Edges | The Direction of Intention

Our Roots [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on August 21, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

Kerri snapped this morning. “How can they support this…cruelty!” she cried. “They” are among those we call family who adamantly embrace the inhumanity of the current administration; those who vote for the cowardice of the republican congress, the enablers of the ruthlessness and corruption. Those who consider themselves righteous.

“Clocks, for some reason or other, always seem to be marching, and armies never march to anything but doom.” ~ Alan Watts via The Marginalian

This was the sentence I was reading when she snapped. I admit that I grew irritated. This is a conversation we’ve now had a thousand times and I was not ready to have it yet again. It is a conversation that only marches to doom. Loss. I suppose it’s like grieving a death; it’s not one-and-done. We lose people in pieces, again and again and again. Sometimes the grief jumps out of the forest. An ambush. Kerri was waylaid this morning.

Every story needs an antagonist. How painful and confusing is it when the antagonist captures the heart and mind of someone you love? “How can they support this…cruelty!” she cried. In the previous nine hundred loops through this despair I’ve found flimsy justifications: “They are in the Fox News bubble,” I say, or, “They don’t really know what they are supporting because they are being told that you and I are the enemy.” I gave that up a hundred loops ago. I have no more excuses to make or rationales to offer. Those are the tools of the third child, the peacekeeper-at-all-cost.

There is no excuse. There is no rationale. There is no common ground here. The word “family” has crumbled. We distance ourselves because we want nothing to do with this level of depravity, this dedicated ignorance.

When I was in my twenties I placed the Rocky Mountains between me and my family. I had to know who I was separate from them. My mental, physical and spiritual health required distance and disconnection from dysfunction as the only route to know myself as healthy. My Rocky Mountain Rule was life-saving but required a great deal of grief. I spent hours staring into the ocean. I spent years walking the shores of The Puget Sound.

“I think this is why I love the ocean. It’s the most difficult part of nature to mess up with emblems and symptoms of man’s dissociated consciousness. It’s an environment in which the awareness of our roots can awaken, in which space (so real because of the light and color) can be seen to be joining things instead of separating them.” ~ Alan Watts

Kerri is experiencing her version of The Rocky Mountain Rule, as are many, many, many people across this nation. In separating themselves out, they are finding themselves, joining themselves. In distancing herself from this level of depravity, in placing a metaphoric mountain range between her and those who share ancestral blood, she is finding and affirming the very essence of what she believes.

In arriving unequivocally at, “I am not that,” one steps solidly onto unambiguous ground of self-actualization, “This is what I believe.” And there is no going back over the mountain. The cry, “How can they support this cruelty!” is not about “them” at all. It is a cry of love as a north star, a rejection of institutionalized hate. It is a cry of humanity refusing to enable the selfish inhumane. It is a cry filled with the grief of loss, and the utterly profound recognition of the inseparable nature of moral conscience. It is empathy that cannot ignore the pain currently being gleefully inflicted upon others. Their pain is her pain. Her pain is their pain. A joining, “…the awareness of our roots.”

Kerri’s legacy is available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about FAMILY

likesharecommentsupportthankyou!

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Identity, KS Friday, Uncategorized | Tagged: alan watts, ancestry, artistry, awareness, corruption, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dysfunction, family, grief, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, roots, self actualization, story, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Check In With Bigfoot [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 18, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

Last week we began each day reading a draft of a book written by our pal Rob. It’s about werewolves. At the end of each day we watched an episode of a television series about the search for Bigfoot. In the middle of the day we checked in with the news of the day. It occurred to me that I have an easier time believing in Bigfoot than I do in the daily horror of the current administration. I laughed when I realized that spending time with werewolves was preferable to spending time with cowardly republicans.

What does it say about current events when the werewolf escape fantasy is more plausible than the actual reality of these United States?

Plausible means something is reasonable, believable, or likely to be true.

Philip Roth wrote that “You can’t write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent.” When governance becomes episodic reality tv, when leaders post for “likes” and troll for attention rather than lead, when debates are canceled because they have devolved into opportunities for sound bytes and no longer serve as forums to discuss issues…we are no longer dealing with actuality, we’re way beyond farce or satire and are solidly lost in the theatre of the absurd. The hyper-focus on the immediate gain destroys the foundational necessity of the enduring ideal. Beckett could not do justice to grotesque characters like Todd Blanche, Pete Hegseth or the mobster-in-chief himself. Up is down and down is up. There is so much gas leaking from the daily-gaslight that we live in actual fear of someone lighting a match.

“Absurdist theatre (such as the works of Samuel Beckett or Eugène Ionesco) relies on fragmented plots, nonsensical dialogue, and a radical breakdown of traditional logic and communication“

A radical breakdown of traditional logic and communication. Doesn’t that aptly describe the current republican congress and authoritarian administration? Nothing is reasonable, believable or likely to be true. And yet, the senate continues to vote to confirm the grotesques while the press core acts as if the crap-thinking is credible. The pedophile pretends to be president for yet another day.

The seals clap, the billionaires cluck, the hardworking people are scooped up by masked men and disappeared as flock cameras track women across state lines while trying to exercise autonomy over their bodies, now a high crime for a woman in a nation that espouses freedom. The purpose gets lost in the fragmented plot. Reality undoes invention.

Yesterday in the space between werewolves and Bigfoot we took a walk. I stood on the bricks while Kerri photographed the enormous Hibiscus growing behind the Art Center (now, doesn’t that sound like a setting in an absurdist story?). I was suddenly overcome with the impulse to toe-kick the bricks just to make certain that they were real. I breathed a sigh of relief when my foot met something solid.

Testing reality with my toe. Fact checking each and every bit that we hear as news. Walking to the marina to clear our minds and hearts from the constant onslaught of fabrication, propaganda and lie. Wide-eyed, watching the world of humans eagerly aim a phone-camera at itself, not recognizing the willing reduction of precious life, reality, to second-rate-performance-art-invention.

We are relieved each night to slip into bed, escape the daily horror story by asking, “Do you want to check in with Bigfoot?”

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE BRICKS

likesharecommentsupportthankyou!

Filed under: Edges, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: absurdist theatre, artistry, Bigfoot, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fiction, gaslighting, invention, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Philip Roth, reality, Samuel Beckett, story, studio melange, the melange, werewolf | Leave a comment »

Not Hyperbole [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on August 6, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

I added an addendum to my post yesterday. I’d purposely avoided the news of the day. I was in overwhelm with the corruption and blatant disregard for human life by the current administration. I was tired of asking myself and others, ‘How is this possible?” And then, right before I scheduled my post for publication, I saw a news report of the fires in Spokane and around the world. And, as fate and the algorithm would have it, right next to the news of the fires burning across the globe, was an article about Shell Oil’s massive surge in profits. I wanted to vomit. This was my addendum from yesterday:

(a note about the current state of the nation and the world: today I simply do not know what to say. There is fire. The oceans are heating. River’s are drying. Crops are dying. And, “Shell reported a massive surge in profits, posting second-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings of $9.84 billion, more than double the amount from the same period last year.” What is there to say about people setting fire to their neighborhood and then finding pleasure in profiting from it?)

My question was not – and is not – hyperbole. “Carbon dioxide emissions are the primary driver of global climate change.” Oil. Gas. Petroleum. Coal. What is there to say about people setting fire to their neighborhood while finding pleasure in profiting from it?

This is not a challenge without a solution. We-the-people and the people of the world have the capacity and the technology to slow the warming if not turn it around. Our challenge is not will. Our challenge is the profit of special interests. Rampant greed. It fuels the cries that climate change is a “hoax,” it is the driver behind the current attempt of authoritarian take-down of our democracy.

