Thursday, February 01, 2007
The Broken Virgin
I need to get some Elmer's Glue today. Over the weekend, the plastic Virgin Mary fell off a bathroom shelf into the tub & her tiny head cracked off. This alarmed me at first, like an unintended sacrilege, especially when I couldn't locate the head & thought it had rolled down the drain. But I found it on the floor. The break was clean, the icon is salvageable. I don't remember how I came to possess my little Virgin Mary. I've had it for many years. Certainly, I didn't buy it, so it was either given to me or I rescued it. No one who ever came into my apartments thought it an unusual object for a noncatholic to have around. Two of them were women who had been raised Catholic & slept in my bed; & one still attended Mass on occasion, although she'd unapologetically conceived, birthed & raised two children without benefit of Holy Matrimony.
Shortly before the accident, I hung a laminated print of
St. Cecilia & an Angel by Orazio Gentileschi in the hallway by the front door. It was always on display in my old apt, & before that in the studio room where I taught piano. Most people probably thought it was kitschy, so did I at first, but my artist friend Jim had an eye for Italian Baroque & liked it. I'm not so superstitious as to think the plastic Virgin was jealous; there's only one Queen of Heaven & Cecilia is usually depicted as a working musician with heavenly inspiration.
I have other treasured dust collectors placed here & there; a Gumby, a camel bell, various frogs, three handpainted ceramic lighthouses, a red toy piano, a Cosmic Clash Mini Arcade. Haven't even unpacked the most musical windchimes. The walls are bare. Been here three years & never really settled in. It's a spartan existence with an obvious air of self-deprivation, rooms evidently inhabited by someone who doesn't like himself very much. In this world, a plastic Virgin Mary is a necessity.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Shortly before the accident, I hung a laminated print of
St. Cecilia & an Angel by Orazio Gentileschi in the hallway by the front door. It was always on display in my old apt, & before that in the studio room where I taught piano. Most people probably thought it was kitschy, so did I at first, but my artist friend Jim had an eye for Italian Baroque & liked it. I'm not so superstitious as to think the plastic Virgin was jealous; there's only one Queen of Heaven & Cecilia is usually depicted as a working musician with heavenly inspiration.I have other treasured dust collectors placed here & there; a Gumby, a camel bell, various frogs, three handpainted ceramic lighthouses, a red toy piano, a Cosmic Clash Mini Arcade. Haven't even unpacked the most musical windchimes. The walls are bare. Been here three years & never really settled in. It's a spartan existence with an obvious air of self-deprivation, rooms evidently inhabited by someone who doesn't like himself very much. In this world, a plastic Virgin Mary is a necessity.
