a mind of winter

Wallace Stevens was a lawyer who ran an insurance company in Hartford for most of his life. He was also one of America's greatest poets, who composed much of his work during his daily commute to and from his office. In 1921 he published "The Snow Man":

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

There are lots of reasons to read poems, but one of the most powerful is that, on occasion, while you are in the midst of unusual circumstances, a poem will come to you and suddenly your mind will yawn open into understanding like a stop-motion flower.

The last stanza of Stevens' poem came to me yesterday while I was hiking home across the city in the first blizzard of the year. I'd gone on an expedition to Target in order "to buy a snow shovel" (i.e. to indulge my masochistic Viking-blooded love of being outside in horrible winter weather), but it wasn't long before the pleasantly bracing walk I'd planned on taking became an hour-long frozen slog across sidewalks and empty parking lots that had been transformed into tundra by the snow and 50 mph winds. (Two miles to the east, 20-foot waves on Lake Michigan were exploding into icy spray against the hard edges of the city's beaches—as captured off to the left here by my hearty, and still partially-frozen, friend Tom.)

Two-thirds of my way home, I crossed the Webster Avenue Bridge and paused on tired legs in the gathering dark to look south down the Chicago River. Through the swirling snow I could see a group of ducks swimming upstream in the dirty water; behind them, half-obscured by the whiteout, the brick chimney of a former factory. There were no cars out and nearly no sound save that of the wind. And then there were Stevens' words: For the listener, who listens in the snow, / And, nothing himself, beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Vandercookin

In order to not become crazy, I like to fill winter up with things to do. Last year I took a ballet class at an amazing Gothic-church-turned-dance-studio and a course on the history of neurology and psychiatry (how does a professor make even lobotomies boring?? it's possible). This year I just finished taking a letterpress class at the Center for Book & Paper Arts, during which I learned how to set metal & wood type, mix ink, operate one of these babies, and cut paper with a giant guillotine(!!). Luckily it was so fun that I didn't even mind waking up multiple Saturdays at 8 or ingesting mass quantities of lead. There is something so zen about working on art early in the morning: in this case, the creaky floorboards and the sharp smell of metal and mineral spirits and the clatter of turning presses mixing with the clattering el down the block. You can just zone out and drink your tea and MAKE STUFF for hours on end (that is, once you've learned enough through trial and error to stop constantly fucking up).

I'm not very good at painting or drawing or sculpture, so thank G-d that I live in the 21st century and can therefore HARNESS TECHNOLOGY to create art. And by technology, I mean pre-World War II technology, i.e. bulky darkroom equipment, toxic chemicals, and 1700-pound presses chockfull of ball-bearings and gears and bolts--the kind of stuff not featured on gizmodo or hawked by Steve Jobs. For me, at least, there's a lot to be said for the physicality of photography and printmaking, and for the ability of the average person to understand the technology behind them. And there's something very, very beautiful about using basic physics and mechanics--a box with a tiny hole cut in it, containing a silver-coated plate--to create something as completely non-utilitarian as art.

I could go on for days and days about my embarrassing mystical feelings about loud clunking things, or things that make your hands dirty, or microscopes, or petri dishes full of agar, but let us save a little something for future posts, shall we? Instead, here are some fun publicity photos I recently took of my roommate Alisa as her performance alter-ego, Plucky Rosenthal. Some of them are blurry, but you know what? Making them was FUN. And perfection is sooooo annoyingly 21st century.





Technology sidenote: my ipod earbuds are breaking for the zillionth time (gahhh Steve Jobs x2). Does anyone have suggestions for a relatively inexpensive pair of quality headphones (preferably over-the-ear)? I have to listen to this song on repeat until the end of time...