Redtree Times

The Answering Light— At West End Gallery,

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

— Mary Oliver, Mysteries, Yes (2009)

Lately I’ve been periodically dipping into Great Question, the wonderful book my friend Larry Robertson recently released on the nature and importance of questioning. It seems like there is something to be learned or mulled over on every page from the many people Larry interviewed over the past several years in putting this work together. I am included in that group but feel a little overmatched by the stellar minds whose thoughts pepper this book. I’m just happy to be along for the ride.

One of the things that has stuck with me in my reading of Great Question are the Five Habits of the Mind. They are a series of five questions that MacArthur Fellow and education reformer Deb Meier developed to serve as a tool in dealing with almost anything on an everyday basis. Making a habit of asking yourself these five questions will serve you well. I think many creative people already do this instinctively but just don’t recognize it as the important habit that it is for them. Seeing the five questions on the page reinforces the habit.

I am going to include the Five Habits just as Larry laid them out in Great Question.

• HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW? is about checking your assumptions, something most of us are not in the habit of doing.
• IS THERE A PATTERN? reminds you to look for the recurring and compelling, not the distracting and misleading.
• Once your assumptions are checked and a pattern worth pursuing emerges, WHAT IF…? is your chance to get creative about acting on what the first two habits of the mind reveal.
• Getting creative is key; but falling in love with your idea or becoming blind, just in a new way, won’t help– which is why the fourth habit wants you to ask, IS THERE ANOTHER WAY?
• Habit five, WHO CARES? makes all of it about mattering. If no one cares about what you’ve seen or created, then it doesn’t matter.

As an artist, I find something in each of these that resonates with me, I believe that all five are habits for me at this time; but I know that there are occasions where I become lax and need the reminder that keeping this list in mind provides.

For instance, there’s habit one, HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW? I think we all sometimes make assumptions or accept things we hear and read without question. I do this a lot less than I used to but even so I still fall prey. I try to be conscious of what I take in and put out as to its authenticity and reality.

An even better example is that fourth habit, IS THERE ANOTHER WAY? Like many artists, I sometimes fall in love with an idea or a way of doing things. That can lead to a staleness that stifles my own excitement in what I am doing. But though I have been there, done that, it is probably the one habit that has been the most important to me and my work. Asking that question periodically creates new avenues of change within my work, something some of you have no doubt noticed over the years.

As always, I could go on and on. But I suggest that you go to the source and pick up a copy of Great Question. As I said, I often pick my copy up during the day and just randomly turn to a page. Without fail, I find something interesting, thought-provoking, personally helpful each time.

Here’s a song that may or may not have anything to do with today’s theme. I don’t care. I just wanted to play another Glen Hansard song after his death the other day. This perhaps my favorite song of his, one that is from the film Once.  This is a live version with his Once partner, Czech singer and pianist Markéta Irglová, performing as The Swell Season. Passionate and real. Good stuff.

Now here’s a Sixth Habit that Deb Meier and Larry missed: When the time comes, you must git.

Now, git…

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Galvanic Memory (2002)– At Principle Gallery

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

–Thomas Carlyle, essay Sir Walter Scott (1838)

This painting, Galvanic Memory, is as its title infers is primarily concerned with those memories that burn themselves deep into our psyches. But for me, it also represents being on the cusp of eternity, when all that is ahead is the Silence and all that remains of the past are those memories that linger in that moment.

That is represented here for me by the door serving as the portal to that eternity shown in the glow of the distant horizon. The Red Chair at that moment is inward looking, still living in those memories.

Looking at it, I wonder if we all get this moment. Do we get that frozen instance right before death to focus on the what was before entering the what will always be?

I mention this now because I was shocked and saddened to hear that singer/ songwriter Glen Hansard had died in a motorcycle crash in Dublin at the age of 56. He was and is one of my favorite musicians, one whose songs and performances have been shared here a number of times over the years.

