Anne Beidler | Nell Ruby | Donna Sadler | Katherine Smith
Qiu Qing and the Red Thread The Chinese legend of the red thread speaks of invisible ties that connect people through time and distance. When the chubby cheeked 15 month old girl, who we had decided to name Elizabeth, first toddled into the hotel room in China four years ago I said “Ni Hao, Qiu Qing”. She looked up with a flash of shy recognition. I knew then that she would be called by her Chinese name Qiu Qing which means, as we were told, Autumn Calm. Once we boarded the plane for her new home with us in the USA, all familiar faces, food, sounds and smells would be gone forever. Her name would be the only concrete part of her previous life that would remain with her. Would we be able to fill those huge gaps with our love? That evening an exchange of gifts would take place. We had arranged for Qiu Qing to have a gift to give her new big sister, Hannah YuYao. It was a set of colorful wooden blocks. The now increasingly jealous 3 year old, Hannah YuYao was reluctant to accept the gift. So, little Qiu Qing picked up one of the blocks and carried it over to her new sister and placed it in her lap. She chose a green block. How could she have known? A single green block had been Hannah’s favorite toy when we met her three years before in China. It had become a sort of sacred object in our home. The significance of this event was lost on no one. Hannah YuYao looked up with tears of amazement in her eyes and I knew then that their bond as sisters was sealed forever. Nellie’s Story I remember looking at an abstract painting with my mother one time when I was about twelve. I don’t remember now what the painting was, just that I thought it was ugly and I didn’t understand it. I told my mom that I didn’t “get” art. It seemed like a dumb way to spend time. I mean, if you can’t understand it, what is its use? While I have no memory of the painting that brought on the interaction, I remember exactly my mother’s face, her green dress with orangey swirls, and my angle of view (this is how I know I was about twelve). She paused and gave me the you-better-take-this- in- or- there- will- be- consequences look and told me “Paintings, Nellie, are all about telling stories, and stories are how we see who we are and how we know how to love.” I didn’t get that either, but because she seemed so mad I remembered it forever. I think I get it now. Après-midi de la fondling… I chose a Wednesday to see the Charles VI exhibit. Learning from... I’m thinking about journeys and guides, about what it means to follow paths and find help, sometimes when you least expect it, along the way. As a scholar, I often choose my avenues of investigation based on a curious combination of intellectual inquiry and intuition, always pursuing directions without a clear sense of where they will take me but nonetheless accompanied by a dauntless sense that I will find something worth knowing, if not about my subject then perhaps about myself. Recently, I’ve been working on a series of topics related to the work of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, architects who turned their attention to the vernacular American landscape, particularly the Las Vegas Strip, in the 1960s. While that choice might seem mundane now, they had visionary goals about the possibility of looking to learn from the existing commercial environment at a time when most of their peers searched instead for more abstract, less contextual and contingent, design ideals. What Venturi and Scott Brown learned, in part, was that the paths, of research and roadways, were not always trouble-free. They describe, with a somewhat retrospective viewpoint, the experience of the postwar American highway, a new type of perception defined by travel and the perspective from the road. As they write: A driver 30 years ago could maintain a sense of orientation in space. At the simple crossroad a little sign with an arrow confirmed what he already know. He knew where he was. Today the crossroad is a cloverleaf. To turn left he must turn right…. But the driver has no time to ponder paradoxical subtleties within a dangerous, sinuous maze. He relies on signs to guide him – enormous signs in vast spaces at high speeds. [Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), p. 4]. They describe the highway and its signage as dazzling, disorienting, even dangerous, and a mode of vision that could be attentive but is more often distanced and distracted. As they indicate, journeys may take us in directions exactly opposite the ones we thought we chose. The signs in life do sometimes whiz by at high speeds. Following Venturi and Scott Brown, I’m learning some lessons en route: how to read the signs and accept guidance, pay close attention and keep my eyes on the road, take occasional detours and trust the way, and all the while revel in the journey, wherever it leads. |
