Living In Time

This is the most attention I have paid to autumn since coming to America with its four seasons. Should I look back to this time of interest the colors will most likely be shades of yellow and brown contrasted with the crystal blue of the sky.

This morning, waking up to the drumbeat of rain falling on the roof outside my bedroom, I took my cup of Verona Starbucks coffee back to bed with me and read G. J. Whitrow's What Is Time? Snuggled in bed I wanted no interruption so I cancelled my lunch with Tony. What a wonderful meditation on time!

I have not done any more work on defining a text project since first opening Eric Maisel's The Art of the Book Proposal but elements of what he suggested fly about the mind influencing what I think. I have thought of writing a book on the theories and practice of  vipassana meditation using Western psychology and philosophy language. Whitrow's book underlined one of the areas about the practice that fascinates me the most: the concepts about time and memory.

Whitrow, after quoting Robert Hooke writing in the seventeenth century, said that what Hooke referred to as "the Soul" nowadays we would call the mind. He didn't explain how he made this transposition but it made sense to me as if I'd always known it. Soul and spirit are nowadays not much differentiated, the first term now hardly used as we immerse ourselves in the enlightened, more secular world of science, computer technology and global warming. While writers in the past differed in how they used the word "soul," it did seem to carry the burden of  the psychological component of our individual being where resided the historical collection of our exercise of choice, our subjective interpretation of events and our image of ourselves.

Buddha reportedly advocated the absence of self, what perhaps is best equated with soul, not that people did not experience self but on the contrary lived through self or the soul which is the reason why they suffered. The self was the individual's psychological processes which he or she refers to as reality but in actuality are something he or she collects in the course of life and imposes on an undifferentiated reality far vaster than the collection he or she makes. Critical to the operation of these processes is the element of time no matter that karmic time is understood in a very different way than time as understood in the West. In India, time might be described to be circular as opposed to linear, progressive time in the West but this is simplistic. Time in Buddhist philosophy is really chaotic, only superficially organized by karmic events. Buddha himself taught that there were four things a human being could never understand and karma is one of these.

The soul experiences time as memory. Science, of course, understands time as progression of events although some theories in quantum physics challenge linearity to events in a similar way that Buddhist philosophy thinks of chaotic time. Hugh Everett, for one, in PBS's Nova program, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, proposed another explanation of Bohr's thesis that electrons revolving around the nucleus of an atom are simultaneously present everywhere. Only when an observer observes them do they take concrete positions in space. Imagine that if electrons indeed are simultaneously present everywhere our concept of time goes bananas! Because time in the West is linear, Whitrow argues, deriving he claims from the dogma of Jesus Christ dying on the cross once and for always to save all humankind from sin committed all over the spectrum of past, present and future.

I doubt I would have the patience to sit down and develop the themes about time that reading Whitrow's book has inspired. I doubt I would ever settle down to one project I could develop into a book, a movie or a photographic project. Having said this I would also add that I doubt I know what I shall be doing in the future. Ancient cultures like the Mayan developed their ideas about time in an effort to control events in the future. We use the past nowadays for a similar motivation. Even our construct of the four seasons is in part an attempt to predict the regular recurrence of events in the future so that science in effect is a throwback to the pre-historic idea of circular and chaotic time. The Buddhist avoids paralysis by training himself to value the present and only the present. Take care of the present and the future takes care of itself.

Or as one of the survivors in the recent Heartland Film Festival movie, Stranded, decided after an avalanche cut off their oxygen supply: don't fight it, experience the moment.

It Begins with a Conversation

I missed going to any of the shows at the Heartland Film Festival yesterday to join the fun at the Parke County Covered Bridge Festival. Minda had left a message for me Friday night that she and Luz would be here by 8:30 if I called her at 7:30 Saturday morning to confirm. They did not get here till after 10. I was already talking to Tony about canceling the trip and moving it to this morning when M's BMW slid into the parking lot in front of the house. I made an executive decision to go and miss the film festival.

