Sunday, December 30, 2012
Year's End
I keep coming back to the issue of acceptance of change ... I feel like a broken record. Funny, isn't it, that people under 35 and maybe much older, don't have recollection of 'broken records' ... of the LP that got scratched one day or covered by little fingers and their finger food ... and kept playing the same few seconds of a song. I look at those folk who are near and dear to me and flashback 40 or 50 years to a time when they were vital, sharp and maybe less prickly.
I don't know why people who are > 60 or so get prickly and short but they do. Maybe the question is better asked about why they don't get pricklier, still? That process, alone, of seeing those who are close to me fading ... I wrote a ditty almost twenty years ago, now, about finding a pair of wing-tipped shoes at the bottom of my closet ... I called them witnesses to God's sinister plan to turn a person with all of his/her aliveness into lore.
Yesterday, a listserv of colleagues went a bit off the deep end ... I don't know how old people are on this discussion board, except for one of my students from 30 years ago ... he says he's 65. But a bunch of the others began the friendly silliness of of double entendres .... not my thing. I read through them with no interest in participating. They began this after some bullied a lost member purportedly for having bullied them.
It's perfectly consistent with some of the rules of what a Doctor from Vienna called the Unconscious ... das Unbewusste .... the Unknowable. In the firs place, if Alice does something to Barney, in her mind she won't be able to distinguish between that having occurred and Barney having done that to her. And secondly, if Alice blew Barney away, she is not unlikely to switch the violence to humorous play.
In any case, I had no particular interest in playing. We had just returned from a trip to Disney planned by one of my kids (calling a 46 year old man a kid may be a poke at an old pig, in itself) to get all the cousins, together. Funny. They're my grandkids but have a life of their own as cousins. Go figure! Anyhow ... the colleagues online reminded me of the three eight year old girls loading a Hangman App onto a laptop (actually, an iPad) and repeated word-guessing just two words ... penis and vagina and giggling as little kids are prone to do.
I don,t think I would've joined in with the online folk even if I wasn't in midst of a cardiac arrhythmia .... a much better witness than Cordovan Wing Tips that I've grown old.
Enough ... New Years Eve I'll spend with M and with my longest-standing and closest friends ... When I met Milt, he was a newly minted professor and now he's a newly retired professor. And Ruth couldn't have been more than 27 when we all met at a Department Xmas party in December 1968. WTF! and how does that happen, BTW?
Happy New Year.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Families Gather
We gather together .... A trio who sang peace songs, Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers, sang a curious one which had the following lyrics ... "And when I die ... and when I'm dead, dead and gone ... there'll be one child born and a World to carry on, to carry on." The Fox in the Little Prince says that ritual is necessary so that he knows when the farmers are busy dancing with the girls allowing his an entre into the chicken coops of his World in order to dine. The first works better for me, at least Playing in Life's Fourth Quarter.
Perhaps, this holiday was the first for me in which I felt my family and its begats as an unfolding of generations ... M and I began this madness in 1965, the year that a harmless flirtation turned into a marriage. 1966 and 1967 saw the appearance of two cgildren and a tgird little miracle, this time a girl, appeared the same year the Eucharist Congress occurred in the Philadelphia we then lived in and was highlighted, just at her debut, by a visit from the Vatican's finest.
In a talk around 2000, I spoke of another innocent flirtation ... this one not with a hot young girl but with a hot idea that would follow me through my writings from 1978 to ... well ... I imagine, at least, to the grave. This had to do with the primacy of seeing another as a person, a subject, a doer in their own right ... and how hard that was for humanity.
In any case, the family enlarged with in-law kids and our charming grandspawn .... the first in 1999 ... then the only boy to come along in 2001, three more girls in 2004 and the caboose in 2009.
While we've gathered many times, this year was different in many respects. For one, it was all planned in terms of travel and destination by our oldest. He chose a place most of us wouldn't have thought to come ... Disney Florida ... Grandpa Dork doesn't quite belong in Disney, except when he's on the jazz, possibly, and then as a character.
Everyone flew except Grandma and Grandpa who sauntered down the thousand miles by car over some days. My children got along (six grownups individuated in their own very different directions, paired off as part of God's plan .... her mysterious plan) and
the grandchildren, particularly, the three eight year old girls.
Last night was our last one here and eleven of us were gathered in one of the two apartments that we took up during our stay here in Florida. The three eight year olds were busy writing silly and betimes salacious words on a hangman ap and the rest of us ... six of the adults and the two older kids ... took to discussing the religious proscription against gossip and bad speech. One thing led to another ... Leviticus 19 came into play ... "You shall be holy, for I am holy" the Writer/writer reasons and tgen goes on to list one after the other the component parts of the good life. Charity ... not taking advantage of the blind by placing a stumbling block (or does leaving one in place count, too)in their way .... honesty in business dealings .... and the Writer/writer repeatedly hitting the reader with "I am the Lord" or "I am the Lord your God" ... as if to say ... this is Godliness.
Lots of effort was expended on the sentence that combines the need to eschew gossip but to disclose in matters of safety ... "don't stand by on the blood of your neighbor." Discussion wandered to matters of whether responding on the failure of a contactor to do a good job on a listserv was gossip? or protecting the deaf and blind? or honesty in business. Was there a notion of gossip in ancient Greece? Could there, indeed, be a polity in which these very issues weren't a prominent part of the discussion? What did it mean that Socrates was tried and executed for words?
What moved me to quiet tears, though, was the manner in which a new generation and its 11 and 14 year old representatives stood up, so to speak, and announced their presence
in this intergenerational and never-endinding discussion of the good life.
"And when I die, there'll be 6 grands born and a World to carry on, to carry on."
Pretty cool how this whole thing works.
Merry, merry ... Happy, happy.
Howard
Friday, December 21, 2012
Still Caught on Newtown
- On the Pictures of each and every victim ... child and adult.
- On the compassion and/or anger that it has generated in colleagues.
- On the questions that I go to sleep with (hypnagogic thoughts) and those I rise with (hypnopompic ones)
- Why are we so angry at each other ... colleagues, Senators, school kids to each other, ....
- What grows in each of us that bodes poorly for taking on Louis' attitude ... "apres moi la deluge" ... after I'm gone what do I care about those kids ... , I ask myself since this catastrophe that visited, chances are, thousands directly and 100's of millions indirectly. How is it that many, maybe even most of us, develop a sense of caring for the living and for the yet-to-come? Global warming will contribute to rising oceans so that when tsunamis, even little ones, hit the shores of Bangladesh, the Mediterranean, New York, Boston and Philadelphia where I live, they'll wipe out population centers! Why should I care about any time after the Fourth Quarter ends.
In my work, I come to know people who do and people who don't care ... even folk who came to visit my office with a very clear: "What the &%^$ do I care about 20 little rich kids! Angry folk ... well ... too hurt to feel for others, anyway.
