48.

Principles

Thinking

Knowing too much
 
Sometimes it is not good to know too much. Opposites can cancel each other out.  A certain blindness is needed in life to progress.  Things get done this way.  Moving step upon step one can build.  I remember in high school my class having read the authors Sartre and Camus. Their message, perhaps oversimplified, seemed to say there is ‘nothing.’ If so why do anything?  Why live?  An apathetic lethargy was cast upon the class.

Even if the message was correct, it did damage to us.  It killed the building process. At times even a false premise is better than no premise. It can be built upon.  It is  a foundation.  One can say how can we build anything on the earth if its core is fire? But that is looking too deeply.  We live on the surface and sometimes the surface is enough. There are rocks and soil and grass to lay structures upon.  Dealing with nothingness will come in due time while its antidote, that which is truly something, lies in wait for us.

47.

Personal   
 
New York trip

I've come back from New York where father turned 95, the temp was 95, and friend Ray asked me if I took I95.  Cute friend Ray.  Dad says he told people he’s lasted because of his mother’s chicken soup.  I wonder if I’ll be able to say the same about Campbell soup. He and I had roller coaster moments, not easy for fully grown egos to be peaceful, but upon leaving he spoke warmly to me and said never know if he'll be around, but that it’s been special to be with me and that even when gone he'll be around. I added my twist saying that this life is unique and won't happen again and I will miss touching and being around him.  Had to get some negative out there.  Still, it brought a tear to our eyes.
 
We spent some time shopping at the Veteran's building picking up a travelling bag and then a $2.00 meal at the Senior Stein Center.  Strange how he, a good  student in his past, liked and took advantage of these institutional settings.  Seeing so many elderly and some damaged people still sits with me and no comment needed.  One morning we went to a neighborhood Greek coffee house where the owner said he was like wallpaper every morning.  I was honored to set foot on such hallow grounds.  Friend Maggie said good to cherish these times with dad.  She misses her parents and even her brother who is alive.  I realize many of you are orphans so to speak so this is fortunate for me to have a parent and still get 50th looks at things and process them.  Maybe I'm not ready yet for departure and maybe some of you were.  This brings up life itself and the age old conflict ‘are things meant as if on a journey or is it just life with indifference.'   I think things are meant but often beyond what we can see.

Had a first look at belongings recovered in basement after hurricane Sandy.  Gone was Sport, a stuffed tiger, a wired computer I built, model ships, tanks and report cards and who knows. 
About half a suitcase full remained. Recovered was an old all-star little league top from when I had played in Puerto Rico, some old drawings and writings (usually about people and relationships).   At seven ships were drawn with impressive accuracy, coloring, perspective and force, along with a horse’s head, and a line drawing of dad detailed and piercing.  A few later books of drawings were recovered, more studied, blander and less penetrating.  Between the dulling effect of canned and pressured schools, ricocheting from one art teacher to another later on, and just time spent on too many other things, I saw the loss and mourned it.  It was a record of what was that never fully blossomed.  Acceptance and self-forgiveness partially seeped in and I knew what I yearned for in the future, a sense of feeling better about what I do in the present.  That’s a gift.
 
Met with friend Ev who is having some landlord problems in New York and says Bloomberg  destroyed the middle class in the city along with the schools (she teaches) and has encouraged the greed of the landlords.  We talked over tea at another Greek diner Orion served by waiter Cosmos who gave her tenant advice.  Hmmmmm.  Something happening here?

Made it home after 4 hour delay from LGA where incoming jet's wheels never opened.  TSA was their bully self (had a pat down for a bottle of water in bag) but crowd became quite warm and united.  For a brief moment things weren't competitive. 
 
And this is a word sketch of my visit to New York where I grew up.   Now I'm back with the directional signal saying 'push on.'  Still, last night upon arriving home at 12 at night it was quiet and still and I saw a near full moon and I stopped to take pleasure in it.


 
 



 
Note:  Below are pics of some drawings saved.  For some this might have interest.  It is about my development, and maybe relates to yours.  We rarely get good looks back over decades ago.  An in depth understanding of art, which can include all of human potential, is good training to question and understand bigger things.  Other activities can accomplish the same, but the very nature of art leads to questioning, from the anatomy of a leaf to the science of atmosphere to the questioning of our existence, it's all there.
 

My first portrait I think at age 7 of my dad on a park bench.  I remember doing it and being thrilled.  I really caught him, nice appearance, somewhat preoccupied and mind off in the distance and, as my mom said, big Hungarian lips.  Later, when confused this was an important drawing to remember because it pointed to my basic instincts which was to draw an outline around an object or person.  Can't see it here but the eyes are done well and sensitively.  The whole head was seen and proportions understood.

Another early portrait at that age, maybe of my mom.  Again, like the early Renaissance craftsman such as a Giotto outline came instinctually.  I think the ideal is like a Raphael, to draw with innocence maintained while knowledge is forever increased.  To know this yet fall short has weighed on artists for centuries.  Various teachers liked me to throw paint and throw around colors but these were my basic instincts, to capture a line around life.  Liked the force here and beginning understanding of the head. 

Later, painting teachers taught by massing forms and/or impressionist type of applications, putting down large swatches of color values.  After being confused by this, recalling these early drawings where outline was important helped to ground me. 

