These are a series of reflections on moments in life, shared from time to time, through out the year.
I try to, twice a year, to visit my good friends, Tom and Sarah Crum, who are now living in Providence, Rhode Island. This is a reflection on the journey to see them.
Day One: Memories
I'm lucky, there's a first class upgrade that means
that at least the first half of my journey back East will be in relative
comfort. It also means that there will be food. Aside from that and a good
book, and an opportunity for a nap, I am satisfied. There is a wonderful
opportunity to fly over Lake Michigan, so that the plane can align itself
to O'Hare's landing pattern. Seen from the plane, are huge ice sheets formed
from smaller pieces that have been rammed together by the force of the water
that surrounds them. They form mosaics, like unto mother-of-pearl, when
seen from the air. They keep my attention and interest for a great deal
of time. The plane is crowded, but I'm unaware of it. From Chicago on, however,
I am quite aware of it. The equipment is changed to Ted, and we're 3x3 for
the rest of the way, and packed in as well. Again, the book Sailing to Byzantium,
serves me in good stead, as I charge through the last chapters and onto
a quick nap before landing in New England.
Arrival is always apprehensive; wondering what kind of memories will be wrestled out of a long slumber, but sweet none-the-less only marred by my luggage still sitting in Chicago. There are reunions and catching up, and then sleep, which brings all things into order.
Day Two: My Space
New Englanders always keep to themselves, even in situations
in which they are required to be public and accommodating. It is usually
only a feint, however. You naturally know the street you are traveling on,
so there is no reason to inform you of that. At intersections only the cross
street is marked and named. Waiters give you deferential names, like "Boss",
and then ignore you. And the drivers well the behaviors are beyond
belief because they all rely on the lie that you (in your giant van screeching
to a halt because of an un-signaled U-turn) simply are not there. Permit
me a quaint example at the airport, where I am waiting for my delayed baggage.
The plane arrives, and earlier luggage is circling around on the conveyer
belt and suddenly stops. It sits there for a good fifteen minutes before
starting up again. All of the luggage newly arrived is stacked up one against
the other with the identifying tags all facing away from the passengers
attempting to pick it. Just like Oregon, "Welcome! Now, go home!"
This is where the great American "melting pot" has huge clumps of unamalgamated material. Charming at times, it can easily give way to stereotypes and chauvinism. When I am visiting here I quickly call to mind all the cultural and ethnic boxes that I built in younger years to hold a new variety of peoples who make this there home. "There's no ice tea?" "No, it's out of season." "Bring me a hot tea and a glass of ice, please." "Oh, you won't like that, it doesn't taste the same.'
In the midst of this are old relationships, solid and loving, constantly being adjusted for new life circumstances and conditions, and always the real attraction. Time simply doesn't dim these points of contact, intensified by distance, and tamed by love. Time just frames them and gives a certain amount of objectivity, oh, and sweet memory. The Christmass tree I planted in 1974 in Raynham, Massachusetts is almost 50 feet tall!
Day Three: Brick
There is graciousness
to the physicality of Eastern cities that isn't found in most cities in
the west. Some of that is age, and some of it is the irregularity of the
development, the randomness of streets and by ways, and the accommodation
to rivers, bluffs and other natural obstructions. It has been some time
since I have wandered around Providence, and it was like seeing a new city.
First of all there is all the brick. Brick is a treat for San Franciscans
who rarely see it there. I don't mean the fake brick such as that on the
AT&T Ball Park, but real brick Flemish Bond brick. And there are
monuments, overblown municipal remembrances of national and local events,
rich with carving and stone. There are the commons, the plazas, the squares,
filled with fountains, and mounted generals. There is colonial and civil
war architecture, along with the thoroughly captivating buildings from the
turn of the century (19th to 20th, not 20th to 21st). Train stations that
dominate, public buildings that are proud, religious structures that contain
a modicum of glory. These ingredients are rare in the west.
Staring across to the Brown campus, which gracefully mounts its palisade by the Naraganset River, I spy a large dome. "Tom, what is that?" "I don't know." "Let's go find out!" And as we pass through the Brown buildings to get at the furtive dome we pass a classical revival naos, worthy of Vienna, and a campanile that would charm any Italian city. There are educational palazzi, and administrative beaux artes palaces. Finally we come upon our dome a huge Christian Science church that very much resembles, in a small way, Santa Maria della Salute in Venice; a delight to the eyes. Time is the eastern cities friend in the same way it has befriended the European city. The encrustation of style, and period, architrave and portico, ally and boulevard, all make the city gracious even welcoming, comforting us with visions and depths of surface. I miss brick!
Day Four: Churches
It's Sunday
and it's time for church. I pick up Tom and we drive over to Grace Church,
a nineteenth century neogothic building. On our way there we pass a very
odd-looking congregational church, the combination of a Greek naos, decorated
with a huge key on the base of the architrave, the whole thing surmounted
by and ovoid dome. The windows are egyptoid, with the lower part of the
surrounding frame larger then the lintel. This stuff just fascinates me.
It seems naïve, and so it is coming from a point in national cultural
history when other exotic styles were being attempted and tested. I wonder
what the inside looks like?
