And so it goes...

"I'm sorry, did I break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that. Please, continue. You were saying something about best intentions." - Jules Winnfield

I stopped blogging back in October with the very best of intentions: to free myself of the pressure to produce that had crept in during the previous year of writing online, and to resume with a more creative direction.

Then, as should have been expected, life intervened.

So here we are, at the dawn of a new year: a good time to refocus and move forward. The creative theme will remain unarticulated for now, though I've provided a bit of a hint in the cartoon above. I'm interested to see if readers can figure it out on their own, or if it's simply too tangential and obscure for healthy folk. We'll see where this goes.

I wish you a happy new year.

Only connect...

February 7, 2009:  Updates are coming.  Seriously.

Blog Gone Bad

Today marks the end of Sed Digressio's first year. It was on October 15, 2007 that I moved some randomly assembled photos, paintings and poems first posted on truslow.org to this platform, and it's been an interesting experiment: to create a virtual home for myself, a place I could visit when I was traveling that would help me feel grounded.

I've decided to take a break, and resume blogging in November with a new direction. I'm not entirely sure what that is, yet, but I'm working on it.

You might be interested to know that over the last year, 2,300 visitors came to this blog 4,200 times, viewing 10,300 pages. The most popular content (in order) has been: Michael Sowa, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Wassily Kandinski, the photos, Hope, Edward Hopper and Edvard Munch. The interest in Michael Sowa has been especially keen: Almost 10% of all Sed Digressio traffic originates in Germany.

It's time to do something different. I hope you'll come back and see what transpires in November.

The Chief Digressor

P.S. During the hiatus, I'll still be updating Merrie Frances pictures on http://www.truslow.org/.

No kidding.

Almost a year ago, I posted what I still consider to be one of the oddest duets in musical history.  Take a moment to welcome a new addition to that list:  Norah Jones and Keith Richards, the rock and roll icon now known primarily for snorting the ashes of his father.

Over the line, Smokey!

Good comedy depends on an awareness of the audience's limits, the discipline to stay within them, and the wisdom to know when they can be trampled. It strikes me as a delicate social undertaking: the performer risks his relationship with the audience as he navigates between what little will succeed and the mass of what will fail.

On any given day, this blog endeavors to rise slightly above the gutter, usually to reproduce art, philosophy and music that transcends normal life. But today - perhaps inspired by my ignorance of the audience and my fundamental suspicion of lines - I push the boundaries by offering three of my favorite, all-time limit-testers.

These are not for children, and while there is nothing offensive about the video content, you wouldn't want your co-workers to hear the sound. Consider yourself warned.

The opening scene of the film "Chasing Amy".

From the television show, "Kids in the Hall".

Finally, I direct you to this link of Steve Martin performing a classic portion of his stand-up routine.

Sizzlin'

This morning, I ran my second 10k of the year (and, to be honest, ever): The Buckhead Sizzler - so named because the course is relatively flat and runners expect good finishing times. My Peachtree Road Race time on July 4th was shamefully near the 75 minute mark, and today my goal was 55 minutes.

I'm happy to report that I finished the Sizzler in 54:33 (an average of about 8:47 per mile). If the same rules apply to next year's Peachtree as this year's, today's results should qualify me for a "time group placement", meaning that I won't start in the back of the pack. My next goal is to run a 10k in 50 minutes, so maybe I'll speed up even more between now and next July.

I have posted my personal GPS track here. My GPS seems to think that I went a shade further than the official length of 6.21 miles, and so does GoogleMaps, and so does my car's odometer. At least the race organizers and I agree on my finishing time, which is all that matters. I can only tell you that it felt like a million miles, and it took everything out of me. Readers who are marathon runners continue to have my utmost respect (though increasingly I question your motives and sanity).

My Oscar Moment: I'd like to thank my parents (immortalized here in this must-see portrait), who came out and cheered me on, and my wife, who not only was the most enthusiastic fan on the course - baby in tow - but has made all my athletic growth possible over the last five months.

