Return from Hiatus with a Book Review?

    Business has been good; too good perhaps.  I have been carefully crafting my time to allow for creative endeavor and that has been, well, an endeavor.  Anyway, I would like to return with something I do not think I have done here before...a book review of sorts. 
    Speaking of business, I have subscribed to The Economist and it has made me feel like Sisyphus.  It is an excellent publication; it is impeccably written and has really made me aware of situations around the world outside of Florida.  The problem is it is a weekly, full-length magazine and despite loading it to audio and listening to it while commuting, counting (for annual inventory at work), and just anytime I am waiting for anything to happen, I have fallen behind.  By the time I finish one magazine, five more have arrived and are waiting for me, standing in line, or should I say queue, on the dining room table.  This would not be so bad were it not a news publication where my old issues are by definition obsolete.  One thing I have consistently enjoyed in The Economist has nothing to do with news or economics but books.  In one such book review, the title in question was a curious Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann.  If the name alone does not spark your interest, check out the reviews on Amazon: they are polarized between laudatory admiration and outright disgust.  This book is notorious for being over a thousand pages of writing that is predominantly stream-of-consciousness. 
     I'm ashamed to say I've never read James Joyce's Ulysses (a situation I would like to rectify in the near future) so this was my first introduction to a book written in this fashion.  Now, I know what stream-of-consciousness is, my mind lives in it as all ours do, but I have never read a book like this.  And to be fair I must say I have not read all thousand pages but merely the sample Amazon provides.  This book engaged me and made me feel like I was intimately present in the life of someone else.  You cannot get more intimate than to be amidst the unedited musings of another human being.  This gives you that perspective and it does it well.  It also speaks to some very uniquely twenty-first century American situations.
    I hope to read the whole thing eventually and then I can comment further, these are but my initial takeaways.  But for now, I will have to catch up with what was going on in the world two months ago in The Economist...   

Acht(ung)

     There was no escape.  There was an illusion of escape, a rapidly evaporating mirage, but the detours were merely diversions.  Centripetal force had been pasted on the clock face and there was no turning back.  With increased mass it gained momentum and the fibers were drawn sharply against the grain, as if you ran your hand down reptilian scales the wrong way.  The snake parries and thrusts but it too finds itself subject to the cyclone.  The gods of the winds have exhausted their collected animus and the mundane laws of physics take over.  Magic finds itself beside myth and everyone lines up according to their belief or skepticism.  Can the superstition be quantified?
    

    It's Kandinsky's Kleine Welten VIII and its feeling of movement is compelling; its entropy unavoidable.  We have seen the esoteric signs and have innately known their meanings.  It's a small world after all.

The Green Heron Knows Where the Money Is

       I'm not an economist so perhaps I have no right to comment on this issue but I have doubts about the efficacy of dollar cost averaging.  Since my forays into Wall Street do not extend beyond the necessary and mundane arena of personal finance, I would like to place this topic in a wider space. 

     Undoubtedly, one of the best environments for glimpsing wildlife here in central Florida is the swamp.  On any given day one can observe myriad species of wading birds and reptiles: today I saw a limpkin and an anole; tomorrow I may find a sandhill crane and an alligator.  If I visit the swamp with enough frequency, I should be able to view most of its available panoply of flora and fauna.  But I have to know where (and when) to look.  There are many things in life to which I would agree that simply "showing up" (mindfulness jargon could say "being present") constitutes the majority of the seminal effort.  Dollar cost averaging is a way in which people are encouraged to invest because all they have to do is show up (with the money).  But if I show up to the swamp in search of an animal who hates humidity, I may be hanging out with the mosquitoes for nothing.

     We've all heard the tired aphorism "the early bird gets the worm" so I would like to posit something more eloquent but nonetheless true:

Chance favors the prepared mind

[Louis Pasteur, quoted in a lecture by Jerry Uelsmann (the artist behind those beautiful and strange photographs from the pre-Photoshop era)]

     Of all the birds I have seen in my swamp visits, I love the green heron most of all.  She blends in easily with the foliage and if you are just randomly walking through, you may miss her.  Perched atop a low-hanging branch near water, she is poised and ready for the right moment to strike.  Patient and careful, she is subject to the vicissitudes of nature and yet she takes full advantage of her available resources.  

     Perhaps my feelings are nothing more than a subconscious attempt to assert control over the randomness endemic to life.  How very human, the desire to manipulate the environment while rebelling against a stoic Destiny or Order; how often in literature and the arts we see humanity as the liaison between the earth and the gods.  

     I have not done the empirical research (for something more scientific I highly recommend The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow) but I do concede to both the value of persistence and the tragedy of human foibles.  It may not be of statistical significance but I will continue to research stocks before investing and I will look for the green heron near the water's edge.  Maybe I will someday find a synergy devoid of both ego and futility.

    

"Where are you?"

     Is this question geographical in nature, or perhaps chronological?  Maybe it is a matter of psychological geography i.e. are you here in front of your computer reading this or are you really at Disney World riding Space Mountain while your body languishes uninvolved at your desk?  Curiously enough my dad has recounted to me his unique experience of seeing Space Mountain with the lights on and apparently it wasn't nearly as impressive as it seems in the dark.  I presume this follows with some senses being heightened when others are deprived.  If you were to ask that seminal question right now, the answer would be floating in a pod in some primordial ooze (the topic of sensory deprivation always brings to mind something like Minority Report or The Matrix).  An appropriate corollary would be:

"What is the state of my mind?"     


