"Whatever it is that pulls the pin..."

Over lunch, thumbing through the notebook I carry to make some people think I'm more thoughtful, intelligent, or french than I actually am, I came across a quote by Diane Arbus that I jotted down in her retrospective show at the Met a few weeks ago. It was in her application for a Guggenheim grant, one of those life-changing kinds of opportunities that sometimes arise from that peculiar combination of talent, luck, connection to others, and a hell of a lot of Guggenheim money.

In her statement, she described the rationale behind her plans to photograph "American Rites, Manners, and Customs":

These are our symptoms and our monuments. I want simply to save them, for what is ceremonious and curious and commonplace will be legendary."

Some of these things, these people and places and scenes she saved, have a permanence in my head that I couldn't shake if I wanted to. There are dozens of photographs and paintings and buildings and books like that in my life that are hard-wired into who I am, and I find that they come out most when you're inviting someone else into that space, trying to explain why these things are stuck with you.

The beauty of it all though, the added beauty of looking at something you'd swear you know back to front, is that you realize you don't, and something else is added in that instant you notice something new, or someone points it out for you.

My favorite picture of hers is alittle kid in the park clutching a toy hand grenade, a look of
exasperation on his face that's both comic and terrifying.

I've seen it countless times, but only once before as an actual print. A professor had been given a working portfolio by Arbus over the course of their friendship, and he had a print of that image. To see another print years later made this kid wholly new to me, and the excitement of showing someone something like that for the first time becomes doubly so.

Looking at it for not long enough, out from that little square on the wall jumped what I'd never seen before --a little wooden ice cream spoon at his feet, the crest pattern on his outfit, the strange joy of the girl in the top corner trying to break away? or happily skipping? --taking their place of permanence with the other details I picture without even seeing the picture anymore -- the dirty, knobby knees, the strap of his overalls slipping down his shoulder, the nanny lurking in the background -- ominous, protective, suffocating, omnipresent.

This happened throughout the show, happens whenever you look a bit closer at anything. Things deepen, take on a kind of texture there next time, our lives the better for it.