Lightness of Being at the AWP Conference in Seattle

As I remember it, about four thousand writers attended the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference in Chicago in two-thousand-eight. I came home depressed and told people who asked, We are a cloud of locusts, foraging in a field that has already been harvested.

This belief, which I still hold, has not kept me from attending five of the last six conferences. After I adjusted to that shock of writers, I have enjoyed myself, gained a lot of useful information, and put some of it to use. I had a wonderful time in Seattle, even though the number of attendees this year reached an astronomical twelve thousand writers.

The first summer after I started working on my MFA ten years ago I attended a workshop led by Robert Olen Butler, who told me, Fine. Get your MFA. But, you will probably have to recover from it when you finish. I think that was true, and that what I had to recover from is also related to attending these gigantic writer’s conferences and feeling so completely invisible and negligible. I am still writing, less enthusiastically and certainly less hopefully than a few years ago, and I am still showing up at the AWP Conferences.

Now, I don’t know what conclusions to draw, considering all this Kunderalike, lightness of being, when yesterday I logged on to check the dates for next year’s conference in Minneapolis and saw my husband, Jim and I twice in the short film highlights of the Seattle Conference. Maybe I have to quit whining, quit blaming the competition, and get back to work with my former hope and enthusiasm?

https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/overview

More on Balboa Park, and the Weather

Some days are easier than others. Living here in the Upper Midwest, I’ve learned that temperature is less critical than the color of the day. All other things being equal, sunny days are the easiest. I grew up in the overcast and damp Pacific Northwest Rainforest. That climate forms its own spiritual and emotional tapestry, one that more closely resembles the color variations and textures of life. But, it’s always easier to start a sunny day.

Back to the sunny afternoon in Balboa Park I wrote about last week. Just for fun, I googled, “Poodles in sunglasses and sun visors.” There they were, two of the same dogs I met last year, photographed two years ago by Dawn Emery http://www.dawnemery.com/blog/ and recently posted on her Blog.

Photo Credit Dawn Emery

The gray dog on the left was fourteen last year. She was my favorite. When I finished scratching behind her ears, rubbing her chest, and telling her what a good girl she was, I moved on to the next dog. The gray dog leaned over and ever-so-subtly sidled into the younger dog’s space. Then she turned her back to me for more scratching. A good laugh, a moment of delight: always a good thing.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Poodles at Balboa Park

Landscape with Parable of the Sower by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The painting, Landscape with the Parable of the Sower is featured prominently in the book I mentioned last week, Pieter Bruegel by Christian Vohringer. It headlines the chapter called, Early Works, and is cited as, “the earliest dated painting by Bruegel.” I saw this painting at the Timken Museum during a trip to San Diego. I was captured by the brilliant and beautiful blue and aqua colors in both the mountains and the water. Unfortunately, this reproduction from the Timken Museum website doesn’t express the captivating hues in the painting, as did none of the other possible options I found online.

I was astounded by that museum, as I always am when I discover any art museum that has begun its life as a private collection and includes paintings by the world’s most famous painters. If you are in San Diego, let me recommend this lovely museum located in Balboa Park. We were in Balboa Park on a Sunday afternoon in March last year. As well as a delightful lunch on the grounds, and visiting the two art museums, we enjoyed listening to part of the free organ concert taking place in the arena, alongside a number of memorable poodles.

I was enjoying the company of a beautiful standard poodle sitting near us when another dog owner came walking by with four more poodles on four leashes, all wearing colorful sun visors and sunglasses. I enjoyed a lovely afternoon at Balboa Park, amazed at Bruegel’s blues and greens that seem to have lived so brilliantly for more than four hundred and sixty years, and immensely cheered by the colorful display created by those four poodle dogs decked out in brilliantly colored sun visors and sunglasses.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Our family attended the Gregorian Chanting at the Iglese de la Chapelle in Brussels on Christmas Eve a few years ago when our oldest son was living in that city. We sat abreast the tombs of the Sixteenth Century Flemish painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his wife. Bruegel was already in my mind because our minister had mentioned Bruegel’s painting, The Numbering at Bethlehem in a recent sermon, noting the Holy Family depicted there as ordinary people going about ordinary lives in the company of other ordinary people similarly occupied. Earlier in that week, we had already seen The Numbering at Bethlehem amongst the Bruegel paintings at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.

Église de la Chapelle Bxl 01″ by User:Ben2 – Own work (Photo personnelle).

We took a cab to the church because of the cold, rainy evening. After the service, when we couldn’t find a cab anywhere, we walked through the rain along slippery cobblestone streets downhill toward what we hoped was the center of the city, and finally found our hotel on The Grand Place.

Bruegel is on my mind again this week, since I recently procured a copy of Pieter Bruegel by Christian Vohringer from the Masters of Netherlandish Art series. My favorite Bruegel painting from The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, has only received a small reproduction in my new book, and barely a mention.

“Pieter Bruegel I-Fall of rebel Angels (merge)” by original photographs: Rama stitching:Esby – Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0-fr via Wikimedia Commons

As I remember it, this painting hung near the more famous and far more frequently mentioned, Fall of Icarus, a painting that barely captured my notice then, or since. Russell and I studied Fall of the Rebel Angels for a long time. The painting  is fascinating in its complexity and scope, its unlimited supply of “angels” falling from the sky into the already overpopulated foreground filled with both grotesque and silly creatures, giving birth to more identical grotesque and silly creatures. A few angels in the middle ground fight an apparently futile battle for control.  Russell stood directly in front of the painting and stared. Finally he said, “Look at that headless creature in the corner. It’s farting.”  I realize now that artists often paint the same subjects as their peers. Paintings  similar to Bruegel’s Fall of the Rebel Angels were done by numerous of his contemporaries.

We who live here on this earth, grow to realize more fully our puzzling and inescapable situation as time passes in our lives. Bruegel’s painting at least partly expresses our common, grotesque, futile, sometimes silly, and often humorous plight, in the presence of the fight for good.

Music and Painting at the Minnesota State Fair

A lovely woman in shorts and a fedora stopped me cold with her beautiful voice on my way to the Fine Arts Building at the rainy Minnesota State Fair last Friday. I joined a small but appreciative audience gathered at the Minnesota Farmers Union Booth to enjoy music performed by The Twin Cities Jazz Cats. A passing fair volunteer stopped and started dancing in front of the musicians. He was obviously a trained dancer and the joy in his light footed and spontaneous performance made me feel instantly buoyant in a way that happens so much less frequently since our children grew up and my dog died. The moment only got better when a young woman dressed as a cowgirl came running from inside the building and joined the dancer. It was the kind of moment that used to happen in movies, the kind of spontaneity that turns the world into the richest colors (see below).

Autumn Light
David Richards Smith

My husband and I have developed a routine at the State Fair. I always check out the painting and photography competition in The Fine Arts Building. I like to see how much or how little I agree with the judges. I like to pick out my favorites. This year my favorite painting was Autumn Light by David Richards Smith, the Northstar Watercolor Society Award winner. The rich, deep colors, wonderful textures, and masterful expression of sunlight in Mr. Smith’s painting blend so beautifully I was engulfed in that special warmth and particular radiance that make the world more precious and brilliant in the Minnesota Fall. It defies description (back to my original subject in January).