Attributed to Wilhelm Leibl: Head of a Man (1879)

There But For The Grace

It might be true that the best work emerges during breaks. Certainly, this principle serves as the centerpiece of OpenSpace meeting technology, that conversations in the hall will reliably prove superior to any more formally organized in scheduled sessions. For me, too, my writing seems to come to fruition more fluidly when I’m being a foreign correspondent, attempting to post from some primitive replacement for my usual office, chair, and window overlooking The Center of the Universe. I usually find some coffee shop corner where I can bum some internet and sip an Americano while composing my posting. In San Francisco, though, coffee shops no longer offer chairs to patrons. The tables remain, but the chairs are absent. I suspect they do this to keep the homeless from encamping there. I found that I couldn’t enter without offering to buy someone a cuppa and some breakfast. It’s small potatoes for me and more significant for the receiver. Decency demands this, with at least a small remembrance that There But For The Grace Go I. I’d slink back to the hotel and write in a shady corner off the lobby while listening to the city waking up around me. That fog-shrouded light remains incomparable.

—-
Weekly Writing Summary

I began my writing week, dreading some mandated Down_Time. “My internal dialogue tries on dozens of good excuses as if any disqualification could even be possible once we have reservations, the likelihood of cancellation plummets.”

Unknown Artist (postcard): Piped Down (1907 - 1908)
"I've experienced worse."
—
I immersed myself in to a place I once aspired to immerse myself into in SF_Oh “The Muse and I escaped our future to visit where I once believed my future might reside. I never did live there, though the promise of finding my future there once proved useful in propelling me into the future I found.”


Coit Tower mural: Works Progress Administration, Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, California Painters: Maxine Albro, Victor Arnautoff, Jane Berlandina, Ray Bertrand, Ray Boynton, Ralph Chesse, Rinaldo Cuneo, Ben Cunningham, Mallette Dean, Parker Hall, Edith Hamlin, George Harris, William Hesthal, John Langley Howard, Lucien Labaudt, Gordon Langdon, Jose Moya Del Pino, Otis Oldfield, Frederick Olmsted Jr., Ralph Stackpole, Suzanne Scheuer, Edward Terada, Frede Vidar, Clifford Wight and Bernard Zakheim. (1934)
"Light winds no clocks."
—
I once again attempted to prove Yogi Berra’s famous reflections that you can see a lot by looking in Looking. “I can talk myself out of continuing my Looking if my first few glimpses yield nothing. Just the very act of Looking seems necessary and sufficient when I can manage to keep my wits about me.”

Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (workshop of): Portrait of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (c. 1533)
" … our faith in Spring, ourselves, and this universe renewed."
—
I experienced flashbacks when visiting the scene of innumerable past experiences in EscapeArtist. “I certainly never found the opportunity to connect, for I was still too busy building communities I could never become a member of.”

Peter Sekaer: Fire Escapes and Shadows (c. 1935 - 1938)
"I suppose I never had."
—
I sat through a prospective candidate’s interaction with her potential electorate in Candid-Ate. “The purpose of the political machine must be to eat candidates.”


Unknown Artist: The Rail Candidate (1918)
"Democracy is a form of governance utterly dependent upon such delusion."
—
I ended my writing week reflecting upon another political, this one announcing her long-awaited retirement after a less than stellar incumbency in Reprehensitive. “They refused to acknowledge that we, the people, were never homogenous and that lacking opposition, any position becomes vacuous.”

Small Jade Sculpture Representing a Crab Grasping a Branch of Blossoming Chrysanthemum (18th century, Qing dynasty, 1644-1911) East Asia, China
" … a future better informed if not necessarily better served …"
—
Maybe I should apologize for repeating precisely the same pattern week after week after week, but this universe deals cards as it has apparently always dealt cards, not in any way randomly but repetitively, repeating the self-same pattern over and over and over again. A new week provides no more than the opportunity to repeat the previous pattern, albeit one with different titles but familiar conclusions. If we’re learning anything, we’re learning the same narrow lessons over and over and over again. We might not learn, just be learning. How many times have I previously failed to side-step imposed Down_Time? How many times have I stumbled upon myself in San Francisco? I thought I already knew that I could learn a lot by looking. Who hasn’t? I might well repeatedly characterize myself as an EscapeArtist without ever once recognizing that I never once escaped anything. How many times have I shunned my constituents in favor of my own notions of how I might best represent them? We might govern exclusively by the consent of the governed, but that has never stopped anyone from trying to engineer that consent. Thank you for following along with this apparently endlessly repeating pattern!
©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz