Ekphrasis

Words in Response to Art

“Ekphrasis is the vivid, imaginative, or dramatic literary description of a visual work of art, acting as a bridge between visual and verbal mediums.”

I recently had the opportunity to write in response to two pieces of art in MoCA/CT’s exhilarating Enough Already exhibit. These pieces correspond with the images above. The first piece corresponds with the second image:Waves of Feminism, by Stephanie Rond. The second, with the first: Shark Girl as Boxer, by Casey Riordan.

Wonder

I hadn’t much experience with backyards or front porches living in a two bedroom apartment on the top floor of a red brick building that looked like every other red brick building in Howard Beach, Queens. What few trees dotted our urban landscape were captives in the pink concrete paths that linked the identical buildings, or prisoners within the chain link fences that defined and defended our asphalt playground. I shared a cramped bedroom with my sister, three years my junior. In turn, we shared the airspace above us with airplanes so close on their ascent from or descent to JFK that we could read the names on their tails: “Fly me! I’m Pam!”

Nature came for us in the form of a lake cabin barely bigger in square footage than our flat. My mother’s elderly aunt and uncle could no longer maintain the place, and sold it to my parents for the proverbial song. From then on, we city dwellers “summered” in Upper Greenwood Lake, New Jersey. Suzanne and I shared even more compact quarters, but the vast verdant expanse beyond our window lent an illusion of grandeur. A carpet of fuchsia-flowered, light green velvet-stemmed rose campion unfurled as far as our young eyes could see. My father - when he joined us on the weekends after his city workweek - puttered around the lake on his dinghy rigged with a ten horsepower engine to fish for perch. We, unfettered by urban threats, roamed at will. In the woods that embraced our cabin on three sides, and around the lake just down the hill from our always-opened and always-unlocked front door.

On Sunday, July 20, 1969 I got to stay up late with my mother after my dad had returned to Queens. My sister skulked off to bed, mumbling about how she “never got to do anything.” Being older had its privileges, and staying up late was one of my favorites. We snuggled on the couch after turning on the bulky black and white television, its rabbit ears a-twitch to catch a signal on our remote hill. We, along with just about everyone else in the world, waited to watch Apollo 11 land on the moon. The screen looked more like snow than lunar sand, but we heard Neil Armstrong say those legendary words loud and clear: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

As momentous a moment in the history of space travel as it might have been, getting to spend the evening alone with my mother made more of an impression on nine-year-old me. My sister paid no more attention to our recounting of the event than she did to the constant stream of jets over our apartment building. She remained sore about missing the party.

In the morning, as wonders unfolded in space, she and I checked on the jack-in-the-pulpit plants, who created canopies for themselves with their curled leaves. We pondered the purple-ish boulders (we’d christened them Aunt Miriam rocks, after our great aunt and former tenant of our lakeside retreat): why did they look like someone had splattered them with white paint? We made our way down to the dock across the road from the foot of our driveway. In shorts and tee shirts and no sunscreen, we dangled our toes in the brackish, murky water, watching darning needles land on the lily pads with as much wonder as everyone else watched the Eagle land on the moon.

Homage to Kafka

I woke up stuffy and slimy and barely able to breathe. Turning in bed required a Herculean effort. A hangover? I hadn’t had that much to drink. The flu? I hoped not. I’d had the vaccine, but knew I could contract it anyway.

I lifted to sitting with great difficulty. And really started to worry. My head felt so heavy! I feared I might be having a stroke. I sniffed the air for the scent of toast. Nope.

I lugged myself to the bathroom and braced myself on the basin to splash my face with water. My face. Not the one staring back at me in the mirror. A literal fish out of water, Jaws glared at me. “Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo” looped over and over in my mind, but this was no time for singing. Or humour. Nor was this a baby anything. A serious, grown-ass shark grinned widely at me.

WTaF? I closed my eyes, hoping that I’d return when I opened them, but no. There were still all those teeth to brush. As if that were my real problem.