The Happy Gentleman

Portrait Experiment I

Shell Prints of Jean-Charles Chenu

Recently, Kristen and I went to visit the museum of printing history here in Houston. The museum itself is a calm sprawling oasis of all things printed. Their special exhibit on the works of the physician and naturalist Jean-Charles Chenu was particularly exciting. I suppose I owe to my family's quebecois backround a disposition toward francophilia and probably also an appreciation of the nineteenth century. The entire notion of a 'gentleman' and gentleman's pursuits fascinated me as a child. 

In my childhood mythology a gentleman's pursuit was driven by passion and the principle of self-improvement--never commerce. I guess gentlemen 'kept it real' and weren't 'sell outs' -- to mix my subcultural slang a little. Chenu's goal was impossible. He wished to create a complete document of known shells. While this kind of document had been achieved in the past, the scientific knowledge of existing shells had greatly expanded by Chenu's historical moment and he was doomed to failure.

Though he may have failed in his goal, he suceeded in creating subtle, beautiful images that have reached far beyond what was likely had been his imagined audience. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling fed up with the constant money-talk these days. If it's not laments for the economy, it's schemes and plans to increase the size of bank accounts. The whole thing wears me down and leaves me existentially barren. But then I see shells like these and I hope that there can be more to our lives and to our society than just an endless series of hustles. 

Maybe that's nostalgia for a time that never really existed... but I hope not. 

Balanced Eating

“The problem,” he would tell me over and over again every week as I sat in my piano teacher’s living room, “is that people are either intelligent or physically fit. No one meets the Greek ideal.”

My piano teacher’s son was the kind of man you only realize was strange after you become an adult. He was a forty-five year old who played the cello, baked all day and lived with his mother. When he wasn’t preparing muffins or pies for his own consumption, he pontificated his philosophies of life to his mother’s pre-teen and teen students. We were a captive audience, waiting patiently for the kids before us to finish their lessons. At well over two hundred and fifty pounds, Terry never argued that he had reached this state of balance and perfection that he so passionately talked about. But he firmly believed that he had the right steps to help us reach his goal.

Continue at www.thegoodlifer.com