The Luxury of the Long Form Composition

I was, thank God, raised in the old "sage on the stage" era. For those of you outside the academic world, that means when you went to college most of the classes were lectures. If you did hands on things like cutting up frogs or building sets for King Lear, those were specifically designated as "lab sessions," often overseen by "lab instructors" who differed from the professor who delivered the lecture. Lectures were lectures. You went in, you sat down, you opened your notebook, you listened to someone with expertise in the subject area, and you took notes - or at least you pretended to. I always divided my notebook paper in half, one column for notes, the other for doodles - which, research asserts, focuses our attention as opposed to distracting us. But the lecture was the main event. Sometimes it was painful. Not every prof understood the difference between oral presentation and droning. But it was part of growing up, of learning. Big Bird had not yet convinced us that education was supposed to make you laugh.

Nowadays it is much more in vogue to be the "guide on the side." Those who practice that version of the craft of pedagogy are far better able to describe it than I. I believe it involves presenting the skeleton of a task or concept to a class, and then nudging them to fill in the missing pieces for themselves. There are those who swear by it. At least I don't swear at it, I am just driven to follow a different model.  You see, there is just so little time. Let's say they are taking a "3 hour class" from you. In my world that means that, in theory you see them for three hours a week. But an academic hour is actually only 50 minutes. So a three hour class is really a 2.5 hour class.  Furthermore, given "settling in" time and "shuffling before leaving time" and taking role, etc, let's call it 2 hours and 15 minutes a week. 16 weeks quickly becomes 14 or 15 with Spring Break and weather and whatnot. When you run the numbers, that comes out to about 31 or 32 hours per semester. About three-quarters of a "normal" work week out of their entire life!

Given that stark reality, I simply cannot settle for nudging. I need to use that brief burst of time we have together to share with my students whatever I might know that could ease their way in the world beyond college.  It is possible that I would choose a different model if I taught small clusters of eager, more mature, grad students. But my audience is for the most part 18 to 20 year-old undergrads in groups of 75 to 150.  It is theater. And they are younger and far more callow than my own children. They are close to half a century younger than I. If I do not know far, far more than they about the subject matter under consideration they should sue me, the department and the university for academic malpractice. My job is not to explore with them, my job is to teach them what I have learned in that half century. So I become the sage on the stage. I lecture.

A lecture is a long form composition, a performed essay, crafted just as carefully as any piece of prose, any poem, play or painting.  Like these posts I send to you, which are usually long form compositions, a lecture may recount the Renaissance, the standard model of particle physics, the nature of being - there are no boundaries to the objects of its attention. It need only, in the end lead the audience, if not to a conclusion, then at least to a reasonable new beginning.

I should point out that lectures, essays, any long form compositions confront the current, digitally-influenced norms of communication and conversation. Literature would lead us to believe that, in earlier eras, the pause had a place in conversation:

Darcy: But surely, Miss Bennett (He pauses, turns aside. Turns back. Pauses again.) Surely you can see why .  .  .  

Try that at a dinner party today and four people will jump in with their contributions, related or not, a second course will have started, someone will be googling something, and the nuts and wine will be passed around - leaving you with your mouth open and poor Darcy and Elizabeth forever estranged by their pride and prejudice.

But of course we must realize that the models for conversation presented in literature or on screens large and small have nothing to do with real life conversations precisely because those media models are all embedded in long form compositions - novels or movie scripts. Hence, the written narrative controls the random vagaries of real short form conversational bursts. Yet even the long form occasional gives in to the short form's need for speed. How many times have you read some version of this phrase: "and the conversation dragged." What does that mean? For me it always calls up the absurd image of a question somehow cross-dressing as a declarative sentence. A conversation in drag needs lots of sequins. The more common interpretation is that the phrase implies that the characters have ceased interacting with the suave glibness of Noel Coward or the intricate byplay of Ms. Austin - both masters of long form composition. Even long form compositions, it appears, occasionally feel the need to "pick it up, pick it up."

That is not to say that the long form composition is without it's own illusions. Primary among these is the illusion of attention. The poet Billy Collins encourages his book Aimless Love to "stay out as late as you like, don't bother to call or write, and talk to as many strangers as you can."  One does not go to the effort necessary to construct a long form composition, and a book of poetry certainly qualifies, without clinging to the belief that someone will attended to it; read it, view it, listen to it. When I videotape a lecture for my students, or for you, or for DistilledHarmony.com, in my mind's eye I see an audience of one or hundreds, enthralled, pausing only to laugh or cry or stare thoughtfully off into space before diving back into the composition before them.  It is a lovely and harmless illusion. 

My life-long love affair with the lecture, with the essay, with the long form composition is not without its drawbacks. You see, with so much I feel moved to share, I have trouble remembering that others, too, need their time upon the stage.
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Nighthawks

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At first glance it doesn't holler Edward Hopper. 

But it whispers "Nighthawks" as I sit here having breakfast. 

It is a rare snowy morning in central North Carolina. 

For once it really does make sense to close the schools. 

The danger comes not from the snow itself, 

But from people unaccustomed to driving on slippery streets. 

Arcade "bumpercars" with real cars. 

I have made a steaming bowl of oatmeal with raisins and maple syrup. 

The breakfast nook has two walls of windows, and I raise the blinds. 

Now I sit in a bubble amidst the bluster. 

Snow covers the bushes, and the pampas grass sways in the wind. 

I am doing "other things." Reading, working on a lecture, 

Checking my email to see if my classes have been cancelled. 

But the whisper persists, drawing my attention again and again 

To the empty bird feeder at the edge of the "natural area" behind our home.  

It has apparently been empty for a while, since it attracts no hopefully patrons. 

And perhaps it is an unneeded adornment, here in a soft Southern lawn. 

But today, as the snow rattles against the window, I can almost see them. 

An early robin, a resident blue jay, and a marauding squirrel 

Sitting there together; yet glumly spaced. 

Wings and paws wrapped around the lonely comfort of a cup of coffee.
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Dreaming in the Seams

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In the spirit of full disclosure I should confess that this is really where the two previous posts began. The problem was that I kept hitting a point where I had to admit that "this won't make any sense unless I explain that." Hopefully the last two posts contained enough of this and that to make the current post less bizarre than might otherwise be the case. One final proviso: the last two posts argue that we really know so little about the nature of the cosmos that it would be foolish to rule anything out as impossible or absurd.

So, regarding the STEM idea that we can understand the nature of the universe via the graceful application of mathematics, alas it cannot be. Alfred Korzybski pointed out in Science and Sanity back in 1933, "the word is not the thing."  The word is but a representative of a deeper reality. General semantics would also assert that "the equation is not the universe" points that way as well. Furthermore, the hinky Heisenberg uncertainty principle, adds to the slippery slope of a purely STEM defined universe. To what extent are our "normal" dimensions simply the product of "convenient observations?" Front-to-back, side-to-side, up and down, now then tomorrow - those certainly seem to be the easily measurable spaces in which we live our lives.  But Heisenberg might well ask if our observations were themselves coloring our what we see. Does the act of observing change the universe we see? Still, as I ask in the previous posts, is it any wonder that the scientific method followed those seemingly precise pathways as we sought to measure and understand the world in which we live?  What were their options? And today their descriptions grow ever more precise. We get better and better at defining the "what" of where we live. But as Panek pointed out in The 4 Percent Universe, those definitions are somewhat a paper tiger. We can observe only 4 percent of our local universe, and nothing of any other universes that may lie beyond ours. Are we to trust universal conclusions based on our observations of that 4 percent? Please.

Think about it this way. Let's say you were conducting an experiment to determine the average height of all 4th graders. You go to the Middle School down the street that you can see from your mailbox. You walk into the front door and ask for the closest 4th grade classroom - the one under the most convenient lamppost. You go to that classroom. There are 25 students in the class. You take the student (1 is 4 percent of 25) closest to the door and measure his or her height. The student is 4 feet 7 inches tall. And on the basis of that observation you declare that the normal height for all fourth graders in the universe is 4’ 7".  There may be other 4th graders elsewhere in the building - or the universe - but we cannot see them, so we will call them "dark 4th graders," and leave it to other researchers to find and measure them. I know, I know, that is just so wrong. But the analogy is frighteningly apt for the declarations we make about the structure of the universe based on our observations of its closest observable 4 percent, the data which lies beneath the single bulb of the most convenient lamppost.

But even as we turn our energy to addressing the flaws apparent in our quest for understanding the “what” of the universe, we allow the question of “why” the universe exists at all to recede.  And I don't mean the "why" of how the physical elements evolve or come together, I mean the why of our existence.  If you believe we are simply an accidental by-product of the evolution of the "what" - well, that's fine, I suppose. But for me, it's a bit of a curiosity killer. No less a curiosity killer is the other extreme of the great existential debate - an acritical acceptance of ancient writs that place some prophet or another center stage as the mouthpiece for the existential Godfather; who is either open-minded, compassionate and forgiving or ruthless and vindictive, depending upon your prophet of preference.  Setting both those dogmatic "certainties” aside I prefer to reposition the "existential why” as a dominant, but frustratingly illusive, question that, while possibly illuminated by consideration of the STEM guided examinations of “what,” is quite worthy of consideration in its own right. 

I also argued in the previous post that harmony is the dimension that unifies the Multiverses, that unites the seemingly disparate and distant.  If that is true, could a perfectly resonant chord be a version of general relativity’s wormhole, linking all the manifestations of that resonance? I would argue that we touch these chords, these moments of significant harmony, these possible wormholes, all through our lives. They put us, however briefly, in touch with and in tune with, the harmonic dimension that defines and encompasses all existence. The tricky part is recognizing them, and remembering them as something special, and considering what they have in common. Some are fairly easy; the classic falling in love at first sight, the piece of music or art that stops you in your tracks, the feeling - mid-sentence, or mid-dance, or mid-brushstroke, or jump shot, or nine-iron, or flip turn, that you are “there, in the groove” - in tune with the universe. At those moments we rarely stop and take notes. The challenge is to recognize them, to remember them, to seek ways to recreate that harmony.

Theater has delivered more than its share of those special moments to me. I must acknowledge that it was my father who nudged me into the Wittenberg University  - then College - production of Mrs. McThing when I was perhaps 6 years old. I played, I presume, "the lonely and put upon lad" featured in the Playbill.  My memories of the event are vague at best. But I do remember the intense shifts between light and dark - between being "on" and watching from the darkened wings. Each perspective was equally powerful.

Ever since those early days, theater, some type of performance and observation has been woven into the experience of my life.  In those “pre-enriched everything for children” days there wasn't much organized theater to sample until high school, but once there I benefited from the fact that my high school's theater and music programs were far more advanced than our sports teams.  That was fine with me, as my athletic skills were merely average even in our less-than-championship seasons. Deep down, I really didn't care who won, and running into other people in pads and spikes held no attraction for me. But put me on a stage, and -  well, that was different.  There are those, I suppose, who must be taught to find their light, to gravitate to the place on the stage where the light is most intense.  I, on the other hand, was something of a human light meter. If there was a spotlight on the stage, I was in it.

When college rolled around, I never actually considered majoring in anything but theater.  Why would I? I was good at it, the women were on the wild and crazy side, it was the sixties, and I was captured by a feeling of belonging "out there" in the lights.  But here is something you may not realize if you haven't been "out there."  And the "out there" to which I refer is the traditional "fourth-wall, proscenium arch" type theater.  You are on the stage, and the audience lives beyond that invisible fourth wall.  But here’s an interesting tidbit - the invisibility is a one-way phenomenon.  The audience can see you, but you cannot see them.  Some actors will explain that with some Stanislavsky/Actor's Studio rhetoric: "When I truly merge with my character, the world outside the play vanishes." (Close eyes. Slight exhalation.)

Yeah, maybe so, but it sure doesn't hurt that the spotlights are shining in your eyes so you never really see the audience. For me, until I finally got contact lenses, I couldn't even see to the footlights, let alone beyond them. The point is that the center of a spotlight is a perfect hiding place.  William Purkey wrote it: "You've got to dance like there is nobody watching." Well, that is an easy fiction to maintain on stage; in the center of the light you can't see anyone, so it follows they cannot see you, right? So, go for it.

That then is one vital dimension in theater, "out there - hiding in the light."  The second vital dimension is the one most commonly experienced - the experience of the audience.  In this dimension the audience is looking in from beyond the fourth wall, observing and sharing in the illusion being created on the stage. The "success"'of most performances can be measured by the degree to which the audience accepts or shares the illusory reality created behind the fourth wall - on the stage. Did they believe, if only for a little while, that they were transported, sharing a slice of another life? Another existence?

The third dimension is one rarely encountered but equally, if not more important than the other two. It is the catwalk dimension.  There is a magical space in a theater from which one can see everything and yet not be seen - the catwalks and fly spaces above the stage. Famously popularized in The Phantom of The Opera, dramatists have been using the catwalk world for centuries - stretch back to the Deus Ex-machina characters of Greek drama, when an actor portraying a god would be lowered from the catwalk into the midst of the other players to set things right.  My idea of this third dimension, this catwalk world, is sort of like that - but not completely.  

When seen from the catwalks, the theater becomes a terrarium.  The actors are still caught on their side of the wall and the audience is still restrained in their seats. But you, up in the catwalks can silently glide across the barriers that compartmentalize the world below.  In Dicken's A Christmas Carol, the spirits of Christmas past, present and future - that narrative's version of the catwalk people - can mingle invisibly with the "on stage" players, and can share that ability with Scrooge, hence obliquely affecting plot and outcome. In Greek dramas deus ex-machina characters interact directly with the players, changing plots overtly.  So on one hand the elevated perspective of catwalk world seems a case of a harmless dramatic device - unless one considers this theatrical view of the world as something more than a metaphor, but rather as a wormhole; one of those rare intensely harmonic spaces elevating our perspective. 

OK, now I’m going to get a little weird on you. [I know, I know - just now?] Remember the cube we can see from the catwalk? The life that unfolds on the stage? Let us imagine that that cube is our real, everyday, walkabout job, kids, taxes, etc., etc., life. Now look beyond that cube - because up here in catwalk world we can gaze down into "cubes without number." The world of our everyday walkabout world on the stage below continues to unfold and a la the Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead we can see beyond the exits and entrances, to the life that unfolds offstage. But as that reality continues to play out to, and other alternate existences, that you can see from the catwalk also reel out below you, spilling over into different versions of the drama.  Maybe one is the life that I would have lived if I had majored in Art instead of Theater, or stranger still, had I studied Physics.  What if I had gone to prom with Veronica instead of Betty? What if I had been an only child? From up here on the catwalk, all those optional versions of my existence play out in some cosmic multiplex. The dominant harmony remains the same, but the progression of chords vary infinitely.

Self-centered? Well, what in your life - or anyone's - is not?  Consider the most selfless person you know. Can we not assume that being selfless makes them feel good? So even a selfless existence is self-centered. We make choices that are ultimately in our own self interest. The choices that let us sleep at night. Even those choices that appear to be for the "greater good" advance the self. Mandela, Ghandi, King, good men all - who could not have chosen to behave venally, ignoring the world they knew to be flawed. They were compelled by their own chord to foster harmony. That does not lessen their accomplishments one whit - rather it makes their inherent goodness all the more exceptional. Those were finely tuned chords. But that is not the point here. The idea here is the possibility that the unknown 96 percent of universe can take any shape, employing any dimensions we can imagine.  

In my chosen dimensions, as I peer down from the catwalk watching all those dramas unfold, the metaphor shifts. Lurking in the wings of one unfolding drama, I catch a glimpse of the edge of "the universe of another consciousness."  It strikes me that each of those unfolding dramas is also the creation of each of the other players in the drama. So my father in his "Reality 47" also has limitless alternative dramas spinning out from his catwalk.  All those terrariums start bumping into one another. Sharp edges and corners collide. Ouch. A better metaphor seems to be soap bubbles.  Like an immense bubble bath, universe after universe slipping over each other in superconductive limitless space.  OK. Seems logical to me.  It also seems a potential invitation to the nut house. If there are uncountable multiverses out there, what makes this one I walk around in important? What makes me worthy of consideration in these brave new soap bubble worlds that have within them creatures without number?

Harmony. No surprise there, right? The multiverses are all manifestations of a singular harmony. Your chord, tuned as it is through both inheritance and experience, is unique in all the universes, and makes a singular contribution to, and in doing so becomes part of, that universal harmony. As those other manifestations of yourself play out their lives on other stages, they become variations on "themes from the transcendent you.”  Your current task in that cosmic tapestry is limited to manifesting the four tenets of Distilled Harmony in a way that embodies the best you of the moment.

But in all likelihood it doesn’t stop there.  To place ourselves, and our seemingly fleeing lives, at the center of existence is a quaintly “pre-Copernicus” view of things. In my mind, for any of this to make sense, the harmony that unifies the universe must be self-aware; it must be sentient, conscious. We, in our most fortunate moments, glance down the wormholes and glimpse that harmonic consciousness, and mysteriously name it God or Allah or Yahweh, etc., when, in reality, we have glimpsed the universal harmony of which we ourselves are an integral part. And we will move on until we do find transcendence enabling us to move consciously among our various existences, fitting our notes to that existential harmony. And in doing so we open our - being, soul, existence; you choose - to experiences of which we can now only dream.

And there it is, “dream,” the by now almost forgotten first word of the title of this post.  I would be amazed if you do not occasionally pause as you read these posts and wonder “Where does this stuff come from?” and "Is he seeking professional help?” Nothing so dramatic I assure you.  In large part these reflections arise from what we often call dreaming. Between meditation, Reike, drawing, listening to music, staring out the window, and various states of semi-sleeping, I spend perhaps half of my life in a state of, I believe the term currently in vogue is distraction. I prefer reflection.

And much dreaming lies therein.  I have read fairly widely in both the scientific and psychological literature on dreams. It is often entertaining. But is at odds with my unique experiences, and those, of course, are the ones that I seek to understand.  Forgive me if I occasionally revert to theatrical terms, as the dreams are, after all, visions from the catwalk. In my dreams I am always “at home.” By that I mean I never find myself wondering where I am. The setting, no matter how strange, always feels familiar. Similarly the individuals, while often bearing no resemblance to anyone I know in my waking world, never feel like strangers. Whether major intimate players or minor extras, they are “known to me.” The plots, I have come to assume, are instructive as opposed to representational, since they do not arise from my current existence. They are rather scenes from beyond the seams. Seams? What seams?

Good question. Remember the soap bubble universes? That immense bubble bath, "universe after universe slipping over each other in superconductive limitless space?" Go run a bubble bath or fill the sink with bubbles, or perhaps more conveniently, imagine the bubbles. Look at the places where they run together.  There, those are the seams. If you watch the bubbles break down you will occasionally see a larger bubble swallow up a smaller one, or move across some surface, pushing the smaller bubbles out of the way. At any rate the seams, are as much “seems” as “seams.” They are porous. The bubbles sliding over one another now joining, now discrete, but all part of the same unified entity.

Dreams, I would again assert, are scenes from beyond the seams. Our lives playing out in different manifestations of the universe. Then what good are they right? Perhaps a great deal. The bubbles, remember, are part of a greater entity joined by a common harmony. We, in our current state anyhow, are limited to creating our most harmonic self in our current “here and now.” Our eventual and larger task will be making a unique contribution to the larger entity. Scenes from across the seams give us more data. While the dreams themselves are playing out as lives in another bubble, they may well provide insight into our behavior in this one. Was I pleased with how “I” behaved in that last dream? Can the dream teach “here and now me” - through imitation or avoidance - to better Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm?  Hamlet ponders:

"To sleep - perchance to dream; ay, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?"

I would counsel the Prince that perhaps it is not a sleep of death, but a sleep of life miraculous where, to turn his on words back upon himself, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

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Into Hidden Dimensions

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The third tenet of Distilled Harmony is “distill complexity,” or “keep it simple, stupid.”  And yes, I am aware that my last post strayed a bit from that path. So, before moving on to the other dimensions, let me try a brief distillation of that previous post.

First, it seems clear that our "best guess" as to the physical nature of the universe is not a very good one.  While our methods of observation continue to get better, most astrophysicists and cosmologists will admit that we get obtain reliable data from only 4 or 5 percent of the universe. That is the part we can "see," the part under the convenient lamppost. We call the other 95 - 96 percent “dark energy or dark matter” because while we are reasonable sure that something has to be out there, we don’t have a very good grasp on what it is.  

It is not terribly surprising that the scientific community, tied as it is to the notion that one must have data before one declares conclusions, has remained myopically married to the 4 or 5 percent of the universe that we can see; they keep their focus on that which lies below the most convenient lamppost. That is what "is." The rest remains guesswork, conjecture, our "best guess" of the moment - but seeming subject to radical revision by the latest data stream.

Perhaps it is the knowledge that so much remains unknown that keeps the STEMites so focused on the “what” of the universe. What is made of? How do the various elements - the unimaginable large forces of  black holes and galaxies, and the incredibly tiny bits of string theory - work together? Or do they? How do all the puzzle pieces fit together?  So much to learn and seemingly so little time. It really isn't surprising that, comparatively, precious little time and treasure has been spent on the question posed in the last post: what does it mean?

Another analogy: Let's say you have a 5000 piece jigsaw of a Jackson Pollock painting, a frightening thought in its own right, but further complicated by the fact that the picture on the front of the puzzle box shows you only 5 percent of the final image.  After a millennium or so of trying you manage to put 250 pieces together, revealing the 5 percent of the picture depicted on the box cover - or something pretty close to it.  You now slave feverishly over strategies, theories and algorithms that will allow you get the remaining 4,750 pieces put together. 

An uninvited stranger walks over to the table and looks at the 250 piece fragment.  You step back and smile with pride. 

"What is it?" asks the stranger.

"It is 5% of the whole," you reply humbly.

"The whole what?"

"The whole universe."

The stranger gazes at the fragment for awhile.

"What is it about?" the stranger asks.

"What do you mean?"

“Exactly - what does it mean? What's its story? Why should I care?"

"But it's the Universe!" you sputter.

"So you say. (Pause) Anything else to look at?"

"No. This is what we do. We try to figure out the structure of the universe.”  The stranger walks away and you turn back to the table looking for a corner piece, or at least an edge.

So the STEM community continues to try to figure out how the rest of the pieces fit together.  I fear we are trapped by the unspoken assumption that the remaining  4,750 pieces necessary to complete the picture should fit into a pleasant rectangle illuminated beneath a convenient lamppost. But couldn't the lamppost be a bit more baroque?  Multiple armatures supporting clusters of lamps? String theory, a recent darling of parts of the STEM community, demands as many as eleven dimensions, some tiny, some rewrites of our notion of time. Ah, now there is a lamppost worthy of consideration. But how do we design such a consideration? How do we multiply the paths we might follow? Paths suggested by these baroque clusters of potential illumination?

A pure STEM approach suggests one option. The December 12th, 2014 edition of New Scientist magazine has an interesting article that considers taking a STEM perspective to thinking about these higher dimensions - that stuff we cannot see. We are most comfortable thinking about "reality" in three dimensions length, width, and height - and then we toss in time. The New Scientist article acknowledges that most people have trouble imagining a reality beyond those dimension. But not, it seems, if you are a mathematician: "simply add extra dimensions to your equations, supplementing the standard x, y, z and t with extra coordinates, say w or s. 'In the end there is always mathematics.'"  So according to that model we can "create" new dimensions at will by slapping on extra coordinates and keeping the equations balanced.

Despite the allure of that “fun with numbers” approach to defining the universe, it just feels so wrong.  You can't, it seems, keep pumping the the universe up with abstract coordinates without at least considering the what those additional dimension mean.  Eventually we need to define those "dark dimensions." What mysteries might they measure? What is there beyond length, width, height and time that we may have overlooked simply because they are so hard - seemingly impossible -  to measure? Excellent question and you will hardly be surprised at my initial response: harmony is the dominant dimension.

Remember, Distilled Harmony, this theory of everything I bandy about, has its roots in the very STEMy notion of string theory; in the assertion that the smallest unit of existence is a tiny vibrating string. Those strings, Distilled Harmony goes on to assert, either cluster or repel depending upon their degree of harmony or discord. Everything in the universe then takes all its characteristics from relative states of harmony or discord. Could there be a dimension of greater importance? And, assuming there is not, why have we spent so little time investigating it? I would assert that it remains untouched because it is, at the moment, invisible beneath STEM’s single lamppost. The strings themselves are simply too small for any type of direct observation and strategies for indirect observation lean strongly in the direction of music, art and philosophy. Last time I looked, there were not many calls for research proposals out there that echoed those chords.

The next dimension I would add to this expanded view of the universe is something I call “vitavis” a nicely alliterative Latin compound for "life force." It has intrigued philosophers and physicians for ages, and is there any wonder why?  Leaving belief out of it as much as possible, at one stage of life we have a large cluster of cells, that left alone, will die and decay.  But with assistance - either from the mother in a "normal birth" or from some helper in any variety of c-sections or less invasive assisted deliveries - a breath is drawn and the cluster of cells "lives" and we sigh "Welcome to the world little one.” At the other end of the spectrum. Something stops. Heart, brain, whatever. Something, along the spectrum of physical function and cultural norms, is no longer present, and the large collection of cells "dies." And hopefully there is someone there to murmur "good-bye."

Yet, while medicine can define a series of measurable points that, in theory, distinguish between life and death - brain activity, the ability to “live” unaided, etc., - that proposed line is anything but clear.  Modern medicine can reach beyond the intuitive “beginning" and the apparent “end" of life, sustaining in both "ultra-premies" and those adults in "vegetative states" the potential - however slight - of life.  So what is that “thing" that marks the difference between alive and not? Ah, there is one of those topics that you don't want to bring up when the extended family gathers for a holiday meal. Plainly "the answer" currently lies beyond “just the facts," living much more comfortably in the realm of belief. The medical field has, to its credit, struggled with this issue, bringing in ethicists and religious leaders to advise the healthcare community on the complex issues of both sustaining and terminating entities that possess the potential for life, but exist on the fuzzy edges of what we can recognize as “alive." The conversations go on, but unanimity still lies somewhere far, far away.

Still it is undeniable that differences in vitavis exist.  Stephen Hawking should, according to most medical models, have died decades ago. Yet he lives on, probing the very edges of the dimensions we currently acknowledge. Babies with no discernible maladies “fail to thrive” and die. In my mind, the explanation of those seeming anomalies lie not in the impressive world of modern medicine but rather along the largely unexplored dimension of vitavis. I am enchanted by the notion of “work left to be done” along the vitavis - the life force dimension.  Hawking has work left to be done, as do artists and musicians who seem to expire only after the completion of great works - Beethoven’s works in the face of encroaching deafness, the arthritis-ridden Renoir’s assertion that he continued to paint because “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.” 

These are the echoes of the why dimensions of the universe. They do not argue for a suspension of the STEM-based exploration of the what dimensions of the universe. Rather they ask us to consider what other dimensions may lie beneath the illumination of a more baroque lamppost, and to expend greater time and treasure in the exploration of why.

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First, Ask the Right Question

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I apologize if you have been missing your “dose of strangeness from Schrag” recently, but I have struggling with the third tenet of Distilled Harmony, “Distill Complexity" for several weeks. While I usually cast Distill Complexity as the third among equals in the Distilled Harmony theory of everything, the fact that “distilled” is one of the two words that define the theory itself speaks to its importance. To distill something is to reduce it to purest state, and that is where I have been running into problems.

I’m not sure when the current object of my obsession began spinning around in my head, but when I began peppering the essay with subheadings and “note to self: bring in the part about .  .  .” I realized that any progress toward "distilling complexity" had taken flight. In hindsight that is not terribly surprising as the subject of my current consideration is "why does the universe exist?”  To release you from any suspense let me put the “spoiler” right up here at the front: The raison d'être for the universe is maximizing Harmony. I have paraphrased Dr. King's famous quote several times, because you should always steal from the very best. My version: The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward Harmony.  

It is in trying to explain to you how I reached that conclusion where complexity rears its frustrating head.  It has become obvious that this particular distillation occurs in a number of steps, and even I am having trouble following my transitions. So that is where I will begin - cutting this kudzu-like post into more understandable pieces. The posts will probably appear separately - again in the interest of distilling complexity. This initial post I will call:

First, Ask the Right Question

I remember encountering general semantics as a young Ph.D. student in Dr. Ray Ross’s class in communication theory. Dr. Ross, who also believed in stealing from the best, would thunder, “The word is not the thing! The map is not the territory!”  Or as I chose to remember it: A description or depiction of something, no matter how artfully constructed, is necessarily different from that which is being described or depicted. [I know, I know - that sounds like the opposite of distillation, but it is for me a necessary inflation as Distilled Harmony asserts that descriptions and depictions - particularly in art and literature - can contain elements of the original. But that is for another time and another post. You see the problem I’m having?]  But Ross’s “purer” assertion [he did cite Korzybski] works better here. The map is not the territory - nor is the equation.

Two incredible minds, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, report agonizing about getting the math of the universe right. They have walked us down fascinating paths into the “what” of the universe. Mass, energy, black holes, wormholes, the intriguing possibility of time travel. These are glorious minds, awe inspiring intellects. It seems almost sacrilegious to assert that they may have led us to the wrong lamppost. You remember the old joke - I use it all the time:  

It's midnight.  Drunk is down on hands and knees, searching for his car keys under the lamppost.  The beat cop comes along, offers assistance and asks "Are you sure you dropped them here?”

"No, I dropped them back there," the drunk responds gesturing back into the shadows.

"Then why are you looking here?" inquires the incredulous officer.

"The light is better here."

There are a number of excellent reasons to read Richard Panek's book The 4 Percent Universe.  But the one that never fails to make me stumble, when it crosses my mind, is his well-articulated assertion that the science that defines the four percent of the universe we can currently observe and gather data from is - especially considering the academic politics that reigns it in - fairly solid. Yet, Panek observes, we cannot escape the equally solid conclusion that what we know about the remaining 96 % is, if not simply smoke and mirrors, pretty much pure guesswork that we label dark matter and dark energy because we don’t know what it is.  Equally inescapable then is the realization that even geniuses like Einstein and Hawking are looking under a very, very small lamppost.

But wait! That’s not all! We can’t forget Heisenberg. He is the guy with the cat in the box, the strange "neither dead nor alive cat." The cat we either kill or resuscitate just by peeking in the box. In Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle our observation of an event affects the event.  That being said, it seems fair to ask to what extent are our "normal” conceptions of space and time the product of "convenient observations under the nearest lamppost” which are further distorted by the very act of our observation? Does make your head spin a bit, not?

Still, front to back, side to side, up down, then-now-tomorrow - those are the easily measurable spaces in which we live our lives. Is it any wonder that the scientific method followed those precise pathways as we sought to measure and understand the world, solar system, galaxy and universe in which we live?  The telescopes get better. Scientific descriptions become ever more precise. We get better and better at defining the "what" of where we live. But remember, those assertions are somewhat of a paper tiger - and possibly a paper tiger in a Heisenberg box. Remember Panek’s  point: We can observe only 4 % of our local universe, and nothing of any other universes that may lie beyond ours.  So, are we going to trust results based on our observations of that 4 %? That makes me a tad nervous.

Think about it this way. Let's say you were conducting an experiment to determine the average height of 4th graders. You go to Local Middle School down the street from your house. You walk into the front door and ask for the closest 4th grade classroom. You go to the classroom. There are 25 students in the class. You take the first student closest to the door (1 is 4 percent of 25) and measure his or her height. The student is 4 feet 7 inches tall. And on the basis of that observation you declare that the normal height for all fourth graders in the universe is 4'7”.  This is about as flawed as an empirical design can get. Even a poet can count the ways: There may be other 4th graders elsewhere in the building, but we cannot see them, so we will call them "dark 4th graders," and ignore them. There is another public school across town in a very different neighborhood, but we don’t go there. Private schools and charter schools and gender differentiated schools all exist, catering to specific groups that may reflect taller or shorter gene pools. They too, don’t count. We stay under this 4’7” lamppost. I know, I know, that is just so wrong. But the analogy is frighteningly apt for the declarations we make about the structure of the universe based on our observations of its closest, or most observable, 4 %.

Strangely, that is not what concerns me most. Einstein and Hawking do the best they can with the available information. You cannot make-up data that you do not have. Well, you can, but eventually your articles will be “withdrawn” and you will lose your job. Scientists can only make their best observations and attempt to marry those observations to the theories best articulated in the literature. That is the scientific method. It underlies all the terrific toys and terrible weapons of our world. It is the current king of the educational mountain. STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, for those of you unfamiliar with the acronym] rules. And that is a shame, considering that the universe is vast and our lamppost is so small.  The sad reality is that despite our best efforts, a STEM-centric exploration of the cosmos not only brings us questionable results, it also stifles our exploration of other, and in my mind, more important questions.

Let me again retreat into analogy. Let us say that STEM allows us to slip the surly bonds of Earth and trek off across our 4% of the universe. In true sci-fi fashion we encounter a planet on which we find the ruins of a magnificent structure. After years of effort and amazing amounts of money, we manage to reconstruct the edifice. A tour is arranged for all of Earth’s leaders. They wander and wonder down glorious hallways, through rooms huge and magnificent, and into smaller architectural pearls.  After the tour they enjoy a banquet back at the base where the scientists and engineers have lived during the reconstruction. The Project Leader shows a holographic presentation of the entire reconstruction process - truly an engineering marvel.  After the presentation the floor is opened for questions. Much cooing and fawning results.

Another guest rises and asks, “What was it for?"

Project Leader: “Huh?"

Guest: “What was it for? Why did they build it?"

Project Leader: “Well. Ah. That’s not really my area. Maybe, George can address that. George?"

George, it appears, cannot be found.

A simplistic analogy, I admit. But the question remains. Why does the universe exist? The current obsession of the scientific community appears to be creating the equations, getting the math right that describes what the universe is. Much effort and treasure has been expended on those equations. Nonetheless, those best efforts still seem to leave us with two significant unanswered questions.

One: Can we derive, and trust, and generalize to the universe - remembering Heisenberg as we answer -  conclusions based on samples of "observational convenience” drawn from 4% of the universe? And,

Two: Even if we can put some faith in those conclusions, are we asking the right questions? Is the “What” of the universe the important issue? Should we not be far more concerned with “Why?”  And I don't mean the simple "why" of how the physical elements evolved or came together, I mean the existential why.  Why are we here? Do we have purpose? Do our lives have meaning? If you believe we are simply a by-product of the evolution of the “ what” - chemicals combining in a fortuitous accident, well, that's fine, I suppose. But for me, it's a bit of a curiosity killer, as is the other end of the great existential debate - an acritical acceptance of ancient writs that place some prophet or another center stage as the mouthpiece for the existential Godfather; who is either open-minded, compassionate and forgiving or ruthless, vicious and vindictive, depending upon your mouthpiece and text of preference.

Personally, from a Distilled Harmony perspective, I have come to believe that we are here as free-will, intentional participants in a universe that is itself sentient, and that, as I said at the beginning, bends toward Harmony.  It is a perspective that, perhaps strangely, might gain significant support were we to add some additional data into current scientific examinations of the nature of the universe. STEMites, for the most part, draw their conclusions regarding the nature of the universe within the solid boundaries of the traditional dimensions; up down, side to side, back and forth, and time - then, now and in the future. Those STEM-oriented observations and conclusions create the equations that we mistake for the universe. Interestingly, those same equations may point the way to a liberating, more encompassing view of the universe. I will share my thoughts on that expanded view with you in another post - hopefully not too far down the path into the future.

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Strolling with Albert

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"So," he said, "If you are concerned about getting more exercise, get a Fitbit or something, a make sure you do 10,000 steps a day."  He isn't just my oncologist, he is a friend, and here on The Schrag Wall like the rest of you.  So I said, "OK."

It isn't as if I'm a stranger to exercise. I used to work out - a lot. Another Wall member introduced me to running when we both taught out in New Mexico. I never reached his level of dedication, but eventually I was running several miles a day, several times a week - at altitude, for crying out loud. After moving to North Carolina I got a locker over at the gym and maintained a fairly respectable workout schedule. When I was acting as Head of the Department my manta was, "For now, I will live for the department, but I certainly will not die for it!"  So I upped my workouts, adding Racquetball to jogging, and weight lifting, and subjected myself to a bunch of machines apparently left over from the inquisition. Even my incredibly fit sister would be proud.

But then, a few years later, I got sick - multiple myeloma. Now, after a couple of stem cell transplants things seem to be holding, knock on wood.  However, during each transplant my docs over at The Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplant Center in Chapel Hill - who, despite not being here on The Schrag Wall, I view as consummate professionals - said "Day 12 is Noodle Day!" I learned that that little bon mot meant that on the 12th day after your transplant you felt like a wet noodle. No energy, no desire to do anything but find a comfortable position and doze. They were right - both times. What they didn't mention was that to a significant extent the get-up and go that had got up and went, stayed gone. 

It turned out that even if I had the energy, most of my old activities, like racquetball, running, etc., would be sidelined because, in my particular case the multiple myeloma had done some pretty significant damage to the bones in my back and hips, so those old routines simply hurt too much.  But walking seems OK, so the Fitbit seems a good option to try. But, not quite as simple as it might appear at first blush.  

You see, I had never been into exercise for the sake of exercise itself.  Secondary motives, stress reduction, the approval of others, etc., had always been what kept me in the gym.  I never experienced the "runner's high" and only observed it when various runners would head for the bar after running for a couple quick martinis, or when they hung out in the parking lot smoking dope. I am reasonable sure that my oncologist was not advocating adding either of those activities to my daily regimen. So I started casting about for someone to serve as my "walkabout role model," some sort of hiking hero. Again, not that simple.

The first tenet of Distilled Harmony is to foster harmony; make the world a more gentle and joyful place. So my role model had to be someone at peace with their "walking self." But watch the people who are out for their daily run, or folks lifting weights at the gym, or people who are obviously "walking for exercise." These do not appear to be happy carefree souls. There is serious work to be done here, and they are doing it - seriously. Smiling is apparently not part of the program and even eye contact seems to be frowned upon unless it is to share a grimace or a groan. I may be wrong. Maybe it is just that the "workout frown" and the "bench press puff, grimace and groan" is mandatory - ritual evidence of membership in some fitness fraternity. Whatever the reason, I'm not going there. Distilled Harmony frowns on frowning.

But I still needed a saint of strolling, a wizard of walking. And that is when I recalled the fitness routine of one of my all time heroes - Albert Einstein.  Nowhere in the biographies I have read about the man does it say "And then Professor Einstein went to the gym for a session on the Stairmaster, and afterwards he did a series of crunches and several rotations of free weights." Apparently that never happened.

However, the professor did walk. Often and at great length. He was a common sight strolling the streets of Princeton, lost in thought - and occasionally lost in Princeton as well. Local citizens and constables would direct him back toward the university from whence he could plot a course home or to the office. Were we to find ourselves doing that nowadays we would immediately take ourselves off the closest healthcare facility with visions of senility or Alzheimer's disease dancing in our heads. Einstein, however, knew he was just thinking, strolling and thinking - and that was just fine.

I had found my model. The idea is to stroll around in your head as much as you stroll around the block, or track, or neighborhood. So now, when I begin a walk, I at least start with a question I want to work on - usually something right-brain creative in nature. But that obviously often gets bounced around; right-brain, left-brain, right-foot, left-foot, right, left, right, left and off I go - strolling and smiling, thinking, musing, and occasionally stopping to take notes before strolling off again.  Left right left right left right. Now, that's my idea of a fitbit.

