The art of just about everything
Two small books set off an avalanche of connections
Check in
We are well into summer now. The solstice, the beginning of astronomical summer, is this coming week. Really, though, the season began either on Memorial Day (American tradition) or May 1 (Celtic or pagan traditions).
In Portland, summer brings mostly mild, cloudless days. There may be heat later, but the forecast now is for springlike weather within our longer summer days.
Gardens are at their peak. Roses everywhere. Lavender and cherries. Poppies, columbines, pretty grasses. Happy cats and deliriously barking dogs.
It seldom rains in Western Oregon in the summer. Lawns will die if we let them.
Readers in other climes have different summers: In Ireland, where it rains every day. On this continent, heat in the dry Southwest. Humidity and bugs in stout New England. Humidity, mosquitos and gnats anywhere there’s a lake in the Midwest.
Did I miss your location? Message me or leave a comment.
Three words
Dot
Grid
Diagonal
Dot
I wrote recently about the word “point.” A dot is not the same thing. Points are dynamic, moving through space and time, focused or diffuse.
Dots are static. They often appear in regimented rows, against a contrasting background. There is a sameness. Each is like the other, in roundness if not in color.
Grid
Grids are static, too. They lock things in. They become the boxes we are advised to think outside of.
Still, don’t diss grids. They can pleasingly rhythmic in their orderliness. They are something we can relax in after the chaos of our lives and thoughts.
Diagonal
Ah, diagonals! A favorite metaphor. They add tension and depth to a scene. They ascend or descend depending on your perspective.
A diagonal stops your thought, redirects it.
Diagonal thoughts are what make writing interesting, then keep it interesting.
Fresh and new
A poem by Emily Dickinson distills everything I have been trying to convey about diagonals in my scattered way.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant—
Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind —
Please sit with these ideas. Feast on them. Let Truth dazzle you, gradually.
I won’t try to explain or interpret this poem. I invite you to live with it, treading the paths of your own associations. Make this poem yours.
You can read an essay about it at the Poetry Foundation.
A winding, synchronous path
I had not been familiar with Dickinson’s poem until I stumbled upon an offhand reference to it in a review in The New York Times of Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti.
I was checking out the review because I had found Heti’s book on the library’s “Lucky Day” shelf and was so unnerved by it that I went seeking others’ impressions of it.
Alphabetical Diaries is based on a seemingly simple but subversive idea. Heti arranged all the sentences from a decade’s worth of journals alphabetically, starting with the first word, then edited them down into a book that reads like an extended poem. It’s both brilliant and maddening.
Here’s a quote from page 101:
It is already three p.m. It is amazing how easy it is and how it costs nothing to italicize something. It is amazing to me how much people read. It is an honorable thing and a wise decision not to speak about your relationships. It is annoying that it takes thirty years to be an adult. It is becoming very embarrassing. It is clear that I have spent these past three years thinking about myself, and that I have a gap in my education, three years long.
Alphabetical Diaries is not a book you can read for very long at a sitting. Ideas and images pile up until you have to walk away and digest them.
The art of finding books
I got home from the library and noticed I had checked out two books of the same approximate size (small and square) and a title that began “The Art of . . .”.
One was about stillness, and the other, social media. I found both of them on the same day, browsing the stacks at the Central Library, but didn’t see the similarity till I got home. After that, I got curious.
Artful browsing
The Multnomah County Library has a mere 19,956 titles that come up in a search for “the art of.” And that’s just books, not counting graphic novels and ebooks, of which there are about 6,000 more choices each.
Those volumes include books with “art” in the title, such as The Story of Art by Kay Hessel.
The list also contains The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, by Mark Manson (nothing subtle about that title) and, of course, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Child, Bertholle, Beck.
Not to mention one of my favorite books of all time, The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. This powerful and inspiring book dates to 2000, which is when Robert gave me my (by now well-thumbed) copy, and it is still in demand from the library, with 12 holds on six copies.
I checked out one book that sounded interesting, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, by Margareta Magnusson, but despite it being touted as “an international best seller,” it had little to offer beyond the usual instructions for decluttering. Marie Kondō, in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, writes with more verve and finesse. She knows you love your things, and helps you say goodbye.
Art in fiction and The New Yorker
The Art of Deception is a popular book title. The library lists six novels with that title, and a smattering of nonfiction books about things like cybersecurity and critical thinking. There’s even a kids’ book: Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception, by Wendelin Van Draanen.
During the time I was thinking about “the art of” books, I happened to be looking at a digitally archived copy of The New Yorker from Dec. 28, 1998. I was checking out the “Greetings, Friends!” at the end of the magazine, then an annual effort by Roger Angell. Toward the front of the magazine, I saw a display ad for The Art of Doing Nothing: Simple Ways to Make Time for Yourself.
Now, there was a synchronicity! An “art of” book from the past. And the library still has a copy. I liked the library copy so much I ordered my own.
“The Art of” in my own library
Thanks to the magic of LibraryThing.com, I now know that I own 23 books with “the art of” somewhere in the title. Among my favorites:
The Art of Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz. Not only do I love the author’s middle name, but I adore this guide to all sorts of fermentation processes. Who knew all you need to make mead is honey?
