Crazy Stable

The vision is coming true! Two different climbers are blooming in the "garth," also known as the fenced-off driveway in front of the unused garage. Thanks to the NBC "Law & Order" set makeover, it looks all nice and cottage-y.The red one is Climbing Don Juan (with accidental ivy backdrop), and the pale pink is New Dawn, which I propagated from another New Dawn on the other side of the garden. I am very proud of this.

 Long shot through the fence lattice shows, at left, how much cement I've ripped up for the raised bed waiting behind it (still needs a tad more chipped off). Even with my compost, I will need many bags of soil to fill it. Cracking cement is addictive; I just want to keep going until it's an abbey garden with gravel paths, herb beds, and more flowers (it gets full southern sun). Like the Cloisters, only via sledgehammer.

Bottom photo: Cuxa Cloister Garden, the Cloisters; Metropolitan Museum

Today was the feast of St. Philip Neri, the "patron saint of joy" and founder of the Oratory. Since I belong to the Brooklyn Oratory, I usually mark his feast, but this year was something special; last month, I visited the dear fellow at Chiesa Nuova, his last home in Rome, the city he served humbly until his death at age 80. Here he is levitating. (I like the guys in the doorway: They're like, Whoa! Do Not Disturb!)

Next to seeing the Holy Shroud in Turin, going to Chiesa Nuova was the biggest thrill of my geeky Roamin' Catholic trip. The church, a splendid Baroque affair called St. Maria in Vallicella, began construction around 1575. Urchins chased a soccer ball on the piazza in front, as they probably have done for a very long time.

I think I now "get" the point of Baroque: to make your jaw drop at its sheer fabulousness and thus, believe in the possibility of divine fabulousness. Apparently St. Philip wanted plain whitewashed walls, but wealthy patrons kept piling stuff on. My favorite: this Visitation by Federico Barocci, capturing the intimate shared delight (and slight apprehension) of two unlikely expectant moms.

Golden angels clamber over the organ pipes.

Beneath them, one enters the gorgeous little side chapel of St. Philip. And I mean...Philip himself. He's in that glass box under the altar (below).

As I joined a few other souls for Mass, I tried to focus on anything--the mosaic over the altar, the bits of liturgy I could follow in Italian, anything but the fact that one of my favorite saints, dead for 400 years, was lying a few feet away, in what looked like a giant aquarium, or ant farm. I had seen ant-farm saints in Brazil, and would see several more in Italy, but this was different; I feel as if I know St. Philip personally. 

After Mass, an Oratorian priest led some of us on a tour of St. Philip's rooms. I caught little of his Italian commentary, but it sounded as if this stand-up Philip was used to convince people that he was omnipresent at the Oratory's famous picnics throughout Rome. It has a very Terry Gilliam vibe; I resisted the urge to have someone snap my picture next to it like those cardboard-candidate photo ops.

The most touching artifacts were Philip's well-worn confessional (he was a legendary confessor and reader of troubled hearts), his battered shoes, a few thin cushions, and a warming box for hands and feet (it was drafty there even in April). I hope Philip's heart, aflame and enlarged with the Spirit, kept him warm; he is sometimes depicted with his collar open to cool off.

None of this seemed the least bit creepy, not even the saint's death mask. (A little goofy, maybe, but Philip was a joker; he chose mirth over pride and solemnity.) Before leaving Chiesa Nuova, I edged back up to his tomb and stared inside at the elegantly masked and vested body. His feet, shod in velvet slippers, pointed heavenward after their long years of pounding the Roman pavement seeking souls to save. And I felt a stirring breath of consolation regarding old Death himself. Not only did Philip seem deeply at peace within his glass casket, but after four centuries, he remains so vibrantly alive in our Oratory community that his frail remains seemed like an elaborately decorated afterthought.

Philip used to say, "Melancholy, flee from my house!"  I left Chiesa Nuova smiling as a light rain began to fall.     

Lucky us: We saw Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in Fences on Broadway. The play was magnificent and so was every actor in it, but then, I was hardly surprised; after all, I gave Mr. Washington his first review (self-satisfied chuckle), and it was a rave.

Our zero degrees of separation go back to Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus in the fall of 1975, where I spent one freshman semester. He and I were in the same acting class, taught by a wonderful coach named Ed Young. Denzel, a senior, was clearly destined for greater things, and while he was a modest and affable guy (the very opposite of the "big fish in a small pond"), I was far too intimidated by him to suggest doing a class scene study together (oh, say, Othello and Desdemona). (And yes, over 35 years, I have occasionally just smacked my head with a big old brick over that.)

I was supposedly going to be an English major, so I signed up as dance and drama critic for the college paper, the Fordham Review. Denzel, meanwhile, made his stage debut as the lead in The Emperor Jones, Eugene O'Neill's weird and daunting antique written in heavy dialect. He blew it out of the water; already, his confidence and instincts as an actor were astonishing. Here's the heart of my review; can I call them, or what?

Over the years, we watched Denzel's star rise with a sort of proprietary delight. (His co-star Paul now apparently owns a balloon business on Long Island.) I fancied the idea of getting the chance to say Hello-I-Knew-You-When; he wouldn't remember me, but he'd remember Ed's class and might get a kick out of it, and I'd get to bask in some delicious homage. Back in 1991 or so, when Spike Lee was shooting "Malcolm X" nearby in Ditmas Park, I dug out a copy of my review and hung around the set. I got as far as his trailer, but it was guarded by a man-mountain in bow tie and shades from the Fruit of Islam, and the idea of nattering about our college connection sort of withered on the spot.

So last Friday night, I set course for the Cort's stage door. We shot out to the street after the thunderous curtain call...where, perhaps thanks to Tweeting, several hundred fans had materialized across the street to await Denzel's exit, along with mobs from the audience. A staff of at least three handlers and a cop worked barricades, and by the time they were configured for the Big Moment, I was trapped in the armpit of an Amazonian tourist-like female with upraised cellphone camera, three bodies deep into the crowd. Denzel emerged to a cheer and a hail of flashes, convivially signed for about the first 10 folks pressed against the gate, and vanished into his limo as I waved my news clipping (which I had slipped into a folder with a note: "Denzel, I sure got it right"). Foiled again! (I must here observe that, back in the day, Broadway stage doors, even for big stars, were much looser affairs and a fan both lucky and creative could get a surprising amount of access, but no more.)

Hey, it was a great evening...and a wonderful reminder that dreams can come true. I only dabbled in theater, and never became a famous critic, but as we strolled through the neon-flooded canyons on a beautiful spring evening with our willowy daughter, all seemed right with the world.

But if anyone knows how I can get a package backstage at the Cort, would you let me know?

Photos top and bottom: New York Times

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"...