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Posts Tagged ‘Little Gems’

A Secret Sun

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

A Secret Sun— At West End Gallery

And they’re only going to change this place
By killing everybody in the human race
They would kill me for a cigarette
But I don’t even wanna die just yet

There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day’s done

–Invisible Sun, The Police, 1981

After finishing this new small painting, it reminded me of something but I couldn’t figure out what. I wanted to find the connection so that it might help me find a title for this piece. That’s how I often title my work, from subtle — and some not so subtle– nudges coming from the work that spark loose connections in my mind.

Was it something I saw or read? Was it because of the red sun? It bugged me for a while but I finally let it go and just worked from what I was seeing.

The red of the sun here made me think that it was not normal, that it had a significant difference for those that saw it. The way it was partially obscured by the trees made me think it was trying to remain unseen, as though it were not for everyone’s eyes.

A secret sun? That’s pretty much how the title to this small painting, A Secret Sun, came about.

But that first reminder of something I couldn’t put my finger on still vexed me. I carry bunches of these vexing little questions around in my head– names, faces, movies, songs, books, and so on that I can’t quite remember. Every so often I will be painting or doing something else, maybe making my way through the woods to the studio in the morning, and suddenly the answer to one of these questions pops into my head.

The initial question and everything around it seems suddenly clear. I sometimes yell out, “That’s it!” like I’m Charlie Brown after the psychiatrist Lucy asks if might be suffering from pantophobia, the fear of everything.

Just remembering the answer one simple and sometimes stupid questions that naggingly lingers in my mind is as satisfying a thing as I can’t think of at the moment. I will probably think of something else later and will be equally pleased then.

Just the other day, the connection that couldn’t recall to this little painting, suddenly came to mind. It was an old Police song, from their 1981 Synchronicity album. It was a favorite album back in the day but one that I hadn’t heard fully in many years. The song was Invisible Sun. which was about a sun we couldn’t see but gave us warmth and hope.

It fit perfectly with what I was seeing in this painting. It seems today that we almost need a secret sun to keep us warm and hopeful as the one that we all can see now gives us heat but not much hope.

And maybe that secret sun is not even a sun. Maybe it is something else that fills us with hope but goes unnoticed by many others?

I don’t know. That question will nag at me, no doubt. But I feel pretty good about getting the one about A Secret Sun out of my head.

Here’s the original Police song, Invisible Sun.

A Secret Sun is 3″by 5″ on paper and is now hanging with the Little Gems exhibit at the West End Gallery. The show opens with a reception on Friday, February 7 but the work is up and available for previews and presales.

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Blue Flow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 28, 2025| 2 Comments »

Blue Flow– At West End Gallery

“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.”

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

This is another new small painting now at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. It is titled Blue Flow and is a tidy 2.5″ by 2.5″ on paper. It is right on the mark for the annual Little Gems show at the gallery which opens on February 7.

I chose the passage above from late psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to go along with this painting today. Csikszentmihalyi first introduced the concept of flow in 1975 and his 1990 book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, which I have discussed here in the past, became a classic in the field of positive psychology.

Flow is basically being in the zone in a creative sense, shutting out all external noise and distraction to deeply focus on the task at hand. It is described as being at that point of balance found when one’s skill level meets its highest challenge. Flow has become a well-worn term for musicians of the highest skill level. You now often hear the word used to describe the soaring solos of guitarists like Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan.

I often use the term rhythm in describing that hyper focused state of creating. It also involves doing whatever is being done for the sole purpose of doing it. It doesn’t depend on the approval or consent of anyone other than its creator.

It’s a letting go of that which is outside– fears and doubts– and just going with the flow.

There’s a lot more involved in his book on the subject but for my purposes today I am going with the simplest form of flow and how it symbolically relates to this little piece. I see the blue stream as being the flow of creativity and the distant sun as its endpoint. Everything around it is in tones of gray and black, their colors lost in the act of focusing on the flow of creation.

It’s a simple reading of it, of course. But sometimes the best pieces find their power in that simplicity. I think that’s the case here.

