Humane Emotion

Philadelphia has been barraged with tragedy these past few days.  Two teenagers went missing, one from an very affluent family and one from a less financially fortunate situation.  One had significant social media, community local and national searches, one had a tag line in the news.  One was found safe and alive and the other was not.

I was filled with relief and joy when the 13 year old girl was found and returned to her family; it made me hopeful for the other lost child.

I was overcome with sorrow when I learned that the 13 year old boy was found dead, on his own estate, four days after he went missing; he had died the same day he was lost, buried under a foot of snowfall.

The city also had another policeman killed on Thursday night.  The father of two children, he was in a Game Stop buying a birthday present for his son, when the store was robbed, and he was shot.  The city mourns, from locals to visitors.  Unknown citizens to famous celebrities have all lined up to grieve and to donate to his family in his memory.

I went out today, on an errand and watched in horror as a small dog ran into traffic was struck a glancing blow, which knocked him down and then was fully crushed by the next passing car.  Neither driver stopped (I had in the opposite lane to avoid the little dog, it all happened too quickly to do anything).  His owner retrieved him from the street and I wept for him and for the dog.

I was also weeping for the lost boy.  I found out he had died, when I went to see if I could help find him.  The parking lot of the rally place was empty, save for one woman, who informed me that his body had been found.

Empathy and sympathy are important emotions; they make us more humane when we feel them. Abstract in concept, but so very really real in experience, they give comfort and compassion to the recipient and expand the capacity for action in those who reach out on those valuable emotions. Hundreds of people turned out to look for this child because they felt the horror of being in the parents situation, and they felt the fear and isolation of the child. Empathy and sympathy are hugely important and need to be nurtured; they bring out our best. We may not all know the feeling of the person in pain directly, but we can imagine.

The money of the affluent family will never comfort their loss; pain is universal regardless of situation.  The loss of a child is infinite, only our empathy, sympathy and care will help buoy them to go on; they will help us go on as well.

The police officer's family has the outpourings of thousands in this city and they deserve our gratitude for his diligence and devotion. I hope it helps, and perhaps helps even enough for us to "Stop shooting our cops."  The new rally cry of the city.

I hope our capacity for conceptual care expands, but I also hope that we move towards much more empathy of joy and happiness.

How Can Plain Be So Vain?

  

  

Dissapointment

We all have disappointments; things that fall short of our hopes, dreams, desires or expectations, Heartbreak, job loss, not getting into that elusive, college, competition, club...the list goes on and on. Most of us deal with them in acceptable and hopefully constructive ways.  Sometimes we rail and throw temper tantrums, but they are short lived, if thrown at all.

Sweet Briar College announced its' closing today; a huge shock and disappointment.  My friends and I wondered if they accepted applications this year for the fall of 2015?  Did they take early admission applications?  If they did and accepted people, is that fraud?

Disappointment can be elevated then, from drat to NO!  What does one do when that happens?  Is it worse for applicants, or for the families and individuals who have invested thousand of dollars and hours of work in study at Sweet Briar already?

People disappoint sometimes too.  Frequently, out of habit we disappoint consistently, that is part of the definition of being human.  When does individual failure escalate from rats, to an intolerable NO?

Perhaps intolerability leads to independence, and the change required to make an individual grow, separate and develop into the very human they were supposed to be.  This is what moves our children to leave home and live on their own.

If we can move through disappointment, even at the criminal level, and seek the rest of the human, can we find joy and satisfaction?  I am reading  a book that calls "expectations  - emotional blackmail;" a heavy accusation.  Every parent I know is guilty, but would not the world be a horrible place if we had no such expectations?  Perhaps that is an illusion of authority and grandeur (or delusions thereof). Parenting requires a certain amount of hubris mixed with courage.  We are responsible for a life and for launching a person onto the rest of the human race; error could be irresponsibly tragic. Is forgiveness in the face of disappointment ransom?

Mistakes and disappointment grease wheels of change or gears of rage, I have moved in both realms, without much effect in either, and that is fortunate.  Sometimes invisibility is a good thing.

A Little Ashtray

February twenty eighth marked the three year anniversary of my Mom's death.  I felt she had lived a long life;  since my Dad died at forty six, eighty nine seemed a really decent age, especially for a life-long smoker with dementia.  All in all, I felt accepting about the inevitable and I wasn't sad, not really.

I do wish my kids had known her longer, she was quite a character and they might have benefited from knowing her later in their lives; or not.

