Naples in Winter
Before I begin...if you want to see what ocd looks like, watch Monk on USA. If you want to see what that motherfucker feels like, see The Aviator, Scorcese's new film. I went yesterday and I'm still recovering. Artistically, it's successful, but I had a very hard time staying in the theater. Somehow I managed. I've been doing better lately and that movie brought up all kinds of feelings and anxiety, but a hard set under the steel at the gym helped. Thanks, again, to the Bomber.
***
Blessedly, I had beautiful holidays. Christmas eve, truly, I felt more contentment than I ever have. Ever. So much serenity.
I'm not really a Thomas Kinkade fan. His paintings looks like electrified John Constable cottages. I almost said cartoon (please, I mean no offence to his legions of fans). He was born near where I live, and he is of course popular all over the world. But the myth that sells his paintings of houses glowing so brightly they appear to be on fire inside is very complex; it's shelter, human and physical warmth. What I actually felt Christmas eve. Security, heat, fullness, contentment. Millions have Kindade on their walls because those warm and glowing houses sell that myth. I had it, in my own home and heart, for real.
When I was a poor college student I used to spend a lot of time in the Naples canals. I mean Naples Island in Long Beach, not Napoli with its putanesca sauces. And I wasn't actually in the canals, but walking on the sidewalks between the water and those huge homes. I'd look inside the enormous glass windows and see how clean the interiors were; it was like walking past the windows of the San Franciso Macy's only with furniture behind the glass instead of clothing, precise and neat and impeccably-furnished. Ordered, genteel, familial. The urge to wander there, usually for two or three hours, would hit me late at night, often after midnight and mostly in the winter. The colder it was the better; the coldest night of the year, which for Long Beach means temps in the forties and wind, I'd bundle up, with another guy or alone, and glide along those narrow walks, staring into the grandeur of those architectural digest homes. I wanted to live in one, or just go inside and sit down on the sofa. I felt relaxed, comforted in my despair and terror, staring into those big and open living rooms with their wood floors and stainless steel fixtures. And no one ever bothered me. No police, no irate neighbors. I don't think I ever bumped into another person walking that late. It was a cathedral, a museum, a domestic vision.
Now that I'm older I know the price many pay to live there. I've seen the vanity at Christmas, as having one's home decorated by professionals is de rigeur for that community. Showing off. Touch my plastic Santa. I know happiness is not equated with social class, and even then I had no idea how much it would actually cost to live there. Yet it wasn't fantasies of wealth that drew me, but the interiors, those wide and brilliant living rooms. My mother's house was always a mess, clothes and dishes everywhere,dark, small, and cold, stinking of lower working class poverty and void of all human emotion save terror; my mom, in those days, walking around in a filthy house robe in the afternoon and drinking box wine with ice. The Naples homes were the opposite. I felt the contrast more strongly, looking into warmth when it was cold outside, hence my winter walks.
For the thing I was yearning for then, even when I was too anxious to work or attend school, a desparate and disordered young man of twenty, the thing I never gave up on is the same thing Kinkade sells with his luminous cottages. His houses look warm to the point of combustion, but it's that exaggeration that makes the gesture impossible to miss. Kinkade sells the myth of the thing I actually felt this Christmas Eve. I was in it. I knew it, sipping Bailey's and looking at my family and the wonderful decorations my wife put up and the fire in the woodstove. We didn't even have any snow then! But it didn't matter. Security, comfort, compared to the rest of the world, even wealth, and above all, human warmth. Human warmth. The most precious of all commodoties, besides the love of God.
I struggle almost every day. With fear. With rigidity. With intimacy. With feeling good even when my life is going very well. It was so nice to feel full joy. I have a wonderful and patient wife, and I'm growing every year, moving in, more and more, to my young man's dream, my own Naples home, though I am no longer young. I know such a gift is more than many get, and I am grateful for the good things I have, tenure and a home and above all the constant love of my family, and for the good feelings when they come.
