Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 07/24/2025
Winslow Homer: The End of the Day, Adirondacks (1890)
Notice Themselves Disappearing
It's fundamentally unfair that shame has been so haphazardly distributed among the populace. Most quickly redden when catching themselves engaged in something embarrassing. Some seem to possess no threshold beyond which they can consider ceasing or desisting, even though accomplishing either amounts to doing both. Our incumbent, may his name never again cross my lips, knows no limits. He serves as a continual reminder of the price of self-importance, for it inflicts by far the greatest tax on everyone else. Those who witness it in action never recover whatever respect they might have previously exhibited toward the afflicted. Those incapable of shame ultimately seem inhuman.
This universe never had any masters.
Indenture
Kahlil Gibran: The Slave (1920)
"I have another early call again tomorrow morning."
Part of the sacred responsibility that accompanies any family must be the obligation to occasionally Indenture one's spouse. This need not necessarily be in any way ominous, for necessity will dictate the timing. Part of the unwritten covenant between any couple covers cornering them. This might involve volunteering their services without first consulting them or merely informing them, rather than asking. The savvy spouse will accept these assignments without altogether too much grousing because they at least imply that they're still seen as good for something, which might be a blessing, depending.
The Muse had this brilliant idea to auction off a couple of dinner parties as part of a fundraising scheme by the local party.
Complicity
Unknown Artist: Portrait of a man (Mid-3rd century CE)
Gallery Notes:
The irregular shaping of the wooden board here helps us imagine the original placement of this portrait over the mummy’s face, affixed with complicated wrappings. The portrait is painted using the encaustic technique, in which pigment is mixed with beeswax, allowing the artist to achieve complex gradations of light and shade and sometimes a luminescence that has been compared to the sheen of oil painting. The man’s hair and beard are trimmed short in the fashion of the mid-third century.
"We'd rather ride the slow train to oblivion."
The Muse, in her role as Port Commissioner, asked me to attend the Port's bi-monthly Economic Development Information Meeting (EDIM) in her stead, since she would be attending a commissioner-only meeting convened by the Washington State Association for the Prevention of Port Commissions in a far corner of the state. I had not attended one of these meetings in nearly twenty years. It typically offers a free lunch and attracts a wide variety of interested parties. It usually features a speaker who holds forth on some topic and enough minutiae to satisfy anyone with a severe spreadsheet dependency.
I arrived a little early so I could wish the conveners well and grab a choice seat waaaaay up front along one side.
Paperwocky
Unknown Artist, probably Spanish: Shadow Box: Castle (1693)
"I'm a tad old-fashioned that way."
"I have adjusted your shopping cart to show the custom cover lite. Please send me your final manuscript and the cover art. Please send any notes you may have regarding the cover design as well.
"I now just need the production approval. Please log in to submit. When you log in, click on the title ID in the active titles box, and you will see a checklist to the right. The last item under the column, You Must applies to you. Please click on ‘Click Here for Production Agreement’. Some terms will drop down. Please review and then click on the Approve Production button. We can then start work."
"I'm a tad old-fashioned that way."
Slip over here for more ...Moisture
Pieter van der Heyden: Summer, from The Four Seasons (1570)
published by Hieronymus Cock
"I can expect another little insubstantial rain shower along about September."
Every day for the past month or so, the news has been reporting the most savage series of flash floods I remember. Past summers have not been nearly this tumultuous, with perhaps a narrow tornado season followed later by an equally narrow hurricane one, but this summer has seen a seemingly unending series of record-setting, thousand-year floods following unprecedented downpours measuring in inches of Moisture per hour. As usual, my little corner of this world, the one overlooking the absolute center of the universe, where gravity always works reliably, has seen nothing even distantly resembling these calamities. We've experienced our more or less usual Moisture so far this summer, the negative kind. Through June, we received barely a distant whisper of rain, resulting in a net negative Moisture month for us again. We've been praying for rain, while further east, they've been praying for its cessation.
We worship the god of moisture, believing it makes life here possible.
MeetingMyself
Allart van Everdingen: Rabbit meets Reynard in Field (17th century)
"The difference sure feels profound, though…"
As a writer, I mostly work through surrogates. It's not precisely that I do not show up for work when I work. It's more that when working, I primarily project. However introspective one of my stories might seem, creating them amounts to an act of extreme extroversion for this extraordinarily introverted writer. I usually speak to someone else when creating, my mythical reader, or the ether. Writing for me has never been a dialogue with myself, or even with the deaf. Even when I edit a fresh piece, it's more of an out-of-body experience than a conversation. I might burgle the opportunity for me to read my writing by the very act of creating it. It seems at least vaguely familiar even on first reading, probably because I just finished writing it. Editing demands a certain cold-hearted distance, akin to pruning shrubs or weeding tomatoes —a certain indifference. It is hardly an intimate act, best done at an emotional distance.
