Question Certainty

 Distilled Harmony changes slowly.  I first began to explore the idea of an existential “theory of everything” back at the turn of the millennium - as 2000 turned into 2001. It was those reflections that resulted in Distilled Harmony - which I guess can be best defined as a “philosophy to live by.” More sophisticated monikers lead to unnecessary semantic quibbling. Anyhow, at that point in time Distilled Harmony rested on three prioritized tenets. 

First, the foundational tenet, Foster Harmony, an affirmation of the seemingly universal notion that we, as individuals, nations, and societies should treat others as we would desire to be treated.

The second tenet, Enable Beauty, advocates for making art - beautiful art, in all its guises, seemingly another universal aspiration for human society. The important issue here is the notion of beautiful art.  Guernica is generally accepted as great art, but isn’t really beautiful except within a specific philosophical context. Distilled Harmony is anchored in a different, kinder, more gentle perspective and philosophy regarding art.  Think Hudson River School, think Ansel Adams, think Vermeer. Art that calms, lowers the blood pressure. Art therapy might encourage an individual to represent negative experiences and emotions, but that is not the task of Enable Beauty.

Oppose Harm, defined in a variety of ways, depending upon the specific harm one is confronting, personal, political, social, environmental, etc., rounded out the three initial tenets of Distilled Harmony.  And so it remained for a decade or so.

However, eventually I came to feel that utilizing these three tenets in seeking the best path to a harmonious existence implied, perhaps mandated, an additional tenet, a fourth tenet fitting most naturally between Enabling Beauty and Opposing Harm. And so Distill Complexity took its place in Distilled Harmony, mandating that we subject any existential assertion to a “tear it down to the studs” consideration and see if it can stand up to a thorough examination of its assertions. 

After lengthy reflection of how life is evolving around us, I think it might be time to add a fifth tenet to Distilled Harmony: Question Certainty. That may seem to be a simple restatement of Distill Complexity, but there is an important difference. We seem to be poised in the midst of a debate - at the ballot box, in the global marketplace, and on the battlefield - between two fundamentally different ways of viewing the world: democracy and autocracy. 

China is perhaps the most currently successful autocratic regime - certainly from a marketplace perspective. Obviously there are some significant social and political “push backs” from pieces of this incredibly diverse nation - but currently “The Party” seems to be maintaining control. Putin would like to claim parity with Beijing, currently by pushing autocracy into the democratic Ukraine. His success is anything but certain, and paradoxically his “Me too!” war seems to have strengthened the democratic resolve of his Western opponents in the EU and beyond.

I am inclined to add Question Certainty because of the political assumptions shared by the two dominant autocratic philosophies in today’s world, which are essentially “trust me based.” Whether Chairman Mao or Marx/Lenin, the political “truth” of an autocracy rests on the unquestionable certainty of the proclamations of a current, or historic, “great leader.” Democracy has, or certainly should have, trouble with that type of assertion. I know I do.

Back in the 1950s Disney aired a TV show starring Fess Parker as Davy Crockett. Davy’s mantra was “Be sure you are right, then go ahead!” At first blush they seem words to live by, and may have influenced a significant number of the program’s youthful audience. However, upon further reflection they underly some of humanities greatest tragedies. The problematic phrase is “Be sure you are right.” And how, we should ask, can we ever be sure we are right? It is quite easy to believe we are right, but certainty regarding the rectitude of would be political leaders - particularly in a democracy - often leads to potentially irreparable damage. 

Both sides in our own civil war were undoubtedly certain of the rectitude of their positions. The result was the deadliest war in American history leaving between 600,000 and 700,000 combined Americans dead. And John Wilkes Booth was no doubt certain killing Lincoln would right some existential wrong. Would that we had left such political certainties in our past. We have not. Yesterday we were driving through a piece of rural Indiana en route between Michigan and Illinois. It is, of course, election season and yard signs were blooming across the landscape. Being from out of state, I knew none of the names, nor their stance on any issues.  But apparently to one homeowner, such ignorance wasn’t important. A hand-painted board, next to the candidate’s professionally manufactured yard sign, proclaimed: “Trump Endorsed!”

Certainty rules. No thought necessary. If my email inbox is any indication, the same is true for “blue state” candidates. Apparently all that is necessary to secure my “desperately needed” contribution to their campaign is to “agree” that the Supreme Court is terribly biased. No thought necessary. Click here regardless of candidate or position being contested. Stay true blue. Send contributions. Certainty rules.

But of course it doesn’t. As we craft our unique and personal relationship to life another’s certainty can never substitute for our own thoughtful consideration of potential beliefs and behaviors. So we need to slide the chairs a little closer together, and make room at the Distilled Harmony table for a new tenet - Question Certainty.

What’s Left at the End of a Love Song?

I always listen to music while drawing - well actually I always listen to music unless I am doing something else that preempts the auditory channel; watching a video, or engaging in conversation - stuff like that. But when drawing I make specific musical choices. Usually I opt for instrumental works, or works like opera sung in a language I do not understand. Otherwise the words seem to get in the way - they sort of block the images that are trying to make their way onto the paper or the computer screen.

But there is an exception to this rule of thumb.  When I have completed the “cartoon” version of the drawing - the black and white outlines and designs within the outlines; when all that is left to do is choose what colors go where - I can listen to “songs with lyrics that I know very well.” It is not surprising that there are more love songs in that category than probably any other genre.  I suppose if you want to slice the big musical “songs with lyrics I know” pie into really fine pieces you could find some “non-love song” categories e.g. sea shanties, work songs, hymns, lullabies, parodies, children’s songs, etc. But if you sift through my Pandora selections - which is my “go to” app for music - you will find more love songs than anything else. That may be reflective of the fact that if you were to ask for all hopeless romantics to raise their hands, I bet I could beat Hermione Granger to the draw.  (Did I mention I am re-reading the Harry Potter books?)

