Schrag Wall: The Real Covid Committee

[Having read with increasing amazement the incredibly bizarre things that folks like QAnon believe I need to point out right up front that this post is satire. It is not true. I am doing it just for fun and have no desire to run for public office. - RLS]

I had hoped that given the results of the recent presidential election and the superhyped not so Super Bowl we had seen the end of "fake news" and "alternate realities." Sadly this is not true, particularly when it comes to the covid pandemic. I am staggered with the gobbledeguk that various pointed-headed science types are asking us to believe. It is as if their decades of research and education entitles them to opinions that are more credible than those I have gleaned from obscure web sites and fortune cookies from my favorite Chinese restaurants.  I finally couldn't take it any more so I assembled my own team of experts. I have shared earlier versions of these esteemed colleagues with a select group of you here on the Wall whose qualifications as experts are unquestionable - so I did't question them.

So let us meet the Real Covid Committee. [Fearing unfounded reprisals from the aforementioned pointed-headed science types, their real names have been omitted leaving only their Covid Face #s.]

Covid Face#1: Chair of the committee. No educational background, but showed exceptional promise in pre-K coloring.

Covid Face # 2 shares many of the same qualifications as #1 but not to such a high degree.

Covid Face 3 and 4. No qualifications to speak of. They were sitting at the table next to us and we needed 2 more members to break any ties. The fourth wants to fix it's face. Perhaps we can get a peek at a subsequent post.

So those are the committee members. I will report our conclusions in a subsequent message.

He Calls Them Musey Rooms

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I suppose it is presumptuous to think about “your legacy” at the comparatively tender age of 72. Aren’t legacies supposed to be somehow attached to long-lived legends? To GOATS?  I am embarrassed to admit how long it took me to figure that GOAT stood for Greatest Of All Time, not a rather clueless ruminant. I still have trouble with that notion. Seems to fly in the face of another sports “truism” that - “all records are mean to be broken.”  Still, if one is to have a “legacy” shouldn’t you be a legend of some sort?  I have trouble seeing myself as a legend. I don’t suppose I can claim that status just because John Legend went to my high school? Go Panthers! Then again if you cut the categories fine enough, everyone can be a GOAT!  I played the “boy” in the Wittenberg College production of the Mary Chase play, “Mrs. McThing” when I was about 6 or 7 years old 1955? '56? I think I was probably the youngest, and most likely the only, kid to have played that role, that year, at that college - and hence by those specific criteria - I am the GOAT! But I digress as is my wont.

The discordancy that currently confuses me is a kind of Dr. Doolittle Pushmi-Pullyu consideration of the notion of a legacy. Being a 72 year-old retired college professor who taught literally thousands of students over some 40 years in the classroom, I feel somewhat entitled to attempt to draw some conclusions while looking back over specific experiences with that cadre of students. Then I remember that my father was a retired college professor who taught thousands of students over many more years, and lived to be 100.  Looking backward from 72, in that context, any claim to a legacy seems both morbid and self-indulgent, ignoring as it does, the 28 years that awaited my father at this age. ‘Tis a puzzlement! Which end is the front of a Pushmi-Pullyu? Does one head look ahead to legacy, the other head gazing behind? And which is which?

Then I remembered my lifelong friend Dan’s thoughts on a related but somehow similar notion. He has lived most of his adult life in the DC area. Which, as we have recently been made painfully aware, is an often exciting locale. Years ago, during a visit to the area we were headed off to The National Museum of Art, and he remarked on the pleasure he derived from visiting the many “musey-rooms” in the area. It is a delightful phrase and one that has stuck with me. I don’t recall if I ever asked him if how and why he came to that particular descriptor, but he is here on the Wall and may correct me if I am completely of base.

My thought is that any museum worth its salt has a bunch of rooms - sort of a riff on the "in my museum there are many rooms" kind of thing. And it is not an unreasonable stretch to presume that each of those rooms is the province of a particular muse. The ancients seem to follow that notion. Different temples for different gods, right? Athena, Zeus, Apollo, all the biggies had their own temple right? OK, now stick with me here. One's legacy is a many-roomed affair. Each Legacy Musey Room is unique to the Muse that inspired the works therein and should be seen through its own lenses.

Some legacy musey rooms are best experienced by looking backward at experiences that are well and truly over - like my life as a college professor. Been there. Done that. Not going back. Some cherished and treasured experiences in that particular Legacy Musey Room. Though many, I must admit, are drawn from a "university" that was already a thing of the past even pre-COVID. Others were even more poignant as I saw that university I loved receding in the face of contemporary realities and demands. Other legacy musey rooms peer into less precisely defined spaces of my life. My lifelong obsession with doodling eventually lead to a one man show of "doodles made big" - called Art; My Second Cousin Once Removed - which was a big hit in the coffeeshop where it was staged - but then so was the coffee. I have some hope that that particular legacy musey room might have some forward looking potential now that I am retired.

But I am discovering that even in retirement Legacy Musey Rooms have to compete for space. There are other muses out there that do not simply go away because you no longer have a "job," an "office," in truth, a private space to which you can disappear for several hours every day. The Family Legacy Musey Room is always in flux, increased by one just today as daughter Emily and her husband Jeremy presented us with my new granddaughter, Madison Ruth Kaplan! The Schrag Wall Legacy Musey Room contains prose, poetry and images which stretch back to the last millennium and will run out into the future as long as I can manage. Perhaps, The Returning to Sculpture Legacy Musey Room? Maybe. And, lord willing, the Life After Covid Legacy Room. Enough to twist any self-respecting Pushmi-Pullyu into knots.

So that's my thought on my legacy. You will note that the notion of Legacy Musey Rooms conveniently places most final thoughts on any legacy itself conveniently in the future. The exception, of course, being any legacy attached to my years in the classroom. And rightly so, as I have no legitimate voice in that discussion. Only the students who sat in those classrooms can make that determination - however, if I could make a suggestion, I feel that "teaching live in a classroom" was a totally different experience than "teaching to a camera." Which, for me, brings me to the thought that those might be two completely different realities - answering, perhaps, to entirely different muses?

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Fragments of Dreams

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Fragments of strange dreams

Surround me in nightly tiny hours.

Shards of someone else's life?

Or a forgotten one of mine?

They glitter all around me.

Little rainbows that cast light

And multi-colored shadows

Into the secret corners,

Misty spaces of the night.

Seen, it seems, through others’ eyes

With calm serenity.

They remain, through mine,

A strange parade

Of fixed uncertainty.

Places that, of course, I know.

But peopled with a cast

Of not quite total strangers

Whose knowing glances ask,

“Can you truly not remember

Where we went upon that day?

The things we said?

The lives we lived?

Before you went away?”

So I look in vain around me

For a solitary clue

Of who this carping stranger is.

Of what they were to me

Before I set off sailing

On this shining midnight sea.

It is a useless query though,

For when I start to speak

The stranger’s face has vanished.

While instead a dreamy fragment

Joins the pile at my feet.

So I pull the sheet up round my neck -

Drifting slowly back to sleep.

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On Fostering Harmony

If you think of life as a symphony, it becomes easier to understand how I have come to consider Foster Harmony as the preeminent objective in our existence, the overarching tenet of the worldview I call Distilled Harmony.  The simultaneous rise of the pandemic in the midst of, here in the US anyhow, the most virulent and divisive political and social disruption in living memory, has provided ample evidence of how life becomes stressing and distressed when we allow Harmony to become overwhelmed by discord. It doesn’t have to be this way.

We have seemingly allowed every aspect of life to become a contest. It is “us” versus “them.” Whether it is politics, athletics, music, art, philosophy, theology, you name it, there is our side and then there is that lying, deceitful, untrustworthy bunch of idiots who couldn’t recognize truth if it came up and spit in their eye! And hey, that sounds like a good idea! You see what I mean? Dr. Seuss’s brilliant “The Butter Battle Book” is perhaps the finest explication of this tragic human flaw I have ever read. If you haven’t read it since it first came out in 1989, give it another go. Especially if you are someone who reads to kids, read it to them by all means, but remember he is talking to all of us.

