Sand And Rice

I drove up to Mass MoCA in North Adams to see the pile of rice. I knew about it because of the billboard that they put up just outside of Great Barrington. The billboard said, "A Mind Blowing Experience." Actually I sort of resent being told in advance that something is going to be a "Mind Blowing experience", as I feel that such experiences are much more profound and effective when they are unannounced and happen unexpectedly. But, I had several questions in my mind about the rice, so I drove up there to take a look at it.

I drove up Route 8 through the town of Adams . In Adams there is a quarry where they process sand. From the road you can see a huge pile of sand in the distance; it is a cone shape, very similar in fact, to pictures I have seen of the rice. I decided to stop and look at the pile of sand and while there, I asked it a few questions.

I said, "Pile of sand, there is a pile of rice in North Adams and they say that it is so big that the total number of grains of rice is about equal to the number of human beings inhabiting the earth. If the pile of rice represents that, what do you represent?"

The pile of sand replied, "That's nothing. First of all I am much larger than that pile and each of my grains is much smaller than a piece of rice. Therefore I represent a much greater number than the pile of rice, even though I occupy an extremely similar shape. The total number of my grains of sand happens to be exactly equal to the number of people who have ever lived on the earth. Therefore, if the installation at Mass MoCA is a mind blowing experience, as the billboard claims, then what am I? I would have to be compared to a cosmic epiphany that occurs to a great genius once in one hundred years. But for some reason, though I am all of that, no one even slows down to have a look at me as they drive by here. They are all on their way to see that little pile of rice; actually I don't see what all the fuss is about."

But I want to stick to the point and tell you about the pile of rice, especially if you are someone who won't get a chance to see it. I arrived at the museum at about 11:00 in the morning after stopping at the Pittsfield Library to pick up a free pass to Mass MoCA. Despite the fact that I had made the trip however, and even though it would cost me nothing to get into the museum, upon my arrival I very nearly decided not to go inside. Something I saw at the entrance got me so upset that it very nearly ruined my trip. I discovered that outside the museum, quite close to the front door, they have set up a large torture chamber made exclusively for trees. And there, for some absolutely unknown reason, they are torturing six trees to death. The trees are hung upside down in barrels by their legs. Apparently they must have committed some absolutely horrible crime to be subjected to such a punishment and apparently, this has been going on for a few years as can be determined by the pathetic way those poor trees are bending their branches upside down in a fruitless effort to get their leaves into the light. I don't know what they did and perhaps they deserve their fate, but I must say that as I stood looking at them, I wept. Perhaps they are actually innocent trees who never committed any crime. Well then, I can only hope that whoever is responsible for this travesty gets a similar treatment in the next life. And oddly enough, this has occurred in the Berkshires, where I have always assumed that people loved and cared about trees.

I entered the museum in a rather frightful state of mind I’m afraid after bearing witness to such dreadfulness, and perhaps, as a consequence, I had some negative feelings about the rice installation but, I proceeded nonetheless as I had important questions to ask the pile of rice. To describe the scene, the rice is in a very large room. At once it makes you think of the Pyramids of Gisa or at the least, those pictures of the pyramid and one cannot help but be struck by the absolute silence. Although silence is an attribute of most art exhibits, this particular silence was especially noticeable, as if there were some hidden secret or mystery about the rice, something magical possibly having to do with occult rites with magic letters and numbers. This was somewhat intimidating I must admit, but nevertheless, I walked right up to it and said, "I would like to know which one of you is supposed to be ‘Paris Hilton.’”

I received no answer and in thinking about it, I suppose that the pile of rice may not have known which one was Paris Hilton. After all, if you consider her face, it is rather like a plain piece of white rice. I accepted the fact that I got no answer but I also wanted to know which two of the rice grains, were Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. I assumed this would be a much easier question to answer given how easy it would be to spot Angelina’s lips and of course, Brad would be right next to her.

This pile of rice however, exhibited all the snobbery that you would expect to find in a big city art establishment and I could not engage it in conversation – something which was no problem with the pile of sand.

