Stray Thoughts

A quote from Death in the Afternoon:

“All art is only done by the individual. The individual is all you ever have and all schools only serve to classify their members as failures.”

The others have the authority of all the world on their side, but they are not you, and no one has your potential — with all the responsibility that entails — than you. Emerson said something similar in his middle age or old age. Looking back on his early life, he said something like “that boy was right and all the world was wrong.”

Remember that, young artist, working on your own, struggling to believe in your own gift and your own responsibility.

My brother Paul, who is a big Wendell Berry fan, recently sent me some quotes he noticed particularly, gathered from Berry’s collection of essays entitled What Are People For. (1990).  I hadn’t realized that Berry is author of several novels, as well as the essays and poems he is famous for, but Paul is currently happily immersed in them.

“There is … the Territory of historical self-righteousness: If we had lived south of the Ohio in 1830, we would not have owned slaves; if we had lived on the frontier we would have killed no  Indians, violated no treaties, stolen no land.  The probability is overwhelming that if we had belonged to the generations we deplore, we too would have behaved deplorably.  The probability is overwhelming that we belong to a generation that will be found by its successors to have behaved deplorably….How can we imagine our situation in history if we think we are superior to it?”

from “Writer and  Region”

Continue reading Wendell Berry on America and life

A few more things I have painted over the years. For some of them, all i have is a digital print.

 

Not a very good representation, I’m afraid.

Inspired by traveling through New Mexico toward sunset.

One of my favorites, a river rushing through rock to drop into a chasm.

 

 

A few more paintings.

An imagined view of the mountains around Shangri-la as thought of in my novel Messenger

Imagined Antarctic ice

Something between fog and ocean, a nice effect

Haven’t thought of this one in a long time. Probably I gave it away to someone.

I rarely do realistic work, but this time I wanted to.  I had set up the table and glasses and tray and drapery and all, and while i was working, one of our cats decided to put herself into the scene, so I said sure.

One of my first paintings, which still hangs in my house.

I woke up this morning and once again I remembered, I am not sick. Once again I realized how important it is (and, sometimes, how difficult) to be as aware of our blessings in this life as we are of our problems. It is one of the advantages of asthma, I always think, that it can alternate you between sickness and health quickly enough for you to remember what it was like to be sick when you are well, what it was like to be well when you are sick. In this it is unlike any chronic condition I know of.

I was sick for several weeks in September and October, this time not suddenly but in a long slow decline. Then, with a little help from my friends (thank you Neal Rogers!) I turned the corner, but it was a long slow climb back. That length of the pattern this time made it a little harder than usual to remember. So now once in a while I awaken — in more sense of the word than one! — and realizer that I am taking for granted the fact that breath comes easily, and sleep, and true rest.

I wouldn’t post this here if I didn’t think that in some sense or another it must be true for us all. We don’t all have asthma, any more than we all have any particular difficulty, but, as my father’s mother used to say, “everybody rides the mule.” That is, we all have something to contend with. But we all have reason to rejoice, as well, probably more reason than we are usually aware of.