Who Was Your First Hero, Leah Umansky?

My first hero is actually a heroine. Two heroines, to be exact: Charlotte and Emily Brontë (Sorry, Anne, didn’t read you until college). What struck me the most was the power of the female voice at a time where women were still very much repressed, restricted and, well—unheard of as artists. It was probably the intrigue that surrounded the Brontë Sisters that I enjoyed the most, as it created a life-long dream inside me, of going to the Parsonage. What were these moors they lived on?  How did they write about such passions and desires? How did these women write such compelling fiction, when they hardly left their homes?

With Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, I learned from Jane about confidence and power, but I also learned about independence. Jane was her own woman in the end, despite the fact that she, well, ends up with Rochester.

But with Emily’s Wuthering Heights, I learned from both Catherine and Heathcliff.

Catherine taught me that the heart goes on no matter what. Love, goes on. I was drawn to the fact that despite marrying Linton and making that wrong choice, she knew her heart belonged to Heathcliff and, in her death, she recognized that love.

I think Heathcliff is my hero, despite the fact that he’s a misanthrope, and that some see him as a gothic, psycho-villain. To me, he is a tortured soul. He is heartbroken and alone. No one understands him, and he needs. He wants. He  taught me that everything we do in life is a choice, and we have to be wise.  And though he loses Catherine, he gains her in the end in the afterlife. Yes, I’m a romantic, but the Brontës were, too. Clearly. They both have made me into my own heroine.

Leah Umansky’s first book of poems, Domestic Uncertainties, is out now by BlazeVOX [Books.] Her Mad-Men inspired chapbook, Don Dreams and I Dream is forthcoming from Kattywompus Press in early 2014.  She has been a contributing writer for BOMB Magazine’s BOMBLOG and Tin House, a poetry reviewer for The Rumpus and a live twitterer for the Best American Poetry Blog. She also hosts and curates the COUPLET Reading Series. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Thrush Poetry Journal, and The Brooklyn Rail. Read more at: http://iammyownheroine.com

See Leah present her work at The Project Room on February 27th in Transforming Text- free!

Who Was Your First Hero, Jonathan Miles?

My first hero, if we’re sticking to chronology, was probably Ozzie Newsome, the NFL Hall of Fame tight end for the Cleveland Browns in the late-’70s/’80s. A few years ago one of my sisters dug out a copy of a letter I wrote to him, seeking advice on how to deal with schoolyard bullies. A more pertinent early hero, however, was the science-fiction author Isaac Asimov, whose books -- my God, he must’ve written hundreds -– I devoured as a child. I wrote to Asimov, too, this time seeking advice on how a kid might grow up to be a writer. Asimov, unlike Ozzie Newsome, wrote me back, and his terrifically simple counsel -– to read as much as possible, and to practice writing as much as possible -– still stands as the best and most concise advice on writing I’ve ever heard. Read, write, repeat. Everything else is just details.

Jonathan Miles‘s latest book, WANT NOT came out from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in November 2013. “Well, I loved this book,” raved Dave Eggers in the New York Times Book Review, “Jonathan Miles can write, and here he’s written a wonderful book, and there’s no one I would not urge to read it.” Jonny’s first novel, DEAR AMERICAN AIRLINES, was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. A former columnist for the New York Times, he serves as a contributing editor to magazines as diverse as Field & Stream and Details. A former longtime resident of Oxford, Mississippi, he currently lives with his family in rural New Jersey. Jonathan is reading from his newest book, Want Not, At University Books on MONDAY NOVEMBER 18 at 7:00PM. More info can be found here

Who Was Your First Hero, Sharon Arnold?

My first hero is totally a fictional character. I didn’t have a lot of good role models (who does?) so it’s probably not very surprising. I was born right in the middle of the 1970s, the same year the Runaways were born, and the year Lynda Carter first donned the strapless red, blue, and gold bootyshort costume that is iconically Wonder Woman. I will never forget her.

