The Œuvre of Edward Hopper: Day 30

I came to Edward Hopper's work in college, when I was working on an honour's project about the disappearance of my great-great grandfather in the fifties. John Omerza, it was said, disappeared from Ely, Minnesota without a trace, a whole series of rumours following after him. I knew the version of the story in which he drown in quick sand in the wilderness of the boundary waters where Ely is sat, on the edge of the American frontier.

Hopper's eye is drawn to people looking out of windows. I love how you can always see the sun in a Hopper painting, even though it is not in the frame.

I deliberately chose a few of the paintings I dislike of Hopper's (see Day 7 and Day 12); ones in which his people are embarrassingly bad. I understand the point: the figure as an idea. But I don't see the idea, not like I see the ideas in Rothko. I just see a mannequin.

I also didn't choose Hopper's most famous painting, the one I have seen the most in person at the Art Institute in Chicago with Bacon, and that Gustave Caillebotte painting that Heather and I sat in front of in the Summer of 1999. We were there with my parents and sister, I remember: I have a picture pasted in a journal from the day. These others I don't remember seeing in person, but there must have been one or two I have seen along the way, in New York or London.

Hopper, in my mind, is a great artist, but not all of his art is great. I hope this month has made that point clearly.

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 29

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 28

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 27

Two years

Mia, you were born on the greyest of mornings only two years ago. You will get bigger and bigger, I'm sure.

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 26

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 25

Having an eternal prospective

A tweet earlier today reminded me of something I used to hear and say when I was religious: We must have an eternal perspective. Washing the dishes, looking out into the alley, I remembered this phrase verbatim: what a ridiculous, silly, arrogant thing to think you can do. Have an eternal perspective.

Taman Sri Minang woke in a haze, fires in Sumatra burning, reducing — as a friend and colleague noted on Facebook — an ancient rainforest to an acrid stench. Everything is covered in grey dust and you aren't supposed to go outside when it is at its worst. We cleaned for most of Sunday and then left to Auntie and Uncle's house for a going-away party. The smell is incredible; the whole world burning just beyond the horizon.

In the heat of the weekend (tasks: mopping and napping, waiting for the night to come), I told Yoko what I realised while she was gone: we are going to be here, in Malaysia, until something moves us. I've stopped looking for a job and being able to imagine going somewhere else. It's been six months now, and I've started leaning into the curve, rather than trying to slow down, to stop. The fundamentals don't change with changes in scenery: move enough and you learn that. Like a stain you wash and think you've removed, but reappears. Any problem you have will follow you wherever you go: the weather is not the problem, the salary is not the problem. You can exacerbate problems and ease them, but you can't solve them without solving them. A tautology, sure, but tautologies are always right. Perfectly balanced equations, perfectly true.

The world may be burning, but that doesn't mean the end of anything. As I left to pick up my brother and his family at the airport last night, Yoko followed me, reaching out to say, 'I love you' at the threshold of the house. I thought suddenly, morbidly, that if I died, that moment would hang, perfectly, a kind of brief summit in a year of valleys. Kisses under smouldering incandescent light, the moon coming closer and closer, touching the treetops.

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 24

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 23

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 22

Blame it on a black star

Walking up the road to Kajang station, I hear the sound and catch a glimpse of two bodies flung into the air from a motorbike. Ejected like from a catapult: they must have hit something in the road. I run out into traffic, my right hand flagging down a car to stop it. One young man on the ground, holding his right leg and wincing in pain, I tell him to relax and try to keep him from trying to stand up. The reaction of the body after falling is to try to stand. That's the reflex: get up and walk it off — it's okay, everything is okay. A woman behind me is asking if someone can call an ambulance; I give her my phone and the rider on the ground is now scooting across the blacktop on both hands, trying to get out of the way of the cars turning into the tadika car park that I just realise now we are blocking. Two others, Chinese Malaysians, come up and kneel down next to the rider; the woman who took my phone gives it back, saying that the headmaster has called the hospital. There's nothing I can do, really. I pick up my bag and walk away. 

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 21

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 20

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 19

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 18

Let us touch you

The KLIA television station in the budget terminal plays a series of commercials about the greatness of the country and the airport on loop. One cheery song and dance routine includes the phrase, Let us touch you with ironic images of men greeting women and putting their hands across their chests. Quaint, polite, and foreign, but I hate this every time I see it: Shake the woman's hand: she doesn't have cooties. The video goes on and on with slogans that clean up Malaysian English into something more international, but are self-congratulatory: Malaysia is great, how nice the people are, how well run and safe everything is. Slouched down in a plastic chair at five in the morning, waiting, I'm less patient than I normally would be: something, please something make sense.

The family returned and suitcases exploded with things from Japan. Naomi and Mei — and Mia now too—  are full of stories and chatting, all the things they did and saw. Within hours I am mopping up pee and soy milk again, listening to criticism of my cooking and what I bought: only hours before the house was empty and clean and quiet. Mei sits closely to me on the sofa and finally someone says what I've been waiting and waiting to hear: that she missed me and cried once, when she was brushing her teeth, because I wasn't there.

Everything I write and experience is so predictable, so stereotypical. Every man with small three kids and a wife feels the same way: 80% of us. Just say what you're supposed to, then shut the hell up. If there is any truth, it's this: people say things that they're supposed to say, and your response should be the preferred response. 'It must be great to have everyone back' and the truth is not what people want to hear. Narratives of marriage and paternity are set and they are simple ones, uncomplicated ones. Say yes, that's all. Don't think too much about it. Say the right thing out of cowardice.

The women are all tired, particularly their mother, and then awake at the wrong times. I ended up kicked out of the bed in the middle of the night, as usual. I woke to sounds — not the azan, not the alarm clock, not the silence — showered, and hugged and kissed everyone goodbye, like the last month hadn't happened.

The multiverse simmers and bubbles. I don't know enough about the theory to make it anything but a sloppy metaphor for my own experience. In a Murakami novel, one can shuttle between two universes, but here, in this universe, the bus still comes at 5:15 and I must make it home in time for a dinner I don't think I should eat — I've eaten enough for the next three months. There are, after all, consequences to the choices that we make.

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 17

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 16

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 15

The D in Detroit

Mia kept telling me last week, from behind the glass, that fireworks are hot, pointing to her hand where she apparently got too close to a sparkler. She said it again and again, in a-matter-of-fact way, like it's not something I know. You too should be careful, daddy.

A month of Edward Hopper: Day 14