The poet, Pablo Neruda gave us many unforgettable lines and one of my favorites is, ” absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through the walls and hang pictures in the air. “

Soon, we are to lose more than half a million American souls to the pandemic and in the midst of this tragedy we have lost many other things including the hugs of our loved ones, the music of their voices and the basic comfort of congregation. We are hanging pictures in the air of our remembered joys. Our minds have become a portrait gallery where the visages of our dear ones hang in defiance of time. I think we are all destined to be pictures in the air. We all can see the faces of our dead, dear ones. Someday we will be pictures in the memories of those who loved us.

We have lost a great deal.

Yet, we have not lost our amazing capacity to REMEMBER. Guy de Maupassant – master of irony- puts it boldly “our memory is is a more perfect world than the universe; it gives back life to those who no longer exist.” It is our duty to remember and hang some portraits. Congregation is temporarily gone but our wonderful memories carry on.

I seek to remember with intention…to tour the gallery of faces that mean so much. In these enforced private times, take a moment to bring many back to life.

Lest we forget.

Human legacy includes the fact that we are all pliable, malleable, plastic. Our characters, our spirits, moralities and values can be formed and reformed under life’s pressures. We are highly suggestible and often have little or no sales resistance. We are subject to the “isms.”

Some isms are choices and some seem to be imprinted on us from the earliest days of historic times. The nature/nurture argument is central here. For example, if you have chosen to adhere more closely to the Tao, you can decide to become a minimalist. You have exercised choice. But where do we find the isms that are imprinted on our humanity and those that are thrust upon us.

Patriotism, commercialism, -even sexism- are thrust upon us by our culture… they are learned. Three isms are subtly present in all people: racism, ageism and lookism appear to have been embedded in human material. Perhaps these three mindsets go back to the earliest days on the Serengetti where hunting and self defense dominated existence. For example, I think we are all profilers because for centuries our survival depended on an accurate threat assessment. We distrust the stranger until more is revealed. We all are made uncomfortable by those that are “other.” Add one stupid generalization to this process (all blue people are dangerous) and you have racism in its most basic form.

Lookism may have ancient antecedents as well. The fastest and the strongest were marked for leadership in hunting societies. Add one little element to this (beauty) and you have the “halo effect,” the belief that a person’s quality of character – their specialness – is directly related to their physical appeal. We have all used the phrase, “well they look the part.” We are suckers for pretty and we have many saws and sayings to remind us that, “all that glitters is not gold.”

Ageism tells you that certain people lose their ability to contribute to society. They eat but they don’t hunt. They need to be corrected and protected…or simply abandoned.

Whether we have been formed by our cultures or we believe that some isms are baked into our humanity each and every one of our habits of mind must be regularly scrutinized. Why do we believe what we believe? We will not defeat the isms until we destroy them in detail, a process that requires a laser focus on both the overt and the subtle.

The brilliant modern philosopher Ferris Bueller said it well, ” isms are not good. A person should not believe in an ism. He should believe in himself.” Yes, indeed. Being ourselves and questioning our isms might do us all a lot of good.

Every writer, regardless of training or expertise, has experienced writer’s block. This limbo-like state is marked by absences… the absence of inspiration, insight and energy. Add the covid fog to this overcast and it is hard to see your way to creativity. When this occurs it is time to run through a list of what is known as “writer’s prompts.” Automatic writing, is a favorite, as is playing with genres. Sometimes I will write the beginning of a detective story or a short burst of description to prime the pump. Today, I wrote the beginning of a country song and came up with:

She buys fine art at the Motor Inn

She has a body made for sin

She may wear earrings made of glass..she may not have too much class

But I love her anyway

There’s nothin you have to buy her

She’s all malt liquor and Oscar Meyer.

When I saw how bad that was, I tried a long peroration on a saying by the Lakota sage Lame Deer; “it’s what you see with your eyes closed that counts.” Problem is that on this day when I close my eye, I don’t see much, other than the interminable boredom of pandemic. Too tired to tilt with windmills, I sit in a non-creative, near vegetative state. I tried music. Cranked up the classic rock and roll to goose the creative carburetor. A few sputters ensued but the engine did not turn over.

We have cleaned all the closets and stacked all the canned goods and the fog continues to close in. I am looking for a new vision and Lame Deer may be right…it is probably behind my eyes. I want to see a bright hopeful future where all are safe and protected. I want to see a new world of possibility and presence but just now, I can’t bring it into focus. As Helen Keller once said, ‘ The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision.” TRUE

So I will continue to seek the inspiration that must be out there somewhere. I hope for all of us that our vision clears and we re-engage with vibrant life.

It can’t come too soon.

All my life I have been fascinated by words. I can’t really explain it but one of my earliest memories was the day I got my first big box of crayons and I came across Burnt Sienna and Alizarian Crimson. I was more attracted to the beautiful words than the colors themselves. As a young man I joined a book club, not because I wanted a continuing stream of new novels or regular access to great non- fiction. I joined because the incentive to join was a copy of the OED in two volumes that was so condensed that it came with its own magnifying glass to effect access to the wonder of words. Humorist Steven Wright once quipped, “I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.”

Yes, indeed.

Then – about 50 years ago – I started doing crossword puzzles with a religious fervor and I was lucky to encounter a gifted cruciverbalist who advised me in my quest. He said, “never do a puzzle in pencil…always use arrogant ink.” This fellow traveller encouraged me and as time went on others came along to mark the trail. A writing instructor who was often published, a minor celebrity, told me he became a writer because the thing he was good at was WORDS. He had tried out in the Yankee farm system, started his own business and became an academic but his real talent was stringing perspicuous words together.

In my days I have written advertising copy, menus, magazine articles, poetry, fiction, diverse brochures, obituaries, grants, white papers and more but I have enough of a right-sized ego to know that I am not god’s gift to the world of letters. What I am is a verbal handyman that has a pick-up truck full of tools. I use words the way my luthier friend uses finger planes to make a perfect scroll work. The other day a good friend of mine came by to build some shelves. As I watched him measure, mitre and choose appropriate hardware, I realized that I was doing the same sort of thing with the building elements that you can find in the OED.

Many of my productions are prosaic and marked by small failures. When it is tough to find le mot juste – the perfect word – I press on measuring and cutting until I have clapped together a thing that looks like a functional birdhouse. I love the process. I agree with Emily Dickinson: ” I know nothing that has as much power as a word. Sometimes, I write one and I look at it until it begins to shine.” When it goes well I get the same satisfaction a builder gets from a nicely completed project. To me there is no higher compliment than being called a “wordsmith”… a builder of word structures.

If you bump into a big word or an esoteric one in my ramblings, chalk up your displeasure to the fact that not every product will fit your needs. Whether the product is minimalist or Roccoco the work will go on.

You have my word on it.

” A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all the voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.” -Walt Whitman

We seem to have entered a state of schizoaffective disorder wherein a combination of mild to severe psychosis, combined with delusion and hallucinations has lead us to a perfect confusion. We are bombarded with pleas to ignore reality and sit quietly while madness rages. We are asked to ignore the fact that a belief in “alternative facts” is the textbook definition of mental illness. We are in critical need of some powerful anti-psychotic medications.

This state may be the result of genetics or a continuous influx of highly stressful events. When human nature and severe trauma collide madness ensues. In today’s political environment and in the throes of a deadly pandemic the madness is inevitable. What is also troubling is the state of torpor that accompanies the disconnect…we sit in front of the television and we are unable to make an effort to save ourselves. This state is not one of anhedonia. While there is no joy, we are also void of any real pain, rather, we are reduced to a near vegetative state. We can only default to, “this too shall pass.” A further madness ensues when we find our concern for our fellows is now tainted by the fervent desire for certain people to suffer. We even root for their deaths as we pray for the health and prosperity of people we deem worthy. Our values are assaulted.

We cast about for signs of sanity and seek to reject the world view of George B Shaw who cynically observed the madness of his day: ” The longer I live the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.”

There is hope.

That hope will be nurtured by an insistence on truth and commitment to consequences. Resisting the pleas to disregard the evidence of our eyes and ears seems to be our best way forward. The tension between knowledge seekers and blind believers may never dissipate but an insistence on reality may lead us out of the acedic state we have slipped into. In any case a return to sanity will be a long-and eventful-journey.

We also have to know when to give up our rage for connection with people who do not share our attitude to facts. Twain remind us that’ ” no amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot. ”

Today, let’s begin by trying not to be idiots.

Every year, after January 1, my heart is bathed with a low-grade sadness that seems to leach into the bloodstream and is death to smiles. This feeling is not a massive depression, rather it is a kind of deeply remembered sense of loss. We seem to have transitioned from a world marked by many days of tasty nog to the many weeks of the daily slog. In 92128 the Christmas decor is being packed up and hoisted into the community’s many attics. We have surely left the season of delight and returned to the drab season of de-light. Darkness seems to be gaining on us. In 92128 older folks are up on ladders removing the twinkling bulbs from the eaves. Frosty and the reindeer are disappearing into plastic bags ready for a protracted nap. The beautiful Christmas star at the end of our street will not shine for a very long time.

We are about to tip over into a new year and leave the deadliest year in American history. It is hard to conceive of a good outcome when we collectively meet the Ghost of Christmas Future. In 2021 all will not be bright. Not everyone will be home for Christmas.

Scrooge was reminded to “keep Christmas well” and that seems like a very good idea. We must make the effort to make the spirit of the holidays last. When we decorated the tree, every ornament came with a narrative …we got this one from Grandma. We got this one on our trip to Paris…and so on. Sadly , when the ornaments came down there were no heartwarming stories; each bauble was unceremoniously bubble wrapped and shoved into a tub for next year. We need to fight back.

I will not take down the mistletoe and I will find new ornaments to hang all the year through. The Gang of Eight are already decorating the bare branches of the scary year 2021. The reading and studying are up. Some are festooning their days with running, walking, home projects, binge watching, cooking experiments and political activism. That is the spirit. In time there will be a narrative attached to each and every new experience and the light will grow. It will take some focused effort to keep our Christmas cheer alive as we venture into the unknown.

In spite of everything the Gang is soldiering on and refusing to put their lights in storage. I fervently hope for good outcomes for all that are suffering and I admire those who “keep Christmas well” in their hearts. May we all be gifted with grace in what looks like a tough year.

God bless us…every one.

It happens that I am old enough to remember a counter culture with its challenge to accepted authority and its energetic creativity. It seems that we are on a course that will lead us to another rejection of the established order. Its about a world view. On the frontier, in the early days of America – our hunter/gatherer days – our vision was limited to the rifle sight and the knifepoint. We ate what we killed. Next came the sodbusters rooted to the land and thriving through husbandry. A short stay in the natural resources economy of timber and minerals pushed us directly to the industrial revolution of ginned cotton, steel and iron. With amazing speed we became the world’s leader in the area of consumer goods and cars, radios, and televisions came in waves. Lately we have entered a digital world where we do not sell goods per se…we sell ideas and concepts that we refer to as, “intellectual property.” Each of these stages produced a particular type of wealth personified by the tidewater elite, the plantation owner, the tycoon and finally the Silicon Valley bazillionaire.

Today conditions are ripe for another dramatic change. Many can dimly perceive a post-racist, post-xenophobic, post-nationalist world community. Others want the status quo and others actually want to regress to the architecture of earlier times. What is certain is the fact that our current politics mixed with a deadly pandemic will make us find new values, new art, new music and revised urban planning to name a few old ways that no longer work. It is going to get interesting.

I see a new mix of trends that are both old and new. Bartering is returning (yeast for sourdough starter; TP for disinfecting wipes etc. ) collectivism is available on zoom and “belonging” also has a new meaning. Tribes are forming and dualities are dying. It is very difficult to think in dualities anymore. We humans are slowly morphing into something unprecedented.

We are slowly birthing an alternative culture as movies go direct to streaming and our music becomes more diverse. Geurilla art and “art actions;” are on the rise. Universities are less and less viable for those who seek education and we see a huge growth in the self taught. Density and congregation are suddenly deadly. Our cities, and our ways of worship will not work in their current conception. Albert Einstein reminds us “the world as we have created it is a process of our thinking, it can not be changed without changing our thinking.”

Everything will need to be made new.

I feel the change coming.

Years ago while I was studying to get a Master of fine arts Degree in Creative Writing, we precious and precocious doves stirred the cote with discussions about AUDIENCE. Who were we writing for? and what do you want to tell them? were core questions. I discovered that humans contact written materials with a complex of nuanced motives that are contained in our humanness. Aristotle tried to answer these questions by positing that the purpose of “poetry” was, “dulce et decorum est ” – to delight and instruct.

Much writing is simply entertainment and designed to avoid the sin described by novelist Salman Rushdie. The great transgression is the fact that the next page is not turned, that the relationship with the reader ends due to bad writing. Many read to escape and they resent challenges that come in the form of polysyllables and the demands for deep thought. There is nothing wrong with a “hot read.” comic books, pot boilers, novels of manners, romances are all based on the pleasant escape. I suspect that a diet of literary bon- bons will eventually become cloying and will fail to nourish the mind.

When James Joyce was challenged about his hyper detailed, complex- near schizophrenic- language he quipped,” I am looking for the ideal reader with the ideal insomnia”. The reader who intentionally seeks a deeper meaning and is willing to navigate a sea of “big words” and challenging ideas is to be fervently sought, indeed. These readers attitude to the material presented is the mindset of the autodidact…they will search and do so with energy. The relationship of writer to reader is a covenantal one. Covenants require adherence to agreed upon behaviors. Simply put, the reader promises to be active and engaged and the writer is committed to give them something worthwhile… a mental meal that offers both sweets and solid fare.

