Vermeer and His Critics

Last night I remembered why I hated being an English major.

We watched a special on Vermeer, easily my favorite painter. Instead of showing the paintings or describing the painter’s techniques, the special focused on interviewing art critics.

The art critics focused on hypothesizing absurd, multi-syllabic theories on What Vermeer Really Meant to Say in His Paintings, including detailed explanations of the metaphoric potential lurking beneath the strong light and meticulous fabrics.

Like translators, critics must be paid by the word: nothing else excuses this sort of drivel. Why labor so intensely to ascribe metaphor and allegory to paintings whose genius is to capture the preciousness of what simply is?

Only two of Vermeer’s paintings rely on metaphor for their full meaning. One failed because it was over-contrived (http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/thumbnail/117231/1/Allegory-Of-The-Faith.jpg); the other is one of the loveliest of Vermeer’s portfolio (http://www.fineartprintsondemand.com/artists/vermeer/woman_holding_a_balance-400.jpg). Woman Holding a Balance is perfect because the metaphor is lucid—a delicate linking, as with a spider’s thread, between the pregnant woman holding an empty balance in preparation for her household chores and the painting behind her of the Final Judgment. If the metaphor were as complex as art critics like to think, the painting would feel overwrought. It would tell the viewer what to think, not invite him to muse on the intersection between judgment and Judgment, unborn life and incomplete death, hope and dread in the face of the unknown.

Only one of Vermeer’s paintings is even mysterious—and not because it is laden with layers of meaning, but because it has none. Girl with a Pearl Earring is just a face, contextless (http://static.squidoo.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_lens2291239module12619353photo_1226772823parel.jpg).

It is a beautiful and interesting face. But the viewer can only appreciate it, not invest it with meanings it does not contain.

Jumping Jacks

My run today went through a perfect end-of-summer day: warm, motionless, and bright. Even the water of Rock Creek appeared clear and still, and the poor fish swimming in their sewage-enhanced river content.

I had accustomed myself to dreading the end of summer and lightless winter days, flinching as it became colder and darker. I do not admire discontent, and so have fought this emotion hard, last year and this. So far this year I have been more successful. Finally figuring out the right clothes for winter biking has helped—a careful miscellany of little boys’ hunting clothes from Walmart and super-de-dooper mittens from REI.

The other trail users today—runners, bikers, and a half-naked man pushing a backpack in a small baby stroller—also seemed to share my happy passivity.

Except for two bizarre gentlemen on bikes, who three times passed me with inefficient flurry, stopped, threw their bikes on the ground, and started doing jumping jacks.

I did not know that people still did jumping jacks. The last time I have been in the presence of jumping jacks was when I was given a coverage of 6th grade boys gym. As a petite 22 year old woman in 4 inch heels, I anticipated this coverage with a certain amount of dread. However, I took it on the authority of my own male students that the gym teacher always made them do “exercises” before starting “class”. The exercises consisted of 30 jumping jacks, 30 crunches, and 10 push ups. So the last time I have come in contact with a jumping jack was leading 60, 11 – 15 year old boys through them.

I was very exacting about jumping jack execution. I got through fully half of that coverage simply by inventing, and requiring my class to meet, a completely fictitious concept of The Ideal Jumping Jack.

The Opera

On Saturday night, my husband, friend, and I went to the baseball stadium to see a simulcast of the Washington National Opera’s production of The Barber of Seville.

The opera was irritating—plot and character development were vintage Hallmark: reliant on stereotype and cheap humor, and sludged in sentiment. Cheap humor of course is timeless; when delivered in arias, it feels endless.

The plot climax was uniquely infuriating. The highest moment of tension: the heroine was furious because she suspected her lover had deceived her. The moment of joyful resolution: the heroine discovered that her lover in fact had deceived her.

Nevertheless, watching simulcast opera on a baseball stadium scoreboard, surrounded by the glaring paraphernalia of corporate sponsors, was surprisingly lovely.

