Through the Glass Darkly

Sfumato. The clouded glass. Mist filled air.

I look back on experiences I've had and think how little I really remember. I don't remember the colors of rooms, the heights of ceilings, the floor of marble or tile, who was standing in the corner at the time, what time it was.

Unconsciousness is so powerful and is ever present, attempting to impose itself onto the everyday reality I've lived.

How much of my life has been lived mindlessly, carelessly, my consciousness picking and choosing what I will see, feel, touch taste and hear.

If my life up to this point were a storybook, it would be filled with sunny days yet also cloudy, moonless nights.

And it's disconcerting how something completely ignored at the time was registered on some level and comes blaring back to consciousness with the full force of the breaking wave in the ocean.

I am tacitly aware that the compromise between this play between what was experienced and what is remembered, what is present and what is perceived, is something that is very terrible, very subtle but at most is beautiful.

Just enough mystery not misery to keep the whole thing going.

Cedars of Lebanon, Tennessee

Mary, Dylan and I spent a long weekend at Cedars of Lebanon State Park in Tennessee for a family get together. We saw sugar maples, sweet gums, cedars, sycamores, oaks and pines. One good thing about living in this area is we have deciduous forests. Such a variety of trees, wildflowers and shrubs in the understory of the woods. We stayed in a cabin so we weren't really roughing it, but we did get out and hike around to see sights like the one in this picture.

It Takes a Population of Billions to Hold us Back

In the Bible, it starts with Cain. He offers, what in my view is the less sanguinary and more peaceful sacrifice to the Creator....vegetables. But his is rejected and so the trouble begins. The mark of Cain is said to be not only being redheaded...but that the carpet matches the drapes. Red pubic hair would later be termed the 'witches mark' by antsy amateur inquisitors who considered redheads to be cohorts of the devil. In the Bible, it continues on to King David, an obviously unhinged individual who nevertheless could write some great poetry and was quite the musician to boot. Then on to the New Testament, we find red-haired Salome dancing for the head of the preacher man. Judas Iscariot with his kiss of death continues the story of redheads in history creating havoc and being general troublemakers.

Outside of the Canon, I begin with Nero, who played the violin while Rome burnt to the ground and later blamed the conflageration on the Christians. His last words being 'What an artist the world loses in me.' Very redhead like of him. Cleopatra was one. Then Oliver Cromwell, Queen Elizabeth, Napoleon and Christopher Columbus followed by Lizzie Borden culminating in Prince Harry.

In his popular novel 'Still Life With Woodpecker', Tom Robbins, also himself a redhead, pronounces that redheads are children of the moon and that they are addicted to sex and sugar.

On a personal level, I can say that everytime I've been to a doctor, my blood pressure has always been slightly elevated. The nurse taking the reading has invariably said, 'Oh you're a redhead. They always run a little high.' I've been called 'full of sulpher dust', 'coppertop', 'carrottop', 'red', and 'irish.' When I visited my cousin in Royal Palm, Florida, I was accosted as being 'from way up North' and looked upon as an anomaly who required SPF 2000 sunscreen in order not to be burned. The sun has always been my enemy and in fact I've until now always privately preferred moonrises to sunrises.

You might say, well you can't define yourself by your hair color. Wrong. When you've grown up being bullied, teased, singled out, condescended to and corralled around for something as accidental as hair color, you in later life, having survived, embrace the accident and love it for all it's uniqueness and scarcity.

So although this is only one way I define myself, it has become a way indeed in which I do define myself.

And to all my brother and sister redheads, I say, keep up with the chocolate and pass the SPF2000!.

My Dirty Little Secret

I've been good for so long. I've opened doors for people, said nice things, encouraged people, helped out where I could. I've been being nice for so long!

But I've got a shadow, see. A side of me that I have to air out ever so often.

I can't constantly be running around making myself and the world a better place.

I have to vent!

It was just a little thing.

I may retrace my steps tomorrow and throw the thing away properly.

But I just flicked it, kay?

I did.

Pathways to Bliss, Brother

Campbell lays it out right good with this one. Myth has the power to transform our lives. Not cosmologically anymore. That's left to the scientists to do. But personally. Psychologically. Symbols are concrete manifestations of the transcendent, man. And we in turn should be transparent to the transcendent. He also covers Freud and Jung, those two monsters of rock of the unconscious and subconscious. It's all about wish fulfillment, dude.. The bogey man is us, and the sooner we realize that, the much better we'll be.

