The Active and Contemplative Life

Probably one of the frightful chains that we who call ourselves "artists" carry about weighing us down is the need to be "special." It isn't even that we're not. In fact, everyone is special. If more people apprehended exactly how special they were, it would probably be a more pleasant world.

But what I mean is, thinking we're special, and unrecognised as such, we hobble around with the weight of "lack of recognition" dragging behind us. Not many see this. We don't necessarily advertise it. But if we could just rid ourselves of the need for recognition, and get on with it, we and the world would be a better place.

(And, pardon me, but I'm not really directing this at anyone but myself. But if you also see something in it of use, why, feel free.)

When I was young, I moved in some quasi-intellectual circles. One of the things that I remember from that era is "Waiting for Godot," a phrase which is actually the title of a play by Samuel Beckett which, as I recall (what do I know) was reputed to be part of the "theater of the absurd." The phrase itself seems to have come to mean (without, you understand, my ever having actually read the play) some sort of unalieviated boredom of waiting for something that never comes.

Now, of course, I have only to leap onto Google and — voila! — I find a summary of the play, including that it is indeed part of the theatre of the absurd and is about some sort of absurd waiting. Well, I'm not much further along, but at least I now have the feeling that, once again, I can use that bit of idiom.

The next question is, if I do, will anyone understand it! After all, Fats Domino's Blueberry Hill constitutes for many alive today a bit of arcane history. For me, it was personal and poignant, part of growing up. ("I found my thrill... on Blueberry Hill, ... on Blueberry Hill .... where I found you.")

But it is nice to have the Internet. I'm very fond of my computer. It makes researching things, finding knowledge, so much simpler. Now if we could just get people to share knowledge freely! It seems like the Internet is tethered to a great extent to everyone's need to make the buck.

So we need to get the world to a saner, more secure place in order to fully realize the potential of the technology. I hope to be doing my part.

OK. Frustrating Friday. I've been wrestling with a ColorLaser printer all day that has decided to do everything wrong. It's therefore time for some words to the land of the living.

I woke this morning thinking about Verna, our housekeeper for many years while I was growing up. Probably, if mom and dad had stayed together, if my sister had not been "autistic," if mom had not had a full time job, Verna wouldn't have been so important. Or, Verna wouldn't have been there at all. As it was, she was sort of a surrogate grandmother. Verna was from Canada, on a Visa, and she cleaned and cooked and hugged, and when I went off to college I promptly forgot about her(as young people sometimes tend to do). Many years later, around the time of her death, someone suggested that she loved me and that I should have written her. Hell, I didn't even write my mother as I wandered around the world.

Just before she died, mom took me to see her. She was staying with her nephew, and she was about to take the long train trip back to Canada, where, shortly afterwards, she died. I tried to send flowers, but I'm pretty sure they never reached her. Anyway, it would have been a futile gesture. By that time, she was teetering on the edge of the grave, frail and small and not quite "of this world."

OK, so Verna loved me. And I loved her. I just didn't know how to -- ummmm -- connect the dots. How do you shout across time and decades and centuries, "I love you. I love you." Well, once, when I asked my mother "how can I ever repay you?" she replied "You may repay me by helping your children."

I have not had children. I may even die alone. Who knows. Meanwhile, I have to keep calling to people I love across the centuries "I love you, I love you."

Nearly 61 years old now, I feel that I have some clue as to how to say I love you. It has to do with the precepts contained in a booklet called The Way to Happiness, things like "Take care of yourself," "Set a good example," "Be competent." The precepts in this book define how to build a society and a world. If everyone but kept them as well as they were able, we wouldn't have suicide bombers and teenagers running amuck. We might have a civilization.

So on the way in to work today, I hear that Israel has obliterated the head of (one of the heads of?) Hamas. And is that not terror? Of course, that's justified, because he's "one of the bad guys." But let me just ask: don't we perhaps make our bad guys? We strike at Al Queda to kill "the bad guys" and more of them crop up in Pakistan. Feels just like that game I used to play on the computer: Rats. You kill the rats, and suddenly, you find you've moved to a new level. Now you have to kill the rats again, but you have more to kill, they're smarter, and they move faster.