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Curiosity

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I wish I had paid more attention to curiosity as a child. However our culture and our educational system is obsessed with us knowing answers. Now, at 66, I realize that the prompting of questions is far more important.

Editing history:

"See the green balloon, Robby?  Yes, green."

And Robby nods, or says "green."

What I should have said was "Well, not really green, there is a lot of blue going on there. How does color happen anyhow, Dad?"

"Can you make the letter W, Robby?"

And Robby makes an attempt at W.

What I should have said was: Oh, you mean that upside M, Mom? Isn't weird that those two symbols are inverted versions of each other. I wonder how that happened!?

Can I really fault my students for wondering which answer will get them more points on the test? They live in a world where, most often, answers and the illusion of certainty are rewarded far more often than "not knowing," and wondering why.

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Fixing Up The Porch

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I have written about the porch of the house where I was raised a number of times. For example -

The Porch on Monday, January 27, 2014

http://schragwall.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-porch.html

and, Minding Mindfulness or Ignore This Post on Friday, November 21, 2014

http://schragwall.blogspot.com/2014/11/minding-mindfulness-or-ignore-this-post.html

There were some earlier ones - back in 2011 I think. They touch different issues but they are always, to some extent, exercises in memory.

Well, I came up with another piece of that particular memory a few days ago. During the mild months, the porch was screened in so we could read and sleep and play in a relatively bug free environment. It is from those months that I think I remember another detail. There was a metal panel over the lower half of the screen door. It was a sort of box weave, shiney green metal strips about a quarter of an inch wide that made a grid of squares about an inch and a half across. It rattled when the door shut. I try to see it on the other screen walls, but it fades out. Might not have been there. I'll look again another day. However, I need to emphasize that getting the physical reality of the porch clear in my head is more entertainment than harmonic necessity.  It is the memory of the Harmony of the porch that is important.

James Taylor does a “what I remember about growing up” song called, Copperline. Copperline captures that difference between physical and emotional recall. The song is all about memory, magical memory if you will.  In the song Taylor recalls the harmonic moments that unfolded in that magical place : 

Branch water and tomato wine, creosote and turpentine,
sour mash and new moonshine . . .
First kiss ever I took, like a page from a romance book,
the sky opened and the earth shook, down on Copperline.

But then there is this bit in the last verse:

I tried to go back, as if I could, all spec house and plywood.

Tore up, and tore up good, down on Copperline.

It doesn't come as a surprise to me, it doesn't touch my memory.

I could, and have, gotten on Google Earth and flown back to the porch of the house where I was raised. The fact that the house and the porch are still there is a bittersweet testimony to the fact that my hometown has been frozen in time for the last half century. Springfield appears to be neither dying nor thriving.  Rather it is caught in a strange kind of stasis, as though waiting for the kiss of a prince to wake it.  The house and the porch, unlike Copperline, are not "tore up good," still,"seedy" would seem an apt adjective.  But just as current Copperline leaves Taylor unperturbed, current Springfield cannot touch my memory. The current physical reality has no impact on the meditative porch that I keep in my heart and head.

As described in the linked posts above, I go to the porch of my memory to calm the cognitive stream that defines my "walk-about, get it done now, take a stand, real world." The tranquility of the porch in my head lets the subsequent meditation unfold. However, before I relax into the meditation, I do "walk around" the porch, checking its physical and metaphysical structure, seeing if there is anything in need of repair.  And the criteria for any remodeling of the porch adhere to the old notion of "form follows function."

The function of the magical porch in my head is to create a space that is in tune with what a couple of decades ago I called The God Chord, and now think of as the Distilled Harmony of existence. So any changes to the porch need to be changes that move me toward that goal, toward creating a meditative space that manifests the four tenets of Distilled Harmony (see www.distilledharmony.com) - Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm. Well, the last time I walked around the porch I discovered a bit of discord that I needed to address.

You may remember that I wrote about envisioning the discordant bad bits of your life as tennis balls that tried to bounce up onto your porch. You then seized your metaphysical tennis racket and smacked them off the porch and out into some universe far, far away. Remember that? Well, I'm afraid I'm going to have to back away from that idea. It does Oppose Harm. But Oppose Harm is the fourth tenet. The first tenet of Distilled Harmony is Foster Harmony. It seemed more and more that while it might feel good to smack those discordant bits out into some alternate reality, it was counterproductive from a meditation perspective.  Raised the heart rate, the old fight or flight reaction kicked it. Calming it was not.

Here is the thing to remember as you construct your own version of "the porch," whatever, whenever or wherever it may be.  Harmony is the natural state of existence, but you cannot force it to surround you. You need to wait patiently for it to gently enfold you. Your porch is the metaphysical - perhaps with physical elements - space that you construct as “the space in which you wait."  Hence it must be an environment that welcomes Harmony. Whacking the discordant bits with metaphysical racquets and bats does not create an environment that welcomes Harmony.

So here is what I have changed. The porch screens are now woven from Harmony. The bad bits still try to tempt me into the "Boy, I should have . . ." and the "If I'd only . . ." fights. But now when they try to bounce up onto the porch they “poof" into the transparent screens of Harmony, about the texture of Cotten candy. The screens restrain the bad bits and re-tune them into harmonies that I still cannot recognize. Once re-tuned, the bad bits are sent drifting off into spaces and places that concern me not at all. Occasionally, the thump of their initial impact intrudes upon the porch.  But at most I glance up, nod in friendly recognition, and wave as they toddle off.

Then I focus on the music and wait patiently for Harmony to be once again revealed, and waft me away to quiet nothingness.

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CONfronting a CONtemporary iCON - or, CON CON CON

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This not an easy piece to write as it requires me to chide both a favorite TV program and an “artist” I have never met. But the fourth tenet of Distilled Harmony [www.distilledharmony.com] is Oppose Harm, and to paraphrase the Duke, “sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do."

I must admit that I had never heard of Marina Abramovic until CBS Sunday Morning’s gushing story by Serena Altschul about Abramovic that aired November 30th, 2014. Obviously my error as the story began by informing me that Art Review magazine had dubbed Abramovic #5 on its list of "the hundred most powerful people in the contemporary art world." As the story unfolded it became clear why the adjective “powerful” was employed instead of oh, say, talented or creative or meaningful or .  .  .  .  

Abramovic is a performance artist who seems to do pretty traditional stuff as far as CONtemporary performance art is concerned.  She hurts herself in a variety of ways. She puts people into a large empty space, blindfolds them and puts noise canceling headphones on them and has them walk around bumping into walls and each other. Stuff like that. In her defense I could not find references to any works that were gratuitously violent to others or panderingly erotic or scatological. She is perhaps best know for a “performance” called “The Artist is Present” in which she sat on a chair in a display space at MoMA. There was a table in front of her and another chair across the table from her. She would sit silently in her chair and museum guests, I assume paying guests, would sit in the other chair and - also silently - gaze into her eyes.

It has always seemed to me that there are - to grossly oversimplify - two kinds of artists in the world. They are, perhaps, united in a powerful need to create. Making a living as an artist - any kind of artist, visual, musical, dance, literature, etc., - is so difficult that few people stick with it unless truly driven to create. But underneath that large umbrella I have always felt a dichotomy between artists who create primarily to communicate with others, art for an audience; and those who create as a kind of personal therapy. That second category includes those whose art makes them feel better. An audience is only necessary as a tool for, or a witness to, their personal therapy.  “The Artist is Present” seems a to fit clearly in the “art as personal therapy” school. What can be more affirming than having 750,000 people pay for the privilege of coming and sitting across the table from you? You don’t talk to them. You do nothing. You can see in them whatever you choose, while they focus on you. Talk about the ultimate ego rush. Memememememememememe! They shift and move on like a speed dating partner, but you remain constant. It is always about memememememememe!