I came across a song from an artist who was not on my radar. His name is Shawn James and the song is fittingly called Flow. I liked the song a lot, both in sound and meaning, and have enjoyed listening to his other music this morning. Solid stuff. Look forward to hearing more. Here’s a taste:

So you think you got it all figured out?
All this money in the bank and the women all about
Well, now what you gonna do when your ship starts to sink?
Caught in a monstrous sea and you won’t be able to think
Yeah, and it’s there you’ll learn what I know
That all of this world will fade
You gotta learn to let it all go, oh
And flow like the river

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Eclipse

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 26, 2025| 4 Comments »

Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.

–Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862)

Eclipse– At West End Gallery

Perhaps all people sometimes live through periods of eclipse, times when the light on which we depend seems to go away. Science tells us now that the light will soon return but to those who lived in the earlier ages of man, the sudden departure of light must have felt apocalyptic. I can only imagine the fearful panic and worry that must have filled them, not knowing if the light would ever return. Wondering if their lives, their futures, would be forever changed. How would they survive?

Maybe I don’t have to imagine. Maybe we are now in the time of a great eclipse.

I don’t know. But those feelings that our distant ancestors must have felt when the last bit of light they saw was obscured seem closer to the surface now, not lost in the mire of our long dormant DNA memories.

I want to believe that like the natural type of eclipse, the darkness of this cultural eclipse will soon give way to a reappearance of light. And I think it will.

The question is how long will this eclipse linger? Will our desire to see the light once more hasten its return? Or will we learn to dwell in a state of constant darkness, forgetting all that the light once gave to us?

Again, I don’t know. Not sure than anyone out there has a credible answer, one way or the other. All we can do is bide our time, lighting candles and torches against the darkness. Keeping light alive somehow.

After I finished this small painting, Eclipse, I knew that I liked it on a surface level. I liked it simplicity, forms, and colors. It seemed to work, to have a life energy. But I also felt that it was offering a message beyond its surface appeal.

This symbolic idea of an eclipse was the first thing that entered my mind at that point. I often attach symbolic meanings to my work that might only apply to my own interpretation. You might not see it that way at all. After all, we all perceive the world around us in different ways with different preferences and prejudices.

You might think that an eclipse is just an eclipse, and a cigar is just a cigar. That’s okay. We all take what we want and need from art. In this case, I see the bigger symbolism of this little piece and find myself waiting for, as Hugo put it, dawn and resurrection.

For this week’s Sunday Morning Music, here’s a song that I have shared a few times over the years. It’s alive version of Darkness on the Face of the Earth from Willie Nelson with Emmylou Harris sitting in. He wrote the song in 1962 and it was originally released that year by Hawkshaw Hawkins, who was a big country star at the time. He died in the same plane crash in 1963 that killed Patsy Cline. Nelson released the version on which this performance is based on his 1998 album, Teatro. Great album.

Eclipse is a 2″ by 4″ piece on paper that is now at the West End Gallery for their annual Little Gems show, opening February 7.

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King of the Night Forest

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 25, 2025| 3 Comments »

King of the Night Forest — At West End Gallery

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

–John Muir, July 1890

I have mentioned that one of the things I like best about doing work for the annual Little Gems exhibit at the West End Gallery is that I get to work on new themes and directions. The smaller format is ideal for exploring new things– different color combinations, compositions, elements, etc. Over the 31 editions of  this show, some once new things have become regular visitors to my work where others have been limited to their one and only appearance.

This year’s show has one distinctly different entry– actually, two paintings of the same sort– to the body of my work. I very much enjoyed working on these and found myself looking at them constantly after they were done. If that means they will become part of my regular rotation for years to come or are simply a one-time entry for this time remains to be seen.

Some of my favorite themes had limited lifespans within the body of my work. Of course, I always reserve the right to revisit these themes in the future so they may not be really finished within the body of my work. Just paused. For example, my popular Archaeology series flourished for a year or two then moved to a place within my body of work where it shows itself every few years. And even then, it only appears in a handful of new pieces, maybe only two or three.

