A Work Progressing

I was single again, newly discharged from the Army. It had seemed to be a good idea to purchase some sort of transportation device. When I was in high school there was a daily newspaper column in the classified want-ads. A free listing for things under $50. Sometimes a running car was listed there.

I was dirt poor, going to college, waiting for my veteran’s benefits to kick in. 50% of my food was eaten out of my Victory Garden. My parent’s always had a small Victory Garden during the war, and they had kept it up for years afterwards. They had moved up to Tacoma, WA and I had taken their duplex for a small monthly rent, until I got on my feet. And I ate out of an ever decreasing Victory Garden.

The choices for transportation remained very slim, no cars under $50 that ran. My best friend had gotten married, and he had a 450cc Honda motorcycle that he needed gone. I bought it for $50 down payment, and something each month until it was entirely paid. It took months and months.

It was my 100% transportation so I put a lot of miles on it pretty quickly. Not a lot of interstate travel, it was a little too light for road-trips, but it was a great commuter, and local ride. I think I rode three years, or 12 seasons. Lots of cold, rain, blazing heat and everything in between.

I had dropped out of college to take a temporary one year position at the college, with no heath benefits. It was a time to save money in order to transfer to a four year school. My plans came to a crashing halt, when I crashed and was crushed by a car that “t-boned” me. I was broken, my motor was broken, and someone stole my wreck while I was in the hospital.

It was the end of my riding days. Although I did remember them fondly every time a decent bike would pull up beside me, and thunder ahead on the road.

I had a 40 minute commute on a slightly twisting two lane road that paralleled a beautiful reservoir. I used to ride my Honda on this same road. I lived in a nice apartment looking over the Bay, but I met a young lady that lived in the Valley. This two lane country road was the best way to go see her.

This was fine for the first month, but as the weeks went by, I began to get uneasy. I had a foreboding that the road was going to be my end. Some horrible accident was heading my way, a deer crossing, slipping on water, head-on with a truck, or just not making a corner with too much speed.

So I faced a few choices. I could buy a safer vehicle, I could move closer to the girlfriend, or I could end the relationship. I chose to end the relationship. I really liked the motorcycle.

A few months later I had my accident on the way home to my apartment, miles from that two lane road.

Fast forward ten years…

I’m back on that same two lane road, commuting on it twice a day in a safe vehicle. Periodically I’m behind a motorcycle for a few miles, but they eventually move ahead because they corner faster. I remember my days riding the same curves and I smile to myself.

This day was in the early winter, there was a brisk cold wind from the north. I had my heater on, and I was comfortable. The rider had a warm leather jacket, boots, gloves, and helmet. He looked well equipped. He also had a long warm scarf wrapped around his neck. He was in the weather, but he looked comfortable.

As I watched him tilt, side to side while taking the curves, I remember again the same movements. Just before he disappeared I saw that his scarf had unwrapped a turn, so it looked like a flag flying behind him, or maybe a WWI fighter pilots scarf. It was cool!

Then I thought I saw the scarf get longer. I was ill-at-ease, so I accelerated to see better. It was hard to catch-up. He cornered much faster, but I was faster in the straight portions. Finally I could see that the scarf was now flopping around almost above the rear wheel. It was a very long, flopping flag.

The dance at the end of the scarf went side to side, then it went up and down. When he slowed for the corners, it fell to the rear seat. Then it got a few inches longer. Now it was possible that it could caught on the chain.

It hit me so quickly that it took my breath away for a few seconds. I had read about the death of Isidora Duncan, I might be behind a future decapitation, unless I could get him to stop.

I raced ahead, honking my horn repeatedly. That only caused him to go faster in the straightaways. It made it worse. I stopped honking and focused on pulling along side of him, except he was generally much faster, so I had to be unsafe to catch up.

Maybe he was tracking me in his mirrors, because he wouldn’t let me pass him, or let me come alongside. I was almost on two wheels coming around the corners, and the thought occurred that this road was going to be my death in a car, not on a motorcycle.

The last long straightaway was coming up, I knew the road well. I floored the gas while coming out of the turn and went in the oncoming lane to pull up beside him. I honked my horn, then made choking gestures after pointing to his scarf.

It was like a game of Charades. Confusion in his eyes, then a sudden awareness, almost a smile, then terrible fear. There was a curve coming up, he was slowing down, the scarf was falling to his chain, but he was also pulling it back to the front.

Meanwhile I was still in the oncoming lane, a car might be coming around the corner, and I was still going far too fast.

Nothing happened… it wasn’t meant to be. I hope he had a future, a life, and a family. He waved goodbye, I continued my commute, and I think about it every few years, thankfully.

It has been awhile since my last ponder. I’ve been struck by things a lot, but when it comes to wrestling to put it into words, then comes the judgement. “It’s not really that interesting”, “It’s more like a Seinfeld rant, like the show about nothing”, and worse yet, “I’ve bored myself before I finished writing.”

The problem with judging myself is that I don’t play fair. I use every flaw that I have to point out why I should stop. And at some point Lao Tze is remembered, “Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know.”

Okay, I’m going to push through this by admitting up front that I do not know a thing.

But I have the “feeling” of knowing sometimes. Not a lot, not volumes… and certainly much less “knowing” is felt now that I’m older. I knew so much more, when I was younger. Obnoxious, pretentious, so filled with myself because I was certain. I took the “feeling” of knowing something to the extreme.

Yes, I had that “feeling” then, as I do now. I just did different things with it.

Take the title of this ponder, “The Smallest is the Greatest”, I have the “feeling” of truth behind this, but it is not obvious. It sounds a bit like scripture, and I think some of the best scripture is experiential. That’s why parables are so powerful. Sounding like scripture is very convincing. the question I have is how “time” changes truth.

We have atoms frozen in time as a small particle. Atoms combine with other atoms, molecules build upon molecules… add time and we get everything that we see, everything that we can measure. The the statement “smallest is the greatest” becomes a fact.

Add even more time, and the greatest becomes the smallest because of entropy. Everything is changing in a wave, building and breaking down. The “feeling” of truth is based upon a “window of time.” So I’m left with the question, “Some truth is impacted by entropy, but does that mean all truth is impacted by entropy?

I believe in the “feeling” of truth about eternity. Does entropy effect truth, like a basketball dribbling unaided in an empty gymnasium?

A person close to me dies. For weeks or months I have “the feeling” that their eternal spirit surrounds me, but then entropy occurs, and something that was eternal is not so much? And I no longer feel the presence of my friend or relative. Or is it just because I’m flawed and I forget?

Here’s a thought, eternity excludes entropy. Entropy exists, but it doesn’t exist everywhere. My son reminded me that I once had a sister that died before I was born. But I’ve always felt her presence. Entropy has not impacted her eternity. And since that is true, then all those that have recently died are not impacted as well. By extension, all those that are eternal beings still exist, and they are not impacted by entropy.

Genealogy has more meaning.

I remember when I was first accused of “feebleness”.  It was every week when my golfing friends would say, “OK, we’ve got Ed now, his legs are just about gone”. 

It would always be on the second nine holes, when they felt the need to joyfully verbalize their observation. As for me, I had no idea that I was running out of gas until they would faithfully remind me every week.  At first, I thought it was just our usual friendly competitive harassment, but eventually, I came to realize that it was TRUE!, my legs were going fast! Me-O-MY, what am I going to do??  I remembered some words from a song 🎵 “They say that I am feeble with age, Maggie, . . my steps aren’t as spritely as then.”🎵   I needed to correct this fast, so do I need to see a doctor?  

Well, the solution to this health problem turned out to be simple and quick — I began to rent an electric golf cart for the second nine holes.  Leg problem?, what leg problem?