I don't regret the decision. Maybe having time away from the film festival would give me time to process the heady ideas coming from the shows I saw on Friday and what I heard from the filmmakers at the end of the screening.

Paul Murphy was one of the directors available to answer questions Friday night. He directed the New Zealand film, Second-Hand Wedding, his first feature after doing commercials for 20 years. He told us that the movie "started with a conversation." After you begin working on it, the project "takes on life of its own." 

These comments connected with me. I complain that we don't have dramatic geological formations and landscapes in Indiana. We are cutoff from the movie-making industry. Movie people are few and as far between as any scenic wonders in the country's heartland. But one does not have to look far for a story to tell or for an image to shoot. The crucial step is to take the step.

For years now I've been collecting inspirational stories of how other people made it, how they started. Movie actors, fiction writers, scriptwriters, visual artists, computer software geniuses, website entrepreneurs, film directors and producers, photographers: these are my heroes, theirs the story that intrigue me no end. Each one's story is different. I can look for the correct mixture of ingredients to make my own start and may be looking the rest of my life. The crucial step is to take the step.

The last two Saturdays going out in search of local images to photograph have moved my interest in photography farther than maybe the last year put together. Shooting models tops the experiences but more than this shooting ordinary scenes like the orange Oldsmobile in my front yard or M's son, Ken, peering at the honeybee he had been shooing away and decrying just minutes earlier suddenly seemed examples of beginnings to get started so a project, any project, can have a life of its own.

Four and Three

My interests do come and go. Along with fluctuations in my energies for productive work, this makes progress towards a goal that also keeps changing hard to define.

The excellence that this blog attempts to explore is disseminated among these three: photography, lifestyle, and writing. This morning, after visiting some Internet sites and signing up for vimeo.com, I felt my interest in videos rise like the phoenix. I have not thought much about videos since last April at the NAB conference but making commercial videos or "movies" is my fourth musketeer.

To mirror its arising (or is this just another instance of superstition?), Charlie Rose in last night's show that I watched at lunch chose guests from the movie industry. "Bob" de Niro, director Barry Levinson and producer/writer Art Linson graced the first half of the show discussing their movie, What Just Happened opening this coming Friday. Later Rose chatted with comedian Bill Maher and Larry Charles, director of the surprise hit, Borat, about their movie, Religulous.

Just before breaking for lunch I went through the 259 images on my Flickr photostream. These are not "astonish me!" images, nowhere close to the quality I am aiming for and with which I would have the gumption to invite the public to see and criticize but when viewed as a whole they are rather impressive. The mix of images I have, reflecting my interests, is unique to me. It is from this mix though not necessarily from every ingredient that my public work shall come from. I don't have my "voice" or "vision" yet but fate has already determined the grist for their mill.

I have not shot models since July. I miss the high of those shots although I have a feeling this present phase on the journey holds an important place in the overall schema. I want to finish at least Deke McClelland's tutorial before I start processing images from my "professional" shoots. Meanwhile I do a handful everyday, just to keep my spirits up.

As usual, the Internet sites I visited awed me by the virtuosity and "outside-the-box" thinking of artists, software engineers, and entrepreneurs. If I have my four musketeers, I also have these tres virgines: art, digital technology and entrepreneurship as the powers behind the musketeers. 

Life is too short for everything I want to do. This is how I feel when I am feeling creative. It's a feeling; I don't believe it to be true. Time at our disposal is important but what we become proud of as we become proud of children are small parts of the package. Our pride in our work is symbolic of the struggle that is life itself.

My Close-up, Mr. de Mille!

The struggle for supremacy between words and pictures continues. The winner gets my attention and whoever gets it makes it to the show.

The day was so pretty yesterday that I frittered the afternoon away taking pictures instead of going to the gym. I don't regret the lack of discipline. The pictures were great. Trees were turning, ahead of the crowd the maples. The red maple in the courtyard outside my bedroom window is aflame. Against the cloudless blue sky, the tree epitomizes the prettiest images of autumn in Indiana.