Sometimes, it simply depends on what I need to see in the work for myself. This work starts off as being explicitly for myself. While I might be pleased if others take to them, it doesn’t really matter to me so long as they spark some sort of excitement within me that can I carry with me into my other work.

There are two distinct pieces from this show that fall into this category. I don’t know where they fit yet or if they will become regular visitors. Or maybe they will become regulars that will never be shown outside my studio. Work for me alone.

The jury is still out on this new work. I like these new pieces a lot. They excite me, both in the process and in the way they carry their own different story and mythology. Maybe I need that new mythos right now in order to make sense of the bizarreness of what I see unfolding here recently. It leaves me feeling me more alone than ever and even more unmoored, as though the past I thought I knew and relied on was no more. 

Kind of like that feeling of which George Orwell wrote in 1984:

He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.

Maybe I simply needed to see something different, something with its own reality, its own history and mythology. This work seems to fit that bill. Whether it remains it another question. I could see them effectively translated as much larger work– 4′ by 4′, for example. It would make for a dramatic and bold statement. But whether I go that route is unknown right now.

The first of these paintings is shown above. It is a little over 6″ by 6″ on paper and I call it King of the Night Forest. The title came from when I used to walk in the dark down to my home from my first studio that was up in the woods. I often did that walk without a flashlight or without any visible lights to guide me and found that the forest took on a whole different character in that darkness. Every sensation, every sound, every smell was magnified as I felt my way down the hill with my feet. Where I could peer deep into the forest during the day, I was now met with a deep blanket of opaque blackness.

The imagination could run wild. Maybe there were eyes watching from just beyond that wall of darkness? Maybe some being I didn’t recognize who only came out when the dimension of blackness. Maybe a whole civilization that lived in a dimension just a shade beyond our own, so near that in those dark moments when I found myself rubbing up against their dimension they could observe me. Maybe they were wondering what sort of strange beast was moving their space.

Perhaps one of those times it was the King of the Night Forest watching me slowly make my way in the blackness. 

I began these faces because they allow me to use pattern and color in their making. It really doesn’t feel much different to me than the process I often use in creating some of my landscapes that incorporate more colors, shapes, and patterns than is typical for my work. It is only the form and the narrative that emerges that is different. 

Where it goes from here, I don’t know. For now, it satisfies something with me that was in need of something new.

This painting, King of the Night Forest, and the other which I will show here in the coming days are available at the West End Gallery as part of this year’s Little Gems exhibit. The show officially opens Friday, February 7 but the work is now in the gallery and available for previews. 

I didn’t have a song in mind for this painting but right now, I feel like hearing Patti Smith and her 1978 collaboration with Bruce Springsteen, Because the Night.

Maybe it fits. If not here, maybe in the Night Forest.

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Sea of the Six Moons

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Sea of the Six Moons– At West End Gallery

But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,
And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,
That the ship would not travel due West!

–Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark (1876)

I think the takeaway from this new small painting for me is that we sometimes find ourselves sailing on seas that don’t make sense.

The bearings that once guided our navigation have changed in ways that confuse us. The winds blow and the waves break in ways we have never seen before and don’t quite understand. Where there was one moon and recognizable constellations by which we could set a course, we find ourselves under a starless sky with six moons, some rising, some falling, some moving sideways.

And a familiar shoreline is nowhere to be found. And the only map we have is like the Bellman’s map in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark— a blank sheet of paper!

Lost sailors on strange seas with the only things we have at hand are ourselves, our imagination, a bit of courage, and the willpower to survive.

A dire situation, indeed. But we are still afloat and our sails intact. That is job one. We can do this.

Now that is my reading of this piece this morning at this particular moment in history. I have looked at this piece many times since I completed it a few weeks ago and saw it in more whimsical terms.  Less ominous and less fraught with peril. But either way, as a frightening allegory or as a flight of fancy, it satisfies me greatly. And that’s all I can ask of my work.

This piece is 8″ by 8′ on panel and is now at the West End Gallery in Corning. It will be included in their 31st annual Little Gems exhibit that opens February 7. The show is going up on the walls beginning today if you would like to stop in for a preview.

Here’s a song that leans heavily to the whimsical interpretation of this painting. It’s a version of a favorite Little Feat song, Sailin’ Shoes, performed by mandolinist Sam Bush, who is a big kahuna in the world of progressive bluegrass. Always good stuff and a good take on this song.

Now, to which moon do I set my course? There’s a snark out there somewhere to be found, for sure.

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The Beat Goes On

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Beat Goes On— Soon at West End Gallery

The first vows exchanged by two beings of flesh and blood was at the foot of a rock that was crumbling into dust; they took as witness for their constancy a sky that is not the same for a single instant; everything changed in them and around them, and they believed their hearts free of vicissitudes. O children! always children!

–Denis Diderot, Jacques le Fataliste (1796)

This is a new piece from a group of small paintings that are headed to the West End Gallery for its annual Little Gems exhibit of small works. It was one of the first pieces I worked on for this new group. I wanted to play with color and form and silhouette.

I add silhouette because it is a big part of perception. That really becomes apparent the longer I live in the woods. Looking through the trees of the forest, especially this time of the year (winter– -4° this morning!) when the underbrush has died back, the fallen trees create strange dark silhouettes that sometimes make me stop in my tracks. There is a kind of primal response as, for a few moments, my imagination sees them as lurking dark creatures.

But all the time my brain is weighing out things and I quickly deduce from gained knowledge the reality of what I am seeing. It is too big or small or the line that would be the creature’s back is somehow not right. The primal response retreats and I am left to relish that momentary burst of imagined perception. It also makes me wonder how many reports of Bigfoots (or is it Bigfeet?) and other strange creatures have been of something far different than what those witnesses have claimed they were.

As I say, our response to silhouette is an important aspect of how we interpret things. I think that’s why I am drawn to the silhouettes of city skylines. They tell a story of growth and change. Or during wartime, of destruction and change.

We often see skylines as constants, being able to identify cities by landmark buildings. But around these few identifiable silhouettes, it is anything but constant. It is always changing as new building arise and old one come down. For example, the skylines of NYC from 1985, 2005, and 2025 are not the same.

Change is the only constancy.

That can be said for almost everything, not just skylines. The rates of change may vary but everything changes over time. Some things evolve for the better and we want them to be eternally that way. Some devolve for the worse and we can’t wait for even more change to come soon. Either way, it is our responsibility to adapt to these changes, good or bad, as they come.

Because changes will keep coming.

Like the old Sonny & Cher song from 1967 says, the beat goes on. That’s where I got the title for this Little Gem. There was also something both warm and cool in the colors that reminded me of the song’s famous bassline, suggested and played brilliantly by Carol Kaye. She was part of the famed Wrecking Crew, a group of L.A. session musicians who played on many of the hits of the 1960’s. Leon Russell and Glen Campbell, among many others, were alumni of the Wrecking Crew.

It is reported that Carol Kaye has played bass on an estimated 10,000 recordings in a career that spanned 65 years. I find that incredible. The beat truly does go on.

There’s more I could write about this Little Gem.  But I am just going to leave it here with the Sonny & Cher tune.

And the beat goes on…

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Summerdream

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 18, 2025| 5 Comments »

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

–Zhuang Zhou

I love this famous anecdote above from the great Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zhou, who was born sometime in the 4th century BCE. Like most things worth thinking about, it has no answers for us, only questions. In this case, the question being how we discern what is reality and what is a dream.

I am not going to get into a philosophical argument here this morning on that question. I only mention it because it reminded me of the painting above and the feeling I take away from it.

It is an early piece of mine from thirty years ago, back in 1995, that I call Summerdream. I’ve been looking at it a lot recently as I prep it to be part of the upcoming annual Little Gems show at the West End Gallery.

It’s a small piece that has always resonated with me. I love its forms and simplicity. But more than that, it has a sense of solidity in the way it is painted with deep saturated watercolor while still giving me a dreamy, ethereal sense of floating. I like this dichotomy, its appearance of earthly solidity alongside a diaphanous airiness in its felt atmosphere.

Like Zhuang Zhou, I find myself asking which is real and which is the dream here.

