TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 186

[Tobie Shapiro]

March 23, 20000000000007


Dear You Who,

	I took my mother and Feyna to the 
UCBerkeley art museum for my mother's birthday. 
There was a Bruce Nauman exhibit.  Bruce Nauman 
is an artist who produced definition bending work 
during the 60s and 70s.  He was a painter first, 
and then a sculptor, but mostly a conceptual 
artist.  The show was wonderful.  Even my mother 
enjoyed herself, though the art was weird. 
There's one piece he did that intrigued all of us 
(I'd seen it before in L.A. in the 70s).  It's a 
ten by ten foot room, actually it's probably a 
cube come to think of it: ten by ten by ten, 
that's my guess.  And in two opposite walls are 
mounted some speakers, flush with the wall, and 
painted the neutral ivory colour the rest is 
painted.  You go in and stand there for a while, 
listening to this urgent raspy voice bouncing off 
the walls at you.  It comes from different 
positions in the room, defining a shape, a space, 
if you were to draw dots in the air between the 
perceived sources of the sounds.  The voice is 
saying, "Get out of this room.  Get out of my 
mind."  You are torn as to whether you want to 
stand there, or follow the instructions and leave 
immediately.  Wonderful bit of art commenting on 
the relationship between artist and viewer.

	Feyna was fulfilling an assignment for 
her humanities class by going to a museum and 
writing in a journal about one piece of artwork. 
She plopped herself down in front of a sculpture, 
took out her binder and started writing.  My 
mother and I waited down in the entrance hall 
where tables and chairs had been set up and books 
about Bruce Nauman had been scattered around.  We 
read while Feyna did her assignment.  She took a 
long time.  And my mother was tiring of waiting. 
How to keep everyone happy?  I went up to sit 
next to Feyna.  She had almost finished her 
writing, but had decided for extra credit to 
sketch the sculpture.  It was  divided into two 
parts.  The bottom part was a plaster mold of 
folded arms, covered in black bee's wax.  It was 
very detailed.  Every knuckle and bone in the 
hands was reproduced.  The mold went up only 
about an inch or two above where the hands folded 
into the arms.  From that point what emerged from 
the mold of the arms were thick nautical ropes, 
each rope made of three smaller ropes bound 
together.  The ropes rose up over the arms and 
entangled themselves in a complicated knot, 
looked like a random knot, asymmetrical, that was 
tied together by a metal cord to keep it from 
falling apart.  The ropes and knot where 
suspended from a large nail hammered into the 
wall.

	The folded arms were not hard to 
replicate for Feyna; she is a trained artist. 
But the ropes, the intricate knot was another 
matter.  It went this way and that, in and out, 
behind and through, looping in front of and in 
back of itself with the chopped off ends of the 
length of rope hanging down to the sides of the 
arms.  She really had to work on this.  It was 
going to take time, and Gramma was restless. 
She'd sat in the chair and read about Bruce 
Nauman to her fill.  Her legs were hurting her. 
She wanted to go home.  I travelled back and 
forth between my mother and Feyna, urging both of 
them on.  It was getting close to closing time at 
the museum.  Feyna kept saying, "I'm going as 
fast as I can."  I went back to my mother.  She'd 
found a good photograph, in colour, and large, of 
the exact sculpture Feyna was drawing, in one of 
the books.  The book was available in the Museum 
Store, along with other books about Nauman.  She 
offered to buy the book for Feyna so she could 
continue her work at home.  I looked at the 
photograph.  There was one problem.  It was 
backwards.  Indeed, the image was reversed.  "She 
could look at it in a mirror," my mother 
suggested, facetiously, laughing.

	I went back up to Feyna.  She'd blocked 
in the knot, and I asked if she could finish the 
drawing at home.  She said, "I guess so, but I 
better sketch in the lines showing the direction 
of the twists of the rope."  She drew those in 
rapidly.  We were then ready to leave.  A fine 
time was had by all.  My mother loves art 
museums, as do I.  I think Feyna is starting to 
love them, too.  I especially enjoy modern art 
museums.  I love figuring out what the artist, as 
cultural visionary, is trying to do.  It used to 
be that artists recorded events and people.  They 
were documenters.  But photography took over that 
task.  Now artists are messengers of forms of 
truths.  This is the aspiration anyway.  The 
arts, the arts, the arts.  My home.