Jet Man

As regular readers are aware, I am not entirely a fan of man's technological quest to overcome nature. However, I would be willing to reconsider this philosophical view if somebody would give me a jet pack.  I have no statistics on this fact, but I suppose that every boy has had this dream.

In this morning's news, I see that Yves Rossy (here is the "Jet Man" website) will attempt to fly across the English Channel later today.

Yar!

In celebration of today - International Talk Like A Pirate Day - I offer this bit of wisdom: a family that plunders together, stays together.

Moose

As the weather turns cooler, I always think of Autumn in Montana, and the critters found there. Photo taken by Steve Wall.

Lingering beauty.

With only three previous posts this month, one might suppose that I have been on the road. Sadly untrue. August ushered in a surprising change in my employment situation (I'm now both here and here), requiring yet another fundamental modification in my life "plan" (ha).  Still, while one can take the boy out of traveling, one can't take traveling out of the boy: so on this final day of August, I write (as I did here, and here) to share some ideas regarding beauty from The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton.  

de Botton writes that "a dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one's life. There is an urge to say, 'I was here, I saw this, and it mattered to me'".  To explain this more fully, he focuses on the philosophy of John Ruskin.

Ruskin believed that "there was only one way to possess beauty properly, and that was by understanding it, by making oneself conscious of the factors (psychological and visual) responsible for it. The most effective means of pursuing this conscious understanding was attempting to describe beautiful places through art, by writing about or drawing them, irrespective of whether one happened to have any talent for doing so."

de Botton explains, "If drawing had value even when practiced by those with no talent, it was, Ruskin believed, because it could teach us to see - that is, to notice rather than merely look. In the process of re-creating with our own hands what lies before our eyes, we seem naturally to evolve from observing beauty in a loose way to possessing a deep understanding of its constituent parts and hence more secure memories of it."

Can you imagine lingering in a place for 20 minutes to draw a scene that has captivated your attention, rather than pausing for 5 seconds behind your camera and moving on? What about coming home from a trip with a book of sketches, rather than a disk of images? Which one is more inclined to help us truly possess that which we experience when we travel?  Ruskin too "began to note the devilish problem that photography created for the majority of its practitioners.  Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it."

I gave up photography for over a decade, returning to it half-heartedly only three years ago, for similar reasons.  I found that with my camera in hand, I became preoccupied with the question, "does this make a good picture?" rather than, "how does this place, this scene, this moment, impact me?"  Even though I am happy to have our new camera, I still fear that photography is giving me a false sense of permanence, an excuse for not living in the present moment: "With this photo, I can always come back and re-live this again some day." Not true.

Besides, can you imagine trying to draw the Bavarian chaos above? Okay, bad example...

Words Matter ("Liberal")

Back on April 6, I digressed briefly on my frustration with the emptiness of contemporary political language, specifically: words that have substantive meaning have come to mean so little. In that post, I went on to provide a robust definition of "conservative." As I try to make sense of all I've seen and read this week, I feel compelled to contrast "conservative" with a definition of "liberal" (with a nod toward Lincoln's answer to his own question, "What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?").

As I did with "conservative", I take this definition from Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot.

In general "a liberal" (or "a radical", as they often have been and often are still known) believes in

1. "The perfectibility of man and the illimitable progress of society: meliorism. Radicals believe that education, positive legislation, and alteration of environment can produce men like gods; they deny that humanity has a natural proclivity toward violence and sin.
   
2. Contempt for tradition. Reason, impulse, and materialistic determinism are severally preferred as guides to social welfare, trustier than the wisdom of our ancestors. Formal religion is rejected and various ideologies are presented as substitutes.
   
3. Political leveling. Order and privilege are condemned; total democracy, as direct as practicable, is the professed radical ideal. Allied with this spirit, generally, is a dislike of old parliamentary arrangements and an eagerness for centralization and consolidation.
   
