28 April 2013: Portrait of a Granddaughter

Congee, and Coriolanus in my Grand High Shakespeare Re-Reading. Coriolanus has long been one of my favorite plays: although written in the 17th century and not during Shakespeare’s annos mirabulos 1596-99 it has the solidity of structure of Roman architecture, and Shakespeare’s 16th century output. One also rather likes the old dog, always slaying Volscians and ranting on and on about what a great guy he is and what scum the tribunes are, literally from scene 1 of act 1.

Antecedents of Coriolanus include Talbot in Henry VI Part 1 but Coriolanus is a much darker character than “the Talbot” who slays Frenchmen and escapes mad duchesses and their dwarves cheerfully by summoning his compatriots. Coriolanus may, and I speculate, express a hatred Shakespeare was beginning to feel for money-grubbing colleagues that wanted him to write masques and mirthful comic shows. His anti-type or foil? Timon of Athens: the Patricians of ancient Rome escaped property relations.

The best recent production is on DVD and stars Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus and Vanessa Redgrave as his Mom, Volumnia.

Workout: 20 minutes “supine angel” first thing.

Edward G. Nilges, “Portrait of a Granddaughter”, Pencil, April 2013

Workout Log: 15 Sep 2012: The Train in Spain and Portugal Too

Edward G. Nilges, “Grandchild Flower”, 1 Sep 2012, copyright 2012 by Edward G. Nilges, moral rights asserted

Listen! For the Peacock is a symbol of life eternal.

Walk to Hung Shing Yeh beach with weights and 40 minute swimming and water dancing. Pain from yesterday’s race walk to catch the ferry, can rest now two days. Cool day…28 C.

Listen!

Concerto for Oboe and Violin

It was strange that the train seemed faster,
Than the plane, and it was unfortunate,
She thought, that this was Portugal,
And not Spain, a nice tripartite rhyme.
But it was not fast for her, her yearning,
To return to Lisbon and to him.

Edward G. Nilges January 2012

Era extraño que el tren dibujara tan rápido,
el mismo plano y que fuera bien inusitado.
Ella quiso pensar,que volaba a Portugal
y no a España,en un verso acaso inopinado.
Pero no era nada veloz,el tiempo y el anhelo
de volver a Lisboa,ya para siempre;ya con él.

Translation of Nilges poem by Mr. Paradoxicus

Fleet Enema

I have to execute health procedures that would of old be executed upon me by a wife or mistress but modern women do not choose as much to be nursemaids, and there it is. In other cases, such as that of the aging Frederick II The Great, King of Prussia, these procedures were executed by invisible yet necessary manservants.

For Wednesday’s surgery I have to self-administer an Enema. Right, you swine, this will read well in the Morning Post although I shall of course withhold details beyond the fact that the mission was accomplished. There are limits.

The enema kit is provided at low cost by our somewhat socialized medicine, a socialized system that sagaciously saves on costs by having us execute procedures such as this, and also the drinking of draughts of salts followed by a quick march to the loo prior to Endoscopy.

The name is Victorian, British: the Fleet Enema. I can well imagine this in old-fashioned packaging circa 1880, with the portrait perhaps of Horatio Nelson and the encouraging Maxim, England Expects Every Man to Do His Duty. And, running ’round the box, a row of running British sailors, obviously heading for the Loo.

Workout Log 9 September: Baby Et Up All Her Spinoza?

- Edward G. Nilges, “Peter’s Crazy Teacher”, March 2012. Copyright 2012 by Edward G. Nilges. Moral rights asserted.

Listen!

Halfway up the wind-mill hill of dawn and then to Hung Shih Yeh Beach for a twenty minute water dance and swim. Still have the right hip slight pain upon swimming. Beautiful Day.

F. Scott Fitzgerald writes this. This is what Scottie Fitzgerald wrote in an article for Esquire, The Crack-Up.

“’Instead of being so sorry for yourself, listen — ‘, she said. (She always says ‘Listen,’ because she thinks while she talks — really thinks.) So she said: ‘Listen. Suppose this wasn’t a crack in you — suppose it was a crack in the Grand Canyon.’”

“’The crack’s in me,’ I said heroically.”

