An Addendum: If That’s All There Is

If that's all there is my friends

Then let's keep dancing.

Let’s break out the booze . . . 

• Peggy Lee, 1969

The question of “Is that all there is?” Is one my best and oldest friend, Dan, and I have been knocking about for decades. From candy-fueled grade school overnights, through 3.2 beer reflections in high school, to twisted fictions in our college dorm room, we would often return to the existential question, “is that all there is?”

Most religions and philosophies posit some sort of existence after this one, or a heightened awareness that transcends the here and now. Heaven, nirvana, enlightenment, olam ha-ba; take your pick.

The question Dan and I struggle with is, “OK, let us assume some sort of higher or different realm exists. What is consciousness like in those realms?” Are we aware of the lives we lived in the many, many, many worlds posited by the extended many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics explored in the previous post?

Ah, ha! I’m glad you asked. And let me say this about that, and make no mistake about it: 

I have no idea.

Doing the Right Thing

This is sort of a sequel to the post Write One True Sentence and shares with that post a significant degree of ambiguity. So I will share with you the advice I would often give my students prior to a rather obtuse lecture: “Don’t worry if, at first, this lecture doesn't seem to make sense. Just keep listening with an open mind and it may eventually become clear.” So, with that proviso, let’s give it a shot.

I read in a recent edition ofThe Art Newspaper, that a a Swiss company was using AI to authenticate the paintings of Old Masters. In this case a previously authenticated 1505 portrait by Albrecht Druer. They train an AI app using hundreds of previously authenticated images and some examples of known forgeries. They would then show the app the image in question, the Druer portrait from 1505. The AI determined the image’s authenticity at about 82% certainty.

Interesting, but somewhat in conflict with a more “quasi-metaphysical” process for authenticating - or at least evaluating - one’s decisions and behavior drawn from an older, and less computer intensive, method for discovering art forgeries.

In this method, no doubt an older version of the AI concept, you take a high resolution black and white digital image of a known, authenticated image. Then you subject the suspected forgery to the same procedure, making sure that the suspect image is exactly the same size and resolution as the authenticated original.

What you now have are two images that are exactly the same size. Next you digitally superimpose the two images. The idea is that even the best forgeries are slightly flawed. They will miss a line here, a spacing there, flaws that are often missed in colored forgeries or forgeries in which tiny errors are missed for lack of size. By superimposing our two matched high resolution black and white images, these flaws are revealed. “Forgery detected! Danger! Will Robinson!” “Danger!” Neat, huh?

Okay, but now I’m going to get a bit - well, more than a bit - weird. So bear with me. The method of "life authentication" I am exploring is a version of what goes under the rubric of “content analysis” in university communication, English and related disciplines.  The first step is to turn one’s personal belief system into something that can be graphically represented. The sort of things we encounter most often in the sciences - graphs that represent elements present in some physical sample, peaks on a screen that show how much iron, or any other element there is the sample. Images that allow us to match finger prints, or DNA. Those are rather precise data points. But my proposed method rests on images of beliefs, attitudes, behavior, values; far more slippery data points.

Harder, but possible. There are lots of related studies out the in communication, psychology, education, etc. But what makes this a bit trickier is those studies, if they are worth their salt at all, are based on large groups of individuals from which generalizable conclusions can be drawn. X number of people favor fossil fuel power, Y favor geothermal, etc.

But that is not really our concern. We want to create a personalized template that represents our own personal beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors so we can hopefully make a stab at understanding how well we are doing in living up to our own expectations. These are very slippery concepts, asking us to play with questions like  “I believe it is mandatory to always tell the absolute truth, no matter its effect on others.” Or “I believe it is Ok to eat meat.”  Or “Killing somebody is self-defense is not murder,” “I should be free to put whatever I want into my body, no person has the right to interfere.” “I should always assist those in need.” Far more believe-centered, personal belief issues. Very different from elements in a meteorite sample stuff.  Not many sharp lines in these personal templates. ( A bit of a spoiler  -  here: we usually  cling to more than one template and we need to blend them.)

Ok, let’s talk templates. Where do they come from? They are, at least initially learned. First from the home into which we are born. There we learn the basics of language and behavior, and how to use language to elicit the behavior we desire. Do we obtain desired behavior - food, attention, privileges - by following the “rules of the home,” or by acting out until those in power give in? Pretty Pavlovian stuff. But eventually we move out into the wider world and encounter more formal templates. Usually schools with specific rules and expectations. Again pretty Pavlovian: spell the word this way, use this sentence structure, use these words, not those. 

But interestingly it is in these initial interactions with the wider world that we begin to encounter formal templates with cultural, moral, political and ethical implications. I still remember in the 50s, hand over heart, class rising to repeat the pledge of allegiance. No more questionable than long division, and easier to understand. I had a friend who went to Catholic school with even more templates to confront. What, we sometimes wondered, did a third grader need to confess? And did the guy behind the curtain really have a direct line to God who assessed the transgressions of every third grader in the world and assigned specific acts of penitence? We figured no, so I helped him make stuff up.

As we grew older the “one-size-fits-all” cultural templates of belief and behavior were beginning to rub up against the often confusing realities of living life. But life’s templates continue to multiply: home, school, religious affiliation, academic specialty, profession, ethnicity, gay, straight, bi-, vegan, carnivore, athletic team fan identity, republican, democrat, independent, Taylor Swift - pro or con? I know, I know, I have left your favorite identity template out. I apologize, but you get the idea. Templates that are chock full of “thou shalt” and “thou shalt nots;” seemingly black and white but are really so full of grey you could paint a herd of elephants.

Yet we really only have a couple of options here. Option 1, the easiest, inherited from the fable (fable ‘cause they don’t really do this) of the ostrich hiding their head in the sand to avoid anything they don’t want to think about; you become a fundamentalist and choose one template to be the one true template and follow all its demands. Any old template will do. An inerrant religious tome, Bible, Quran, Vedas, Tripitaka, the Mahayana Sutras. The party platform or unique beliefs of some political entity. The writings of some advocate of a particular template; Edgar Cayce, L. Ron  Hubbard, J. K. Rowling - it really doesn’t matter.