I don’t know for sure. Perhaps I am actually a butterfly dreaming that I am a man wondering such a thing? Or maybe both I and my butterfly alter ego are just a tiny part of a dream dreamt by a tiny being that dwells forty dimensions of time and space from where I sit? 

Maybe or maybe not. We will most likely never know and that, in itself, might be the only correct answer. We deal with the reality in which we find ourselves at any given moment.

Right now, I am a guy sitting in the dark of a winter morning. That’s my reality right now. But later, I might look at this painting and find myself as a floating butterfly.

And that will be an acceptable reality then.

Here’s a well-worn song, from the Cranberries and the late Dolores O’Riordan, Dreams.

Summer dream is a 5″ by 7″ watercolor on paper, framed at 11″ by 14″. It will be available at the West End Gallery as part of their annual Little Gems show, which opens February 7. This painting and a group of new small paintings will arrive at the gallery later this week. The gallery is currently on a short winter break and will reopen this coming Tuesday, January 21.

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Completeness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 16, 2025| 4 Comments »

Completeness— Coming to West End Gallery

With a secret smile, not unlike that of a healthy child, he walked along, peacefully, quietly. He wore his gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but his face and his step, his peaceful downward glance, his peaceful downward-hanging hand, and every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continuous quiet, an unfading light, an invulnerable peace.

― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Welcome back. It’s been about ten or eleven days since I last welcomed you here. Good to be here and good to have you back. I don’t know that I needed a break from this part of what I do but I needed a little extra time to get back in the swing of things on the bigger part of what I do, which is painting.

Did I get back into the swing of things, find a groove?

Hard to say.  But I was very productive. More than expected, to be honest. That’s the advantage of getting to work on the small pieces for the Little Gems as a reentry point. Smaller work obviously takes less time to complete than much larger works so rhythm builds quickly as I move from one piece to the next. There’s little time between them to lose the new spark or the new thought. Momentum is easily maintained.

This allows me to examine new spaces as well as new or enhanced takes on the normal themes of my work. Some work takes me forward and some is a reexamination of the past.

Some will surprise you. Hopefully in a good way but maybe not. I might like it but it might not be your cup of tea. And that’s okay. Nobody is required to like anything I do here, though I guess one might wonder why you’re here if that is the case.

Will this momentum or new ideas be carried into the following several months of work? I can’t tell at this point but generally the answer leans toward yes based on past decades of going through this. My own first reaction on this work is strong, creating the excitement that I was seeking so I am hoping it does take hold for me. 

That being said, I will be showing this new work in the coming weeks leading up to the February 7th opening of the Little Gems show at the West End Gallery.

The first piece I am showing is an 8″ by 6″ canvas piece titled Completeness. It was one of the first pieces I worked on and, while I am not sure it breaks new ground within the body of my work, it really provided a big jolt of energy for me, doing just what I hoped it might which was to set a pretty high bar for where the work that followed in its wake might go. 

I also thought this was good piece to show first since it represented a central theme in my work, which is finding a sense of wholeness within myself. This painting felt whole, as though the broken shards of the sky had been finally reassembled to reflect down on the fully formed and complete Red Tree. 

It just felt right.

Here’s a song that kind of goes with this piece. It’s Love You To from the Beatles classic Revolver album. George’s sitar playing links well with the passage from Siddhartha and I could imagine the lyrics resonating with the Red Tree here:

Each day just goes so fastI turn around, it’s passedYou don’t get time to hang a sign on me
Love me while you canBefore I’m a dead old man
 
A lifetime is so shortA new one can’t be boughtBut what you’ve got means such a lot to me

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Shadow of the Red Eye

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on February 24, 2021| Leave a Comment »

“What appears to be definite and precise does not belong to any acceptable reality. It is only the experiences, the queer previsions, the fleeting premonitions, that are real. Vague and insubstantial though they may appear to be, compared with anything else in the mists and shifting lights of Time theory, they loom up like mountains of iron ore.”

― J.B. Priestley, Man and Time

This painting is titled Shadow of the Red Eye and is part of the current Little Gems show at the West End Gallery. It’s a painting that really spoke to me when I was working on it, as well as after. It just seemed to have something to say to me the whole time.

