Waiting for Nothing to Happen

For about three weeks now I have been gradually adjusting to being socially isolated, cut off from co-workers, family, friends, and strangers I talk to when I go out. Now I realize I’ve taken a lot for granted, especially the simple act of talking to people face-to-face. I have to admit I hadn’t been to the movies in a while before this all started. And I usually go to restaurants for take-out (to-go orders). My wife and I are already a little socially isolated as it is, but I am an extrovert, and I spend much more time outside the house more than I thought.

I think we’re looking at many more weeks of this. We’ll have to do some major adjusting if we don’t want to lose our sanity. I decided I must get out of the house a few times a day, if for nothing else, pulling weeds from the flower beds. I could also walk in my neighborhood, keeping a 2-meter distance from everyone else. We walked in the park, but passing other walkers made me tense up, and I wonder if that negated any health benefits I would otherwise gain. At least it’s better than sitting on the couch or at my desk for hours on end. The various people and agencies calling themselves authorities on the matter are telling us to stay inside as much as is humanly possible. But humans need to be outside, despite anyone’s comfort level and aversion to the outdoors. You don’t have to like camping and hiking to appreciate the sun and the smell of cut grass. By now much of the northern hemisphere is experiencing spring, and in Texas we are starting to see flowers, and everything is turning green.

It’s a sad irony that the SARS-Cov-2 virus has held us captive. Understandably, we should be cautious, if we are to believe Dr. Fauci’s dire predictions of the worst-case outcome of the pandemic. In the meantime I’m working from my spare bedroom, eating mostly leftovers, and going outside to prove the world hasn’t come to an end. It’s all for the best, I keep telling myself. The city’s tornado sirens went off at 6 am. That did nothing for my nerves!

I’m waiting for everything to be better. The best that can happen is nothing will happen. We will never know how bad it could have become; but, we have to do everything we can to keep ourselves – and others – safe. The virus has spread to every nation, and it’s really worse than anyone imagined. I was previously convinced it was no worse than the annual flu outbreak. But I can see now that we have a serious health crisis on our hands, which we should be washing with vigor.

Stay safe, everyone. We’ll get through this. Tip the delivery people well.

My Personal Traffic Light

I’m reminded of a time not too long ago when I was more impetuous and not-so-mindful about what I said or did, up to my early 30’s. I have a pretty good memory, and it plagues me that I can recall essentially every stupid remark I’ve made and all the bonehead stunts I’ve pulled. From my time in 4th grade, through middle school, and after college, my mouth had betrayed me in ways my worst enemies wouldn’t have dared.

Now, much later (but not too much), I believe I’ve evolved to a point where I can at least stop myself before I reveal my inner court jester. Even now as a more mature adult I have moments when I wish I had kept my mouth shut. How I would love to have someone know what I’m thinking and persuade me from saying or doing anything.

In the 1991 Terry Gilliam film, “The Fisher King”, there is a scene where Tom Waits plays a disabled man, ostensibly a Viet Nam veteran, who is explaining to Jeff Bridges that he is a “moral traffic light”, because people will stop themselves from doing very stupid things when they consider him and his predicament. Then he proceeds to make strange noises as the scene morphs into a waltz in Grand Central Terminal.

It would have been nice to have someone be that for me in my youth. Young people do stupid things, but now we have things like YouTube and instant karma. (I personally do not believe in the concept of karma, the way popular culture has portrayed it, where ne’er-do-wells and idiots get some sort of comeuppance for their poor judgement.) I’m pleased that YouTube wasn’t around when I was in my 20’s. Smartphones have only been around for a decade now. Thank God! I feel sorry for people born in the 1990’s. They have had to shape their lives around a society that rewards abandoning your private life. Everyone has a video camera in their pocket, and nothing is sacred.

That traffic light guy would really come in handy today! Every time you leave your house, this crazy dude would say things like, “I wouldn’t wear that shirt,” or, “that guy is messed up; stay clear of him.” My moral traffic light would even help by stopping me from posting stupid shit on Facebook. He would say, “remember, your mom reads this,” and, “companies do searches on people they’re thinking of hiring.” In fact, as we get older, this traffic cop voice in our heads starts making more sense. Today I was tempted to call someone out and give them a complex for being a complete moron online. Then I considered that trolls thrive on the attention, or that the person writing that immature remark was likely someone immature. I might be insulting a child or someone who is one harsh word from taking out their angst and frustration on innocent bystanders.

Such was the fate of Jack Lucas, Jeff Bridges’ character in “Fisher King”, when on his nightly radio show he carelessly goaded one caller, who in turn, opened fire on a yuppie hotspot. I highly recommend this film, as it is about forgiveness and redemption of each other and ourselves, and the value of mercy. One harsh word is sometimes all it takes. Jack certainly could have benefitted from that small voice that might have steered him in another direction, saving lives and averting tragedy, not to mention his career. We could all use that from time to time, and hopefully we will never find ourselves in need of so much forgiveness.

I am grateful that my past mistakes were not of the type to be kept on file by the authorities. I’m quite fortunate. But I have close friends who have made colossal errors and recovered from them. Those mistakes have even shaped who they are. We learn from our mistakes – that is, most of us do. But hopefully our mistakes do not define us. Hopefully we are made better by bearing the brunt of our failures. I’ve learned to admit when I make a mistake. And I continue to demonstrate how flawed I am. Sometimes we run red lights. I just hope someone is looking out for us just in case.

 

The Poison We’re Made Of

A couple years ago I heard this story, then saw the video, regarding classroom skeletons (think biology labs, but this was in an art class), and how the reporters wanted to track down the previous occupant of these old bones.

It turns out that collecting DNA evidence is not necessarily the first option, especially since it is pretty expensive and takes a long time to analyze (in 2018). To cut to the chase, the team was able to get a lot of information about who this person was just from measuring the bones, and from testing a sample for tell-tale clues: diet and radiation.

First, apparently, using a Mass Spectrometer, we can determine what a person ate mostly. In the case of this person, it was mostly plants that might have grown in Southern Asia. These days, with the abundance of mass-produced food stuff. My bones would tell you that I eat a lot of chicken and bread (actually you can see that from looking at a photograph of me).

Then there is the radiation.

It seems that every person on the planet who was alive after 1950 was exposed to what they call The Bomb Spike as a result of a large amount of nuclear testing that flooded the atmosphere with radioactive carbon. Anyone born after this time, and anyone who was living, like my parents, received this signature which will remain in our bones for a very long time (I was going to look it up, but it dawned on me that it doesn’t matter). The sample they measured from this skeleton did not present this signature, and so it was determined that the person lived and died before the 1950’s.

 

Recently we’ve heard more about microplastics, which happens when discarded plastic items like water bottles and straws and food containers break down into tiny particles. We’ve also been using microbeads made from plastic in things like household cleaners and toothpaste for many years. Now these contaminants are finding their way into our soil and water. There are tons of plastic in the oceans. They end up in the fish we eat. Microplastics are also showing up being ingested by birds and other animals mistaking the material for food. The plastic, made from polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), is designed to be durable, so it tends to stick around for a while. I don’t believe we really know how much is out there, or how long it will take to completely vanish, if that’s even possible.

What we do know is that we have poisoned our planet, and the lasting effects may not be fully realized. Who knows how humanity will be affected in the long run. As it is, right now my city is introducing large amounts of chlorine (a toxic element) into our drinking water. They assure us this is necessary to remove dangerous pathogens, keeping us all safe. But the chlorine is so strong I can smell it just walking past the bathroom. You can purchase systems to reduce the amount of chlorine in your household tap water, and filters kind of eliminate the taste. Purified bottle drinking water is very popular in my area because of the foul taste of the city water supply. And, of course, it comes in plastic jugs.

A few years ago I started making many things from scratch, like noodles, tomato sauce, bread and anything usually found as a boxed, processed food. Initially I was only interested in doing this for the improved taste, but I realized how many additives are in our food. There are countless chemicals added to things like cornbread mix and canned vegetables that it was just unbearable to think about how much of what we eat that is not, strictly speaking, food. Sure, I like the occasional snack food, and I was very surprised when I read the ingredients on a bag of Original Fritos to learn they are made of corn, corn oil, and salt. (I can’t say whether it is non-GMO corn, however.)

When my great-grandparents were young people, around 100 years ago, food was mostly plants, rice, corn, and anything you could grow in locally. This meant things like strawberries and parmesan cheese were not easily obtained since they had to be carried by train across long distances. Locally grown was not something trendy or hip; it was the only way to go. Until the late 1920’s refrigeration was limited to iceboxes, basically a wooden cabinet with a block of ice in it. (Some people my age still use “icebox” to refer to a fridge). Eggs and milk were unpasteurized and consumed the same day. Meats were essentially living things earlier in the day. Maybe our food is safer today. It’s certainly more regulated. When I eat at a restaurant, I have no idea what’s really in the food I’m eating.

This is nothing terribly surprising. There are very toxic things in our world, many naturally occurring, like volcanic effluence, poisonous gas and hot ash. Then there are tree frogs and somewhere I read that tigers have caustic and perhaps harmful saliva. But the real enemy of humans has been bacteria. But now that we’ve eliminated bacteria from most of our daily lives, something has to fill that void. I wonder what that will be.

The Choices We Never Made

I spent Leap Day shooting photos all around the city where I grew up, Dallas, Texas. Ironically, I had never been to the Meadows Museum, which rests on the campus of Southern Methodist University. The main campus was constructed as early as 1914, and the Meadows Museum opened to the public in 2001. I paid 1/2 price admission ($6) for some reason, and they encourage photography. But, like most museums, I was not permitted to use a flash or a tripod.

 

When I visit art museums I take my time, looking at each piece, wondering about the time when it was made. Artists like Caravaggio tended to paint stories. Others simply depicted s scene of some action or a portrait. I’ve long admired the great masters, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Renoir, for depicting very ordinary moments and turning them into masterpieces. Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party is one of his most famous paintings. Yet the scene is something so banal, so ordinary, one which might be recreated by assembling a few millennials in a dog-friendly bistro. (Well, looking at the photo, it was probably more challenging than I assumed.)

One of those ordinary scenes can be seen at the Meadows in a painting by Antonio María Esquivel, Woman Removing Her Garter. The painting might seem it was rather scandalous at the time (1842), but nude representations of the human form have been around since the beginnings of civilization. But the painting of this woman sitting on the floor removing her stockings (and other things, perhaps) raised one huge question. When Esquivel decided to paint this scene, one which we all do every day, I find it interesting what he chose not to paint. Looking at the painting, my wife said she could almost see that the woman wasn’t wearing any panties. I don’t know what women in the mid-19th century wore under all those superfluous outer layers, so it’s conceivable some went “commando”. I mentioned that only the painter and his subject really knew, leaving the rest to the viewers’ imaginations. And what naughty imaginations we have!

Apparently, given the constraints within Spanish culture at the time – and I am still reading from the Oxford History of Western Art – it seems that artists could only have brushes (pun intended) with depicting nudity. So it was with the woman sitting on the floor coyly removing her undergarments. The paint on the canvas is opaque, and we cannot see except in our own minds what’s really going on. A camera or a microphone might be assumed to capture reality, but even photos and sound recordings can be engineered to give us only what the artist wants us to perceive.

Do we do that?

I have tidied up my house before the hired cleaners were scheduled to arrive. It’s a little dishonest and vain. But that’s not art, is it? Can life be art? Did Renoir paint the scene of a hero returning from battle? No, he painted people having lunch, for crying out loud. We live art in our everyday experiences. We can make our scenes of plain, ordinary existence look golden and radiant. Yes. We do that. And it’s okay. It’s our choice how we want to live our lives so that no one needs to see what we decide to leave out of the picture. Every one of us goes to the toilet in a most undignified way. We all wake up looking like shit. So, yeah, every bit of our lives we choose to share with the world is a purposeful, deliberate expression of how we want others to perceive us. We are vain and proud, and it’s part of being who we are: human beings. We’re ordinary, so we portray ourselves in a way where we can pretend we’re not disgusting animals. We perhaps shouldn’t be concerned about how many likes we get on Instagram. Instead, we can focus on how we live our lives, like works of art, allowing the world to see that part of us that is beautiful, and maybe just not displaying other parts. We can work on that, but there’s something to be said for private lives, because no one wants to see that.