Gateway to Unrepentant Gentleness

 It was the end of some video we were watching - I forget which, but the father was sitting in a big stuffed armchair with a kid tucked in on each side. He was reading:

"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms."

"Ah," I muttered, "I wonder if they'll let him get all the way to "‘Bother!’ and ‘O blow!’ and also ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’"

"What?" responded my better half - possessor of a university degree in English.

"Wind in the Willows," I replied. "I wonder if they will let him get to the 'Hand spring cleaning' bit."

"Don't know. Never heard of it."

We have a joke we share when appropriate in conversation:

"We have been married for almost 60 years" Folks look at us amazed, to which we respond: "Just not to each other!" Reactions vary from laughter to chuckles to "Us too!" depending on the company.

It is true, Christine and I lived very full lives before entering into second marriages. She out in the business world, I ensconced in the ivory tower of academia. And those experiences crafted very different realities, that are most often complimentary. This one, however, stuck with me for a few days. "Never heard of it." Amazing.

Christine chose to not have kids. A decision for which our over-populated planet thanks her, but may have contributed to her tendency to spoil her nieces and grandchildren. Probably no harm there.  I, on the other hand, have two delightful daughters with whom I shared many a night immersed in children's literature. It got me thinking, what was there in those seemingly simple stories that allowed me to recall big chunks of them half a century later? I have come to the conclusion that it has to do with the general notion of gentleness - even more so, a protective, unquestioning acceptance of the value of gentleness. Let me natter on a bit. 

There is something childlike about gentleness - remember that there is a significant difference between childlike and childish. Childlike is actual a rather adult concept that nonetheless has its roots in childhood. That assertion probably needs some clarification.

We often use language that paints an erroneous picture of childhood. Perhaps the most common example is the phrase "sleeping like a baby," to convey the idea of "a deep and peaceful sleep." Anyone who has actually been in the presence of a sleeping baby realizes the fantasy snuggled within this phrase. Babies rarely, if ever, sleep deep and peacefully. When they finally stop fussing and go to sleep [yes, my dear darling, sleep-resistant, daughters, I am talking about you] they wriggle about, toss and turn, need frequent drinks of water, need changing, make weird noises that often defy explanation, and so on. But we continue to say "sleeping like a baby" as if it were a good thing.*

Childhood can actually be a very stressful time for the little humans going through it. Changing realities, roles, expectations, physical and emotional evolutions that present them with the continually changing challenges of "growing up."  And sadly that often includes, as Corinthians 13:11 puts it: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." And too often one of the things "put away" is gentleness:  Grow up! Act your age! Put on your big boy pants! Don't be a sissy! Take care of business! All those exhortations favored by Trump's bevy of bouncing billionaire bullies.

I'm thinking that I took away from a subset of children's literature an inclination to occasionally withdraw into a childlike, as opposed to childish, state of unrepentant gentleness that blunts the haranguing of contemporary life both as portrayed by the media - online and off - where "if it bleeds it leads" still rings true, or as in the LA area where the current reality surpasses nightmares.

What defines that subset? There may well be contemporary examples but I naturally choose those examples that were prevalent either when I was a child or when I was "the reader" for my children. So here is my list:

Old Mother West Wind Stories by Thornton Burgess. These were published in the 19teens. 1916, 17, 18? Definitely read to me as a child, and maybe some "self read" when I was first learning to read. I include them, not because I can clearly remember them, but because there is something of the air of unrepentant gentleness about them. And they may have drawn inspiration from the grandparent immediately below.

Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.  Published in 1908, but recast in several more contemporary versions. I favor the pre-Disney versions. If you haven't heard of it, go read it.

Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne. Illustrations by E. H. Shepard. First appeared by name in a children's story commissioned by London's Evening News for Christmas Eve 1925, so is the most recent of the trio. Again, redone by the Disney empire. But finding the original version is worth the effort.

So what is there about these works that constitutes what I call Unrepentant Gentleness? Primarily it is either the absence of evil, as in Winnie the Pooh and Mother West Wind, or the thwarting of somewhat muted evil as in Wind in the Willows. They define a safe place in which kindness, caring, and friendship, wrap their loving arms around you. Read them.

Is it a fantasy? Well, most certainly it is a fantasy that any adult recognizes as such. One that crumbles in the face of any extended brush with "reality" as reported in the media or present for any number of reasons in your own life. It is a fantasy and I cannot advise trying to live there. But who among us can say they do not seek an occasional respite from that reality? A glass of something? A taste of now legal weed? An exhausting run or workout? Smashing the ball of your choice, golf, soccer, tennis, pickle?

This is simply another, perhaps more gentle, option.

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* For those of you who may - regularly or occasionally - be currently responsible for getting small humans to sleep, I share a strategy I used with my younger sleep-resistant daughter who actually did sleep in a trundle, albeit one painted to resemble a formula 1 race car. It worked oh, 30 or 40% of the time.

First, find a spot close to, but not shared with, the small human. I lay on the floor next to said trundle. The idea is for you to be able to slide out of the room when small human falls asleep.

Next, you make up a soft tune that fits with this little ditty:

Bundle o'baby

Baby's a bundle

Can't sleep in a big bed

You sleep in a trundle.

Finally you lie down in your spot and softly sing the ditty over and over and over and over again until either you or the small human falls asleep. Either way, mission accomplished.

Gazing Into the Water

Again, with apologies to Will Rogers, I never metaphor I didn't like.

The dictionary gives us this:

Metaphor: Noun. A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable: “Life is just a bowl of cherries."

Oh, but they are so much more. Metaphors are to prose what haikus are to poetry - little gems of wisdom wrapped up in deceptively simple statements. One has been playing keep away from me for several days now. It is a visual concept, I can see it clearly, but just can't find the right words to find its metaphorical form. I may have to send the idea off to Dan C., my BBAM (brother by another mother) who is a true magician with words. Maybe he can polish it up. But regardless, let me give you what I see, what I am thinking.

The issue is our relationship with our past. It is something those of us in our seventh decade and beyond tend to muse about, or pester our muse about. I have talked about how one's perspective on life changes when there is more in the rearview mirror than out beyond the windshield. And that isn't intended to be morbid. I mean if those two vantage points revealed equal chronologies - as much before me as lies behind me - I would be looking at an actuarial expectancy of 152 years! No thanks!  I doubt that even the Silicone Valley "long life wannabes" want to tear that many pages off the calendar. Of course, I'd like to be able to sneak a peek through a cosmic wormhole and catch a glimpse of what life will look like in a hundred years or so, but I sure wouldn't want to live through the wild changes that will - fingers crossed - get us there.

But there I go again, nattering off the topic, which is, in case you followed me down that rabbit hole, "metaphors about life and thinking about the past." The problem with the rearview mirror metaphor is that rearview mirrors are - when compared the whole field of vision behind us - little itty bitty things, and if you get fixated on them, odds are you are going to get pancaked by a semi!

So I have this image of gazing into water. Crystal clear water - like, well, I'm not sure like what. Ponds are too small, streams move too quickly, rivers tend towards murky, and oceans are far too deep. Maybe a lagoon, or a perfectly calm bay. The point is you can see the bottom - which is your life - with incredible clarity. Every perfect pebble, glittering rock, swirl in the sand, every bent twig, each broken branch, tiny shell, maybe a lost fish hook, sunken golf ball or discarded bottle cap - everything you ever did, saw, experienced, loved, hated, anticipated or feared is gleaming there on the bottom. But you cannot touch it.

You can try reaching full arm's length, maybe even diving down, stroking mightily until your breath gives out and you thrash desperately back to the surface. gasping for a cleansing breath. You float again, gazing down at the untouched panorama below. And finally you come to peace with the notion that you can look all you want; but no touching, no corrections, no subtle restorations with brighter hues or erasures. Just looking.

And that is when we have to trot out the old maxim of "glass half full or half empty," or perhaps looking either through rose-colored glasses, or those with darker, more unsettling, tints. Think about it. If I cannot change my past, can I learn from it?

Back to gazing at, or into, the water and seeing clearly the tapestry of our life. There is a concept in philosophy called "situational ethics" which dwells in the grey area between truth and falsehood, good and bad, right and wrong. The idea is that seeming polar opposites actually sit on a sliding scale that is affected by the situation in which we confront decisions or evaluations.

Do you shoot Bambi? Of course not, unless you or your family is starving.

Do you drive 20 miles above the speed limit on a congested freeway? Of course not, unless your partner is in the midst of giving birth, or is gravely ill. What if your way is blocked by school buses filled with children?

Do you save a child thrashing helplessly in a flood tide? Of course you do, unless you yourself cannot swim and are the sole support for a partner, 2 infants, frail aging parents, and four puppies. No, you look for a long rope or something that floats to hurl to the kid.

Sliding scales.

So when we examine our all encompassing past shimmering there beneath the water, where on the sliding scale - good person versus bad person, exemplary life versus wasted life - do we focus?  It is probably a bad idea to obsess over either end of the scale. An email signature I often use is a pretty good indication of where I come down:

"Who we are is a quality of the moment. What we have done in the past cannot be undone, and what we have promised for the future remains but a promise. So, going forward, live each moment in the awareness that it defines you."

Still, that's a bit long for a pithy metaphor and way beyond a haiku. Gotta think. Waiting is, and all that, right? Any ideas?

 

A Blast From the Past

OK, I realize you don't usually get a couple of posts from me in a 24 hour period, but let me explain:

So the Old Dude post went out and I got a very quick response from one of y'all out there - way out there. She opined that for some reason the image reminded her of Chagall, and thought that an upside down violin would complete the image nicely.

Which naturally got me thinking. Violins, musical instruments, "Chagallesque" images. Hmmm. I've drawn that picture, haven't I? So I took myself down to my computer and opened up my trusty 4 terabyte hard drive and began to search old images.

There ought to be a law. I mean really. Too many years, thousands of images. Eventually the old grey matter shrugged a bit and I remember that I hadn't draw violins, I had drawn saxophones - and back before Christine and I were married. 

So I hopped back to the early 2000s and started searching for saxophones  🎷. And there it was "saxflight." But the image was in black and white ☹️. Search, search, search! Ah ha! "Saxflightclr!" March 11, 2004. And here it is with its full title: Flight of the Saxophones." Perhaps it was the two cellos down front that made me think of violins.

A more thorough "imageoctomy" leads me to think that the image was first drawn, hence the black and white versions I found. But then the effects on the colored image indicate that I then scanned the image into Photoshop and did the painting in the app. Sort of backwards from the process I use more often today where Photoshop allows me to erase parts of a photographic image to free up space where I can draw graphics and add color by hand.

Anyhow, a neat little "art voyage!" Thanks M!"

Portrait of The Artist as an Old Dude

 Well, this is how it turned out.

There are a couple of "backstory bits" I want to share: 

First, Da Vinci was renowned - some would say infamous - for leaving paintings "unfinished." He carried the Mona Lisa with him all his life, some say because he never thought it "finished." He would leave other commissions with some figures still in outlines. Friendlier explanations are that his restless genius called him to other tasks. An explanation that I prefer is "a painting is finished when the artist says it is finished." So . . . Old Dude is finished. Which in some ways tries to explain all the white left in the image. First, it seems that none of the colors were crying out to have another color right up next to them. Second, I began to think of white as a color in its own right, and not just an empty space that needed to be filled. And when I sat back and squinted my eyes, trying to imagine all the white painted in, the image began to fell claustrophobic. Maybe it was the slightly weird experience of staring at myself. Anyhow, as I said, the Old Dude is finished.

Second, I always listen to music when I am working on an image. Usually some mix of an artist - Lightfoot, Dylan, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchel, The Beatles - or decade 60s, 70s - music from the Old Dude's salad days. So you would think they would be perfect for working on this image. Think again grasshopper.

For the last several months I have been immersed in Estelle Ryan's Genevieve Lenard series. I am on book 14, and so obviously recommend the series. Take a look - each book is called The Something Connection in which "something" is the name of an artist whose works play a role in the plot. I will refrain from a more thorough explication, and skip to the aspect that plays a role in this image.

Genevieve, the narrator voice and primary protagonist, is on the spectrum. Her special autistic skill is interpreting non-verbal communication. She can sense moods by close observation of non-verbal cues and, most germane to many plot lines, tell whether someone is lying. However, when overwhelmed by stimuli from the "neurotypical world" she can be driven to a "shutdown" rendering her unconscious. She can fight off these shutdowns by - and this is the important part - writing, listening to, physically or in her head, the music of Mozart.

I'm assuming you may have seen this coming, but the Old Dude image has sprung to life exclusively while listening to Mozart. Delightful. I suggest you give that other old dude a listen.

*A hint, or reminder: Unless you are looking at the images on a giii-nornous screen, you are seeing the images smaller than intended. On most platforms, phones, tablets, etc. you can click on the image and it will pop out onto a new screen and you can pinch and pull the image to get a better idea of how it looks "in real life." Which in this case is 12"x18".

Here's Lookin' at Me Kid

Rembrandt is said to have painted around 80 self-portraits. I say "is said" because the art history folks want a little wiggle room. The issue is that Rembrandt used his self-portraits as exercises for his students, so it is hard to always determine which paintings are his and which might be the efforts of his more talented students. Still if it were 60 or 90 that is still a lot of self-portraits for one of the big names in the Dutch Golden age. The experts agree on that.

However, there is some disagreement as to why the big R was so into "selfies." Imagine him with an iPhone and a Facebook account. No, on second thought don't do that. Beyond creepy. Anyhow, some folks believe that, particularly for the early images - painted in his late 20s - the intent was advertising. "See what cool portraits I can paint! Wouldn't you like me to do yours?" Then in later years he seemed to be experimenting with various effects. Maybe examples for those students? And towards the end of his career, with bankruptcy nudging at his heels, a bit of what I have recently learned is called "self care." "Yeah, I may not be as popular as I once was, but I can still, by god, paint!"

I dunno. But it is enough for me to have one of the Old Masters confirm that it is alright to engage in this kind of image making. Yet, I face a couple of major obstacles in this endeavor. First there is the old biggie - I can't draw reality, you know like recognizable faces, people, pets, flowers, etc. Hence my obvious inclination to make things up. But I have one benefit that Rembrandt had to do without - photography. I assume he used a mirror. Look at the mirror, put paint on the canvas. Mirror, paint, canvas. Mirror, paint, canvas and so on like that. My process is different. Print out the picture on big sheet of paper. Look at self, make up stuff to go around me. Look at self, make up more stuff and so on until I came up with this image.

Which brings us to second obstacle between my image making and Rembrandt's. (See how I am subtly ignoring the whole issue of artistic quality and ability here? Shhhh.) Rembrandt apparently did a couple of self-portraits a year, giving him a rich chronological tapestry of his life. I almost never do selfies. So I sort of had to settle for this one which I call Portrait of the Artist as An Old Dude. And I'm only cheating a little bit, the picture was taken in December of '21. So do the math, still a legitimate representation of me in my seventh decade.

Obviously the next step is to add the color. I have begun that process - with a theory. The idea was to match parts of the photo with color bits that would spread out throughout graphic. Sort of putting the "self" in self-portrait. And I did that. But I forgot that the colors talk to each other - strongly suggesting that they partner with another color. Here and then there. And then over there. They have begun that dialogue, so I am slowly losing all control over the palette.

Who knows what they will come up with? I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I'll keep you posted.