Happy Hanukris Everyone!

Wary of separate celebrations and traditions, Jakie and Oliver long ago came up with Hanukris, and we finally made good on it this year.  Ah, Hanukris, a time of togetherness and unity - when we can pull together the best of all traditions.  It's all about mirth and melding. Pedar gave a most excellent homily (everyone looks forward to the Hanukris homily), intoning meaningfully about the true meaning of Hanukris.  We're still looking for a deity, striving for a female one just, you know, to keep things going - but thus far, Hanukris Kristin isn't inspiring anyone.  Hanukris Kafka and Hanukris Kali are right out. We're contemplating Hanukris Kalanit (the name means flower which would be lovely, but might not be irreverent enough) (because God forbid we should take our parody seriously!). :-)

As with any holiday, the feast is key.  It took Rebecca and I about two seconds to come up with the Jewish side of the feast: lamb and latkes, of course. A fabulous combination of flavors, plus, if you say it out loud, it sounds really, really delicious. Go ahead, try it "Lamb n' Latkes."  Mmmm.  The, as it was soon dubbed, "Christian side dish" was harder to come up with.  I had the honor of looking through a Minnesota church cookbook, but the amount of cream of mushroom soup used in unthinkable combinations was too much. So I went for green beans with shallots - probably Presbyterian in its sparseness.  Turning to English dessert traditions of this time of year, however, I did come up with...

...a Trifle!!! Definitely the most mis-named dessert of all time.  It's not dessert, it's architecture! And endless in its possibilities. Mine was pound cake, whipped cream with Grand Marnier, and for the layers kumquats in syrup and wine-poached cranberries.  A Happy Hanukris was had by all!!!  All of this made me so grateful for friends and our laughter and the ersatz utopias we create that nonetheless can take on plenty of meaning. 

Always Almost Jerusalem

12th c. map of Jerusalem

Most unexpectedly, I have had a couple of hours alone in the house while one kid is at a friend's house, and the other two are with Mac and friends at a museum. The mind reels! Laundry called, then piano, but now, just a few minutes to reflect on the on-going and ever-pressing thoughts of our upcoming trip to Israel - me, and Oliver, my friend Rebecca and her son, and 25 students. The mind reels again (has been for months, as I've thought about how to even begin to put into words what this trip might mean). The title of the post is Oliver's take on that post-modern phrase "always already" (beauty is always already a contested concept, Eden is always already lost) - a handy little phrase that does away with a firm originary: if something is "always already" it has never "really been." We think there's a point of origin, a perfect place, but when we look at that point of origin, we see that our very first tales of it are about its loss, or contest, or struggle for existence.  There is no Eden, really - but there is really a loss of Eden.  Cool, huh? We could talk about that for a long time (especially as it tackles the tradition of a fixed beginning point to human existence and meaning - existence and meaning emerge, the argument goes, in much more haphazard, less fixed "always already" ways).  In any case, Oliver was remarking on how I speak of Jerusalem, which shows up a great deal in my teaching of the Crusades and Crusader Art, and he said "It's like we're always almost in Jerusalem."

And of course he's right.  I don't know how many years I've given that city thought, practically daily thought as my research has a taken a turn east - since graduate school started in 1991, for sure, but I know that Donna had taught me many things before then as well.  And now, as it's reality looms large and possible, I find that I have many questions, that I know really very little really, but that I know of a great many people's desires and dreams for Jerusalem.

Modena cathedral, 12th c. Guinevere archivolt

12th-century Modena for example, as the marvelous essay by Jeanne Fox-Friedman ("Messianic Visions; Modena Cathedral and the Crusades," Res 25 (Spring 1994): 77-96) tells us, displayed images of Guinevere captured by Mardoc (with their Welsh names inscribed above!) in its archivolt above a northern church door.   Sermons reveal a intertwining of Guinevere's capture by Mardoc with Jerusalem's capture by the Muslims. Oh the tales we tell: Jerusalem as Guinevere, Guinevere as Jerusalem - both always already captured and desired.

