A Moving Journal: Entry Two

Selection by Exhaustion 

I'm going to leave this paragraph in here, even though I think I fixed it:

I don’t know how many of you, if any will actually see this post. One result of moving induced exhaustion was the deletion of all the email addresses to whom the Wall is sent. There may be a way to retrieve them within the Evernote app, but I think I need to be on a computer to do so. Being restricted to my phone and tablet for the time being, that attempt will have to put on hold. The possible silver lining to this dark cloud is the fact that while The Wall is sent to about 85 folks, only 35 or so of you actually look at it. Yes! Blogger does tell me that, but unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your feelings regarding digital privacy, Blogger does not tell me who the 35 are!  Anyhow, no use worrying about that until I am back in front of my computer - sometime next month.

But that is not the selection by exhaustion issue that concerns me at the moment. One of the most vexing issues of moving house - I like the British version - is the “what to keep/what to leave” dichotomy. It is influenced by a variety of variables - some pragmatic, like how does the space being moved to differ from the space currently lived in?  And is that favorite piece of driftwood from Santa Fe worth the cost of moving it from North Carolina to Chicago? But the pragmatic is inextricably interwoven with the emotional.

After a good night’s sleep, breakfast and a cup of coffee or an energy drink, making those decisions is well within your capabilities. But eight or nine hours later, after many such decisions and trips to Goodwill and the dump, exhaustion raises its evil head, or more accurately, lays down its weary head and the possibility of bad decisions runs amuck. 

Like great, grand Aunt Cecilia’s wedding dress. “God, the fabric and the faux pearls alone weigh a ton. And those are moth holes! Besides the woman died in 1837!” And there goes Aunt Cecilia into the Goodwill box.

It is fortunate that neither children or pets share our current abode, or Aunt Cecilia might have some company!

A Moving Journal

For those of you who didn't get the earlier post, back in early July Evernote decided to erase all the email addresses that I use to send the Wall out to you. I knew there was a way to retrieve them, but it was one of those archaic situations where you needed to be on a "desktop" computer to complete the task. Well, I was on my iPad and restricted to that or my phone. Neither of which allowed me to "retrieve" the old files. But now I am back up in Burr Ridge and have - I think - successfully got them back. I say I think because none of the internet posts purporting to tell me how to rescue the files actually worked. But as I say, I think I found a way to make it work.  So here goes. From mid-July:

Entry 1. Why the Brits Call it “Moving House.”

It seems a more realistic description of the process. We, on this side of the pond, simply refer to it as moving. Rather simplistic. I mean, you get up in the morning and set about getting breakfast - you’re moving right? But just moving doesn’t even scratch the surface of what we are going through. Moving house on the other hand, putting a whole house on your back and dragging it across the street, or across the country does seem a better description.

My car now drives itself to Goodwill, the Public Library and the county convenience waste disposal site, while I struggle with the guilt that comes with sending so many trees to the cardboard factories and plastic out into the ocean. I’m hoping the Goodwill and Library trips balance out the trash runs, karma-wise.

There is some good news today. While taking 173 pictures to add to the "for insurance list" I found myself getting reacquainted with things, paintings, masks, glass and crystal - some beautiful bits and pieces that I’d forgotten or just overlooked as they became “normal.”  The same is true with dozens, nay, hundreds of pre-digital photos that has been lurking in drawers and files. Some faded faces and places from decades ago. Even a few from the 1800s, that had undoubtedly survived multiple rounds of “moving house.” Far be it from me to break their streak, so I placed them into our “photo vault” to be hand-carried up to Chicagoland. I’m sure someday, someone will figure out who they are, and how they came to be “one of us.”

Which reminded me of a Curiosity Stream video I saw on crustaceans. I was particularly struck by the hermit crab. This feisty little sea creature goes through life “moving house” by simply slipping out of it's current shell and then appropriating a steady stream of ever larger, fully furnished, abandoned abodes, moving in and calling each one “home.” Ah, some creatures have all the luck.

Cheerio, or Raisin Bran, or Corn Flakes.

I Didn’t Know It Was a Hymn

 I thought it was a song called On My Journey, by The Chad Mitchell Trio, on their 1960 album, Mighty Day on Campus. And, no I didn’t pull that reference off the top of my head - did some online searching for the repeating chorus that was stuck in my head:  When I’m on my journey, Don’t you greave after me, I don’t want you to greave after me. Other Internet sources, I think maybe Wikipedia, does credit the trio with the lyric, but there is more to it than that.

Apparently you can find the “don’t greave after me” phrase in Revelations 1:7, and there is a 1927 bluegrass version by Ernest Phipps as well as a number of versions between then and now. So it is a notion that seems to have a lot of sticking power. It is particularly germane to me these days as I observe the greaving instilled by the passing of my friend Smitty that I wrote about here earlier. 

Despite the fact that he was 93, it wasn’t supposed to happen. But then I suppose it rarely is. Even when “it was a blessing,” one can’t help thinking that it would have been a far greater blessing had one been able to turn the clock back to when “things were OK” and life could go on without the rude interruption of death. But we can’t.

And despite some fascinating theoretical work by brilliant minds, the arrow of time still points forward. And after death comes the sorrow of the living. Smitty was such a happy, positive guy, I cannot help but think that he would not have wanted to be the cause of the grief his passing instituted. But then I realized that, of course, like everything else it was now out of his hands. The task of dealing with death falls to the living.

So I began to think of how I might structure a plan designed to mitigate any suffering my passing would bring to those that “he is survived by.” There is an apparently controversial quote used by, and argued about by singers, poets and philosophers that goes like this: Live everyday as if it were your last one, ‘cause one day you’re gonna be right.”  