4. Economic leveling. The ancient rights of property, especially property in land, are suspect to almost all radicals; and collectivistic reformers hack at the institution of private property root and branch.
   

The radical, when all is said and done, is a neoterist, in love with change."

Portrait above is "Jean-Jacques Rousseau" (1753), by Maurice-Quentin La Tour.

Inside.

Inside of each of us is a thing of beauty - perhaps beauty itself - a glowing thing of life that wants to get out.

It is trapped under mud and rock and hurt and fear and sin and memory and habit and it cries and yells to get out - except on the empty days when it doesn't.

Inside some of us is a bridge, or a painting, or a poem.

Inside me is my life,
my own beauty,
my song to God,
my connection,
my peace.

Why couldn't I have a bridge?

- anonymous

Photo of Mathematical Bridge (Cambridge) by this artist.

And on, and on...

I have been tracking the progress of Roz Savage, who I learned about on Will's blog. Observing her cross the Pacific has given me a lot to ponder about my own limitations, capacity for dedication, and drive for achievement. I have long considered one of my life's goals to be a bike trip across America, but with my life transitioning as it has over the last two years, I'm thinking that for now I should settle for goals I can accomplish closer to home. Still, keeping my long-term, but relatively minor bike-ride objective in mind as I watch Roz is good perspective.

Over the last week, I've done some reading on people like this, folks who do extraordinary physical feats because they want to, or feel that they simply must. For example, this article in Wired has started me thinking about my own running primarily as a mental challenge (a belief my brother has long held). Let me also share this link to Karl Meltzer's website, where we can watch Karl try to run the entire length of the Appalachian Trail faster than the current record holder (yes, people keep up with this sort of thing). He started this morning and seems to be moving along. Because.

Release the hounds!!!

Gareth Armstrong, as Shylock

“The mere receipt of an order backed by force seems, if anything, to give rise to the duty of resisting, rather than obeying.” – H. A. Prichard

Canine "leash laws" are a matter of controversy, even among friends. It turns out that they also can be the foundation of bad relationships between neighbors. Living on my street is a man - we'll call him Shylock - who persistently and obnoxiously believes in the letter of the law, and thus objects to the practice of off-leash dog walking, no matter the total isolation, late hour, harmlessness of hypothetical dog, nor other circumstance. Conversely, others on my block believe merely in the spirit of such laws: dog owners must be in complete control of their dogs, and are absolutely responsible for their behavior. After all, if a dog bites, do you care if she's on a leash? I have heard that Shylock's zealous support for the letter of the law has resulted in calls to "the police", though not surprisingly, I have yet to see a Fulton County Animal Control officer on my street... ever.

I make my living by promoting ethical behavior in organizations, a neighborhood being but one example. Not taking into account Shylock's arrogant and bullying style, the ongoing conflict troubles me deeply from a moral point of view: Is a violation of the leash law also a moral wrong? Do we have moral obligations to obey every law, no matter how silly we think one might be?

Laws are statements of minimal social norms. Societies create laws to describe behavior that is either required or unacceptable. Given this absolute quality, one hopes that all laws - which are coercive by nature - are grounded in some sense of shared morality, but the inescapable truth is that The Law is morally fallible, and specific laws are corrected or even repealed using this very rationale. The reality is that some laws unjustly restrict a citizen's liberties or infringe on personal rights and obligations without a compelling moral argument for doing so. These immoral laws should be resisted on principle. Do "leash laws" fall into this category?

I believe that some do. Many leash laws in Georgia do not go so far as to require an actual leash, specifying only that the dog must respond to voice commands and be "at heal" in the presence of others. This makes sense to me, because those laws articulate a reasonable expectation of responsibility and control, but do not dictate the type of control. However, the overly sensitive Fulton County statue to which this neighborhood is subject requires a six foot fixed length lead. Why? Why six (why not seven)? Why fixed? Who can say? From a practical perspective, these leash laws are motivated by the bad behavior of dogs that have not been trained properly by their owners. All the dogs I know at the center of this conflict are small, harmless, non-agressive, and well-trained. If the specific dog is small, harmless, non-aggressive, and well-trained, then what, exactly, is the law trying to achieve in this case?

