Brown Eyes

“Suzuki-roshi, I’ve been listening to your lectures for years,” I said, “and I really love them, and they’re very inspiring, and I know that what you’re talking about is actually very clear and simple. But I must admit I just don’t understand. I love it, but I feel like I could listen to you for a thousand years and still not get it. Could you just please put it in a nutshell? Can you reduce Buddhism to one phrase?”

Everyone laughed. He laughed. What a ludicrous question. I don’t think any of us expected him to answer it. He was not a man you could pin down, and he didn’t like to give his students something definite to cling to. He had often said not to have “some idea” of what Buddhism was.

But Suzuki did answer. He looked at me and said, “Everything changes.” Then he asked for another question.

—David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

Everything changes, and everything ends.

Max rules the skies

Our son Max was selected to work at American Airlines in summer, at the Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona.

He learned more about data analysis and flew to other cities, such as Chicago. Max already has another job at a different airline, set for summer, 2025.

Misa has fun with my siblings’ grandchildren

We saw more of my family than usual. Many new, little people kept us entertained.

With newest boy, Harvey Forrest Fulker

Hannah Duke bestows my long-awaited knighthood

Misa at her favorite restaurant in the world, You See Sushi
And yes, she says it’s better than any place in Japan

No, I haven’t finished the picture yet

Early in the year I decided my sky wasn’t working, so I scraped all 28 feet of sky off, then began again. You can see more of the work, eternally in-progress, on this page.

Canvas 2 with sky scraped off

Misa and JP drive around the Southwest

We got to see family and friends in Dallas, Prescott, Morro Bay and San Francisco this year. That’s a lot of road trips for this reluctant traveler.

In Morro Bay, I thought to paint a picture of this famous feature, Morro Rock. Our motel room looked directly at it. Unfortunately, the unobstructed view seen here was visible for exactly twenty minutes, during the entire week. The rest of the time, the Rock was covered in fog.

It looked like this

Surrendering to the gods of weather, I found this stand of trees in the inland valley and set up my paintbox. I hadn’t painted outdoors in many years, and wondered what I could do in that athletic situation.

I could do this

View from the International Space Station

The French biologist Jaques Monod wrote about the scientific enterprise:

We must create both things and ideas. There is a basic misconception about the role of science: that the purpose of science is to create technology, when technology and applications are by-products. The most important results of science have been to change our view of ourselves, the meaning of our existence.

I make pictures for the same reason, for the change in vision it brings about, and only secondarily for the souvenir produced.

Death

Seven people I knew intimately died since I last wrote. I will write about three of them.

In 1990 I exhibited my pictures at San Francisco Open Studios. There I met a man my age named Randy Sexton. Randy noticed we both painted landscape subjects around San Francisco. We became friends and I spent many pleasant hours with Randy, his fiancee Kim Frohsin, and another outdoor painter, Paul Stempen.

A few years later, on the worst day of my life, Randy and Paul took a day off from work to be with me. I told Paul and Randy how much that meant to me. Both friends are gone now, and I wish I could do more for them, in return. Randy passed away in December, 2023.

My mother, Lila Lee Spence Turnage died in April at age 94. As we can’t choose our family, I’m extraordinarily lucky to have grown up, surrounded by stable, loving people.

Lila would want you to know that she was a strong Christian, and that conviction guided everything she did.

Lila married Bill Turnage in 1953. A few years later, Bill heard the call to Christian ministry, left his career in the building trades and attended seminaries in Texas and Tennessee, where I was born.

L-R Susan, Lila, JP, Bill, Mike

Both Lila and Bill trusted their higher calling to lead them. It led them to an oil and cowtown in the Texas panhandle, a farming community in Kansas, and to Dallas. It was an interesting way to grow up.

Younger sister Teresa and JP at the Alamo

Later in my life, I needed to leave for new places. I had to make choices that appeared reckless, especially financially. Mom and Dad never failed to encourage me to trust my heart. All of us believe in marriage, that people are capable of mating for life. We encourage all efforts toward that end. That kind of support cannot be replaced.

