By J. Ruth Gendler
As an artist and writer, student and teacher, I have visited the Town of Qualities, written directions to the Land of the Imagjnation, lamented the exponential growth in the Lands of Glittering and Compelling Distractions, and most recently, become a sustaining member of the Library of Dreams.
In my twenties, as I began personifying Qualities (emotions, attributes, and essences), it seemed possible that these Qualities were both inside and around us, part of us and apart from us, in a town of their own, The Town of Qualities. I imagined a woman named Lianna who came to the town to rest and recover after a long, draining illness. She started sketching portraits and sending reports back about the residents. As I prepared to publish The Book of Qualities, I left the story of the stranger in a drawer. There were, however, hints and glimpses of the town and its environs, and the living arrangements of the residents that made it into the first Book of Qualities:
Faith lives in the same apartment building as Doubt.
Wisdom takes long walks in the purpose hills at twilight, pausing to meditate at an old temple near the crossroads.
Forgiveness has embarked upon an extended walking tour, visiting ruins and old monuments.
Grief spent a long time in the forest before she came to our town and started to do her real work.
The Book of Qualities was published around my thirtieth birthday and has stayed in print for forty years. I was not planning to make a sequel. When I considered why I have returned to the Town of Qualities and began to describe the residents, the answers were clear.
From Curiosity, to better understand the seekers and dreamers who have been populating my monotypes and paintings when I work in the print studio.
From Loneliness, following a time of great losses and despair. It was partly my own time in the Grief Lands, that showed me that Qualities I dismissed as shallow or unimportant when I was young–Courtesy, Elegance, Eloquence, even Hope and Audacity–are more substantial and generous than I realized.
From Love, to offer new ways to understand qualities we think we know.
Here are four more.
Delight recites an alphabet of blessings when he wakes up in the early morning dark. His good cheer would be daunting but for his wisdom about taking the time for true nourishment. Delight takes the practices of wandering and wondering, sauntering and meandering, seriously. He tastes the flavors of exotic syllables, savors the textures of stone fruits and unfamiliar words, the odd old rhymes and the new rhythms. Delight is a connoisseur of fresh air, bird song, and Mediterranean light.
Delight sets out on an early Sunday morning walk, enjoying “the sweet breathing of plants” and the shapes of the leaf shadows, occasionally anticipating lunch.
He is well acquainted with the main path but likes to wander the back roads with old cameras documenting the overgrown grasses, the buckeye trees and old oaks, and unexpected insects. Delight doesn’t need to know exactly where the path is going; he has an excellent sense of direction. Delight loves many voices of the wind in the wild curving branches of the valley oaks.
Note: The word savor in the etymological dictionaries nods to both flavor and appreciation. Such a Sufi kind of word. The sweetness of knowledge. In Latin sapere means both ‘taste’ and ‘be wise.’
Dread remembers the old highways where the soldiers were ambushed. He is all too aware of the way scars in the land have not healed. He hoards rumors and cardboard, expired passports and tins of fish…His enormous ears amplify the faint rumbling in the distance we almost hear. Dread is restless, moody, and vigilant.
On his most extroverted days, Dread announces his fears to everyone he meets, embellishing the headlines with vivid details that may or may not be true (yet). At city council meetings, he stands in the back of our shabby town hall, thin and haunted by our short-sightedness and reluctance to confront and prioritize our problems. And then there are the days that Dread stays inside, under the covers, unable to leave his house.
Sometimes, Dread is stoic about physical pain; still, he can hold onto a grudge for fifty years in three languages, waiting until there is an opportunity to resurrect and magnify an old insult. As one of his contemporaries put it, Dread “lives between the recent future and the not-so-distant past.” It is Dread’s burden to recognize how our science outpaces our ethics, to have experienced the long-term effects of a rare and misdiagnosed illness, to know the immense and temporary power of tyrants.
Humility walks in the footsteps of his ancestors, clearing a way for descendants and the children of his heart. He composts his self-doubts along with the morning egg shell, apple cores, and coffee grounds. He is not easily fooled by happy endings or convinced by sad endings either, which makes it hard to predict what books to bring him when he is recuperating from bronchitis. When he is not well, he rests.
Humility is frustrated by how rarely the rhythms and the textures of daily life are included in most stories. During your visit, he wants to hear about the work you do to do your work. He asks you to describe “what you know how to make” and “what has made you you.” Humility learns from everyone, but he is skeptical of authorities who announce that their earthshaking discoveries are changing life on earth as we know it. Humility wants these experts to exchange dreams with the ones who are sopped over, discouraged. Humility wants some of us to look back and see how much we have learned, and others to look back and see how little.
Humility’s favorite food, especially when he is tired, is a baked potato. His favorite chore is laundry.
Strength has to make her own path but that doesn’t mean she does it all by herself. Strength walks backwards when she needs to understand what is behind and what’s in front of her, when she wants to know the power of her hips and her shoulders, the qualities in her calves, her hips, and spine. Sometimes when Strength starts walking backwards, it feels like she might turn up on the other side of the world. Her research keeps Strength on the move, seeking out new ways to understand how humans and animals learn and play, heal and concentrate.
If you have the opportunity to study with Strength, do not hesitate. Even if it is a subject you are not especially interested in or good at. What you learn from her will have unexpected applications. And do not try to compare your assignments to the tasks she gives your friends. You will confuse yourself and them. Strength asks some of her students to focus on what they love; others to try things they were told they could never do. (She invites the wrestlers to dance and the dancers to wrestle.)
What is blunt about Strength? Her feet, her forehead, her staccato imperatives and encouraging messages. What is gentle about Strength? Her willingness to see each person in their vulnerability and their power. Once I went over to the studio and Strength had scribbled, “Wait quietly. Trust your sources,” with a red pastel on a piece of sandpaper in the margins of my favorite dictionary. I didn’t even think she knew where I lived.
This article was adapted from J. Ruth Gendler’s Emotional Geography, a limited edition artist’s book featuring text and color images for 14 qualities, published in 2025. Order your copy from [email protected]
Coming soon, an expanded version called The Town of Qualities.
Buy Gendler’s The Book of Qualities (Harper, 1988) here.
