Everydayness

Nighthawks (1942) - Edward Hopper
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A conversion at a Edward Hopper Exhibit:

Docent: I have seen you before. You like Edward Hopper.

Young Man: Yes. I do.

Docent: I hope you are not thinking of doing 'A Thomas Crown' on the Hopper exihibit.

Young Man: I beg you pardon?

Docent: Sorry. A bad joke.

Docent (inclining his head towards 'Nighthawks'): What do you like about it?

Young Man: By the way, I am Binx Bolling. I like to hear what you have to say first.

Docent (shaking Bolling's hand): Glad to meet you, sir. I am Soren Regeneré.

First of all, Mr. Bolling, Hopper has another name for this 1942 oil on canvas. He also called it The Wanderers.

The most authoritative voice on Hopper and his art is his wife, Josephine. Jo, for short, to the artist community. Hopper described this work as a painting of "three characters." The man behind the counter, though imprisoned in the triangle, is in fact free. He has a job, a home, he can come and go; he can look at the customers with a half-smile. It is the customers who are the nighthawks. The lost wanderers, if you will. Let me write this down. You can read more about Nighthawks and others in Sister Wendy's American Masterpieces.

Young Man: I keep coming back to this painting to look for something. That's it. The word you just said. Imprisoned. That is what escapes me.

Docent (chuckling): What you just said is ironic, whether or not you realize it. Are you a painter, Mr. Bolling? No? Then, what positives and negatives do you see in Nighthawks?

Young Man (pursing his lips): Let's see. The positives: Life, place of rest and refreshment, lots of lights. The negatives: a deserted city, dark street, empty street, isolation, loneliness, no door, no entry, tense atmosphere, to hunch one’s shoulders, not talking, characters crying to speak out but can't. What's the word for all these...?

Docent: Despair.

Young Man (nodding his head and squinting his eyes at 'Nighthawks'): Yes...

Docent: What Harper captured in Nighthawks is everydayness. His characters, with the exception of the waiter perhaps, are unaware of being in despair. Accepting and existing in everydayness is despair, Mr. Bolling. It's not living a purposeful life. Put it in another way, the everydayness is exisitng inside a sealed glass bottle; and the boat inside goes nowhere. Happiness costs little, too. In Nighthawks, it is a cup of coffee at a familiar surrounding.

No amount of light casts over these characters will jolt them out of their rut. The weary dark shadows of alienation tenaciously abide. For them, living outside of everydayness comes only when illness, disaster, or death is laid at their feet. In that transient moment, life is real and they live outside the bottle.

Young Man: I like the word everydayness. May I use it?

Docent (smiling): Life can be harsh, Mr. Bolling. It beats down and tramples the soul. Art, such as the Hopper collection, reminds you and I have one. It is God given. May I speak something off the record and personally, Mr. Bolling? Thank you.

Moreover and utmost important, God is given man a soul. Our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. He can free us from our imprisoned and everydayness existence. If we let Christ in, He knows where the door to our heart and soul is. Now, let's go back to Hopper.

There are three other Hopper's American Realism pieces on exihibit that tie in with Nighthawks. Go have a look at Night Shawdows, Approaching City, and Sunday.

Young Man (looking at his watch): I have a movie I want to see. I will be back to look at the other Hopper paintings. You have just given me my 2005 resolution. Happy new year, Soren. Thanks for everything.

Docent: Goodbye, Mr. Bolling. A happy new year to you also.

Behind the Oysters is the Landscape

This book review is titled: "Behind the Oysters is the Landscape"
My Amazon nom de plume is: Gussie Fink-Nottle.

This review has been posted to Amazon. The Amazon link to this book is embedded below.

My reveiw of this book is as follows:

The opening line of this book is:
"WHAT YOU NOTICE in the month of May is the tiles, like roof tiles but white, stacked by thousands at one point after another along the shore."

The last line on page 203 is:
"BENEFICIENT Oyster, good to taste, good for the stomach and the soul, grant us the blessing of your further mystery."

In between these 200 pages concerning oysters, Eleanor Clark wrote a definitive classic on the amalgamation of geography, human history, ecology, and commerce. One reads much of the mystery or the character of this mollusk at this Breton coast. It expresses itself through the human being just as it does through its own.

These oysters of Locmariaquer can be appreciated or thought of in two ways. How they are farmed in this northwestern Breton Coast can be thought of as being incidental. The important thing, some argues, this is a place of scenary, good oyster eating, and tourism. Or one can see with an understanding eye, as the author wants the reader to see, at the landscape. This Locmariaquer landscape, with the oysters, is repleted with the rich voice of its ancestors, myths, history, and human foibles.

Equipped with this behind the scene knowledge, the mystery of the Locmariquer mollusk is revealed. Now we can trippingly roll off our tongue why these Breton oysters are dear to the gourmet. Put on a few more dozens of these oysters on the barbie, won't you? No, not on the doll.

*Note: This book was published in 1964. In the 1970s, some if not all of the oyster varieties named in the book had been devastated by parasites. Today, the region is cultivating the hardier Japanese oyster, the Japanese naissain (the Gigas) variety, to sustain the industry and a way of life.

In Times Like These

As another year draws to a close, apropos our generation and the world events - wars, famine, and catastrophes - the following words of supplication are recalled. These words are the last two stanzas of a narrative poem 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind'. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) wrote these lines in 1872.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.

Hey, Nonny Nonnie

I have just finished commenting on a comment on my blog. My comment was on the nature of blogging commentaries. It sounds convoluted already in my trying to explained what I wrote. Enough.