In the era of the emergence of the corporate monster from the swamp, Teddy Roosevelt – a Republican – warned that the only protection a citizenry had against exploitation by the monster was a strong government willing to regulate its actions. Our current situation is not a new challenge in the USA:

“At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will…Now, this means that our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics.” ~ Teddy Roosevelt, The “New Nationalism” speech, Osawatomie, Kansas, 1910

The difference between now and then is the scope of the existential crisis. Teddy Roosevelt cited the Civil War which was a very real threat to the existence of our nation. Our warming globe threatens the very existence of humanity. This is not hyperbole. The water wars are on the horizon. Crop failures, the collapse of the food supply, are a reality today. This is data. Information. It is knowledge that somehow has not landed as understanding in the corporate boardroom or the republican congress.

Wisdom is nowhere to be found.

Last night we had a discussion with 20 about a man who has made his home a bunker. His basement is filled with canned food. He hoards ammunition because he believes in the coming world bullets will be currency. His is a cowboy fantasy. It is the same fantasy as those entertained in the boardroom and strutted by the maga-republican-madhatters. This man thinks that he will somehow be able to go it alone in a societal collapse. His strategy is built entirely upon the labor and support of others. It has yet to occur to him that his cans of food did not manifest themselves. They represent the labor and service of hundreds of people, people that he pretends that he does not need or depend upon. The same is true of his guns and bullets. He did not forge or construct any of his many weapons. He has yet to consider that his cans and bullets will only go so far. And then what?

Penny wise and pound foolish. And arrogant. And blind.

We’ve only walked our loop twice since June. The storms, heat and humidity have made it impossible. While snapping his photo of the black-eyed-Susans, Kerri said, “I miss our loop. When do you think this gross weather is going to change?” I shook my head, not wanting to say what I was thinking because my thought was cynical: When the people stoking the fire in the world realize that their massive profit will not spare them from the flames.

Earth Interrupted VII, 48″x36″ mixed media

read Kerri’s blogpost about BLACK EYED SUSANS

likesharecommentsupportthankyou!

Filed under: DR Thursday, Edges, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, climate change, communal, community, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, existence, global warming, greed, humanity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, profiteering, story, studio melange, Teddy Roosevelt, the melange | Leave a comment »

Give Voice [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on July 28, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

We saw this phrase printed on a bag in a bookstore. I thought, “It is no small feat to speak truth to power”. Especially for “she”.

Since seeing it at the bookstore, this phrase has come across my screen more than a few times. It is not a platitude. For a woman to choose to speak truth rather than maintain silence, “she” will necessarily step into the fire. Note the Epstein survivors. There could not be a hotter fire and yet, for years, many have chosen the fire. Silence is untenable when silence guarantees that yet another generation of women -sisters, mothers, daughters, aunts – will be abused and discarded. For “she,” the step into the fire is often selfless.

Silence means survival. That is why the fire is so hot when “she” chooses to speak. It is quite possible, even likely, that the fire will consume her. “She” knows that. “She” speaks anyway.

Yet, silence is also a firewall against really living. “She” knows that, too. Silence-transcended is a fire that transforms.

Fire is the threat. Fire is the hope.

Glimpsing some small hope, perhaps the slim promise of change or simply having had enough…breaks the silence. It necessitates voice. Giving voice to truth is shining light into dark corners.

Consumed by fire? Transformed by fire? Either way, it is the fire-of-necessity. It is an incredible act of courage to stand up and say aloud to those who would have “she” remain silent: “This happened. This was wrong. This matters.” ~ Deborah Tuerkheimer, Credible

read Kerri’s blogpost about FIRE

likesharecommentsupportthankyou!

Filed under: Edges, Power, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, breaking silence, courage, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Epstein survivors, fire, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, selfless, silence, speaking truth, story, studio melange, the melange, transcend, transform, truth | Leave a comment »

Get After It [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on July 27, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

What is the target? Get after it.

Is it a dream? An aspiration? Is it as simple as taking the next step?

Get after it.

Is it righting a wrong? Fixing what is broken? Is it seeking justice for an injury?

Get after it.

Is it helping others to survive? To thrive? Is it a course correction, a change of heart or perhaps a full-stop to regroup?

Get after it.

My long ago pal, Roger, once told me that he did not understand people who took their own life. “Why not do anything else?” he asked. “Why not do anything else? Anything.” Doing anything else is a target. It is the target. Live.

No matter what, turn and run into life. Pick a point. Run to that. Pick a rock and sit still. Drink in the enormity of it all. That is a worthy target: drink it in.

Get after it.

No matter what. Today is one of those days to remember that there are moments when everything falls apart just as there are moments when everything comes together. Neither are permanent. Neither are isolated. They are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. Tides.

One day, when everything was bleak, we saw a tiny crack of light; a door just barely open. We decided to walk toward it. We had a target. Sometimes having a target is all that sustains you. And what happens when you reach the door? Do you pull it open? Do you step through it? Do you step back and ponder? What’s the target?

I guess we’ll find out. Either way, we’ll get after it.

read Kerri’s blogpost about GET AFTER IT

likesharecommentsupportthankyou!

Filed under: Edges, Merely A Thought Monday, Uncategorized | Tagged: action, artistry, aspiration, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dream, hope, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, light, purpose, story, studio melange, target, the melange, threshold | Leave a comment »

Read The Rings [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on July 24, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The “Lost Cause” is a revisionist narrative that emerged in the American South after the Civil War to romanticize the Confederacy and justify secession. It falsely claims the war was fought over “states’ rights” rather than slavery, portrays slavery as a benign institution, and asserts that Confederate defeat was caused solely by Union advantages in resources and manpower.” ~ EBSCO

In 2023 I wrote a play entitled DIORAMA that explores our nation’s inability to deal honestly with our history. Even after all of my research and immersion into the topic, I have been agog at the lengths the current administration has gone in the past 18 months to whitewash our history in order to reinvigorate The Lost Cause narrative. White supremacy cannot face the mirror of history so must selectively distort, assault and/or eliminate fact and truth.

Last week Stephen Miller labeled progressives – or anyone who does not agree with his white nationalism – as less than human. We were witness to the president of the United States call the democrats and progressives “a danger to our democracy” and dust off the tired-old-chicken-little-cry: liberals are communists! It would be sad and laughable if history had not taught us of the dangers of desperate dictators and their nationalist sycophants.

As we have previously written, a storm recently broke our mighty maple tree. Kerri’s relationship with this guardian reaches back nearly 40 years. She has a long and precious history with this gentle giant. I have only had a fragment of that time but felt deeply the loss of this near-century old spirit. It is part of our history. As I watched the crew quickly take it down, I couldn’t help but think about how long it took to grow. It seemed unfair how rapidly it was removed.

Destruction is easy. Growth takes time, nurturing, patience. Perseverance.

A healthy history – a healthy nation – relies on the strength of its roots – all of its roots. The rings preserve and tell the story of the good, the bad and the ugly. To attempt to cut out the bad and the ugliness of manifest destiny, slavery, the trail of tears…to eliminate the rings of diversity, suffrage, the struggle for civil rights…is to badly weaken the tree. Kill the history and you kill the root. Kill the root and the democracy will not survive. And that is precisely why they attack our history. To be successful, an authoritarian regime needs to weaken and then cut down the tree of democracy. Systematically. Efficiently. And the fastest route to dismemberment of democracy is to amputate its history, eliminate entirely the struggle for equality.

Of course, like our tree, they can remove the exhibits from the institutions, they can fire women and people of color, they can vilify DEI, they can ban books and force universities to suspend programs of study…but that will never cancel the truth of the history of our nation. It lives in us as powerfully as the history of our tree lives in Kerri.

The Nazis made the same mistake as did the Daughters of the Confederacy when they concocted their Lost Cause narrative. Whitewash only temporarily covers the substance; it is not the substance. We the people hold the history, not a made-up curriculum. History is lived.