It sounds funny to say since he had won Oscars and Tony Awards for his work for Once, the highly acclaimed movie–later turned into a Broadway show– in which he both starred, wrote and performed his songs but I always thought he was vastly underappreciated. I don’t believe he ever wrote a bad song. By that, I mean every song of his was very personal, reaching out to the listener in an intimate manner. Like a friend whispering you a secret or an observation he wanted only you to hear.

Not the sort of songs that become anthems.

Many of his songs began much like that whisper but often grew and crescendoed to an emotional climax. One of the things I admired about his performances was that he was all in every time, never backing off the emotion contained in the song. I think this came from the years spent busking on the streets of Dublin where you learned that the way you connected with people just passing by you was to not be afraid to bare your soul completely. To give your all every time whether it was in a crowded arena or a bustling street corner.

There are plenty of videos out there of him busking in recent years in different cities around the world. It was not for the money or fame for him and artists like him. It was for the sake of the music and the connection it provided. To give a gift to those from whom he had received so much in the past.

A rare thing these days.

Here’s an example of his ability to fill a space with his silences and emotions. This is Paying My Way from a live solo session in a private garden in Cologne Germany from 2015. The song felt right this morning. He paid his way. Rest in peace, Glen. Hope you had that moment of reflection before you headed out that door.

You should be gittin’ along now. Out the door. No, not that door, just my door…

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Anchor– At West End Gallery

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

–Margaret Atwood, The Moment (1995)

I came across this poem the other day from author Margaret Atwood of The Handmaid’s Tale fame. It reminded me of my own relationship with the land on which we live. We’ve lived in our very humble little home here for about thirty years now, tucked away in the edge of our forest.

There I go, saying our forest.

Time has taught me the same lesson that Atwood stresses in her poem, that we are mere fortunate and temporary occupants.

We don’t own this land. After thirty years, it owns us.

When we were building our home, still under the misconception of ownership, we took from the land freely. I spent weeks cutting down the white pines that occupied the space where we envisioned our little cabin. I would cut them into lengths just small enough where I could drag them out and their limbs of the clearing for our home.

Man, I am tired right now just thinking about the effort I expended back then, more than a half lifetime ago.

We also sold some of the trees that lived on our hillside to finance our building. A logger came in and took about a hundred trees, all beautiful older oaks, maples, beech, and others. It hurt even then and bothers me still, but we saw it as a means to an end a sacrifice that needed to be made.

A few years ago, a logger who was culling trees on a neighboring lot asked if we would like to have him look over our property. He marched around marking all the grandest and most regal trees, many of which I had formed a personal attachment to in the years when my first studio had been up amidst these trees.

It was when I saw him put a big chalk X on a big oak that stood at the bend of the path to my old studio, I instantly knew that I would never agree to have someone come in again. The forest had already given me all I needed, had allowed me to take from it.

It was now my responsibility to repay that kindness.

That has been my attitude for many years now. We don’t own this forest. We are its caretakers and protectors, grateful for it allowing us to live amongst its wildness.

Oh, we’ve had to periodically have tree guys come in to cut down a few very large trees that were threatening to fall on both our home and this studio. They were decisions we did not take lightly, agonizing over each tree that had to be cut. And recently the electric company sent in loggers to cut back trees that had grown under and over their lines on the property. I felt sick after they left, feeling as though I had somehow betrayed the forest, even though it was beyond my ability to stop them from doing their job.

Even as I write, I can see a few big white pines about 50 feet from the studio that would easily destroy this space when and if they ever tumble over. The woodpecker holes in some of their trunks make me a bit concerned. I sometimes feel like someone living on the edge of a volcano, waiting for the next eruption.

Maybe it is a bit foolish, but I have the feeling that since I have taken on the role of the warden and protector for this patch of woods, the forest will reciprocate and try to protect us to the extent it can.

I sure hope so.

Superstitiously, I am a bit more worried now that I have put this out there. I guess each of us has to live with the beliefs we hold. Fingers crossed.

Here’s another song from Ren with the Big Push that I feel captures the spirit of this post. This is their cover of Praise You from Fatboy Slim. Good stuff.

Now, if you will, the forest has requested that I tell you to git.

Hey, I just work here and do what I am told…

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As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

–Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Going through old work there are plenty of these small paintings that I just shuffle past quickly without giving them much consideration. They often are half-baked attempts or simply flawed or, worst of all, just plain boring. As a result, whatever thought was present when they were initially painted is often lost in the mists of time and faded memory.

Such is the case with this small painting from late 1995. Whenever I make these little journeys back in time, I generally go past this one quickly though I have stopped a few times. At those times, I usually think that it was sad that it had puddled a bit in its sky, causing there to be darker blotches captured in the pitted surface of the paper. I remember this being one of the first time I had used this particular watercolor paper and that it had a number of qualities to it, such as this puddling, that turned me off.

I always assumed over the years that it was this flaw in the sky that kept me from actually completing the painting by putting a destination on the sign.

That made sense.

But just the other day I picked up this piece and examined it closer than I have in decades. I noticed that I had thought enough of this flawed piece to title it, which surprised me. The title was Give Me a Sign. That explained the omission of destination on the sign.

It was as though I was at a point where I didn’t know which direction to head or what to do.

Looking at the date scrawled in pencil in the bottom right corner, I realized that this was probably the case for me at that time. It was dated November 7, 1995. Just a couple of days before my mom finally succumbed to cancer. I had seen her for the last time a few weeks before down in Florida and she soon after spent her final days in a highly medicated state.

Her end was inevitable at that point and she hovered between states of being. A thousand or so miles away, I found myself feeling much the same, tied to my memories of her past while trying to imagine a future without her. I felt lost and impotent in that moment, not knowing which way to turn.

I truly wanted a sign to guide me.

Just the context of that title and date changed how I was now seeing this piece. It took on meaning and weight that had been lost to me.

My perception of that staining in the sky also changed. I now understood that at the time my distracted mind most likely overlooked the puddles that gathered allowing the paper to absorb the pigments, causing the dak blotches. I no longer saw it as a flaw.

Maybe it was sign in itself that, try as we might, we can’t control life?

Maybe we spend too much time looking for signs at the wrong times?

I don’t know.

I do know that I will look at this small painting, insignificant and flawed as it is, with much greater appreciation in the future.

Here’s a song that came on while I was writing this.  It’s Make It Rain from Foy Vance, a singer/songwriter from Northern Ireland whose songs I have featured a couple of times in the last several years. A cover of this song became a hit for Ed Sheeran but this one hits harder for me. Sometimes you can’t copy or fully capture the authenticity of an artist. This i sone of those times.

Boy, it seemed to hit the mark for what I was feeling on a lovely gray and rainy morning, one that we have been seeking for a while now in these all too dry days of summer.

You best leave now before I cry. You heard me– git.

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Studio Window 5:45 AM July 27 2026

Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people’s memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.

–Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1867)

I looked out the window of the studio this morning around 5:40 AM. The light was just rising. A light fog. A patch of buttercups next to the bend in the studio’s driveway that leads out to our main drive.

Nothing remarkable. I have looked at this same spot thousands of times in the nearly twenty years I have worked in this house. Actually, probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Most of those times it is done as a mere glimpse, without thought at all. Sometimes it might come as a delivery truck is pulling up the driveway or a group of deer or turkeys slowly nibbling their way through the clearing where our drives converge. Or perhaps it is simply fleck of light moving in the periphery of my eye that draws my glance.

It doesn’t really matter why. It’s just an always slightly shifting scene that I have looked out on innumerable times.

This morning as I looked out at this scene, I began to wonder if this might be one of those images that is seen so often that it literally burns itself into your deepest memory.

The kind of memory that that shows itself in the series of images that might flash through your mind as it winds down towards its finality one day.

