"HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE" AND OTHER GUIDES FOR THE TRUE "GONER"

"When a man has reached old age and has fulfilled his mission, he has a right to confront the idea of death in peace. He has no need of other men, he knows them already and has seen enough of them. What he needs is peace. It is not seemly to seek out such a man, plague him with chatter, and make him suffer banalities. One should pass by the door of his house as if no one lived there...Translation from the Chinese on author Henry Miller's front door."

I copied these words some twenty five years ago from an issue of the San Francisco Chronicle. Who can say why they carried meaning for me? I was yet in my forties and had the same horror of old age as anyone of that age. The closest I could come to a "mission" was to make the rent and pay my bar tab. Still, there was even then a growing uneasiness with the ways of humanity, with what one was expected to do, say, endure and feel to secure food, shelter, sex, friendship and financial security. Perhaps I sensed then that the day would come when I too would seek the only plausible refuge of low income solitude. It was that or live on a daily basis with Jean-Paul Sartre's insight, "Hell is other people".

Solitude has, along with it's rewards, produced some surprising side effects. The harsh opinions I once held of individuals, groups and even nations have mellowed considerably. Even hell looks better from a distance...a long, long distance. Then again I have had the luxury of never having to experience first hand the horrors endemic to the twentieth century. For those less fortunate I'm sure Sartre's hell must be relived endlessly.

On a more subtle level, the longer I have gone without speaking or writing the less inclined I feel to do so. Embroiled in society's daily treadmill of achievement, relating, competition, and just plain sucking up it's easy to lose track of all the talking and writing that requires. I suppose it becomes second nature just as with long term solitude, quiet becomes the rule. I found a web site devoted to hermits and surprisingly it had, as well, a forum. Not surprisingly, there were very, very few replies to the many questions about becoming a hermit.

So it was that setting out to write entries for this blog has proven increasingly difficult and less satisfying with time. I just don't like talking anymore. The other problem is that much of what I have written about is more to do with the person I was once than who or what I am now. That gives it a bit of a bogus flavor that doesn't feel right at all. I have a few months before my yearly rental of my web space comes due. By then it'll be time to either drop the whole blog or refashion it entirely.
'Til then Pilgrims
enaitee on 02.01.05 @ 09:40 AM MST [link]

OVER THE HILL'S OK, IF THAT'S THE ROAD HOME

I've never really understood why anything that is emotionally gratifying is likely logically absurd, often extremely bad smelling and requires not even an idiot's intelligence. On the other hand, things that demand intelligence, are logically flawless and possess perfect order are always boring, pretentious and leave you more hungry after consumption than before. People will, in the main, think, do, say, feel, believe, love and/or hate absolutely ANYTHING to simply "feel good"; meaning to convince themselves they are much more than a meaningless blob of matter on a cooling chunk of lava hurtling through an empty, dark, frozen and eternal space. The unexamined life may or may not be worth living, but, it surely gives you a choice of being a satisfied fool or frustrated boor.

Welcome to the rich tapestry and unexplored wonders of the "inquiring mind" ... the last resort of the social misfit and all those who have neither the talent nor learning needed to simply enjoy being alive and must instead pick at it, like a meal gone cold and unappetizing. It has been my lot for most of my life to simply not care much for being. I do remember a time when it was not so; a time when magic filled my days; the taste of chocolate ice cream under a steaming hot sun, the certain faith that rowboat sized fish were ever ready to bite my worm baited bent nail hook, the thrill of understanding long division, the absolute joy of rolling and tumbling in the dirt with my pals...gone, all gone these many long years.

I once did a lot of reading, looking for answers to what went wrong, crossing that perilous wasteland from childhood to being an adult. Sad to say I can recall very little of the philosophy and fiction I consumed; an idea or two, a catchy phrase here and there, maybe a few characters; nothing more. A pattern emerged and nearly all I ever did followed a progression from curiousity, to learning, to proficiency, to indifference, to boredom, and lastly to rejection and disappointment. It didn't matter whether it was a career, spouse, friend, hobby, or brand of cereal or whatever.