The loveliest part was the number of bicycles parked around the stadium. Every one of the 250 bike racks that surround the stadium was full. I had to lock to a sapling. Most of the bikes didn’t belong to the usual suspects—they weren’t high end racing bikes or carefully abused fixies. Families had biked in—with trailers or kid bike carriers, little kid bikes. Well-used hybrids and mountain bikes mingled with beaters, steel fixies, road bikes, and (of course) the requisite fendered Schwinn.

The was the first time in the United States that I have felt that bicycles were an accepted form of transportation—not just the mode of choice for the few and the proud. Obama’s inauguration in January gave some faint forecast of this—but Americans only took to their bikes in droves that day (over 2000 bikes were parked in WABA’s bike valets!) because other transportation methods were blocked.

I was irritated that we had to listen to a member of the Washington National Orchestra play the Star Spangled Banner before the opera began. I grudgingly put up with this ritual before sports games, understanding that patriotism, nationalism, and physical competition are psychologically synonymous enough to warrant it. Why were we forced to be patriotic for an Italian opera?

However, as I left the stadium and saw the gorged bike racks and the droves of people leaving by metro, I was proud of my city.

The Noodle

The long rotini noodle is still sitting outside the elevators on the eighth floor of my office building.

It has been there since Tuesday.

It is about half a foot long, wheat, cooked, sauceless. It first appeared in the corner next to the door to the inter-building walkway. It has inched its way to a central location between the first and second elevators.

I am obsessed with this noodle, and not only because of its preposterous size (where do you buy a rotini noodle that long?).

I am obsessed with the fascination of watching the easy hypocrisy of my workplace. I work at an enormous international development nonprofit. We espouse civic morals all day long. We want businessmen in Moldova to take action against corruption, fisherman in Sri Lanka to work towards civic peace, and kids in Jordan to get involved in NGOs. Hell, I oversee a program in Darfur where we try to get kids to pick up trash!

Yet, no one at my organization, for 4 days, has removed this noodle from the floor.

I haven’t either: I am too interested in the sociological experiment. When will the noodle go? Will I get to watch it progress from a clean, cooked, firm brown noodle to a decaying squish? Will the perpetrator admit that he littered a lunch noodle and pick it up surreptitiously, when no one sees him? Will one of the many employees of my organization who love to slather their self-righteousness onto the rest of us try to create a stink about the noodle over email, preaching about cleanliness and indecency and who knows what else? Will the cause then get picked up by the unctuous senior VPs of my organization, whose capacity for slathering self-righteousness in peculiarly nasty syntax knows no bounds? Or will one of the janitors, noticing the noodle now that it has moved to a more prominent location, simply sweep the offending pasta into the trash?

Someone with statistical training should research whether community values break down more in settings in which those values are professionally espoused. I have never seen a place in which fewer people refused to do their dishes in the kitchen, more people stole other people’s food from the communal refrigerator, or more people in general refused to take any responsibility for shared space as in my current non-profit, which promotes civic participation, action, and responsibility.

I also would like to point out that, in said nonprofit, my bicycle yesterday was thrown to the ground in the secure bike cage, resulting in a broken left brake handle and stretched right brake cable. I have sent a company-wide email asking for the bike-thrower to help pay for fixing my brakes. I am waiting to see if the guilty person has any moral fiber; my bet is no.

Fish in Timeout

This weekend we had to discipline a fish.

One of our platys is obscenely pregnant. A second now seems also to be in the family way. We had been debating getting an isolation chamber—baby fish are tasty morsels, and though we don’t object to the bulk being eaten, would like to observe platy development from the 1 millimeter stage on.

The debate ended when a male platy—we assume, he doesn’t look pregnant—started chasing the vulgarly pregnant one. So we bought a mesh “baby saver” box that clips to the side of the tank.

