Thursday, April 25, 2024

No Time for Boredom

“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Art and the State of Wonder

“I believe that the justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.” 

— Glenn Gould


Friday, April 5, 2024

Wheels in the Night

As George and I finished our predawn walk this morning, we saw a homeless man wobbling by on a bicycle, burdened by the inevitable backpack, his lonely light probing the darkness.

Wednesday, April 3, 2024

Failing Journalism 101 to Coddle Trump

Chris Quinn, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post today, on Journalism 101—

“Chris Quinn, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote to his readers to explain why he will not treat Trump like other politicians:

“The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.

“The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

“This is not subjective. We all saw it. Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive. (If leaders began a years-long campaign today to convince us that the Baltimore bridge did not collapse Tuesday morning, would you ever believe them?) Trust your eyes. Trump on Jan. 6 launched the most serious threat to our system of government since the Civil War. You know that. You saw it.

“The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.

“Quinn warned, “Our nation does seem to be slipping down the same slide that Germany did in the 1930s. Maybe the collapse of government in the hands of a madman is inevitable, given how the media landscape has been corrupted by partisans, as it was in 1930s Germany.” He hopes that will not be the case but vows that his paper will “do our part.”

“This should be so blindly obvious that every respectable outlet should subscribe to it. That they don’t — and instead reject it — tells us how badly major outlets have forgotten their essential mission.”

Sunday, March 31, 2024

Saturday, March 23, 2024

The Old Man in the Know

At a local restaurant over breakfast this morning, an old cretin sitting behind me was telling a man at another table the details about several Iraqi cells that were planning or had been thwarted in bombing attacks in central Illinois.

This to be said of a country where we killed several hundred thousand innocent people in an invasion based entirely on Bush and Cheney’s lies.

Funny how profound American guilt so often expresses itself in viciousness.

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Sunday, March 17, 2024

A Sign of the Times

Cold, high winds sent us

A cardboard sign that said "Free."

A fine reminder.

Emerson on the Purpose of Life

Among Ralph Waldo Emerson’s primary perceptions about living were these:

• There’s no other world; this one is it.

• All important truths must finally be self-evident.

• The purpose of life is individual development, self-expression and fulfillment.

• Nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm, and your work should be in praise of what you love.

• The days are gods.

“On a day no different than the one now breaking, Shakespeare sat down to begin Hamlet,” explained Emerson’s biographer Robert D. Richardson Jr. “Each of us has all the time there is; each accepts those invitations he can discern. By the same token, each evening brings a reckoning of infinite regret for the paths refused, openings not seen, and actions not taken.”

“There is nothing in this list that Emerson had not learned firsthand. These are not abstractions but practical rules for everyday life. The public consequences of such convictions for Emerson were a politics of social liberalism, abolitionism, women’s suffrage, American Indian rights, opposition to the Mexican War and civil disobedience when government was wrong. The personal consequence of such perceptions was an almost intolerable awareness that every morning began with infinite promise.”

Saturday, March 16, 2024

In Control of Consciousness

“Despite its great powers, attention cannot step beyond (its) limits,” observed Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.  “It cannot notice or hold in focus more information than can be processed simultaneously. Retrieving information from memory storage and bringing it into the focus of awareness, comparing information, evaluating, deciding — all make demands on the mind’s limited processing capacity. For example, the driver who notices the swerving car will have to stop talking on his cellular phone if he wants to avoid an accident.

“Some people learn to use this priceless resource efficiently, while others waste it. The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer. And the person who can do this usually enjoys the normal course of everyday life.”

Now consider what digital media has done to shorten the human attention span in the decades since this was written. What does that imply about the ability “to enjoy the normal course of everyday life?”

Thursday, March 14, 2024

In Tepid Blood

Although it was masterfully done, Feud Season Two left me feeling that I didn’t really care what happened to Truman Capote or his Swans.

Truman destroyed a great talent with booze and pills, and practiced treachery to boot. And the Swans were Sondheim’s Ladies Who Lunch, permanently pickled in their own frustrations.

People who have every imaginable resource handed to them and nevertheless manage to remain unhappy tend to drain the well of sympathy.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Impoverished by Wealth

Americans seem to assume that the alternative to materialism is poverty. Ironic, because it’s clear to me that the result of materialism is emotional and mental impoverishment. 

The alternative to materialism is an indifference to wealth that provides a relative immunity to greed.