It’s ridiculous to watch it now. It’s super campy and the plot line is – I don’t even know what it is. She gets the bad guy and looks great doing it. But Lynda Carter is still the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen on television and her disco glam version of Wonder Woman will always be first in my heart. When I was four, I was inseparable from the bracers and crown that I would make out of paper and I would wear everywhere until they fell apart. When they did, I made more. My grandmother (who raised me) would help me carefully wrap the poster board in foil so it would be “metal” and I’d color it with a yellow marker to make it gold. If my grandmother insisted upon the removal of said adornment because of something as mundane as a bath, I’d yell indignantly. Greek goddesses don’t need to remove their armament to bathe – they’re just magically amazing and nice-smelling. They probably don’t even need baths. How silly to even suggest it.

Later, in 2nd grade at a school carnival, I was over the moon about a cardboard Wonder Woman at the photo booth. As I stepped up the ladder to put my head over her body the photographer exclaimed, “You look just like her!!” and I thought I would die. The resulting photo does not make any effort to hide the biggest, shit-eating grin I think I’ve ever worn. 

As I grew up and got into comics, my love for her became deeper. It isn’t just that she’s drop-dead gorgeous, tall, athletic, independent, super strong, and invincible. It’s that she’s complex. Descended from Amazons and Greek mythology, she is expected to endure a world that is not yet ready for her. If she removes her bracers, she will be unfathomably powerful but she will also lose her mind. Once, she gave up her powers to stay here. She  got them back. She’s smart as hell, using her wit and wisdom to solve problems, not using her beauty. She’s been through multiverses and spans a myriad of alternate Earths. She’s in love with Hades. She is presumed to love Superman. She is a warrior, but she is a woman.

The love affair blooms because she, like most Greek heroes, is who we aspire to be. The truth is that Wonder Woman is the ultimate human. She is not infallible. She’s emotionally layered. She has to make tough choices and they may not always be the right ones – there are consequences. We can do it all, but there is always a price. You can’t have everything. We can imagine ourselves in her place, doing the same thing, facing the same choices. It’s a fantasy – of course we could never be her. But, because she is human, we see ourselves in her, and we dream that some part of her exists in us, too.

Sharon is a Seattle-based artist, curator, and writer. She studied at Pratt Institute in New York and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Cornish College of the Arts, focusing on sculpture, art history, and philosophy. She is Founder of Bridge Productions/LxWxH and writes for her art blog Dimensions Variable and Art Nerd Seattle.

Some notes about the images: The Bather by William Bouguereau 1879 Photoshopped by FlashDaz for an online contest– I included it because it’s my favorite adaptation of Wonder Woman and it merges my art life with my superhero life; Wonder Woman’s New 52 costume. Panel from Justice League Vol. 2 #3 (Nov. 2011). Art by Jim Lee and Scott Williams; Wonder Woman in battle armor: 2003 DC Comics Wonder Woman: The Ultimate Guide to the Amazon Princess. –SA

Who Was Your First Hero, Lowery Stokes Sims?

My father was tallish—6 feet or so– taciturn—said little but communicated much. Ever sartorially elegant he was invariably dressed in one of his Brooks Brothers suits—two of which he purchased each year—and shoes he obsessively cared for—most often polishing them himself.

Originally a school teacher who grew up on a southern farm in Tennessee, he morphed into a northern suburban Dad in New York, commuting by subway everyday from Queens to jobs in Manhattan–at any number of architectural firms where he navigated the politics—having others take credit for his work—and the economics—dealing with finding another job in another firm as soon as the current one laid him off in economically scarce times. The amazing thing is that that he managed this deftly, never skipping a beat so that we never experienced scarcity or want. He eventually found a consistent job at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey where his greatest pleasure was the work he did on the Authority’s flagship structure: the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. He would die two years before 9/11.

For me he was protector, disciplinarian—he could stop me in my tracks with a single look—and patient and willing chauffeur. He would also be my date at a museum opening when my boyfriend punked out—I took out my first membership at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I was in high school—and he patiently observed all my creative endeavors including unsuccessful stints as a violinist and a guitarist. As I made my way in the institutional and corporate world I came to know full well what he had weathered and how he survived the lurking exclusions and outright racism that he faced—and refused to be deterred by—to go on to have what by any measure was an amazing career. He was a hands-on mentor guiding me in strategies to swerve away from the usual triggers of race and gender to analyze the situation in a larger societal context. It was that equanimity and toughness that inspired me and made my father my first hero.

Lowery Stokes Sims is a Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design. Sims was on the education and curatorial staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1972-1999 where she curated over 30 exhibitions. Sims then served as executive director, president and adjunct curator for the permanent collection at The Studio Museum in Harlem from 2000-2007.

Photo of Lowery and her father, circa 1975

3 Responses to “Who Was Your First Hero, Lowery Stokes Sims?”

Barbara Earl Thomas says:

1. September 26, 2013 at 5:36 pm  (Edit)

   Wonderful to see Lowery here in “First Hero.” I can attest that her dad did a wonderful job of guiding and mentoring her. While I didn’t know him personally I can say I believe I’ve encounter his good works in his daughter. It’s amazing what we can learn from our parent’s lives and how their lessons continue to teach us long after their time with us is past. It’s how we keep them living with us in the present. When I miss my father I simply speak in his voice and say something I may have heard him say or something I think he might have said. Makes me smile and brings him into my present.

2. Cee Scott Brown says:

   September 26, 2013 at 9:08 pm  (Edit)

   I LOVE this.

3. Linda Earle says:

   September 27, 2013 at 4:16 pm  (Edit)

   Mr.Sims was all that — dashing, funny graceful and so very proud of Lowery.

Who Was Your First Hero, Paul Marioni?

My first awareness of an adult public figure was of Mahatma Ghandi. At about seven years old, I would ask my parents “who is that old man in a diaper appearing in the newsreels.” I would say that my first “hero” was Bertrand Russell and his BAN THE BOMB movement when I was about eleven or twelve years old (1952 or 1953). I had been questioning my parents about the use of the atomic bomb in Japan as a child and our “duck and cover” drills in grade school and it just didn’t make sense to kill people (particularly me and my grade school chums).

Paul Marioni is one of the founding members of the American Studio Glass movement. He will be presenting stories from his life and work– along with a rare film screening– at The Project Room and Northwest Film Forum on October 2nd at 6pm. Read more about this program here.  Photo of Marioni in a friend’s garden by Martin Janecky, 2013. 

Into the Wild… of a Beer Garden

Editor’s Note: in an attempt to work through the implications of having gone half-feral up in Alaska, Tessa is currently using the Seen to explore stories about people who are remembered for disappearing. 

“Tramping is too easy with all this money. My days were more exciting when I was penniless and had to forage around for my next meal… I’ve decided that I’m going to live this life for some time to come. The freedom and simple beauty of it is just too good to pass up.” –Chris McCandless

You’ve probably heard at least something about Chris McCandless, AKA Alexander Supertramp. Popularized by Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild (and later turned into a movie of the same name), the basic sketch of McCandless’s story is a familiar one: middle class white American male drops out of his mainstream life and, in a blurred amalgamation of spiritual inquiry and mental illness, eschews all material comforts to strike off into the wild. Eventually, he dies alone in the ruins of an abandoned bus in an isolated stretch of Alaskan wilderness, leaving behind an iconic self portrait:

Responses to McCandless’s story vary drastically depending on who you ask. Down here in the Lower 48, there’s a tendency to romanticize what he did: he is usually seen as an intelligent, competent individual whose death was the tragic result of a few turns of bad luck. But up in Alaska, he is mostly viewed as an idiot whose ill-advised pursuit of spiritual union with nature failed to show adequate respect for the land, and whose death perpetuates a dangerous romanticism untempered by the brutal pragmatism necessary for wilderness survival.

