Bookmark 2020

Celebration in Time of Covid- Part 2

Six months from the last post by this title and the pandemic is even worse. Numbers beyond imagining six months ago, still galloping higher. Though many have given up on precautions, many others are celebrating in new ways. In my neighborhood, every street is alight. Looking down the hill from my bedroom window is a wonderfully disorganized succession of elaborate and imaginative displays, far more than in previous years. Children have made contributions, a lawn full of hand-painted Christmas lollypops is my favorite. As I walk during the day I keep smiling at so much inventiveness, the use of white clothes hangers to make beautiful, giant snowflakes hanging all over the yard. It’s refreshing just to walk around in the daytime and be drenched in everyday creativity. Going at night is even more spectacular. This is joy, this glimpse into the minds behind the scenes and variety of imaginations. Inflatables are everywhere. I’ve seen a chorus of singing penguins, and Santas, riding not just sleds, but cars and dinosaurs. One extensively decorated front yard even has a Grinch that’s taller than me and furry. Walking gives me time to examine the details, and people have really knocked themselves out this year. To see and feel that effort is uplifting. It’s a reminder of how spirit can be shown, and seeing it everywhere in the neighborhood fortifies the heart at a time when discouragement comes easy. Nature is cooperating. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen snow on the ground in the days before Christmas, natural encouragement to stay in, enjoy the transformed neighborhood, maybe bake cookies, and listen to the children sledding on the hill across the street. Two separate notes Having just finished teaching my last Illusionism and Personal Ideas classes ever, the break has a new openness about the ways my mind may range, one less thing knocking on the door of the current here and now. With a better sense of how to use zoom, I’m in a better position to enjoy the last semester ever. The collage painting I did over the summer is now posted on visualcommentary.blogspot.com And a hi-res image is on the Baker portfolio now is the Visual Commentary section. https://bakerartist.org/portfolios/susan-waters-eller

Open Heart

Grounding

When I think of good childhood Thanksgivings I think of my grandfather. In a family of restless people, he was a lively stillness and equanimity that was a pleasure to be around. His field of being was infectious and I felt more settled in his presence. My grandparent’s house was filled with the things they brought back from their time as missionaries in Japan and I didn’t recognize until much later that Buddhism may have affected him more than the other way around. The Methodism I’d grown up with seemed to have more to do with how to behave and wearing uncomfortable clothes. Unlike so many who remember wise sayings from their elders, I can’t remember anything he said, but more how he was. He was more of a place than a person, a place where I felt seen and accepted and he brought that place with him whenever he visited. Most memory is in imagery, no longer subject to time. When a loved one is sick and dying, that’s the imagery that fills thoughts of them. When they’re gone all memories are there simultaneously. At a time when people are apart for Thanksgiving, it could be grounding to remember grandparents or whoever has understood us in a way that mattered. The imagery of memory carries the feeling of being there, emotion better understood by repeated reflection. Gurdjieff wrote that, “Feeling is the foundation of common sense.” Strengthening what stirs positive feeling reinforces those circuits. Particularly in stressful times, this may help us keep balance. Understanding emotional signals lays the groundwork for symbolic thinking later. Intelligence is built on early back and forth interaction. The larger the social group, the larger the frontal cortex. The matriarchal bonobo group live in extended communities and have among the biggest of monkey frontal cortex. Recent research has shown that the greater and more complex the emotional communication in which a species engages, the higher the intelligence. Attachment is important because it makes a baby want to signal. Words are learned more easily with emotional connection. Emotion integrates various currents of mental activity. Who we’ve valued and the images and feelings associated with them could be a subject of conversations that include everyone that’s not there, vivid in their place in the painting of our lives, equally there with the areas we’re still developing. One of the positives students have attributed to our time of covid is better understanding of themselves. It takes so much psychological resourcefulness to be alone for extended periods. Thinking about people who have strengthened what’s valuable in us can bring us back to center. When we can’t have people in the flesh, remembering can keep the mental wiring active and the people in our head can keep us company.

Brief Moment

Why Art Works

If art is as inessential as the educational system treats it, then why has it lasted since the beginning of human time. After centuries of histories rewritten, theories of science overturned for new ones, celebrities shed as quickly as dead skin, art survives intact. No one corrects Rembrandt. Look into the face in one of his portraits and timeless humanity looks back. Looking at contemporary faces by Jenny Saville or Dara Engler and see the pain of our times, equally true, but sad in what they reflect about modern values and the anxieties of living today. As the philosopher Susanne Langer emphasized in all of her books, the arts are the best reflection of what’s true about human psychology. As she put it. “Art looks like feelings feel.” The art a person is drawn to is a reflection of their feelings, the ones they recognize from their own lives. This is an avenue of self-knowledge in the murky realms below conscious attention, the areas of human psyche that need morelight and clarity to avoid the sophisticated manipulation of perception managers that take advantage of what fears and desires lurk beneath the surface. Art takes you to the center of being human and if looking at it was part of a person’s self-care, an avenue to the bigger self is opened. Beyond the preoccupations of the mainstream surface, there is more to reflect on in the meaning an image has for an individual. Art stirs the mind with thoughts and memories connected to those feelings developing the intuitive understanding of emotions. At a time when emotional intelligence is prized, even in business, looking at art can be a first step to the self-understanding necessary to understanding others. Finding one artist that shows what you need to see is a bridge to a world of depth today’s marketing values eclipse. It’s not so much what art is but how. How balanced, how energetic, how intense. We feel these first as our bodies adjust to the requirements of the surroundings and apply them to the subject, giving it a mood or attitude. This universal sense of relationship to where we are, educated from birth, is free of the hazards of language. Near and far are positions in space that everyone understands in order to navigate. Visual form of any kind works the same way. Decoding the feeling of abstract space starts with which mechanism is responding. The body responds to the balance of the surroundings and its relationship with surrounding forms. If there is something like a figure, then automatic mirror responses to body language are active. If there something that could be read as a face, the part that understands facial expression adds information that hints at how the other is feeling. Whatever the feeling, it triggers associations with one’s own experience of that feeling. Brain systems that usually work separately, one which processes outer signals, the other involved in the inner world, are both active at once. Not only is the stimulation good for the brain, the intertwining of outer and inner strengthens their link. In a time when what to value has been eroded by modern culture, spending time with art can fortify our common humanity. Strengthening visual intelligence could help us see a bigger picture with broader implications and locate the problems hidden beneath the clutter of speech.

Late Summer Anxiety