But, in a way, that is OK. It obviously makes Abramovic feel good. My own doodles make me feel good. If they make others smile - all the better. Art has to live under a pretty big tent. Anyone who feels that they can understand all ART, writ large, is going to find themselves in need of serious therapy. There is just too much being said in too many different ways for any one human being to take it all in, let alone come to grips with what each artist is trying to say. I get that. Live and let live. But then Abramovic went too far:

"The worst childhood you have, the better artist you become, because you have things to work with," she said.

What an utter crock. Sounds like a would-be gangsta rapper trying to establish some kind of street cred: "My neighborhood was so tough that smoking crack was considered a form of rehab." Please.  Perhaps Abramovic draws her creative energy from an abusive childhood. That would explain the dominant “self-therapy” strain in her work. But to generalize her personal journey to the rest of the world “The worst childhood you have, the better artist you become,” is incredibly arrogant, and potentially dangerous.  Want your child to discover his or her true artistic potential? Smack them about a bit. Be withdrawn. Be cold. It may seem cruel now, but they will thank you for it when they - like Abramovic - have a sprawling, bucolic estate in upstate New York where they can retreat, hug their favorite tree with the nice lady from Sunday Morning, do yoga with Lady Gaga and recharge their batteries.

I mean really. I try to rein in my inclination to assert that in most CONtemporary art the accent is on the first syllable. But just when I think I’m finding some harmony there, someone like Abramovic comes along playing the long CON. This is an artist who seems utterly unfamiliar with the notion of Enable Beauty.

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Restlessness

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Restless

Considering the fact that the little hand 

(If we still had clocks with hands)

Has now nudged past three,

And the rosy-fingered dawn is probably

Stuck somewhere out over the Mediterranean,

That seems to capture it.

I am content with the understanding

I have come to with the Universe.

Foster Harmony.

Enable Beauty.

Distill Complexity.

Oppose Harm.

Got it. I'm trying.

But the itch I cannot scratch is the one

That moves that agreement forward.

Being no longer willing, or perhaps likely,

To wait the decades necessary 

To observe success or confirm failure;

The task of instilling curiosity 

In students who could be my grandchildren

Has lost its allure.

So, in lieu of my life’s work - what?

Currently I take my greatest pleasure

From drawing fanciful abstractions

While listening to whatever musical genre

Captures my inclination of the moment.

But the serious rules governing mature society

Create long noses down which

Such endeavors are observed.

Yet around me those same pinched nostrils

Attend with “all due respect” to “goals and plans”

Both “long term” and “interim”

That have time and time again

“Turned slowly unto dust.”

I have grown tired,

Not simply of feeling dusty,

But also of pretending

That it is important to be thus.

So again, in lieu of my life’s work - what?

At the moment just restlessness.

Still, I take some degree of comfort

In having snared this particular bit of lightening 

In its appropriate bottle.

Perhaps with it thus suspended

I will discover ways to bend it to

A more harmonic path.

Fiddlesticks 2

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Minding Mindfulness - or Ignore This Post

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Perhaps the most common complaint I hear voiced against contemporary culture it is that it is so hard to ignore. And yes, I meant to end the sentence there. It is so hard to ignore just about everything. Our phones “push” messages to us. Colleagues can compell us to consider events by placing an “invite” on our “e-calendars.” Our computers encourage us to “submit a review” of that book we thought we were reading all by ourselves. It is all just so hard to ignore.  It is hardly surprising then, that we seem to be actively seeking better ways to do just that - ignore, to quiet the rush of life in the 21st century, to find a peaceful place in the midst of our pushy, “technologized” existence.  Let me offer the following ritual - part of which I have shared before - and which does, ha, ha, require - or can benefit from - some technology.

You need to begin by thinking about some peaceful place you would like to find. This is important because  part of the ritual asks you to create that scene in your mind in some detail. So it is helpful if it is a real place, but it need not be. Sometimes I enjoy crafting rather detailed mental animations that have nothing to do with reality. But they seem somehow to be more difficult to maintain.  Either way your “scene" does need to be a place that manifests the tranquility you desire.

My usual scene is the front porch of the house in which I was mostly raised, back in Springfield, Ohio. The specific details are largely irrelevant because you build the scene in your head. For example, I don’t really think the floor of the porch was really painted barn red, but for some reason I make it so.  It was a modest concrete slab - open in the winter, but screened in during the summer months, and the summer months were the magic months. There was a wicker table with  lamp. The lamp cast a golden haze, floating out into the summer night. Bits would break off and flutter past the sheltering evergreens on the backs of obliging fireflies. Murmurs of indistinct conversations rustled on the night breezes. When a sultry summer storm swept past, it was my deck upon a stormy sea - I have written to you about it before:

The porch

Of the house

Where I was mostly raised

Is rather small.

Drive-bys, real and virtual

Confirm this fact.

Yet in my memory

It was quite large.

A world apart

Screened by shrubbery.

At night in particular,

It was a magic place

Bathed in the warm glow

Of those yellow "bug lights"

Now largely gone,

Replaced with harsh

Fluorescent spirals,

Sacrificed, like smoke-tinged autumn,

To keep the planet safe

And sterile.

But in memory

The porch floated serene

On their golden halo.

Serene and apart as rain

Drummed down all round.

I believe,

But cannot be certain,

That it is the porch

Of my current meditation

Backed by a gentle track

Called "Soft Forest Rain:"

I stand on guard,

A lad of maybe six,

Dressed in imaginative pajamas.

The particulars shift.

But always armed with

The proverbial new broom.

Cantankerous colleagues

Divisive kin

Old Regrets

Long-departed

Lovers and antagonists

Charge up the front steps

Like animated tennis balls

Demanding satisfaction.

"Get off! Get off my porch!"

I command,

And swing my mighty broom.

My aim is true

And the invading irritants

Carom back down the stairs,

Now a roaring cascade,

And are swept out

Along the sidewalk

To the street

To the gutters, and away.

Their carping accusations

Fade and blend

With the chirping of crickets

Leaving me alone,

Safe once more with the drumming

Of the rain.

And building such a scene is your first step. The “mind-clearing” step. The important part is that you create a mental environment where you can swing your mighty broom, or tennis racket, or golf club, cricket bat, or Hogwarts wand - whatever.  My guess is that it is best to draw the inspiration for this environment from a real-world place in which you felt truly and deeply safe and happy. Life being what it is, it may now only exist in memory. Lucky for us memory lives right next door to meditation and the two chat regularly over the backyard fence.

So lie down - or sit I suppose, my back much prefers lying down - and build the “broom swinging environment” in your head. My choice is to do this phase to music - noise canceling headphones if you are in an “auditorially challenged” environment: someone near and dear to you is snoring, someone far less dear is watching mindless TV or listening to what they choose to call music. Got the scene?  OK.  Now you begin to swat the irritants. But remember this is not WWE Raw, the intention is not to mindlessly pummel your opponent - Foster Harmony, remember? Rather the intent is to gracefully launch the irritant off into another universe where their discord may meet a harmonic counterpoint.

An important objective in this phase is to create a gentle dance in your head where your mighty broom doesn’t so much strike your irritant, as sweep them away as mentioned above. You create a mental dance that becomes graceful, gentle, calming, soporific. And falling asleep is a perfectly acceptable option. But I would encourage you to explore another choice - mental painting. Move into the Enable Beauty phase. You now create the animation that accompanies the music. The utterly wonderful thing about painting in your head is that you never have to actually have to draw, there is no learning curve, no software to master - simply thinking creates the painting. For me this animation usually takes one of two forms - one is the creation of a very complex Disney/Pixar/Norman Rockwell/Andrew Wyeth world. That one I can pretty much guarantee is going to stay dancing around in my head.

The other actually makes its way out into the real world. The tennis balls become blobs of color and their trajectories become clean black lines on a crisp white sheet of paper - and the image lingers long enough to be reborn on paper.  It is not that the exact image that skipped across the synapses comes to life when I sit down to draw. Rather the Sharpie - black, ultra fine - begins to dance across the paper. No real notion of where it is going, it just traces the trajectories that present themselves. This also happens to music. Most often I fill the whole page without lifting the point from the paper, but if I do - no big deal. The next step is to let boxes grow within boxes, or triangles within triangles - or appear wherever they seem to choose.

