Filling Up Sleepy Hollow

Being a card-carrying member of, if not one of the founders of, Insomniacs United I wanted to share a couple of thoughts with you.

First, one of the best ways to reach the state of sleep is to do an Internet search on "sleep" or "insomnia." Read all the articles. Take copious notes. You will soon lose consciousness.

However, one night while chipping around the edges of that massive compendium I came across an interesting little tidbit. The article - the references for which are long since buried in the twists and turns of my grey matter, apologies to the authors - asserted that "going to sleep" as an intentional act, is a myth. Rather, we "fall asleep" when the brain gets tired of being conscious and "falls asleep." Naturally, I lay awake for an hour or two wondering "to where?" Falling implies that one goes from one place to another. So where and what is this place called "sleep" to which we fall? Hmmmm.

Again, the extant literature provides a tsunami of opinions, most of which address the physical state of the brain at particular points in the "sleep cycle." e.g. This from the Cleveland Sleep Clinic: "Sleeping doesn’t mean your brain is totally inactive. While you’re less aware of the world around you, you still have plenty of detectable brain activity. That brain activity has predictable patterns. Experts organized those patterns into stages. The stages fall broadly into two categories: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep." 

These kinds of definitions do address whether or not we tend to dream during the various sleep stages. But leave ambiguous the question of the origin of these nocturnal dramas that seem as real as waking life, if not more so.

It is the nebulous nature of conclusions drawn from the disciplines of neurology and psychology that leave me to still assert that dreams arise in part, from that place, or places, to which we fall, when falling asleep. Hence, where is this land of dreams? A few personal suppositions about that place:

Dreamland (DL) is unique to each dreamer. While we may encounter, while dreaming "real life" people and locations that we recognize, they do not overlap with those same locations or relationships in "wide-awake-land" (WAL).  i.e. Dreaming that you reconcile with an old antagonist has no effect of your WAL relationship with that individual. Or falling in love with an unattainable other in DL, sadly leaves that relationship unaffected in WAL.

Strangers are more common in DL than people we know in WAL. This may be unique to my DL, but in my DL, I encounter people I know in WAL very, very rarely.  And then often only after waking do I realize "That was so-and-so!" And often I am not certain . . . "Or maybe so-and-so. . . ."

DL seems to be in higher definition than WAL. Again, this may be unique to my DL. But for me, colors are more intense in DL. Visual elements, people and places, are in sharper focus. This may be personal dreaming compensation for the fact that I have worn corrective lenses of one generation or another for as long as I can remember. Who knows?

But, yes, I realize.  These suppositions still only describe the characteristics of Dreamland. They leave unaddressed the central question of where is DL? Where on the cosmic, existential globe of "me" is the continent of Dreamland? Can I plot a course to it? Can I find my way there? Or is it only a place to which sleep allows me to fall, once I cut the cords that bind me to the shores of "Wide-Awake-Land?" Again some personal suppositions:

Dreamland may lie amidst the "many worlds" proposed by quantum mechanics. Google's AI provides a fairly clean definition: "The 'many worlds notion' suggests that every possible outcome of a quantum measurement is physically realized in a different, non-interacting 'world'. This process is often called branching."

Or, as I think about it - every time we select a significant path in our life, the "paths not taken" in our WAL are actually "taken" in one of quantum mechanics' other "many worlds." An alternate WAL.  Hence some other version of our self moves ahead with that life in that world. And while quantum mechanics goes on to assert that "the mechanism of decoherence explains why we only perceive one outcome. When a quantum system interacts with its environment, its different possibilities become entangled and "separate" into independent branches that can no longer interfere with one another."  Or, more plainly, quantum mechanics tells us that the path we choose for our primary WAL must remain separate from all the other "paths not taken."  Maybe. Maybe not.

It behooves us to remember that the "many worlds" aspect of quantum mechanics is but an enchanting notion within an equally fascinating theory. Like the religious, or philosophical notion of some sort of "life after death" we have no data (despite Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's belief to the contrary) that these many worlds exist in a form we can visit or perceive. So it comes down to belief:

I chose to believe that:

First: These many worlds do actually reside somewhere on an existential plane.

Second: While, as stated in quantum mechanics, these worlds are primarily "separate," leakage between the worlds can occur, and,

Third: It is this leakage that seeps into our awareness, influencing - but not totally dominating - the narratives of our unique Dreamland.

So, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

Not Crazy After All These Years

There were two possible titles for this post. The one up there and the other which was exactly the same, except that "Still" would replace "Not." Hence, Still Crazy After All These Years. Choosing "Not" was the result of an experiment that was part of our recent 3 day getaway at The Drake hotel in downtown Chicago. The city is particularly lovely this time of year - lots of holiday lights, a Christmas Market we had explored with my father and daughters many years ago, lovely decorations in the restaurants and hotel lobbies. But my experiment had nothing to do with that.

First we need to explore what it means to be crazy. It can be a tendency to believe you are better than everyone else - narcissism, megalomania. Or that you can make something be true simply by saying it is so - delusional disorder. Forgetting what you just said or where you put something, or a host of other "Damn, what did I . . . ?" issues - dementia. But let's forget politics for the moment - I'm talking real "insanity."

A relatively common definition of insanity - which may or may not have been coined by Einstein; who remembers, right? - is that insanity can be defined as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." I was worried.

