15 - wounds

… I was interested in Photography only for ‘sentimental’ reasons; I wanted to explore it not as a question (a theme) but as a wound: I see, I feel, hence I notice, I observe, and I think.

      —Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

~~~

We were on our way home from a glorious day up North when we decided to stop at Jake's in Del Mar. We got a table in the northwest corner, windows opening out to the beach and the ocean breeze. Told the waiter we were “andante” and wanted to take our time. We asked him to bring us his favorite Pinot Noir. He returned with a Sonoma Coast, 2007 La Crema, poured the first glass and said to wave him down when we were ready to order. Service allargando, upon request!

When you’re a romantic you reinvent, over and over, those first moments of connection. Enduring relationships that keep one loving and whole allow for dynamic renewal, a place along the way where you reconnect and learn something new about the one you love. I’m with Rilke on this, that even at the end of a relationship where you create distance and space to get your bearings, a necessary going alone, it’s all a preparation to begin again. To see anew through the lens of your wounds—the suffering and struggle—and admit to your failures, large and small. I’d argue that the smaller failures of understanding, the moments where we’ve belittled or condemned one another, where we don’t remember or see clearly the breadth and depth of what they’re feeling and thinking, where one or the other of us quits sharing who they are and what they’re wanting to do, well… all along the way these failures become the bricks and mortar used to construct retaining walls, structures built to resist pressures and protect the personal landscape/context we’ve created.

To understand and communicate forthrightly and fearlessly means to tear down all walls that protect and retain. All barriers to direct and honest communication must be destroyed. Real love has to do with insecurity and defenselessness; we give ourselves over to one another out of trust, and if we’re courageous in the revealing, in the expression of our inmost hopes and dreams, our desires, then we have empowered them and placed ourselves at their mercy; and thus the risk so many refer to, the danger of loving another, the enlivening and enchanting ground for making us gentle and affectionate.

We had just come from the Museum of Tolerance. Camille had a friend on Facebook who had re-posted an alert on the opening of a photographic exhibition Srebrenica: Then is Now. 15 Years After the Massacre. Photographs by Marissa Roth. She asked me if I wanted to come along; she had made up her mind to journey to Los Angeles and Martin had begged off. How could I resist?

In the evenings before our Saturday excursion I found myself exploring the photographer’s work. Who is Marissa Roth? Couldn't help myself and became immersed, clicking on every image at her site. The loving and fearless eye of a photographer like Roth cannot fail to inspire empathy for and interest in her subjects. And if you linger with such images long enough, the poetry emerges, revelations micro and macro, personal and individual wounds become societal and shared. What to do, how to respond? And of course there’s nothing to do, you have to allow for the feelings that come. To ignore the message, the themes given to us from such artists, is to ignore what’s possible, to turn away from making empathetic connections that can lead to pondering a change in our violent and warring ways.

Our time at Jake’s was unusual and unsettling. We were subdued and serene, and at ease in the most lucid and revealing way. So easy to sip and savor, to be comfortable, to drink in life all round from that corner table,… and just as the waiter arrived with the main course, she asked, “Are you okay?”

“I am.”

The time spent engaging Roth’s photographs had been affecting and I don’t think the tears that had welled up during the MOT “tour” ever went away. Camille was looking across at a man who imagined a different world, one not violent or cruel, and he was struck by her, by what her presence inspired in him, and he was enrapt by the hubbub in the dining room, the boisterous and lively sociality of his fellow creatures; it was as if all cultures on the planet were represented, differences accommodated and allowed for, all individuals embraced and accepted, and nary a harsh or hateful word, all and sundry kind and considerate; and it wasn’t the Srebrenica collection that had gotten to him but Roth’s Holocaust Survivor series, Witness to Truth.

As Camille and I made our way down the gallery walk, pausing before each of the survivor’s pictures/stories on the wall, there were moments where I’d put my hand to my mouth to prevent the sobs from coming… and as we slowly and thoughtfully spiraled downward, when we reached the end of the survivors’ exhibition we found ourselves in a larger space confronted by José Sacal’s stirring sculpture: Holocausto. We lingered for a while, no words… and while Camille wandered back up I stood frozen in the most grievous silence; it eventually gave way to Sainte-Colombe.

On the drive home, she quietly opened up and gave me a peek inside. She was strong in the telling, composed yet emotional as she shared the horror of losing her mother to breast cancer.

She said books had always been a salvation for her, a very real and sane escape into imagination, into the world of the authors and their characters. She freely admitted that these authors/characters had become a kind of second family, a clan to turn to when her mother and father would fight and forget about love. She had gotten herself to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and began studying English Literature. She had imagined herself a poet.

In her sophomore year at ULL, her mother, Juliette Durand, at the age of 44, was diagnosed—advanced metastatic~! Within in a year she’d be dead; the last six months spent in hospice. Camille took a leave of absence from school to work closely with the hospice team. She got a clear look at the compassion and wisdom of these healers, tending not only to the body but to the soul.

Hospice not as an expeditious exit but a turning away from the often ceaseless, torturous and thoughtless efforts to deliver the next “life-saving” treatment. She went off about what she had seen and experienced since becoming a nurse. She said it was disturbing that more of her colleagues couldn’t see or support the life-affirming offerings of hospice; it was baffling to her that others weren't on to our collective fear of death.

I wanted to pepper her with questions, eager I was to learn about what might lie ahead for me, but we were becoming friends, confidants, and I listened. After burying her mom, she returned to the university and changed her major. In 2 1/2 years she’d be on her way into nursing and a decision or two away from moving into oncology.  

As we rolled into Del Mar, she said something that got to me. She was about to leave for California and was saying good-bye to her mom, at the gravesite, “And it hit me, it’s in the way we die that reveals to others how we lived. My mother loved life, she loved me, she loved my father even when she told him to get out. Her spirit was strong and gentle, and wide, and all-encompassing, and… ”

Love. In this moment of truthtelling and revelation I could no longer resist. I fell for her.

Now, strolling on the beach postprandial,… and as we strolled, walking ever so slowly, more poetry, the poetry of calm and reassurance, and you’re lost in it, something about the shoreline, the sea, a reminder, and then the spell, broken, it’s getting late, the sun’s setting, time to head home, time for her to go back to Martin…