Moons in Motion

Monday, November 23, 2015 – Clamart

I would like to share with you my recent personal discovery of the way in which metaphor is naturally integrated into the human learning process. Learning through comparison is kind of an animal reaction, not limited to the soi-disant reasonable benches of the university setting. I've noticed this while observing my daughter discover and put words to her world.

About a month ago I was in Lyon to research at the Musee des Tissus. Since my parents were in town at the time, we all went together and brought my daughter along. She is a toddler. She's 18 months old. We stayed in an apartment on the quai of the Rhone just off of the Place Bellecour and right around the corner from an epicerie called Pignol. (Pignol has nothing to do with the story, but they have really good food.) 

Cezanne, Paul, Pommes et oranges, oil on canvas, 1899, Musee d'Orsay.
Cezanne observed that by moving his head ever so slightly he could paint
an entirely different perspective. This still life seems to have been painted
from multiple angles which were then regrouped together. 

Well, on the first night we had dinner in the Vieux Lyon at the base of the colline Fourviere. After dinner we strolled in the dark back towards our home base. It was cold (by California standards). It had been raining, but the rain had stopped and as we crossed the river Saone on a footbridge a curtain of clouds rolled back, discovering a bright, full moon. My mom, who has always been sensitive to atmospheric effects, turned to her granddaughter with wide eyes and said while pointing towards the sky, "Look Baby! It's the moon!" Baby, in equally wide-eyed wonder, stared up, pointed and exclaimed, "BALL!!" I was speechless. There she was layering images in order to verbalize her surroundings. It seems that it's inevitable. Mom, already expecting this type of reaction from a child (she was a grade school teacher), lost no time in responding, "It looks like a ball because it's round Baby, but it's not really a ball. It's the moon." The new word has been fully integrated into her vocabulary now - even when the moon looks like a section of orange or a fingernail clipping.

So are we trapped in these repetitions and variations? 

Lazlo Moholy-Nagy wrote in Vision in Motion, "Tradition must be dynamic." At first, I really liked this expression of the importance of renewal in the process of living. But it's occurred to me recently, "Why worry about the inevitable?" Last night for example, as I opened the oven door to check on the gratin, I realized that even though I've done this one hundred times already, it's different this time, and it was different the time before that, and the time before that... even if it's only different because of the slight gradations in the burnt smell. But seriously, it's always new and different. The important thing, in my eyes, is to make a humane decision. In this case, trying to provide a palatable dinner for my family.

The particular difference last night was that the gratin was in no way burnt. By some small miracle it was actually good. Even so, my toddler didn't eat it. It's as if she were saying, "Even in the face of a miracle, some folks just can't be swayed." 

-- CSL