So, it was a rare occurrence when I found myself re-re-reading my Cluelessness manuscript, recently returned from final copyediting before publication, and caught myself immersed in what must have been myself.
StudyingMyself
Stanley Anderson, Engraver: Head Study (1908)
From: Samuel Putnam Avery Collection
"…I retain a few unanswered questions."
As I announced in Recovery, the episode of this FollowingChapters Series I posted just before yesterday's Weekly Writing Summary, my Cluelessness manuscript has returned from its final copyediting pass. I had both dreaded and warmly anticipated its return. I secretly feared that the copyeditor would uncover the depth of my long-secreted impostor syndrome and expose me for my presumptions. I also imagined that her efforts might somehow validate my talents, however modest, and justify my continuing this little vanity on into infinity. I received a bit of both, and also neither of what I'd so fervently hoped and feared. As I reported in Recovery, she’d employed a light hand, preserving what I'd imagined represented my voice while drawing a firm line between what might prove acceptable and what could never pass muster.
I characterize myself as more of a feral writer than a trained one.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 07/17/2025
Angelo Caroselli: Summer (1620s)
Downward And In
I cannot decide whether I'm aging or just imagining myself aging. I have so far failed to convince myself that I'm growing any older. I see old classmates pass by, obviously aged in my remarkably youthful eyes. I should know, I submitted to cataract surgery ages ago, but I survived. Nobody ever very well remembers the struggles they endured, just the moments within which they surprisingly managed to convince themselves again that they were probably not aging.
I continually need to resolve some fairly obvious deviations from expectations.
Rediscovery
Ammi Phillips: Harriet Leavens [1802-1830] (c. 1815)
"…the direct eventual result of this writer writing."
Seven summers ago this morning, I was up writing very early, as had been my habit for just over a year by then. I had begun this writing discipline after a six-month-long Dark Night of the Soul wherein I wondered if I had ever—indeed, would ever—become a writer. I quelled my fretting by writing, a simple enough resolution in retrospect, but a serious question when still prospective. I speculated that if writers write, then I could only hope to answer the question of whether I was a writer by writing. I needed plenty of reassurance then, so I began by dedicating myself to daily stints. I'd write early in the morning, before my day could slip away from me. Neither the content nor the purpose mattered then, for I was just seeking reassurance. If I could maintain that modest commitment, I figured I might eventually consider myself to be the writer I aspired to become.
In reality, the effort proved to be a little more complicated, since this fresh dedication demanded a level of diligence I'd never invested in anything before.
FalseFlags
Johann Sadeler I: Micaiah and the False Prophets (16th-17th century)
"We're not quite there yet."
Since the 1930s, DC Comics character Superman has been presented as a staunch defender of "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." These three pillars of the society I was later born into remained reasonably stable until recently, when another ethic began to enjoy expanding influence. Our incumbent, schooled by the fascist gangster Roy Cohn, embraced a decidedly different American Way. His version rooted itself in falsity and injustice, reframing these as the supporting principles of his newer American Way, if I can even properly characterize falsity and injustice as principles. Our incumbent realized that truth could be effectively neutralized for any purpose by merely dispensing lies. These lies could not succeed if they were tentative. The liar would have to be all in if he intended to succeed. He would need to treat Truth as the ultimate enemy of his brand of democracy. He set about creating an alternate ecosystem where lies could thrive.
In the paper-rock-scissors game that comprises public opinion, the relative truth or fiction of any assertion matters little to the dedicated practitioner.
AntiPolicy
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重: A Cuckoo Against the Moon (c. 1843/46)
"They are their own worst enemies …"
Our incumbent holds no affirmative policy positions. I could insist that he holds no policy positions because those he has, or those he holds in lieu of holding affirmative policy positions, tend to be negative. He seems to be opposed to damned nearly everything, especially anything that even distantly hints at decency. This outlook places him and his anti-administration in a unique position, for they exclusively promote negative space outcomes. Try to envision a result should any of his anti-positions somehow come to fruition, and you will find yourself unable to agree with anybody on how those results will manifest. Each seems to project a strong sense of tangibility until and unless one tries to render them tangible. Asking the innocent question, "And if you achieved that, what would you have?" throws his spokespersons into inescapable disarray.
