The Iowa Review
Volume 12
Issue 1 Winter
1981
Boyhood Aesthetics
Jonathan Holden
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Holden, Jonathan. "Boyhood Aesthetics." The Iowa Review 12.1 (1981): 135-146. Web.
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Article 39
Boyhood
Aesthetics
Jonathan Holden
was nine, I knew
informa
TIMEI
THE
by heart such beautiful
F-86F Sabre (683 mph.
North American
the
tion as the ground
of
speed
two 166.5
at sea level), its combat radius (463 mi. with
Imp. gal. tanks),
.50
machine
cal.
its ferry range (1,525 mi.) and its armament
(six
guns).
BY
tone
most
airliners
commercial
I could
indoors,
by the
identify
most
the
and
familiar
the
their
of
unique
slightly gurgly
being
engines,
both
DC-4
and
the
DC-3.
The
the
of
DC-6,
song
four-engined
Douglas
Even
were
from the old Skytrain
by the greater heft
distinguishable
planes,
heard from greater altitude. The drone
of their engines,
and authority
more
was
Constellation
of the Lockheed
choppier,
rugged,
gruffer,
a
was
to noise
Stratocruiser
The Boeing
than to music.
closer
quiet,
In my
discreet mutter.
system of aesthetic priorities?a
highly developed
were more beautiful
than two
in
which
hierarchy
four-engined
planes
was as freakish
as a three-dollar
and a three-engined
plane
engined,
For one
it was
handsome.
Stratocruiser was particularly
bill?the
thing,
Its wings
and
more
airliners.
commercial
than most
manly
looking
A two
DC-series.
like those of the Douglas
weren't
rounded
fuselage
was
the
story liner, it was husky but not fat. It
ideally proportioned,
to six feet four, 250
its thin, severe
With
aeronautical
pounds.
equivalent
at the ends,
of the
view was
reminiscent
its bottom
wings
clipped
of great reserve, as
It was a distant,
B-29.
fatherly
plane,
legendary
as the narrow neckties
that became faddish
later in the fifties.
dignified
rare.
was
was
it
It
would
after
Its value
appear usually
high because
supper,
already
at
an
impressive
altitude,
on
a northwest
course,
the
late
sun
it all the more
its leading edges, making
royal,
gilding
orangish
out its red vertical
more
make
could
binoculars
you
kingly. Through
of Northwest
Airlines.
red and blue markings
the sumptuous
stabilizer,
summer
To me, stranded there in the stagnant
dusk, craning up at that
it
it like a brooch,
the sun jewelling
still in daylight,
magnificence
over Seattle and the
the plane were
seemed as though
Bering
already
Strait was just beyond.
the lowest rank and
In my scale of values, private aircraft occupied
to
The highest was restricted
commercial
the middle.
espe
warplanes,
were
was
the
in
w7hen
the
This
1950s,
military,
jets
only
early
cially jets.
over
had priority
and in my refined rating system, wing
configuration
Delta
of engines:
number
lowest,
swept-wing
higher.
straight-wing
135
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the sublunary
the faster
wing was o fi the scale, outside
sphere. Likewise,
a
its value. At around 700
a
the
jet's ground
plane
higher
mph.
speed,
was
to blur into myth.
As for the sound barrier?it
the
began
simply
transcendental.
Supersonic meant
of my
One of the great misfortunes
life, I believed, was that where
we lived, near the Great
in
New Jersey, was far from
northern
Swamp
were
more
air
force
all
the
beautiful
for their rarity, and
base.
any
Jets
limit
of
the literal.
the instant
I heard
one
scour
up
were
the sky. Usually
in the
bright haze
boring
unless
I'd go pounding
outdoors w7ith binoculars
and
was too
center that I
the tiny moving
sought
high
or it was above the clouds.
to be discerned
If it
of a vapor-trail
chalk-streak
day, I'd look for the moving
it. But
that
the
blue
after
the
through
pale germ
kept outrunning
a bomber,
a
even
it were
through field glasses all you
big plane,
a clear
or
At that
straight-wing
swept-back.
a
to
the
seemed
jets
glow,
acquire
ghostly
height,
stratospheric
have been some new,
top-secret
Any
jet might
swept-back
quality.
on its way west
to Edwards Air Force Base.
prototype
experimental
w7as so
to
I can't
Even now,
understand
w7hy it
important
wholly
a
it
could
be
unless
identification.
make positive
Somehow,
named,
jet
even
I couldn't
elusive.
the memory
of it securely
remained
possess
could
tell was whether
lit with
the jet was
a
in the rare instances
that a jet would
appear over our
enough. When,
to
house
low enough
that I had a chance
it, I felt so lucky
recognize
a form of grace.
I can remember
that it seemed
early in my
literally
one
a strange
in
sultry Saturday morning
spring hearing
airplane religion
so
drone undercut
bass
that
and mighty
the
house,
by
poundings
deep
even
the earth, seemed
literally blanketed with
to shoulder
to
to see the
sky
rushing outside
of B-36's, herds of them all shoulder
and
pulsate,
formations
their progress
silhouettes
silvery
laboring west,
were
slow. The
immeasurably
planes
the wisp
spewing
occasionally
high, glowing,
an hour, the last of these
after
what
half
seemed
of a contrail.
Finally,
was silent, dimin
the trees, and the morning
formations
inched below
were
those great saurian
ished as if abandoned
by its gods. Where
planes
on that
on those
I don't know. But
back
headed?
morning,
looking
slow (435 mph.) muscle-bound
tremendous,
heavy
weren't
if, like a herd of Brontosauri,
they
making
west
in some desert
toward extinction
dump-site.
Not
wretchedly
136
to dwell
anywhere
in the boondocks,
near
an air
in a
force
place without
I wonder
bombers,
their last migration
base was
culture.
to be
isolated
It seemed
as
as life without
one of the new television
sets the
deprivation
to let
Mrs.
had
consented
had
Thompson
bought.
graciously
Thompsons
me
Show
each
brother
and
watch
The
evening
my
Howdy Doody
weekday
on their massive Admiral with
its shimmery
8-inch screen. When,
each
a
serious
news of Mr.
at dusk,
with
the shocking
satisfied, brimming
across
latest plot, we'd
home
field, entering
Thompson's
lope
sat
our silent house where Father and Mother
in the
living
expressionless
to
room
into Harper's and The New Yorker was like returning
frowning
the dark ages.
night
Bluster's
so it seemed, was blessed but me. Uncle
David
and
in
Massachusetts
found
the
South
up
actually
jet
Hadley,
I asked my cousin Larry
Field a nuisance. When
traffic from Westover
or
Everybody,
Aunt Peggy,
what
didn't
of fighters
they had up there,
a lot of
know, but there sure were
kind
he
remarked
that he
wryly
them.
Lin, and his family were even luckier. They
brother,
lived no more
than five miles
from Wright-Patterson
in Ohio.
Field,
the maps of the
One day I discovered
that, in our Hammond's
Atlas,
states show7ed the names
of air force bases:
individual
and locations
Uncle
Mother's
a
Stewart
Moses
Lake, Nellis,
and, of
Biggs,
possibility!),
(quite near,
to the Vatican.
in my
the equivalent
course, Edwards,
religion
over these maps
state
I spent
afternoons
going
by
long, productive
state until Iwas satisfied that I'd memorized
the names and locations of
and nondescript
The most unpromising
every air force base in America.
area of the country,
such as Texas,
could suddenly become
interesting.
center which
I
every state had at least one shrine, its cultural
Nearly
were
area.
ever
to
visit it I
in the
Even
resolved
lowly New Jersey had
some culture?McGuire
in
Air Force Base, a two-hour
drive
south,
the gray lull of a spring
by Fort Dix. One day, during
Wrightstown,
we
a
that
Mother
vacation,
day in Wright
suggested
brightly
spend
at the
stown
"looking
jets."
