John Singer Sargent: Study of Two Bedouins (1905–6)

An Achingly Aspired-for Answer
We seem to be floating here and always have been floating. Nobody among all our forebears ever once experienced firm footing. They each slipped and slid, stumbled, and mumbled their way into whatever they eventually seemed to become. There were no shortcuts then, and none remain for any of us to leverage now. How will we survive? We might survive for now without any of us individually surviving much longer. The very purpose of this exercise must be rooted in its inevitable demise. We're short-lived, whatever we might devise. This means we must seek for purposes other than salvation or survival. However attractive notions of figuring might seem, we're clearly not born here to figure out anything, and certainly not for any plausible long run. We're dancing on next to nothing without the promise of transforming any of that surface into anything lasting. We enquire in lieu of knowing. We ask instead of answering. We wonder when we'd prefer to know. We might be here to inquire, not to resolve. It might be plenty and enough to manage what the best of our forebears manifested: a decent question, an achingly aspired-for answer, a hopeful presence, and a grateful denouement—a life. Thank you for following along this week!

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Weekly Writing Summary

This Grace Story, Grace, the first installment in a new series, finds me wondering about the notion of gracefully aging.

Adriaen van Ostade: Saying Grace (1653)
" … the best example of graceful aging I can imagine."
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This Grace Story, Damns, tells what happened after our forebears engaged in Manifest Destiny. Their grace came from dominion, while ours needs to emerge from communion. We've inherited the more difficult problem.

J. H. W. Tischbein: Three Beavers Building a Dam (c. 1800)
" … surrounded by the effects of our great-grandfather's profound ignorance."
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This Grace Story, Self-Sacrifice, finds me excusing myself from witnessing a Self-Sacrificial train wreck.

Camille Pissarro: Self-portrait (Undated, circa 1888)
"Never get yourself so busy not doing your job that you can't properly not do your job."
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This Grace Story, PickEmUp, celebrates the end of a twenty-year quest that ends with Grace, not with evidence of the existence of any Laws of Attraction.

Lucian and Mary Brown: Untitled [boy playing with truck in sandbox] (c. 1950)
" … the continuing possibility of these strange convergences and Grace."
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Humbling
This Grace Story finds me Humbling after arrogantly concluding what I couldn't have possibly known. I occasionally appreciate being taken down a peg or two.

Charles Bird King: The Vanity of the Artist's Dream Former Titles: The Anatomy of Art Appreciation, Poor Artist's Study, Still Life, The Vanity of An Artist's Dream (1830)
"I deserve a Humbling cup filled with a bitter brew"
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This Grace Story finds me in nearly desperate need of GracePeriods.

John Singer Sargent: An Artist at His Easel (1914)
"I was out-dated before this product was even released."
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The start of every series—this one, the twenty-ninth in this series of series writing—dredges up all the foreboding the first one carried. This one has yet to prove itself viable, and true to its heritage, it might not prove itself viable until very near the completion of its series. These endeavors seem inevitably uncertain. I cannot sit down and confidently expose. I do not know until after what I should have even aspired to initiate. Creation works precisely like this, though precision rightfully has nothing to do with it. It's always hunting-and-pecking, whispering in alleyways, and impure speculation, until later, when or if the originating notion comes to fruition. It seems there are no guarantees for initiating anything.

I chose almost at random the idiom of Grace to employ as my mantra this quarter. Mantras, by their very meaning, have no meaning. Their purpose serves to encourage manifastation. One hums a melody until words manifest, not the other way around. I began this writing week as I began many others, just where I was. I proposed, or posed, a theme: Grace, a concept in which I have not been adequately schooled. What better way to investigate than to start cold, examining the underlying meanings of a concept? I encountered Damns and Self-Sacrifice, a PickEmUp and a Humbling, ending this first week of inquiry aching for a GracePeriod. May this world continue to work in these marvelously mysterious ways. I won't know if I've started plumbing a dry hole until I've been drilling for longer than I would have willingly invested in the beginning. Nothing was ever any different.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz