 Janet taught me the word. And on my own I learned how to escape the trouble that word means. Note this example of my sterling common sense. Thus I reasoned brilliantly, I think, that the stairs to our basement make really a superior laundry chute For I pitched – as had grown my wont to do – some shirts and socks and other items down my well-loved way, when that day a stentorian voice caught me off my guard: “I saw that, Johannes!” “Yes, dear,” was Johannes’ meek and peaceable reply. Was this not a crafty way to avoid a main “kerfluffle”? “Yes-DEAR-ing” is indeed a time-much-tested refuge from the Wifely Wroth.  After all, “kerfluffles” are best when they don’t happen. You believe me, don’t you, if I tell you that I never, ever raise a fuss? So with my best superior mien I sometimes pick tenderly on Janet for “big-dealing” trifles. Now I can frame my complaints with much more eloquence: “Do please stop ‘kerfluffling’ me.” We husbands are a brilliant lot. Or do you think it’s all low cunning?  Strange Growth on Janet's Kitchen FloorThere remains one more little thing to tell. One day I came down the basement stairs and, at the bottom, were to be seen “loveable dainties” – none of them my own – ’NUFF said!   I have long been fond of exercise and, to gain a useful layman’s lore, studied some bone and muscle anatomy and kinesiology. For, real expertise is out of my reach, and “Do this – do that” directives leave much unclear. I therefore sought mainly “first-pace comprehension” and tried to pass it on as “first-pace explaining.” For example, it is easier to give time to warming up when I learn that warm muscles deliver more of their power. In the muscular action of breathing, this brings to us a most welcome “second wind.” The experts know all this and more, yet seldom put any of it into words.  My “first-pace explainings” are a help to a fine lady who has begun “working out” with me. Our friend has lauded me most liberally as a patient, gentle, and altogether sterling, ancient pedagogue. As twice a week is a scanty fitness effort, I inquired: “Do you keep up with your work at home – I mean – when I am not looking?” My nice lady: “No!” And so, with her prettiest mocking smile, “milady” shot me through the heart.  
When I say this word I am more often ignorant whereof I speak than comprehending. Talking, for example, of “orthographic projection,” we name a discipline which underlies the classical mechanics of our early industrial action. Our discourse on relationships means not nearly the clear insights and precision that are the implied sense of the descriptive geometric term. If I think of shape and color relations in visual art only as appealing or not appealing, we close down the mind. In an able black and white design, the black renders with care also the white spaces, so that black and white separate and simultaneously unite at their common boundaries. How inventively this is done interests the discerning viewer.  We meet with relationships in ubiquitous diversity. The most fateful are those of human people. What we feel and think about, what we speak and do to one another, will either build strongly, or derail, relationships. Preceding all will be a motivating cause. Out of this completeness of succession – of cause, of feeling, thoughts, and speech and deed, each one is not shown always visibly and truly, nor perhaps, at all. So our demeanor towards one another is a path of pitfalls and of obstacles which frequently we jointly misconstrue. Therefore I do blunder on the path of life I share with others and name those several ignorances my relationships. So I do not much like this word. For it reminds of too much I cannot understand. I make, however, handy use and hide behind “relationships” each time I know too little and want to say it loud.   Janet and I once were friends with a lovely old lady – she has since passed away – who told us proudly how many beaux paid court to her when she was young.  At the time I noted down our exchange together with a summarizing comment. Johannes: “Did you break their hearts?” Old Lady: “So they claimed.” Johannes: “Did you believe them?” Old Lady: “I believed them.” Johannes: “Did you care?” Old Lady: “No.” Johannes “Tis a hard, hard world in which we live and cruel are the times.” For you and me, my friend, the times and world have not unfolded more accommodating since.   If you read my log you will have met one of my great teachers. Josef Albers is a second. Albers’ color course at Yale was then the sole basic design study really foundational to our work to follow. Colored papers – torn or cut – gave more color learning than paint and brush could have supplied.  Colored papers taught also the “simultaneous contrast color-change.” One color may so alter upon different grounds that we give this single color different names – here, once “purple” and, once “ochre.”  Albers did not waste his words teaching us not to allow one content or another into the middle of a work, nor on recommending “balance.” What he said was more weighty and a deal more useful. Of a student’s painting he remarked, “I can read this. This is FLOWERS in a bowl.” It was not neglected bitsy pretties in a BOWL. To thus serve the theme and striving of a work teaches how inclusions either damage or support our effort.  “I do not believe in self-expression.” Albers’ utterance here causes me to remember another by a friend to a foreign friend, both figures of fiction: “If you can’t be yourself, you’ll have nothing to put in the pot.” We easily miss that the two sayings tell the same meaning from opposite directions of regard. Albers held that the unimproved, uncorrected self was not the equal of educated and industrious creative individuality. The friend said to the friend, “Let not one of our bad examples tempt you. But bring to us the good you own and join it to the good already here in place.” It is what Albers once said to me of German and American traits – and said it in his native tongue: “Man muss beide im Guten vereinen.” “One must unite the two in that which is good.”   Our hearts are but a dense, polluted pond and hold within all possibilities of Evil and just a little Good. Thus, Frauds and Sinners do not come purely made, so that the names we give them derive from traits we see most often and most clearly. A tattle-tale and backbiter – that is, the Pious Fraud – is upholding virtue at painful cost to others and rewardment to himself. One reward will be most surely a happy triumph of self-righteous Gloating.  Our Hypocrites, however, are with us in two species, and not mere one. And that other holds himself to be a Go-Getter and Sterling Fellow. A fluent Liar, his manner is Blunt Honesty, but not his purpose. Those trustable, and also trusting, are his chosen prey. “Caveat Emptor, you damn Fool!” Is profit by Impious Fraud not glorious?  Like two species of Hyena are these two – one Spotted, and one Striped.  We others are the Ordinary Sinners – we have some Bad in us, and also just a little bit of Good. We believe in Goodness, but do it only on occasion and so, repent of faults, but not too much. “For there is no point in wearing myself out.” Of Saints I cannot tell, as I have known but one. They are our most elusive species, because they try to keep unseen.  Comment:
Do you have some favorite "hypocrites" ?  A lady poet and a friend of mine opened a series of her verses quoting Nicholas Cage. I do not recall the words verbatim, but the awful meaning was unmistakable and clear: Life is awful; we love all the wrong people; our hearts get broken; then we die. I trust, foolishly perhaps, for myself and for my fellows in a better turn of luck. Our day is dire. Right people love right people wrongly. If your heart be broke, do not presume to die – repair another broken heart imperfectly, because you both are human. In due time, depart this life with Grace. We are right people, you and I, but bunglers in the craftsmanship of love. Dreamily we look for bliss into a distant sky, though our lacks need tending here and not above. We are right people, you and I.   Comment:
Do today's problems come more from loving the wrong people or right people wrongly ?  Feeling as EMOTION Live beings emote because they will to live. That is, they own a drive to outward action whose always purpose is to repair a deficit: when we are hungry we seek food, in peril -- safety. Along the path of labor on his pictures, an Artist learns the burden of emotion. For a work still incomplete is a wish not yet come true -- a short-fall to be mended. . . . and as RECEIVING Speaking of happiness emotes a need to reach a hearer -- perhaps a sharer. Happiness itself, however, enters the accepting heart as a near-celestial blessing and perfection of fulfillment. Emoting nothing, we partake wholly of a most liberal receiving. When art works render depths of grief and dire misadventure, they will not make happy. Yet, if they engage all our attention and whole participation, they afford fulfillment. We are not strong enough to endure for long this all-demanding state of being. The spirit wanders. Our attention must soon divide, and the lacks of our world require care.   |
Johannes
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