Mary Helen Porter

A Clockless Epic

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As my acute awareness wore thin, I soon found inner peace that seemed like patience’s cousin. My concept of time vanished as I was further encompassed in my physical, mental, and perceptual awareness. I was still waiting and I was still impatient, but I was not frantic. I was soothed by not knowing what time it was. My analysis had transitioned into accepting the images’ form. I accepted the red, blue, and yellow pigments. I accepted that my slumped back was stiff from its stationary being. I accepted that my mind had over analysed all that could be analysed of the German Kasperltheatre postcards. I accepted that I was lonely. I accepted that I was at a complete loss as to what my life’s vocation was to be. I sat in utter suspense and limbo. I was waiting, but I was weightless. I was at peace.

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My self inflicted task was to stare at six tiny postcards, claimed to be works of precious art, for three long hours in hopes of bettering my humanity. It was to be an adventure. Before beginning my practice of patience, I asked a supervisor at Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts if I could borrow the vacant stool that was near my chosen postcards. With permission, I claimed the lonely stool. So, I actually did not steal it. I asked nicely, with a smile, but it felt like stealing seeing as a security guard's feet would hurt instead of mine while I stared for three hours at six strange postcards. I dragged the shiney, black stool in from of the clear box that held the cards in the corner of the vast room. The sound echoed through the very empty museum. I placed my bag, silver raincoat, and umbrella down and took out my worn sketchbook. I soon became encompassed in Hans Kalskeiner’s work long enough to feel the beginnings of boredom and self-pity. I twirled my blond hair, a bit damp from the rain, and attempted to appear stoic as my gaze became more difficult.

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The swirly, wooden floor was more interesting than the Kasperltheater postcards stationed before me. The six images on the postcards mocked me with their mastery of a sort of patience within their infinite nature. They depicted twentieth century German Kasperltheater puppets, drawn in primary colors, and their stark white faces shown in contrast to the pitch black background. Each image was childlike and comical, but also mysterious. My sense of time was lost without technology dictating references of time, and boredom lingered in my joints and mind. I blinked my eyes four times in attempts to wake my mind. I had only been sitting alone for, if I were to guess, twelve minutes when I realized the next two hours and eighty eight minutes I would spend staring at six ancient German postcards were going to be agonizingly long. I was just as impatient as a petulant child waiting for the puppet show to begin.

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A security guard approached me not long after boredom encroached. Her looming

presence appeared through the corner of my eye, and it startled me. Her gold name tag read, “Tara.” When she eyed my stool I instantly realized it upon which I sat was indeed hers. My boredom shifted from surprise then to desperation. Would she make me give my stool, my only support and now campanion, back to her? Would she complicate my practice of patience?

“So you’re a student? What kind of crazy professor...why dontcha just take a picture?” she said quickly so that I would not interrupt, “You could just take a picture, sit at home, stare at your phone then, BAM, three hours later you’d be done.” Tara’s animated arms became crossed as she waited for my response.

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“It’s part of the assignment...dealing with the concept of time reference and no technology in relation to art...well I mean actually I decided to do this. I am supposed to have an adventure,” I said tenaciously in order to convince myself of my adventure’s validity.

Tara gave me a strange look and said, “And you chose to do this?”

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The man made concept of time has been humanity’s keeper as long as time has allowed us to document. Each clock, event, or alarm dictates how we live and why we live. It seems we are always waiting for something. I am, like many others, obsessed with productivity and efficiency. I am not, I repeat, not, a patient person. Yet, I was gazing upon animated puppets with unseen puppet masters not far from the imagination. And, how appropriate it was that time, along with the references of obligations, has always been my personal puppet master. I answered Tara’s question with a simple smile because I honestly wondered the same question as I looked at the most mysterious puppet master, time, in the eye.

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I stared at a puppet whacking the devil, another taking a photograph with an old box camera, an animated funeral processional, and my analysis became focused on what stories each image told. I tried to make connections between the puppets and I realized that the grandmother, rabbit, and devil all had red eyes. Certain objects were disproportionate, and innovative technology of the era were highlighted. Some puppets had funny noses, and others wore silly hats. The postcards’ childlike simplicity also depicted dark subjects. Puppets were meant to be entertainment for children, yet these puppets seemed to engage adult ideas and questions. I ran out of things to analyze pertaining to the postcards just as my pen ran out of ink.

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I first heard about the experiment I was embarking on a year prior to that night in the Frist in an article from Harvard Magazine. Harvard art history professor, Jennifer L. Roberts, makes the argument that students must decelerate and practice patience when consuming knowledge to fully understand what they are learning. Roberts argues that, “Just because you have access to something, doesn’t mean you have learned it. What turns access into learning is time and strategic patience” (“The Power of Patience”). As my thoughts decelerated, I was able to recognized quirky details in the postcards and understand their composition in further detail.

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If I could come to understand hidden details in a couple of postcards within hours, the question must also be raised if such practice can be effective in terms of self reflection. Afterall, my adventure with patience was all in hopes of bettering my personal humanity. I turned my decelerated learning turned to myself, where I noted first my physicality then my internal emotions. I noticed that no one wanted to be near me. It was as if my stationary being suggested that I was a naked Greek statue, a work of art meant to be briefly examined and definitely not touched. Tara was the only human being to break my trance that night and while it at first startled me, I missed the human interaction. I was not made of stone. I would not crumble if someone got too close.

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I was lonely. Physically, mentally, and literally in all senses and definitions of the word. It was my first semester in college. My past friends from boarding school were scattered throughout the world and we had no common home to simultaneously revisit. Death was too prevalent. And, as a person who finds adventure in staring at postcards for hours on end, many social norms in college seemed utterly pointless to me. These and other factors left me simply lonely, yet there were no tears shed. My loneliness did not define me, it was simply something I observed. This was not a pity party. This was a practice of patience, and within such practice there was peace. This peace was a week at the beach, yoga inspiring, sip of warm tea, kind of peace that was unobstructed by time. Perhaps this state of peace was born out of the mass over analyzing of postcards, my surroundings, and my personal inner workings, or perhaps it occurred out of sheer boredom


 

Works Cited:

Roberts, Jennifer L. “The Power of Patience.” Harvard Magazine. Harvard Magazine, 15 Oct. 2013. Web. Jan. 2015.