Cultivating my garden today

Dear Polly (a.k.a. maternal Grandma Evelyn),

As Eyafällajökull continues to erupt on Iceland, her plume of ashes - however threatening - is apparently not overhanging, at least not here and not now. Flights between Stockholm and the United States seem to be arriving and departing on schedule. Peace is.

I am writing from my home in the neutral territory to which I return, year after year. The cherry tree blossoming in our garden, overlooking a delta of the Baltic Sea, is a witness to that place. Petals fall.

As a young student of the 1960s at Berkeley, the vibrant epicenter of student revolt, I adopted history as a major. What was I thinking? Was I out of touch with the times? Was I not really there? During my two-term introduction to historical methodology, I chose to dig into the Age of the Enlightenment. In that vein, I took a course in the winter of 1968 in modern French history that introduced me to Voltaire’s perspectives on optimism (Candide), which he concluded by advocating that “we must cultivate our garden”.

If claims to be truly contemporary are a current fetish in the modern museum of modern art world, then I believe that my own life incarnates that fetish.

I promise to write to you again soon about where I'm coming from...

yours,

Dig where you are

Dig where you are. Neues Museum, Berlin, in background.
For 10 euro I could purchase a time slot to visit the Neues Museum.
Bullet holes pock the window frames of Neues Museum, Berlin, both inside and out. The new staircase of the new Neues Museum in Berlin is a monumental reconstruction (in terrazo) of the old one which collapsed in the bombing during WWWII.


Since I did not have an appointment (with Bonos) last Sunday when I was in the area, I continued along the shores of the Spree to another architectural relic: the Neues Museum, designed in 1855 by Friedrich Stüler (who also designed the Swedish National Museum). Unlike Speer's bunker, Neues was not built to withstand explosives, and thus was ravaged not only by bombs but by seventy years of subsequent exposure to the elements. It has been closed since the beginning of the war and only recently (2009) reopened to the public. Ironically, the Eastern German government had just appropriated funds to restore the museum in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Thus it took several more years to reappropriate funds, and in 1997 David Chipperfield, an English architect, was commissioned to do the reconsruction.

Chipperfield was confronted by Goliath, a nearly impossible task fraught with supervision by authorities and storm fronts propogated by cultural and political stakeholders, as well as by the general public. He continued his task of sifting through layer after layer of material, reviving old techniques and developing new, to integrate and reconstruct from what he discovered in the process. (Strange how an essay appeared just this morning in a Swedish daily (DN) on the Neues.)

In rebuilding places to house art - Bonos or Neues - Berlin epitomizes the layer upon layer that connect history (cities where bombs have been dropped) with the facades of contemporary art and architecture. If a city reflects the time and space of life, then I might well choose postwar Berlin to reflect the kaleidoscope of my own...

tbc

I was here today

Berlin 2010

Albert Speer’s bunker

I collect art that I don’t understand
- Christian Bonos


Visitors exit the bunker slowly,
so slowly. One man’s voice still echoes
in the architecture
of fear –It is
the Remembrance, before the remodeling.
Then someone pounds his fist
like a hammer
against the wall and cries out
“Humpty Dumpty… “ had a great fall.
By the time Bonos arrives, visitors are
knocking away – with mallets, chisels and crowbars –
at the blue concrete.
They are so intent
upon deconstruction that their palms are calloused
their skin is cracking.
.
When they are gone, Bonos sits looking out. He imagines
the collection – sculptures, installations and performances –
His collection – that will occupy this space.
Meanwhile, buried somewhere in the rubble, Mr. Speer
is still breathing out, repentant,
through a sophisticated ventilation system –
His doing.
The temperature in the “Banana Bunker” is ideal
for storing fruits and vegetables, and constant
for sexexperimento, techno and fetish parties.
He once told Playboy magazine: “If I didn’t see it,
then it was because I didn’t want to see it.”

Bonos looks out
from his penthouse and garden atop the bunker,
where visitors enter, by appointment only,
today and every Saturday afternoon,
to view the works that he finds
so difficult to understand
in the beginning.


From Nazi Bunker to Artistic Haven

I tried to peek inside the window of this art haven. Though it was dark inside, I saw more there than I care to share here.

Christian Bonos says he did not purchase Albert Speer's six-storey ground-level bunker for protection, but to house his collection of contemporary art. While most war bunkers in Berlin were built underground, the marshlands along the banks (sic) of the River Spree necessitated protection above ground too, and this particular bunker is one of the few that was not demolished after the war. I hear that Olafur Eliasson's wrecking ball now hangs, however, from the gutted interior of the bunker - like the sphere atop the famous TV tower at Alexander Plaza emitting invisible signals throughout the city, or a rotating disco ball that explodes technicolor light shards onto the concrete surfaces of the interior. A man on the street pointed up to Bonos penthouse on the roof and mentioned that Bonos holds open house by private appointment only (Sundays).

Had you known

Stockholm, Sweden

Dear Polly (with a future, a.k.a. Grandma Evelyn),

This morning, as I was biking up an incline on my way to work I passed a young mother with a 4-5 year old child on the back of her bike. I smiled at the young girl, whom I heard say to her mother:
“Mamma, an old lady is passing us.”
I heard her mother respond to the young girl:
“It is not an old lady, it is a woman.”

So , not only am I an “old bag”, but an “It”, neutralized of any possible age or erotic power.
I had to laugh as I considered the weight and fate of myself, a fleeting vision.

As I biked on, I recalled an evening – must have been in the sixties, in my teens – when you came to our home for dinner. I remember the fleeting sight of your hand, alongside mom’s and my own, on the dinner table. I recall thinking of the significance of age, how it marks our skin. My own hand was pink and supple, mom’s was drier and more mature, while yours was marked by age spots, elevated veins and distorted form. Now, my hands are like yours:

Pacific rings and Icelandic threads
Sit atop a surface seam in the Earth’s crust
Straddling two of the planet’s
tectonic puzzle pieces.