  
     Sometimes the state of the mind is one of great weight.  It is not light like a blank sheet of paper.  Though typically translated into English as 'emptiness,' the Sanskrit word sunyata is more an absence of things and therefore ripe with possibility like the aforementioned paper.
     Sometimes the state of the mind is the opposite of sunyata.
     Sometimes it is like an overloaded Christmas tree and one half-hearted push would end a few dozen twinkling glass globes.   

Insert Inspirational Cliche Here!

     Against an unlikely landscape of HD quality, the words emerge like beacons to guide you from the crags of insecurity to the well-labeled docks of assurance.  Perhaps this simple aphorism serves to propel you forward with newly discovered intention, to the extent that you must share your gratitude with everyone in the form of a tagline following your pre-programmed email signature.  I share a similar feeling and desire but I hesitate to tag it on because the single declaration that really motivates and inspires me is the following:

    Also, you are not your furniture from IKEA...Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club is an overflowing wellspring of wisdom.  But back to the matter at hand... masturbation that is, I mean...self-improvement.  We've all done it: made lists, goals, resolutions, etc ad nauseum.  I've devised and implemented multiple strategies including an incentive based system with different point values assigned to various "self-improving" activities.  They were weighted based on the level of effort and commitment: learning a foreign language or traveling to LA to see Magritte's The Treachery of Images in person would garner more points than running five miles or attempting to make paneer out of firm tofu.  But self-improvement, like masturbation to a certain extent, implies a preparation for something else...practice, if you will.
    When I approached a certain numerical age I became acutely and disturbingly aware of the fact that life was not about making preparations anymore, it was about the now (another inspirational quote, this time from John Lennon: "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans").  There is no more time to practice measures 33-37 because you are on stage now and everyone is watching as you...self-improve.  You are honing your skill and mastering your craft.  This is not to be discouraged but for all the compulsive self-improvers out there like myself it should be undertaken with the awareness of the present moment and a realistic perspective of purpose.  Also, perhaps, self-improvement is better when done as a collaboration.     
    

Life as an Unfortunate Series of Evasions

     When providing medical care to someone, it is extremely important to have an idea of that person's "baseline" so you can appreciate changes to their physical or mental status.  Our baselines change throughout our lives but if we look carefully we can notice a fairly permanent, low-grade suffering that operates in the background like an invincible app, draining our battery.  If you go searching for it, which I wholeheartedly recommend, you may find the pervasive suffering too subtle, in which case I would recommend starting with the suffering of change: we suffer when we meet with undesirable circumstances and we suffer when parting with the desired.  This comprises the backbone of our daily life (symbolized by the dotted line...I'll explain a little later): we miss our bus, we get a flat tire, our friend moves away, etc.   And how do we, as technologically advanced human beings, handle this?  Diversion!  We pick up the phone, turn on the TV, and surf the fake news pipeline.  Being something of a cartophile, I've made a map of our actual path through life (the bolder, black line) as a series of evasions of the dreadful dotted line, from which we hastily retreat if we get too close.  Our lives then become synonymous with our escape routes and we think of that as normal, so much so that the line of evasion becomes our new baseline.

Obviously, visual art is not my specialty.  For real art, go to https://asheralon.deviantart.com/ or your local art museum

    According to the Karmapa , compassion is the default human condition.  I had a difficult time with that concept, especially having just listened to Marina Abramovic's TED Talk in which she described what it was like to perform Rhythm 0, a work of performance art in which she stood for six hours beside a table with seventy-two objects and a note of instruction to the audience to use the objects on her in any way they desired.  Compassion may seem elusive and certainly not our baseline but it logically follows that it should be because of the nature of our shared baseline: suffering.  It is easy to gather observational evidence that suffering is endemic to the human condition; turn on the TV and computer and if you are not affected by the varied afflictions of others then introspectively look into why you turned on those devices in the first place and see if you can locate your dotted line, buried under that soothing cacophony.  As long as we can be receptive to empathy, compassion can and empirically should be our default condition.  It makes the delineation of "self" and "other" very fuzzy.
     People who wouldn't probably characterize themselves as violent took full advantage of Marina Abramovic's invitation in Rhythm 0, to dehumanizing effect.  Objectification desensitizes otherwise rational human beings and allows for the stratification of "self" and "other" which can be overcome by seeing the overlap of our dotted lines, in which case we would not be able to differentiate them at all.

Blame the FitBit? Blame the Fountain!

     Things have resumed their more familiar pace at work, thus accounting for this 'hiatus' of almost a year.  I have acquired a few new objects including my tracking device with a blue LED light that periodically blinks in affirmation of my physical activity.  Today's tally topped ten thousand steps compliments of...brace yourself for cliche...a long walk on the beach (through the water nonetheless - where are my bonus points for added resistance?) and a visit to one of my favorite and very extensive art museums. 

    Ah, the Fountain.  It needs no introduction.  I did not get to view this particular artwork today but the museum does house a nice collection of Duchamp's earlier works that could sit comfortably alongside Gauguin or Cezanne.  It was hard to believe that they came from the brush of the man who would give the Mona Lisa a moustache and pass a urinal off as a Fountain.  Sense no sneer of derision in my voice because Duchamp challenges us to think about what constitutes the hallowed category of objects known as "art" and to do that he must provoke us, thereby fulfilling his aesthetic obligation.  Despite my typical sentiment - if we're not being provoked, we're merely being entertained - I think Duchamp's Fountain gives us an opportunity to feel both in a uniform stream.