From a wannabe strong man, negative, AntiPolicy positions tend to sound powerful, like any espoused by any odd Old Testament God.
CityOfCards
Lucas Vorsterman: Fighting farmers after a card game 1619-1675
Gallery Notes: Fighting farmers, after a card game. One holds a threshing flag and hits the other on the head, while another man tries to stop him. The other farmer has a pitchfork in his hands. A woman holds a jug and is prevented from hitting it by a man holding her wrist. In the foreground, a fallen bench, a jug, and a scattered deck of cards. In the background, a village.
" … the future refuses to disclose which castles topple next."
" … the future refuses to disclose which castles topple next."
Every half-decent charlatan masters the construction of at least one House of Cards. It takes an exceptional one to oversee the development of a Community of them, and a once-in-a-very-blue-moon one to fabricate enough buildings to result in a genuine CityOfCards. The City seems no less tenuous than the original single building, though it's exponentially more fragile if only because of the proximities of similar fragilities. One errant puff of wind, one clumsey addition, and the entire fabrication can crumble. After some point, the marvel no longer comes from the construction, but from the ever more unlikely preservation. The likelihood of catastrophic failure blooms as the charlatan continues adding roofs. He eventually can't stop himself from ever-more-frantically adding roofs.
The sure bets ride with failure, but then a second wind, if you'll excuse the expression, comes in to encourage ever more frantic and apparently successful construction.
Prafussee
William Blake:
Frontispiece for "America a Prophecy" (1793)
"Anyone claiming today that they're directed by God has forgotten their history lessons or they might just be a charlatan."
News that reports some members of the incumbent's cabinet, public servants, believe themselves to be instruments of prophecy leaves me wondering whether insanity can be employed as a credible offense. Nobody can reasonably claim to be such an instrument, and if true, nobody gets to choose to become such an agent. I seem to remember some biblical figures cursing such an intrusion into their lives, neither particularly proud nor feeling rewarded by such a designation. Further, biblical prophecy so predates our circumstances that it seems much more than merely unlikely that scripture, retranslated innumerable times over many, many centuries, even if divinely inspired, could have accurately and intentionally targeted our times as its purpose. Further still, modern interpreters of such messages appear to interpret them literally, except in those special instances where figurative interpretations seem necessary. They seem capable of justifying anything by claiming scriptural sanction, and do.
Heaven help us survive this latest twist on justification.
Disintegrating
John Martin: Fall of the Walls of Jericho,
from Illustrations of the Bible (1834)
"It would never raise a credible head again. It's done."
The apotheosis appears as a trajectory more than a peak. At that point, nothing's obvious yet, though subtle and, in retrospect, not so subtle signs point to an inescapable conclusion. That arc peaked. It will never regain that height again. It's downhill from there, though not necessarily a power dive. There might be a series of plateaus and even a few apparent recoveries on the inevitable way down, but the momentum is lost along with the surprise that the initiative initially depended upon. Opponents easily anticipate what were once utterly baffling motives and moves. What seemed like magic was rendered barely tragic. Only theater remains. The outcome will never again find itself in serious question. So begins the slow shuffle toward the exits. What began as a mammoth traffic jam as everyone tried to arrive before the start winds down with people who paid through the nose for tickets leaving well before the end to avoid traffic or something.
Our incumbent still believes he successfully outsmarted everybody.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 07/10/2025
George Inness: After a Summer Shower (1894)
Now Must Be The Time
I once believed that a time might come when my patience would be amply rewarded, though I never invested much time defining what that payoff might entail. Would it come in the form of no longer needing to exercise patience? After all those decades diligently practicing my patience, I might have earned a payoff that promised only the continued practice, by then masterful, of ever more patience. I might have mastered waiting. It seems now, from the perspective of this once far and distant shore, that practicing patience itself might have always been the underlying purpose, promise fulfilled in the very act of striving to practice. Of course, anyone who has practiced patience understands that this practice never seems to approach perfection. Even the avid practitioner understands that even diligently practicing patience involves experiencing considerable impatience, too, and that it's ultimately a failed pursuit if judged too absolutely.
My mother's Uncle Curtis served as an early example of both diligence and patience.
BrightIdeas!
Harold Edgerton: Death of a Light Bulb (1936, printed later)
" … the crutial resource I need to deploy to succeed."