“’Listen! The world only exists in your eyes — your conception of it. You can make it as big or as small as you want to. And you’re trying to be a little puny individual. By God, if I ever cracked, I’d try to make the world crack with me. Listen! The world only exists through your apprehension of it, and so it’s much better to say that it’s not you that’s cracked — it’s the Grand Canyon.’”

“’Baby et up all her Spinoza?’”

“’I don’t know anything about Spinoza. I know — ‘ She spoke, then, of old woes of her own, that seemed, in telling, to have been more dolorous than mine, and how she had met them, overridden them, beaten them.”

Prospect, at Dusk, of Mount Stenhouse (Shan Teng Tong) from Queen Mary Hospital, 5 September 2012

Listen!

Portrait of my son & grand-daughters

Edward G. Nilges, “Portrait of the Artist’s Son and Grand-daughters”

I received a photograph from a family member but my request to my son for permission to post it has gone unanswered. I’d resolved to let my son control the amount of involvement I am to have with this joyous event since I left his Mom when he was little (but was a caring and responsible non-custodial parent).

Therefore to honor my commitment to my son yet celebrate the blessed event I hatched a cunning plan. I have made a pencil sketch after the photo as above.

Art is seeing something without illusions. First of all my son’s eyes are so damned large, like his Mom’s, that they violate the art skewl rule that the iris should fill the eye and the “whites” not go under the iris. Second is I don’t know why he’s wearing a hoodie in August I thought there was a heat wave. Sure he doesn’t fetish the hoodie and I insisted on wearing a lined jean jacket in the summer of 1967.

Surely he could get a nice Brooks Brother’s shirt? Ha ha. Hey, I’m just the father. The hoodie is fine. But don’t get me started on Guy Fawkes masks. We must not be afraid as young men are to show our faces, and there’s a creepy if buried insistence in that idiotic mask that we all be white males. I should have thought that we want the rich to know that we are a rainbow that is unified but what the hell do I know?

Third is the nose. When I had the children with me at Princeton my waggish coworker said he’d seen them and knew they were mine because of the nose. It has a real structure which has to be brought out.

I can only scratchily suggest the babies. They are not yet beautiful in the conventional sense they are rather like little boiled things. But I find them moving all the same. Babies don’t come into this world raring to go, they want to sleep away the trauma of birth, their little eyes shut and their mouths set in rage after having to come crying hither…as if we did them no favor.

But to me they are incredibly moving so I draw symbols of them and Peter’s hand to protect them. The symbols are like Buddha because babies retain much of the character of the soul of the world after they are born.

Nyah ha ha: cue Dr Evil laugh. I hope my son doesn’t get angry with me. We so judge our fathers. Me, I got tired of being bitch slapped around as I was by my father whenever I crossed his very well defined boundaries and it looks like I’m getting this shit from the other end today. Why I don’t know. Maybe I was a truly awful father and a Bad Son.

Art has got to be OK. I understand the transgression of photography. I have no right. But I took responsibility here for my relationship with my son as Cezanne did with his son. There are differences between the photo and this drawing. In the photo Peter’s glance is veiled and mistrustful and a bit cheeky and know-it-all you ask me. In the drawing I naturally make him connect for that’s what my subjects do.

It’s as if I am trying to remake the family through art and undo what I did as an absent father. But wait. Can a person be blamed for trying to clean up a mess he made? In some families the answer is yes. Wives no longer wish to hear tender words from husbands when the last tender words were always followed by blows later on. But they stay together and watch TV and save for retirement, oh, five thousand bucks or so.

Well that is all I can do for now. NOTE: do not tell me to calm down and forget all this that is schone undt treue undt gute. I defy the motto of damaged existence that we no longer deserve Shakespeare and what Allen Ginsberg called the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit.

Parody Mass

Edward G. Nilges, “Kundry, Whom None Could Call Fair”, pencil, ink, computer manipulation, 2005

Listen!

6.431
Wie auch beim Tod die Welt sich nicht ändert, sondern aufhört.
6.4311
Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht.
Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt.
Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist.
6.4312
Die zeitliche Unsterblichkeit der Seele des Menschen, das heißt also ihr ewiges Fortleben auch nach dem Tode, ist nicht nur auf keine Weise verbürgt, sondern vor allem leistet diese Annahme gar nicht das, was man immer mit ihr erreichen wollte. Wird denn dadurch ein Rätsel gelöst, dass ich ewig fortlebe? Ist denn dieses ewige Leben dann nicht ebenso rätselhaft wie das gegenwärtige? Die Lösung des Rätsels des Lebens in Raum und Zeit liegt außerhalb von Raum und Zeit.

