Y-Y-Y

MB of Find Me a Bluebird has pointed out that a Ms. Y ran away to Yaddo and Yale, and asks if she has any other Y venues lined up. She does not—that is, I do not, though I am open to other Y-ideas. Those of us in the long tail of the alphabet, with those less-used letters, need to promote them. Up with X! Up with Y! Etc. Etc.? Make that Xvz! For the next year, buy all your books from authors whose last names start with W, X, Y, and Z. They have been languishing in the dust bunnies on the bottom shelf for years.

As I have been away for twenty-nine days, my house is a sad wreck. Somebodies have been flinging broken pop tarts, dirty cups, and assorted laundry over the house. Another somebody had no boxers left. Domestic explosions are in evidence in all areas except the dining room. Meanwhile, it is still Easter in the living room, complete with baskets and egg tree! It will take a long time to comb the snarls out of this bad-hair-day house. Bad-hair-month house.

Here is the good stuff.

At Yaddo, I drafted (yes, I wrote like a maniac) a short novel and a story. I also met lots of interesting artists, attended readings and concerts, and went to open studios. Once I did a reading from my recent poetry. Once I read from the above-mentioned short novel. That is a brief and bare account of twenty-five days that satisfied my desire to do little else than meditate on the emerging shape of a book and write.

I came home, hugged my family, and then raced off to Yale Divinity School, where Makoto Fujimura and I did two collaborative presentations at the “Faith as a Way of Life” conference on pastoral excellence. Our events yoked my “The Pilgrim Soul” with eleven paintings titled with phrases drawn from the story. And yes, it is thrilling to see images made as a response to one’s own writing. As Mako works in the Nihongan style with a paint made of crushed jewels (along with vermilion, cochineal, silver, gold, and platinum), it’s hard to find photographs to do justice to the marriage of light and paint. He’ll be having somebody who specializes in micro-photography record the images, and eventually I’ll post a link. We may be doing a few other things with this project . . .

And that is the nutshell version of Y at Y and Y.

Oh, I spent a wonderful afternoon at the Yale Art Gallery, too. So many lesser-known museums have such splendid collections. This spring I’ve been to the Corning Museum of Glass and Yale, and found them both very worth seeing. While the contemporary/modern sculpture at YAG had a familiar air of fascinating tedium, there were lots of lovely things in the “ancient,” Asian, and painting collections. Think I’ll add going to smaller museums to my year's resolutions.

Credit: The photograph above is a photograph of an installation by Makoto Fujimura at All Hallow’s, London (curated by Meryl Doney of The Hayward Gallery for The City of London Festival.) It originally appeared on his blog, Refractions. The measurements of the three “Mercy Seat” paintings were 1 ½ x 2 ½ cubits—a cubit being the length from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow, and the unit of measurement used in the pyramids (Pharaoh’s cubit) and in the mercy seat atop the Ark of the Covenant (Moses’ cubit.) Mako used the "cubits" of his three children. A little boat covered with Chinese paper sits on the floor between the mercy seats, the source of the video, “Nagasaki Koi,” that floats in the air above the seats.