Blank Canvas

Washing Away Summer on Maui

Woke up groggy today, probably a side effect of the sense that summer is over, at least the series of events that started last March or April--a moved office, a new job, Beijing, Washington, Portland, and this weekend, Maui.

My reading from 365 Tao today seemed precise and profound:
An ocean of ink in a single drop
Trembling at the tip of my brush
Poised above stark white paper
A universe waits for existence.
"...A painter poises above blank paper. But it is not the painting to come that is as important as that single moment when all things still lie in a state of potential," Deng Ming-dao writes. "Will something ugly or beautiful be created? The stately determination to make something worthy of the materials and the moment is reverence."

There was a lot of potential in my summer, all that travel and new possibilities. With my recent visit to the next island over, I concluded something and now feel on the verge of the next roller coaster that will build up speed until the New Year.

"Only when we tire of our excesses can there be esteem," Deng continues.  That describes how I felt on awakening this morning.

So much potential in a drop of ink. My new painting class is good, but challenging, because the style and techniques seem not as traditional as my previous teacher's. (Well, not strictly true. I was immediately moved to an advanced level; most of the rest of the students are painting grass orchids, and have been for three weeks. Fortunately I have escaped that boring exercise.) It's all rooted in the "oriental" method, but with different (Japanese) paper, different (Japanese) brushes, different (Japanese) colors. The ink is the same, but I cheat: I surreptitiously grind my ink stick in bottled ink, a quick trick I learned from my Chinese teacher. I feel my old teacher's admonitions and instructions. I think she would say what I am doing is ugly. But, she's not there, and I actually kinda liked the image I made last night (regrettably I had to "turn it in" for class, and I failed to photograph the landscape of somewhat garishly colored trees, mountains, and rocks.) The beholder I suppose determines if it is ugly or beautiful; the painter simply creates a universe. Maybe a Japanese universe. Or Korean--my new teacher is a Korean nun. She is quite kind and patient; I don't expect her to smack my fingers with a brush handle.

I realize other students are not necessarily in the class for the same reason I am; they are undergraduates fulfilling some requirement. I am there to paint, and increase my skill and knowledge. I did not expect challenges to my already acquired method. But I find some wisdom in The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, a classic Chinese text from the 17th century:
"To be without method is deplorable, but to depend entirely on method is worse. ... If you aim to dispense with method, learn method. If you aim at facility, work hard. If you aim for simplicity, master complexity."

And if you didn't think there is Tao in Chinese painting, there it is. 

One of the things that all this painting exercise has done for me, perhaps the real point, is to cause me to look at real things a little differently.  I notice the structure of trees more, the beauty of a flower, the mist on a mountain, a carp in the koi pond.  And at the same time, I look at classic paintings and enter them. They are the original virtual reality. Photos become inspirations for paintings.  Like this fish, a denizen of a koi pond on Maui.

Happy Fish

But I won't paint that fish.  Or even a fish.  The aim is simply to paint fish.

____________

NOTE:  Not sure if this post is going to publish correctly; I have been having a little struggle session with Windows 7, which seems to exxhibit some quirks regarding my habitual blogging method.  Taoists are supposed to cope with change, but not sure that patience with operating systems is what is intended.  Those are methods you do come to depend on; why not, when they work?  One time when I hate change!

Blog as Diary

One of my blog-o-pals has been threatening from time to time to delete her blog and start over, and in this sluggish dog-day period of August I have sometimes had the same urge, though I resist it; it seems vaguely suicidal. And today I'm glad I haven't done it. There's useful information there.

Yesterday I was at my doctor, the one who does lady-health things, and the question "Have you had a colonoscopy?" came up. I have! Why he didn't know puzzled me. But he is part of a different health care system, so the records were not so easily accessible (a whole 'nother issue).

"Within the past two years, maybe three...I think," I assured him. Though I wasn't completely sure myself. "Do I need another?" Fortunately, no, only if they found things previously; otherwise I'm good for 10 years out.

But when was it? I did recall that I wrote about it, over on My Yin Side (a colonoscopy has a yin quality, dark and hidden things) and there is the post: March, 26, 2009. My memory, and my blog, served me well. I suppose I could put it on my calendar for later, if I had a 2019 calendar. Oh wait, I can put it on my online version, which I never use. Or on my phone, which I do; I have it set so that a crowing cock announces upcoming events. Sometimes I wonder why a chicken is "singing" in the office or in my bag, only to realize it's my phone alerting me to something I have tried to forget.

In any case, I would have gladly scheduled another colo-check if necessary; a good friend is coming to O'ahu next month for her own. We could have done it together. A sort of spa day. It would have been fun. Now we'll just have to go shopping.

A Little Early

Yesterday, 8/8, a double eight day. I spotted the first kolea of the season, looking a little confused, standing in the middle of the street. It surely is a returning one; I haven't seen one in the area since well before I left for China, last April. Checking my records, last year I noted the first bird's return on August 17, and even then it seemed a bit early. It's been such a strange summer, with weather, travel, world events, change...maybe my bird's return on 8/8 means things will settle down.

But probably not.

Monumental Capitols (Part 2)

Escaping the over-air-conditioned business conference rooms in our close-to-the-Capitol Hyatt, I took opportunities to thaw out (easily done in the high heat) and sample some area pleasures:

• briefly browsing the National Gallery where I contemplated the difference between Western and Chinese paintings; looking at a famous Rembrandt or Rubens is not a bad way to spend a coffee break.
• walking through the Georgetown University Law Center grounds and Chinatown (such as it is in Washington; Beijing doesn't really have a gweilo town, having dispensed with the foreign concessions some decades ago).
• taking the Metro from Union Station to the Pentagon Center mall (where I actually bought a copy of Mandarin Rosetta Stone software--I'm such a sucker for personable, good-looking salesmen at mall kiosks. I suppose this is a good location for Rosetta Stone, a lot of diplomats and lobbyists who might need to acquire a second language).
• dinner and drinks with a friend from China pilgrimage 2010 in the oldest Irish pub in Washington, dating all the way back to...1967. (I thought maybe Thomas Jefferson might have tossed back a shot of Jameson's there, but more likely a Kennedy.)

Leaving the Nation's Capitol in a cheap cab ride that allowed me to glimpse the Washington Monument and other familiar markers, I moved on for a long weekend in Portland, Oregon. I had a hotel reservation in a motel near my son's home, but somehow it seemed like I was supposed to stay here, a far cry from the Hyatt Capitol Hill, but still, what coincidence.

I haven't seen such retro signage and architecture since the Motel Vietnam, my one-time regular home-away-from-home in Central Florida, which has as much in common as not, with Oregon, as like and different as Washington and Beijing.

If you're open to it, you can be at home and happy no matter where you land. Especially if there are flowers, imbued as they are with memory, as well as fragrance and color. Maybe this was my Summer of Flowers (the Summer of Love long past). Here's a sampling from Beijing to Washington and Portland (not that we don't have a profusion of flowers all the time in Hawaii):

Peonies in Beijing

Hibiscus in Washington:

Roses, waning slightly, in the parking lot of my motel in Portland:

And just to round things out, lotus at Lu San Yuan Chinese Garden in Portland, sister city to Suzhou, China.

Monumental Capitals (Part 1)

I notice a lot of blogs I read have been a little stalled lately, perhaps it is the laziness of hot dog days, or just that summer is busy with travel and leisure. I feel stalled, but have compelled myself to share some observations about my recent travel.

My May China trip was certainly personal, but I mixed a little pleasure with business during a trip to Washington, D.C., a town I haven't visited in decades, and even then it was with grandparents or Girl Scouts. I vaguely remember cherry blossoms and a spitting camel at the Washington Zoo, or that may just be because of photos of me at four with Grammy and Pap. I have more valid memories of the Girl Scout trip, lead partly by my co-troop-leader mother, who made me call her "Mrs." and never paid any more attention to me and my troubles than any of the other Scouts, some of whom "sneaked a boy into their room." (I couldn't get away with that.) We visited our Congressman, and I sliced my big toe open (not in Congress). Mom made me drip blood in the bathroom. "Don't bleed on the hotel carpet!" she advised. "Bleed in the bathroom!"

I measured this recent trip against the recent walkabouts in Beijing. I was in D.C. during the budget debates and heat wave--but you'd never have known the dealing was going on just by walking around, although the heat was obvious and oppressive. I wanted to contrast the capitals, but found more in common than not. Yes, one party versus two, but really, which government gets more or less done. One is impotent, the other reckless; I leave it to you to determine which is which. It's kind of yin/yang.

It would appear that Congress has gotten the message.

The Great Hall of the People! Walk don't linger.

A constant police presence at the Capitol.

A constant police presence in Tiananmen. But this guy doesn't have the luxury of dougnuts in an air-conditioned squad car while on duty.

A bronze lion guards Capitol Hill.

A Yuan Dynasty stone lion guards something imperial.

Warriors for the people, justice for all!

Warriors for the people, but these guys don't have any shade trees.

I left Washington for a brief sojourn in Oregon before returning to the 50th State, which is just about as close to Beijing as it is Washington, at least judging by my air travel time.

More irony to follow in Part 2.

Back in the Classroom

Yesterday I was stuck in terrible traffic caused by a terrible fatal three-car accident caused by someone who was driving the wrong way on the freeway at 4 in the morning--sounds hard to do, but happens with more frequency than you might expect. The freeway was closed for investigation over several exits, or entrances; apparently the difference is not clear to some. The traffic delay gave me a chance to contemplate the meaning of life even before the teddy bears and plastic flowers are placed on the roadside at the scene: once I discovered why the traffic wasn't moving, I was in a spot where I couldn't change my course and go home to wait it out even if I'd wanted to.

