WASTE TIME WONDERFULLY

I got up this morning early and finished another painting. This one is for my old boss. She is a wonderful lady, she happens to be black, and she wants black themed pictures. I’d painted her a scene of a little black church in the background, and the tiny congregations at the river doing baptisms. There is a shaft of light coming from the clouds bathing one of the still wet converts as she is raised from the water.

I did a tiny, inferior copy of a painting I first admired when I watched the Cosby show many years ago. That picture is called The Funeral Procession, and it is by Ellis Wilson. My copy is not even trying to be exact. I put patterns on the cloth and because it is so much smaller than the original, the impact is minimal, but I only had two canvases left and so I used up the 16X20 piece as a give away picture.

My last piece of canvas is a 24X36 and my plan is to do a copy of the Norman Conquest of October 14, 1066. I find it amusing that my last name is norman and I was born on October 14th. Anyway, I want to do a this in the style of medieval art. There is a famous tapestry called the Bayeux Tapestry. That tapestry is located in Bayeux, France. I won’t try to copy the tapestry, but use the style.


Some, and sometimes I include myself among the some, think I should be always doing original work. If I am a serious artists, a serious painter, that I should do original work. The work I do most often might be considered a waste of time. Here is where my mind is now: the words WASTE OF TIME sound so negative. WASTE seems bad, at the least it is stupid, and at the most it is a sin against the planet. In today’s drawing I team up the words WASTE OF TIME with the word WONDERFUL.

I keep going back to resignation, because when I resign myself to certain things, it actually steers my life, activity and mood in a particular direction. What I am resigning myself to now, is the fact that I am not a great artists. I am an artists. My work is so much better than the work other people have never done. All the time, people come by, look at one of my paintings, and the typical response is something like this:

“I wish I could draw [or paint] but I don’t have that talent. I can’t draw a straight line. I can’t draw stick figures. God didn’t give me that gift.”

I don’t believe in gifts. I feel sure that anyone could do what I do, IF they did what I have done. Even so, there are millions of people painting pictures. A lot of people consider painting a hobby. It isn’t something serious they do, it is something they do to pass their free time, and something they enjoy doing.

I suppose what I do is a hobby. I instinctively shy away from the word hobby, because it disrespects the seriousness I have toward what I do. To me it is not something I do for fun, it is something that defines my life. I am a serious artist, not a hobbyist.

Nevertheless, I know there are perhaps 50,000 hobbyists doing better work than I do on the best day of my life. I am a serious artist, but I am not a great artist. I am not outstanding. It is likely that IF I live to be too old to paint, that at that point not one of my paintings will have escaped the trash bins of the world. My work is serious to me, but no one actually takes my work seriously. This fact used to bother me, but now I find it freeing. Since my work is not going to be Van Gogh quality, and at most I can hope some people will hang my work because the green in the back ground matches the fabric on their couch, it really doesn’t matter what I paint. I can paint anything I want and feel no obligation to my portfolio, or the catalogue of my life’s work, or to collectors (I have none), or anything else. I can paint what I want. It is not the final product that matters to me, it is the process. What matters to me most is the feeling I have, the zone, the altered mental state I experience while I paint. The joy of my life, at least one of the joys of my life, is the sensations I feel while I paint.

When I was a kid taking creative writing in West Springfield High School in Springfield, VA I wrote a short story about a guy painting a picture. As the guy painted I tried to convey the zombie-like ecstasy one feels when painting a picture. It probably wasn’t that good a story because it is impossible to explain the feeling to someone who has never had that feeling. If someone has had that feeling, a few words will hit the mark in their mind and they will know what you are talking about. If they have never had that feeling, there are not enough words in the world to convey that experience. The point of the story, however, was placed at the end of the story. The artist finishes the painting, steps back to admire it, sees that he has done something that, at least for the moment is acceptable, and then the artist takes that painting and tosses it into the fireplace and burns it up. Why? I was trying to explain that the important part of creativity is the creating, not the end product.

I think the way to enjoy life, to make the most of life, is to FIND THE MOST WONDERFUL WAYS TO WASTE TIME.

Dead Babies, Buddha, and Me

My therapist is, I think, worried that I keep going back to this theme: the way to be OK in this life, is to accept it just as it is. Resigning myself to my circumstances is not an original idea, and I have just co-opted the concept. I first heard it from reading about the teachings of the Buddha. Buddha taught The Four Noble Truths:

1. Life means suffering.
2. The origin of suffering is attachment.
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.
4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

I could discuss all four of these noble truths, but that would get my off track. I want to focus on the third noble truth that says the cessation of suffering is attainable. Who wouldn’t want to eliminate suffering from your life? The point of the third noble truth was that suffering can be overcome through human activity. All we humans need to do to eliminate suffering is simply remove the cause of suffering. In elementary school I learned this joke:

Why did the little moron hit himself in the head with a hammer?
ANSWER? Because it felt so good when he stopped.

