Contemplating Art

Acrylic on Paper, 1999, 24x18

This west wind brings autumn

To the waves, to my soul

I think too much about the future

And what tomorrow’s winds may bring.

• A new book details the fights among various folks who made money revising and publishing Emily Dickenson’s poems after her death.  Of course, she herself, by intent, never profited monetarily.  As a person who once enjoyed and practiced visual art, I recall some of my own confused grappling with action versus artifact.
• One of the painful realizations of becoming old is to recognize that tangible traces of my time on Earth will soon be buried or burned.  Paintings, poems, old software programs, changes to the house and yard, all become one with the snows of yesteryear, forgotten even more quickly.  They join that which I knew was ephemeral at the time, from enjoyment of a vacation to interactions with other people to solitary momentary moods and experiences.
• When art was an attraction, why was it an attraction?  What captured my almost obsessive interest?  Why are there still large museums, books, fairs, and _ yes _ artists still working and creating what is _ from a practical standpoint _ mere useless decoration?  Professional artists respond that they are working for a living, some amateurs respond that they are hoping for a lottery payoff, but I suspect most folks _ like me back in the day _ do it simply because art enhances life.

Acrylic on paper, 2003, 22x30

Who knows where

She’s been.  Or why.

No one

Really

Cares

• Some science now indicates that toolmaking and control of fire by Homo Erectus, our predecessor species, led to rapid enlargement of brains.  But there is little understanding of what suddenly happened to Homo Sapiens less than a hundred thousand years ago that led to our frighteningly rapid, and possibly disastrous, mastery of the planet. 
• One primary suspect is either cultural or neurological mutation that allowed people to imagine what will be, what might be, why something is as it is.  To add narrative to the instantaneous impressions of life.  In other words, in one way or another, to become artists.   
• Perhaps we are too quick to seek one “silver bullet.”  What makes us different in quality from animals is not a single trait, but a conglomerate which art encapsulates.  Thinking is basically all that is unnecessary in an immediate moment.  Dance, paint, music _ yes those are art _ but so are any of our imaginings of why leaves turn color, or smiling at unexpected actions of children, or anything at all fleeting and floating in mind.  Consciousness itself is our most glorious form of high art.

Acrylic on canvas, 1999, 30 x 40

High seas never, actually,

Reach the harbor

Waves may chop, like my life

But disaster happens elsewhere

• Even as I crafted art, I was conflicted about professional or personal aims.  I realized that most artists I admired had led miserable lives _ and I was never willing to sacrifice that much.  Nor did I much enjoy what I fantasized about becoming famous in the art world _ well, maybe the wealth, once in a while.  I tried to think of myself as an ancient Chinese literati, even though I realized that even they were a mixture of professional artisan families and true amateurs.
• Eventually I understood that permanence was hardly what I sought.  Even fine dinners and impromptu dances have their place in the infinite and eternal “museum without walls.”  Even stone temples and magnificent marble statues eventually wear away, most art is dust almost instantaneously.  So what I created was done for the sake of creation, for what creation did for me, and that was and is enough.
• Finally, I accepted that I could also be other than an artist or artisan for part of my life.  We can fully enjoy phases of being, then move on.  I look back on my paintings and my thoughts and my journals with pleasure, but with no desire to reenter those corridors of being.  One of the most wonderful gifts of my life has been that I need not always be what I have been. 
• Sadness.   Nostalgia.  New different joys this morning.

Expected Surprises

Tree in the middle of a quick change.

• Summer lingered long and warm.  Even though autumn had been anticipated for some time, the abrupt arrival of deep and persistent cold was a little shocking.  Suddenly leaves change, nuts fall, fragile summer blooms turn to mush, and jackets, hats, and gloves are once again fashionable.  This weekend the first fierce northeaster of the year may strip foliage before it can reach full glory.
• Old folks can see such actions in almost every phase of life.  We anticipate without happiness that friends will get sick or die, that we ourselves face declines and incapacity, that social conventions or development or technology will leave us confused and sometimes angry.  But we are nevertheless taken aback when any of those certainties actually come to pass.
• Like all humans, we adjust quickly enough.  But we always remember what once was, and sometimes are shocked at how the familiar is suddenly gone forever.

