Part VIII - Vulnérabilité

Paris Stories (continued) -- Part VIII

They spent the late morning together, drinking delicious coffee at one of their favorite cafés.

Auburn hues, and bold aromas drifted down avenues—fragrance wafting in the city air. Life’s rhythm slowed down in such moments; they would think back later and realize the magic of love sets aside time like an invisible hand.

By midday the streets of the arrondissement bustled with weekend activity.

Separate Paris lives bumped into one another, in close proximity but with uniqueness; like red-blood cells coursing through the body’s arteries. 

City dwellers’ living kinship, the concord of the masses: coexisting diversity, common values, the momentum of time, and a collaborative friendliness pervaded most of the neighborhoods along the Seine, at least those frequented by artists.

“I’m peaceful right now, Char.” “It’s hard to put to words, but exploration has exploded my creative boundaries.” They were long on both intimacy and communication, a powerful duo.

“Tell me how, Gabriel,” smiling, waiting expectantly for his answer.

“Its heart is energy,” he told her, “from my center, creativity hisses like a volcano; the earth’s about to crack open.” He continued, “there’s definitely a pressure building,” “It’s a mysterious force.”

Gabriel continued, “when I feel most accomplished, besides when I’m with you; is when the creative explosion erupts but I can still grab hold of it, use it!”

She loved his explanations, because she was pretty sure the wheels in his beautiful mind always spun.

“I didn't know the power of my thoughts; what to do with them?”

“I knew I was different but by secondary school, my classmates let me know for sure!” (winking)

“I miss Middle School,” deadpanned Charlotte.

She added, “Like I miss having Poison Ivy.”

He barked, “being different in secondary school… like being sent to the gulag—you’re labeled… doomed!” "Condamné."

“The hidden fruit finally came to the forefront, didn’t it?” Charlotte said.

“Thank God,” he replied.

Charlotte said, ironically, “I’m not trying to conform anymore, myself.”

“I want to be different, but I’m not sure making a living is something I should ignore,” Charlotte confided, “but if I devote all my time & energy to a law practice, there won’t be anything left for myself, for my art?”

Charlotte concluded, “Working in the law won’t give me the buzz that expressing myself does, artistically.”

Gabriel said, “Stimulus doesn’t pay the bills, Charlotte;” showing, maybe a firmer understanding of economics than she gave him credit for?

“But legal expression isn’t the same,” she concluded, “As a lawyer you have to say what your client wants you to say, or what they need you to say.” “And you have to fight for causes you don’t believe in!”

“The worst is when you know your client is lying to you.” He could tell she was agitated.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Char,”

[Did Gabriel mean that he had a better grip on the art business than she did?]

He believed Charlotte’s work as an amateur laid the groundwork for a long career as a professional artist. 

“You’ve got the self-control,” continuing, “You’ll know when it’s time to quit Lawyering; the art will meet the artist, when the writer is ready.”

“Keep exploring, Char, and drink from the waters of creativity,” Gabriel seemed confident. “You’re on the right path, I'm sure of it.”

“I just read Ayn Rand, she said that art is… 'a selective re-creation of reality, according to the artist’s metaphysical value judgments'.” “Isn’t that cool?” she said. This might be where Gabriel's English language skills broke down?

“The purpose of art is to exhibit and concretely make known, the artist’s fundamental view of existence,” “which I think is so evident in your drawings, Gabriel.” He was flattered, but also flummoxed.

Charlotte: “So, the metaphysics of your designs are made within the principles of mathematics, geometry, and uniformity. The black-and-white is obvious when you look at your art; but at the same time, the art is independent of the world’s measurements and reflects your own knowledge, beliefs, feelings, and desires of how the world should be.” Gabriel was completely focused; transfixed by this brilliant woman.

Image 2018 ©Charles Crumb via Facebook

“Maybe I know more than the casual observer, but to me drawing's a means of survival,” “a way to make sense of the world, your life, how you think things should be. That which is internal still makes its way onto the canvas!” After saying so much, she was physically spent—out of breath.

Gabriel just stared at her. He didn’t know what to say. 

Most Frenchmen weren't as sapiosexual as he was at the moment.

But this vulnerability exposed him to great danger.

He felt like his skin was transparent, and she was gazing right inside: into his beating heart. 

"My art is my own language, Char; it's unconventional, but on its face it looks systematic, I know. It's learned from an apprentissage of my own mind; and a long period of experimenting, or doodling as you call it in English."

