This
entry will be different. It's not going to be about Art, as nearly
all of my entries are. It will be about a simple lantern.
In late
May, one of my sons was returning from a trip to the Midwest, and,
anticipating a drive of over a dozen hours, he would not reach our
home until nearly midnight. All of the family waited up for his
arrival, knowing that he would have some interesting stories to tell
of his travels. But we had a problem. My son had been out in the
big world, eating at restaurants, stopping at rest areas and mixing
with a fair number of people. It was possible that he had been
exposed to COVID-19, and, at our home, we had been following strictly
the suggested guidelines for stopping the spread of the virus since
late March. He would have to be isolated. My wife and I set up a
living space for him, providing a bed and a few pieces of furniture
and preparing a work area where he could write, use his computer and
eat his meals. I purchased a large tarp and hung it across the
entrance way to his new quarters, and I placed a tiny 5 inch tall
Baby Yoda that my wife had crocheted on the desk to keep him company.
But we still hadn't resolved the problem of how the family would
gather with him upon his arrival.
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| Baby Yoda |
It
seemed to me that the only safe way for us to share a common space
would be if we met outdoors in our yard and practiced social
distancing. Being May, the nights were still pretty cool, but a
sweatshirt and a pair of long pants would be sufficient to ward off
the cold. I pulled six chairs out of the garage and organized them
so no one would be closer than six feet from our sequestered
traveler. Turns out it was a moonless night, making it nearly
impossible for me to see what I was doing out in the garage. I was
stumbling over garden hoses, paint cans, a few discarded two by four
studs, bags of potting soil, chicken wire fencing and a remote
control vehicle – a vestige of our children's early years. I
should mention that our garage is situated at the top of our
property, separated from our home by about fifty yards, and has no
electricity. The night was so dark that I thought it would be a good
idea to provide some kind of lighting – just to make sure we didn't
break our necks. My first thought was to bring out a couple of
candles from the house, but the night was too breezy; they wouldn't
stay lit ten minutes. Then I remembered an old lantern that would be
perfect for shielding a candle from the wind – if only I could find
it. I returned to the house and, to my surprise, after just a few
minutes searching, found the desired item. I grabbed a stub of a
candle left over from some family gathering and headed back up the
property. Once the candle was lit, everything was set for my son's
arrival. My wife joined me in the yard to have a beer while we
waited. According to our estimations, my son was expected home
within the hour, and we wanted to be sure to intercept him in our
driveway before he might inadvertently rush into the house thereby
potentially contaminating our living space.
These
are strange times indeed.
 |
| Petrus van Schendel |
As we
quietly talked, I glanced over at the lantern sitting on our picnic
table about ten feet away. I had left its small doorway open to
provide more light, and the candle's flame danced in the wind's
gentle currents. Surprised at how much light a single candle could
provide, I focused on the flame, then examined the intricate
patterning that had been cut into the lantern's shell. It occurred
to me that this dusty, old lantern and I shared a history going back
about forty years, and, as I often do these days, I started to
reminisce.
My Aunt
Lillian, my father's sister, was 30 years old when I was born, which
meant that she was about a decade younger than my parents and most of
my aunts and uncles. She was different than they were. They had
grown up during the Depression. The men had fought in World War II.
And by 1959, the year I was born, the men were solidly settled in
careers and the women, even those with careers of their own, had
already given birth to most, if not all, of the children they would
have. My parents and my aunts and uncles were “adults”. I guess
at some point in the distant past they had sown their wild oats but
by that time had matured, put on a few pounds, accepted the routine
and responsibility that comes with having a family and didn't have a
lot of interest in frivolous things. But, like I have said, Aunt
Lillian was different.
Aunt
Lillian was contemporary. She dressed stylishly. Her wardrobe was
colorful and patterned a wee bit dynamically as was the mode in the
1960's. On occasion, she even wore jeans – something still
controversial for adult women at that time. She was slim and
youthful. She wore her hair in a tasteful, impeccably maintained
bouffant, which was covered in a fashionable headscarf when outdoors.
She was chic in an Audrey Hepburn – Breakfast
at Tiffany's sort of way.
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| Aunt Lillian with me and my sister |
Aunt
Lillian never married, so she would often visit with her siblings'
families whenever the opportunity arose. She would stay with us for
the entire weekend, and, long after my father had gone to bed on a
Saturday night, my mother and aunt would stay up smoking cigarettes,
drinking beer and having private conversations that we children were
not privy to. During one of her visits, she brought my brothers,
sister and me to the beach, and we pulled her fully dressed into the
surf. She just laughed. Because she was freer than most of the
adults I knew, she was able to travel, making multiple trips to
Europe and elsewhere over the years. I recall that once she flew to
Ireland to visit family there and spent a number of days sightseeing
in the countryside in a gypsy caravan. In her bedroom, there was a
dish that held all kinds of exotic coinage, loose change collected
over years of travel; at our home, only the occasional maple leaf
emblazoned Canadian penny cropped up. Aunt Lillian introduced me to
fondue, caviar and good wines, and she listened to classical music.
She took my sister with her to see Doctor
Zhivago at our local movie
theater. Aunt Lillian was different.
She
attended birthday parties, baptism, communion and confirmation
celebrations, graduation ceremonies, showers and weddings. When I
had a solo art show at SUNY Stony Brook, she drove from Rye, NY to my
school, a considerable journey, especially after a full day's work,
to attend the opening. But Aunt Lillian had a unique role to play.
Being unmarried and childless, all of her nieces and nephews were her
children too, and she did her damnedest to support us in all our
multifarious endeavors. In later years, Aunt Lillian, a free spirit
during my early childhood, didn't adjust easily to the changes that
were occurring in American society in the late 60's and 70's. They
were radical times in our nation's history with countless “movements”
continuously cropping up that challenged our perceptions and values.
Our society was fracturing, not into a multitude of narcissistic
fragments but into two camps: the old and the young, and that breach
was achieved in a riotous, contentious upheaval. If you were the
parent of children coming of age during this period, you were forced
to evolve, to some degree, with them. You would be introduced to new
ideas and ethics. You would be indoctrinated into the new code of
informality. My parents, like most during those days, made the
transition in a herky-jerky fashion, sticking to many of their core
values while accepting that society was changing and recognizing
that, if they were going to maintain a functioning relationship with
their children, they had to tolerate our distasteful customs and
attitudes. By the time I started college, my parents had been “worn
down” from countless, minor insurrections and a fairly congenial
truce had been effected. Aunt Lillian didn't have children to usher
her into this new era, and she retained many of her beliefs and
habits in spite of the changes that were going on around her. She
appeared a bit reactionary, somewhat Victorian. We would have silly
arguments about the environment, the sexual revolution, the new
openness. Occasionally, she would critique us children, evaluating
our activities or choices from a perspective that seemed absolutely
antediluvian. I recall her informing me when I referred to my mother
as “she” that “she” was the cat's mother. I was bewildered.
“But Aunt Lillian,” I protested, “it's just a pronoun.”
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| Aunt Lillian (l.) and Aunt Mary |
But, in
truth, we negotiated those days without an inordinate number of
collisions and clashes, and, even during my college years, I would
accompany my family on visits to Aunt Lillian's apartment in Rye. It
was during one of those visits that I noticed as we were preparing to
head home two lanterns sitting atop opposite ends of the shelving
that spanned one wall of her apartment. They were simple lanterns
constructed of panels of blackened tin pierced in patterns of dots
and dashes. The cone of each lantern was capped with a circular
grip, and a hinged doorway permitted access to its interior. They
looked primitive and excited my interest, which was particularly
strong at that time, in everything “old”. (I carved Viking
styled figures and patterning in wooden beams, brewed homemade mead
in my mother's kitchen and made paintings and drawings paying homage
to Woden and Llyr. My area of focus for my English degree was Middle
English Literature, and I ravenously read Chaucer, Viking sagas and
Middle English lays, lyrics and romances. Jethro Tull's Songs
from the Wood was my
favorite album in those days.) So I stopped to admire the lanterns.
