All Embracing– At West End Gallery
There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance … some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone.
― Angle of Repose (1971)
The lines above from the 1972 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Angle of Repose, from the late Wallace Stegner really jumped out at me this morning. To be honest, I haven’t read the book so can’t speak to its context. I read a summary that described its theme, described by its title, as a metaphor for finding balance between personal ambition and contentment. His description of this concept being like two vertical lines tipping together so that they meet and prop each other up to create a self-supporting false arch just seemed like the perfect imagery for today, Valentine’s Day.
Love, like every lasting relationship including the inner one we maintain between our hopes and reality, depends on this arch. I hesitate to use the word “false” though I understand it is in reference to the distinction between “true” and “false” arches.
“True” arches are carefully designed and slowly built, having angled stones and a keystone at its apex that sturdily binds it all together. It is built to last. “False” arches that may have the appearance and serve the same purpose are more organic, not really designed or constructed so much as they just happen, often haphazardly and by sheer coincidence of time, place, and circumstance.
Two trees falling against one another in the forest, for example.
Or maybe even two trees that grow together and eventually seem almost as one, a la the trees in my Baucis and Philemon based paintings such as the example at the top.
I’ve been part of such a false arch for a very, very long time. As a result, Valentine’s Day takes on a different look for me. Though it still maintains a romantic aspect, it is now more about a deeper recognition and appreciation of all the many aspects that make up that tree that somehow fell my way all so many years ago to create the false arch that has somehow, often against all odds, survived.
Actually, I should say when my tree came to rest against the strength that is her tree.
Without that support, I would most certainly have fallen all the way to the forest floor.
Many times. I have always existed as a pretty precarious tree, after all. Even in my sapling days.
As the Stegner lines above point out, this type of false arch might be as much as one can expect in this life. I certainly couldn’t ask for anything more.
Here’s one of my favorite Rickie Lee Jones songs, one that seems fit for this day and post. This is We Belong Together, from her 1981 album, Pirates. Though this album was critically acclaimed when it came out, I don’t know how it has aged through the years or how it is viewed by a younger audience nowadays. I have always thought it as a classic, with its striking cover photo from the great French photographer Brassai who has been featured here before, and the many songs that have stuck with me for forty-five years now.
There’s an angle of repose in there somewhere…
This post ran several years ago. I rewrote it a bit, adding and subtracting here and there, but its sentiment holds true for this Valentine’s Day in this forest.
Redtree Times 