Patterns

The gorgeous clear blue sky would get boring if it only wasn't too cold to admire it much.

Today in one part of town at one particular moment in the afternoon, the clouds arranged themselves into a fishscale pattern. I didn't get a clear shot of it; in this picture the tree is obscuring the pattern.

I find patterns comforting. If you're drawing a pattern, once you begin you're never at a loss about what comes next. Any decisions about altering the pattern are only simple variations; the groundwork is already in place. There are some patterns that are not boring. Escher was a pattern-maker, for example. You could argue that Jackson Pollack was as well.

I read an article recently about how wealthy people think choice = freedom and people who have fewer resources think choice = a burden. As I was making my 20th major decision yesterday at about 10 a.m., I wished I didn't have to make decisions all day. Decision-making can be a burden, even the small choices, when you have a lot of them to make. Having money seems to gives you an escape hatch or the ability to delegate your choices or the situations that call for choices. It's also less likely that one of the options is going to cause you physical discomfort or hardship. Like, if the weather is cold, if you have money you have to decide what temperature to turn the thermostat to. If you don't, you have to decide whether to turn the heat on or not, and if you do you know it's going to bite your ass when you get the gas bill. So, the choice is physical discomfort now, or financial hardship later? It's not "should I set it so I have to drape a cardigan around my shoulders, or should I set it so my daughter can wear a tank top indoors?" When you don't have money, your choice is be screwed now or be screwed later.



I think artists have to be decisive. You have to put what you have out there and can't waffle & cater to much to the opinions of others or your vision gets diluted. You make a choice to put the canvas on the easel and to open the tube of paint containing the color you want. Once you're done you often have the choice of whether to revise, ditch or leave it as it is.

If your threshhold of freedom-to-burden decisions is say 25 major decisions a day, then you better have a simple life that allows you to save your decisions for your work. If you don't have that freedom and can't purchase it, what will you be able to create?

Patterns?



I like patterns. They give me a moment of autodrive so I can postpone the shift from freedom to burden just a little longer. I like knowing what time to get up in the morning. I hate it if I have to make a new decision on what time to get up every morning. When I don't have to get up, I get up anyway so the mornings that I do have to get up are easier. I don't mind eating the same thing for breakfast every day and I could go for weeks eating the same dinner everyday. I don't care. I even like Starbucks, because the drinks always taste the same. You can spend the same $3 at another place but you may end up wondering when the last time they cleaned the espresso basket was or whether they were using it as an ashtray. Independent places may be charming, but if I'm spending $3 I want to know what I'm buying, plus I'm happy that Starbucks at least makes health insurance available to its employees. If I could toss away money on a risky espresso and if I never knew what choices the uninsured have to make, maybe I'd be more of a fan of charming coffeeshops.

I like to save my decision-making for things that do matter. Right now the ground is shifting below our feet and I don't like it. I can't make decisions until I know how things will turn out. Some decisions now are experimental in nature. How will this work? Of course you hope it will work well, but if it doesn't you have more big decisions to make and more work to make the right choice. And you never know if you've made the right choice because you don't know what would have happened if you chose the other direction. It's hard too when people are very willing to criticize your choices from the outside especially if you know if those critics were on the inside playing your hand, their opinions would change.

As for the Big Choice, let it be made clear that I am completely pro-choice.

Artistically though I believe I'm entering a period of really enjoying patterns.