So how do we avoid becoming just another braying discordancy in this angry babble? I think by going back to the idea that life is a symphony, and we control only one instrument - our own voice. We need to listen to it. It may be as simple as that. Speak gently. When possible, speak quietly. Ask for clarification. Look for agreement. Try to listen more than you speak. Do not interrupt. Be a violin, not a trumpet. Listen to beautiful music, played, spoken or sung. Avoid the brash, the confrontational, the angry, the derogatory, the argumentative, the hateful and demeaning. We have a tendency to mirror that to which we attend.

Life can be a symphony, but only if each of us lends our voice to make it so. Foster Harmony and the rest will fall into place.

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It's My Cookie, or Oppose Harm

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Oppose Harm is the fourth tenet of Distilled Harmony, and is called upon only when events threaten the preceding three; Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, and Distill Complexity. Donald Trump’s declaration that he will “fight like hell” to hold onto the presidency, is one of those moments. There is, of course, the most obvious data. The certified votes, the leaders of both parties in Congress, and every court where Trump has sought to reverse the will of the voters have all held that he lost the election. Yet, he continues to declare that he will remain President. Given the total absence of any legitimate basis for that declaration, I wonder what drives his obsessive claims?

One is almost forced to the conclusion that his perception of the world has slipped more than a little bit away from reality. It is clear that he believes that if he chants “I won! I won!” long and loud enough, and persuades his hard core followers to do same, reality will magically change. This is the way toddlers see the world. If I shout “It’s my cookie!” long and loud enough someone will eventually give me a cookie. Even if there are no cookies left. Sometimes even the most well-intentioned will give in and slip the kid a cookie, even if they realize that this behavior eventually will come back to haunt them as a Cookie Monster more bizarre than any Sesame Street ever envisioned, one that will come to rule the house.

But we are not talking about cookies. We are talking about the highest office in the land. In many ways we are talking about the very fabric and legitimacy of our democracy. It is true that we have bent the intention of the Constitution many times since it was signed in 1789. And we are still seeking ways to bring its promises to all our citizens. But the one thing we have avoided - perhaps uniquely in modern history - is that we have never turned political power over to a “ruler” - a monarch or dictator - who seeks power despite, not because of, the will of the people. We fought a revolution to avoid just that.

Yet, Trump is seeking just that “upside down, toddler” redefinition of our cherished democratic reality. I remain convinced that Congress will do its sworn duty and move forward to swearing in the legitimate victors of the recent election. However, the fact that a seemingly unbalanced, unelected, pretender to the leadership of our nation has fractured our normal political process to the point of calling on a group of thugs - some of his hard core "supporters" - to violent attacks on Congress is terrifying. This recklessness is beyond the pale and has already resulted in the death of one of those "supporters." These are not grainy film clips of Germany in the 1930s as Hitler smashed his way to power. These are videos from the halls of our Congress - here where most folks are focused their improbably named professional football team. In the "real" reality such behavior is nothing less than an attack upon our time-honored tradition of the smooth transition of political power. 

As such it should serve as a sincere reminder to each of us that the greatest danger to our democracy may not lie in the manipulations of some shadowy group of foreigners, but in a man driven by an unbridled lust for power right here at home.

Furthermore, we must hold our political leadership and candidates up to closer scrutiny. We must look deeply into their history, ideals, behavior and character. Such attention is mandatory as we realize that it is our power, the power of the ballot box that, in the final analysis, protects us from the excesses and blatant falsehoods that characterized the soon departing administration.

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Actually It Is Quite Simple

And so here we are. 2021. Perhaps never more glad to put the old year behind us. But how do we move most gracefully into the new? It is certainly a question worthy of our attention, so I’ll give it a shot.

Einstein once said “If you cannot explain your ideas so that a six-year old can understand them, you are doing it wrong.”  It is in pursuit of that simplicity that I have whittled my admittedly often unwieldy thoughts about life in general down to those four tenets of Distilled Harmony that I keep harping on: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. Given that perspective it is unsurprising that I believe that we should approach 2021 with a kind of gentle courage.

FDR in his 1933 inaugural said words to this effect “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” 2020, and the pandemic to which it gave birth, was undoubtedly a frightening year. Yet, the new year brings real cause for such gentle courage. Vaccine efforts by scientists around the globe stir hope that by those using those vaccines and following the simple steps of social distancing, masks and personal hygiene, we will gain the upper hand in confronting COVID. Political changes here at home signal America’s return to addressing the issues surrounding climate change, and long-overdue steps to bring the promises of our precious democracy to all our citizens are increasing from baby steps to strides.

