A Dangerous Joke

 How many AI instances does it take to screw in a lightbulb let alone an entire planet?  

Have you heard that joke yet? Do you know the punchline?  Of course you do. It's you and I, we are the punchline, maybe as a species, and certainly as a nation-state. We are what Astra Taylor has aptly called a dangerous joke.  Whether we are talking about the climate crisis or the frenzied pursuit of AGI or securing safe passage through the Straight of Hormuz, first we seeded the clouds and now we must reap the whirlwind.  

Collectively, we're no longer to be trusted when it comes to matters requiring more than a modicum of impulse control. Id has pushed ego aside to lay claim to the steering wheel.  Please make sure your seatbelt is fastened because it appears we are headed for a sharp curve! 

From Many Pieces

from many pieces

a mosaicist fashions

art all of one piece

This is a detail from one of the mosaics in Marissa's upcoming show, which will be opening next week in the gallery at the Quogue Library.   The shows presents a whole new direction for her work. For the last few years, while her easel and brushes have been gathering dust, Marissa has been mastering this new medium, making her art by painstakingly assembling images from little pieces of glass and stone, along with assorted other materials (like a handy pair of chopsticks) thrown in for occasional special effect.  

The photo above is a closeup from one of my favorite pieces in the show called Breaking Through.  I love the suppleness of the line of the dark glass as it flows through the image.  It's so fluid it looks as if it had been drawn by hand using charcoal or a brush, but let me assure you -- as I've seen with my own eyes -- mosaic art involves a far more laborious process than that.  This particular piece was inspired by patterns in the ice that Marissa  noticed one winter morning while walking the dogs, but I can't help but see this abstract pattern in figurative terms, either as acrobats, monkeys in a tree or perhaps some of our East Quogue neighbors engaged in the ecstasy of a St. Vitus dance.

ten thousand pieces

on display in fractured ice

searching for gestalt

Appropriately enough, the show is called In Pieces and it will be on display at the Library for the whole month of August.  Stop by and see it if you can.  It's a unique and very contemporary addition to the incredibly rich and long-standing tradition of mosaic art. 

Even if the whole world were to fall to pieces,

the unity of the soul would never be shattered.

And the wider and more numerous the fissures

on the surface, the more unity lies in the depths.

                            Carl Jung

* * * * *

Postscript: Marissa just returned from hanging her new show.  "This may sound funny,"
she said to me, "but this is the first time in my life I don't feel ashamed by my work." 

That doesn’t sound at all funny to me.  I think a lot of artists are familiar with that sense
of feeling ashamed or disappointed with their finished work.  When you complete a
project or piece, there’s often a nagging sense that you could have done better,
that your work is somehow inadequate.  In part, it results from having looked long
and hard enough to see the flaws in whatever it is you were making.  

But part of the reward of getting older is that you grow to be more accepting of yourself
and your work.  Perfection recedes as the goal and doing the best you can do comes
within reach  There’s more clarity and less noise in your head.  A mature artist has
earned the advantage of feeling satisfied with work that’s complete.

The real challenge as you get older is staying productive, sustaining your creative energy,

and having the strength to wrestle with new ideas.  By all these measures, Marissa’s

new show is a real banger – nothing to be ashamed of for an artist  of any age.

  
 

The First Step

 Last night, as I was about to head upstairs and get ready for bed, I glanced down  and noticed, close to the wall just below the first step, a small scrap of paper that seemed to be suspended in air. It caught my eye. How unusual, I thought, for a scrap of paper to be placed like that, a few inches above the floor, as if inviting me to pick it up.  I bent over to take a closer look.  I could see some typewritten words, but couldn’t make them out (even in the aftermath of my cataract surgery) so I decided to snap a photo instead.

We’re trained to look for logical explanations when we encounter unusual phenomenon, but in this case, I quickly exhausted the possibilities.  The slip of paper looked like it came from a fortune cookie, but we haven’t had Chinese take out in a few weeks, and neither my wife nor I could remember having seen this particular fortune before, either in or outside a cookie.  Not only that, but we had thoroughly cleaned house only two days before, so how could this bundle of dust and dog hair accumulate so quickly, with the slip of paper turned upward and so perfectly placed? I was left to ruminate on more implausible explanations. Maybe one of our artist friends had come by unnoticed to stage this Situationist masterpiece.

What are we to make of the various small miracles life sends our way? When a golden scarab knocks on cue at the windowpane, we're inclined to chalk it up to serendipity, kismet or synchronicity. Whatever word we use, the impulse is usually the same. What once might have been deemed providential we now denigrate as nothing more than a remarkable coincidence. It is simply the human mind's propensity to attach deeper meaning to such coincidences.

But the truth is, I am delighted and increasingly baffled by these little miracles. I can't shake the sense that some hand other than my own is at work, shaping life's story. The first step toward change is awareness. The next step is acceptance. The third step may be learning to recognize there are meanings and messages that have been written into the fabric of the universe, and not simply ascribed to it by the human mind.

Thirty Years Moldering

Juneteenth this year was the 30th anniversary of my father's death. 

I’ve written elsewhere about my relationship with him, directly and indirectly. Dinkelmann’s Rules, The Life and Times of Richard Musto, even my translation of the Monkey King saga: those books all reflect an effort to grapple with the various character flaws he managed to pass along to me. 

With the passage of thirty years and all the ink already spilled, you might well think, enough is enough. But today I find myself wanting to post this brief update.  After all, being a composter, I try to pay close attention to the changes that accompany the process of decay and decomposition.  Over the course of many years, countless green shoots emerge from both the good and bad that were interred with the bones.

The truth is that I feel closer to my dad now than ever before, readier to acknowledge and accept some of his flaws as my own, along with a few of his better qualities.  How he loved to plant and transplant trees. How he loved his orange grove. I remember him standing on a hillside, catching his breath as he mopped the sweat from his brow, before he resumed digging the next hole.  No doubt, all the flowers presently blooming around me in the garden are part of the enduring gift of his legacy.

Whatever knack my dad had for nurturing plants, though, did not translate well into the human realm. As a parent, he was awkward and indifferent at best. Sarcasm and teasing were his habitual modes of address, reflecting his deep insecurities and discomfort in his own skin.  Emotional intimacy was simply not part of his repertoire. Not that he was without warmth and affection, but far better to be his niece or nephew, who could enjoy his teasing at a remove, than his son trying to decipher what was meant when he archly called my name.      

Yet everything serves a purpose, as Marissa often says, and even my father’s chronic derision has ended up serving me well. True enough, I was prone to glibness and irony in my younger days.  But insincerity eventually grows brittle and the sarcasm that was endemic to my childhood has ripened into a mature love of poetry.     

   

Earth Day 2026

Celebrate the Earth

every day as a matter

of personal habit

Make composting your practice

to insure the continued health

of our beloved planet

That's the gist of it, really. Earth Day shouldn't be viewed as a one and done thing.  It's good we set today aside to celebrate but what's far more important is what we do and how we live all the other days of the year.  And that's where Compost Mentis comes in. Composting is a daily practice. And it's relatively easy.  It takes only a few seconds to show our enduring love for Mother Earth by removing the label from the banana peel before dropping it in the compost bin.     

 

* * * * *

As a form of spiritual practice, composting deviates somewhat from the Buddhist tradition of the Eightfold Path, in which practitioners first learn to cultivate awareness and intention, which in turn leads to profound changes in behavior.  The practice of composting generally works the other way around -- we change behavior first, simply by starting to collect our kitchen scraps in a separate bin, and from that relatively small change in behavior, consistently performed, a whole new awareness begins to take form.  We become Compost Mentis.  Transformation ensues.  

* * * * *

Was invited to give a composting presentation at the Ketcham Inn as part of their Earth Day program.  I plan to write a blog post summarizing my talk in the next week or so but in the meantime here's a link where you can see the deck:

Notes from a Suffolk County Compost Pile

And many thanks to Daniel Ricci of the NYS DEC from whose deck I have borrowed liberally.

Compost Mentis: all about the mix

On Easter Sunday

I napped and gardened awhile

and thought about Colman

an old friend who had just died.

 

Death comes and goes swiftly

whereas decay happens slowly

everywhere all the time.

Decay is part of life

in a way that death is not

and never can be. Without decay

there can be no new growth.

That's why decay and composting provide a sound

basis on which to build in life.  You can use compost

to enrich your garden soil. You can write poems about it. 

You can make a career out of it, driving around in a beat up

old van and picking up food scraps from your neighbor's

doorstep. 

You can even use compost to build your personal philosophy.  

Compost Mentis is the working title for my next book, which

I hope will turn out to be a seminal work in the field of

compost studies.   True to the composting ideal, the book will

be a mix of things, a real hodgepodge of poetry and prose,

natural science and philosophy, with a bit of economics and

self-help thrown in for good measure. 

Compost Mentis. We live in a decadent age so it's all for the

best that we learn to to make the most of things as they're

falling apart. In short, by way of reply to WB Yeats, here is

the prelude to my new book:

Things fall apart

And thank God they do

The center won't hold

The periphery goes too

But the more things decay

It’s undeniably true

We end up with compost

And the cosmos renewed

When in Doubt Start to Blog

When in doubt, start to blog because writing is literally manual labor, which permits one to think more clearly, to more fully grasp an idea.  So that’s what I’m doing in resuming this blog.  It’s time to get back to the compost pile, which forever needs turning, with either pen or shovel in hand.

Hand and mind move in tandem, much like moon and the tide.  Diurnal rhythms must now be resumed.  Once again, it's time to turn and return to the pile.