I oughta endow a monastery just for being able to walk without pain
From now on in
Straight on until Morning
The whole deal is maintaining an even strain:
Light on the horizon surrounding us in the cold clean air
Neah Point beckoning lights of La Push.

Workout Log 9 July 2012

20 minute swimming and water dancing at Hung Shing Yeh beach on another beautiful morning. These mornings just drop from the sky onto us “by the will and permission of all-ruling Heaven”.

Edward G. Nilges, “State of Cartoon for ‘Whether Peter’s Crazy Teacher Teaches Us Gym or Mathematics, Peter’s Crazy Teacher Admonishes Us, and Teaches Us the Way of All Things’ as of 9 July 2012″, charcoal, 60×40 cm. Copyright 2012 by Edward G. Nilges. Moral Rights asserted.

The Banyan Believes in God

Third day of exceptionally fine weather ending in a walk under a shimmering moon. Best vegetarian curry with Naan I’ve ever had at this joint: I don’t ordinarily plug things on this Serious blog but I shall make an exception here. On Lamma, there are a number of excellent restaurants such as Bookworm and the Szechuan joint but this joint is something very special. It’s next to the public toilet in a guesthouse where there used to be a bakery.

…and, of course, hanging out with friends. An end to my long isolation. Mom and Dad might have thought they were riff raff so shy and indeed innocent Mom and Dad were. But I am not innocent and I am riff or raff or both.

I think I have surgery tomorrow, I have an appointment at which the results of the PET scan will probably be known. I am prepared emotionally. Indeed, getting a bit too used to the drill: take lots to read, pen and notebook, don’t bother with laptop, it’s too heavy and many wards are shielded from wireless signals especially scanner wards.

But…an evening with friends has eliminated any pain from sciatica and some of the numbness. I have to confirm this in the next couple of days by halving the pain meds and then eliminating them. Basically, I have either pain or a little nausea insofar as I maintain my patterns of isolation.

I still believe that I need about a fifty-fifty balance of hospitals and science on the one hand, and holism on the other. But in hospitals I just endure whereas tonight was positively enjoyable in a way that you’d think would be illegal these days. As I said in 2009 in “A Note on the Mercy of the Night” I’m supposed as a divorced old guy to be a miserable son of a bitch. But I said “f*k that shit” then and I say it now.

Oooohhh I may never run again. So what? One door closes another opens.

I reason, Earth is short –
And Anguish — absolute –
And many hurt,
But, what of that?

I reason, we could die –
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

I reason, that in Heaven –
Somehow, it will be even –
Some new Equation, given –
But, what of that?

Emily Dickinson

The poet’s asking a radical question. She saying that as far as we’re concerned, in our box of space and time, Raum undt Zeit, we are the decider like George Bush said he was. Even if we have it all spelled out for us we have to know how to read it. Moses had to get another copy of the Commandments because in his anger at the Golden Calf he smashed the first one. That must have been rather embarrassing for Moses: “uh, God, can you give me another copy?”. But the myth expresses the truth of writing. It’s not the same as getting it engraved on our hearts so that it makes a difference.

We have to answer Emily’s question, “what of that?”. Conventionally religious people expect us to answer in a certain way just like sports fans expect us to wear team regalia. But Dietrich Boehnhoffer and Karl Jaspers knew that our answer might really anger people, as do the characters in the 2009 Klaus Guth dramatized Messiah.

That an experience such as being in the towers of Sep 11 or merely getting a raw Diagnosis that we do not want to get might be transformative in a way that will make other people reject us. That we might be not very nice to be around. Of course, I do want to be nice to be around, and the last thing I’d want to do is God-wallop anyone. For one thing, my experience has had nothing to do with “religion” as ordinarily understood. Quite the opposite.

Emily was anti-religious even more so than Emerson:

“Faith” is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see—
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency

…as are PET scans. I can’t believe I was unwilling to get one. But I did and now the docs have far more information than they would have even as recently as 1990.

I shall also have to pay for the recommended hormone therapy and will do so cheerfully since it ain’t radiation or chemo. Gee, the worst side effect may be a set of tits and not needing to shave? Bring it on…

I have confidently asserted in classes that “all natural trees are mathematical trees” because I believed that no branch of any tree would grow back into the branch from which it sprouted, or a sub-branch of the branch from which it sprouted.

This is false. For today I discovered that the Banyan tree’s root system is what mathematicians call “a general graph”, one with “arcs” that lead to “nodes” that lead back into the originating node and arc!

Edward G. Nilges, “To the Unknown Helper, Installation 1 July 2012″. Drawing, pencil, pen, computer-added colours, aged with sun and rain at Lamma Island chicken wire advertisement wall. Copyright 2012 by Edward G. Nilges. Moral rights asserted.

Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment: in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. The trumpet shall sound, and we shall all be changed, be changed incorruptible. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

Peter’s Crazy Teacher #6 (Gym Class)

Listen!

Edward G. Nilges, “Chiaroscuro Study #1 for ‘Whether Peter’s Crazy Teacher Ka Yan Teaches Us Mathematics or Physical Education, She Admonishes Us, Teaching Us the Way of All Things’”, pen, pencil, A4 Size 29 April 2012. Moral Rights asserted by the Artist.

Edward G. Nilges, “Chiaroscuro Study #2 for ‘Whether Peter’s Crazy Teacher Ka Yan Teaches Us Mathematics or Physical Education, She Admonishes Us, Teaching Us the Way of All Things’”, pen, pencil and Gimp modification for the green tone and white highlights, A4 Size 29 April 2012. Moral Rights asserted by the Artist.

Backstory: Peter’s Crazy Teacher was teaching us our Maths but was asked to teach a substitute class in Gym. So wow she shows up in her grubbies! Ai-Yah! The Principal was at his windows with binoculars and all the boys were like uuuunnngggggghhhhh! The Discipline Teacher approached her kindly at the end of the class and said that next time she has to wear full length sweat pants and a top!

We all did Jane Fonda and then we swam! Funnest gym class I have ever had! No competition for she seems to realize that competitions favor boys born in January and February, since they are the biggest!

We all love Ka Yan! Let’s make a Facebook page so she gets rehired!

Her black hair should frizz a bit for her Ancestors come from all over the world.

Peter’s Crazy Teacher #5 (Pandora)

Listen!

Edward G. Nilges, “Study #2 for ‘Whether Peter’s Crazy Teacher Ka Yan Teaches Us the Dance or Mathematics, She Admonishes Us, Teaching Us the Way’”, pen, pencil, A4 size 26 April 2012. Moral Rights asserted.

Edward G. Nilges, “Study #3 for ‘Whether Peter’s Crazy Teacher Ka Yan Teaches Us the Dance or Mathematics, She Admonishes Us, Teaching Us the Way’”, pen, pencil, A4 size 26 April 2012. Moral Rights asserted.

Her feet leave not the human stain
For the Dance reconciles the pain
And makes us whole again
In sunshine or in rain.

Peter’s Crazy Teacher #4: the Green Man Teaches Art in Prison

Edward G. Nilges, “Schema for ‘Whether Peter’s Crazy Teacher Ka Yan Teaches Us Math or the Dance, She Also Admonishes Us, and She Teaches Us the Way’”, 24 April 2012, pencil on paper. Moral rights have been asserted so don’t even THINK about using this without attribution!

The Green Man Teaches Art in Prison

Men! Find the artist within, especially if you are under court supervision! It’s called sublimation and it is part of civilization. I know you think you are tough guys but where life is nasty brutish and short you won’t last a minute!

When drawing the naked female, behave yourself, and don’t worry about breasts. They are not circles, anyway, they are fatty triangles and just one more cancer risk made for feeding babies.

If you are one of those artists that gets the Line right the first time, knock yourself out: but most of us are like the British artist David Hockney. We can’t draw and must Find the Form using girlie swirly lines like my Mom did when she would draw us kids!

Art ain’t knowin’ how to draw! It’s your Daemon! It’s your Wound! Let it Bleed!

Edward G. Nilges, “Sketch Notes for the Doctor”, 24 April 2012, pencil and pen on paper. Moral rights have been asserted so don’t even THINK about using this without attribution!