From My Work-in-Progress Basket

Elegant Solutions

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Saturday, September 22, 2018

Delray Beach, FL – In his book In Pursuit of Elegance, Matthew E. May tells a story about Drachten, a Dutch village that had a serious problem with traffic at its main intersection. The village hired an expert, Hans Monderman, to help them reduce congestion and accidents.

The conventional way to do this is to implement various measures to get cars to slow down. Unfortunately, such measures – including stoplights, radar-controlled equipment, and a beefed-up police force – are expensive. Since Drachten had a small budget, Monderman was forced to do something different.

He realized that this was an opportunity for him to test a theory he had been developing about human behavior: that the more controls you impose on people, the less self-control they are likely to exhibit. In his words, “Treat people like zombies and they’ll behave like zombies. But treat them as intelligent, and they’ll respond intelligently.”

So instead of increasing traffic controls in the middle of town, he reduced them to a startling degree. Instead of adding regulations, he suggested repealing most of them. No speed bumps, no speed limits, no signs, no mandates about right of way.

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Notes From My Journal

A Passing Jealousy

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Thursday, September 20, 2018

Delray Beach, FL– Walking to my office, a woman passes me, going the other way. She is attractive. Tall, lean, and handsome. And I notice that she is dressed attractively too, in a linen skirt and matching jacket.

She pays no attention to me. She is looking ahead, walking with a confident gait, speaking animatedly into her phone. I hear one phrase: “I mean… you can’t wear it all at the same time, can you?”

And that sends me spiraling into that existential despair. No, not despair. More like ennui. No, not ennui. But a pang. A reminder of how much I’m missing.

“I mean… you can’t wear it all at the same time, can you?”

I’m not judging her, as they (imprecisely and insistently) say these days. I’m jealous of her. Truly.

She is living in a world I do not, have not, and never will inhabit. Yet it’s a full world and it seems to me to be in many ways a happier one than mine.

I try to imagine what things in life I loved that much – what material objects gave me such pleasure that such an idea would have occurred to me.

I am a little sad that I have never felt that way: that I wanted to have it all but at the same time.

Of course, that world is entirely open to me. I have only to wish to enter it to become a denizen. Why don’t I?

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A Word to the Wise

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Today’s Word: rood (noun) Rood (ROOD) is an old word for crucifix. As used by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his historical novel The White Company: “By the black rood of Waltham!” he roared. “If any knave among you lays a finger-end upon the edge of my gown, I will crush his skull like a filbert!”

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From My Work-in-Progress Basket

The Miracle of Compound Knowledge

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Thursday, September 20, 2018

Delray Beach, FL – I have a little gift for you. A simple idea that can mean the difference between struggling and being immensely successful. It is a very small idea that will be worth a great deal to you if (a) you really understand it, and (b) you make it a part of your life.

The idea in a nutshell: Knowledge is a form of wealth. Like wealth, it provides dividends if it is invested. Over a long period of time, those dividends compound. Eventually, they become gargantuan.

Let me explain.

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Notes From My Journal

More on Caring Less: The Questionable Virtue of Restraining Desire

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Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Delray Beach, FL-“The discipline of desire is the backbone of character,” wrote Will & Ariel Durant.

That’s different from the Buddhist idea of extinguishing desire. The difference is profound. And it says something about two different worldviews.

The Durant idea is very Western, very Christian – almost Puritanical. It is about self-restraint. About reining in one’s natural impulses. This is a view that sees desire (and the temptations that come from desire) as inherent to the human condition.

The Buddhist idea is about letting go. It is about giving up desire. Energetically, it is the opposite of restraint. It assumes that desire is extrinsic to the self – that the self can be separated from desire.

For the Durants, life is a struggle to resist one’s inherent desires, and the effort to resist builds moral muscle. A good or virtuous person is one who strongly and continuously resists temptation.

For the Buddhist, extinguishing desire (caring less) is not about character but about wisdom.

Let’s say K and I agree that we will go to the Norton Museum Saturday afternoon. I know there is a possibility that we may not go. Still, I allow myself to look forward to the trip. Saturday arrives and K tells me she cannot go. I am disappointed, on the verge of anger. I want to blame her, which will cause a fight and more pain. So I control myself. I restrain the desire I have to act out. I behave myself. I behave like a person of good character.

But if, instead, I take the Buddhist path, I do not attach myself to the prospect of going. While scheduling the event, I consciously detach myself from the anticipation of it. I allow myself not to care. By doing so, I spare myself the possibility of pain if it turns out we cannot go, while not diminishing in any way the possibility of joy.

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Fun and/or Interesting

Art Notes

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Ernesto “San” Avilés

Van der Weyden + Des San Juanes, 1969

I have more than a thousand works of art in my collection. This little painting by Salvadoran artist San Avilés is one of my favorites.

As you can see, San Avilés can display the technical skill of a classically trained master, but there are always elements in his compositions that veer from the expected. In the case of this painting (which was painted in Paris in 1969), you have a very common subject: Christ being lowered from the cross. However San Avilés’version – sensual and rich in religious symbolism but without any apparent dogmatic intent – is far from traditional.

It sits on an étagère in the billiard room outside my gallery office. It is surrounded by many larger and more imposing pieces, but it seldom fails to catch my attention when I step into that room. And when I see it, it pleases me.

Browsing visitors notice it too. I like to watch how their expressions change as they take it in. The technical mastery of the composition itself draws them to it, and the subject matter makes them think for a moment that they are looking at a Renaissance painting. But then the bits that are missing – figures to support Christ’s body and the face of his mother – tell them they are looking at a post-modern painting. One unlike anything they’ve seen before.

Or such is my interpretation of their expressions.

San Avilés is one of more than 30 modern masters featured in Central American Modernism / Modernismo en Centroamérica, a book I have been working on for nearly 10 years.

For more information on the book, contact Suzanne Brooks Snider: suzanne@rojasford.com; (561) 512-2467

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Worth Quoting

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Worth Quoting: “There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.” – Logan Pearsall Smith

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