{"id":103714,"date":"2016-10-14T16:29:29","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T20:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=103714"},"modified":"2016-10-14T17:20:03","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T21:20:03","slug":"jar-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/14\/jar-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"Jar Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Photo: TheStarmon, Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

I first arrived in LA in the dark. On crutches. I\u2019d been bitten by a dog the week before, that was the reason, but by the time we got from LAX to our temporary digs in Laurel Canyon, having almost thrown up in the car, I was definitely worse for wear, as if I\u2019d walked the whole way. The next morning\u2014though I felt like the sister from another planet (I\u2019d never been to California)\u2014I had to admit it was beautiful here: morning glory blooming up the side of the house in the middle of winter; all those flowering trees. But the rest of the city turned out to be ugly, so I thought: too much stucco; everything short and squat, brown or beige, bleached out and overexposed. I couldn\u2019t see the forest for the palms, bearded and rootless, coming straight up from the pavement.<\/p>\n

Anyway. Not so long after, within the year or so, a famous comet was scheduled to show up in our skies, a once-in-a-lifetime event\u2014not to be missed\u2014and the best place for us to get a glimpse? The Mojave. How astonishing if you hail from New England, to find yourself living on the lip of the Mojave. As recommended, we left after midnight and drove until ours was the only car on a two-lane road, nothing but sand and scrub as far as we could see. We pulled over, turned off the high beams, and stepped outside. It was freezing. And the Joshua trees\u2014wizened, arthritic\u2014seemed to fold in on themselves as if they disapproved of our being there; no moon in the sky that night, much less a comet, and not many stars. Cold, disappointed\u2014a little scared of the quiet and the dark\u2014I gave up. Sat hunched in the car, like one of those pissy little trees, while Fred (my boyfriend) shivered and scanned the sky.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But at last he gave up, too, and got behind the wheel. We figured at eighty miles an hour we might catch a few hours\u2019 sleep before dawn. It was halfway there along a six-lane highway, all kinds of traffic and neon on either side of us, when we saw it straight ahead: Hey, look<\/em>, one of us said. What is <\/em>that? <\/em>said the other. It can\u2019t be<\/em>, we agreed. But it was. We could have picked it from the sky like an orange, big and round with a golden spray of tail. (It wasn\u2019t a dream or a special effect. I\u2019m not making this up, Fred will vouch for me\u2014I married him; I\u2019m married to him still.) We hooted\u2014delighted with each other and the night\u2014and followed it home.<\/p>\n

By that time we\u2019d found a place of our own, a rental in the flats; we\u2019d realized we weren\u2019t leaving LA, not any time soon\u2014which grieved me. For two years (I\u2019m not proud of this)\u2014for two whole years I whined and complained; for ten years\u2014twenty\u2014I schemed my return to the other coast. (Where I thought I\u2019d do what? Where I thought I\u2019d live how?)<\/p>\n

Eventually, we moved to Echo Park instead. Another pilgrimage involved or that\u2019s how it seemed at the time. Having painfully fallen out of escrow in Mid-Wilshire (between Hollywood and Beverly Hills), Fred told me no more; he didn\u2019t want to look at houses for a while, he had better things to do. But one day our realtor cajoled me into his Cadillac and drove me further east (within city limits) than I\u2019d ever been before. \u201cSilverlake-adjacent,\u201d he said. \u201cPlease,\u201d I told Fred, once I\u2019d seen the view. \u201cIt\u2019s Silverlake-adjacent,\u201d I added, as if either of us knew what that meant. I was using the wall phone in the kitchen, while the realtor hovered, tapping one shiny shoe. \u201cYou have to come,\u201d I hissed into the receiver. \u201cWill you, please?\u201d And he did. And we pretty much bought the house on the spot.<\/p>\n

This was thirty years ago, when Cadillacs, the gas-guzzling kind, were hip; when you had to ask to borrow a landline; when the original neighbors in the valley below, who have long since moved away, kept chickens, just ordinary chickens with ordinary eggs, which wasn\u2019t hip then, not at all. And I remember, too, goats and sheep hidden behind vines and chain-link in the lot across from what used to be Magic Gas, now a condominium complex catty-corner from Chango Coffee (very trendy), and newest store on the block, a juice bar, where you can buy a smoothie that might possibly change your life for a buck an ounce. But before all that? Before the neighborhood was known as up-and-coming\u2014and actually came\u2014it was called Red Hill; because the communists settled here in the forties, and also someone once told us, due to the light in the morning and the late afternoon.<\/p>\n

And yet. In spite of that glow, I continued to pine. It\u2019s hard\u2014narrowing, limiting\u2014to admit you might belong exactly where you are. I imagined a different landscape as if to conjure a parallel life. Except when visiting that other city, the one I thought I loved, I\u2019d forget to look up<\/em> or out<\/em>. Night fell too quickly, it seemed, and the sky, when I remembered to notice, felt too close or too far away. A day or two, and I\u2019d start to feel uneasy\u2014like I couldn\u2019t get enough air. At some point (though I can\u2019t recall so much as the season), flying into LA, looking down on the giant sprawl that we are, allowed me to breathe again\u2014to locate myself. As opposed to the other way around. Something\u2014the balance of something\u2014had shifted\u2014but I wonder if I\u2019d have noticed if not for another pilgrimage.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field<\/i>, 1977. \u00a9 The Estate of Walter de Maria. Photo: John Cliett, via DiaArt.org.<\/p><\/div>\n