The controversy seems to center on the first phrase, with critics contending that it is just pragmatically impossible to live everyday with that kind of existential focus. To me, that begs the issue that concerns me at the moment. That issue is more “other centered.”  What, I wonder, is the impact of your passing on those around you. Something we rarely consider when we are “fine, thank you.”

Most “professional estate planners,” seem most concerned about financial issues, and that is certainly important. But for the living, equally- if not more - important is the strange collapsing of time that death creates. The future becomes today. What we planned, or anticipated for tomorrow, or next month, or next year, becomes now. And the demands of that “imperative now” drags the “survived by” into a confrontation with a “vacated present” that is the very last place they wish to consider.

So what, I ask myself, should I do to minimize the extent of the grief experienced by my “survived bys?”  A few thoughts strike me: clarify, simplify, and communicate. Clarify what I want done. Cremation - ashes to be scattered according to directions left with my significant “sbs” (those “survived by” folks.) Simplify the easiest route to the instructions clarified in “clarify” above. Think, then simplify again. Communicate via any necessary means, electric messages or documents, hard copy, psychic link, (gotta think what might be available when I check out), whatever, the content of clarify and simplify to all “sbs” and any unavoidable legal entities.

And now what is really important. The reasons why no one should “greave after me”: I am, and hope to continue for a bit yet, living a ridiculously lovely life. I have experienced wonderful places, been loved by precious people, had the freedom and opportunities to create in a variety of media, and will hopefully be “survived by” many of those who made that all possible. So once I do carry on over to my next exciting existence, should my “sbs” feel inclined to gather in my name, let them focus on celebrating and remembering that lovely life in joy and do not “greave after me.”  

80s Dude

 Having once been married to one, I know that archaeologists and cultural anthropologists often date mysterious artifacts by comparing them to better known artifacts recovered from the same site. I still watch a lot of “ancient excavation” videos. So it isn’t surprising that on a recent pre-move visit to Raleigh, I began to excavate the ancient site known as the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet in my basement office, or “the nethermost drawer.” Much had been written about it, but scholars were unable, with any certainty, to discern which stories about its contents were myth and which had roots in historical fact. I decided to take the plunge and actually look into the drawer.

I was able to cleverly discern, largely from dates actually written on various documents, that these were actually documents created at various time during the 1980s CE. But then sandwiched between artifacts of which I had vague memories, I came across this image:

While it bore stylistic signatures of the current millennium, I had no recollection of having created this image. This was different from having no recollection of where we had dinner last week or where I put my car keys. Those are normal memory glitches that no longer bother me. This was a drawing - ostensibly mine. And I remember my drawings. Often where I was when I created them, sometimes what I was thinking when I created the drawing. Not that guy. No idea where it was created, who it was, what prompted it. All I knew was that it was created sometime, somewhere in the 1980s. All else was lost in the mists of that decade of long ago.

I was left with only one investigative option. Enlarge the image and color it. I did so and here is the result:

And now, gazing at it in this reconstructed form, I realize I still have no idea when or where I created the drawing. Or, a touch disconcerting, what I was thinking at the time. Still, coloring it was fun! I plan to apply for grants from The National Geographic Society and The National Science Foundation to continue my research at this unique and too often ignored site.

Merle B. Smith: A Requiem

 My friend Smitty died on June 12th.  I think it was the 12th. Not sure, these things screw with your sense of time. Not important. Anyhow, a fall into a mindless spiky bush visited more trauma than, eventually, his 93-year old body could endure. He was an exemplary, self-reliant man and, in my opinion, the indignities of the prodding and personal invasions from his well-intentioned medical team were just more than he could put up with. Besides, his beloved black lab Vito Muso had departed not that long ago. So Smitty just said “No!” when they wanted to pound on his chest and stick more tubes down his throat. And he closed his eyes and went off to look for his puppy.

I choose to believe he found not one, but two lively labs - Vito and his predecessor, Safransky. Safransky was admittedly more reserved, and definitely larger, than the lovable Vito. But they still made a good pair to show Smitty around. Is it foolish to flesh out this fantasy about my departed buddy and his canines? I think not. You see, if there is anything comforting about the death of our loved ones, it is that no one has ever demonstrably come back to either confirm or deny our personal narratives regarding an afterlife. 

Now before you start quoting faith and belief, remember those are, in the final analysis, rather evidence-free narratives. They are beliefs about an afterlife that folks choose. And that is fine. I just happen choose a quantum-mechanics-many-worlds afterlife narrative that, among other neat, compassionate, and forgiving things, allows for Smitty throwing balls for Vito and Safransky on a pleasant beach, while Smitty and Vito sip martinis. You see, I never actually saw Safransky drink a martini, but Vito?  I have the video.

After Christine and I moved in with Smitty in Burr Ridge, he and I soon became fast friends.  Alright, so he was a couple decades older than I. And we shared the unique characteristic of having, again decades apart, both married Christine. A little strange, but we both saw it as confirmation of our excellent taste. Nonetheless, he and I developed a nice kind of comfortable rapport. We were both fond of music and luckily between my mother’s renditions of songs from the 30s and 40s, my brother Jim’s great collection of records from the 50s and 60s and my own involvement with popular music, show tunes and the media thereafter, we had music pretty well covered, and spent many delightful hours playing our own version of “name that tune.”

He also had those Labradors that I fell in love with. First, there was Safransky  who I met when he was living with Christine. Safransky was sometimes mistaken for a pony. Big dog, rather aloof, hogged the bed, but eventually tolerated me rather well. But then there was Vito Muso - undoubtedly the best dog who ever lived. Understood everything you said to him, with the unfortunate exceptions of “come back here,” “stay,” “sit,” and other words some canine owners consider important. But “park,” “ball,” and “martini?” Those were right there in his wheelhouse. And most importantly he loved us every bit as much as we loved him. 

After Vito passed on, some of the light went out of Smitty. Often out of the blue he would say, “I really miss Vito!” So said we all, Smitty, so said we all. And strangely, or perhaps not, when he would talk to Vito about dying - OK, I’d eavesdrop, it was an unusual conversation. “We’re going out together, buddy!” he’d say, rubbing Vito’s ears, “Going out together.” And then he’d give Vito the rest of the martini.

So, to continue my narrative, when I shuffle off this mortal coil, and opt to spend some time in the men’s club portion of my conception of heaven - if my lifelong best friend Dan hasn’t shuffled more quickly and arrived before me up there - I’ll find Smitty hanging out peacefully by himself, feet up in front of the fire, two black labs snoozing alongside. He’ll look up and say, “Took you long enough! I told you it was martini time!”

Here’s looking at you, brother.

Tiny Druids

 So I decided to try the Druids on regular letter-sized paper. 8.5 by 11. It was an interesting experiment resulting in hair that needed, again, Sharpe Ultra Thin markers, a headlight, and two sets of reading glasses worn over each other. I like the way the image turned out. But I was simultaneously working on a large version 24 x 19 of the same image which included coloring the bricks. But I’ve done a version like that already, and I am wondering “Do I really need two?” Maybe it is time to move on to another image? I dunno.

Anyhow, here are the Tiny Druids:

Spoke too soon🥴

 Family member back in ICU. Good vibes, remote Reike, prayers, etc, all appreciated 🙏F

And Now, Finally, the Internet

 You probably sense some approach/avoidance going on here. You are right. It is difficult to write about the Internet. Because, as one of the early denizens of this particular digital jungle has popularized, “It’s complicated!” 

Back when I taught courses about this stuff I would assert that every new medium would cannibalize the content of the previous medium, thereby stealing it’s audience, advertisers and profits. And that was usually true: records and movies stole from live performances, radio stole from records, television stole from radio and movies. It was a medium eat medium kind of world. But it was a kind of technology-controlled kind of cannibalism.  You took the content from the older medium and put it in a “package” that subsumed older packages. You couldn’t “play” a book on your gramophone, you couldn’t watch a movie on your telephone.

Until the world went digital. I have a former student who grew up, quite successfully, in the world when radio was a huge medium in the world of popular music. I remember quite clearly the day he came into my office and declared that this was “the day the music died.”  Well he didn’t actually say that. Don McLean wrote that in his 1971 hit, American Pie, but the feeling was much the same. 

What set the young man off was what he saw as the unholy alliance between mp3s, the earliest forms of digitized songs, and internet sites like Napster, founded by Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker and Hugo Saez Contreras in 1999. Internet sites like Napster allowed free downloading and sharing on those mp3s. Napster eventually went broke under the weight of multiple copyright infringement lawsuits and shut down in 2002. But rather than being the day the music died, the Napster/mp3 alliance was instead the tip of the iceberg.

Soon a myriad of hackers, entrepreneurs, academics, and kids with “trash 80s,”  (Radio Shack’s TRS-80, which until 1982 was the best selling microcomputer in the world) began to digitize everything - music, books, movies, typed notes, lists, personal texts (aka Short Message System SMS). You fill in the rest as we jump into the world that came to be after April 30th, 1993, the day the Internet went public and the World Wide Web was born. And now, some three decades later, we have what Mark Zuckerberg grandiosely calls the metaverse.

Not a bad moniker actually, considering the extent to which we are dependent upon digital information zipping through the wires and ethers of the world to find life on our computers, tablets and smartphones. Be honest now, in addition to reading this Schrag Wall post, what else have you used the internet for today - or in the last few minutes for that matter? Amazing, right? And just a little bit spooky? Perhaps we can tame the digital monster a bit by chopping it up into bites (bytes? Sorry, couldn’t resist) that are a bit easier to chew and swallow.

The Corporate Byte: It would not be hard to argue that today there is nothing but the corporate byte. Amazon, an alternative online bookstore that Jeff Bezo started in his garage in 1994, not too long after the Internet went public, eventually morphed into “the everything store” where you can buy, well, everything!  If you don’t believe me think of something and Google it.

Oh, yeah. Google. According to Wikipedia, “Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by computer scientists Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University” And Wikipedia, according to itself, began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered^[2] by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.  And both Google and Wikipedia are places we go, often, to get information about stuff that we then buy on Amazon. So you can see what I mean by the corporate Internet being dominated a few huge entities to which I should add Microsoft and Apple, who announced yesterday its new Vision Pro Headset, that lets you live, simultaneously, in the real, physical world and the metaverse. Sort of like those anablep fish with four eyes that can see above and below the water at the same time. Weird.

This is probably a good place to bring up the fact that a couple of years ago I added a fourth tenet to my worldview, Distilled Harmony. That new tenet was Distill Complexity, a gentle reminder to myself to “keep it simple, stupid!”  I could have used that tenet far earlier. I had occasion, a couple of days ago, to go back and look at some Wall posts from a decade or so ago. Jeeez. Even I couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. The point in this particular post is that there really isn’t much point in wandering around in the corporate byte. We use it. We have little to do with its structure. And we can’t change it.

Of far more importance is how the structure of the Internet has come to affect the way we communicate with each other - or don’t. I recently came across this post on a science oriented site I follow. I forget which, could be National Geographic, New Scientist, or maybe Science News.They tend to run together in my head, but the quote is germane here: “Social media can serve scientists as a refuge and a community — or a source of terrible abuse.”

On the one hand the Internet is incredibly helpful. We currently have a family member in the hospital recovering from a fall. (Good news there. Recovery moving along.) The point is that we can do updates to the whole family with group texts or emails without having to repeat the same information via multiple telephone calls. Furthermore, these Wall posts go out to some 90 folks, all of whom are, or were at some time intimates, close friends, colleagues, or family members. So I can easily keep all of you up to date on the strange state of Schrag’s brain.

But the way that you receive the Wall also reveals the tip of the dark side of the interpersonal internet. When you get the Wall you only see your name, but as I just told you there are 90 of you “out there.” But I send the Wall out as “blind copies.” Only you see your email version and you use it in different ways. Many of you treat it as sort of a magazine, read it or not, and move on. Some of you comment, and we can chat about your comments. Others, no doubt, may never see it, perhaps because the email I have is out of date, points to a deceased individual, or the user automatically blocks the post. I have no way of knowing. But the important thing is that both you and I have the option of engaging or not, with different degrees of anonymity.

Problematically, the interpersonal aspect of the internet - commonly referred to as “social media,” Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc., etc., etc. have, in addition to being helpful avenues of communication, become enablers of bullying, and the “hiding in plain sight,” places for hate groups of every stripe spewing vitriol and misinformation that is often hard to avoid, and almost impossible to refute. That porous characteristic of social media no doubt brought on the “good news/bad news” post from the frustrated scientist cited above.

Also problematic in the “only sometimes anonymous internet” is the, apparently common, tactic of “ghosting.” In ghosting one side of a relationship simply becomes a “ghost,” ceasing all interaction with the previous “other” in the relationship. There are obviously relationships and situations in which becoming a “ghost” is wise and self-protective. In others it is cruel and cowardly.

So let us return for a moment to the new tenet of Distilled Harmony, “Distill Complexity” - or keep it simple, stupid. I think, for me anyhow, the best way to deal with the incredible complexity of the internet is to continue to follow those four Distilled Harmony tenets:

Foster Harmony - avoid those places and individuals on the internet that/who are strident, confrontational and hateful.

Enable Beauty -  Seek out the incredible rich sources of beauty on the internet, photography, fine art, poetry have all carved out niches easily located on the net. Find them, enjoy them, contribute to them.

Distill Complexity - Try to avoid those individuals and organizations - no matter how cleverly named - whose sites seem to wind around logic and/or cite seemingly sacred sources in pursuit of bigotry and evil. 

More pragmatically if you find yourself ensnared in government or organizational or commercial sites that fail to allow you to accomplish the task that led you to the site call someone - customer, client, constituent support is usually a good place to start - on the phone and insist on speaking to a human being who can address your issue.

Oppose Harm - As I stated here not long ago, the best way to accomplish the fourth tenet is to pay close attention to the first three. That certainly applies here.

And to those tenets of Distilled Harmony I would add the good old notion of treating the Internet, and the people you interact with there, as you would want them and the Internet to treat you.

So to close this ramble, let me observe that interacting with the Internet these days really is interacting with the world, and I have discovered, for myself anyhow, that the same principles I hope to follow in life apply to our digital communication. I need to point out that my coming to this conclusion has been, like everything else in life, a process. I have in the past fractured some of the very Internet interaction principles I now profess. I hope to avoid those errors in the future. But like I said, it’s complicated and a process. You just keep on trying.

Another Profession Bites the Dust

 One would think that being retired and in my early 70s I would stop worrying about what I would be “when I grow up,” but apparently not.  The whole “job of the future” thing got started for me early in grade school. They gave us “aptitude tests”. You answered a bunch of questions, undoubtedly drawn up by psychologists and other related professionals. The answers were then fed into what had to be early computers and the results decided the job best fitted with our “aptitudes.”  I was slated to be a forest ranger. I think I was in also in the midst of reading the novels of James Oliver Curwood, all set in the wilds of northern Canada. But I’m sure that had no influence on my test defined “aptitudes,” wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

A variety of ideal jobs followed my life, world famous thespian, renowned architect, etc., before I settled on university professor. Worked out well for the most part. However, back at the turn of the millennium, I began to think I really missed the boat by not pursuing a career more aligned with my art, which was claiming more and more of my free time. 

Then Christine and I took a few weeks off in Italy - Venice and Florence. I think it was in Florence. In a large side gallery of the Uffizi, a couple of art restorers were working on a large canvas. They were behind a rope barrier, but you could watch. I was like Toad from Wind in the Willows, encountering his first motorcar.  “There! There is the perfect job for me!”

It is a feeling I have clung to since. However jobs in the field tend not to welcome applicants with my resume.  I choose to believe that it is not my maturity that discourages them, but rather the fact that I have neither training nor experience in the field. Perhaps it was an “I’ll show them!” attitude that led me to explore finer detail in my own images. I would use Druids, a version of which I believe I have posted here, has always been one of my favorites. The original is 24 x 19 inches, and is very detailed.  I’ll jump over and see if I have a copy of that.  Nope, the image is Photoshop and blogger doesn’t like that.

Anyhow, so I decided to do an 8.5 x 11 inch very tiny version of the original to demonstrate my detail versatility.  This image is a detail from that smaller version.  It is about 4 x 3.5 inches:I had to use Sharpie Ultra Fine Points to add the color. I’m fine with how she came out. But I was exhausted, even after just working in bursts of a couple hours, naps, reading and beverages in between. 

Somehow I think that a professional art restorer would be expected to follow a different work schedule. So, alas, my life as a professional art restorer seems not to be in the cards. So I’ll finish this image, content to know that this version of Druids will be a one of a kind.

Maybe I ought to give that forest ranger thing some thought. Neat views from up in those towers, and I’m not that afraid of heights. You think they have put elevators in by now?