When I think back on the experience, I wonder if my questions may not have been sort of critical and accusatory perhaps, which may explain why I received no answers. For example, I wanted to know which of the rice represented black people and following that, how did that rice representing black people feel about appearing as white rice. And furthermore, what about the Asians? I felt that there was something inherently racist about using white rice for everyone. If this was going to be a “mind blowing experience,” why not have only white rice for white people, black rice for black people and yellow rice for the Asians. Now I think that would be an interesting installation, especially for the white people.

And which rice represented homosexuals; I wanted to know that also.

Despite my curiosity however, I came away with nothing. The most interesting thing about the exhibit in fact were those grains of rice that had rolled away from the huge pile and could be found grouped loosely together in little sections out on the floor. Here and there were little rice families set apart from the mass and every now and again one could find a single piece that had been kicked far away to the other side of the room – one single grain of rice, all by itself, over in a corner of the room. I found that it was those individual grains with whom I identified the most and that the big pile meant almost nothing to me.

On the way home I stopped to talk to the pile of sand again. I said, "Pile of sand, I respect your integrity as a work of art and I know just how you feel. You’re an important installation and you make a profound statement, yet nobody takes any notice of you. That's because you’re just local art and not something for which someone paid thousands of dollars to transport from Denmark or something. I have been ignored in the very same way. Why, would you believe that I have precisely the same number of hairs on my head as the population of Pittsfield – the very same number and all of them white? And what is more, several years ago, my hair was equal to the population of Philadelphia . That’s right; Philadelphia ! And at that time, all of them Black!

Richard Britell
Housatonic 2007

Homoeroticism in the Paintings of Norman Rockwell

When Freud wrote his psychosexual study of Leonardo DaVinci, he stated in his first paragraph that it was not his intention to attack him, nor to drag his name into the mire as he presumed many would think, but rather to further the understanding of DaVinci's works. I too must begin my article with a similar disclaimer: I am no Freud and Norman Rockwell was no DaVinci, but nevertheless I intend to point out obvious but long overlooked aspects of Rockwell's paintings and in so doing, to further the understanding of his works. That said, because it is their sexual content about which I intend to speak, I feel it necessary to preface this essay by saying that neither is it my intent to drag Rockwell's reputation into the mud. In fact, it is quite the contrary. To my way of thinking it is curious that our society holds Rockwell on such a pedestal, yet it is sort of a little pink pedestal, that is, not in the least threatening or of any real consequence. It is my opinion however that his works are full of complex ideas and suggestiveness, which for some reason, are never noticed or commented upon. It is just these aspects of his work that I feel should lead to a reappraisal of this artist and a realization that his work is much more complicated and insightful than formerly thought.

To begin with I would like to clarify what I mean by homoeroticism in general, and in Rockwell's work in particular. First I would suggest that there are three types of homoerotic art. The first is that found in videos and photographs of the XXX variety; in the art world the photos of Mapplethorpe spring to mind. In such works we assume the creators take sexual pleasure and invite the viewer to share in the experience. Then there is another category, usually described as soft-porn, in which the obvious sexual content is thinly veiled. In films and photographs figures are placed suggestively, even sexually, but the effect is blunted by the addition of clothing and especially softened by the context or situation, which justifies the partial nakedness of the subject matter. Helmut Lang's photos of men come to mind in this context.

And finally, there is the third category, which is the most widespread and yet, the hardest to define. It consists of images where the sexual content is entirely obscured and overwhelmed by the obviously non-sexual or even highly moral content of the subject matter. With such works one frequently has to wonder whether the artist was aware of the sexual aspect of the image to begin with. To further this ambiguity, when such content is pointed to, it is often denied. Consider many religious images, a crucifix for example. Many crucifixes are clearly homoerotic, but the primary message is so important that the nakedness and sensuous nature of the pose are almost never even noticed. It is into this murky category that Norman Rockwell's paintings fall. That is, the homoeroticism is veiled and even justified by the apparent necessity of the pictures' story telling content.

To demonstrate this idea however requires illustration but that is an easy task as Rockwell's homoerotic images are not in the least hard to come by - in fact, if I were to mention them all it would become redundant, so I focus on his Post covers, beginning with the earliest. The homoerotic aspect of his work is immediately apparent in these early covers and continues throughout his long career. Consider eight covers done in succession from June 14 1919 until January 17, 1920 during the first year of his work for the magazine. Of these eight images, seven feature men or boys in either suggestive or revealing poses. Featured in the June 14, 1919 cover, a young man, obviously confused about something, scratches his head and stands awkwardly with one toe on the other and a flower in his lapel. He has pulled back his jacket to reveal his crotch with his anatomy nicely suggested by the folds of his trousers.
Now clearly this is not some obscure detail, as the crotch in question is in the center of the painting. Why does the boy seated in the background laugh at him and the girl tilt her head in a questioning look? Notice that once the original meaning of this image is lost, the real content begins to emerge.

The following week's cover presents a painting of a boy leapfrogging over another boy's back. This is the first example of the male, spread legged pose, which will be repeated over and over again in the next fifty years.
The boy's crotch is here again highlighted by the trousers being dark and the shirt sleeves being white so that the crotch is given its own little sub frame inside of the larger picture. Like the previous example, the figure is pictured centrally, again with the crotch in the center of the painting.

In the following illustration, which was portrayed the week of August 9, 1919, a young boy has lost his clothing and a dog is running off with his pants. He runs after the dog and the figure is depicted with its legs spread apart and once more, the crotch is in the center of the picture.
As a matter of fact you could say that in this series, the crotch of young boys is the subject of the art. The painting for the issue of September 6, 1919 shows a young boy resting from his labors against a tree trunk. Although his crotch would be in the center of the picture, the pose is such that it conceals that part of his anatomy. Our attention is drawn to his genitals nonetheless, by the placement of a hoe's handle right where an erection would be. His face with eyes closed and mouth open further brings the sexual aspect of the pose to mind.


Indeed, the placement of the hoe where the penis would be is an example of phallic symbolism seen here for the first time in Rockwell's Post covers, but one that will be oft repeated and even become a favorite device of the artist. We see it again the following week in fact, with a rather benign image overall of a business man locking up his office to go play golf. Note however the self satisfied smile on his lips; the key which locks the door and the thumb and fingers that hold it are effectively placed in the man's crotch acting as the required phallic symbol.

And why do I say "required"? For such benign images of apparent cliches to work and become ideographs of a lasting nature there would have to be sexual content, narrative and symbolism. Otherwise, image, like life itself, would be lacking in salt.

A boy walking on stilts is seen on the October 4, 1919 cover. He is shown frontally with his legs spread and his crotch - per usual - in the center of the picture.
When looked at in this way, it is amazing how many images clearly have an erotic aspect about them, especially when one considers that it has never been noticed. One cover stands out in my mind as particularly noteworthy however and I sometimes wonder how it came to be published in the first place.

The Post cover for June 4, 1921 features three boys all in a state of semi-nudity. They are running full tilt to the left. The larger central boy is entirely nude; his spread legs fall right in the center of the picture space as always. While his nudity is concealed by his shirt and pants clutched in his hand, the breeze from his running pulls back the edge of his shirt so that as much of his naked upper legs are shown that would be legal. This center child is depicted as a large enough image so that Rockwell is able to dwell on and develop the more subtle details of the nubile flesh. One can readily see the transparent blue tint in skin that has not been exposed to the sun contrasted with a crimson flush of suntan on the back of the arms. There are freckles across the shoulders and last, but not least, a classic sidelong glance with lips in a pucker and topped off with wet hair. Behind the boys there is a faded, "No Swimming" sign, which offers the explanation for the entire image. Take away the sign and one might consider that the painting was done simply to admire the boy's flesh and caress it with the brush. Or, in a much simpler sense, just to set up the scene, put the naked boys in motion, and take photographs.

Many artists have had a signature pose for their figures, immediately recognizable as their creation. For DaVinci it was a figure with an arm extended and a finger pointing to heaven. In that large coffee table book on DaVinci, the one with the sepia tone reproductions, several pages are devoted to a discussion of that pose because it was so "Leonardoesque" that it was often employed in forgeries. With Michelangelo it is the contrapposto, or twisting pose of the male figure, abundantly bestowed with muscles. His poses were so characteristic that they could easily be described as "looking like a twisted bag of walnuts." Rockwell also has a trademark pose, unusual because only he ever used it. He poses a model so that we are looking at the back view. The figure is rather symmetrically set with the butt prominently placed in the center of the composition. If the butt is not in the exact center, at least it is presented as the center of interest in the painting. We might call these works "the butt portrait series." One example should suffice to illustrate just how unique this pose is, but I would like to mention several, given that it is a trademark, Rockwell icon.