For better or for worse, McCandless is remembered as a polarizing archetype of The Man Who Disappeared. Ironically, McCandless’s story has been co-opted to support many of the values that he fought in life: first a successful book, and then a successful movie, his story made a lot of people a lot of money. And “his” bus? Well the original is still out there in the wilderness. But the one from the movie?

Well.

It’s in the beer garden of the 49th State Brewing Company. And you can go visit it (click on the image to view a version large enough to read the text: it’s worth it):

The Possibility of Escape

“We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there. I may never in my life go to Alaska, for example, but I am grateful that it is there. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope…” –Edward Abbey

Hello Seen readers. I have returned from Alaska. Sort of. Physically, I’m back. But I’m not entirely convinced that I returned in spirit. I spent the last month bicycling over mountain passes, hiking across the tundra, and drifting on the ocean while thinking about the human need for escapism.

American culture romanticizes the frontier. We fantasize about running away, about striking out for the horizon and sloughing off our layers of tame sophistication as we disappear into the vastness of the unknown. And for most people, it stops there: the siren song, for all its plaintive beseeching, doesn’t claim the physical self, only some echo of the spirit.

And maybe this is why we are so drawn to the stories of the ones that really DO escape, who drop off the map. My time up in Alaska made me want to revisit one of my favorite books from childhood: My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George. From the book jacket:

It’s a wonderful little book that is half instructional manual, complete with drawings of native plants, and advice on how to burn a hollow indentation into an oak stump in order to tan a deer hide. My ten year old self yearned to follow Sam’s path, to make my own tree-cave home and fulfill my need for friendship by training my own peregrine falcon. But for all my restlessness and the romance of the book’s feral austerity, I always knew that it was just a fantasy.

For the next few installments of the Seen, I’m going to be writing about people who took the leap and truly disappeared. In keeping with the Alaskan theme, I’ll be starting this series in the relatively near future with thoughts on Chris McCandless of Into the Wild fame. Unless, of course, I disappear before then…

Travelblogue V: Marfa, Texas (art not included)

I have nothing to say about Donald Judd, the Chinati Foundation, or the art scene of Marfa—only because we added it to our itinerary as a lark…a way out-of-the-way, too short, and (now we know) blessed lark. We knew we were supposed to be visiting because of those things, and we knew it would be difficult because of our arrival during the Film Festival. We got there at dusk one night and left before noon the next day. Most accommodations were reserved and we had struggled to book lodging (and only lucked out because of cancellations).

We had each done only vague research about the exact location of Prada Marfa along Highway 90 and sped right past it (how is that even possible? It’s surrounded by nothing, right on the road!) in our haste to get to the Thunderbird Motel and check in (and outrun the rainstorm). 

But even without the aforementioned attractions, even with no luck getting into one of the cool restaurants (Dairy Queen dinner FTW, complete with West Texas houseflies!), even just driving around mostly deserted streets of mostly vacant-looking buildings, we were besotted. Everyone was friendly and had generous grins (except for the one hipster waiter who told us to forget getting a table). We circled past two folks sitting on the pavement in the middle of the street playing guitar and singing—almost willing us to stop and acknowledge their civic transgression with hopeful smiles. Truly free spirits or self-conscious and attention-seeking? Who cares?

We, too, would have sat there, had we brought guitars. We, too, leapt up from our DQ sundaes half an hour before the sun went completely down and raced 30 miles back up highway 90 to find the missed Prada Marfa before the incredible, big light left. We, too, stood in the middle of the blank road and turned around and around, sniffing the peculiarly fragrant air (I’ve since learned there are native plants there that would have been new to me and are unique to the area), marveling at the temperature drop, making common cause with the Australian guys who saw us stop and got out to take a few pictures, felt our hearts race with joy even as our heartbeats slowed. We, too, hopped through grass (WATCH OUT FOR RATTLESNAKES, CHAD MILLER!) to look at old, de-commissioned windmills. 

