2007 - Vol. 4, Issue 6

My heart leapt when I saw the ad: the first–ever exhibit of Gustav Klimt landscapes was coming to a gallery in the Berkshire Mountains. Although I've never connected to Klimt's decorative paintings — The Kiss being the most widely recognized — his landscapes have beckoned since I discovered them three years ago.

How would I get there? My chronic fatigue syndrome renders travel a tricky transaction. Even a three–hour trip from Connecticut to Williamstown, Massachusetts (the gallery site), requires "cost–benefit analysis." On any given day, I have so much energy to "spend," and the amount I have in "cash" floats as mystically as the dollar against the yen. And speaking of cash, I would need an influx of that, too, for hotel, gas, meals.

No. As seductively as those landscapes called, the trip would be too costly — financially and physically.

A few days later, though, a flyer jumped out from a nondescript mail stack. I was invited to a resort in the Berkshires — free! Was a higher power calling? Were the culture gods commanding me to the Klimt exhibit? I dialed the 800 number. Sitting through an hour's timesharing presentation would require a withdrawal from my energy account, but it would also earn me two free–nights' stay, plus meals.

Still, there was that pesky drive. Though MapQuest calculated it to be less than three hours, I wasn't up to it. Hmm. Tom was the only person I was comfortable traveling with. Over the seven years we'd known each other, he'd learned to roll with my unpredictable energy states. Tom and I weren't together anymore, though. Sure, he e–mailed when he wanted me to edit a sensitive business letter, and I called before taking my beloved cat to her final vet visit. We were friends now, but there was still that tug that whispered maybe.

I picked up the phone. Clicked it on, then off. Should I? Those landscapes were calling, but . . . oh, what the hell. I dialed Tom and after bobbing and weaving for a few what's–new, how's–it–going minutes, I popped the question. He said yes.

That weekend, on as brilliant a New England Saturday as could be, we set off, Springsteen on the stereo, Starbucks in the cup holders — and was that hope in my heart?

The only overnights Tom and I had taken before were dutiful weekend visits with my family in Rochester.

We'd taken day trips, though. Most into New York to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (He had never been before.) And to the International Center for Photography. (He's a photographer.) There was an occasional trip to New Haven to the Yale galleries, not to mention supportive missions to openings where our emerging–artist friends exhibited.

I once told my therapist how Tom and I laughingly called our sojourns Weekend College. "Does he know how lucky he is?" the doctor asked, referring to what he considered my largesse for sharing what little I knew about the arts. Lucky? Wasn't I the lucky one? To be with a man who preferred Hockney to hockey, Stieglitz to Steinbrenner? No, scouring New Yorker reviews for upcoming exhibits took me so far from the moody gray landscape of my artless, snowbound Upstate childhood that I felt no discrepancy at all.

Still, there were "issues" with Tom: my illness, my prickly temperament, his post–divorce financial constraints and obsessive (I thought) commitment to reclaiming his children's affection. So, when we loaded the car, Tom and I brought wrinkle–resistant khakis and soft–soled shoes, and that other baggage, too.

We arrived at the museum close to four. If I'd prepared better, we might have arrived earlier. There was no time to waste. So, when a well–meaning volunteer tried steering us toward the permanent collections, I dismissed her. "No," I insisted, "just the Klimts."

"But the exhibit's so small, dear."

As I often did, I left Tom to do the courteous leave–taking. He's more patient, more pleasant than I. Besides, the stairs to the second–floor galleries would take what energy I could muster.

Two flights up, face–to–face with Klimt's pink–white–green–blue stippling, I was transported. The controlled melee of color, the multitudinous vibrating dots swept me out of illness, beyond limitation, to expanse, freedom, hope.

I wanted to laugh and cry and never move and at the same time race back home to work on my novel. I flitted from one picture to the next. There was so little time, though in the first moment of glorious conveyance–by–color, I got what I came for.

Then Tom stepped behind me, propping his right hand under his chin, pointing out something I missed: perspective. How seeing a Klimt landscape was like looking through a telephoto lens. Indeed, Klimt had prepared for these paintings by peering at Austria's Attersee Lake through opera glasses and telescope.

"I would have missed that," I said. I looked at him, he at me, but we had no time for the intimacy of possibility. With a few minutes till closing, we rushed through the permanent Impressionist collections.

Then we left, found our condo, and nervously surveyed the premises. We were friends, right? Who would take the king–size bed and who the pull–out couch? And what about that hot tub?

Finally, familiarity trumped fear. We nested, went to dinner, and woke the next morning to get schmoozed by a Schwarzenegger lookalike who thought we would be more inclined to buy his Timeshare Spiel if he told us seven or eight times how much money he made. Fortunately — and surprisingly — when we declined, he didn't press.

On our way home we stopped for lunch at a Hudson River village where I've thought about moving to cut expenses and foster creativity. We ogled the signed New Yorker cartoons on the diner wall, and trying not to try, scanned the crowd for famous writers, artists, and photographers.

But sitting across from each other in our vinylette booth, The Subjects that have always plagued us jumped out like fun house monsters: his obligations, my needs, our fears. Mostly in silence, we finished lunch and drove home, Tom drifting into vintage James Taylor melancholy, me reading, then rereading gallery notes.

Klimt's landscapes are divided into parallel planes in which foreground and background appear almost equally close. They produce a sense of both intimacy and distance, as though the viewer were visually but not physically close.

I looked across the car seat and saw Tom, both intimate and distant, and knew what the writer meant about parallel planes and the difference between intimacy and distance. Then I closed my eyes and, without success, tried to nap.

"Thanks for getting me to see something I wouldn't have," Tom said when he dropped me off. Like I said, he's better than I at polite leave–taking.

"My pleasure."

After we hugged, Tom turned to leave but turned back.

"It still doesn't work, does it?"

I shook my head — slowly, reluctantly.

But, I said to myself when I closed the door, why can't it work? We had shared those landscapes, found common ground on canvas. What about that perspective? Doesn't that amount to anything?

Yes, I decided, perspective helps, just not enough. Parallel planes, though compatible, ride down the road side by side, from a safe enough distance to observe each other. They just never quite touch.

"Landscapes and Perspective" first appeared in The Phoenix, November 2006.