At Gloria Jennings' office yesterday I chatted with her office manager, Meredith. He has been writing a blog since last fall. He told me he was raised in a conservative Pentecostal family and was never allowed to swear. Now a grownup he has given vent to his feelings as he navigates through the pain of breaking up with his girlfriend and not being able to see their daughter. Cuss words have their usefulness and in his blog really shine.

Meredith is also pretty aware of his belonging to the African-American community. He writes, he told me, as he speaks, at least inside his mind. His written prose certainly is colorful and conjures tribal qualities, the unique way people in communities choose words and phrases to communicate with each other.

My own prose seems colorless by comparison. For years I've told the few people whom I've told of my occult dream to write for publication that I was still looking for my voice. To a stranger maybe I already have my voice, my own individual ways of using words and phrasing them to express ideas. Certainly the topics I write about when taken together help to identify me. I can't use tribal colloquialisms as Meredith does. That would not be me. And I am not interested in fiction, in re-creating myself to write something others might want to read.

However I do know that if I wanted to break through the glass ceiling and into the public sphere I must keep to some rules. So far I've written solely for myself. Frankly though if I didn't know me I would probably find what I write dull. I'd read a few words, diagnose the writer as inept and narcissistic and move on.

I've admired many published writers. I have a revolving gallery of prose heroes. I can pinpoint what they are doing right; I just can't make myself write as they do. 

The latest is Tahir Shah, the offspring of "Afghan royalty" who grew up and now lives in the U.K. I came across his second book, Trail of Feathers, at Half Price yesterday before I decided to junk going to Bally and spend the rest of the day snapping pictures instead. Tahir certainly has found his voice. He writes in simple sentences that seem to come straight out of my mind, at least, the idealized mind. (The real mind is going hundreds of miles faster, crowded with wordy vehicles all streaming towards nowhere in particular.) He writes with humor and sets the stage over and over to grab his reader's curiosity. He describes himself as inherently a curious man and it's his curiosity that led to his writing books.

Curiosity, that curious quality some of us have who grapple with seemingly endless numbers of topics. The world is truly a wonder, its details insuperably intriguing. But curiosity is not enough. We must husband it and yoke its energy to a project. This may be the difference between a rock and a man. The latter believes he is master of his fate while the former simply is.

Lunch with Tony at noon became stressful. When he arrived I was urgently washing pans and cooking utensils while the food that I had already plated was going cold. It was a great spread though if I might say so. I'd bought a fennel bulb intending to make a version of coleslaw using it instead of cabbage. I was going to eschew mayonnaise and make a lighter dressing. I envisioned poppy and toasted fennel seeds to top it.

Well I never got around to making the slaw. Today I sliced up the fennel into crosswise strips, added a smaller portion of celery also cut into crosswise strips, quickly fried these in olive oil with rehydrated wild mushrooms, bits of scallion and walnut halves and the result was ecstasy!

So okay I may never have my moment in the public eye but I have art nonetheless though only for my own enjoyment and the enjoyment of my few friends. Life can be better, definitely better, but what's to complain. It's all good. As Hildegarde, the medieval Catholic saint sang, all is well is well is well...

My Ithaka

George Seferis, the Smyrna-born Greek poet admirer of C.P. Cavafy, wrote:

"As you are writing

The ink grows less

The sea increases."

When creative energy is high, the "real" world around me - the window full of morning sunshine, the hum of the computer, the keyboard under my fingers - disappears. I inhabit my inner world completely and there the sea surges to blasts of tropic sun, the breeze startles, the sand enraptures. For the real world to an artist or writer is what he or she has in her mind. Nature as we know it belongs to the domain of science but experience is the nature he or she mines.

In Theodoros Angelopoulos' 1998 movie, Eternity and a Day, the protagonist, an old man and poet, Alexander, tells the story of how Dionysios Solomon whose poem, Hymn to Liberty, became the words to the newborn Greek nation's national anthem, used to buy words from the locals to write his poems. Born of an Italian father, he wrote in Italian until deciding to move to the Ionian island of Zanthikos when Greece fought for and won its freedom from the Ottomans in the late 1800s. I employ the same maneuver because while I write from my inner world it often takes an external impetus - a movie, a poem, a book - to trigger the creative process.