Two summers ago, we jumped at an invitation to visit The\u00a0Lightning Field<\/em>, Walter De Maria\u2019s so-called land-art installation in New Mexico. But The\u00a0Lightning Field<\/em> is more than art\u2014or, at least, it begs a redefining of what it is and what it\u2019s for. At any rate, to get there: First, you fly to Albuquerque, then you drive to Quemado, at which point you\u2019re shuttled to a cabin in the middle of nowhere\u2014very spare, enchilada pie in a Tupperware container on the counter for dinner\u2014and you stay overnight. At seven thousand\u00a0feet above sea level, the air is undiluted, and the space between the desert and the sky is at once dizzying and barely perceptible, marked by aluminum poles, almost invisible midafternoon, but there turns out to be four hundred\u00a0in all in a perfect grid, which nonetheless shifts and bends depending where you stand, near or far, inside or out.<\/p>\n

But why\u2014why are they there? To make us look? At them? Past them? Over and around them?<\/p>\n

And what about the lightning part\u2014that\u2019s what everyone asks, Did you see lightning? The answer is yes. Yes, we did. There was lightning in all directions, soundless, startling, fracturing and chipping at the sky. Look! <\/em>we gasped, giddy with collective purpose and awe. But lightning notwithstanding, most astonishing of all was the sunset\u2014a pool of red in the west\u2014which trickled, then lengthened and widened, lapping at the night and spilling over the edge of the world into day somewhere else. And all the while the poles gleamed and flickered as if their tips were on fire.<\/p>\n

Home two days later, meant to be doing the dishes after dinner, I stood rapt at the window over the sink. Everything the same. Everything altered. Because of a bunch of aluminum poles? Because we\u2019d made a pilgrimage? Because, perhaps, I was compelled to pay homage, if not justify (why justify?) the one and the other and my kitchen-view besides. A finch bounced on the air and disappeared in the dusk. The light changed and changed again.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a poem\u2014 \u201cAnecdote of the Jar\u201d by Wallace Stevens. It starts like this:<\/p>\n

\n

I placed a jar in Tennessee.
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I was thinking the other day, on my regular <\/em>pilgrimage (my daily hike), that what I love about the park isn\u2019t just the flora and fauna: it\u2019s the path running through it, a man-made thing, like that jar on the hill, like those poles against the sky\u2014the path, curving and cutting between the trees, making sense of the rest, showing it off, acknowledging that slovenly wilderness for what it is. The older I get, the more amazed I am, and comforted, too, by its indifference to us: the wild doesn\u2019t care either way if we claim it, if we don\u2019t; if we claim it in order to see it; if we actually see it\u2014only to understand that it isn\u2019t ours to claim.<\/p>\n

Anecdote of the jar\u2014
anecdote of the comet\u2014
anecdote of the poles\u2014
that\u2019s all this is, right? An anecdote, a bunch of them strung together, having something to do with my coming to feel that this<\/em> is the place; as if we\u2019d actually chosen this house, this city, this state, this country, this earth; as if it makes a difference where we are, who we are\u2014and it does. To us, it does. But to carry on as if it didn\u2019t all just happen somehow; determined as we are to pretend we know what we\u2019re doing (and to keep doing it with a measure of conviction or hope or whatever) no better spot in the world, we tell ourselves, to watch day turn to night.<\/p>\n

Or, if we must, to get up in the middle of the night. Have I not demonstrated our willingness to go the distance? To make fools of ourselves? We continue to be willing\u2014who wouldn\u2019t be willing to get up in the dark for a meteor shower, say? So it was a few weeks back, when the Perseids came to town: the Perseids, an annual occurrence, which this year, for some reason, got a whole lot of press in advance. It <\/em>will rival the stars in the sky<\/em>, read the headline in the paper on the morning of.<\/em> Where do we have to go? I asked. We don\u2019t, said Fred. It\u2019ll happen right here, right off the deck, we just have to get out of bed. Which task he took on himself\u2014he\u2019s like that: he\u2019ll do the heavy lifting for whatever it is, and then, if whatever it is turns out to be good, he makes sure I don\u2019t miss out. Between dreams, on the suddenly slippery passage from one to another that is, I heard his alarm. I heard him leave the room. I swerved into waking as the screen door slid open\u2014and then he was back. Anything? I asked without opening my eyes. Nope, he answered. And what a relief to slide back to sleep. Not so very much at stake, after all\u2014not with an annual event: there\u2019s always next year, and the year after that, and ample opportunity, no doubt, to stargaze in the months between. Although. If I\u2019m to believe what I hear, the stars are not only far away, but actually dead. Whereas\u2014just this evening, as he does every evening, \u201cCome look,\u201d said Fred from the deck.<\/p>\n

And I came. And I looked. And the sky went from violet to sapphire. And the houses on the opposite hill twinkled and shone.<\/p>\n

Dinah Lenney wrote\u00a0<\/em>The Object Parade\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Bigger Than Life, and, with Judith Kitchen, edited\u00a0<\/em>Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction. She teaches in the Bennington Writing Seminars and the Rainier Writing Workshop, and serves as a senior editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first arrived in LA in the dark. On crutches. 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