Silence

Agnes Martin whose work is being seen right now at LACMA is the subject of several review articles here and abroad.  Her art which is a combination of hand penciled grid lines and the subtle use of color in and out of these lineal restrictions produces a calm, a peace of god that passeth all understanding, as the good book says.  Nothing much to look at, my husband says, but yet I can look for hours, gaze, wordlessly, speechless, slowly surrendering tot her spell.  She was known to be a woman who pursued a silent and lonely life by choice.  Silence is, as they say, golden.  I have trouble with it having been raised in a household where polite conversation was routinely imposed upon us whenever we children were together or with grownup.  I was one of that kids who commandeered the best lunch table at school with my ferocious chatter.  I married a woman for whom talking was an effort, an architect, like Agnes Martin more at home with grids and planes, silent reminders.  She sat with a drink at parties in our house with her slight smile and generally saying nothing.  I sometimes grew angry "at her lack of cooperation."  Now she is dead but first we were divorced.  Her mother said to me "You took your laughter away."  I used to feel  triumphant at that observation but later on I wondered if my ex-wife cared.  She must have blissed out in all that quiet.  Later I joined forces with a man who as I slowly perceived disliked company and talking as much as she.  We have been together twenty six years now, actually married in a church when it became legal.  We live in Sarasota where we have almost no friends--we just don't seem to have anything in common.  I mean we are culture vultures, me pretentious high culture, Richard middlebrow culture, but those we meet don't seem to expand their horizons o reading and writing and playing going and music listening so we don't connect.  Richard is in ecstacy at that thought of another day without speaking to anyone when I go up to Manhattan where I have lots of friends and we talk and talk.  When I am in Sarasota I am trying to learn the peace of god that comes with monastic silence.  It is a great revelation to see that French documentary film about the monks of Chartreuse I believe who have taken a vow of silence.  It is a kind of wilful experience of living death.  Blessed Quiet, a new way for me.

I will be extra special wordless until the First of July as we fly off this morning and return the end of June.