While working on the “tale of two tongues” images that I recently shared with you, completing the areas that sort of turned out looking like Aztec glyphs gave me a lot of hours to listen to love songs.  And I found myself reflecting on a particular facet of the genre: the end of a love song. I realize, as Billy Collins points out in The Great American Poem, that one of the benefits poetry has over prose, novels, etc., is that you don’t have to parse hundreds of pages to get to the important kernel of the work. So how love song's lyrics - given that “lyrics” are simply poems put to music - end is a legitimate area of critical reflection.

So then - on to the ending of love songs.  While there are plenty of “hurtin’” love songs - those “somebody done somebody wrong songs.” There are a surprising number of “things turn out fine love songs.” Those moments when the lovers ride off into the sunset. “The hands that once held a six-gun, are holding their baby tonight,” etc. Find your own favorite examples, there are plenty of “happy love songs” out there. Disney and Broadway are fertile fields for these.  But even in these happy examples what follows after the ride out into the sunset is rarely if ever addressed. There are some - Kisses Sweeter than Wine, comes to mind, but not many others.

Country music in particular thrives on the “bad news love song;” “He stopped loving her today,” “Bury us both deep, and maybe we’ll find peace, And pulling the trigger, she fell cross the dead cowboy’s chest.” “Somewhere near Salinas, lord, I let her slip away.” But even in Country we can find some “happy love songs. “So I walked away from the hangin’ tree, And my own true love, she walked with me.”  And that strange “happy dying love song” Running Bear, “As their hands touched, and their lips met, the raging river pulled them down, Now they’ll always be together in their happy hunting ground.” But here too we never learn how the lovers - particularly the dead ones - deal with any prolonged happiness. Music stops. Story over.

So love songs, neither happy nor sad, rarely manage to tell us what happens after the lovers ride off into the sunset. What happens when the kids get the mumps? What happens when the horse dies? the cattle stampede? the bank won’t extend the loan? one of them gets called off to war? the crops fail? one of them “meets someone”? etc., etc.

But, in truth, “tough love” isn’t the job of love songs. Even the sad ones are supposed to make us feel good - sometimes in a “hurts so good” kind of way. “The phone that rings at midnight ain’t got nothing good to say. She just called to tell you she’s a thousand miles away. Long gone this time.”

So if you want to seriously suffer, to learn all the sordid details of lives and nations falling apart, you might better advised to read a novel, Tolstoy perhaps, or even, shudder, watch the news. Love songs, thankfully, point us in another direction.

Two Types of Tongues II

 And here is the second -new- version.

Two Types of Tongues I

 Hi There -

A bit of history. The first post I am sending is of an image I drew back in 2003. It is called "How We Got Tongues." I am sending the images in two posts because I believe Bogger compresses the images and they are both large.

Hitting from The Middle Tees

 Hitting from the Middle Tees

[Content Advisory: Some of you out there on The Wall also spent time as students in my various classes. Remember those days when I would start out in one direction, move through “What is he talking about?” And end up at “Weird, but interesting.”? Well this might be one of those times. Hang in there. DrS]

While having dinner last night it came out that one family member was having a “milestone birthday,” which, among other things, would allow him to tee off on the middle tees at the golf course up by their lake cottage over in Michigan. “What does that mean?” asked my wife. Not a strange question given that her exposure to golf has been gleaned from quick glances at the TV while passing through the living room, enough to convince her there was no reason to pause.  

Still it made me realize that it was a bit “golfist” to assume that everyone would know what “Middle Tees” meant. Was it like the Middle Ages? Middle Earth? Middleweight? Middleman? And since l am using it in the title of this post, it behooves me to at least attempt a definition. So briefly, here goes. A golf course consists of 18 holes, long stretches of lawn leading from the “tee box” to the “green” where the “flag” sits in the “hole” which actually is a small hole (4.25 inches in diameter) in the ground of the green into which the golfer wishes to hit his or her ball.  Obviously there is more to it than that but that is sufficient for our purposes since we are only with the tee box. 

The tee box is usually divided in three areas each progressively closer to the hole: the “back tees” furthest from the hole and hence reserved for the best players. Everyone on “televised tournaments” hits from the back tees. The “front tees,” which are those closest to the hole - sometimes significantly so - are reserved for participants who for reasons of age, gender, or other issues are deemed worthy of some sort of benefit. And then we come to “the middle tees.” I think of being allowed to “tee off” in this area, often located midway between the back and front tees, as an acknowledgment, or reward for dedication to the game as one often “ages into” permission to tee off from here. This was the case of last night’s milestone birthday - 70. 

So “hitting off the middle tees” in golf - and in life - isn’t so much a case of “try it from up here, old guy,” as it is a reward for having reached a particular plateau, while still realizing that age brings both rewards and rational limitations. Having already passed this particular milestone I occasionally think about instances where pre- and post-middle tees in real life are most obvious. 

One that often springs to mind is a trip to San Francisco to deliver a paper in the early days of my teaching career - so I was in my late 20s or early 30s. I remember hiking up into the hills above the city, and pausing to appreciate the view out across the city, past the Golden Gate to the bay and the Pacific beyond. Part of my appreciation stemmed from the realization that I could walk from my present location to anywhere in the vista spread out below me. I was limited only by time. Now, “hitting off the middle tees,” I realize that is no longer the case. I could probably get from here to there, but it would entail cabs, Ubers, cable cars, or some combination thereof. The legs were just not going to make it. And that was OK. That’s why I was here on the middle tees and glad to have made to this point in life.

There are other middle tees realities that I have become comfortable with - like puppies and parrots.  Let me clarify. We share this domicile with a wonderful 13 year-old black lab named Vito Muso (saxophonist with Stan Kenton in the late 1930s). If you know much about large breed dogs, you know that Vito is approaching the upper limits of life expectancy for the breed. And while we hate to contemplate that eventuality, we are somewhat comforted by the fact that no lab has had a better life. Three humans fuss over his every need, food, exercise, medical. We stop and pet him every time we pass him by. He often blocks my way, lying down, wagging his tale, demanding a longer rub down. I naturally oblige. Or he will camp on the kitchen floor in front of the treat stash until Christine, the official treat dispenser, caves in and gives him his treat - or maybe two. A truly blessed doggy life. But when he does hop off to chase tennis balls in the sky, none of us would even contemplate replacing him with a puppy. 

