Happy Accidents

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 I have recently begun to view Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting videos again before drifting off to sleep.  They remain wonderful night time stories. Ross's voice is delightfully calming, even when he discovers a new idea for a painting: "Oh, wait, yes, I see it. You saw it too. A little hollow here with a cluster of trees!" Hardly worthy of an exclamation point, the intonation is so restful. But what I have rediscovered and found particularly interesting here in the days of the pandemic is his idea of "happy accidents." 

Whenever a painting begins to slip a little sideways, as close as Ross comes to "Drat" is something like "Oh, wait. Let's not make that a cloud. Let's make it a tree, and put another one here next to it. Trees need to have a friend too. See? Doesn't that look nice? We don't have mistakes here. We have happy accidents."  The notion come especially clear to me the other day. 

Smitty had been watching me sitting on the couch doing some drawing, and came over and gave me a little sketch on a half sheet of paper. "There you are!" he said. And there I was, couch, drawing glasses, pencil. Very cool.  It came out that back somewhere in his 91 years he had done, and enjoyed, drawing.  We decided to do a quick in-and-out at the local Michaels to grab a couple of sketch pads and some drawing pencils.  

We came back and did some doodling. He did a neat cat cartoon - sort of along the lines of "Kilroy Was Here!" But then he fell into the "realism trap." He tried to do sketches of things around him - Vito, the black lab, hard to even photograph, let alone draw and a couple of things on the coffee table. "Those are terrible." he declared. "I'm a failure!"

A creativity mantra I repeated and repeated during my 40+ years in the classroom was "Never compare your work to geniuses!" So we can't sing like Pavarotti or Streisand, can't paint like Wyeth, sculpt like Camille Claudel. Big deal. Neither can most of humanity. Back to Bob Ross - "The only important thing about painting is that it makes you happy."

I thought I'd share a "happy accident" with you. Over the holidays I acquired - self-gifted and received - a couple of marker sets. You can never have too many markers. Both sets were water soluble, so I decided to experiment with how they might blend together.  That resulted in this "happy accident:" 

The phrase "a face only a mother could love" springs to mind.  But the "Happy Accident" was what I learned from that particular doodle.

Even before the water drop drizzled across the drawing I learned about which markers could blend and which could not, and the "Happy Accident" of the water drop clued me in to the idea that I might be able to use a damp brush to blend some of the colors in a "serious" drawing that I wanted to spend more time with.

So, especially during the time of covid, we need to remember to cut ourselves some slack.  There are, and will continue to be a variety of events and instances where we will want to declare ourselves failures.  "I should have done that better." "Stayed more in touch with that person." "Written a poem." "Been more forgiving, more understanding." "I'm a failure."  Nonsense. We are all just ordinary people in the midst of a very trying time. If we look closely enough I think we will discover that those "failures" are often happy accidents, just waiting to teach us something delightful.

Foster Harmony. Enable Beauty. Distill Complexity. Oppose Harm.

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Shhh. Quiet. My Brain is Full!

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I’m sure there is good science on this somewhere but what I have read often seems contradictory. I am talking about dreaming, what it means, what affects it; that kind of stuff. Right now there is a lot of talk about the affect of the pandemic and dreaming, Some focuses on the co-occurrence of Covid-19 and dreaming; weird dreams as a side-affect of the virus as it were. Other studies - more psychological than medical - look at these pandemic dreams as related to general increase in stress that comes from living with the pandemic, isolation, lockdowns, masks, the whole 9 yards.

I, not unexpectedly, take another tack - admittedly unsupported by any scientific evidence of which I am aware.  You see, I think it is all about sound. We are spending the holidays up here in our new locale, Burr Ridge, IL., a far western suburb of Chicago. Our “socially isolated cohort” is primarily defined by the extended family of my wife’s first husband. Long story, and unrelated to this current ramble. Anyway “the fam” is made up - generally speaking - of 9 or 10 adults, 3 tweeners, and 2 boomers (my designation for vocally active little ones younger than 3 or 4), a brand new infant, and somewhere up to 3 dogs. Seriously. It is quite a hoot when we all get together - often a literal hoot, a holler, laughter and other more unhappy vocalizations. And that is my point. Decibels - many decibels.

You might think that I am moving to an assertion that the significant, yet unavoidable decibel level when we all get together triggers the weird dreams associated with the pandemic. Actually I am moving in the opposite direction.  I would propose, instead, that the decibel level of “the fam” in full throat, actually fills up my brain. And contrary to what one might think, that full brain does not spill out weird dreams, as soon as the head hits the pillow. Rather, like a carnivore after gorging on a fresh kill, or a human being gorging on Thanksgiving turkey, the sated brain rolls over and passes out on the couch.

It is the more tranquil brain that, after a day of solitary reflection, amusement, and creativity continues that activity into the “sleeping” hours. Finishing, embellishing, often distorting, and contorting the day's creative activities. Add to that the rested brain’s inclination to engage the refrigerator in late night encounters, and the raison d’etre for these macabre dreams stands revealed. So, I think that I must sever the idea that the noise level that surrounds me during the day, particularly the current elevated "sounds of the season," triggers nighttime's strange visions,

I have come to realize that the parents and even the grandparents have become immune to the joyful, youthful cacophony that surrounds them at this time of year.  And I have no doubt I once possessed those intuitive editing skills. Alas, no more. My brain is no longer able to simply allow the playful pandemonium to slide in one ear and out the other. Instead the brain fills up. A question poised to me in ordinary conversation in these situations simply does not penetrate. It bounces off my brain and ricochets out into the surrounding auditory anarchy. However, oftentimes the facial nonverbal cues on the questioner's face makes it obvious that I was being addressed.

Hence I respond with the non sequitur: "Boy, you can say that again."

Unfortunately, they sometimes do.

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There are Breadcrumbs

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And then there are breadcrumbs, which leads us inevitably to the question of whose forest is this anyway?

The notion is that the path to truth, reality, belief - define your own target or endpoint, your "existential inclination" if you will, is a subjective journey, one we take alone. What’s the old Woody Guthrie lyric? Lonesome Valley? 

You gotta walk that lonesome valley,

You gotta walk it by yourself.

No, nobody else can walk it for you,

You gotta walk it by yourself.

OK, so Woody was never known as an upbeat cheerful lyricist. Still, a couple of points of clarification for that lonely assertion:

First, we need to realize that at every point along our personal journey to our desired ultimate destination, there are breadcrumbs. Someone has been here before. They have written, painted, composed, sung, danced - recorded perhaps in media or languages we have not yet recognized, their thoughts, feelings, about their experience at this same “here,” but perhaps in some other now, perhaps surrounded by an entirely different forest that nonetheless crosses ours at this same point.

Second, we need to remember that those are their breadcrumbs, scattered along their path. We can pick them up, sniff them, even - depending on your own interpretation of the ten second rule - pop them in our mouth and see how they taste. But they are not our breadcrumbs. They do not mark our path. We can gather them up and - again, depending on how completely we employed the ten second rule - stash them away in our pocket for later reflection and consideration. But they are not our breadcrumbs, they may or may not even be part of our forest.

Let me try to clarify what I mean if it is not too late for that. And yes, I realize that this sounds like one of the very first “computer-based text only” games. I think it was called “Colossal Cave Adventure.” Circa 1976?

Anyhow it went sort of like this - green words on a black screen - because that was all there was: “You are standing in the middle of a forest. At your feet there is a key. Pick it up?” And here you type either Y for yes, or N for no. If you typed Y you were presented with a variety of “next steps.” “There are three doors in a room. There is another key on the ground. Pick it up?” In my analogy the key becomes a breadcrumb left by previous travelers. If you pick up the breadcrumb, you have typed Y, but the number of “next steps” possible in our particular, personal, experience are infinite. The breadcrumb is a nugget from someone else’s journey in the "Colossal Cave Adventure." We can chose to employ it on our journey or not. 

What I am warning us against here is the common inclination to become a “fan” of some other pathfinder or another, of someone else’s particular existential inclination. Remember “fan” is the shortened version of “fanatic.”   As we pursue our own goals, our own existential inclination, we may find that some artist, philosopher, theorist, politician, or even celebrity, has been dropping breadcrumbs that we really like. But again remember, those were their breadcrumbs dropped along their path in their forest as they followed a "next step" determined by the desired endpoints of their existential inclination. 

We may use those breadcrumbs, if we choose, in pursuit of our own endpoints, but if we begin to substitute their inclination for our own, if we begin to use their breadcrumbs as a guide to a journey that leads to their endpoints we are in grave danger of crossing the line that separates a casual fan from a rabid fanatic. We may well find ourselves walking down a path in a forest not truly of our own making. We end up chanting in a crowd. Wearing strange costumes that identify us as part of that crowd. Getting tattoos about which our children will ask embarrassing questions down the road.

In a Distilled Harmony view of the world, it is the second tenet, Enable Beauty, that fosters our ability to make sure that we stay focused on our own forest, that we only use those breadcrumbs that help us move down the path that leads to the future we truly desire - our existential inclination. But before we get into that let us dial back a bit to the first tenet, Foster Harmony, because remember, the only way to the second tenet is through the first. Harmony and Beauty, to steal a concept from quantum mechanics, are entangled. Simply put, Harmony is the sunlight of creativity. I find that I am hard put to be creative in a discordant state. This is different than physical exercise that can purge negativity. If I attempt a creative task when in a bad mood I find that my bad mood leaks through onto my project. The words don't flow, lines wobble, colors clash. Yeech. 

Obviously there are a fair number of creative types who can channel their angst into their art. Or at least like Van Gogh, for example, are accused of doing so. Where else do we get horror films? Where - for crying out loud - did Picasso find Guernica?  Hopefully, discordantly fueled artists get the same release from their work as long distant runners - able to leave negativity behind them along the longer road. However, that reality is not part of my forest.

In my forest, the primary objective, the existential inclination is Harmony, and Harmony is the primary ingredient of Beauty. If all beautiful things carried a list of ingredients, Harmony would be the first thing on the label. So those are the breadcrumbs I seek. Beautiful objects, moments, sounds, images, people that remind us, and reflect the underlying foundation of, Harmony.

It is often difficult to remember that notion here in the throes of the pandemic. But it gets easier if we remember that entangled nature of Beauty and Harmony. You can't have one without the other. Empty parking lots, shuttered businesses, crowded hospitals, spiraling death rates. One could think that Harmony and Beauty have taken themselves off to some foreign galaxy, far, far away - especially now that winter is truly coming - at least here in the northern hemisphere.

But remember, symphonies still sound as sweet as before. A smile is still a smile even if it is on your screen. You can still see a sunset and flowers while wearing a mask. Maybe, having to gather Harmony and Beauty a crumb at time will remind us what treasures they truly are, and we will, eventually, bake sweeter bread for that knowledge.

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Nightscape

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[I am deep in the night’s little hours. 3:30ish. I default to sleep strategy 4,682. As I listen to my Naturescapes sound collection, I task myself with at least the opening line of a related poem. Tonight’s soundscape is the rumble of a train. Tonight’s poem I call Nightscape. Sleep well.]

I sometimes come to wonder

In the darkness of the night

How sound can paint a picture

Without benefit of light?

A freight train’s lonesome whistle

And the clatter of the rails

Drafts a clear horizon

Where painters’ efforts pale.

The empty fields rush through my mind,

As the rattle and the roar

Sweep all the world before them,

Places here, and then no more.

Perhaps a ghostly farm appears,

Caught by the passing train,

But on the lonely whistle moans

Through sheets of driving rain.

Then flashing images are smeared

Cross rocking window panes

Dancing to the thunder’s roar

As the mighty engines strain.

Yet all this bright creation

Within my conscience rose,

And truly was experienced

With eyes quite firmly closed.

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Schrag PPP: The Yellow Tree Project

 

I had already begun to work on this image when an old buddy of mine drew my attention to a project he had recently completed called The Yellow Pages - a sort of memoir to his wife who had died of pancreatic cancer a number of years ago. It was quite wonderful, and since this guy has been my best bud, literally since the week in which we were both born I decided to follow his color lead, and while I usually let the image decide what colors should be used I opted to let yellow guide my color choices.

The initial image is the scene that currently serves as the wallpaper on my iPad. It is a picture of a tree by a pond that lies along one of my walking routes up here in Burr Ridge:

Next I trimmed the image to separate the edges of the tree from the background creating more space for subsequent designs. [I am looking for that interim image, but recently I "upgraded" both my computer and its software. Neat for the most part, but they decided to shift all my images from JPG format to something called HEIC, designed primarily to "save me space" and ruin my life. It will eventually work out, but meanwhile it forces me to jump straight to this image.

And here I hope is the final image. The resolution is a bit iffy, since many of the details are quite small. But I hope you can increase the size enough to get the idea.

In The View of Distilled Harmony

If you have been reading the Wall for any significant portion of its 20-something year history you are well aware that it often deals with the exploration of the four major tenets of the world view I define as Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm.  My own inclinations spin those essays most often towards the concerns of Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty; but last night’s violent protests in Washington, DC, and other scattered locales demand that I turn my attention to the the fourth tenet: Oppose Harm.

When Donald Trump was elected President I foolishly thought, “OK, he is a narcissistic, looney, game show host, but how much damage can he do in four years?” Never have my reflections been more off the mark.  We all tend to vote in our own best interests, and I will admit that mine follow traditional progressive issues; voting rights, social equality, etc. But my biggies have always been education, the environment and the arts. It soon became clear that where the current administration was concerned, I just needed to hunker down and try to tough it out. And true to my fears, the Trump presidency has cut a destructive swath through all my major concerns.

But now, I thought, we made it through. It is time to start repairing the damage. Again, foolishly, I assumed that Trump’s early bluster about not recognizing any election results that did not declare him the winner was just that - bluster. His recent behavior indicates that he was quite serious, and that he places his own personal successes above the Constitution, the will of the people, and the law. His refusal to accept the results of the election and the related pitiful legal actions attempting to overturn the election give tacit permission for his fanatic base to take violent protests to the street.

I do not know what, if anything, will convince him to acknowledge the damage his shameful behavior is doing to our nation. Hopefully he will soon realize that only he can put an end to the lawlessness his childish, selfish, behavior has called into the streets of the nation we, perhaps erroneously, assumed he loves. He must cease his divisive legal actions, concede that he lost the election, and tell his followers, in the streets and in Congress, to do same and allow the country some degree of healing. Perhaps then he can finally live up to what until now has been an empty slogan, and help Make America Great Again.

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Peeling the Many Roads of Life

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 I’m not sure what it is about nap time dreaming, but the images seem extraordinarily vivid, the perception of reality more enforced, making it harder to wake up.  That was certainly the case yesterday.   

I was walking somewhere, no place in particular, at least none that I recognized. The locale was more rural than urban, the path more a trail than a sidewalk. The atmosphere springlike, neither too warm nor too cold. It was sort of the “Goldilocks Zone” of dream environments. If there were other people or creatures about, I did not notice them. I am not terribly good at recalling dreams, so I might be missing some of the details. But what I definitely am not missing is the bizarre fact that when I glanced back over my shoulder the landscape was rolling up behind me.  The trail, trees, grass, etc., everything, was rolling up behind me like a giant version of those round hay bails one sees in fields nowadays. I stopped, and the “world bail” stopped. Backed up a bit and the bail unwound a bit. Started forward and the bail continued to wind up. I woke up. OK, pulse slightly elevated. It was a really weird dream.

Then, as is my wont, I began to try to unravel a bit of the weirdness of the dream. I don’t, as an old friend was prone to do, see dreams in a Freudlike reality. Whenever red meat appeared in one of her dreams it either represented her husband, or was an indication that she should cut red meat out of her diet - she seemed to give herself some interpretive flexibility there.  But neither do I just shrug my shoulders, mutter “weird dream” and get up to take the trash out.  I do think that dreams give us an opportunity to consider some alternative interpretations of our existence.  Here is where I am with the “Weird World Bail Dream.”

First I need to make it clear that I am pretty much in agreement with the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics - the idea that there are many worlds that exist simultaneously and parallel to the everyday “reality” that we walk around in. Furthermore, given the incredible physical and metaphysical complexity that such a universe implies, it doesn’t seem strange at all to me that some of those wires get crossed occasionally. Sort of a “cosmic butt-call” to use the technical jargon.