So why do I call for “gentle” courage, and not just “good old fashioned courage?” It may have something to do with my having read Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage,” in high school. It is a complex work and can be read to a variety of conclusions, but the one that has remained with me is that “courage,” as Crane’s work defines it, is synonymous with a willingness to dominate. A “my way or the highway, even if I’m wrong!” view of the world. We have tried that. It doesn’t work.

The problems confronting humanity here at the dawn of 2021 are global problems. Largely because of near-sighted self-interest on the part of the world’s “great powers,” we have allowed issues to evolve that threaten our very existence as a species. As I stated just above, we - and by we I mean a wide range of global “bad actors” - have tried to “fix” things, either by denying they exist, or by forcing individual, nationalistic solutions. Those strategies often grow out of the “old courage.” I am advocating the kind of courage necessary to reach the policies and compromises that assure that, not only will we be around for the foreseeable future, but it will be a future crafted for the health, happiness and prosperity of all of us “earthlings.” 

Not surprisingly, I believe that that kind of gentle courage grows out of a world view that encourages us all to Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm.

Happy New Year.

Happy Accidents

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 I have recently begun to view Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting videos again before drifting off to sleep.  They remain wonderful night time stories. Ross's voice is delightfully calming, even when he discovers a new idea for a painting: "Oh, wait, yes, I see it. You saw it too. A little hollow here with a cluster of trees!" Hardly worthy of an exclamation point, the intonation is so restful. But what I have rediscovered and found particularly interesting here in the days of the pandemic is his idea of "happy accidents." 

Whenever a painting begins to slip a little sideways, as close as Ross comes to "Drat" is something like "Oh, wait. Let's not make that a cloud. Let's make it a tree, and put another one here next to it. Trees need to have a friend too. See? Doesn't that look nice? We don't have mistakes here. We have happy accidents."  The notion come especially clear to me the other day. 

Smitty had been watching me sitting on the couch doing some drawing, and came over and gave me a little sketch on a half sheet of paper. "There you are!" he said. And there I was, couch, drawing glasses, pencil. Very cool.  It came out that back somewhere in his 91 years he had done, and enjoyed, drawing.  We decided to do a quick in-and-out at the local Michaels to grab a couple of sketch pads and some drawing pencils.  

We came back and did some doodling. He did a neat cat cartoon - sort of along the lines of "Kilroy Was Here!" But then he fell into the "realism trap." He tried to do sketches of things around him - Vito, the black lab, hard to even photograph, let alone draw and a couple of things on the coffee table. "Those are terrible." he declared. "I'm a failure!"

A creativity mantra I repeated and repeated during my 40+ years in the classroom was "Never compare your work to geniuses!" So we can't sing like Pavarotti or Streisand, can't paint like Wyeth, sculpt like Camille Claudel. Big deal. Neither can most of humanity. Back to Bob Ross - "The only important thing about painting is that it makes you happy."

I thought I'd share a "happy accident" with you. Over the holidays I acquired - self-gifted and received - a couple of marker sets. You can never have too many markers. Both sets were water soluble, so I decided to experiment with how they might blend together.  That resulted in this "happy accident:" 

The phrase "a face only a mother could love" springs to mind.  But the "Happy Accident" was what I learned from that particular doodle.

Even before the water drop drizzled across the drawing I learned about which markers could blend and which could not, and the "Happy Accident" of the water drop clued me in to the idea that I might be able to use a damp brush to blend some of the colors in a "serious" drawing that I wanted to spend more time with.

So, especially during the time of covid, we need to remember to cut ourselves some slack.  There are, and will continue to be a variety of events and instances where we will want to declare ourselves failures.  "I should have done that better." "Stayed more in touch with that person." "Written a poem." "Been more forgiving, more understanding." "I'm a failure."  Nonsense. We are all just ordinary people in the midst of a very trying time. If we look closely enough I think we will discover that those "failures" are often happy accidents, just waiting to teach us something delightful.

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

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Shhh. Quiet. My Brain is Full!

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I’m sure there is good science on this somewhere but what I have read often seems contradictory. I am talking about dreaming, what it means, what affects it; that kind of stuff. Right now there is a lot of talk about the affect of the pandemic and dreaming, Some focuses on the co-occurrence of Covid-19 and dreaming; weird dreams as a side-affect of the virus as it were. Other studies - more psychological than medical - look at these pandemic dreams as related to general increase in stress that comes from living with the pandemic, isolation, lockdowns, masks, the whole 9 yards.

I, not unexpectedly, take another tack - admittedly unsupported by any scientific evidence of which I am aware.  You see, I think it is all about sound. We are spending the holidays up here in our new locale, Burr Ridge, IL., a far western suburb of Chicago. Our “socially isolated cohort” is primarily defined by the extended family of my wife’s first husband. Long story, and unrelated to this current ramble. Anyway “the fam” is made up - generally speaking - of 9 or 10 adults, 3 tweeners, and 2 boomers (my designation for vocally active little ones younger than 3 or 4), a brand new infant, and somewhere up to 3 dogs. Seriously. It is quite a hoot when we all get together - often a literal hoot, a holler, laughter and other more unhappy vocalizations. And that is my point. Decibels - many decibels.

You might think that I am moving to an assertion that the significant, yet unavoidable decibel level when we all get together triggers the weird dreams associated with the pandemic. Actually I am moving in the opposite direction.  I would propose, instead, that the decibel level of “the fam” in full throat, actually fills up my brain. And contrary to what one might think, that full brain does not spill out weird dreams, as soon as the head hits the pillow. Rather, like a carnivore after gorging on a fresh kill, or a human being gorging on Thanksgiving turkey, the sated brain rolls over and passes out on the couch.

It is the more tranquil brain that, after a day of solitary reflection, amusement, and creativity continues that activity into the “sleeping” hours. Finishing, embellishing, often distorting, and contorting the day's creative activities. Add to that the rested brain’s inclination to engage the refrigerator in late night encounters, and the raison d’etre for these macabre dreams stands revealed. So, I think that I must sever the idea that the noise level that surrounds me during the day, particularly the current elevated "sounds of the season," triggers nighttime's strange visions,

I have come to realize that the parents and even the grandparents have become immune to the joyful, youthful cacophony that surrounds them at this time of year.  And I have no doubt I once possessed those intuitive editing skills. Alas, no more. My brain is no longer able to simply allow the playful pandemonium to slide in one ear and out the other. Instead the brain fills up. A question poised to me in ordinary conversation in these situations simply does not penetrate. It bounces off my brain and ricochets out into the surrounding auditory anarchy. However, oftentimes the facial nonverbal cues on the questioner's face makes it obvious that I was being addressed.

Hence I respond with the non sequitur: "Boy, you can say that again."

Unfortunately, they sometimes do.

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There are Breadcrumbs

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And then there are breadcrumbs, which leads us inevitably to the question of whose forest is this anyway?

The notion is that the path to truth, reality, belief - define your own target or endpoint, your "existential inclination" if you will, is a subjective journey, one we take alone. What’s the old Woody Guthrie lyric? Lonesome Valley? 

You gotta walk that lonesome valley,

You gotta walk it by yourself.

No, nobody else can walk it for you,

You gotta walk it by yourself.

OK, so Woody was never known as an upbeat cheerful lyricist. Still, a couple of points of clarification for that lonely assertion:

First, we need to realize that at every point along our personal journey to our desired ultimate destination, there are breadcrumbs. Someone has been here before. They have written, painted, composed, sung, danced - recorded perhaps in media or languages we have not yet recognized, their thoughts, feelings, about their experience at this same “here,” but perhaps in some other now, perhaps surrounded by an entirely different forest that nonetheless crosses ours at this same point.

Second, we need to remember that those are their breadcrumbs, scattered along their path. We can pick them up, sniff them, even - depending on your own interpretation of the ten second rule - pop them in our mouth and see how they taste. But they are not our breadcrumbs. They do not mark our path. We can gather them up and - again, depending on how completely we employed the ten second rule - stash them away in our pocket for later reflection and consideration. But they are not our breadcrumbs, they may or may not even be part of our forest.

Let me try to clarify what I mean if it is not too late for that. And yes, I realize that this sounds like one of the very first “computer-based text only” games. I think it was called “Colossal Cave Adventure.” Circa 1976?

Anyhow it went sort of like this - green words on a black screen - because that was all there was: “You are standing in the middle of a forest. At your feet there is a key. Pick it up?” And here you type either Y for yes, or N for no. If you typed Y you were presented with a variety of “next steps.” “There are three doors in a room. There is another key on the ground. Pick it up?” In my analogy the key becomes a breadcrumb left by previous travelers. If you pick up the breadcrumb, you have typed Y, but the number of “next steps” possible in our particular, personal, experience are infinite. The breadcrumb is a nugget from someone else’s journey in the "Colossal Cave Adventure." We can chose to employ it on our journey or not. 

What I am warning us against here is the common inclination to become a “fan” of some other pathfinder or another, of someone else’s particular existential inclination. Remember “fan” is the shortened version of “fanatic.”   As we pursue our own goals, our own existential inclination, we may find that some artist, philosopher, theorist, politician, or even celebrity, has been dropping breadcrumbs that we really like. But again remember, those were their breadcrumbs dropped along their path in their forest as they followed a "next step" determined by the desired endpoints of their existential inclination. 

We may use those breadcrumbs, if we choose, in pursuit of our own endpoints, but if we begin to substitute their inclination for our own, if we begin to use their breadcrumbs as a guide to a journey that leads to their endpoints we are in grave danger of crossing the line that separates a casual fan from a rabid fanatic. We may well find ourselves walking down a path in a forest not truly of our own making. We end up chanting in a crowd. Wearing strange costumes that identify us as part of that crowd. Getting tattoos about which our children will ask embarrassing questions down the road.

In a Distilled Harmony view of the world, it is the second tenet, Enable Beauty, that fosters our ability to make sure that we stay focused on our own forest, that we only use those breadcrumbs that help us move down the path that leads to the future we truly desire - our existential inclination. But before we get into that let us dial back a bit to the first tenet, Foster Harmony, because remember, the only way to the second tenet is through the first. Harmony and Beauty, to steal a concept from quantum mechanics, are entangled. Simply put, Harmony is the sunlight of creativity. I find that I am hard put to be creative in a discordant state. This is different than physical exercise that can purge negativity. If I attempt a creative task when in a bad mood I find that my bad mood leaks through onto my project. The words don't flow, lines wobble, colors clash. Yeech. 

Obviously there are a fair number of creative types who can channel their angst into their art. Or at least like Van Gogh, for example, are accused of doing so. Where else do we get horror films? Where - for crying out loud - did Picasso find Guernica?  Hopefully, discordantly fueled artists get the same release from their work as long distant runners - able to leave negativity behind them along the longer road. However, that reality is not part of my forest.

In my forest, the primary objective, the existential inclination is Harmony, and Harmony is the primary ingredient of Beauty. If all beautiful things carried a list of ingredients, Harmony would be the first thing on the label. So those are the breadcrumbs I seek. Beautiful objects, moments, sounds, images, people that remind us, and reflect the underlying foundation of, Harmony.

It is often difficult to remember that notion here in the throes of the pandemic. But it gets easier if we remember that entangled nature of Beauty and Harmony. You can't have one without the other. Empty parking lots, shuttered businesses, crowded hospitals, spiraling death rates. One could think that Harmony and Beauty have taken themselves off to some foreign galaxy, far, far away - especially now that winter is truly coming - at least here in the northern hemisphere.

But remember, symphonies still sound as sweet as before. A smile is still a smile even if it is on your screen. You can still see a sunset and flowers while wearing a mask. Maybe, having to gather Harmony and Beauty a crumb at time will remind us what treasures they truly are, and we will, eventually, bake sweeter bread for that knowledge.

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Nightscape

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[I am deep in the night’s little hours. 3:30ish. I default to sleep strategy 4,682. As I listen to my Naturescapes sound collection, I task myself with at least the opening line of a related poem. Tonight’s soundscape is the rumble of a train. Tonight’s poem I call Nightscape. Sleep well.]