The obvious reason is that - while no dog could ever replace Vito - even a perfect puppy would be playing from the back tees. Full of Vim, Vigor and Vitality as 3V cola used to brag back in the late 1950s. Christine and I will be playing from the middle tees while Smitty will be way out there swinging from where the 90+ golfers get to tee off. None of us will be able to raise a puppy. 

Parrots come with similar baggage. I have always been fascinated by African Grey Parrots. Smart, winsome creatures. But knowing that they are often smuggled under terrible conditions, and that they can live to middle tee ages themselves - 60 to 80 years! - makes me walk on past the pet store.

Which got me thinking. Back in the late 1960s as Ph.D student at Wayne State one of my favorite classes was Communication Theory taught by Dr. Raymond Ross. In my mind the neatest thing about Dr. Ross’ class was building communication models, when, truth be told, we got to just make up models of how communication worked. While we were often more than a little “off point” it was an excellent way to figure out how we could better understand the process. It is a process I have returned to all my life - and often far afield from just communication theory. 

Most obvious and of greatest current importance to me is the model that can depict Distilled Harmony. I have played around with some fancy depictions of Distilled Harmony, but for the moment let this simple straight line model suffice:

Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony-> Enable Beauty-> Distill Complexity -> Oppose Harm.

Which is just one, prioritized, way to represent the various stages of Distilled Harmony, my model of how we should approach life. To reach Distilled Harmony (Inner Peace, a State of Grace, Nirvana, call it what you are comfortable with) you begin with a general attempt to foster harmony in your everyday life and then pull the other subsequent elements of the model into your life as possible. 

Well it struck me that using the golf tee box as a metaphor for the stages of our life and the kinds of legitimate options each position on the tee represent was really another communication/aka life model or metaphor. And so, as my wife is fond of saying “anything worth doing is worth overdoing” here is my first cut at blending “Distilled Harmony” with the “View from the Tee Box Life Model.”

The first thing that obvious is that the two models don’t line up. That is because Distilled Harmony is by far more encompassing than Tee Box. No surprise there since Distilled Harmony has been “under development” for 30 years or so, while Tee Box just came to me after dinner the other night. But Tee Box does bring, I think, some valuable insight.

E.g. you cannot just “think” your way into another tee box. You work your way there. You spend most of your life hitting from the back tees, learning everything that will be valuable in life, and then putting all that into practice. Inventing stuff, teaching, practicing medicine, studying law, improving agriculture, protecting the environment, doing art, whatever. The Tee Box model gives us a pretty wide range for hitting off the back tees, essentially until you are 70.  The potential blend with Distilled Harmony is the notion that we really don’t come to a clear understanding of harmony until we are approaching what western culture considers “retirement age” - 65 or 70ish. 

So let’s try this on: Hitting from the back tees for 50 years or so enables you to gather a vast amount of information in your field, perhaps in several fields. Starting in the 1600s we used to call folks like these “polymaths.” They are excellent at Trivial Pursuits and Jeopardy. But perhaps not the person you might turn to when faced to serious personal problems. They “might could,” as we say in the South tell you who had written novel A, or invented thingamiggy B, or was the first human to walk on Mars, but would have no idea how any of that worked out. And that is why after spending 50 or 60 years hanging out in the back tees we turn our attention to the issues of the middle tees, because there you increase your chances of finding, not just information, but wisdom.

Let me quickly point out that reaching 70 is no guarantee of finding wisdom. Any glance at the news these days would seem to argue the opposite, but it is in the middle tees that we can find guides, mentors, examples of wisdom that have stood the test of time. It is a more gentle tee box. One less defined by loud harangues of certainty. More inclined to quiet reflection. 

Having now spent a few years hitting off the middle tees I can report that it too, carries no guarantees of wisdom. I occasionally find myself stumbling into some stunning instances of foolishness, and occasional flashes of unintended arrogance more appropriate to the exuberance of the back tees. However, the view from the middle tees does allow one to recognize those stumbles more quickly and to learn from them - perhaps approaching the wisdom expected here on the middle tees. It also can awaken a desire to make amends, if that option remains feasible. Sadly, the view from the middle tees often forces one to realize that sometimes the desire for reconciliation arrives too late. 

So you sigh. You learn. And you trudge along the weary path to wisdom, where, strangely, these awkward insights also reveal the route to Harmony and joy.

They’ll Learn Much More

 I hear babies crying, I watch them grow.

They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.

-Bob Thiele and George David Weiss

My own experience with these lyrics is hearing Louis Armstrong sing them over the visual carnage accompanying of the opening scenes of the searing Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, movie Good Morning Vietnam.  For my generation it is a very, very emotional montage. I used to show the movie to my media criticism classes so have watched that scene many times over a couple of decades - in the company of 18 to 20 year-olds for whom the film increasingly became a history lesson. 

I would look out over their faces - some riveted, others bored - and wonder what they will be doing with the awesome opportunities that a university education would provide. There are times when it is easy to despair, what with global warming, NRA enabled school shootings, and the raw megalomania being revealed in Putin’s war on Ukraine and, shockingly, exposed in the reports stemming from various investigations into the Trump inspired January 6th riots in our own capital. 

However, recently I have been regaining some of my natural optimism as I forsake the “if it bleeds, it leads” bias of the most news programs on commercial networks and programs whose bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Instead I am paying more attention to documentaries that demonstrate how various collections of fresh-faced youngsters, removed not many years from those in my classroom, are rolling up their sleeves and reimagining, redesigning, and rebuilding this “third rock from the sun” in wonderful ways - if we; their parents and grandparents don’t trash it beyond redemption first.

For example, Elon Musk wrote a paper in 2013 conceptualizing a mode of transportation now commonly referred as the “hyper loop” which features people/product pods zipping around in enclosed tubes at speeds surpassing “bullet trains” and approaching those of jet aircraft. Then in a seemingly “un-Musklike” move he threw a white paper clarifying the idea out for public development, and sponsored a contest for the best designs. Hundreds of teams of young engineers, designers, and dreamers from all over the globe took up the challenge, resulting in several new start-ups building green, working prototypes of what could be a hugely significant evolution in transportation. 