Interestingly, while America's intelligensia are enamored of all things eastern, Campbell offers a frank assessment of the Dharma that results in the caste society of India. He uses terse language in describing the way the Easterns want to destroy the ego in favor of the sociological self.

It makes for a nice counterpoint to the West's notion of the Spirit, the Individual.

I'm telling you, man. What we're seeking is the Tradition. Sometimes hidden, but very Western all the same, brother.

Everywhere and Nowhere, Man

You see '4' everywhere. For example you just saw it in my text. You can hold up four fingers, count four balls, see four clouds in the sky, I mean, '4' is everywhere!

But then you think, wait '4' can't be everywhere, it's gotta be somewhere, but where?

So you finally have to decide '4' really is nowhere. Yet you see it everywhere. Which means you won't find it anywhere, man.

Same with 'red'. You see 'red' everywhere! In my hair, on your computer screen, on flags, on birds and leaves and so on and on. But where is 'red' really? Honestly it's nowhere, man.

It's amazing how nothing can be so ubiquitous!

Uplifting Quote of the Day!

'Life is something that never should have happened'.
-Shopenhauer

This lively upbeat philosopher said what we all want to say every once in awhile.

Take it all back!

Nothing better than this!

Stop!

With all it's ups and downs, starts, misstarts, interruptions, cryings, sorrows and so forth, Life can many times seem like we'd all be better off (as we all would literally be 'off') if the whole shootin' match never would have happened.

But then there's Beauty. Unexpected natural beauty, nexpected human beauty. Someone slips you some chocolate. Or cocaine. You know, whatever your poison is. And suddenly life is better!

I hope to someday look back on it all and say, you know, I suffered, I cried, I had hard times and made mistakes and had regrets, but I really wouldn't change a thing.

The thing about the unexpected is it can be really awful and terrible and so on, but it often times enough is really amazing, beautiful, wonderful and such like.

Just enough mystery not misery to keep the whole thing going...

Name's Fuller

Because of various coincidences, and due to family gatherings over the years, I first researched the maternal side of my family before researching the paternal side of my family. My mother's maiden name is Woehler. By working with an uncle of mine, I was able to find out that our family of Woehlers were stonemasons and I was able, with my uncle's assistance, to track them back to Prussia, part of the Holy Roman Empire and to the seventeenth century. My great grandfather was a stonemason (of course) who came to the States with his two brothers...probably to escape war. My grandfather broke from the pack to become a carpenter. Little did he probably know he was breaking a protocol that was possibly centuries old!

Now on to 'Fuller'.

I've not been able to track down any detailed genealogy of my dad's side of the family due to lack of records and oral tradition.

So I've begun with the general 'whence Fuller'.

So far, I've been able to find that 'Fuller' comes down from the Old French 'Fouller', which meant 'to trample upon'.

Further research has shown that this phrase 'to trample upon' involved the trade of cloth...fulling cloth.

In the olden days, wool was fulled manually by cleansing it with pig feces and urine, due to the ammonium they contained. Not a glamorous job back then!

But wait!

The process of fulling made it to Britain via the Romans, where the trade name continued on and in as early as 1185, there was a mini industrial revolution where the fulling process became mechanized and mills were built around natural streams. Again in 1185, in Temple Newsham in West Yorkshire and also in Barton on Windrush in Gloucestershire two fulling mills were built by the Knights Templar.

So going waaaay back, I suppose I come from simple tradesmen on both sides of my family. On my mom's side, stonemasons, and on my dad's side cloth tradesmen(women).

Well, it was a Forrest Gump moment. Senator Richard Lugar did a booksigning at our store and I was one of the people in charge.

I told him I appreciated all his years in public service. I mean come on, depite your politics, you gotta appreciate a man like this!

He thanked me for the 'encouragement'.

He was solid.

Rock Solid.

Nice People

This past weekend, Mary and I spent time with old friends from work and North High School's graduating class. It's so nice to spend time with people you've known from the past and who have been travelling their lives parallel to yours. People's families have grown, people have changed jobs, bought new homes, and all the other events life can offer up on a platter. But what's wonderful is, they still retain the same core personalities you remember from before and have not lost their individuality, though their social lives have changed. It seems as life gives us each our experiences, we still hold onto some sort of 'self' that cannot be sold, bartered or frittered away. The Personality lingers!

There is something deeply satisfying about seeing someone one for the first time in years, and though they've changed dramatically, you still recognize them and immediately pick up where you last left off. Old differences have been left to the wayside and new agreements are forged. You agree that the meal is good, the company is nice, and isn't the weather lovely? It's our favorite time of the year!

And when you meet up with people from the past, you have the opportunity to travel back in time, remembering songs you used to like, shows you used to watch, what we thought of the president, how we were in our jobs.

What life was like before kids.

And now we share the common bond of raising our little ones and looking forward to them enjoying the life we've been able to enjoy.

It's true.

Mean people suck.

It's those nice ones that make it all so worth while!

Return

Sometimes, you leave home to travel to some far off place you've never seen before and only heard other people talk of.

Sometimes your mind shifts into a different way of thinking, and you want to explore ideas that are new to you.

Other times you get challenged by someone smarter than yourself. Why do you believe the things you do?

And then there's the return.

To yourself, to your home, to your family, to your friends, you just wake up one day and return to the home you left a long long time ago.

Perhaps even now a little wiser.

Harvard

A few years back, I got to go to Boston for some work related training. I stayed in the Royal Sonesta hotel in Cambridge on the Charles river next to the yacht club. One evening, the training broke up early and we suddenly had a free night to do what ever we liked. My choices were to go into Boston and have dinner at an authentic Irish pub, or head to Harvard and see the campus and surrounding area. Obviously, I chose the latter and headed to Harvard. I've never been to Europe, but Harvard and it's surrounding area looked and felt european to me. While there, I visited the campus, the Harvard Square, and most appreciably, Harvard Book Store. At the bookstore, I purchased some tee-shirts, magnets, and a signed hardback first edition of Harold Bloom's 'Hamlet Poem Unlimited'. I still proudly carry my Harvard Book Store keychain discount card! Everytime I see the thing, it takes me back to that time in Boston/Cambridge.

The Golden Section

This is an X-Ray picture of a nautilus shell. The form you see the shell take closely resembles that of a Golden Spiral. The word 'Golden' here refers to the Golden Section. A geometric ratio, thought to have been studied by the ancient Greeks.

Artists and Architects use the Golden Section, as it is aesthetically pleasing in it's many manifestations. Leonardo Davinci is said to have used the principles of the Golden Section when he created his famous masterwork the Mona Lisa, and Salvador Dali is said to have used the principle in several of his works.

In Victorian times, it was said Nature was the shadow of Heaven, and Art was the shadow of Nature. I am always titillated by Art that incorporates the principles of natural beauty into it's works. And there is the intellectual satisfaction of knowing abstract geometry is the basis for much of the manifest Beauty you see throughout the world, whether it be Natural, or Artistic.

When studying such principles as the Golden Section, there is also a feeling that there is an underlying order to an otherwise seemingly incidental system. That there is an underlying rationality to what on the surface would appear to be chaotic.

Dylan Skateboarder Extraordinairre

Dylan gets radical by catching some air on his skateboard. Like father, like son. When I see him do his skateboard stunts, this one being called an 'ollie', it reminds me of when I was a kid and skateboarded myself. Some of the professional skaters I admired as a kid are still around for Dylan to enjoy. Stacey Peralta, Tony Alva, both have done quite well with their careers.

Summer Florida Trip

Dylan and I playing checkers during our Aunt Catfish's visit at Ormond Beach, Fla. Dylan has been in chess club at school now for two years and will be starting his third this year. He is quite good at chess and wins more often than I like.

Summer Florida Trip

My dad, me and Dylan on the deck at Aunt Catfish's in Ormond Beach, Fla. The weather was perfect that day. I think it was around ninety degrees during the day and had cooled off that evening to around eighty degrees.

Summer Florida Trip

This photo is from our Florida trip we made this summer. We were in Ormond Beach, though we visited St. Augustine and Cape Canaveral where the Discovery Shuttle was sitting on the launch pad. This restaurant we're eating at is called Aunt Catfish's and offers a wide variety of seafood, steaks and great desserts!

Fall Trip to Falls of the Ohio State Park

At the Fossil Beds, Dylan cheeses big time

Falls of the Ohio Fossil Beds

Falls of the Ohio State Park just east of Huber Winery off of 64. Dylan had been before, and was eager to show me the fossils embedded in the rocks. Supposedly, this is an ancient sea bed dating back millions of years. Trilobites have been found encrusted in the rock in this area.

Huber Winery

I have no idea what I was doing here. I think I was looking to see if Linus's Great Pumpkin would rise from the patch and wish us all a merry Christmas.

Huber Winery

At Huber Winery and Farm, Mary, Dylan and I rode out to the pumpkin patch and picked out three pumpkins. We had a daddy one, a mommy one, and a baby one. Dylan here is holding his, the baby.