I sometimes come to wonder

In the darkness of the night

How sound can paint a picture

Without benefit of light?

A freight train’s lonesome whistle

And the clatter of the rails

Drafts a clear horizon

Where painters’ efforts pale.

The empty fields rush through my mind,

As the rattle and the roar

Sweep all the world before them,

Places here, and then no more.

Perhaps a ghostly farm appears,

Caught by the passing train,

But on the lonely whistle moans

Through sheets of driving rain.

Then flashing images are smeared

Cross rocking window panes

Dancing to the thunder’s roar

As the mighty engines strain.

Yet all this bright creation

Within my conscience rose,

And truly was experienced

With eyes quite firmly closed.

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Schrag PPP: The Yellow Tree Project

 

I had already begun to work on this image when an old buddy of mine drew my attention to a project he had recently completed called The Yellow Pages - a sort of memoir to his wife who had died of pancreatic cancer a number of years ago. It was quite wonderful, and since this guy has been my best bud, literally since the week in which we were both born I decided to follow his color lead, and while I usually let the image decide what colors should be used I opted to let yellow guide my color choices.

The initial image is the scene that currently serves as the wallpaper on my iPad. It is a picture of a tree by a pond that lies along one of my walking routes up here in Burr Ridge:

Next I trimmed the image to separate the edges of the tree from the background creating more space for subsequent designs. [I am looking for that interim image, but recently I "upgraded" both my computer and its software. Neat for the most part, but they decided to shift all my images from JPG format to something called HEIC, designed primarily to "save me space" and ruin my life. It will eventually work out, but meanwhile it forces me to jump straight to this image.

And here I hope is the final image. The resolution is a bit iffy, since many of the details are quite small. But I hope you can increase the size enough to get the idea.

In The View of Distilled Harmony

If you have been reading the Wall for any significant portion of its 20-something year history you are well aware that it often deals with the exploration of the four major tenets of the world view I define as Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm.  My own inclinations spin those essays most often towards the concerns of Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty; but last night’s violent protests in Washington, DC, and other scattered locales demand that I turn my attention to the the fourth tenet: Oppose Harm.

When Donald Trump was elected President I foolishly thought, “OK, he is a narcissistic, looney, game show host, but how much damage can he do in four years?” Never have my reflections been more off the mark.  We all tend to vote in our own best interests, and I will admit that mine follow traditional progressive issues; voting rights, social equality, etc. But my biggies have always been education, the environment and the arts. It soon became clear that where the current administration was concerned, I just needed to hunker down and try to tough it out. And true to my fears, the Trump presidency has cut a destructive swath through all my major concerns.

But now, I thought, we made it through. It is time to start repairing the damage. Again, foolishly, I assumed that Trump’s early bluster about not recognizing any election results that did not declare him the winner was just that - bluster. His recent behavior indicates that he was quite serious, and that he places his own personal successes above the Constitution, the will of the people, and the law. His refusal to accept the results of the election and the related pitiful legal actions attempting to overturn the election give tacit permission for his fanatic base to take violent protests to the street.

I do not know what, if anything, will convince him to acknowledge the damage his shameful behavior is doing to our nation. Hopefully he will soon realize that only he can put an end to the lawlessness his childish, selfish, behavior has called into the streets of the nation we, perhaps erroneously, assumed he loves. He must cease his divisive legal actions, concede that he lost the election, and tell his followers, in the streets and in Congress, to do same and allow the country some degree of healing. Perhaps then he can finally live up to what until now has been an empty slogan, and help Make America Great Again.

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Peeling the Many Roads of Life

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 I’m not sure what it is about nap time dreaming, but the images seem extraordinarily vivid, the perception of reality more enforced, making it harder to wake up.  That was certainly the case yesterday.   

I was walking somewhere, no place in particular, at least none that I recognized. The locale was more rural than urban, the path more a trail than a sidewalk. The atmosphere springlike, neither too warm nor too cold. It was sort of the “Goldilocks Zone” of dream environments. If there were other people or creatures about, I did not notice them. I am not terribly good at recalling dreams, so I might be missing some of the details. But what I definitely am not missing is the bizarre fact that when I glanced back over my shoulder the landscape was rolling up behind me.  The trail, trees, grass, etc., everything, was rolling up behind me like a giant version of those round hay bails one sees in fields nowadays. I stopped, and the “world bail” stopped. Backed up a bit and the bail unwound a bit. Started forward and the bail continued to wind up. I woke up. OK, pulse slightly elevated. It was a really weird dream.