The Dane, Soren Kierkegaard pretty much summed me up about a hundred years before I lived; "I stick my finger into existence - it smells of nothing. Where am I? What is this thing called the world? Who is it who has lured me into the thing, and now leaves me here? Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted." Like I said, perfectly logical and about as satisfying as half a Twinky for lunch! (It's no small coincidence that Kierkegaard for all his sensitivity to the individual's anxiety had to resort in the end to relying on the absolute faith of traditional religious dogma for his "emotional fix".)

Alas, I could never do likewise although I can well understand the essential craving that it eases. This from Kurt Vonnegut's "Palm Sunday:"
"How on earth can religious people believe in so much arbitrary, clearly invented balderdash? For one thing, I guess, the balderdash is usually beautiful - and therefore echoes excitingly in the more primitive lobes of our brains, where knowledge counts for nothing. It is a way to fight loneliness."

That solitary loneliness is the unavoidable result of having lived and lost and grieved...a lot. Consider these thoughts from one of my favorites, Phillip K. Dick's "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said":
"Grief is the most powerful emotion a man or child or animal can feel. Its a good feeling. Grief causes you to leave yourself. You step outside your narrow little pelt. And you can't feel grief unless you've had love before it - grief is the final outcome of love, because it's love lost. Its the cycle of love completed; to love, to lose, to feel grief, to leave, and then to love again. Grief is awareness that you will have to be alone, and there is nothing beyond that because being alone is the ultimate final destiny of each individual living creature. Thats what death is, the great loneliness."

I have always had a difficult time in the coming holiday season but more so than usual in this, my 68th winter. It's not for other times, people and places. I've had more than my share of Norman Rockwell dinners and settings. No, I think I feel what probably a lot of exiles experience, that alienation from the people and country where they live, a deep longing to go home, if only I could remember where or what it is or if it ever existed. Tales like "Lost Horizons", "Brigadoon" and "The Once and Future King" have always had a strong appeal for me. That instant identification! There! Just so! That's where I want to be! Wouldn't it be a grand thing if each and every one of us found it just beyond that final "great loneliness" mountain range, in "Shangrila".

Happy Trails, Pilgrims
enaitee on 11.17.04 @ 03:52 PM MST [link]

THUMBPRINTS ON ICEBERGS AND PEEING ON FIRE HYDRANTS

There are times when an author will reveal an astounding insight into one's innermost feelings and not well understood feelings at that! Writer Margaret Atwood included the following passage in her novel, "The Blind Assassin". Her character, Iris, is struggling to compose a chronicle of a long and complex family history.

"I've written nothing for the past week. I lost the heart for it. Why set down such melancholy events. But I've begun again, I notice. I've taken up my black scrawl; it unwinds in a long dark thread of ink accross the page, tangled but legible. Do I have some notion of leaving a signature, after all? After all I've done to avoid it, "Iris, her mark", however truncated; initials chalked on the sidewalk, or a pirate's X on the map, revealing the beach where the treasure was buried.

Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on a fire hydrant. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on wash room walls. Its all the same impulse. What do we hope to get from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simple attention, of any kind we can get? At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down."

When I first read it I was impressed by the clarity of Atwood's idea and how appropriate it was for my own nagging apprehension...I would vanish into nothingness and have no more meaning than if I had never lived at all. How well she seems to have understood how that need to assert an identity had been woven through my life like an off color thread. The striving for educational certificates, the signatures on engineering reports, hiding my childrens' names in the cross hatching of pen and ink illustrations and yes, even this very blog. Wasn't it all a protest against the sting of Shakespeare's indictment, "Life is but a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing." I once heard that the introduction to a well known play described the work as, "an attempt to leave a thumbprint on an iceberg". Perhaps any drawing or painting or writing is just that; an appeal, however fragile, for a witness that we did exist once, and even though we are gone we have left this, our very own mark!