Another small town we had visited seemed like a produced memory of a gold rush spirit, propped up by artifice, Old West reenactments, and bags of feed to purchase for the quasi-domesticated wild burros. Marfa, on the other hand, was buzzing with the rubbing up against each other of heritage (old family-owned store names retained on buildings), hunger (of new residents to make a life where Making A Life of making art was actually possible and non-exhausting), and hope (that old and new—politically disparate—Marfans co-existing might provide a counter-lesson to, say, what we see in legislatures). 

It’s no wonder I slept like a baby, even as trains whistled just behind my room in the night. It’s no wonder we schemed about how to get back, even as we were driving out of town. It’s no wonder we looked at real estate prices and fantasized about opening various businesses.

And all without ever even getting to the art.

Jenifer Ward is the Editor of Off Paper and Dean of the College at Cornish College of the Arts. Read installment #1, #2,  #3 and #4 here!

One Response to “Travelblogue V: Marfa,Texas (art not included)”

Chad says:

1. July 16, 2013 at 12:53 am

   Without a doubt, there are two lives being led in Marfa: those of the artists that have taken up studio there and the farmers/ranchers of Marfa/Alpine. At the Thunderbird Motel, you’ll see the artists. At the Dairy Queen, you’ll see the native townsfolk (and flies).

   What I didn’t realize until we were driving away is that this town of two lives perfectly mirrors the lives that Jenifer currently is living: the artist/the spectator and pre-operation/post-operation. Jenifer truly came alive, as it were, while we were traveling through Marfa and that in itself was its own lively adventure as I watched the resurrection of an artist left dormant.

Travelblogue VI (final episode): Ashes and Dust

The surgeons who repaired my CSF leak used cadaver skin to fashion the part of the repair that was on the “brain side” of my skull. Since the procedure, I have joked that any behavior on my part that struck someone as odd should be chalked up to a random person’s DNA being pressed right onto my brain—just like in those B movies in which a character’s severed hand is transplanted with one from a serial killer, which leads the character to then become a serial killer, too. I have hoped that my cadaver was an artist or—at the very least—a creative and compassionate person, with less tendency toward fear and procrastination and more inclination toward math, drawing, and making healthy food choices.

The fear of surgery was considerable. I bucked up publicly, but in private I trembled. It was to take place on February 14, and February 13 of this year coincided with Ash Wednesday. I was alone in my apartment (still recovering and in treatment for meningitis), and I took to ruminating over what could go wrong, what accounts were not settled, how much I wanted to survive, what people cleaning out my apartment would think about my music and books if I didn’t (but I didn’t have time to go through them and discard the stupid ones). I thought about the Christian ritual of the imposition of ashes, and its relationship to mortality and penitence. I was in no shape to go to a church, and so I reclined on my sofa, wrapped in a quilt, and lit a match. Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. I extinguished it, let it cool, and harvested the ash from the match head. Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. I made the sign of the cross on my own forehead, site of the leak, with a finger. Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Somehow, improbably, standing in the dust of the high desert of Marfa at the end of 2000 miles of driving, I came to the liturgically and theologically bizarre conclusion that I was, in fact, not on vacation, but was on a pilgrimage, and that the ground and the air there were as holy as the water of Bernadette’s spring in Lourdes.

I left renewed, if only ephemerally.

Car antics, laughter, and cherry-lime slushes with Chad hadn’t hurt, either, and I felt a genuine lump in my throat when I had to drop him off to meet his family at a travel center on I-10 and continue my journey alone. As romantic as the notion of a solo, contemplative road trip had sounded to me, I had underestimated the right-setting of uninterrupted time with a kindred, generous soul (who, like me, would sing all the parts of Bohemian Rhapsody—melody, harmonies, and instrumental parts—simultaneously and at full volume). As I continued, I visited friends in San Antonio, had fried chicken and peach pie with cousins at “heaven’s cafeteria”—Bryce’s in Texarkana—and pressed on to Little Rock to see friends there, as well.

In the South, there are ceiling or oscillating fans in every room, and people still say yes, ma’am and no, sir to strangers and elders.