There are big questions to be asked here: why want Jerusalem? why does it matter? why is the pull to the city so relentless? (don't forget, even Christopher Columbus wanted to use the riches of the New World to fund a crusade to win Jerusalem back).  My questions of late have been specifically geared to Europe: what is this strange, brutal chapter in which Christians desired Jerusalem?  A city far from European seats of power; a city at the heart of one of the strangest colonial empires, surely; a city that produced more art and literature pining for its possession than I'll ever know about.  There are some answers, some lucid explanations, but I'll save those for a post written from the office where the books are.  For now, I find myself much more interested in coming up with good questions than finding answers.  Will I understand the desire for Jerusalem? Probably not (the secular enthusiast for the Enlightenment in me wishes to strip away every shred of mysticism anyway).  Will I be moved by the markings that have been left by the always already fleeting possession of the city?  Yes (the non-secular enthusiast in me (whatever she may be called) wants to understand the meaning of place, wants to somehow perceive and feel the layers of history).

Matthew Paris - Road to Jerusalem, 13th c.

Was there ever a Jerusalem at rest? An Edenic Jerusalem?  No (as much as we might want King David to be the originary point, there was already someone there). Was there always war? No (there are remarkable chapters of co-existence).  Has the identity of the city changed with each layer of desire, occupation, and possession?  Yes.  As I write these absurdly short sentences, I realize how difficult it is to write about Jerusalem.  I keep trying to organize my expectations and questions, my knowledge and approach - and it all collapses a bit into a "wait and see" - wait until you are there, and walking and breathing there.  Will everything fall into place then? How can it?  I will try try again to put some order to these thoughts - I don't mind if they get jumbled again - there's something wonderful about having the time to try, though.  Look at Matthew Paris, tracing a pilgrimage to Jerusalem that he probably never took and adding bits and pieces of velum - additional thoughts, places, approaches, knowledge. Always almost there.

Glimpses

Oliver's been questioning Santa's existence, though at this point he has "no evidence that Santa does not exist," as he puts it.  But, crafty kid that he is, he thought of leaving the iPhone with its built-in camera and asking Santa in the note left with the cookies to take a picture of himself.  And check it out, Santa complied! It's a fast-paced night for the guy, all that giving, and the action shot tells it all.  The kids were all thrilled, but not overly so, as that would have "meant that we doubted too much" (Oliver speaking here, too).  Belief is so tricky in its inevitable relationship to doubt - even if you're 8 years old.  Eleanor at 4 has a much more uncomplicated to relationship to belief - she was just excited that Santa knew how to work a camera.

The day was completely relaxed and focused around the discovery of presents and new objects, books, savories, and music to become familiar throughout the year.  We went to visit my dad who had some odd things to say, but Christmas with a brain injury is like any other day with a brain injury.  I accidentally texted a friend my dad's strange pronouncement when I had meant to send it to Mac.  Luckily for me, this friend is incredibly gracious and kind and understanding, and took this glimpse into not only my dad's strange world, but how I deal with it (by immediately sharing the strangeness with Mac so that he helps me bear it - in every sense of the word) in stride.  It was strange, too, in that moment to realize how constantly conversations about my dad flow between me and Mac, and how completely odd they must seem to anyone else.  I'm not explaining that well - the strangeness has something to do with a powerful guilt I felt at inflicting this on my friend (the strangeness and the sadness, and the push to laugh instead of cry); a guilt assuaged by her kindness and good will, thus my gratitude to her.  Sometimes, I wish that I could write about my dad's brain injury every day, or rather, that it were a more quotidian and mundane occurrence to do so - I think about it every day after all - but then this would be a very different kind of writing place, wouldn't it? Brain injury is kind of overwhelming and all-encompassing if you let it be.  And it would make sense that on a holiday, it would somehow become more significant - as though we can't help but notice the loss of him more.  But we laughed and so it was ok, and the kids were, as ever, great (Iris greatly intrigued by my dad wearing one black glove).  We'll go see him again tomorrow with Eleanor, who was napping at home at the time, and who was totally distraught that she missed seeing him.  This is why I must constantly take my cue from the kids, and not from myself, in struggling to know and love my dad now that he's a completely different person.  I think that it's their trust in the reality of the present that makes a lot of things make sense to children - that helps.

Both of their thoughts are inscrutable to me, but this is the love I want to understand.

Hard to switch gears, but you must know: actually, Santa took two pictures of himself (clearly testing out the iPhone) - you can see here that he really had to go.  For Christmas dinner we had:

• Broccoli cream soup with wild mushrooms and shallots
• Coffee-braised beef chuck roast with orange and cinnamon
• Brussel sprouts in garlic butter
• Mashed turnips

Dessert was somehow out of the question - perhaps all of the Swiss chocolate generously provided by my mom, and all the Christmas treats.  We will valiantly try try again tomorrow.   For all its fleeting images, of Santas and fathers, it was a full day lucid in its joy.

The True Meaning of Macmas

Today is Macmas! Or, as some call it, Macanalia.  It is a day of celebration for a man whose kindness and wit and patience and light makes this planet pretty terrific to dwell in.  Brunch for friends in the morning, great big snowstorm in the afternoon, Mamie driving in early, impromptu dinner, inexplicable love for the Vicar of Dibley, and then tracking Santa on the way cool NORAD (which stands for North American Aerospace Defense Command - best uses of American tax dollars ever) for the rest of the evening.  Oh man! He's in South Dakota as I write - best get to bed. Our rational child (Iris) went right to bed; Oliver stayed up reading, despite "trying really hard to exhaust myself today;" and Eleanor, sweet wild Eleanor, refuses to go to bed - this is how I find her passing the time until I can swoop her off to bed to wait for Santa with her.  Happy hoping for all good things, everyone.

What We Know About Ourselves

Three cheers for the American Museum of Natural History and its awesome "Hall of Human Origins," which, dear Gina noticed, was partially funded by the U.S. Congress (and lots of other donors).  There'll be no time for long writing this morning, so it will just be to say "thank goodness," there's an educated stand out there (in our nation's capital at that!) on human evolution.  The depressing amount of denial of reality that has to take place for any denial of evolution is here countered with thrilling (the entire human species has a DNA variation of .01 percent - we're that much alike, really), fascinating (cast after cast of the primate species that didn't make it), intriguing (more stuff than I had time to read about the big split in the family tree between Neanderthals and homo sapiens - the oldest "us vs. them," one that some have flirted with to explain monsters like Grendel - actually, a huge post awaits on this issue once I teach "Monsters and Marvels" again), and art historical (cave art from 15,000 B.C.E.!) scenarios to think through. The presence of artistic creativity at the end of this narrative of genetic survival is fantastic for discussion (idea for next survey class session on Paleolithic art!) - art is a moment of recognition, an act that collapses thousands of years of history into an "Oh! They did that, too!"  What I love is that, so is burial (and there's a great display and explanation of a Paleolithic burial site in modern-day Iraq).  Kunstwollen (the will to art), the Germans would say, and then draw all sorts of horrid racist conclusions about Paleolithic art in Europe and contemporary art in Africa.  Any critique of that move becomes a critique of a transcendental kunstwollen, a transcendental art history.  Art is always already historically specific.  And yet, I can't deny that thrill of recognition when I see cave painting - even though we really have no idea why they did it (oh, we have plenty of theories, lots and lots of theories: ritual, memory, mimesis, simulation, stimulation, pleasure... basically, all of the reasons that we make art). I can't deny that intense feeling of continuity, one that lasts so much longer than the one that writing/literature gives us.  But here, I'm invited to think of art along the lines of evolution - I don't know what that means yet, especially in terms of teaching, but I can't wait to think more about it. 

I mourn (ok, am angered by) any end of inquiry, any discourse that closes down questions, makes you stop asking, and the so-called anti-evolution, and anti-global warming campaigns make me nuts.  It's prompted several conversations here at the House of Inquiry, Laughter, and Babies about the presence of anti-knowledge groups throughout American history.  Iris and I are going home today and will be sad to go - glad to see Eleanor's Holiday Program at school tomorrow, but sad to leave this wonderful house and aaaah, our nation's capital.

You can totally see why when you have an aunt and uncle who make you a Shirley Temple in a super fancy glass that floats on ice.  And a baby cousin Henry who goes out and about in town with you to the American Museum of Natural History and smiles and hangs out and sleeps and is so, so dear.  Life is good in this happy house, as we discuss and play out this narrative of birth and infancy that has had stunning evolutionary success against so many odds.  What we know about ourselves is that we are part of an amazing set of shifting circumstances, some of which we recognize and make sense of, others of which we move within.

Oh! And they have an Easter Island Head at the American Museum of Natural History - notice the tiny hands folded across the bottom part of the statue, which is made of hardened volcanic ash.  Neolithic megaliths have always fascinated me, and they are now that much more gripping with Jeffrey Cohen's awesome Geochoreography ideas.  The move from Easter Island to D.C. must have been something.  Itinerant creatures we are all.

A Thousand Years of Don't Ask Don't Tell Starts to End

detail of Saint Eligius, 1449. The Met.

There are already two favorite quotes that have emerged from the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" - one is by my wordsmith friend David Guinee: "Don't let the door hit you in the ass, don't ask don't tell" - and the other is by Congressman Barney Frank: "I do not think that any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people's rights to get married, join the Army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform."  How else to commemorate this momentous event? How else to mark the day that ends the discrimination of asking people to put their lives on the line by serving in the military, but denying their right to identify by their sexuality? You can die, but you can't be yourself. You can prove your patriotism, but you can't profess your love.  The incredible harm and hypocrisy might just start to be over.  And so we are presented with that strange, but not unprecedented, phenomenon of civil rights being supported and defended in the military domain with more certitude and absoluteness than in the public sphere - think of the racial integration of the military in the 1960s (and isn't this an interesting volume?); now maybe think of the repeal of DADT.  I'd like to commemorate some of the momentousness here by considering a medieval painting whose visual representation of a male couple in the liminal space of a convex mirror embodies the occluded visibility of gay identity in this period. For the Middle Ages were a "Don't Ask Don't Tell" culture if there ever was one - if one did ask or did tell, persecution was sure to follow.  And so, it takes oblique readings and sidelong glances to realize medieval gay presence.

Petrus Christus, Northern Renaissance painter extraordinaire, can help us out here.  His painting of Saint Eligius in his Workshop from 1449 (of which you see a detail above), has become, thanks to the incredible work of Diane Wolfthal, a critical image in medieval art history's quest for understanding the visual representation of gay culture.  Her essay "Picturing Same-Sex Desire: The Falconer and His Lover in Images by Petrus Christus and the Housebook Master" (in Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality and Sight in Medieval Text and Image. ed. Emma Campbell and Robert Mills. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004: 17-46) remains one of the few to analyze an image of a gay couple.  Medieval literary criticism has here far outstripped art history: "queer theory" (a set of ideas that extrapolates from a marginal sexual position to decenter, destabilize, denaturalize any and all normative discourses) has informed fantastic scholarship on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, troubadour lyrics, Catherine of Siena (oh my, yes), the Roman de la Rose, the entire Arthurian Round Table, and much more. Chaucer himself has a queer nation.  Art historians have operated within the confines of the visible, I think to our detriment.  It seems absurd that art history should deal with invisibilities, with non-images, but it depends on what the goal of art history is: the history of sight, or the history of images.  I'm not going to tackle that here, I'm just trying to think around the limits of the field and why on the issue of gay culture, the two fields are so far apart.  Here's what else I'm not going to do: I'm not going to agonize over the historical parameters of gay identity (the debate goes: there have always been and will always be gay people; vs. gay identity, like every other identity, is constructed in historically specific periods.  For the former see John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality from 1980, for the latter, see Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality from ). I'm also not going to rehearse Diane's fantastic argument (it is far too cool and too complex to be dubbed here), but I will be influenced by it in everything that follows.

Petrus Christus. Saint Eligius, 1449. The Met.

As an image of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the detail of the male couple in the convex mirror evokes the whispers and the codes, the silences and the intimate knowledge, of identities marginalized by oppressive normative forces. The male and female couple looms large in the painting. His hand on her shoulder, and hers reaching for the gold that saint Eligius is measuring bespeak the possession and materiality of heterosexual couples, possibly of heterosexual married couples, if these two are in the purchase of a wedding ring.  Saint Eligius was the patron saint of goldsmiths and we see him here transported from his 7th century origins to a 15th century goldsmith's shop.  It's interesting to me just how material the world outside of the mirror is: the "stuff" of the shop is a marvel of oil painting, a treasure to the eye of desirable, transluscent surfaces (the decanters, the ivories, the corals, the gold, even the window panels are marvelous to behold).  The girdle (a kind of belt as virginal signifier) is draped upon the wooden counter that reads "Petrus Christus me fiat 1449" - even the painting speaks within the material world of the painting!  But the men in the mirror are silent, looking into the representational space of the shop from that of the street; looking into the social space of material normativity from the reflected (reflective?) space of dematerialized vision - they are an image within an image, and their interpretation necessarily puts us outside of the confines of the easily visible or legible despite attempts, the Met's among them, to chillingly reduce them to a moral anecdote.  You're much more than that when you reside in a mirrored world.

