Redtree Times

I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them.

~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

I wrote one thing already this morning but after reading it, decided against posting it. It just felt too negative, too cynical, and I didn’t really want to go that way this morning. There’s enough negativity and cynicism in our public discourse without me adding to it. 

Instead, much as the character Ivan Karamazov states in the passage above–which is but a small part of a wonderful long paragraph–let’s focus on more positive aspects of this life. Though we are often disillusioned, disappointed, disgusted, and left feeling hopeless by the actions of men, this is a life worth living.

Perhaps by recognizing the intrinsic beauty in those things of this life not defined by monetary wealth or political power, we can better appreciate the value of contentment and caring. 

Maybe then we can begin to see a movement away from self-serving attitudes and toward those of self-sacrifice and service to others.

That probably sounds implausible but for this morning I am willing to embrace it. 

Here’s an iconic performance of Soul Sacrifice by Carlos Santana from the 1969 Woodstock festival. In a concert that featured remarkable and legendary performances, this remains a standout. Carlos Santana was only 22 at the time and his drummer, Michael Shrieve, had just turned 20.

Age is, after all is said and done, just a number. And whatever your age, as the late great bluesman John Lee Hooker said: If can’t dig this, you got a hole in your soul– and that ain’t good.

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Welcome to yet another new year. Let’s call this one something different.

Maybe something like 2025? 

Yeah, that should work. 2025 it is.

How will it be in this newly named 2025?

Damned if I know.

Six hours in so far and I haven’t heard anything too bad so maybe it will be okay, right? Of course, that’s not much of a sample size.

I mean, we’re twenty-five years into the 21st century and it has lost that new century smell and feels pretty worn around the edges, maybe even showing a bit of rust in places. It seems as though there’s enough to judge it on already but I am not sure how people will judge this century when the 22nd comes around. Maybe it will be the best century ever. I have my doubts about that, imagining future historians uttering a lot of WTFs and continuously face palming in disbelief at the stupidity they’re looking back on, at least in this first quarter of the century.

Then again, there might not even be historians then.

Who knows?

So, we’re only six hours into this new year, this 2025 and everything about it is yet to be written.

It is all up for grabs at this moment. 

That being the case, I say let’s take it now while they’re snoozing and claim it as our own. Make them take it from us.

Possession is, after all, 9/10th of the law.

I say it’s settled– this will be our year.

So, Happy New Year. Remember, it’s ours. Let’s hold onto it, okay?

Funny how prescient the Zombies were back in 1968. How did they know that 2025 was going to be our year?

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Watchful Presence-– At Principle Gallery

Perhaps a man’s character is like a tree and his reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

—Abraham Lincoln, Washington in Lincoln’s Time (1896)

Sadly, Jimmy Carter passed away yesterday at the age of 100. 

He was indisputably a man of character.

Honest, principled, compassionate, unselfish, and highly intelligent. I could probably add any number of other positive attributes here, but that would be like pointing out high limbs on an already towering tree.

We probably didn’t deserve him. Our character seldom matched his and it sometimes felt as though we almost resented the strength and goodness of his character, even though he never preached at us. It was as though our own lacking character was somehow shamed by his. 

We shunned honesty and accountability, instead repeatedly displaying our preference for flattery, meaningless slogans, unfulfilled promises, and empty reassurances that there were easy answers to all our problems.

It has come to the point where we almost beg to be told lies so the smallness of our own character is not revealed.

As a result, character such as that of Jimmy Carter has become an almost disqualifying quality in our elected officials. We may never see the likes of Jimmy Carter again in public life. The current environment of manipulated information and media makes such tall trees susceptible and too easily felled.

Where tall trees should stand, we now place tiny, twisted shrubs, whose shadows are equally short and twisted.

Jimmy Carter may have been the last of the tall trees.

We still stand in your shadow. Good travels to you in the afterlife, Mr. President. 

The quote at the top comes from an 1896 book, Washington in Lincoln’s Time, from Noah Brooks, who had first encountered Lincoln during Brooks’ time as young journalist in Illinois. Brooks became a close friend of the Lincoln family and wrote this book based on his conversations and travels with Lincoln, This quote about trees came in a conversation a day after Brooks had spent the day with Lincoln in Virginia where the President stood on a tree stump and talked about how he loved the shape of the silhouettes that leafless made against the sky and the fineness of the shadows they and their branches cast upon the ground.

Lincoln was another towering tree of character.

A little additional info:  Noah Brooks also wrote the first novel exclusively about baseball, Our Base Ball Club and How It Won the Championship, in 1884.

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Passing Through Blue– At West End Gallery

“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (1882)

Amor fati. The love of fate and everything it brings– good and bad.

It is an idea, as proposed by Nietzsche, of having to accept, along with the highs of one’s life, all the lows that tag along with the inevitable suffering that comes with being a human. Loss, grief, sadness, illness, aging– all these things can never be fully avoided. They come to us all in time.

Amor fati stresses that such unavoidable suffering is simply part of who and what we are. It is therefore necessary for our experience as humans to embrace this suffering, to take comfort in knowing that our suffering is not limited to ourselves alone. That it is universal and that there is beauty and grace to be found within it. 

Of course, nobody wants to hear that. we all want a life free of suffering of any sort. That desire, too, is only human. My belief is that by knowing we are always susceptible to the inherent suffering of this life, we begin to understand that we have the ability to control our reaction to our suffering, that we do not have to be overwhelmed by it. 

I have carried this idea with me for quite some time, long before I heard of amor fati, that recognizing that we have a choice in how we react allows us to persevere through our down times. That comes in handy this time of the year for me when I always feel a little more glum or stressed. I know I have a choice in how I cope to what I have come to see as a natural cycle, that I don’t have to react rashly or impulsively.

As I have said before, knowing that the black birds of sadness can come to my trees at any time makes them tolerable. They are just part of the deal in being human. Not too high a price to pay in my opinion.

Amor fati.

Here’s a longtime favorite song, How Blue Can You Get?, from the late great B.B. King. This is from his classic 1964 album Live at the Regal. I first came across it when I was going through the used bin at a local record shop in the late 1970’s and found a beat-up copy of the recording of the fabled show from the Chicago theater. The album was well worn as though whoever had owned it before had played the hell out of it.  

From the second the needle on my turntable snapped into the groove, I understood why that was so. Pure electric, a perfect storm of time, place and people made every moment of that record crackle. One listen and you knew it was about as good as it gets. I still get shivers when I hear it.

Gets me through my own blues.

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May the Great Veiled Bear bless your holiday with cookies this year.

…

I am looking out my studio windows into the darkness with the hope that the Great Veiled Bear shows up with a cookie for me. I like cookies…

A favorite from Edward Gorey. Merry Christmas.

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