Like her character, Iris, we struggle to set down in line, color or words, a page from our life's diary showing our attitudes and feelings toward the subject of our choice. Even if that's not what our goal was, it very much remains as an aspect of the work and often the only one worth noting. And how do we mark the place where we no longer fear "our voice falling silent", when the urge to assert an identity is as faded as the passion for a long dead love? I think it needs the sign from Dante's "Inferno" which marked the entrance to the lowest and most horrible level of hell, "LOSE ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE". Truly, there is no calm so awful as that which comes with total despair. So, value your anger at life's futility and nourish your defiance of the prevailing order that celebrates stupidity, ugliness and banality. Redouble your efforts to make your mark however trivial or transient it may seem because it serves a deeper purpose not apparent on the surface...it helps keep that urge to assert your identity alive and thriving. Heed the advice of Dylan Thomas, "Go not gently into that dark night; rage! rage against the dying of the light!


Happy trails, Pilgrims

enaitee on 09.19.04 @ 01:15 PM MST [link]

"I GROW OLD, I GROW OLD!" ... MY PICKUP TRUCK IS SOLD!

After 52 years of driving I'm car-less. It's been a tense experience going through the steps to accomplish that but I'm getting used to the idea and liking it more with time. It is for me one more of those milestones that mark the steady withdrawal from life as I once knew it. Each seemed at first too extreme, too difficult to accept, very sad to see as inevitable, then not so bad and finally quite nice. It was that way with departing both my exes, giving up on my career in engineering, not being able nor caring to earn any more money, etc. etc. Those doors that close behind us never to reopen.

One illusion associated with having a car that seems to linger longest; the road leads to the "land of beginning again", the land of Oz. Maybe it was being born into a culture that had the myth of the frontier as a place of renewal or it's counterpart, the quest as a rite of passage. In any event something tells me I've finally learned that packing everything I own in the back and following the varicose vein of a map to Valhalla just doesn't cut it anymore. Ditto with trying to do my own mantenance work with a bod no longer suited to crawling around and under the beasty nor trying to meet expenses that seem more appropriate for brain surgery and such. I think I can appreciate how those old cow pokes must have felt when the time came to hang up the saddle for the last time and put old "Paint" out to pasture.

I've been relearning this summer how to ride a bicycle after a lapse of thirty years. Hoping to dust off a sense of balance after that long and finding it alive and well was wishful thinking. It's not like sex and swimming, the body does forget...and how! In spite of that I have progressed so that staying within the narrow confines of a sidewalk is no longer the death defying feat of early days. Steering has eluded the master's touch of my childhood. It reminds me of taking a neighbor's dog for a walk; it had it's own agenda and only with near strangulation by the leash would it adapt to my plans. Maybe my vintage thrift shop bike still has technology far more advanced than my clunkers past and has a front wheel with a mind of it's own? We'll just see about that! I've added a neat thrift shop bike trailer/child stroller so I'm able to truck home a week's worth of groceries. A wire basket on the front of the bike suffices for trips to the library. It's nearly a month now and so far I haven't missed a vehicle at all. With winter coming I plan to convert the trailer to stroller mode and walk as I did anyway before being sans wheels.

I have adopted a means of coping with shifts in my life by doing something to occupy my hands and mind intensely. Of late that consists of rearranging software for my web site. My ex used to make a quilt. I knew it was going to be like walking a minefield when all the snippets of colorful fabric started littering the living room. With this latest I rewrote parts of program script that generates an atom.xml file for this blog. This I needed like a lifetime subscription to "People" magazine. What I did need is some complicated (for me at least) series of puzzles to solve that when done right, would send me a signal that I had succeeded. And so my faithful Odis and my belief that the road led to something better have vanished. Losing old, comforting illusions becomes harder with old age because like friends, it becomes much more difficult to make new ones.
Happy trails, Pilgrims

enaitee on 09.18.04 @ 01:35 PM MST [link]

OF PINK MAILBOX PIGS AND HISTORY AS FENCE MATERIAL...

