A Changing Experience

Last night he didn’t sleep. Today is Monday and he opened the door to the large corporate glass building. There was some corporate art sitting on the lawn that he passes every day. This time he thought to himself, “Why can’t we see some real art?”

A couple weeks ago he went to a show downtown called the “Rembrandt Experience." The “Rembrandt Experience” was an interactive art gallery. He didn’t know anything about art. His wife wanted to go to this show, and it happened to be the same day as a soup stroll where they sampled soups downtown from a dozen restaurants for a dollar each.

He felt a bit guilty. He was full of soup, and he was warm inside the art studio. He didn’t know anything about hunger. He didn’t know anything about spending a night in the cold. They saw a homeless person scavenging for cans that day. It’s a common sight in this state, where you can get a $.05 deposit refund for recycling one can. So many well-to-doers throw away their cans, opening an economic opportunity for someone that’s hungry for it.

He failed his greatest moral test of the day. At their first stop of the soup stroll, he was seeking change for a $50 bill. The woman at the counter was working slowly, amongst the anticipation of hundreds of soup-strollers lined up, most out the door standing in the cold. He started the transaction with a $50 bill and ended up walking away with $55 in smaller bills. He hated crowds and he hated the idea of holding up the line any longer. It had already taken two attempted accounting corrections within the transaction to get to this point. He decided to leave with soup in hand, and “up” by $5. Upon later examination his conscience revealed to him that he stole $5 from that restaurant. He hoped the calm and kind woman who counted it wouldn’t get in trouble.

Heading into the office today, something wasn’t right. He felt uneasy. We had just gone through a global pandemic. This corporate building was shut down for two years, but it was lit up and humming like it didn’t miss a day. Now he is expected to be lit up and humming like he didn’t miss a day, but he desired to continue working from home.

His office at home was decorated in a way that he liked. On his wall, hung an artist’s sketch of the iconic picture of the Marines at Iwo Jima where they are hoisting the American flag. He knew about the Marines that planted this flag. They did it four days after landing by boat. On the beach where the Marines landed, their boots sunk about a foot into the loose volcanic soil. The Marines had a difficult enough time getting their footing on the beach and trudging uphill. They had to do it with their equipment on their backs as machine gunfire from the jungle-covered ledges and hills tore their own limbs and their friends to pieces. He read the details in the account of Marines that survived to write about it. He wasn’t on that island. He was in front of a corporate building. That artwork summarized the kind of hardship that he will never know on this side of World War III.

At the beginning of the pandemic, he was reading philosophy. He introduced himself to the stoics, who regularly meditate on the shortness of life. He bought a reproduction of Philippe De Champaigne’s Vanitas. A still life painting of a flower, skull, and hourglass.  The flower is life. The skull is death. The hourglass is time, running out.

He spent the past couple of weekends examining Rembrandt’s work. He admired the way Rembrandt painted people. He might buy a print of one of these pieces, but which one? The depth of each spoke to him. In the art show that they saw downtown, the portraits changed as the light display moved its orientation. The automated LEDs were dimming and brightening. Bulbs on the east/west, to the north/south, all were coming on and off according to their scheduled program. The display simulated the sun at different times of day. He read about an author who sat in front of a Rembrandt painting for hours. With enough natural light, the sun and the picture dance with one another throughout the day. Your eyes notice things in the second hour they didn’t see in the first. Things you saw in the first hour are no longer there. Characters step into and out of your eye. Your mind focuses on different things and people in the painting.

Maybe he was more into art than he thought. Now that he had gazed at powerful art that moved him, he hated that putrid excuse for art that sits on the Corporate grass. The pieces of steel are bent and welded together in a bizarre spherical pattern. It’s an abstract pile of metal. Worth nothing to the people walking in the building. At scrap metal prices of $2.91 per pound, the statue is worth its weight in food. His face drains as he thinks of the homeless man who forages cans.

He had gone two years without really looking at this “art.” He doesn’t even remember it being there, but it surely wasn’t installed during the pandemic. Over the past couple of years, he put together a nice routine for himself. Before and after work, he was setting aside 30 minutes. He would sit in silence and gaze at his pictures. He would reflect on interactions in the day. Reflecting on his life he lacked the life-or-death adventure like the Marines at Iwo Jima. De Champaigne was telling him that time was ticking away. His face is becoming a skull.

That was it! He realized these small silent retreats he had worked into his schedule, where he was alone in his home office, had ended abruptly. Instead of art that he picked out and revered, he was now surrounded by corporate committee-approved art he despised. Instead of a quiet way of working on his own, he now had to listen to the corporate lackies around his cubicle talk about mission statements, adding value, lessons learned, efficiency, process improvement, production, compliance, and on-and-on. All this while the sand trickles. The flower is alive, and dying.

He's too old now to go to war, but there is a sophisticated tunnel-network of enemies at work in his mind to spoil his peace. There is adventure to be had, battling these enemies. A silent retreat. That’s the new adventure of his life. Before lunch he will walk into his supervisor’s office. The company could grant him a request for leave, or he could quit altogether. It really didn’t matter. All that matters now is the journey. The battle for silence rages on.