How do we come to deal with the truism that for me, for most of us, 70 years from now we become an inscription on a marker in a graveyard that someday, itself, will fall into history.
I wonder a lot about this when I hear the talking heads and Pols ask about why the youngster killed.
We're going away on vacation, soon ... hope to meet up with my 6 grandkids and their three sets of parents, my kids. They're flying and we're driving in ... past Millions of homes on the side of highways, each home with a complex drama going on inside ... Do I pay attention to what I cannot know? or do I "drive-by" ... there's a word with ambiguity attached to it. Do I drive by as if each is little more than bricks and mortar ... frames and windowshades?
Happy Holiday to anyone out there listening. Chistmas celebrates the birth of one child ... by celebrating one morning in the life of our own child, for those among the faithful in Christendom. We shall not ever reach a time when every child is celebrated. That's sad.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Just One More Thing
Many of my colleagues in the Helping Professions who consider themselves experts want to go out and heal, as if they, themselves, had conquered death.
Beware of experts!
Beware of experts!
Death, Be Not So Present
Twenty Little Kids and more than a half dozen Women and a killer who, apparently, everyone thought was odd ... all dead. Friday and it's weekend, three of the major Sabbaths, restful days, all disturbed by gunshots and mourning and pain and of course by ...
Details ... all the talking heads voraciously furrowing for details ... pressing at the State Trooper trying to do his job amidst his own feelings ... details will save us from the horror of 6 and 7 year olds dead for no obvious reason. Getting near to the town ... leaving a Teddy Bear ... trying to balance feeling with not feeling.
A Killer ... I don't know what plagued young Lanza ... who knows. The circulated picture? A confused and different boy ... Asperger's? Maybe. But Asperger's doesn't kill. Alienation for years ... maybe the all too often brought up bullying ... Odd kids are bullied incessantly in school. Another Blogger attacks me for being like the others ... blaming Asperger's. No! There was a law passed in maybe 1974 that required that Odd kids be placed in the Least Restrictive Environment that might maintain, presumably, their academic forward-progress. Odd kids in a school full of odd kids doesn't hurt so much. Odd kids in an environment full of aggression towards the different hurts like hell. Take a healthy kid and put them in a totally different environment that's mocking of those differences for 12 years and you may -- at least part of the time -- create a monster ... full of revenge.
Blame ... I blame an old Law. Others blame the illness or the Mother who collected guns. Some blame the Laws. The Republicans and the NRA! The Democrats and their Godlessness. Huckabee says the schools are Godless and murder is the obvious outcome. I wrote on one listserv that I had considered during a morning fearful reverie that our civilization with it's 20,000,000 people cities and hostile rhetoric and inabilities to embrace difference had reached a tipping point.
Inability to Feel ... The listservs I've been part of are drenched in hostilities. Fights breaking out between professionals who as a widow of one of the great analysts, Sperge English, once opined: "should have known better." Fight! Don't embrace difference. And, damn! Don't feel.
Answers ... We wait on answers that will give us that long-overdue but heralded SENSE OF CLOSURE. There is no closure to mourning. Like any other wave, its destruction depends on its amplitude (its height) and its frequency (the time-distance between crests, for instance). Mourning eases and never ends. Those of us Playing in the Last Quarter, charter members of the Club of Orphans, know well that mourning has no closure.
In my tradition, upon hearing of a near one's death, we rip our clothing in rageful anger, eschew speech and pleasures, and say Blessed is the Truthful Judge. The usual is discontinued until it is possible, once again.
Details ... all the talking heads voraciously furrowing for details ... pressing at the State Trooper trying to do his job amidst his own feelings ... details will save us from the horror of 6 and 7 year olds dead for no obvious reason. Getting near to the town ... leaving a Teddy Bear ... trying to balance feeling with not feeling.
A Killer ... I don't know what plagued young Lanza ... who knows. The circulated picture? A confused and different boy ... Asperger's? Maybe. But Asperger's doesn't kill. Alienation for years ... maybe the all too often brought up bullying ... Odd kids are bullied incessantly in school. Another Blogger attacks me for being like the others ... blaming Asperger's. No! There was a law passed in maybe 1974 that required that Odd kids be placed in the Least Restrictive Environment that might maintain, presumably, their academic forward-progress. Odd kids in a school full of odd kids doesn't hurt so much. Odd kids in an environment full of aggression towards the different hurts like hell. Take a healthy kid and put them in a totally different environment that's mocking of those differences for 12 years and you may -- at least part of the time -- create a monster ... full of revenge.
Blame ... I blame an old Law. Others blame the illness or the Mother who collected guns. Some blame the Laws. The Republicans and the NRA! The Democrats and their Godlessness. Huckabee says the schools are Godless and murder is the obvious outcome. I wrote on one listserv that I had considered during a morning fearful reverie that our civilization with it's 20,000,000 people cities and hostile rhetoric and inabilities to embrace difference had reached a tipping point.
Inability to Feel ... The listservs I've been part of are drenched in hostilities. Fights breaking out between professionals who as a widow of one of the great analysts, Sperge English, once opined: "should have known better." Fight! Don't embrace difference. And, damn! Don't feel.
Answers ... We wait on answers that will give us that long-overdue but heralded SENSE OF CLOSURE. There is no closure to mourning. Like any other wave, its destruction depends on its amplitude (its height) and its frequency (the time-distance between crests, for instance). Mourning eases and never ends. Those of us Playing in the Last Quarter, charter members of the Club of Orphans, know well that mourning has no closure.
In my tradition, upon hearing of a near one's death, we rip our clothing in rageful anger, eschew speech and pleasures, and say Blessed is the Truthful Judge. The usual is discontinued until it is possible, once again.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Writing
Been a while since I opened up my notes on aging. Thanksgiving came and went. Half my family was gone .... always disappointing to recognize that the family that one was born into has gone .... but, of course by the Last Quarter, even the one that you have created has broken into a number of little pieces. I see the sadness in my older son who has decidedly single-handedly to take his wife and child, as well as his two siblings' families to the so-called House of the Mouse. M and I will drive down the 1,000 miles each way and meet them to play a bit.
I think I wrote last year about my oldest grandchild's query while walking through her just-dead great-grandfather's home, looking at the pictures and asking how families are made. She wasn't asking for a sex-education class but a far more profound question about how this thing we call family is constructed ex nihilo ... from nothing.
How do you explain to a six year old that family is a process ... like a fractal ... with one copy birthing many others that are in some ways duplicates of the original. How do we explain it to ourselves as our younger generations have dared disturb the Universe by constructing an identity and a family all their own.
In any case, M and I are tired and struggling at the moment to figure out where the past half century + is packed away. Life, in the end, I suppose, happens along a sinus curve with peaks and valleys full of energy and lethargy. Wake up, wake up, M ... Winter is setting in but there will likely be another Spring.
I think I wrote last year about my oldest grandchild's query while walking through her just-dead great-grandfather's home, looking at the pictures and asking how families are made. She wasn't asking for a sex-education class but a far more profound question about how this thing we call family is constructed ex nihilo ... from nothing.
