"Do a lot of little things..."

 
I. Next Up: Fog City

BELOW: Marz, left, with Fog City,
and lino-block —carving in process -- of Fog City Bear
(reversed, so student's writing is right-way round).

Circling Fog City's head, makings ^ for Fog City Salad: macaroni, green peas, and cubes of yellow cheese. (A recipe.)

We had this "salad" in Duluth, where air coming in over cold Lake Superior creates fog (explanation),
but the nickname is properly San Francisco's.

I'd written "Fog City" on a piece of paper for the student. After he wrote it, he asked, "What comes next?"
The other names he's written for me ended with "Bear"--I guess he wondered if this one should too?
I said, "Bear".

Fog City likes it! "That is my last name."
(And here I'd thought 'City' was the last name.)

II. "Do a lot of little things"

I'm a little worried. School is out in two weeks--only nine more weekdays. But I'd signed up late for summer school, and they have enough special-ed aides.  So, I'm off for the summer. 

This is nice in many ways. I'll get unemployment, equal to about what I made at the thrift store.
I'm worried, though, because being all alone for long stretches of utterly unstructured days (especially when it's horribly hot) can be depressing.
I need a plan.

Luckily, I can do what I've done for the past six summers: work almost every day at the thrift store.
They always, always need help, and I love being there. I don't care if I'm paid, since I'll have enough.
(I love my new job a little, but I would not, not, not do it for free.)

One of the best things about my school job is that I've been making art, and I want to keep doing that too.
So I will do that. I will make little things.

I take heart from a postcard Sol LeWitt wrote in 1966 to his friend (and former student), sculptor Eva Hesse.
BELOW: Hesse & LeWitt

"Do a lot of little things--It's better than large things."

The year before (1965),  LeWitt had written to Hesse of his understanding of how hard it is--which also encouraged me:

"I know that you (or anyone) can only work so much and the rest of the time you are left with your thoughts. "

But Lewitt he also says what we all know, right? JUST DO IT.
The way to be a writer is to write, the way to be an artist is to make art.

"Don't worry about cool, make your own uncool.
Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you--draw-paint your fear & anxiety. 
And stop worrying about big, deep things such as [he's quoting Hesse] 'to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistant approach to even some impossible end of even an imagined end.'
You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty.
Then you will be able to > DO <"

[ Read the full letter, "Do: Sol LeWitt’s Electrifying Letter of Advice on Self-Doubt, Overcoming Creative Block, and Being an Artist" here] 

__________________________
III. How to Keep the Door Open

Sometimes the locked entrance/exit doors at school don't automatically unlock when they're supposed to--like, at the beginning of the day, when I'm waiting for the school buses to unload.
So I looped my lanyard around a bar to latch-hook the door open--circled in blue:

Even when I'm not there, other staff members have started to use this system.

Everyone tells me the locked doors are for safety--from shooters (etc.).
I'll grant that that's the intention.

But have you noticed, what humans intend for good, we use for control?
The lure of personal power is too strong:
Staff standing outside the locked doors at 2:58 PM often will not open the doors for students inside, saying,
"They have to wait till 3."

That is not the intention of the locks, or so everyone tells me, but the lure is too strong.
Remember--Frodo tries to keep the Ring at the end.

Tolkien on Frodo's "failure", a letter in 1963:
***SPOILER ALERT***

"I do not think that Frodo's was a moral failure.
At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum – impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, . . . 

". . . certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted.

"Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved.

"His humility (with which he began) and his sufferings were justly rewarded by the highest honour; and his exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed.
[Gollum bites the ring off Frodo's finger, and then falls into the fires of Mount Doom, destroying himself and the ring.]

"We are finite creatures with absolute limitations upon the powers of our soul-body structure in either action or endurance.
Moral failure can only be asserted, I think, when a man's effort or endurance falls short of his limits,
and the blame decreases as that limit is closer approached."

This is related to my bafflement at the saying, "Everybody is doing their best".

It's helpful to grant that "we are finite creatures with absolute limitations upon the powers of our soul-body structure".
But I don't see how it's helpful to say we are all working up to those limits.
I'm not, and I don't want a pass to say, There, there, that doesn't matter.

I want encouragement to DO, little things.

Blogging in the mornings is good too! The store doesn't open until 10, which is why I always had so much time to blog, and now will again.

IV. What I'm Reading

I'm way behind in recording this. Here are some.

Me at M&Q bookstore Sunday:

I sat in the store and skimmed Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder. I saw Rushdie speak once and absolutely loved the person he came across as, but I've never loved his writing, and this was no exception. I did not buy it.

I bought from the $2 bargain shelf Under the Banner of Heaven (about a religiously motivated murder by Mormons) because I have a small ongoing interest in things like Jonestown.

BELOW: I paid the full $40 for the long-delayed second volume of the graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Wonderful art!
She juxtaposes horror comics covers with paintings such as “Judith and the head of Holofernes”. Good stuff.

And I brought home from the store the autobiography of Sister Helen Prejean (crusader against capital punishment), River of Fire.
I'm reading that now--it's interesting--the development of a person's morals getting lined up with her ability to DO (to her limits).