For the fundamentalist the important thing is that the texts or the beliefs of the prophet removes doubt and the necessity of personal thought or reflection. Nice work if you can get it, but be careful of the inevitable contradictions.

For myself, and I would guess for many of you, the more difficult task is the merging of the templates. For me it often feels like trying to work a jigsaw puzzle with no picture on the box or the pieces. It is an exercise in position, agreement and fit that really can only be figured out through experiencing life. You have to find, and fit together those pieces of experience that make a pleasing, coherent, justifiable - and, what the hell, - good, truthful, kind, humane, template for you.

Siddhartha went through many varied life experiences before finding enlightenment and becoming the Buddha. Enlightenment, wow, that is probably setting the bar a bit high, but it might not be asking too much for each of us to try for at least a glow in the fog. A glow that flickers a bit, sometimes may hide for a bit behind a deceptive cloud, but gradually comes into view again, a bit brighter, a tad more constant.

And how do we begin to build that more constant template, that more illuminative flame? Ah, patience, grasshopper! Or as Heinlein put it in his 1961 sci-fi novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, “Waiting is.” But to expand upon that a bit, it is not just a question of passive listening, it is listening and paying attention, listening and looking for patterns that point the way to a worthy life. I’m going to cheat a bit here since I have been trying to follow my own advice for a couple of decades now, sometimes successfully, sometimes with astounding failure - painful to myself and others.

 

But let me share a couple of “templates” that I have tried to blend.  Teaching media for 40 years it should not surprise you to learn that I draw some of these template from narratives drawn from the media. Now, lower that disdainful upper lip for a bit. It is true that for decades the “cultural influencers” of their day were deign to admit the narratives carried by flickering light into whatever canon they chose to adhere to. When growing up, we kept the TV in the basement. But why do you think the chorus in Greek tragedies would flutter their arms to presage the coming of a storm, and perhaps the arrival of the gods? Because they didn’t have classic stage lights to hide behind the proscenium for crying out loud.

Stage writers from Euripides, to Shakespeare, to Jane Cavendish brought significant narrative templates to our attention via media other than the printed page or the various pulpits of the sage in current vogue. So let us be open to some TV templates. Back in 1981 I wrote an article with two of my graduate students (in the Western Journal of Speed Communication with Lawrence Bernabo and Richard Hudson) titled Televisions New Humane  Collectivity. In that piece we asserted that:

“Analysis of the manifest content of Taxi, Barney Miller, Lou Grant, and M*A*S*H reveals three predominant fantasy themes: the realization of significant others, the alliance in action, and membership into personhood. From these three themes emerges a rhetorical vision, the new humane collectivity, which focuses on a meaningful and rewarding existence based on humane, sympathetic awareness of and concern for the group, the individuals who comprise the group, and the society which surrounds it.”

Or in real people-speak, “we should treat individuals kindly, and carry that sympathetic and kindly attitude into our behavior with all groups of people - friends, family, check-out clerks, wait staff, - etc. So that became one template by which I tried to live.

Eventually, over a number of decades, I continually tried to refine that into a cleaner, clearer set of guiding principles with which I could find my way in an increasingly adult life. The result was what I have come to call Distilled Harmony.

As I have written before it is comprised of four hierarchical tenets:

First tenet: Foster Harmony

Second tenet: Enable Beauty

Third tenet: Distill Complexity

Fourth tenet: Oppose Harm.

More recently I have come to the realization that the hierarchy is more flexible than I had previously imagined. One can envision the Distilled Harmony hierarchy as a simple pie chart like this:

[Please excuse these clumsey freehand drawings, which I cannot rotate 😟]:

But that would be wrong. A more realistic image would better resemble a round slightly under-inflated ballon that morphs shape as you squeeze it. Sort of like this:

You see, the various tenets shift situationally as we move through life. The was a picture of the path of the recent solar eclipse that might make this clearer. Let me see if I can find it.

There we go, I think. Hope it will paste to The Wall. Anyhow, as you look at the path of the eclipse, think about this: A person observing the eclipse in any one of those circles will see a different version of reality. It is the same underlying solar event, but a different perceptual reality.

Life is much the same. In the sketches above the small circle in the middle is us. But as we move along the path of our lives the dominance of the tenets shift. They will rarely shift dominance, but sometimes may. For example if we walk into a voting booth and know one candidate has a criminal record or manifests crude behavior toward women, then Opposing Harm may partner with Foster Harmony to influence our choice. Or if we find ourselves in the midst of a gorgeous fall forest, or awesome sunset, Enable Beauty may send us scurrying for our sketchpad or camera.

Different specific situations like that affect to some degree the semi-flexible tenets of Distilled Harmony, but each informs the "me" at the center and our search for a constant, somehow balanced, understanding and manifestation of the self.

And now an unavoidable, but related footnote, which I may explore further in a subsequent Wall called "I Love It When the Data Support My Biases."

On April 7th, the online version of New Scientist published an article with the following lead [and a very cool image That I will try to share]:

"The multiverse could be much, much bigger than we ever imagined

The multiverse could be infinitely bigger than we ever imagined, according to a new interpretation of quantum mechanics that describes realms upon realms of parallel universes created with every decision we make."

This is a modest extension of the normal definition of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics which Britannica defines thus:

"Basically, many-worlds proposes the idea that the quantum system doesn't actually decide. Rather, that at every junction where large everyday stuff interacts with the quantum system, the timeline of history splits and both possibilities happen on different alternate branches."

The important difference lies in this phrase: "at every junction where large everyday stuff interacts with the quantum system, the timeline of history splits."

The difference in the New Scientist" story is that it isn't just large everyday stuff that splits the timeline of history, it is every decision that we make. While exploring a new city you turn left at an intersection instead of right. BAM - the timeline of history shifts and two worlds spiral off, in one - the one we are "conscious of - you follow the left hand world, in another more hidden world's version of reality, another you explores the right.

I love this many, many, many, many worlds reading of quantum mechanics for a couple of reasons. First, in it real live theoretical physicists voice an existential view I [with zero background in physics] have held for a long time.

Two, and most important it - in some way - forgives me for all the questionable decisions I have made in my life. For example:

• When I chose to go to graduate school in Michigan and become a university professor, another me went to California to become a professional actor.
• When I decided to marry one high school sweetheart, another me married the other high school sweetheart I had dated the previous night.
• When I decided to get my degree in communication, another me apprenticed with a practicing artist and became painter/sculptor.

It is not that I regret the choices that I have made in my conscious reality, it is that I often wondered about what my life would have been like had I chosen another path. This new reading of quantum mechanics says I did both.

And here is an interesting extension. Even if choices I made in my conscious reality did harm to others, in other sides of the split in history's timeline, I made the right choice, and am - in one view of existence - forgiven. 

Two Short Walls and a Patio

 Well, that may be a bit deceptive. I call them Short walls, because I have been working on a Long Wall, exploring the unexpected existential tension between the first tenet of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony and the fourth tenet, Oppose Harm, that is threatening to become a book. 

Anyhow both these short walls got their starts in the Wayback machine. They are “short” in that they could both be summarized with “been there, done that.” But that would hardly be fair, so I’ll, naturally, give you the long version of each.

Short Wall #1 - or Pills, Pills everywhere.

This Wall got its start not too long after Christine and I were married in December of 2006. I had been bothered by back pain for awhile and been seeing a chiropractor - which wasn’t doing much good. Christine suggested that I see a real doctor.

My doctor of many years had recently retired so I went off to see the doc who had taken over his practice - a fresh-faced young lad who looked like Doogie Houser’s younger brother. He ran some tests, correctly diagnosed multiple myeloma, and, less correctly, said “get your affairs in order, you’ve got about six months.” He was very sorry, actually wept a bit.

I’m not sure which particular flight of angels brought us to Dr. W’s door for a second opinion, but obviously the outcome was far preferable to Doogie’s initial assessment. But there was a fly hidden in the otherwise delightful ointment. As some of you may know one of MM’s presenting symptoms is pain, rather significant back pain. 

We had to fight with Blue Cross, Blue Shield before they would approve a kytoplasty to repair the damage that MM had done to my back - the chemo had killed off a swathe of small tumors, leaving me with a kind of Swiss cheese bone structure at the site. The Blues were apparently stuck on the preconceived notion that kytoplasty was a treatment for women with osteoporosis. While they vacillated my back pain continued to get worse. That was went the fly crept into the ointment: OxyContin.

Now remember this was almost 20 years ago and the world was rather unaware of the addictive potential of this amazingly effective analgesic. So you really shouldn’t be all that surprised to learn that I blithely, and regularly ingested various amounts of the opioid over the next 20 years - until about seven weeks ago.

For probably the last decade a number of my doctors suggested that I get off the opioid. I really saw no reason to. In my mind it simply maintained normalcy. Yeah, I could tell when I missed a dose, just felt a bit off, but it was never more than a few hours until the next pill, so no big deal, right?

But it was becoming inconvenient. After retiring, spontaneous travel became a more common opportunity, and it was just an additional hassle to figure out how to maintain contact with my oxy. So when I, much to the delight of Christine, suggested to my current doc that I was ready to follow his advice to taper off, he was delighted to set up a plan. Five week gradual taper. Finished a couple of weeks ago. Not much of a hassle, but again a fly lurked in the ointment.

Think about it. For 20 years I constantly had this “feel good” drug circulating around inside. Not surprisingly, when you remove that from a 75-year old dude some things it had been masking pop up and say hello. For me; diabetes, neuropathy, insomnia, and a strange desire to root for Carolina - just kidding about that last one, Go Wolfpack! 

But, as irksome as those maladies are, they are all far more manageable than trying to schedule drug mules to follow me to Europe. So I’ll keep on keeping on.

Short Wall #2 - or Hermit Crabs do it Better.

It is easy to pinpoint this one as it started as darkly as it gets. On June 12 of last year, or maybe the tenth or the 11th, which would be closer to the date when our dear friend Smitty sustained the injuries in a fall which led to his death. 

Our unique short wall began with the provision in his will that Christine and I were granted lifetime occupancy to the home we had shared with him during our numerous and lengthy visits.

The obvious good news on this wall is that we had a sweet residence in a lovely neighborhood close to the family Christine had been missing during our lengthy stay in Raleigh. The dark part of the wall grew at the other end of the event - moving our worldly possessions up from the South to a state only once removed from Canada. 

The move is a continuing disaster as we discover more cracks, chips and breaks of outrageous misfortune, resulting from our movers seeming inability to read things like “fragile”and “Do Not Stack” and the related ability to completely overlook entire cabinets of dishes. (Tangential good news - the lifetime occupancy clause means we will never have to move again!)

For reasons mysterious to all concerned, the North Carolina house sat idle for nine months, leaving us racking up almost 20k in expenses for a vacant home, and much more than that in stress and anxiety. 

We finally left the chaos of the move at this end and made a run back down to Raleigh to see a 90+ dear artist friend - ended up sleeping in his studio - and to interview realtors to get the house moving. Hooked up with the realtor who sold Christine’s sister’s house when they moved to Wisconsin.

She and Dave, her “ace handyman” swiftly put the house in order for an open house the first week in March. It sold at the open house for 20K above asking! And the check is in the bank! 

New car to replace our ancient Yaris and a European Christmas River Cruise currently top our wish list!

The Patio.

I have no idea why I call this event a patio. Maybe because you sit out on your patio to look around. But, more likely I just liked the way it completed the metaphor. 

Anyhow, Christine had eyelid surgery a couple of days ago. My sister Margaret tells me it is a rather common procedure that some of her friends have had done. What happens is the eyelids droop down and begin to obscure vision. So the surgery is kind of an eyelid lift.

Christine is doing fine, but the post op is quite uncomfortable requiring many drops, ointments, ice water gauze patches etc., etc. Let me simply say that my admiration for the healthcare workers on the end of the “nurse call” button has skyrocketed - since I am now that guy!

Write One True Sentence

 We watched a documentary about Ernest Hemingway the other night. I would not recommend it unless you are a real depression junky. Learning about his immensely dysfunctional family, with his father, brother and sister all suicides, did clarify why suicide probably struck him as a normal, possibly expected exit strategy for one’s life. 

I much prefer the fictionalized Hemingway we meet through Cory Stoll's depiction in the 2011 film Midnight in Paris. Stoll's Hemingway was a tough but eloquent advocate of clean precise "manly" prose. But hidden in the real Hemingway's macabre world view, lurks a possible hint of Hem's “self-erraticating” perspective which arose from an unlikely revelation in the documentary - Hemingway’s philosophy of writing.

Apparently when Hemingway found himself, as all writers inevitably must, confronting the monstrous challenge of a blank page his remedy was this: “Write one true sentence, and the rest will follow.” Write one true sentence? My god, no wonder the man killed himself. Think about this sublime, but chronically depressed, advocate of "Write clearly," "Use short sentences," "Make your first paragraph short," trying to follow his own advice. Even imagine our less talented, but better balanced selves, facing that empty page, and hearing the echo of Hem’s advice - “Write one true sentence!” Perhaps the best, truest, response would be: “I cannot do that.”

“And why not?” The Hem in our head might inquire.  Well, Hem, because to assert that we can write one true sentence strongly implies that the sentence possesses a kind of eternal verity. That, by being the one true sentence, it would always be true.

Life itself argues against such a sentence. The one true sentence that flows from our pen today will be almost certainly be betrayed if not tomorrow, then next week, next year, or next decade. That assertion does not mean to question the veracity of the sentence as we compose it, but rather seeks to realize that maintaining the constant truth of any one true sentence lies beyond our meager ability.

Heraclitus said “The only constant in life is change.” And before we say “Ah, ha! There is one true sentence!” consider the research being done in cryogenics, aimed at freezing sick folks to stop all change until a cure can be found. That attempt to arrest change seems as yet unsuccessful. 

Heraclitus is far more often proved right than wrong. Change does seem to be the dominant constant in our lives, and because we live our lives in states of constant change, the very condition of truth is also subject to constant change, making our ability to write one true sentence impossible.

Whew, that felt good.

Obviously if we edit Hemingway’s challenge to read “Write a sentence that is true in your world at this time.” We open the door to “the earth is the center of the universe,” “the earth is flat,” “I believe all people are good,” "No one will ever run a mile is less than 4 minutes,” “Humans will never walk on the moon.” Insert your own example of a true sentence that has fallen by the wayside. 

I think that attempting to meet that edited challenge would get most authors past the dreaded “blank page freeze.” But that is not what Hemingway asked of us. He said “Write one true sentence.”

And what happens when an obsessive, perfectionist, depressed author like Hemingway realizes that there is no way to do that? Most of us would, hopefully, think “Oh, you mean like true right now? OK.” And we would move on to sentences two, three, four, etc, perhaps of varying veracity, but engaging fiction. Unfortunately, given Hemingway’s family history, and personal demons, his response to such a literary impasse was to reach for a shotgun.

So what does that mean for us as creative human beings who feel the urge to create something but are faced with the equivalent of a blank page? Here are some suggestions:

List your favorite words. With them, write a beautiful sentence, or one that makes you laugh, or cry.

Describe the world outside your window.

Fill a page with a loopy scribble, color in the loops.

Write down the names of all your teachers and the grades or subjects they taught.

Write down the names of every pet you ever had.

None of these exercises will necessarily lead you to the great American novel. But they might lead you somewhere interesting. Perhaps the best you can hope for on any one day is a limerick or two. But that is OK. At least it will keep the shotgun in the closet. And, why, pray tell, is there a shotgun in your closet anyway? For crying out loud.  .  .  .

I Write Because I Have No Other Instrument

 Like many youngsters I took music lessons more to please my parents than to fulfill some melodic inclination within. My buddy Dan from the previous post, and I would dutifully bicycle over to Mrs Stupp’s house, a landmark we failed to seek out on the previous trip with the “way back machine.” I vaguely recall a tarantella duet from one of her sponsored “student concerts.” The memory is faint, and probably best forgotten, along with my three-chord, two song fling with the guitar in high school.

As I lie here watching a video on Irish airs, and find myself profoundly saddened by the fact that I cannot make music. I have a decent voice and have used it in musicals, choirs and choruses throughout my life. Wonderful memories of singing alone and in groups - but exclusively music written by others. I cannot pick up any instrument and follow a score, let alone improvise or compose. It is, as I said, a source of sadness and not a little envy.

So when I write, perhaps because of my background in theater where the written word must be spoken or sung, I am constantly aware of the aural quality of the words. I do not mean just how the words would actually sound if read, but also how the words relate to one and other tonally on the page.

That is not always a good thing as sometimes the melody of the narrative takes control, resulting in a composition where the intended meaning can be lost or distorted by those melodic demands. The result can be better, more pleasing writing, that nonetheless distorts the communicative motivation that originally led pen to paper, fingers to keyboard.

My wife often laments the fact that my copious consumption of the written word is skewed 80 % fiction 20% non. I imagine my love of fiction stems from a variety of motives. First, non-fiction is obviously restrained by an obligatory relationship to the truth, a requirement obviously cast aside when the source of the narrative has political or commercial aspirations. But those who would create narratives that are legitimate attempts to convey accurate portrayals of the world as it actually exists - nonfiction writers - are the literary equivalent of hobbles on a racehorse. Second, events that occur in “a galaxy long ago and far away” are forever closed to them, as are the adventures of protagonists living on a desert planet, or attending classes at a school for witches and wizards.