How do you explain to a six year old that family is a process ... like a fractal ... with one copy birthing many others that are in some ways duplicates of the original. How do we explain it to ourselves as our younger generations have dared disturb the Universe by constructing an identity and a family all their own.
In any case, M and I are tired and struggling at the moment to figure out where the past half century + is packed away. Life, in the end, I suppose, happens along a sinus curve with peaks and valleys full of energy and lethargy. Wake up, wake up, M ... Winter is setting in but there will likely be another Spring.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Inadequate Response to Sktrbrain
Sktrbrain ... Wish I knew how to respond to the sentiments you present ....
The following came to mind ....
Einstein received a letter from a young Palestinian man (I think it's in a collection called Ideas and Opinions [of Einstein]) ... maybe 1947 ... Einstein had much earlier asked Freud for the League of Nations if there was any hope of putting an end to war (published under Varum Krieg? [Why War]). Einstein's answer to the young man was more elegant I think than Freud's, who left it as a need for increasing the recognition of similarities and love to the mix ... more tatological than pragmatic.
Einstein, on the other hand, talked of choosing a group of maybe 10 people ... 5 from each side ... and an agreement to abide by their mediated ruling. I think it was something like a Doctor from each side, a politician from each side and a Mother from each side and some that I forgot.
I am struck, though, that in my own field of working with people who come with personal angst, inevitably I find that these experts, my colleagues, cannot make peace and get lost legislating against each other. At one point, I was paying dues to three organizations that were seeking each other's destruction.
What madness. The people in Judges 12 or 13 send the son of hooker-woman off to fight for them ... Yiftach [the opener] (Jepthah, in transliterated butchered form). He comes to a tragic end. My kids were in the generation between Viet Nam and the Desert Wars ... I'm guiltily pleased for that.
I am a member of an online listserv for such healers. Yesterday, I was filled with hope as the group not only showed concern for each other but shared their gratitudes ... for each other ./.. for the world we get to visit for some number of years .... I did feel ... and continue to feel ... hopeful. Maybe Freud was right in his view that only Love and the Recognition of Similarities will ever act as as buffer against gratuitous enmities and wars. During the day, I had managed to go into a nasty cardiac arrhythmia and found that my Falling Leaves weigh more than my back's listed Load Capacity. So many colleagues held out a helping hand ... ideas for taking care of my heart ... and then began talking of gratitude. One sent a hyperlink to a You Tube ... another a choral rendition of Christmas musiocs by Britten.
Life has its good stuff!
The following came to mind ....
Einstein received a letter from a young Palestinian man (I think it's in a collection called Ideas and Opinions [of Einstein]) ... maybe 1947 ... Einstein had much earlier asked Freud for the League of Nations if there was any hope of putting an end to war (published under Varum Krieg? [Why War]). Einstein's answer to the young man was more elegant I think than Freud's, who left it as a need for increasing the recognition of similarities and love to the mix ... more tatological than pragmatic.
Einstein, on the other hand, talked of choosing a group of maybe 10 people ... 5 from each side ... and an agreement to abide by their mediated ruling. I think it was something like a Doctor from each side, a politician from each side and a Mother from each side and some that I forgot.
I am struck, though, that in my own field of working with people who come with personal angst, inevitably I find that these experts, my colleagues, cannot make peace and get lost legislating against each other. At one point, I was paying dues to three organizations that were seeking each other's destruction.
What madness. The people in Judges 12 or 13 send the son of hooker-woman off to fight for them ... Yiftach [the opener] (Jepthah, in transliterated butchered form). He comes to a tragic end. My kids were in the generation between Viet Nam and the Desert Wars ... I'm guiltily pleased for that.
I am a member of an online listserv for such healers. Yesterday, I was filled with hope as the group not only showed concern for each other but shared their gratitudes ... for each other ./.. for the world we get to visit for some number of years .... I did feel ... and continue to feel ... hopeful. Maybe Freud was right in his view that only Love and the Recognition of Similarities will ever act as as buffer against gratuitous enmities and wars. During the day, I had managed to go into a nasty cardiac arrhythmia and found that my Falling Leaves weigh more than my back's listed Load Capacity. So many colleagues held out a helping hand ... ideas for taking care of my heart ... and then began talking of gratitude. One sent a hyperlink to a You Tube ... another a choral rendition of Christmas musiocs by Britten.
Life has its good stuff!
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Thanksgiving Ceasefire
Haven't checked whether ceasefire between Israel and Gaza has held. Afraid.
I suspect, like many others, I find my sympathies split between innocents on both sides of wars ... for,
indeed, most participants in the product of war (its death and devastation) are innocents ... At least innocent of the propensity to turn hurt to anger to hate to rational decision to exhaust that hate on all others who are 'like' the persons who induced the hurt.
I often in my mind go back to what some feminist thinkers think of as Freud's negative comments about women's uber-Ich (conscience), about women's inability, according to Freud, to make a purely rational decision to offer up hot and cold retribution without being effected by feelings. Wouldn't it be nice if our generals had just a bit of that womanly conscience?
Over the years, I've spoken a number of times about Jonah's lesson on the need to feel at the hands of his God. The teaching moment doesn't come till the end of the story. I suspect this audience knows it but I like telling it ....
God wants Jonah to warn the non-Jewish dwellers of Nineveh (Mosul) to repent or get the shit kicked out of them ... Divine wrath. Jonah the Son of Amitai (maybe best translated as Jonah who came out of Truthtelling) takes the morning boat to Tarshish for fear that if the Ninevites repent, it won't look good for HIS non repented brothers and sisters. The whole thing with the big fish and the big storm happens and the big fish spits him back up on the road to Nineveh. Vocatur atque non vocatur, Deis aderit ... Beckoned or not beckoned, alas, God and all your dilemmas are still present.
Any case Jonah gets to the outside of the Gates of Nineveh, mouths some words, and sits down in his pity pot. It gets hot and hotter. He bemoans his plight ... God grows him a shading gourd ... A kikayon ... and Jonah feels cool. That night, his God brings him an East wind and with the next day's sun and a nasty little worm, the Gourd and it's shade disappear. God asks him ... So, are y'sufficiently pissed-off-depressed, now. Jonah responds ... Damn straight! Then, his God hits him with his teaching moment and metaphor .... You're angrily depressed for the gourd for which you never toiled and I shouldn't cry for the 125,000 of my children and their many cattle that may die of their own corruption.
I don't know how to deal with my need to feel for the needs of the dwellers of all Ninevehs ... All the suffering Others .... And the fact that someday I may have to make the decision to go to war with them. Awareness sucks and Instincts rule. Awareness sucks because, in its healthy form, it brings doubt and the skeptic's paradigm .... Instincts are binary. The still fly is not food to the frog. The moving fly is nothing but food to the frog.
