Under the Gaze of Our Lord Courtesy of Franco Zefferelli

As those of you who read this blog know, I attend Mass at St. Victor Church in West Hollywood.  I have been a long time parishioner, literally just over half my life.  I hadn't thought about it being half my life until just now

Some fifteen or twenty years ago, our late pastor, George J. Parnassus, of whom I have also written in these pages obtained a catalog of rather beautiful accoutrements (props in Hollywood lingo) from a variety of Zefferelli films. That is the Italian Director, who famously made, for example, the 1970 ish version of "Romeo and Juliet".  There was to be an auction.  Among the items was a reproduction of the Damiano Cross from which St. Francis of Assisi heard the exhortation "Francis, rebuild my Church!"

St. Francis, still on his road to conversion, or re-version--for he was raised a Catholic among the wealthy tradesmen of Assisi--misunderstood a little. He thought Our Lord from the Cross was asking him to restore the ruins in which the rood remained a fixture.

It was the beginning of a saint. 

The reproduction had been used in Zeffrelli's Italian film version of the story of Saint Francis (not the Bradford Dillman and Delores Hart American one). The Monsignor was taken with it, and with the idea that it would be a beautiful, profound piece above the tabernacle containing the Lord's Real Presence. And so, correspondence began with Italy and the representatives of the director. 


One day the large and heavy crucifix appeared in our lower sacristy, successfully acquired. It was covered in cloth, very similar perhaps to a shroud. It had apparently become in need of some repair and restoration, and because it was so large and weighty, it needed a special installation against the back wall.

And then one day, it was there, the eyes of Our Lord looking down from this wood of torture with eyes of kindness and promise. I have loved to be in the presence of the Cross in the Presence of Our Lord ever since. His Eyes seem even to follow us as we walk from one end of the sanctuary to the other, protecting and guiding.

After Monsignor died, among his things was the original catalog, with several photographs which must indeed have sold Monsignor on the gift that having the Crucifix become part of the tapestry of our parish. I was fortunate. I was able to make copies of two of the most wonderful photos.

When I look at the one in the black and white photograph, I realize that I have something in common with the actors below it, kneeling at the fictional altar.  Every Sunday, I too kneel below it, for the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice.   And I can imagine that He joins us as we kneel in prayer.

                                                         

Being Sixty: A Preface

 

Now

 

 

                                                                             Then

Some two years ago I posted my reveries about being at the edge of thirty years old, as now I do about teetering on sixty, precisely thirty years hence. I have lived a second half of existence since committing those thoughts to paper.

I was always very cognizant of the breath that life is, and it is no surprise that I reflected a bit on it, and the inevitability of its end just before I turned thirty.  I had been doing that since I was a teenager reading "Thanatopsis" by William Cullen Bryant.

But there is a difference now. I do not say it to be morbid and I do not feel the morbidity I felt, as it happens, as a teenager. No matter what adults said, no matter what I knew intellectually then, and now, the speed of the days going by is an emotional whirl that produces a tad of fright about how much time I have wasted, and an anxiety about the fact I probably will waste a significant bit of what is left, despite my best efforts. On the other hand, I am not sure sitting on my couch in my comfortable little rooms, surrounded by my pets is an entire waste of time. It could be considered meditative, and meditation, secularly or in religious circles is a sought after "activity" of inactivity.

I have, I admit, found myself looking at the statistics of what time I have left. My mother died at 48; my father at 90. Women, as a general matter, have a life span of 78, although I know of a lot of women in their mid-to-late eighties and at least one 90.  If I am gifted with the maximum (in which case I might well be writing the third of these entries, "Being 90:  a Preface"--now there's a thought). More, or less, of a future, my comment about becoming thirty--the need to resolve things--is more urgent than it was. And I was right then that the things to resolve are not the same now as they were then.

Certain ships have sailed in an earthly sense of achievement--children did not happen and the reasons wherefore were a combination of nature, nurture, and self-fulfilling prophecy. Fortunately, though, I have had others' children in my life and that has been an enormous compensation. Where I had a career before me in my 1984-ish writing--I had been licensed and my name appeared on a door-- that career, as an attorney was had and I have set it aside with a bit of an unceremonious push by political demi-gods. Sometimes I wonder whether they see that they face the same existential realities as the rest of us. What was it that Rose (Cher) said to Cosmo Castorini (Danny Aiello) in "Moonstruck"?  "I just want you to know no matter what you do, you're going to die, just like everybody else."