The Hyperloop story is cause for optimism, not simply because of its potential impact on transportation and the immense knock on implications for the climate change impact on that traditionally “dirty” industry - think SUVs as the single most polluting vehicle in the world - but more importantly as a model for enabling and encouraging young, energetic students in all disciplines to focus on and pursue issues they simply have not have time to think about or encounter. Set a target and turn the amazing power of human thought and creativity loose!

I’m going to break with my normal Wall posts here and stick in another piece that I have been working on for awhile. It was designed to be a separate post but seems to fit nicely here as it could be one of those “unimaginable ideas” that the “amazing power of human thought and creativity” might address. So here it is:

My Marvelous Toy

There are any number of rabbit holes

Ripe for the tumbling down these days.

Dug by youthful techies 

Raised on science fiction,

A plethora of these

Hopeful Hogwarts wannabes 

Have jumped the requisite hoops

To claim labs of their very own.

At MIT, CERN, Google, Meta, and the like.

Not surprisingly these big-brained

All-but-babies have come 

To focus on the brain.

Or some artificial version of

Intelligence creativity artistry 

AI, AC, AA, AWhatever

They are the magicians of the impossible.

Intellectual descendants of those

Who built Steven Hawking’s awesome

Array of prosthetic devices that freed

Thought from his compromised body

To unimaginable rainbows of insight.

They enable the knitting of 

Shattered spines back through 

Silly-putty wired silicon so

Legs could again march about

To the myriad directions 

Of that maestro of intention

The brain.

But even as I read of 

Entrancing marvels ready made,

I cannot help but wonder

Will I live to see the day -

The month, the year, the decade

When the toy I most desire

Finally makes the 

“Name that Brain Game Hit Parade?”

The desire strikes most predictably 

When I suddenly find myself

Caught up in drawing a pattern -

Leaves, or dots, or swirls bright.

All that such and such 

Tedious but vital whatnot

When the brush needs a 

Sewing machine-like repetition.

Dot dot dot dot dot dot dot

Visible if you take your 6X

Magnifying glasses to a 

Carpet painted by Vermeer.

A sleeve stroked by Rembrandt.

And as my mind grows fuzzy

It occurs to me to wonder

What was Vermeer thinking 

As his brush went dip dot dot

Dip dot dot dip dot dot dip?

What was Rembrandt thinking

As his palette knife went

Scoop slap slap scoop slap slap?

What wasÉlisabeth Le Brun thinking

As her brushes went 

Dip soft stroke dip soft stroke dip?

What was Pollock thinking, ever?

What were any of them thinking

In those mindless meditative

Moments when planning is 

Replaced by artistic instinct

In the mind of a genius?

My toy with a marvelous 

Brain would tell us.

All we would need to do

Would be to capture a hi-rez

Image of any picture by anyone

From any place or time now

Floating around out in digital-land.

Free to be clicked upon for

The menu for “reveal thoughts.”

We could then choose

“Text” or “Talk” or “Other” or “Immerse”

And our device would select

The most appropriate modality

To reproduce whatever 

Had been going through 

The artist’s mind/brain/heart while

Creating the image we had chosen.

Now before falling victim to counting the

Unbelievably number of advances

Looming between my marvelous toy

And the experience I chose

Remember, time was when

Symbols required stone

Or clay or skins or paper or screens

When only birds 

And small dinosaurs flew

When we got electricity from lightning 

When phones where tethered to

Permanent cords

And could only reproduce sound.

When cars only ran on gasoline 

When you were only either male or female

When you got music from bones 

Or carved reeds, hollow skins

Or hand cranked record players

When you could have heard

A Nobel prize winning poet sing

“The times they are a’ hanging.”

When the prescient Bard scribbled 

There are more things in heaven and Earth, 

Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Right now I’m dreaming of my own

Marvelous Toy.

As you can probably tell, the old clock on the wall, or more accurately the clock here on my laptop has made its way into the tiny hours after midnight when my thoughts, while still seeming clear and rational to me, tend to make their way into the land of “What the Heck is He Talking About?” So I will bid you goodnight, and see what other dreams might creep into my philosophy.

Masters of Time

Ok, so my hands shake. Big deal. They have done so all my life. Strangely, it seems to be an inconsistent anomaly. Often when I am in an emotionally intense situation, they shake. But if it is mandatory that they not shake, they don’t. Two examples. Back in the days as a theater student when I had to do my makeup and the choice was either stop shaking or poke my eye out, the hand would stop shaking. More recently when creating some of the drawings I share with you, I often back myself into a corner by drawing very detailed designs that must eventually be colored in. The choice in that situation is to either stop shaking or smear color all over the image. There, too, the hands usually stop shaking - but not permanently. I’m good for a couple of hours and then a suspicious jiggle tries to creep in, and I have to stop drawing at least for a similar couple of hours. I have tried to “tough it out” a couple of times, and end up trying to hide errors that, to my mind anyhow, immediately draw the eye to that, usually tiny, part of the image. But I did come to believe in the notion that if I paid attention and rationed my efforts and concentration, I could calm my shaking hands in the service of any task.

Well, tonight that bit of arrogance got kicked to the curb. Curiosity Stream again. This time the series was called “Masters of Time: Independent Watchmakers.” The title is somewhat self-explanatory, the series does feature the works of several independent watchmakers, but that doesn’t prepare one for the intricacies, the detail, the artistry involved. First, least there be any mistaken notion, all of the watches created by these artists are handmade - hand tools shaping metal, wood, wire, etc.  And all the watches have some type of tourbillon in them.  And what, you might well ask - as did I eventually, after pretending I knew what the heck they were talking about, - the heck is a tourbillon?  Glad you asked.  A tourbillon is a little gizmo you put into a watch to counter the affect of Earth's gravity on the isochronal properties of the balance wheel and spring. Right, sure. That means - various sources tell me - that the balance wheel and the spring stay in sync. So these watchmakers and their watches are addressing chronological concerns and variables I have never heard of, let alone thought about. Again for example, one watchmaker addressed these and other concerns, after which the artist then carefully covered the face of the watch with black glass - you could see nothing. The idea, according to the watchmaker, who tuned the, now invisible, internal elements of his watch by holding them against the body of a violin, was to not distract you with looking at the hands of the watch, hence freeing you to concentrate on the far more important task of simply listening to the passage of time. Accurate quote, as God is my witness.