When I was young, mon grandpere would swing a sacrificial chicken over my head ... Take this chicken, God, and not my grandson. Today, many Americans offer up their 'Big Chickens' .... Even if the grandson-now-grandfather doesn't swing a bird over his grandkids.
Wishing for the hegemony of the Female uber-Ich, I remain with warm regard .... Au nom du grandpere
I suspect, like many others, I find my sympathies split between innocents on both sides of wars ... for,
indeed, most participants in the product of war (its death and devastation) are innocents ... At least innocent of the propensity to turn hurt to anger to hate to rational decision to exhaust that hate on all others who are 'like' the persons who induced the hurt.
I often in my mind go back to what some feminist thinkers think of as Freud's negative comments about women's uber-Ich (conscience), about women's inability, according to Freud, to make a purely rational decision to offer up hot and cold retribution without being effected by feelings. Wouldn't it be nice if our generals had just a bit of that womanly conscience?
Over the years, I've spoken a number of times about Jonah's lesson on the need to feel at the hands of his God. The teaching moment doesn't come till the end of the story. I suspect this audience knows it but I like telling it ....
God wants Jonah to warn the non-Jewish dwellers of Nineveh (Mosul) to repent or get the shit kicked out of them ... Divine wrath. Jonah the Son of Amitai (maybe best translated as Jonah who came out of Truthtelling) takes the morning boat to Tarshish for fear that if the Ninevites repent, it won't look good for HIS non repented brothers and sisters. The whole thing with the big fish and the big storm happens and the big fish spits him back up on the road to Nineveh. Vocatur atque non vocatur, Deis aderit ... Beckoned or not beckoned, alas, God and all your dilemmas are still present.
Any case Jonah gets to the outside of the Gates of Nineveh, mouths some words, and sits down in his pity pot. It gets hot and hotter. He bemoans his plight ... God grows him a shading gourd ... A kikayon ... and Jonah feels cool. That night, his God brings him an East wind and with the next day's sun and a nasty little worm, the Gourd and it's shade disappear. God asks him ... So, are y'sufficiently pissed-off-depressed, now. Jonah responds ... Damn straight! Then, his God hits him with his teaching moment and metaphor .... You're angrily depressed for the gourd for which you never toiled and I shouldn't cry for the 125,000 of my children and their many cattle that may die of their own corruption.
I don't know how to deal with my need to feel for the needs of the dwellers of all Ninevehs ... All the suffering Others .... And the fact that someday I may have to make the decision to go to war with them. Awareness sucks and Instincts rule. Awareness sucks because, in its healthy form, it brings doubt and the skeptic's paradigm .... Instincts are binary. The still fly is not food to the frog. The moving fly is nothing but food to the frog.
When I was young, mon grandpere would swing a sacrificial chicken over my head ... Take this chicken, God, and not my grandson. Today, many Americans offer up their 'Big Chickens' .... Even if the grandson-now-grandfather doesn't swing a bird over his grandkids.
Wishing for the hegemony of the Female uber-Ich, I remain with warm regard .... Au nom du grandpere
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Singing in the Last Quarter
Was reading a review of a Leonard Cohen concert ... In part ...
"“Reach into the vineyard of arteries for my heart / Eat the fruit of ignorance and share with me the mist and fragrance of dying,” he wrote in “The Spice Box of Earth.” As an aging lion with a storied past, he does not wish to retire or retreat, but to invite others to accompany him in old age. The love he never gave, he wants to give now.
“I had wonderful love, but I did not give back wonderful love,” he wistfully told a Swedish reporter in the 1990s, according to The New York Times. “I was obsessed with some fictional sense of separation. I couldn’t touch the thing that was offered me, and it was offered me everywhere.”
Growing old means admitting regret, and it has made his music more melancholy."
Regret? I gotta think on that. Maybe it's too late, Lennie? or maybe it's never too late? Time don't pass slowly up here in the endgame.
Back hurts more than usual, today. Need especially today to construct gratitude.
"“Reach into the vineyard of arteries for my heart / Eat the fruit of ignorance and share with me the mist and fragrance of dying,” he wrote in “The Spice Box of Earth.” As an aging lion with a storied past, he does not wish to retire or retreat, but to invite others to accompany him in old age. The love he never gave, he wants to give now.
“I had wonderful love, but I did not give back wonderful love,” he wistfully told a Swedish reporter in the 1990s, according to The New York Times. “I was obsessed with some fictional sense of separation. I couldn’t touch the thing that was offered me, and it was offered me everywhere.”
Growing old means admitting regret, and it has made his music more melancholy."
Regret? I gotta think on that. Maybe it's too late, Lennie? or maybe it's never too late? Time don't pass slowly up here in the endgame.
Back hurts more than usual, today. Need especially today to construct gratitude.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Losing (It) with Grace
After thinking of my sweet pooch's ways of training me, I must report that Gunther Dog continues to prevail. I am a reasonably intelligent Soul and thought, perhaps -- just perhaps, I could get him to compromise on his need to be petted right at the top of the stairs. I was like a wrestler whose name is lost to me ... He would in the midst of a contest point to his brain and say something like "Smart ... I'm smart."
My plan was direct. The stairs begin 5 meters from the bedroom door. Open the door and invite Gunther Dog out for his AM pee. Stop after closing the door and scratch his head for a good bit. Then proceed to the stairs and just keep walking.
Best laid plans of mice and men, aye? I implemented my plan ... closed the door. Scratched Gunther Dog's head for twice as long as I normally would and then proceeded to the stairs. Gunther dutifully followed and sat at top of stairs while I walked downstairs quite alone and feeling defeated.
You win, Gunther.
Reminded me of trying to teach a school full of disturbed urban inner-city high school kids how to read and do Math. But this was 40 years ago and I was younger. I figured, then, that hiring an ex-priest to teach them how to read Latin and having the math teacher slowly go over all the Fisher-Spassky Chess games of the 1972 Reijkavic world championship was better than confronting their resistances. (they never learned how not to read Latin or how not to play Chess.) Damn! It worked like magic, ... then. The big rule in this school that I instituted was: NEVER CONFRONT THE RESISTANCE. OK, Gunther Dog, the Rubicon is not yet crossed. Alia non jacta est!
But, I suppose, another way of saying this is: Lose with grace, Kid! Lose with grace.
OK, Gunther, you win ... at least for the moment.
My plan was direct. The stairs begin 5 meters from the bedroom door. Open the door and invite Gunther Dog out for his AM pee. Stop after closing the door and scratch his head for a good bit. Then proceed to the stairs and just keep walking.
Best laid plans of mice and men, aye? I implemented my plan ... closed the door. Scratched Gunther Dog's head for twice as long as I normally would and then proceeded to the stairs. Gunther dutifully followed and sat at top of stairs while I walked downstairs quite alone and feeling defeated.
You win, Gunther.
Reminded me of trying to teach a school full of disturbed urban inner-city high school kids how to read and do Math. But this was 40 years ago and I was younger. I figured, then, that hiring an ex-priest to teach them how to read Latin and having the math teacher slowly go over all the Fisher-Spassky Chess games of the 1972 Reijkavic world championship was better than confronting their resistances. (they never learned how not to read Latin or how not to play Chess.) Damn! It worked like magic, ... then. The big rule in this school that I instituted was: NEVER CONFRONT THE RESISTANCE. OK, Gunther Dog, the Rubicon is not yet crossed. Alia non jacta est!
But, I suppose, another way of saying this is: Lose with grace, Kid! Lose with grace.
OK, Gunther, you win ... at least for the moment.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
And I envy the Dog
Poor Gunther Dog ... little is known of the plight of the Middle Aged dog living with Older Adults who don't Play nearly as much as they once did in the Fourth Quarter. It took us awhile to find out why he needed to be rescued in the first place ... 8+ years ago from some quick-kill shelter in KY. It's no wonder Sarah Palin was concerned about "death panels" .... and we older folk are concerned about going in to nursing homes. But Gunther, as we were to name him after a fallen colleague, must've gotten himself into trouble. He hated men or maybe it was the other way around ... maybe he came to hate men who hated him. We'll never know.
In any case, Gunther has developed a night and morning ritual. He spends the night in a chair that sat in Marsha's parents' den and gets there as soon as he has his evening pee and is told that it's time to go upstairs. Gunther, I should point out, isn't walked ... he goes out in the yard, alone ... pees alone and returns to several words that he knows (he's originally from Kentucky .... Shoulda called him Daniel Boone or something): "Gunther ... wanna go upstairs."
Gunther flies up the stairs and looks down ... "Hey, you comin'?"
Then, he climbs on the bed and gets looked at by his adoptive Mother and jumps onto his chair for the night.
Morning comes and Gunther waits patiently until I shower and dress ... oh! and I get to pee, as well. He looks at me pitifully, especially if I'm struggling to get my pants on ... "Poor Old Man with a bad back." Gunther has a troubling oedipal complex and clearly prefers children and his Mom to me but in the morning, I feed him and let him back out into the yard before his breakfast.
He has a certain ritual, though; he has his ways. He begrudgingly climbs off the chair and follows me in the dark room into the lit hall where he walks to the top of the stairs and sits. If I do not come and pay homage to the Great One (all 40 pounds of the mangey mutt) by stroking his head, he refuses to begin his descent. I must scratch his head and invite His Majesty the Dog down for breakfast and then ... and then ...
The SOB shows his stuff ... Without missing a footfall, he descends the stairs .... in a blurry (to his myopic Dad) motion ... left-front with right-rear blending into right-front with left-rear into left-front with right-rear, etc. Show-off! Proving a point!
"I'm a mind to just feed you dog food, this morning ... then see who is boss."
Oh! The shame of envying one's dog.
In any case, Gunther has developed a night and morning ritual. He spends the night in a chair that sat in Marsha's parents' den and gets there as soon as he has his evening pee and is told that it's time to go upstairs. Gunther, I should point out, isn't walked ... he goes out in the yard, alone ... pees alone and returns to several words that he knows (he's originally from Kentucky .... Shoulda called him Daniel Boone or something): "Gunther ... wanna go upstairs."
Gunther flies up the stairs and looks down ... "Hey, you comin'?"
Then, he climbs on the bed and gets looked at by his adoptive Mother and jumps onto his chair for the night.
Morning comes and Gunther waits patiently until I shower and dress ... oh! and I get to pee, as well. He looks at me pitifully, especially if I'm struggling to get my pants on ... "Poor Old Man with a bad back." Gunther has a troubling oedipal complex and clearly prefers children and his Mom to me but in the morning, I feed him and let him back out into the yard before his breakfast.
He has a certain ritual, though; he has his ways. He begrudgingly climbs off the chair and follows me in the dark room into the lit hall where he walks to the top of the stairs and sits. If I do not come and pay homage to the Great One (all 40 pounds of the mangey mutt) by stroking his head, he refuses to begin his descent. I must scratch his head and invite His Majesty the Dog down for breakfast and then ... and then ...
The SOB shows his stuff ... Without missing a footfall, he descends the stairs .... in a blurry (to his myopic Dad) motion ... left-front with right-rear blending into right-front with left-rear into left-front with right-rear, etc. Show-off! Proving a point!
"I'm a mind to just feed you dog food, this morning ... then see who is boss."
Oh! The shame of envying one's dog.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Playing "after" the Last Quarter
Last night was the election here in USA. We'll see how it all flushes out, eventually.
Past couple of days, however, has brought me into contact with two 90+ gents ... I had some friction with both, though I had no intention to initiate such adversarialness. Both men were angry ... one was speaking publicly. I suggested how nice it might be to get, if we had time, to a related issue .... and ... he unloaded on me. The other was in a reading group to which I belong ... he expostulates ... goes on and on, as if what he was saying was obvious when it wasn't, at least not to me.
In spite of my age-related infirmities, I suppose it is possible that I'll reach my 90's .... and become obstreperous and begin to pontificate. Now, it hadn't passed me by that in writing a blog, one may well go on and on, as if the world were interested. I remember often lunching with a friend ... 30 years my senior but we had been chums together in an educational institute for a number of years. I recall one incident (though similar events were not infrequent) in a restaurant where he ordered a sandwich and coffee. The waiter brought out the coffee and E. went after him ... "When someone orders coffee, don't you know that they want it AFTER the sandwich." And he went on and on.
A dozen years ago, I wrote about a mirror phenomenon ....
"I sometimes imagine an array of mirrors. Some of these surfaces are fine reflectors while others are foggy or cracked or but partially reflective due to some aging process in the surface’s material. Some face each other and others face away. Diagonal, orthogonal, pairwise skewed — a congeries of mirrors set in a never to be replicated pattern.
Past couple of days, however, has brought me into contact with two 90+ gents ... I had some friction with both, though I had no intention to initiate such adversarialness. Both men were angry ... one was speaking publicly. I suggested how nice it might be to get, if we had time, to a related issue .... and ... he unloaded on me. The other was in a reading group to which I belong ... he expostulates ... goes on and on, as if what he was saying was obvious when it wasn't, at least not to me.
In spite of my age-related infirmities, I suppose it is possible that I'll reach my 90's .... and become obstreperous and begin to pontificate. Now, it hadn't passed me by that in writing a blog, one may well go on and on, as if the world were interested. I remember often lunching with a friend ... 30 years my senior but we had been chums together in an educational institute for a number of years. I recall one incident (though similar events were not infrequent) in a restaurant where he ordered a sandwich and coffee. The waiter brought out the coffee and E. went after him ... "When someone orders coffee, don't you know that they want it AFTER the sandwich." And he went on and on.
A dozen years ago, I wrote about a mirror phenomenon ....
"I sometimes imagine an array of mirrors. Some of these surfaces are fine reflectors while others are foggy or cracked or but partially reflective due to some aging process in the surface’s material. Some face each other and others face away. Diagonal, orthogonal, pairwise skewed — a congeries of mirrors set in a never to be replicated pattern.
I imagine choosing a spot in a singular mirror upon which to focus my gaze. I shall have arrived at this moment and this place and this choice of spot after years of trekking through many other such mirror mazes. Still, I shall now marvel and fascinate at the array of sequential visions that are visible through this chosen spot in this mirror. The images will stare back at me at that moment. Not simple images, but compound ones that, if I look with care, may include me, the intrusive observer who has inadvertently been cast as a shadowy figure in his own observations. And after all is done and looked at, what shall I know of what I see? What is? What is smoke and mirrors? And what may be contingent on the choice of the chosen spot arrived at here at this random point in the midst of travels? And what shall be known of the identity of others who fortuitously may be looking in on this maze of mirrors just as I do? ' ...
Many such conclusions that arise from such observations are responsive to queries relating to who I am in the diverse roles that I come to play in life. Who am I as child to parents? Sibling to brothers and sisters? Friend to friend? Lover to lover? Parent to child? Among them are those relating to who I am as a gendered other to my others. Male to Female and other Male? Female to Male and other Female?"
Geez ... life is complex.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
An Old Man Feels Shame
The lights did go out and so did the heat. It was dark and it was cold ... true it is. Psalm 140-something has it "before His chill, who can stand?" .... Well, indeed, most of us can. I found a pump in a local hardware chainstore and managed to pump out the 3" of water, not the 9" of anticipated rain. 300 or so candles and blankets and sweaters did the trick. And then! irony of ironies ... just shy of four days into "the big chill," I heard a noise in my office. Poor old man! What was it but a laser printer in the office going into its warm-up routine. That was 3:00 pm, yesterday. All the other amenities followed suit ... phone, internet, etc. Went to eat with some kids and grandkids and went to sleep in an already warmed home.
Then, it was like a Scrooge nightmare. I already heard about the devastation on the Atlantic Coast and NY City and Staten Island and Lord-knows where else. 2:00 AM and the sense that I had just experienced the petty narcissistic cave-like experience of a neurosis .... that's more or less all I could experience during those four days ... the petty disturbances of life by candle-light, sweaters and blankets. Oh, yeah! Gunther-dog was shivering and Pretty Girl Freud le Chat looked annoyed.
Sat around till 4:00 AM thinking about how easy it is to feel sorry for oneself.
Ach du lieber ... enuff!
Then, it was like a Scrooge nightmare. I already heard about the devastation on the Atlantic Coast and NY City and Staten Island and Lord-knows where else. 2:00 AM and the sense that I had just experienced the petty narcissistic cave-like experience of a neurosis .... that's more or less all I could experience during those four days ... the petty disturbances of life by candle-light, sweaters and blankets. Oh, yeah! Gunther-dog was shivering and Pretty Girl Freud le Chat looked annoyed.
Sat around till 4:00 AM thinking about how easy it is to feel sorry for oneself.
Ach du lieber ... enuff!
Monday, October 29, 2012
Madamoiselle Sandra
When King David was old and cold they brought him a Shunamite Young Pretty to try to get him going. They shoulda brought him a cardiologist, instead. Scripture reports that he didn't "know" (wink) her and not too long after joined Jesse in eternal rest.
I'm one of something like 50,000,000 people on the Atlantic Coast of the USA who are in Miss Sandy's sights .... a Hurricane the meteorologists (some of whom are rather attractive Shunamites, themselves) describe as a unique and potentially disastrous storm. It has already killed in the Carribean and seems likely to kill many in its path.
I don't know how many millions of the 50 million are Players in the Last Quarter ... but many. It is my first storm that has frightened me thinking about my inability to respond ... Late Middle Age brings "irresponsibility" .... an inability to respond as one did once upon a time.
In 1993 at 305 on September 28 a tornado picked up a Beech Tree and moved it vertically from another's property maybe hundreds or more yards away through the roof of my office where it stood vertically ... damaged but still tree-like. By the time the insurance adjusters came to assess the damage that 40+ feet of debris left, I and my trusty chain saw had spent a week removing essentially all the debris. No more.
Nineteen years older, it's a non-starter. Yesterday, I needed to install a pump in the basement and do some other light-duty stuff with moving my 1996 car into a garage, etc. and this morning I'm on heavy-duty analgesics struggling to lift my leg high enough to put on my pants. I included many months ago a bit of doggerel about an old set of wing-tip shoes in the closet and my sense that aging has its way with us ... turns us from vigorous worker to lore .... This morning, it's there looking me in the face.
The Good Brother Thomas Merton, in one oif his many prayers, wrote: My Lord God, I have no idea where I'm going, I do not see the road ahead of me.
Brother Thomas, wherever you are, let me add: and Dear God, I have no idea what your emissary, Frau Sandy, has in mind for me and the other 49,999,999 dwellers of this East Coast. How many feet, dear God, will accumulate in my basement? Will that Willow Tree that sits over my office join it and crush my library? How many of my brothers and sisters will be caught in her wrath? My Lord God, if you've tired of listening to the distortions of politicians and their bull-pucky, give a look over to those of us struggling the World-over and maybe just a moment towards we the fortunate who have been blessed to live long years in a protected and privileged country!
And to whomever is listening? Stay safe.
If you have nothing better to do, 50 million friends, check out the myth of the Kikayon, of the gourd, in the Book of Jonah .... it's got all the elements ...
and stay safe!
I'm one of something like 50,000,000 people on the Atlantic Coast of the USA who are in Miss Sandy's sights .... a Hurricane the meteorologists (some of whom are rather attractive Shunamites, themselves) describe as a unique and potentially disastrous storm. It has already killed in the Carribean and seems likely to kill many in its path.
I don't know how many millions of the 50 million are Players in the Last Quarter ... but many. It is my first storm that has frightened me thinking about my inability to respond ... Late Middle Age brings "irresponsibility" .... an inability to respond as one did once upon a time.
In 1993 at 305 on September 28 a tornado picked up a Beech Tree and moved it vertically from another's property maybe hundreds or more yards away through the roof of my office where it stood vertically ... damaged but still tree-like. By the time the insurance adjusters came to assess the damage that 40+ feet of debris left, I and my trusty chain saw had spent a week removing essentially all the debris. No more.
Nineteen years older, it's a non-starter. Yesterday, I needed to install a pump in the basement and do some other light-duty stuff with moving my 1996 car into a garage, etc. and this morning I'm on heavy-duty analgesics struggling to lift my leg high enough to put on my pants. I included many months ago a bit of doggerel about an old set of wing-tip shoes in the closet and my sense that aging has its way with us ... turns us from vigorous worker to lore .... This morning, it's there looking me in the face.
The Good Brother Thomas Merton, in one oif his many prayers, wrote: My Lord God, I have no idea where I'm going, I do not see the road ahead of me.
