Please Pardon the Sand in My Eyes

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One of the more popular cultural myths that falls by the wayside as we grow up is that, when threatened, ostriches bury their heads the sand. Actually, if they can’t escape, they just play dead - or play possum to mix a wildlife metaphor. The “head in the sand” idea being if I can’t see the threat, it can’t see me.  In practice, only humans seem to buy this fallacy.  A couple of ongoing examples spring to mind.  Around the country statues depicting “heroes of the Confederacy” are being torn down occasionally replaced by works more in keeping with our, finally, clearer understanding of the harm done by the glorification of the racist views reflected in these works. The same should be said of the renaming of buildings that were named in honor of such individuals. Having just recently retired from a large public university situated in the old confederacy, I have been following these actions at my own and sister institutions. And I can raise no objections whatsoever to removing these statues and names from their previous places of honor. However, being a firm believer in the old adage “those who do not learn from their history, are inclined to repeat it,” I am concerned about what comes next. 

Given the oft-cited deplorable state of our young people’s knowledge of American history I am concerned that these removals will simply result in “out of sight, out of mind.” And we, and our students, will simply stick our heads back into the muddled sands of time. I shudder to think what the results might be if we questioned students and faculty regarding “Who was the subject of that statue?" and “Why is/was there a statue of them on campus?” “Who was your office building, classroom building, dorm, named after and why?” I am afraid we would be greeted with heads popping out from under the sand, featuring a frightening number of blank stares. Yes, it was Jefferson Davis, but no, he did not play quarterback at Clemson.

It strikes me that we are missing a great teaching opportunity here in the redecoration of our campuses and other public buildings. I’m not sure where these statues are headed, and am sadly aware that their public display could create a rallying spot for misguided hate groups. Nonetheless, I can envision a website - a sort of “Where did they go and why?” place where digital versions of the works could be displayed accompanied by descriptions of the rationale behind the removal of the works or the “decommissioning” of the various buildings. The site could become a valuable resource to be used in various history, art, literature, and western civilization courses.  

We are, after all, supposed to be teaching institutions, and that distinction is being threatened on a number of fronts.  I read with horrified disbelief stories of speakers being “uninvited” from presenting speeches or participating in debates at prestigious campuses because students and faculty have determined, a priori, that they disagree with the perspective advocated by the speaker. Where, if not on college campuses, should the opposing voices of our culture be raised in open debate? Perhaps a small silver lining to the COVID mandated necessity of online courses could be “zoomed debates” among controversial adversaries where disruptions by those who would silence open debate could themselves be silenced. Optional digital sandboxes could be provided for those unwilling to listen to either speaker or speakers. As I pointed out, they would not disturb any ostriches.

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Schrag PPP Sailing Ship

Hi There -

I won't be sending these this often, but I had been working on this image for a few days and since it was finished I thought I would send it along. As an aside, a couple of friends who had watched me working on these pieces asked, "So what are going to do with those when you are done?"

A strangely insightful question to which I have no final answer. It is obvious, to me anyhow, that I create these images because I find the process "self-affirming." They are the manifestation of the second tenet of Distilled Harmony: Enable Beauty. Or if you prefer the non-BS version: Making them makes me happy.

Right now, sending them out to you seems better than just stacking them up in my home office. I will, I suppose, eventually have to do something with them. "Curating" them in a form that is palatable to you does force me to create versions of the images that I will - I think - allow me, post Covid, to hawk them to some "real" galleries in downtown Chicago, and some online spaces. We'll see.  In the meantime, here is Sailing Ship. [I think if you click on the pics they pop out in a larger format]

This is the original photograph. The ship is located outside the Hotel Saturnia & International in Venice, Italy. I took the shot during our trip there in 2018. Great Spritzs in the bar!

The photo then gets opened in Photoshop where I remove the parts I want to design and color. That leaves me with the image above. I have a couple of options now. I want an image that is 10 or 11 inches square. Too big for any of our home printers, and they would return questionable quality. So I use Staples. I can either send them the file digitally or mask up and take it in on a thumb drive. Either way I end up with the above image on 11x17 heavy stock at a cost of less than 2 bucks! I usually pop for a few. From this point on everything is non-digital, old fashioned drawing.

Next I create the design, drawing it in the white spaces in black marker. That leaves the version above which I color using a variety of markers. Which results in version 1 below.

Version 1.

It is called Version 1 because after living with it a few days I discovered I wasn't really all that fond of it. Too busy, particularly around the sails which seemed to run into each other.

So I went back to the blank white version and redrew the designs a bit and did another version in which I tried to tone down the colors and to darken the edges of the sails so they would 'pop' a bit more. That resulted in Version 2 below.

Version 2

I like this version better. But if I were to do a version 3, I think I would go back and white out the sea below the ship and fool around with trying to make it look a bit more "water-ish."

Schrag Ping Pong Painting: Introduction

I’ve heard that one of the most insidious side effects of the current pandemic is loneliness. Apparently the behaviors that are best for our body - wearing a mask,  washing your hands frequently, using a hand sanitizer, and social distancing - aren’t all that good for our emotions. We get angry, resentful, and as I said, lonely.  It is natural that we turn to our digital tools to attempt to blunt the loneliness. Problematically, much of the chatter going on in digital space seems to be discussing the pandemic or the upcoming elections - discussions or rants that are anything but calming.

I am going to offer an alternative. If you are getting this email you are on the mailing list for Schrag Wall.  I will use that same list to distribute the posts for Schrag PPP.  The PPP stands for Ping Pong Painting, a process that I have chatted about with some of you off The Wall list. The PPP images are my latest take on the second tenet of Distilled Harmony - Enable Beauty.  They are the result of a lifelong negotiation between my love of painting, drawing, photography and the - truth be told- the sad fact that I can’t draw. I have tried, and can keep pace with modestly competent 8 year-olds. But recognizable people, pets or places? Ain’t gonna happen. I will however claim to be a rather accomplished doodler. I mean think about it. I spent years and years sitting in classrooms listening to lectures. What’s a guy to do? Assuming you want to at least appear to be paying attention? You keep your pen moving across the page. You doodle. So when I say I am currently focused on taking photographs that lead to drawings, I really mean I am focused on taking photographs that lead to good spaces for multi-colored doodles.

Briefly, here is the PPP process. I take a photograph. This is the first step in Ping Pong Painting - the serve if you will. 

Next I pull a digital version of the photograph into my computer and open it in Photoshop or Gimp or some other graphics program. I decide what part of the image would make for interesting doodles. I remove that part of the image, leaving a blank space. This is the return of serve.

Next I print out the image - or have Staples print it out for me, as they do a good and inexpensive job of creating this step up to about 11x17 inches. This creates a sort of coloring book version of the photograph - the photograph with my chosen blank spaces.  Volley the return of serve.

Now I fill the blank spaces with black and white doodles.  Again, sort of like coloring book images.  Volley back.

Another volley - I color those portions of the image with markers or pencils or whatever, creating a version of the original photograph whose relationship to the original photograph is somewhat ambiguous. Here is an example that is what you will

see in every Schrag PPP post.

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The photograph - AKA the serve.

Here is the original photograph, take in Venice, July 7, 2018

Return of serve. 

The original photograph cropped with the coloring spaces removed. 

Volley.

I am discovering that I don’t always save the various volleys.  Searching them out is rather complicated. I will try to do a better job.

Designs created in the coloring spaces.

Final volley.

Designs painted.

Strange Dreams

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I understand that the whole COVID social isolation/quarantine thing is having a variety of impacts; mysteriously expanding waistlines, binge viewing of trash TV and all. I, however, am more curious about these strange dreams I have been having. I haven’t come up with a good name to separate them from “weird dreams,” which I have already discussed. These might be a subcategory of weird dreams. Let me explain.

They seem to come in clusters, or bunches. Sort of one after the other. I don’t think I actually wake up between episodes - but I am semi-cognizant of one dream ending and another beginning. I would call them episodic dreams, except that implies that, like a tv series, the dreams were related, same characters, same dominant themes, etc. That is not the case. The content of each of the dreams seem unrelated. Also, the dreams are short. Shorter than short stories, more like little vignettes clipped from a longer narrative. But, as I said, I am left with no clue as to the nature or content of that larger narrative. No doubt I could get a better grasp on this phenomenon were I better able to remember the content of the dreams. I know, I know.  You are supposed to keep a dream journal and, immediately post-dream, write down whatever you can about your dream. However, and this is one of the “strange” bits, while I don’t think I fully wake up between the dreams, I am aware on some level that I am dreaming, and given my current issues with “sleep problems” - which I may have inherited from my older daughter and her older daughter, if that is possible - I am loathe to sacrifice precious sleep to come fully awake and write in a dream journal. So I don’t. My sister and her husband have these watches that track your sleep and show you a graphic representation of waking, sleeping, good sleep, bad sleep, etc. I suppose I could get one, but I’m afraid my graph would look like a pepperoni pizza.

Anyhow, the strangest thing about these mini-dreams is their nebulous relationship to my waking life. I assume we all have repeating categories of dreams that we recognize. In my world of the university, my colleagues often report “dissertation dreams,” in which it is discovered that we never actually finished the damn thing and are summarily either shorn of tenure or dismissed. I have one, perhaps related, in which I am trying to find a location at a convention where I am supposed to deliver a paper. I rush frantically around a huge convention venue with malfunctioning elevators often packed with friends or antagonists from my professional life. They may aid me in my search or lead me astray. I wake from these “genre dreams” exhausted. 

A confusing aspect of the dreams of current concern - mini, cluster, bunch, I still don’t know - is that they have no obvious relationship to either my real world or my “ordinary” dreamworld. Characters, plots, assumed relationships, are all utterly alien, yet seem somehow natural and appropriate. I am toying with the notion that I am pulling the content of these dreams from “somewhere else.” A couple of equally “strange” somewheres suggest themselves. The “many worlds” piece of quantum mechanics posits the notion that whenever we make a significant choice in our lives; career, spouse, location, etc., the alternate worlds that would have resulted from alternate choices go spinning off in other realities - many worlds. Maybe the stuff of these strange dreams is being drawn from those alternate realities. Another idea is one that Buckminster Fuller champions in the introduction to Expanded Cinema by Robert Spahr  (1960) - world-around womb land. This “place” is a sort of universal psychic space that can be accessed by us all, not just the fetal residents of “womb land", would we but pay attention to acquiring the metaphysical skills required, most of which, he seems to imply, are centered in meditation. So, “leakage” from world-around womb land would seem another candidate for the source of these “strange dreams.”

This is the place in a really good essay where the author would pull the various points together into a wise and insightful conclusion. And I would if I could, but I can’t. I guess I just wanted to share, and perhaps inquire as to possibility that you too might be experiencing these strange dreams? But here’s a concluding thought. If I am correct in assuming that these strange dreams are being pulled from “somewhere else,” and if Fuller is right in asserting that meditation plays a significant role in accessing that “other space,” and if the new strange reality of social isolation and self-quarantine brought on by Covid, draws us into spaces more usually accessed via meditation, then maybe the label I am searching for is “Covid dreams.”

