera! Can't be done. You'd spend all your time alianating the bulk of your crowd.

On the other hand, take a village in Brittany and you, the photographer, are on thin ice. For instance, don't even try to chase photos of meat vendors. And do not elbow your way past crowds who are buying. Or else.

The market across the street from me here, in Madison, is like Brittany. The market on the Square is like Nice. So I guess I am back in northern France. Only the sun is hot and the people are speaking only English.

(setting up)









(watching)







(selling)