Art Lesson

Most non-Spanish people don't know much about the history of Spain in the 20th century.  Very few people bother to know much about it at all and most general world history classes tend to ignore it, but if you are smarter than the average bear you might know a bit about the Spanish Civil War.

That most people tend not to know much about the war is a real failure of education in the world today.  The Spanish Civil War was a practice ground for the Second World War.  Hitler and Mussolini sent weapons and "Volunteers" to support the Nationalist side under Generalissimo Francisco Franco and many of the battlefield tactics the Germans would use later in World War II were first used and refined in Spain fighting against the Republican forces.

The Spanish Civil War also saw a lot of famous people participate.  Ernest Hemingway fought on the side of the Republicans and wrote The Sun Also Rises about Spain and For Whom The Bell Tolls specifically about the Civil War.  George Orwell, of Animal Farm and 1984 fame, also fought on the Republican side.

But the one person I want to talk about in all of this is Pablo Picasso.  You know who he is but you may not know that one of his most famous paintings is based on a terrifying event that happened during the Spanish Civil War.  The painting Guernica is about the bombing of that city by German and Italian planes in 1937.  It was a pretty horrific event and probably the first example of using airplanes for terror bombing in history.

All war is hell.  There is no doubt of that.  But people can become inured to the most terrible things.  Looking back now at what happened to Guernica it seems such a small thing.  After all, thousands died in the Blitz of London.  A hundred thousand each may have died in the Dresden and Hamburg bombing raids.  The firebombing of Tokyo may have killed 125,000 people and of course the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed probably another 140,000.  So the losses at Guernica - 1200 people at most - would seem almost insignificant in comparison.

Isn't that shocking though?  That we can call the loss of 1200 people "insignificant" really reminds me of just how casual we are about human life, even in this day and age.  Twelve hundred people would be two-thirds of the people in my home town.  Yet in comparison to so many other events, twelve hundreds does seem a trivial matter.

I imagine that it was not a trivial matter at the time.  Back in 1937, the horrors that would become so commonplace in World War II had yet to occur.  That civilians would get bombed in their homes, that bridges would be bombed and roadways strafed with machine guns so that those trying to flee the bombs could not do so, would not yet be the commonplace cataclysms that they became.  The destruction of three-fourths of a town's buildings was still a novel event.  High explosive and incendiary bombs dropped from thousands of feet in the air, indiscriminately killing young and old, man and beast, were a new way of creating hell on Earth.

And it is that context that we have to look at Picasso's painting of the event.  He was recording the newest horror that man had perpetrated upon man.  In stark black and white, he engraved on our psyches the revulsion and fear that must have accompanied the realization that war had become even more terrible than it had been before.  It is a nightmare written on canvas, and all the more terrible in that it was real.

It is said that while he was in Paris during the Nazi occupation, a Nazi officer was looking at a photograph of Guernica.  He studied it for a while, perhaps seeing all the destruction and death that Picasso had put into this piece of art.  He is supposed to have turned to Picasso and said "You did this?"

To which Picasso replied, "No. You did."

And that perhaps is the art lesson for today.  That art, good art, should reflect life, should make you see life in some new way.  And if art is a reflection of life, then it follows that some art must shock and horrify us.

Garbage Day

It was garbage day today

and I put some stuff out on the curb

for the garbage men to take away.

Not a single thing of any real worth,

at least not to you or I anymore.

A card or three that you'd given me

and some keys - I'd forgotten what they were for.

There were a bunch of old letters I had kept,

and silly things we'd save from when our life was new.

All that we thought we were when you still lived here

is sitting on the curb in bags covered in morning dew.

And what is really making me think

is how easy it has been to throw a life away.

To toss every memory in and just so casually fill a bin

with all that had been important in some way.

It was garbage day today

and the garbage men have hauled

all that junk on the curb away.

The Lost Sock

A few months ago while I was putting away my laundry I came across a single black sock.  All of the laundry was folded, but I was left with a single black sock.  I suppose this was the universe's way of letting me know that somewhere between the hamper in my bedroom and the dryer in my laundry room, a small wormhole had opened up and sucked in the sock that would have matched the one I found.  But I refused to believe that sock was irretrievably gone - I had faith that it was SOMEWHERE in my house, and not in a dryer in Shanghai, at the other end of that wormhole, where some guy was even then saying, "凡地狱没有这些袜子来自？" ("Where in the hell did this sock come from?").   

I put the poor lonely black sock that had remained with me on top of my dresser, thinking that I would find its match soon.  But it sat there, mocking me each morning for four months, reminding me that somewhere out there was one of my black socks.  And I waited.  I am a patient man.  I could wait for that lost sock to return, to come back to its mate and lead a happy life again, as least as much as anything that has to spend its existence sandwiched between my feet and my shoes could call itself happy.

Then last weekend, I found a black sock in the laundry room, in the narrow space between the wall and the washer.  I was ecstatic.  I had my lost sock back!  The Parable of the Prodigal Son came to mind.  I debated slaughtering a fatted calf...