Here, I'm not operating within the confines of academe, so I feel no compulsion to have anything I write supported by more authoritative discourses. So I feel free to ask questions: What are they whispering to each other? What made them stop at this window? Is there someone inside the shop/the painting they recognize? Do they see themselves reflected back out? Is the falcon, bird of prey and signifier of the hunt for love, a gift? a flaunt? a dare? How do we think about the juxtaposed textures of the bumpy stamped coins and the smooth, glistening mirror? Who put the mirror there in the first place? Who else has passed within its frame? Who has freedom of movement here? Where will they go once they leave the shop window? They are out and about, but are they out?  It's this last question (though many more could be asked) that prompts the commemoration of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell - the move from the margins to the center, from being an image within an image (an identity within an identity) to being a coherent part of a larger image.  There is perhaps a thrill, a romance even, to coded whisperings and furtive glances - but any power is contingent, and there is much danger of someone moving the mirror, and of thus being taken from view, erased.  Not now - not if our lovers can leave their whisperings and speak declaratively.  We can ask how this linguistic turn, this freedom of speech reclaimed, could repaint our image - who would stand where, or if some would leave the goldsmith shop altogether and be present elsewhere.

detail of Arnolfini Portrait. 1434. Nat'l Gallery, London

We can also ask after other mirrored couples - the Man in Red and the Man in Blue who face the Arnolfinis in van Eyck's 1434 painting. Why, we can start to question a lot things.

Carthusian. 1446. The Met

For now, I can thank Petrus Christus for his portrait of a Carthusian monk - not for any reasons of historical identity (although it's nice to think of him as saint Bruno, and it's nice to think of him as a man from 1446) - but because with him, we can look directly into the eyes of an individual who is himself central.  No mirrors or occlusions - no easy explanations of the self either.  There is an inscription that has the painting speaking again ("Petrus Christus made me" - "me fecit") - another (a greater?) voice in representation.  And it being medieval art, there is that fly on the ledge.  There is much to ask, and much to tell.

Funky Peace

When in D.C. at the fabulous National Art Gallery, knowing there's an Arcimboldo show your mom can't wait to take you to, and having just been through the awesome kid section of the gift shop, what else is there to do but don your funky hologram glasses and hang out in the garden atrium with your baby cousin? A funky peace reigned today, the best kind: fun, unexpected, blissful. Warning: a picture of every single member of the household over the age of 1 month with baby Henry features below. He is the gift that keeps on giving.

Lunch at the National Museum of the American Indian, whose reputation for being fantastic is well earned.  The key to its success in academic circles is that it doesn't just herald the early (read "primitive") American Indian, but instead presents contemporary American Indian cultures (skateboard art, for instance, or the Indigenous Contemporary Arts Program). There's a post at some point about the concept of the primitive in the Middle Ages (I used to think there wasn't one, that The Primitive is a product of Modernism, but sometimes I'm not so sure).  Anyway, here's Iris pushing Henry in his swank stroller.

And here is Henry's sweet mama, Gina.  He's four weeks olds and already the love radiates when he sees her.  Gina's calm and good humor makes all the difference in this little household. I remember a much more fraught and frenetic time - Oliver was the one with the calm and the good will.  Thank goodness for these little ones who know what they're doing. Henry and Gina are a beautiful team - she is in utter love with her little guy, and knows him deeply, and knows there is fun to be had.

See what I mean about the radiant gaze?  And can you imagine hanging out in those huge, comfortable arms all day?  A significant amount of our conversation yesterday was spent trying to figure out exactly that.  Seeing Steve as a dad is still more mind-blowing than I can really write about - except to say that he and Gina are amazing and totally symbiotic around Henry, that Steve's state of wonder (which we have all treasured for his whole life) is exponentially beautiful around his son, and that all of us can only marvel at the fun that awaits you, Henry.

Here is my proud chicita, feeding Henry while he gazes pensively out the window - there's clearly already much to ponder. Iris and I keep talking about what it must be like to grow up in D.C. - these cousins will have some wild notes to compare.  What always amazes me about the first three months is that they actually do pass - but the memory of holding an infant is immediate: that special heaviness, that unique warmth. I remember Iris holding Eleanor four and a half years ago. My proud Iris.  Happy Henry.

Good to know I still have a soporific effect on infants. Look how long that little guy is!

It might be difficult to see, but the moon was already out at about 3:30 p.m. as we were making our way back from the National Gallery.  Why is a dome such a great architectural shape for grandeur and order?  Even though the Republicans insist on besmirching it with their unbelievably cynical politics, it looks pretty grand.  The thing with architecture is that it allows you to transcend all that.  Just ask the domes of Jerusalem: the Holy Sepulcher, the Dome of the Rock, and the Shrine of the Book.  The thing with babies is that, I swear, you get that same transcendence - that embodiment of goodness at the very least.