And finally, after nine days on the road, I reached my destination: Bee Branch, Arkansas, where I would spend nights in my uncle’s cabin and days attending to the work of going through my father’s things in the house down the road—my father, who had never discarded a negative, a contact sheet, a letter he had received, a copy of one he had sent, a draft of his books or speeches, a document, a bank statement, or a tiny pocket day-timer in his long life. Whatever I had remembered of him through my own experience, it was now being re-framed through what he had chosen to keep, and by the stories his brothers and sisters were telling me about him.

The more time elapses since his death, the more I feel I am running after his truck, Old Blue, down the road in Van Buren County, the road dust mixing with the exhaust trail, running, grabbing at it all.

He was the one that knew me. We shared a reputation for being quirky, peculiar, always-sure-if-not-always-right, intense, competent, generous with things and sometimes stingy with patience. I have his big personality, his tendency to hum under his breath, and his obsession (especially earlier in his life), with making a picture of everything I see.

I love this clip. We were on a road trip to see family in Nashville, Arkansas. I love that Dad is so eager to show my cousins and me his newfangled instant camera. I love that I will always remember him this way. I love that I am smiling and hugging and curious, freely swinging on an open car door—where I am not supposed to be—and I love that I have just re-acquainted myself, over the last 6500 miles, with that girl.

When I consider The Project Room’s question of how we want to be remembered, I know that the humble and truthful answer is not about My Life’s Work or my Contributions to Society—it’s about this. Just this: being no stranger to swinging on an open car door, and being smiling and hugging and curious.

Jenifer Ward is the Editor of Off Paper and Dean of the College at Cornish College of the Arts. Read her entire road trip series here:

#1: Travelblogue I: Solstice

#2: Travelblogue II: Perigee

#3: Travelblogue III: Key Lime is the Color of Grief

#4: Travelblogue IV: Road to Nowhere

#5: Travelblogue V: Marfa,Texas (art not included)

Travelblogue IV: Road to Nowhere

I want to be remembered as the lady who rolled up to the kitschy Flintstones’ Bedrock Village roadside attraction in rural Arizona with a fancy L.A. bakery box filled with a red velvet bundt cake, paid admission, went in, ate one sliver on a piece of Fred and Wilma’s garishly painted rock furniture with a travel spork, went out, and gifted the cashier with the rest of the cake.

She was thrilled. I would have been digging through it for white powder and razor blades, or explosives, maybe, but she just beamed at us.

Most of the memorials I had been seeing were for hard, enduring things: bridges, roads, stadiums. They were named after men—fallen soldiers, policeman, politicians. I started wondering what a gendered public memorial for women would look like. The only things I would want to be remembered for along the way were non-specific and non-concrete: a vista, a sound, an experience, an act, an intervention, a spontaneous gesture that led to a story a young Arizona tourist trap cashier would recount when she arrived home from work with a decadent (partially eaten) cake from a big city bakery miles away.

Outside of Oatman, Arizona, someone remembered “Bullitt” on a rock.

My friend Chad and I had dodged burros in the middle of the road in an old mining town in Arizona, had dodged tourists gasping at the thin air at the Grand Canyon, had dodged elk in the road from the Canyon back to I-40, had dodged a near disaster by going too quickly over railroad tracks in Flagstaff (no, really, we thought we had scraped the undercarriage clean off the car). Whoever was not driving was snapping iPhotos of the landscape or making iVideos of the trains—the many, many trains—from the passenger seat.

We participated in a summer music festival on the plaza in Santa Fe, had the best ever brisket and green chile burritos in a blazing hot parking lot in Albuquerque, cursed the spotty cell reception in Hatch, began what would become a refreshment trope for the whole trip—Cherry Lime slushes—somewhere near El Paso, were stopped at a border check along the Mexican border (“Are you both US citizens?” “Yes, sir!” I leaned over from the passenger side to say to the obviously FEMALE officer in my flustered and irrational fear of being deported, as Chad fumbled with the contents of his wallet, looking for identification). We laughed, we sang, we tried to take a photo of the “110 degrees” temperature reading on the dashboard readout.