Mind you, I am not denigrating the truly wonderful and seemingly magical worlds I encounter in Nature, National Geographic, and Science News. But they are narratives closely constrained by truth, a barrier I find limiting in those narratives I read, and often unfortunately, unacceptable in those I write.

To steal a warning from the old sci-fi series, “Lost in Space,” “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!” My inclination to favor an engaging narrative over one that clings tightly to the dictates of the actual, truthful, unembellished, reality can result in what less compassionate, less understanding individuals might call lies. For example, while living in Vienna, Austria, from 1959 to 1961 One day while rambling around the inner city, I chanced upon a rehearsal of The Vienna Choir Boys. Uninvited, I slipped into the back of the church. They were singing a song I knew, so I sang along - admittedly inaudibly. They stopped to get advice from their director, and I slipped out. Now, can you really blame me if, in a later sixth-grade retelling of the event, the description leaned to, “Yes, I had a chance to sing with The Vienna Choirboys?”

Harmless? Of course, but it was one of those little steps that could lead one to treat the line between fact and fiction cavalierly. Perhaps that is why I prefer fiction to reportage. It admits right up front “Hey! I am making this up! Cool, huh?” Or perhaps it is because I read so much fiction that I am inclined to easily spot it in the rhetoric that surrounds us in the “real world,” and allow it, sometimes unintentionally harmfully, in my own writing. 

In my own defense, when my literary excesses cause pain to others, it is, in the larger field of human activity a little thing. Uncomfortable for a dyad, but unknown and unimportant to society as a whole. A minor foible on any but an interpersonal scale. Nonetheless, admittedly painful at that level.

Those lesser emotion ripples become infinitely more important when these flawed narratives are voiced by one who seeks the most powerful political position in the world: “I respect women!” “I’m a highly functioning genius!” “I’m a multibillionaire!” “I built my fortune all by myself!” “I hit the ball out of the park!”

Yeah. And I bet you sang with The Vienna Choirboys.

Memories from the “WABAC” Machine

( I’m going to begin this post with an old pedagogy joke: “Will everyone who is not here please raise your hand!” Actually I would like everyone who hasn’t read the email about Tuckpointing the Wall to check your mail, spam and trash included, and take a look. Thanks!) Now on with Memories from the WABAC Machine.)

Between 1959 and 1963 one could dip into a TV cartoon on Saturday mornings called Peabody’s Improbable History. In the program Mr. Peabody, a brilliant bespectacled beagle and his human, rather befuddled, sort-of-ward, Sherman would enter the “WABAC” - pronounced “way back” -  machine and zip off to, and muddle about in, major events in history.

I sort of did that a couple of months ago when my oldest friend and partner-in-crime, Dan, and I took off to Springfield, Ohio to revisit our strangely shared history. We started with the duplex where we were born 7 days apart in November of 1948. I will include that image as it seems rather like what a structure would look like 74 years after the November of our birth. But from there things got a bit weird.

Among the more normal stops along the ramble we revisited the other homes where we grew up. Mine looked rather well kept up, but the knock on the door was greeted only by raucous barking from multiple canines and a sign on the door which read: “No need to knock. We can hear that you are here.” Perhaps that was what alleviated any need to answer the door. We moved on.

Dan’s home had fared less well, deserted, weather beaten, and up for sale. His attempts to engage his sisters in an architectural rescue seem to be falling on deaf ears. However in our mind’s eyes we were able to recreate backyard baseball games where we imposed upon his younger sister to play the “way, way, way outfield,” part way back into the neighbor’s yard. The stump of the pine tree down which we would escape for late night soirées to the candy, soda and baseball cards store was discernible. Sadly, our junior high school directly across the street was but a memory faded behind a strip of bland buildings devoid of signage and of indeterminate function.

Better preserved were the homes of our high school sweethearts, whose current occupants apparently neither observed or reported our slow and subtle drive-bys. But that brings me to varied reasons to allow the past to remain the past.

Springfield, Ohio lies 10 miles down State Route 68 from Yellow Spring, Ohio, home of Antioch College, which like Dan’s house appears to have fallen on hard times. Once a cornerstone of “alternate - aka hippy - education” with several campuses, Wikipedia reports a current total enrollment of 133 students. Adieu the 60s.

But that isn’t the point. Our time along the Route 68 corridor had little or nothing to do with Antioch. Far more important were Young’s Jersey Dairy - a small (maybe 15 foot square) little Mom and Pop dairy bar with incredible milkshakes; and John Bryan State Park - home of a bucolic waterfall guaranteed to impress your date from high school.

So we set off down route 68 to recapture those scenes of our youth. We soon arrived, appropriately for the original writing of this post, at the Halloween version of both.  The two entities had formerly been separated by pastures and cornfields. They now seemed to share Disneyland-like huge asphalt parking lots featuring dual-stroller friendly paths - all densely inhabited. 

We bailed on both and instead headed down 68 a bit further to Yellow Springs proper, which seemed to have found a new identity as overflow parking for the dairy and State park. When you could find a parking place it was behind trendy little boutiques and bars. We repaired to one of the latter and were informed by a chatty patron that Yellow Springs was “the most visited village in the nation!”

She had no data for her assertion, nor could I find any online, however, the general congestion seemed to offer some support. We wandered around for awhile, eventually stopping into a cloyingly quaint garden restaurant for dinner. It eventually further distinguished itself by serving Dan the smallest filet either of us had ever seen.

We finally admitted defeat and left reality behind and returned to the kinder embrace of memory. Dan had secured a couple of “senior” tickets to a Wittenberg University - previously Wittenberg College - football game at the cost of $6.00 a head. Not a typo, perhaps a nod to the kinder and more gentle pricing of our youth, which was not reflected in the concession stand where a hotdog and a Coke outstripped the cost of admission.

(The yellow house across the playing field is the one at the top of the post where Dan and I lived the first few years of our lives.) 