"Everything not expressly forbidden is mandatory!" would be an appropriate addition to this vacant lot sign in Prescott, Az. I pass it on my morning walk or bike ride and keep meaning to look up where I read that phrase; probably one of those dreary future society novels I once read. It speaks volumes about the author's view of life and our times just as if it had been a series of paintings or an "installation". The aging material and added types of warnings suggest a long standing anxiety over transients possibly setting up camp, people dumping trash or stealing the ground itself. The use of printed warnings tells us of a person in late middle to old age since it's been at least a generation since anyone paid any attention to signs of any kind other than tall fences with razor wire and large dogs. When I see this sign I think of the painting, "The Scream". CLICK ON ANY IMAGE BELOW FOR A LARGER VIEW
How can you not like a mail box fahioned like a pink pig and all the while saying a silent prayer that they don't catch on like the "Hula-Hoop" once did. The smaller older one above on the left is just up the street from the larger newer version shown above on the right. Well, offspring often turn out larger than their parents, no? It may not be apparent in the photos but the ears, snout and feet are made from food cans. I admit to smiling when I pass them in the morning and have never had either suggest anything but a nice feeling that people can still laugh and take the time to share it with others ... a worthwhile thought to have at the start of a day... I don't get nearly as many as I'd like.
My walk often takes me down an alley in back of stores where deliveries are made and the trash containers live. The photo above on the left shows a property line fence made out of sheets of metal used once to print a 1964 edition of our local newspaper "The Prescott Courier". Without going into the details; what was once the offset printing process involved making these sheets with areas etched with acid where the printing ink would adhere later to be deposited on the paper. Surprisingly, being outdoors, the printing shown in the closer view in the photo above on the right is still clear and readable after 40 years! I have tended to share the interpretation of history of Ambrose Bierce, "History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools." Here at least is one example of where history is instead serving well as a fence building material and judging from the look of it, for a long time.
The photo on the left is of then US President, Lyndon Johnson. This was only a year after the murder of JFK and the nightmare of Viet Nam was yet to fully develop. The food prices shown in the ad in the photo on the right are roughly a fourth to a tenth of today's so you can compare them in your own country's currency. Oddly enough the prices on the washers are not that far from today's or at least not so wildly lower than current prices. I think those machines were probably made here in the US by US workers while today's are all imported like so many other goods. There is even a small item low to the ground which was too muddy to photograph about Maria Oswald testifying before some committee in Washington. For you younger folk she was the widow of JFK's alleged murderer Lee Harvey Oswald. This particular year, 1964 has a lot of personal signifigance for me. It was a time frame of huge change that has been written about and documented ad nauseum. In a way this fence is sort of like the other "wall" memorial in Washington. At least that's what I feel. It's setting is just seedy enough to denote the nature of the decline whose beginnings it marks; the unraveling of our national culture that began with JFK's death. Yes, it too reminds me of that painting, "The Scream".

Happy Trails, Pilgrims
enaitee on 08.21.04 @ 04:01 PM MST [link]

THE SERIOUSNESS WE HAD AS CHILDREN AT PLAY

The first art I sold showed St. George slaying the dragon while eating a slice of pizza and looking bored. Except for the pizza it was a copy of an old painting done in pen and ink for a children's book on Machiavelli's "The Prince". The caption was to have been one of his quotations which ran something like, "Difficult tasks performed with an attitude of seeming indifference are more easily accomplished." It was also an introduction to the world of commercial art where the newcomer's credo was to work for dish washer wages with the certain faith that it would lead to a living wage doing something wonderful for humanity... yeh right! It was then and for all I know still is the rare occupation that has an endless supply of eager recruits willing to work for next to nothing because it was "art". The girls drifted into waitressing and guys to part time carpentry or car washing jobs until they tired of having teeth that ached needing dental work and tiny apartments so small that even the roaches had to walk sideways past the Salvation Army Store furniture.

I follow an internet forum of aspiring artists all trying to make a go of selling their art on the popular Ebay online auction. I keep promising myself to give up this activity because I can't see it having any value. I don't know which is more pathetic, the quality of the art offerred or the "garage sale" pricing it brings if it sells at all. No I take that back. What really depresses me are the posts of the participants; so full of self dillusion, congratulating each other on every meagre sale; praising each other's talentless work. I guess it's too much of a reminder of my own bitter travel through the same valley of despair. There was a popular song some thrity years ago that spoke of it all too well with a line, "And all the stars that never were are parking cars and pumping gas." Still it was heady stuff that magic faith that you could earn a living doing something besides the usual crass profit scramble. Isn't there a religious quotation somewhere, "Many are called but very few are chosen"? Amen to that, amen indeed.