Then, as is my wont, I began to try to unravel a bit of the weirdness of the dream. I don’t, as an old friend was prone to do, see dreams in a Freudlike reality. Whenever red meat appeared in one of her dreams it either represented her husband, or was an indication that she should cut red meat out of her diet - she seemed to give herself some interpretive flexibility there.  But neither do I just shrug my shoulders, mutter “weird dream” and get up to take the trash out.  I do think that dreams give us an opportunity to consider some alternative interpretations of our existence.  Here is where I am with the “Weird World Bail Dream.”

First I need to make it clear that I am pretty much in agreement with the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics - the idea that there are many worlds that exist simultaneously and parallel to the everyday “reality” that we walk around in. Furthermore, given the incredible physical and metaphysical complexity that such a universe implies, it doesn’t seem strange at all to me that some of those wires get crossed occasionally. Sort of a “cosmic butt-call” to use the technical jargon.

OK, so I wonder, if the World Bail is rolling up the reality of the world in which my dream is taking place, what is left? I do my best to remember if I could see anything left over behind the World Bail in my dream. But try as I might I draw a blank - pretty much literally a blank. But rather than seeing that as a dead end, I choose to treat it as permission to fill in the blank. And I choose to fill it in with the many worlds.  

To switch analogies on you, perhaps the roll that is following me around isn’t so much a cosmic bail of hay as it is a cosmic apple peel. You know, when you are peeling an apple and you try to peel the apple in “one go” as the Brits would say; remove the entire peel without it breaking. And what is left? The apple, of course. But in the many worlds view of the universe, what lies below the peel is another peel - another world ready for us to experience.

However, it seems somehow inappropriate to want to hop down and start peeling that new world before finishing this one. A better course of action would seem to be to stop looking over my dream shoulder at the bail following me along the path and concentrate on what lies ahead. Those other bails, peels, what have you, will - most likely - always be there. The current path, although no doubt rocky, still leads to ample opportunities to Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm.

Oh my! Look at the clock up on the corner of the computer! Coming right up on nap time!

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Enduring Life Without Challenges or Caught Between Two Worlds

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It is not that life amidst the COVID pandemic is devoid of challenges, rather it is that I have yet to encounter one, or several that truly stir me. That is a rather embarrassing admission.  I realize that there are many issues that should move me to passion. Social injustice, global warming, world hunger, science denial, good old COVID itself, and the social and political chaos left in the wake of “the Donald.” For crying out loud, Robert, latch onto some sort of cause. But alas, not yet. No project, candidate or campaign is able - to quote the Doors - “light my fire.” Assuming of course, that fire remains to be lit.  I sense that patience is of primary importance at this point in time. It was Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land:  “Waiting is.” Perhaps also, “Do, but gently, without impatience, with faith, with calm.” I’ll think on it.

Another observation: I find myself seemingly more adrift in what we think of as “the real world.” The pragmatics of everyday life; shopping, bills, insurance, the normal responsibilities of living life in the “real world.” Those realities seem to slip past me rather unnoticed. It is easy to write those off as “senior moments,” but on the other hand, my internalized conversations and considerations regarding metaphysical concerns; the nature of truth, of what we rather glibly call God, love, an afterlife, reincarnation, that “stuff” seems more intriguing and more clearly focused than previously. And those are issues that I regard as far more important and complex than the most recent location of my reading glasses. Unfortunately, the nature of god, the paths to inner peace, happiness and love are topics that rarely pop up in everyday conversations. And, when they are raised they result most often in raised eyebrows -the adult equivalent of the adolescent “eye roll” or “whatever.” So it is mostly in my art and writing that this “other world” finds expression beyond my internal dialogue. Mind you, I’m not turning my back on Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm.  That is still the path, but the road seems a bit muddy these days. Tires having trouble gaining traction.

“Waiting is.”

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