The concession stand exerted a particular pull for me as both my older brother and I had hawked popcorn and the original coca-colas to the fans. Some of whom were seated - as we had been, back in the day - in the “box seats,” which at the time were concrete pads that held four folding chairs. My memories of those those days may be a bit sanguine, as the whole concession endeavor was run by a burly guy strangely named “Peaches” who was the uncle of my girlfriend whose house we had earlier cruised. Naturally I enquired at the concession window if the family still owned the operation. Blank stares.

Wittenberg won and we trudged back across the rolling lawn where Dan had squired his high school sweetheart whom he eventually married. We found the car and returned the our rented porch, made beverages that would have been illicit in the times we sought to recall, and gazed quietly out across the fields that fit more comfortably with our memories than the insistent realities that populated the world beyond. 

I do not regret having made this little sojourn in the Wayback machine, but do not think I will advocate for a repeat. Other places in our shared history may call to us, but there are, I learned again, some memories that are owned by the past, and should be left there in peace.

A New Pot on the Front Burner

 Distilled Harmony, as I have often mentioned, rests on four primary tenets: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm. I would often further contend that the tenets formed something of a hierarchy with Foster Harmony forming the base from which the remaining three ascend. However I am learning that this nice tight little model is sometimes impacted by a little thing called life.

The first cracks in this tautology came apparent on March 16th, 2023 when after a sudden precipitous decline in his health we had to have our beloved black lab, Vito Muso put to sleep. His longtime owner Smitty, in his mid-90s, who had often told Vito, “We’re going to go out together buddy,” made good on his prediction in mid-June.

Smitty’s passing triggered our long-planned move from the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina to the western suburbs of Chicago. It was a move that has stretched over months, and in the process battered the tenet of Foster Harmony, and our own psyches, into tattered remnants of their former selves. Discord stalked every virtually every stage of the transition. Death, broken bones, and it seemed as if every person of importance in our relocation was literally speaking a foreign tongue.

Point was Foster Harmony needed a break. So I pulled it off the front burner and let it simmer quietly on one of the back burners for awhile - not abandoned, just resting.

It soon became obvious which tenet had to take one for the team and slide onto the front burner. Foster Harmony had always held first place in part because it fed smoothly into my favorite tenet; Enable Beauty, which gave free rein to messing around in my studio drawing and writing my Wallish drivel.

But it is only over the last few days that I have come to realize how important being in the presence of art is to my psychic well being. I have posted pictures from my Raleigh studio here before, but I can’t recall having shared the rest of our art with you.

We are, I now realize, “Art dependent.” We have friends who actually prefer minimalist wall treatments - maybe a picture or two, but nothing excessive. We, on the other hand, upon spying a spot of exposed wall, wonder “How did that happen?” To give you an idea of what that realization results in, we finally had the picture hanging folks in yesterday. They were incredibly, able to actualize, and even improve on, our designs. I’m going to share a few images with you:

 

And we really aren’t done. These are the major pieces - still a bunch of smaller works, among which are a few faves, yet to be hung. But here is what struck me as we got these pieces installed: we have been separated from these images for more than seven months!!.  That is like being without air, like having to eat at fast food restaurants, like watching TV without cable, for seven months! 

Is it any wonder that I was suffering what the religious would call a crisis of faith? I read recently that it made perfect sense to attain a state of grace in the pursuit of beauty. So come on in Enable Beauty, take this seat right down front. Make yourself comfortable, and in the process, do the same for us! Please.

Interim Images

To continue playing with sharing the evolution of the red flower drawing. After playing with some smaller versions I came to this rather bolder black and white version:

Which I might have shared with you before. The problem soon became that it was hard to figure out where the original flower stopped and where the design images I added began. So I covered the b&w with tracing paper and began marking in the various boundaries. That came out looking like the image below. Obviously the red and green areas show the borders of the original flower parts. Not so obvious is the fact that I will not be restricted to those guidelines, but like other previous images’ I will add more intricate designs in those spaces. The same is true in the spaces marked “open.” Time will tell.

But I’m not sure when that time will be as real estate and related issues seem to be calling us back to Raleigh :-(

Back in the Studio

Managing to work on a bit of art. So I thought I’d share a little. Decided to start with a floral abstract as that lets me stay a bit distanced from the more stressful “human world.”  So I chose this red flower 

and worked out this first stage black and white version. More to follow as time permits🙂

Cheers!

On The Seventh Decade

The new year is less than 48 hours old. And as is the case with every new year, the horizon is shrouded in mist, thick in places, dappled with rainbows in others. Multiple paths, each equally uncertain stretch out.  So I decided to do something symbolic - and I went out and bought a puppy! No not really, though we both have moments when we are dangerously close. Way too much uncertainty in life right now. I remember Smitty’s reaction whenever we proposed a trip; “What will we do with Vito?” I stave off the black lab puppy temptation by watching dog videos on Curiosity Stream.

What I did instead was open a “new notebook,” called The Seventh Decade on Evernote. I realize that seems like no big thing, but I see it as symbolic. I have been using my “default notebook,” rlschrag, for decades now and have somewhere over a thousand posts stashed in there. And while setting up The Seventh Decade I noticed that I have another half dozen notebooks scattered around the app with names like “Blown Away,” “Celestial Sounds” and “Dream Log.” Some day when I am feeling both courageous and bored I will pop one or two open and see what I was writing there.

I’m going to make The Seventh Decade my default notebook for awhile, even though I, according to my birthday, am halfway through the decade. Why? I guess because reminding myself of my lofty seniority frees me to censor myself less. What you say? No, really,I actually do that sometimes, like the last post “Thoughts from the Hollow” was fairly circumspect - particularly the parts about the draft and Vietnam. Didn’t mention my older brother Jim at all. I have moved that Hollow post here into The Seventh Decade notebook which changes nothing other than a digital pathway winding along cyberspace on my various devices and then, often, out to you to save, read, pass along, or delete.

These Seventh Decade posts I hope will remind me of the special opportunities here in the Seventh Decade. Things like remembering the special calm that comes with writing poetry. I need to do more of that. The luxury of having no idea what day it is, and really not caring. My digital calendar reminds me what day to take the garbage out, and if I miss it so what? The guys with the noisy trucks will be back next week. I have friends with a home out on Ocracoke island. And, back in the day when I would visit them, they would relish the fact that they were living “on island time.” Ignoring, at least for a little while, that they would - next week, or tomorrow or the day after -  have to return to their important and rewarding jobs and obligations back in “real world” time.