Once the enormous one was isolated, the mean male platy started chasing the less egregiously pregnant one. The other male platy (again assuming gender by lack of pregnancy), wedged himself between the mesh and the tank glass, drooped like a u-lock, and refused to swim. If I were to attribute emotions to fish (see Blog 1), I would say he was the Byron of fish, composing drippy ballads about his separated love.

We watched this for a bit. The mean platy got meaner; the lovelorn platy moped. Our littlest danio hung motionless under the isolation chamber, refusing to join the boisterous circling of his peers. The final straw came the next morning: our frog had wedged himself between the mesh chamber and the tank. I thought he had squished himself unintentionally; however, once released, he instantly wedged himself again. After repeating the release and re-wedge scenario a few times, I became convinced that this position was his independent choice.

Given all this, we decided to remove the isolation chamber. Everyone seemed happier. Mr. Lovelorn perked up. Littlest Danio rejoined his peers.

But then Mr. Mean starting chasing and biting both pregnant platys. Afraid that they would give birth prematurely from pure stress, we googled. Apparently male platys often pursue their desired mates to death (from exhaustion), or at least bite off their fins. Counterproductive?

We decided to punish Mr. Mean by sending him to the isolation chamber—seemed fair since he was the problem. The other fish didn’t seem to mind the isolation chamber the second time around, and the platys clearly were delighted at the removal of Mr. Mean.

The funniest thing is that it worked as behavior modification. After two days in the isolation chamber, Mr. Mean is now a reformed character. He has only once given chase—and that half-heartedly—to the lady platys.

Not sure how long this remarkable turnaround will last. But if Mr. Mean relapses, we can always send him to timeout again.

A Victory

Yesterday I had a rare cyclist victory: I intimidated someone into submission.

Sounds savage—I am. I fanaticize about SUVs crumpled in the fingers of some almighty fist; taxis thrown headlong into righteous flames; busses, mechanics vans, and UPS trucks crushed by massive heavenly feet. Urban cyclists all carry some level of this rage in their bellies, and must remind themselves several times a mile that the u-lock is only to be applied very sparingly, very judiciously, in the most extreme circumstances.

Of course, my victory was not over a person in a car; I wish.

It was over a person who, when I walked out of my work last night, was sitting on my bicycle. My bicycle was locked up on the post of a street sign; this person was a parking attendant for the restaurant next to my work. He apparently thought it was justified to rest on a stranger’s bike, while waiting for someone to valet.

I released a flood of abusive vocabulary, enriched by a year teaching public school in the Bronx, and the squatter skedaddled. No arguments or aggression: perfect triumph.

I bent to unlock my bike. As I pulled it away from the post, the squatter returned with a reinforcement. Slightly scared, I reminded myself that I was in one of the richest parts of DC and that a parking attendant would not be foolish enough to risk his job by harming a cyclist in front of his place of employment.

The reinforcement informed me, while the squatter smirked, that I was not allowed to lock my bike to the post, but had to use the bike racks.

For a second, the sheer number of possible responses to this drivel prevented my ability to speak: it was patently wrong, the bike racks were full, etc. What came out was, “It is legal for cyclists to lock up anywhere their lock fits. I’ll wait right here while you call the police and we can have this debate with them.”

This was not a smart thing to say. There are some places to which cyclists are not allowed to lock their bikes. Plus, the police would not come for such ridiculousness, and police side against cyclists as a rule of thumb anyway. However, my aggressive tone worked. Both squatter and reinforcement backed away, mumbling.

Victorious, I mounted my bike, turning to deliver the pithy parting insult, “It’s illegal for you to park your ass on my bike.”

Incredibly childish: that comment, the whole interchange. I see other cyclists, under duress, act the same way, but it’s ridiculous.

I try to avoid these interchanges. Even when it ends in victory, I feel dirty.

Potomac

Since becoming a kayaker and, with my husband’s job and natural interests, learning more about water, I find I am beginning to relate to familiar rivers as entities.

Over the past two years especially, we have spent a great deal of time in (swimming), on (kayaking), or beside (biking/camping) the Potomac River, from its Appalachian beginning as a shallow, rock-filled spurt to the fat, growth-choked course that empties into the Chesapeake Bay.