Halfway to scarlet, berries complete, another cycle fulfilled.

• Change of seasons is less a metaphor than an omen.  There are many worrisome indications of declining possibility, as if this summer of civilization itself is passing into winter.  I hope it is only my own fey fancy that holds such grim foreboding.
• Like autumn cold and rain, indications of future problems have been revealed in worrisome bits and flashes.  Climate change hides its tipping point under huge storms and dying reefs.  Overpopulation remains a straining but irrelevant nuisance.  Breakdown in civil morality and general decency _ not to mention high ideals _ has only ripped minor tears in the fabric of daily life.  Global interdependence and global fragility deliver goods reliably in spite of growing difficulties.
• I concentrate on being an optimist.  Yet there is a fin de siècle tone to much of what I observe, a general twilight of the gods brooding undercurrent of what may come next, that I cannot ignore. 
• For now, I simply put on metaphorical hat, gloves, and jacket, and hope that the weather holds back its worst for just a little bit longer so that I can enjoy what remains.

Borderline between summer and autumn, bright leaves overlook an empty beach with green trees on horizon.

• Philosophical surprise is my outlook while growing older.  To myself, I am important.  To the universe, I am an insignificant speck in space and time.  Somewhere in between lies the actual limit of my power, but I suspect that is closer to universal impotence.  LOL.
• I’ve enjoyed, and still enjoy, each day immensely.  Nature remains filled with wonder.  People provide constant entertainment, even if much of it is misanthropic.  A key to such enjoyment, like that which triggers laughter, is being suddenly tricked.
• To fully appreciate continuing miracles, I encourage the ability to be surprised by everything, all the time.  Kind acts, noble thoughts or deeds, woolly bear caterpillars, extravagant northeasters, the laughter of a child.   I may regret horrors in our world, but I can no more change them than the path of a storm or the sweep of the tides.  Some say I run away from responsibility _ I agree with them.  Perhaps the greatest surprise is that all this stuff gets along without me quite well.  

Magic Mushrooms

Hiding under a huge fir in our front yard.

• Since the heyday of the counterculture, “magic mushroom” has implied drug use.  This year, probably because of a very wet season, the magic in mushrooms is their size, shape, and color popping up everywhere in the most unlikely places.  There are some bigger than a softball, some brilliant yellow, some scarlet, some strangely twisted.  And almost all completely undisturbed because I, like almost everyone else, do not have the faintest idea which are safe to eat nor even if I would eat them if I did know.
• We ignore a great deal of the biomass of the planet _ all the bacteria and of course the insects come to mind.  But fungi contribute a great deal of living matter, and almost all of it is out of sight and unknown to us until a massive underground network pops up a temporary fruit.  We hardly realize how much of the forest decay we take for granted is actually the work of the subterranean tendrils silently and efficiently decomposing cellulose and other organic materials.
• So I am taken aback at a sudden visitor to my yard.  If I am lucky, I pause a moment to reflect on what must lie beneath my feet to be able to put forth such a structure.  If not, I am merely amazed that such a wild lifeform should show up unannounced, only to vanish totally in a day or two.

Exotic apparition by the bay in Cold Spring Harbor

• Most of a mushroom is underground, as we once learned most of an iceberg is underwater.  Much of my unconsidered life is like that. 
• I try to realize how complicated even my “simple” breakfast of coffee, juice, cold cereal with berries and milk must be.  Coffee from the tropics, bagged by hand, roasted, heated with electricity produced by oil or gas from deep underground wells.  Juice from apples picked, crushed, transported.  Oats grown and  harvested, ground, toasted, packaged. Berries plucked from greenhouse or field by hardly paid labor.  Milk from herds of cows.  Industries relying on other industries for metals, tools, labor.  All of it magically transported and presented to me in a vast cornucopia market, where I can purchase it with money earned decades ago.  So I can have my simple breakfast. 
• Nature is vastly more complicated than I normally realize.  My own body is incredibly intricate _ I take it for granted.  Civilization is a web of marvels.  I am glad that even at my age I can be granted the privilege of realizing just how magical a mushroom is, and by extension how much of everything else is just as impossibly intricate and wonderful.

Samples from Caumsett on a brisk morning.

• So much to see, so much to do, so little time _ and less energy than when I was younger.  Alas and woe.  Well, truly, when I was younger I hardly noticed the mushrooms anyway.  There seems to be a time and season for everything, even for noticing as much as possible.

Global Warming

Wild asters are among the most welcome weeds in any garden.

• Unusually sultry days linger on this October.
• According to a recent extended article in the Wall Street Journal, insurance companies have firmly decided that a warming planet is real, has real world effects, and are making adjustments.  Now, the WSJ is fairly schizophrenic at this point, with its four or so back pages and online front page almost reading like the National Enquirer.  Those cater to a group of subscribers best described as old right-wing grumps and younger trolls.  But the rest of the paper remains a bastion of solid reporting, because the business community still uses such information to make corporate life and death decisions concerning money.
• Insurers are reacting ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/chubbs-ceo-on-the-problem-with-government-flood-insurance-1534125961?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=7 ) quickly, because their bottom lines are heavily impacted when risk is calculated incorrectly.  The main differences now are not, as one might naively expect, that some areas are getting hotter, or even that sea level is rising rapidly.  Insurance problems have to do with new patterns of weather, which affect and will increasingly affect our daily lives.
• For one thing, even if annual average rainfall remains the same in a certain area, it often arrives in a different periodicity _ months of drought followed by months of flood, rather than the former weekly cycles of wet and dry.  Agriculture is obviously affected, but so are forested areas increasingly at risk of fire.  Formerly desirable sites along rivers, streams, lakes, and seacoast are becoming practically uninsurable, which means unable to obtain a mortgage, which means that only the rich can buy with cash, which lowers the average prices for sellers.  Crops like wine grapes have been increasingly destroyed by hail in Europe _ what used to be a 1% chance of damage in the southern part of the continent has jumped to 18%.
• Another issue is calculating risk.  Insurers once used averages obtained over hundreds of years _ they now consider those relatively worthless, and only use the last few decades.  Some are even ignoring averages in favor of trends.  Extreme “black swan” events are no longer unusual _ storms carry more rain, more violent winds, and linger for extended periods.  Or never arrive at all.
• Eventually, this reaches our pocketbook, even if crops are not wiped out, even if we do not live in a fire or flood zone.   Public services must pay more to respond, taxes go up.  Patterns of where to live change dramatically and affect specific housing prices.  Some foods become more expensive or unobtainable.
• Bottom line _ this is all real and happening now no matter what the trolls and editorials may say.  The companies which are impacted do not survive on fairy tales.

Hordes of crickets this year seemingly unaffected by environmental change.

• Evolution is a fascinating field of study, still filled with uncertainty.  Are the driving forces gradual adaptation, punctuated equilibrium, massive disaster, Lamarckian epigenetics?  The fossil record provides evidence of all of these at one time or another.  And, for relaxation, there are all the tall tales and fantasies of pre-scientific people and current religious fanatics.
• I fear, with accumulating professional agreement, that we are in the middle of one of the massive disaster scenarios.  It is hard to see how the world escapes extreme warming, industrial pollution, and the ravages of human exploitation without a stupendous die-off of many species.  Only the bacteria and viruses are unaffected.  My own “anecdotal” memories indicate a great loss of birds, animals, fish, insects, and reptiles since I was young.  Where did you see the last once-common box turtle or garter snake?
• The real problem is that this ending is everywhere.  Once upon a time the last box turtle in New York City made no difference, since there were so many elsewhere.  But now, with monoculture, warming air, changing rain and fire, human habitation _ there is no elsewhere.  Only more of the same monotonous survivors of widespread ecological niche destruction.  Cheer up.  We will always have bacteria, viruses, and probably ticks, flies, and mosquitoes.

Who knows if this ancient tree died from simple old age or environmental change?