Steve and Me

 It is a presumption, I realize. Had we met in real life I would have said, “It is an honor to meet you Dr. Hawking.” Only in my imagination does he reply, “Aw, shucks. Just call me Steve.” However, since he passed away in March of 2018, decades after his doctors had predicted, he will not contradict my undeserved familiarity. Unless he slips through a wormhole out there in space-time. And if anyone could do it, it would be he. . . . Hmmm.

Anyhow, before leaving this present consciousness, Hawking created a TV series titled, fittingly, Genius. However, it was not a paean to his own genius, but rather an attempt to demonstrate his contention that anyone could think like a genius, if you simply asked the right questions. To do this he recruited a team of three “ordinary volunteers” and, by asking them to solve a number of challenges, he would lead them to genius like answers to these persistent questions humans are wont to ask:

1. Can we time travel?
2. Are we alone?
3. Why are we here?
4. Where did the universe come from?
5. What are we?
6. Where are we?

It is a delightful series, not always just for the answers to which Hawking’s questions lead his volunteers, but rather for the exquisite construction of the challenges he posits for the volunteers. From an incredible Rube Goldberg device to lasers across lakes and mountain tops he creates a wonderful tour de force of education in action, taking his volunteers step-by-step to a shared genius insight. It is a must see for teachers of any grade level - K through grad school.

But it did leave me with a question I wish Steve was still around to address. In the third episode, Why Are We Here? Hawking leads his volunteers into the quantum realm of many worlds, one of my favorite “what if that is true?” spaces. If you have the time and the inclination, hunt up the episode and watch it. Hawking’s reveal is just brilliant. To condense the notion, admittedly incompletely, many worlds asserts that all the options we consider in our lives generate all “paths not taken” out in the very real “many worlds” that exist in the multiverse. Didn’t take that job? Yes, you did in a parallel world out in the multiverse. Didn’t marry that person? Yup. Out in the multiverse. Didn’t move to Alaska? In the multiverse you did.

I am delighted Steve came down on the side of many worlds because, as I implied, I buy it. But watching his genius path to those many worlds made me wonder what was my relationship, if any, to those other versions of me living out their lives on those roads I did not take. Making the very unlikely assumption that there is - or will be - the option to communicate with those other versions of me, do I have ethical or moral obligations? Do I need to explain to myself why I made the choice I did that sent this version of me down this path? Are congratulations or apologies in order?

You see my problem Steve? Are you out there somewhere, somewhen? You reading this? Come on, Steve, help a guy out.

In Lieu of Monotheism and The Internet

 (Spoiler alert: This started out, as most of these posts do as an “interesting thought” that got stashed in a file I call possible Walls.”  It hung out there for a while, sort of tickling back while I was drawing or something. Then we went back to Raleigh for a couple of weeks to do some pre-move cleaning, packing, fixing a dead AC unit, and, delightfully, spending a bit of time with the Raleigh kids and grand babies. Well, I have moved all my drawing paraphernalia up to Burr Ridge, so found myself working with words instead - specifically this post. It has morphed into if not the longest post on The Wall, certainly one of them. I tell you this to allow you to plan how/where/if you chose to read it.  It is not one you can glance over while standing in the checkout line at the grocery store. However, if you do happen to glance at it there, go grab another bottle of wine, or something stronger. Take it home. Put your feet up, and settle in, as Monty Python would say  “for something completely different.”)

As you can no doubt tell from the title this one will get a bit weird. It may not make it toThe Wall as it really only makes sense to me say, between midnight and 3 AM. But I must admit that the title is a bit of a lie. It was my intention to tackle both monotheism and the internet in this post, but - taking pity both on you and my wrinkly grey matter, I’m going to restrict this post to monotheism and take up the internet issues next time around.

The reason I was initially tempted to pair the issues is that they both have issues of connectivity. But as I said, I’m going to put the Internet on the shelf until next time. So on to monotheism. I think it was last week - pardon the uncertainty, we are down in Raleigh chipping at the absurd amount of work needed to get the townhouse ready to sell. Anyhow, I watched this video on recent excavations in the city of Pompeii. Apparently these excavations were the first ever to penetrate the nearly 20 feet of volcanic ash and other pyroclastic material from Mt. Vesuvius that buried the city on August 24, 79 CE. The tragedy struck with such swiftness that flight was futile and so many of the city’s residents died where they stood, engaged in everyday activities. Among those activities was folks making offerings at their household shrines to their household gods to secure prosperity, long happy lives, etc., etc. The gods apparently were not listening, or were perhaps busy elsewhere, hence putting those particular supplications “on hold.”

Monotheism, however, claims 24/7 service with unlimited bandwidth. Which assumes that the deity is always available.  That presumption raises the thorny issue of if there is an all powerful deity “out there” who is always connected and hence always hears human prayers - perhaps even those directed to other, erroneously conceived, deities, why do terrible things occur? Pompeii is only one horrific example from a human history littered with millions of disasters, natural and wroth by humanity. Events an all-seeing, all-powerful deity could, one assumes, prevent.

The monotheistic notion of an all powerful “always on” deity - dare we say AO?- gets further bruised when we consider the presumed extent of the “devine network.” While Zoroastrianism might lay claim to being the first monotheistic faith with roots reaching back some 4000 years; Judaism, Christianity and Islam all stem from the same millennia. So, one might legitimately ask, what was the “extent of all creation” over which these monotheistic faiths originally held dominion? How big a network were these early theologians, philosophers, prophets and priests talking about? Well initially, I suppose, what they could see. “All creation!” Spread out before them - “This is my Father’s world, All nature sings and round me rings, The music of the spheres.”  

