September 29: "Pornography," Mangled Glasses, Art

I'm often stirred or moved by works of art:  paintings and poems and songs and movies and books.  That is one of the functions of art--to inspire people to action.  To understand the confusing.  To love the unlovable.  To sing the unsingable.  Art is about celebrating the whole human experience.

Billy Collins celebrates a painting . . . 

Pornography

by: Billy Collins

In this sentimental painting of rustic life,

a rosy-cheeked fellow

in a broad hat and ballooning green pants

is twirling a peasant girl in a red frock

while a boy is playing a squeeze-box

near a turned-over barrel

upon which rest a knife, a jug, and small drinking glass.

Two men in rough jackets

are playing cards at a wooden table.

And in the background a woman in a bonnet

stands behind a half-open Dutch door

talking to a merchant or a beggar who is leaning on a cane.

This is all I need to inject me with desire,

to fill me with the urge to lie down with you,

or someone very much like you

on a cool marble floor or any fairly flat surface

as clouds go flying by

and the rustle of tall leafy trees

mixes with the notes of birdsong--

so clearly does the work speak to me of vanishing time,

obsolete musical instruments,

passing fancies, and the corpse

of the largely forgotten painter moldering

somewhere beneath the surface of present-day France.

This morning, I couldn't find my glasses.  I traced and retraced my steps.  Looked in all the usual places.  Then I looked in all the unusual places, including the refrigerator.  I was about to give up, but I decided to check by the couch one more time.  As I walked over to it, I felt something underneath my shoe bend and then break, and I looked down.

There were my glasses, mangled, with one temple snapped off.

I'm not ashamed to say I let fly from my mouth a long stream of obscenities.  Of the two pairs of glasses I own, my reading ones are necessary for me to function properly on a daily basis.  I can't even see my computer screen clearly without them.

So, what do my pulverized glasses have to do with celebrating the human experience through art?

Collins is moved to sexual excitement because of the painting by the forgotten painter moldering in his grave.  I was moved by Collins' poem to write a blog post about breaking my reading glasses.  There is really nothing in the painting that should make Collins randy, and there's not even a mention of eyeglasses in his stanzas.

Perhaps, after reading my words, you'll feel pulled to call your significant other and set up some afternoon delight.  Or maybe you'll be compelled to contact your eye doctor's office to make an appointment.  Art affects every person differently.  Where one person sees pornography, another sees love and passion.

Tonight, all Saint Marty sees is a new pair of glasses in his future.