Sunlight Illumination

You have to think about sunlight to appreciate its impact on your life as it is, and has been. We know that exposure to light is a necessary component of life and that people act more graciously and are less dour on sunny days.  I know I am less of a curmudgeon.  But these are aspects of light we normally just accept as givens. Given the choice, we want sun, and when it’s obscured behind gray clouds for days on end, as it often is around here, we pine for its return.

Grain Stacks

My very first conscious memory is of sunlight illuminating the shingled roof of a house next door, which my new eyes could see out my nursery window. I was about two years old.  The details of the roof have faded (I was peering out through the rails of my crib, after all), but one thing I very much remember was that the sky that day was not blue, but white.  All these years later, I feel I am reliving a moment in my infancy on those days — usually very hot or bright — when the sky is white with thin clouds that only barely screen the sun.  On such days, I find myself transported back to that moment in my crib as I tried to make sense of the world beyond myself.

From these and similar experiences, I’ve concluded that filed away in my subconscious mind — and perhaps in yours, as well — are memories that are like templates of days. These templates form in our earliest years, and are composed of elemental senses, and they stay with us.  The effect is eerie yet also pleasant: every day is different from the last, of course, but some days jog our memory bank until it locates the identical day template from a prior (most likely much earlier) experience.  Sunlight seems to dominate the memory fragment, more than sound or smell.  We all vividly recall the particular circumstances of certain days, such as especially fun vacation days, or the dampness of a rainy spring afternoon.   What I am attempting to explain is something more basic: revisiting a certain set of circumstances that we experienced very early in life that is suddenly floods into our consciousness.  These circumstances, I believe, are most recalled as involving some  aspect of light, which is the first of the senses we have to grapple with.

I’m not talking about the well-known sense of deja vu that we all experience. Those moments are mind tricks that cause us to believe we are reliving prior events, usually a conversation or a chance encounter, when in fact we are not.  We have felt days before, going back early in our lives when light and shadow and colors were just sorting themselves out in our nascent minds.

Street Winter Sunlight and Snow

Thus, I invariably feel in the watery light of winter a cold Minnesota afternoon and the sting of snow on my chin as I fell face first from a sled.  In a similar way, crisp, sunny winter days are all brittle and snap, just like the day my father let me ride with him to the gas station — a huge concession on his part and a momentous event for me. Summer thunderstorms brewing in roiling pewter clouds looming behind shimmering green and silver leaves cause me to become fearful, just like the day, as a toddler, when I was left out in the front yard as everyone scampered for cover.  The light that at that moment, which I have seen many times since, was suffused in pink.

Which brings me to a consideration of the art of painting, and how accomplished painters are able to capture the visual depiction of light and also its visceral essence.  No matter their style or “school,” artists as varied as Constable and Diebenkorn, Van Gogh and Vermeer, all possess the uncanny ability to capture their own day templates for the world to see.

Sunday Morning

Edward Hopper’s “Sunday Morning,” for example, is surely not a study of deserted urban streetscape.  It’s about (to me, anyway) loneliness and isolation. In his evocation of a moment in time, Hopper portrays sadness as — masterfully — sunlight.

Other painters, especially Impressionists, use light (and shadow) to elevate our understanding of nature to the realm of revelation. Monet, for example, devoted a series of paintings of grain stacks as seen through different natural light settings.  His intention in these paintings was to portray how perception and emotion are conditioned by the external environment; how sunshine (or the intensity of light by season) alters both the perspective and the emotional resonance of the scene. These paintings, to me, are Monet’s day templates — visions of early life, when he first embraced sunlight.

Monet’s grain stack series points to another facet of the treatment of light in art. Painters deal with ambient light by the way it reflects off objects, and also by focusing on the effects of weather, clouds especially, on the strength and vividness of light.

Bulb Field

Van Gogh’s “Bulb Fields,” painted in 1883, focuses on a large field of flowers. The thing that catches my eye, and creates a shudder of recognition, is his treatment of thin, scudding clouds and the wan, diffused light that unifies the composition. In seeing it, I am recalling a day template from somewhere in my past.

The brilliant insight of artists like these is that light — and in particular, sunlight — is an emotional sense, and not only a physical one. The exceptional artists have, over the ages, rendered  light through the lens of emotion and memory. We’re the better for it, because when we come across a Pissaro pastoral scene or Winslow Homer landscape, our delight is two-fold.  We are looking at great art.  And we are seeing, again, a memory of a moment in our early life.

Heading Down the Highway

The recent Easter weekend provides a good reason to offer some thoughts about Interstate highway driving.  After all, it was behind the wheel of my family vehicle (Escape Hybrid) that I spent about eight hours — one full working day — driving with my family back and forth across Ohio to visit the in-laws.