are
It was one of the best days of my
life. Some parts of New
Jersey
so
so
worst elements
of
the
that
all
the
exhibit,
glum,
blighted
landscape
a somber aesthetic
like a Charles
of heavy
Sheeler painting
industry,
a
consistency,
grisly beauty. The view from the Pulaski
Skyway
is like that: the sickly waters of the Hackensack
the Jersey meadows
Passaic,
rotten
the tarnished
pilings,
like organ pipes
arrayed
brick faces of tenements,
atmosphere
south?the
below?an
innards
infernal
of
the chemical
orchestra?the
over
and
industry
blackened
the bridges measuring
of the smoky
the
depths
the
the Ver
Goethals
Bayonne
Bridge,
Bridge,
137
razano Narrows
hazy smiles of the bridges arching over the
Bridge?the
like arias. It is this difficult
was William
gray waters
beauty which
Carlos Williams'
obsession:
is a
There
plume
of fleshpale
smoke
the blue
upon
silver
sky. The
that
rings
strap
the yellow7
brick
stack at
wide
shine
intervals
in this amber
light?not
of the sun not of
the pale
sun but
his born
the
brother
season.
declining
As a boy I understood
this kind of beauty.
Itwas like the dubious
beauty
of a maximum
and air force bases had it?miles
of
security
facility,
storm fence, barbed wire,
search
the
towers,
runways
lights,
hangars,
like superhighways
off to the horizon
events
w7here vague
running
out
in
occurred
the oily distance,
and the silvery mirages
of the jets
congregated.
For about
hours, parked on
lunch of chicken-salad
four
a
with
the cinders
of
the shoulder,
armed
and Iwatched
Mother
sandwiches,
picnic
of North
American
F-86D
Sabres maneuver.
Some of them,
squadrons
as
over the barracks,
in
low
their
like tea
they lagged
engines peeping
a
kettles
so close that I
sooty smudge of fumes, whispered
leaking
by
on the
could see all the networks
of pop-rivets
the
nub of the
fuselage,
pilot's
down
into
In time,
138
as the
huge machine
zone
the
I could
where
helmet
Iwas
to visit
other
sank away
not
shrines.
sighing
over
the fence
trespass.
Iwould
spend, with
Father,
one
at the
of Otis
sallow7, hazy afternoon
perimeter
on
was
I
the
surfeited
until
Cod,
shape of the
from the three-view
memorized
I'd religiously
Observer's Book of Aircraft but which,
Pollinger's
had never hoped to see.
most
I would
of a day with Uncle
spend
Field,
Wright-Patterson
a
a
Air
Force Base,
Starfire?a
in
Cape
F-94C
shape
in Green
and
drawings
I
until that morning,
Lin, on a bus tour of
a virtual
climaxed
by
day
banquet of different
a
a dark,
which
included
gourmet
sampling
must be an actual Martin
I
that
realized
jet
jets parked by
hangar,
mantis-like,
twin-engined
in its
It had an aura of evil, like
B-57,
night camouflage.
P-39 Black Widow7
the sinister,
twin-boomed
Northrop
the model
of
all-weather
night-fighter which Tony Remsen and I had made. The Black Widow!
Fully assembled, with all its aerials and guns like the feelers and stingers
it
harm.
of a fat, heavily
armored, black scorpion,
literally bristled with
was
a
I
member
of
the
Audubon
like
then,
any
By
Society,
keeping
and military
of
which
I'd
made
list of all the commercial
planes
"posi
tive
the Ground
like
If I'd been
identification."
years older,
volunteer
I would
have
joined
which,
Corps,
organization
now sounds
the mission
"Civil Defense,"
o?
prehistoric:
to
that had slipped through U.S.
bombers
identify Russian
a civilian
Observer
the term
a few
the Corps was
radar. I kept my
"Friend-or-Foe"
desk, rubber banded to the heavy wad of 200
cards
I'd collected
sheets of brittle,
by buying
airplane
I'd immediately
I had the only
bubble gum which
discard.