Then there was the time when I first noticed that people were starting to call me “sir”.  This was not a bunch of young people addressing me as sir because of good manners. No Sir!, these were people of all ages calling me Sir!!  Now, I understand military “sir”, and southern manners “sir”, but WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME HERE?  

Then one day, about ten years ago, I finally got it; I was 70, and was fishing on a dock, and talking some fishing to a guy that I had just met. When we were finished talking, he whirled around, and said, “Well, I’ll see you around, old timer”.   Huh??  As he walked away, I looked back over my shoulders, and sure enough, I was the only guy there — he was actually talking to me!, . . calling ME an old-timer!  I felt like saying, “Hey, dude, You talkin’ to me?”  

When I was about 40, my optometrist said, “Yep, you’ve got 40 year-old eyes alright”.  We’ll, yeah,. . but, I really would have been ok with just, “Everything looks great, Ed”.  When I received my heart stent, the blood and oxygen began to flow normally again, but my mind was already healthy, filled with good memories, and my mostly always present rock n‘ roll mental vitality. 

So yeah, being called an “old timer” for the first time in my life was rather shocking; I can’t believe this is actually happening to me!  And it’s happening just when I oftentimes enjoy self-identifying as a teenager!  These people need to get a clue; they should know that when I get up in the morning, a little after my first Aleve tablet kicks in, I can still break into a painless arthritic happy-dance!

Maybe it was my walk; did I suddenly adopt the “old man walk”?, duck waddling from side-to-side?  Nope, I checked it, my gait was straight, albeit slightly stooped at times.  I don’t know exactly what is happening, but all my doctors stubbornly insist on measuring my height at 5’ 7”, when my driver’s license has always plainly shown the truth to be 5’ 8”.  They all must be talking to one another to get their stories straight.

Now, in these times, everyone is saying that “Age is just a number”, well of course that’s true, it is just a number, but the whole truth is that sometimes the “number” can turn out to be a not-so-good one, so I’m just trying to manage the number the best I can, and as we age, that’s about all we can do.  

My wife, Joanne, always managed her number well, and when she was struggling with late stage Parkinson’s, I used to sing her the words of a song, in my out-of-tune voice;

🎵 To me you’re as fair, as you were Maggie, . . when you, and I, were young. 🎵 

(Another guest blog from my brother Ed.)

The following aricle was written by ZUZANNA STAŃSKA 14 OCTOBER 2018, in www.daily art magazine .com.

“Edward Hopper, July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967, Soir Bleu, 1914, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY[/caption] It’s an ambitious but inert picture, so heavy-handed in its allegory of detachement. The lack of connection is not however right into the viewer’s face, as it might have been done by an ironist or an expressionist. It just is everywhere.

Hopper is a painter without any sense of humour, he paints without wit, without self-awareness. His clown just couldn’t be happy. We may have to accept the fact that Hopper painted the sad clown smoking a cigarette in a café because he felt it to be a poignant scene. Soir Bleu is a vivid and monumental work painted in New York in 1914, almost four years after Hopper’s last travel to Paris.

He created this allegory of melancholy from reminiscences and the huge scale of the painting is proof of how strong an impression Parisian life had made on the young Hopper. The painting is a synthesis of many trends in French art of the end of the nineteenth century, especially in its focus on café and street culture popularized by Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, both artists Hopper deeply admired. Not long after its completion, he showed it along a painting of a New York street.

Critics were generally positive about the New York painting, but they were less enthusiastic about Soir Bleu. This was the reason why Hopper rolled the painting up and put it in storage. It wasn’t seen again until long after his death. After Soir Bleu, Hopper focused almost exclusively on American subjects.”

Wow, he rolled the painting up for almost fifty years?. He was serious about rejection and loneliness. I’ve been reading about his personal life, he was married a very long time, but not happily. He wasn’t easy to live with. His wife Josephine document all his work, and was an accomplished artist herself. He spent many hours degrading her work. He was not a nice man, but I have always loved his work.

Unfortunately, he is another artist where the work is great, but the person is not. Caravaggio, Egon Schiele, Gauguin, and now Edward Hopper. Troubled souls.

I decide to have some fun with a few of Hopper’s paintings,

Painted in NYC in 1942, by Edward Hopper, the year after Pearl Harbor.

Not absolute proof, but it fits the composition.

A lot of critics have written about Nighthawks, many have mention that it is the most recognized American painting of the last century. But why? It’s probably not because of what is there, it’s what is not there!

It’s a long rectangle that seems too long, in fact, most people only see a cropped version, because the editors of newspapers, magazine, television, are uncomfortable with the real proportions. The painting is complete, there is stuff going on, but the sense of meaningless emptiness is disconcerting, hence the crop. And the crop is usually around the three people, why include the fourth person? His back is to us, there’s no need to give him space. Why include the sidewalk, no one is walking there.

Hopper’s intention was to paint the loneliness of the big city, eyes that don’t meet, and hands that don’t touch.

In my tribute version I wanted to focus on the light reaching out to the sidewalk and to the buildings across the street. The diner was acting like a lighthouse, to bring safety and direction to ships in the night, like birds in flight, like nighthawks.

Original version…

All this research about Sarah Bernhardt has lead me to rediscover what is called the Belle Epoch, or Beautiful Age. We recently used the label Beautiful People on some of the standouts of the 60s and 70s. Apparently we have always had Beautiful People, it’s just that we didn’t have a lot of photos to prove it.

It certainly became a thing in the 1870s, 1880s, and right up to the 1930s. It does seem that the Hollywood starlets pushed the Belle Epoch folks off the newsprint,

I have collected nearly one hundred images. Here are a few of my favorates.

Several weeks ago, I watched a YouTube fishing video where the User’s I.D. happened to be Brats&Mustard. The video was all about fishing, but as I watched the video, I just kept thinking about Brats&Mustard — was it only because I am half German?

All day long, thoughts of Brats & Mustard crept into my consciousness. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted it. While watching TV, I thought of Brats & Mustard — while washing the dishes, Brats & Mustard —vacuuming, Brats & Mustard. Then sauerkraut popped into my mind — I wanted that too. Now, I like sauerkraut, but I can’t remember ever having eaten Brats & Mustard; today I vowed that I will have it with some sauerkraut.

So, I sat down to a lunch of Brats & Mustard, with sauerkraut, and beer. Then, I made the regrettable mistake of devouring it all, very quickly, without the slightest thought of savoring even one bite. Like so many other things in life, I kind of messed up my meal — I could have enjoyed it so much more, by just chewing and swallowing slower, by letting the taste linger. In life, I know there are no do-overs, but there are start-overs — so I thought, I’ll do better next time.

Now and then, I still crave Brats & Mustard, and after learning of the great health benefits of sauerkraut, I always include it.

So the words Brats&Mustard, and one German surname are few — but they had quite a bit of power.

Uncle Ed

Periodically I have guest posts, this is from my older brother!

In addition to the different vowel, there is a world of difference. While they are technically contemporaries, Edouard Manet is eight years older, and painted in an entirely different style. Manet is a modernist/romantic painter, and Claude Monet is the father of the Impressionists. It has been said that the Impressionists were more concerned with rendering light, sacrificing detail in the process. I think that is a fair description.

Monet was eight years younger but lived almost forty years after Manet’s death in 1884.

The title Impressionism was actually a critics slam, Louis Leroy, who was trying to criticize Monet’s works at the Exhibition Of The Impressionists. He called the painting an “impression” because he thought that the works looked incomplete,” he said upon viewing “Impression, Sunrise, 1872.”

Both painters had a massive impact upon Western Art. Manet pushed directly against the accepted standards of the times in composition, and came from a very influential family. In fact, Manet’s father was the Chief Justice of the French Court. It was perfectly okay to paint nudes so long as they were mythical or Ancient Greek or Roman, but Manet painted contemporary nudes of women. In fact, one critic said that Manet did not paint “nude” women, he painted “naked” women.

Manet was famous for the painting of “Déjeuner sur l’Herbe”, or “Lunch on the Grass”. It was rejected by the Annual Salon of 1863, and caused quite a stir because of the content. Two typical art students (modeled by Manet’s two brothers), accompanied by two women in different states of nudity, in public. The fully nude model was the famous model, Victorine Meurent.

My personal favorite is the painting, “A Bar at the Folies-Bergere”, 1882. I have studied, sketched, and repainted this piece several times. Manet was in the final stage of syphilis during the painting and died two years later in 1884, but had won the “Legion d’Honneur” for his artistic work in 1883.

Manet had also painted, “Madame Manet in the Conservatory”, in 1879. This was a classic Modernist composition done with great skill. Manet apparently saw the painting done by Monet, “Camile Monet on a Garden Bench, 1873” and was inspired to paint his own version.

Monet’s father was a middle-class merchant and wanted Claude to follow in the family business. His mother was a singer and encouraged his artistic development, unfortunately she died when he was sixteen.

Monet was following his studies of light. His painting “Impression: Sunrise, 1872” gave the name to the painting style. He also painted a series of haystacks in 1890-91, exploring the quality of atmospheric light. He had been introduced to “plein air” by Eugène Boudin In 1856 when he was just starting to paint, and most of his paintings were done outside, and not in the studio.

During the last thirty years of his life he painted over 250 separate paintings of lily pads. It is said that during these last years he was suffering from cataracts.

In 1923, Monet underwent cataract surgery on his right eye; he refused, however, to have his left eye operated on. As a result, he could see violets and blues through his right eye but not his left. It is also believed that due to the removal of the lens, which filters out ultraviolet wavelengths, Monet began to perceive—and paint— a spectrum of color typically unseen by the human eye.

His impact on painting was so significant that many art historians label him as the greatest artist of all time.

The Wedding

I’ve taken my time to ponder this last event, partly because of circumstances, mostly because of jumbled thoughts.

The next day, after the wedding, there was a picnic luncheon, very informal. Someone asked me what my thoughts were… I went with the immediate, the first on the tip of my mind. I replied, “I once rode a roller coaster, I didn’t know that it would be the last time.”

Of course that isn’t an absolute fact. I’m still breathing and a roller coaster is available after a two hour drive. But because of time passing, and the cost/benefit analysis, I have determined not to ride roller coasters, I just didn’t noticed that the last time was the last time.

The list of potential “last time” things is getting larger. I don’t think about it much until just before something might happen. Most is based upon age and time, but the last child getting married is pretty much the last marriage. I least I hope so.

This was the longest “distance” wedding in our family, apart from a nephew’s in Panama and another nephew in Hawaii. Upper state NY, was not familiar to me, I know a little more now. I’ve been told that experiencing a winter there will give a fuller picture. I’m not sure I want a fuller picture. It was simply perfect in the summer.

I have lived back East during the winter. It’s not bad for the first few months, but then the “slush” months arrive and the spring seems so far away. My daughter and new son-in-law are staying there for awhile. Good for them!

I suppose the daughter’s bedroom can be neutralized, obviously they can stay there when visiting, but now the “individual” can be changed to “guest”. That will be a big change. Too soon?

Moving would solve most of these issues. But it would generate lots of stress, and lots of new problems. Better to recover a awhile. … I’m avoiding my thoughts.

The Ceremony

The light is special. It has taken nearly eight minutes to get to this exact spot from 93 million miles away. It has fused with the earth’s magnetic fields, filtered through the atmosphere, and is hitting the leaves above our heads. The effect is called “dappling”, painters apply pigments in quick small daubs to give this effect.

I am bathed in daubs of dappled light when I hear a voice asking, “and who gives this bride?” I stumble my response, “her mother and I”.

How do we give what has been given to us?

In the same way that we have received, with love and grace.