Anyway, a flash of brilliance equivalent to a 4-watt night light came to me ensuing my commentary on my commentary. I am dim-witted, please indulge me for a little while. The following is an imaginary, if not silly, blog and response.

Setting: a blogger met someone at a gathering. He left her his blog site address, with the hope she might pay a visit. In this blog, he described how she looked to him at the party. Only she would know how she looked at the party, perhaps not the same way the blogger saw her.

Blogger to his l'objet d'amour:
You seemed all brown and soft, just like a linnet,
Your errant hair had shadowed sunbeams in it,
And there shone April in your face.

Alas, in stumbled L'Envoi Budinsky to his blog. L'Evnoi can be a pain sometimes to his peers. He never let a literary moment went to naught. Very uncouth was he. With not even a forethought of apologies extended to Emily Dickinson, he submitted and signed this comment.

L'Envoi Budinsky:
Beneath the blessed moon-lapped smile
On waters hushed at nights wild
Our passions quivered full to swoon
One soul one heart our eternal tune

I will leave it to the fertile mind of the reader as to how the blogger would react to this unwelcome intrusion.

A Time and a Place

Today is the last day of my Christmas break before returning to the bowels of crime and punishment. The winter face is showing its colors, "where, outside, rain and wind combine with a furtive ear, if I strive to speak, with a hostile eye... a malice that marks each word, each sign..."* Maybe that's the reason I prefer blogging to speaking.

I was writing a new blog when Raymond, whom I met in ou sont les neiges d'antan?, brought over a Christmas gift. A surprise but not an unwelcome visit. The time and the place were right.

After Raymond's visit, a writer's block ensued. The blog on an Edward Hopper painting and the approaching new year will not be written this afternoon.


*Robert Browning - "Never the Time and the Place"

Iris dévoilée (Iris unveiled)

This Iris plants are an important in the myth, art, and cultivation in many societies. The Chinese composer, Qigang Chen (or Chen Qigang), has rendered a musical portrait of the female sex likened to the fragile and beautiful Iris flower.

This 2003 Iris dévoilée (Iris unveiled) recording is a much acclaimed piece of artistry. In his arranged marriage of the East and West musical ware, Chen has exotically woven a tapestry of sensual harmonics and vocalises (Beijing operatic and Western) depicting the eternal feminine mystique.* The musical metaphors of the female personae are intrinsically Chinese. There are five additional tracks on the CD. Each invokes an element of the five core progenitors that which gave rise to the physical world known to the Chinese.

This, however, is not the CD one wishes to complement the delicacies of the conversation, nor when solitude is desired.

* The nine mica panels of female attributes portraited in this tone poem are:

1. Ingenious
2. Chaste
3. Libertine
4. Sensitive
5. Tender
6. Jealous
7. Melancholic
8. Hysterical
9. Voluptuous

An Honest Thought of Christmas

A foreign student studying in England wrote unprententiously in this blog about Christmas:

What is Christmas to me? Apart from Christmas presents & Christmas sale shopping, nothing much I guess. As I don't believe in God, neither Jesus.

I do eat turkey + gravy, I love Christmas crackers the most, I collect little toys inside, I like to wear the paper crown. I never try mince pie though, maybe next year.

The last time I was ill on Christmas Day... was something like 13 years ago... I remember I did not eat any food on that day while all my relatives were around my house having a party & feast, & I was dying on the bed. This year, I am ill again, I down the whole bottle of medicine & waiting for miracle to come.

I left the following remarks on this person's journal:

With regard to Jesus and His birth, you have a trilemma. Only one of the following three alternative is true. The trilemma is this:

1. Jesus was a liar

2. Jesus was a lunatic

3. Jesus was and is God

I suppose I am not being fair by making you think when you are ill...

Epiphany

She asked.
The reply: "As long as you have memories, there will be roses in the dead of winter."

She asked again.
The reply: "As long as you have hope, tomorrow awaits you."

She asked.
The reply: "Friendship itself is of no particular value. It's of value only when your life allows it."

She whispered to her soul:"As long as I have friends, life is worth the living."
The reply: "This is the desired epiphany."

She inclined her head and smiled.

What Child is This?

He is the Word.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Merry Christmas to one and all!

There is an Exit

I have on occasions frequented this existenial poet's blog. I am the only visitor thus far who has commented on the journal. The following is my response to this poet's latest blog entitled "Le Mythe de sysphe", which the author borrowed from Albert Camus, the noted French existentialist. This blogger's lament is that science explains nothing of life and the universe.

My comments are as follows. There are puns and double-entrendres regarding Camus (sorry about that).

You intrigue me.

You are not what you are at any given moment
You are what you are not
You are your future which is not yet
And your past which is no longer

I have just distilled the existentialistic you in four lines. Is this why you called yourself "Zero"?

There is no exit with Camus. Camus is dead. Existentialism is the pseudo-intellectual thief who robs you of your youth and years. It is a Sisyphean task to find the meaning of life via Camus or in any philosophical pursuit. Don't let it.

The vast heavens are telling, the smallest neutrinos are telling - there is a divine order in the universe. Cosmology can only get it down to three seconds before the Big Bang. The mathematically deduced explanation of how the universe is formed is still missing three seconds.

God is not a mathematical formula. Neither is He anything we can postulate.

You are obviously a very educated, talented, and prolific writer. Thus far, your existential prose reveals only the pessimistic ephemeral "Zero." Is there an extrovert, an exuberant, a solidly grounded side of you?

Anyway, all that philosophical stuff aside, let me be the first one to extend you the warmest of Christmas wish on this day.