flesh-colored
set on Pleasantvllle
the result of
Road,
complete
dogged barter.
more
But
the list was much
valuable
than the cards. True,
great
was
beauty of the Gloucester
Jave
beauty
by the cards?the
prefigured
at over 700
lin, a British delta-wing
jet, its speed "secret" but "estimated
mph."?a
bombers,
descended
list in my
like the British
jet which,
vampire-shaped
a
was
in
less
gothic
phantasm
sunlight
from the realm of faerie.
directly
Vickers
than
delta-wing
a silver
sprite
so far
that, even going
Early in my tenderness for planes, I 'd noticed
were more
back asWorld War
II, the shapes of British
planes
organic
to the
than those of American
stubby, square-tipped
planes. Compared
the wrings of the Supermarine
of the P-51 Mustang,
wings
Spitfire and
were curved
the Hawker
like vowels more fully
Hurricane,
a British
as if the very
accent. The
of
the
had
rounded,
shapes
planes
was
a
P-51
writh
shoulders
its
gray, pug-nosed
blocky
clearly
tough-guy,
a
its wrings like curved leaves and its canopy
city kid. The Spitfire, with
its cousin,
set
jauntily
far back on
the fuselage
like
the cockpit
of a baby Austin,
139
streamlined
seemed
its sand-and-spinach
P-51 was a machine:
for the sake of beauty alone, a thoroughbred. With
it was pastoral, aristocratic,
refined. The
markings,
was
a
the Spitfire
gull.
had a dialect. The most
country
fascinating
of
that of the enemy.
course,
shadowy was,
Every
as the CIA, I awaited
as
when
Russians
the
May Day,
spring,
impatiently
in the
Iwas now
reveal some new jets?jets which,
might
airplane books
were
black-and-white
always depicted by grainy, amateurish,
collecting,
In aircraft
it was
because
design,
so
each
our
was
a
I knew,
The
taken,
spies. MIGs!
by
expletive
out
for
of
ambush,
synonym
knee-jerk
evil?Apaches
bursting
riding
was easy to
down out of the sun. The MIG-15
like the Sabre
recognize:
snapshots
an
but with
obscenely
high tail-fin. And, like the shark, like any stylized
were
MIGs
all
devoid of humor. They were
identical,
enemy,
bleakly
like
the
of
but
the
craft
beautiful;
beauty
Empire's
stubby functional
was
a
sort. The MIG-15
in Star Wars, theirs
of minimalist
resembled
the
brain-washed
Communists
wooden,
obedient,
who,
suicidally
toMrs. Lee, my fourth
them. Puritan,
according
grade teacher, piloted
to the
I studied in such
gray, crude?the
stylistic equivalent
"burp gun"
as Two-Fisted
war comics
MIG was
Tales?the
issued in gray carbon
a world where,
were
it seemed obvious,
too arid
conditions
copies from
faceless,
for
romance.
so little
Whereas
the MIG
that it didn't even
possessed
individuality
have a name, our planes were human. Reciting
the lineage of the Boeing
its progressively
bomber series, with
elaborated motif?Flying
Fortress to
to
to
never
doubted
that the men
Super Fortress
Stratojet
Stratofor tress?I
who designed
these planes and named them were
like me, moved
by the
same
men at Lockheed
the
who
dreamed
the
up
longings:
Shooting Star,
then the Starfire, theti the Starfighter; the men at Republic
who dreamed
first
the Thunderjet,
then
Thunder chief.
the Thunder streak, the Thunderflash,
and finally
the F-103
list of planes
I'd spotted was more
than a list of shapes. It was
My
a list of
as baseball statistics were,
and
elusive experiences,
just
complex
a measure
or
as an
for me then, not so much
of performance
efficiency
aesthetic measurement
from which
could
the
evoke
you
magically
peculiar mystique?the
Bases: 29. RBI: 63. HR:
in his
1951 season for
the essence
140
of
a star.
