Théophile Alexandre Steinlen:
Diverse portret- en figuurstudies van vrouwen en mannen
(1869 - 1923)

Still Present From Our Own
The state of being gone has always fascinated me. In perhaps the most fundamental sense, no one can ever achieve goneness in their own presence. When I'm gone, I'm just absent from someplace in which I used to be present. I'm still present then but surrounded by perhaps less familiar territory. There's no place like home, but then there's no place very much like any other place. The Muse and I engage in our epic toodles not to escape but to delve more deeply. We seem to become closer and more interdependent when we're toodling, more patient and forgiving, and less distracted. We become precisely who we always were, only a little bit more so. Nothing's really very different except the scenery and the company. We remain intact. We receive daily reports on the state of the cats we left behind. They remind us we have a place to return to and people who notice we're missing. They're adapting as they always do—as we always do, too—and we'll require some reconnecting after we return from an absence we never entirely experienced for ourselves. We are absent from the cats' perspective while still present from our own.

—

Weekly Writing Summary
I began my writing week, dreading leaving for a vacation. “I have what's next to choose from, irrespective of how carelessly I resolved my expectations in the past. Fortunately, SaidLines "are not deadlines, and nobody's deeply wounded by their troubles.”


Pieter Cool: Chariot with the Seven Deadly Sins (c. 1590)
"Saidlines are not deadlines …"
—
The Muse and I began an epic toodle down and deep into territory that never drains to the sea. “This GreatBasin Country seems sequestered. I suspect it was never intended to be conquered and has been struggling to reclaim itself since.”


Coy Aron Seward: Mountains and Desert (1929)
"We'll be on to someplace different before then."
—
I sat on the veranda of a cafe in Death Valley, reflecting on the fine art of Finding “It might be that these adventures, these plots and twists, result from random interaction and that all our fervent instruction in the supposed fine arts of seeking amounts to little more than attractive distractions, useful for diversion and entertainment but useless for their stated or presumed purpose.”


Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾 北斎: A Mild Breeze on a Fine Day (Gaifu kaisei), from the series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei)” (c. 1830/33)
" … maybe those things just found us …"
—
The Muse and my toodle entered a seriously alien territory with CaliforniaRules, which proved to be the most popular posting this period! "“We each unselfconsciously engage in our complicities, each soiling our own virtues in turn.”


Dwight C. Sturges: The Juggler (1934)
"I'm not the one to point out ironies …"
—
I caught The Muse and I TimeTraveling while toodling. “Every time we toodle, I'm reminded of how little I can discern from looking at a map. The presences and the pasts, the futures and the vast gaps between expectations and experiences- very little of that ever gets captured for reuse.”


Carle Vernet: English Travellers (1815–25)
"I found a familiar sense of place …"
—
I ended this writing week attempting to dispel a persistent myth about how this country simply must be heavily Forested "I find historical plaques reverently extolling the virtues of the pioneers who, as near as I can tell, extracted like Hell with little consideration of the consequences for their great-great grandchildren's children. We are their great-great grandchildren's children and seem to have learned nothing about what follows even the rightful pride of possession.”


Kamisaka Sekka (神坂 雪佳): Forest (1909-10)
“I couldn't imagine.”
—
Toodling reliably dredges up pasts and harbingers futures. It utterly consumes presence for we’re already gone by the time we notice we were. I’m probably nearest my best self when out in the world, yet I crave my everyday routines. I might be fated to live in-between home and elsewhere, wholly comfortable neither here nor there. I resist resolution, creating SaidLines I will ultimately excuse myself from. It seems that whichever way I choose routes me over and through some GreatBasin places devoid of drainage, the ultimate purpose being the Finding and little else. I always seem called to practice tolerance, whatever else I might practice. There’s always some variant of CaliforniaRules present. I am never merely traversing space, but also TimeTraveling through many myths and truths. Thank you for following along on my toodles!
©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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