OK, so I wonder, if the World Bail is rolling up the reality of the world in which my dream is taking place, what is left? I do my best to remember if I could see anything left over behind the World Bail in my dream. But try as I might I draw a blank - pretty much literally a blank. But rather than seeing that as a dead end, I choose to treat it as permission to fill in the blank. And I choose to fill it in with the many worlds.  

To switch analogies on you, perhaps the roll that is following me around isn’t so much a cosmic bail of hay as it is a cosmic apple peel. You know, when you are peeling an apple and you try to peel the apple in “one go” as the Brits would say; remove the entire peel without it breaking. And what is left? The apple, of course. But in the many worlds view of the universe, what lies below the peel is another peel - another world ready for us to experience.

However, it seems somehow inappropriate to want to hop down and start peeling that new world before finishing this one. A better course of action would seem to be to stop looking over my dream shoulder at the bail following me along the path and concentrate on what lies ahead. Those other bails, peels, what have you, will - most likely - always be there. The current path, although no doubt rocky, still leads to ample opportunities to Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm.

Oh my! Look at the clock up on the corner of the computer! Coming right up on nap time!

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Enduring Life Without Challenges or Caught Between Two Worlds

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It is not that life amidst the COVID pandemic is devoid of challenges, rather it is that I have yet to encounter one, or several that truly stir me. That is a rather embarrassing admission.  I realize that there are many issues that should move me to passion. Social injustice, global warming, world hunger, science denial, good old COVID itself, and the social and political chaos left in the wake of “the Donald.” For crying out loud, Robert, latch onto some sort of cause. But alas, not yet. No project, candidate or campaign is able - to quote the Doors - “light my fire.” Assuming of course, that fire remains to be lit.  I sense that patience is of primary importance at this point in time. It was Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land:  “Waiting is.” Perhaps also, “Do, but gently, without impatience, with faith, with calm.” I’ll think on it.

Another observation: I find myself seemingly more adrift in what we think of as “the real world.” The pragmatics of everyday life; shopping, bills, insurance, the normal responsibilities of living life in the “real world.” Those realities seem to slip past me rather unnoticed. It is easy to write those off as “senior moments,” but on the other hand, my internalized conversations and considerations regarding metaphysical concerns; the nature of truth, of what we rather glibly call God, love, an afterlife, reincarnation, that “stuff” seems more intriguing and more clearly focused than previously. And those are issues that I regard as far more important and complex than the most recent location of my reading glasses. Unfortunately, the nature of god, the paths to inner peace, happiness and love are topics that rarely pop up in everyday conversations. And, when they are raised they result most often in raised eyebrows -the adult equivalent of the adolescent “eye roll” or “whatever.” So it is mostly in my art and writing that this “other world” finds expression beyond my internal dialogue. Mind you, I’m not turning my back on Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm.  That is still the path, but the road seems a bit muddy these days. Tires having trouble gaining traction.

“Waiting is.”

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Gearing Up

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Out behind one of the outbuildings on Cousins Dean and Lori's place in southeastern South Dakota (either Marion or Freeman, I'm never sure when you leave one and enter the other) is a sort of museum to the equipment that was used on the farm when our fathers were at home. That makes sense since Dean and Lori and their kids have been living on "the home place" for as long as I can remember. Their "new" home sits on the footprint of the home in which all - excepting one - of the 9 children in my father's generation were born. If I have this wrong I will undoubtedly receive corrections from the various kin who hang out here on The Wall. The point is that the image immediately below is an item from that museum. It is called a "horsepower gear."

As I understand it, horses were hitched to the gear - much like you see on pony rides at the fair. The horses then walk around in a circle and the gear translates the round-and-round motion of the horses to drive chain motion that could power the various machines, pulleys, conveyer belts etc., used around the farm.  I have a vague memory of my father debating with his brothers as to which horses were hooked where, but I may be thinking some other horse powered implements, plows, rakes, what have you. But be that as it may that  is the "horsepower gear" from what I think of as the Schrag Farm Machinery Museum.

As is the next step in all PPP images is to use Photoshop to remove much of the image to create white space in which I draw the designs which will eventually be colored to create the final image. Here is the white space only image:

The next step is to draw in the designs. I need to remind myself, as I tend to get carried away with this step, that I will eventually need to actually color in all those spaces. Anyhow here is a semi-complete version of that step. And no, I will not share with you how long it takes to do this step.

Finally, I color in the designs. To anticipate a few questions:

1. I don't really choose the colors or where they will go. They just sort of choose themselves.  You may have heard of "dowsing for water." You take a forked stick, hold it gently and slowly walk around. When the sticks "dips" you can dig down and find water. One way color appears in my drawings is a form of "dowsing." I take the "color source," pen, marker, brush, whatever and move it slowly over the designs. It dips when it wants to color the spot below it.  .  . Or, I move back from the drawing and sort of unfocus my gaze - shifting from the design to the palette of color sources. A match occurs and I take the color source and apply it to the portion of the design asking for that color.  And I really can't offer any more precise explanation.
2. Come on, if I wouldn't admit to the time I spent drawing the designs, what makes you think I would fess up to how long the coloring takes? Let it suffice to say much longer than it to to draw the designs!
3. Why do I do these drawings? To cut to the chase, I enjoy the process. I find it calming. It makes me happy.
4. And no, I don’t see them as being influenced by other works. They have, over the past few decades, bounced between a variety of styles from quasi-representational to abstract. That too is a purely subjective process, driven by mood and circumstance.

So here is  the final version of Gearing Up!  Actually this version is a bit cropped around the edges, the result of a struggle with Photoshop. But this is about 95% complete.

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I will be glad to answer any other questions you might have at robert.schrag@gmail.com.

 

Foster Harmony 2020

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I listen to music or “books on tape” while drawing. I have just finished listening to the BBC’s radio production of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. While obviously more sparse than the 1200 or so pages in the print version, Sibley and Bakewell’s version captures much of the spirit of the original. As is my wont, I see this radio play through the eyes of my worldview - Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm.

Foster Harmony is the first and dominant tenet of Distilled Harmony, so it is not surprising that I was drawn to its manifestation in this version of The Lord of the Rings.  Aragorn, who is eventually revealed as the rightful Lord of the Rings, and “King” of Middle Earth, performs all kinds of heroic deeds of arms, slays an amazing array of evil doers, orcs, nazguls; you name it, he “smote” them! But interestingly he is not completely accepted as the true King until he demonstrates his ability to heal Eowyn, the shield maiden who slew the King of the Nazguls at great personal harm because - like the first tenet of Distilled Harmony, Foster Harmony, “the hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known.”  The ability to heal is of far greater import than the ability to harm, and hence one who claims the kingship must demonstrate the ability to heal.

Back in 1776, we decided that the will of the people was of greater import than the will of any king, hence he or she who would stand for the people must manifest the ability to heal. And now, perhaps more than any time in our nation’s history - save perhaps the Spring of 1865 and the ending of the Civil War - we stand in need of healing. Somehow we have come to see those whose political views differ from our own not as “the honored opposition” but as enemies whose will must be thwarted, whose every assertion must be declared some type of falsehood. 

President-elect Biden has declared his intention to heal the corrosive divides that threaten the very notion of democracy - also put in place back in 1776. That is certainly a welcome change from the discordant confrontational style emanating from the White House over the last four years, and is still capturing and poisoning the media's attention today.

However, unlike Aragorn's mythic powers, this is a task beyond Biden's welcome declaration. As I have said before here on The Wall, fostering harmony is an individual, not a governmental, task. You cannot legislate compassion, gentleness, caring - you cannot mandate harmony. So while the government can, and hopefully will after January 20th, put forth policies that ease the path to fostering harmony; a broad cultural manifestation of harmony, of goodwill towards all is a task each of us must shoulder individually.

Perhaps the best first step is a sincere attempt to purge both our overt language and internal self-talk - and so hopefully our attitudes - of the "Us versus Them" mentality that has increasingly poisoned our public discourse. "Those Democrats" "Those Republicans" "Those neo-nazis" "Those black militants" "Those Latinos" "Those Immigrants" and, of course, the more virulent versions of all those labels, are the sad reflections of the linguistic norms that further and deepen the "Us versus Them" divide. Perhaps if we self-edit our reflections and our language, we will begin to reign in the currently common cultural inclination to fail to see individuals and see individuals only as members of groups, and often to see the group as part of "Them."

So while Biden's declaration of healing, of changing the idea of red and blue states into united states, is a welcome, and hopefully welcoming, relief from the years of anger, confusion and confrontation emanating from the fragmented seat of government, it is not enough. Each of us, in our language and behavior, must become welcoming and open to compromise, for only then can we claim to truly foster harmony and open the path to healing.

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Po'

Po’ you, po’ me

It’s an awful time

For po'etry.

Stay at home.

Go nowhere.

Take three hours

To wash your hair.

Watch another TV flick

Rehashed plots

That leave you sick.

Brush the puppy

Sweep the floor,

Collect the groceries

From the door.

Play some music

Off your screen

Oldies, new stuff --

In between,

You run some laps

Around the den

Count your steps

Then run again.

Facetime chatter

With the kids

Realtime life

Still on the skids.

Grab your journal

And your pen,

Enter “no news”

Once again.

Po’ you, po’ me.

It’s an awful time

For po'etry.

It Has Always Been at Midnight

Or, Confessions of an Insomniac

Spring  forward, fall back

A game we have to play.

But it really doesn’t matter

Makes no difference anyway.

For it has always been at midnight

Quite precisely, more or less

When the real world grows quite hazy,

Some delights tinged with distress

’Cause I’m never really certain

Just where I ought to perch

Is the footing there quite stable?

Will my next step be a lurch

Sending me careening

Out there beyond the pale?

Where my insights all can fragment

And all past wisdom fail?

So I turn the pillow over -

Seeking for a cooler spot

Switch the sounds from trains to stormy.

Hide behind the rain and thunder.

And from what now?  I forgot.

Can the patter on my window

Bring the pleasing calm I seek?

Or send me out free-wheeling

Down some other psychic street?

So it goes, sometimes, till morning

When sunlight creeps back in

And I finally claim some solace,

Blanket tucked beneath my chin. 

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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Schrag Wall: Phil and Beth Kominski - Like Walls Around Your Heart

 Hello All -

Most often these posts are primarily the work of my own hand. I’m going to make an exception.

Out there among you on the Wall is my oldest friend. Some of you have heard the story of how Dan and I were born 7 days apart back in November of 1948 when our parents occupied the 2 sides of a duplex in Springfield, Ohio. I often remind him of how much I learned in that week before he was born. I will not go into the fascinating parallels that have followed us through the subsequent seven decades. Let this one suffice.

Dan’s daughter Elizabeth, who has considerable musical skills in her own right, married a musician named Phil Kominski who got a degree in music and has pursued a variety of musical endeavors as a musician, composer, organizer. etc.,etc. Well, Phil has a cd being released even as I write this post. If Dan asked me to share that information with you here, I would. But he didn’t, but I asked him if I could, and assuming Phil and Beth have no objections, I am delighted to share this song with you. 

Like Walls Around Your Heart could be a theme song for Foster Harmony. No wonder I love it. Phil does all things musical, and Beth created the exceptional video.

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtrSCApej-U

Schrag PPP: Chains- step 2

Chains: Step 2

The second step is to blank out the places that will then be filled in with drawn designs.  This image has the blanks, but the interior designs have yet to be completed.

Schrag Wall: Moments of Connection

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One reads about defining moments in a life. Those experiential sparks that start us down that path that will become our life. I suppose, if I worked at it, I could create a narrative that would read that way. But it would be an artificial construction. Perhaps a long enough time with an excellent therapist might lead to a moment where she would declare, “There, don’t you see? That was the moment! That was the existential spark that leads to now! And here are the issues we should address.” And, in the name of Fostering Harmony, I would produce my insurance card, say “Thank you!” and head off down the road into another quantum branching that led elsewhere. Because I really don’t see it that way at all.

Mind you, I have nothing against the idea of a defining moment in a life. My objection is with the notion that there is just that one. The clouds part, a rainbow arches overhead, and the path to wealth, fame, a Pulitzer or a Nobel prize is suddenly clear. Cue the orchestra. Finish the curtain call. Bring up the house lights. Strike the set. Head for the cast party. Call it a life.

If that is how it is supposed to work, I have done something wrong, or the awards committee lost my address. Rather, I am becoming more convinced that our lives are shaped by plural moments of significant connections; individuals and events that do bump us down one of the variety of quantum worlds that we share with the shifting cast of characters who define our shared reality. Which, in part, explains the words of that great philosopher Yogi Berra who once opined “Deja vu all over again!”

But seriously, while I simply cannot point to any single time or event that “cast the die” in my life, I can easily point to multiple individuals and events that, either as “one-time” or “first-time” experiences or as continuing relationships, initiate or maintain significant influences over my worldview. Therapists love parental models, and probably with good cause. My father was a university professor and my mother was among the most gentle people I have ever known. One need not spend a few hundred dollars an hour on a couch of questionable quality to discover the importance of those connections in my life. 

More interesting to me are those connections that are less obvious but perhaps of equal influence in my journey through life. And this might be a good place to point out - particularly in these mediated days of CV19 - that influential connections can be fictional and/or historical as well as real-live-sharing-your-space people.  For example, I can trace a series of fictional anthropomorphized critters whose gentle presence has always been important in my life. Beginning with Thornton Burgess’s Tales of Mother West Wind, and Peter Cottentail, through Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, and of course A.A. Milne’s Winnie The Pooh, these very human animals bounced along beside me for much longer than I would have easily admitted to my more sophisticated peers who were already flirting with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.

More important, naturally, then and now, are the connections we maintain with experiences that we share with real live people. These connections are scattered throughout our lives and it is the ways in which they influence and inform each other that creates the richness and beauty of our existence. Let us look at a couple of relevant examples from material science. Yeah, I love it when I get to pull “relevant examples” from fields in which I have no training!

Consider glass blowing. I love glass art. But even more than the shimmering perfection of lead crystal, I am captured by the constructions of Dale Chihuly and others that feature swirls of colors blending like a frozen sunset or field of tulips. Those blended swirls of color are created, I understand, by a series of “gathers” wherein the artist repeatedly inserts the piece being created into the furnace and “gathers” multiple layers of glass of different colors onto the tube and blows and spins the piece out into the psychedelic constructs for which the art form is renowned. No single gather, no single experience or connection, can duplicate the depth and complexity of multiple gathers. [Editor’s aside: In the course of writing this post I came across a sort of tangentially related beautiful YouTube video that I simply must post https://youtu.be/PeMGRMwarKI.] 

Or consider the katana, the Japanese samurai sword. Or actually any finely crafted sword or knife. None of them are created by hammering a single thickness of steel into the shape of a blade. To simplify the process terribly, you keep folding the steel into layers that you reheat, reforge, and hammer together to create a sort of steel Big Mac - 2 all beef paddies, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles onions on a sesame seed bun in steel - compressed over and over to create a blade of exceptional strength, flexibility and beauty. 

Life is a lot like that. No one moment, no one experience, no one person or relationship is “all there is.” As Peggy Lee sang back in 1969, “If that’s all there is . . .Let’s keep dancing. Break out the booze.” But fortunately, as I just said, that is never all there is. There is always another existential “gather“ in the glass sculpture of our lives, another fold and reforge to give our living, evolving, katana greater strength, flexibility and beauty.

Thinking about the multiple layers created by the many experiences and connections in our lives makes me wonder about the possibility of existential wormholes. Quantum mechanics often raises the notion of physical wormholes in the universe, places where the universe folds back upon itself in a way that makes it possible to - in one small step for man (and woman) - sort of instantaneously slip across vast reaches of space and time, leaving the limiting notion of the speed of light tattered in our wake. Well, can we do the same thing in the multilayered construction of our existential experience? And is that the real nature of dreaming? Do those sometimes rather real, mundane even, nocturnal narratives spring from the same space as their frenetic, almost psychotic, hallucinatory cousins? And is that incubating space the folded, multi-gathered realm created by our ever evolving life experiences? I just finished my almost daily walk while listening to the Pandora channel “Hits of the 50s, 60s, and 70s” Oh my! What faces, places and memory traces inhabit that space. And can we wander around in that space via “dreamholes”? And then can we draw, paint, sing, compose, sculpt, choreograph, our memories of those voyages?  Whew. Maybe. There are, after all, “more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

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