Calling Citizen Artists

Seems like there are "citizen" everythings these days. Citizen ornithologists count birds, citizen herpetologists count snakes, citizen anthropologists track our ancient ancestors, citizen archeologists seek departed dinos. Hopefully citizen architects and engineers are not designing our high rise apartment buildings. 😟 

I'm just after your eyes.  Yes, I am still working on the 4' x 5' drawing I have decided to call Carriage Ride. And while the delightful 1977 children's book by Nancy Willard and illustrated by Tomie dePaola that I used to read to my daughters exhorted the notion that "simple pictures are best" I have been unable to follow it in Carriage Ride.

You may remember this version of it:

Well the blank spaces at the "top" and the "bottom" were destined to have some sort of botanical treatments in them.  The bottom one looked like this:

With the "bottom" now on the left.

Here is the issue I wish you to consider. Here is a closer look at the botanical treatment that is now finished:

And here is the cartoon for the opposite side - bottom or whatever:

It was my initial idea to fill that cartoon with Fall colors; orange, red, russet,  - stuff like that. However it now strikes me that given the abstract structure of the "leaves" in the cartoon that the completed treatment would not read as autumn leaves, but more like a forest fire.

So that's it my citizen artists. What's your take? Feel free to copy that last image and color it with "fall-ish" colors and see how it looks. 

Take your time. I've been working on this drawing since way before Thanksgiving. By now Christmas seems an optimistic target! 😅

On Mortality

I received an interesting request the other day from one of you out there on The Wall. They wanted to know what I thought about Mortality. But something "more complete than what usually appears on The Wall." Hmm.

I do need to clarify about The Wall. It stands in for two “real life” situations. One no longer occurs, the other rarely. The first would occur when lecturing in class and I would go “off script” as sometimes related thoughts would spring to mind and demand inclusion - and as many of you may recall from your own days in a classroom, students rarely would walk out when the professor started to "wing it." [Something I chose to believe even when teaching via online videos.] The second would be conversations with people you care about regarding issues of real concern. These days politics, the kids or grandkids, movies, sports or online events tend to dominate, so meaningful conversations simply fall away. So I write The Wall.

But to mortality. To put it simply, but seriously, I don’t believe in it. I believe we are immortal. Not that I think we end up walking and talking around in other worlds - except of course in those quantum alternate existences of which I am so fond. :-)

Rather I believe that in our current lives the existential spark which most traditional faiths call the soul transcends our current physical demise (aka death) and continues to evolve, learn and develop. Now, admittedly, the nature of those subsequent existences does remain a mystery.

My oldest and dearest friend, who was born on the other half of our duplex six days after me, interestingly has occasionally asserted that he shares, at least portions of, this rather strange belief system. Among the interesting discussions we have had is the question of whether there comes a time in the maturation of the soul when we become aware of the existences that preceded the current one. And do we retain relationships or shared experiences from previous existences?

We have not come to any firm conclusions regarding those issues. ;-) However we do agree that the process is never ending - hence our immortality. We do not stop at some point and stroll about in Elysian Fields, we just, as was often said back in the 60s when he and I were college roommates, “keep on keepin’ on!”

But to clarify a bit on mortality, i.e. - "being subject to death." It obviously plays a role in our current existence. It can affect our behavior. I am a touch acrophobic - I don't like high places. I am aware that falling from said high place will result in my being "subject to death." Seeing videos of those [in my mind lunatic] people climbing sheer rock faces in Yellowstone results in a quick channel change. I stay away from high places. Additionally, my recurrent claustrophobia prevents me from venturing into small spaces in which I might be "subject to death." Sadly then I will never see the magnificent cave paintings around the world.

Mortality can, however, also serve as a motivator. Rembrandt said "A painting is finished when the artist says it is finished." Leonardo Da Vinci is said to have carried the Mona Lisa with him all his life. Perhaps hoping to, in his mind, finish it before he died. On a far smaller scale I have been working on a drawing for a couple of months now. It keeps insisting on compositional additions. When tired, the thought crosses my mind - "I hope I finish this thing before I die." So I lie down on the floor again and take up my pens and markers.

And then there are those brushes with immortality that we can experience without the necessity of dying. Some commonly shared experiences probably check this box: The birth of a child, falling in love, a medal performance in some competition. I am no doubt biased in thinking of artists in this realm. A genius performer lost in the magic of a musical composition, an artist losing conscious control of his/her medium as the work take shape beneath their hands, a poet fascinated by the words seeming to simply appear beneath their pen or on the screen. Immortality slipping through the existential curtain to add a touch of the divine to our everyday.

Then again, sometimes the immortal appears less obviously. Feeling well after a sickness. A sunset or sunrise of unusual beauty. Being buried by a mass of puppies. A certain smile. You choose. Sometimes we realize the moment, hold our breath and hang on for as long as possible. Other times the moment slips away and we realize it was there only after it fades. Immortality is fickle.

There is Time, and Then There is Time

 I learned today that The National Institute of Standards and Technology has announced the new "most accurate clock in the world. The clock is based on a “fountain” design that represents the gold standard of accuracy in timekeeping. The NIST-F4 ticks at such a steady rate that if it had started running 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed, it would be off by less than a second today.

Whew. While that brings no retroactive relief to the now vanished dinos, it did make me think about the vagaries of time - the primary thought was wondering why tracking time with such mind boggling accuracy was important enough to have a National Institute. And if said institute was among those shuttered during the government shutdown - was there an impact on time, current or Paleolithic? But I digress.

I'm more concerned about the impact of everyday ordinary time in my life. And it does shift. For example, I have designated the hours between 6 and 9 AM as PST - Prime Sleeping Time, the hours during which I get my best sleep. 2 PM is nap time, which is however often sacrificed to MBT - Most Boring Time, when I wait in the waiting room of some healthcare office to be seen for some malady which is directly linked to SDA - Sole Driver Activity. But I digress, yet again.

My real interest is in how time affects the creative process - primarily painting. As I have mentioned before Rembrandt asserted that "a painting is finished when the artist says it is finished." Which, problematically, leaves open the possibility of a painting never being finished. You know, if the artist never says "There. It is finished!" 

And that brings us to Leonardo d'Vinci, and his reputation for leaving a variety of projects unfinished when he was seduced away by the challenge of another "more interesting" opportunity. His famous notebooks are ample evidence of a mind never at rest. And might shed light on this polymath artist who carried the Mona Lisa with him all his life. Perhaps he never thought it was finished.

In light of full disclosure, much of this reflection on time comes from my discovery - from browsing through my picture gallery - that I have been working on the current "carriages and greenery and circles" kind of image for almost three months. It doesn't seem that long, just lying on the floor drawing on a big picture.

But that might be because when I submerge myself into this environment: 

time really does not exist. 

Well, the NIST-F4 is still tick-tocking away, but it has no relevance in my life. I think I quoted an anonymous source recently that asserted that: "When I am using my hands I do not have to think." That is not exactly what I mean when I say time does not exist when I am painting. I always listen to music while drawing and the genre of music influences where my thoughts drift. Years, places and people, crowd the edges of my drawings. And it is in that revery that time does not intrude. 

However, when the rough edges of time from the dinosaurs intrude - dinner gatherings, appointments, the doorbell, security camera - the drawing suffers. Bits and pieces fall outside the lines, and I have to stop. Often "tyrannosaurus-NISTus" distractions haul me away for hours at a time. Gulp, even days. But even though it takes awhile, eventually I can take up bit of color again and banish time.

A Quick Halloween Treat

Well, I'm not sure how much of a treat it is - but at least it's not fattening!😁 

Having spent the morning quickly clicking by my various news sources that are all stunningly depressing I thought I would remind you that I would encourage you to forward The Wall to any of your friends, family, or acquaintances who might enjoy "something completely different" to quote Monty Python. And if they would like to be on The Wall themselves, they can drop me a note at robert.schrag@gmail.com and I will be glad to put them on the distribution lists.

Anyhow, here the details in case they inquire:

The Wall is sent out via "blind copies" so that no person on The Wall has access to anyone else on The Wall.

There is no "publication schedule" for the Wall. I just post when something moves me, or a drawing is ready to discuss or share.

I have no way of knowing who opens the post. Just numbers of how many "hits" there are on the post.

Anyone on The Wall can comment on a post by emailing me, but there is no public site for posts, altho' "comments" made directly on the post will be seen - I think - to anyone accessing the post.

So have a good Halloween 👻💀! Pretend you bought all that candy for the kids!

Ode to a Fading Gentleman

I don't have a specific gentleman in mind - rather the idea of a gentle man; a man who is gentle. The Brits still cling to a sort of system, harking back to "the days of old, when knights were bold." At the top of the heap you had the nobility, those folks who can trace their linage to the royal family. Those who, given opportunities presented by death, war, sickness or assassination, might actually become Queen or King. A group not renowned for their gentleness. Nor were their hired head breakers - the knights, Lancelot and that crowd.

But there was another level of society, those at the back of the book in Burke's Peerage - the gentry. While not pretenders to the throne, they were thought to be models of gentility. Sort of nobility without the carnage. They were supposed to be polite, well-spoken, gentle, kind, brave, clean and reverent. No wait, those last three were from the Scout Law. But you get the idea. Gentlemen were supposed to be gentle, as were gentlewomen when given the opportunity.

I seem to seek in vain for contemporary remnants of these progenitors of human gentleness, of loving kindness. The liturgies of most organized religions do assert them - and elements of some do actually manifest those behaviors. Yet, sadly, as we examine the hot, or even the merely smoldering, spots of conflict around the world, we often discover that the conflict revolves around a disagreement as to whose god is the right god.

But I can't personally pour any oil on those troubled global waters, I'll leave that to the petrochemical companies - sorry, couldn't resist. What I mean is I can't really champion gentleness on a global scale - a task that objectively seems beyond the pontifications of the White House and other self-serving global figures who talk peace while simultaneously threatening, preparing for, or engaging in, greater armed conflict. But maybe we can each individually "play gentleness forward."

It's not really that hard. Do little things. First off - don't yell. It is a natural inclination, even to ourselves: you stub your toe, drop a glass, get cut off by a rude driver. Yelling seems natural, but fight the inclination. Try not to yell, swear, make rude gestures. It's tough sometimes, but your cardiovascular system will thank you. Keep that blood pressure just rolling along - Old Man River it.

Best place to practice this primary manifestation of gentleness is at home. Here are some phrases guaranteed to make your home a more gentle, yell-free, calmer place: Thank you. Please. You're welcome. Let me help you with that. No, you go first. I'm sorry. Is there something wrong? Want to talk about it? You look nice today. I love you.

Go ahead, add some more examples of your own. Things you'd like to say or hear in the house. We all know them. We just seem to forget to trot them out when they would do the most good. Practice. Now, once you get used to using them at home, try taking them out for a spin. While driving. When you are shopping.  Eating at a restaurant.  At work. Anywhere you rub elbows with your fellow citizens: "No, you go ahead." "Take that spot. I'll drive around.""I'm going to go grab a coffee, fruit juice, snack, apple, orangutan. Can I get you one?"

These are terribly simple things we can all do, many of them come right out of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten  by Robert Fulghum. But the problem is that these behaviors are not seen as pathways to success in American culture.

Our local heroes more often leap aggressively from our various videos, sporting events, music, politics. Slam, bam! Good guys take down the bad guys in a plethora of streaming thriller videos. (Yeah. One of my guilty pleasures. I'm trying to cut back.) Sports gives us: Defense! Hit that line! Crash the boards! (Another of my trials - football for schools where I taught. I, at least, think about CTE, and don't cheer at hard hits.) Politics leads with: Liar! Fake News! Bad man! She Belongs in Jail! The City is a disaster! Send in the National Guard! Join ICE help root out the baddest of the bad! And today there are reports of 10K American troops standing off the coast of Venezuela.

But it could be worse. A dose of schadenfreude reveals these tidbits from today's international news:

"Rapid Support Forces kills 460 patients at a hospital in el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur." And "Brazilian police raid on a drug gang in Rio de Janeiro Tuesday kills at least 119 people—the city's deadliest raid on record."

It all sure adds a sour note to the morning coffee, not?  Why do we act this way? What forces the notion of gentleness back into hazy visions of romantic pasts that might never have really been? I do not know. I don't buy the notion that we are still chained to the violent inclinations of our atavistic prehistory. But I have a suggestion for at least claiming the feeling that one is injecting a touch of gentleness into a frighteningly hostile world:

As much as possible lead a personally gentle life. I'm not suggesting a kind of life of pure behavioral pacifism where you seek out a monastic retreat and spend your days in solitary prayer. Nah, nothing that extreme.  Just start by using some of that gentle vocabulary we constructed above. Then once you can "talk the talk," move into "walking the walk." Be gentle with yourself and with those who touch your life.

Suggestions that, of course, allow me to trot out my old mantra for trying to live a "good life": Foster Harmony (aka gentleness), Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm.

Drawing Thoughts

It's kind of a zen thing that folks who actually took art classes probably learned in "drawing day two," just after "securing the paper and selecting the medium." But those of us who took the "self-taught" route never got that memo - especially "mature" doodlers like myself who are peeking a couple of weeks ahead to the big double 7.

I realize I had read about something similar to this notion in the "spy-thriller" novels I favor. It is the ritual the sniper goes through before shooting the mafia kingpin meeting with a group of fellow wiseguys on the patio of a restaurant a few thousand yards away. He does some breathing exercises to reach "stage zero" where no internal quiver will disrupt the trigger pull or the bullet's trajectory. Bam. There goes the bad guy! It's sort of like that, but not really.

A little background. My hands shake. Not a function of my upcoming 77th birthday - been that way all my life. As a young theater-type in high school and college, I usually made sure I had something to lean against or hold onto when on stage to anchor the shakes. But interestingly, these days they don't shake when I am drawing. Except when; well, as you have seen I often draw myself into the proverbial corner of tiny little spaces. For example, take a look at Grand Canal image.

Those little colored pieces of sky and water are maybe a half inch by 1/8 inch. The rocks at the base of the buildings are even smaller. It is when coloring little spaces like that when the shakes threaten to re-emerge.

OK, take a quick look at the current project, Carriage Ride with Flowers, or something like that. Haven't really decided on a title yet:

The triangle is eight inches on the long base, and is there to give you an idea of scale. The "learning moment" occurred when trying to decide what kind of design should fill the empty spaces along each edge of the drawing. I wanted something botanical, but was hesitant to put pen to paper until I was more certain what that would like. So I decided to do a preliminary sketch that I could position around on the big drawing to see how it would look.

So I did one, then went a little OCD and cut it out so it wouldn't block any of the big drawing as I tested placement. Here is where I am on that:

OK. The cut out image is 12 x 7 inches. So those spaces inside the leaves get kinda tiny. And it was while creating them that the shakes began to raise their trembling head. I paused. And that is when I discovered - pure serendipity, no explanation - that if I drew the tiny little spaces by pulling the marker towards me while slowly exhaling there were no shakes.

And that's it: To cure the shakes take a breath, position the drawing implement so as to draw it towards you, and draw slowly as you exhale. It is OK to pause mid-stroke, just take another gentle breath, and then continue as you softly exhale.

I don't know if this insight warranted a Wall at all, let alone one this long, but it seemed cool to me! 😁

 

Peace, not pieces.

Alfred Nobel established five categories for the Nobel Prizes which were first awarded in 1901, the fifth anniversary of Nobel's death. The five original categories were Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. The prize for  Economics was added in 1968.

Nobel, who made a significant fortune largely based on weapons and munitions - the most remembered being dynamite - seems to have turned the other cheek late in life by endowing the now world-renowned prizes to be conveyed to individuals who contributed the "greatest benefit to mankind" in those specific fields.

The awards in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature are duly noted by the media. Especially when recipients are themselves media figures, as when Bob Dylan won the Prize for Literature in 2016 "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." Despite being a Dylan fan I shook my head at that selection until I read his acceptance lecture which ended thus:

"Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They're meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare's plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says, 'Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story."  Hmm. Hope the "songwriters" of today are listening. We can always use well sung stories.

But the Dylan prize is only one of several that might make us stop and think. For example:

The 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Fritz Haber. A bit strange, not because it was awarded for his work in the mass production of ammonia, but because Haber had overseen Germany's chemical weapons program during World War I.

And then in 1949: Antonio Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist and brain surgeon was awarded the prize in medicine for devising the lobotomy, a practice that is, well, no longer in practice.

Still, what can we really expect from a series of prizes awarded by a committee, any committee!

However, it is the Peace prize that generates the most coverage and controversy. And there have been many controversial winners among those individuals and organizations receiving the award in the 124 years of its existence. And, realistically, one would be hard pressed to find a singular example of an individual or organization who have contributed the "greatest benefit to mankind" by making the world a more peaceful place. There are undoubtedly many worthy individuals and organizations laboring unseen "to benefit mankind" in the trenches and byways of this troubled world trying to bring peace. Few will win the Nobel Prize for Peace, and perhaps that is because they do not "campaign" for it. Instead they focus on their task as peacemakers.

The same cannot be said of Donald Trump, who has claimed in a New York Times article regarding the Nobel Peace Prize: "I deserve it, but they will never give it to me." Well, I hope this is one statement by President Trump that actually proves true - well, not the deserving part, which is a reflection of the fact that he really does not understand what it takes to deserve the prize.

Much of Trump's claim for the prize rests on his claim to "have ended eight wars!" Most prominent at the moment is his claim to have ended the war between Israel and Hamas. That claim seems to be very much up in the air as claims and counterclaims continue among the participants. One can certainly be thankful for the lives repatriated on both sides, but I'm going to wait a few months before checking this one off the list of Trump Victories.

More germane perhaps is the war that Trump declared he would end on his first day in office - the war between Ukraine and Russia. Well, as of today Trump announce 100% tariffs on Russian oil because his one time "good friend" Putin won't follow Trump's playbook. Just another example of a frightening litany of reversals of policy and alliances that have marked his brief tenure in office.

A review of the claims of ending the other six "war ending interventions" seem to reveal Trump lending some impetus to ongoing negotiations where others did the major heavy lifting; sometimes successful, other times not. Not a stunning argument for being the one person in all the world who providing "the greatest benefit to mankind." And then of course his claim to "have never started a war!" Let's keep our eye on Venezuela, or maybe Columbia.

But most damning in my mind is the farce this would be Nobel prize winner is perpetrating on his own country. Using his party's shut down of the government to throw thousands out of work, or to force a reduction in health benefits for millions. Attempting to force universities to kowtow to his ideas of who should be admitted and what should be taught. Using the Department of Justice to attack anyone who might ever have attempted to contradict his beliefs. Loosing ICE agents into cities to arrest anyone whose accent or skin color or former country of residence he finds offensive. And sending armed National Guard troops into "blue cities," aka cities with democratic mayors or voting histories.

This man who covets the Nobel Prize for Peace seems quite content to tear his own country to pieces.

But that is not what frightens me most. These grievous acts against our country are not, in my mind, the acts of an evil person. They are instead the acts of a man in a fairly advanced state of dementia. His inability to construct meaningful sentences. His forgetting of his own previous statements. The implementation of projects he has previously disowned, like the destruction of portions of the White House. His dizzying 'on again - off again' relationships with other countries and world leaders. These are all examples of behavior that, if we observed them in parents or friends of his age [79 - 80 in June], we would be concerned.

"Sure, Dad. Sure, Aunt Martha. Sure, cousin Jo. Sure, dear. You deserve the Nobel Peace Prize."

Horseless Carriages: Update

Hi there -

We have been busy. Trip over to the Cratin Cottage on Klinger Lake in Michigan, then down into the city for a fascinating lecture by Lech Walesa. But I try to steal a bit of time to work on Horseless Carriages.

So let me try to get you up to date.

As you may recall this composition started with a photo I took of one of our favorite objet d'art - or neat thing. A cool little carriage, with a tiny carriage on top:

I then pulled that image into Photoshop and removed all the background stuff to create a "cartoon" version of the image which could be used as a template for various "designed" version of the carriage. That template looks like this:

And that version was replicated for the current design.

Then I created various designs for each of the 13 - no hidden significance there - just happened to fir in the larger design. Here is an example of a "designed carriage":

The next step is to paint each of the designs with my various versions of markers. I have shared some of those with you. There are two types of design.  Here is one of the "full dress" versions in which all the elements are painted:

The other version is the "Pinto Version" named not for the bean, but for the patchwork ponies characterized by their patchwork hides. Here is an example of that version:

I have completed 10 of the 13 carriages, and designed the last 3. But face some new challenges, or opportunities, depending on my mood at the moment. I think I have mentioned that the whole design is 36x46 inches, too big to fit on my drawing table.So I have moved the image to the floor of my bedroom which is the only unoccupied space in the house large enough - excepting the tables upon which we occasionally eat - to accommodate the image:

So I tiptoe around the edges, masking the pieces I am not working on with a blanket and weighing down the edges with books and whatnot. For those of you who have, or have had, small children, know that they can contort themselves into pretzel-like shapes on the floor for extended periods of time and bounce up with no seeming discomfort. This is not the case in the current situation. I realize that I am not painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel here. But Michelangelo was 33 years old when he started that task - completed it 3 years later. Well, I've got more than 4 decades on him. So, yes, this hurts, hence I pace myself, and down the occasional flagon and advil to self-medicate.

But that's not all! You may have noticed that there some significant white spaces between the carriage pathways. But fear not! I have a plan - developing, but still a plan: flowers.

The idea is to fill those with spaces with flowers. They are still in the "design" stage. But here are couple evolving ideas:

This is the basic idea, which will, of course become a full circle:

Each flower will have a unique petal design. Here are the ones I am currently considering.

And here is an outlier that I might consider, based on some rose-like designs I have used in the past - like for the bathroom in the strange refurbed factory Christine and I first rented in Raleigh.

OK, now for the last challenge/opportunity.  Many of my markers are several years old. The ability to smoothly apply color with a marker demands a smooth flow of the ink. It will soon become mandatory for me to test and replace some of my markers. Sooooo many markers, the task seems daunting. But as Buzz Lightyear says - "To infinity and beyond!"

Slip-slide'n Away - To Irrelevance

 "God save the King!"

No, I don't mean the wannabe king in the White House. I mean the real king of the Brits, who lives in Clarence House and whose office is in Buckingham Palace, - an actual King.

You see I have always felt a special connection to Charles, who was born at 9:14 PM on November 14th, 1948. I said hello to the world on the morning of November 15th, 1948. So I occasionally muse that but for a few hours, a few thousand miles of ocean and different parents, I could be sitting on the throne of the British Empire.

The British Empire aka TBE - now there's a golden oldie from the WayBack machine. True, those imperialist dreams got their first stuttering start here on our side of the pond. But in the big picture of TBE, we were an initial hiccup on the way to global domination. Who would have guessed that the whole "taxation without representation" thing would boil over when the King billeted troops in Los Angles - er, Boston - against the wishes of the colonists?

"Oh well," thought the Brits, "There is the rest of the world to filch." And they did for next three or four hundred years, giving birth to the axiom "the sun never sets on the British Empire!" Until it did; as each of its colonies came to realize that The Crown primarily served the interests of The Crown as opposed to the home folks in the various colonies. True the British Navy and the soldiers of The Crown could usually be depended upon to maintain order. But that "orderly state" was usually defined as vouch saving the British head that wore The Crown. So now TBE is an island of about 50,000 square miles, or the size of Alabama. [For the curious minds - Alaska is about 650,000 square miles. Ed.]

So where did it all go wrong for TBE? Leaving my good buddy Charlie presiding over an Empire the size of Alabama, but without the sunshine or the football [American not British] team?

Well, a few things. First, a procession of Royals clung to the belief that only "real Englishmen" - and one supposes "Englishwomen" to a lesser degree, were of import. Everyone else - the natives, colonists, etc., - were sources of labor, conscripts, and most importantly revenue. Hence, one used whatever resources were available to protect the position, power and resources of the "Real English" throughout the Empire; even if that meant intervening militarily should the natives occupying those lands object to the policies and practices of TBE.

It is somewhat ironic that it was the colonists who came to call themselves Americans who were the first British colonists, and the first British colonists to rid themselves of TBE. But over the next 3 or 4 hundred years the rest of TBE followed our lead, leaving my buddy Charlie [in partnership with a surviving cluster of Royals] as the territorially reduced, but still immensely wealthy, ruler of Alabama Britain.

There is another oft quoted axiom: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  -- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.

I can imagine myself sipping port in Buckingham Palace with my pal Charlie. After awhile, and into the second bottle of excellent port from somewhere in the former TBE, he begins to wax philosophical:

Charlie: "So Bobby old boy, this Trump lad - can he read?"

Bobby:  "I believe, occasionally, from teleprompters."

Charlie: "So not Santayana?"

Bobby: "I would guess he would assume you were talking about a rock group from the sixties"

Charlie: "Well let me share some observations with you based on my own view of our history here on 'this sceptered isle'"

Bobby: "Pray do."

Charlie: "Bobby, America is becoming irrelevant."

Bobby: "Huh?"

Charlie: "Think about it. There are a few things that are absolutely imperative on the world stage if one is to maintain a position of leadership."

Bobby: "Such as?"

Charlie: "We'll, for one, consistency. To lead others a state must stand for a consistent set of beliefs, actions and relationships."

Bobby: "Go on."

Charlie: "Trump is a willow in the wind. One day he supports the Ukraine, the next he cozies up to Putin. Turn the page it's Ukraine again. One day he will end the war in Gaza, and turn it into a resort. Then he disappears only to resurface with new plan for that trouble regionto that will fail to past muster with either Hamas or Netanyahu. And one day he wants to annex Greenland. What? To relocate Hamas there?

Bobby: "All right some inconsistency, I admit."

Charlie: "Then there is this whole fiasco of stationing National Guard troops in your own cities. Insane. As any read of history will reveal it cost us the American colonies - maybe eventually the whole empire."

Bobby: "Point taken."

Charlie: "And finally this legal witch hunt. Using his Justice Department in an attempt to imprison those who oppose him? Would the name Robespierre, or the phrase Reign of Terror strike a chord with him?"

Bobby: "Robespierre, not at all. And he would preempt the phrase 'reign of terror' to talk about the Biden administration or cities with Democratic mayors."

Charlie: "Oh, Bobby, Bobby. Don't you get it? MAGA is a recasting of The Emperor's New Clothes. With the bizarre behavior emanating from your President, the world will just stop paying attention. Unless, of course he does go completely off the deep end and employs his personal version of a final solution, pressing nuclear buttons that will eliminate us all. Barring that, America will become a punch line, and then be forgotten. Irrelevant and unimportant on the global stage.

I know, I've been there. I am there.  .  .  .  just a rich old fart hanging out with his rich buddies. Going through the motions of forgotten relevance. . . . Would you like some more port?"

Bobby: "Do you have anything stronger? Maybe from Scotland?"

All I Have to do is Dream

A couple of hours cruising the Internet leads me to the conclusion that while lots of people can wax philosophical, romantic, poetic, scientific, and "eruditic" about dreams; no one can say more than "it seems to happen in the brain when you are either asleep, sort of asleep, or maybe a little bit asleep; and your eyes are moving rapidly back and forth - or sometimes not - and dreams can go on for hours, or minutes, or perhaps seconds - oh, and we usually forget them." What I love about this kind of uncertainty is that you can really just espouse whatever you like about dreams and, if you take it seriously - or maybe put it into a neat song or poem - maybe someone else will take it seriously too.

OK, I want to go back to ideas I was playing with a couple of posts ago  - https://schragwall.blogspot.com/2025/09/dreams-harmony-et-al.html - when I was talking about life as a spiral each iteration of which contains some repeated similar - often powerful -  experiences distributed throughout our lives. That reminds me of something I remember reading somewhere about "peak experiences." Probably Abraham Maslow. Wikipedia gives us this:

"Maslow described them [peak experiences] as rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experiencer."

So, I'm thinking that even if peak experiences are rare, related forms of them reoccur throughout our lives. Think falling in love, birth of a child, committing to a relationship, creating an important expression - a painting, poem, dance, building, garden, novel - whatever. For me "peak experience" and "strongly harmonic experience" are synonymous terms. The idea I'm playing with is that distributed "strongly harmonic experiences" lead to dreams that tie "the circles/spirals of life" together into a consistent set of chords that reinforce our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.

So how to test this notion? Ah, there's the rub. To analyze the content of a dream - content analysis, dramatistic analysis, narrative analysis, rhetorical analysis, - name your poison, makes no difference. To analyze the content of your dreams you have to remember - have access to - the content of the dreams.

No doubt our ability to remember dreams varies widely. My wife seems able to recall dreams in significant detail. Me? Not so much. More like "now I see through a glass, darkly," or "through someone else's glasses, briefly." My dreams usually appear to be peopled by strangers and take place in locales primarily defined by lots of hallways and doors within which I am lost and late for something.

But I am working on it, and as I wrote in that previous post linked above, I have lately had fleeting dream glimpses of both recognizable people and environs. But they still slip swiftly away. I realize there are possible solutions to my murky relationship with my dreams. Some folks suggest "dream journals" that you keep bedside and jot down your memories of your dreams. Think about that. 

There are some problematic assumptions here. Reach out to bedside table. Grab notebook. Find writing implement. Turn on some form of illumination. Oops. Find glasses. No, the other glasses. Now, write down dream in which. . . um, . . . .?  And the idea of using my phone carries a similar chain of requirements - grab phone, turn it on, "Siri, take a note . . ," etc.

What I am looking for is a single button recording device that I can keep in my bed - under my pillow or just next to me. (Debates regarding snoring, temperature concerns, iPad usage and blanket stealing have been resolved by separate bedrooms.) This would, I believe, result in a "grab device, press button, speak - eyes need not be open" process. Such a scenario for dream recording could yield usable data for dream analysis.

Now, I have some preconceived ideas regarding what those recordings will reveal. However my academic history demands that I regard those ideas as merely hypotheses, and those hypotheses must be tested against the data. It's called the scientific method and is, contrary to the idiosyncratic and glibly reversible reasoning underlying much current national policy, necessary for determining our best guess regarding truth. 

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P.S.  A word about AI, which - as should be obvious in occasion font and spacing errors - I will never use.  If I wanted to use AI generated words or styles, I would have written them myself. Jeeez. No wonder American kids rank near the bottom of international rankings of reading and writing ability.

Seeking a Consistent Intelligence

 F. Scott Fitzgerald is often cited as the source for the quote: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." Apparently some first-rate intelligences debate that attribution. Still the quote lingers on. And the phenomenon sometimes get trotted out in public, where its veracity remains every bit as in question as the literary source.

I am, of course, referring to the contretemps that has arisen over the tragic assassination of the youthful conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. While I doubt Mr. Kirk and I would have agreed on any aspect of politics or policy, I am saddened and distressed by his death - yet another indication of the growing belief in our society that violence is an acceptable mode of political discourse. My distress is furthered by the seeming acceptance of the notion of "holding two opposed ideas while continuing to function" that is being displayed by the White House in its contrasting commentaries regarding this young man's death.

On the one hand the Vice President eulogizes Kirk as "a martyr for the Christian faith", while on the other hand President Trump takes the opportunity to assert, "I hate my opponent!" We seem to have some sort of theological conflict going on here. Matthew 5:44, records Christ's Sermon on the Mount in which he instructs his followers to "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." Instructions that one would assume "a martyr for the Christian faith" would adhere to. Yet Trump, who, when the occasion warrants, professes himself a Christian, declares in Trump 21:25, "I hate my opponent!" So which kind of Christian lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

If this is an indication of “first-rate intelligences” at work, I would be content to be a "second-rater." The founders of our seemingly increasingly fragile democracy were incredibly prescient in separating church and state in our fledgling nation. One need only glance at the violent conflicts simmering around the globe to see what happens when inflexible ideology dominates national interests and policy. When hatred trumps love.

I do feel obligated to once again trot out my "second-rater" personal ideology:

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

There is enough complexity in trying to live by those simple phrases to keep me slogging along. Not enough energy left to worry about "hating my opponent."

Sometimes Size Does Matter

 I'm talking about images here. There are times when I think that I should make an image a little bit bigger. OK, maybe a whole lot bigger. You have seen this image before:

It is called Beltline Boogie and was done originally as a giclee print from my original drawing that was 4x3 feet. But then fate, in the guise of the North Carolina Department of Transportation, took a hand and sponsored a contest looking for images in which to wrap Raleigh's city buses. I entered and a few weeks later Beltline took to the streets supersized and wrapped around a full size city bus. It was a very, very cool feeling to see Beltline cruise by my office window.

That was as big as I ever went. But big retained its attraction. The next sort-of-supersized image followed the giclee process. It sits above my "marker storage desk" and measures 4x5 feet.

It is called Through Every Window,  and I'm not sure if I have shared it with you before.

Back when I had a rather large office in Raleigh, my "go to" size was 4x3 feet giclees and I had a bunch of them. Here are a few:

But since that time I have pretty much stayed with the 20x24 inch format that you recently viewed. But  recently the "go big or go home!" bug bit me again.  It started with a photo I took of one of our Christmas pieces. A couple of wagons with no horses:

Which, naturally I felt compelled to turn into a template for a drawing:

Of which I did a couple of versions:

But that is when the "big bug" bit. You see those images are only a small part of a much larger concept that measures 46x36 inches:

Horseless Carriages

This is about half of the image in process. Too big to fit comfortably on my drawing table, so I shift it around. And there is an awful lot of white space left to be filled. Sigh.

I'll keep you posted.

Dreams, Harmony et. al.

Dreams are funny things, and apparently quite flexible. For most of my life - those that I can recall anyhow - my dreams have been defined by a couple of constant characteristics. They were peopled by strangers and took place in anonymous locals - usually large structures with many hallways in which I was often lost and late for something.

Exceptions to those parameters appear to be creeping in. Most recently I dreamt I was back in the house in which I was raised in Springfield, Ohio. I was in the kitchen, clearly defined by the large cut out of Peter Pan (from the Disney movie, circa 1953) affixed to the door that led to the backyard or the basement. I was discussing something, maybe arguing?, with my parents. We were all represented as age appropriate for the era - so probably when I was in junior high or somewhere around there. I have no recollection as to what was discussed. But it was fairly calm, no raised voices or confrontation.

Not long before that I had a dream in which my daughters were present. K-12 ages in Raleigh. Again, no recollection as to specific content. Just a rather bland interaction. But I was confused as to why these seemingly "real world" venues were making their way into my previously uniquely "fictional" nocturnal dramas. I have worked out an explanation that makes sense - well, sort of anyhow - to me. Let me attempt an explanation.

First, a quick refresher of "Chord theory." Building on the framework of quantum mechanics in which we find string theory, my extension, "chord theory" asserts that since everything in the universe is built - on its most fundamental level - on tiny vibrating strings, then we too are made of tiny vibrating strings. And since vibrating strings, no matter how tiny, make music - we too are made of music. Furthermore, as our DNA (made of music) is unique to us, we continually vibrate to our own unique chord. Chord theory asserts that our relationship to existence - friends, family, lovers, enemies, jobs, music, art, food, locale, everything - depends upon the degree of harmony or discord between the chord of those individuals or entities and our own unique chord. We seek association with harmonic chords and we avoid those that are discordant. OK. Hold on to that idea.

Now, let's move on to circles. You may remember that when I posted the image "Painted Ponies," (https://schragwall.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-painted-ponies.html) I drew the title from Joni Mitchel's 1966 song Circle Game. Well, that tune is but one small element in a staggering number of assertions that life can be seen as a circular experience. The Lion King: Circle of Life. The circular representation of the universe in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism. The old gospel tune, Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Circle dances in the Judaic world. The Medical Circle in some Native American traditions. It's enough to make your head spin.

Well, let me put a bit of a twist on the dominance of the circle, and assert instead that life is a spiral. Where a circle eventually closes where it began and becomes a static entity, a spiral, on the other hand, moves. Seen from above a spiral does appear to be a circle, but viewed from the side, in three dimensions, it reveals itself to be a spring. Which, as an existential model, implies progress, growth,  perhaps an increase in harmony. Which doesn't really contradict some circle-based ontologies which often propose movement to a "higher" plane of existence or spiritual awareness. So maybe one can think of a spiral as a bunch of circles with ramps. But I digress. What does this have to do with somewhat realistic dreams from another era?

I'm glad you asked. OK. Get an image of a spiral in your mind:

Like this:

Now image a line dropping down the edge of the spiral, like this:

The line represents when you were at similar points of the spiral segment (analogous to a circle) at some earlier stages of your life. It is my contention that the various intersections between the spiral and the line, share, if not unique, then powerful, harmonics. Meaning that at some point in your past you found yourself in a situation very similar to your current point in time. And it is those shared moments, shared harmonics, that propel images from those disparate eras into our dreamscape.

So why are these particular moments from days gone-bye just now entering my dreams? Why not moments from everywhere the line - or any line for that matter - that intersects with any part of the the spiral? Obviously, I do not know. But to further hypothesize, I would assume, as implied above, that there were harmonics associated with those intersecting moments that are somehow uniquely in sync with those moments dominating my current life.

But the dreams, as in their wont, decline to clearly reveal those connections.

I will continue to cogitate.

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PS. As some of you know, we currently reside on the outskirts of the failed city of Chicago where we regularly dine and attend a variety of cultural events. It is our fervent desire that the President will act so National Guard troops will - over the misguided objections of all our elected officials - be sent to our city to address the current threat to national security here in the Windy City - a criminal scarcity of on-street parking. A situation obviously attributable to flagrant criminal parking abuses of shadowy Albanian gang members driving large SUVs.

 

Old Books, Old Friends

Balladiers seem to enjoy composing works that profess to address realities with which they have no experience.

For example Paul Simon composed these poignant lines:

"Old friends, old friends

Sat on their park bench like bookends

Old friends, memory brushes the same years . . .

Time it was,

And what a time it was

It was . . .

A time of innocence

A time of confidences . . .

How terribly strange to be 70."

-Written at the tender age of 26, with nary an inkling of what it meant to be 70.

James Taylor, who joins me in our 76th year, penned this advice:

"The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time." 

-Written almost 35 years ago, when he had barely turned his back on his 30s.

One might be tempted to write off these uninformed musings, regarding some fictional seventh decade, as the trivial scribblings of young poets. But as both proved in their later works, there was an inclination to insight in these two writers as they touched on the mystery and the allure of life in maturity.

And, for me, a large part of that mystery and allure lies in the wonder of memory - a statement that will, most likely, reduce both my wife and my sister to gales of hysterical laughter. But let me clarify, I'm not talking about the kind of memory that would allow me to recall "that lovely restaurant in Venice where we had the squid ink pasta." Remember the dish, but the when and where escapes me. 

Nor can I recall specifics of the trip to Disneyland in the mid-1950s, except that they closed the park because it had reached capacity. Sorry ladies, I just draw blanks there. That doesn't mean that the original experience wasn't significant, it's just that the details may be a touch fuzzy.

But, strangely perhaps, I can recall "pretty near" just about every book I have ever read. And more than that, I can fairly clearly recall what was going on in my life when I first read them. So the books serve as some sort of mnemonic aid. I have no explanation for this phenomenon, except perhaps as some existential compensation for my inability to recall the trip to "that restaurant we went to twice last month."

But there is an important aspect to this wrinkle of literary memory. To jump back to the songsters, Gordon Lightfoot penned these two lines in his 1970 song "If You Could Read My Mind":

"And you won't read that book again

Because the ending's just too hard to take."

Well, to stand that notion on its head, I often read old books again, specifically because the ending is joyful, peaceful, comforting. The bad guys get caught, the good guy gets the girl, the world is saved from the evil genius, the dog finds its way home, and the lovers ride off into the sunset. And I can sleep.

So to crib a rhyme from Paul Simon - delightfully now in his 83rd year:

"Old friends, stand on my bookshelf

'Tween bookends.

Stories that lull me to sleep,

Fall from the pages,

And the sages

Of these old friends."