The last time Eya erupted,
Her angry big sister had yet to awaken.
Thus, as Katla continues to belch
the planet’s unsettled insides
scientists are carefully watching her.

Had you known what I know.
Now. No Never.
You would never
have wanted to know.
How everything would be
Nor would I nor anyone
for that matter
ever want to tell you.
No one ever told you
What I saw
If only someone else had
Seen what I…
Then you would
never ever know
what I knew what you knew
If we had only
known then
We would never.

Their nest is one of the most restless
The Fire is a marvel,
highly coveted Bird,
charmed by the wonder of the pen,
the spring sprite
eventually blames feathers
for all its troubles.
the bird sings by night
and pecks the golden fruit
at the mouth of a nearby crater
and is restored to life
after the destruction
and the forest
is reborn with her.

Forever,
Your granddaughter

Earthquake and fire

Sunday, April 22, 2006 Kentifield, California

Dear Diary,
I intended to write earlier, but life just hasn’t been the same since last Wednesday morning. I remember that I was dreaming that we were out on the sea to go fishing, swaying back and forth in the swells, when suddenly the deck started to rattle and shake. I woke to the real nightmare of my bed rattling so violently that I was thrown out and heard the big pictures on the wall of my room crash to the floor, along with all else atop my dresser drawer. I thought everything was going to collapse. Daddy called out loud from the 1st floor and told me to get up immediately and into the doorway, but I couldn’t open it. I started to cry and pulled and pulled on the handle, when suddenly it just flew open. I hung onto the jamb with all my might, and could hear that everything was crashing all around. There was such a din of rattles and thuds, and cracking and crashing it was hard to tell just what was happening. When cracking and shattering finally stopped Daddy called again and told me to put on something and come get out into the street as quickly as I could. I could care less how I looked, just wanted to make sure I’d be warm enough…so I put on my riding pants and a wool sweater and my jodhpurs. I remember walked carefully as I could down the stairs, afraid that they would break under the strain of my weight. The back porch had actually collapsed, and there were cracks and dust everywhere and broken windows. There were lots of people on the street...
more later

your Polly

P.S. I am in Kentifield now, because we packed some bags and took the ferry to Marin County on Wednesday afternoon, and are staying with our Grandpa and Grandma Sherbeck. Daddy’s office building on California Street is gone as well as most other downtown buildings. I suppose you could say it is a good thing the earth quaked so early in the morning, because daddy might have been crushed to death otherwise. He is down there now, working with a rescue crew. With all the broken gas lines, fires have been raging out of control in the City ever since. The air, even here in Marin County smells of burnt redwood, and the sky is a haze. I can still see smoke curling up across the bay.

Waiting for Phoenix

Sundsvall, Sweden

Dear Polly,
As I write, a volcano under the Eyafjall glacier on Iceland continues to erupt. While I am not on Iceland to witness diverging (or are they converging?) tectonic plates with my own eyes, I am witness to the steam, the ashes and cancelled airline flights. I hear that never before have so many flights been cancelled by such a catastrophe, natural or otherwise.

Phoenix.

How long did the bird live? In any event, it would build itself a nest of herbal fibers at the end of that time. It would look like an eagle, fan its golden wings and set the nest afire. A small worm would then be found in the ashes. Are you that worm?

This weekend I had the privilege of attending a conference (SFÖ) for trade translators in the lively Swedish lumber trading metropolis of Sundsvall, Sweden, a town that literally rose from the ashes in 1888 ( Nils Johan Tjärnlund, architectural historian from Sundsvall). Mr. Tjärnlund proved to be more than happy to answer all my questions about first impressions of the town where he grew up. I did not tell him about you, nor did we talk about earthquakes, volcanoes, or fires. We talked about train stations and other buildings in Sundsvall, and national romanticism at the turn of the last century, when you were a young girl.

As I return to my typewriter this evening, I can tell that you and I are on a test flight, like Lina S. Berg (see my earlier blog entry, Nov 5, 2009). I sense timelessness of meaning in the redwood fiber, the heat and steam of your dream. A perfect Redwood hatchery, broken egg shells all around, frantic movement, wet feathers and chirps. Easter Sunday in 1906 was on April 15.

I am writing to you on a sunny Sunday in Sundsvall, Sweden

your dear granddaughter,
xxxooo

Redwood fibers

San Francisco, April 15, 1906

Dear Diary,
Daddy talks so much lot about redwood lumber and steamships, McPherson and Wetherbee, and Pacific Lumber.
Daddy is so proud of redwood, its insulating properties, its long-lived nature, fire and moisture resistance. He says it’s distasteful to vermin and insects. But what about redwood cones, fibers, fire and steam? Sometimes I think Daddy should get back to the basics.
The bark can be ten inches thick, and Daddy says it is a waste.
In a dream last night I was the bell of the Easter parade, with a gown woven from the fibers of redwood bark. In my dream I was hot and steaming, and under my gown I was hatching Easter eggs. My Easter bonnet was a redwood burl. Little yellow chicks were scurrying underfoot, chirping and pecking all around me...even as the vermin appeared to dance.
Daddy says you can do so many things with redwoods, but he doesn’t seem to be interested in using the fibers to weave a fabric like the one in my dream, an Easter suite, that could be used to insulate me and so many other chicks. Maybe he doesn’t think it gets cold enough around here, or hot enough for that matter, or that we need to worry about varmits and insects, but I do. I think it would be a strong fabric, useful in hats, blankets and so much more, if you mixed it with natural sheep wool. Just a dream. What do I know?

Your,
Polly (with a future)