In Chicago last week we went to see some art.
Mara was pregnant and her beautiful, buoyant 2-year-old daughter was at daycare. I never get to see her anymore, and when I do it’s usually only for a meal. I felt greedy with her time. She’s one of my oldest friends. A long time ago I ran into her randomly on the street in Amsterdam when I was out of money and she fed me. I have cried to her more than any person I know besides my mother, and I was just a baby then anyway. We share a handful of secrets that we have sworn never to speak of again, and I think of them only rarely, but when I do they make me laugh.
She has a child and a house and a husband and a very complete life, and I will never own anything except for technological devices that I am sure will someday be implanted into my brain, which means they will probably own me at that point. (If they do not already.)
We both write for a living, but we write very different things. She always comes to see me when I give readings in Chicago, and I can tell that she’s very proud of me.
She knows how to love, and always has. It has just never been that easy for me.
I do not feel competitive with her, and I never have. I only say all this to illustrate our different paths, even though I feel just like her in the most important ways.
We walked across the river, past the Tribune building, through a small stretch of industrial wasteland, and then, a few blocks later, past a sunflower field next to a church. Finally we arrived at the Intuit Gallery, where we went to see the Peter Anton show, an installation of photographs, paintings, and journals reflecting the life and work of the 78-year old outsider artist from East Chicago, Indiana.
It was a messy brain, splayed out there in the room, but also completely consistent. He had spent his whole life making art and documenting his existence. As a younger man he organized and performed in talent shows. More recently he sketched people for five dollars a pop at fairs, including the annual Pierogi Festival in Whiting, which is where he was eventually discovered by the curators of the show.
Over the years his house became full of waste. The walls were covered with his art and photographs and memories, but there was junk all around him, too. There were too many cats. He didn’t take care of himself. His feet became swollen and diseased. One of the characters in my novel has diseased feet and I had an image of it in my brain but this looked much worse. His feet looked like they were going to explode at any moment. They were engaged in a complete rebellion against the rest of his body. Against him.
I watched a video interview with him. He was philosophical, and also cheerful. He was talking about suffering for his art. How all the great artists suffer for their art. He rambled for a bit about it. And then he said, “It’s called fortitude.”
I had to stop listening then, and I put down the headphones which were attached to an iPad, and I walked away, the video still playing, and Mara and I, alone in the room, shuffled from paintings to photographs quietly, while his voice played, muffled, through the headphones, on the other side of the room.
I wrote it down, though. Actually, I didn’t write it down. I typed it into my iPhone, because I forgot my notebook that day.
It’s called fortitude.
I believed it, if he did.