As I said, I was fine about it all.  Then my daughter's boyfriend, who was helping her clean up her stuff, brought down three packages of tea and a small glass dish.  I could barely speak and tears welled up (I suspect he thought I was a bit nuts); it was one of my Mom's ashtrays (I think it is actually a coaster, but she used them as ashtrays). She loved smoking.

I could see her sitting in her recliner, cigarette resting next to her blue glass of ice coffee,

head bent over the ubiquitous book.  She read, on average, one book a night.  I wish I had her aptitude for reading; my brother got that trait. I just missed her at that moment of that ashtray's appearance.

My Mom was superstitious, which is so funny for a psychiatrist.  My friend's mother is also superstitious and is amazed that I know so many of these worrisome practices.  Some are just intelligent: Don't walk under a ladder (duh).  Don't open an umbrella in the house (duh) -  I had to onstage once and it gave me such worries.  Don't put a hat on the bed (duh - think about it).

Do not whistle in a dressing room (?) - I have no idea about that one, and the whole black cat thing is just stupid. Saying "bread and butter" if you and  a friend go around opposite sides of a pole or you will have a fight(?).  Getting out the same side of the bed as you got into it (hence the right side rather than the wrong side of the bed (?).  They go on and on; guess who taught me all those.

Some I think she invented, she was very upset when some of our trees started to die, fearing that it was a bad omen. We even brought the stump of a dead tree from our old house to our new one, for good luck (?).  We put the Halloween pumpkin on it for years, until the stump finally disintegrated. Owls were not welcome near our house, she made loud noises to drive them away; in some Native American traditions owls are harbingers of death.  She was an interesting conglomeration of facts and worries. Being well read can have its' pros and cons.

She kept the "Handbook for Poisoners"  next to her cookbooks, which I always found amusing, especially since she was not fond of cooking, though she was a pretty good, if nervous, cook.


Mom introduced me to:

Charles Addams cartoons



and the engravings of Gustave Dore,
 

for which I will always be indebted.



Funny what one little ashtray can do.  I put it in the china cabinet for safe-keeping.

The Waking Vision

The cat decided to take a nap on my lap this evening.  I love it when she does; I find her very comforting.  After a while, however much I enjoy her warm presence, my legs begin to ache from impaired blood flow and I must, reluctantly move.  She invariably leaves me and I usually, as I did  tonight, curl up in a ball and sleep.

This evening, I briefly napped, awoke with an idea in my head and ran upstairs to make a drawing, with which I am pleased.  From there I went to work on an idea about a painting, on which I have been working on for ten years.  It is a part of a series of works, both 2-d and 3-d referring to The Crown of Thorns from the New Testament of the Bible, with which Jesus was crowned as a mocking tribute to his authority.  I am fascinated by the metaphor.

This particular painting is a collage of my ripped up charcoal drawings, on a panel,.  I had done one before measuring 3 x 3 feet, on a red background.  I like it very much.  This one is 4 x 4 feet on a pale blue background, like a sky.  It was too simple, yet, I could never quite find a way to complicate it just right.  I tried lots of things and pulled them off the surface. When I say I have been working for ten years it was, build up and tear down for several of them. Finally I got smart, lazy or frustrated and worked in my head.  The image has been thumping around in my head, with its' four sharp corners for a long time.
 
In the last three weeks, I conceived of an idea, brought to me by my storage war.  I do not have room to store a  4 x 4 foot painting and it is a pain in the neck to move.....that is what saws are for.

Tonight I placed the image in "Paint" and cut it up.  I love it!  4 x 4 cut into 4.

In my studio that I had this past fall, I had a cot.  When I grew tired, every day, I would lie down and nap for as little as 5 or 10 minutes.  When I woke, my eyes were new, my head was clear and ideas flowed again;  same as tonight.  Perhaps there is something about waking up from the horizontal to see the vertical image that allows me to just get it.  Live with the work; the waking vision is so different from the staring one.

The only problem I have now is that I do not want to sleep, I am so excited.  I hope the lumber yard will cut this thing for me.

Oh boy Oh boy oh boy!

Rules??

I confess, I follow most rules.  As an artist this can be an oxymoron and yet potentially liberating.  It can also be a wonderful framework in which to press the edges until they mold to what I want.

In life, I try to follow rules.  In life, I often fail.  This is not because I am such a rebel, I am not, at least not until I am pressed, not unlike that aforementioned framework...   Rather the issue I face with rules is that I just don't understand a lot of them.  Dare I say - your rules; dare I say your rules, except when they apply to me?