But that was not what convinced me that the very least of the tasks performed by these incredibly skilled artists was far beyond the abilities of my poor shaking hands. It was, in large part, the fact that their measurements and tolerances were routinely measured in tiny fractions of millimeters, and if you missed the mark with your tiny little tools, minuscule screwdrivers, wrenches, etc., you simply scrapped that piece - sometimes a large part of the watch - and started over. Arrrrgh! But finally one of them copped to what was really going on: “I am trying to create the smallest mechanism that can be built by human hands.”

Oh. Now I get it. And I realize that I will never get it. 

Schrag PPP: A Pair of Roses

 Hi there - 

Some of you might be expecting pictures of Andrea, Sam, Maya and Ellie - Roses all, branches of the family and worthy of pictures. But these are roses of a different bloom. The first image, call it Big Rose, I have been working on for the last week or so.  Big Rose because it is 22 x 16. The second image, oh, let’s call it Small Rose is 13 x10.

Now, how there came to be 2 different Roses.  The first step in any of the PPP images is a lengthy browse through an embarrassing huge mass of photos from decades of digital images. That is, of course, the problem with digital photography - there is no film and if you, as I do, backup obsessively you end up with thousands of images. And I came across this Rose picture. Cool, I thought. I think I’ll work on this.

So I did. Then several days and multiple steps into the image, as I was going upstairs for dinner or a basketball game or something, I happened to glance up at a corner of my “gallery.” And, oops, there was Small Rose. It had no date on it, so I pretended not to see it, and went on to finish Big Rose. I have now acknowledged Small Rose, and am glad that, although they are obviously sisters, they are different enough that they are the result of different artistic moments.  Anyhow, here they are:

First, Big Rose:

 

And now, Small Rose:

Probably wise to point out that although they look the same size here Big Rose is, well, Bigger.

Precision Napping

If I knew how it was done, or why it happens, I would tell you. But first let me explain what it is. I’m not sure where you stand on napping, or to what extent your life allows you to indulge in “nap time.” If you are, or were, the primary caregiver of little ones then nap time might well be something you seek to impose on others in order to claim some time for yourself - for napping or reading or catching up on any number of the myriad chores that caregivers are heir to. Been there, done that. You have my heartfelt sympathy. If, however, you believe that adults should not nap, you can skip this post and click over to Amazon and take some personal shopping time.

The rest of us are currently in the midst of a debate regarding to what extent wage earners are free to determine their own nap time. Elon Musk, whose wealth and business acumen apparently makes him some sort of authority figure on all things, has declared that Tesla employees must be “in the office” for the traditionally requisite 40 hours a week. The fact that he feels that there is an immutable relationship between being in the office and being awake, calls his credibility - at least in this area - into question. What is true is that in many cases adults do have a certain amount of control over when they nap. Being retired gives me a great deal of control over my nap time, and I think that is quite important for precision napping - aka PN.

My ideal nap time begins between 2 and 3pm. Sometimes life does intrude; medical appointments, auto repairs, pizza deliveries, and other significant life events. But I try to keep those to a minimum. When nap time rolls around I arrange my technology to support PN. First, for me, PN is supported by a couple of digital apps - a timer and access to audio support. I access both of these through either my iPad or iPhone, though similar support is available through other sources.

First I set my background audio. Ideally, I blend two sources on my iPad. One is called Naturespace, which features a wide range of - as the name implies - nature sounds; rain, wind, surf, cicadas, birds, etc. The cool thing about Naturespace is that you can “blend” it with other apps, so I “blend” it with Pandora’s meditation or classical music options, giving me a variable blend of tranquil audio.

That done I set my timer for 15 minutes, recline and spend 15 minutes reading a novel, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, or poetry - just about anything that is not focused on politics, mass shootings, global warming, etc., in short, the news. It is not that these issues are unimportant, it is just that they are counterproductive in the PN arena. When my 15 minute timer goes off, I add an additional hour to the initial 15 minute setting, bringing the PN total session to an hour and a half - 90 minutes. You can see why being retired is a significant PN advantage.

But now here is the strange part, and why I call it “precision napping.” The second timer almost never goes off. I awake, seemingly automatically, with 2 or 3 minutes left on the timer. So have I “conditioned” myself to that 90 minute cycle? I have no idea. And if I were able to do that, one would think I could exercise some sort of similar control over my “normal” nighttime sleeping regimen, which is anything but normal. 

You may recall that in a number of these posts I refer to “the tiny hours.” Like with PN, I am referring to 2 or 3 o’clock - however in those instances I am talking about 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning when, unfortunately, the ideas, poems, etc., that end up here on The Wall strike me. And, yes, I realize that there may be a connection between a 90 minute nap in the afternoon and a period of uncontrollable wakefulness at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. And I further realize that omitting PN might also eliminate the tiny hours wakefulness.

But what if that isn’t the case? What if eliminating PN leaves the tiny hours wakefulness unaffected!? When, then, do I sleep at all! Horrors!

Making Magic

I read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett yesterday (published in 1911). I had polished off The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908) a couple days earlier.  Both are commonly defined as “children’s literature” and never have we needed them more. With the occasional exception of Toad’s forays to recapture Toad Hall from the shoats and weasels, Wind in the Willows is remarkably free of any taint of violence - even those skirmishes produce only bumps and bruises, no one actually dies. The Secret Garden is a prototypical green novel, perhaps the archetypal example of the genre. For those of you who haven’t engaged in this joyful read in a decade or more, in The Secret Garden, a group of preteens employ the “Magic” of the renewal of spring growth in a long neglected garden to restore the physical and emotional health of two of their “secret group.” Their recovery is facilitated by a new, unexpected, powerful identification with, and appreciation of, the flora and fauna living in the garden.  The transformation is most obvious in the character Colin, who largely through what he identifies as the “Magic” of the garden, transitions from believing he will soon die, to the firm conviction that  “I am going to live forever!”

And what, you might ask, has turned my attention to these two “children’s books” from the previous century? Not really a difficult question. The motivation for this double dose of kiddy-lit Valium is the recent horrific dosage of the murder of school children here in America. Aside from the fact that the guns in the most recent bouts of carnage were purchased “legally,” the other common element appears to be that the murderers believed that they were acting from a position of moral certainty and that their victims represented a threat to a preferred society anchored in their own moral certainty.  I have also recently watched a couple of documentaries on Curiosity Stream about the rise of Hitler and fascism in the early decades of the 20th century. The parallels between the fascists of history and our current domestic crop are obvious.

I find it sadly curious that my two comfort children’s books were written as the world was sliding towards the “war to end all wars,” which turned out to be anything but.  Still there is, I do believe, an ethical component to existence. But I am much less sanguine regarding the notion that we have stumbled upon it.  Louis Pasteur said "Chance favors only the prepared mind."  While he was addressing the necessity of preparation in scientific investigations; I would assert that it would not distort the axiom too greatly to consider its application to ethical and moral considerations: Ethical and moral clarity favors only the open mind.  I view with significant skepticism those hucksters, religious zealots, and politicians on the right and left fringes who assert they have found the “truth” and conveniently close their minds to options and ideas they have yet to encounter or consider.

The comfort I draw from both Wind in the Willows and The Secret Garden is that they both, perhaps naively, take place in a world where compassion and gentility are more valued than power and coercion. True, it is a world seemingly alien to the one in which I actually live, but then the great religious and philosophical texts of our civilizations also seem to depict realities still seemingly beyond our grasp. 

An interesting experiment. Contact your representatives in Congress and inquire about their feelings regarding the state of current gun legislation. If they assert that current legislation is sufficient, you will have learned two things about them; one a probability, the other a certainty. The probability is that their election campaigns are supported by meaningful contributions from the NRA (the National Rifle Association, for those of you lucky enough to reside beyond their nefarious influence.) The certainty is that they are wrong. If they wish to cling to their belief that there is nothing amiss with current gun control legislation you might suggest that they visit cemeteries near to these locations:

ROBB ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL

SANTA FE HIGH SCHOOL

MARYSVILLE-PILCHUCK HIGH SCHOOL

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA

SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

OIKOS UNIVERSITY

NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY

VIRGINIA TECH

WEST NICKEL MINES AMISH SCHOOL

RED LAKE HIGH SCHOOL

COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL

There they will find the graves of the 169 students, from elementary school to college, for whom, since Columbine, the current legislation did not suffice.

Enabling Hatred

Since we seem to be unable to implement the idea of “love one and other” perhaps it is finally time to stop enabling hatred. It should come as no surprise that here in our totally technology dependent nation that we need to focus on controlling the technology that enables our inexcusable, world leading, rate of death by firearms - guns. According to the New York Times, the US counts 45,000 annual gun related deaths. I don’t think this is a statistic that should have anyone chanting “We’re number one! We’re number one!”

 Yes, I have heard the old NRA inspired excuse, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” That is in some strange way true, but it ignores a vital lesson from history. The evolution of technology enables everything we do, everything we know. It was not so long ago - in the rather short history of humans on earth - that we believed we were the center of the universe. Uniquely blessed creatures on a uniquely favored piece of real estate comfortably located close to the one and only sun. And then Hans Lippershey invented the telescope back in 1608, and all bets were off. The constant evolution of optical and electronic telescopes since that point in time have brought us to the James Webb space telescope of today, peering back over light emitted 30 or 40 billion years ago, past countless stars and galaxies to help us understand the nature of our universe. Flip the telescope over and you have the microscope that revealed tiny creatures swimming around in blood, dirt, etc. A discovery that allowed us to shed the mysticism of shamans for the insights of science as we confront disease in the human body. 

Make no mistake about it, technology enables the capabilities of humanity - and we never voluntarily revert to last year’s model unless we discover that “the new way” carried unseen faults and danger. Albert Einstein - a world renowned pacifist - signed a letter, in August of 1939, to President Roosevelt encouraging the development of nuclear weapons to blunt Nazi efforts along those lines. After witnessing the previously unimaginable devastation caused by the bombing of Hiroshima, Einstein deeply regretted what he saw as his intellectual complicity in that desolation. But the atomic genie was out of the bottle, constrained only by intricate international agreements to stave off mutual self- destruction. Agreements whose fragility is being revealed by Putin’s raging. 

So technology is essentially culturally neutral, constrained only by legislation that defines its place in society. Now we have plastic guns that can be printed on 3D printers in the privacy of your own basement. We have legal kits to convert “legal” semi-automatic weapons into illegal fully automatic weapons. And, of course, we have the legal weapons used in the most recent atrocities at Robb Elementary School - deep in the heart of Texas, a state with some of the most lax gun control laws in the country. 

Now, again from the President to the coach of my Golden State Warriors, we are hearing cries of “Enough is enough!” It is time to reign in this deadly technology that is obviously out of control. I hope this latest round of indignation finally translates into meaningful legislation. But it is a hope I have hoped before. 

 In the meantime parents, teachers, pastors, rabbis, imams, big brothers and older sisters, teach the children well: Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty.

The Secret Life of Trees

The Secret Life of Trees

Foster Harmony

 It is, perhaps, because this tenet is foundational to Distilled Harmony - my “path to appropriate living,” - that I find it so dismal when life unfolds in ways that are totally oppositional to it. The fact that the teenage murderer who killed 10 people and wounded 3 others in Buffalo, NY was a delusional racist white supremacist advocate of the “great replacement theory” allowed me to briefly hide behind the “He is insane. A kid blinded by the violent rhetoric of hate that seems almost everywhere in the world today. A crazy kid, an exception to the norm.” Then I learn about the 68-year old ethnic Chinese man in Southern California who murdered 1 and wounded 5 others during an attack on a church that was motivated by his hatred of people of Taiwanese descent. Well, there goes the crazy white teenager excuse.  Maybe everyone “out there in Southern California is crazy.” Then on the next link I get the latest from the war in Ukraine - which seems to have done the seemingly impossible by drawing republicans and democrats together, or mostly. This war is OK. 