It’s been out there in the ether for weeks now and I am still wrestling with its meaning. Some pieces are like that. Some immediately let me know what part of me, what part of my psyche and internal world, they are displaying. Positive emotions usually show themselves quickly.

Others take awhile.

They are usually darker in tone. And while their meanings may not jump out, there is a sense of certainty and reality in them. I may subconsciously try to avoid putting meaning to these pieces, not wanting to face the possible darker realities they may represent.

Maybe realities is not the right word. Or maybe I should include the word possibilities as an accomplice to realities. That would align well with the Priestley quote above which I read as being about how each of our personal realities is not just a timeline of facts and tangible data. It is not black and white. No, our reality is in shades of grays and subtle tones of black and white. It is a compilation of personal emotions and feelings in the present, interpretations and reactions to our past, and premonitions of our future. That is the reality in which we reside.

And that might be where this paintings fits in. It coincides with darker dreams I have been experiencing in my sleep lately, dreams that are a bit uncomfortable and worrisome. I wake in the morning with pangs of anxiety from them, fearful that they are some sort of premonition. Perhaps, a call out to my outer self from my inner self to pay heed to the clues it has taken notice of in the patterns and movements of the outer world. 

I am still taking this piece in so I am not really sure what it means. I hope it is not a pure premonition but is maybe more of a simple reflection of my own worries for the future. But it has a real attraction for me and maybe that comes because it feels real to me, that is has something of true meaning in it for me.

Even with my own personal uncertainty, it seems to have certainty.

Like a mountain of iron ore.

 

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Asking Again, Was That Me?

Posted in Biographical, Opinion, tagged , , , , on February 20, 2021| 2 Comments »

 

“Memoir” – At the West End Gallery

As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man.

—Ernst Fischer 

I’ve wondered about the concept of perfection for some time, given the way some folks are always going on about it and seeking it.

Not me, of course. Quite some time back, I came to that conclusion that perfection is not a human quality, that we are defined by our imperfections and how we cope with them. How we adapt and compensate for all the area in which we are lacking.

And that’s somewhat what the quote above says, as I read it.

When I read it, it struck me at once but I had never heard of the writer, Ernst Fischer.  Looking him up, I found him to be an Austrian Marxist writer/journalist born in 1899 who waved the banner for Stalinist policies for many years but in his later years– he died in 1972– Fischer came to regret his past. His memoir of his life began with a chapter that was titled Was That Me?, indicating his astonishment at looking back and seeing the many phases and changes he went through in his life.

I think most of us could start our own memoirs with that same first chapter title.

I know I could, even though I feel that I am very much the same at the core now as I was in my earlier days. However, my actions were not always consistent with that core and didn’t really reflect well on me. I did some things that were–how should I put this?— less than perfect. I was then, and am now, a walking exhibition of flaws, imperfections.

As are we all. At least, that applies to everyone I know.

Maybe it’s when we recognize what sort of person we want to be that we begin to alter and align our actions to what we are at our core. Then life becomes somewhat easier to swallow and our imperfections become less evident, not worn on our sleeves for all to see.

I’m not talking about trying to acquire perfection. No, I mean that we just try to recognize the flaws that make up each of us and to accept them. Life is in toleration- of others as well as of ourselves. And in adapting to and overcoming our shortcomings.

Please bear with me here. One of the negative aspects of doing a daily blog is that I often post things as though I were writing them in a journal, unedited and just as they fall out of the mind. They are not always fully realized thoughts or ideas and will soon be questioned in my own mind.

It’s like reading an old journal written when much younger and wondering, “What was I thinking there?” or, echoing Fischer, “Was that me?”

You hope that, as we age and gain experience, that this is a less frequent happening in our lives.  But writing in this public forum, forcing out words each day, it sometimes reappears. One’s imperfections become apparent.

Phew!  I don’t know what I just said here and I don’t really want to reread it so I’ll let it hang out there for now, flawed though it may be. Someday in the near or distant future I just know I’ll read it and ask myself, “Was that me?”

This post first ran back in 2010. Some things never change.

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