This sort of image flashback is an often-used device in literature and cinema and it has often come to mind through the years as I stop for a moment and look up the trees at the sky. It is always in moments of quiet with maybe a slight breeze that moves coolly over my face and rustles the leaves so that they make their light chattery sound. There might be the distinctive call of a thrush in the woods.

I often wonder at these moments if this might be one of those final flashing images in my mind at the end of my life.

I hope so. Just as I hope that this scene out my studio window is included.

I hope my final reel is filled with those scenes of calm moments when I feel connected to my surroundings and to the greater power of the universe.

I am sure there will be some more traumatic or enigmatic moments. I briefly told the story of how a fall off a ladder brought me to painting. That story reminded me of an image that haunted me in my dreams for a few years after, one where I was hurtling headfirst towards a large moss-covered stone below my ladder. I would often wake with a start just before slamming into the ground.

I sometimes wonder if that scene is cued up somewhere waiting to make an appearance in my final reel.

If so, that’s okay and fitting because as traumatic as it was, it got me here. And now here in this place I have images like the one out my studio window burning themselves deeply into my mind.

I’m looking out the window again right now out of my deeply engrained habit. The scene has shifted becoming lighter revealing that the fog has moved in a bit more. It’s lovely as always.

It feels it is part of me now as I am part of it.

Burned in deeply.

Here’s a favorite song that I hope will be included in the soundtrack of that final reel. This is a live performance of Souvenirs from the late John Prine.

I would normally tell you to git at this point. But so long as you don’t block my view, you can stay a bit longer. That’d be nice.

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A poem should not mean
But be.

— Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica (1926)

These are well known last lines of the 1926 poem Ars Poetica from Archibald MacLeish. The poem asks us to experience poetry as a sensory experience. To just take it in as it is, to trust our visceral reaction to it. To not lose the poem in a fog of intellectualization as we grasp for meaning.

That is very much like experiencing art of all sorts. All too often we fail to trust our initial response to a piece of art. We often require that it meet parameters we set arbitrarily or attached meaning or the validation of others before we allow ourselves to enjoy it as it is.

It always reminds me of old James Thurber cartoon at the top, one I have shared a couple of times over the years.  It’s something you see all the time as an artist. Actually, artists are not immune from overthinking about our own reaction to art. I think it’s a very human thing to not trust our own feelings at times. It seems sometimes like we only trust them at the extreme reaches of our emotions. We seldom question it when our first response is anger or revulsion.

MacLeish’s poem lines up with my own thinking which often creates a quandary for me here on the blog. I worry that my words and the meaning I attach to the work I show here may somehow hinder someone else’s response. I’d like to believe that my work remains wordless like MacLeish’s idea of a poem, as the flight of birds.

That the work will do just fine for itself without my words, explanations, or cajoling. That whatever meaning I find in it is mine alone and might not necessarily reflect the responses of others to the work.

For the most part, I believe that has been the case. I think there have been a number of times when my words here validated an emotional first response to the work and I am sure there have been times when they have soured someone else’s first reaction. But I trust that anyone who reads this blog has a pretty strong grasp on their own responses to art.

That they know what the like, regardless of my words or the words of others.

I don’t know why I wrote this today. Just one of those things that popped out in the fog of early morning light. I got a lot of fog. And I don’t mean outside my studio window. I thnk it may have come from some of the paintings showing at the Gmeiner right now. My response to many of them is always visceral. Wordless.

They just are.

On that note, let me extend my thanks to all the fine folks who turned out for yesterday’s opening reception at the Gmeiner. It was such a warm and welcoming event. I left feeling embraced.

And that’s never a bad thing.

Many thanks to Melina Moyer and the marvelous group of volunteers at the Gmeiner and to Jesse and Linda Gardner at the West End Gallery for making this event possible. I am deeply appreciative.

For this Sunday Morning Music I am going with a French flair since today is the final day of the Tour de France in Paris. Cheri and I are huge fans of the legendary bike race, which follows a brutal series of stages across the plains and mountains of France for three weeks every July. It has been required viewing at our breakfast table every July for nearly thirty years. I thought a little music from the legendary French chanteuse Edith Piaf, the Little Sparrow, might be in order this morning. This is her Non Je Ne Regrette Rien. which translates as No, I regret nothing. I think it is a good example of what I am trying to say here this morning. My limited– practically nonexistent– French language skills preclude me from dwelling too much on the lyrics or meaning. I enjoy this song simply for my visceral response to its rhythm and the power in the distinctive voice of Edith.

Just as it should be.

Oh, and the entire MacLeish poem is at the bottom here.

Now, here’s bit of French for you–le git.

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

— Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica (1926)

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In the Pocket of Time (2014)- Included in A Seedling Returns

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.

–Muriel Rukeyser, The Green Wave (1948)

The blessing is in the seed…

Everything we accomplish or attempt has a seed, a beginning.

About five weeks back, I started a blog post with the lines above in a post titled A Seedling Returns. In that post I wrote about how instrumental the Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center in Wellsboro PA had been in my career as an artist. I was, as the post implies, a mere seedling as an artist. At that point, I was then showing my little paintings at the West End Gallery and had few expectations that this painting thing I had begun after an accident a couple of years before would become any more than a pleasant pastime or, at best, a part-time gig.

But two events at the Gmeiner changed everything for me. The first was an award in their regional at competition, something that caught me completely off guard. That was the first real nourishment for my seed, making me believe for the first time that this might actually be something, that there might be a path I hadn’t dared to consider.

This all took place around the time my mom’s life was coming to an end as result of metastatic cancer. I had painted a series of what I considered personal paintings, Exiles, expressing my emotional response to her struggle and death. I felt the series deserved to be shown together and approached the Gmeiner. I really had no idea if they would accept my proposal but much to my surprise, they did, setting me up for a solo show in January of 1997.

It was my first solo show.

That show was huge boost for me mentally. It changed my perceptions entirely. It was the first time I felt that my work was something more than nice colors and pleasant forms. It truly had something to say, something to express. Meaning and purpose. Something that reached across the space between the viewer and the painting and connected the two.

That shift of perception rattled my world.

Looking back now, I can see the significance of several moments of serendipity that have pushed me along this path. Both the West End Gallery and the Gmeiner loom large in that progression at that time. When I was asked to put together a small showcase in conjunction with Big Gems exhibit that the West End and the Gmeiner had collaborated on, I saw it as an opportunity to return to a significant starting point as an act of gratitude for all that it has meant to me over the years.

A Seedling Returns is not a retrospective in any way. The space for the showcase is too small for such a thing. Instead, it is more an expression of what has grown from the seed they first nourished.

Last week, the Big Gems exhibit, along with A Seedling Returns, opened. It is a take-off on the West End’s very popular annual show, Little Gems, but here combines the small works with much larger works of artists from the West End Gallery. The Big Gems exhibit is wonderful collection of work from eleven, me included, of the West End’s artists.

This afternoon, Saturday, July 25th, there is an Opening Reception for the exhibits that runs from 2-4 PM at the Gmeiner. There is also a painting demo from master painter Brian Keeler, whose two Big Gems glow on the wall of the Gmeiner. Brian’s demo is not to be missed.

I shared this song just a couple of years ago but felt it fit too well not to share again, This is From the Beginning from Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

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Night Magic— Now at Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center

What, keep a week away? Seven days and nights,
Eightscore-eight hours, and lovers’ absent hours
More tedious than the dial eightscore times!
O weary reckoning!

–William Shakespeare, Othello, Act 3, scene 4

Couple of things on the agenda this morning so I going to be brief. Well, brief by my terms. It doesn’t work out that way sometimes, even with the best of intentions.

To begin, let’s get out the stuff that needs to be said first. This small painting, a Little Gem titled Night Magic is included in the Big Gems exhibit now hanging at the Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center in Wellsboro, PA. in conjunction with the West End Gallery. The Opening Reception for this exhibit and my solo showcase, A Seedling Returns, is tomorrow, Saturday, July 25, from 2-4 PM.

Job done. Check.

I was looking at this painting yesterday and asked myself why there were seven moons. Not five or six. Not nine or ten. Not even two or three.

Seven.

I guess the easy answer is that seven moons were needed to find the balance I needed in the composition. But I probably could have found it with any other number as well.

Maybe the number seven holds some symbolic meaning?

I don’t know to be honest. Sometimes I find things in my work after the fact that have symbolic meaning for me that was never thought of nor intended. Maybe the seven moons were something like that.

Seven days in a week. That concept derives from 6th century BCE Mesopotamian astronomers who observed that there were seven visible celestial bodies and dedicated a day to each.

Then there’s Lucky Number 7. Don’t know anything about that, especially the lucky part so I doubt that has anything to do with this painting.

Maybe it has to do with the Seven Levels of Hell? Nah, doubt that.

Maybe Seventh Heaven? That’s a concept I wrote about here several years ago. Without getting into too much detail, like the days of week, multiple ancient cultures assigned each visible celestial body its own heaven.

That sounds like a contender. But then again, what do I know? It might be, as the title infers, simply a little night magic. Or maybe like the old Moon Mullican rockabilly classic from 1956, it serves as a reminder that we only got seven nights to rock, seven nights to roll. I first heard the song Seven Nights to Rock quite a few years ago when Springsteen often included it in the encores for his shows. As my friends in Texas most likely know, Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel have performed this song on a regular basis for years.

There are lots of fine versions of it out there but I thought that the original version from a guy called Moon was most fitting for this painting.

Let’s give a listen. Okay, it might not be Shakesperean with lyrics like this but the sentiment is eternal. After all, throughout most of human history we only have seven nights to rock.

I got seven nights to rock
I got seven nights to roll
Seven nights, I’m gonna show my face
With a different chick in any different place
Seven nights to rock
Seven nights to roll

Now, be gone. You heard me- git.

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In Radiance— At the Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center, Wellsboro, PA

The aim of life is to live it intensely, to be fully born, to be fully awake. To emerge from the ideas of infantile grandiosity into the conviction of one’s real though limited strength; to be able to accept the paradox that every one of us is the most important thing there is in the universe – and at the same time not more important than a fly or a blade of grass.

— Erich Fromm, Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (1960)

I’ve been writing this blog for almost 18 years now, which in itself seems ridiculous. It’s been sometimes interesting and fun but more than that, it has often been enlightening for me and, hopefully, the reader. Writing this blog has allowed me to do a lot of research and reading on subjects that interest me. Oh, I would have probably done much the same without the blog but having an outlet to pass on my thought on these subjects and get a bit of feedback has made all the difference, making me work just a bit harder. Dig a little deeper.

One of the things that becomes clear when doing research on what could considered be the deeper thoughts from the great writers and thinkers throughout history is how certain concepts emerge to become accepted truths. This truth is validated by the fact that a long line of thinkers observes the gist of the idea then passes it on, creating echoes that resonate down the ages.

I suppose that might indicate that there is actually little original thought, just a restatement and interpretation of eternal truths. We are at a point, where, as they say, everything worth saying has already been said. I know that anything I say that passes for truth or wisdom is not original but is merely an echo.

And that is okay. If it felt new to me when I wrote, it may well be new and enlightening to a reader out there. And they then may hold it for themselves then pass it on.

The great truths do not stay hidden for long.

Their echoes eventually come to all ears willing to hear them above the din of the now.

Such is the case with the passage from the late German psychologist Erich Fromm who is a seemingly endless conduit for those echoes. His thought that we humans are paradoxes that find us at once being both the center of the center of the universe and no more significant or vital than the grass on which we tread is one that has haunted my work for many years.

Each of us needs to know that we are important and unique, that the order of the world needs our presence. But, in equal measure, we must keep mind that we are totally insignificant, that the sun will rise and set just fine without us.

Forgetting that we are both and believing we are bigger or smaller than we are is the basis for so many problems in this world, at least in my eyes. We need to tread the middle ground between our largeness and smallness.

I think this is a theme that echoes throughout my work. I sometimes believe that the purpose of the work is to simply keep us aware of our place in this area between the two poles and assure us that it is just as it should be.

But maybe that just the largeness in me coming out. Maybe the work means little in the long run.

I can live with that. I have to.

The painting at the top is a longtime favorite called In Radiance that very much captures what I am trying to say here. It is included in my A Seedling Returns exhibit now hanging at the Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center in Wellsboro, PA. This small exhibit runs concurrently with the Big Gems exhibit that is a collaboration between the Gmeiner and the West End Gallery. The Opening Reception for both exhibits is this coming Saturday, July 25, from 2-4 PM.

Here’s a song that I like in just about any form. It’s Wade in the Water, an African American spiritual that has echoed down the last couple of hundred years in many different interpretations. This is a jazzy version from the late Eva Cassidy who exists through the echoes she created in her all too short life.

Now, git. I can’t hear the echoes with you lurking around…

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The Call of Wonder– At West End Gallery

I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.

And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
karma demands.

— Gary Snyder, Four Poems for Robin (1968)

Does the fool know he is a fool?

I mean, I would like to say that, for the most part, I have done what karma has demanded of me, that I have both benefitted and paid for the decisions that have shaped my life.

That I have not been fortune’s fool.

Can we ever know though?

Are we fools for even asking the question?

Maybe our self-examination, though it sometimes feels like a blessing, is actually a curse. Maybe those who live without questioning who and what they are or the decisions they have made are living life exactly as they should. Maybe they are achieving their purpose and meaning in this life simply by not thinking about it?

Those of us who ask questions we know cannot be answered, that seek meaning and purpose in a life that sometimes seems devoid of it– are we the true fortune’s fools?

I remember an incident in high school. Not even an incident really. A moment. There were these two kids in my class who were good buddies, always seemingly together. They were both nice guys, friendly and not abusive to anyone. Both were not what you consider bright guys. You could see that their future lives were going to be somehow limited by their intelligence and their circumstance. I can’t remember exactly where this took place at our school, but I overheard the two of them talking.

One said to the other, “I am a nothing. A big zero.”

It wasn’t said lightly or in jest. I was looking at his face when he said these words and his face was blank and absolutely forlorn as though he had total self-awareness of himself and the limitations he faced in his future life. He recognized at that young age that he was fortune’s fool.

It broke my heart in that moment over fifty years ago and it breaks my heart now. I can still see the total despair and lack of hope in his face.

Just to let you know this not a totally tragic story, I ended up working with him years later at the Perkins Restaurant where I worked before the accident that led me to this life. I didn’t recognize him at first. He was busboy/dishwasher and was a fairly happy soul who joked around and worked very hard. He had a family and found things that excited him outside of work, things that made him very happy.

Things that gave him a break from the self-awareness that hung with him like a curse, showing itself every so often in the restaurant.

He didn’t recognize me from school. I had a way of blending in that often made me feel invisible– a valuable skill in high school– which was sometimes a curse and a blessing. I never brought up that moment years before. I always was exceedingly kind to him, joked a round with him, listened to his exploits, and almost always overtipped him when cashing out after my shift. It wasn’t much of a gesture, far too little actually. But it felt good when he smiled in recognition of any kindness given. Just not seeing that face he wore many years before was ample reward.

I wasn’t planning on sharing that story today. Actually, never. But it has long lived in me and it seemed to fit whatever the hell this post is supposed to be saying. I don’t even remember how this whole thing started, to tell the truth. Almost wished I hadn’t started writing it.

I have to go now. Said too much and not enough.

Maybe I was fortune’s fool all along and just didn’t know. Would that be so bad?

No song fits this moment. You’ll have to git without exit music this morning.

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