Hope changes form as we age. We are no longer hoping for new things or adventures or lovers or careers. We are not “living for” any particular cause or project. We are simply living. Hope is now a compact with the universe: a resolve to keep trying, keep giving, keep reaching out. So when the world tells us it would rather we die already, that we are about to become a great deal of bother, why would we not bow out gracefully?
A marriage must be flexible. One is strong while the other flags, then you meet in the middle and run parallel for a while, then the music stops and you switch, fast as a game of musical chairs.
As soon as you can reach high, grab the shiny doorknob, and toddle outside, you see what your homeworld actually looks like. Odds are, it will be the first thing you draw: a box with a triangle on top, two square eyes to let the sunshine in, a tall door to let your friends in. It is your kangaroo pouch, familiar and comforting when the rest of the world is strange.
Why are any of us drawn to twisted or ironic amusements? And if my answer is dark, why would I want to document it? Still, now that I am looking at my predilection straight on, it unsettles me.
Everybody wanted a piece of Sister Wilhelmina. Not a relic; those days are over. But they wanted to touch her, know her, maybe leave with a CD of the sisters’ music or a copy of the biography that was hastily whipped up. Even people who held religion at arm’s length read the national news stories, hungry for awe. And who does not need a miracle?
He had flawless musical timing, comic timing, cultural timing. When he fell out of time, we sped away from him. We still say Satchmo’s name, Ella’s, Sinatra’s, Elvis’s, with reverence. But only a smattering of fans and jazz musicians invoke “Bing Crosby” with similar awe.
Adam, the first collector, got to label every other creature, creating the first taxonomy. Collectors ever since have catalogued their finds, documented their history, identified subtle differences. By the nineteenth century, people saw collections as symbolic worlds, full of clues to other places and other times.
Silences that close us off, refusing connection, shoring up the ego at others’ expense—those are dead silences. But the letting-go sort, the silences that hold space or keep vigil for someone else? They are alive.
Mothers sewed these quilts when everyone else was asleep, so there was no time to fuss over the details. For batting, they beat the dirt out of trash cotton or swept the floor of the cotton gin. Quilts were women’s work, therefore practical and unquestioned. How were these women to know, tucked into a paper-clip curve of the Alabama River with scant access to the rest of the world, that their quilts echoed the best and most daring modern art?
How did our bland city become a hot spot for national ad campaigns? Overhead was low, flights were easy in any direction, and smart, creative talent was abundant. Between the two world wars, Winston Churchill himself, speaking at an international advertising conference, pronounced the St. Louis Ad Club “far ahead of other cities.” By midcentury, the Midwest was the obvious place to study middle America.