It sounds so simple. If you are unhappy, if you suffer, if you are depressed by hardships of traumas from your past all you have to do is remove the sources of your pain. For Buddhists attaining and perfecting dispassion is a process of many levels that ultimately results in the state of Nirvana. Nirvana is not the same thing as the Christian concept of heaven. Nirvana means freedom from all worries, troubles, complexes, fabrications and ideas. This sounds great. This sounds like what I want.

So Buddha points out that when we crave something and don’t get it we suffer. If we abhor something and yet that something comes into our life and grows roots, well, you guessed it, we suffer. To reach a state of contentment, a life free of worry, troubles, complexes, fabrications and pestering ideas, I need to want nothing and to accept whatever is. Buddha was not a believer in god. The Buddha said that if you want God to exist and he doesn’t you are frustrated. If you don’t want god to exist and he does exist, you’re frustrated. So theologically, if you want to not be frustrated you need to believe and not believe in god, or you need to not care about the topic at all.

So when I talk to my shrink I tell her that my messed up life is what I have. I tell her that I am trying to just resign myself to the way things are. Wanting my life to be different doesn’t fix anything but it does pick the scab off of my psychological wounds.

Now I am reminded of the The Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Maybe what I need to work on with my shrink is develop the strength and skills , and courage to change what needs to be changed, to just be resigned to what I need to be resigned to, and the wisdom to know when to work to change stuff, and when to just accept what is.
I wonder what the Buddha would have thought of the serenity prayer?
There are memories that stay with me and continue to hurt. I crave a better childhood, but what happened is what happened and it can’t be changed. Here is a poem I wrote about an incident that happened just prior to my brother Tim’s birth:

You Killed the Baby

Walking down the hall I saw them there—
my mother sitting in a rocking chair—
my father standing by the bed. His voice
was hard and sharp like chips of flint.

I want to sit inside my mama’s arms,
to rest within her warming grasp. and then
to lean into her chest and listen for
the rhythmic beating of her heart that seemed
always to say: you’re Good, you’re Good, you’re Good.

I spread my elbows far apart so she
can easily encircle me, but she
does not reach out to pull me in. Instead,
my father thumps me on the head. It feels
a little like a stone thrown from that Texas
Tower. “No!” my father said, “you stay

away from her. Stay off your mama, boy.
She’s got a baby in her tummy now,
and when you make your mama pick you up
it hurts the child inside her. The last time
you did something like this, did you know
you killed the baby? That’s right, little Mister,
that’s exactly what you did.. You killed
the baby. Yes. You made that baby die.”

What happened, is what happened, and I can’t change that. If I can’t change it, then doesn’t it make sense to just accept it?
 

Pick and Pick and Choose and Opt for Joy!

I remember once, I paid this diet program place to help me lose weight. I was portly, not as portly as I am now, but pretty dang portly. I diligently worked their program, I drank water, ate almost nothing but salad, avoided ranch dressing, and instead used oil and vinegar, and within a few months I had lost 75 pounds. I thought, “I still feel like me. So who was that 75 pounds?” I had cured my weight problems. So I finished that program, I had my weight problem under control, and I was done, finished, successful, cured. Now I thought, I will just eat like a normal person. And I did eat like a normal person. A normal person just released from a third world prison.

Well, from looking at me now, it is pretty clear that those 75 pounds came back and brought some friends.

One of my problem with depression comes from this idea that I can pick and fix, and be done with it, and it just doesn’t work that way. I have gone to shrinks, taken the meds, faced my traumas, and learned to talk back to my self-destructive internal monologues, AND I’ve felt better. So I go off, thinking I am cured, that I have defeated depression.

What I’ve learned is that I can pick to be happy and choose NOT to be unhappy, but I can’t do it just one time, and be done with it. If I’m going to NOT be depressed and if I’m going to actually be sort of happy I have to pick and pick choose, opt for and decide moment by moment. The job is never done. I would like to coast, but I can’t. I can’t just “go with the flow” because my flow is down a drain. If I’m going to be OK I must constantly, continuously, repeatedly over and over again decide to be happy and to avoid unhappiness.

Is Resignation Actually Surrender?

Sometimes nothing is going to go right. If you are like me, when things go wrong, and when they go wrong too often, when each event follows another with little or no gap between them, I get BLUE, and when I say BLUE I mean Navy Blue.

Obviously good stuff and bad stuff happens all the time to all of us. Even in the fantasy world of movies, the protagonist has to have troubles. The resolution may be a little too perfect, but the conflicts are always there. There is an old writer’s aphorism that goes like this:

Get the protagonist up a tree;
throw rocks at him;
get him back down the tree.