Gabriel proudly finished his speech:  "I don't know if it's capital-A art; but it's neither a sob story, nor a confidential whisper. You're correct, Charlotte, my art is a translation of my personal life into visual terms. As weird as that looks."

Image 2018 ©Charles Crumb via Facebook

(Fair use of copyrighted work shown herein above is not an infringement of copyright law, 17 USC  Sec.107)

##

The video I'm posting to celebrate Part VIII is one of the sweetest love songs I've ever heard, slow dance: #TupeloHoney

https://youtu.be/3DbTIKHYwog

_______________________________________________________________________________

Fiction ©Mark H. Pillsbury

Legal disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 

Part VII -- The Paris Stories

(Part VII) "I Didn't Know Art" 

With powerful energy, their love burned brightly for a fortnight in Paris.

They wanted everything, to do everything, seeing the city from every angle on either side of the river; they felt it was the first time they’d lived.

“I’m an artiste, Charlotte. I’ve become strong enough to concentrate on my work, vigorous enough to calculate what’s in my head, and brave enough to paint it,” Charlotte smiled. His roots bled into her like indigo ink on a canvas he'd drawn.

He continued, “Medication affected me. An artiste is the last person in the world who can afford to be desensitized.” “The drugs carried me along fine, but I had no zest—it was, how do you say it? Mediocre. I didn’t like or dislike it, actually; it was just existing, not living.”

“It wasn’t good for me, but I didn’t know Art yet.”

Charlotte could see his pensive face as he told her. She agreed, “Your art lives through you, Gabriel, you’re dedicated to it, it runs deep.” “Thank you for sharing this with me.” At the same time, their toes carried on a conversation without words; the relationship was tangling like the soft cotton sheets.

Photo©A. C. Akin

“Is what I draw really Art?” he questioned her. “With a capital-A”. Charlotte considered this question awhile as they laid next to each other, intertwined.

“I don’t know how to define it, but some things I know are faking to be art.” She laughed, “it’s like an old law professor told us about Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who said once, I don’t know how to define whatever it was he was defining in the brief, but I know it when I see it.”

“I believe that art influences other art. The work of one discipline can inform and inspire another. What you do, drawing in such detail, gives me the confidence to try to write in a different way, or play guitar--of course what you draw is capital-A, r-t”.

Charlotte told Gabriel that in the law they’re taught to look to what others have said in règle du précédent; but in art one gets to be original - saying further, “what I like about your use of angles, measurements, and the exactness of your shapes, is that you’ve taken what is Known, and created the Unknown.” She was mesmerized but most all, calm. Her heart's rhythmic beating was strong, but barely perceptible.

“You think so?” He said as he sat up in bed. “I get lost in those designs.”

She added, “You borrow from the abstract realm, like nature’s sequence, and mathematics, or geometry; but this is a fundamental style, I know the order you seek in life is represented in your drawings.” “When do you think you’ll have an inner need to add color to your art?" Charlotte was thinking out loud: “I don’t know if adding color to your abstract art would have the same psychic effect as it does with impressionism?” 

It was a valid point, but wasn’t addressed then; they were hungry.

Public Domain Photo

The couple rose late in the morning, the sun's ivory rays warmly flushed the room, making bright boulevards to their bed, and revealing dust in the air like snowflakes. They ventured over a block to one of their favorite bakeries for breakfast and dark, French-roasted coffee.  ##

Fiction 2018©Mark H. Pillsbury

Shadows Seen Through the Veil

Artiste: Transcendental Truth

Quote by G. K. Chesterton ("The Everlasting Man" Ignatius Press 1993):

"Long ago, the human imagination reached beyond the limits of reason to find its true object."

 "Every true artist feels that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images (art) are shadows of things seen through the veil." (end quote)

Paris Stories, Part VI: Arrondissements Municipaux

Paris Stories – Arrondissements Municipaux

[Part VI] like a person, Paris shines brilliantly, as the “city of lights”, but with 22-different personalities. Actually, the twenty-two districts are called arrondissements in French, originally numbering around a dozen in 1790; each sub-divided into four ancienne (“former” or older) districts.

The twenty-two arrondissements are arranged clockwise in the form of a “spiral” (often likened to nature’s nautilus shell-shape, reflected in the Fibonacci sequence -- see Part IV of this series), starting from the center of the city, with the first on the “Right Bank” (north bank, or la Rive Droite) of the Seine. Similar to minor divisions in a personality, or the gradual differences we all share, but which make us exceptional through individual personhood; these subdivisions each exhibit the idiosyncratic variances in Paris which make it so complex.

