tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665991.post-1080759816111462242004-03-31T12:58:00.000-06:002004-03-31T14:05:26.623-06:00HOW DOES MY GARDEN GROW? In this periodic and casual Blog column I mean to write from the shadow—what visual artists' call Negative Space. I found the following definition of "Negative Space" on San Francisco art educator's Dede Tisone-Bartels' Web site.* "In a painting or drawing, the space around the object is just as important as the object itself. A good artist strives for a balance between the positive (the object) space and the negative (background) space around it. The object of this lesson is to work with the surrounding space...Often by working from the negative spaces rather than focusing on the object, you end up with a much more accurate painting." I'm not a painter, so I have no idea how au courant this description is, but as a writer I am attracted to the metaphor. This writing is my attempt to focus on the SPACE SURROUNDING my ongoing book project, and write back at American life in general. I name this project "Barrie quite CONTRARY" because my plans here are to explore the territories and points of view of daily life as a Contrary American. By this I mean Anti-American, perhaps, but also I mean that I write absolutely as an American. I might even dare say, due to my location in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a Middle American—if contrary lefty lesbians can carry such a term Still I choose, despite overwhelming evidence of late, to insist that "America" can and must include me and mine, on our own terms. Also, when I was a girl in Chicago, my Uncles—bumbling guys with car grease on their fingers and no children of their own—could only think of one thing to say to their sassy little niece, the first child of their only college-educated sister. Whenever they saw me they would repeat and repeat the first line of that old nursery rhyme, but insert my name. Barrie Barrie Quite Contrary, how does your garden grow? I know now that I am an adult—and an Auntie—that they were just teasing me, and that some nieces and nephews are harder to talk to than others, so we resort to repeating sing-songs, to amuse ourselves and fill the silence. But then, because alas, I always have been a kid who thinks too much, I thought they were really ASKING me, how DOES my garden grow? The question FRUSTRATED me. WHAT garden? (We lived in a brown brick bungalow with a small fenced-in yard, just off fume-hazed, truck-rumbling Halsted Avenue. WHAT garden?) The question made me want to cry because I didn't know the answer. One of those Uncles, my mother's youngest brother, died last year. He was inactive and had diabetes and spent most of his adult life stretched out under some engine or other. He got sick suddenly, at his job—while working under a school bus—when something burst in his brain, then he died a day or so later on the operating table, from a heart attack. I never did figure out, while he was alive, how to talk to him, although Linnea (unsurprisingly, as such is her gift) usually did a decent job chatting him up. My Uncle told me once that he figured I'd moved to Minnesota because I was allowed to do things up here that people couldn't do in Chicago. I laughed at the time, aware that he referred to my love life, but now I see that in some ways he was right—not so much about Chicago vs. Minneapolis of course, but rather about why someone like me runs away from her family, and how often my attempts to return and talk have been lost in translation. Since his death Linnea drives his meticulously maintained Blazer, which is, perhaps, the clearest conversation we've ever had. Now 40 years after so commonly hearing my Uncles imploring me to tell them how my garden grows, I still hear their rhymes beating a familiar circle in my brain. Barrie Barrie quite contrary how DOES your garden grow? It's grows well, thank you, in the smaller beds closer to my sweet home, despite these mean Republican-run times of so little positive political sun for anyone who lives contrary to the center. But beyond the sunnier bubbles of my own making I don't believe the garden is growing at all. No, this is not what my Uncles want to hear me say. They don't want me to answer at all; I am after all a girl, and a deviant who claims words—such as lesbian—that I am sure have never even passed their lips. But they asked me a question and I still feel compelled to answer it, and answer it, and answer it. We've been hearing so much these days about the severe cultural divide in America. I agree that we seem to be split down the middle. I live on the side caught in perpetual shade. No, the garden is not growing well. The bus drivers are on strike here and the anti-public transportation governor does not care to negotiate. The news is crowded with bombing after bombing. Cultural conservatives are so repulsed and offended by the notion of queer marriage that they are lining up to rewrite us out of the constitution. Linnea and I were shocked last night to find ourselves agreeing that the Reagan Era felt benign compared to this one. The Garden is not growing. I am going to try to express what it looks like from this side. At least the sun is not in my eyes. Peace, bjb [*NEGATIVE SPACE: http://home.att.net/~tisone/lesson15negative.htm] -- If you would like to send me comments, please go to my Web site, www.barriejeanborich.net, and use the GUEST BOOK feature. Barriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10581998301225235522noreply@blogger.com