Archive

Tag Archives: Thomas Carlyle

The All-Important Body of Work

May 4, 2015
Uncategorized
2 Comments

body of work 050415

A few months and a seeming hundred years ago, I was living in Cottonwood, Arizona, and working at the front desk at Sedona Winds Independent Living Retirement Community in the Village of Oak Creek. Every 3-to-11 shift I worked part of my job was to create a new menu for the next day. When the dining room closed for the day I’d remove that day’s menus from the menu holders and then place the next day’s menus in the holders. We recycled some of the menus as scrap paper. Many of my posted images on this blog were created on the backs of those menu scraps.

One such remained unfinished at the time of my departure from Sedona Winds and subsequently from Cottonwood. I remember it had a swirly, flowing backdrop and some of a triple-acrostic poem entitled “Body of Work.” I thought of it as perhaps 80% finished and in need of a bit more structured image and a good punchline/last line for the poem.

After I finished the Pat McMahon page, I thought “Body of Work” would be a good one to finish. Alas, I have not been able to find it, though I looked every place it could possibly be. (Of course that’s not true, and I’ll probably smack my forehead with my hand when it turns up.) Lacking the original, I set about making another one. The above result bears almost no similarity to the original, nor should it–I’m different now, and have hundreds of hours more pencil work under my belt. The spirit is probably similar, though. It is an admonition to Produce. Not for the first time on this blog, I’ll print Thomas Carlyle’s famous quotation:

Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God’s name! ’Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day: for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.

My grandfather, Paul L. Householder, gives us the other quotation, the one on my image: “Do the thing and you shall have the power.” Daydreams are good only to the extent that they raise yearning to the level of a need to accomplish. Soon or late the daydream must end and work be performed to make the daydream real.

At sixty years of age, my memory is starting to decay. My left elbow thinks it needs oil a la the Tin Woodsman, and my linework, I being left-handed, gets the occasional elbow yip sending my line askew. My eyesight is astigmatic enough to give me two full moons for the price of one. But I will Produce until my night cometh.

Less Prediction Production More

January 16, 2013
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Image

The 16th-Century apothecary and prognosticator Michel de Nostredame, popularly known as Nostradamus, is most likely better-known than the 20th-century biochemist, raconteur, limericist, Futurian, essayist, humorist, correspondent, toastmaster, and, yes, prognosticator, Isaac Asimov. Dr. Asimov is perhaps best known for his Foundation series, which covered more than a thousand years of Galactic history. But he also wrote Asimov’s Guide to Science, Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, and about four hundred other books that made him the only author to have original writing in every single major Dewey Decimal System classification in the library. His daily writing streak extended from his teens till close to the end of his death at 72. In addition to his books, he corresponded with EVERYONE who wrote him–over one hundred THOUSAND letters.

Indeed, one of the biggest regrets of my life is that I never wrote him. I wanted to–I had found what was perhaps a fatal flaw in the logic of his science-fiction short story “Billiard Ball.” But I had not the wherewithal to do so. Alas! His letter to me would have been one of my most prized possessions.

My late, great father was fond of saying “Less prediction, more production.” This is the latest of my several salutes to him. And I’d also acknowledge Thomas Carlyle for his immortal quotation: “Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God’s name! ‘Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.” And–what the hell, grateful acknowledgment also to Harlan Ellison, writer of more than one thousand short stories, without whom I might never have read Carlyle’s quotation.