god-hole

The piece was unbalanced. The "piece" -- as if it were an installation or something. Really, it was nothing more than an elaborate doodle I was sketching as I listened to Montine chat with an artist acquaintance while I was hanging out at her studio yesterday morning. But it was unbalanced, a tower on the fall, pieces breaking off in the process.

I say Montine was chatting, but really Mike was doing all the talking. Mike had just popped by to check out the studio. Mike wanted to know about classes. Maybe he might take one. Mike pontificated about art and about his process and about his next phase. And then in that out-of-left-field, blunt-object-to-the-back-of- the-head, not-quite-slight of hand way that some people have of broaching a topic. . .

"Do you go to church?"

"MMmmm. . . noooo," Montine says carefully, "I'm not really a church person."

"Have you ever gone to this church?" Mike presses, indicating the church above our heads, the one from which Montine rents her studio space.

"Once," she answers, "A long time ago. It's a really nice congregation, very open." And then skillfully, batting it back to him, "Are you looking for a church?"

"Yes. I just moved and I can't find one in-town that I really like."

"What are you looking for in a church?" Montine asks, displaying a real conversational generosity that always escapes me in these situations.

"Friends," Mike answers with no elaboration.

And then I missed the jump where the topic changed to his recently diagnosed cancer, caught early and so now he's on the mend:

First stage lung cancer that they caught by accident.

The morning they found it, he'd read his daily angel card and it said he would be protected.

Most people die from lung cancer.

And yes, he smoked.

He didn't really need chemo, he said. But he decided to get it anyway.

He didn't lose his hair, he said. But he decided to cut it off anyway.

Poor Mike, I couldn't help thinking. And not because of the cancer.

In a corner of the studio, a painting stands nine-feet tall. A monster-man with a hole in his gut glowers down. "Whoever painted that," Mike nods importantly, as he leaves, "I think they need to feed their God-hole."

Fred jumped into my lap. Fred has no interest in God-holes.

"You know, Mike," Montine says gently, "In this studio, our philosophy is that what people see in the art is less about the artist who painted it and more about what they see in themselves."

Montine's studio space may be in the basement of a church. Montine herself is kind beyond measure and to my mind often displays the patience of an actual saint. Montine is unquestionably an exceptional friend. But even she can't fill someone's empty God-hole.