the highest form of hope...
+ just order the dessert already!
Bonjour-Bonjour,
So many false starts for this note to you, because… the world. Our time in France is dwindling. Yes, we’ve been here 7 months, and yes, I’m not ready to leave. These last few days I wanted to joyfully galavant along gorgeous boulevards and secret passages, maybe with a little ache in my heart and in my throat. I wanted to admire the Seine at night through teary eyes. Je ne veux pas dire au revoir.
And then the we bombed a school.
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During this wonderful sejour in France, I’ve tried my best to ignore news from the U.S. It has been easy and not easy.
Try as I might, I can’t get away from the constant onslaught of news from home. Maybe I shouldn’t try? Maybe I’m falling prey to moral disengagement. What’s that? I’m glad you asked.
Basically it’s when you read about or watch a report on an atrocity, like a school shooting, or the murder of American citizens by their own government, or the start of another war, and you feel uncomfortable—helpless, enraged, grief stricken—yet you don’t allow yourself to sit with the uncomfortable feelings.
What happens when we move swiftly past the unbearable? Gradually our threshold for the unbearable gets a bit higher. We become numb, disaffected. Sure, it’s self-protection, but it also turns us into morally disengaged people. Crap, that is not good! We become sideline participants to atrocities.
Hold up a sec, think about you 10 years ago, if you had seen headlines about a girls’ school being bombed, what would that have done to you? Now, compare to today, to how you responded to the news. For me, there’s a difference. I am not poleaxed. I am not enraged to the level I should be. I want to examine who I am becoming. I want to feel the feels fully so I can still recognize myself.
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Which brings me to Gerhard Richter.
We went to see his retrospective at the Foundation Louis Vuitton. We were able to snag tickets for the final hours before the exhibit closed. It was slammed, long lines, packed galleries. Joel had a man-cold and soldiered his way through the show.
Richter’s amassed works spanned 60 years. In the beginning he copied family photos and newspaper clippings with surgical precision and then ran a damp brush over his paintings to add an element of chance to his work, and also an aspect of time gone by.
I am sorry to report that I moved too swiftly through the galleries. His work left me cold. The colors left me cold. Enormous abstract paintings, color chips, did not stir an emotion in me in the same way a Rothko painting swamps me with feelings.
The show notes revealed that Richter’s father was a Nazi, and that he himself had been forced to be a ‘brown shirt’ as a kid. He and his wife left East Berlin and his family and moved to West Berlin just before the wall went up. The parade of grey canvases and austere faces gave me the sense that Richter was haunted by his father’s actions, by the family he left behind.
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Yes, some of his explorations into all the ways to make a painting enthralled me. He created collages in which he combined seascapes and skyscapes, looking for images that seemed ‘right’ together. He then painted enormous canvases of his collages.
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His colors were dark, infused with a grey and shadow, as if he painted in a minor key.
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What I really want to tell you about Richter and the exhibit is my moral disengagement…
There was one room with four enormous abstract canvases. The title of the work is Birkenau. The room was jammed with people. A docent spoke in rapid French. I felt uncomfortable, chilled, an inexplicable clutch in my heart. I rapidly departed.
Still I felt haunted. In bed that night, I did a little sleuthing to discover that the paintings are based on four clandestine photographs smuggled out of Birkenau in 1944. In the photos there are bodies, there is smoke, there are men in uniform idly chatting amid all the death. Richter first saw these images in the fifties. He encountered them again in 2008 and kept the worst of them hanging in his studio. Finally, seven years later, he projected them onto canvas and traced them. He painted them and then, unbearable as the images were, he dragged something across the canvas, smearing the pigments. He painted again, smeared again. (Is this not what we all do with our trauma? We relive and then blur, relive and then blur, hopefully dulling the events in our bodies…) The paintings became illegible, dense layers of dragged pigments with clashing red, sickly green, stained whites, and grim blacks. By looking you would not guess their violent inspiration, yet I felt the evil.
Richter said:
Art is the highest form of hope. ~Gerhard Richter
I know how I square the Birkenau paintings and hope. The paintings are essential reportage of atrocities. They are atrocities partially digested by a sensitive human. We can stare and be present and be moved.
After my post-exhibit studying up of course I wished I could go back. I wanted to sit in the gallery and stare and feel everything. I may have failed the exhibit in real time, but it certainly sits deeply within me.
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To be sure, Richter painted love right alongside death.
He painted beautiful images of his child and his wife. It doesn’t surprise me that women, nursing, babies, are antidotes to the horror. Women at ease. Women reading. Women not participating in war. (Yes, I know, these were painted before Birkenau, but the gallerist made the decision to place after in the exhibit, perhaps as solace, perhaps as hope.)
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Richter painted momento mori as well, skulls and tall candles, somber symbols of death.
I always wanted to make beautiful paintings. When I painted the candles I did experience feelings to do with contemplation, remembering, silence and death.
~ Gerhard Richter
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Contemplation, remembering, and silence seem the least we can do for the girls murdered at their the school in Iran. The least we can do for their families.
I look forward to reading your thoughts. Or, share what resonated most:
read:
My friend Jennifer Louden suggested I read, THE SPARE ROOM, by Helen Garner. She told me I’d like it. I did. But what I really like is that I have friends who make me feel known and loved.
Which is perfect for this novel because it is about two friends, one of whom, Nicola, is in complete denial about her diagnosis of stage 4 cancer and is pursuing all sorts of quackery in order to avoid the truth. She will die. (Believe me, MAHA was not far from my thoughts as I read about vitamin C and coffee enemas and ozone saunas as cancer cures Nicola pursued.) While the other friend, pragmatic Helen, has been called upon to care for her in her final weeks.