Driving, especially in the vast expanse of the United States, is all about time, space and distance.  Early on, driving was thought to be pleasurable and, to some, adventurous, if not romantic.  But those notions have mostly disappeared.  Driving is a chore for most people, a drag on their “productive” time and something at best to be endured

Which Exit is Ours?

The Interstate Highway system, launched in the mid-1950′s during the Eisenhower Administration, is largely to blame for this change in attitude.  If it weren’t for the blue, white and red Interstate shields, you’d be hard-pressed to know where you are at any given moment.  Interstates don’t normally follow the scenic route because fun has been sacrificed on the altar of efficient movement from Point A to Point B.

Driving’s also become impersonal and anonymous.  It occurred to me, maneuvering through I-71′s heavy traffic, that each car, van, SUV and truck on the highway constitutes a mini, albeit temporary, world in which one or more people are encapsulated for the duration of however long the trip happens to be.  You know nothing about them, or they you, because everyone on the road is unknown to everyone else, so it’s impossible to say where folks are headed, or where they’ve been.  This was not always the case. Back in the days of CB radio, you could chat with truckers, other drivers and overnight radio hosts and find out lots of things about your fellow travelers.  Other than a few die-hards and long-haul truckers, who does that any more?

The vehicles we pass by, whose passengers are sealed from our knowledge, are not shielded from our peering curiosity.  You can see inside most cars, which is something I do whenever I am accelerating past slower drivers. You can take in a lot in a glimpse: people eating, of course, and talking on their cell phones — sometimes simultaneously.  Stoic farmers on their way to a funeral.  Rock musicians headed to a late night gig. An estranged couple furiously arguing over children and infidelities.  Any plot line is valid on the Interstate.  Drivers text messaging, or flailing at misbehaving kids in the back seat, or spilling hot coffee in their laps are all easy to spot, and best avoided, because their cars swerve across lanes, speed up and slow down for no reason, and otherwise hurtle erratically along the highway. Give me the silent farmers any day.

Our fellow travelers may be a disparate lot, but certain habits appear to be widely shared.  One is the confounding habit of most drivers to always want to position their vehicles in the passing (a.k.a. “high speed”) lane, even if that lane is crammed bumper to bumper with other cars whose drivers previously made the passing lane decision.  The thinking seems to be that it is preferable to be bogged down in the high speed lane than trapped in the right — or slower — traffic lane, which is where most tractor-trailers labor, causing annoying slowdowns.  Many people also appear to believe that drafting the vehicle directly in front of you helps with gas mileage.  Why else do drivers tuck their front end grilles as close to possible to your rear bumper, if not for the drafting technique they saw on last week’s NASCAR race?  A final bit of driving behavior comes directly from the Grand Prix circuit: many drivers you encounter on the Interstate would rather risk life and limb than allow someone to pass them. There clearly is some visceral satisfaction to be derived from preventing that Lexus or Mercedes-Benz from getting around you until you’re good and ready to let off the pedal, or exit to find a restroom.

Interstate Highway drivers and passengers are also hungry people, or so it appears.  Normally responsible parents will load up their children (and themselves) with obnoxiously bad food choices, and in sufficient quantity, to last until the next rest stop or fill up.  Chips, nuts, candy bars in gay profusion, popcorn, corn dogs, super-sized soft drinks, bottled water, pizza, candy of all flavors: these are the staples of highway travel.  Not to be confused, mind you, with regular fare available at fast food franchises that are present all along the Interstate highway system, like bamboo. What is it about driving along the Interstate that compels a rational adult to consume a double cheeseburger, large fries, a Super-sized soft drink — and a Snickers chaser?

It’s boredom.  I think the eating — and the race car tactics — have ultimately to do with our super-charged, frenetic life styles.  We simply cannot accept “down time” at any time we are not asleep. Work (or seeming to work) expands to fill each and every minute of our waking lives, so we’ve become adept at multi-tasking, even behind the wheel of a two-ton machine that in the hands of a distracted or daydreaming operator could result in horrific crashes, injuries and death.  We appear willing to take that chance with our lives, and with the lives of others, just to stay on schedule, check those voice mails, meet a deadline or check up on the whereabouts of our children.

Technology may save driving, in the end, and free up even more time to fill.  Certainly within a decade or two, we will likely give up active driving control of our vehicles for new rides equipped with breakthrough technology that will keep all vehicles at a safe distance the way magnets repel each other.  Cars and trucks will propel down the highway on puffs of air or attached to narrow-gauge tracks. Travel will be faster, safer and drudgery-free.