One of these days, we need to step back and take a look at it. Is all this rat-killing getting us anywhere? There's a basic assumption here: that the "bad" guys are "bad" guys. Maybe they think we're the bad guys.

I'm not saying anything new here, but I'm not sure that it doesn't need to be said again anyway.

The artist sets out to create an effect. How is that different from the terrorists? Well, usually, the artist sets out to create a pleasant effect, an aesthetic effect. Is there no aesthetics to terror? Probably there is. The perfect bomb. The artistic suicide. Certainly, terror seems to be creating bigger effects on people these days than art.

A friend replies...

What does this mean: The Politics of Terror? I was dismayed this afternoon to discover yet another bombing was carried out, in Baghdad, by placing a car full of plastic explosives and metal parts in front of a hotel. It left a crater. Many dead. More wounded. The article is accompanied by a picture of figures silhouetted by flames. Surely there will be many motion pictures on the evening news, because this hotel was in the center of Baghdad, near the places where the newspeople stay. They rushed to cover it. So we will be able to see it all, in somewhat gory detail. And they will speculate on what it means, whether this is a good or bad thing, whether the U.S. did the right thing or the wrong thing, whether "The Bush Administration" did the right thing or the wrong thing. This will be grist for the mill, over and over and on and on.

So what are the Politics of Terror? A small group makes and deposes a bomb, blowing up a couple dozen people. The newsmen rush to make sure we all know, are all properly terrified, again and again and again.

I don't think I had any particularly strong religious feeling about Easter as a kid. My Father claimed to be an atheist and my mother an agnostic. At best, mother (with whom I lived) simply didn't have any religious affiliation. But I got the idea of Easter as a popular holiday from the culture, I may not have known Jesus, but I sure knew the easter bunny and all about colored eggs and chocolate and the little sugar eggs you could still get when I was young that you could peer into to see a whole little scene.

One year, in fact, I approached my mother when it became evident that Easter wasn't about to occur at our house. It was Easter eve, if you will, and no sign of the Easter bunny. "Mom", I asked, "if you will give me some money, I'll go out and get Easter baskets for Dede and me." Gratefully, she gave me money. I swear it was no more than $2. And yet, with that, I got the colored straw, and jelly beans and chocolate eggs, all the Easter candy a kid could stand! Using baskets we'd saved, we had a perfect Easter morning.

When I was a child, it was absolutely clear to me that flying was possible. Icarus had nothing on me as a dreamer. Even now, when it's hard to jump, much less fly, I see the geese heading north and my heart flys. Now, if you consider, for a moment, that perhaps, though our bodies can't fly, WE can, well, then, perhaps believing in flying is not so far off!

Here's a little poem I wrote today in response to a poem "trilog" that I participate in.

I know I’ve been flying

when I feel myself drop

and waken gripping the bed.

Sometimes I fly when I hold

eight corners of the room

and forget about rooms and spaces

that confine and remember only

eight anchor points.

Sometimes I wheel slowly,

over boundless spaces,

some large and some small,

into sleep.

I wanted to spend some of my small allotted time this morning (after I covered the very mundane details of my life) remembering some signal event or great moment from the past. And all I could think about is how I should follow up on the IRS audit by March 15 and whether the guy who claimed to have been so upset by my sticking a sticky note to his jacket would try to sue me.

So I've got it all figured out. Our lives are held hostage to the events that put us at "effect," the events that we can't control and that we have some dread about.

And, if that is the case, the best way to fight back is to flourish and prosper. There may always be those who endanger our survival. To survive their evil or counter-survival intentions, it is simply necessary to survive better.

So, did I mention that Farmyard in Winter was accepted in the prestigious Art League of Alexandria monthly juried show and was on display at the Torpedo Factory, Art League Gallery, during the month of March, 2004. The judge for the show was Mark Leithauser, Senior Curator and Chief in Design for the National Gallery of Art.


	True art always elicits a contribution from those who view or hear or experience it. L Ron Hubbard, Art Series 5