The novel is witty and sad, full of the chaos one must face at end of life and the emotional and physical toil of a caregiver. There are children. There is joy. Honestly, the book is a delight. I highly recommend. And, it is the selection for our March book group discussion.
Opportunities to engage in the r.w.e. community:
If you’d like to discuss books with me and a group of smart and lively readers, the r.w.e. book group selection for March is THE SPARE ROOM, by Helen Garner. We meet Sunday, 15 March, at 9a pacific time on zoom.
BUCKEYE, by Patrick Ryan, will be our April book group book, and Patrick will be joining in our conversation on Sunday, 12 April at 9a pacific time! I can tell you he is a wonderful writer, excellent editor, and all around good egg! Want to join us? The book group is a perk for paid subscribers. I’d love to get to know you better:
Get this! We also have a Mentor Book Group— in which we read memoirs, personal growth books and discuss what we might like to adopt in our own “work-in-progress” lives. I listened to Patti Smith’s new memoir, BREAD OF ANGELS will be our March book, meeting on 29 March at 9a pacific time. Love to have you join us.
I’ve made a read.write.eat. Bookshop where you will find many of the books I’ve recommended. Buying books from my shop is another way you can support my newsletter. I have made a special Women’s History Month list of books about women who are strong, weak, and splendid!
write:
So, how does one write in the face of all real suffering? How do we sit before the page as we must and spill our stories? Remember what our friend Gerhard Richter said:
Art is the highest form of hope. ~Gerhard Richter
We cannot allow ourselves to be bogged down by all the pain in the world and hence quit creating. We must “stubbornly accept our gladness,” and that of our readers’.
Of course there is a poem in the world that speaks to this. Please, stay past the first lines that are meant to shock with their glibness. I’ve only shared part of the poem as I’m just not sure what I can share w/o angering the gods of copying, so do click the link for the entire poem.)
A Brief for the Defense - Jack Gilbert
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that's what god wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick.... If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment.
We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world…
(Please click the link for the full poem… you must read it in its entirety.)
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I invite you to risk delight with me.
There is something beautiful that happens in a room (yes, even a virtual room) when people write together. As the timer ticks, writers soften, words flow a bit more freely, thoughts coalesce and something is discovered. Is this serendipity? Yes, but it’s cultivated by us. We have made the choice to come together with creative intentions. Sometimes a prompt is the exact right dumb luck to open a door into what we need to say, in our stories, in our memoirs. Sometimes a prompt reminds us of something we’ve been needing to say. I spoke about desire paths as a way to deepen our writing:
I invite you to join me for 90 minutes of writing and community (It’s filling up, so please hop on, I’d love to get to know you better).
We begin with a short writing sample from the world to ground us in language and to inspire us.
We write to very open ended prompts to generate new work or to use as a new door into your writing project.
We share writing (if you feel comfortable).
We close with promises and plans to keep writing, to keep establishing our desire paths.
Sounds perfect, right?
Here are details:
what: Desire Path Writing Meet-Up
when: Saturday, 7 March, 9a-10:30 PST/12p-1:30 EST
where: zoom
who: you! writers of all levels
cost: 25.00
Sign up by replying to this email or messaging me here:
eat:
On a glorious day I walked through Le Jardin des Plantes with two new friends. All of which makes my world so much brighter.
After the garden we dejeuner-ed at Le Petit Bal Perdu Bistro, and yes, I stubbornly accepted my gladness and ordered dessert. (Thank you, Jack Gilbert.) Life is hard. Life is short. We all should order the dessert.
It arrived in a charming little dish—a bed of poached pineapple, kiwi, blueberries, and some mystery berry that was bright and tart in my mouth, all of which were covered by a duvet of Vanilla Chantilly mousse.
Now I must make the mousse at home, and so should you!
Vanilla Chantilly Mousse
1½ c heavy whipping cream, divided
4 large egg yolks
½ c granulated sugar
¼ t salt
1½ c whole milk
2 t vanilla bean paste
In a large bowl, whisk together egg yolks, sugar, and salt until well blended.
Combine whole milk and vanilla in a saucepan over med/high heat. Heat until bubbles form around edges, whisking constantly, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
Slowly whisk ½ cup hot milk into egg yolks. If you do this too swiftly you will end up with scrambled yolks. Next, pour the yolk/milk into the saucepan with the milk and vanilla and return the saucepan to the stove. Cook, over med/low heat, whisking constantly, until mixture bubbles and thickens, about 10 minutes.
Transfer the custard to large bowl, press plastic wrap onto surface, and chill 2-3 hours until completely cooled.
Whip remaining heavy cream to medium peaks. Gently fold into cooled custard in three batches. Refrigerate at least 2 hours until set.
Now, you get to have fun with whatever fruit is available: softly poached pears, poached pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, kiwi, clementines, raspberries. In a dish arrange a layer of fruit, spoon on the Vanilla Chantilly Mousse in gorgeous heaps. Enjoy!
I hope your day is full of art and hope!
If you find yourself regularly reading and enjoying my work and you’d like to show some thanks, you can do so with this charming button:
If you aren’t ready to hop on, yet you wish to send a little love my way:
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Thanks for being here with me. Thank you for sharing my newsletter with your funny and fun friends.
Tell your people you love them, and take care of your skin!
PS:
In case you missed it, here are a couple missives from our time here in France.
And, to stay in the loop:
A lovely read - thanks so much for sharing!
I came downstairs with my next book—Buckeye!—got it in December and am finally ready to dig in. I wish I could go to the book club discussion, but I will be running the Bend half marathon that morning.