Aunt Lillian explained that she had purchased the lanterns from one
of my cousins who was selling them as part of a fundraising effort
for some worthy institution. If I recall correctly, she said my
cousin had actually participated in the construction of them. I
guess I raved about them a little too enthusiastically because Aunt
Lillian reached up, removed one of the lanterns from the shelf and
handed it to me. I was mortified. “No, Aunt Lillian,” I argued,
“I didn't mean to...I don't want to take your lantern. I mean I
appreciate it, but I can't.” She just laughed and said, “One
lantern is enough for me. Really. Hope you enjoy it.”
And
that's how I came into possession of the lantern that I went in
search of the night my son was returning from his journey.
 |
| The Actual Lantern |
Immediately,
the lantern found a critical function. The house I grew up in was a
rather compact ranch with kitchen, living room and dining room
clustered tightly around a central stairway that led to the basement.
There was absolutely nowhere private to congregate if my friends
stopped by to visit. We would gather at our kitchen table, the sound
of the blasting television howling in the room and, every so often,
my father angrily demanding from the living room sofa that we “keep
it down out there!” So if the weather was in any way tolerable, we
would retreat to the yard to share a couple of beers and shoot the
bull. There was an outdoor light installed above our backdoor, but
we would prefer to sit in darkness rather than be vexed by its
blinding glare. Once I got the lantern, it became our regular
companion during our gatherings. In the midst of my thoroughly
suburban neighborhood, I enjoyed seeing my friends' faces lustrous in
the golden glow of a flickering candle and imagining, however feebly,
that we were creatures of a different age – simpler, more primitive
and more essential.
 |
| Jan Steen |
It was
about this time that my friend Tom suggested that we attend a lecture
on Transcendental Meditation that was to be given at our local
library. I had known Tom since we met in Junior High School. He was
in most of my classes and was part of the regular crew who occupied
the same table in the lunchroom each day. Though we remained friends
in High School, we didn't see quite as much of each other because
there were now two “accelerated” classes and they were
essentially divided between band and non-band members. My musical
career had ended with my graduation from elementary school; Tom
played bass guitar and was in the school band. All the same our
paths still crossed several times each day, and, of course, we
regularly got together with a core group of friends outside of
school. I thought moving on to college would mean the end of our
relationship, more or less, but I was shocked to run into Tom at my
orientation session at SUNY Stony Brook in the summer of 1977. He
was never in any of my classes, but we met up for lunch most days and
ran into each other on campus fairly often. It was fantastic to have
a close friend around, especially during my first year of college
when I was adjusting to this new environment and new
responsibilities. Tom was studying journalism, and I was striving to
secure two degrees in English and Studio Art. Tom was very
open-minded and curious, driven to meet new people and explore new
situations. I was a cynic, suspicious of people's motives and
resistant to new ideas. I considered myself a realist. In fact,
another friend and I were engaged in a series of conversations,
sparked by our reading of Tolstoy, in which we concluded that only
through cool, dispassionate, intellectual evaluation could one hope
to come to a full understanding of anything. Tom jumped into things
full throttle, while I cautiously dipped my toe in to test the
waters.
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| Sketch of Tom - c1980 |
So when
Tom proposed that we should attend this lecture on Transcendental
Meditation at the library, I was less than enthusiastic. “It's
just going to be a sales pitch,” I objected. “But it should be
interesting,” he responded. “I really doubt it,” I replied.
“Come on! What can it hurt?” “Aw!” I moaned. I ended up
attending the lecture with Tom more out of friendship than scholarly
curiosity.