Perhaps I am foolish to continue to believe - as Anne Frank, Dr. King, Mahatma Ghandi, Albert Einstein - and others far wiser than I, that deep down where it really matters, people are kind, caring, and compassionate. But it is getting harder. I am most frustrated by the incredible arrogance and false piety of contemporary religious leaders. I know of no faith that advocates something other than their version of “treat people the way you would like to be treated.” But somehow there are always implied exceptions. “Oh, you meant them too? I don’t know that I can go that far. They are, well, just different. Strange, you know?”

To clarify. Foster Harmony means foster harmony with everyone. And it starts at a personal level. You need to try to avoid personal disagreements - which is really hard especially here in the midst of the Covid pandemic. I am of the age and with a medical history that causes my oncologist to strongly suggest that I continue to wear a mask and practice social distancing in public and especially around children. I try my best.  Still I have folks point out to me that “you don’t need that anymore.”  My response? “I think I feel a cold coming on.” Much easier to lie than launch into a mask-muffled explanation. 

But here is a strange, admittedly bizarre, thought that is beginning to seem more plausible.  I was watching a documentary the other night - Netflix, I think the title was Unacknowledged. Anyhow, the basic assertion was that we - Earthlings, for lack of a better descriptor - have been in both direct and indirect communication with other far more advanced civilizations for several decades at least. These “unacknowledged” contacts have not been acknowledged - according to the documentary- for a variety of political reasons. But the one that struck me as most plausible was the assertion that “they” believed that we were, as a species, too violent and unreliable to be trusted to interact with these other far more advanced and - I assume - evolved civilizations.

They would, I muse, read one of my posts:

“Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm. Well, of course. And why don’t you do that?”

Dandelion

 It is a perfect day for dandelions, so I wandered out among them to look at a few.

While sitting on a bench I happened to look down and spied a tiny little gent - no more than an inch tall - striding amongst them. He was carrying an even smaller easel and a matching wooden case.

“My,” he murmured, with a slight Dutch accent, “look at all the sunflowers!” And opened his easel.

I slipped silently away so as not to disturb him, and made my way back to the asylum.

The Ultimate [Virtual] Video Game

Alright, let me assert right up front that none of us, even the youngest of the young, are not going to be around to play it, but I have a pretty good track record at predicting these future developments.   Back in 1998 I started an online children's publication company with a young novelist. We called it Chapter & Verse and had to build the whole site from scratch since no one else thought it was a good idea. Then Amazon and Barnes and Nobels swooped in, bye bye C&V.  Also, I was developing online courses years before the pandemic pushed education that way.  More recently, I was exploring marketing my images as Non-Fungible Tokens  - NFTs  - at least a couple of years before Dolly, and other less endowed pop and sports stars busted the field wide open. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

So why aren’t I as rich as Elon Musk? Well, that’s pretty simple. My strength is predicting. When it comes to taking the idea to market? The whole business side of things? Pretty clueless I’m afraid. But that isn’t a problem with this concept since, as I said, we won’t be around to play it. You know how prognosticators are always saying “So perhaps in 30 years, this that or the other thing, may become commonplace?” This is more like 300 years, if then. 

But let’s play with the idea.

First, we need to focus on the multiverse. Yup, here I go again. But I have been talking about the multiverse long before the silly movie about a multiverse of madness came out.  In truth, it may not be silly, I haven’t seen it. But the promos seem to be pushing PT Barnum's assertion that you could never go broke underestimating the taste of the American public.  

But to clarify, and greatly simplify, there are three dominant flavors of ideas about the multiverse:

Flavor one asserts that our "here and now" universe is just one of a bunch of universes that all came into being simultaneously at the Big Bang and have been independently floating off around in spacetime ever since.

Flavor two has little baby universes growing out of those independent universes, initially sharing characteristics with their parents, but eventually popping off to go their own way.

Flavor three, and the one I like best, and upon which my ultimate video game depends, is the “many worlds” version.  You can visualize this version by looking at a pine tree.  The tree has a central trunk from which other branches grow. The cool thing in this flavor of the multiverse is that when we make significant choices in our lives we determine the primary direction of the central trunk of our “here and now” universe. But all those other choices that we did not make - the paths not taken, if you will - branch out and continue off in “another world” version of what our life would have been had we made that choice. Whew.

OK. So here is how the video game would work, and the challenges that cause me to posit that it will be a long, long time coming. First, we would have to determine the bottom of the tree, the “where it all began point” of our particular "many worlds." Logically this would be when we were born, and could begin to make independent choices.  Then the game would have to move on up the tree to get an understanding of each branch of the tree - each “choice point” that, in addition to the choice we made leading to the "here and now" around us right now, set some new worlds spinning off our central trunk - the paths we did not take. I talked about this a bit in the last post where in one world I became a forest ranger, and in another married my 6th grade sweetheart, remember? All of those "paths not taken" would be contained in the ultimate video game - the UVG.  Or maybe better,  UVVG for the "ultimate virtual video game" because, the UVVG would allow you to visit each of those many worlds, follow each of the paths not taken, while still returning to the “real here and now” in which we actually exist. 

Or not. And that “or not” is why I push my game out centuries in the future, because without that default to your “real here and now” the game does begin to take on shades of psychosis with an accompanying potential for addiction that makes fentanyl seem like MMs. I mean odds are that as we traipse around in those very real seeming "many worlds" we are going to find one or many alternative worlds that seem quite preferable to the one we currently inhabit. Perhaps a "perfect world!" So why not stay? Well, at the moment my thinking is we cannot stay because we aren’t really there. It’s a game, an artificial construction.  Maybe like Scrooge in the George C. Scott 1984 A Christmas Carol movie - my favorite version - you would "be there", but nobody in that world could see you or interact with you.  And at some point you have to take off the VR googles, or the batteries run out, or something, and the UVVG ceases to function. But you remember that perfect world, and there you are like a kid stuck with their nose against the window of the candy store - seeing, remembering, knowing, but never being able to go in.