Batting Average:
4. Hits: 221 ?these
numbers were Richie
character?of
the Phillies.
the Dodgers'
Won:
Preacher
19. Lost:
Roe
11. ERA:
.344. Stolen
Ashburn
3.30. This
in 1950. Likewise,
certain
is
three-view
shapes?the
were
I used
of planes?which
to flashes of irrecoverable
silhouettes
the shorthand
to whet
my
beauty.
a
home from Ohio
after coming
of weeks
(on Martin
404),
list and erased the B-57. You
the elastic band, unfolded my
take credit for spotting a plane on the ground. The parked,
imagination,
A couple
I untwisted
just couldn't
B-57 was
like a stuffed scarlet tanager I'd seen in the Museum
placid
too available.
It was
listless.
The
natural
of Natural
History,
oddly
in the narrow7
skies when,
habitat of planes was sky: Steep, windy April
the fraying walls
of stratocumulus,
if you were
blue chasms between
a
little fighter
the mica fleck of
lucky, you could glimpse
leaping the
down
the sky-canyon
like
gap, catch the lonely echo it left crumbling
late afternoon
stained
shreds of shale debris. Hazy
skies,
orange,
through
Constellation
which
you could hear the growl of a Lockheed
heading
west but couldn't
it w7as almost behind Cissels'
locate it until
spruce
the sun hit
trees, when
it
and
right,
the Constellation,
lived up to its name.
like a
kindling
Solid slate skies
in the general glare,
tiny candelabra
and the thin how7l of a jet was like the
when
sounds carried for miles,
rumor of some great trouble above the clouds. The
three-view
drawing
was
not
shorthand
of the Navy's
my
just for the
Douglas
Skyknight
of the light,
of seeing it. Itwas part and parcel of the weather,
experience
had been its habitat.
day which
was one of those rare
saw
to
two
The day I
days when,
Skyknights
summer heat, my
to the
parents had decided we'd go
escape the stifling
the night before filled me w7ith quiet determi
shore. The announcement
of
the whole
nation.
Never
had we
to the shore when
I hadn't
spotted several
Even
white
commercial
insignias.
new value in
if only
dress,
military
faster
of
aircraft.
the
Al
they prefigured
tougher,
possibility
in God,
I shunned church and was pretty sure I didn't believe
to pray. I asked God
before we left for the shore I w7as careful
gone
Navy
planes with
warplanes?blue
DC-3 acquired
like
the
banal
planes
because
though
the night
to make
I was
sure a few
were around. Then,
in case God wondered
jets
wrhy
never
Him
for
and
giving Him
always asking
things
anything
back, I quickly
grateful
moment.
stretched
thanked Him
for all the things I knew I should be
were at the
exactly what
they
I closed my eyes,
all I could,
and wraited for the fan to lull me to
I couldn't
remember
though
I'd done
that
satisfied
Finally
for,
out on
top of
the sheets
sleep.
The
in the days before
drive south to Sea Bright,
fifty-mile
turnpikes,
w7as dull and slow and
But for me it was
For one thing,
thrilling.
ugly.
141
in Plainfield
two major
the B&O
and the
railways,
me
In
trains
in
those
had
for
Metuchen.
days,
Pennsylvania
something
trains.
streamlined
of the elusive beauty of planes, especially
passenger
To behold one of these?say,
the Royal Blue on its w7ay toWashington?
on the
concrete
its chrome
coach cars basking
soot-blackened
dingy,
me
as if a Queen who
center
in
left
the
of
Plainfield,
overpass
feeling
was both beautiful
Iwas positive
and good, from a realm which
had to
to
in her silk regalia,
of
exist, had deigned,
light up the drabness
our
route
crossed
of some gleaming,
frictionless
streamlined,
be
for.
someday
ready
of the Manhattan
Farther south, if the day were clear, were glimpses
names and
I
New
and
had
memorized
the
brother
skyline. My
shapes of
names
memorize
the
the
of
mountain
York's
way you
skyscrapers,
peaks
Plainfield
future
in order
with
a
promise
Imight
to
the Chrysler
recognize
their
Building,
in midtown,
a movie
standing together
were
State Building
countenances.
