Tag: museums

(In memory of Steve Cass)

I usually walk to work through a beautiful colonnade of trees but one day four trees had been taken out by municipal workers. Since I had been looking at those trees every day for months, I knew one had a squirrel’s nest. As it was now January and there was no leaf litter on the ground, I knew that squirrel was in trouble. So, the next time I went to the grocery store, I got unsalted peanuts and every morning I would scatter some at the base of the nearest tree.

It took me three weeks to realize that I was tossing peanuts because I identified with that squirrel. I had lived in Oman for 19 years and had to leave with a few months’ notice. By the grace of God, I have my family and friends, but I lost so much, that even with a nice studio apartment and a good temporary job, I feel like that squirrel, suddenly tossed out of a warm, safe space into a bleak January.

When I left Oman, I lost my job and, far more than that, I lost my main career. For 19 years, I taught stories, poetry and dramas to non-literature majors to help them improve their language skills and cultural knowledge. I don’t fit into American universities’ English departments whose students know English and don’t need to learn about North American/ UK/EU cultures. And I don’t have the training or temperament to teach English as a Second Language using language textbooks.

I lost my second career as an anthropologist. Over a decade of study, I taught myself how to do ethnographic research and wrote four books. But I don’t fit in Anthropology departments as I don’t have a related degree and I have never taken an anthropology course.

I also lost stuff: my beloved 2009 pick-up that drove me up mountains, across deserts and along beaches. I lost my hand-painted furniture, my teak chairs, wool rugs, clothes, everything that was in my kitchen and hundreds of books, all given away to friends.

And I lost a lot of who I was. I visit my mom every six weeks or so, but beyond that, I am at home or at work. I used to be social but since I have been back in the States I have been out to lunch once with relatives, had coffee with a friend, dinner with friends and attended one party. Four activities in eight months when I used to have four social activities in a week.

In an effort to get out more, I went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Walking into the Ancient Egypt section felt like coming home. It was so peaceful and lovely, it seemed as if I was putting down a burden that I hadn’t realized I was carrying.

I wandered around the museum for three hours in a daze, in the words of Emily Dickenson

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro’ endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

I liked “Woman and Flowers” by Alma-Tadema, one of my favorite painters, but the painting I loved most was “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” by Luc Olivier Merson, such a quiet, graceful scene.

I bought a membership to the museum and within a month I was back. I paid a visit to the Egyptian section, then ventured further out, into the American and impressionists exhibits. Two weeks later, I spent another morning walking around without a map. It was nice to come across Paul Revere’s silverwork and the painting of flowers exhibit, but the only places I really wanted to be was in front of Merson’s painting or anything Middle Eastern from before 1500 CE.

Walking into a room in the Ancient Egyptian section that I hadn’t seen before, I suddenly understood why the museum brought me such serenity. The cases were full of small, wooden boats full of men in white sarongs. “Oh,” I realized, “they look like the research guys.” Most of the Omani men I did ethnographic research with are full- or part-time fishermen. They wear a wazar, a piece of fabric wrapped around their waists that falls to their knees which is often plain white cotton or white with a light checkered or striped pattern.

And the man in the painting “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” sleeps as the research guys sleep when they are camping, directly on sand next to a fire with a blanket underneath and a blanket over which is pulled up to cover the face. For everyone else, the man in the painting is Joseph; for me, it’s one of 15 different men who I was friends with, went fishing with, had hundreds of picnics with, asked questions of and who I miss terribly.

My grief is much smaller than most people who have been displaced by wars and hatred. Relatives co-signed my lease so I have a place to stay; my mom helps me get through a Boston winter by gifting flannel sheets and sweaters. By the grace of God, I have landed with the kindest group of co-workers. But I stand in front of that painting and cry as it seems to hold all the harmony that I have lost.

And, as so often happens, the book I needed to understand how I felt appeared at the right time. Amidst the postcards and scarves in the museum shop, I saw All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley. Although my favorite museum is the Frick, I also love the Met and the cover mentioned something about grief, so I thought it would be interesting.

I read it in one morning, crying all the way through. What Bringley gets so right is how a loss, even when you know it’s coming and you have a pretty good idea how much it is going to hurt, stops the forward motion of your life. His book isn’t “feel-good” or “how-to”; after his brother died, Bringley walked away from his career and became a security guard at the Met for ten years.

I understand that kind of change. Several acquaintances have been shocked that, after almost two decades as assistant and associate professor, I am working as an administrative assistant. I apply for jobs I am qualified for, such as teacher training, but I am very content doing something less complicated. Rest is good.

And while the book is about grief and the solace of art, Bringley also knows the solace of time passing and how, even you want to cling to a certain kind of numbness, beauty (however you define it) will lead you back to life.

Reading All the Beauty in the World made me realize that I wasn’t only missing my Omani friends, I was missing beauty, the sublime moments of natural splendor that were so common in Oman and totally absent from my life in Boston.

For me, beauty comes straight on, like a ghost walking through you. You feel like you have been passed through a sieve that takes out all your daily, small worries as you stand in front of that gorgeous scenery. That happened constantly when I was in Oman.

I could go to a miles-long beach with clean sand where I could sit or walk without being bothered by another person. I would meet the research guys for dinner in small sandy coves, where you could not see any lights except on boats far out to sea. After dinner, we would sit and talk for hours, looking up at a sky full of stars. Some nights there were meteor showers; in the spring the water had phosphorescence. If we went out on a boat, there were pods of dolphins, whales, sea turtles and all the different types of fish they were catching. I walked down into sinkholes full of birdsong; in the monsoon season I had tea next to waterfalls.

And now I live in Boston which has nice parks and some pretty streets but you can’t see stars. Is there a place in the States that has a miles-long stretch of beach with pristine sand, ocean water that’s clean and warm enough to swim in, where you can camp, build a fire and it’s safe for a woman to sit alone for hours after dark?

I am snug in my tiny apartment but I don’t have grandeur. I don’t have vistas. I don’t have the chance to stand on the edge of a cliff and look down on the lights of a small town by the ocean and look up to the wide sweep of a dark sky full of constellations. When I see “Rest on the Flight into Egypt,” I remember that I have camped in deserts like that. I have driven across deserts during the day chatting away with research guys and driven across deserts at night alone, playing music and watching the stars that came down almost clear to the horizon.  

The problem with tasting a liquor never brewed is that one day, there will be no more such liquor and you will stand in a museum with tears streaming down your face.

I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro’ endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove’s door –
When Butterflies – renounce their “drams” –
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!

Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Luc Olivier Merson,