Brother Thomas, wherever you are, let me add: and Dear God, I have no idea what your emissary, Frau Sandy, has in mind for me and the other 49,999,999 dwellers of this East Coast. How many feet, dear God, will accumulate in my basement? Will that Willow Tree that sits over my office join it and crush my library? How many of my brothers and sisters will be caught in her wrath? My Lord God, if you've tired of listening to the distortions of politicians and their bull-pucky, give a look over to those of us struggling the World-over and maybe just a moment towards we the fortunate who have been blessed to live long years in a protected and privileged country!
And to whomever is listening? Stay safe.
If you have nothing better to do, 50 million friends, check out the myth of the Kikayon, of the gourd, in the Book of Jonah .... it's got all the elements ...
and stay safe!
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
The Truth
What is this thing called Truth? Difficult listening to the election advertisements. The talking heads seem quite willing to accept that our candidates for public office will say what they need to be elected or re-elected. While the well-being of going on 400 Million souls is twisting in the wind, the election is treated like a strategic game ... and I accept that it appears unwise to show one's cards. Each candidate has been put forth by a coalition of special interests ... no subgroup, no voting bloc may be alienated or the game is over.
And we folk Playing in the Last Quarter? What do we do?
There are interesting things being written .... spoken, too. Last night, I read an analysis of the election based on the Conservative Brain vs. the Liberal Brain (http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20121021_Debates_a_showcase_of_primal_styles.html ). Didn't move me. The Debates? Didn't move me. The Stump Speeches offer nothing. I do have my theory of thirds ... take any group and a third of them are good and kind souls. Another third is composed of perfidious little "shits" who shouldn't be trusted any day of week. And then there's a final third of those suitable for dining with once or twice a year.
Used to think that we could solve some of the lying by having public floggings for any candidate or elected official that has demonstrably lied to the electorate. Charge an entrance fee and maybe we could pay off part of the national debt?
I'm not one that is easily disgusted. Getting there. Two weeks to go ... Yuch.
And we folk Playing in the Last Quarter? What do we do?
There are interesting things being written .... spoken, too. Last night, I read an analysis of the election based on the Conservative Brain vs. the Liberal Brain (http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20121021_Debates_a_showcase_of_primal_styles.html ). Didn't move me. The Debates? Didn't move me. The Stump Speeches offer nothing. I do have my theory of thirds ... take any group and a third of them are good and kind souls. Another third is composed of perfidious little "shits" who shouldn't be trusted any day of week. And then there's a final third of those suitable for dining with once or twice a year.
Used to think that we could solve some of the lying by having public floggings for any candidate or elected official that has demonstrably lied to the electorate. Charge an entrance fee and maybe we could pay off part of the national debt?
I'm not one that is easily disgusted. Getting there. Two weeks to go ... Yuch.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Communication
A comment that I received on yesterday's garbled post, highlights for me just how difficult it is to communicate. I was talking about bravery in some; how could that not have been heard as talking trash about others?
Just because one doesn't mean to offend doesn't mean that one doesn't.
I have this plant that has survived a direct hit by a tree that landed in my office on Sept 28, 1993 at 3:05 ... delivered by a relatively small tornado. I brought the plant back to life and think of her/him as Mathilda/Mortimer, depending on my mood. I look at the plant, a rather commonplace philodendrum, anmd marvel how it grows where it wants to grow. Maybe 5 years before "the tree," it wrapped itself around a 4 foot fluorescent bulb and choked it to explode. The plant, Mathilda or Mortimer, reminds me how messy life is.
Alas and apologies ... H
Just because one doesn't mean to offend doesn't mean that one doesn't.
I have this plant that has survived a direct hit by a tree that landed in my office on Sept 28, 1993 at 3:05 ... delivered by a relatively small tornado. I brought the plant back to life and think of her/him as Mathilda/Mortimer, depending on my mood. I look at the plant, a rather commonplace philodendrum, anmd marvel how it grows where it wants to grow. Maybe 5 years before "the tree," it wrapped itself around a 4 foot fluorescent bulb and choked it to explode. The plant, Mathilda or Mortimer, reminds me how messy life is.
Alas and apologies ... H
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Bravery
As I've suggested previously, no Quarter -- certainly not the Last Quarter ... but, in fact, not one -- is for the meek. Indeed, there are those who check out ... who refuse to face the realities of their lives. Yesterday, I found myself thinking of those who fail to experience gratitude for gifts received. On the other side? are all those who rise each morning and in spite of their emotional and physical pains and disabilities greet their near and dear with a dignity of everyday life.
I stand in awe and admiration of all who bring that bravery with them and add life to their step ... for their own benefit and for the benefit of those who walk with them.
I stand in awe and admiration of all who bring that bravery with them and add life to their step ... for their own benefit and for the benefit of those who walk with them.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Getting Personal
I';ve had a pretty good ride ... 3 middle-aged children and 6 grandchildren. One of my kids and spouse lead a very religiously ritualistic life and work very hard. They and their kids are healthy. One eschews all religion and lives a comfortable and healthy life with spouse and child. They participate in rituals when the family partakes. The remaining child has three kids and a spouse and fall somewhere in the middle though serious health issues follow their family in a yet-to-be-diagnosed illness. DH Lawrence wrote a wonderful short story (The Rocking Horse Winner ... introduced to me by Marsha some 40 years ago) about a youngster who feels with all his body and his soul that he must redeem his family -- most obviously his Mother -- from its luckless state of needing more money. He rides himself on his Rocking Horse to an early death, though his luck won out monetarily.
In almost all our years together, Marsha and I have lived a blessed life. LOTS OF GOOD STUFF HAPPENED. Hey! Just the three kids and their spouses and their six kids would be enough. The fact that they welcome us to join their pilgrimages ... their unfolding lives ... would be enough. But we've also always earned a living and (to borrow a curse from Car 54 Where Are You?) our teeth haven't fallen out on the day before Thanksgiving. Professionally we've been OK. Never knocked the World dead but always wanting for nothing important. Even our health has been somewhere in the middle of the normal curve.
I work a great deal with people who come to me with personally constructed religions that require that they avoid most pleasures and demand of themselves the performance of painful or humiliating activities. This appears to consistently (I have been working with such sufferers for nearly 40 years) go with a difficulty appreciating ... a difficulty experiencing gratitude. Often, this is accompanied by a toxic envy, one that begrudges others their fortunes and bemoans their own misfortunes. Envy comes in two forms ... with the other living comfortably with gratitude ...
In our dotage, this is essential, as we see the next generations strutting their stuff and their stuffs and the still-to-be-filled canvas that they have many years to fill.
Blessing for us Old Ships going out to our Seas each day: May we beneficently envy the young just as we rejoice in our mostly filled lives and already made choices!