It was the first time I've driven myself to work in over a month, commuting as I have been with the Wizard. Traveling together in his car has given me opportunity to gawk around and use mobile devices with impunity. A passive partner in the passenger seat, I've been listening to HIS Teaching Company lectures, so far learning rather dreary biographical information about Mozart, Mahler, Shostakovich, and Churchill. We have an informal agreement that the driver gets to choose the audio. (I'd rather listen to Mahler than hear about his personal misery, to say nothing of Shostakovich.)

But yesterday, because the Wizard is on the mainland, I had the opportunity to resume my own Teaching Company lessons in my own hot little car (his big car has air-con)--literally, The Meaning of Life, Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions.* I had left off the lectures before leaving for China in May, and then there was another sound system glitch that needed attention. It took some recollection, but I'd stopped just after Zen, and just before Hume--Lecture 22, Taking Stock of the Classical World. Since yesterday morning, I have quickly progressed from Hume to Kant to Mill to Nietzsche, with a little side trip into Tolstoy.

Who knew that The Death of Ivan Ilych could be interpreted as a Taoist fable? All through this journey into modernity and beyond, I was struck by ancient Taoist themes, usually just before the lecturer said, "Now this may remind you of the Taoists... ." Eastern thought is discussed far more --14 out of 36 TC lectures** --in this course than in any of the survey courses like this I took in college. In fact, I don't think Eastern thought was EVER included in my classic liberal arts humanities curriculum. Well, maybe once in a comparative religion class. In any case, I never would have expected to be listening to a lecture on "Nietzsche--Achieving Authenticity" some 40 years later in a traffic jam in Hawaii. Some eight o'clock class!

And now I'm looking forward to the drive home: moving on to Gandhi, Lame Deer, and the Dalai Lama, before the concluding lecture, "So, What Is the Meaning of Life?"

I just can't wait to find out. But it's a question I'll likely be asking until I die.

*The Wizard and I are both fans of The Teaching Company. I should point out that the prices cited on the the site are never what we pay; I can't imagine that anyone would...the ongoing "sales" are far more reasonable, and we expect to donate our collected curriculum to the university we both work at or pass them on to persons in need of education.

**And counting two lectures on Lame Deer, the Lakota Sioux medicine man, I think it adds up to a pretty nice balance of East and West, indigenous and European thinkers.

A Brush with Ambivalence

I've been spending some quiet time recently on my lanai studio with my brushes and ink, and studying some Chinese painting manuals. I picked up a couple of interesting volumes in a bookshop in the Beijing airport on my way home last month: very fine "How To" manuals of landscape, and bird and flower painting, the two major genres in Chinese painting, along with figure painting, which I don't do or have much interest in other than looking at. Although, one of my favorite paintings, the figure of a herbalist, at right, probably a copy of some classic, hangs in the window in a Chinese pharmacy in Chinatown, and I own a similar scroll of a literati guy with some ducks. But the style I am most attracted to is shan shui (mountain and water) landscape. My teacher is bird and flower painter, but she is tolerant of my interest and more than proficient to teach the techniques of landscape.

Though a teacher is essential, manuals are an interesting element in Chinese culture studies. Wuxia stories often involve the search for some esoteric lost martial arts manual that has the final secret to some ultimate power. Likewise painting manuals describe technique and offer background into the philosophy and techniques, very interesting once one has had the foundational guidance of a teacher. Similarly qigong videos and books are useful and informative to someone once they have been initiated into the basic techniques. You can't reliably learn these any of things just from a book, but once you have been taught, the books are of value.

In this frame of mind, I scrolled through an article in the New Yorker about the purchase of a painting we all surely know (if you studied English literature in high school--I thought the artwork was called "Thanantopsis"; it always illustrated the poem) and its recent destination in a new art gallery in Arkansas. Kindred Spirits, to which I alluded in reference to my own painting exercise not so long ago, was acquired in 2005 for some $35 million by Alice Walton, the middle daughter of Sam Walton (as in Wal-Mart, not that depression-era TV series), and something like the second or third wealthiest woman in the world. She's been buying lot of American art (not infrequently by cell phone while riding a horse) to display in a museum in her home town in Arkansas which boasts a bigger endowment than the Whitney. The dynasty's outlet --or at least its related philanthropic foundation --where I got a photo for my last Chinese visa is financing a major collection of American art. She is apparently not a shabby collector, but it is something of an affront--or surprise-- to the art establishment that her acquisitions will find a home in an obscure town in the Ozarks, as an economic boon to a heartland community.

Justifying her purchase of Kindred Spirits, she said of the previous owner, "They needed the money." I'd be glad to have her give me $350...even $35...for my little "kindred spirits" echo. Why not? It's in the Chinese style, but by an American. Sort of a reverse Wal-Mart tradition.