State
Empire
Building,
w7ere like a
Building?they
family
As if the Empire
king, queen and prince.
star, we both agreed that the thin view of
The
the RCA
him was
in our
handsomest.
South of Perth Amboy,
chugging
along
was
a
the
Manhattan
1949 Plymouth
cluster
of
Suburban,
skyline
spires
a
so
was all the more
tiny and dim that, like the speck of
high jet, it
to see it,
it was clear
On
the rare instances when
tantalizing.
enough
was
as
out
I would
It
and
the
excited.
of
characterless
if,
get
Stephen
huddle of the New Jersey landscape,
the faint suggestion
of a beautiful
on
face in profile had appeared
and familiar
the horizon.
there were
the bridges?gray,
each
w7ith its serious expres
Then
lacy,
over
we
out
water of Raritan
like
knew
there
the
sion,
people
choppy
a few
we could visit
serious
old
Bay?the
only
bridges,
acquaintances
a
never
as
we
times
it is that,
attach
kids,
year. I'll
fully understand why
to
We
it
this charge of emotional
did
with
marbles.
energy
King,
things.
a
and an aesthetic
Big Bubber?each
possessed
personality
I think that, even as adults, our apprehension
of beauty
some sense of
involve
recognition.
subjective
ranking. But
must
always
the sand was still cool, I glanced up from
Shortly before noon, while
a wet deviled
w7as
an
I was trying to keep sand
which
like
egg
eyeball
out of as I
sixth sense for jets had
paper. My
separated it from its waxed
over the wash of a
sadly listless surf, the indolent w7histle jets
picked up,
make as they coast. And there they wrere, twro chunky Skyknights
maybe
a thousand feet up, out over the water,
in no hurry,
north
sauntering
was
as
no
were. And
the
toward Sandy Hook. There
question w7hat they
142
twin
from the grains of light and
finally
indistinguishable
over
New York Bay, and I gave the south
haze
somewhere
sure no more miracles were about to
a cursory
to make
surveillance
fly
a
out of it, I felt as
movie
and Gene
stars, Roy Rogers
though
couple of
them. I knew
that all the
had come past and only I had noticed
Autry,
hours I spent daydreaming
about planes and
them
had
paid off,
drawing
two
faith
which
had
that it was my devotion,
enabled
the
stalwart
my
specks grew
to the north
Skyknights
to manifest
out of the hot dreariness
themselves
of summer
vacation.
sense of it, our conviction
that we're behold
Beauty?our
subjective
a
as
is similar but
I've
ing it?involves,
already hinted,
"feeling" which
we
we
not identical to the
experience when
recognize
feeling
something
a
a
a
Like
familiar?a
lost in a
car,
face,
three-year-old
landscape.
we
out his mother's
who
crowded
discover
that
face,
supermarket,
picks
we
have
the unique
character?the
singular gestalt?of
But
the three-year-old's
part
upon
experience.
feeling
flood of relief and, perhaps,
rage at her for
"Mommy"?a
glimpsing
to be aesthetic,
For an experience
it must
aesthetic.
disappearing?isn't
seem beauti
involve some degree of abstraction.
In order that
something
some
"memorized"
our
of
in it some sense of its
for recognition
ful, we must discover
typicality;
a
a
sense
of the beautiful
involves
of its singularity
paradox of feelings:
and typicality both. To me, as a boy, the beauty of the Douglas Skyknight?
or the actual
in the air?combined
of the three-view
both
plane
drawing
a
the
feelings. Like any familiar face,
Skyknight
possessed
unique shape.
name it?was
to attribute
to it
To identify
this shape?to
typicality.
The subtler the set of cues by which we "recognize"
and
something,
the greater the degree of abstraction
involved when we match
these cues
our
to some abstract pattern,
is. The lost
the more "aesthetic"
"feeling"
senses her
not her
his
mother
who
finds
but
three-year-old
familiarity
and typicality defines the
uniqueness
aesthetic
The upper
limit is
range
experience.
a
too
exceeded by people who
aesthetic experi
readily reduce
potentially
ence into an abstraction,
its
its
who
and
ignore
uniqueness,
quality,
typicality. This
lower limit of
dwell
entirely
by Woods
ping
death-wish"
imbalance
between
the
of
on
its
on a
is an
Snowy
upper-limit
which
range of experience
describe
thus: the subjective
notion
The
typicality.
Evening"
violation.
I'll
call
sense
that Robert
is a poem
Within
"aesthetic"
of beauty
"about
these
Frost's
"Stop
the Freudian
limits
and which
is an
intimation
lies
the
I would
of
the
143
of experience.
character
elusive
late-November
cold,
to snow,"
tion, "It's going
to tense
"a land that/began
he means.
what
when
"Duwamish"
P.M./on
And
we
We
all know
snow
when
afternoon,
is aesthetic. When
he writes,
exactly
imminent.
William
for deliberate
itself all day
know
that gray
is
what
of a
intima
Stafford writes,
snow," we know
means
in
Hugo
the river. Cold
like 4
Richard
like
"Gray/cold
suspense
Our
Sunday."
which
is another aspect to aesthetic
should
experience
perhaps
to
is
in
restricted
Aesthetic
without
go
experience
experience
saying.
w7e find value. This
those domains
of
which
excludes,
by definition,
we associate with
It also excludes
which
shame.
experience
experience
There
as a
easily available. For me,
boy, the deepest aesthetic contemplation
to summon
the way
the
from a three-view7 drawing
entailed
trying
tanks
the
and
slid
off
the
of
brushed
Starfires
wing-tip
shabby sunlight
too
bank way out over the scrub
to describe
in my mind's
eye
trying
in the drab
traced as curve after curve dissolved
in the heat-shimmer,
as, buoyant
It meant
flats of Otis.
and macadam
the pure trajectories
they
like caresses w7hich
afternoon
was
never
to
they'd
last quite
at a tiny,
long enough
pale arrowhead
squint through field glasses
a snowy brow of cumulus,
against time
working
through
to
its name.
of
find
the moment
against pages
shapes,
to grasp.
It
plunging
to try to match
to "collect"
to name
it in the
is the impulse
The
something
impulse
a
sense of
it into
that of a list.
familiar
context,
usually
incorporating
It may
stuffed birds or artists' canvasses.
This
list may be of minerals,
a
to "collect,"
instinct
in
But
the
be simply a list of words,
vocabulary.
sense that I use it here, is also aesthetic.
In listing
the
the figurative
Iwas trying to collect a special type of experience.
planes I'd glimpsed,
Iwas after was not a literal collection
of planes. Had my parents
What
a
me for Christmas
Star and trucked
it
F-80
Shooting
surplus
bought
it would,
into the backyard,
like the B-57
that I erased from my
list,
to me
than the apparition
of those twin
have been far less valuable
over Sea
Bright.
Skyknights
was the
lazy and ultimately
The
theme of collection
a familiar
theme
poem
Duke
144
one
Literal
collection
didn't
alternative
satisfy
to art.
me.
That
unexciting
as a
is
of the aesthetic
perversion
impulse
on
most
in literature.
the
famous
the
poem
Probably
In the most
that
"My Last Duchess."
explicit way,
that art, epitomized
the
the notion
presents
by the painting which
of his wife
before murdering
has commissioned
her, is the best
is Browning's
available
most
crudest
have
to possess
extent
that it is possible)
the
(to the limited
same time, the poem demonstrates
At
the
in
the
beauty.
that to literally own and possess something
beautiful,
you
means
elusive
way
to kill
The
it.
as evil abounds
too. For
in fiction,
example,
a
Portrait
of Henry
James'
of
Lady and Edward
are collectors
is
for collection
whose mania
of Middlemarch
of collection
theme
both Gilbert
Casaubon
Osmond
who
collects
has transformed
his
Osmond,
art-objects,
a sad,
into
Once
Isabel
Archer
doll.
daughter, Pansy,
perfectly-mannered
is in his possession,
in her. The
he loses interest
through marriage,
life-destroying.
who
also
scholar, Casaubon,
possesses,
serious
Dorothea
beautiful
and
Brooke,
to his
ornament
life while
he busies
the young,
through marriage,
maintains
her as a
peripheral
himself with his life's work, which
to
a
to all
Proba
is, appropriately
"Key
enough,
compile
mythologies."
most
treatment of this theme in prose fiction
the
is
bly
gruelling
John
a
means
in which
Fowles' The Collector,
man,
young
by
psychopathic
a beautiful,
art student and
to
of chloroform,
young
attempts
kidnaps
as one
a
or a live
a
case.
in
her
In
all of
pet
butterfly
keep
glass
keeps
we
see that to treat the beautiful
as part of a
these works,
tangible
is to deny its life. Indeed, to freeze movement
is to deny the
collection
nature of life itself, as illustrated
poem by
by the following
beautifully
Albert Goldbarth:
The
of Porno
Origin
equine series
1878: theMuybridge
the horse, we
Studying
how hard-core
followed
question,
which
point
the invention
a dark
There's
of photography.
muscle
framed
a
understand
by
the flanks.
compelling
There's
an academic
in a
question,
the
female
leap
of at
breast
is highest?
light
a
In the early stopwatched
studies,
a scree. There's
down
the
breasts
like
slopes
question
exactitude.
of
The
time,
there's
powder
a
sepia
erupts:
145
in the foreground?two
In the back, a clocked
lovers/
a basket/
thoroughbred
red wine.
sudses.
Is there ever a moment when all four feet
invent pornography.
leave the ground? And so we
I was
in San Francisco,
to a
military
finally granted my boyhood
dream?proximity
near
east
at
Twin
faced
air base. Our
Peaks,
flat, situated
directly
across the
ten miles
Air Station
Naval
Alameda
bay. Late afternoons
were best for
when
the
would
be at my back,
Alameda,
light
observing
a frozen
as
assumed
brilliance
and the white
they stared
buildings
at the sun, a hillside
of white
and
the
hard, blue strip
rubble,
blindly
of the East Bay looked as if you could step across it.
It wasn't
until
the
late sixties,
wrhen
living
that Iwas
field glasses, you could see the day's training flights
strag
Through
down across the powder blue
insects floating
slow
in,
diagonally
gling
as the sun set, a
of the hills where,
twenty miles
picture window
profile
so that even without
sun
it was
the
field
echo
the
away might
glasses
as if in the mountains
there had lodged a reddish-white
behind Oakland
star. Most
resembled
bats
of the jets were Douglas
Skyhaw7ks?they
more than hawks?and
attack planes
McDonnell
Phantoms, mean-looking
all business.
and stubby, meat-cleaver
bodies
wings,
wasp-like
a Phantom would
curve back across the
the
Sometimes
bay
day
during
a thousand feet up. It had a characteristic
and over the rooftops, maybe
roar:
sound, like heavy canvas being
jets merely
ripped. Commercial
snarl.
jets fume,
military
a carrier like a
for a couple of weeks,
Once,
only
long gray cloud?the
out in that silent blue
that there was a war going on?existed
reminder
shimmer. On the deck wrere lined up copies of a snub-nosed jet I couldn't
It no
Corsairs.
have been Chance-Vought
identify. They might
quite
more
were
than
little
Planes,
very much.
by then,
longer mattered
was
in the clouds but the
it some elusive
No
emblems.
shape
longer
dim countenance
of my experience?a
which,
though
larger character
that a boy in America
the
I
think
ways
may
unlikely
typify
singular,
to
to
to
I wanted
must
follow
beauty?that
tropism
satisfy the human
with
name.
146