You see, whenever we go on a trip - big, little, local, domestic, international, doesn't really matter - I always pack my drawing stuff fully intending to "do some drawing." Alas, I never do, never had done.

When I create some foreign scene like Grand Canal:

Or Gondolas:

While there is drawing there, they were both based on photographs I shot on a trip to Venice. But the actual drawing - marker to paper - wasn't done until I got home.

So as we prepared for a little 3 day R&R sojourn to The Drake hotel downtown, I, once again, packed up my drawing materials planning on "doing a little drawing" on the trip. And, amazingly, did so, producing this image:

Counselor 

Now, this is really just a first step - producing a differing result from a previously repeated but never actualized, set of behaviors. Ta Da! I'm not insane! Well, at least not according to this little experiment.

However some clarification is needed:

First, I call this image The Counselor because it reminds me of a non-gender specific entity from the movie The Planet of the Apes.

Second, I don't like it very much and don't know when, or even if, I will spend time adding color. 

But either way, I achieved a differing result from an oft repeated set of behaviors! The notion of liking the result isn't really there in the definition , so "Hooray! For Sane Me!"

Now if I could only remember to address those pesky memory issues!

Curb Thy Tongue, Knave!

Scholars are still fighting over how many unique words can be attributed to Shakespeare. 1700? 1500? And did he make them up or "merely" popularize them? Hmm.

Think about this. His last solely authored work was The Tempest, written around 1611. That was some 415 years ago, and we are still thinking about his use of words. And they are surely worthy of our reflection. I was in The Tempest, as a college freshman - the equivalent of a chorus member in a Greek tragedy. But I loved the words spoken by Prospero - Jim Donaldson, a senior? But I digress, again. Still, you can see why the words echo over 415 years: Miranda - "Oh, brave new world, that has such creatures in it." Huxley was listening.

And don't forget the sonnets. 116 is perhaps the pinnacle of the form:

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me proved,

 I never writ, nor no man ever loved."

Compare that to the lyrics of the current top forty. Really!

But then we must remember that Shakespeare also penned these memorable slurs:

"Thou art like a toad; ugly and venomous.” – As You Like It

“I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed.” – Much Ado About Nothing

Which brings me to the theme of this post: "There is nothing more powerful than a deep and wide-ranging vocabulary. But how you use it determines how honorable a "vocabulist" you may be. [A vocabulist is one who uses their vocabulary to achieve social objectives. ed. - and yeah, I just made that up.🙂 Shakespeare would approve.] However, it is imperative to remember that a well-honed vocabulary is a weapon that can cut quite as easily as it can court.

So what might be the rules of behavior that separate a courtly vocabulist from a cad, a knave if you will? Here are some possibilities:

Moderation. When he was Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt said "Speak softly, but carry a big stick." The courtly vocabulist manages the two simultaneously realizing that his/her big stick is their vocabulary, so s/he quietly utilizes their vocabulary to gently, perhaps softly, but firmly, articulate the preferred path to their social objective.

Do no harm. This physician's canon fits a touch awkwardly into the world of the courtly vocabulist. The idea is to obtain a social goal, so the vocabulist is tasked with subverting those concepts that stand in opposition to that goal. In this context the courtly vocabulist confronts the opposing concepts, not the individuals who espouse those alternative. Folks who study this stuff call personal attacks ad hominem attacks, rants that attack their opponent rather than the issue. "He's a bad man!" "They are garbage!" The courtly vocabulist fights fair, avoiding ad hominem attacks. This is a difficult balancing act, and one currently absent in American, and sadly global, political discourse.

The courtly vocabulist realizes the fact that much of contemporary interaction occurs onscreen. That is fine with me. I once played the Clarence Darrow character in the play Inherit the Wind [a fictionalized version of the 1925 Scopes monkey trial regarding the teaching Darwin and evolution in school. Darwin lost - denying any teaching about gender differences. Oops! That's today. Digression again.] The Scopes decision prohibited the teaching of evolution. Anyhow, with a script I was OK with face-to-face debating. It is that way with any scripted drama. "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue." - Hamlet. The outcome is predetermined. But these days I prefer the online interactions. They can be more thoughtful and actually more refined. No, seriously they can be. Except, it seems, if you have your own online streaming platform. However, the online environment asks the courtly vocabulist to accept additional guidelines:

First, revise and edit, then revise and edit again. First drafts are rarely the best articulation of one's position or a refutation of another's perspective. 

Second. resist the "Oh, yeah? How about this!? Take that - Send!" inclination. This obviously goes hand-in-hand with the first guideline.  Ideally, the courtly vocabulist waits at least 24 hours between the "final draft" and hitting "send."

Both those guidelines should remind us that the Internet is forever. The "delete" key functions only if the message has not yet been sent. There is no "taking it back." on the Internet. You can say you are sorry, that you misspoke, even that you were wrong; but that for which you are apologizing is still out there in cyberspace subject to forwarding, reposting, reformatting, "deep faking," whatever. So read your final draft as if you were the recipient of the post, not its author. Then wait 24 hours. OK, now send.

These guidelines have evolved, sadly, from mistakes I have made. I like to write, and when I find myself in disagreement with a position, policy, person or politician I often find myself going with the cataclysmic compositional flow, forgetting Sonnet 116, getting presidential and straying into the "Thou art like a toad" waters.

Sigh. I know better.

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! 😅