Saturday, March 9, 2024

The Tiffany Trick

“During World War II, a man of middle age entertained a Marine one Saturday night. The man enjoyed himself so much in the Marine’s muscular embrace that he felt he should buy him something to show his gratitude, but since it was Sunday when they woke up, and the stores were closed, the best he could offer was breakfast.

“’Where would you like to go?’ he asked. ‘Pick the fanciest, most expensive place in town?’

“The Marine, who was not a native, had heard of only one fancy and expensive place in New York, and he said, ‘Let’s have breakfast at Tiffany’s.’”

Capote, Gerald Clarke

And that anecdote gave Truman Capote a title.

Friday, March 8, 2024

Thursday, March 7, 2024

How the Mind Can Manage Pain

“The largest-ever brain scan study of the placebo effect has revealed that it seems to act on systems in the brain that process the emotional aspect of pain, which could explain why sugar pills can ease discomfort,” wrote Moheb Costandi in New Scientist magazine.

“Expectation, suggestion and social cues can all influence the placebo effect, where a person’s symptoms lessen after taking dummy medicine that they believe to be an effective treatment.”

And this research points to a mechanism by which mindfulness can be used to manage emotions and thereby alleviate the perception of pain.

“The placebo effect is a way for your brain to tell the body what it needs to feel better,” explained Harvard Prof. Ted Kaptchuk.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Maigret's Prose

“The memories reached him in waves, because this was another year when spring was early, and that morning he had left home without his overcoat. He felt as light as the sparkling air. The colors of the shops, the food stalls, the women’s dresses were all bright and cheerful.

“He was not thinking of anything in particular, just a few disconnected little thoughts.”

— Georges Simenon, Maigret’s Pickpocket

I always enjoy the quotidian aspects of the Maigret novels — the specificity of weather, the satisfaction of meals, the small vivid impressions — as much as I do the crime stories. He’s one of those characters who wanders around in your mind, knocking out his pipe, after the story ends.

The Secret of Nostalgia

The simple secret to nostalgia for the past is that we know how things turn out, a comfort that the present reality — the only reality — never gives us. 

It's like a favorite movie we can watch again and again.

Meteorological Theatricality

Torrents, floods, flashes, booms. 

A simple spring rain can be 

quite the drama queen.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Saturday, March 2, 2024

A Reassuring Glow


The soft yellow cones

of the streetlights in the haze

welcome weary eyes.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

The Devil's in the Downward Dog

So apparently “anti-yoga Republican” is a thing now.

The satanic sin of stretching, I guess.

Monday, February 26, 2024

The Remembered Taste of Grape Soda

Doing Photoshop art upstairs, I had a sudden urge to watch Father Knows Best, and wondered why. Not really a great show, after all. 

Then I realized it may have been because I was drinking a grape soda, something I’ve tasted very rarely since early childhood. 

I think it took me back to living with my grandparents in those earliest years, with that warm-as-a-blanket sense of absolute security that never comes again. 

I used to watch that TV show with them on CBS Monday nights, often drinking a bottle of grape soda from a six pack that my grandmother would buy at the neighborhood grocery store just down the block.

Friday, February 23, 2024

When the GOP Dial Got Stuck

I wrote this: “The problem is that at least half the country is being fed a largely fictional narrative, every day, and accepts it to be true. That’s the Fox News Effect.

“I realized 20 years ago that if lying propaganda could be substituted for news, this country’s ruin would follow in short order.”

And I got this thoughtful reply from Mouse Detective on the Washington Post website: 

“Same here professor. Believe it or not, I grew up in a Republican family, and used to listen to Rush Limbaugh every day. I remember during the first Gulf War, he was always enraged at CNN, and wanted them muzzled for reporting what happened, and whined about the “liberal media,’ 

“I remembered what Ben Franklin had written about an informed electorate, and felt uncomfortable. It took me awhile to leave but I have never looked back. 

“That was before Fox ‘News,’ but it was universally accepted by Republicans that the media was biased in favor of liberals. I thought that was BS, and that you had a rich buffet of choices from both extremes to the middle. But I think that was a time when many Republicans began to choose only far right sources. AM radio was loaded with Rush wannabes and I think that’s when my generation got stuck. There, but for the Grace of God go I! I don’t think I’ve voted for a single Republican since about 1995...”

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Of Thee I Sting

Our national symbol shouldn’t be an eagle. It should be a scorpion stinging itself to death.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

China in the Sky

A sky as blue as

bone china, and a silence

as deep as the snow.

Less Than Meets the Eye

The whole hackneyed concept of being “seen” now has narcissistic vibes.

What we actually need is to be moving toward a principled goal — whether we are “seen” to be doing so or not.