It may also be important to remember that when these ancients - primarily from desert cultures - walked out at night to consider the wonders of the universe, they looked up and saw an unpolluted, star-strewn sky the likes of which you and I have never seen except on digital screens. No wonder they felt themselves at the center of existence, watched over by a deity who created it all - it was obvious, there, right before their eyes.

And then Hans Lippershey invented the telescope in 1608 and the very next year Galileo pointed the thing up into the sky - discovering to his amazement and eventual chagrin - that there were a whole bunch more planets and stars up there strongly suggesting that our third rock from the sun was not actually the center of the universe. And he was foolish enough to say so. The Pope was not amused and forbid Galileo to write or speak of such foolishness. Galileo apparently held his peace until 1632 when he published his basic theory, thinly disguised as a mathematical exploration of  Copernicus’s theory of the planets. Again Rome was not amused, and placed Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Those faiths and philosophies, firmly convinced of their accuracy, do not have a history of tolerance when it comes to alternative notions of existence and divinity. So for the last few thousand years established monotheistic faiths have slaughtered their way across much of the globe convinced that their theology was the “one true faith,” and others need not apply.

The more I think about it, I believe that the various versions of the monotheistic AO faiths simply bit off more than they could chew. It isn’t beyond belief that one deity could keep a handle on one planet - seeing the sparrow fall and all that. Maybe even a whole solar system. But as the late great astronomer Carl Sagan of The University of Chicago (my father’s alma mater) used to say “there are billions and billions of stars out there!” And further, it seems every day the James Webb Space Telescope aka JWST, reports on distant galaxies that continually expand the known reaches of the universe. Most recently a galaxy that is a whooping 31.96 billion light years from earth.

And then there was Stephen Hawking, only one among the many genius cosmologists who assert that the idea that “we are alone” is absurd.  Rather, they claim any simple analysis of existing data reveals that we are but one of many, many intelligent and technologically capable entities in the universe. That is a far cry from “my father’s world” and an incredible ask for a single AO monotheistic deity.

Which is, in part, why I think the ancient polytheistic faiths may have had a better idea. They seem to have practiced what I think of as “deity diversity.” Instead of making one deity responsible for everything-everywhere they divided the tasks. In a polytheistic world you had a deity in charge of the ocean, maybe fish and all “water” stuff, another deity for land, maybe farming, crops, etc. It appears that the tasks assigned to a particular deity vary according to the central needs of the culture. Northern trading and raiding cultures may have needed deities different from those needed by tropical or desert nomadic cultures. So different deities evolved.

Of course this still does beg the question of connectivity, functionality, and responsibility. Does the honoring of a particular deity have any impact on events in the deity’s “area of responsibility?” That is purely an issue of faith and belief - true with both monotheistic and polytheistic faiths. A herd of sheep sicken in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600s? Widow Jones is a witch! “Off with her head!” Or something equally heinous in local puritanical Christian belief.  Crops fail in Ghana in the same time period? The local “crop-type” deity must be appeased with the appropriate ritual.

Belief in an exclusive relationship between a specific group and a deity who, through favored belief and ritual, impacts the occurrence of specific events in the world (and the afterlife) has fueled the evolution of religions. Such “my God” beliefs formed the basis of thousands of wars, and the creation of seemingly “billions and billions” of exclusively infallible narratives in print, art, music and video. And yet, while many claim it, no one seems to have gotten an undisputed lock on the nature of a, let alone a functioning example of,  a unique relationship between humanity and divinity.

We can view this seeming lack of divine connectivity in a couple of ways. Pessimistically we have the “Woe is me! Lost in a trackless wilderness!” perspective. More optimistically is the “Cool. I get to work this out myself!” Having always been an optimist, I have naturally constructed my own notion of a multi-layered set of relationships between whatever deity may exist and “my unconquerable soul.”

This might be a good time to get that adult beverage I mentioned waaaay back at the beginning of this post.  Or whatever other element - tea, coffee, CBD lotion, nicotine - that lets you relax in the face of strange information.

OK, here we go. When I leave home for any extended period of time, I travel with a small stuffed panda named Boswell. Pragmatically, both at home and on the road, Boswell provides the perfect padding between my pillow and the optimal head elevation for interacting with my iPad: reading, writing, watching videos, etc. Were that “padding” the panda’s only function I could have named him Paddington, after the famous bear in children’s literature. But this Boswell has a different function, drawn from the history of James Boswell, famed Scottish biographer. That Boswell is best known for his works on Samuel Johnson who was a towering British author of the era, but who seemed to have a penchant for thinking and writing in fragments. Boswell, in addition to writing the great man’s biography, apparently kept Johnson’s ramblings in some sort of order. I believe I once wrote a post here on The Wall pleading for a Boswell.

Frighteningly, as I mentioned we are doing “packing stuff” here in Raleigh and I just made my way through a two-inch thick file I discovered in a drawer. The file bears the title “Waiting for Boswell.” Within are essays, poems, short stories, and personal letters of significant import - but to uncertain recipients - reaching back to my grad school days in the 1970s!  Where was Boswell when I needed him most? I also found a 1980ish short story predicting the advent of, and potential dangers in, virtual reality.  Needed some work. So you see Boswell is not a recent fixation in my mind.

OK, let us assume I could take this Boswellian notion with me as I time travel back to the polytheistic world of Pompeii. Well, very first thing, I would move to somewhere waaaay far away from Mount Vesuvius. But I suppose that would be cheating. Second, I would construct my version of a Pompeian shrine to my household deity - Boswell the Panda. I would call it Boswell’s Hearth, and the physical representation of my household deity would be, of course, a panda. Sacred offerings? Any kind of bamboo would do. But what I would expect from such offerings to this somewhat restricted household deity would not be wealth, better crops, health - the normal household deity requests made at the time. Rather I would ask Boswell to remind me of Distilled Harmony, and its four tenets: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm.