• We have a hard time getting a rational handle on global issues.  Far away places _ filled with storm, plague, and famine _ are far away.  Local events _ fire, flood, drought _ are anecdotal and fogged by the overlay of memory. 
• We all share the defect I remember from an old science fiction story.  A group of people are huddled under a tree as rain pours down.  One worries what they will do when the tree begins to drip.  “Don’t worry,” says another.  “We can just move under a different tree.”  When we can’t eat one species of fish, we will just eat another.  And so it goes.
• The biggest paradigm shift since the 1950’s has been the realization of global effects and limits.  We put up with regulations that would horrify our ancestors.  They could just move on to somewhere else on the frontier.  We cannot. 
• Today the remnants of a huge, “unexpected” hurricane arrive.   But these things happen so often that “unexpected” is losing much of its power.  Once upon a time we could move to another tree, another fish, another place to avoid them.  Today _ “global” is almost a curse.

Winds of Change

Early morning construction site, all day roar and whine.

• Usually summers have passed modestly since retirement, as we spent a lot of time just sitting in our back yard, reading and enjoying birds and flowers.  But not this year.  Our Italian-heritage neighbors have decided they need a piazza in their own yard.  Leveled, paved, cleared of ancient trees and shrubs.  I expect the monumental Michelangelo statue to arrive any day.
• Since town regulations are honored only in the breach lately, each morning began with vast crews of foreign-language workers and massive amounts of construction noise.  Bulldozers, stone saws, jackhammers _ everything except blasting.  Up to ten trucks on the road in front of our house.  Like living next to an expressway, all day, every day, nearly dawn to dusk.  I had to escape to New York City for some peace and quiet.   And perhaps the most annoying thing is that this family _ if it maintains its usual patterns _ will only use this monument to nouveau-riche futility five or less days a year, when the lawyer in charge can impress his friends.
• Of course the same horrors happen everywhere.  The Hamptons are a prime example.  America at her strongest defense of private property guarantees that residents such as this will spend a fortune on things that nobody can share, but will continuously vote against any public improvements in the local area.  Lower taxes, they cry, as they pour money into backyard concrete and imported marble which will languish unused forever.
• Ah, these old people, they complain about everything.

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Grasses slowly maturing into autumn colors as high tide swirls.

• Strong erratic winds under broken purple clouds yesterday, but in spite of strong overnight storms, summer lingers.  People are still wearing shorts and light shirts.  Trees are mostly a jungle green, although salt meadows are half gold, and a few poison ivy leaves show crimson.  Some flights of geese appear to be heading south, although since so many overwinter here now that is not too much of an autumn sign.
• A few folks complain that the heat remains.  Others are excited to still be able to walk woods, sit on the beach, or in some cases continue to do laps in the salt tide.  Mostly though, everyone is too busy at work or school to pay much attention to the weather.  The old agricultural rhythms die hard.

Sun burns through mist that enchants the most prosaic scenes

• Heavy fog this morning has not stopped the neighbor’s bulldozers and stone saws, but it does indicate no wind.  Wind and fog rarely exist together, except in social metaphor, when we can easily be buffeted about with change at the same time we are blinded by cultural mist.
• I grew up with the typical American exceptional belief that we had achieved ultimate human stability.  Things would get better, hard work would gain appropriate riches and fame, the rest of the world must follow us, I could confidently predict what others around me were thinking.  All naïve and innocent balderdash, of course, until it metastasized into current political sloganeering and personal victimhood.  Everyone seems to be truly becoming a rhinoceros _ there goes another one down the street now _ my neighbors metamorphosed overnight.
• Knowing I will quit the planet fairly soon, I’ve had my share and be somewhat philosophical about stuff.  I can’t affect the world which my grandson will inhabit.  I couldn’t control my own. 
• And yet, as the winds howl, I maintain faith.  Humans are remarkable, and mostly work together in social situations amazingly well.  I strolled NYC sidewalks Monday, amazed at how well everyone gets along.  I am amazed that our own culture is so little filled with actual violence.  There can be hope.  But sometimes the gales blow fierce, and all seems lost, and I worry if the storm will ever end.