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Care for Some Very Stale Pie?

Evangelical Christians will burn the whole Earth to warm their pie in the sky.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Level and Level-Headed

Kilimanjaro 

can kill, but in Illinois,

no mountains mock you.

The Bird: Do What You Were Created to Do

“I don't know what to tell you. A statement is easy, and here it is: Be yourself. Try to matter. Be a good friend. Love freely, even if you are likely — almost guaranteed — to be hurt, betrayed. 

“Do what you were created to do. You’ll know what this is, because it is what you keep creeping up to, peering at, dreaming of. Do it. If you don’t, you'll be punching clocks and eating time doing precisely what you shouldn’t, and you’ll become mean and you’ll seek to punish any and all who appear the slightest bit happy, the slightest bit comfortable in their own skin, the slightest bit smart.

“Cruelty is a drug, as well, and it’s all around us. Don’t imbibe.

"Try to matter. Try to care. And never be afraid to admit that you just don’t know, you just don't fucking know how you’re going to make it. That's when the help — the human and the divine help —shows up.”

— Tennessee Williams, Interview with James Grissom, 1982

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Monday, February 12, 2024

When No Wind Whispers

One that makes me think of my friend Jim— 

“When Ryonen was about to pass from this world, she wrote another poem:

Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the changing scene of autumn,

I have had enough about moonlight,

Ask no more, 

Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no wind stirs.

— R.H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature

Ryōnen Gensō (1646-1711) was a Japanese monk and poet who taught poor children.

Thursday, February 8, 2024

Who’s Sitting in the Empty, Invisible Throne?

A theist is like the owner of an empty apartment who insists that, on the contrary, his home is furnished with an invisible, intangible throne more magnificent than any mere physical chair on Earth.  He claims to sit comfortably in that chair by the spiritual fire, with his dogma curled up cozily at his feet. 

But an assertion is not a chair. 

A metaphor is not a chair. 

A belief is not a chair. 

Freethinkers are merely those people who observe that there is nowhere they can sit.


Wednesday, February 7, 2024

A.I.? Aye Yi Yi Yi!

AI art is attracting a lot of bitter Luddite invective these days. 

But I calmly reply that all artists borrow elements of other artists’ styles, particularly when they’re developing. So let’s not get all high dudgeon about AI here.

I have used AI to generate thematic sample comic book images. And it’s a funny thing, as Stan Lee used to say. The reaction to one of my AI images was instructive. 

People asked, “Where’d you get that wonderful image?” 

And when I answered “AI,” several of them immediately replied, “Oh yuck, it’s awful!”

Literally, they’ve said this! Their hypocrisy was instantaneous.

Remember, the comic book industry was built on artistic swipes. 

And style cannot be copyrighted. 

“It’s not always bad,” observed my comics historian friend Joseph Lenius. “Al Williamson was a genius, and he obviously followed in the footsteps of Alex Raymond. (Frank) Frazetta as a comic book artist did so to an extent from (Hal) Foster. MANY have tried to follow in the footsteps of Wally Wood (who borrowed from others and constantly swiped), although few have succeeded.”

Also, there are literally hundreds of thousands of public domain comic book images which can be sampled by AI. 

“AI using that is no worse than a person doing the same,” Lenius remarked. “Again, there are a lot out there who think NOTHING bad about artists swiping, tracing, light-boxing.”

AI’s art’s detractors decry it as “lazy” and “soulless.” 

That’s claptrap.

I’d say it’s the detractors’ hysterical knee-jerk Luddite reactions that are intellectually lazy. And as for “soulless,” well, are blueprints “soulless?” 

AI art is a tool that enables you to visually describe your concepts — swiftly, helpfully and very effectively. 

So let’s just leave the “souls” out of it entirely, shall we?

The Tree Wise Men


My friend Jim Hampton has a strong affinity for trees, so this morning I asked him what he would say are the wise qualities of a tree. 

He replied, “The immediate words that come to mind are: ancient, sage, quiet, patient, watchful, constant and protective.

“To be more descriptive, I think of something that is wise and powerful, yet discerning. They patiently observe without interfering. Taking in our behaviors so they may increase their wisdom which leads to greater, superior silence.”

“I’m curious as to why you asked.”

I replied, “It’s something I thought of while walking George past my personal ‘world tree’ this morning. You gave good answers. I always think of solidity — the immovable trunk — and yet suppleness, branches that bend with the breeze. And they are satisfied just with sunlight.”

We're Surrounded by Selves

Watch for all the commercials in which people talk to various duplicates of themselves, often more than one. These “selves” have all emerged from their smartphones, I think. The algorithms endlessly echo us, even as they manipulate us.

Sunday, February 4, 2024

A Thought Expermient about Superwomen

In several of the earliest versions of Superman’s origin, his mother Lara is offered the chance to go to Earth with her baby, but chooses to die with her with her husband on Krypton instead.

But what if Jor-el had insisted that she go? She would have ended up on Earth with her Superbaby, perhaps around the time women got the vote.

And unlike the infant, she would have been fully aware that she’d lost her people and planet, not to mention the love of her life. 

That could make quite a mini-series, a kind of ElseKryptons story.

Friday, February 2, 2024

How Amorality Is Advertised

Let's get a wider view and watch how amorality is sold to our society. 

Once we regarded “Lord of the Flies” as a horror story. Now we treat it as comedy on “Survivor.” 

And children raised on nothing but Hollywood's product could be forgiven if they thought the two most popular professions in America were “assassin” and “prostitute.”

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Horror of the Fog Queens

Christopher Isherwood recalled a London cab ride with Bill Caskey and Tennessee Williams in 1948. 

“It is foggy, and Tennessee exclaims, ‘We are the dreaded fog queens!’ and utters his screaming laugh,” Isherwood wrote in his Lost Years memoir. 

“Whereupon all three of them begin to elaborate on the fantasy — how the respectable citizens shudder and slam their shutters and cross themselves as the dreaded fog queens ride by, and how one darling little boy disregards their warnings and looks out of the window and sees the fog queens and they are absolutely beautiful, so he shouts to them and begs them to take him with them, and they do, and he is never heard from again.”

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

News Flash! He's Not Coming

Sad that these theists continue to wait anxiously for someone who has never and will never arrive, making up little lies about why he’s so very late and how much he loves them, like desperate wallflowers at life’s pageant. For century after century they’ve sat there, erupting occasionally in spasms of bloody madness, then slouching back to wait in the corner, muttering to themselves.

Monday, January 29, 2024

Perception and Inner Balance


happiness is not:


perfection, control or determined

by external events and people.


happiness is:


a product of your perception and

inner balance. When you define your

own energy, you bring your harmony

with you wherever you go.

 — yung pueblo


Saturday, January 27, 2024

Inside the Digital Skinner Box

The hunger for constant, instant digital stimulation has made Skinner Box pigeons of the lot of us. The need for the digital fix turns out to be as compulsive as yanking the levers on a slot machine, training the human attention span to be reduced to that of a gnat.

The Eternal Sincerity of the Talk Show

 

“I suffered in silence,” confessed the blonde, flashing her practiced smile on the Today Show.

Friday, January 26, 2024

A Man Called Intrepid

Whenever I hear the word “intrepid,” it reminds me that, sadly, I have never been trapped in quicksand or chased by a helicopter.

Thursday, January 25, 2024

The Hereness of You

Beyond the health benefits, the reason to meditate is simply to return us to the hereness and nowness of conscious human existence. So much of what we worry about or stew over are pointless phantoms from the past or groundless speculations about the future.

Friday, January 19, 2024

Beware the Dreams of a Sleeping Society


“Every powerful emotion has its own myth-making tendency. When the emotion is peculiar to an individual, he is considered more or less mad if he gives credence to such myths as he has invented. But when an emotion is collective, as in war or disease, there are few to correct the myths that naturally arise. Consequently in all times of great collective excitement unfounded rumors obtain wide credence. This myth-making faculty is often allied with cruelty. Such myths give an excuse for the infliction of torture, and the unfounded belief in them is evidence of the unconscious desire to find some victim to persecute.“

— Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays (1950), Ch. XII: An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, p. 81

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

The Flow of Frankenstein

"There is no occupation in the world so absorbing as trying to paint. Everything, every worry, is for the moment forgotten in the effort, however unsuccessful, of creating a masterpiece. To the surprise of many and the horror of some, I have also found great pleasure in needlework, which, after all, is only another way of making pictures."

— Ernest Thesiger, Dr. Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein. He understood the concept of Flow long before it had been defined.

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Daily Deflation

Days sparkle like toys,

but some are merely balloons

that slowly deflate.

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

In the Depression, They Weren't Depressed

Superheroes are metaphors about the soaring human spirit, born of necessity in times of powerlessness and despair like the Great Depression. 

Their function is the same as the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies from that era — to enable the downtrodden to fantasize about defying gravity in fancy duds.

Monday, January 1, 2024