The Unexpected Inhalation

If I could make 

It happen 

I would.

But I can’t.

So there you have it.

It does seem to occur 

Or perhaps “concurs”

In creative spaces.

When I am drawing, writing 

Or listening to music.

But it is not thematically 

Related to either the image

The notes or the words

But suddenly my mouth

Opens and a swift breath

Rushes in.

Inevitably I look around,

My eyes turn up and right.

That gaze of expectation,

Of anticipation.

But there is nothing there.

I wait for several seconds.

Knowing, believing, hoping

That something wonderful?

Well, at least insightful 

Will reveal itself.

Aren’t these the moments

From which inspirations

Are supposed to spring?

But apparently not this time.

The music plays on.

The paper requests my pen.

I fake a breath or two,

But whatever it was

It’s gone again

And I cannot call

It back.

Maybe next time.

How Many Last Times?

 I returned my last stash of university owned technology to the office today.  Of course it was no longer my office, hadn’t been for several months now. First retirement, then Covid closed that door, then opened it again for “moving out."  But as I drove away I wondered how many more times I would leave campus for the "last time?" It seems to have changed rather dramatically every time I have ventured here over the last several months. But peeking through the new buildings and the wandering new students I caught glimpses of the campus I had first glimpsed in the fall of 1981. What is that 30 years ago? Another indication of my lack of facility with math.  My calculator says 39 years. Yikes!  It shouldn’t be that easy to lose a decade, but it is what it is.

I realize that things are rather different these days. People rarely stay in one job for more than a decade. And considering the changes the Covid-19 pandemic may usher in, when one changes jobs in the future the major difference you may encounter could simply be a new login screen on the computer in your home office.

My experience has been radically different.  While “my office” has bounced around among, let’s see, three buildings that I recall, and at least 6 actual different rooms, they were all in buildings spread along about a mile of Hillsborough Street. So as I parked my car, moped or bike - again depending on the decade - I walked a similar route to my office or classroom. Colleagues proved more fluid. None officially remain from the 12? 18? I encountered at my first faculty meeting, although a couple still touch administrative and adjunct roles. Dear friends, mild antagonists, valued colleagues, racquetball buddies, all now distant in time or space.  Strange blend of smiles and melancholy. More disconcerting is the fact that several of my most recent colleagues had not yet been born when I lwas first welcomed as the “new kid” in the department.

I haven’t walked around campus much over the last 8 or 9 years, as - in an unintentional rehearsal for this past year - I have been teaching my classes online.  But I do remember a couple of strange strolls. I wandered out the back of my building and headed off to where the design school, the parking lot and the gym should have been. I did encounter sites that conjured up places and faces, smiles and memories of hazy days gone by. But I also found other spots occupied by large buildings and strange paths that had no business blocking my way. Quite the opposite of “deja vue”  more like “deja who?”

So as I walked down the hallway of Winston Hall today, for yet another “last time,” I was somewhat conflicted to see two of my paintings hanging, as they have for the last five or six years, on the wall at the end of the hall. They are small versions of two of my images that graced the sides of city buses in the city’s Art on the Move project a few years ago. I like them and have always drawn some what, comfort? pleasure? from them as I walked past on my way to my office, or class. But now I wonder what they might mean to students and colleagues from this, my maybe “last day” onward?

”Strange, but nice colors?”

”Who is RL Schrag?”

”I think he taught here?”

”Really?”

”Yeah. A long time ago.”

The Creative Life

It is, of course, a fantasy - but one I have clung to all my life. It shifts. Through much of my youth I was going to be god’s gift to Broadway, and heir to all that accompanied such celebrity. The fantasy would shift between cinema and the stage, from performer to producer, but always with some flavor of significant fame and fortune attached. Strangely however, I never woke up to find myself immersed that life. I suppose that while most celebs achieved their status on the wings of dumb luck, they probably were also willing to make effort, choices and compromises that I couldn’t get behind. You will undoubtedly have noted that nowhere do I imply a lack of talent or ability on my part. There are always pieces of a fantasy to which we cling.

It turned out that rather than following the examples of the idols whose visages covered the walls of star struck adolescents everywhere; I followed this guy:

That’s my Dad down there, Dr. F. James Schrag, professor of Sociology, doing his thing - most likely at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. His twin specialties were religion and race relations. He lived to be 100! Sure could use him these days. Anyhow, I followed his lead and spent 40+ years in college classrooms - more if you count those spent on the more populated side of the desk. You’d think I would have outgrown my youthful creative fantasies. Ha! I laugh at you! And again, ha ha! And then thrice - ha, ha,ha!

If you have been hanging out here on The Wall for the 20+ years of it’s existence you know that I am utterly shameless about posting prose, poetry, and a wide variety of images. The thing is this - the fantasy has shifted, particularly here in retirement. I am no longer so concerned about the whole fame and fortune gambit. That horse, I believe, has left the barn. Rather, I am fascinated by the idea of being “one of guys” - no gender distinction implied. I would love to be Jane Austin or Emily Dickinson or JK Rowling every bit as much as being Tolkien or Twain reincarnated. I just imagined retirement as the opportunity to live a tranquil, creative life. Billy Collins says in the strangely titled The Trouble with Poetry, “Poetry fills me with joy and I rise like a feather in the wind.” I just wanted to share a bit of that wind.

But obstacles to the wind have arisen from a rather strange place: technology. You see I picture “the guys” plying their trade in some romanticized version of a garret - no rats, central ac and heating, a nice wine. (Come on, it’s my fantasy. To continue -) The windows open out onto a loggia overlooking a formal garden sloping down to a shimmering canal. Picture Bilbo writing his memoirs before setting sail off to the Grey Havens. Ah, yes. 

And just where, in that calm and gracious scenario does the phrase “Enter your Google password in Settings” make sense? Followed by “The data you have entered does not match our records. Retry?” Followed by “Reset password?” and “Sync new password across all devices?” or “Please chose a new password that you have not used in this lifetime” and “Your password was changed 42 months ago.” 

I feel more like Dr. Frankenstein than Bobby Burns. “Could you hand me a cup of brains from that tub over there? Just next to the femurs. Yes, they came in today. Fresh, very fresh - quite prime if I do say so myself.”

And what was I writing anyway?

“How do I love thee?

Let me count ......”

Let me count what?

Bing! “Dr. Appt with Dr. Seuss at 4:00 pm tomorrow.”

I suppose that this post fits in there with don’t go grocery shopping when you are hungry. You get no vegetables, but lots of donuts and spray cheese. I am, you will not be surprised to learn, doing a major technology revision, and dammit, I just wanted to write a few paragraphs. I seriously suspect that the software engineers at all the major tech companies have 3 year-olds, are working from home and have home bound grandparents who just tested positive for the virus. What else would have driven them to visit this software hell upon us?

Schrag PPP Loggia Update

.As Facebook taught the world to say, “It’s complicated.” My old iPad died mid sentence on my latest Libby book. One of my credit cards was compromised. Apple doesn’t recognize my ID. I fly back to Raleigh in a couple days and the zipper on my suitcase broke. Other than that .  .  .  

But I still can access The Wall - fingers crossed - so thought I would send you this update on the Loggia image:

As mentioned in my earlier post this image is a combination of several photographic images: 

an architectural model of an Italianate loggia. And in the niches formed by the loggia you can see - if you enlarge the image a bit;

a sunset painting that I drew for an early work that is visible along the openings above and below the larger niches in the loggia.

a deserted plough in a field close to the area in South Dakota where we spent summers when young.

a room in our favorite hotel Monaa Lisa [not a typo] in Florence, Italy.

the beach at Warren Dunes State Park in Michigan near where portions of my Mother’’s, Father’s and older brother’s ashes are scattered, 

one of my earliest free-hand drawings, and finally,

the roadside sign from Schrag Shorthorn Farms, where we spent those summers mentioned above.

To clarify the process a bit each image had to be refined so that they shared the same resolution and I had to manipulate the image size so that the piece of the image I wanted to fit in the niche matched the size of the niche.  If I lost you there, don’t worry. I often lost myself in the process and had to walk around a bit or nap before coming back to the task at hand.

Anyhow, this is what I have now which is, least we forget, the canvas on which I will now actually begin to draw!

Yikes

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Touching Perfection

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I'm not sure how long ago it was. We were having lunch with my older daughter on the deck of the Columbia Yacht Club on the lakefront of downtown Chicago. If memory serves me, which it rarely does these days, we were married, she was not. That would narrow it down somewhat if I wanted to look it up.  But the point is, it was an awesome day. A sky blue enough to put anything from Carolina to shame. The sun dusted the gentle breakers out on the lake with glitter. A soft breeze filled the sails of the multitude of boats dancing out to the horizon.  Temperature somewhere in the mid-seventies, humidity lingering somewhere south of 30 or 40%. It was, in short a perfect day. 

