the Wakefield Doctrine

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Famous (and Doctrine fav) painting by Maximillien Luce. Man sitting on a really rudimentary bed, almost a cot (or to use the more archaic, ‘pallet’) judging by the really spindly legs under the bed which has an orange blanket the appears (in this image) to be tufted, but that wouldn’t be right for the era. The man in the photo is sitting on the edge of the bed, adjusting the cuff of his trousers (which are brown). He has on a white(wish) shirt and a tie. He has one shoe on (right foot) and the left shoe is in profile to the right of his left foot. The shoes are black and they are of a style that would come up over the ankle. (‘High tops’ would be not only anachronistic, but ‘flippant’ as the man in the painting is serious about getting dressed.) The room also has a narrow table with a blue pitcher on it. There are four pictures on the wall, the lower half of a skylight and, I can’t explain it, but what for all the world appears to be a rubber chicken suspended from the ceiling above and behind the man. The man has a beard. His eyebrows are a touch arched, one could be forgiven for thinking, ‘a roger wakes up and wonders when the world will recognize his contributions.’ This photo courtesy for the Metropolitan Museum and there is a description on the page this image was copied from:
‘This intimate scene depicts Luce’s close friend and fellow painter Gustave Perrot “getting up” and dressing as morning light streams through a garret window. Luce enlivened the traditional subject of an artist in his humble living quarters with a vivid palette of red, orange, yellow, and blue, applied in stippled brushstrokes, in keeping with the newly minted technique of pointillism. Little is known about Perrot, aside from the fact that he died young. In 1892, his brief career was remembered in a fifteen-work tribute held at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris.’
(For the record I neither painted nor do I own this painting or any rights to it. image courtesy The Met.org)

Each week(end) Josie Two Shoes opens the doors of her blog and invites one and all to participate in the bloghop, Ten Things of Thankful (TToT). In the simplest of terms, theme is to recount/share/relate and retell recent, (and far distant past), experiences that have elicited a sense/emotion/feeling of gratitude. It’s easy. It’s enjoyable and, sometimes, in some circumstances, it can be quite beneficial.

The people, places and things for which I am grateful this week are:

1) Phyllis: she has the capacity to achieve and accomplish much in the world of the everyday work and life and such. She has, somehow, succeeded in maintaining that element of herself that is not bound to the concrete, conventional, objective everyday world of work and life and such. She has a tree house and enjoys the very idea of such a thing.

2) Una: those not familiar with the life, canine, might be forgiven for thinking, ‘yeah, but she’s just a dog. Nice, but not a human. She can’t talk, is limited to the things a dog does which is sleep eat, bark and need to be let out twice a day’. Una is a dog. She can communicate (with those for whom a relationship exists), does only the things that a dog every life form does, sleep, eat, make noise and ask for assistance. She lives her life to the fullest in each moment. I should be so fortunate to have even a 10th of her capacity to make the most of life.

3) The Wakefield Doctrine:  a serendipitous intersection of perception, inspiration and reflection that resulted in a coherent perspective on life and the world and everything. It’s been a while since anyone asked, so following is the ‘Eureka Moment’ of the Wakefield Doctrine:

One day in 1981 or ’82, I was visiting my friend Scott at the music store where he worked, doing repairs on musical and electronic equipment. While I was there, a man came in with a double cassette recorder, put it on the counter and said to Scott, “This thing is brand new and it doesn’t work.” Scott looked the recorder over, noticed that it’s controls included a Volume control for each of the two cassette recorders and a single Master Volume control. The Master Volume control was set at ‘0’. Without a word, Scott turned the Master Volume up to ’10’, took a piece of black electrical tape and covered it over. He slid the recorder back over the counter and said, “All set.” The customer plugged it in, ran it through its paces (it allowed recording from one cassette to another) and everything worked perfectly. The man thanked Scott profusely and left the store. At that moment I realized that all reality is, to a degree, personal. The ‘solution’ that Scott came up with was nothing even close to what I would have thought to offer, in principle or in execution. It was, however, clearly consistent with the way that my friend interacted with the world. The Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) rose from that moment of insight.

4) Writing. It’s fun, in a horribly, painful-until-its-not and then it’s, like more fun-and-satisfying-than-almost-anything.

5) The community of the TToT (and the Six Sentence Story) and the Gravity Challenge. The internet does one thing better than anything else: it allows realities to exist (for a second, for a lifetime) that simply would not have ever existed otherwise.

6) Work. (most of the time). I watch ‘How It’s Made’ a lot. (I’m a clark, so, duh.) There are times when people are shown working at a task both simple and repetitive. At this point, I always say to Phyllis, “8 hours a day, 5 days a week.” I’ve worked at such jobs. Phyllis’ profession is of a much more…varied nature than the operation of a punch press or picking thousands of fish off the deck of a boat. This does not mean that Phyllis doesn’t work just as hard as the Peruvian, chewing coca leaves and happily weaving baskets of straw. As a matter of fact, the Wakefield Doctrine maintains that, ‘Everyone works just as hard as everyone else.’

7) ‘Home and Heart’ working on Chapter 15 for the weekend. (This will be an ‘interlude’ chapter. Sister Ryan will be creating an more and more effective social media campaign to pressure the Bernebau Company into stopping their foreclosure of her mother’s house. Drusilla Renaude and Arlen Mayhew are in the middle of getting the marketing up and running for the biggest development Crisfield MD has ever seen. The two efforts have a common point, one Cyrus St Loreto. They will be in conflict.) Go to jukepop and read and vote, please.

8) Book of Secret Rules (aka Secret Book of Rules)

9) (garden photos tomorrow)

details at 6

10) SR 1.3

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