An intentional, active reader is easy to spot. I saw my wife reading a novel about World War Two with an atlas and an historical reference at hand…she was determined to experience the full effect of the writer’s tale and to know the furniture of that world. All writers exist for these people.

If you read Olio Folio you know that you are not always in the candy store and you are not always in life’s classroom. I try to bring a little sugar and a few ideas to each of our encounters. Today, my audience is growing and I am thankful for that. I am even more grateful that diverse people have hitched up their pants and strapped on the work of understanding in order to make little journeys with me.

We are in this together. Thanks for doing the work.

A mere 2.7 parsecs-or-so from my front porch in 92128 is the brightest star in the northern sky. Canis Majoris – the Dog Star blazes. Known colloquially as “Orion’s Hunting Dog” the star appears in human lore over the centuries. Homer notes that the rising of the star coincides with Achilles’ approach to Troy, “Orion’s dog they call it, brightest star of all but an evil portent, bringing heat and fevers to suffering humanity. ” The exact opposite interpretation occurs to some Biblical scholars that propose that Canis Majoris is the Star of Bethlehem…a portent of man’s salvation. The Cherokee nation places the star as a marker on the path of souls and the ancient Egyptians, noting that the appearance of the star coincided with the swelling of the Nile, actually placed a goddess Sopdet in their cosmology as the goddess of Sirius… ruling the “dog days” of summer.

What interests me is not Sirius but its companion, a white dwarf star that appears next to the Dog Star. Sirius B, its name, suggests a subordinate role for the heavenly body. What Sirius B lacks in size it compensates for in density. Roughly two thirds the size of Earth, this speck of light has a density 50,000 times greater than water and roughly 2X THE GRAVITY of its neighbor. Things that seem small in themselves often have significant gravity – agency – in human affairs. We all know that seemingly small things can have a major effect. The first kiss that leads to a marriage and generations; the first camera that leads to a great photographer or the first short race that leads to an Olympic gold medalist…things of small magnitude often possess great mass.

These days it pays to think small.

The Gang of Eight is always on the lookout for the means to make things better and they are often frustrated by what seems to be the impossibility of making positive change in our current circumstances. In a way, I believe that “mass” trumps magnitude. The plate of cookies, the positive post, the encouraging word create their own gravity. This is, of course-counterintuitive, we all hope for the large, “game changing” action. But it is often the mass of “small things” that actually has an effect. Mass outstrips magnitude.

When we are asked to wear a mask, to stay home or to be tested it is well to remember that it is not the gaudy brightness that changes things but the mass of small well intentioned actions that have 2X the gravity. While these actions may seem contrary to expectation, they work.

Let’s reject the fascination with the grand act and inhabit the dwarf star of small kindnesses. Ignore the big Dog and pet the Pup.

Be well. Think small. Act.

Among the many activities that can be called quintessentially human – from sleep to warfare- none stands out as much as kissing. Experts vary in their opinions regarding the origins of the practice with theories as diverse as 1) the biological: (kissing is the human adaptation to mother birds feeding their young) 2) the physical:( there are more nerve endings in the lips than elsewhere in the body) and 3) the spiritual : the Vedic tradition that the act is sharing the breath of life with the beloved. The confusion is furthered by the many types of kissing such as : the kiss of death, the kiss of betrayal (see Judas), the kiss of peace. Kissing is flat out HUGE.

Today we drove to the homes of the Gang of Eight and surreptitiously dropped off sprigs of mistletoe to celebrate the Christmas Season. There is controversy here too. Some say we owe the mistletoe tradition to the Celtic Druids while others give the credit to the early Norse culture. In any case, the tradition abides.

Poets have waxed eloquent in this arena. Shakespeare (“kiss me Kate!”) Marlowe (“Make me immortal with a kiss.”) and thousands of other wordsmiths have indulged in the pleasures of the kiss. My favorite is Shelley : “sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me.” This sentiment has the fixation on pleasure, selfishness and self-esteem that can be wrapped into a simple snog.

I am a big fan of kissing.

Now-lost in zoom land – the art of the kiss has been compromised. Compromised, but not lost. We can still plant one on those that share our bubble. In fact, it is a good idea to kiss as much as possible because technique is important and practice will make perfect. Walk up to those you love and plant a wet one with authority. While Covid is wildly skewing the death rate, there is a possibility to increase the birth rate as well.

It starts with a kiss….