Collecting these current posts here in The Seventh Decade notebook will, hopefully give me a bit of a leg up on future questions like "Where and when did I write that piece about whatever?" Real issue. For example, earlier today while attempting to organize a couple of boxes of paper from my office at NC State I came across a copy of an article I wrote for The International Journal of the Arts in Society, vol. 1, 2006 titled Beyond Genius, Obsession and Patronage: Technology and the Enabling of Creativity in the 21st Century. Sounds interesting. I look forward to reading it since I have no clear recollection of writing it. Luckily, I am not the president of Harvard, nor subject to review by the arcane processes of the academy. Another benefit of living here in the Seventh Decade.  Just glanced at the first page, and I do recognize myself there. I also recall that this particular piece afforded me some travel money so Christine and I could travel to the Edinburg Fringe Festival. Very, very cool. Learned to love haggis.

So Seventh Decade time brings, like island time, a number of unique benefits and opportunities. Sure, it often comes with the twinges, aches and the inevitable bugs and bruises “that all flesh is heir to.” But melancholy Hamlet’s moaning aside, the Seventh Decade also holds the possibility of a more gentle, more creative, richer life than the hurried, harried, decades that led us to this little backwater in space and time. And, no matter its drawbacks, it is - almost without exception - far preferable to not having made it here at all! 

Thoughts from the Hollow

 It has always struck me as a strangely fallow time of year, that gap between whatever winter solstice holiday you celebrate and the time when various calendars proclaim it to be a “new year.” Two peaks in the public consciousness between which is “the hollow” where a listlessness prompts its twin lassitude to stir drifting thoughts.

Among mine are reflections on “Distilled Harmony,” the world view I have be toying with for the last decade or so, and various comments from here on the Wall and elsewhere that wonder how I manage to cling to a positive view of the world when “information media” present a rather contrary view of existence. Hmmm. 

I believe it was my mother who first read the Pollyanna books to my sister and me. If I am wrong Margaret will switch on her super sister memory and correct me. For those of you without access to that marvelous resource, Pollyanna, was a children’s literature classic written by Eleanor H. Porter in 1913. Wikipedia tells us that Pollyanna"has become a byword for someone who, like the title character, has an unfailing optimistic outlook.”  

When you consider the four major tenets of Distilled Harmony, Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm, it would be understandable to consider the Distilled Harmony view of existence to be skewed a tad toward Pollyanna. And that is just fine, as Distilled Harmony is a positive perspective on existence, but not naively so. There are some clouds in this predominantly blue sky interpretation of existence. And it behooves me to clarify the exceptions, which, not surprisingly can be found predominantly in the oppose harm tenet.

First, perhaps, is my extreme dislike of “negative noise.” That is a pretty fuzzy notion. To clarify, I guess I would say “negative noise” is any audible manifestation of discord.  Still broad, but perhaps less so.  A whining puppy, a bawling calf, the banging of a storm loosened shutter - these are all negative noises, and I find them disturbing. But, as we are discovering regarding many of the world’s woes, most negative noises are created by people. 

A personal bete noire is voices raised in anger. I was fortunate to have been raised in a home where discord was most often expressed more gently than I have come to learn was, and sadly still is, the norm in many domestic interactions. And I supposed my surprise at this stark reality is in itself a tad strange given that in my 1990 book, Taming the Wild Tube, I laid blame for this distorted notion of normalcy on the media and its impact on “real life.“ Unfortunately things on that front have not gotten any better.

In journalism the notion of “If it bleeds it leads,” is alive and well. The latest clashes from the never-ending wars of the world usually lead. In “reality TV” think Dr. Phil, or other programs in that genre. Or even “fictional dramas” that center on conflict, the conversations most often featured are manifestations of anger, stress and violence. More “negative noise.” Political “discussions” have “devolved” into media enhanced confrontations bearing more similarities to a fifth grade cafeteria food fight than a rational discussion of pressing local, national, or global issues. And, to stay with the analogy for just a moment, given the tawdry presentation of life via the media, is the rise of the taunting, belittling playground bully in political life really any surprise? Whew! That felt good. And isn’t that the problem?

Well, obviously, if I dislike mediated presentations of conflict, those entities pale in comparison with “real life” arguments, feuds, disagreements, etc. Fortunately, and not entirely by chance, my “real life” has been relatively free of personal “negative noise.” There was, in hindsight, not even much hollering during my divorce. There is an argument to be made that part of that avoidance of “negative noise” in my “real life” has come at the cost of “fighting the good fight!” It is an argument I choose not to make as the idea of a “good fight” is, as manifested in contemporary culture, in itself an oxymoron.

OK. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Things I am not “Pollyanna-ish” about.

Authoritative voices from on high, or on paper, or these days on a digital screen, demanding behavior that ultimately proves foolish.  OK, for this one you’re going to have to squeeze into the WayBack machine with Sherman, Mr. Peabody and me because we are headed to the mid-1960s. Those were the years when young men over the age of 18 began to receive letters that began: “Greetings!” Long, very long, story short, these were letters from on high - the “on high” in this case being the Selective Service System - I don’t believe the irony in the name was intentional - telling them to report to their local draft boards to begin the process that had a good chance of sending them to Vietnam. 

Now, I have no intention to debate that incredibly divisive period in our history. Rather my concern is with the whole “voice on high” from the rather arbitrary Selective Service System. Everyone’s experience during this time was unique, as was mine:

One thing each young man had to do was get physical - and not in the Olivia Newton-John sense of the concept. So, I did, and that was where things began to get strange. I have terrible eyesight, fell into the orchestra pit during a rehearsal for Bye, Bye Birdie in high school. Which bruised my ego but strengthened my case to get contacts. So, word on the street was my eyesight would deem me unfit to serve. But the process was the process, so I went for mu physical; moved from doc to doc, station to station - discovering in one station that the examiner was a good friend of my then wife’s parents. “Give them my best!” he said as he shoved me along to the next station.

