Living in the Moment

 No, that's not a typo down below these first two paragraphs, but yes, it is the signature you see often see on my emails when I send you Wall links. But like many "auto" bits in our digital lives, email signatures often become part of the "white noise," of 21st century communication, like the supermarket checkout ritual: "Have a good day." "You too."

I actually spent a good deal of time composing that signature, or "sig" as we often, and ironically, refer to it. And I too often forget it is there. I shouldn't, and I'll explain why - perhaps in too much detail - down below the signature:

"Who we are is a quality of the moment. What we have done in the past cannot be undone, and what we have promised for the future remains but a promise. So live each moment in the awareness that it defines you."

Hi there. Back again! OK, here we go.

A few days ago I was talking with my brother-by-another-mother, actually talking as "live on the telephone." As the conversation took turns it never would have done when we were growing up back in Springfield, Ohio, Dan used an interesting phrase a couple of times; "living in the 70s." 

Now I need to point out that up until the very early years of the 1970s, Dan and I had spent most of our lives in close proximity. So I interpreted the phrase as referring to those last couple of years "in the seventies" when we were attending Kalamazoo College. 

However, in the specific context of our current phone call, the phrase was a bit of a stretch. Strange, as Dan has a Ph.D in English from UNC, is an accomplished writer and doesn't use the language  as  casually as I sometimes do. So it wasn't until later that the sluggish lexicon of my mind realized that he was referring to our current situation - living with the interesting complexities of life in our seventh decade.

Whoa. Strange collision of realities. In 1970 we were both completing our undergraduate degrees and rushing off to graduate school and matrimony. Hence we were, naturally, infallible, invincible and immortal - full of, as a short-lived soft drink of the era, 3V Cola, put it, Vim, Vigor and Vitality! Yet, in this current reality we are living the year that marks three-quarters of a century existing here on the third rock from the sun. We are both retired, in second marriages, proud grandfathers, a tad less infallible and invincible, and certainly convinced of our own mortality. But, and this is important - also somewhat wiser.

Which, naturally brings us to the question of which “70s” is preferable? The “ins and im” and “3 Vs” of the 1970s or the more compromised, but more thoughtful, reality of our chronological 70s? And what does that have to do with my email signature?

To explain I must return to the year when Dan and I popped into the world seven days apart, in November of 1948. This year also saw a song called Civilization by Danny Kaye and The Andrews Sisters climbing the charts. The fact that it was better known as Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, I Don't Want to Leave the Congo, is a clear indication that this was a song so replete with cultural insensitivity that it must have been offensive even then in 1948. However, like many bits of art removed from their chronological reality and examined with a more reflective eye and ear, we discover some insight in this, admittedly catchy, little tune.  

First, Mr. Kaye sings a couple of lines about the hassle of life in "civilization," that concludes:

"When they've got two weeks vacation 

They hurry to vacation ground.”

Causing the Andrews Sisters to inquire:

"What do they do, darling?"

To which Kaye responds,

"They fish and they swim

But that's what I do all year round!"

Which makes me consider the notion that in our youth, my early 20s of 1970, my focus was, as it is for most 20-year-olds, on the future and how my many successes were going to change the world.  Then "real life," arrives with its ups and downs, successes and failures, compromises and challenges.  And, strangely, somewhere along the line, the old gospel notion of "laying your burden down," creeps into your consciousness. 

Perhaps having the freedom to "swim and fish" isn't your idea of what you want to do "all year round," but still the idea of that freedom does have a certain allure.

And so I realize that the advice contained in my email signature, about cherishing and living in the moment, is something to which I should pay continuing attention. I have made my peace with the fact that I am not going to change the world single-handedly. But perhaps my children, and those myriad other children whom I taught over my 50 odd years in the classroom, will.

In the meantime, they will think, write and create -

"But that's what I do all year round!" 🤪

There Must Be a Better Way

 I don't usually use this space to complain about arboreal issues but I felt the need to make an exception as I stood in the kitchen amidst the decimated remnants of what had to have been untold numbers of trees and sundry plants, modern and ancient.

But let me begin at the beginning as authors are wont to do. Like many folks these days both my better half and I use medicines delivered by a "self-injecting" pen-like device. (Fully prescribed medications, obtained by our personal physician - nothing "dark web" or back alley.)

You may be familiar with these injectors - you hold them against the injection site, click the button on top and the injector, "injects," with varying degrees of discomfort - 1 equaling "Huh, no big deal" to 10 being "Ahhhhh, damn, damn! That hurts!" Well, after one such attempt the reaction was, "Hmmm. Nothing." The injector had failed.

A brief conversation with our friendly neighborhood pharmacist informed us that we needed to seek replacement of this pricy, or "spendie" depending on your local dialect, little gizmo from the company whom manufactured it. So we contacted them.

This required a number of back-and-forth emails amongst ourselves, the drug company and our doc, all necessary, it seems, to determine that neither we nor our physician or any close relatives or casual acquaintances were now, or had been at anytime, employees or representatives of a currently active drug cartel or other nefarious entity operating outside the law in this or any other incorporated area. We indicated that we had, to our direct knowledge, no such relationships.

All this led to a large, 18x15x15 package arriving on our porch. See large box in attached photo. Stickers on the box indicated it should be opened immediately and refrigerated.

"Honey," I called, "The frozen turkey you order has arrived." She indicated, firmly, that she had ordered no such product, nor any other large perishable foodstuffs.

The package, we discovered after digging through all the items you see in the pic, was "necessary" to deliver one, count 'em, or rather count it, I repeat one medical auto injector 6 inches long and about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. We are left with multiple "ice packs" and a futuristic double-walled, form-fitted, government and FDA approved styrofoam container suitable for mailing medically approved human organs or suspicious biohazards anywhere in the world.

And I need to mention that the company also sent an only slightly smaller set of double boxes for us to return the defective injector - same size as the replacement - a three-quarters of an inch in diameter tube six inches long. The multiple prepaid labels were, we assume, designed to prevent us from selling the defective injector on the dark web where the 1.5ml dosage could generate millions for the aforementioned cartel trolls who spend hours lurking online for just this kind of score.

I shudder to think of the countless hours spend by various government committees, not to mention the billable hours spent by equally countless attorneys - public and private, whose machinations have generated the, no doubt, hundreds and hundreds of pages of dense legal prose the contents of which define the requirements that - in order to stay inside the law - result in big pharma pushing a variety of polluting industries to ramp up the harvesting of acres of trees to produce the boxes and the pumping of millions of barrels of oil - harvested from the ancient plant life mentioned waaay up at the beginning of this post - to produce the styrofoam and "freezer friendly" global warming cold packs shipped to us. (Try reading that sentence in one breath!)

But really, don't you think big pharma could of just sent a letter saying something like:

"Hi. We are so sorry our injector failed. Enclosed please find a check for $47.50, the retail cost to compensate you for the cost of the failed injector. Please return the failed injector to the physician who prescribed it. They will be able to prescribe a replacement.

Please pardon us for any inconvenience caused by our defective injector. As additional compensation we have enclosed another check in the sum of $2,500.00 to allow you to purchase a purebred puppy of your choice.

Peace and Good Health,

Your friends at big pharma."

OK. I made up that bit about the puppy - but have you priced lab puppies recently?! But other than that, doesn't that seem a more reasonable solution to our simple injector replacement request than the web of factory production, phone calls, emails, signatures, and postal deliveries in which we were unwitting participants? 

Really.

L’Image Aumentare: Mike’s Hands

 Hi All -

Please pardon the duplications, I am working on cleaning up The Wall list. More about that later. Anyhow here, once again, is the image my Italian buddy, Mike Angelo, and I have been working on 😜.

Cheers!

In Praise of Gentleness

Fight fiercely Harvard!

Fight, fight, fight.

Impress them with our prowess, do.

Fight Fiercely Harvard, Tom Lehrer, 1960

It is, I admit, a strange way to start a post on the virtue of gentleness. But my inclination to rise to the defense of gentility beats most strongly when the world is least gentle. Starting this post, as I am, moments after President Biden has declared his intention not to pursue a second term, I decided to search for examples of quotes from individuals with legitimate intellectual credentials that echoed Trump, the Republican nominee’s simplistic exhortation "Fight, fight, fight!"

It was a difficult search once I eliminated the ritualistic chats of fans at athletic venues - never widely cited for thoughtful commentary. Equally problematic was finding specific references to, or with whom, Trump was encouraging this confrontational conflict. While references to various perceived miscreants abounded, it pretty much came down to anyone who didn't follow Trump's wide-ranging litany of evildoers who stole the last election from him.

Finally I stumbled upon Tom Lehrer, a Harvard educated mathematican, who taught math and theater at the University of California at Santa Cruz in the 60s and 70s, and penned the delightful Fight, Fiercely, Harvard. My fear is that if heard by Trump supporters with band-aids on their ears, they would fail to realize that Lehrer was best know for satire. . .

Several days have now passed and Kamala Harris appears to be the presumptive Democratic nominee. I see that as good news as she certainly aligns comfortably with my view of the world and advocates policies that would move the nation in that direction. So I will pull the lever, well, actually fill in the circle, for her come November. The bad news is that various voices within the party champion her by hailing her as a "warrior."

So there you have it, a Republican nominee whose sweeping view of the complex issues facing the nation and the world can be condensed in his mantra, "Fight! Fight! Fight!", opposed by the Democratic nominee some in the party would seek to paint as a "worthy combatant" - a "Warrior." Certainly I cannot be alone in finding this antagonistic, aggressive framing of our national political environment depressing.

Which brings me, albeit tardily, to the intended focus of this post: praising gentleness. There is a relatively simple reason why such a seemingly praiseworthy notion as gentleness needs championing. And that is because its far more common antagonists; anger, hostility, confrontation and violence, are so much easier. Ask any parent whose three-year old decided to see if the cell phone could "swim" in the toilet, or maybe see if you could flush it like they had learned "big boys and girls" did. See how easy anger is? 

And taking the easy route with anger, hostility, confrontation and violence seems to be an affliction that humanity just cannot shake. It follows us from swimming cell phones to playground squabbles to "Harvard fighting fiercely" to first-person-shooter video games to drone "warfare-at-a-distance" to old-fashioned bloodshed in the streets. All because it is easier than gentleness.

And we know it is wrong. If you read any of the foundational texts of the world's great religions and philosophical tomes, you will discover that all but a distorted few argue eloquently for gentleness, compassion, and loving kindness. Unfortunately, that has not prevented a seemingly endless parade of "pious souls" from using those same texts to make the streets run red with blood in the name of some deity, demigod, king or emperor. All because shedding blood in anger or fervor is easier than pursuing the gentleness advocated in a more compassionate reading of those saints, prophets and philosophers.

Gentleness is difficult, but is actually capable of existing beyond the covers of the writings of those prophets and philosophers inclined to friendly persuasion. I am a product of my time and culture so when I consider real-life individuals who have been able to manifest gentleness in a predominantly violent world my list (in no particular order) reflects that upbringing: Dr. King, Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela - and in a very personal cluster - my mother and older brother Jim, both sadly deceased these many years, but neither of whom can I now recall ever having raised their voice, let alone an implement, in anger toward another individual. Those other, more well-known, names belonged to people who met all the indignity and anger the world could hurl at them and turned it away with a gentle, forgiving, humanity seemingly passing all understanding.

So there are real-life models for gentleness. Your particular cluster of such individuals may overlap with parts of mine, but will no doubt extend to other worthy souls of whom I am ignorant. We need to pay attention to those models. Learn from those examples. That exercise can, in itself, be difficult and frustrating as we often run into aspects of ourselves it has been easier to ignore. Anger has been a particular bete noire for me, I still struggle with it. And occasionally I also fail to fully appreciate the unintended hurt caused by my words or actions. But as a wise person (the source and precise citation escape me at the moment) once said, "Knowing you have a problem is the first step in solving it."

So I meditate, listen to gentle music from pleasant times, draw and - I tell myself - keep taking baby steps to a more gentle me.

---

In a lovely bit of serendipity, shortly after finishing this post I came across this article in New Scientist. The title is self-explanatory.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25233625-000-survival-of-the-friendliest-why-homo-sapiens-outlived-other-humans/

We Are Such Stuff

 We are such stuff as dreams are made on,

And our little life is rounded

With a sleep.

The Tempest, William Shakespeare.

Being of an age when sleep is an erratic visitor, I tend to focus more on the dreams than the actual sleeping part. And they are strange critters, aren’t they? These dreams of ours.

If popular music is any indication, dreams are the inevitable partner of romance - of love requited and un. “When I want you, all I have to do is dream.” “When I close my eyes, I dream. And when I dream, all I ever dream about is you.” “Dream lover, until then, I go to sleep and dream again, Until all my lovers dreams come true.” Etc, etc, etc, etc. Add your favorites, :-)!

Ah, well, no offense to any of my romantic interests, from the little black-haired Irish girl who lived across the street from Jefferson Elementary, she of my earliest classroom memories, to my dear better half here with me in Burr Ridge to, as Julio and Willie put it, “all the girls I’ve loved before,” I don’t have those dreams.

Let me clarify - I think my dreams are as thematically diverse as anyone’s. The very strange thing is that when I dream - and on those rare fleeting occasions when I can remember any of the details of the dream - I dream in the presence of strangers. Although able to interact with, and converse with, the other actors in these insubstantial dramas, I am the only identifiable entity in my dreams. Upon waking, in those, fleeting recollected moments when I can recall anything about the dream, ain’t nobody I know there, ‘cept me.

I realize that this is somewhat unusual. My wife can recall, and retell, her dreams - cast and plotline - with the length and clarity of War and Peace. And the players are all real people who share her live in some way. Not I. I hang out with strangers.

One episode of an favorite old TV show, Nothern Exposure, (which I recently binge viewed in it's entirety) proposed a possible explanation. In the episode Chris and Bernard - a bi-racial pair of brothers - discover that they are having each other's dreams. Interesting notion, especially in light of my fondness for the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics. Maybe I am dreaming of the lives I am living in those other existences? How about that Professor Freud? Huh? Wadda ya think!? Stranger things have happened, right? Although none spring to mind at the moment. . 

Yet, I am pulled back, at least partially, into more realistic realms by the fact that I can recall a couple of specific dream types:

Type one: Where Is the Room?

This dream is obviously drawn from my academic life. The setting is a large convention venue. Lots of hallways, elevators, meeting rooms, sociality suites. I am supposed to be presenting a paper but cannot find the room. I am late. I am lost. I rush frantically about until rescued by the relative sanity bestowed by the breaking of the rosy fingered dawn - as some poem we had to translate in Classical Greek 101 at Kalamazoo College put it, and I awake.

Type two: Doesn't the Addams Family Live Here?

This type is similar to, but still different from, type one. I am trapped in a large spooky, gothic kind of mansion. It isn't a frightening environment as much as it is a frustrating one. I need to do something, but I don't know what or where. So I rush about never discovering what it is I seek nor where it might be located until, again, I am rescued by the rosy fingered dawn.

In both types of dreams I encounter the usual cast of familiar strangers who offer well-intentioned, but meaningless advice. My first non-dream response upon waking from either a type one or a type two dream is: "Whoa! That was weird!" And then the dream disappears.

Naturally, shortly after writing this post, the black swan that proves the exception came winging her way into my dreamscape:

My best and oldest friend accompanied me throughout the dream. We are playing golf at night on a lighted par three course, similar to, but eventually different from, one we frequented while attending high school in Springfield, Ohio.

The round started normally enough. My friend hit a lovely drive off into the lights, perhaps even onto the green. Things then got a bit strange when I attempted to tee off. The tee box turned to sand. Not golf course sand - beach sand, deep fluffy sand which would not hold a tee. Every time I placed the ball upon the tee and stood up to tee off the tee would disappear into the sand and the ball would roll away.

We finished the hole. I do not recall how. But we set off to find the second tee. Signs led us to the door of a large decrepit old mansion. We entered and found ourselves in the throes of a type two dream - hauling our golf clubs around while wandering fruitlessly about seeking the second tee. Cue the rosy fingered dawn. "Whoa! That was weird!"

Weird on several levels. First, there was a person from real life in the dream. Previously, at most, as the dream faded I might think, "Hey, that might have been .  .  ." Usually someone from at least long ago and perhaps far away.

Second, the whole athletic thing - golf and the semi-sentient golf course winding its way through some Addam's Family Mansion.

Third, and strangest of all, I remember it - at least all the salient parts.

However, given the strangeness and weirdness of my night time dreaming, I should point out that that particular cloud does have an afternoon delight silver lining: naps! I take them most days - and when I do, I do not dream. Or if I do I am blissfully unaware of the phenomenon, and awake not weird.

Well, the clock has crept past midnight and the tornado warnings have been recalled. Time to wrap this one up!

Sweet dreams!

L’Image Aumentare: Memories of Irises

 An interesting part of the conceit of this image can be found in the checkerboard patterned pieces. The idea was to not allow a colored square to touch another colored square - side-to-side or at the corners. The idea came to me after I had made some headway on the section at the upper left, so there are some exceptions there. The other two should follow the conceit, so see if you can find any flaws..

Otherwise, the image is a traditional L’Image Aumentare based on a cluster of irises photographed on a morning walk through the neighborhood.

Here is the original image:

And the initial cartoon:

And the final L’Image Aumentare 

 

Fleeting Serenity

Chaos seems to be the order of the day this 4th of July, here in the USA. Wildfires out west, Torrential rains along the Gulf coast and Florida, flooded fields in the heartland, and the far more mild irritation of “not-since-1803!” dual cicada emergence here in greater Chicagoland. Sweltering everywhere else putting psyches on edge. Politics past understanding. The new normal? I dunno. Hope not.

It all does argue for grabbing a bit of serenity wherever you can find it, right?  

Try this. Wait until dusk. Find a swath of greenery somewhere. Backyards, parks, gardens, golf courses. All good. Trees, bushes, also a plus. Now, take a seat, chair, blanket, top of a cooler - doesn’t matter. 

The idea next is to sort of “unfocus.” Look all around you, but don’t really look directly at anything - kind of a zenlike awareness. Patience, grasshopper. Waiting is. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. . .

Then ZAP! There it is! Or was it over there? Zoom! Again! Another one - but fading now. 

Fireflies. Lightening bugs. Call them what you will. 

Silent and magic, they claim the evening like tiny fairies fleeting hither and yon with blinking green and golden satchels, almost neon. They are there, then not. Gone again, only to reappear over there, or maybe there. 

For the barefoot young they invite chase. Mad flip-flop scampers over wet grass, hands swiping, or softly extended, seeking to quietly intercept the illusive prey. Then, POP! Into the Mason jar. Screw down the lid. Punch some holes in the top. Add some well-intended - but meaningless - blades of grass for seeming sustenance. Tiny romances interrupted, destined for a darkened summer bedroom to cast their fanciful, frustrated, glimmers of soft summer lights against a midnight wall.

For those of us in long pants, sleeves, socks and shoes - sporting the slightly sweet scent of Deep Woods Off - the soothing pulses stir different responses. It touches on the transcendent, linking memory, tonight, and the still masked tomorrows in a serene patchwork of the present moment.

The object of many meditative practices is to calm the mind, to step outside the hurly-burly drumbeat of contemporary life. To slow the heartbeat. To find the soothing waters of tranquility. Somehow these miniature, rhythmic, wing-borne silent pulses illuminate summer’s path to that sacred spot.

The Divinity Would Not Mind

 I find it quite depressing to read the daily death figures from the Muslim religious observance of the hajj in Saudi Arabia. The numbers vary widely, some focusing purely on restricted groups reporting only in double digits, but now major news outlets are projecting a death total exceeding a thousand souls perishing in temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a card-carrying Compassionate Agnostic, (a CA for short -  I need to remember to have those cards printed) I occasionally feel compelled to speak out on behalf of the Divinity:

It is not pleased. Come on now, here we have almost two million devout believers - many of them elderly, a demographic in which I am reluctantly included - trudging across a desert in triple digit heat to demonstrate their devotion to the Divinity.

The Divinity gratefully acknowledges the devotion, but proposes a tad more ”calendarical” flexibility for the event - especially considering global warming. (For which the Divinity is withholding judgment. All tied up with the free will choices of humanity, you know.) So moving the hajj to a less virulent time of year - like December? - would be fine with the Big D.

However, the Divinity is not holding its breath. And can we blame it? Consider our time on earth for Divinity’s sake. Seemingly, the planet has run red with “holy blood” ever since we first figured how to carves clubs and knap flint into knives, hatchets and spear points. The Divinity is quite displeased with the rampant bloodletting done in its name. It is not amused. Not at all. 

It is bad enough when, as parodied in Dr. Seuss’s delightful Butter Battle Book, two sets of contrary “believers”, bloody each other. From ancient sacrifices to crusades to pogroms to holocausts to modern armed conflicts, the Divinity is chagrined. But even more, when we visit unnecessary mayhem upon our fellow travelers, within our particular the family of belief, as it were, well, again the Divinity is not amused. 

The Divinity would far prefer that we learn to be gentle with each other, and certainly be compassionate in performing those rituals intended to show our fealty to the Divinity’s core of lovingkindness.

* What is a “compassionate agnostic?” Glad you asked, particularly since I have encountered folks who think “agnostic” and “atheist” mean the same thing. Not at all. 

To use an example from my old home, The Old North State, aka North Carolina: Folks in other parts of the country often confuse the Wolfpack of North Carolina State University, where I spent 40 some years teaching, with the Tarheels of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from which my daughters secured various degrees. The two institutions share portions of their names, but there the similarities end. The same is true with agnostic and atheist. 

To clarify:

An atheist - a-theist - denies the existence of a supreme being, a god.

An agnostic - as I use it, acknowledges the existence of a transcendent force that guides, but does not control, the nature and evolution of the cosmos.

A compassionate agnostic (CA) - again in my usage - believes that that transcendent force is compassionate, and that we, in our own little diorama of existence here on the third rock from the sun, should seek to manifest that compassion in our own lives. I have discussed elsewhere in these pages - I know, I know, sometimes at tedious length - Distilled Harmony, my own attempt to carve a path towards compassion. We CAs can natter on as we try to clarify that path. 🤪

Cloning Lilies

It had been a long time since I had done any digital manipulation with L'Image Aumentare, other than simply creating the basic "cartoon" within which I created the designs, like this, which you have already seen.

And then I colored the blanks in which gave me this image, again, which you have already seen:

But then I took the image to Staples and had them run it through their large scanner which gave me a digital version that I could manipulate in Photoshop. There I aded an addition layer, and painted a small sunset which I put behind the original Indian Lily and did a bit of cleaning on the original layer which gave me this image

Anyhow I am going to play with another type of L'Image Aumentare which entails leaving the background intact. I did a version of my Grandfather's car using that process. This time I'm going to play with a flower.  Like this:

I'll start with this picture from a nearby park:

And then remove the main flower, creating some spaces for designs.

Like this:

I'll let you know how it turns out!

Beyond the Reach of Forgiveness

Alexander Pope told us “to err is human, to forgive divine.” 

It is a comforting platitude that looks great on coffee mugs and T-shirts. Yet, I have always felt that a touch of clarification was needed: To err is easy, to forgive often seems impossible. 

One need only glimpse at the daily headlines to confirm my admittedly dour addition. Israel seemingly cannot forgive Hamas’ recent addition to the unceasing attacks of its neighbors, while Hamas and its allies are equally unforgiving of Israel’s decisive response. Ukraine is reluctant to forgive Putin’s unprovoked attack, while Putin remains unforgiving of western support of Ukraine’s surprisingly adamant resistance.

While these two international conflicts dominate our media, a deeper dive into the state of the world reveals a depressing number of “pools of intractable differences” separating “us” and “them,” supporting Kipling’s lament; “East is east, and West is west, and never the twain shall meet,” without divine intervention. Assuming, that is, that we were to agree on whose divinity takes precedence. A detente history tells us is unlikely.

Would that we were able to take comfort by focusing our attention closer to home. But we can’t. Our government is more reminiscent of scuffles on an elementary school playground than a forum for reasoned debate designed to succor the needs of “we the people” -  “Yeah, our team has only 3 felony convictions. Your guy has 34 and counting!” How about “You will both stay after school and write ‘I will play nice with others’ one hundred times on the blackboard and then clean the erasers.” Jeeez.

While the big picture would suffice to drive us to drink, the smaller image is no guarantee of inner peace. I heard a couple of years ago of someone somewhere in the various webs of extended families in which I am embedded had actually created a list of people forbidden to attend their funeral! True story, the details of which I have thankfully repressed, but talk about “beyond the reach of forgiveness!”

I came to my personal mantra of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm,  partly in the hope that it would minimize discord in my life. And to a certain extent it has. But there is a potential fly in the ointment - oppose harm. 

In every conflict I have enumerated in this post - international to interpersonal - the bugaboo of “us versus them” raises its ugly head. The “other” becomes the party whose harm we must oppose, and that opposition - depending upon degree - often places them “beyond the reach of forgiveness.” 

In family court they call those “irreconcilable differences.” And while the precise percentage of marriages that end “beyond the reach of forgiveness” is debated, it is a number that every couple tends to ignore when headed for the alter. Less visible, but equally distressing are relationships within families and among friends that end in fractures where opposing some perceived harm prevents the fostering of harmony. These situations often evolve when an individual either sees themselves as harmed by another, or wishes to protect another individual from harm, and so must place the “source of harm” at least “beyond the reach of forgiveness” and perhaps beyond anything. The internet calls one form of this negative cycle “ghosting.” You simply make the harmful other “disappear” - a rather totalitarian solution.

“Well, Schrag, thanks for ruining my day!”  I know, I know, and I am truly sorry. But I do have some positive suggestions.

First, both Pope and Kipling lay this conundrum on the shoulders of divine intervention, and if you have influence in that arena, please feel free to utilize it. However, here are some more secular suggestions as to how we might deal with instances in our lives that may have somehow crept “beyond the reach of forgiveness.”

While Google has removed its classic mantra “Don’t Be Evil” from its corporate code it seems a good idea for us to revive it in ours. And couple it with this: Don’t Escalate. Bite back the “deserved” response. Or to steal a phrase from the medical community: primum non nocere, or “first, do no harm.” More simply, chill.

Next let me steal my email signature which you usually see when The Wall is sent to you:

“Who we are is a quality of the moment. What we have done in the past cannot be undone, and what we have promised for the future remains but a promise. So live each moment in the awareness that it defines you.”

To condense that for this particular post: Let bygones be bygones. Don’t dwell on the past, live face to the future.

Internationally, those issues are pretty much beyond our control except as we seek to influence those who do have an impact. For us here in the USA, that remains a question for the ballot box and your checkbook. In those instances, I do come back to Distilled Harmony, and seek, to vote for and support, to what extent possible, candidates who advocate inclusiveness and loving kindness and eschew conflict and denigration. 

Sometimes a tough task. And tho’ a true child of the sixties who has carried my share of signs in the streets, I have lost touch with the more overt manifestations of discord on college campuses where I spent most of my life. The intent always seems to rail against those one has declared to be “beyond the reach of forgiveness.” A strategy based in intimidation and conflict - signposts on the very road to a world “beyond the reach of forgiveness.”

Interpersonally, I, to re-emphasize, will revert again to my email signature, and while not denying my past, occasionally spectacular, stumbles, will seek to do better in the all important, and uniquely controllable, present.

L'Image Aumentare: Indian Lily Final

 This is one of those images when asked "How long did it take you to do that?" I simply point out that it took Klimt three years to complete the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. This image did not take that long.

The title of this work stems from the fact that the original photo was of a flower in the calla lily family called Indian Shot. In most email apps if you click on the image it pulls it out in a separate window.  The painted image is 14 x 19 inches.

Indian Lily

The Lesson of the Cicadas

 Those of us who live around northern Illinois and southwestern Wisconsin are being visited by these red-eyed critters. They are “Brood XIII of 17-year cicadas.” Brood XIX of 13-year cicadas” are popping up south and east of us. The first dual emergence of two broods since 1803!! So, wow! I thought there must be some deep Gia eco-planet lesson to be learned from such a rare event.

So what should we know about cicadas? OK. The cicadas that are camping out and making such a racket in the trees around here, mate and the females lay eggs in grooves they make in the bark of the trees. The eggs hatch as nymphs who drop to the ground and burrow down to hang out for 13 or 17 years, when they surface again. To wit:

These are the holes in the dirt you see around the trees where the nymphs emerge.

Then the nymphs climb up the tree. 

 

Where they molt their nymph identity and emerge as adults.

Then both male and female adults die off in a few weeks. Then, as stated above, nymphs hatch from the eggs and drop to the ground, where they tunnel down for the 13 or 17 year hiatus, surface again, molt out of their nymph shells, and climb up the trees to start all over again. Deep huh? 

Is that all there is? I mean aren’t we missing something here? 13 or 17 years underground - just sucking on tree roots? There has to be more to it than that. I’m thinking nymph drive-ins, cafes, elementary schools, car pools. We’re talking bazillions of cicada teenagers who all decide to pop up at the same time, have cicada orgies, and then commit mass suicide. 

How do they decide on that? Yeah, I know, I know, teenagers assert their individuality by all doing the same things, clothes, music, slang, at the same time. But mass migration, cicada raves, and suicide? A bit much don’t you think?

But then I think maybe I’m pushing the secret lives of cicadas theme a bit too far. Maybe there is no deeper message here. Eat, sleep for a really long time, procreate and die. That’s all she wrote for cicadas. 

They are, after all, just teenagers with, as far as we know, very little brain - sort of like human teenagers, who, however, have the advantage of growing in to fully functioning adults who can live for decades - sometimes behaving rationally.

But there is a legitimate gripe for both cicada and human teens: can’t y’all do whatever you are going to do a bit more quietly?

 

Leaving Paris

My answer to the question “What do you teach?” shifted over my four decades in college classrooms. Back in the 70s it was “radio-tv-film.” The 80s brought “mass communication.” And then in my last couple of decades it became “communication media and technology.” You know, everything digital, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook and all their progeny.

I’m not sure what moniker the discipline shelters under these days, but, as in days gone by, it will rub up against its kissing cousin - journalism. And while journalism has undergone some painful metamorphosis of its own in the digital age one of its underlying principles remains unchanged: If it bleeds, it leads. (IIBIL).

I currently have at least four major “news” sites on my iPad: The New York Times, something called 1440, which bills itself as an “unbiased news source”, The Guardian, a British site, and New Scientist, for all things science. With the exception of New Scientist, they all cling to the IIBIL mantra, which, in our digital age allows them to dredge up mankind’s inhumanity to humanity from anywhere on the globe. 

Sliding smoothly into second place is reportage dealing with political attacks threatening either violence at the polls, leaving democracy as we know it lying in the battered halls of Congress, or implying further worldwide boycotts, embargoes, ecological disasters or bloodletting. 1440 does have a section called “Humankindness” but you have to scroll down past all the IIBIL mayhem to get to it. Still better than nothing, I guess.

I started writing this on Mother’s Day, and as mine used to say, “The world is too much with us.” Amen, to that. I have grown weary with the existential coarsening of this globe we all must share. Which brings me to Cezanne.

Paul Cezanne was a French artist who worked from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s. He started hanging out, and hanging his art up, with the Impressionists, Monet, Renoir and that crowd in Paris. But he never did get in with the in-crowd. The big city critics were particularly vicious and derisive. Which caused Cezanne to take himself off to the less judgmental bucolic countryside of his youth in Aix-en-Provence saying:  “The world doesn’t understand me, and I don’t understand it, which is why I have retreated from it.” And it was there, far from the madding crowd, that he did his best work.