***
Peace to all. I'm tired. I don't know how many of my blog family write as much as they do. I rarely get or make time to sit here and do this. Maybe when school starts, and I have official reasons to procrastinate...
Here's to warmth in the midst of the cold.
***
Blessedly, I had beautiful holidays. Christmas eve, truly, I felt more contentment than I ever have. Ever. So much serenity.
I'm not really a Thomas Kinkade fan. His paintings looks like electrified John Constable cottages. I almost said cartoon (please, I mean no offence to his legions of fans). He was born near where I live, and he is of course popular all over the world. But the myth that sells his paintings of houses glowing so brightly they appear to be on fire inside is very complex; it's shelter, human and physical warmth. What I actually felt Christmas eve. Security, heat, fullness, contentment. Millions have Kindade on their walls because those warm and glowing houses sell that myth. I had it, in my own home and heart, for real.
When I was a poor college student I used to spend a lot of time in the Naples canals. I mean Naples Island in Long Beach, not Napoli with its putanesca sauces. And I wasn't actually in the canals, but walking on the sidewalks between the water and those huge homes. I'd look inside the enormous glass windows and see how clean the interiors were; it was like walking past the windows of the San Franciso Macy's only with furniture behind the glass instead of clothing, precise and neat and impeccably-furnished. Ordered, genteel, familial. The urge to wander there, usually for two or three hours, would hit me late at night, often after midnight and mostly in the winter. The colder it was the better; the coldest night of the year, which for Long Beach means temps in the forties and wind, I'd bundle up, with another guy or alone, and glide along those narrow walks, staring into the grandeur of those architectural digest homes. I wanted to live in one, or just go inside and sit down on the sofa. I felt relaxed, comforted in my despair and terror, staring into those big and open living rooms with their wood floors and stainless steel fixtures. And no one ever bothered me. No police, no irate neighbors. I don't think I ever bumped into another person walking that late. It was a cathedral, a museum, a domestic vision.
Now that I'm older I know the price many pay to live there. I've seen the vanity at Christmas, as having one's home decorated by professionals is de rigeur for that community. Showing off. Touch my plastic Santa. I know happiness is not equated with social class, and even then I had no idea how much it would actually cost to live there. Yet it wasn't fantasies of wealth that drew me, but the interiors, those wide and brilliant living rooms. My mother's house was always a mess, clothes and dishes everywhere,dark, small, and cold, stinking of lower working class poverty and void of all human emotion save terror; my mom, in those days, walking around in a filthy house robe in the afternoon and drinking box wine with ice. The Naples homes were the opposite. I felt the contrast more strongly, looking into warmth when it was cold outside, hence my winter walks.
For the thing I was yearning for then, even when I was too anxious to work or attend school, a desparate and disordered young man of twenty, the thing I never gave up on is the same thing Kinkade sells with his luminous cottages. His houses look warm to the point of combustion, but it's that exaggeration that makes the gesture impossible to miss. Kinkade sells the myth of the thing I actually felt this Christmas Eve. I was in it. I knew it, sipping Bailey's and looking at my family and the wonderful decorations my wife put up and the fire in the woodstove. We didn't even have any snow then! But it didn't matter. Security, comfort, compared to the rest of the world, even wealth, and above all, human warmth. Human warmth. The most precious of all commodoties, besides the love of God.
I struggle almost every day. With fear. With rigidity. With intimacy. With feeling good even when my life is going very well. It was so nice to feel full joy. I have a wonderful and patient wife, and I'm growing every year, moving in, more and more, to my young man's dream, my own Naples home, though I am no longer young. I know such a gift is more than many get, and I am grateful for the good things I have, tenure and a home and above all the constant love of my family, and for the good feelings when they come.
***
Peace to all. I'm tired. I don't know how many of my blog family write as much as they do. I rarely get or make time to sit here and do this. Maybe when school starts, and I have official reasons to procrastinate...
Here's to warmth in the midst of the cold.
Comments
Troy, I love your writing, and I benefit from the honesty with which you speak. Peace.
t