I feel affectionate towards this river as one would towards a more human thing.

Two pictures from this weekend: one, the Potomac at night under a limply full moon; the other, when a persistent downpour just had stopped.

Fortunately, for neither of these pictures can I provide the accompanying audio: a collection of people a couple hundred yards upriver at another primitive campsite, who also had driven several miles down dirt roads our bikes would have handled more easily than our car did, for seemingly the sole purpose of recreating a stereotype that Kenny Chesney and his ilk have marketed with regrettable success—both for the sake of country music and, apparently, camping. These folks did have the good sense to bring a couple buckets of Wild Turkey (a solid choice, even if in excess). However, they also had the bad sense to steal or otherwise acquire a police broadcast system, with which we were awakened Saturday morning; to try to canoe drunk, screaming unconvincingly to each other that they loved the outdoors; and to blare on a 1980s boombox music that I can only imagine was the mixtape played at their 7th grade dance. Late Saturday night they switched to a solid hour of Johnny Cash—an upgrade for which we could not be too grateful.

Tank Fatalities 3 - 6

Last night was tragic.

We changed part of the water in our fish tank—something that must be done regularly in a new tank to maintain a 0 ammonia level. We dechlorinated the new water, glad finally to have a dropper which could measure the appropriate miniscule amount of dechlorinator (before we just had to pour as small an amount as was humanly possible, and worry about over-dechlorination). We put the new water in the tank, and sat down. We have done this regularly over the past few weeks, with no ill effects.

Within 5 minutes, it was clear the fish were not doing well. One danio died instantly; another was puttering near the top in an unhealthy amphibious way; the neon tetras were bunched at the bottom and graying; if the platys had brows, they would have been furrowed. Mr. Plec did not submit an opinion.

We instantly pulled new water in a bucket, de-chlorinated aggressively, and moved all the animals still living into it. Moving Mr. Plec was challenging: he did not want to leave his rock-cave and, when forced to by the removal of the rock, proved adept at color-changing in order to blend against the black gravel.

We emptied as much water as possible from the tank, without removing all the healthy bacteria we had cradled from Baltimore to DC a couple weeks ago. We mixed new water, and agonized as we poured our animals back in.

The danio with the amphibious ambitions died when returned to the tank—flipping horribly, ludicrously for a few seconds before expiring. So did one neon tetra. Mr. Plec—disoriented by the turquoise bucket, the trip, and the new placement of his favorite rock—decided to fight the frog over ownership of the back left tank corner. After a tense minute, the dispute was resolved: a very pink, flustered frog was sitting on Mr. Plec’s head; Mr. Plec was attached to the back left corner glass, sucking the bitterness of victory.

This morning one more neon tetra and a platy were dead. The two remaining tetras were less gray, but I have doubts about their surviving the day. The platys looked better, as did the frog. The remaining danio was lonely but healthier. Mr. Plec was in his rock.

We still don’t know how we managed to kill so many fish in one night, with one water change. PH and ammonia were fine; we followed the directions on the dechlorinating stuff.

We can only assume that DC’s water was, for that particular moment, especially toxic. Or that DC injects so much chlorine in the chemical soup that is our civic water that the only way to render it livable for fish is to overdose the dechlorination.

If the former, we’re not sure what to do. If the latter, then I’m at least grateful that we had been over-dechlorinating because of the lack of a dropper. Otherwise, we probably would have killed all of our new animals instantly.

Glad Riggs is sturdier. And better at communicating his needs.

DMV Vignettes

Everyone has a horrible DC DMV story. I am not going to share all the obscene details of what my friend, Ruthie, and I went through yesterday during our trip there.

That would be the equivalent of swapping stories about a bike commute in DC on one of the rare days there is snow and ice—no words can possibly describe how bad DC drivers are in ice/snow, how little they respect cyclists, or how terrifying it is to try to maintain your bicycle upright and out of traffic, while still riding on the right hand side of the street, where the snow is treated and plowed the least. The DC government does not plow bike lanes.