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Morning Song

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I took Greek as part of my undergraduate language requirement. No, I’m  not really a glutton for punishment. You see, Kalamazoo College required two languages; one Romance, one Classical. I had already used up German as my Romance language and Latin and I had a painful breakup in high school. So I found myself in Professor Poggi’s Greek 100 class, sometime in sophomore year. He was an excellent teacher and shared with us fascinating stories about the satyr dramas, the burlesque entr’actes that stitched together the longer cycles of Greek drama. Like many aspects of my undergraduate career, I wish I had paid closer attention. The point is, I still remember one phrase from the Iliad, or was it the Aeneid? Maybe the Odyssey?  And no I don’t remember the phrase in Greek, but I remember the translation: “the rosy fingered dawn.”

I don’t know what was going on in my life at the time, but somehow that phrase struck deep, and remains at the ready whenever I happen to be awake and attentive when the sky begins to lighten. There is magic in morning, in the feeling of the world made new, before life and memory and obligation drag their muddy feet over the threshold, their dirty prints smearing a path to reality. 

Maybe it is the light, that of the rosy fingers, golden glances, purple clouds sliding into blue, still tinged with crimson, hiding the fading sparkles of starlight and moonglow.

Maybe it is birdsong. The greeting call of the larks gently nudging the notes of the owls, whippoorwills and mockingbirds back into muffled night. Soon the hidden songbirds knit a hallelujah to greet the rising sun, occasionally interrupted by the raucous counterpoint of a murder of crows.

Maybe it is something as simple as the air. Breezes that hint of forests just over the horizon. Of an ocean. The almost forgotten tang of autumn’s burning leaves. A crisp heralding of Winter’s flurries or the gentle reminder of Spring’s lilacs. Summer’s drowsy new mown hay.

Ah, the treasured prints of those rosy fingers of dawn. I do wish I could spend more time in their company - if only they didn't get up so early.

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Humanity Behaving Badly

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The third tenet of Distilled Harmony is Distill Complexity. I do not, at least have not, written about it often because, well because it’s complicated. However recent experiences with “news stories” seemingly arising on different planets force me to address this oft neglected tenet. So be patient with this post. Take notes, draw diagrams. Walk around, talk back. OK. Here we go. 

In order to distill complexity so as to arrive at a clearer, more accurate, more precise understanding of any issues under consideration in order to proceed wisely as individuals, or as society, we need first be able to grasp the nature of, and the details that define, the complexity. I said it was complicated! Sadly, I am becoming convinced that if such a definition has not already slipped through our fingers, it is in imminent danger of doing so.  

The optimistic view of the Information Age is that we have at our command all the information necessary to solve humanity’s challenges. A more pessimistic take is that there is so much information available that one can construct, and support, virtually any version of “truth.”  The complexity, rather than being the raw material from which we can distill truth, becomes a vast array of data points from which we can distill whichever version of truth fits best with our personal perspective, beliefs, attitudes and values. 

Presented with an assertion, position or policy, any well-trained graduate of our universities, or post graduate schools of law, medicine, or business, - or perhaps a facile high school student - needs only access to any of a variety of today’s powerful search engines to create a persuasive, well-documented refutation of that assertion, position or policy. And yes, I realize that one obvious conclusion of this train of thought is that a couple of disconcerting casualties of the Information Age may be reality and truth.  

Alternatives to that depressing conclusion may lie in paying close attention to the notion that there are differences among the related concepts of information, knowledge and wisdom. Briefly: 

Information is the Dragnet, Joe Friday, view of the world. (For those of you younger than, oh, say 65, Dragnet was a TV detective show that ran from 1951 - 1959. Joe Friday, the head detective would alway confront a witness, usually a woman, with the phase, “Just the facts, m’am. Just give us the facts.” Apparently still available via Sling TV.) Hence, information is “just the facts” - the data. 

Knowledge is the process by which we assemble those facts into logical, cohesive, “if - then” statements about the world we live in; if I/we do this, then this will be the result. Knowledge is knowing how the world works. 

Wisdom is choosing which flavor of knowledge we put in place as individuals, societies, nations to most benefit those individuals, societies and nations. 

To do that, to determine what you consider “the most beneficial knowledge narrative,” one must clarify one’s own beliefs, attitudes and values. A word of warning here. I suggest that you do make a list of your core beliefs, attitudes and values. But make sure that each item on your list begins with “I,” not we. “I” believe so and so. “I“ value such and such. “We” statements tend to reflect adherence to a group norm. Which is often OK, but your list needs to be personal and need not always mirror the norms of any group to which you belong. Then, make your list, check it twice or thrice to see if it really does reflect your intellectual and emotional core concepts. 

The objective, obviously, is to personally live according to the narrative most consistent with those core concepts. (My “Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, Oppose Harm.”) The alternative is to accept the psychic whiplash that accompanies the dissonance and stress made possible by the constant clash of competing versions of existence residing in the overwhelming stream of data that underlies the Information Age. 

In conclusion, it is only responsible to consider one’s inevitable interactions with those adhering to alternative narratives. We have been conditioned to consider “fight or flight” as our primary choices. But while being the source of the current reportage in both main stream and fringe media, fight or flight are not the only options. Perhaps it is time we all gave more credence to the idea of observe, consider, and tolerate. Contrary to the “fight or flight” perspective, tolerance is not a bad thing. Tolerance is not an indication of weakness. Perhaps tolerance is the flavor of wisdom that can most benefit us all. Tolerance is merely an acknowledgement and acceptance of difference. Something we could all use in these new, but troubled, times. 