The
lecture had yielded what I thought was a pretty good turnout of local
residents willing to devote an evening to learning about a relatively
new discipline brought to the US from India. The speaker took the
podium and addressed the audience. I felt his talk was very
pragmatic, not the murky mysticism I was expecting. He explained
that Transcendental Meditation was simply a means of dispelling
distractions, achieving a thoroughly relaxed state and attaining an
enhanced ability to concentrate. Two short sessions of TM per day
offered a multitude of benefits. Practitioners would feel better
rested and more energetic while requiring fewer hours of sleep each
night. In addition, TM could induce a greater sense of contentment
and inspire creativity. He also talked about health benefits, in
particular the potential to ameliorate the symptoms of hypertension.
And, as a college student, I was especially excited by the claim
that, by acquiring the ability to block out distractions and improve
focus, my studies would be made easier and I would absorb material
more readily. He explained that if one continued with the program he
or she would be assigned a mantra, a personal Sanskrit word or
phrase, that would be silently repeated by the practitioner to assist
in emptying the mind of all thought and bring on a state of utter
relaxation. The mantra was unique to the individual and should never
be revealed to anyone else. Of course, the thrust of the lecture was
to sign up participants for a multi-step program which involved a fee
structure that far exceeded the means of a financially strapped
college student, but I wasn't turned off by the presentation. On the
contrary, it actually intrigued me. The speaker ended his lecture by
teaching us an exercise that we could all easily perform without
further instruction, which involved staring at the flame of a candle
until its image became established on our retinas. We were to close
our eyes, then attempt to retain and stabilize the afterimage of the
flame for as long as possible. With practice, our ability to control
the afterimage would strengthen, and, hopefully, in the process, we
would actually initiate our first experiences of meditation.
Returning
home that night, I thought I would give the flame experiment a try.
I was living in my parents' basement at the time, so I could explore
this technique in privacy and without disturbing anyone else. I
placed the tin lantern on the table beside my bed, lit its candle and
turned off all the lights. After focusing on the flame for quite a
while, I closed my eyes and, sure enough, its afterimage appeared
quite distinctly on my retina. The flame drifted slowly to the
right, and when I attempted to bring it back to center, it darted
about wildly, veering out of my field of vision entirely. I managed
to recapture the image of the flame only to watch it fade rapidly
into the darkness. “No problem,” I thought, “The instructor
said that this skill would take some time to master. Rome wasn't
built in a day.” I performed this experiment several more times
that night achieving similar results before pulling up my blankets
and going to sleep.
 |
| Georges de La Tour |
The
flame experiment became part of my nightly ritual. After my reading,
I would light the candle in the lantern, shut off the lights and
practice my rudimentary TM technique. I might perform this exercise
three or four times each night. The routine wasn't difficult or
unpleasant, so committing to this activity didn't represent a
hardship. But despite many months of performing this exercise, I
must admit that I saw absolutely no progress. I was neither more
successful at controlling the movement of the afterimage nor better
able to retain the image longer. I chalked this failure up to my own
deficiencies, my dependence on a Western way of addressing perception
that advocated logic and analytical discourse as the best means to
achieving enlightenment. My mind was unable to relinquish active
thought. Recognizing this, I called an end to the flame experiment
and chose instead to listen to classical music as I fell asleep.
I still
continued to use the tin lantern to light my nighttime gatherings,
and it followed me to each of my three apartments in Brooklyn and
then up to Dutchess County. When my kids were small, I was more
likely than now to pull out the lantern to lend a little romantic
ambiance to an evening's activities in the yard, but I've never
abandoned it completely. Over the years, an amalgam of many
different colored waxes has accumulated in its bottom and a coat of
dust has collected on its shell. I tell myself from time to time
that I should rehabilitate the old lantern, but never seem to get to
it. It remains on display on the stone ledge that skirts the base of
our living room's fireplace where it occasionally asserts its
presence and its history on my consciousness.
And
here's my point. If you're around long enough, it's more than likely
that your home will inadvertently become a museum housing the
detritus collected over decades and decades of living. Honestly, I
can just quickly glance around in any room of our home and find a
multitude of items that unearth a host of memories. On our bookshelf
perches the small teddy bear, a little worse for wear, that was my
companion when I was just a baby. The low, wide chair that my
siblings and I bought for our grandmother many years ago sits in my
living room, even its reupholstered
epidermis now frayed after repeated onslaughts from our cats.
(Incidentally, this low chair still proved insufficient to meet my
grandmother's needs, and she was provided with a stool on which she
could rest her feet when seated there.) Displayed above it is a
flask I purchased in Germany thirty years ago so I could enjoy an
occasional nip while hiking in the Bavarian Alps during a rather cool
October. In my closet, hangs the corduroy jacket I bought for my
first real job interview – I wonder if it still fits. As I type
these words, a wooden rocking horse that my wife and I bought in
Brooklyn as a Christmas gift for our oldest son peers out at me from
our front door's vestibule. A decade later, I spent my evenings
restoring this rocking horse, after years of abuse from three raucous
boys, in expectation of the imminent arrival of our fourth child –
who, by the way, is now eighteen years old. Truly, I could go on
listing similar items endlessly. It's kind of reassuring to be
surrounded by these things; they remind me that we're all part of a
continuum, that our imprint on this planet is not completely
ephemeral. However I also recognize that sometime soon after I'm
gone these accumulated “souvenirs” will lose their magic and
become simply objects once more.
 |
| Godfried Schalcken |
I
believe this entry must conclude with a few followups to some of the
stories I touched upon within it.
My son
remained asymptomatic throughout his isolation, and, after his two
week quarantine, he rejoined the rest of the family living in our
home. I was pleased to note that he handled his period of
confinement with relative ease, maintaining for the most part an
upbeat attitude while enduring his life behind a plastic tarp.
My fiend
Tom married and moved to Maine where he and his wife raised their
family. He did become a successful reporter and currently writes for
an organization committed to preserving island and coastal life in
Maine while promoting a healthy environment. It's hard for me to
fathom, but Tom is now a grandfather.
When my
wife and I bought our home north of the city, I immediately thought
about inviting Aunt Lillian up to spend a weekend with us. The
purchase had left us strapped for cash, and we were furnishing the
house piecemeal, buying things here and there as our budget
permitted. For instance, we ate at a folding table for what seemed
an eternity before finally securing a dining room set. I didn't want
to have my aunt up until we could entertain her... well not properly
(that was definitely beyond our reach) but maybe passably.
Unfortunately before we could get our act together, I received word
that Aunt Lillian was seriously ill. She passed away at the age of
sixty five a quarter century ago.
Though
my foray into Transcendental Meditation didn't go well, I maintained
a curiosity about Eastern doctrines. During my undergraduate
studies, I enrolled in a course on Indian Philosophy in which we read
selections from the Bhagavad Gītā,
the Ŗg Veda and the Upanișads. The material proved to be too
esoteric for me, and I really didn't get much out of the class.
Later in Grad School, I took a course on Chinese and Japanese Art
that sparked a lasting interest in Zen Buddhism. On my own, I began
researching this philosophy which complimented my fixation at that
time on the writings of Yasunarί Kawabata and Yukio Mishima.
Though I remain steadfastly irreligious, Zen Buddhism appealed to me
as the most practical and applicable of the world religions with
which I've become familiar. The concept of Yin and Yang definitely
contributed toward my artistic development, particularly my
fascination with duality and contradiction. For the last thirty
years, a jade Buddha pendant has hung from my neck not to proclaim my
adherence to a religious doctrine but to express my dissatisfaction
with all absolutes and emphasize my conviction that, regardless of
how comforting it is to assess people and events in tones of black
and white, any significant perception of experience must recognize
that everything is painted in shades of gray.
As
always, I encourage my readers to comment here, but, if anyone
prefers to respond privately, I can be contacted at
gerardwickham@gmail.com.