I only want to share two vignettes.

Vignette 1
I finally made it through three different lines to talk to the DMV employee granted the power to process the renewal of my driver’s license. I asked this exalted individual why my DLN was not recognized by the DC DMV online system—a technical glitch that had forced me to spend several hours of yesterday’s perfect late summer day in a state of sullen boredom. The DMV employee paused in her rant about how she was too smart for her job—delivered to an unseen but doubtless sympathetic cubemate—blinked at me behind watery goggle-glasses, and bellowed, “Oh I don’t know nothing about no online system. You have to talk to a DMV employee about that.”
I startled at her—body language totally lost on the DMV employee, who already was re-complaining to her invisible cubemate that no one recognized her many talents, including how well she treated the customers.

After a few minutes, I again interrupted her soliloquy to ask her how I should go about finding a DMV employee who could help me. Her response: “I don’t know nothing about no DMV employees. We all work for the DMV. You want to learn about the online system, you have to call 311.” I blinked, mentally probed this statement to see if there were any way to extract logical or helpful directions from it, and decided to bite my tongue.

Vignette 2
Ruthie and I were finally triumphant, all necessary documents in hand. Almost: they had entered in Ruthie’s height erroneously on her license and we were standing where we had been told to stand while the error was corrected.

A new, authoritative woman suddenly materialized around the corner, screaming at everyone that wasn’t already doing so to sit in a chair. This involved separating parents from their young children; it also involved admitting that there weren’t enough chairs. Once we were all seated or corralled in some manner that was minimally acceptable, this Supreme Harpy of the DMV screamed at us to show proof—a DMV wait number—of our legitimate right to occupy the chairs into which we had just been forced. Most people obediently held up their numbers; Ruthie and I couldn’t, since our numbers had been taken when our new licenses were processed. We tried to explain this to the Supreme Harpy, but to no avail. Finally, she admitted that Ruthie had a right to remain in her chair, but I did not and I was ignominiously ejected. As I retreated in the Supreme Harpy’s wake, I heard her complain in a loud mutter, “I swear, it is the same every day. People always come up in here. Every single day there are people that come up in this office.”

Any commentary I could provide on that statement would diminish it.

Rain Delay

I love rain delays at baseball games. At least, in August, when the rain is warm. Since we live in an unairconditioned house and bike everywhere, there is little that is more pleasant that getting a cool shower while you are sitting, watching baseball, and drinking a miller lite draft.

Our neighbors don’t tend to agree with us. As the rain becomes dense, lines of people retreat, like human escalators, up the steps to covered areas. If it’s not a muggy August night, Shane and I still remain—we pull our rainsuits on and sit, perfectly dry, in our rain-abandoned section.

We get to watch the thick rain pellets glow a glassy white under stadium lights. If windy, the small rain balls swirl in airborne currents. It’s one of the few times a person can watch rain, before it hits ground and puddles.

Tank Fatality #2

Today is the one week anniversary of our fish tank, and we already have had our second fatality.

Both are excusable. One of our frogs was pummeled by Mr. Plec’s tail, for trying to hoard an algae wafer. One of our danios died from being genetically pathetic—skinnier, weaker, and less wriggly than the others.

When you add the little southern red-backed vole our dog killed last Saturday, 146 U Street NE has experienced a great deal of animal carnage in one week—particularly for a vegetarian home.

We bought my brother’s fish tank for the mesmerizing fascination of watching fish swim. The placid mental state we anticipated enjoying has been severely startled by two deaths in one week, and further spooked by the paranoia resulting from our total ignorance of aquarium care.