Visiting cafes and restaurants gives a vision of each district’s grandeur. Making the twirling route from the center of the city outward in mathematical precision, moving from scene to scene; one can picture the different affiliations and intrigues of each group of writers, philosophers, artists, and curators whose lives are similar but vary according to their own experiences and worldviews, reflected in each neighborhood. (See Poirier’s book, Left Bank, Holt & Co. 2018).

Just as DNA bonds like a ladder along a double-helix, so Paris' personality trails upon either side of the Seine, and in each municipal district. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, of course; however, stereotyping Paris is impossible, and every arrondissement links almost symmetrically to the next neighborhood either Left or Right bank, Montparnasse or Montmartre, as unique as brothers or sisters from the same family.

As different as the two young lovers were, they shared the spark of discovery, the relief of escape, the procrastination of youth, the magnetism of common art, and the freedom of time. What they lacked financially, they made up with the richness of creativity, tolerance, curiosity, health, confidence, and the comfort of common attraction. In one way poor, there are many who'd label them infinitely wealthy. 

And they were in Paris!

to be continued..........

2018©Mark H. Pillsbury

The Paris Pivot (Part V)

The Paris Pivot:

(Part V):

Until the first time he picked up a pencil, which saved him, and after failing out of secondary school, even a miraculous honorable discharge from the Armée de terre; Gabriel didn’t draw, paint, or visualize art at all. Instead, he suffered for 5 months under fumbling, misguided, veteran’s socialized medicine; mostly sleeping, in a bewildered confusion brought on by prescription drugs—numbing his senses and drowning him in a haze of disorder worse than the fog of war.

Gabriel almost didn’t make it out of the fog, but he made it to Paris.

I’ve labeled this chapter in his life the Paris Pivot, because it turned Gabriel’s life around. Concentrating on art as behavioral therapy rivaled whatever stimulant drugs (Ritalin), or psychedelic, organic tea had done for him so far. The tiniest details of his penciled drawings allowed him a portal to an awareness only achieved while meditating; but I experienced also the delicate social interplay between us focusing him intently, enlivening and stimulating him. Loosely called “flirting” in America, but very pedestrian in France, I didn’t know at the time whether a well-groomed American girl with a guitar could pull him out of his shell, but we recognized in each other an attractive detour from our pre-planned escape routes.

I represented for him a normal experience he could not have hoped to achieve while medicated. His depressive dullness kept him out of the cafés, and he was not self-confident enough to approach me at the time; even though his devilish grin and colossal frame, on the surface alone, made him radically gorgeous to me. I was falling backwards, spinning around, light-headed, over the moon, whatever you want to call it.

Out of the chaos of a mixed-up mind, he began to see eternal patterns. He drew the same self-similarity, or scaling, that is common among the seed patterns of flowers or trees. Even though Gabriel often seemed like a bumbling professor, or starving artist; his mind naturally pictured this famous ratio, with a long and honored history in mathematics, from Euclid and Aristotle to modern computer calculations. His black & white pencil drawings reflect the simple but divine “proportion” of Leonardo da Vinci, considered the most beautiful and important of mathematical standards.

Gabriel even sought the medicinal effects of mind-altering tea that has been brewed for centuries in the Amazon River basin. He found an underground tea-shop on the Left Bank, conducting ceremonial "tea-party" healing sessions where an Ayahuasca "potion" was served for many searching, tortured souls. Made from a blend of two plants, containing the hallucinogen "DMT" --  the psychoactive compound of organic elements provided a powerful, transformative, upending, "high," good for the ameliorating affects on numerous psychological conditions. Unfortunately, his brain activity changed little under the influence of ayahuasca, and the tea ceremony was anticlimactic. Gabriel's treatment-resistant depression was best fought by pursuing art.

He studied the nature of these forms and their relationship to each other (ratio), giving Gabriel a greater insight into the scientific, philosophical, psychological, aesthetic, and mystical laws of the universe. Natural inquisitiveness instructed him more than formal schooling; in fact, these symmetrical images opened his life onto a new path, resurrecting his future. During hours of meticulous sketching, grappling with all he had lost, fighting against the misunderstanding that dominated his existence before now; Gabriel used science to cure himself of dysfunctional mystery, reinventing and reinvigorating his soul. Detailed drawing was a small, simple way for him to express truth, and as deep as were his wounds, so deep too was the healing.

