The Nineteenth Sunday of Pentecost, 2019
Last Sunday almost didn't happen. I mena that in the sense that I almost didn't spend it in New York, but had, at one point, every inention of spending one more warm weekend in Middletown before Indian Summer disappeared completely. But, I've been having a lot of dreams lately and one of the new memes to emerge is high school in the 1960s.
These dreams involve Mommyland in the days before it became finally and irrevocably Mommyland but also my dad's last redoubt, Sis's real coming of age and the launching pad for whatever intellectual life I could call my own for the next twenty years. It was also the last time I was ever responsible for a dog, something I have sorely missed since the last family pet died just about twenty years ago exactly.
I have posted about the first in this series of dreams. That one involved washing Dad's car. There were others in a similar vein, involving a task or chore that needed to be performed in connection with the house, usually with Mom's cooperation or tacit approval. The one in question involved cleaning out a closet. Out of the closet, came all sorts of things most of which could be safely thrown out. But, among the last items were two pieces of art, each created by me. The first was a portrait done in pastel chalk of the late New York senator and Attorney General of the United States, Robert Kennedy. It was completed a little over four months after his assassination toward the end of the presidential primary season in 1968.
I was 17 years old.
The second was an exact duplicate of the same portrait only scaled up by a factor of ten. Of the two portraits, only the first one actually existed in real life. And, that is where the dream ended. I woke up last Thursday believing it was a sign from G-d that fifty-one years later, I should complete the second of the two portraits.
But, first, I had to locate the original. It was by no means a foregone conclusion that I could do so. Despite the fact that I am an inveterate pack-rat, things have fallen through the cracks: a cherished letter from the widow of childrens' author, Walter R. Brooks, the stone tossed into the campfirefire at our last Ghost Council at Camp Rising Sun, the notes I took after my tour of Katharine Hepburn's townhouse the night before Sotheby's moved everything out - have al vanished into thin air.
I was in luck. I found the RFK portrait in the second hiding place I looked in. I hadn't looked at it - hadn't even thought about it in years. I think I was a little embarrassed by it because the hard pastels had such a limited ability to be mixed that I was left to using a combination of white highlights and a stick of chalk labeled "vermillion" which I had understood to be associated with certain parts of the human body. The result was a head and partial shoulders portrait of the late senator that was highly florid.
But, looking at it again, I had to admit that it was stunning, particularly the way RFK's eye's pierced right through all the orange and pink. Duplicating that on a much larger scale would be a challenge, but I felt the Holy Spirit at my back. Somehow, over the space of the last half-century I have picked up enough skills that the job was fairly easy. It was done by sundown Friday evening. It wasn't an exact duplicate; I allowed for a little more emotion to creep into RFK's face. But, I kept the same color scheme, mixing the paints myself.
That was why I stayed in Brooklyn. The canvas - a good three by four feet - was WAY too big to carry on the Metroliner to Connecticut.
I arrived at church just in time for the sermon which was delivered by a seminarian. It was all about greeting strangers and really seeing them. So, yes. There was a group exercise where the entire congregation was encouraged to stand up and gaze into someone's eyes for three minutes. It wasn't so bad. I don't think the seminarian realized how quite practiced St. Michael's is at these sorts of things.
Bad News: Bilbo Baggins is permanently in a nursing home. His decline has been rather rapid these past few months. The Elders Table will not be the same without him.
These dreams involve Mommyland in the days before it became finally and irrevocably Mommyland but also my dad's last redoubt, Sis's real coming of age and the launching pad for whatever intellectual life I could call my own for the next twenty years. It was also the last time I was ever responsible for a dog, something I have sorely missed since the last family pet died just about twenty years ago exactly.
I have posted about the first in this series of dreams. That one involved washing Dad's car. There were others in a similar vein, involving a task or chore that needed to be performed in connection with the house, usually with Mom's cooperation or tacit approval. The one in question involved cleaning out a closet. Out of the closet, came all sorts of things most of which could be safely thrown out. But, among the last items were two pieces of art, each created by me. The first was a portrait done in pastel chalk of the late New York senator and Attorney General of the United States, Robert Kennedy. It was completed a little over four months after his assassination toward the end of the presidential primary season in 1968.
I was 17 years old.
The second was an exact duplicate of the same portrait only scaled up by a factor of ten. Of the two portraits, only the first one actually existed in real life. And, that is where the dream ended. I woke up last Thursday believing it was a sign from G-d that fifty-one years later, I should complete the second of the two portraits.
But, first, I had to locate the original. It was by no means a foregone conclusion that I could do so. Despite the fact that I am an inveterate pack-rat, things have fallen through the cracks: a cherished letter from the widow of childrens' author, Walter R. Brooks, the stone tossed into the campfirefire at our last Ghost Council at Camp Rising Sun, the notes I took after my tour of Katharine Hepburn's townhouse the night before Sotheby's moved everything out - have al vanished into thin air.
I was in luck. I found the RFK portrait in the second hiding place I looked in. I hadn't looked at it - hadn't even thought about it in years. I think I was a little embarrassed by it because the hard pastels had such a limited ability to be mixed that I was left to using a combination of white highlights and a stick of chalk labeled "vermillion" which I had understood to be associated with certain parts of the human body. The result was a head and partial shoulders portrait of the late senator that was highly florid.
But, looking at it again, I had to admit that it was stunning, particularly the way RFK's eye's pierced right through all the orange and pink. Duplicating that on a much larger scale would be a challenge, but I felt the Holy Spirit at my back. Somehow, over the space of the last half-century I have picked up enough skills that the job was fairly easy. It was done by sundown Friday evening. It wasn't an exact duplicate; I allowed for a little more emotion to creep into RFK's face. But, I kept the same color scheme, mixing the paints myself.
That was why I stayed in Brooklyn. The canvas - a good three by four feet - was WAY too big to carry on the Metroliner to Connecticut.
I arrived at church just in time for the sermon which was delivered by a seminarian. It was all about greeting strangers and really seeing them. So, yes. There was a group exercise where the entire congregation was encouraged to stand up and gaze into someone's eyes for three minutes. It wasn't so bad. I don't think the seminarian realized how quite practiced St. Michael's is at these sorts of things.
Bad News: Bilbo Baggins is permanently in a nursing home. His decline has been rather rapid these past few months. The Elders Table will not be the same without him.