The Art of Cameroon isn’t about how to do something. It’s the catalog of an exhibit of his collection of art from the African country, written by Paul Gebauer, who was instrumental in mounting the Art of Cameroon wing at the Portland Art Museum. The works are now in storage.
The Lost Art of Finding Our Way, by John Edward Huth. A rich, encyclopedic compendium of all the ways humans navigated in the times before GPS. Think, for example, of what insight it took for Vikings to try sailing into the wind.
The Art of Memoir, by Mary Karr. Although I already have too many books, I had to buy this one for its extensive bibliography. I want to read all the books she lists there, and it would be too much trouble to transcribe.
How to Tell a Story: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Storytelling for Writers and Readers. There is “the art of” in that whopping long subtitle. The book is a modern translation of Aristotle’s Poetics, which really is about how to plot. Aristotle says, for example, that while character is all fine and good, the story is what matters.
I particularly like that this well-designed book has the Greek on one page and the translation on the facing page. I love the look and sound of ancient Greek, know only a little, and would like to study more. Finding a class is difficult; finding time is impossible.
The first book
One of the initial “the art of” books I got from the library was The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere, by the travel writer Pico Iyer—I love that “going nowhere” is a goal for a travel writer.
The Art of Stillness, though—so fulfilling. The opening anecdote is about Leonard Cohen—yes, that Leonard Cohen—making tea for the author in a California monastery. Cohen periodically retreated into silence, his soul like a still lake.
Like the tea, this book is so delicious in little sips. Iyer writes that he kept the book small so you could read it at one sitting, but it is not a one-sitting book. Such wisdom is best nibbled in small bites.
Other books that I can only take in small sips: The Comfort of Crows, by Margaret Renkl, William Carlos Williams’s Paterson, The Art of Doing Nothing, any Shakespearean sonnet, the Tao Te Ching (Mitchell or Le Guin translation, take your pick), the Bible. Add yours in the comments.
Since dipping into Iyer’s book, I’ve been noticing chances to be still. I regret now I didn’t linger at a sidewalk garden I passed through a few days ago in my travels at the outer reaches of my neighborhood. I was heading for a coffeehouse to stop and sit and write. I should have stopped there, and listened to the bees, and basked in the warm sun, and inhaled the scent of roses and lavender. The world was too much with me, and I moved on. Now I don’t remember where that garden is.
Two poems
Both these poems rely on common themes for me. One is the kernel inside a capsule, like an idea or a seed, hiding, waiting for its entrance into the world, into our consciousness.
I also often write about the blossoming of the particular to the general. What starts local becomes global. Insights drop like seeds along the way. You, the reader, come along behind and snap them up like hungry birds.
Whirligig
I’d like to have a whirligig With opalescent blades Twirling to scare the birds away, Leaving the seeds to grow. Resting under the mulch, Hearing the earthworms breath, Ready to soften and root. Life in a capsule, everything Is in the seed: nutrition, The germ of a root and a bud, All of the plant’s information A speck in a hummingbird’s eye. Soon it will be radish, A pea, a cucumber, a rose. From tiny beginning, life prospers. The cosmos bursts forth from a seed. The whirligig twirls in the garden— Focus your vision on that. You are the seed, and the radish. Everything happens through you.
Pumping
Every day, regular, beat after beat, Pushing the hemoglobin, red with iron. Pumping iron, each heartbeat, Rich, red, sticky—my veins Pulsing with life. How can I Stand it, knowing generations, Year after month, eons until now— Never once ceasing, sleeping and waking. Everyone’s heartbeat, the rhythm of living, Birth until death, always and ever. Joy in my being, knowing and caring, Pumping, my living, beat after beat.
Check out
Remember Mangoworld? I wrote about it in one of my first Substack postings, and it ties into the themes I mention above.
Mangoworld is the place where you turn you life, your heart, your outlook inside out, the way you harvest flesh from a mango. Here’s the photo, one more time.
A fresh start is good, once in a while.
Maybe find that fresh start in your quiet time today, your meditation time, your just-before-sleep time, the time when you quiet your inside voices. That time. Maybe in that time you can remember the mango.
Or just peel a banana. Remember to do that from the “bottom,” where the little button is. It’s easier that way. Just ask your friendly baboon.
Relaxed? Take a moment to step back. Think about gratitude. Think about your mother. Think about telling a story. Think about how everything will be all right.
Hold that thought. And come back next week. There will be more to say.
Almost forgot
Another chewy writing prompt, this one about birth and rebirth, has been posted at the Substack known as Juke. And another one will be coming soon. You don’t have to be a writer to appreciate these images and imaginings. You can leave a comment there letting me know what you think.
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I love this “Art of” book collection you have and the details you shared about some of them.
I do love books as rich as cream. The one I’ve always dipped in and out of is Invisible Cities by Calvino. Also agreed about the Tao Te Ching, would also add Zhuangzi, the Analects, and Mencius. And just recently picked up the Penguin abridged edition of Schopenhauer’s book of essays and aphorisms. All Juicy and dense.