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Surrounded by the masters
May 19th, 2008 | 10:31 pm
My mother is young and beautiful and always in pain. Between both kinds of arthritis, on rainy Florida days
she can't even leave her couch.
Seven years ago, her left knee was replaced, transforming it into a working joint again. She didn't need a
wheelchair for a simple trip to the mall anymore. She could carry my niece and chase her around and putter
around her garden. The past couple of years, it's been my mother's hips that have been painfully wasting
away. Next month, she will have one replaced, and then maybe she'll feel mobile and lithe enough to visit me
here in California before I move.
It is a wondrous procedure, taking out these old joints and replacing them with prosthetic implants. It makes
my head swim to try to understand the process of arthoplasties, the replacements and revisions. the balls
and sockets, the titanium, the ceramic and the polyethylene. I can't imagine the extraordinary talent and
confidence it takes for a person, a master craftsman of the body, to break down and rebuild nature's perfect,
damaged design.
Now I'm sitting next to one of these master craftsmen of the body. He talks about bone saws and bedside
manner and how Johns Hopkins kicked his ass and I'm enthralled and inspired by this high art. We're at the
Getty Restaurant, sitting at the window with the marine layer melted away on a perfect Friday, the Pacific
spread out before us.
The Getty Center is itself a work of art and is as big and travertine white and loaded with the masters as ever.
Later we will see tapestries and beds and floors and tables and books and paintings that took years to
create. Some are astounding, some disgusting, some confusing.
We will learn that "museum" is from the Greek "muse" and wonder why we didn't know something so
obvious. We will hastily exit a video presentation of the dead Christ dipped in flour and laying on the floor
with two women hovering above him. We will laugh at the exhibit of someone who took a photo of every
person in their German town. We will marvel at a thousand photographs glued into one mural, and I might
make the guard nervous by almost touching it. We will try to understand Degas' The Milliners. We will stare
at Monet's The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light and declare it perfect. We will stroll through the
gardens, gorgeous with algae fountains and bougainvillea rebar trees and a water hedge labyrinth.
But first, as we step outside the Restaurant, a beautiful hostess follows us and calls to him, "Sir,"
We both turn around as she says, "We thought you'd like to know that people in the restaurant were talking
about how beautiful she is."
Embarrassed and confusedly flattered, I blush as best I can under my light brown skin. The hostess was
talking about me.
I'm standing on top of The Getty, full of art and garden, next to someone who, with his skilled hands can give
people like my mother the precious gift of movement. I was the least of all the beauty.
Comments
May 19th, 2008 | 10:31 pm
My mother is young and beautiful and always in pain. Between both kinds of arthritis, on rainy Florida days
she can't even leave her couch.
Seven years ago, her left knee was replaced, transforming it into a working joint again. She didn't need a
wheelchair for a simple trip to the mall anymore. She could carry my niece and chase her around and putter
around her garden. The past couple of years, it's been my mother's hips that have been painfully wasting
away. Next month, she will have one replaced, and then maybe she'll feel mobile and lithe enough to visit me
here in California before I move.
It is a wondrous procedure, taking out these old joints and replacing them with prosthetic implants. It makes
my head swim to try to understand the process of arthoplasties, the replacements and revisions. the balls
and sockets, the titanium, the ceramic and the polyethylene. I can't imagine the extraordinary talent and
confidence it takes for a person, a master craftsman of the body, to break down and rebuild nature's perfect,
damaged design.
Now I'm sitting next to one of these master craftsmen of the body. He talks about bone saws and bedside
manner and how Johns Hopkins kicked his ass and I'm enthralled and inspired by this high art. We're at the
Getty Restaurant, sitting at the window with the marine layer melted away on a perfect Friday, the Pacific
spread out before us.
The Getty Center is itself a work of art and is as big and travertine white and loaded with the masters as ever.
Later we will see tapestries and beds and floors and tables and books and paintings that took years to
create. Some are astounding, some disgusting, some confusing.
We will learn that "museum" is from the Greek "muse" and wonder why we didn't know something so
obvious. We will hastily exit a video presentation of the dead Christ dipped in flour and laying on the floor
with two women hovering above him. We will laugh at the exhibit of someone who took a photo of every
person in their German town. We will marvel at a thousand photographs glued into one mural, and I might
make the guard nervous by almost touching it. We will try to understand Degas' The Milliners. We will stare
at Monet's The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light and declare it perfect. We will stroll through the
gardens, gorgeous with algae fountains and bougainvillea rebar trees and a water hedge labyrinth.
But first, as we step outside the Restaurant, a beautiful hostess follows us and calls to him, "Sir,"
We both turn around as she says, "We thought you'd like to know that people in the restaurant were talking
about how beautiful she is."
Embarrassed and confusedly flattered, I blush as best I can under my light brown skin. The hostess was
talking about me.
I'm standing on top of The Getty, full of art and garden, next to someone who, with his skilled hands can give
people like my mother the precious gift of movement. I was the least of all the beauty.
Comments
