The Wisenheimer Brainstorm

Going back to the Sir Thomas More eyes for a second, remember these?

He was this highly intelligent dude that lived 500 years ago.   I was looking at his painting and thinking wow dude, I'm sure you were smart, but five-year hundred years ago, people had all kinds of crazy ideas.   For starters, most people believed that the earth was the center of the universe.  Then, they had all these alchemists (including no less Isaac Newton) trying to make gold out of everything and poisoning everybody with mercury in the process.   And doctors?  Well lets just say that I'm sure you wouldn't want to be under the care of any physician or surgeon back then.
   

After a little San Pedro Mescal, I commenced myself to a wee bit of thinking, to wit: what would people 500 years from now think about our ideas and beliefs?  We hardly know the first thing about the complex interplay of the human body.  Scientist are just now starting to study the gut  microbiome which may be one of the primary players in health even though for centuries we have been clobbering it with anti-biotics, vitamins, and lord knows what not.  Similarly, there is a whole unexplored world of fungi in the soil that we have been similarly altering without really knowing what we are doing with new fangled crop sciences, herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers.

 Nature has been evolving for millions of years.  It is perhaps naive to think that the recent scientific "advancements" in crop science in the past century or so would not be without repercussions when they have altered what has been going on for eons.  What would you rather eat? Something from McDonald's or a diet from Japan or one of those islands off the coast of Italy where 50% of the population live to be over 100? It is probably not an accident that the longest living people on this planet eat a diet similar to what their great great great great great grandparents were eating and not the recent fad diet coming from a "nutritionist" in the U.S.
 
I envision a future where there are all sorts of sophisticated monitors in our body to maximize our own potential by recommending that we eat the right foods in the right amount at the right time-- then, of course, the inevitable sip of a bit of wine and all the programming goes out the window.  Its the old maxim:  "whats the point of having a rule if you can't break it?"

Moonrise expresso Avec novel de graphic 

Miss jubilee Avec humdinger en Augusta 

And I for an Eye

Ok, I know its Fourth of July weekend, and I shouldn't be talking about work, however, I need to touch briefly on the art on the wall of my office.   Here it is:  

Ta da!   Ok, that's an old picture from my old office downtown taken four years ago.   Here is what my office looks like in the photo I took today at work: 

Ta da!  This painting, by former Springfield artist Andrew Woolbright is of Sir Thomas More, the almost patron saint of Lawyers.  He wrote the book "Utopia" and for his efforts, he was beheaded by King Henry VIII.  There is a famous original portrait of Sir Thomas More painted in 1527 by More's friend Hans Holbein which now hangs in the Frick Collection in New York City.   As you can see, Woolbright's painting is an abstract version of the Hobein masterpiece:  

I was intrigued by Woolbright's abstract riff on the original portrait.   I mean here we have the "original" lawyer, all black and white, full of clear cut and unambiguous rules, regulations, checks and balances being morphed into abstraction where nothing is clear and everything is blurry.   What might seem like a good Utopian idea in the abstract becomes messy and fuzzy upon implementation. Indeed, Woolbright told me that his original vision for the painting was to juxtapose More with the "Utopian" St. Louis public housing project of  Pruitt-Igoe of 1950s St. Louis which ended as ignominiously as More's neck.   I discussed Pruitt-Igoe in a blog in 2011:

http://sittinginmotion.blogspot.com/2011/09/things-that-dont-go-together-5.html

Also interesting is Woolbright's treatment of the More's eyes.   Note in the original portrait, More's left eye seems tired as if it has seen too much of this world, while his right eye retains its steadfast vision of some ephemeral truth:

Christopher Andre, in his book "Looking at Mindfulness" states that one eye is "sharp with attention" while the other is "soft with compassion."  Andre suggests that we cultivate a mindfulness practice "capable of both."

It is fascinating that Woolbright picks up on the difference in the eyes in his painting:

Note that More's left eye in Woolbright's treatment is clear and sober, like a placid pond while the right eye is obscured in swirls.

Draw from this what you will.   I certainly will.   We are creatures of dreams and creatures of practicality all rolled into one.   May we keep our head on our shoulders.