First, consider his self portrait for the February 13, 1960 Post cover.
In this illustration we have Norman Rockwell's rear end very carefully and exactly painted in the visual, if not the geometric center of the painting. His rump is placed on a red cushion, and this is no coincidence. Indeed, the red cushion or red upholstery is often employed in the butt portraits. This particular one has several other enigmatic characteristics. Four pictures of other portraits are tacked up on the canvas: self portraits by Rembrandt, Durer, Picasso, and Van Gogh. On the canvas itself, Rockwell's face emerges in gray under painting without glasses. In the mirror however, he wears his glasses and the light glints from the glass so that no detail of the eyes can be seen. There appears to be a sort of hopeless search for the self in the painting, yet only absurdities emerge. What could he have in common with those other artists, or with a Roman war helmet that sits on the top of the easel?

The September 20, 1958 Post cover, which is called "The Runaway" displays a policeman's butt, which is contrasted very interestingly with the young boys'. I can think of no better painting of the male buttocks in the entire history of art than this policeman's posterior. His figure just borders on being fat, but it is that kind of fat that can so easily pass for muscle. His body strains against the fabric and fills it up in a perfectly convex way. The ornaments call our attention back to this centerpiece, if our eye should happen to stray to other details of the painting such as the glossy highlights on the leather strap and belt and the ribbon that runs along the side of the leg.

Now consider the way the fabric of the shirt is pulled so taught against the bulge of muscle in his broad shoulders. The fabric has darts coming up from the waist and down from the shoulders to accommodate his rather natural massiveness. This is a lovingly drawn figure and reminds one of those portraits of horses that young girls are so fond of drawing. I would never suggest that every time Rockwell poses a figure in this way that the image has erotic undertones. As a matter of fact, the sensuous policeman sits next to a young boy who - although posed similarly - presents an image completely devoid of anything erotic or physical. The boy looks up trustingly, but perhaps questioningly at his protector and one feels almost uneasy about the way the man twists toward the child, seeming to loom over him.

Ironically, one of Rockwell's most interesting rectal images does not give the butt central play in the picture. Rather, in the center of the picture is the now-familiar groin image, replete with legs spread but, the butt appears off to the lower left, rather than taking center stage. It is a rear end so perfectly painted however, suggestive of such interesting ideas, that I feel I must include it in this discussion of the butt pictures.

The perfectly-painted butt of which I speak is seen in the May 18, 1940 Post cover illustration titled, "The Full Treatment", A middle aged man with legs spread sits in a barber chair. His groin is in the exact geometric center of the painting, but covered by the barber's cloth. Circling around this central groin, like the planets rotate around the sun, is an assortment of "pleasures" . . .
A Vargas looking female with the requisite cone shaped breasts of that period is preparing to do his nails so he dips his fingers in her little red bowl. In his other hand is a cigar. The barber will cut his hair but first seems to be gently caressing his ears. A black "shoe shine boy" polishes his shoes and here is where we finally see the butt of the picture. A symmetrical butt, which is thrust toward the viewer because he has to be "bent over" to shine the shoes, is seemingly a pose of necessity. That is, the activity seems to require that the butt be portrayed in this suggestive way. So to be quite specific with this piece, the take-away message is that this man will get to enjoy every type of sexual pleasure. He will put his fingers in the woman, the red bowl suggesting her vagina. He will have at his beck and call the black man's rectum and he will be stroked to pleasure by the boy as indicated by the motions of the shoe brush. Lastly, consider the face, which expresses his anticipatory pleasure in these expectations of delight.

But I must stop at this point and address my critics who I can hear in my mind's ear, becoming angrier and angrier. "Those are not groins and rectums we see in these paintings but simply articles of clothing, which would be impossible to leave out in a painting. There is no sex, no homoeroticism in these pictures; it is all just a sick projection of a sick mind! Every word of this travesty suggests that the writer is just some mentally ill person."

I will not come to my own defense; I would rather defend Rockwell himself. My critics assume that Rockwell did not understand the obvious and repeated content and symbolism of his own paintings, that he was some kind of innocent who did not fathom the psychological power in the leitmotifs of his own images. The idea that this artist, one of the most careful observers of the content of human body language that ever lived was not conversant with sexual symbolism, would be like suggesting that Ernest Hemmingway did not know the alphabet. Inundating the viewer with sexual symbolism and the like is the backbone of contemporary media art, image and advertising, of which Rockwell is a founding father; it is one of the ABC's of contemporary media communication. That there are naive people who deny that it exists really just makes it all the more powerful

For the March 4, 1944 Post cover, Rockwell painted "The Tattooist" who sits with his back to us, and as has become commonplace, his butt is in the center of the picture and in fact, is the largest object in the painting. Like the shoe shine boy, he has assumed a pose of necessity as his craft requires him to sit in such a way as to thrust his rear-end out towards us in a slightly bent-over position. Note that the butt in this illustration is elaborated with a circle of adornments. There is the handle of a pair of scissors peaking out of one of the tattooist's pockets and a little book looking out of the other. A towel on either side isolates the portrait and frames it. The belt at the top and the blue cushion at the bottom complete the framing. These added details completely encircle the man's ass and make it into a separate little painting within a painting - much like that same separation seen in his self portrait.

Surprisingly, the most important painting in the butt portrait series does not conform to the usual format. The rear end is not in the center of the picture and instead is pictured in profile. It is a painting of a young boy bending over, taking down his pants so that his naked posterior is exposed. How, you might ask, could Rockwell have painted such a subject? Here is the genius of Rockwell because again, it is a pose of necessity. The boy must take down his paints because he is in the doctors office and he is about to receive a shot, which we see the doctor preparing in the back of the picture space. The picture is titled "Before The Shot" and was painted for the March 15, 1958 cover of Post.
The behavior of the boy in this picture is extraordinarily touching and endearing. He is examining the framed diploma that the doctor has hung on his wall, perhaps wondering if this man is "qualified" to do what he is about to do. Or to put another way, one might say that the boy wants to know if this man has the right to do something to his ass.

In this analysis of Rockwell's work, I have not ventured to speculate on Rockwell's sexuality, and I would never presume to do so. This is not a study of Rockwell's personality or sexuality or physicality, but a study only regarding particular aspects of the content of his paintings. If I were called upon to speculate about his biography however, I would suggest that this great painting may be some sort of a self portrait, in which we glimpse, in metaphor, an indication of something that happened to him as a child, some invasion of his childhood chastity by an adult male, perhaps a Doctor, or a character like the Policeman in the runaway. Whatever the case, I believe that Rockwell may have been violated in some way by someone in authority, and that, like the boy who received the shot, he did not accept the experience and began examining the world in which he lived, looking for clues, leaving no rock unturned in a search of explanations. Such experiences create great artists; Norman Rockwell was one.

Richarde Britell August 12, 2007 Housatonic, MA

Princess Diana in Paradise

Princess Diana in Paradise

I like to drive down to Hudson and go into all of the antique stores there. I tend to be very methodical about my Hudson trips. I start at the beginning of Warren Street , up by the park, and proceed to go into every single shop on the south side. Often I will continue walking until I get to First Street, which is at the very end of Warren, just because I don’t want to miss any new venue that might have opened up down towards the poorest end of the street. There, the gentrification process is so palpable, you could shoot a movie about the process by setting up a camera on a street corner and letting it run for a few days.

When I reach the end of Warren , I cross over to the other side and then I go into all of the shops on that side of the street. I do not discriminate among the shops and consider them all to be equally interesting.

Ironically, I have never purchased any antiques, even though I have been making this trip to Hudson over and over again for fifteen years. Well, that may be an exaggeration; I think that once about five years ago I bought some spoons in one of the shops. Actually, my trips to the Hudson antique shops have nothing to do with antiques as such, rather they are undertaken in the same spirit and with the same attitude that I have when I go to New York and visit all of the galleries in Chelsea . I am not shopping for an Anthony Cara sculpture for my back yard if I happen to go into the Gagosian Gallery, and I am not shopping for a sideboard if I go into Vincent Mulford. The entire event is just an historical, artistic and aesthetic experience for me. I see no difference between my New York trips in which I visit galleries and my Hudson trips in which I visit antique shops. In fact, there is no difference except that Hudson ’s stores are about a thousand times more interesting than New York ’s galleries.


