As we move from the Hartford of the West (Des Moines, IA) to the Gateway to Yosemite (Merced, CA), from the nation’s breadbasket to not far from its salad bowl, we’ll have to keep an eye on water like never before. Water is a finite and precious resource practically everywhere, and this is especially true in the San Joaquin Valley.
City of Merced, Gateway to Yosemite
One of these days I’ll tell the story of how I became familiar with traditional Persian music. It has been a love affair of more than 30 years! On one of our flights back from CA to IA I was listening to a beautiful piece that featured the Persian ney and tombak, and this little drawing was inspired. If you’re not familiar with this music or these instruments, then I simply suggest that you look them up on YouTube. It’s been a long day; otherwise, I would supply a link or two.
I’ve caught myself driving this way. It’s safer to go into the direction you’re heading.
Prior to take off, the citizen-passengers of Flight #US 530 explored the notions of high-altitude community service and civic duty, examined the exit seat eligibility and performance criteria, and posed critical questions that could very well affect the destinies of all on board.
All of the uncertainty out there seems to have underscored the importance of strategy above all in development initiatives. (See also Nobody Likes Change or Complexity.)
OK, mea culpa.
In the early 1980s I attended a lecture given by an artist/philosopher who aimed to explain the act of art creation. From his phenomenological perspective – and strengthened by his beautiful German accent – he emphasized that the very first line, smudge, mark, or expressive movement is a mistake. This is then followed by a second expressive attempt to correct that first mistake, an act which results in an even bigger mistake, of course, and, naturally, an even more compelling invitation to mend it. See a pattern? Each subsequent, additional, inductive, and deductive effort to repair the opus merely adds to the accumulation of purposelessness and further hollows out any remaining significance! Finally, the artist discovers that nothing can fix it; no more tinkering, no more cobbling, no more troubleshooting. The piece is irreparable. The piece is finished! “It’s Kaput!”
For years I internalized this rather lopsided approach and applied it to practically every aspect of my being. Yes, it was like playing Russian roulette with my life. When it came to art, I approached the blank paper, the block of wood, the lump of clay like a Quixotic adventure. I entered it and allowed myself to get carried away. When the muse was there, we collaborated swimmingly; when it wasn’t, I’d try again later. Nowadays, I realize that there aren’t enough hours in the day and that some things really do start off as half-baked ideas, require planning, rely on infrastructural support, and so forth, long before execution.
I still love indulging in let’s just see what happens. It challenges me to go with the flow and know when to quit. Is there such an alternative as quitting while you’re ahead?
Customer service ain’t what it use to be. That’s really what prompted me several weeks ago to draw this one: when there are multiple, abandoned, unoccupied, off-line check out lanes, say for instance at a grocery store, and yet everyone is channelled into the one and only line that snakes its way toward the light as though it were the illuminated path of the Three Wise Men.
However, the bigger question is this: When you’re in this situation, are you standing in or on line?
Today was my final session. I feel better.
“Heaven is reserved for people who like surprises.” Personal communication. Demetrius Dumm, O.S.B.
N.B. I add this particular note a couple of years later, November 9, 2016 to be precise. When I originally posted this, I did not know that Fr. Demetrius had just died a few weeks earlier. His death came as a surprise to me sometime in early 2014. Click here for his obituary and here for books written by him.
Watching the final episode of Treme last night on HBO reminded me of the richness and incomparability of New Orleans and the life-changing 5 years that my wife and I spent living, working, and redefining ourselves there from 2005 to 2010, roughly the same timeline that David Simon and Eric Overmyer followed in the creation of Treme. We had been there just under 6 months before Hurricane Katrina hit. That portion of my experience and memory will forever be eclipsed by the following 4 and a half years dedicated one way or another to one form or another of rebuilding. Treme helped me begin to make sense of the fullness of that experience, which I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. New Orleans is an incomparable city in so many ways, and it has an enormous lesson to teach the rest of the world; and Treme, if I may generalize, should be a central component of the curriculum.
Last night’s final episode of Treme coaxed out a pre-Katrina memory. I was reminded of one of the many trees that we had to have removed from our property in Algiers Point, one of the few things we got done BK (Before Katrina). Some folks in the neighborhood called this tree a misbelieve tree or a misplease tree. It was, in fact, a Eriobotrya japonica or loquat tree, which some called a Japanese plum tree. Its trunk had been damaged, it leaned very much, and the arborist said it had to go. Those names, I’ve read, are associated with the tree’s name in either French or Italian. I’m not sure. Any ideas out there?
You’ll see this tree in living color 15 seconds into the following short video that I put together (images and terribly slow soundtrack) to celebrate our selling the property, which I’ve been told was the last house to sell in the Western Hemisphere in the summer of 2008!
portfoliolongo 