I believe in grace, and I believe because there are moments in my life that I can only describe as having been full of grace. The secular definitions of grace are all unsatisfying. There is elegance of movement, there is courteous goodwill, but neither rival the radical nature of a "divine influence which operates to regenerate and sanctify, to inspire virtuous impulses, and (my favorite) to impart strength to endure trial and resist temptation." Sometimes you are just a little bit stronger than you were the moment before, a little bit more integrated with the world, and there is no real explanation for it. I call that moment grace, and I believe in it.
Grace tends to come all of once. It cannot be planned, called, or ordered. Perhaps it can be incubated, perhaps you can improve your receptiveness to grace, but I simply to do not know whether or not this is true. In my experience, I simply proceed, I do what I do, and then I am shocked by a feeling of wonder that defies gravity -- of a connection between the body, spirit, mind, and the world -- and all I can do is ride the moment until it evaporates like smoke.
House bound, today I traveled back to Valencia, Spain. Valencia was never a place that I wished to go to, nor had I ever thought of it until I arrived there. Yet, go to the city I did on a art courier trip. I was taking a large Jasper Johns painting to a contemporary art museum, and the trip went like this: by cargo flight into Luxembourg, by truck to Lyon, then Barcelona, then up early for the final jog to Valencia. It took four days and three nights.
There is a lot to say about courier travel. I once wrote a 100 page essay on a courier trip to Argentina (now sleeping on my desktop). That trip was all Borges and Basquiat. The trip to Valencia, however, was about Johns and grace, which goes hand in hand with a documented case of what I call "Happy Belly." I am reliving this trip now at my desk.
I can draw you a swift outline of Valencia with a circle. The town was once encircled by the river Turia, which forked and made the area an ideal location in terms of defense. The Romans had an outpost there, in the middle of the natural moat. One of the forks has now been drained and Valencia has turned the old riverbed into a wonderful park. Inside the city, you find heavy Moorish influence interlaced with medieval and Romanesques moments, as well as Spanish Modernista, which riffs on Art Nouveau and Art Deco.
My duties as an art courier required keeping my eyes on an art crate as it moved from one secure location to another secure location. When the painting is packed, I completed what is called a condition report to record the status of the object. The goal is for the status to be constant, and I kept checking and tracking this status: as the painting is unpacked, as it is put on the wall. Then, you do it all again on the way home.
Many of your tasks as a courier require spending large amounts of time in a warehouse, in a no man's land that really belongs to no one in particular. You are surrounded by crates from all over the world, yet they are all anonymous. It is a very alienating feeling. You do not belong to the space and the space doesn't belong to you. During these times, I have fantasies of being put to work. If they would just let me help them move the boxes, it would all be so much easier.
When you are not doing your tasks, however, you wait, entirely dependent on the schedule of the organizing shipping companies and the borrowing institution. Sometimes you get a day off, sometimes not, but a central experience of being a courier is that of travel exhaustion and quick little tourist moments, which divide your spirit with their alternating currents of boredom and opportunity.
You can try to work, you can try to read, but the fact is that you do not belong where you are, the world is moving around you and you do not have a place in it yet. It is all vast and far beyond your control. When you are called, you get on the plane. When you are told, you get off. You are following one crate among billions of crates.
I was definitely divided on that trip. On one hand, I was comfortable. I stayed in a modern but completely charmless hotel. The food was fine. The directions I have been given were accurate. However, my only previous experiences with Spain had proved useless in offering me any true orientation. I thought back to being a student abroad 15 years earlier and registered disbelief at my lack of recognition, my lack of genuine interest in anything other than registering that I had physically "been" to a location. In Valencia, returning to Spain again, I felt like my physical presence in Spain years ago did not matter at all. To really travel requires a deeper connection.
This feeling only grew. I felt like one of those Flaneur characters that art history class made so much hay of in talking about Manet. I did not want to watch, but I defaulted to watching. I wanted to be involved. I wanted to engage, but had no idea how to do it. Instead, I wandered. I wandered a lot until my feet ached, a stranger. I have always hated the Flaneur narrative about Manet. Tell me about the blue!
I'll admit it was all very depressing. I remember going into a suit shop, and a woman looked at my large body, and said: "Nothing for you, you are too big!" That summed it up. Psychologically, spiritually, physically out of joint. And there was no reason to think that it would do anything else but simply go on, that I would feel that way the entire trip until I would leave, my task completed, and I would slowly be removed from the experience of it, integrated back into the familiar, numb until the numbness would slowly peter out.
However, grace.
Have you ever had a meal that totally surprised you? My grandmother once made a pecan pie that my brother and I still talk about. The pie could never be made again because my brother and I could never remake ourselves at that moment. There is no recipe. It is a matter of chemistry and spirit. It is your mind and your body meeting exactly what it needs from the senses, and together, the three of them are the best possible version of themselves.
You glow. You have a lift in your step, despite your belly being full and satisfied and full of gravity and depth. You are a walking paradox: you are released from what your body usually expects from you and there is no explanation for it. I remember all 5 times that I have been subject to the radical grace I call, "Happy Belly." Valencia was the third.
The restaurant was called Jamon Jamon (yes, it was that absurd). I had a plate of Iberico ham, patatas bravas, bacon wrapped dates, and a bottle of Ribera Del Duero. All of these items served as my introduction to actual, glorious Spanish food, and I think it might be important that I had no frame of reference, that I was living this food as a newcomer, a rookie. The food was not an image, it was the transubstantiation of a culture, a substance that could be consumed and lived as a part of my body. I walked back to the hotel like this, glowing, so so much more than drunk.
However, it doesn't really matter what I ate. It really doesn't, for grace has its own rules and its own instruments, it has its motions and paths. In other words, like love, it finds you, and also like love, you will never find it by looking for it. The next day, I did not feel the lift, I did not feel released from gravity. It doesn't work that way. Grace visits. It never lingers.
An yet, I do believe that grace will come again, I believe that grace can be dynamically revealed at any moment. I do not wait for grace, I have learned this lesson. However, I do wish that it would arrive. I wish that physical reality will suddenly mix with my body and mind and spirit and help me endure a trial.
I wish for it, I do so wish for it.