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What's up, doc?

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OK, so I just don’t have the psychic energy to follow the news anymore. I know they are just following their old mantra “If it bleeds, it leads!” But really.  I, on the other hand, am hankering for something that allows me to feel good about our world and who we are. To that end I’m spending more of my screen time differently. 

No surprise, I am guided in this screen odyssey by the tenets of Distilled Harmony, particularly the first two: Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty. Being a nature junky and photography geek, it wasn’t long before I stumbled upon the Netflix series, Night on Earth, sort of the progeny of the earlier Netflix series, Planet Earth.  But shot entirely at night with cutting-edge, low-light and infrared video technology. Both the new series and it’s older ancestor speak eloquently to those first two tenets and set me off binging on whatever pops up when I enter “nature documentaries” into the YouTube search engine.  

But this adventure requires a bit of explication. First of all these programs are not Disney, the Muppets, or Toy Story. These programs are not animation of any sort.  The programs I select - I have just finished a couple on the National Parks of Africa, and a National Geographic winsome piece on a barn-owl’s search for a new home - are “real life” stories that feature prey and predators. And so adults need to preview before sharing with little ones. Remember, the harmony of nature really is a “circle of life” and that includes death. So to foster harmony we must learn that true harmony results from complex notes scored not solely in concert with, but also rubbing up against, one another. Nature, especially when captured fairly and artfully in these documentaries, does just that.

The treatment of second tenet, Enable Beauty, staggers the imagination in these new works. And here I must truly give the new technology its due. One of my favorite all time nature documentaries is Yellowstone in Winter, shot in 1984. Sadly it is one of those things, like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, treasured best in memory. With the original Yellowstone in Winter I found myself vainly trying to adjust the focus on my iPad. You can’t do that. I noticed that there are newer HD versions, and I will give them a try. But it was my disappointment with the original that prompted me to include the word “new” in my nature documentaries searches. Incredible. Now I often have to view each video twice, as all through the first screening I am saying, often to the chagrin of anyone who happens to be watching with me, “How can they get that shot?” “Where is the camera?” “Why doesn’t the gator eat them?”  Then someone says, “Will you be quiet and let us watch?” So we start over.

But there is something far more important than the astounding technical quality of these documentaries, and that is what they reveal about harmony and beauty. I must admit that most often when I think about harmony and beauty, the dual cores that support Distilled Harmony, I think about the arts; music, painting, sculpture, literature, architecture - those tangible manifestations of our species at our creative pinnacle. However, a few hours of peering at our world, our universe, through the incredible lenses and microphones of today’s nature documentarians reveal that far deeper layers of harmony and beauty can be discerned in the quiet contemplation of realms external to, or relatively untouched by, our species. As Shakespeare said, “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horacio, . . .”

Well, I find that I have written myself into the proverbial corner. I’m trying to use words on a screen to describe experiences that we need to experience through our eyes and ears. I hear tell that some creatives are making significant headway in revealing these worlds through virtual reality platforms. That is truly exciting, and I look forward to the experience. But in the meantime, I will content myself with binging on “best new nature documentaries.” Come on in! The water’s great!

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I think, therefore . .

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Ah yes, Descartes “I think, therefore I am.” He was a biggie that we all had to read back in Philosophy 101. He helped keep philosophy departments stay afloat in the face of the STEM inundation, and was the source of one of my favorite philosopher jokes: 

Descartes was sitting in his favorite bistro when the waiter realized the philosopher’s coffee cup was empty.

“Professor Descartes, would you care for more coffee?”

Descartes looked up, replied, “I think not .  .  .” And vanished!

Well, maybe you had to be there. 

Anyhow, I don’t know how Monsieur Descartes would feel about the current ascendency of “magical thinking” which might possibly be traced to his famous quote, only twisted to read “If I think it hard enough, I can make it true.” Some of the most widely cited current examples of this logical fallacy can sadly be traced to the White House’s assertions regarding COVID-19. From Trump’s initial assertion that it was “Only one guy in China,” to his more recent claim that “99% of all COVID cases are harmless” we see magical thinking running rampant: “If I think it hard enough and shout it loud enough I can make it true.” Would that that were true.

Anyone who has taught school has encountered more than their fair share of the illusory certainty that accompanies magical thinking in the young: Santa is real. Elvis is alive. Human beings existed alongside dinosaurs. The earth is flat. When pressed for evidence they will often assert that “everyone knows that” or they have known that “all their lives.” A droll assertion in the mouth of a teenager. I fondly recall the response of a pithy older Baptist preacher, a guest speaker in a class on Constitutional Law, to a student who had opined that only the members of his tiny church would be allowed in heaven; “Young man, did you check your brains at the door?”

Magical thinking in the young is, perhaps, inevitable. An occasionally amusing intellectual aberration that they will outgrow as they move through life and education, encountering the idea of truth, of proof, and the scientific method. Those tools that gave us penicillin, knee replacements, lasik surgery, open heart surgery and the iPhone! But among chronologically mature adults in positions of power, like our current President, magical thinking is a dangerous adolescent mental deficiency leading to policy decisions that endanger millions.

So how did we get here? I am currently reading Fluency, by Jennifer Foehner Wells, an entertaining sort of Calamity Jane in Space sci-fi romp. I have also re-read most of Frank Herbert’s Dune series during my pandemic induced literary frenzy. So I have been thinking about how science fiction - touted by many practicing scientists as an early influence in their career choices in pure science, physics and all those other STEM fields - might drive one instead into the arms of magical thinking. Think about it. Writing fiction is an act requiring a rich vocabulary, a fertile imagination, boundless creativity and energy, and a slavish dedication to the craft of writing. If you point those characteristics at the task of creating narratives that unfold in imaginary worlds from long ago in galaxies far, far away you often end up either with science fiction, or with fantasy. And there is a significant difference between the two.

