Corita Kent (Sister Mary Corita): enriched bread (1965)

Inscriptions and Marks:
Signed: l.r., in black ink (ball point): Sister Mary Corita
Inscription: ENRICHED BREAD / WONDER / Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say this hope lies in a nation; others in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works everyday negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. As a result, there shines forth fleetingly the ever threatened truth that each and every man, on the foundation of his own sufferings and joys, builds for all. Camus / Help build strong bodies 12 ways sTANDARD LARGE LOAF no preservatives added
Inscription: On verso, l.l.: 65-2

" … still in more or less one piece."

When we were Exiled, losing my DelicateBalance and slipping into LostDays rarely lasted long. We would shortly be SnappingBack into more fully functioning organisms. Just the continually threatening nature of being Exiled sort of insists upon the Exile's full functionality. Days lost cannot turn into lost weeks without increasing the already screaming threat level. We had defenses to handle and offensives to scheme. Exiles do not simply take care of themselves. As with everything, there's always something insisting upon attention, threatening an already tenuous homeostasis. Remember, we had chosen not to be mere renters, so we needed to maintain that all-important owner mentality. We had responsibilities! However powerless or exhausted we might have felt, no excuses could have worked. Like our pioneer ancestors, we'd get back behind the plow mule again, usually by the following morning.

Our discipline doubtless helped us recover after we'd stumble. We maintained iron-clad rules intended to help us sustain an almost military discipline. I once had a girlfriend who insisted on not only cleaning up the dishes after supper, but also the counters and floors. She could not sleep, no matter how many glasses of wine she'd had with dinner, until completing this essential ablution. One never woke up to a sinkful of dried-on dishes waiting for attention in her kitchen. Our discipline was less exacting or compulsive than hers but just as insistent. The dishes were done and put away before we allowed ourselves to go to bed, even on those evenings when we'd entertained three dozen guests.

As I explained in an earlier installment, I was primarily responsible for laundry and housecleaning, except for dusting. These duties were also treated as if sacred. If The Muse could report to an often hostile office every morning, I could have no excuse for not wrestling the vacuum cleaner out of hiding. The kitchen and bathroom floors got a thorough wet mopping weekly. The laundry was never allowed to pile up higher than our respective baskets and, partly to cloak my ignorance of how it was supposed to be sorted, it was folded and usually put away before The Muse returned on laundry day.

It was generally my job to both secure groceries and prepare the meals. This made sense since The Muse had a full-enough plate of responsibilities. I was not born helpless and became a fair-to-middling cook, if never quite a chef. The Muse prepared her own breakfast, almost always yogurt and thawed sweet cherries. I kept the yogurt stocked and made sure the cherries were bought. I maintained a working knowledge of commodity levels. If The Muse discovered some morning that I'd not noticed that she'd run out of coffee, I'd be running out to find her coffee at six o'clock in the morning. We maintained a place for pretty damned near everything, and we damned well kept pretty much everything in its place. Our pantries were as ordered as any navy ship's stores.

I feared wallowing. The baseline experience of living in Exile seemed likely to nurture a tenacious despondency. There we were, sentenced to an indefinite term, inescapably captive to forces beyond our influence. By necessity, we became more expert at coping, which was always the only known antidote to difficulties beyond solving. We might improve or worsen our lot, though worsening produced no discernible benefit. It would have merely been self-defeating, so we faked our ability to cope. We pantomimed, rarely discussing the underlying purpose of our dance. We stayed in line because we feared what might happen to us if we turned into strays. We respected our days and maintained our schedules regardless of the cost, if only because the cost of every alternative seemed even more onerous. I shaved. I ironed my shirts. I prayed that our usually focused energy might preserve me through our Exile and return us back home, still in more or less one piece. SnappingBack became an ongoing imperative.

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Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz