I'll begin with a Normaphoto taken last week. Somehow it captured my theological posture toward existence. It shows how I look from behind where horns hold my halo up. Hopefully it confuses demonic attackers who strike from the rear, or avenging angels above. A personal detail.
I don't begrudge this confusing feature. I accept surreality, and yes reality , even though I don't always approve of it. A detail. Let us consider another detail: paper towels and the 20th century:
Caption: He's one of the few physicists who has
conceptualized Black-hole Theory:
I drew this on a paper towel many years ago --during my 1/2-hour lunch break at someplace I worked, possibly in the early 1970s. It may easily be the last surviving paper towel of the 20th century. I never made a fair copy of this doodle to submit to a periodical, as I sometimes did. It is just a detail.
Then there's the big detail of the California sky. It has been brown again, very brown. It turns brown every summer and every fall brings out a tremendous amount of painters and scaffolding. Here is a photo over the Vineyard:
It usually consumes 8 or 9 months for crews to get the sky blue again, but this summer's been bad. Could take 2 or 3 coats. So our taxes go up. Small price to be penniless under blue sky.
Point is, Brain sometimes yields a pleasant, fun memory or constructive fantasy, even in these hard times. It's Brain's way of saying, "Just details. We got this." Don't forget to thank your Brain when that happens.
This is Hairy Tux. He is thinking intently about something. In the past year, all he has done is grow up. I believe his meditation must be focused on that.
I don't ordinarily discount physical education. In fact, I have several friends who entered gainful employment as gym-coaches and freelance toilet trainers (doubtless seduced by the glamor of it all) . But I recall those days, deep in another century, when 9th grade choice consisted of gym class or the cacophony of marching band. Although I played 3 --or so--guitar chords, I never mastered the cacophone and took gym. Gym class was full of psychologically isolated boys who exhausted themselves --whose only other exercise was falling in love, even when nobody else was around.
A year or more later, we were mobbing the DMV to get our drivers' licenses. Girls were warm, soft and smelled really good but, if boys were foolish enough to ask them out without a driver's license, they were soundly skunked. We mainly just had fun.
Years later, I met a girl in a library and wondered: how could such a perfectly fragrant creature appear under my very nose? I asked the cat, "Is that the sort of thing you're focused on?"
Hairy answered, "No, I'm concentrating on making my white eyebrows grow. It makes me more attractive."
No argument there, Hairy. You got this.
