Sunday
Jul192009

Sunset, Sunday, 19 July 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Adapted from Walden, by Thoreau:

I have no doubt that some of you who read this are unable to pay for all the dinners you have actually eaten and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour.

Guess that goes for quite a few of us.

*     *     *     *

My first real foray into my richest blackberry-picking grounds today was pretty discouraging. (While looking for blackberries, very narrowly missed stepping on some ... evidence of our local black bears.) (Sorry!) (Yes, a bear does, in the woods.)

Three factors, concerning the blackberries. The most important would be the assiduous tree- and brush-clearing carried out this winter and early spring by an outfit under contract to the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative. I would like to have seen their manual or their instructions, because I got the impression that if their directive was to cut, say, every tree within 30 feet from the power lines, they liked cutting so much they decided, aw heck, let’s cut another five feet ... or why not another 10. And that included everything clear down to the ground. The third or least important factor seems to be the natural up and down cycles of different shrubs and vines in the margins of the woods. In between, at number 2 like Tom Watson, is the dismayingly conscientious job of field cutting done by the landlord’s freelance crew – the very same guys who killed me in a justifiable homicide back on June 24th. Even though I know they know their employer will never bother to go through the fields and check up on their work, they give it everything. These fellows make Yanqui myths about the Latin work ethic look really stupid.

Saturday
Jul182009

Sunset, Saturday, 18 July 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

The sun going down on a mostly clear summer day, a dark green atmosphere starting to form underneath the great oaks – darker for the brightness of the sunset – puts me in mind of the evening trees and green lawns of West Egg, in the spaces between Nick Carraway’s cottage and Gatsby’s mansion. Pretty funny, considering I’m standing in a yard that hasn’t been mowed in a few weeks, looking past a garden waist-high with weeds, and the nearest party is likely to consist of a few drunken yahoos screaming and tossing bottles out by the county road. But thanks, Scott Fitzgerald, for creating this part of the world for me, this atmosphere under the trees.

Friday
Jul172009

Sunset, Friday, 17 July 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

There was a confusion of thunderstorms on the horizon – at least two framing the view – and the mountains were obscured. I had thought of saving the following for another time, but then I wanted something more suitable specifically for sunset, not just for my current Albemarle County location. The following lines meant a great deal to me growing up.

From Walt Whitman, Song of Myself.

And I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

Friday
Jul172009

Jefferson’s Country

So, my brother Michael, in Texas, and I had this little e-mail exchange today that gave me a chance to rail curmudgeon-like against two of my favorite bugaboos, Thomas Jefferson, and his town, my town (more or less), Charlottesville, Virginia, and environs.

And there already I’ve overstated or misstated things, since, for example, I also greatly admire Thomas Jefferson, read Dumas Malone’s monumental biography, still for example get a kick out of discovering that Jefferson and I share a habit of washing our feet in cold water, in all weathers – but, in any case, it’s great fun to overstate views that aren’t popular.

Mike sent me, without comment, a link to a Maira Kalman illustrated commentary on Jefferson in The New York Times, titled “And the Pursuit of Happiness: Time Wastes Too Fast,” published on the 25th of June.

So I said to Mike:

You know, I had read this when it came out and kinda semi-hated it!

I think it’s partly a thing I had been starting to feel about Kalman as much as anything else.

And I should say here that I also admire and like Maira Kalman specifically – and the ‘graphic novel’ style of writing in general – people like Kalman, Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman, et al. It’s just that this particular post of Kalman’s, along with another I’d read about Barack Obama’s inauguration day, had struck me as veering at times into some sort of ‘cute’ or even ‘lite’ awestruck worship of her subjects. It can be vaguely cloying, but I’m also probably being too critical.

Here in Charlottesville/Albemarle, ‘Mr. Jefferson’ is everywhere. (He has to be referred to as ‘Mr. Jefferson’ – a practice that bugs me and I believe would have to bug him.) We are reminded daily, most often but not always in various commercial slogans, that we live in ‘Jefferson’s Country.’

Kalman’s homage to TJ gave me the chance to sound off to Michael.

Living in ‘Jefferson’s Country’ at some point you want to say “Wake up, people! Is this JEFFERSON’s country or is it OURS?”

And:

Anyway, even though she does mention it, I don’t think she says enough about how he did all these things as part of a system of daily living in which he was a superior being, both in the sense of being born into a landed gentry – this she does NOT mention – and because he had one billion slaves.

One of Kalman’s key Jefferson quotes:

“It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.”

I think it’s mostly the slave support system that really bothered me about this, but:

That line about ‘doing’ is something you hear grandmothers say who never did anything much, so I’m not sure how useful it is.

I love to try to scandalize my brother. He’s a graduate of Thomas Jefferson’s beloved creation, the University of Virginia. Mike allowed as to how he was fine with my comments but that, “For most UVa grads, brother, you’re talking trash.” Then he said:

The admiration for TJ runs so thick that people even admire him for his faults.

Sure enough, Kalman:

The monumental man had monumental flaws.

Rephrase that as “The monumental man had awful flaws.” Not quite the same, is it?

We love you, TJ. You deserve better from us.

Thursday
Jul162009

Sunset, Thursday, 16 July 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Actual random soundtrack for the process of this painting included “She’s Coming Home” (Zombies) (she was, even though she worked late), “Annie Get Your Gun” (Squeeze), “Sh-Boom” (The Chords), “Phonograph Blues” (RJ), “I’m Gonna Love You Too” (Buddy Holly), “The Luck Of The Irish” (John Lennon), “Watch The Tapes” (LCD Soundsystem), but no “Twilight Time” even though there were two completely different spectacular twilight skies right after this one – and, most appropriately, “Virginia” (Clipse), which includes a reference to “heat like Caribbean summers.”

Indeed.

Wednesday
Jul152009

Sunset, Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

The sunset sky changed its story three times in 30 minutes, altered its address, login and password, effaced its Facebook account, sold all of its stuff in a yard sale down here on Watts Passage, and left without telling me what I wanted to know. I finally found it staying under an assumed name at a boarding house in Bristol, Tennessee, in a room with a spectacular view of itself.