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Authors: David Macfarlane
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something like:
You shall live your little life in the same little house in the same little provincial North American town in which you grew up. You shall never leave the place where they eat canned spaghetti and drink milk, and you shall never again find a love like the one you have just abandoned
.
Because that’s what happened. Unexpectedly, unpredictably, that’s exactly what happened. Here I am. Although being a single, reasonably attractive heterosexual who had the words “culture critic” under his byline in the Cathcart
Chronicle
was not always so heavy a burden. You’d be surprised how many women, single and otherwise, are interested in the arts.
Some affairs lasted longer than others. There was one that danced for years around the subject of marriage. But one of the anxieties I’ve always had about dating is that sooner or later it’s bound to involve a couch, a bowl of potato chips, and anold tear-jerker on a movie channel.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
was the most embarrassing.
I am neurotically susceptible to pathos—which isn’t surprising, really. I can’t manage sadness because my life began with it. At least, that’s my guess. There’s not much chance that the history that immediately precedes the abandoning of a baby beside a swimming pool in a town in southern Ontario in 1948 is going to be anything but sad. There would have been a girl. And a boy. There would have been nothing more mysterious or glamorous than a moment of bad timing. And so I always steered clear of any investigation of my own origins—even when, as your exasperated mother used to say, “All the connections are staring you in the face, you
stupido
.”
Your mother’s interest in my background might seem a writer’s impulse more than a sculptor’s. But I always thought it was the process of carving marble that informed her—about this as about most things.
Once when I was watching Anna work I asked her what she was doing. My question was actually quite specific: I hadn’t previously seen the wooden-handled, claw-toothed chisel she was using. But she took my question to be more general and thus more stupid. “What do you think I’m doing?” she said. “I’m looking for the fucking figure in the fucking stone.” She enjoyed demonstrating her command of colloquial English.
Anna believed that the last buff of emery on a piece of Carrara marble was predicted by the first stroke of her point chisel. The intersection where the plane of a question and the plane of an answer meet—despite the countless opportunities for them to miss one another entirely—is where your mother puts her faith.
Your mother believed in the same perfect beauty thatMichelangelo did—the one that he was always trying so furiously to find. It’s the frequent subject of his poems: the sculptor, chisel in hand, his face and his hair and his arms white with the dust of his impossible quest.
Anna thought love was much the same kind of search. It was surprising, really.
My upbringing could hardly have been more North American and more middle class. Before I arrived in Pietrabella, I knew about macaroni, and I knew about spaghetti, and I thought that olive oil was something that was kept in a small vial in the bathroom in the event of stomach disorders. Still, somehow, Anna and I answered each other’s question. We could lie together for an hour after, our lips hardly touching, our hands hardly moving, doing nothing but looking at one another.
The mistake I made was not recognizing how rare such coincidence is. I was wrong to think I would ever love anyone as much again. But Anna knew. She did not think things happened by accident. Whereas the only thing I could claim as a birthright was the certainty that they did …
CHAPTER FIVE
M Y FATHER’S LETTER was delivered to me by the Italian appointees of his Cathcart attorneys, much sooner than he had ever imagined. On the envelope, in the fine, black ink he always used, were written the words: “To my
You shall live your little life in the same little house in the same little provincial North American town in which you grew up. You shall never leave the place where they eat canned spaghetti and drink milk, and you shall never again find a love like the one you have just abandoned
.
Because that’s what happened. Unexpectedly, unpredictably, that’s exactly what happened. Here I am. Although being a single, reasonably attractive heterosexual who had the words “culture critic” under his byline in the Cathcart
Chronicle
was not always so heavy a burden. You’d be surprised how many women, single and otherwise, are interested in the arts.
Some affairs lasted longer than others. There was one that danced for years around the subject of marriage. But one of the anxieties I’ve always had about dating is that sooner or later it’s bound to involve a couch, a bowl of potato chips, and anold tear-jerker on a movie channel.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
was the most embarrassing.
I am neurotically susceptible to pathos—which isn’t surprising, really. I can’t manage sadness because my life began with it. At least, that’s my guess. There’s not much chance that the history that immediately precedes the abandoning of a baby beside a swimming pool in a town in southern Ontario in 1948 is going to be anything but sad. There would have been a girl. And a boy. There would have been nothing more mysterious or glamorous than a moment of bad timing. And so I always steered clear of any investigation of my own origins—even when, as your exasperated mother used to say, “All the connections are staring you in the face, you
stupido
.”
Your mother’s interest in my background might seem a writer’s impulse more than a sculptor’s. But I always thought it was the process of carving marble that informed her—about this as about most things.
Once when I was watching Anna work I asked her what she was doing. My question was actually quite specific: I hadn’t previously seen the wooden-handled, claw-toothed chisel she was using. But she took my question to be more general and thus more stupid. “What do you think I’m doing?” she said. “I’m looking for the fucking figure in the fucking stone.” She enjoyed demonstrating her command of colloquial English.
Anna believed that the last buff of emery on a piece of Carrara marble was predicted by the first stroke of her point chisel. The intersection where the plane of a question and the plane of an answer meet—despite the countless opportunities for them to miss one another entirely—is where your mother puts her faith.
Your mother believed in the same perfect beauty thatMichelangelo did—the one that he was always trying so furiously to find. It’s the frequent subject of his poems: the sculptor, chisel in hand, his face and his hair and his arms white with the dust of his impossible quest.
Anna thought love was much the same kind of search. It was surprising, really.
My upbringing could hardly have been more North American and more middle class. Before I arrived in Pietrabella, I knew about macaroni, and I knew about spaghetti, and I thought that olive oil was something that was kept in a small vial in the bathroom in the event of stomach disorders. Still, somehow, Anna and I answered each other’s question. We could lie together for an hour after, our lips hardly touching, our hands hardly moving, doing nothing but looking at one another.
The mistake I made was not recognizing how rare such coincidence is. I was wrong to think I would ever love anyone as much again. But Anna knew. She did not think things happened by accident. Whereas the only thing I could claim as a birthright was the certainty that they did …
CHAPTER FIVE
M Y FATHER’S LETTER was delivered to me by the Italian appointees of his Cathcart attorneys, much sooner than he had ever imagined. On the envelope, in the fine, black ink he always used, were written the words: “To my
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