Saturday fun and reflections

Today I had to make a run to North Beach to pick up something, so I suggested to Melanie that we all go and have duck rillette sandwiches at the Ferry Building. She agreed, so we loaded up the car and headed over to the city.

In the summertime we will often have beautiful, warm, sunny weather on this side of the bay only to find cold wind and fog over San Francisco. Today was the opposite. It was still gray and drippy in Oakland, but the sun broke through in the City, so after eating duck rillettes, making our rounds at the farmers' market, and taking care of business, we wanted to do something else, but weren't sure what.

Since we were driving on Broadway, and Amalia is almost as smitten by tunnels as by trains, I figured I could give her a good treat by driving through the Broadway tunnel. She loved it, but then one is on the other side of Russian Hill, so one might as well do something over there.

Not really knowing what to do I just kept driving West, making suggestions to Melanie. I thought about a hike at the beautifully restored Chrissy Fields wetlands, and that made Melanie think of Marina Green and the two kites that we keep in the car, and next thing you know Amalia was having her first kite flying experience.

Some days the light and sky over the marina are beyond description. Alcatraz stands not too far from shore and looks almost inviting, the Golden Gate Bridge seems to glow. The Marin headlands take on colors normally only found in paintings. A blimp kept buzzing us, birds kept flying by, dogs chased frisbees, and the mansions of the Marina still sported their mayoral allegiances (including the ones extolling candidates who were finished in last week's election).

To fly a kite in this atmosphere is one of the great pleasures in life, and I am not entirely sure why. Kite flying at the level we do it is not a great challenge. We are not performing aerobatics or exhibiting monumental sheets of nylon, rather we have two good but simple kites that we were simply keeping aloft. All three of us were completely mesmerized by the whole thing, though.

There is something beyond fun in flying kites, and I am not sure I can put it in words, just as I have been having great difficulty putting into words what I expect a painting to do recently.

After we flew kites we drove to Fort Point, the Civil War era fort that guarded the Golden Gate, and now sits, perfectly preserved, under the famous span. Then through the Presidio, and it hit me as I took a glance at Chrissy Fields from the vantage of the Presidio and saw not a landscape but a painting.

Well, it did hit me then, but it took me a few hours to synthesize it, and it will take me many hours to articulate it. When I do, you will read it here first, but I think I may have found a breakthrough in my painting rut, which is my first concern. Articulating theory of art is much lower on my list than making art.

Of course this one view did not really open everything up at once. I have been working on the problems for quite some time, having read and reread theory, studied paintings with a vigor that I have not put to use for quite some time, and so on. Just this week I stumbled on a used copy of the second printing of Etienne Gilson's Painting and Reality, which has really helped me focus some of my thoughts, so this little epiphany did not come from a vacuum.

It makes me think about prayer and contemplation, as well as learning music. I don't know how it is for the rest of you, but I learn things in uneven steps and tend to get discouraged with plateaus. Spiritually it is the same. Obviously it would be semi-Pelagian to claim that we earn spiritual wisdom through our prayer disciplines, but it seems that God's grace often works in the same rhythm as the one that governs how I learn a piece of music.

There were times, particularly on tricky French baroque pieces that I almost gave up, threw in the serviette and said, "this is just too difficult. I am not ready" only to find that in the next week the difficult passage was there at my fingertips and was not only quite easy, but rather natural as well.

It all makes me wonder whether the intellect imitates the way Grace operates, or does God bestow Grace on us in a way suited for us to get it and to cooperate?

Anyway, it is a quarter to two in the morning, and I only meant to post a little thing about the joys of flying kites, with maybe a brief mention of how the Ferry Plaza is quickly becoming one of the world's great foodie meccas (it really is. If you want a foodie vacation, make a reservation at the French Laundry in Yountville, Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Oliveto's in Oakland, then spend a Saturday at the Ferry Building. I mention the French Laundry first, as it is notoriously difficult to get a reservation there, so once you do, schedule the rest of the trip around that). Instead I got off on something else entirely and am not really doing it justice.

Posted by erik at November 16, 2003 1:50 AM | TrackBack