We-the-people are the “burning point of our ancestral ship”and history teaches us that sooner or later, given enough time, these scrubbers of history, these fearmongers, will eventually scrub themselves. They will become a single ring in our tree, a marker of a bad time, a forest fire that we survived and transcended. A moment in time that ultimately made our democracy stronger and, hopefully, a ring that marks the time when we finally faced – without fear – the complete story of our nation’s history.

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE STUMP

likesharecommentsupportthankyou!

Filed under: Edges, Identity, KS Friday, Metaphor, Transcendence, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democrat, dictator, fact, history, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Lost Cause narrative, perseverance, progressive, story, studio melange, the melange, truth, white nationalism | Leave a comment »

Our Context [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 23, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Words are never good or bad on their own, context makes them so.” ~Abhijit Naskar

I know what the image is and, even so, it took my brain a moment to make sense of it. It’s what happens when the subject of an image is stripped of context. On first glance this looks like a claw machine in an arcade instead of the last moments of our ancient maple tree. It took a crew less than an hour to reduce a century of growth into a stump. A giant claw easily lifted the massive trunk into an awaiting dump truck.

I am writing this the day after the grifter in the White House served the nation a prime time lie. A well-worn, very tired, endlessly debunked lie. Every statement he made was void of context. He is adept at wrapping simple facts in a morass of made-up hooey. He lost an election. His knows his party is about to lose “bigly” in the upcoming midterms. It can’t possibly be that he is incompetent. It can’t be that he and his party have no interest in governing or a shred of reverence for the constitution or the rule of law. It can’t be that the nation is shocked by the blatant corruption. No, to stay in power, a fabricated context is called for. Fraud! Hoax! Foreign intervention! The loser-in-chief cries again and again and again, “They cheat!”

Context: Over 60 courts tossed his 2020 claims of voter fraud for lack of evidence. His own government watchdogs reported that the election – like all elections in the USA, was free and fair. Context: while he lost, the down-ballot republicans, listed on the very same ballot, in the very same election, won handily. Context: His administration was in charge of the election he claims was rigged against him.

Context question: Are you as weary of this incessant boy-crying-wolf as I am?

“Separate text from context and all that remains is a con.” ~ Stewart Stafford

His cries of corruption in our elections are a deception. He is the corruption in our electoral process. He is the threat to our free and fair elections. He and his crew are the danger to our democracy.

His prime-time lie, like everything else about him and his crew, is a con. They expect you and me to ignore the context, to swallow their bilge without question. It is less than 100 days to the midterm elections. Our role as citizens in a democracy has never been so clear: first, we must be keepers of the actual context and protect our right to vote. This administrations authoritarian intentions are apparent. Their actions are criminal. It is our context.

Second, after we protect our elections from this assault, we must hold this con man and his mob accountable for their crimes. It is what they most fear, it is why they lie, it is the reason they ask you and me to close our eyes, plug our ears, and pretend that they are not reducing our centuries old democracy into a fascist stump.

In the end, history will place them in their proper context.

Red Bird*, 16″x20″ mixed media on canvas

*This painting has nothing to do with the theme of this post. It’s new. It’s lighthearted – and, like me, I suspect you could use a bit of that.

read Kerri’s vastly different thoughts about THE TREE

likesharecommentsupportthankyou!

Filed under: DR Thursday, Edges, Language, Pattern, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, con, context, corruption, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, election, fraud, incompetence, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lies, meaning making, story, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Take The Keys [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on July 22, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

We’re writing a bit ahead so by the time you read this the smoke may have cleared. However, the challenge will remain.

Kerri just shared a short instagram piece. The cost of fighting the now mega-fires runs roughly a trillion dollars a year. The Instagram-speaker made it clear that, although forest fires happen every year, the mega-fires that are now an annual occurrence are avoidable. He asked an obvious question: why wouldn’t we put our trillion dollars toward combating climate change, toward green energy, toward the future…toward preventing the conditions that produce the mega-fires, tornadoes, floods and droughts that a heating globe produces?