These reinterpreted versions of household deities, like Boswell, would allow a finer focus of piety. No need to worry about the entire - and swiftly expanding - universe. Rather the household deity would help focus our involvement in the everyday world, in your home and community. Ask not what your deity can do for you, ask what your deity would have you do to make your world a happier, more beautiful, more joyful, more peaceful place. Boswell be praised. Have a bite of bamboo while I go fluff him up a bit.

Distilled Harmony Edit

 It has become so commonplace that one comes to expect each morning to greet you with news of another mass killing. And while it is true that occasionally these macabre events arise elsewhere on the globe, despairingly they seem most often to be homegrown acts of lunacy here in the United States. It is the sad realization that these murders appear to arise from the notion that when considering mindless mayhem we tend to think locally that prompts me to provide a clarifying edit to the worldview I call Distilled Harmony.

This is not a casual edit. As you know if you have been reading The Wall for it’s last couple decades, Distilled Harmony provides, in its four basic tenets, the philosophical underpinnings of my perceptions of the proper way to conduct oneself as we seek to live a compassionate, loving, honorable life. I have condensed Distilled Harmony into a single hierarchical sentence of four tenets. It originally appeared thusly:

Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, enable beauty, distill complexity and oppose harm.

I am loathe to change that sentence. It was years in the making and I have written, here on The Wall, at significant length about each tenet. Yet as I read of the ways in which various insane killers justify their actions as “purifying manifestations” of some twisted worldview, I am prompted to provide the following edit to hopefully assure that Distilled Harmony is never hijacked by such nefarious minds. So currently:

Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, and Distill Complexity  in order to Oppose Harm.

To clarify, it is by living harmoniously according to the first three tenets that one opposes harm. Not by resorting to violence to oppose those who view life differently, and then calling such violence harmonious.

Of Sunflowers and Druids

 Last night I got caught up in artists lives online. El Greco, Turner and Da Vinci kept me up way past yesterday and threatened to greet “the rosy fingered dawn” so popular in my fumbling attempts to translate the Iliad freshman year.

Fascinating in the lives of El Greco and Turner was their determination to explore the evolution of their own styles and inner vision despite the derision of critics who had previously championed their insight. Well, perhaps with the exception of El Greco who had to wait a couple of centuries to be recognized as a precursor to both Impressionism and expressionism. Turner was seen as the golden boy who went “strange.” The Da Vinci piece was an interesting treatment of a theory that contends that The Mona Lisa is not a portrait of a specific woman at all - Lisa del  Giocondo - as Vasari contends - but rather a purely fictional version of “a mother” commissioned by a Medici. Interesting stuff, kept me awake anyhow.

But when I sat down to draw today another artist jumped to mind - Van Gogh and his sunflowers. He painted them repainted them. There was obviously a fascination with them. I suppose that thought sprang to mind as continued to add color to yet another version of Druids. You see I didn’t actually realize it was yet another version of Druids. I had just finished Vase and Flowers, and was looking for a new drawing. Which means I browse through the hundreds and hundreds of my photos and drawings until one jumps out. Well, Druids, jumped out and I cleaned it up, and had it printed out large to add further designs and color. It was only later while looking for something else on my backup drive that I stumbled across previous digital versions I had done of Druids. 

Setting aside the idea that I had just found evidence of an extreme senior moment, I chose to wonder if Van Gogh thought that each new version of Sunflowers was the first.  I suppose that having the physical paintings around your studio would make them harder to forget than digital versions that live in a black box on your desk. But maybe he had sent them off to brother Theo to be sold. Leaving Theo to wonder, “More sunflowers?! Really Vincent! Maybe time for a refresher at Saint-Remy!”

I think I’ll just put the realization of multiple Druids out of my mind. I won’t be able to finish this one before we head back to Raleigh for a couple of weeks anyhow. I’ll deal with it then. Meanwhile, here is a copy of what I sincerely believe is the original Druids:

Perfection is Fleeting

 Ramses I I apparently did not buy into this assertion as ancient Egypt seems awash in images, sculptures, cartouches, etc., of that particular Pharaoh. Apparently didn’t want folks to forget how great he was. It seems to be an affectation common among dictators and other authoritarian figures, Hitler, Stalin, and others of that stripe who want to keep their likeness in front of people who would most likely wish to avoid it. This megalomania flys in the face of the reality of those moments we hold most dear.

For me anyhow, recalled perfect moments are painfully fleeting, crystal memories, of a minute or two, no longer, that flash clearly and then recede again. Which brings us, naturally, to Leonardo da Vinci and Lisa del Giocondo, reputed to be the lady of The Mona Lisa. The exact identity of the lady remains the subject of some debate. However, what is generally agreed is that Leonardo never finished the painting. Rather he carried it with him all his life, tweaking a bit here, shifting a bit there. You see da Vinci was blessed? cursed? with the ability to capture on canvas that moment of perfection that he carried in his soul. Well, close to it anyhow. He was an artistic genius enough to capture it - almost. But was driven enough to never be satisfied. Maybe a touch more shadow? Are the flesh tones too pink? And then the smile. Damn the smile anyway! Sigh. Genius is a cruel mistress.

I, having sidestepped genius, have instead learned, I hope, to cherish those moments of perfection when they choose to present themselves, close my eyes and enjoy them for as long as they choose to hang around, and then, when the scene passes or the song ends, acknowledge their transient nature, and allow them to pass back into bittersweet memory until such time as they choose to surface once again. Normal is still disconcerting, but less painful than genius.

It Took a Century to Build a Cathedral

 Or, why do I do this to myself. The first image is maybe an hour’s work from this morning:

That’s OK until I zoom out to the whole 17x24 inch image I am working on. The faces will come later, much later since I really can’t draw faces. The other blank spaces will get “leaf-like” designs. I’m thinking some kind of blue/green palette- maybe a touch of yellow.

Heavy sigh. Well, it’s almost lunchtime, but I better go cut another big stone for the northwest turret.

Seek a Sunset

 I have been asked by a number of folks - including some of you here on the Wall - how I decide what colors go where on my drawings. Well, first you go to a good bookstore or an art supply store, or even on the Internet - though color accuracy and purity can be suspect online. Anyway secure a good color wheel - those graphics that show you what colors go with what other colors. Then I make a mark on the drawing - starting with red, and I hold the color wheel over the red mark and slowly rotate it to find the next color that goes best with it and .  .  .  .

No, not really. That is all a load of BS. If you recognize the structure of the paragraph, I just realized I stole it from one of the early scenes in Robin Williams’ Dead Poets Society where an English teacher is showing his students how to evaluate a poem with a ruler by physically measuring the length of lines, stanzas, etc. Excrement. 

I feel much the same about color wheels and coloring inside the lines. The obvious exception being the lines I have drawn, which I feel free to change whenever I choose. You should not be surprised to learn that I am guided by, but by no means constrained by, a palette quite different from those suggested by color wheels. I call it SAS. Not to be confused with the huge corporate entity back in Cary, NC, my SAS stands for Seek a Sunset.

Think about it. Or better yet do it. Find a place where you have an unobstructed view of the horizon. I suppose you can see a good sunset in the city, but my own experience indicates that the truly world class sunsets are best seen over wide expanses of oceans, big lakes, deserts, etc. However, in the name of full artistic disclosure I need to admit that some of the best sunsets I have ever seen were viewed from the beach of Lake Michigan watching the sun sink into the hazy - oh, say it, polluted - skies over Chicago on the opposite shore. Just awesome!

And what was it that made these “sunsetscapes” so incredible? Obviously it was the awesome variety of colors. No rhyme, no reason, no color wheels. It was as if God had bumped into her art table and every hue, shade and color imaginable - and some that weren’t - spilled out and ran down her sky canvas. Yes, these were the sixties, but glorious, truly glorious colors. There could be no talk of “Oh, do those colors “belong together?” “Is that shade a bit too harsh?” 

Poppycock! In a sunset everything works. So how do I try to bring the colors of SAS into my drawings? Mostly by not trying. I know that sounds glib, but let me try to explain. I work with pens and “markers” on paper. The designs are the product of either freehand drawings or images that started as my photographs which I reduce to line drawings through Photoshop. But the end result is always black lines on white paper that I color with markers. Markers are a single discrete color. I am aware that one can blend markers to obtain gradations of color, but that is a process I have not explored, so my drawings are constrained by the markers arrayed before me on my drawing table. Hence my maxim: you can never have too many markers!

So the array of markers on my table becomes the “sunset” from which I choose the colors for the various portions of my drawings. And here it does become a bit mystical. I look at the portion of the drawing I wish to color and run my eyes and hands over my array of markers until something says “That one.” I pick up the marker and place a blank note card next to the portion of the drawing I am working on, and make a mark on the card. This lets me see if the color indicated on the marker cap is an accurate representation of the color of the ink. If so, great and I proceed to color that portion of the drawing with that marker. If the color on the card is not right, I put the marker back and start again. This process obviously gets more complicated if I have been working on the drawing and the new place I am working on is surrounded by colors I have already employed. 

But the process is always the same. Observe the area to be colored. Observe the marker dictated palette. Run your hand/eye/mind over the available markers. Select the one that speaks to you. Make a mark on the test card and then either approve and use, or reject and begin again. This obviously results in a workspace littered with markers and multicolored test cards, but it is the best way, for me anyhow, to bring the unrestricted palette of a sunset to my drawings. Which leads to the inescapable conclusion that the only way to get better is to buy more markers!

No, no, no!

They did it too me again, damn their eyes! The protagonist had just discovered an important wrinkle in the case. I touched the screen to discover “what comes next,” when instead of the next page in the current “who-dun-it”, up pops a screen “About the author.” With nary a by-your-leave, it informs me that s/he was born in a small town in northern Minnesota where s/he honed both his/her writing skills and love of nature by tracking black bears to their winter dens and journaling predictions as to when they might emerge. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. Get on with the damn story. 

I was just beginning to care about the protagonist. How can they treat me so shabbily? Odds are I will not hang around for the “thrilling conclusion” in their next novel, which the “About the author” page informs me will be published sometime in the next decade after the author completes his/her sabbatical in Tahiti. 

I really do try to understand the author’s point of view, which can reflect their struggle, sometimes their fight, with their own creation. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried valiantly to slip out from under the huge shadow of Sherlock Holmes by tossing him over a waterfall. The ploy ultimately failed and Doyle was obliged by public pressure - and financial inducements - to bring his iconic sleuth back from the dead to sleuth yet another day. Establishing, perhaps, our current obsession with season after season of less deserving narratives, or the recreation of previous successes out of something less than whole cloth.

Authors do depend upon our attention to pay the rent, so I guess I should be more tolerant of the occasional narrative fracture when the well runs a bit dry. I have written before of my own love of serialized fiction - particularly in the mystery genre. But if you are going to start down this monied path, dear author, please have the professionalism to leave us with some sense of individual completion when you leave us to weave the other various segments of your larger narrative. As Doyle and others have learned, our tolerance for narrative interruptus is frail and unforgiving.