"If the weather was always like this, everyone would want to live in Chicago!" opined my daughter, a confirmed Southern girl.  

We have had a few of those days this week here in the Chicago suburb of Burr Ridge.  Leaves etch a palette across dozens of shades of green, yellow and crimson as they dance across skies so clear they would bring tears to a constant gaze. Breezes that hinted equally of summer and autumn sent the leaves, not quite ready to fall, gossiping across the tree tops. They have been, like that luncheon so many years ago, perfect days, perhaps more so in that I have been free to walk the lanes in relative solitude.

And in the midst of such perfect days, I have found myself contemplating the notion of perfection and its relationship to creativity.  No surprise. The beginning of every creative act dips its toes in the temptation of perfection, and often concludes with our, albeit transient, refusing to acknowledge that we have missed the mark.  Our creative selves ride into the eternal sunset of a land of make-believe. Perfection lies, we almost believe, just around the corner, there, in the next sentence or phrase, note or brush stroke, subtle movement, gather of glass, the framing or lighting of an image - there! Just there! Almost.

Cosmologists and astrophysicists tell us that at in the micromoment just after the big bang the known "universe" consisted solely of particles of matter and antimatter that were busy scurrying around annihilating one another. Fortunately there were a few more particles of matter than antimatter and so, Ta da! Here we are.  I have never been quite comfortable with that significant touch of fortune.  And recently, lying awake in the tiny hours of the morning I was struck by the notion that it is perfection that occurs at that moment when matter and antimatter merge into some form of exquisite nothingness. And the creative spark within us demands that we attempt to extend that moment through love, through art, through poetry, religion, physics.  And then, come morning, I try to recapture just what I meant by that insight, which seemed then so clear, but now seems obtuse enough to blame on some other consciousness.

Here is the progress I have made to date.  If we think of the "matter v antimatter collision" in terms of Distilled Harmony, that instant can be seen not as annihilation, but as a moment of perfect balance, of total harmony. And that is, again in terms of Distilled Harmony, the manifestation of the first two, and dominant, tenets of the Distilled Harmony world view: Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty

Perfection is harmony, is balance. The matter v antimatter collision only appears to be destruction. On closer inspection we can see that it is balance, but in a time frame so tiny that we do not understand it or it lies beyond our comprehension, our observation. We need to remember that much of our understanding of physical reality is the direct result of the invention of the technology necessary to see it - telescopes, microscopes, etc.  I often wondered why folks put so much effort into increasing the sensitivity of atomic clocks. I mean you can only be so late for a meeting. Now I think that perhaps if we can "see" time on the scale that reveals that moment when matter and antimatter merge we will come to see the harmony, the beauty, that resides therein.

So let us consider tenet two, Enable Beauty.  Art in any of its various guises is as close as we can come to creating beauty; it is our attempt to mimic or to capture that beauty hidden - seemingly frozen - in the matter-antimatter merge.  Think of meditation, grace, nirvana, how ever we attempt to name it. It is not in motion. It is a constant state. Can perfection be sustained? In the arts, music and dance seem to be our efforts to marry perfection and motion. The recent attention to and efforts in “performance art” may stem from a desire to attain sustained perfection. But, to date anyhow, they have an end point. Exhaustion, if nothing else, mandates the end of the dance, the conclusion of the performance. And while digital devices seem able to drone endless musical tracks, it is not long before such compositions become more tedious than transcendent. It seems that this notion of sustained perfection currently lurks more comfortably in the intriguing realm quantum mechanics rather than in the arts - but that too may be a temporary situation. And one I am not yet ready to trace.

For us, as rather time-bound, creatively inclined individuals, the more fulfilling challenge is, it seems to me, to pursue that most illusive of goals; the path to, and personal expression of, sustained harmony, aka perfection. So we continue to love, to write, draw, dance, sculpt, compose, choreograph, sing, hum, design, etc., etc., etc.  Always seeking that next baby step toward perfection.  And no, I have no illusions that the goal is attainable for me, or for most of us in our current “go around.” But who knows what we all may attain after a few more existential cycles?

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