The Fulton County leash law (and Shylock) is attempting to force dog owners to perform in an arbitrary way that may or may not have any relevance in a given situation, and as such is an inappropriate government infringement upon individual personal liberty. The law actually prevents the dog owner from taking personal (voluntary) responsibility for his own (or his dog's) actions. Much like helmet laws, leash laws start from the presumption that citizens are dumb, insensitive to context, and in need of parenting. So, Fulton County would like to be my daddy, but can I say no?

I encourage all responsible dog owners who have harmless, non-agressive, well-trained dogs that respond immediately to voice commands to resist overly aggressive leash laws by practicing civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience is a violation of the law without any loss of respect for law and the other basic political institutions generally acknowledged to be fair and just. Speaking most generally, civil disobedience is that act which knowingly violates a law, committed in deference to a higher order (like natural rights), or in support of a cause greater than the actor himself (like liberty) and the law itself. Under John Rawls’ strict interpretation, civil disobedience is a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law, usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government.

Civil disobedience is a form of political statement, an invitation for others to join in a just cause. Civil disobedience is deliberate lawlessness, and can be classified as either direct (by breaking the very law that is objectionable) or indirect (by breaking laws which are not objectionable, but which call attention to the wrong). Lastly, acts of civil disobedience must be conscientious, which generally means that one acts out of an honest and sincere conviction that what one is doing is the uniquely correct thing to do, no matter what the personal cost. This stipulation rules out the motives of private or personal gain, or malevolent emotion as primary factors. The actor’s willingness to suffer inconvenience, expense, threats, real danger and punishment helps to demonstrate that his purpose is to protest a greater social injustice or wrong and not to achieve some immediate gain for himself.

So, if you are a responsible dog owner, act on principle and release the hounds!!

The false self.

In a previous post, I quoted a well-known passage in Henri J. M. Nouwen's book, The Way of the Heart, a work I had not read. I'm reading it now, and finding it very thoughtful. Here is a more lengthy excerpt:

"The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions.  'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated, or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a business man, or a minister, what maters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failing and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends.

These very compulsions are at the basis of the two main enemies of the spiritual life: anger and greed. They are the inner side of a secular life, the sour fruits of our worldly dependencies. What else is anger than the impulsive response to the experience of being deprived? When my sense of self depends on what others say of me, anger is a quite natural reaction to a critical world. And when my sense of self depends on what I can acquire, greed flares up when my desires are frustrated. Thus greed and anger are brother and sister of a false self fabricated by the social compulsions of an unredeemed world."

The image above is "Versace Veiled Dress, El Mirage" (1990), by Herb Ritts (the artist who took perhaps my favorite image of all time).

Flight of fancy.

I have fallen for the first season of the HBO production, "Flight of the Conchords". It is one of the rare television programs that is consistently funny, creative and yet somehow oddly relevant. The show is part absurdist / deadpan comedy, part musical theater. It's also a shade risque and a little edgy.

Above is the probably-not-safe-for-work song, "A kiss is not a contract". Here are other random (neither boss nor child-friendly) video clips of their music: a) Business time, b) Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros, c) If you're into it, d) She's so hot, e) Mutha Uckers, and, f) Sugarlumps. Each makes me laugh out loud.

More standing.

"New York City Skyline" (1940), by Leon Dolice

Another interesting passage from the book I'm reading, "I'll Take my Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition":

"Religion can hardly expect to flourish in an industrial society. Religion is our submission to the general intention of a nature that is fairly inscrutable; it is the sense of our role as creatures within it. But nature industrialized, transformed into cities and artificial habitations manufactured into commodities, is no longer nature but a highly simplified picture of nature. We receive the illusion of having power over nature, and lose the sense of nature as something mysterious and contingent.

Nor do the arts have a proper life under industrialism, with the general decay of sensibility which attends it. Art depends, in general, like religion, on a right attitude to nature and in particular on a free and disinterested observation of nature that occurs only in leisure. Neither the creation nor the understanding of works of art is possible in an industrial age except by some local and unlikely suspension of the industrial drive.

The amenities of life also suffer under the curse of a strictly-business or industrial civilization. They consist in such practices as manners, conversation, hospitality, sympathy, family life, romantic love - in the social exchanges which reveal and develop sensibility in human affairs. If religion and the arts are founded on right relations of man-to-nature, these are founded on right relations of man-to-man."

Jabberwocky

"Farm Road" (1979), by Andrew Wyeth

Below is the favorite poem of many: "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872.  I know people who talk like this.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Aw yeah...

Get More: MTV2 Legit, Full Episodes

Frankly, I don't know why this is so funny to me, but it is, and it has been for many years now. Awwww yeahh....

City Life

"Room in Brooklyn" (1932), by Edward Hopper

In The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton describes the city dweller's need to travel in the countryside by referencing the poems of William Wordsworth, who

"... proposed that nature - which he took to comprise, among other elements, birds, streams, daffodils and sheep - was an indispensable corrective to the psychological damage inflicted by life in the city.

The poet accused cities of fostering a family of life-destroying emotions: anxiety about our position in the social hierarchy, envy at the success of others, pride and a desire to shine in the eyes of strangers.  City dwellers had no perspective, he alleged, they were in thrall to what was spoken of in the street or at the dinner table.  However well provided for, they had a relentless desire for new things, which they did not genuinely lack and on which their happiness did not depend.  And in this crowded, anxious sphere, it seemed harder than it did on an isolated homestead to begin sincere relationships with others."

An excerpt from Wordsworth's "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey":

[Nature] can so inform 

The mind that is within us, so impress 

With quietness and beauty, and so feed 

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 

The dreary intercourse of daily life, 

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 

Our chearful faith that all which we behold 

Is full of blessings.

Anger

"Seneca on Anger" by Alain de Botton

Over the last several years, I have felt in myself and in many of my close friends a growing store of anger, regret, resentment, and disillusionment. Perhaps this is merely what They call "middle age", or "the onset of reality", but it's grim stuff, and it has many of my contemporaries well within its grasp. And not just a few.  A satisfying explanation for why these emotions are so pervasive among the smart, peaceful and prosperous currently eludes me (even after watching the video), but there it is.

This transition is associated with a growing sadness about the world, an acceptance of the inevitability of cruelty and disappointment, a questioning about the natural order and purpose, and a loss of both optimism and hope. It is clearly linked to a weakening of spiritual faith - any belief that God "cares".

Last week, I was (sorta) joking with a friend that recently I have embraced pessimism as a time-saving device, and today I come across the video above suggesting that it could be more: a successful coping mechanism. To reduce anger, Seneca suggests that we manage (adjust downwardly) our expectations about life. While this makes sense at some level, it is an approach decidedly lacking in all those natural, joyful inclinations that make life worth living, and borders on hopelessness itself. Though perhaps it proves that cynics are optimists run down by reality.

My grandmother used to tell me that happiness (and optimism) is a choice, and this was a choice that she had to make every day.  In contrast, Seneca starts from the Buddhist position that to be happy is to suffer less, and to suffer less we must suffer in advance, to prevent disillusionment when the inevitable occurs.  Frankly, I suspect that my grandmother was far happier than Seneca must have been.

Still, it's an intelligent, interesting video. It is part of a series by Alain de Botton, author of The Art of Travel, and The Consolations of Philosophy, from which these videos are derived.

UPDATE: The timing of William Kristol's uplifting piece in Monday's New York Times about Tony Snow and the nature of optimism couldn't be better. Thanks to Captain / Doctor / Professor / Momma Betsy Holmes for the heads-up.