I think one of my bigger problems is in wanting things to be FAIR. If some unfair thing happens, I want to tell the world, jump up on a table, pull my hair, scream, and say, (a famous movie quote: I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!) However, being mad as hell, never makes the unfairness fair. Even in those rare cases where your complaint is the squeaky wheel and you get the grease you were wanting that is redress, but it still is not totally fair because the unfair thing happened. If things had been fair, you never would have needed redress. It is like a murder trial. The killer may get life in prison, or even the death penalty, but that does not make the unfair murder suddenly fair.

Fair not only does not exist, but it is the prime cause for my unhappiness.

I want redress, I want everything to be good all the time, but that does not reflect the reality of life. Good and bad stuff co-exist in life, all life, my life and yours. Some day you are the cat, and some days you are the yarn.

I keep telling my shrink and my wife that I am resigning myself to the way life is. I could moan and complain and fuss, disrupt, and stir the pot, but there are a lot of things in my life that are just not what I want, and maybe not what I deserve. My shrink seems to thing I am settling for less, that what I call resignation is actually surrender, that I am not accepting, I am giving up, giving in, relinquishing, forfeiting, conceding, caving in, submitting, capitulating.

How do you know when it is best to accept, and when is it best to keep plugging away?

Being Perfect Is a Flaw!

I did that on purpose.

I've said that a lot throughout my life. Let me give an example. I am a poor speller. I blame it on a lot of negative reinforcement that occurred during those years of elementary school where they gave weekly spelling tests. On Thursday there would be a pre-test. If a kid failed the pre-test they had to take the pretest home, and have it signed by a parent. What I remember was being made to write the spelling words like 10 times each, then I was given an oral spelling test, and I got spanked for each word I missed. Then on Friday I took the final spelling test, and if I failed, I had to take the Friday test home for a parental signature.

I got a lot of spankings for spelling poorly. Over time, when I was asked to spell a word I would tense up, my mind would go blank, I would start to sweat, and my hands would tremble. It's better now, but still I tense up. It is odd that I spell so poorly, because I read a lot, and I write more than anyone else I know, but, if it weren't for spell check, I would not share anything thing I have written with anyone.

As an English teacher, if I misspelled something on the board and some kid called me out, I would say, "I did that on purpose. I was just trying to see who was paying attention." That didn't work for long, because I just spelled so badly.

I don't like to make mistakes. [No, that's wrong. I hate to make mistakes. I hate myself when I make mistakes. I'm not satisfied with my efforts unless they are totally and absolutely perfect, and I've never done one thing perfectly in my entire life.]

Why would I want to be perfect? Because I feel like if I'm not perfect I am worthless. There is no middle ground with me. I can't seem to allow myself to be good enough, or OK. I'm either perfect, or God is wasting air on me.

So this is what I'm working on: I want to feel OK with myself just the way I am. I already know in my brain that it is unrealistic to expect myself or anyone else to be perfect. It's not my thinking that is the problem it is transforming logic into feeling.

Life Is Unusual

I was sort of raised to believe ordinary was bad, and that being odd, different, or eccentric. I remember once, my shrink asked me to do this little opposites game where she would say something and I would reply with the very next thing that popped into my mind. At one point in this word game she said creative, and I replied ordinary.

This shocked me, because it shows that in my mind the ordinary was everything that was not creative. I wanted and needed to stand out, to not be ordinary and the only way I could think of to not be ordinary was to be creative.

Why does it matter to me that I be out of the ordinary, different, unusual? Part of me realizes that being different, unusual, creative will also make me valuable. The stuff that is rare is valuable, right? I mean, if platinum was ordinary and common we might be building buildings out of the stuff instead of jewelry.

If diamonds were common we would spread diamonds on our drive ways.

Why would I want to be rare? Because some part of my brain is thinking that IF I was rare I would have value, and most of the time I feel worthless. Creativity is my method for trying to be valuable Creativity is my way of earning my value. Maybe it is important to believe that worth can't be earned, that is just there, that our worth comes from life, and human worth is intrinsic. That may be important to believe, and it might even be true, but it is not something I actually feel. I feel worthless, superfluous, and that I must do something to turn this around.

Why would I, why would any of us want [no need] to be valued?

Well, here I think it has something to do with evolution. Part of being alive is to have within our selves something hardwired to help us survive. It is a survival skill this being important, valued, essential, rare, precious.

Am I creative? Am I more creative than anyone else? I mean, if I'm not MORE creative than other ordinary people, then I'm as ordinary as everyone else. I think I've been delusional, and not for just a little while, but for my entire life. Being creative, or unusual does not belong to me, it belongs to life. Sometimes people tell me I am creative, a good artist, stuff like that, but it's not true. There are millions of human beings who draw better than me. Actually, I think most people would draw better than me if they had done what I've done. I have been drawing almost daily for over 55 years. I've drawn hundreds and hundreds of cartoons, painted lots of pictures. Anyone who drew as much as I have drawn would very likely be fare better at it than I am.

Life is unusual. All by itself, regardless of what we do, or do not do, we are unusual. We are special. We have value because value is just there, among all of us, within all of us.

Relationships

My shrink has speculated that perhaps my lifelong affair with depression might stem from my inability to be intimate, open, trusting with others. I’ve been considering this matter for several weeks now. There could be something to this, because, when I really look at my life, I have been distant. I am not too open. I guess I’m so afraid of being betrayed, hurt, lied to, fooled, and let down that I just don’t and won’t allow myself to be vulnerable. If I am vulnerable, I try not to let anyone know just how vulnerable I might be.

But not being vulnerable, not being open, means I am distant and closed off. Am I depressed because I have no open close safe relationships? Maybe. But if that’s the truth, then it would seem an easy thing to fix. If being guarded and suspicious is causing me to be isolated, and paranoid and sad, then all I need to do is stop being hyper-vigilant, and open up, reach out, and trust others.

That’s way harder than it sounds. I think of Charlie Brown and Lucy and that dang football. Lucy is always taunting Charlie Brown to run at the football, she’ll hold it up, and he can kick the fire out of that pig-skin. But every time he tries Lucy, at the last second possible, jerks the ball out of the way and Charlie Brown kicks the air, goes flying into space and lands on his sistabottarinktum.! Like many jokes, the joke is only mildly funny the first time. The real humor comes from the repetition of this gag. Time after time, Lucy tempts Charlie to kick the ball. Charlie refuses, he is tired of being fooled, but Lucy promises, Charlie Brown wants to believe, he needs to trust, and in the end he always trusts Lucy one more time, and Lucy always betrays him one more time. This is sad. And don’t we all send out mental messages to Charlie Brown, “Don’t do it. Don’t trust her. She is just going to betray you again. Stop being such a chump, such an easy mark, such a duped dope.












Well, this is how I see myself. I am guarded and closed off and cold because I just don’t want to try to kick that damn ball again. Why should I trust when my history is telling me to stop, wake up and smell the coffee, don’t try any more, because those you love are just going to yank your heart out and stomp that sucker flat.

But here is the rub. I still believe that we are born in this life to be happy. Life is not enhanced by merely enduring suffering. You are only alive a short time, and after that you’re dead forever. When time is short, shouldn’t we enjoy as much of it as we can?

So I go back to my Life Line drawing. You have to move apart to play catch. But to play catch you can’t be too close, nor can you be too far apart. There is a place where the playing catch works best, it is a sweet spot, a point of balance. I need to be careful, but I also need to keep looking for that sweet spot, that point where my relationships are just close enough without being too close.

Why Can't I Be Happy?

['You can double click on the cartoons to zoom in on them.]

Happiness is a relative term. This past week there was a Monk show where the main character, Adrian Monk finally got what he has wanted from the very beginning of this long running show, he got a position back on the police force. What Monk learned quickly, was that he hated the job. This miserable man, with phobias out the wazoo, discovered that although he thought he was unhappy, before, now that he had what he wanted he realized he had been happy back when he was sure he was unhappy.

I'm thinking maybe the way to master life, or the way to have a happy life one has to develop an ability to see how we block our own way to contentment. I don't want to be all zany happy. If you get too zany happy they think you are bipolar or something. Zany happy is a 100 yard dash. I want marathon happy, and that kind of happy is long sustained contentment. Marathon happy is being OK most of the time.

Many of us grumpy Gus guys (and gals) grow up without a cohesive and nourishing sense of family, or community, or tribe and, unsurprisingly, we grow into this disconnected, disconnected being. We learn early in our lives that any affliction, and I mean any affliction with family, friends, teachers, supervisors requires that we prove we are worthy. We are under pressure all the time to compete with our co-workers, peers, siblings, and hell, even strangers. We sense an urge to get ahead, to stand out, be special, smarter, better looking, capable, powerful and/or worthy. We grow up feeling like there is always someone keeping score, and we live with a constant fear that we are not winning.

How can you be happy, when you feel like you are constantly being evaluated?

In the Book of Daniel there is a scene where King Belshazzar is having a drunken party and he is drinking wine from holy vessels stolen from King Solomon's Temple. Suddenly a finger just appears in the room and writes on the wall words, but the language is unknown to all, except the Prophet Daniel who translated the words like this: You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

The great unhappiness of life is feeling like King Belshazzar.

Marathon happiness apparently includes the skill to stop feeling judged, to stop caring or imagining that others are judging you, and to stop judging yourself.