I know that visiting galleries in New York is a sacred contemporary experience, but, to tell the truth, I sometimes feel that the galleries are not doing their jobs very well. If I told you that I went to New York and saw a large room with tiles that had been laid out at equal intervals on the floor, you would believe me because you yourself have gone to New York and looked at tiles. If I said that I had seen huge brown and black paintings over which a text was scrawled by someone who perhaps had a broken arm and that the words were misspelled with backward letters, you would believe that too. In New York , we are always being asked to appreciate fake illiteracy.

Those poor gallery owners labor under such tight restrictions and established expectations of what shows should look like, it is amazing that anyone ever sees something like a Lucian Freud exhibit once in a while.

In Hudson however, it is nothing like that. There is no magnifying glass of critical opinion poised to burn one’s personal expression to cinders. Hudson ’s antique stores are a sort of living installation art that changes constantly, with no pretense or the emasculation of contemporary art usage.

At Gray Fish, which is located at 602 Warren Street , I came across some large scrims hung on the walls. I asked what they were.

“These scrims were created for the Sotheby’s auction of the contents of the home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor ”, was the answer.

“Did they fall on hard times and have to sell their furniture to pay off their debts?” I asked.

The furniture, it turned out, belonged to the father of Dodi Fayed, who was the boyfriend of Princess Diana. Fayed sold all of this furniture after Diana’s death. Apparently he had no further need of it – as he has plenty of money.

So here then, was perhaps an image of the rooms with the furniture in which Princess Diana might have lived if she had married Dodi. Certainly it was grand enough, but so excessively serious and formal. I imagine that to reside in such a setting would be like living in a very stiff tuxedo – so stiff in fact that a group of servants would have to wheel you around with a hand truck from place to place, and then set you up like a mannequin.

In any event, the scrim was very otherworldly and magical and, set in the antique store the way it was, created a very unusual visual effect. In the foreground, as you can see from my photograph, were the usual antique store objects: the back of a couch, an ottoman, an Asian planter and a stand, a little marble obelisk, a silver tray, a plaster dog, art books and a wine carafe, all the indispensable items of a contemporary home. These various objects were lit by a soft light which flowed in through the windows of the shop, and lit up all of the objects in that caressing way for which light is so famous.

What is more, the image you see is somewhat mysterious: the furniture of the scrim is also lit by a soft light, which also flows into the picture from the right, more or less at the same angle. It is an instance where it appears to the eye, or more to the imagination, that this is the boundary between the real world and the heavenly realm of the next life. As if you could step across the room and enter another world. You seem to be peeking right into Princess Diana’s apartment in Heaven.

Now, to my mind, this experience of going into this shop and looking into Princess Diana’s apartment in heaven meets all of my expectations regarding installation art. Granted there is no docent around to put any particular spin on it. I cannot rent earphones, as if in a museum, in order to listen to an explanation of its significance. It didn’t take eighty people six months to create it with fax instructions from Europe . Nevertheless, installation art it is, and like all good installations, it took up a place in my mind for the rest of the day as a riddle to be pondered, and for me, as part of a larger riddle of the city of Hudson itself.

For I must admit that it is not just the antique stores that draw me to Hudson , but there is something else, some powerful magnet that pulls me there; the scrim simply set me to thinking about what that could be. My pondering took the following form.

The living room of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor is like all of those sumptuous, monstrous and expensive rooms that you might look at in the pages of Architectural Digest. Perhaps stage sets created to be back drops for the lives being lead by some high society couple. Is the setting so expensive because the performance is so fascinating, or, is it just the reverse?

Certainly, everyone has a macquette in their mind of the rooms and the furniture that might constitute the appropriate set in which to act out the chapters in their personal stories. Very recently, Paris Hilton was reading that part of her life where she gets to go to jail. The jail was the stage set. She wanted that scene to be cut out but everyone agrees that so far it is the most interesting one.

And what about newly weds? Don’t they invariably have notions of a love nest? Even if they have no money, their scene can be fleshed out for them at a local rent-to-own store. Domestic environment presumptions and expectations are practically innate. That is why movies can deliver absurd set-ups that our minds accept instantly. A waitress wants to be an actor in the city; she struggles to get along on her tips and wages, but nevertheless goes home to a five million dollar loft space. No one objects to this for everyone assumes that life is supposed to look like that, except perhaps for their own.

I too have had visions of the settings for marital bliss; I have had many such notions and I can remember very clearly my first. I was in love with a blonde girl named Cynthia. Blonde is the best description I can give because I never saw her close up. She sat in a seat the farthest from me: diagonally across the room in kindergarten.

Once, at a great distance, I followed her home, but not all the way to her door. After getting several blocks away from my usual path home I began to feel a rising panic and gave it up, but then, I was only five.

That same night I had a vivid dream about my new love. I dreamt that we were married and that we lived in a tree fort in the back yard of my house. When I awoke it was with a distinctly absurd feeling of stupidity and I wondered to myself, “How could I think that people could be married and live in a tree fort?” I felt that the dream indicated a certain level of stupidity on my part. But the blissful feeling of contented marital bliss, as I now know it is called, would not leave me. As a matter of fact, when I recall that dream I still can feel that delicious feeling of being in love with someone who I really do not yet know – set apart in some wild and strange place. We were like shipwrecked survivors on a deserted tropical island, for whom courtship, inquiry, fascination and consummation take place without the least possibility of interruption or competition and where even memory and fantasy are silent.

The very next morning I set about building a tree fort, with the restricted means of a five year old. Our backyard however presented a dismal prospect: a piece of dirt perhaps thirty feet square with a few strands of crab grass here and there. It was bordered with cinder block walls on three sides. One of these walls was the back part of a funeral parlor which had one window, its curtain always closed. Another wall was the back of an establishment that rented tuxedos. In the corner of this yard grew a lone sumac tree about seven feet tall with spindly branches and those long leaves that look like the remaining unkempt hair of some balding old man.

I spent a long time trying to nail a two-by-four into a branch in that sumac tree but with no success. I remember being stupefied by the problem of how to hold the hammer, the nail and the wood up in the air all at once and still, be able to strike with the hammer. Each time I would try the nails would fly off into the dirt of the yard someplace and I would have to hunt around for them. Finally, in desperation I resorted to rope. I tied several two-by-fours to the branches of the tree with the rope, and then, standing on a chair, I jumped upon them like mounting a startled horse by surprise. The various branches of the sumac tree all broke at once and everything ended up on the ground. I had murdered the sumac tree even though I had not meant it any harm. I was just like Lenny, in Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”.

My crime did not go unnoticed. Later that day my mother confronted me and asked, “Dicky, why did you break down the sumac tree?”

I explained, “I was trying to build a tree fort.”

“But why would you try to build a tree fort in a sumac tree?”

This second question she said more to herself than to me and did not really expect me to answer. Actually, to me, it sounded more like, “Dicky, why are you such a stupid little boy?” I couldn’t even face her apron but stared down at my shoes, the laces I still had not learned to tie.

Late in the afternoon I occupied myself with throwing stones at the mortuary wall until, as luck would have it, I broke their only window. After that I went inside, told my mother about it and said I would be in my room until the police came to take me away.

I am sure you are wondering at this point what all this could possibly have to do with Hudson and its antique stores, which this article seemed to be about at the start. It has everything to do with what, for me, is the purpose of the Hudson antique market. Personal archeological research, the digging up of my past.

My childhood was spent in a city just like Hudson . The backyard and the sumac tree were exactly like the backyards and sumac trees in those neighborhoods that press up against Warren Street from all sides. Many parts of Hudson ’s downtown seem unchanged for eighty years and for me, to walk around the city is like a trip in a time machine to Utica , New York , circa 1955.

If one’s life were like an aircraft, that at six hundred miles an hour had exploded into a million pieces, perhaps every one of those pieces could be found. In the corners, shelves and walls of Hudson ’s antique shops one is constantly stumbling across various lost fragments of ones’ life. They can never be reassembled, but it is very interesting to look at them again.

Richard Britell Housatonic, Ma