I spotted this quote by Shirley Hibberd on the side of an enormous glass case, just outside the departures gate at SFO:
Let us not despise the day of small things. A windowsill garden is better than no garden, and the dark area where cats quarrel and damp makes patches of unsightly mould, may be made bright with healthy vegetation that shall be worth a little care and very much love.
This lovely quote is from Shirley’s book, published in 1870, called Rustic Adornments for Homes of Taste and just look at this punk thing. For all the lovely feel-good-vibes and gardening advice of that quote above, it’s clear that this book is a cursed object that beckons from beyond our realm. Although, making a gardening book exclusively for goths like me is kinda neat.
Anyway, Shirley’s quote, the glass case, and the whole exhibit at SFO is called Indoor Eden: Victorian Jardinières and I feel like it was setup exclusively to ruin my day. The exhibit is a celebration of art nouveau Victorian pottery and I can’t think of much else in life that we should be actively rooting against: stumpy dark green leaves fold over ceramic fish with their mouths wide open; an ugly brown vase stands proud with a few ugly dandelions haphazardly carved into it; a psychedelic, gaping-wound-red butterfly has been stamped onto a tall pot that’s perched on an equally upsetting, even taller pot.
It’s all just profoundly ugly. Overly complicated. Frilly. The colors are wrong. All the pots on display beg for attention in a way that feels embarrassing, reminding me of stuffy rooms in England with silverware locked in cabinets and nice china brought out for special occasions. Or it reminds me of pictures of the Queen printed on tacky plates and all the weird romanticism in England about what the Victorian era was, and what the Empire did. Each piece in these glass cases fail so profoundly and in such remarkable ways that it draws me in, pulls me close. For a while I forget where I am, that I’m at the airport to say goodbye to my father in-law, and instead I’m locked in an eternal death stare with these ugly 150 year old pots.
I know, I know. This meanness is unpleasant and these ugly things are expertly made and technically competent beyond anything I could ever manage with my enormous sausage fingers and terrible hand-eye coordination. A lot of care and attention, decades of experience, was poured into making these objects. But a bad song or a bad movie or a bad anything is still bad, despite the effort made.
Here’s how I excuse myself when being a grump.
When I complain I’m honoring the effort of whoever made these things by trying to understand why I hate them. It’s genuinely interesting to me! A lot of folks dismiss their hatred or are mean about what they dislike in boastful ways but I want to understand why and how these things suck. I want to learn more about them in the hope that I can avoid making anything like it. It’s useful information about myself, like knowing that I’m never going to enjoy karaoke. It’s just too late, okay? I’m thirty six years old and I’ve spent enough time pretending to have a good time singing Shania Twain. It’s ok to hate karaoke! Let me live!
Back at the airport, I chuckle to myself.
Shirley is trying to be nice. In his book and in that quote he’s trying to remind me that great things can come from small problems. That all I have to do is tidy up, clean up a garden, remove a weed, or do small things for the sake of small things. But here I am—a total grump—despising the smallness of these acts. I want to yell at Shirley: no, actually, a windowsill is not better than a garden goddammit. A damp patch in your house is gross and instead of fixing it you should run away, get a new apartment, burn the place to the ground. Small, ugly things should be unacceptable. Fix this minor inconvenience by changing everything about your life and move a thousand miles away, change your name, forget everyone you love, adopt a whole new identity.
And please, for the love of all that his holy in this world, stop making these goddamn Victorian Jardinières.
(Ahem. Sorry, Shirley).