“Do you expect me to dine here again,
EVER!
when nothing on your menu’s without meat?”
Sarah recited to me (which I couldn’t help but lineate) tapping her nails on the menu, nails kept short, brightened slightly with a neutral satin polish that, according to hand position, announced strength, or, more, audacity as fashion. Her hair, too, was kept feminine short, its natural goldish brown calling for help before the scheduled salon visit dyed it blue or violet with complementary highlights. The menu tapped was not that of the restaurant she scolded, but that of the friendly, accommodating breakfast/lunch place, Ever Egg’n, we frequented Saturday mornings to write or at least scrawl a few notes.
However, Sarah continued recounting her performance at the—well, leave it unnamed—restaurant, which was, after all, one of the better Twin Cities’ steak houses. The waiter, Shaun, an acquaintance of mine from my restaurant days, very skilled in handling obstinate customers, told me he’d replied:
“I know just the menu for you,
the one offered at Table’s Green,
two blocks east on 10th. The maître d’ll
reserve a table for you both.”
“I must speak with the manager,”
Sarah had enjoined.
Anticipating this reply, Shaun, ever calm, said, “Of course, Ma’am, she will speak with you shortly.”
Hearing that lightly stressed pronoun, Sarah hesitated, then, quietly, said that wouldn’t be necessary, and gesturing to her date, they quietly departed, Shaun had relayed.
Sarah’s eyes shifted toward me twice, but I kept silent, though she persisted. “Have you come down with some sort of virus, wiping your nose with a napkin? And I hope you’re current with the vaccines,” she added.
“No virus, just my response to pollen season; it is April, and you know I don’t trust vaccines for many reasons,” I said, and she, having debated me on vaccines several times, only shook her head. “Was your performance at that restaurant an exercise of some sort related to building management skills?” I asked, restraining a smile.
“I was impressed with how the waiter responded: immediate touché and cloaking any irritation he felt behind his full, measured voice,” Sarah said.
“But you still left the restaurant.”
“The only damn move I had left to play…and that guy I was with…”
“You mean Ben?” I replied.
“Yeah, him.”
“The very nice, bright young guy you’ve lived with all year.”
“Yeah, Ben, he’s just so quick, so smart, so…”
“Competitive?” I said softly.
“You’re a little quick today yourself,” she frowned. “When I took him out on my new dinghy, he kept showing me how to do ev-er-y-thing. I’m new to sailing and, of course, he grew up on boats. He was telling me what to do, how to trim the sail. I’d read about how to do that in detail, can recite it word for word.”
“Words can’t trim…” I began.
“Can’t trim a sail, blah-blah-blah. Have you sailed with him? That’s what he would say,” Sarah asserted.
I said, “But words do so little pulled off their page, out of their chapter, yanked from their book; trimming the sail is an intuitive thing that simply clicks on one day or another.”
“And I’m some sort of retard who can’t click, as you say, into doing it?” she said in a rushed whisper.
“I argued for what seemed like months with that ‘helpful’ telltale high on the cloth, demanding that it flow aft, that it not stick out and wag about, until one day in choppy water and fearing a storm might be blowing in, knowing I better get the hell back in and securely tie up at the peer, I just focused on where I needed to be; the boat seemed to speed up and glide over the choppy water. No words told me how to do that,” I recounted.
“Wished he’d put it that way,” Sarah replied, exhaling.
“Didn’t he first impress you with his car?”
“Yeah, the new Audi, its heated seats. This is cold Minnesota, and even before the heater starts warming the cabin, your bottom’s toasty?”
I said, “Ben will soon complete his MBA and he can already afford a new car.”
“Bill, Ben’s just five figures; I want someone who’s nearly there.”
“Nearly there?” I asked.
“Yeah, upper six figures and still looking for more.”
“Sounds like romance,” I thought, then said, “But you have said he’s always good in…”
“Bill, I told you that?” Sarah interrupted through her teeth, then remembered she was talking to her closest confidant.
“No details, and I wouldn’t have asked…” I said, matter-of-factly.
“But that’s no reason to put up with all his knowing and doing and instructing,” Sarah’s voice slowing to let me know that was enough from me of Ben.
Moving my own menu aside, indicating I was ready to order, I extracted the old pen I trusted still held a little ink from my shirt pocket and rolled it slowly on the notebook I always brought along. Her fuming spent, Sarah pulled her menu squarely in front of her, though knowing it by heart. I, as always, ordered the bargain house special and Sarah the same but with extra bacon.
Sarah pulled a small note pad and pen from her bag and jotted a note or two. Our food arrived and we ate silently until the waiter’s timely arrival to warm our cups.
“You know, he was just like that with skiing,” Sarah said. “We’d ride side-by-side on the lift to the top, choose a path and start down, and I saw how he kept braking to descend at my slower pace; didn’t say anything, but with a powerful shove of his poles he’d accelerate a moment, probably how he’d start a race with this pals, and the snow that flew up when he’d turn left and right to slow was louder than words.”
“Maybe his skis were waxed more heavily than yours,” I said.
“You don’t know much about skiing, do you,” Sarah replied.
“Only tried it once in high school, seemed like a lot of trouble and expense just to slide down a hill. But on the phone you mentioned something about work, about the woman who manages your group,” I said.
“She really thinks she knows how to make our project group run like a machine—drives me nuts!” Sarah said, anger resurfacing, a flash of lines under her eyes.
“I thought you liked working in the city’s tallest building,” I said.
“That lasted several weeks, months, and might for years if the city felt safe any longer,” she said.
“Didn’t you say you practically lived on Block-E in the ’80s?
“Block-E, what’s that got…?” she paused.
“I’ve read that Block-E was loud and filled with bars and beggars—anyway, bars and beggars fixed in my head—and that every parent worried that their darlings might go there.”
“There was dancing and dancing. Didn’t you ever go there?” she asked.
“Didn’t even know about it until you told me,” I said.
“It was drugs and pot and alcohol and fights every night, and flashing police car lights, but straight or stoned it felt safer than anywhere downtown now,” Sarah said, her voice dropping, eyes blinking.
“Now I park in a ramp blocks north to save a little money and walk the skyway, have to during all the months of snow and ice, but even in good weather, don’t feel safe down on the ground; and the walk up there feels little safer with the frequent early morning meetings Cheryl has us attend. In winter with no sky light and long stretches without a single person ahead, it’s creepy. And walking back after work with half the population stuffed in there, it’s one great, toxic experimental lab—I’ve never caught so many bugs.”
“Aren’t there jobs east and west and south of town for someone with your programming skill?” I asked.
“Money’s downtown, not yet, but can be if I move up enough, bend to receive the corporate leather,” she said.
“Climb enough rungs to give as well as receive,” I laughed.
“You are awake this morning, my dear,” she smiled.
Jotting a note of this, glad there was some Sarah left, I said, “But your manager doesn’t know how to manage?”
“She doesn’t get in the way when I’m actually working, when we lowly programmers keep three golden rules in mind: Does my coding solve the problem at hand, is the code easily read and understood, and can it be maintained and be extended?” Sarah said. “Anyway, Cheryl’s got her eye on advancement, too—those early team meetings, she calls them.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“Look, I didn’t play sports in school, but she coaches us like a school team.”
“Like what?”
“She gives a little speech to generate enthusiasm, then has us huddle, like a coach charging up a football or basketball team, like we were in uniforms; her voice rises to nearly a cheer, and to finish she turns the energy physical, suddenly thrusting up her right arm, which the group, now pulled into it with her, also does, arms high,” Sarah said, shaking her head.
“Sounds like hand worship at a mega-church,” I said.
“Huh, yeah, like a damn mega-church—and not the Lord, but Grow the Corporation!” Sarah almost shouted.
“And another thing about those early meetings, you get up before dawn, dress and rush downtown, walk the creepy long empty skyway to get there before 7:15, and what is there to eat when you arrive, just a plate of tiny glittery muffins and a big thermal carafe of regular coffee that Cheryl had the building food service deliver. What if someone wanted decaf?”
“Sarah, you call decaf ‘café émasculé,’ if I have that right?”
“Yeah, yeah, and no one makes a fuss, but one day someone will; and one modest plate of non-food to feed the six to eight of us. And her recitation and build up to the arm-raising group consummation, (“group consummation” I quickly scribbled) from the start you feel rushed and who then wants to eat anything?”
“Makes me thankful I’ve shown no trace of programming aptitude,” I said. “God, the number of English and psychology and history and you-name-it BA degree folks who’ve turned to programming for what they dreamed was real money. But is it true that the speed a person learns programming is based on their ability to think like a computer?” I asked.
“Well, computers don’t really think, or what passes for their thought is only the code fed into them. The longer I write code, the less I think the computer does much of anything,” Sarah said, at first assuredly and then with less certainty.
“But I know from you that unless you happen upon a solo niche that programming is a team activity and I’ve always flown solo.”
“I couldn’t imagine you writing code all day,” Sarah said.
“You were an art history major?” I knew well but asked so it might go somewhere new.
“Way back, that pampered girl’s major,” Sarah consciously joked. “Spoke a little hillbilly French, traveled to Paris, stumbled about in the Louvre for days, flew back home, wrote my papers, Was! Done!” she said, swatting the table on each of the last two words.
“That was that,” I said.
“That was that, and wished life to begin,” Sarah replied, taking a breath. “I had appreciated art to its near extinction and dearly needed to step away from it for however long recovery might take,” she said. “I knew I would never say anything fresh about Renoir’s The Great Bathers or Monet’s Water Lilies—you get the idea—and no one art craft called me to live in it.”
“I like the idea of living within an art craft,” I said. “No formal study, but I bumped about looking for such a craft, in concert halls, in museums and books, and finally met people who did seem to live in it, most not productively, with anything to show. Most were artist courters, who never got down to action, and if they did, found that it took work.
“Living it, running from it and finding that at a certain point, it can’t be left, that’s what I’ve found living it means.”
“You mean poems,” Sarah said. “Spend more time with prose, on fiction—that’s where the money is, at least for a few.”
“Tried music first; and talk about work, practiced day and night, on a stage five and six nights a week, until it was clear music didn’t need me as more than an appreciative listener,” I said.
“And now you arpeggiate words,” she noted.
“Now I hear tunes in lines on a page, absent treble cleft and key signature, though some lines feel more minor than major,” I replied.
“And I don’t have your memory, would have been a poor Art History student, naming, comparing thousands of classic and modern works. Study has always challenged or, more, goaded me into responding in kind, often just a reflex, and, I guess, sometimes managing to create. I’ve very seldom used up time to critique,” I said.
“I think this breakfast will lead to a white paper,” Sarah challenged.
“It’s high pollen season—anything that begins white will likely turn yellow-green,” I replied.
“Bill, coffee doesn’t make one that alert; are you now into other helpers?”
“No more now than at your husband-ago birthday party when there was a pass-around of a certain white powder and I leaned back so the person on my right could hand it to the person on my other side. Remember years ago, Sarah, when we walked the annual Gallery Crawl, how we passed by tired painting after copied painting after precious watercolor after what’s-the-point weaving and pottery without stopping, and we suddenly paused, and looked around wondering why?”
“Yes, we stopped at the same moment; it seemed strange, like some force had picked us out,” Sarah said, her eyes rising.
I continued, “We looked about us for a special painting or spectacular vase, something, but found only small, salad-plate-sized pottery vignettes, each depicting a scene from suburbia—modest ranch style houses, their fenced yards, wading pool, a car, a pet, one of more persons, no vignette element more than half an inch high, colors minimal but precise and effective. ‘This is art,’ one of us said, both felt, and as quickly heard in our heads the words reordered, ‘Is this art?’”
“The guy’s work jumped out,” Sara said. “We moved close and I found myself arguing with everything I was taught about real art and how these trifles shouldn’t excite me so much. ‘This shouldn’t be, shouldn’t be, shouldn’t,’ echoed in my head. We knew our gallery crawl was done; it had shown us what we couldn’t have guessed, that we had, on this cool fall night, experienced something fresh and real. Neither of us negotiated a purchase, which was beyond my means then and surely yours. We viewed the pieces from different angles, then nodded our appreciation to the artisan, who nodded back, pleased that someone understood.”
I said, “Some pieces silently announce their presence for an instant, free us from conscious thought, any sort of evaluation. Released from that moment, we fumble with words, words that we likely discard to try again?”
“Work of Kandinsky, for instance,” Sarah said, “doesn’t represent something recognizable but can, for some, lead them to ponder something deeper. His work becomes a freeing space for the imagination of the viewer to run freely, to take flight, to use that tired phrase.”
“Take flight, yes,” I said, “but that’s different, not shorting wires in the mind for an instant, but challenging the mind to take flight—and I agree, a terribly tired phrase. Anyway, I like an art work to supply at least one street sign, or better, an arrow pointing east, so that one may know which way to turn to watch the sun rise.”
