View Above Hutch’s Pool In the Santa Catalina Mountains — Image by kenne
— John P. Milton
Sunset Over The Tucson Mountains — Image by kenne
— Ganga White
Tourist In Other People’s Reality (1974) — a caricature of kenne
In 1974 an artist friend I worked with at a publishing company drew this caricature of me trying to include all the things he felt identified with me. For a long time, it hung on the wall in my office(s). One day I used a sharpy and wrote on the glass of the framed poster, “I’m a tourist in other people’s reality,” which sums up my life. I borrowed the line from Susan Sontag’s book (On Photography), “The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.”
— kenne
Pinned on the wall in the drawing is the Edmund Burke quote:
“No men can act with effect who do not act in concert;
no men can act in concert who do not act with confidence;
no men can act with confidence who are not bound together
with common opinions, common affections, and common interests.”
Catalina Foothills Sunset — Image by kenne
I went to the [desert] because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
— Henry David Thoreau
nearlywildcamping.org
— kenne
Rose Canyon Lake On Mt. Lemmon — Image by kenne
“But I’ll tell you what hermits realize.
If you go off into a far, far forest
and get very quiet,
you’ll come to understand that
you’re connected with everything.”
– Alan Watts
Sunset After the Rains — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Desert Globemallow — Images by kenne
— kenne
Female Phainopepla Photo-Artistry by kenne
— Paulo Coelho
Digital Image by kenne
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.
— from “What I Have Learned So Far” by Mary Oliver
Swimp Boats At The Rocky Point (Puerto Peñasco) Port — Computer Painting by kenne
Graphic Pen Art by kenne
— Paulo Coelho
Source: William Morrow/HarperCollins
It’s just a little after midnight in Tucson, and I’m having trouble sleeping. It could be that Joy is having surgery later today. It could be that in this age of hand-held technology, it was several hours ago I received a news alert on the passage of Robert M. Pirsig at age 88.
In the 1970’s I was interested in motorcycles — own a couple. It was a time in which I loved reading about technology and philosophy. So, in 1974 when I read a review of a recently published book, “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values,” I went out and bought a copy.
The inside cover jacket begins with a quote from the book:
“ The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon.”
What better way to write about the conflict between science and religion, and the nature of Quality in art than to have it as part of a motorcycle narrative of a trip Pirsig, his eleven-year-old son, and two friends took from Minnesota to California? As it turns out, the real journey was not a motorcycle trip, but a philosophic trip that centers on an insane passion for truth.
In February of this year, I posted a blog entitled, The Zen of Visual Imagery – Balancing Passion and Obsession, in which I reference the novel I have worshiped over the years. Whether in my own teaching of educational philosophy or photography, I can’t talk about life without referencing Pirsig for the truth. It is time for a Chautauqua.
–kenne
Sunrise On Wildhorse Trail — Image by kenne
— Alan Watts
Female Phainopepla — Image by kenne
— kenne
