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!