So, I say to myself, “Self, can you follow Cezanne’s example, and retreat from the world?”  “Hmmm,” I replied. “Let me think about that.”

OK. The following suggests itself:

Cezanne left Paris to escape the negative environment created by the critics and various naysayers. The negative environment I find most worrisome is the one created by the IIBIL bias in the major news sources clamoring for space on my screen. So it seems best for my psyche to shun their digital version of Paris.  Banish The New York Times, The Guardian, 1440, etc. from my morning screen, keeping only The Art Newspaper, The New Scientist and The National Geographic. That won’t totally eliminate IIBIL, which is almost impossible to avoid, but it will greatly reduce the vitriol and gore.

No, I hear you. Doesn’t that make me a cultural slacker? Voluntarily uninformed? At fault for the ills of the world by not seeking to understand and correct them? Well, yes and no. Should Cezanne have stayed in Paris? Trying to convince those who had repeatedly refused him entry to the best shows and galleries? Or was it wiser to escape to the countryside and do the work that later inspired Picasso, Braque, Mondrian and others? If I have to choose, I’m coming down for country.

Leaving the IIBILs folk behind might well elevate my own moods and emotions, leaving me free to better pursue my L’Image Aumentare work which feels like my most mature and satisfying work to date. However, that does lead to a bit of a conundrum - the idea of sharing your best work.

My most convenient avenue for sharing my work is the one before you on the screen - The Wall.  A couple of problems there. First, unless you are a confirmed techie with a huge hi-rez monitor, you see a terribly compromised version of my art. I took a few images into my doctor at my last physical. He is a bit unique. Named among the ten best doctors in the greater Chicago area for the last several years, he also writes and publishes children’s books and messes around with stained glass. He was nonplussed with the difference between L’Image Aumentare in real life and the images on the screen. Real is far better than digital.

So that brings me to the second “sharing” issue. As Cezanne discovered, the best way to fully share your work is to have it on display either in a public show or through a gallery. I did have a show a couple decades ago back in Raleigh. Good feedback, but nothing was for sale. I have sold some pieces privately, but that was uncomfortable - and this points clearly to my second issue. Let’s say I find a gallery up here in Chicagoland willing to represent L’Image Aumentare. Cool. But if you show in a gallery you are supposed to sell your work. And give a more than generous slice of the price to the gallery. That is what a gallery is for, to make money. But, there is - in my mind - a more pressing concern: if you sell your work, you have to give the piece to the buyer. I don’t want to do that. I want to keep them all. A lot of hours, tired hands and eye strain go into each piece. Like I said, I want to keep them. Obviously a paradox with which I will have to deal.

The other major issue I need to consider as I pack my existential bags in preparation to depart Paris is leaving the cafe society, the street scene. Cezanne never became part of cafe society in Paris. I equate that with my profound ennui regarding the IIBIL mentality of contemporary media. Hence, leaving Paris and heading down the digital road to country. However, I do enjoy discussing the issues related to Distilled Harmony [Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm.] that I often explore here on The Wall.

But fortunately, it is The Wall that is my cafe society. Let me side track for a brief history of The Wall. You need a break right? OK, The Wall began back in 1990 when I finished my book, Taming The Wild Tube with the University of North Carolina Press.  When the writing stopped the thinking went on. I would print out the little thought pieces and tape them on the wall behind my computer - hence - drum roll - The Wall, or sometimes Schrag Wall.

Then in April of 1993 the internet went pubic, and I took the paper version of The Wall onto the internet by posting those little thought pieces on a blog - the one you are reading now. [To clarify, you get The Wall as a blind copy so no one on The Wall knows who else is on the Wall unless you share that information with each other.] The Wall obviously started going out to folks I saw as possibly interested, and with whom I emailed; so friends, family, former students, etc. The list has ballooned to maybe 85 names - some of whom have shuffled off this mortal coil and I need to remove them. Others have turned their attention elsewhere and either block or quickly delete The Wall.  However, the blogger app tells me, some 30 or 40 of you do open the posts, and I assume that some subset of y’all actually work your way with me as I natter on about this or that. I know some of you do since you respond - and that is the only way I know who you are, since the app only tells me how many folks open the post, not who you are.

But that is fine. You see, embedded in the list of 80, and - I choose to believe - represented in those 30 or 40 who open the posts, is everyone that I really care about. There is no need to table hop, trying to touch base with the people who are important in my life because you are all here. Oh, you may drift off a bit if the main course is too salty or spicy or bland for your taste. You may sneak out before dessert. No problem. You’ll still get gladly served the next time The Wall pops out of the oven!

And I’m taking you all with me as I put Paris in the rearview window.