It was time, though, for me to leave the arena of law when I did, and I have been happier. Has "retirement" been a panacea?  No. Naturally, and I knew it would be so, there are other challenges. One is never free to do exactly what one wants. From a Christian point of view, and that is the point of view I practice (emphasis on the "practice" part) one is supposed to let go of the I in favor of the other, and the Other, He who relentlessly invites us to follow the path of His act of love. I keep digressing. Well, maybe it isn't a digression. It is the point.

I am thinking, yes, yes, I am, seems silly to say it, but it is true, eschatologically. In terms of final, ultimate things. What is the person I have become, and if given the chance, will become?  And whoever I become it will be without the same supports I had during the previous thirty years. My dad has been gone nearly six years. Several good friends have passed on, some at a good age, and others much too young, not given the years I already have been.

I know this. Although the core of who I am seems to have remained with me, some of the concerns surrounding the core have changed radically. The things that obsessed me when I was younger, things that pained me in ways I thought were irrevocable, no longer do. I wonder now why I gave them so much importance. Some large piece of me got left behind.  I shed unnecessary or burdensome, outer layers.

On the other hand, some old bête noirs still follow me around--I have come to understand that I have to befriend them. Or at least tolerate them without whining.  Or tolerate them, with just a little whining! 

My faith. My faith. I am no holy roller, but I do believe, in my deepest self, that there indeed is the pearl of great price, just like it says in the Good Book. I won't stand on the pulpit right now. Too much.  But when I sit before the Blessed Sacrament, I have flashes of certainty about Him, really, truly, present as if He were sitting next to me saying, "Don't be afraid".

I have come to believe that if I am given and accept the Spirit and I lose the fear, that not only will I find what I am supposed to be doing in the last (I hope) third of my life, but I will also be at peace for the rest of my days.

                                                                           

Tim's Vermeer, and the Original Vermeer, Tantalize-- and Inspire

 

The Music Lesson, a copy of the original, I think. Not Tim's, I think?!

The Variety Review of "Tim's Vermeer" in which a tech genius tries to prove, by painting Johannes Vermeer's "The Music Lesson", that the great artist used optics that can be replicated by well, anyone, considers the documentary "incendiary" and as I read it, rather arrogant. 

Tim Jenison really isn't anyone in that he has the money to experiment with lenses and a whole set from which to copy the context of the painting, the piano, the windows, the chairs, the girl, the man watching her play, the tapestry, and of course, the precise lighting. I sure don't.

But I found myself riveted. First, by the fact that the Jenison spent six years on demonstrating a theory that has somewhat floated around for some time, it appears. And by the process of reconstruction and painting. It didn't make me think for one minute that Vermeer was less than brilliant. It somehow made him more brilliant, IF indeed the theory that Jenison proposes is true, and even, or especially if it's not.

And then there is the ineffable. I disagree with Variety in that I don't think Jenison was trying to prove he could do as good a job as Vermeer, assuming that the optics was the foundation of Vermeer's difference from other artists of his day, the particulars of the color and light. The movie did not attempt to compare the original with this copy. And when David Hockney, an artist of great modern repute looked at the copy, he did not say, "By Jove," Hockney is English, "Jenison this is as great as the work of the master himself!"  He simply acknowledged that the nature of the detail, for example, in the tapestry, was such using the optics that it could very well be this was the way Vermeer LOOKED at what he painted, through mirror image. Looking fleetingly at the original prints via the movie and separately at the Jenison version, I had the feeling that Jenison's leaned toward the mechanical of Vermeer's process, not the artistic.

The inspiring part?  It made me feel I should not give up on my little efforts at painting, either in some form of impressionism (which in my case means I am being lazy so I don't do too much detail) or something more real life expression. 

I felt as I watched a little of what I feel when I paint. There is this blank canvas. You begin to put color to it. And something is literally created out of nothing and becomes present.

I walked back home from the Sundance West Hollywood Theatre, past several restaurants running the Oscars over early meals, and came back home to join that audience. Maybe this week I will finish a painting of old Elwood that has been sitting on my music stand for nearly a year.