On the Texas Mountain Trail just before Sierra Blanca, Texas, “Mingo” and “Lupe” have their names spray-painted on a stone.

By the time we veered south from the interstate onto Highway 90 toward Marfa, I had unfurled. We were the only ones on the road, slowing to try (and failing) to catch dust devils on video, gauging how long the far-off horizon rainstorm would take to reach us (or would we overtake it first?), and thrilling to the silver dollar-sized raindrops when they finally came.  The hairpin turns of my first few driving days had corresponded to the kinks in my soul, but now the west Texas landscape was laying it out flat, smoothing it: I was getting a soul-ironing by the time we saw the large billboard just outside of town: “WELCOME TO MARFA.”

Jenifer Ward is the Editor of Off Paper and Dean of the College at Cornish College of the Arts. Read installment #1 here, #2 here, and #3 here!

Travelblogue III: Key Lime is the Color of Grief

I worried on day 3 that I had made a terrible mistake. The adrenaline from the first leg of the trip left me around Gilbert, California, just as the scent of garlic fields replaced the eucalyptus. There were lots of RVs with bicycles mounted on the backs. The wheels of the bikes circled lazily in front of me, like pinwheels on a faint breeze, and I found myself falling into a Caligari-esque hypnotic trance (if Dr. Caligari had had a recreational vehicle). I also hit my first traffic, and inched along from just north of Santa Barbara clear in to Los Angeles (with a welcome break to see a friend at a packed-to-the-rafters In-N-Out Burger in Newbury Park. I was in California! It was a must!). But I found my second wind after studying the backs of my eyelids for a few moments in my hotel room on Santa Monica Boulevard, and ventured out for an early dinner with yet more old friends. We sat outside and I had my first occasion—in over a year—to utter the words: “the sun is hot on the back of my neck.” Also: did you know that serving a grown-up woman an ice cream float of housemade yuzu soda, vanilla ice cream, and vodka will make her giggle like a small child after 3 days of being mostly alone?

Truth be told, it would have been a straighter shot to Arkansas (my ultimate destination, my home) to go diagonally across the country and skip California altogether. Two things impelled me: 1) the prospect of picking up a travel partner, Chad, who would get a kick out of doing road trippy things with me; 2) the desire to see something my dad had always talked about: the La Brea Tar Pits. Once I penciled LA into the route, I added the James Turrell retrospective at LACMA with a set of college friends (California’s state motto should be: “California! State of Large Concentration of Jenifer’s Friends!”).

The Tar Pits were freaky. There were large fenced off areas with bubbling tar, but more concerning were the various spots where tar was just starting to rise to the surface, some with makeshift fencing, some as yet unmarked.

I worried that no one had really accounted for the unpredictability of the tar when LACMA was built and that one day soon I would hear the news that the whole complex had been swallowed up—artsy hipsters now lodged cheek-by-jowl with saber-tooth tiger and mastodon remains, but the subterranean resting place at least adorned with incredible art. And a gift shop.

Chad and I pranced around the grounds and then I met my friends for the Turrell tour. Cue record player needle scratching across a record: my reaction to the Turrell experience was unpredicted.“Key Lime”  is evidently the color of grief. Going into that exhibit, the marker suggested to the viewer that one should allow at least 5 minutes with the work. I shuffled along in the darkness, hand on the wall to keep my bearings, and found the bench where I was supposed to sit.

It was quiet, cool, dark, and—within seconds—I started to cry. I have no explanation. It’s not as if I haven’t been immersed in darkness since my father died, but the light installation in front made this darkness so much blacker, so much more velvety, enveloping, visceral. No one could see me. I couldn’t see myself. I was unobservable, even to me, and—completely outside of time and space and reason—the tears bubbled up like the tar underneath me, sticky and inescapable.

Unfenced.

Jenifer Ward is the Editor of Off Paper and Dean of the College at Cornish College of the Arts. Read installment #1 here of this series. and #2 here