 
µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ
                                   ‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡
                                  ½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½



Extreme Gift Giving

	My brother, Daniel, and I have a history 
of gift giving that has brought us much mutual 
joy.  We've always been close, and especially so 
where our senses of humour are concerned.  This 
is the intersection, gift giving and humour, 
which inspired us.  It started out with the 
Channukah exchange at our Grandparents' house. 
Daniel and I conspired to give my mother a joint 
gift.

	This was the era when feminine deodorant 
sprays were attempting to be foisted on the 
American public.  Women were being told that our 
nether regions were odiferous and required some 
form of freshener.  Since Adam and Eve we have 
smelled of feminine juices, but now, in the 
latter part of the twentieth century, we were 
going to have to correct nature's omission with 
sprays, forms of air wick, which would transform 
our undesirable triangles of pubic hair and 
vaginal folds into mountain springs, strawberry 
patches, and evening mist.  The image deodorant 
manufacturers were trying to convey was that each 
woman had an unfortunate hole emanating a putrid 
stench that could be easily detected through our 
underwear, our panty hose, our slips, skirts or 
jeans, coats or jackets.  Multiple layers of 
cotton polyester protection were not enough to 
mask this rank aroma God had given us, perhaps to 
punish us for the Garden of Eden affair, along 
with death and childbirth.

	 "Go thee forth from the Garden and 
suffer an humiliation of odors, foul to the 
senses!"

	Our first line of defense must have been 
the fig leaf.  But everyone knows that didn't 
work on anything but a statue.  Through the ages 
we had been reviled by every species with a nose, 
but in modern times, science and commerce would 
combine their talents to find the long sought 
cure.  We would be redeemed.  We would be 
redeemed at $5.99 a can, good for one hundred 
applications.  I imagine all us reeking women 
inserting perfume soaked tampons and walking 
about, finally free from worry.  Then for that 
extra added protection, sprites our birth holes 
with feminine deodorant sprays.  FDS.  If you 
wonder where all these products went, and why you 
don't see a whole wall of them in the stores, in 
your supermarkets, you may credit either the 
savvy of the average female consumer who just 
would not be sold on the idea, or the average 
sniffer of femalia who was rightly taken aback by 
the smell of a fruit stand wafting out from 
m'lady's crotch, and admonishing her to lay off 
the can.  The industry surrendered to common 
sense.  A big flop on the market.  But when FDS 
was first introduced on the market, the 
television and magazines were flooded with 
advertisements and the spray cans were on the 
shelves in number.

	Daniel and I purchased a can of FDS.  I 
took it back home with me and modified the label 
so that it read, "FDS, Feminine Deodorant Spray, 
Industrial Strength, Thermonuclear Power."  It 
looked just as if it had been manufactured with 
the wording emblazoned on the can in bright 
yellow.  We carefully repackaged the can in the 
box which I had also altered to read, "NEW! 
Secret Formula.  Scientifically proven.  Doctor 
Recommended.  Four out of five vaginas agree." 
We wrapped this box nicely in cheerful paper, 
affixed bows and ribbons, and attached a card 
reading, "Warning.  Do not open this in front of 
Grandma."  Gramma was rather proper.

	The laugh we got out of our mother was 
worth all the falsification of labels and boxes. 
Our only regret was that in order to satirize the 
dreaded product, we had to reward the industry by 
buying a can.  Daniel and I were very proud of 
ourselves.  Yet, we doubted that our mother ever 
actually used the gift which was so generously 
given.  Ungratefulness?  Fear?  Prudishness? 
Something smelled fishy.



 
µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ¼¼µµ
                                   ‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡
                                  ½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½½
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net