Visual Splendor

The constantly changing views of the Dolomites as we bike is feast enough for the eyes. But today, I had the most remarkably aesthetic visual arts experience of my life. Far from a dedicated museum-goer, I’ve done my fair share and believe I’ve seen most of the top-100 paintings in museums far and wide. But today, almost by chance and certainly a spontaneous casual decision, three of the seven fellow riders decided to detour to see some murals in three small hill towns—Masarie, Pianezze and Cibiana, to be exact.  I chose to go mostly because we were getting close to our destination and I didn’t feel finished with biking, especially as the sun had finally emerged and not a drop of rain all day. Also, I noticed the detour included a long steep uphill and I love the feeling of switching to Turbo on the e-bike and gliding upwards.

 

So off we went, my wife Karen and Terry, little imagining what lay ahead. We found our way into the first town and lo and behold, there were some murals on the exterior walls of houses that were impressive and captivating. We parked the bikes and started strolling and there were more around every corner. The town itself felt wholly deserted. Certainly not a single tourist, but also very few townspeople out and about and everything looking closed. 

 

But no matter. The murals continued to astonish us and then we realized there were two more towns in shoutin’ distance with more. By the end, we had seen 60 or 70 and taken 90 to 100 photos. 

 

What precisely made this so different from going to the Tate Museum in London (which we just had) or the Guggenheim in Bilboa or the Museum of Modern Art in New York or the Louvre in Paris? (I could go on. There’s a lot of famous museums in the world!). It’s worth it to try to articulate it, but much better with photo examples. As this will take a little time to select key ones and comment on them, I’ll just share screenshots of the photos I took today without comment and if there’s time after tomorrow’s ride, do my homework. 

Stay tuned.

 

 

Dancing in Cortina

As expected, I put on my worldly hat yesterday to take care of business that had piled up— registration for my summer teaching, dates for Fall workshops, my new book finally printed and the many next steps to get it out into the world, my next Podcast. It was 2:00 in the afternoon before I left the hotel, took off that hat and became again an anonymous two-legged-being wandering through the city on a blessedly sunny day.

This view outside my hotel window offered an enticing hillside and that’s where I started to ascend the road outside of town. Past some boys practicing scoring soccer goals without an adult in sight, past the Austrian-style houses that remind me of Salzburg, soaking in the warmth of the sun and arriving at two inviting benches. There I sat looking back at the view back to my hotel and writing in my journal. Nothing to achieve, nothing to resist, no one to convince, nothing in particular to do but just sit in the fullness of the moment and enjoy the privilege of being a living, moving being. 

 

Then winding back through town, excited about going to the little produce store we discovered last night to get some welcome Happy Hour snacks—cheese, crackers, tomatoes, red pepper, cucumber, mixed nuts. But las, for reasons unclear, it was closed! A little reminder to be open to outcome, but not attached to outcome.

 

Met up with the group and enjoyed the cherries and nuts two of them had bought last night and then began the decision about dinner. If I may mildly complain, most of the group has drunk the Kool Aid of finding everything on their phone and I suggested we simply wander in the town and peek in at different restaurants. They ended up agreeing and we found a lovely place with some choices other than pizza, treated ourselves to gelato and walking back, peeked into the lobby of a 5-star hotel. There was a grand piano there and I started to play some jazz. A hotel employee came over but instead of sternly telling me to stop, had a big smile on his face and started snapping his fingers and then grabbed Pam and they started jitterbug dancing together while I played Jeepers Creepers and gave me a high five at the end. Yeah! That’s the world as I want it to be. 

 

Back on the bikes tomorrow and hoping the rain will not accompany us.

  

10,000 Words

 If a picture is worth a thousand words, here are ten of them from the Dolomites.

Whether the Weather

                        Whether the weather be cold

                        Or whether the weather be hot

                       We’ll weather the weather whatever the weather,

                       Whether we like it or not.

 

This fun speech piece has become a standard part of my workshop teaching. In the last two days (two weeks), it has been a standard feature in my life!

 

The first day of the biking trip was actually a 9-mile hike up and around three of the magnificent peaks of the Dolomite Mountains. This whole area is part of the Tyrol Region of the Alps shared by Austria and Northern Italy. All signs are in German and Italian and whole towns have two names—Toblach/ Dobbiaco, for example. The architecture is distinctly Austrian and the cuisine a mix. 

