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Beauty begets beauty

8/15/2017

"Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love... Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding."

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Because my mind was going a mile a minute when I sat down to meditate this morning, I plopped a vase of mums directly in the line of my meditative gaze. I'm not sure that this helped me step out of the thought stream but they sure were beautiful to look at. Before I stood up to move along with my day, I gathered them between my hands, buried my face in them and inhaled deeply. I love the smell of mums!

It is too, too easy to be sucked into the virtual world of (often) horror and mayhem. Make it a practice to focus on the beautiful objects in your space. After all, you put them there, didn't you? If you haven't filled your space with objects of beauty that the light can find, please, do yourself a favor and do so now.

The objects that the light finds and illuminates will illuminate your mind, whether you love them or not. Practice seeing what the light illuminates. Practice loving that.

Short post. I'm looking away now. Looking for the beautiful in my immediate vicinity.

"I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains."

—Anne Frank

What matters are tomatoes.

8/7/2017

Let's get our priorities straight.

Our government and much of the world seems to be in utter chaos if we take the major news outlets as our source of information.

But if I move away from the computer or radio and tv news and look around my rooms, there are so many more interesting and wonderful things to behold, to read, to make beautiful things with.

If I step out my door and bump into neighbors (and often, their dogs), happy transactions (and often, lickie licky? kisses) await.

A few steps more around the corner and I find my fabulous garden, exhausted from the heat but still bringing forth peppers, collards, leeks, herbs and, yes, tomatoes!

I just read an essay by Garrison Keillor and the line that jumped out at me was "What matters are tomatoes". Well, I thought, that's it.

And it's true.

It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.
--Lewis Grizzard

Happy full moon. Think pleasant thoughts. Enjoy your tomatoes.

The Value of Practice

7/18/2017

Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890),
Chair, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, April - May 1890
chalk on paper, 33.0 cm x 24.7 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Why bother practicing anything?

Isn't it enough to just get out of bed in the morning and go through the motions of your well-planned or follow-your-nose around day? I guess that depends on who you are and what you want out of this all-too-brief life. For the sake of argument, let's just say that your answer is, no. That's not enough.

Also, for the sake of argument, let's say it doesn't really matter what you practice. You could be practicing law, tennis, meditation, a musical instrument, sobriety, writing... usually, when I talk about practice, I'm talking about drawing and watercolor. And I'll get to that shortly.

Whatever you practice, you're usually going after a result. Generally, you want to "get better" at or master an activity or experience. Maybe you're in it for the competition, with yourself or someone else. For a score or an accolade or, simply, just to do it.

If you measure practice on a graph, you are not going to see a straight line ascending at an angle. That graph line will shoot up one day and plummet the next. Or plateau for long periods of time. Again, that's generally speaking. If you're Federer, with a lifetime of discipline, your calendar planned at least a year out, surrounded by a support team and trainers, your results might look different but even someone at the top of whatever game they're playing has to manage daily practice and deal with daily results.

If you're not a pro and don't expect to master whatever you practice, why bother practicing anything? Every discipline has its own set of rules and regs and quantifications, but just consider your personal experience and level of satisfaction with a practice.

No matter how long you've been practicing, you're not always going to be happy with your results. Which means that you're not always going to be happy with yourself. You're going to succeed sometimes and you're going to fail. A lot. You're going to trip and fall and hurt yourself. Even if it's just with the thoughts you think about yourself (which can be more damaging than a broken bone). Like it or not, that's just the way it is.

But the true value of practice is that every time you set out or sit down to do so, you meet yourself. You show up to practice, you meet yourself in whatever condition you find yourself, and that, right there, adds up to a lot.

"Exercittio potest omnia." *
(Practice makes all possible or Practice is everything!)
—Periander
*Often (almost always) mistranslated as "Practice makes perfect."

As you succeed, fall down, get back up, fail, succeed, fail miserably... you learn about your weak points and strong points and get to know yourself. If you keep on going, practicing, you have the opportunity to accept your weaknesses and appreciate your strengths.

Contrary to popular belief, it is your weaknesses, your limitations, that give you your personal style. No one else in the world has your particular set of strengths and weaknesses. If you can learn to embrace your weaknesses, you can turn them into strengths.

Above, the simple, charming, kind of wonky, drawing of a chair was made by Van Gogh during the last four months of his life, after many, many years of practice. It might not hold you up if you tried to sit down on it, but it certainly is alive. And unmistakably Van Gogh.

What do you practice that makes you feel alive? What have you learned through that practice that makes you unmistakably you?

Why fight it?

7/11/2017

I think it's hysterical that my intention was to write about the value of practice and instead, I am surrendering to a quick post on...surrender!

After almost two weeks of serious over-scheduling, my mind, body and soul are telling me, "break time!"

Anyway, it is very, very, very hot where I live and work and I must move to the drawing table and surrender to my pencils, brushes and colors, if only for my mental health. Well, spiritual health, too. Okay... for fun. Actually, I have already been working at the computer here for hours today and I must switch gears.

Sometimes, even when you feel (or are) obligated, even if only to yourself, it's good to say, "Sorry, Charlie!"

Must go scribble.

"Always say 'yes' to the present moment... Surrender to what is. Say 'yes' to life - and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you." —Eckhart Tolle

One thing at a time

7/4/2017

“A weakness of all human beings is trying to do too many things at once.”
—Henry Ford

There's no such thing as multi-tasking

The ocean waves do not try to reach shore at the same time.

The leaves on a tree do not try to change color at once.

Each wave, each leaf is a unique manifestation of an unfolding process of living experience. Human beings moving through space and time are also unfolding processes of living experiences.

But the human mind? Especially with gazillions of distractions here in the early 21st century? We are so easily distracted that we miss much of the beautiful unfolding process of life.

I make this claim with confidence because I am one of the most easily distracted people I know.

I practice meditation briefly every day but nothing, no meditation I have come across, calms and focuses my attention like drawing or painting. It may not be for everyone but it sure works for me.

In my experience, multitasking is a myth. Trying to multitask, or even expecting yourself to be able to multitask, can leave you dizzy, drained, overwhelmed, ungrounded. You may think that you are working on several projects simultaneously but, in fact, you can only take action on one thing or think one thought at a time (no matter how brief that time may be).

Expect yourself to do one thing at a time and plan for that. It's a sure way to sanity.

"Two things cannot happen at once; it is impossible. It is easy to imagine that two things are happening at once, because our journey back and forth between the two may be very speedy. But even then we are doing only one thing at a time.

"The idea of mindfulness is to slow down the fickleness of jumping back and forth. We have to realize that we are not extraordinary mental acrobats. We are not all that well trained. And even an extraordinarily well-trained mind could not manage that many things at once--not even two. But because things are very simple and direct, we can focus on, be aware and mindful of, one thing at a time. That one-pointedness, that bare attention, seems to be the basic point."

— Chogyam Trungpa, from "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness Meditation"

I have a long list of reasons why I continue to teach drawing and watercolor after 20 years. One reason is that the process allows people the opportunity to quiet their minds and practice focusing on one task at a time.

Practicing drawing and watercolor is mindfulness training on steroids.

Five ways to let nature nurture you

6/27/2017

My Willow Oaks

One way to allow nature to nurture you?

Get your ass under some trees!

More ways...

Behold the life forms on our planet from whatever vantage point you have...Experience the sky. The birds. The land. Trees. Squirrels. Water. Fish. So much. Everything.

Experience a Forest Bath. Just go for a walk as close to your residence or work place as you can, to wherever there are trees and other species of animals (mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians).

Appreciate the interconnectedness. All of the everything you behold gives us the biospheric system that allows us to breathe and exist at all. Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate.

Thank your lucky stars that you were born onto this planet at this particular moment and place in time. All of the craziness and wondrousness, the love and hate and fear and trust and grief and longing— all of this is part of being a spiritual being in a human experience on earth at this particular time. For a limited amount of time. Limited.

Accept that you are living through a magnificent time of change on this planet Make a list of things you have to be grateful for. Keep your Syrian pen pal in mind .

Heaven and earth and I are of the same root,
The ten-thousand things and I are of one substance.
—Sengzhao

Everything is connected

Especially the trees with every living thing that breathes.

I wish that everyone would shut up already about square footage and the price tag of land.

It might not bother me so much in theory except that every time I turn a corner, another lot of undeveloped property (what a concept), by which I mean untouched plots of trees and and grass and nests and dens and rich root systems and microbiomes and shaded earth, bird song and scampering through leaf sounds, is being clear cut and dug up for real estate profit. Real Estate. Let those two words together sink in.

Witnessing this destruction of the earth makes me physically sick. It's difficult to keep my blinders on.

When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.
—Alanis Obomsawin

And yet, if I bring myself back to the present moment, to my immediate vicinity, almost all I see are trees. Trees and my garden. I have the great and time-limited fortune of living beneath a canopy of willow oaks with the mother tree immediately outside my front door. I desperately appreciate my situation.

