Hippolyte Petitjean: Self-Portrait at Easel (1897)

Light Seeps In Regardless
When The Muse gets The Blues, there's little I can do. Even though I am our relationship's recognized Emotional Support Animal, my powers do not stretch much further than my fingertips. When The Muse gets The Blues, there will be no laying upon of my fingertips. I cower in my corner, which, at that moment, feels more like hers, and I hope for the best. She cannot maintain her Blues for more than a few scant days, which, of course, last forever. She will have been actively working her way out of her ditch and around her wall since slightly before her fall, and she's never yet failed to find an exit. The moment she glimpsed the exit, the atmosphere brightend around here. Even the cats noticed the retreating low-pressure area. Life returned to what passes for normal again, though the receding downtime was not precisely alien. We know the whole mix that constitutes the human experience. I try to keep my head down and focus on my work when The Muse gets The Blues. I claim she was experiencing some campaign doldrums, a perfectly normal condition every campaign and campaigner has experienced before her. Light seeps in regardless, and the story continues with renewed earnestness, GoodNuff for our intents and purposes.

Weekly Writing Summary

I began my writing week by finishing my Honing Series with a small but significant CurtainCall. "I do not subscribe to the spoon-feeding school of authoring. I expect my reader to draw their own conclusions."

Riva Helfond, Curtain Factory (1939)

"My purpose sleeps in the basement or beneath the neighbor's bushes."
—
I next began my next series, one I labeled GoodNuff, with AModestProposal. What if we're already GoodNuff? "The secret about greatness might be that greatness holds few secrets. It might be precisely whatever it seems, out there and in everyone's face. It's not quietly conspiring. It's probably not even seeking the greatness it feels it doesn't really deserve."

Francis Gilbert Attwood:
General Benjamin F. Butler's Nightmare:
Proposed Procession of the Unemployed
(19th century)

"What if we're already plenty …"
—
I asked the question, "What if we've already arrived but haven't noticed in Incomparable, where I imagined a world without comparisons. " … there are a nearly infinite number of attributes that might be used to determine "fairest." You have yours, and I have mine, and we can both inhabit first place together."

Billy Rose Theatre Division,
The New York Public Library. (1911).
The Incomparable Albini Retrieved from
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/b5cfbf49-a59f-7548-e040-e00a18060aef

"What if we've already arrived …?"
—
I next insisted that one simply must reserve a part of their yard as an unbridled mess in
*The Wabi-Sabi Corner. This posting proved to be the most popular of the period. "I scrupulously maintain an unmaintained corner of the yard"

Tajima Hiroyuki: Small Garden (Shōwa period, dated 1967)

In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a worldview centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" in nature. It is prevalent in many forms of Japanese art. -Wikipedia

" … a universal rule insisting upon less than perfection …"
—
I introduced TheWall, one of those famillar, universal occasional possessions. "I find comfort in recognizing that few paths leading anywhere worthwhile do anything but meander."

Josephus Augustus Knip: The Aurelian Wall in Rome (c. 1809-12)

" … always stumbled upon some resolution."
—
I reported on how I'd managed to breech my wall by glimpsing some alluring promise in TurningAround. "Contrary to popular misconception, most difficulties do not need fixing."

Edgar Degas: Dancer Turning (c. 1876)

"I solved nothing and resolved everything …"
—
I ended my writing week by concluding that I'm probably much better off when I'm not AlreadyKnowing. "I never did know everything back when I was learning what I would one day end up AlreadyKnowing."

Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
Madame Pierre Henri Renoir [Blanche-Marie Blanc] (1870)

"We're both still learning, or could be."
—

Beginnings seem more complicated than ending anything. Endings hold the advantage of familiarity. By the time an ending looms, it's old business, its patterns and quirks have become old friends. Beginnings live on imagining at first, for, unlike endings, they seem utterly alien. No matter how many beginnings I've encountered, each brings fresh confusions and unsettling uncertainties. I start with speculation and crawl out, only imagining myself ever flying until I do. I must hold faith that I will fly again with little concrete evidence that my latest construction might support that end—GoodNuff's no exception. Neither was Honing. I began my week with a CurtainCall, a high point where appreciation radiated down on me. I moved next toward Modesty, for I figured I was too old to aspire after anything more grandiose. I considered not comparing, a likely impossible objective I embraced anyway. I praised what most revile, testing out my GoodNuff bona fides. I encountered TheWall, that universal barrier, perhaps a dedication test positioned so near this beginning, before evaporating its influence with a glimpse. I ended this writing week reviling my tendency toward AlreadyKnowing. It might be GoodNuff, I suspect, for me to be curious and seeking. It seems like an auspicious beginning stacked upon a satisfying ending. Thank you for following along.

©2023 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #GoodNuff, #PureSchmaltz