Banana Dreams

Come with me on another escape

The problem with stepping into a painting by the Russian artist, Vladimir Kush in a time like this, is that no one warns you how hard it will be to leave.

One moment you’re standing in a gallery, doing your best impression of a sophisticated human, chin at a thirty-degree angle, eyebrows slightly knit, pretending you’re contemplating a banana metaphor instead of feeling upset about the country coming apart at the seams. The next moment, you lean a little too close to Kush’s “Banana Hammock,” a surreal little vacation where bananas have figured things out. You can hear the painting exhaling.

On the far side, the sky is the color of a ripe bruise, the ocean a smug, calm blue because it has no access to breaking news. The hammock is a peeled banana, a curved yellow arm gently cradling a banana, and yet another banana administering perhaps a Reiki session or simply reassuring the prone banana that fruit flies and corruption are in a reality far, far away.

This is a tale of a republic, full of dreaming and calm where the stresses of life are in the past and the future is full of love, peace, and nature. Metaphorically.

The frame stretches like taffy, reality burps, and you slide straight through the canvas into a world where fruit is in charge and no one is incredulous about what someone posted. Everyone is drinking fruit cocktails.

I land on the sand with a thud that knocks loose a small cloud of outrage. The bananas glance over. One lifts a peel in a tentative greeting, the way humans wave when they’re not sure if they know you from yoga or a protest.

“First time escaping?” a banana asks.

“No,” I admit. Last week I slipped into a Salvador Dali painting of a woman in a blue dress much like you slip on a banana peel, but I emerged unbruised and refreshed. If I don’t enter a painting every once in a while, I will be blabbering in hysterical gibberish, growling at my husband, and hiding under my bed - with the dust bunnies. I thought this one looked fun.”

The one in the hammock’s voice has the weary kindness of someone who has outlived many administrations and has stopped expecting any of them to be sane. He wiggles deeper into the hammock and I think, of course. I have literally fallen into a tale of ripeness and rest at the exact moment my own country feels unripe, spoiled, and governed by people who shouldn’t be left alone with sharp objects.

“Rule one,” says the standing banana. “Lighten-up before you split.”

“Okay,” I say. “But what’s the lesson? How do I go back out there and not lose my mind?”

The banana couple exchange a look that says, Oh no, it’s one of those humans who wants a five-step plan to cope with madness.

“Lesson?” the other one says. “This isn’t a TED talk, sweetie. This is where you remember how to be human again.”

“Bart will move out of the hammock for a minute, try it.” says the standing banana. “Let your body sink into the peel and let go for just a minute.”

I climb in. The peel hammock is surprisingly comfortable, like a high-priced mattress that has my correct sleep number. In the distance, I imagine more hammocks swaying between palm trees, each one a tiny monument to people who made it through decades of history, some of it noble, much of it foolish.

I see a banana out on the sea in the distance floating serenely … It’s too cold for me to swim in the ocean where I have regularly slipped into bliss for a medicinal experience at sunrise, so I pretend like I’m floating too.

“Do you … ever worry about being eaten?” I ask.

They laugh, that low, ripened laugh of those who’ve survived their worst fears.

“Honey,” Bart says, “we were supposed to be banana bread years ago. This is bonus time. We refuse to spend it doom-scrolling.”

I realize any day that I’m alive is bonus time too.

“And this is the subversive part,” he continues, “Letting yourself feel awe and silliness in grim times is not betrayal, it’s strategy. Laughter and beauty are not a denial of corruption; they are a refusal to let corruption own your nervous system 24 hours a day. They’re the rebellions that keep you from going numb. You step into a painting so you can step back out with your playful imagination intact.”

I let that digest.

After a while, the bananas say they have a sunset to attend with the rest of the bunch, union rules. The frame begins to appear around the edges of the sky. I feel the tug of gallery lights, the hot air a gallery heater, the weight of a country staggering under the strain of leaders who confuse power with permission.

Before I go, I ask, “Any last advice for re-entering the news cycle?”

The banana taps me between the eyes.

“Don’t. Do one of the three thousand other things available to you for fun, retaliation, and love. Those in charge want you to be miserable, rebel. Take us with you,” he says. “Not literally, we bruise. But keep this in your peripheral vision: a hammock, a calm sea, the wild idea that your nervous system deserves sanctuaries. Notice funny stuff. Rush less. Don’t wait to be perfect to do the things you love.”

Outside, nothing has changed, except that I am carrying a small, surrealistic, necessary hammock … in my peripheral vision.

On the way out, I buy a postcard of the painting. Later, I tape it above my desk, a quiet dare from the fruit: When the world feels impossible, I’ll climb in for a minute. Let laughter fizz through the fear. Then go back out and write, speak, paint. Occasionally be ridiculous.

Mirth wins.

Mirth, mirth, bo-birth, banana-fana fo-firth, Fee-fi mo-mirth, Mirth.

Peripherally,

Jill
Other art you can slip into by Vladimir Kush