I'm Just Wild About Saffron

I recently made the mistake of reading an Anna Quindlen column, an activity I gave up long ago after realizing it regularly wasted four minutes of my life I'd never again be able to recover. Somehow I momentarily forgot this when paging through a recent Newsweek and stumbling upon her work again. The thing with Anna is that it's not so much that I disagree with her thinking; it's that I usually can't find her thinking.

Apparently she was quite enamored of "The Gates," the silly, $20 million, saffron-colored car wash flap display in New York's Central park recently. And the reason she was enamored was because of the pure brainlessness of it (which, come to think of it, is also the primary reason people are enamored of Anna Quindlen columns):

When pressed about what "The Gates" meant, the creators said it meant whatever you thought it meant, which was a relief after all the highhanded symbolic tyranny that passes for meaning nowadays. For lots of people, the installation made them happy for no reason, the way a spring day does. The spring days are coming soon, the yellow forsythia and daffodils rising as the orange stanchions disappear.

Does a spring day really make you happy for no reason? It seems odd that she immediately then cites two evident reasons she likes spring days--yellow forsythia and daffodils. Some people like a spring day because the plant life blooms again, some because it means that the cold winter is over, some because it means school will soon be out and summer on the way. But Anna can't figure out the reason why she likes it. Evidently it's an inexplicable reflexive response, like hiccupping.

Well, I've been thinking about what "The Gates" meant to me. It meant that no matter how stupid an artistic project is, even if it's $20 million worth of orange bedsheets, there'll always be someone like Anna Quindlen who's just vacuous enough to think it's good.