Authors who opt for science fiction often obsess about retaining scientific believability. The written forms tend to carry long lists of acknowledgments of scientists who kept them on the scientific straight and narrow. In video versions the list of scientific advisors in the credits takes several minutes to crawl down the screen. The message is clear: This is science fiction, but science fiction nonetheless in which science is writ large. Authors who opt for fantasy probably have more fun because they just make up their worlds. And so we get dragons and wizards, hobbits and Harry Potter, magic and, seemingly unintentionally, the seeds of magical thinking. Winter is coming, because I say it is. Winter is coming because I believe it is.

Hence, The White House fantasy narrative: COVID-19 will soon disappear on its own because I want it to. Most COVID-19 cases are mild, harmless, because I want them to be. We are winning the fight against COVID -19 because I want us to.

Old man, did you check your brains at the door?

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This Isn't Our First Rodeo

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I was going to call this post “This Isn’t Our First Date.” That might be more accurate, but somehow “This Isn’t Our First Rodeo” felt better. Maybe more nuanced? I’ll let you decide.

Anyhow, this post springs from the fact that my bride thinks I am anti-social. Not in a bad “hiding in the basement” way, just as sort of a neutral descriptor. I, naturally, take exception. I would rather say that I am less social than she. She has been raised in that tidewater tradition of Southern gentility that enables her to skim over the surface of oft repeated conversations in which many words are spoken but nothing truly revealing is said. You see where that first date analogy might come in?

I, on the other hand, was raised in an academic home in which if you didn’t have something new and interesting to add to a conversation nobody paid any attention to you. Way past the first date. Which really brings me to the real point of why I spend hours of effort composing these Wall posts. The rationale is especially germane here in the midst of the pandemic when we may well have run out of interesting conversation material with the folks - over five years old anyhow - with whom we are sheltering. 

If you can think back to those first dates, the reason - hormones aside - that there were 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc., dates was because that person was interesting, fascinating even. They made you think. They listened to your stories. Maybe they even made you laugh. You (and I use the singular Northern form as opposed to the collective Southern y’all, because when I write these posts I usually think of you as the other side of a two-person conversation) and I have, for the most part, been together for a long time. The Wall is pushing into its third decade, and some of you have been here that long. Others of you are still wondering what you have wandered into.

But regardless of your time on The Wall, each individual post/conversation is way past first date surface chatter. When I write to you I am unabashedly exercising the privilege that made university teaching such a delight for much of my career. I get to set the agenda. “Yes, the kids are fine. Wasn’t that cute? How about that Wolfpack? And now, what do you think about . .  .” And I take off from there to whatever I want to talk about.

Hopefully each Wall post allows me to ruminate on something interesting. In the classroom, or in the last decade, online, with my college students I often asked them to think about the relationship between their beliefs, attitudes and values and the important people in their lives. This was often an “invert your assumptions” moment for them. They were often under the illusion that their friends and celebrities of various stripes determined, or at least shared, their beliefs, attitudes and values. The reality, of course, is that each student’s beliefs, attitudes and values should determine who they choose as friends and whose careers they should support. For many of them that was their first intellectual rodeo.

But, as the title of this post indicates, you and I are way past that. We are hopefully at that quiet, feet propped up with a beverage in front of the fireplace, late in the evening, but strangely not tired place, when one of us says, “Have you ever wondered about . . .” We are at the place where interesting thoughts unfold. The place where hopefully we both come to better understand what it means to foster harmony, enable beauty, distill complexity and oppose harm.

I am really only beginning to realize how incredibly fortunate I am to have you there across the firelight from me. You see, unlike social media, you can’t sign up to be on the Wall. There aren’t any self-declared Friends or Followers. I have to put you on the Wall. And as a result everyone I truly care about is on the Wall, gazing at me through the flickering flames. That doesn’t mean that everyone on the Wall fits that unique category of someone I cherish. You see, I started the Wall about 25 years ago. And in the early days I would sometimes invite my students or folks I had met at art classes, galleries, etc., to give me their email addresses and I would put them on the Wall. As a result there are probably 70 or 80 addresses on the Wall list. No doubt a fair number of the “Here’s the link” messages zip off to addresses long since turned off as lives and careers shifted. However, and this is the wonderful part, still among those addresses are virtually everyone I truly care about. A couple still need help figuring out how to get the post up on their screen. But for the most part, there you are, sitting across the fire. Amazing.

So, am I anti-social? Not really. I do occasionally enjoy chatter and “first date” level interactions. But only in limited doses. Hence, in a way I guess I am a touch anti-social in the sense that I have trouble doing those “first date” conversations very often. I really prefer the fireplace, here on the page, just you and me.

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Eyes in the Galactic Skies

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I read recently that experiments aboard the International Space Station have isolated a fifth form of matter, a Bose-Einstein Condensate. A giant step forward in the wild world of physics, or so they say. CRISPR allows us to shuffle genes around, opening the door to unprecedented opportunities to heal and cure. I just read about a study where the die-off of pollinating honey bees was being addressed in part by using gentle soap bubbles to carry pollen to flowers without damaging the fragile blossoms.  And an intriguing study from the University of Nottingham asserts that there are more than 30 intelligent and communicating civilizations here in the Milky Way Galaxy. We are an incredible species - until you read/watch/listen to the news.