Yesterday we stopped by the Episcopal Cathedral, which is a little worse for the wear. It dates from the first decade of the nineteenth century and is built of stone and wood. Large wooden sections are in need of serious repair, but that is not what fascinates me. What are fascinating are elements, such as a semi-circular portico, that are made to look gothic. The windows, seen from the outside, would well be worth the trip, but more about them later. Next door there is a straight out of the seventies chapter house, and chancery built of exposed aggregate formed into perpendicular gothic arches. It, like its cathedral neighbor, is a clear period piece. It's too bad the building was locked, as both of them would have been fun to explore.
Meanwhile, back at Grace Church, there are several arresting features. The baptismal font, which sits at the entrance to the nave, is a carved from a wonderful golden-rose marble. The chancel is dominated by a "triptych", that was, this Sunday, closed for Lent and properly so. I don't remember what the central panel is, and it's really not a triptych in that the two side panels are "unoccupied" but taken up with a large grille pattern. They are lucky however to have a huge piece of liturgical art, that functions within the changes of the church year.
At the separation of the quire from the nave, there are two very distinct features. The first is a painting that covers the space above the arch of the chancel up to the roofline of the church. Christ in glory is enthroned above a weathered and yellowed band of musician angels who cluster around his majesty. It's too romantic to seem medieval or gothic, and too staid to be baroque. I can't take my eyes off it, however. The second feature turns on the steps that ascend from the nave to the quire. A wall of nicely dressed granite (all the other surfaces are brownish) holds back the higher plane of the quire and chancel and is only broken by a flight of some six to eight risers that take you from nave to quire. Also incorporated into this wall are the pulpit on the right and a stand for the ubiquitous brass eagle that adorns a great number of Episcopal churches. I am guessing that this wall was installed either in the 40s or 50s, perhaps earlier. The clean lines of the wall are incised with a floral band, kept strictly in bounds as it runs along the upper edge of the wall. And the pulpit, which rises from the wall, in almost an art deco fashion, is incised with a slight decoration of the cross, in whose corners sit a stylized lion, angel, ox, and eagle, symbolizing the four gospels. The whole thing fits, but doesn't.
Then there are the windows. They seem to be like the cathedral's in that there is no clear iconographic program. Most seem to date from the early nineteenth century, and sometimes keep to gothic and medieval norms, while others do not. One, in a clear anticipation of Tiffany and Lafarge, has a "heaven" filled with colored spheres that delight the eye and use up space. Another one is filled with vesicas that are filled with Christian symbols (a chi rho, a cross with IC XC NIKA, a tetragramaton, with badly rendered Hebrew letters), the coat of arms of the Diocese of Rhode Island, with a miter that looks a bit like a dunce's hat, and some absolutely huge passionflower blossoms. It's strange and delightful at the same time. Observed from the outside at the cathedral were halos make of thin lines of glass radiating from the heads of the unknown saints, seen in reverse. This all bears much further exploration. There is richness here, however, that is to be admired.
Day Five: Airports
A long time ago I drove my then wife,
Joanne (now Owen) to the T. F. Green Airport that sits, I think, in Warwick,
Rhode Island. Then it was a quaint municipal airport, commanded over by
a small white washed building, and a few hangers. Passengers would embark
and disembark on those lovely old run-up steps pressed up again the fuselage
of the plane. No longer. It has been replaced by a modern airport that is
under-going constant revision and construction. It is also peopled by hordes
avoiding Logan in Boston, leaving behind the bridges, tunnels, and traffic
of that airport.
Most airports could double as shopping centers. The airport in Barcelona, Spain, is incredible in that regard, housing a fine sample of shops and goods. That is not so at Green. Things are simple here, kept to a minimum. It is functional, provides for obvious needs, and seems to be efficiently run (except for the baggage noted in Day Two). I was, however, able to buy a local eiswein as a belated Valentine's Day gift for Arthur. When I looked for books on Providence, however, there was nothing. If you're on the way to the Cape or Boston, try it out; you'll like it!
O'Hare is amazingly similar, albeit on a larger scale.
It is built for a graceless efficiency that somehow reduces the people there
to isolated individuals. The waiters, shop clerks, maintenance staff, are
all blissfully ignorant of our presence. I conducted a relatively complicated
transaction at a Hudson News outlet, during which the clerk said not one
word not even "thank you." A maintenance worker comes in
through an alarmed door, and leaves it open. The alarm begins to ring and
she simply walks away. Five minutes later a security worker comes by and
closes the door. He does not ask us what happened. We are not here, apparently.
This in the face of all the silliness about security!
Layovers at O'Hare are to be avoided at all costs. There
is nothing but the business of getting from here to there at O'Hare. Should
that enterprise be interrupted by a delayed flight or other extenuating
circumstances, you're shit-out-of-luck. I checked for a bookstore
none, for a sit-down restaurant none, for some interesting shops
none. No displays of art or interesting stuff, no airport museum, nada.
In this regard Green and O'Hare are remarkably similar. Their appeal is
simple we're getting you from here to there, and we may loose your
baggage. There is one respite: bring books! You'll have reading time absent
of any other temptations.
MTH 2/20/08