Saturday, July 29, 2023
In bed after 10, following Ferrante's fish fry at 8, awake at 5:53, up at 6:15, Lilly sleeping next to BR recliner, let Lilly out, 66℉, high 76℉, sunny., AQI=37, Good. Wind N at 11, 3-11/21. .4"of rain last night. The sun rose at 5:38 and sets at 8:17, 14+38.
Mood swing. I was uncommonly 'up' yesterday. Was it the result of the rewarding dinner with Caela on Thursday night with a serendipitous visit with Tom and Patti Hammer, Caela's visit on Wednesday combined with Ellis' all-day visit with Nona and my finishing the sketch-y paintover of Camille Claudel/Aunt Lydia, and the call from LOA? It was good to have a good day, especially after a few difficult days but it had me half-thinking (in med student syndrome) that I was bipolar. Clearly not; my uncommon 'highs' are not so high nor are my 'lows' so low. But I certainly had the feeling of emotional yo-yo-ing.
I also am wondering why I seem so fixated on working on versions of the Camille Claudel portrait although I am happy to have any 'muse' that has me painting again. ". . . painting is a friend who makes no undue demands, excites to no exhausting pursuits, keeps faithful pace even with feeble steps, and holds her canvas as a screen between us and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advance of Decriptiude." Winston Churchill, Painting as a Pastime. and
"Now he was speculating whether Laurette would pose half-nude on the car seat. The whole idea was preposterously silly but why not? It was no more cheeky than the idea of his resuming painting. Part of the grace of losing self-importance was the simple question: "Who cares?" More importantly, he didn't want to be a painter, he only wanted to paint, two utterly different impulses . . . Clive didn't want to be anything any longer that called for a title. He knew how to paint so why not paint? Everyone had to do something while awake." Jim Harrison in "The Land of Unlikeness" in THE RIVER SWIMMER.
There comes a little space between the south side of a boulder
and the snow that fills the woods around it.
Sun heats the stone, reveals
a crescent of bare ground: brown ferns,
and tufts of needles like red hair,
acorns, a patch of moss, bright green . . .
I sank with every step up to my knees,
throwing myself forward with a violence
of effort, greedy for unhappiness -
until by accident I found the stone,
with its secret porch of heat and light,
where something small could luxuriate, then
turned back down my path, chastened and calm.
Depression in Winter by Jane Kenyon
10 a.m., and I am still in my nightshirt, thinking birdcage or minnow bucket thoughts, looking out my window at the same basic view every minute, every day, every year, except for the weather and seasonal effects and the varying and unvarying bird and rodent visitors, the walkers, the joggers, the cyclists, the parents with strollers and buggies. It's past time to shower and shave and get into living but I'm in no hurry; indeed, I'm postponing it. Laziness, lingering tiredness from last night, some listlessness, inertia. Some downsloping? Some 'what's the point?'ism.? Now I'm watching my beautiful wife walking our beautiful Lilly up Wakefield, waving at the driver of a passing car. I hear you, Kitty: Snap out of it! Get moving, Buster.
Reading some Pope after showering, from An Essay on Man.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the skeptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
. . .
C'est moi! In doubt, in doubt, in doubt, reasoning but to err, thinking too much, thinking too little, chaos of thought and passion, all confused.
Denny Doofus
Pandora's Basement Boxes and Why Religion Matters. In the several boxes I opened in the basement a few weeks ago were some books that I valued and had packed away when we moved to Bayside, among them Huston Smith's Why Religion Matters. I started it years ago and got distracted; I have no idea how far into it I got. In any event, I picked it up again yesterday and have started to get into it again. It's in large measure because I am so thoroughly confused in my old age not so much about religion but about the whole idea of "God." I know as I look back on my life that what I was taught in Catholic schools for so many years - 8 years elementary school, 4 years high school, right into 10 academic credit hours of Theology and 15 hours of mostly Thomistic Philosophy - means nothing to me as I get nearer and nearer to death. All that 'all' stuff - all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful, all-good, all-this, and all-that - still leaves me with the problem that has haunted Mankind for millennia: why so much suffering in our lives, so much evil and wickedness in the world, the 'theodicy' question. It's as I said to Geri's cousin Sue and her husband years ago, if there is a God, a good case can be made that He is a mean prick, or, if He isn't, He has a brother who is (a bit of Manichaeanism.) To the query 'Do you believe in God' I'm always inclined to ask "Which one?" If "He" is beyond definition and beyond description, how can we deal with that in any meaningful way? On the other hand, I was once blessed with a bit of wisdom from an old friend of mine, Vicki Conte, who when I was pissing and moaning about such matters, said to me "It's not a head thing, Chuck, it's a heart thing." She was a lot smarter than I was and am. But I do think that there is Something ineffable about Life, about the World, about Being at all. Why is there anything? I don't think I spout BS when I say, as I so often have, that the world is full of Saints and Miracles (and Heroes) though we usually don't see what is all around us. I don't think it's just sentimental claptrap. I think the Whatever is not in the same realm as other stuff that is unimaginable and incomprehensible to me, like quantum physics, the nature and behavior of subatomic particles, etc. The Whatever is in the realm of Awe, of poetic apprehension, of some sort of mysticism, and thus unquantifiable, unmeasurable, unfalsifiable. I think these thoughts are what Huston Smith's book is about and I hope I have the discipline to see it through. Maybe I'll learn something and help my "Chaos of thought and passion, all confused."
A note: Smith wrote the book as the Millennium was upon us. He wrote in the introduction that he objected to "science's claims concerning what constitutes knowledge and justifies belief." He refers to "our spiritual crisis . . . join[ing] other crises as we enter the new millennium- the environmental crisis, the population explosion, the widening gulf between the rich and the poor . . ." Almost a quarter century later, the environmental crisis has become the existential Climate Change Crisis. I'm not sure where we are in terms of the population explosion. Perhaps climate change and pandemics will take care of that. And to the widening gulf between rich and poor, we can add the profound political polarization within polities throughout the Western World that sees Democracy weaken and Fascism strengthen. These are not encouraging thoughts.
This marks the end of one year of journaling. Quid nunc? Quo vadis?
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