And soon I was back on the bus headed for home. Now, another little bit of history. Since this was after December 1, 1964 I was part of the “draft lottery,” a system devised by the Selective Service System that assigned each potential draftee a number between 1 and 366, which determined in what order the draftee could be called to serve. Low number - pack your bags. High number - chill. More of a Random Service System.

My number was 133, or 131, not 132. Funny the things you can sort of remember after 50 years. So another thing draft eligible guys tended to remember was their “draft classification” a letter/number combination that worked in combination with your lottery number to predict your future. 1A - pack your bags. 4F - write a nice thank you note to the AMA because you have been declared physically unfit. So a generation of American lads, sat around watching the mail - analog mail, 1964 remember - for another notification from on high to learn their “draft classification.” I was classified 1H. No, that is not a typo. I was classified 1H. I had no idea what that meant. And like other young men of my era, we were quite familiar with the argot.

I did some research - again, at the library - no computers. I never found any reference to a draft classification 1H. But I never heard from the draft board again, so I let it pass. I assumed that it meant that if the Vietcong managed to establish a beach head in Cleveland, and set Lake Erie on fire (look it up, it has happened before - the fire, not the Vietcong) I was to be held in reserve with other 1Hs to serve as hostages. Seriously, an incredible set of snafus from “very highly placed voices from above.”

And that’s not the only example. Set the WayBack machine to around 2001. This time the highly placed voice from above came from the doctor who informed me that I had multiple myeloma and only a handful of months to live. Get your affairs in order. Well, he got the multiple myeloma part right, but missed the other variable in the equation by a few decimal places. Latest data shows me still cancer free, knock on wood - and a thankful knock on the doors of the docs who provided the excellent care I have received both in Raleigh and here in Burr Ridge.

But I hope you can see why when “highly placed authoritative voices” intone, “I can handle this. We’ve got it under control.” My inclination is to respond, “I may be old, but I’m not stupid. Let’s get some other voices into the conversation.”

And then there is “money talk.” I probably could include this in “negative noise,” but it feels like it should get its own category - a decision no doubt influenced by the unbelievable amount of “money talk” I had to endure recently to secure a home equity line of credit which a great deal of money talk convinced us was “the best strategy” surrounding the sale of our former home in Raleigh.

To clarify, I have friends, family members, trusted advisors who love to talk money. Several have made livings far beyond the scope of mine, by talking and doing “money things.” Their eyes light up, voices move to either semi-conspiratorial, or “on high-ish” as they talk about “return on investments” and possible impacts of shifts in the prime. However, since the only obvious shifts in the prime that seem to have touched me, have touched me on the palate where there is significant difference between “choice” and “prime.” My eyes glaze over. I desperately search for diversion on TV, like last year’s cricket finals from Australia - a sport whose rules are as incomprehensible to me as “money talk.” But there is actual movement.

It is, I guess, an attitude drawn from personal experience. Money talk, is like phone calls after 10:00 PM. It has never brought me anything pleasant.

And, all right one final one that at first blush it may seem trivial.  I suspect that my iPhone is short-changing my “walkabout-steps.”  What, you may well ask, are “walkabout steps?” The notion springs from a ritual in Australian aboriginal culture. In this form of “walkabout” a young man - I could find no parallel reference for young aboriginal females, which might speak well of them. Anyhow, the guys on “walkabout” seem to literally wander about the Australian Outback for an unspecified period of time, until they return having somehow transitioned into adults.

 That is not the kind of walkabout-steps I am talking about. Although my “walkabout-steps” are also age related, they are gender non-specific.

I am talking about the steps that pile up as we “walk about” wondering - well, wondering about a plethora of issues. First, the pragmatic wondering; I wonder where I put my phone, my keys, my coffee, my book, my coat, my walking shoes, my hiking sticks - regular stuff, which ironically, often results in wondering just what was it I was looking for. Why am I here in the garage? 

And then there is secondary wandering which induces another level of wondering. Perhaps you find yourself in your study, where you went to look for your iPad, and you find yourself confronted by a painting or a piece of sculpture, maybe even one you created yourself, and you remember the person or place that inspired you to create or collect the work, and you wonder about the current condition of that person or place. The whole “I wonder who’s kissing her now?” “Operator, can you help me place this call?” phenomenon. And then you think, “What am I doing in the study?” And you go back to the kitchen, wondering why your FindMy app never makes your iPad chime.

And finally there is tertiary wandering which can often occur outside the home - maybe even during an intentionally planned walking event! And as you stroll about you find yourself wondering about the world that surrounds you. How did people walk around with twins before dual strollers? Why do people with dual strollers bring them to grocery stores with single stroller aisles? Are golf courses more environmentally damaging than parks? Why don’t public parks let you play golf in them? Can you take a dual stroller stroller onto a golf course? Would there be an additional green fee? Why? Unless the kids in the strollers played? You know with those little plastic clubs? Are there any golf courses designed for kids to play with those little plastic clubs? And what happened to all the miniature golf courses? Where you try to putt your ball into the mouth of a plastic alligator or rotating windmill? And if they want you to “ask for assistance with items on higher shelves,” why do they put stuff up there? And finally, what am I doing at the grocery store? Ah, the list. Where did I put the list? Yeah, laugh now, but just wait. Well, the point is that all this wondering has to generate an incredible amount of wandering. Yet, my iPhone tells me “You walked fewer steps today than yesterday.” Bull. No wonder Steve Jobs died. Lying piece of junk!

Sometimes Distilling Harmony means siding with Pollyanna and overlooking those things that irritate us in order to Foster Harmony, which in turn allows us to Enable Beauty. Yeah, that’s the story to which I will stick, or words to that effect. Better stop now as it is almost New Years with new mountains to climb. May yours be exceptional for the scenery and not for the demands of the climbing.