Approximations

When I took portraiture classes in college, one of the first habits I had to shed was approximating. For instance, how do most people draw a person?

Circle for a round head.  Rectangles for arms and bodies and legs.  Garnish with a triangular nose and ovals for eyes. Draw the outlines of the shape and then fill in the details.

But how does an artist imitate the living? She starts from the inside, then fills out.  See how the light spills over the shadows, and shade in the shapes.  Show the negative space to create the solidity of permanence. Start from the planes of the cheeks, the dips under the eyes, the gleams inside the pupils, the creases of the brow and the quiver of the lips – begin with the details and the image will be true.

Never mind approximating, truths are in the details.

Most of us, me included – most of us approximate in our lives, don't we.  We approximate in our words, in our wants and in our interactions.

We toss words like love and honesty and hate around carelessly, without thinking about their terrible power.  And when we glide over those powerful words, we buttress them with generalizations like great and awesome and fantastic -- to the point where those things lose all their meanings.

- Dude I had an awesome time!
- That was a great show!
- She's a fantastic person.

With technology, definitions, once the domain of specificity, migrate to an anything-goes frontier.  Strangers offline are counted as 'friends' online. "Shock and awe", what does that even mean? Mission accomplished, are you kidding me?

With information overload, simplicity is valued over subtlety. Articles in 'serious' publications can be reduced to Powerpoint bullets – with so many channels out there, it's easier to filter (and dumb down) ideas so the eyeballs will (ironically) stay interested for a shorter amount of time.  Otherwise, they'll move on.  And the race to the bottom – where ideas increasingly gets simpler and more approximated – speeds up.

We don't even know what we want. It's easy to approximate, though. "I want a: good career, healthy relationships and enough leisure time. But what do all those things mean? A well compensated job, not feeling lonely, and 2 week vacations per year?  Perhaps. But what about beyond? How do salaries and security and holidays relate to what we really want? Behind the approximations, behind the images, things are more complex.

I suppose that's why the self-help section at the book store is so big.  We approximate so much that we seek help – the only problem is that we seek solutions that are easy, that tells us to simplify our lives, that reduces a successful (what the hell does that mean) life to a list of steps, to do's and neat-sounding empty phrases.

We live in silos. Our spiritual interactions are handled by the approximators behind the pulpits.  Do these things, believe in these edicts, and everything is taken cared of, they say. You are the same as the others in the pews, they say. We venture out of our caves only to seek justification for what we are doing in others. Friends are good for agreements, for support. Disagreements are disagreeable because "you don't know what I'm going through!".  We need solace in generic worlds. To specify is to reveal too much of ourselves, to confront too much of our fears --that we're all flawed, all ignorant, all bound in a complex world that may not have resolutions.

But the only resolutions that matter are the ones that are specific to us, right?  And so the sad thing is, we continue to seek generalized resolutions -- because there's some level of comfort in the herd. And so it goes round and round.

It happens each April. I think of all the details, the billions of cause and effects, of murmurings and whirrings, of living and dying – all the specificities that occur every spring that creates the same exact happenings – each and every year.  The earth opening up after the rain, of damp dirt and wriggling grass – the faint stirring of expectation hanging in the breeze, the twitters of invisible birds among the rustling branches, the tart and blush and warm and sweet and heavy and light smells of the awakened gardens, the emotions of tangerines and peaches, milk-oranges and limes...

It amazes me. In an 'awesome' way.