I get shushed, more than I would like and often by people who seem to enjoy my company. I guess my company is OK up to a certain volume.  My cousin posted a t-shirt on Facebook to another cousin of mine; the t-shirt read:

http://www.greekworldmusic.com/product_info.php?products_id=3203&osCsid=pei36r19so11r7cvg52dr2c330

Actually, while there is some truth culturally, in saying that Greek culture accepts a different level of interaction volume, it could also be construed as an ethnic slur.  I was not encouraged in my upbringing to have no opinions nor to be unwilling to express them.  I was encouraged to be lady-like, but also full of life.  So I chose to keep my legs together when wearing a skirt, and to speak fully when moved to expression.  This is against the rules, especially if wearing a skirt; why those two are related boggles my mind.  I do not get the rules.

Museums are not churches, you may talk.  You may feel.  You may rejoice with consideration of others and of the work (Do not throw snowballs in a museum). I walked into a gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,  to visit my favorite Manet angels:



http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/29.100.51


and wept instead when I encountered a Courbet:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/40.175

It just plain floored me that day.  The guard thought I was nuts.  Perhaps I was, but I felt overwhelmed and it felt alive to allow the full sensation of that feeling.  It is a beautiful painting (not well represented online). I could feel the touch of Courbet's brush on the canvas. I still love the Manet too, but that Courbet, just got to me.

Television is entertaining.  Why do people think that it is odd of me to laugh out loud at a joke on TV?  I am in my own house and I am not disrupting their pleasure; I do not get this rule.

I like funky clothes.  I wear them less than I used to because I am old.  The age things matters to me because I belong to other people and I might make them feel foolish.  I hate that, but I try to follow that rule a bit.  Most people would tell you that they have no idea what I am saying, since I always look weird; they have no idea what I left in my closet.

It is nice not to rob, injure, murder, cheat, lie....but really, if I am loud in the hall while you are playing bridge, will it kill you;  4 seconds of 24 hours, because I laughed, fully?

I can't do Facebook according to he rules either.  I have no idea what those rules are, but I seem to be messing up there royally.  I keep getting private messages or phone calls that say "Stop!" "Take it down!" or "Oh no!!!"  I keep sending "Sorry."  I feel about 3 years old.  If you see less of me on Facebook, that's why - I seem to be really stepping in it and I do not want to bother anybody.

I am a bull in the china shop of the world.  I don't like breaking the china, I am just trying to say hello and get out of your way.  Perhaps I should press my ringed nose against the glass, but that would probably scratch it.  Point me to Wall Street where I can play outside and be a good omen.

In the meantime, as I have been told, I will continue to be as described: "...about a subtle as a Mack truck" and "What you see is what you get."  I take these as compliments.  I have little subterfuge, I stink at lying and I wear my heart on my sleeve. Rules?  I am very compliant, but I often can't read the language.

Sorry is my mantra, but expression seems to be my tenacious, truculent, succulent, inexorable identity.

                    .....Sorry.

                                                                                            

  

Flu Blues

I recently fell ill with the flu.  Please do not yell at me for not getting a flu shot, I did.  As so many of us have come to realize this winter, the flu shot does not cover all the strains this year and we have an epidemic.  Fortunately, the shot did lessen the effects so I was not totally miserable and my fever stayed below 101 degrees.

Flu hits hard, even weak flu and I spent most of the first four days in bed.  I had lots of time on my hands, lots.  TV gets old, Facebook repetitive, reading is a little tough... so I thought, between naps and then I thought more.  I worried and obsessed over things I had said the day before my temperature rose; dumb things, really dumb things.  I ached, some from the flu, but mostly from verbal regret, unfettered by new interactions.

Today, I saw a couple of the people in whose presence I had verbally embarrassed myself. I apologized for my clumsiness and stupidity and the possible offense I had precipitated in them.  It is completely possible that the dear people I spoke with today plead generous ignorance out of kindness. It might well be that they had been too busy with their own versions of the flu or other business, that they actually did not recall, or care, if I had been a less than evolved human.  Thank goodness and their good natures, that I am redeemed!

"Too much time on my hands," never too many friends, glad I didn't lose any while I learned yet another painful lesson.  I am still becoming human and I am working hard on it too! Perhaps the flu slowed me down and shut me up at just the right moment.  Ah-choo, ah-choo, thank you flu? God bless you too.