There is a man in our community who claims to be climate scientist. Meet him on the street and he will loudly proclaim that climate change is a hoax. Hit him with some data and facts and he’ll reject it all as “fake science”. Apparently, his belief in himself is more powerful than actual science – which affords him the capacity to claim that only his science is real. It’s the same logic employed by RFK Jr., Dr. Oz and the rest of the authoritarian clown car, including the chief authoritarian who loves to yammer on and on about the virtues of clean coal. This is the same guy that suggested we shoot up with bleach to clean ourselves of COVID, the same man who lost an election six years ago and to this day refuses to accept the truth. His only recourse is to foment lies – much like the man in our community who thumps his chest on city streets and insists that he alone is the steward of facts.

It is no small challenge we face.

We took the keys from my dad when dementia unplugged him from reality. He slipped into a world all his own and that made him a danger to himself and to others. Listening to the confirmation hearings of Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton, the ramblings of a president in obvious mental decline, the white nationalist ravings of Stephen Miller…it’s time to take the keys. The whole maga country club is unplugged and dangerous.

Even though the actual fires are hundreds of miles away, the air in our region is too dangerous to breathe. That’s the way the systems on earth work. We are not separate no matter how much the current administration would like to pretend that we are. The number of tornadoes are breaking records. Record rainfall is causing flash floods here, there, and everywhere. “The world’s oceans absorb over 90% of the excess heat trapped in the Earth’s climate system. This relentless absorption is driving ocean temperatures to record highs, warming at double the rate they were twenty years ago.” (NASA Science)

The rising temperature in the ocean is akin to the canary in the coal mine. Our canary is currently motionless at the bottom of the cage.

We are the frog in the pot yet still might have the capacity to control the stove if we show up en masse to vote, if we fight to protect our vote from the crew that insists on living in their alternative facts, who claim to be cowboys but daily cry that they are victims of the past administration-or-plots-or-the-other-party, that their facts are the only facts, even when nothing they espouse lines up with demonstrable truth. They want power in perpetuity and will do and say anything to get it. Anything.

The reality that they deny – or are too morbidly wealthy to see – is that they, too, are frogs in the pot. They believe power and money will put them out of reach of the natural disasters that they conveniently ignore. Magical thinking. There is, after all, only one pot.

It’s time to take the keys before their hubris – or dedicated ignorance – kills all of us.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SUNRISE THOUGH SMOKE

likesharecommentsupportthankyou!

Filed under: Edges, Flawed Wednesday, Pattern, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, climate change, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fact, fires, forest fires, global warming, hubris, ignorance, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, science, story, studio melange, the melange, truth, vote | Leave a comment »

The Clouds Part [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 9, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

In Seattle, after weeks of being shrouded in clouds, Mt Rainier would suddenly appear and people would exclaim, “The mountain has come out!” I almost wrecked my car the first time I saw it. Living now as I do, near the shore of Lake Michigan, when on a clear day we walk to the park or the beach and look south, it is possible to see the tallest buildings of Chicago. I think, “The city has come out.”

Unlike Mt. Rainier, a formidable presence towering into the sky, Chicago appears as a distant mirage. A beckoning.

Kerri has her entire life kept a daily calendar that doubles as a journal. Her calendar makes it possible for us to look back in time and re-member when memory has scrambled experiences. This past weekend Dogga turned 13 years old and we were reminiscing about the events that led us to suddenly have a dog. We were fuzzy on the details so Kerri fetched her calendar and we found ourselves reliving our initial meeting, my near spontaneous move from Seattle to Kenosha, and the moment on the road trip between those two cities, driving a Budget truck loaded with paintings, that we saw a sign for “Aussie pups” and decided to stop. We revisited each day in that wild progression and marveled at how much we’d forgotten or rearranged in our minds. The clouds part. Our life together towers and we are amazed.

What of the road ahead? It is a distant Chicago. I remember my grief on the morning after the election. The ugliness that loomed was hazy on that morning and has become crystal clear in the subsequent months. Masked thugs hauling people into concentration camps. The suspension of due process and habeas corpus. The utter corruption of the Department of Justice and FBI. An all out assault on the vote and right to protest. The collapse of the two party system, the rule of law and co-equal branches of government. The unmasked and unbridled profiteering of a president, his family and his party.