Then what will we do to pass the time?  Eat additional quantities of junk food until we are unable to get out from behind the wheel? Use the cell phone to tweet someone you haven’t talked to in the past year?  Reading might work, except it looks like there won’t be any newspapers or magazines around to pack for the trip.  Converse with the kids?  Are you nuts?

I’m all for bringing back the CB radio culture.  At least we could talk to the chump who’s blocking the lane ahead.

Breaker, breaker, good buddy. Park it on the right side, over . . .

He Makes the Catch

The arrival of spring brings with it the return of blessed baseball, for my money still the best game to play and watch.  One of baseball’s many pleasures is its spatial symmetry, which is best appreciated from a seat in the upper deck where a full view of the infield diamond’s subtle dimensions are visible. Did you know (I did not) that the arc from first to third base is exactly equal to the distance from home plate to second?  The measurement is 127 ft., 3-3/8 inches, let the record show.

I also like baseball’s expanse beyond the diamond, a reminder of the game’s pastoral roots.  Outfields can be, and are, as big or as oddly laid out as the real estate “footprint” allows. It explains why parks are considered either hitter or pitcher friendly based upon how close in or far out the walls are positioned vis-a-vis the batter’s box.  The outfield is where foot speed is most valued, because of the absolute need to cover so much ground. Outfielders must be lightning fast to run down fly balls and line drives, and also sufficiently skilled to judge where to run to reach the right spot for the catch.

I played baseball as a kid, on a team named the “Red Rockets.”  No unis, but we all had dark blue (wool — this was 1956) baseball caps, upon which our moms had ironed two, bright red felt letter ‘Rs’ over the bill.  I played some right field but mostly first base because I am left-handed, and baseball lore had it that lefties had an advantage at first base.  I was a no-field, no-bat kind of player, but good for a laugh or two in the dugout.

What I most remembered was how big everything really was!  As an 11-year-old, running the bases from first to third required enormous effort and stamina because of the sheer amount of ground to be covered.  The outfield was even more vast an expanse. I was fairly fast and could reasonably judge most fly balls, but I was in constant fear of being unable to track down a line drive hit into the gap between center and right field.  If you didn’t get to the ball, and it rolled to the fence, chances were pretty good that the batter (faced with his own challenge of speed and distance) would be headed for home by the time you retrieved the ball and threw it back in to the infield. Then, because baseball moves at its own languid pace, you’d be left standing out there, alone, sheepishly digging at the grass with your spiked shoe and afraid to look up or at anyone.

Sportsman Park

One summer weekend, our team, coaches and some of our parents boarded a bus and traveled to St. Louis, then and now a real baseball town, to see the Cardinals play in Sportsman Park (long since torn down).  We sat in a group along the left field line, which put us in close proximity to the great Stan (“theMan”) Musial, a lumbering but graceful hero who was a prolific hitter and a graceful fielder.  A batter for the opposing Cubs hit a looping fly ball into left center and Musial, taking off at the crack of the bat, chased down the fly for a long out.  He had to run a long, long way, but the ball was always within his loping, easy reach.  I can still see Musial’s uniform jersey, number 6, loose and baggy, surging and receding like an ocean wave, as he galloped away towards the ball.

Now it is many years later, and I recently found myself standing in the outfield of a baseball field where my son’s team was limbering up to start its spring practice.  I figured no one taking BP was ever going to hit it to where I was.  I was reminded, standing there, that for many decades in the early years of baseball, some fields didn’t have fences.  In fact, at New York’s old Polo Grounds, where the Giants played before moving to San Francisco, the fans were the fences!  Long flies could literally disappear into the crowd and still be in play, until Major League Baseball mercifully changed the rules.

Interrupting my thoughts, one of the kids practicing his swing hit a long fly that appeared headed in my direction in a high, looping arc.  If I were to catch it (and of course, I had no choice because baseball instinct compelled me to try) I quickly calculated that I needed to start running backward and fast.  I took off, but within a few steps, I slowed as if tethered.  My legs were suddenly mush. I could not traverse the grass from where I was to where I thought the ball was headed.  Helplessly, I watched as the ball plopped into the ground about 20 yards away. I retrieved it slowly, walking to it, while the kids and coaches waited.  I threw the ball back in the general direction of the infield, but the ball went mostly sideways and down, and one of the new spring players came out to pick up the ball, like a birding retriever.

It was clear to me at that moment that those vast spaces of the baseball field had now, for an older me, become as unavailable as a distant galaxy. What I once could do — and did, many times — was no longer in my power.  Try as I might, I am past the time when I could conquer the space between me and the white baseball bounding along the green grass.