Two Stories
The Wave: A Review
Since its installation two months ago, The Wave has become the museum’s most popular exhibit. It’s not hard to see why. Rearing up to the 18-foot ceiling like an aquatic Pegasus, the Wave spreads across the vast end wall of the newly opened Multi-Media Gallery, striations of foam stretching across its blue-green belly and a crest breaking on the sides such that you think the whole thing might crash down upon you at any moment. Reminiscent of Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa (that dwarfs even Mt. Fuji in the background), the Wave is Maximum Art.
Like any masterpiece, museum-goers report a range of responses to the Wave. Most viewers are literally wowed by it and after coming forward to assess its reality, they step back again, uttering only that single exclamation, Wow…! Young couples love its large-as-life feel that encapsulates the rising potential of their burgeoning romance while adults long-married with children reminisce with fondness about the first time they went to the seashore and saw the towering waves of the mighty ocean and heard its thunderous surf for themselves, wondering simultaneously how long it has been since they’ve seen such a wave and where does the time go anyway? Some have said that they see in it the primordial soup origins of all life on Earth when the original organic molecules took their first clumsy steps of self-replication, to be followed eventually by the slow but persistent tides of natural selection and evolution; others, more apocalyptically, have said that it foretells environmental catastrophe when over-population will have meant that even the oceans are covered over with new suburban subdivisions and our only experience of the beach will be in museums. Not surprisingly, the few surfers who have seen it have dreamed of riding it to shore.
However, not everyone is impressed. Many stare at it blankly, unsure of what to think, trying in vain to resist the nagging feeling that they don’t get what the fuss is all about and absently wondering if there is some inherent meaning in the Wave that they are missing. Some see it as frightful as the recent tsunami that wreaked so much havoc in the Indian Ocean or they find it too big, too vast, a too-potent reminder of the ever-rising flood waters that made such a calamitous mess of New Orleans. Then there’s the 12-year-old boy who, perhaps buoyed by the salty tears of commiseration shed by the fourteen-year-old girls around him for the Wave’s ephemeral predicament, has begun a letter-writing campaign free the Wave and return it to its natural habitat. So far, the curator has ignored the petitions.
For his part, the curator of the exhibit is pleased by the fuss the Wave has created, yet, some of the stories that surround it have baffled him. For example, he doesn’t know where the Wave came from. It appeared one morning in the parking lot of the museum, encased in a waterproof wooden crate. He consolidated the 20th century abstract galleries and put the Minimalists in storage to give the Wave its own multi-media space (not to mention giving museum-goers one last thrill before filing into the cafeteria). Even so, for the first few days, no one seemed to notice it, or if they did they didn’t say much about it.
But that same week, a Japanese tourist, who had somehow gotten separated from his tour group, reported getting drenched by the Wave – with digital self-portraits that appeared on the front page of the Arts section of the Herald as evidence. Now everyone is talking about the Wave. The two scientists who have studied the Wave have declared its authenticity, though neither offered any explanation for its gravity-defying suspension. Adding to the mystique, the janitor, still devoted to the museum after thirty-two years on the job and as laconic as the day he started, has reported that some mornings he has to mop up puddles on the floor of the gallery.
Everyone wants to know where the Wave came from and the most common reaction on the audience survey card is, "Who is the artist?" because the sign simply says Wave, Anonymous Donation.
The curator remains hopeful that the artist will come forward with another masterpiece, such as Mountain or Wind. He has already begun to make room.
The Last Days of My Youth
"Amen," my father said, as I left the hospital room. But I couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t believe he was there. Christ!
"Don’t you think you should help your father?" my mother had said. "Ever think of anyone besides yourself?" was what she meant.
Friday it had snowed all day, twelve inches, sixteen inches, something crazy like that. Great big flakes that floated gently down, giving everyone the impression that this was going to be one of those lovely, leisurely winter days, until the blizzard kicked in and things quickly turned nasty. He couldn’t wait to get out there and get the driveway cleared.
"I’m just going outside," he said, which was code for me to come help. "Just going outside," as if he was going to look at the moon.
Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy.
My mother shouted at me to help him – "It’s your duty!" she said, trying a different angle. "NO," I shouted back, for no real reason except to be difficult.
Oh Lord, what have I done? Please take this cup from my hands. Quench these fires. Receive my prayer.
Saturday I spent all day at the hospital. "Tomorrow, I’m coming out," he said, prodding the nurse in front of my mother, trying to smile. "Unless she keeps me here."
"Very funny," the nurse said as the doctors came and went, "you just worry about getting better, then we’ll see about letting you out."
Waves on the monitors. X-rays on the table.
"You’d better wait outside now," she told me.
Zero, zero, zero, was all I could think; I wasn’t going to amount to anything.
Daniel Hudon originally from Canada, teaches natural science at Boston University in Boston, MA. He has recently published work in more than a dozen online and print publications and links to his recent prose can be found at people.bu.edu/hudon.