This is a great trick, by the way, especially if you suffer from the same malady as I do, or if you regularly read the news. When the world is too, too much (when I click through to news or social media or whatever entity is selling soap or cars or drugs on the back of human and biological tragedy), I bring myself back to the present moment, to my immediate vicinity, which I intentionally fill with beauty and nature, my freakout subsides. I allow my eyes to rest on the trees, my darling, magnificent plants, well-made pretty fabric, phenomenal books, Miss Tallulah, or the way the light bounces off any surface, more... I allow my hand to feel something tangible, within reach and notice why I brought it into my world to begin with. The color, the form, the texture, the pleasure the life form or object brings me.

Then I take a deep breath and all's right with the world again. It's a form of meditation.

This is actually why I teach drawing. To help people connect to what is right in front of them. It's mindfulness on steroids.

I love living on Earth. I love this planet. With every passing day, my appointment with death is a gamble. It's kind of nice to know for sure that one thing (death) is absolutely out of my control because, if I accept that, my experience of life is amplified to the max. I just have to keep remembering...

Life is a process. Healing is a process. It truly amazes me how far away from a wound we can get to engage in an actual healing process of that wound. Especially if it's emotional. All of that is a subject for another lengthy post. But... when you are feeling hurt or sad or low, my suggestion is to...

Turn to Earth. Turn to the manifest forms of energy designed specifically to work with us to help and heal us through our lifetimes.

By Earth or Nature, I mean the energetic forms that spring from the systems born of and engaged with our planet. Including you, as a person or earthling, and me. With that defined in approximately 25 words, I'll move into the meat of this post.

How do you allow nature to nurture you?

Let me know in the comments below.

What I'm reading this summer (2017)

6/20/2017

Clouds from my garden.

Summer rolls in on the 21st at 12:24 am. Do something special to mark the longest day of the year.

Any plans for the season? I'm preparing a set of new online drawing and watercolor courses that debut (to alums of my foundation courses) in September. Also, I am taking my first, actual, planned vacation in late August and truly looking forward to that. But on the other hand, I'm enjoying life immensely right now, so I can wait.

I am leaving behind the habits of checking the news more than once daily (if that often), and of streaming movies and tv shows online. I'm sick to death of both and am back to reading.

I've just discovered Andrew Garve (aka Paul Winterton, aka Roger Bax, aka Paul Somers), and finished his Hide And Go Seek this afternoon. I discovered this book in a free basket (as I have several other fab reads over the years), opened to a random page, read a paragraph aloud, put it under my arm and am committed to three more of his.

Here's what else I have stacked up for summer:

Alice Carter, The Red Rose Girls
Andrew Garvey, Murder in Moscow, Ashes of Loda, Cuckoo Line Affair
Umberto Eco, History of Beauty
M. J. Rose, The Book of Lost Fragrances
re-read, again, Landscape into Art
Jacob Wenzel, Landscapes From Brueghel to Kandinsky
Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve
finish Jeffrey Archer's Be Careful What You Wish For √ and
next installment of The Clifton Chronicles, Mightier Than The Sword
Joyce Cary, Art and Reality
Alice Munro, Runaway
re-read Ram Dass, Still Here
and, if there's any time left, would like to re-read
Leonie Swann, Three Bags Full
Conrad Richter, The Light in the Forest and
Hansen & Davis, Boone

How are you celebrating the Solstice? What are your plans for the summer? Any good reading suggestions to share? Tell me everything! Leave a comment below.

About my Dad

6/15/2017

Edwin J. McDermott, Esq.
1907-1978

Recently, I have been missing my Dad. A lot. I think of him now, especially while I am swimming laps, remembering the simple, loose, lined '60's Jantzen swim trunks he wore in olive green or khaki.

Approaching Father's Day, rather than compose some sentimental essay, I am making a list of random facts about him, as they come to mind. The massively interesting, good stuff I remember. Okay, here goes.

was once arrested on Atlantic City beach for bathing without a top on.
had just come back from horseback riding on Atlantic City beach when he heard the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.
taught Naval officers accounting at Penn during WWII.
was one of the youngest lawyers to go before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1932 at the age of 24.
graduated third in his class, Order of the Coif, at University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1930.
entered St. Joseph's College in 1927, at the age of 15.
rowed single scull on the Schulykill River.
was a master bridge player.
regularly bought records from Sam Goody at his first record shop on 9th Avenue in NYC, relying on Sam for au courant recommendations.
said, "Here. I understand that you should listen to this." while handing me a copy of Meet the Beatles.
taught me how to work an amplifier and tone arm when I was about five years old and later, how to change a diamond stylus .
built a woofer and tweeter into the playroom wall of our first house.
learned the hard way about storing LPs above a tube amp.
built two giant sound boxes on casters for speakers when stereo hit the market.
taught me how to body surf.
took me to see a matinee of Forbidden Planet and explained to me how it was based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Best first date ever. Decades later, I went to a matinee of same and sat a few rows behind a father with his very little daughter. The three of us were almost the only ones in the theater. Yes, I cried.
always said "Go into the ocean, it'll heal you up." when I hurt myself at the shore.
read Donald Francis Tovey's Essays in Musical Analysis for fun.
collected all of the Arthur Quiller Couch and John Dover Wilson editions of Shakespeare.
knew Shakespeare's plays by heart and would turn to the act, scene and line to show me source of title when I'd come home from school with reading assignments like Brave New World, or The Sound and the Fury.
loved to walk and took me jogging with him around our neighborhood park or up and down the beach at Longport when jogging became a thing.
took me regularly to the Robin Hood Dell in the summer. One time, it started raining while Van Cliburn was in the middle of a concerto. Daddy pointed out to me all the umbrellas popping up in the "Friends of the Dell" section and as the Friends scurried out, we dashed up and watched the rest of the concert, a few feet from the stage, sitting on the concrete steps, in the rain. It was fantastic!
loved convertibles filled with beautiful girls before he was married.
drank a lot when he was young until, according to my late aunt, his doctor told him that he really had to stop.
attended 6:30 am mass every morning, without ever saying a word about it, at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church at 13th and Market Streets in Philadelphia.
collected every volume of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History. When then master photographer, Mr. Okada asked Daddy to give me something to hold in one of my baby pictures, he handed over Toynbee's Greek Civilization and Character. I don't know for sure but this may have been with a sense of humor. At least I think it's funny.
loved history and the idea, philosophy of history.
kept his possessions simple and elegant. This approach applied to his clothing, tools and memorabilia. He splurged on books, records, his wife and children.
had two good coats (one camel hair, one black cashmere), a cream silk tuxedo scarf, a sports jacket, a couple of fine wool suits, a seersucker suit, Norm Thompson slippers, an Irish Tweed Walking Hat and a classic, Gregory Peck, fedora.
was an early "health nut" and we always had plenty of wheat germ, black strap molasses, honey with the comb, protein bread.
kept his treasures on and in the top drawer of his bureau. On top of his bureau, he kept two framed photos, one of his mother, the other of his father. (They were the only photos I ever saw of his parents.) In his top drawer, he kept a letter from Arnold J. Toynbee, a short story he once wrote, a sterling silver swizzle stick from his drinking days, a pair of gold and amber cufflinks, and his Order of the Coif medal. Later, after his brother, Charlie, passed, he added Charlie's eye glass frames. With these, he also kept a scrap of paper with quick notes about my maternal grandmother's origin after a surprise visit from an unknown cousin on my mother's side. But that's another story.
bought a copy of The Beach Boy's Surfin' USA for my 2nd grade school Pollyanna. I, of course, went for the LP shaped gift and listened to that album as much as any. Over the years, I occasionally wondered who's parent had bought that gift until, decades later, it dawned on me. Of course, Sam Goody.
rarely gave me advice but once told me, "Always work for yourself."
was very excited to hand me a copy of the 1973 U.S. Court of Claims document for the Williams & Wilkins Company v. The United States decision, indicating to me now that he knew then that my work would primarily concern intellectual property. And it has.
had a distinctive whistle: a long G# followed by a smooth ribbon of short G, G#, G, G#, G, repeated twice to call for my brother and/or me.
could play untold variations with impeccable skill and invention on the piano of "We are Collegiate" and that's about all I ever heard him play.
married late, had children in his late 40s and absolutely loved and adored my mother, my brother and me.
compiled and published the multi-volume Modern Federal contract law: Modern digest of decisions of United States Court of Claims and of Supreme Court of the United States (U.S. Court of Claims cases) 1969
specialized in the United States Court of Claims and wrote an article for the American Bar Association Journal, The Court of Claims: The Nation's Conscience.
ate half a grapefruit every morning. My Dad loved grapefruit.
ate oranges over the sink.
made sure that my brother and I found an orange at the bottom of our Christmas stockings every year.
enjoyed reading authors' works in chronological order: Graham Greene, Ian Flemming, Erle Stanley Gardner, Joyce Cary.
collected Modern Library books.
was excited by all new technology.
took some exceptional photographs that demonstrated a sophisticated sense of composition during the 1940s through early 1950s.
loved the TV show, Secret Agent Man, The Prisoner, and early Masterpiece Theater.
would love to have gone to Ireland.
was the son of Charles J. McDermott, originally a drayman, later a Teamster, finally a Motor Freighter. I think that his father owned one of the first trucking companies in Philadelphia. His mother's name was Margaret F. Murphy and I am very sorry to say that that is all I know about her except that she looked very sad in the photo of her young self atop my father's dresser and that my Aunt Peggy threw all photos and identifying information about her parents away after they died.
used Gaby Suntan Lotion and Noskote.
walked to the Overbrook, later the Wynnewood train station every morning during our life together and took the train into town at least five days per week.
taught me to drive in our 1968 Grecian Green Camaro on Sunday mornings in the John Wanamaker Parking lot in Wynnewood, PA.

There's more, and I'll add to this later, but that's enough for now. He taught me to love music, learning and physical exercise, to think critically, and to be myself. I wish that I could have been more helpful to him at the end. Always my first love.

20th anniversary

6/6/2017

This week, it's just a quick note.

With the start of the recent Basic Drawing class that I teach for the city of Raleigh, I've celebrated my 20th year anniversary of teaching drawing and watercolor. Had to share!

Little did I know when I created those morning and afternoon drawing and watercolor workshops for guests at the Kiawah Island Resort in South Carolina that two decades later, I'd still be at it. In a big way.

These week after week city classes have given me opportunities to serve while growing my method and developing new courses. I have to thank the city and all the students—not only the great successes but also those who've challenged me and made me a better teacher. I am so looking forward to bringing my teaching back online.

And I must not forget to include thanks to my best drawing and painting teacher ever, Ronn Davis, and best art history teacher, Jim Urmston. Both at Santa Monica College where I studied so many moons ago when, as Jim put it a few years back, "all things seemed possible".

Minus a few absentees, the above shots are a peek at my 20th anniversary classes.

The growing season

5/29/2017

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ― Anaïs Nin

The garden is coming along.

I can't get the ever-expanding plots all in to one shot so the above photo is a detail of Russian kale that's been keeping me in greens all winter, flowering zucchini, dill, beets, leeks, tomatoes, vinca, lavender, anise hyssop, scabiosa and some native plant in violet bloom that a neighbor gave me last spring. There's more, much more... but you get the idea.

This time last year I started with discarded heirloom tomato seedlings in old recycling bins. I knew little about growing vegetables and still have a lot to learn but I can say that about almost anything.

Along with the garden, I've been growing new drawing and watercolor studio classes in art history. These have evolved since January in dramatic and exciting ways. Dramatic because of the phenomenal results of student work. Exciting because, well, anytime we create brand new things there's always a learning curve, obstacles, the unexpected (no matter how well we prepare), and uncertainty.

The entire series of three courses is not quite complete but I've jumped the main hurdles and they'll be ready in an online format by end of summer. I have to say that I have worked my butt off putting these together and yet have loved (not always enjoyed but loved) the process.

All the time I thought I'd have to write blog posts has been diverted to developing these courses. Which is fine! It's just that when I put down one discipline for the sake of another, it does take some time and serious effort to start up the disciplines I had to put aside for a while.

Writing is the worst, I think. It's always been a challenge for me to chain myself to a seat and to focus on writing. By which I mean...actually writing. Fortunately, I know that I am not alone. The only way to write is to write and so, here I am. Writing.

After procrastinating (not really, I had so many other important things to do today!), I decided that it was not at all important for this post to be perfect or about anything important. All I had to do was to write something.

Something.

So here it is. It's a seed for getting me back into my regular blogging. I like the discipline. It's just a matter of doing it.

“It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.”
― Robert Hass

One of the books on my bathroom shelf is a collection of essays by Peter Mayle called Acquired Tastes. My favorite essay in that book is The Writing Habit. Every time I need a belly laugh at my life or to feel in good company, I re-read it.

Tomorrow, I start two new live groups of basic drawing students. 20 years ago today, more or less, I taught my first group of basic drawing students down on Kiawah Island at the Resort's Nature Center. Little did I know then that I was embarking on a career of doing so.

Okay. That's it till next week.

<<Previous

Beauty begets beauty

What matters are tomatoes.

The Value of Practice

Why bother practicing anything?

Why fight it?

One thing at a time

Five ways to let nature nurture you

One way to allow nature to nurture you?

More ways...

Everything is connected

What I'm reading this summer (2017)

About my Dad

Edwin J. McDermott, Esq.
1907-1978

20th anniversary

The growing season

inspiring you to
heal yourself, shine your light
and make your own magic

categories

archives

Why bother practicing anything?

One way to allow nature to nurture you?

More ways...

Everything is connected

Edwin J. McDermott, Esq.1907-1978

inspiring you to​heal yourself, shine your lightand make your own magic

categories

archives

Edwin J. McDermott, Esq.
1907-1978

inspiring you to
heal yourself, shine your light
and make your own magic