The result is a black and white template begging for color. And I, of course, oblige by pulling out the whole collection of colored Sharpies - to my knowledge second only to my sister Margaret’s. Yes, maybe there is something genetic going on. You may also be interested to learn that the relationship between any individual Sharpie’s cap and the color that flows from the tip borders on the arbitrary - even two Sharpies with the same color top! That is not necessarily a bad thing as it actually increases your available palette. But you need to know that going in.  But I digress, again. Anyhow, certain colors volunteer to participate and I help them fill in the spaces they prefer.  Knowing when to stop is the hardest part. I will tell you how to do that when I discover it myself.

I call the images that grow out of this process Fiddlesticks. There is no “meaning.” The objective is to elicit a smile. Here is the first one:

Fiddlesticks then led to a more studied application of the same processes. Those images I call Monograms - largely because that is what they are.  Here is mine.

Sometimes people ask “How long does it take you to do one of these?”  To which I reply “Get off my porch!"

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Topping Off Harmony

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Ansel Adams called the Monterey Peninsula a "Place, with a capital P." He felt that the peninsula's intersection of sea and sky and cliff conjured a mystical world, powerful, almost magic. He'll hear no contradictions from me. And part of the magic is how Adams's photographs capture the Place so brilliantly that they merge with, augment, maybe even replace, our own less focused, memories of that enchanted stretch of coastline.

I spent a couple of hours today wandering around the J A Ralston Arboretum here in Raleigh. As a place it may not warrant the peninsula's capital P, yet a number of characteristics argue for it being a place best defined by something other than lower case.  I haven't spent much time here in the last few years.  Oh, we have had some faculty retreats in the Education Building, but after spending several hours doing "business meeting behavior" the inclination to remain longer in the neighborhood fades. Today's meander reminded me that I need to return more often to this "place with a greater than lower case p," for it is the kind of place that Fosters Harmony.

Fostering Harmony is to a great extend modeling, demonstrating harmonious options in thought and behavior. In this way, demonstrated Harmony flows from ones own Harmony, an internal emotional storehouse from which one draws, and from there, out into the world in which we live. But you cannot go to the well of Harmony over and over again without depleting, to some extent, the supply. At least I cannot. People like Nelson Mandela seem to somehow possess an inexhaustible supply of personal Harmony, that enables them to make endless withdrawals while existing in horrible conditions.  Most of us deplete our personal harmonic reserves far more swiftly; a realization that brings me back to a consideration of the value of places like my arboretum, "places" with something other than a lower case p.

The arboretum certainly cannot claim the breath-taking beauty of Monterey, but then few places in the world can.  A fairer comparison can be found with the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. and the Morton Arboretum outside Chicago. I have visited both many times over the years, and they both boast more acres and a broader variety of plants than our local version.  They also possess, in my mind, a fatal flaw - people.  Lots and lots of people. Many of the young and unsupervised variety, barely beyond ankle-biters.  Harmony serves as a shield against the inevitable friction that is generated when urban assumptions confront agrarian environments, but only with conscious effort.

On the other hand, I spent most of my time at the JA strolling in pleasant solitude, recalling earlier visits that never failed to replenish my inner stores of Harmony. I remembered anew that I used to come here to grade papers, back when they were actually papers, handed to me in manageable clusters of 20 or 30.  I used to bring books, again made of actual paper, here and read them on benches secluded in bowers of extraordinary leaves and flowers. I would read, and doze, and write.

Today, as I stroll and gaze, I realize that Fall has found its way again to the South, and the arboretum reflects the changes.  The deep greens and multi-hued blooms of summer have largely given way to cross-stitched hedges of straw-colored stalks still interrupted by an iris or late blooming rose; blooms that seem to have distilled the hues of an entire bush or bed into one last, outrageous, burst of color. Squirrels troll the leafy understory, plowing in search of the varied seed pods that will add spice to the leavings of winter's well-intentioned visitors who will ignore the signs and scatter nuts and popcorn along the pathways.

I rest my walking stick against an arbor and take a seat on a rustic bench whose plaque informs me that it was donated by a son in loving memory of his parents. I say a silent thanks to all three as I turn my face into the late afternoon sun, close my eyes, and let the ambient Harmony top off my own Winter stores.

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The Sky is Falling . . .

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First let me say that I realize that in every age the old folks have sat around muttering "The sky is falling. Damn kids, the sky is falling."  "Haul the fire inside the cave? Damn kids, the sky is falling." "Ride around in a wagon with no horse? Damn kids, the sky is falling!" "Elected Tricity? Damn kids, the sky is falling!" The Bomb! TSIF! Pollution! TSIF! Mary Lou Gewanna! TSIF! Global warming! TSIF! And yet somehow the human race has always muddled through. I must, however, call your attention to these large blue chunks that have been crashing to the ground in my world recently, and assert that there is actual cause for alarm.

I suppose I could trace it back to losing my cellphone.  I know, I know, we ALL lose our cellphones. At least once, if not several times, a day.  But this time it stayed lost. After a week of covert and overt searching, which included rifling the pockets of pants that have not fit for years, I declared the phone well and truly lost and set about replacing it. Rather than opting for the latest and greatest model that priced out somewhere north of 300 bucks, I opted for the $49.50 "replacement from b-stock.” Read: old phones that the young and monied had traded in, in exchange for the latest and greatest. The company rehabs the old phones and sends them out to guys like me. Well, after an exchange of maybe ten emails and a couple of "FAQ Letters From the Community," the phone now works, but all my saved contacts have been scattered out onto the solar wind, and are currently drifting past Uranus, or maybe mine.

About the same time that this was all going on my MacBook Pro began behaving strangely.  It had obviously channeled Hal from 2001: "I'm sorry, Robert. I'm afraid I can't do that" became its favorite saying, as it gleefully spun its multi-colored MacBall of Shame. Twice in as many days it flashed the dreaded Gray Screen of Death.  The problem is that when my computer dies, several hundred university students go without class. Despite their giddy feelings, I consider that a bad thing.  Hence, I took my Mac upstairs to the tech guys.  They huddled about and spoke geek speak in hushed tones. “Tomorrow," they concluded, and I went away.

The next day I was greeted with confident smiles. "All is well!" I was told, and I took my machine and left, comforted.  A couple of days later I was putting a PowerPoint presentation together for a video for my online class. "Print" I told my machine.

"I'm sorry, Robert. I'm afraid I can't do that." And the MacBall of Shame spun round and round.  

A quick drive into campus. Upstairs to the guru geeks. "Mutter, mutter. Aha! That's the problem!"  “Tonight,” they declared.  Again, I went away but not quite as comforted.  Later that night, after having been assured it was a "wicked fast machine," I took it home.  It was wicked fast. I finished the PowerPoint. "Save," I told my machine.

"I'm sorry, Robert. I'm afraid I can't do that." And the MacBall of Shame spun round and round.

I could go on, but it would only make me weep. Instead, I will ask you to play a little mind game that I play with my students. No tech required, not even a pencil and paper.  Think of the number of times your technology has told you in the last, oh, two days "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I can't do that." Email glitches, GPS runs you into a dead end, print fails, Netflix dies, batteries crash, anything. Think of that number.  Now multiply it by 214,942,000 - the 75 % of the US population, which the census bureau says is how many of us own a computer. (OK, I lied about "no tech." Pull the calculator up on your phone, tablet, or computer.)  Divide the number you get by 2, the number of days we considered, and the number you see on the screen is a very low estimate of the number of times, everyday, our various machines told us, as a nation, "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I can't do that."

Yet, we rush to make ourselves, our banking, our entertainment, our music, our art, our social interactions, our healthcare, our cars, our entire existence increasingly dependent upon this capricious web of screens and wires and machines. TSIF! TSIF! TSIF!

This is where I am supposed to say something comforting. Where I assert that the engineers will get it right, that governments will enact policies and mandate fail-safes that will address these big blue and cloud-marked chunks over which I continually stumble. This is where I should opine that Google or Apple or Facebook certainly will create an all-purpose “patch."

I would like to, but,

"I'm sorry, my friends. I'm afraid I can't do that."

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