I learned early in my consulting career that my most successful clients started their projects with the worst ideas. These often seemed initially inspiring but ultimately unrealistic, and rarely survived into implementation. The less successful operations married their earliest notions and spent the bulk of their development efforts trying to avoid divorce. They would end up implementing something nobody really needed to satisfy some urge that hadn't survived the earliest phases. The most successful companies seemed to be most skilled at skewering their originating BrightIdeas!
I later realized that all development efforts start with BrightIdeas!
Lowbernation
Edward Clark Potter:
Sleeping Infant Faun Visited by an Inquisitive Rabbit (1887–89)
"All might be right with the world contained within the midsummer guest bedroom walls."
Midsummer brings a lethargy every bit as overpowering as any mid-winter might induce. In both instances, the weather turns inconveniencing, even menacing, introducing a definite reduction in initiative. If I'm not finished with my outside work by ten in the morning, I'm best off just forgetting about making progress that day. When the mercury fails to make it below seventy overnight and has already climbed to eighty before six, its trajectory becomes obvious. This is a performance I've seen before. In my youth, I'd head for the swimming pool and stay in the deep end all afternoon. Now, I head for the guest bedroom to lie beneath a screaming ceiling fan to read another detective novel until I doze. I swear I never know where any of those afternoons go.
I later take to the back deck and water the planters.
Tariffied
Lucian and Mary Brown:
Untitled [baby reaching for typewriter] (c. 1950)
"Nobody ever applauds a terrorist."
Far from appearing to be a skilled negotiator, our incumbent exasperates his counterparts by continually switching his terms. On trade, he made up a "novel" definition of tariff, one which no economist can make heads or tails of. He promises one thing before reneging, typically delivering some punishing terms to trading partners who've loyally served as our manufacturers for decades. Even where no hope of developing domestic production exists, he hits a former partner with some punishing, seemingly random blow. Nobody knows what he's trying to do. If anything shines through his increasingly thin veneer of sanity, his trade negotiation policies qualify as nearly pure insanity. Or, perhaps, they're only inanity. The two seem indistinguishable in him.
The urgent need to seem victimized might fuel much of this theater.
Disasters
Thomas Rowlandson:
The Double Disaster or New Cure for Love (July 10, 1807)
Published by Thomas Tegg
" … after the previously almost unthinkables start occurring regularly again."
In an apparent contradiction, MAGA governance has ushered in an unprecedented —and indeed, previously unthinkable — number of Disasters. From airplanes suddenly falling out of the sky or inexplicably leaving taxiways on takeoffs or landings, to so-called Natural Disasters, those deemed caused by acts of a somewhat less than benevolent God, the MAGA-verse has seen more and worse than recent administrations. While the incumbent hastily explains that these can be traced to lingering effects of President Biden's administration, no explanation seems entirely necessary. Actual Disasters come from nowhere, are utterly unforeseeable, and provide almost endless potential for sympathetic photo opportunities. Few things demonstrate an administration's authority more than mustering the National Guard to help locate flood victims with their Hueys. This sudden spate of horrible events might have boosted the incumbent's ratings.
His incessant budget cutting and reallocating could be seen as at least a proximal cause of this shocking increase in Disasters.
3rdWorld
Vasily Kandinsky: Painting with Green Center (1913)
"Nobody imagines us essential anymore."
I was born into THE 1st World nation. Others would catch up to become almost our peers, but for nearly all of my years, my country held distinct advantages over every other country in this world. In the early years, this advantage encouraged our compassion. Sure, we still exhibited vestigial evidence of a lingering arrogance, but we were most often seen as benefactor and breadbasket, goodwill ambassadors more than vicious competitors, except with the Communists, of course, but we invented our Communists because we needed the appearance of competitors. We could well afford to be egalitarian, and we befriended everyone we could. We agreed to host the United Nations headquarters, and few could question the reason. We were the original democracy, and we were definitely interested in sharing our social technology, even when, unfortunately, it was not of our target's choosing.
We always had a primitive minority who opposed modernity, seeing government programs as reckless intrusions into sacred traditions.
UnAmerican
American Issue Publishing Co.: Liquor Problem: United States.
A "wet and dry" Map of Temperance Reform in the U.S.:
"Wet" and "Dry" Map of the United States, January 1, 1912:
Areas shown in white are areas in which
the sale of alcohol is prohibited by law.
(1912)
"I wonder if we can survive until the curtain rises on our next performance."
