Crazy Stable

Last weekend, we checked out the Brooklyn Design fair in DUMBO, a painfully hip expo of furniture and interior goodies. I liked the sleek Cyclone Lounger, made of discarded Coney Island boardwalk wood by Uhuru, but it takes a lot of work to get those famous splinters out—$7,000-plus, actually. We'll be sticking to loungers from Lowe's, I'm afraid.

And if we were in this league, our first stop would be the drawing board of Juni Setiowati, a brilliant young Brooklyn furniture designer poised for discovery by the DUMBO crowd. I've actually flung myself on this exquisite modular bed/headboard unit she created for her fledgling U&I Design Studio, and been convinced it would suffuse my whole chaotic bedroom in serenity (while creating a secret ocean of storage space). The fair showcased a lot of self-consciously cutting-edge stuff, but nothing with this intuitive elegance. You heard it here first.

Funny thing was, we found cooler designey-ness on the nearby streets than at the $15-per-ticket fair. Like the contents of this barnlike Japanese antiques emporium, Shibui, tucked away in sleepy Vinegar Hill. Just about any of their exquisitely tooled ancient wood, stone, or woven thingamajigs would render a room instantly Zenalicious.

This piece is worthy of Madama Butterfly primping for Pinkerton; note the tiny bird cutouts under the mirror. Even their midcentury anime ephemera (right) are worth coveting.

But best of all, just hanging out on the street in front of a parking lot near a pita-bread bakery was this: the Ladder of Achievement Chair. Which rung are you on?

That is what Benedict XVI called the Holy Shroud this past Monday, and that is what I saw, too, just one week ago, on a solo pilgrimage to Turin.

Despite its brush with fame during the Olympics, the gorgeous city of Turin keeps a bit aloof from tourism, but the hardcore Catholic hordes descend for the occasional displays of La Sacra Sindone, and so do the vendors with an array of Shroud Swag. That enigmatic face was splashed all over the city on everything from magnets to newspaper supplements.

Crowds were huge, and managed impeccably. The line wound through a park that was once a walled royal garden, and past a modern railway stop and a half-excavated Roman ampitheatre. The day was beautiful, and the mood was festive, especially considering that we were awaiting a glimpse of a bloodied burial cloth.

An elaborate covered ramp had been set up outside the cathedral of St. John the Baptist, where the Shroud waited within. By midday, the volunteers in their colorful vests were looking a bit weary.

Blinking from the sun, we entered the shadowy church.

I didn't expect the image on the cloth to be beautiful, but it was: startlingly clear, backlit in its case and glowing like a silent film. Every mark on this legendary forensic puzzle was familiar, yet fresh and jarring. Even if it is "only" 800 years old, its very presence there was an astonishing link with the past; and the imprint—produced without pigment and concealing (in photonegative reverse) a masterful portrait of human passion hidden for centuries—was a sublime icon for the linked mysteries of suffering and faith. Even the face could be readily seen, battered and majestic. Non-flash photography was permitted, but I did not photograph it.

A few days later, Benedict XVI visited the same spot, "taking a break from the abuse scandals," as the papers put it. Before the Shroud, he articulated the fathomless stuff that drew me here and will remain with me always. The entire short address is profoundly moving, tender and wise, but this is the best:

"As children we are afraid of being left alone in the dark, and only the presence of someone who loves us can reassure us. This is precisely what happened on Holy Saturday. In the reign of death, God’s voice rang out... Human beings live to love and be loved. If love could penetrate the realm of death, life could thus reach into it. In the hour of extreme solitude, we shall never be alone."

More on my trip to come. (Oh, and yes, I bought swag: a holographic Shroud magnet with eyes that open and shut. Even in Chaucer's time, pilgrims snapped up tacky souvenirs of sacred sites; who would spurn such a hallowed tradition?)    

For another, more detailed recounting, go here; I like this priest/pilgrim's wondering whether "reports of the death of Christianity in Europe aren't perhaps a tad premature"...

Something huge is about to unfold for me, and I've been too superstitious to discuss it very openly. As the result of a mysterious and marvelous chain of events, I am going to visit this guy. Yes, right here, very soon. 

That is, unless more primordial deities like Pele here perform another cheap stunt for attention. (And they wonder why I'm superstitious? What, does my Expedia account get hacked by a lava conduit to Iceland?)

Actually, I blame this one. Either way, I am gearing up for one helluva pilgrimage. I cieli sono aperti. You will be kept informed, and may the best god win!

Now that the New York Times has laid down the baton after their orchestrated Holy Week festival of pope-pounding, my feelings toward Benedict XVI are more conflicted than ever; his lifetime track record on clergy abuse ranges from all-too-typical avoidance and denial to unprecedented engagement, repentance, and reform. Sadly charisma-impaired, he's no rock star like John Paul II, yet he has dealt with the crisis more directly than JPII ever did.

Sick of getting my pontiff in cartoon form from the likes of Maureen Dowd, I've started reading some of his own stuff, and "complex" doesn't begin to describe it. He thinks, and writes, like a dark Time Lord plagued with bad dreams and tormented by human tenderness. Enough with the crap about "God's Rottweiler" already. The next time I'm almost beguiled by the kittenish Ms. Dowd's pop-snark take on matters Catholic, I'll let Benedict speak for himself:

"God is dead and we killed him: are we really aware that this phrase is taken almost literally from Christian tradition and that often in our viae crucis we have made something similar resound without realizing the tremendous gravity of what we said? We killed him, by enclosing him in the stale shell of routine thinking, by exiling him in a form of pity with no content of reality, lost in the gyre of devotional phrases, or of archaeological treasuries; we killed him through the ambiguity of our lives which also laid a veil of darkness over him: in fact, what else would have been able to make God more problematical in this world than the problematical nature of the faith and of the love of his faithful?"

Text: 'The Anguish of an Absence: Three Meditations on Holy Saturday,' from 30 Days, March 2006

Image: Detail, Fra Angelico, Deposition from the Cross, Museo San Marco, Florence

FRAGRANCE CONFIRMS BENEVOLENT DEITY 

RANDOM TRAGEDY, CHILDHOOD CANCER AND EVIL

REMAIN UNEXPLAINED

To see (and smell) for yourself, go here.