A drawing of a horse done at same age altho probably later in the year.  It was from a photo, a much easier proposition. One can see how working from a photo produces a flatter, less authentic picture.  I Think I had help with the eyes and maybe deep shadows, perhaps from Pels, a New York Social Realist Painter in New York, my first teacher.  Realism is achieved at the price of authenticity.  Still, impressive for seven.  This is interesting for me to observe and perhaps for other artists to see.   It is before concepts clouded our heads.  The ears and fence show an early understanding of perspective.

Ships drawings from that period.  Some are from postcards, some from models built, some from partly my imagination.  The liners had quite of bit of detail.  The color schemes all hold to my mind.  Before one thinks I had a charmed life let me add I was not a great reader, and public schools then, a vision of Bernard Baruch, were all about reading and test taking.  One had to fit into a certain form to get thru those schools.  They were a narrow meritocracy, similar to what must exist in China and have existed in Russia.  To advance one had to fit in.  Art and drawing was not part of this, except in very elementary way.

Later I went to a progressive school.  It was another extreme.  Expressiveness was encouraged but craft and drawing skills were frowned upon.  One was made to feel backwards.  Just food for thought here.  In the first case one was just a number.  In the second case one had to fit in to a limiting agenda.  Oh, just to have been left alone and given space with some understanding.

46.  Past

Principles

Family

Coming together

John K., a friend of mine, commented on not seeing his sister. 
"I thought things would come together in life. 
They don't."


 

Below:  Another look at the drawing 'Opening the door......"

(Accompanying Poem)

Opening the door to another realm

The freshness of air,
of light,
of color,
breaking through
internalized psychic crust.


 

43. Past

Change 

Stepping back
 
Change is not what we thought it was.  It  has a cost. The physical law of entropy (2nd law of thermodynamics)  says for every movement there is a heat loss which is irretrievable. Buddha, during his meditations, discouraged wanting and desiring and ambition, saying all they led to was more complications.  As with quicksand, the more you struggle, the deeper you get.  Moses gave rules to the wandering Hebrews, giving them parameters for their behavior and limiting their liability. We've all heard the statement “let go and let God.”  In the Christian New Testament, a wisdom statement wrongly or rightly attributed to the persona Jesus Christ said “by myself I can do nothing,” and “you can't add an inch to your stature” and “you can't change one gray hair black or one black hair gray.”
 
All these are examples of change not being as easy as we thought. While it is popular to encourage people to change, many of us have observed that people don't change  that much. It's as if their “doings” are hardwired into their makeup.  As such, if we don't seek to change, and the need and urge to do so is understandable, then how do we live?
 
To seek a simple life, to move to the woods, to get rid of all our possessions, is not so simple.  Sometimes to live simply you have to be rich and to achieve this is not so simple. The average person in the shrinking middle class is a puppet pulled by many strings. Not so simple unwinding these strings.
 
The approach should be just stay where you are, in your own shoes, accepting your situation and also your reaction to it, realizing your need for a solution without trying to make anything happen.  This is simple.  Just continue your life, such as it is, and observe your desires and yearnings.  One has to accept, reconcile, and be patient. The solution can't be forced. Your desire to forcefully and willfully change things hasn't often worked, so don't succumb to it.  In this “step back” approach lies the answer.


 

42. Past

Principles

Living

Pleasing the Senses
 
To live fully one needs spiritual fulfillment but one needs the senses pleased as well.    Nice music can be so pleasing to the senses.  It is relaxing, calming, and peaceful.  A nice radio voice can also soothe one's emotions and give harmony to  your senses.  These things should  be recognized when occasioned upon. They provide momentary relief from the harshness of the world and recall a sense harmony.  Music, as well as a nicely enunciated phrase, massages the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual being.


  

41.  Past

Principles

Art
 
Morning Flashes
 
Early morning flashes can be priceless.  Their clarity, if listened to, cuts through the sludge of the previous night and day.  I'm referring to  waking up early morning, not at 3 am although this 3 am has its own value. 
  
This morning, I was bothered by my art and what to do, and the answer was simple, “just do anything.”
 
The blank page shall be “forged into art and a form should appear amidst the blankness.”


 

40. Past

Approach to Writing

Note:  This is # 6 of a list of approaches and things I keep in mind when writing.  There is more than one list.

Scholar versus Primitive 

I have read my share of scholarly works.  They are insightful and defined.  They take reason as far as possible, and details are not overlooked. Logic and reason are used with care. They lead one in a direction that hones down a problem and clarifies definition. 
Scholarship can be the most precise tool man employs in dealing with and accumulating data.  However, inherent in its precision is its limited scope and ability to see the whole.
 
Primitive thinkers (preachers, seers, prophets, thinkers) are not held back by academic training and the scientific process.  They can glean what they need from scholarship but can also rely on their insights and intuitions.  Hence they can take stabs at seeing the entire picture and are not  restrained by logic and reason.
 
Often they can be wrong.  Part of their thinking is based on fear, or myth, or superstition, but there are grains of truth interspersed amid the nonsense. So they are not to be dismissed.  We just have to listen and discern what hits a true note or not.  
  
Both the scholar and the primitive thinker are not complete, but neither should be discounted.