Weekly Endorsement: Undergrowth With Two Figures

I have been listening to the Slate Culture Gabfest a lot lately. Well, a lot being every week, since that’s how often the podcast comes out. I wouldn’t say the Culture Gabfest is my favorite podcast, but it is the easiest to listen to. Each episode is like a smart person’s dinner party where no one talks about their children or their dogs. And like a dinner party, if you miss any conversation to the sound of washing dishes, it’s not a big deal. 

At the end of each episode, each host endorses something, usually cultural, occasionally esoteric, they have enjoyed in the past week. I think it’s a good practice to recognize one good experience weekly, and I’m going to start. 

My endorsement this week, along with the Slate Culture Gabfest, is “Undergrowth With Two Figures,” a 1890 Van Gogh painting that is now on display at the Denver Art Museum. I had never seen that painting before I went to a lecture on the exhibit. Even though purple on the bark of trees is rare, I know what Van Gogh means. Trees in twilight feel purple. I also like how the two figures sort of seem like trees, how they have the same verticality. Plus, and maybe most importantly, the walk those two figures are going on seems like something they’ll remember, like it’s the moment they fell in love or fell out of it.  

To see this painting, you have to live in Cincinnati, where it is normally shown, or visit the Becoming Van Gogh show at the Denver Art Museum. And for that, I endorse making reservations online and going early.  

Other Realities

So there’s this piece on Slate about a writer who lost her computer in a cab, and after a bout of self-loathing, she bought a new computer. This was a story because a year after she got a new computer, she checked her Facebook Other Messages and learned that someone had found her computer soon after she lost it and wanted to return it. 

And what are Facebook Other Messages? Something no one checks right below Facebook Messages.

Obviously, the only thing to do after reading that article was to check my own Facebook Other Messages. And wouldn’t you know it, but I also had an alternate reality hidden for me there. 

A woman whose house I looked at in September, and whose spare bedroom I was interested in, sent me a message on Facebook to invite me to move in. Because we weren’t Facebook friends, her message got hidden in the Other section. We never became roommates, and we will probably never become Facebook friends either. 

While I would have moved in there—it was a furnished room, which appealed to me at the time—I ended up in my own place, an attic apartment with good light and tons of wood paneling. My apartment is probably the best thing in my life right now. Or at least it’s the thing I think about when my yoga class goes in the “take a moment to be thankful for something” direction. 

In a quote brought to my attention by a recent episode of Gossip Girl, Albert Camus once said, “Life is a sum of all your choices.” It’s also the sum of all the things you didn’t get to choose. Still, it’s rare to see the mechanics of fate, and in this case, I was lucky not be given a voice.