But of course, when the laundry was folded and I came to the last sock and triumphantly grabbed the one on top of my dresser, I noticed that the two socks now in my hands DID NOT MATCH.  One was a Docker, the other Izod.  One had narrow stripes, the other wide stripes.  So now, instead of having one unmatched and lonely sock, I have TWO.  The universe is mocking me.  I know it.  I can hear it snickering.

But I suppose I can take a lesson from this.  I was so looking forward to the day I would find that lost sock.  And when I finally did find a lost sock, that which I thought would be the answer to my problems, it turns out that in reality all it did was double my problems, because now there are two unmatched socks on top of my dresser, mocking me... 

Steam Cleaning

So, I steam cleaned my tile floors today.  That's the biggest advantage of being underemployed - my floors are cleaner than they have ever been. I use my Shark Steam Mop (I love it, and would give it a shameless plug, but couldn't they put a quick release on the cord holder?  I love the long cord, I just hate having to wrap it all up again when I'm done).

Anyway...

I steam cleaned my floors today and as I was just about to start doing that, I spotted a big cockroach-type bug (it's Florida - it could be any one of a gazillion different critters, but for now it was a cockroachy looking kind of bug) looking dazed and confused, on the living room carpet right next to the entryway. I am a card-carrying manly man, having rescued many a fair damsel from spiders, mice, lizards and the odd seagull or two, but even I will not engage a cockroach mano-a-mano. No, I will not argue with five million years of evolution and my tool-creating forebearers just so I can look all macho squashing a bug with my bare hands. Instead, I will whack them with whatever is to hand - shoes, rolled up newspapers, hammers, my daughter's boyfriends - as I make my small contribution to continued human dominance of this planet over the cockroachy-type hordes.

So what did I have to hand? Well, my handy steam mop. Without even thinking, I walloped the steam mop down on top of that bug faster than Lindsay Lohan can get arrested. I then stood there, wondering what to do next, when I realized that I was holding a steam mop. Sometimes, it takes me a while - I can't be brilliant all the time. So I really pumped up the steam. For five minutes I pumped up enough steam to make any locomotive proud. When I felt that I had done enough, I lifted the mop only to see the bug STILL MOVING. That's right, five minutes of intense steaming was not enough to render this super roach lifeless. So I walloped the steam mop back down and set to work again.

I kept that steam going and going and going until a bunch of Swedes showed up at my door carrying towels. Probably fifteen minutes later, I tried again to see if that bug was gone to meet its maker. It laid on its back, its little legs folded in front of it like it was praying. I might have felt a little remorse, just a little sorry for the poor bugger, but in this battle for the planet, it's them or us. This time, it was one of them.  Next time, mankind may not be so lucky...

But now I keep having this strange thought going through my head. It probably comes from watching too much Travel Channel, but I'm wondering what Andrew Zimmerman is doing for dinner tonight?

My Universe and Welcome To It...

The universe is at once huge and infinitesimally tiny.


The universe is the sum of all the experiences that you are capable of.  We all perceive the universe in different ways; a beautiful flower to one person may be a weed to another.


We live in a world of perception.  Everything we experience, everything we know of this universe, we learn through one of our five senses.  Whether something feels hot or cold, whether something smells good or bad, whether something looks beautiful or ugly, all depends on our perceptions.

Add to this that all of us are different.  We are, each of us, the product of our upbringing and our environment.  How we perceive the world is affected by how we have interacted with this world.  To an honest man, the world is filled with honest people; show me a man that believes all others lie and you can be sure you cannot trust him.  So, to paraphrase the quote, we see the universe as we are.

Perhaps you've experienced this... a person tells you to give them your opinion of their red shoes, but to you they are wearing pink shoes.  Or maybe someone tells you that these flowers smell simply beautiful, but you find them to be simply awful.

So, because we each perceive the universe in a different way, we each see a different version of reality.  What I see and you see is never going to be exactly the same.

That sounds bleak.  If you think about it, you are all all alone in a universe that only you can see.  No one else can ever see the world in exactly the same way you do.  There is no other person in the universe that is able to see the universe the same way you do.
 
But also consider this.  That we all perceive reality in a different light allows us to see things in shades of gray.  The world can not be just black or white, for black and white have different meanings for every single person in the world. So our unique perceptions allows for the universe to be infinitely diverse and so beautiful in so many ways that we simply have no idea of.  And it also means that the universe needs us, creatures capable of recognizing beauty,  for it to be beautiful.

If there were no one to see a sunset, would it be beautiful or would it just be?  Can any other creature pause and notice the beauty of this world?  Could a mouse relate the beauty of a blossom to another mouse?  The universe requires us to appreciate its beauty.  Otherwise, all of creation becomes mundane and ordinary, a random collection of atoms with no other meaning.  The universe requires those that can appreciate it.

And it is in that that I find the most subtle beauty of all.  I have long loved language.  That we have a tool that allows us to share our perceptions with those around us comforts me.  It means that we are not alone in our universe, but rather that we can share our insights with all those that also exist here with us.  And I believe that we should - and must - share our visions with each other.