 

We took a bus up to the first of five Refugios that dotted our hiking trail and off we went. Temperature in the 50’s, overcast, but no wind or precipitation. The paths were lined with people of all nationalities— this is apparently quite a tourist destination. The views were consistently stunning and the mountains shrouded in mists that would both obscure and then reveal, a constantly shifting verb of scenery. We passed some snow in the field, felt a bit of wind kick up, hiked through slight drizzle and near the end, endured a two-thunderclap torrential downpour that soaked us through and through, with a teasing four minutes of warm and welcome sun. The cliché in some places—“If you don’t like the weather, stick around for five minutes”— must have originally come from this area. 

 

The next day was the first of actual biking and before setting off in earnest, we rode to the Grand Hotel in Toblach, which had both a nature museum about the area and a cultural center honoring Gustav Mahler, who came to this town near the end of his life to compose some of his most memorable works—the 9^th and 10^th Symphony and the Song of the Earth. 

 

And then we began. On a dedicated bike path with the road to one side and the river on the other. Slight uphill for the first half and downhill to Cortina the second half. The constantly shifting weather held true— a few minutes of sun, overcast, drizzle and then torrential rain, just at the moment that we passed a restaurant. We sheltered there for lunch in clothes as wet as if we had jumped into a pool and had an overpriced but delicious bowl of polenta with mushrooms and cheese. My one regret is that I didn’t think to bring rain pants, which would have been lightweight enough to pack and extremely useful. My raincoat was enough for the top part of the body, but pants, socks and shoes soaked through with cold rain was far from pleasurable. 

 

A respite from rain after the lunch as we re-mounted our bikes and then the torrents again just as we came into town. At the same time we were trying to figure out on phones where the hotel was. Pam and I got separated and with that cold, beating rain relentlessly coming down, finally figured out we had overshot it and miraculously made our way back to where our companions were already checking in. We indeed had all “weathered the weather, whether we liked it or not” and there was certainly an element of adventure to it that was almost fun. But we were all grateful to change into dry clothes and be inside a warm room. 

 

Today the sun is out, the air still chilly and a “day off” to do as we will. My wife went off with another to meet some people high up in the mountains, but I passed on the $30 lift ticket and early morning rising to just enjoy a day of leisure, catch up on worldly business, roam around the town (hopefully in the sun) before setting off again on the bikes tomorrow. The view out my hotel window of the newly snow-capped mountains, a balcony inviting me to write in my journal or read my book or just gaze out at the scene, a produce store nearby that will be perfect for a picnic lunch. Happy for it all.

  

Marco Polo

Marco Polo is well known as the adventurer from Venice who traveled to China in the 13^th century. No small task, I imagine, without the help of planes, trains or automobile, no hotel reservations, no Starbucks or indeed any cafes, and no Google translator. The mind boggles how he and his father and uncle not only traveled that great distance but were received with great hospitality by the Emperor Kublai Khan. Apparently, the Emperor was impressed by Marco’s intelligence, though hard to image that Marco had mastered Chinese or that there was a translator in Kublai Khan’s court that spoke Italian. 

At any rate, he appointed Marco as his emissary and sent him on diplomatic missions to present-day  India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar, as well as traveling extensively through China—for 17 years! He chronicled his adventures in a book called The Travels of Marco Polo, so if I want some details about how he did this—and I do— guess I’ll try to find that book. 

 

Meanwhile, Marco Polo is also a tag game played by kids in swimming pools. The kid who is “it” has to close his eyes and then shouts out “Marco!” and all the other kids answer “Polo!” “It” continues to call, the rest continue to respond, and in this way, “it’ tries to find someone to tag using sound location. 

 

It’s a fun game to play, but not so fun for others to have to listen to. Once at a pool, my mother, unaware that this was a game, was being driven crazy from the repetition and walked up to one of the kids and said, “If you say that one more time, I’m going to kill you!!!” It took some explaining on my part to the rightfully upset parent that my mother simply misunderstood that this was a game and I apologized on her behalf. 

