It’s true, I have a broken heart. But it’s the only heart I have, so I’ve got to live with it. My son’s birthday came and went. I try to close my eyes to it, like I close my eyes to all anniversaries. But like the rest, I remember when it’s too late. I remember that I forgot, since forgetting is something I never do.
Remembering my son’s birthday always puts me in mind of my sister’s, which comes on Labor Day, which used to be a joke. But it hasn’t been a joke for years. Labor Day we don’t mention.
Before my stepson disappeared into the wilds of Scranton, having run through three different colleges without a single credit, four months in rehab, six in a halfway house, and 6 in what was called ‘sober living’, and who is now on the loose in a town with the highest population of people in recovery in the nation, which also has the highest concentration of addicts, I used to go on vacation in August, which lies between remembering my son’s birthday and staring at my sister’s. It was good to go to Greece and swim in the water, eat lousy food and walk around some island, a place where you will never belong, that gets along just fine without you, that won’t care when you’re gone but is hospitable enough, as long as you leave a trail of money. It’s life in a nutshell.
I didn't go to Greece because my wife refuses to leave NY, as my stepson might call. We haven’t heard from him in months, and the chance that he might call is nil, but my wife wants to be in a state of readiness. The last time my stepson set foot at home, my wife had an intervention team waiting, which included his favorite teacher from high school, my surviving son - also in recovery, and a professional interventionist who flew in from LA for an all expense paid weekend in NY courtesy of yours truly. It didn’t work, of course. My stepson handled the whole group like he was selling placebo. He even got enough money for a Manhattan haircut before he bolted without a trace - or a haircut.
My wife is half crazy and half sane, both in the extreme. I love her in both states, but I’m likewise divided, since the one costs and the other pays. I think she was also relieved not to be in Naples, where she usually spends July, since the situation there is a disaster. The family business is bankrupt, her brother has been confined to a mental hospital, and her parents are in need of constant care. Her father’s denial has become malignant, and could be counted as a nuisance were it not for his other son, who continues to look to his father for all the answers.
The father doesn’t have any answers. He’s 86. At this point, all he has are questions, and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t remember the answers, even when the answer is where to find the men’s room. Another answer he can’t remember, or at least refuses to, is that there’s no more money. The little plastic card doesn’t work anymore. He keeps sticking it in, like one atm doesn’t know what the other one is thinking.
So I didn’t do anything much this summer but work, which didn’t feel too bad. Besides, we need the money. Recovery I can’t afford otherwise.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
The Last Supper
The first and only time I saw The Last Supper was about 40 years ago. I was wandering around Milan like a dumb fuck on a Sunday afternoon in August with nothing to do and nowhere to go. The city was completely empty - every restaurant shuttered, every bar closed. I walked all the way from the cemetery to Porta Magenta without seeing a soul and stood across the street from Santa Maria delle Grazie, which looked a little grim, like a jewel box left in the barn. There were pieces of scaffolding here and there, but it didn’t look like anything was going to get fixed any time soon. It was just another neighborhood church without much in the way of coffers.
I crossed the street to the entrance, where the door was standing open and an old man wearing a wife beater was sitting in a folding chair in the vestibule. I stood there as he gave me a long look. The church was closed, of course, but this guy and me were like the last two people on earth. I was happier to see him than I was to see inside. He looked at me like he was trying to remember something. Then he said: go ahead, take a look.
I went inside and walked right up to it. There were tarps hanging on either side, a small rolling scaffold nearby. The painting wasn’t covered. It was the back wall, that’s all, and it was a wreck. There was some construction detritus, like the place was undergoing a paint job. In fact, it looked like The Last Supper was getting ready to be painted white, right after it was scraped and spackled.
Like most art up close, the artist’s hand was apparent, the magic on display. In the case of The Last Supper, you could see that it was done by many hands, one following another, taking off a flake and painting it over because, from a technical point of view, Leonardo did a truly shitty job in the first place.
It was vanity, which is no surprise. It had to be the perfect painting. Leonardo was more confident as a scientist than as an artist, which was his one big mistake, the first and fatal, set to destroy this most perfect of paintings before it was begun. He re-made the surface into one he could paint over, which is exactly what happened for centuries.
A true fresco permits no mistakes. The plaster becomes part of the stone on which it sits, and can last thousands of years. The artist has to get it right the first time, and he must prove himself master by the minute. It occurred to me that Leonardo never expected it to last very long, and I can’t help but think that he knew it - two immutable facts. Every mason knows them, every housepainter: water seeps, stone weeps.
No, I didn’t touch it. It was The Last Supper and I was respectful. But I did put my nose right up to it. I smelled the bread on the table and the left hand of Christ. I wanted to see if I could still smell egg tempura, but it smelled like dust, which is what you’d expect.
I crossed the street to the entrance, where the door was standing open and an old man wearing a wife beater was sitting in a folding chair in the vestibule. I stood there as he gave me a long look. The church was closed, of course, but this guy and me were like the last two people on earth. I was happier to see him than I was to see inside. He looked at me like he was trying to remember something. Then he said: go ahead, take a look.
I went inside and walked right up to it. There were tarps hanging on either side, a small rolling scaffold nearby. The painting wasn’t covered. It was the back wall, that’s all, and it was a wreck. There was some construction detritus, like the place was undergoing a paint job. In fact, it looked like The Last Supper was getting ready to be painted white, right after it was scraped and spackled.
Like most art up close, the artist’s hand was apparent, the magic on display. In the case of The Last Supper, you could see that it was done by many hands, one following another, taking off a flake and painting it over because, from a technical point of view, Leonardo did a truly shitty job in the first place.
It was vanity, which is no surprise. It had to be the perfect painting. Leonardo was more confident as a scientist than as an artist, which was his one big mistake, the first and fatal, set to destroy this most perfect of paintings before it was begun. He re-made the surface into one he could paint over, which is exactly what happened for centuries.
A true fresco permits no mistakes. The plaster becomes part of the stone on which it sits, and can last thousands of years. The artist has to get it right the first time, and he must prove himself master by the minute. It occurred to me that Leonardo never expected it to last very long, and I can’t help but think that he knew it - two immutable facts. Every mason knows them, every housepainter: water seeps, stone weeps.
No, I didn’t touch it. It was The Last Supper and I was respectful. But I did put my nose right up to it. I smelled the bread on the table and the left hand of Christ. I wanted to see if I could still smell egg tempura, but it smelled like dust, which is what you’d expect.
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