Puzzling

I’ve been doing the NY Times crossword puzzle daily for about 15 years. Even when I am traveling in another country, I will find it in the International Herald Tribune. I have to finish it every day. However, it’s more than just a compulsion: it’s a great escape for me…..it’s almost meditative: it’s probably the one time during the day when I’m not anxious about anything (except maybe finishing, but that’s different…..). Some people time themselves – hard for me to imagine. Why would I want to rush through something I enjoy so much?

For those of you unfamiliar with this obsession, the puzzle starts out being fairly easy on Monday and progresses through the week, getting harder each day. There is a common misconception that the Sunday puzzle is the most difficult, but actually it is simply the biggest. The reigning king of the crossword is Will Shortz, who has edited the NY Times puzzle since 1993. Shortz designed his own college major in "Enigmatology". Clearly the right man for the job.

On a day when I solve a particularly difficult puzzle, I have been known to scrawl “genius!” across the top of the page. I once confessed this to a puzzler friend of mine, who laughed and admitted she did the same thing….we are a bunch of odd ducks. We are in good company, though – some others in this cult include Bill Clinton, John Stewart, and Bob Dole.

Recently I decided to take it to the next level – no, I’m not going to go to the annual tournament and compete – I’ve decided to attempt to construct a puzzle. I had been using a Scrabble board, but I recently discovered that an Excel spread sheet works much better.

So yesterday I began in earnest to construct a 15 square by 15 square puzzle. There is a website for puzzle constructors called Cruciverb (www.cruciverb.com) , where I was able to find all the rules and standards: no two letter words, no single "dangling" letters,etc. Writing the actual clues for the puzzle will be the icing on the cake, the easy part…right now the challenge is to juggle words and phrases into a coherent grid.

Of course now the problem is I can’t stop working on it. I get an elegant long string of words like “REARVIEWMIRROR” only to have it fall apart when I try to intersect the last two “down” words through it. It’s very hard to let go of something as clever as “AVOIDCACTI”, but eventually it must be done. Letting go……yet another lesson in letting go. It’s a lot like when a corner of a painting is working perfectly but nothing else is, and I finally have to let go of that precious corner and work with the piece as a whole.

Okay, I have to get back to my puzzle now.

Felines Make Me Happy

I said I would post something more uplifting next, so here it is: my kitties, Bella and Rocco. More on Art and Life later, but for now this is it - mysterious cats and their beauty.

"Extraordinary Rendition"

When I was first heard this term on an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air last week, I thought I was hearing wrong…..extraordinary rendition…doesn’t it sound like a particularly beautiful drawing, a perfect representation of an image? To me it implies something lovely and beneficent…..it even sounds a bit like divine intervention. But, the sad truth is that our post 9/11 government coined this esoteric euphemism to mean this:
Extraordinary rendition is the apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one state to another, particularly with regard to the alleged transfer of suspected terrorists to countries known to torture prisoners or to employ harsh interrogation techniques that may rise to the level of torture. (Wikipedia)
What?? Yes, it’s true. The interview was with a Canadian man of Syrian origin who had been picked up at JFK after 9/11 - for no good reason other than his name - and deported to Syria (where he had never been) for “questioning” AKA torture. He was imprisoned in a tiny, coffin like cell for nine months while being intermittently tortured for information he did not have. His case is now before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
While I don’t intend for this blog to be political, I haven’t been able to get this out of my mind. What’s been most profound to me (beyond, of course the shock of hearing this man’s story) is the insidious abuse of the power of language. How something that sounds so lovely and harmless can represent something too hideous to comprehend.
Okay, that’s all about that. I promise to find something optimistic to write about next.

A bit more about Morandi.....

Friday's New York Times Arts section includes a review of the Morandi show at the Met by Holland Carter. Toward the end of the review, Holland writes about Morandi's later years when "his hand lost its steadiness, his eyesight was, perhaps, failing. But he didn't rest. Why?" Holland's nearly poetic answer ends the article:

The work goes on. Because it is controllable reality. It is a form of thinking that frees up thought. It is time-consuming, but time-slowing, isolating but self-fulfilling. It is a part of life, but also a metaphor for how life should be: with everything in place, every pattern clear, every rhyme exact, every goal near."

Wow.

Me, Myself and Morandi

I’ll be in New York mid-October, and one of the things I’m most looking forward to seeing is a major Morandi show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of my art heroes, Georgio Morandi (1890-1964) painted simple still lives - inhabited by vases, bowls, bottles and jugs - almost exclusively throughout his long career. His restrained style, subtle use of color and focus on a limited set of objects has always fascinated and delighted me. Although I can’t seem to help but to be a “Maximalist” myself, I secretly long to paint spartan, spare, subtle pictures. Maybe it’s simply the attraction of opposites. In any case, I often think of Morandi when I struggle with how to move forward in the studio, how to stay true to my vision and keep things lively without feeling like I am walking in a circle, imitating myself.

For many years, I moved through bodies of work somewhat quickly, holding onto the assumption that in order to evolve as an artist, I needed to continue to change and re-invent myself. I would push to where I felt that I had explored a format or a set of images, then dutifully move on to something new, working to take whatever I had learned into new creative territory. This approach served me well for quite a few years, but I began to feel unsettled, and it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I had my Morandi Moment: I realized that what I in fact needed to do was to do essentially the same thing over and over again, but do it better. Find the subtleties, push deeper rather than wider. Walking in a circle is fine, as long as it becomes a kind of an upward spiral. I come back around to the same place, but it’s different, it’s with a new perspective. The images I use fade away, morph, regenerate, and are made anew as I discover new ones.

The risk in working this way is, of course, that the casual viewer may only see the “same old” when they look at even the newest work. The slow, quiet evolution is evident mostly only to me and a few close friends/observers. Although as an artist I must pay attention to what others think, write and say about my work, essentially it is I who must decide what is most important. And in the long run, it’s all between me, myself and I ….and maybe Morandi.

Books

I discovered Shelfari, a widget that lets me display some recent books I have read and that I recommend. No deep thoughts today, just good books.

I am one of those people who grouses that blogging is no more than a narcissistic pursuit, at best an electronic journal which – for some unknown reason – people want others to read. What would motivate me to post thoughts and observations so casually for anyone to share (and judge)? My thoughts are my own, aren’t they? Hard as it is for me to admit, I have begun to believe that this assertion works against me. While I have always had a rich and active interior life, I have valued it to a fault, more often than not keeping “it” to myself. So how do I make this endeavor constructive for me as well as entertaining and informative and hopefully thought provoking for others?

The fact that I don’t know quite what I will write about has also stopped me from ever considering blogging. I kept paper journals for years, scribbling like crazy, every idea or fear or feeling – but of course these notebooks were kept under lock and key (so to speak……I’m not actually that nuts). But as I check in with friends’ blogs, I see the myriad of ways one can approach doing this. Yes, in a way it’s all about the Blogger (me me me!), but there are many ways to go – from simply posting up to date images and information about my work and exhibitions to writing about a book, movie or article that has informed and/or moved me; tracing the evolution of a painting with serialized text and imagery; posting photos and observations while I am traveling, be it to another country or to visit my 93 year old father; reviewing a local art exhibit.
A friend of mine, a realtor in southern California, wrote a unexpected and totally entertaining blog entry about how she found God (in a manner of speaking…) in the mosh pit while accompanying her teen aged daughter to a concert. Who knew? So, anything can happen. and I will try to stay open to whatever comes along – within me and without me (a la the Beatles) - and begs to be written about.

So, thus begins this big experiment from Me, The Reluctant Blogger.