This year's 4th of July, coming on the day our incumbent signed the most repressive bill in American history, didn't hardly seem worth celebrating for many, me prominently included. I moped around the place, grieving for a fictional America I still believed in, for that's what makes me an American. This new bill seemed too gawd-awful cynical to accurately represent actual American interests. It seemed unworthy of even any Banana Republic, and might be evidence that we've finally gone and done it, become the very opposite of our Founders' originating intentions.
There was always much contention between the pretensions necessary to maintain governance and what are widely considered to be rights and freedoms.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 07/03/2025
George Platt Lynes: Frederick Prokosch [writer] (c. 1950)
Worsen Our Collective Experience
I suspect that one of these days, the old Father Forgive Them For They Know Not What They Do routine will finally lose traction, especially in a country predicated upon the notion that we could and so really should be striving to improve rather than incessantly backpedaling. Our latest ignorance seems forced and unconvincing, as if we had not been living for the last three-quarters of a century. Ignorance didn't used to be a choice. It could appear without overdue blame before the Enlightenment. After, those who chose to ignore history's lessons tended to undermine themselves, so most avoided dabbling in it on anything like a societal scale, except for those who gained their power and authority by associating with the biggest losers in history. One by one, the more primitive philosophies bowed down to emerging realities, and while all was still not entirely right with this world, things were arguably better, enviably so.
But being human, we couldn't just accept obvious improvement and retire to smell sweet roses.
Cluelessnesses
Raphael Sadeler, the Elder:
Allegory of Wealth, Lust, and Stupidity (1588)
" … some just manage to cope better with its presence."
M'Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in our imagination,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
on Earth as within our deepest intentions.
Give us this day our enriched white bread,
And forgive us our debts
As we persecute our debtors.
Lead us well beyond temptation and
Forgive us our Cluelessnesses
As we persecute those who seem most clueless to us.
Award us the franchise to deliver evil,
that we might finally vanquish decency,
For thine is the power and the glory
We intend to invoke forever and ever. Amen
Raphael Sadeler, the Elder:
Allegory of Wealth, Lust, and Stupidity (1588)
" … some just manage to cope better with its presence."
M'Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in our imagination,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
on Earth as within our deepest intentions.
Give us this day our enriched white bread,
And forgive us our debts
As we persecute our debtors.
Lead us well beyond temptation and
Forgive us our Cluelessnesses
As we persecute those who seem most clueless to us.
Award us the franchise to deliver evil,
that we might finally vanquish decency,
For thine is the power and the glory
We intend to invoke forever and ever. Amen
Humildity
Wayne Miller: Heat Wave, August 1947 (1947)
" … shirts that wrinkle far too easily in such low humidity."
When I was twenty-three,I experienced high humidity for the first time. I could not believe that people could tolerate living with it, that every soldier in the Civil War wore a heavy felt wool uniform and still managed to move around in that stuff. I promptly contracted a severe case of sun poisoning, a condition I had previously been blissfully unaware of existing. It occurs when bright sunlight filters through extremely moist air. The effect seemed similar to what happens when sunlight passes through a well-focused magnifying glass. I blistered and felt seventh-circle-of-Hell horrible for a week, taking ice baths and slathering ineffective calamine lotion all over my upper body. I had never really bought in to the concept of an Old Testament vengeful God until that experience. I wear long sleeves and havelocks through my summers now.
Summers here near the center of the universe feature a drier heat, the sort that vacationers to the Southwest use to explain away triple-digit temperatures.
Moosenator
John Woodhouse Audubon:
Servus alces, Moose Deer. Old male & young. (1845-48)
" … a little heaven here in The Villa so close to the center of our universe."
I have no more steady companion than our formerly feral male cat Max. Since he became a member of our entourage five years ago, he has accumulated a fair raft of nicknames, if only because he's a member of our family and everybody in our family gets assigned at least one nom de famille. He sports several, including: Maximum, Moose, and Moosenator (pronounced Moose-EN-a-tor). Those who ask why I call him moose, I answer by insisting it was because of the antlers. Of course, The Moose does not actually have antlers, which might be my point. Perhaps the finest reason to assign nicknames in the first place involves the creation of an absurdist mythos around the old family unit. I imagine myself a budding Roald Dahl, writing a book about the wholly unlikely adventures of a typical American family who just happens to have a Moose and a Muse involved. I believe that every life requires some air of mythic mystery surrounding it. Mine features a Moose.
The Moosenator is clever, but not particularly intelligent.
Good For A Goose
CHope (90)
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iAlogue (1)
Letters to the Editor (1)
NextWorld (91)
Personal (19)
Steam Festival (4)
Vaporized (6)
Work (16)
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