“Sun/Son pun,” Sarah exclaimed, as she must have in class.
“Your Profs must have loved you,” I thought silently, just barely moving my lips.
“Share with me aloud, please,” Sarah said, lowering her head.
“Just trying out a line, but it’s already trashed,” I said to escape.
“Those vignettes showed themselves to us,” she said, “out in the open on rickety card tables, with no guard gesturing ‘Not so close,’ ‘Don’t touch,’ and I felt no need to, their aura reaching us where we stood.”
“Art is inseparable from experience,” I couldn’t help but say.
“Bill, you sure you aren’t Ben’s twin brother he’s never mentioned?” Sarah said, inspecting my face.
“Sorry for the generalization,” I said.
“Your time in Paris, didn’t the Louvre have certain hours, and then and only then you were permitted to view the famous objects displayed within?” I asked.
“Yes, 9 to 6 or 9 to 9, depending on the day, closed Tuesdays, I still remember,” Sarah said.
“Is our experience of art so regimented, so restricted?” I asked.
“Bill, so many big questions for a Saturday breakfast, write it out,” Sarah directed.
“Sorry, but experience of creations as art occurs no matter the rules and hours of esteemed establishments, occurs before the wide doors open and after they shut,” I continued to think aloud.
“Is this one of your thought experiments?” she said, leaning toward me.
“An ongoing debate with myself,” I said. “The issue is what state of mind is that initial awareness, as we experienced at the gallery crawl? There has been much talk about AI and how it will advance to the point of equaling or exceeding human consciousness.”
“AI? Not my forte, and all the screwy dreams many have that AI will become, if it isn’t already, the master consciousness,” Sarah half sang.
“I know, I know, and I’ve not burned time there either, but the claim that a computer system might soon, if not already, have reached a human-level of consciousness is a hell of a dream, a nightmare, and if it does keep climbing toward near-human cognizance, could it ever reach the level of emotional connection to a work of art, as we experienced that night of the crawl?”
“My workdays of telling computers what to ‘think’ has nothing to do with art? Coding can be sloppy, passable or very concise. It’s just focus, focus, focus on clarity, usability. The mindset of a programmer, as I said, runs like this: you sit in your workstation all day and prioritize clarity, modularity, and reusability,” Sarah said, her voice and thought losing focus.
“That’s a pile of adverbs,” I replied.
“Yes, distant from the mindset of experiencing art and Nebraska from creating it,” Sarah added.
“Nebraska…yes,” I clapped my hands. “There is still Sarah in there!”
“Its goal and single purpose is showing fulfilment of an installed (programmed) list of criteria a piece of art could have, totally emotion-free. Did those small pottery vignettes we both responded to satisfy any such list? Would anyone in art history assess those pieces as one milligram more than low brow conceits?”
Feeling we’d accomplished something, we dropped our napkins on our plates, picked up pads and pens and left Ever Egg’n, Sarah to the nearby college campus library to work on her thesis for a Master’s in business management and I to a nearby used book store. There wasn’t any particular book I needed, nothing I could name; I just wanted to look around in case some book called out to me.
White Paper
This is more self-diagnosis
than artistic proclamation,
a listing of symptoms and just
ones that revealed themselves to him,
for he shall not guess what others
hide. We are not all one under
the art that captured him, that works
and works and perishes. You can’t
take my word for this. He’s the least
trustworthy to critique, so hit
and miss of canon, of who and
what is anthologized, fourth, sixth,
and eighth eds. So, he says,
take what suits you, though what does not
may prove the deeper confection
needed or not fiction to light.
Recipe: White Paper
Find one (even two is likely one too many) who knows you well enough to have useful mutual memories; in fact, nobodies can only generalize. Don’t waste time cooking; this will only make your hands too messy to jot thoughts as you converse—ballpoint pens don’t roll when messed with butter and oil. Therefore, find a cheap, affordable place to eat. Waste no time with the menu; order the day’s special.
See what comes out of this. If nothing, cross out that name from your list and next week invite the next one down. Expose yourselves to each other, even to the waiter if that so happens. Any waiter worth a tip will display polished indifference.
* * *
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More from Don Moss: POETRY: Don Moss’s “Greenroom” (1998), POETRY: Cards At The Center, Breakfast Stories: OPEN Sign