I have these visions of the opium dens of the 1800s where people lay around in a stupor living, but not really, in their particular drug-induced fantasy world.  Pick your own version of these personal, ultimately destructive, fantasies. There are plenty of them out there in myths and fictions. And sadly in contemporary real life, with the addicts aided by today's descendants of opium.  And it is this easy digital path to psychosis and addiction, not to mention the incredible technological and the science/physics challenges to be overcome, that forces me to push the UVVG out there centuries in the future.

But if we could do it right, safely, harmlessly, wouldn't it be awesome?

 

PPP: Macro Mystery

 Hi All -

My better half suggested that I post this with no description and see if you can guess what it is and suggest titles. I will post what I call it in a couple days. 😜

Thoughts on Age, Insomnia, and Quantum Mechanics

With age, I am beginning to realize, comes an increased inclination for us to sleep like babies. We squirm around, we whine, we need to pee and poop, and no sooner than we wake up, we want to eat and finally nap.  Given this unfortunate reality we devise strategies to confront our golden age insomnia. My own ploy is fan, temperature, and iPad based. The fan circulates a breeze of no more than say, 65 degrees. The iPad is my answer to “white noise” that some friends and family address with an actual fan, or garden fountain. I have an app on my iPad called NatureSpace: Holographic Audio, which has dozens and dozens of audio tracks - crickets, cicadas, streams, waves, storms, rain, trains, etc., etc., etc. You name it and it is probably there. Now the cool thing about NatureSpace is that you can “blend it with other apps.” Like your favorite music app, like Pandora or whatever. So I confront my golden age insomnia with a variety of audio blends - classical violins and gentle rain, piano and distant trains, and other possibilities almost endless.

And what you may well ask, does my better half think of this?  Well, headphones seemed a good option for awhile, but failed to address the: “Hey! You are snoring!” “I don’t snore! You snore!” “No I don’t!” “Tape me!” "Tape You!"  debate. Which often leads to the age appropriate luxury of different bedrooms. Yes, it is true. When the kids finally move out you don’t only lose all that laundry, you also gain an additional bedroom or two. But I digress.

So, I asked myself, what soporific environment am I trying to create with my iPad/fan/temperature manipulation?  A number of childhood memories eventually came drifting back. In the summer we kids would occasionally sleep out on the screened-in porch. The best nights had breezes, rain, even an occasional storm. Similarly, most summers the family would vacation at “cabin number 12 in the pines” at Tower Hill Camp on the shores of Lake Michigan. There too, we kids would bunk in the screened-in porch. Breezes in the pines, occasional rain showers. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that those sleep-inducing nights had followed me throughout my life; as a camper and then a counselor at scout camp in Ohio, as a counselor at a treatment ranch for “emotionally disturbed" 5 or 6 year-olds - my “itsy-bitsy-skitsies” - in Northern California, Scout camp in Austria. Nights with cool breezes, out in nature. Further, I came to realize that my current nighttime meditations would often send me drifting to those calming places and spaces. Sometimes inhabited, but just as often not. But I have recently come to understand that my “beat the insomnia” ritual is probably about much more than temperature and sound. It is about Harmony and the porous nature of existence.

Let me try to explain. Those perfect sleeping environments held no expectations for the future - those nights were somehow isolated in space and time. Perhaps the many worlds of spacetime? Floating? Harmonic? Protected? I’m not sure how to express it, They made the world go away? Or maybe made the world harmonic?

Which of course brought me back to Distilled Harmony. Back around 2000, in The God Chord: String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart, I asserted that the unique “string” vibrations in our unique DNA determined the “chord” that defined us, and further determined whether we were in "harmony" or "discord" with the world in which we found ourselves at any particular point in time. People, places, sights, sounds, everything. We either hummed along harmonious in that moment of existence, or there were a lot of those “fingernails on the blackboard” moments - discord. Over the intervening years I have distilled those observations down to the four tenets of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. It strikes me that my iPad and the fan moments are an obvious attempt to create at least some portion of those drowsy, soporific moments. But it further occurs to me that there may be more to it than that.

I remain intrigued with what seems to be the various special qualities of different types of sleep.  Why am I writing again here in tiny hours of the morning, knowing that even with my iPad and fan properly coordinated, were I to blank my screen and set the heating pad on low - did I mention the heating pad? - sleep would still be an hour or more away.  Yet, in mid-afternoon I can lay down my colored markers, and barely make it to my bed before sleep - often accompanied by technicolored dreams - overwhelms me.  No doubt a neurologist would offer an insightful medical explanation. Or a psychologist who would explain that I am still caught in a childhood mandate that I “should” sleep at night or Santa won’t come or whatever. While nap time is a time when I, as a retired adult with no lectures to prepare or research to pursue, can simply choose to sleep and hence do.  Could well be the case. But I am still more interested in what happens after I get to sleep, regardless of how I got there. Which is probably why I put so much effort in creating the ideal sleeping environment.

I am fascinated with the relationship between sleep and the “many worlds/quantum mechanics” issues I have mentioned here before. You see it seems quite reasonable to me that when we sleep - and the sleep scientists might provide some insight here as to when this might occur - we might well slip over the boundaries, perhaps through a personal "wormhole" between our many worlds and spend a little time in one of our alternative “worlds not chosen.” Neat idea, not?

So I am beginning to think of dreams, less as “dreams” and more as "quantum clusters" - sort of like cosmic candy bars, maybe mental mints.  They are, it seems reasonable to assume, unique otherworldly manifestations of Harmony, as reflected in the four tenets of Distilled Harmony.  Physicists tell us, although with less certainty it seems these days, that the laws of physics should manifest themselves consistently throughout the universe - as we know it.  It seems no less likely to assert that the tenets of Distilled Harmony are equally far-flung, with those very real seeming, hi-res, multicolored dreams being supportive data points.

Now, if I could only remember them better. 

Macro Silliness

Hi There -

Still getting used to the process, will try some more thoughtful constructions later with less stumbling around! 

Cheers!