One of the words that the old man bought from his "friend-for-a-day," an Albanian child he rescued from the Thessaloniki police, was "xenites," meaning an outsider, a stranger, an exile. We are poets, writers, moviemakers because in a sense we are all xenites. We live in our inner world and only by concretizing its denizens to share with others do we make that connection that lessens our loneliness.

The DVD of Angelopoulos' movie contains Cavafy's poem, Ithaka, one of my favorites.

"Keep Ithaka always  in your mind.

Arriving there is what you're destined for.

But don't hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you're old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you've gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now."

Finding the way to externalize my inner world where lie my most precious treasures is my own journey to Ithaka.

I took the image above from inside the tourist bus taking us from the port of Bari to Matera in Central Italy in 2007.

More than Art

More than art, my interest is what delights the mind. 

What delight it are ideas, but not just any idea. The idea that delights has to grab the mind and not just grab it but grab it totally. The idea must take center stage and squeeze out everything else.

Where there is delight there is attention. The mind attends to what seduces it into delight and the mind "sees."

I have been exploring the way of images to counterbalance the emphasis I have always placed on words and concepts. Images are a more complex expression of ideas in the mind. Many times words fail. Concepts fall short. They only represent what the mind sees but does not comprehend it. Images by their very ambiguity allow various interpretations. Ideas, as Plato also conceived it, are primordial, before thought, before the attempts of reason to give solidity to what is inherently immaterial.

For years I've viewed my coming to America as my search for a bigger world, a world not limited by the little that I knew. To understand and live my life more fully I needed a larger ocean so that the mistakes I made would not cause a maelstrom but be a simple ripple in its vastness. As a child I attempted to comprehend experience by tying it to the Christianity of my upbringing. It was only after coming to America that I obtained access to other systems of thought and belief. America gave me access to media - books, movies, television programs, magazines, and, most powerful medium of all, the Internet. Through these I've come to know the many ways that men and women have understood themselves through the millennia and throughout the many parts of the earth they inhabited.

Perhaps my most important discovery in America was Asian  religions and ways of thinking and being. It took my coming to the West to find my East. Never shall the twain meet, wrote Kipling. They are meeting now despite our deaf ears and blind eyes although to only a very few is this realization dawning. We need every part of our heritage as human beings to see more of the whole, what Nikos Kazantzakis caused his protagonist, Zorba the Greek, to call "the whole shebang."

Artists can play a vital role in all of us someday realizing we're all in this together. Art if genuine has to be rooted in something universal in the human spirit. We use the details of our workaday lives to flesh out the universal. What is universal is delight, the joy of our being.

Where's the Wonder?

"Where's the wonder

As each day would start,

That sang with the dawn,

Ran away with my heart:

Where is it gone?"

These opening lyrics from the song, Wish You Were Here, struck me as I walked at the gym last night. I've had glimpses of this feeling in the past, usually associated with falling in love as sung in this Rome and Harold song as well as those times when I was on long meditation retreats but I've never had the feeling consistently day after day. How wonderful to wake up each morning with a sense of wonder and anticipation! 

But is it even possible? I have now been on my own five months since taking a sabbatical from the clinic in Lafayette. I don't have to worry about traffic or the weather and road conditions driving to and fro the clinic. I don't have the stress of diagnosing and coming up with appropriate treatment for one client after another. One would think I'd eliminated all the stresses in my life but still this feeling of wonder that starts in the morning and pervades the day eludes me.

The feeling is more accessible on a day like today when the sky is clear and sunshine is pouring down to illuminate the landscape. Light brings out colors and vivid images are hallmarks of the experience. This is at the core of my interest both in writing and in taking photographs, to stay alert to possibilities of wonder and joy.