In June, my childhood friend Wesley Drake died in Amarillo, Texas. We attended the first through eighth grades together. In adult life, Wesley worked on the big trucks that ship almost everything we consume. He was a devoted husband and father of two girls. I always admired Wesley’s enthusiasm. When he liked something, be it a girl, a car, or the hard-driving music of Deep Purple, he went all in.

It’s better to conquer grief than to deceive it.

—Lucius Seneca, On Consolation to Helvia

Unemployment

I have not written about my job. I won’t say much about it now.

Since 1999, I worked for Big Financial Company. In August, Big Financial Company decided it was better off without me. Am I better off without BFC? The jury is still out.

After working most of my life, I’ve had four months without a job. I’ve enjoyed the freedom, but have been disappointed at my accomplishments in that time. Probably it will take longer to adjust to this different life. I don’t know if I’ll go back to work or not.

Injury and Healing

A slow-moving, and slower-healing injury took hold of my neck and shoulder, late in 2023. When it continued into the fall, I wondered if I’d ever get another day, free of pain. I’m not quite there yet, but almost. This is entirely due to the magic of Dr. Michael Nobles and the team at Water Sports Physical Therapy in San Diego. If you are similarly afflicted, check out physical therapy. It can work wonders, but again, at a snail’s pace, so the patient must exercise patience.

Back to the Change Thing

To resent change is to wrongly assume that you have a choice in the matter.

—Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic, November 15

I foresaw many of the big changes that happened this year. That didn’t lessen their severity, but it allowed me to prepare. To keep my anxiety at a manageable level, I began copying my favorite book, Journey to the End of the Night, by Louis-Ferdinand Celine. I love the way Celine and his translator, Ralph Manheim use language. Going through their prose slowly might put some of those celestial patterns into my head and writing.

The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.

—Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Journey to the End of the Night

This activity reminds me of the brave students who copy pictures in museums. It’s a long book; I will finish in 2025.

Talking to the past

While waiting for a medical test, I decided to check my email. I saw a message from my art school, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. They send a message about once a month, announcing the news at the school and asking me for money. Most of their news does not interest me, and I was about to press the delete key when I saw a photograph that stopped my heart. It was attached to a story about a studio residency program.

In 1980, a woman named Rosemary Ranck visited the still life studios in the old Peale House, on the north side of Chestnut Street. The photograph she took that day captured several first year students. A pretty, serious-looking girl named Renee sits at an easel in the right half of the image. To the left, we see a doorway, and through that doorway, we see the face of Louise Stotz, the profile of Bernie Coll, and standing over them, a thin young man, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with an ugly mop of long hair and an ill-chosen mustache. That was me. A message in a bottle, from forty-four years ago.

Renee left to study in Paris, the following spring. I never saw her again. Louise and I became good friends and we still talk regularly. Bernie Coll, a polished Apollo in 1980, would die from AIDS in 1993. I was able to visit him, close to the end, and he remembered me.

1987

That tower speaks

In San Francisco, Sutro Tower hovers above the city. It’s visible everywhere, but especially from the west side, toward the ocean, where I lived most of my years there.

2006

April 13, 2024 Saturday

The weather was sympathetic, rain off-and-on all day. In late afternoon I walked with Misa straight west on Moraga, to see the ocean during a break in the rain. There it was, silver and gray, spicy and cold. When we turned around to come back, I saw the monster tower on Mount Sutro. It looked down darkly, like a god on Mount Olympus, seeing the beginning and end of all things. “I watched you drive away from here, twelve years ago,” it said. “I saw what you did in San Diego. Now you’re back. I’ve waited for you.” The Tower remained unimpressed by my return, as it was indifferent to my leaving, but watching, always watching me, always waiting for me.

2024

2025?

After the big changes this year, I would choose a quiet, boring sequel, to adjust and recover. As Ryan Holiday points out above, this is not our choice to make. Bigger changes will come next year. If we are lucky, the world will make hash of our plans and change our view of ourselves, which will be uncomfortable, but also the true value of our explorations, as Jacques Monod observed.