Kerri’s daily calendar entries rarely chronicle the political chaos but captures the details of our passage through it.

We’ve learned much about the underbelly of our nation. We’ve learned much about the bright lights and courageous spirits pushing back while holding the torch of democracy high, inviting hope and lighting a path through this dark time.

Someday, perhaps 13 years from now, we will have grown fuzzy on the details, and will pull out Kerri’s calendar and revisit these days and remember how the people of this nation came together to secure their democracy against a fascist near-takeover. That, at least, is my hope, my dream for our future. The clouds will have parted and we will ask, “Do you remember how the nation came out?”

read Kerri’s blogpost about DISTANT CHICAGO

likesharesupportcommentthankyou!

Filed under: DR Thursday, Edges, Metaphor, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, chronicle, corruption, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, diary, fascism, government, hope, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, memory, story, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Cosmos Questions [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 2, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Named after the Greek word kosmos (meaning “harmony” or “ordered universe”), cosmos flowers symbolize peace, balance, tranquility, and the harmonious arrangement of the world.” The Everpresent A-EYE

I am having an existential moment. That means that I am swimming around in the notion that there is no meaning or order in the universe and it is up to me to make it for myself. That’s a lot of responsibility! What if I am responsible for my own happiness and I screw it up!

I was not having an existential moment until I looked into the symbolism of the Cosmos – the flower – and bumped into the etymology and meaning of the word “cosmos” which is “the universe viewed as an orderly, complex, and harmonious system.” There’s plenty of science to support the orderly, complex yet harmonious system we know as the universe. I appreciate actual science that begins with a hypothesis, experimentation, observation, test upon test, verification, and drawing conclusions…and knows with each evidence-based conclusion, with each answer, bigger and bigger questions open.

I’m convinced that, unlike the spiritual traditions of the east, the three great western religions fear the absence of meaning (what happens after I die?) so they’ve constructed a very simple answer (I go to heaven if I’m good and hell if I’m bad). They’ve learned that people are more malleable and easily controlled if their cosmos is organized around fear, particularly the fear of breaking a rule and falling out of favor with an angry old father. Fear is an organizing principle that produces conflict. It is possibly why we have, as Joseph Campbell said, “3 names for the same god so we can’t get along.” This god is a colonist for sure: the shepherds of his flock control by pitting one group against the other. In this vast unknowable universe the shepherds claim the cranky old father chooses favorites. His is an autocracy made complex by his fickle love, contradictory rules and penchant for punishment. Sound familiar?

But that’s not what threw me into my existential crisis.

On our walk through the neighborhood we passed a house with brilliant cosmos. “I love those!” I said. I do. Cosmos may be among my favorite flowers. Kerri took a picture. I was not surprised when I investigated the symbolism of the simple cosmos-flower and found harmony, peace and tranquility. I was surprised to find, at the bottom of my screen, a box with this siren-call: Ask Me Anything.

Anything? A little cocky A-EYE box that promises an answer for anything?

I am suspicious of a little box that promises easy answers just as I am of religions that promise heavenly solutions – just as I have rolled my eyes for a decade at a bloated man in a blue suit who daily trumpets, “Only I can fix it!”

Ask me anything. Only I can fix it.

What if there isn’t an answer? What if it isn’t broken?

I find that it is more meaningful – and helpful – when my gods are silent, like a good parent, who, rather than dosing me with easy answers, helps me to find a better question. It may be frustrating at times but working and searching for my answers helps me grow.

Just so, the best leaders do not elevate themselves with boastful guarantees that they alone have all the answers. The best leaders elevate others. They seek answers with their constituents, answers that open doors to better questions. They welcome debate. They unify and facilitate. They focus energy into a common direction, making life better for all.

I stared at the box: Ask Me Anything?

“Okay,” I thought and smiled. “Two can play this game.” Into the A-EYE box I typed, “What’s your question?”