There we learn about different creatures altogether. These entities seem determined to eliminate both themselves and the planet they inhabit, and, as any historian or anthropologist worth their Ph.D will tell you, they have been doing so since they first figured out how to knap flint into weapons millennia ago. 

If the scholars at the University of Nottingham are right, heck, even if they missed a few of the “30 intelligent and communicating civilizations here in the Milky Way Galaxy” you can bet some of them are watching us. And why, we might ask, haven't any of those “intelligent and communicating civilizations” tried to make contact with us? After all, SETI and other projects have certainly been reaching out. 

Hmmm. Think about it for a moment. Imagine you are them and not us. You are tapping into our social media. Observing our “news.” You have been following our “evolution” over millions of years. An exercise that would reveal that we create and destroy our “civilizations” through cycles of violence. There are occasional pacifist blips led by charismatic individuals, but these tend to be sadly short-lived, often with the pacifist teachings getting twisted around to rationalizations for violently eliminating others somehow less insightful. Would you be anxious to open communication with us? No, I thought not.  But it may not be too late.  

Again, think of it from their perspective. Odds are these are incredibly ancient civilizations. Perhaps they have observed brutish planets like ours in the past. Maybe our self-destructive inclination to violence is just a phase - like the “terrible twos” on a galactic scale. They may still be watching.

I remember taking a walking tour of Florence.  It was on the back side of the Arlo, away from the more famous cathedrals and galleries. The student section. Our guide called our attention to ubiquitous portraits of the Virgin Mary. They were perched high on walls, often overlooking isolated calles. Our guide informed us that these icons were medieval “security cameras.” The idea was that the thugs of Florence would be deterred from their evil deeds if the Virgin Mary was “watching” them.

Our belief systems and philosophies seem to be unable to reign in our own thuggery. Perhaps we need to consider the possibility that, like the icons of ancient Florence, there are galactic eyes in the sky watching us, and keeping score. If we eventually become truly civilized, maybe we get to join the club. We learn the password, the secret handshake. And perhaps we learn how to stop killing each other.

And how do we begin? Foster Harmony. Enable Beauty. Distill Complexity. Oppose Harm.

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Caught Between Prose and Poetry

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Well, I started this post back on May 28th when it was to follow blithely after the “Composing Reality” post. But what is the old saying? “We plan and God laughs?” Hopefully the incidents that intervened between then and now will point the way to more harmonic and eventually more beautiful lives. I am usually pleased when life swirls around to a perspective that finally demonstrates the imperative of a world governed by the principles of Distilled Harmony. But I cannot help but be saddened that we had to take these few fragile steps forward at such a horrific cost in life and social solidarity.  But I think that part of that forward movement is to return, when possible, to pursuits that highlight that which is good, harmonic, and beautiful.  So I am going to step back to those quieter days of early May when I found myself caught between poetry and prose.  .  .  .

Initially, it was my intention to explore the differences between poetry and prose, but a quick jog down memory lane reminded me that Billy Collins, former US poet laureate, had beat me to it. I have already mentioned his poem titled “Poetry” in a previous post, and it is still just as frustrating to track down online. A friend gave me a copy of the Collins collection Aimless Love [Random House, 2013] and “Poetry” is in there - you see the problem? Trying searching Collins and Poetry and the problem becomes clear. Anyhow, the more I thought about it the more it occurred to me that Collins - the poet laureate - might be a tad biased in this particular comparison. Duh. So I am going to attempt a more objective analysis by stealing an analogy from a sister disciple - painting.

For this discussion let’s let realism stand in for prose, while poetry will put on the guise of abstraction. Yes, yes. I know. Simplistic almost to the point of childish - What manner of realism? Abstraction of what flavor? Picasso? Pollack? But remember, the third tenet of Distilled Harmony is distill complexity. Our objective here is not to delve into the complexity of artistic analysis, but rather to allow these basic visual motifs to guide our understanding of their literary kin.

To further distill the already simplistic, let us have Rembrandt’s The Night Watch (1642) and Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World (1948), do the heavy lifting for realism; while Pollack’s Convergence (1952) and Picasso’s Guernica (1937) will stand in for poetry. The reasons behind these selections are also rather simplistic. The Night Watch is currently undergoing a significant restoration and there are some neat online tools to let us peek over the shoulders of the restorers. Christina’s World was one of my mother’s favorites, and hence is one of mine as well. Convergence is here because it is so classically “of a type” while Guernica can distress even those far removed from, or ignorant of, its anti-war roots. The four works are grouped together because, despite one’s personal biases, these are exemplary works. Outstanding realism, moving abstractions, just as, regardless of personal preference, there are excellent works of both prose and poetry

OK. Enough setting of the stage. Let’s jump into my specific assumptions and no doubt unwarranted generalizations. Imagine I am still teaching and posed the the following essay question for my students: "In a single sentence, compare and contrast the artistic tasks of prose and poetry.” Here is the A+ answer.  "Prose seeks to bring clarity to experience, while poetry reveals the insights of the heart.” It is no doubt the simplicity of that sentence that most clearly reveals how insufficient it is. The “what abouts” and “how do you explains” bounce around like ping pong balls on lottery night.  So let me dodge those objections by stating that both forms can, and in their best examples do, take on the task assigned to their counterparts. Poetry can bring clarity to experience, and prose can touch the heart.  But only exceptional genius can condense, oh say, War and Peace into a single Haiku, or conversely clarify the emotional impact of that perfect Haiku by adding hundreds of pages of additional words.

But if we look at The Night Watch we get lost in the details, the expressions on each face, the way the light and shadow encourage us to guess about the feelings and motivations of each character. We wonder why they are there and what their relationship might be with the other characters in the painting. And then we wonder what the watchers are watching? Why are they there? Who is the guy in yellow? How about the guy with the red sash? There are a lot of guns and drums in the painting. Again why? And then, if we look long enough and let our minds wander, we begin to answer all those questions for ourselves. We begin to draft the novel ourselves. And it is a novel, not a short story. But it is prose. Not a haiku, at least. The Song of Hiawatha, maybe, but certainly nothing shorter.

Christina’s World takes us on a different kind of journey. There is not a single face to guide our reflections.  The sky, the field, everything is flat. Christina is seen from the back, stranded on the field, which the title tells us is her “world." Four structures share her world, all distant, each receding further toward the horizon. So our focus becomes the horizon, which, I suppose, takes on different guises depending upon our mood. It could be a hopeful horizon, portending the possibility of better things ahead. But that would demand that Christina could get there. Her outstretched left hand seems to indicate such a desire, but that wrist and hand seem rather frail to pull the more substantial mass of her body along. Which begs the question, why is she lying there in the field? Injured? Disabled? Or merely resting? Again the tense angle of the body argues for a less optimistic reading of the image. But like The Night Watch this is a novel. We can plot it along a variety of narrative axises, but none of them are simplistic, all require rather extensive exploration.

So let us turn to the poetic images. To unpack  Convergence  would require a trip into Pollock’s head, and I for one am more than a tad leery about making that trip. Nor, I think, would Pollock have been terribly concerned that were unable to follow in his footsteps. I used to opine to my students that artists were motivated by one of two driving forces. One was communicative, to express their thoughts, feelings, insights, what have you, in ways that externalized them and would allow the artist to share those motivating impulses with others, with an audience. The other school was more therapeutic. These artists used their art as personal therapy. Rather than screaming, or talking with a therapist, or marching, or taking pills, they made art, because their art calmed them, or assuaged their need to be “heard.” Convergence and Pollock would seem fall into this latter category. The painting is Pollock screaming. It includes none of the explanatory details of The Night Watch or Christina’s World. It is more haiku than novel. It is, however, written in a language I do not understand.

Guernica tells a different story. The painting makes me uncomfortable. There is not a piece of the huge canvas that does not reveal something terrible. Fear, pain, anguish, sorrow, Guernica has it all. It is more poetry than novel in that there is no real linear narrative, there is no explanatory theme of color. Each section of the canvas is a short grey statement of those terrible themes. Timeless, freed from explanations rooted in history or politics, each portion of the canvas creates its own condemnation of war, of hatred, of violence. Guernica reveals the insights of the heart.

Which does bring us back to what was supposed to be the major theme of this post: caught between poetry and prose. Well, perhaps with a bit of a detour - but here we are again. The thing I find refreshing about these detours is that they often bring me back to slightly different places than I had intended.

It strikes me that the difference between poetry and prose is not so much a difference in form, as it is a difference in content and intent, and that difference itself varies depending upon the “writer.” And the category of “writer” is a very large tent indeed - and has grown ever more so in the Internet-centric 21st century. Over the last few years I have read and been fascinated by both Mark Twain’s autobiography and a biography of Charles Dickens.  These two 19th century writers define one fairly discrete table under the tent; writers who used words to pay the rent and put food on the table, unlike their equally talented, quasi-contemporary Jane Austin, whose restraining lower gentry status prevented anything so gauche as a “career” focused on sales.  But Twain and Dickens had to keep a close eye on sales, often to our benefit, as Dickens penned A Christmas Carol: A Christmas Ghost Story, in 1843 to cover his increasing debts. The point is that these folks were professional writers whose attention to form and style far surpasses my insight and ability to offer clarity or advice. But they were novelists, wedded to prose and the complexities of Realism at which prose excels.  Sitting alone at a table all by himself is Shakespeare. The Bard’s problem is that he doesn’t fit comfortably at any of the genre specific tables. Today’s students know him best as a playwright, since they usually encounter his works in their 20th - 21st century cinematic or video versions. It is only English majors who enjoy the poetic brilliance of his sonnets and other works in the genre. The point is that professional writers, whether it is their intent or not, are most often considered novelists or poets. Switch hitters are a rarity.

That is not the case for casual wordsmiths such as myself. I love peeking under the tent to see what the folks at the big tables are up to, but I am much more a consumer of their works than a member of the club. But that is not to say that words are any less important to me than to the folks under the tent. And in a very important way I am luckier than they. I have published several books, “aided" by editors, for which people had to pay. I have also written books for the pure pleasure of it, driven by a desire to share insights and ideas [e.g. The God Chord: String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart from Feedbooks.com.] These latter endeavors have proven far more fulfilling, but do finally bring us back to the crux of the post: caught between poetry and prose. How do we, bastard children of the artform, decide how to bring words into the service of our literary impulses?

Again I would assert that for us the difference between poetry and prose is not one of form, but rather one of intent. Back to that A+ answer way up the screen: "Prose seeks to bring clarity to experience, while poetry reveals the insights of the heart.”  I can find self-confirming evidence of that assertion here on The Wall. There is poetry here, although it can get overwhelmed by these longer ramblings, which I am beginning to recognize as lectures I never got to deliver.  So how do we recognize whether a communicative impulse should put on the studied garb of prose or the more revealing rags of poetry? As I look back over the 2 decades of The Wall, I realize that question is best resolved in the act of writing itself.  An explicative sentence resists truncation. Huh? What I mean is if you find yourself writing a sentence that needs to go on and on to clarify your point, you are probably writing prose. On the other hand, if a phrase needs to pause, needs a bit of silence, maybe you should hit the return key. You may be on the verge of a poem.

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A Time Without Meaningful Voices

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Santayana, Churchill? Probably Santayana first, later appropriated and rephrased by Churchill. But the message remains succinct: those who fail to reflect on historic blunders will repeat those stumbles. Regardless of the appropriate footnote, we need to consider the substance of the message as America gropes for a positive path forward in these troubled times. 

Being in my 70s, and firmly committed to the principles of Distilled Harmony, there are several moments that remain firmly entrenched in my memory. In addition to the personal high points of marriages, the births of my daughters, the sadder times of the the passing of my brother and my parents, there were moments of social import, and of particular significance in this, America’s summer of quarantine and unrest. I remember my father and older brother heading off to Dr. King’s March on Washington in 1963. And then the horrible string of assassinations, Kennedy, King, and Kennedy. Then the moon landing and later, the upsurge of harmonic optimism with Obama’s election in 2009, followed by a seeming resurgence of anti-intellectualism, intolerance and bullying under the current administration. Politics aside, to the degree that politics can ever be truly set aside, there is an interesting little factoid buried in these moments in my “memory castle“: everything prior to Obama’s election occurred prior to the Internet going public in 1991.

So the “data” that informed all my “pre-internet” memories were predominantly drawn from newspapers, radio and television. I am not about to suggest that 20th century media voices were anymore “free and fair” than their 21st century descendants, but there were fewer of them and we could discern more easily how they might massage the dominant voices of the era. And that is the important point of this post: before the internet there were dominant voices of the era. Voices that, for better or worse, concentrated and clarified the various positions on the vital issues of the day. Dr. King and JFK sounded the mainstream progressive position. President Regan and Rev. Billy Graham defined the mainstream conservative party line. That is, I realize, a fairly gross oversimplification. But the point is that there were centrist, credible, voices on the social landscape who could, and did, define “truth” from their particular perspective. And we could take our seat under the tent best suited to our own taste, and move our chair closer to the choir or to the back of the room as the issues under consideration unfolded. Perhaps even catching a phrase or two from a neighboring tent, and slipping in to check out what was going on there.

And then 1991 rolled around, the Internet went public, and truth, and our perspective of it would never be the same. Everyone with a digital device and a connection to the Internet could claim a front row seat in the contest for the hearts and minds of America. It is not that there are no longer significant voices to be heard. From my Distilled Harmony perspective I found former President Obama’s recent posting on how best to heal America insightful, and the conciliatory behavior of the Fayetteville, NC police in the face of angry protestors was nothing short of inspirational. On the other hand President Trump’s disavowal of violence after ordering his guards to spray tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd of non-violent protesters to clear his path to a photo op clutching a bible on the steps of a church reached the level of high farce. 

Your perception of those events may be completely at variance with mine. But the discouraging reality is that neither your perception or mine makes much difference because thousands and thousands and thousands of online voices - many declaring nothing more insightful than simplistic shrieks of “Democrat!” or “Republican!” “Liberal!” or “Conservative!” - will eliminate most meaningful discussion of the issues that confront our nation.

And so what? Perhaps we begin by reclaiming and reassertion our own voices, not so much to add to the digital cacophony that fills our screens, as to see more clearly the path to the place where our voice still matters - the ballot box.  And here is where the internet can be a helpful tool. We need to research the candidates for every office, from animal control officer to the highest offices in the land. Visit their websites, read their position papers, research their past performances. See what "those other people” say about them, and when available see what voices outside our town or country are saying. Canada? The EU? China? South America?  As the US has systematically withdrawn from important international organizations, those voices may be the source of some less biased perspectives. We may have trouble hearing important voices as clearly as we did in years gone by. But we can make sure that the most important voices are heard - ours, speaking through the ballot box.

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Cultural Split Screen

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Foster harmony. Enable beauty. Distill complexity. Oppose harm. It has been a long time since I began a Wall post with the four tenets of Distilled Harmony - those assertions by which I attempt to structure my life. Yet it has been a long time since the successes and failures of our culture have been revealed in such stark contrast. 

On one side of the screen a rocket rides on plumes of flame flinging humans once again towards the mystery of space. On the other, garish flames highlight humanity sinking into the thuggish behaviors from which we vainly struggle to free ourselves. 

I have no doubt that politicians, academicians, theologians, business leaders, friends and neighbors will attempt to distill the complexities that etched these strangely disparate realities upon our collective consciousness. Blame and praise will be assigned. Harm will be defined, and appropriate paths of support and opposition will be proposed. And each voice will echo with certainty. So distilling complexity and opposing harm will take center stage as we look back on a day defined by both human triumph and societal failure. 

It is here that I need to reaffirm that the four tenets of Distilled Harmony are hierarchical. Foster Harmony is the first and dominant tenet. When faced with any decision, that which fosters harmony is always preferable to that which ignites conflict and creates discord. Enable Beauty is the second tenet, following closely on the heels of foster harmony. Here too the decisions are often clear cut. That which makes our lives more beautiful must always be given preference over the coarse and merely pragmatic.   

The planning and creativity that led to the SpaceX side of the screen was informed by those first two tenets, and brought to fruition by tenets three and four. The destructive thuggish side of the screen reflects the awkward attempts prompted when we struggle backwards to tenets three and four to address the discord prompted by ignoring the primacy of foster harmony and enable beauty. 

Hopefully we will learn from this strange day, and will squeeze discord off the screen and free space for our better selves. 

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

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