Intelligence or knowledge carries with it the curse that it is paid for in lost fun. There is no uninhibited joy that can match that of young children at play. Adults can try to regain it but it's one more of those doors that close behind us and isn't easily reopened. There was a time when drawing and painting were play for me; a time when I had no concept of working for a living or "being an artist". As I recall most of my male friends were destined to be cowboys or firechiefs and the girls, princesses or nurses. I can still recall the thrill of learning that hair could be drawn more convincingly with highlights or that a balsa wood model airplane's contours could be made using the kit's paper templates to assist the carving.

When I scan the latest issues of my favorite artist's magazine at the library I'm always impressed that there are still so many people drawing and painting the same old tired subjects. What I see are adults at play, truly. They have managed to immerse themselves in the game of "getting it right this time" to the exclusion of all that messiness of earning a living. It doesn't really matter how they manage that either with a job or supportive spouse or trust fund. The have insisted there is something more to life than feeding the mortgage or the 401k or boring other people to death with meaningless talk. In a way they are no different than those forum participants I mentioned earlier only the work is generally of a higher quality and it's not given away for next to nothing. As a result their efforts can be very inspiring at times.

I've been saving clipped articles from old issues the library sells very cheaply. I've thought of papering my walls with them as a constant reminder to *NOT* think if this or that project is worth doing or profitable but only if I can get it right this time...that and nothing else. Start to consider how this painting or drawing could be sold and it's inevitable that the brush or charcoal will resume gathering dust in short order. Only when it is done as one used to play years ago can art flourish. Approach it in the same spirit as you used to try to get a swing higher and higher or to get a sand box castle just right. "Maturity is when we regain the seriousness we had as children at play." ... Frederick Nietze

Happy Trails, Pilgrims
enaitee on 07.01.04 @ 12:36 AM MST [link]

SHORTER IN WORDS AND LONGER IN MEANING ... WORTH TRYING

I have always been interested in writing on what seem to be very contemporary subjects but written years ago. The following quotation from Robert Henri's "The Art Spirit" is a wonderful example. Although written in 1915 his words could easily apply to the here and now of nearly 90 years later.

The art student of these days is a pioneer. He lives in a decidely colorless, materialistic age. The human family has not yet come out of the woods. We were more barbarian, we are still barbarians. Sometimes in the past we shot ahead, in certain ways, ahead of where we are now. We gave flashes of what is possible in man. We have yet as a body to come up to the art of living. The art student of today must pioneer beyond the mere matters of fact.

There is nothing in the juggler's skill of copying things. It is a question of seeing significances and apprehending the special forms and colors which will serve as building materials. A good picture is a well-built structure. There is material in the model before you for all kinds of structures. All these structures will be like the model, but beyond likeness there will be a manifestation of something more real, more related to all things and more unique in itself. Infinite simplicity. A direct purpose and most exacting choice of the terms of expression. I believe the great artists of the future will use fewer words, copy fewer things, essays will be shorter in words and longer in meanng. There will be a battle against obscurity. Effort will be made to put everything plain, out in the open. By this means we will enter into the real mystery. There will be fewer things said and done, but each thing will be fuller and will recieve fuller consideration. Now we waste. There is too much "Art," too much "decoration," too many thing are made, too many amusements wasted. Not enough is fully considered.
We must paint only what is important to us, must not respond to outside demands. They do not know what they want, or what we have to give.

Of course it's impossible to know exactly what it was like to be living in 1915 or any other time than the eternal "now" of our own lives. Still for each of us there are gifted writers who rise above these limitations and touch us with their understanding of concerns that know no boundaries of time and place. It's hard to imagine that Henri existed long before the current celebration of mediocrity that became radio, television and now the internet. The guidance he offered then is still valid. There is much work to be done if you would paint well. His appeal to me has always been his objective point of view. It's almost impossible to read much without coming up with a list of studio practices that need rethinking. I think in part that is because he was an accomplished painter as well as teacher.
Happy Trails, Pilgrims.
enaitee on 06.23.04 @ 01:03 PM MST [link]