We do respect Mr. Plec’s right to correct the injustice of food-hogging and realize that genetic frailty is more likely than not in fish sold at a Petsmart for $1.29 a piece. However, the rapid demise of 14% of our tank’s inhabitants does make us wonder about the morality of owning fish. Is the lulling pleasure of watching fish swim valuable enough that it justifies trying to create a cramped, counterfeit ecosystem for tropical fish from contaminated DC tap water? It would be intriguing to follow this line of thought into the “gaze theory” that dance critics babble about, but I’ll restrain myself. I hate the “gaze theory”, particularly the feminist version.

Of course, since we did buy fish from Petsmart, instead of catching them in the wild, these fish would not have had any different experience. They would have died in some tank at some point, and they probably don’t care which one.

I would prefer they wouldn’t die in mine, at least not in such quick succession.

DC Weeds Blues

My various acquaintances often have asked me what I think about while running, the assumption behind the question being that running is boring and how can I possibly keep myself entertained while cranking out the miles?

The question is difficult to answer because I have the exact opposite experience. Running is not at all boring; it creates my freest mental space—with lucid, unformed thoughts very carelessly linked. I don’t think while running; it would invalidate the point. I do sometimes try to focus the tumbling mental mess, or use the time to think through what I’m writing at work, but only if I need to be specifically productive.

The last week or so I’ve been trying to focus on a particular plant—selecting one weed that is common on my run, trying to spot every time it occurs, and thinking about its shapes, colors, textures.

Written down that sounds very odd, but it is intriguing to realize the abundance of each weed. It seems there is not a great deal of biodiversity among DC weeds.

It is more intriguing to notice how each iteration of the weed grows, next to what, formed like what, tinted how. Observing the regular variation on a common shape has made my runs this past week like listening to Miles Davis or Bach, eyes closed: being guided on a tour of unfixed geometric precision.

Unfortunately, not being musically gifted, I can’t sing for you all the DC Weed Blues.

Of Fish, Dogs, and Men

In some C.S. Lewis book I read in high school, Mr. Lewis commented that the emotions we believe our domestic pets to have are merely projections of our own, a psychological transposition that shows how incredibly self-involved we are.

Mr. Lewis likes to make sweeping, unsubstantiated statements and this one, like many of his, would be more truthful if it were qualified by words such as “sometimes” or “one of the reasons we have pets is to….”

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at my dog, a very emotionally-ridden Jack Russell terrier, and wondering how many of the things I assume he is experiencing are my own projected thoughts. I’ve decided that this statement has an even higher percentage of hogwash than most of Mr. Lewis’.

Certainly people project their own emotions onto their pets, and use pets to fill a range of human needs: loneliness, a way to communicate indirectly with one’s spouse when one is arguing, etc.

But Mr. Lewis’ statement ignores both the genuine emotions that dogs and other domestic pets certainly experience and evidence—hurt, fear, love, excitement, desire to name a few—and the level to which domestic pets such as dogs have adapted their communication methods to suit human interpretation. Dogs are pack animals; in living with humans instead of a pack they suit communication to their adopted “pack”.

The real reason I was ruminating on this recently is that my husband and I just bought a fish tank from my brother. We have one algae eater, whom I call Mr. Plec, a frog, and 13 small tropical fish (tetra, dwarf platy, and danios). It is clear that, as much as I love watching the fish, their emotional worlds are completely obscure to me.

For instance, our frog has a tendency to hoard the algae wafers intended for Mr. Plec. The frog does a belly flop on top of the algae wafer and swats away the various members of the Gang of 13 who try to nibble a piece. That is interpretable: the frog wants the wafer for himself. However, Mr. Plec’s communication with the frog over the algae wafer is inscrutable. It ends up with Mr. Plec getting the wafer, but the way in which this transfer of ownership is negotiated and effected (a series of wiggles that mean nothing to me but apparently do to the frog) is bizarre. The frog and Mr. Plec also have a range of other communication signals between them that mean something—I have no idea what and cannot imagine—but they appear simultaneously at various times from their hiding spots within rocks and it is obvious that both have received the same signal or are giving each other a signal and responding.

In any case, the transfer of my emotions to the 14 fish and 1 frog is still pending.