Joseph Cornell, Christian Scientist

The best artists are behind the scenes; we never see their faces and they only give us their names reluctantly.

There's no caller ID when a certain friend of mine calls, and when there's no caller ID I don't answer my phone, or answer it reluctantly, but for some reason I answered it and it was the certain friend of mine who has no caller ID when he calls, for some reason. I must have known somehow that he needed to talk, but then he always needs to talk, he's that sort of man.

"I've had a half bottle of wine," he said. Yes, he said that, but it wasn't the first thing he said. The first thing he said was, "Brooks Roddan, Brooks Roddan, my brother, my brother. How are you this morning?"

He told me he'd had a breakthrough and was, "way ahead of his psychologist." I wasn't sure I wanted to know the details of the breakthrough--to know he'd had one was enough--and found other things to talk about: my new house, the kitchen, a bathroom that needs remodeling. "Have you seen my bathroom?" he asked. "It cost $120,000."

I told him I'd seen his bathroom, it was very nice, but it didn't cost $120,000. That was too many zeros for one bathroom. He laughed and said, "yeah, you're right. That's what we spent on the landscaping and the pool, the kitchen and the bathroom." 

"Do you want to know my breakthrough? he asked again. "It's my new reality."

I was caught myself looking out the window as he spoke. I was looking out at the city of San Francisco, which looks from where I was looking like a small to medium-sized fishing village somewhere in the Mediterraean, while he was speaking to me from Los Angeles. He told me his breakthrough, went into the details (his realization that the white anglo-Saxon race is the most humanistic race, how his mother had blond hair and blue eyes while his father was a Greek) but I couldn't keep up with the information even though I took notes. I told him I'd be interested in learning what his psychologist had to say about his breakthrough once he'd told her.

He told me he "loved me," and hung up.

I'd been looking at a book of the work of Joseph Cornell, wondering how he got all those little things inside the things he made. I opened the book again and skipped to the last few pages of his diary. There was a letter to Eva Marie Saint (1972) about the magic of Christmas and a diary entry eight days before he died about attending his Christian Science church Wednesday evening testimony meeting, receiving "lovely hearty sincere greetings from the individual members! Thank you, Mrs. Eddy."