Failing to bring up the utility of studying law, nor my dusty, unstable ambitions of helping incubate struggling African democracies, we rarely discussed the chances that Gabriel could make a living painting, any more than to contemplate the average signing bonus for a beginning US “junior-lawyer”. His confidence, now rooted in his journey in the arts, also buoyed an exceptional faith in the rightness of his journey. Realistically, because I did not completely sell-out to my artistic abilities, instead falling back on my training as a lawyer; I was playing it safe while in Paris. But Gabriel didn’t have any other options, and I’ll admit to you here, that the question of whether his talent could carry him into his future, produced an unspoken tension between us. ##

Fiction 2018©Mark H. Pillsbury

Fast and Cool

What really matters... You gotta be cool... 

Three years ago (3/31/2015 -- "Up and Down the Dial"), I posted about the #SiriusXM satellite "highway"—taken each night; sometimes holding my sanity together on the parking lot known as Houston traffic, descending like a femoral artery into downtown.

The alchemy of memories and music transports me back on a tightrope time-machine to a place when we were all pretty "kewl", if I can say so myself. “Fast and Cool” as in the club, or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, for movie buffs.

Maybe a long time ago, but I remember when we were buff and the feathered haircuts fell just right on starched oxford button-downs. The girls all dressed for each other, and the wild night was calling. There was a time, back in my prime, when your old-man could really lay it down; but we didn’t rely on Instagram or Facebook to show everybody. It was sealed in our memories.

The music, tasting the rum, giving or getting all the jokes; ok, crank up the car stereo, and take off. The feel of a slow-dance with that girl you like… in the end, there's only the dance. How did the years go by so fast but the memories play back so slow? The smell of a ski boat's exhaust, a bonfire; I can hear the roar of the crowd, or the whisper in the ear. Youthful discovery is like electricity, but the assurance of wisdom is comforting. Life’s a balance in every decade. Maybe my pendulum needs to swing back to happiness; time flies whether you’re having fun or not.

It could be the passing of an old friend recently, or the end of a long week sending me on this journey, but my “trigger” is often just the right song, which takes me to the file cabinet in my head: pulling out the right disk from the right decade. We manually take it out of the sleeve and place it on the record player, crackling and hissing with expectation. Easter is the season of passage from death to life. The memories linger tonight in the “bardo” or in-between: I don't try to reconcile the past, but I do go back.

Without a physical photographic record on social media, how do I prove our youth? We were from all over the state, and the world was much more laid back. Somehow we had enough money to pool our resources as a group; supporting a large social structure consistently together to have a good time, and act “big”. I went to high school and college with the fast and cool crowd, always looking for adventure, maybe we were like the Club Gryffindor before we knew about Harry Potter. Or it might have been a middle-child syndrome, seeking to fit-in?

I would like to think of those foolish, happy days not as my last fling, despite the age and the miles. I believe that there are new beginnings in every springtime; I’d like to be happy again. Maybe we can get together and shake off the worldly blues and stride out tomorrow with the same arrogant confidence we had in our twenties, when everything was possible?

Probably not, but at least give the same swagger. I have more money and less hair. My car is not as hot, but more reliable. I’m more educated, but hopefully wiser. The songs seem more poignant now; the friendships deeper and more valuable. At least we can commiserate rather than compete—like we did back in those heady days. I don’t want to impress anyone like we used to, I’d rather show humility and kindness than competence and success. My heart yearns to express connection, admit defeat, listen with an attentive ear, be slow to speak, quick to squelch my opinion, easy to talk to, or ask for a favor.

“Grief” and its verb “grieve” come from the Latin gravis, “heavy, weighty” and its verbal form, gravare, “to burden or cause to grieve.” Grieving is like being weighed down with sorrow and a sense of loss. “Mourn” has its origins in the Old English murnan, “to mourn, to be anxious”. Jung says that mourners are fortunate because they are involved in a growth process, that “even though it cost me a great deal to regain my footing; now, I am free to become who I truly am.” (end quote) This is God’s truth, because the more I’ve cried and felt wretched and worthless, the more often I've felt on-a-passage (journey), and that I could have occasional moments of utter joy.

I think we know now how elusive confidence really is; the escalator has made some unexpected stops. Values now drawing respect are affinity, realism, collaboration, servant-leadership, empathy, kindness, faith, relationship, and humility. Money, beauty and power are not only elusive but ephemeral. Age tends to level the playing field even for those who woke up on third-base. (you know who you are).

Character is formed in the crucible, but everyone yearns for a second-chance; like the magical saying under the pyramid, on the back of a one-dollar bill: novus ordo seclorum (“a new order for the ages”). That’s what's astonishing about Easter; with Christ there is always the opportunity to brush yourself off and start again. His work on the cross gives us new life, forgiveness in exchange for our brokenness. This year I will relish in free grace, give thanks for true friends: “put that one on His tab, please…” 

I need to write off a few things, people, and losses, starting again with a clean ledger; don’t we all? Happy Easter.

©Mark H. Pillsbury

Book Review: Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch series)

Book Review: Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly 

(Harry Bosch series)

(Los Angeles) Who has the time or money to read books anymore? The sturdy hardcover, paper versions are $30/apiece, maybe you can save some cash by downloading it on your Kindle® but it still takes time to finish 400-pages. 

Here’s my quick proposition for the latest Michael Connelly book: save the cash and check it out from the local public library, because this one you won’t be able to put down!

Why review the 30^th novel of one of the most famous crime fiction novelists of our time? Because his books interweave prior characters, including his famous series starting in 1992 involving a hardened, over-60 retired LAPD detective, Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. In the past few installments, I have to reveal that the author has disappointed me a little, so I was skeptical. 

I’m not throwing Michael Connelly under the bus, to use a hackneyed phrase or “today’s terminology” as an old lawyer claims reluctantly in the current book: “Two Kinds of Truth” (Little Brown, 2017); however, after finishing this 20^th installment in the Harry Bosch series in about 48 hours, it felt right to sing his praises and yell out to readers in the earshot of this blog, “Harry’s back!”

Two of Hollywood’s most popular recent films, Last Jedi and Wrinkle in Time, took over an hour to get to the launching point of the story’s action. That’s an awfully slow Part One, making for a long afternoon in both experiences. Connelly uses half the pages to finish Part One, but this time I was thankful for a thorough introduction to the action involving two major story-lines: one is ripped right from the headlines of TIME® magazine and the other is very personal to Harry Bosch and hence the title of the book. Unable to compare the book to those films, let me warn you that the next 30% of the novel (Part Two) flies-by like a juiced up Yamaha® crotch-rocket through L.A. traffic on the 101.

Part Three (18%) smartly closes up the story and gets into the psychological side of Harry Bosch’s worldview, appealing to police-procedural fans who take the time and spend the money to follow this popular series. Harry’s point of view relates to what many people think about criminal law, when they either ponder it or are brought-in against their will to a system which unfortunately emulates the world around us. It also gives the reader a peek behind-the-front-desk, into the complicated, layered reality of police work.

“What’s this world about, Harry?” the police chief asks. Bosch explained what happened that week and also added that the truth was, it felt like to him he was walking in circles: “true justice was the brass ring just out of reach.” Echoing Raymond Chandler, Connelly reflects Harry's angst: Vietnam War veteran who closed homicide cases for 30-years on the mean streets of Los Angeles, forced into retirement by department politics, feeling empty when facing the enormity of the evil in the big city, or even the small suburb of San Fernando where he's landed. The author's power comes, however, in the masterfully consistent, genuine "character" of Harry Bosch played out once again in Two Kinds of Truth; it's why readers keep up their relationship with him by their loyalty:

"“To be a character” is to maintain a few qualities, nourish them to excess until they dominate and dictate all others. A character is delineated and thus generally delimited. To “have character” is to have reliable qualities, to hold tightly to them through the temptations to swerve and change. A person of character is neither bribed nor corrupted; he stands fast, is steadfast." From The Identities of Persons (1976) by philosopher Amelie Rorty. (quote not about Harry Bosch)

As an executive producer, Connelly branched out into an AmazonPrime® TV-series called Bosch, starring Titus Welliver as the eponymous character; which in full-disclosure I have not been able to watch. Nevertheless, based on the latest novel which I highly recommend, I’ll be back in the hunt for his next fictional episode in 2018, featuring a new character working with Harry, Detective Reneé Ballard, in Dark Sacred Night.    ## 

2018©Mark H. Pillsbury

Paris Stories: Unlearn What You've Learned (Part IV)

Unlearn What You've Learned (Part IV):

(Paris) Along with differences in age, language, size, and demeanor; between us walked our constant companion, his art. Training alongside the verbal, linear logic of legal precedence, my companion spun mathematical formulas out of his mind into symmetrical circles of exacting care, drawn softly with pencil and later illuminated with black & white acrylic paint.

As the practical, grounded, first-born daughter of an accountant and a classroom English teacher, my style epitomized the ascending power of the American Female Lawyer. It is true that women still struggle in the workplace for equality, but my experience was like a clear, fortunate passage into a profitable career.  At the same time, Gabriel showed me how an unorganized giant, uncomfortable in his own skin, could give his art the hyper-focus it demanded; producing large scale paintings that drew your eye into a tunnel of precision, a mystical maze of fastidious circles.

His art bloomed out of more than a mere triquetra (trinity knot), it subtly revealed the sacred artistic geometry of life; exact, mathematical, but more than just slide rules and protractors. Exhibiting the formulas of Fibonacci and the ancient truths of a sunflower’s pattern of seeds, the paintings communicated the consistent, repeatable thread of life going back to the beginning—the historic symmetry of the human struggle.

[artist and author]

Drawing by hand, sequences appearing to have come from a CAD drawing and a laser printer, Gabriel believed the complete, ancient flower of life formed an inter-dimensional tool, like a portal. Meditation showed him a mental window into what some call the inter-space plane. Not only therapeutic, his mind now had a factory in which to process traumatic stress that had once destroyed and dismantled his natural genius. He patiently waited, unbridled the yoke of mental illness, practicing his art with hope, and what Cameron calls our true nature:

"No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity. . . . I have come to believe that creativity is our true nature, that blocks are an unnatural thwarting of a process at once as normal and as miraculous as the blossoming of a flower at the end of a slender green stem." (end quote) by Julia Cameron 

Gabriel created two series of curves winding in opposite directions, drawing with a fine mechanical pencil. Beginning at the center, they stretched out to the widest part of his canvas like petals. With each seed-shaped unit sitting at a certain angle from the neighboring seeds, he demonstrated the precision of a spiral, which exists everywhere in the physical universe. The angle found in the “flower-of-life” is the universal “juste-milieu”; yet, it is the most irrational number imaginable for such a drawing, a feeble approximation of a fraction. This number is sometimes called the golden mean, or the golden angle, which is 137.5⁰.

Aristotle thought the angle was the middle point between extremes, e.g., if courage is a virtue, its excess could manifest in one extreme as recklessness, and in deficiency, cowardice. The Greeks thought the golden mean was artistically beautiful but at the same time closely associated with mathematics, being both beautiful and true. Because the best known group of American artists are usually said to be the abstract expressionists of the “New York” style, my artistic palate wasn’t typically exposed to this degree of exactness, but I guess the lawyer in me liked it? Gabriel helped me realize that the artist often must "unlearn" what she has learned, in order to know her path. ##

Fiction ©Mark H. Pillsbury

The Burst of Bloom

The Burst of Bloom (Part III)

[Paris]

“Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.” (John Dewey)

Without being an adept guitarist, still I joyfully practiced chords and songs in my Paris flat. With a cool breeze coming through the window, the street noise soothed my anxiety about learning. For hours we’d try songs we both knew; singing and reminiscing about each one’s importance; forging the kind of connection that led to a greater one, later. Music’s power moved us to experience different feelings, its primitive elements combined to reflect our own artistic predilections. These times playing guitar together fostered concord in our relationship, although we were hardly aware of it.

We also read together and discussed the state of our interests. By the hidden interface of fellowship through art’s revelation, we shared our personality struggles and became closer to each other’s quest for a new kind of beauty. 

Eventually it became possible to articulate how and where each of us sought validation. My gut told me that God sanctified mathematics through Gabriel, using his imagination as a soul-force. He would humbly remind me that a poem is not a legal argument, and that I could grow beyond my American biases and idols.

Once I read a passage that struck for us a note of truth: 

“Art celebrates with peculiar intensity the moments in which the past reinforces the present, and in which the future is a quickening of what now is;” Dewey continued, calling art’s qualities: “commemorative, expectant, insinuating, and premonitory.” 

This resonated between us, with a fervently mutual hope that the art would be such things, as our intensity grew. 

The Law Student in Paris (Part II)

Part II from Paris:

Cafe Society ©Mark H. Pillsbury (2015)

I’ve often remembered how complicated this relationship appeared on its face; but at that age, at that time, it fit like a glove. Without similar backgrounds or cultures, common-ground came from far more intrinsic personality patterns, where they fell on the arc of our lives. 

His English proficiency allowed us to communicate, but our rapport grew slowly, partly because of our separate styles. Gabriel leaned shyly toward introversion, but his eyes sparkled, connecting with mine when we met.

My strong, gregarious “American” persona, smooth as my tanned legs, pressured his French manhood, yet as artists we were noncompetitive; drawn together by his earnest skillfulness, far more interesting than mine. 

He loved to debate politics, or the legal system. I assumed my sophisticated, cerebral “aura” caught his fancy, but he told me later that he first noticed me wearing a simple red Hermes scarf tying up my long, wavy brown hair.

Even though both of us were “breaking-out” of entrenched patterns; we went about it differently. Trading my logical conformity and linear thinking with sublimity, artistry, and creativity, became more art than science. On the other hand, Gabriel escaped deep-rooted archetypes of chaos and disorder through focus and concentration on life’s blueprint, which he found in nature’s precise mathematical models. As representatives of yin and yang, I believe we came together at the starting point of these changes; like two halves chasing each other, seeking balance. ##

[*This is a work of fiction, all references are coincidental and photographs are used under the "Fair Use" doctrine]

A Long Way from Houston: Law Student in Paris

A Long Way from Houston: Law Student in Paris 

(aka "Chick-lit")

(Houston) Part I

A gray, opaque blanket of clouds obscured the blue-white sky like a lamp shade, not blocking but dulling the light. Reflections off shiny office towers sometimes shot a bright laser across my eyes as I powered up the highway that bisected Houston, US Interstate Ten.

It was the kind of weekend when parents with children took their turns car-pooling to a game or practice; and single folks were lazily waiting in the Starbucks drive-thru, scrolling through Twitter®. Regardless, thousands of cars emitted enough ozone to make moist Gulf air smell just like summer.

The powerful southeast breeze was damp; saturating the atmosphere, exposing Houstonians to a stifling heat not yet oppressive, but that’d put the average American into heat stroke. You get used to it I guess, “it’s the humidity not the heat,” the old saying goes; the sky has a neutral, azure quality which burns off in the afternoon into searing yellow fire.

This Saturday, I hovered somewhere in the middle. Not a soccer mom, but not “single” enough to be waking up tangled in sheets, late after a binge-Friday night. Too poor to live in a luxury condo, and poaching off the local CrownPlaza, I sunbathed in the peace and quiet of an empty corporate hotel pool, diligently studying for the upcoming bar exam. 

I’d saved an old plastic access “key” entry card from a legal conference a year ago. So much for hotel security. At least the lecherous old men wouldn’t ogle my 70's style white diamond crochet-islet "micro-bikini".

The well-maintained pool had no bartenders to take my order, so I snuck an Evian bottle with my law books; sporting a pink canvas beach bag containing highlighters, power-bars, sunblock, and aviator Ray-Bans. Tools of the trade.

   

As a release valve, I toted a steamy novel I’d borrowed from the library. Sometimes there’s just so much Torts a girl can take before she reverts to the bleach blonde mentality of summer-reading: if the sun fries your brain, don’t use it on anything substantive. Besides, lately the pressure of thinking about the job market and the upcoming bar exam weighed too much; fiction was a way of coping with the real world.

Saving money during law school, I chose to "splurge" and leave Houston to travel abroad in Paris, the quiet city of lights. Having French classes in high school made it easier to survive. I’d never left Houston, but I was sure about Paris. The legal aspects of my stay merely provided tasks and subject matter; the surface, raison de mon émigration. But the real motivation of Paris? To fly. Escape. By soaring above my apparent direction, I wanted a perspective of life’s thoroughfare, before I took it. I needed more than a vacation in France; my time served a higher purpose.

My sojourner spirit grew out of the need to flourish and test my traditional upbringing, and the confining nature of legal studies. Reading in a café suited my taste better than studying in the law library, teaching myself guitar or meditating in my flat were more enlightening than staying after class to debate cases. The capitalist, puritan bromide my mother taught me: work hard, get a good job, quietly grow successful in the suburbs, fell off of me like a second skin; scales coming off my eyes as I discovered an authentic purpose.

Not readily apparent, the conversion came only through meditation and experimentation. I considered contrary paths: maybe I would be better working in a foreign country, helping develop a nation’s government? Returning to an American corporate legal department seemed like the least attractive option, and in Paris these questions hounded me. They still do.

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Transition to Part II:

As much as “chick-lit” novels occupied me when not concentrating on common law and the upcoming multi-state exam; nothing could tear my subconscious from the love I’d found during the last semester of law school, studying in France. The opportunity to achieve a Master de droit in one-year studying abroad, morphed into a difficult academic experience surrounded by the passion of a genius artist, as different from me as possible.

I mastered the skill of sitting at sidewalk cafés, because that is the best place to absorb Paris. With a hard piece of sourdough and French roast coffee, I’d spend hours listening to other conversations, people watching. Different corners or plazas, depending on the neighborhood, traffic, and time of day, gave variable atmospheres. I had my favorite cafés, but my reasoning never considered where to meet the fellows. That’s because trolling Frenchmen are everywhere. I got to the point where I just reacted blithely, saying, “I don’t speak French?” One day, however, I watched an artist sketching what looked like the most compulsive doodle I’d ever seen. Gabriel attracted me like a subtle magnet, or maybe it was his art.

##

Fiction ©Mark H. Pillsbury (2015)

Advent: The Coming of Christ

That's What Christmas is About, Charlie Brown?!

Dialogue:

"Are you going Christmas shopping?"

"Yes, of course I am," she said.

"Don’t get anything for me, OK?"

"God, I’ve got so many people on my list!"

He asked, "why don’t you skip it this year?" He continued:

"Would anyone really miss your small gifts?"

She snapped back, "how do you know they’re small?"

"Your budget, amigo."

"I know, there’s no way I can afford all this," showing him her list...

"You sure you have to do it?"

As a retort, she said, "what, are you not "all-in" with the Christmas spirit?"
"Santa’s making a list and checking it twice?"

"That’s bullshit." He said firmly: "What is this season about, capitalism?"

"I’m just doing what everyone else is doing;" "it's called being nice." "I have to."

"That’s how we got here," continuing, "this is a #FakeHoliday if it's all pretty paper and boxes of things."

"Well, what in the hell is it about, Charlie Brown?"

"Don’t go all Linus on me, Chuck" (wink)

"It is a great speech, Linus gives"

[he says softly, like a little boy, "I can tell you what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown"]

Adding, "but watch it closely next time?"

Right when he says “Fear not” – Linus drops his security blanket.

"He doesn’t need it anymore, dude."
"Need what?" she asked. "The security blanket!"

The Savior has come to save us… It’s called Advent (his coming), no more fear...

*The speech from Linus:

https://youtu.be/eff0cqYefYY

*Note: I like to pin a #YouTube video to my writing and this time it is from the famous "Charlie Brown Christmas" shown on ABC in 1965, using the Gospel of Luke, ch 2, verses 8-14, as translated by the Authorized King James Version.

Christmas Thoughts on Literary Devices and Why Jesus Came

Christmas Thoughts on Literary Devices and Why Jesus Came

“And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction (oppression), yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher (God).

Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but (then) let them not turn back to folly. Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him, may glory dwell in our land. (When) steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” (end quote)

Note: (parentheticals and underlining are mine)

As literary works, these ancient passages from the Old Testament, also called in Hebrew “Tanakh” pronounced [təˈnax]; helped me learn more about writing tools:

·         metaphor, a substitute for perspective;

·         metonymy, a substitute for reduction;

·         synecdoche, a substitute for representation; and

·         irony, a substitute for dialectic.

The metaphor of bread and water represent synecdoche for the bare essentials needed for sustenance. Jesus instructed in the NT that in this godless world, we’d continue to experience difficulties, which indicates to me that tribulation is a basic component of life. But the next sentence from Jesus is an encouragement: “Take heart! I’ve conquered the world.”

During the season of hope that Christians call “Advent”, where hope’s coming to the world is celebrated; the promises of God can be found by listening to God through his Word (metonymy). After this good news above, the prayer is that we’ll not turn back to the folly of the “rat-race” which is the world, then and at this time.

These passages can be used as metaphor in order to gain perspective and not as a tired, dying cliché; like a tutor showing the lesson by using a word picture to bring home the point. I’m encouraged that the Teacher (metonymy) is not hiding, that my eyes have been opened to see God through his Word.

It is a fearful and wonderful thing to be taught at the feet of God, simply by opening his Bible and allowing its glory to shine light into one's circumstances. This is the intersection where steadfast love and faithfulness meet.

The metonymy of such large concepts: righteousness and peace embracing for a kiss, reduces meeting of truth to something loving, human, and simple to conceptualize. Picture the metaphor of the intimate closeness, and the kissing: it’s a story of relational love!

The apostle Luke wrote about Jesus and said, “then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and (Jesus) said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’” 

Jesus' clear instructions are that to hear from God, to learn about the gospel (metonymy), one must try to understand what is written in the Bible about his coming, his life & death, and the meaning of the resurrection; and it should be proclaimed to all nations. As we seek the light of the Scripture, shining into our land, bright with God’s glory; the gospel is the climax of the story, bearing witness to Jesus and his work. This is where the steadfast love of God meets the faith of believers. Merry Christmas. ##

©Mark H. Pillsbury