 

Marco Polo is also the name of the airport in Venice. But apparently, not the only one. Karen and I flew in from the tiny Luton Airport outside London and upon arriving, got a message from Pam, one of the other 5 friends on the bike trip we were about to begin. We thought we should take the shuttle to the hotel together, so my wife called her and they tried to figure out how to meet in the airport. Pam kept talking about meeting at the Water Tower and Karen kept telling her there was no Water Tower in sight. After ten minutes of confusion, I got on the phone with Pam, tried to clarify whether she was on the first level or the second and made a plan that she would walk from one exit door to the other and I should do the same in the opposite direction. Neither of us were in sight. 

Finally I asked, “What’s the name of your airport?”

She replied, “Marco Polo Airport.” 

And then the lights went on. “We’re in Venice Treviso Airport!!” Some deep metaphor in there, as each must have been thinking the other was crazy until we realized that we were in two different places! It was like playing “Marco Polo” in two different swimming pools.

 Apparently the Marco Polo Airport is for International Flights outside of Europe and Treviso for more local and European ones serviced by the bargain-brand airlines like Easy Jet, Ryan Air and others. (We took Ryan Air.) The penalty for our cheap flight was an 88 Euro taxi ride to our hotel instead of the free shuttle. Oh well.

 

At the end of it all, we all finally convened at the hotel, ready to begin my 5^th European bike trip, Karen’s 8^th. Stay tuned!

In Beauty It Is Finished

I loved reading people’s comments on my Yorkshire Dale photos—“Beautiful!” “Gorgeous!” “Lovely.”  Testimonies as to how hungry we are for beauty in our lives. 

 

It is not incidental. It is central. 

 

When we settle for utility bereft of beauty, forced-air malls over open-air markets, hotel breakfasts of stale muffins and bad coffee in Styrofoam cups with views of the parking lot, we are diminished. 

 

First in the English countryside, now in the Tyrolean Alps, splendor is all around. The magnificence of the natural world, the care taken in architecture, the food carefully cooked and attractively presented— it makes a difference. Seeps into the soul and reminds us that we are made for beauty. If we can remember that, then it makes sense to preserve it, to cultivate it, to create it, to savor it— in the way we live, the way we love, the things we make, the things we cherish. 

 

The arts, of course, are part of the landscape, but more important is the sense of artistry in everything we do, everything we are. I’ve heard that the Balinese have no word for “art” and simply suggest that everything they do (a lot!) that we call “art” is simply doing things well, with care and attention. So here I am, with six others, about to begin our 10-day bike trip in the spirit of one verse in the Navaho Night Chant:

 

“May it be beautiful before me. 

May it be beautiful behind me. 

May it be beautiful below me. 

May it be beautiful above me.

 May it be beautiful all around me. 

In beauty it is finished. 

In beauty it is finished.”

 

 

Love, Admiration, Fear & Hatred

“We all want to be loved. Failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs, we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact”

 

               My grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry— Fredrik Backman

 

This explains so much. Those who choose hate, who try to stir up fear, are admitting the vacuum in their own souls, their failure to merit admiration, to attract love. Every human deserves some measure of unconditional love, but also needs to step up to the mark of their own highest promise to be wholly worthy of love. So much of the willingness to be brainwashed into hatred and fear that we’re seeing in the world today is our incapacity to love ourselves and others, our inability to admire things worthy of admiration. If our family or school or culture refused to see our best possibilities, then we are vulnerable to being seen through our worst. What is intolerable is to be invisible, to be left alone without contact. So it behooves us all to choose wisely. Do we want to live lives that inspire the love of and from others, that merit admiration, or are we content to be feared, hated and despised?

 

As I wrote in my recent book, if no one invites us to join the band and do the work to express ourselves through the discipline of learning an instrument, the habit of playing in harmony with others, the work of immersing ourselves in beauty, then we might join the gang. Not just the violent street gangs of teens, but the gang of the fundamentalist churches or mean-spirited political parties or conspiracy theory trolls. If we can’t stir up feelings of love or admiration from others, then we’ll troll their Facebook posts or Substack writings and shoot out our hateful venom at those who are actually doing the work to think, feel and care. 

 

And so education. Not only to develop our capacity to think, to feel, to care in a conscious and intentional way, but to create learning communities dedicated to making sure that each child be welcomed, valued, seen, celebrated and encouraged to fulfill their highest humanitarian promise. It is  perhaps the most needed and radical act that reduces the toxic practices of contemporary life, refuses the invitation to fear, hate and despise. 

 

As schools all over the country finish up their year, a grand salute to all the teachers and institutions that take that work to heart.