In almost all our years together, Marsha and I have lived a blessed life. LOTS OF GOOD STUFF HAPPENED. Hey! Just the three kids and their spouses and their six kids would be enough. The fact that they welcome us to join their pilgrimages ... their unfolding lives ... would be enough. But we've also always earned a living and (to borrow a curse from Car 54 Where Are You?) our teeth haven't fallen out on the day before Thanksgiving. Professionally we've been OK. Never knocked the World dead but always wanting for nothing important. Even our health has been somewhere in the middle of the normal curve.
I work a great deal with people who come to me with personally constructed religions that require that they avoid most pleasures and demand of themselves the performance of painful or humiliating activities. This appears to consistently (I have been working with such sufferers for nearly 40 years) go with a difficulty appreciating ... a difficulty experiencing gratitude. Often, this is accompanied by a toxic envy, one that begrudges others their fortunes and bemoans their own misfortunes. Envy comes in two forms ... with the other living comfortably with gratitude ...
In our dotage, this is essential, as we see the next generations strutting their stuff and their stuffs and the still-to-be-filled canvas that they have many years to fill.
Blessing for us Old Ships going out to our Seas each day: May we beneficently envy the young just as we rejoice in our mostly filled lives and already made choices!
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Feeling the Burn but Keeping it Positive
To deny the human pains of living is as delusional as some hypochondriases. One exaggerates the importance of things .... the other trivializes that importance.
A youngster in song writes: "It's gonna be a long, lonesome Summer. But Darling I'll tell you this. I'll send you all my love. Every Day in a letter. Sealed with a Kiss."
Thinking positively all the time (Gotta love that Cancer) is as delusional as some pessimisms. One trivializes the importance of pains ... the other replaces life with them.
I suspect it is true of many elections (but I'm caught up in the hype about the American one) that more than half the people will be disappointed in the results and caught up in negativity for times bracketing the election on each side. Maybe 4 out of 9 will be disheartened that their candidate has lost and another 1 or more of 9 that their candidate who they weren't pleased with to begin with won.
Negativity is a well that remains dry even after the rainy Season. It bears little resemblance to Realism and the Fourth Quarter has no shortage of Players who have ended the game. I often conjure up the image of a person rising in a theater and announcing midway through the Second Act that the performance is over. 'Please, finish your popcorn and leave your seats quietly. I'm sending the Cast back to their Homes.'
The Fourth Quarter is chocked full of excuses to do so. Parents are gone ... maybe half the cousins, siblings and friends, too ... and children and betimes grandchildren no longer bear the patina of immortality. If one is somewhere in the midst of a normal health curve, the spine begins to speak in the language of collapse and arthritis ... sleep is not that idealized uninterrupted kind .... and there is some evidence of neuropathy that prevents vigorous signals from reaching the ends of some limbs yielding a sense of numbness. ... One could go on. My own arrhythmias intrude on longstanding habits and hobbies and my Thyroid has tired of its task ... Yuch.
And if one is fortunate to still have a partner, the probability of one getting caught in negativity may be as much as doubled.
To the Negativist, the future is fraught with not only danger but the certainty of disaster. Not only will the election be lost but the entire World Order will change ... and to the iconoclast who votes for the candidate that is never going to win, there already has been a broad denial that incremental change is possible in a direction that will bring them a portion of joy, gratitude and peace. Ethics of the Fathers has it: Who is the fortunate one? That person who feels gratitude for their share in life.
Going to drive 330 miles to visit two of our grandchildren ... the two who live at a distance. At 8 and 11, they'll be waiting at a window, smiling when they receive a cell phone call that we've exited the highway. ... like puppies wagging their tails with glee. The election will wait and so will any visions that include the warnings to the attendees that the sky is falling or the performance is over.
Gunther Dog joined the chorus, last night. He has begun to snore.
A youngster in song writes: "It's gonna be a long, lonesome Summer. But Darling I'll tell you this. I'll send you all my love. Every Day in a letter. Sealed with a Kiss."
Thinking positively all the time (Gotta love that Cancer) is as delusional as some pessimisms. One trivializes the importance of pains ... the other replaces life with them.
I suspect it is true of many elections (but I'm caught up in the hype about the American one) that more than half the people will be disappointed in the results and caught up in negativity for times bracketing the election on each side. Maybe 4 out of 9 will be disheartened that their candidate has lost and another 1 or more of 9 that their candidate who they weren't pleased with to begin with won.
Negativity is a well that remains dry even after the rainy Season. It bears little resemblance to Realism and the Fourth Quarter has no shortage of Players who have ended the game. I often conjure up the image of a person rising in a theater and announcing midway through the Second Act that the performance is over. 'Please, finish your popcorn and leave your seats quietly. I'm sending the Cast back to their Homes.'
The Fourth Quarter is chocked full of excuses to do so. Parents are gone ... maybe half the cousins, siblings and friends, too ... and children and betimes grandchildren no longer bear the patina of immortality. If one is somewhere in the midst of a normal health curve, the spine begins to speak in the language of collapse and arthritis ... sleep is not that idealized uninterrupted kind .... and there is some evidence of neuropathy that prevents vigorous signals from reaching the ends of some limbs yielding a sense of numbness. ... One could go on. My own arrhythmias intrude on longstanding habits and hobbies and my Thyroid has tired of its task ... Yuch.
And if one is fortunate to still have a partner, the probability of one getting caught in negativity may be as much as doubled.
To the Negativist, the future is fraught with not only danger but the certainty of disaster. Not only will the election be lost but the entire World Order will change ... and to the iconoclast who votes for the candidate that is never going to win, there already has been a broad denial that incremental change is possible in a direction that will bring them a portion of joy, gratitude and peace. Ethics of the Fathers has it: Who is the fortunate one? That person who feels gratitude for their share in life.
Going to drive 330 miles to visit two of our grandchildren ... the two who live at a distance. At 8 and 11, they'll be waiting at a window, smiling when they receive a cell phone call that we've exited the highway. ... like puppies wagging their tails with glee. The election will wait and so will any visions that include the warnings to the attendees that the sky is falling or the performance is over.
Gunther Dog joined the chorus, last night. He has begun to snore.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
The Force of Character
Some years ago, I had a column in a professional rag called the NAAP News. We called it Letters to the Author and it followed an experience that I had with a reviewer of something I'd written (Oedipal Paradigms in Collision) who pretty obviously hadn't read my rather lengthy arguments. I remember reading his published review and not only being in a quiet state of disagreement but being, as is somewhat more consistent with the truth, pissed off. I decided to review books differently. The "Letters" column would attempt, in the form of a letter, to get in the author's "boat" and row a little with them and then to add the author's response. I would not respond to the response, feeling that since I had chosen the book, I had already given the author the right to last response. Maybe I'd do it differently, now.
In any case, a couple of days ago someone contacted the Editor of the rag asking if the column with my letter to James Hillman and his response might not be available. They contacted me as they could no longer find a copy of that issue. I checked my present computer and my last one and found files that must contain the sought after copy but couldn't open the file of Hillman's response to my review of his volume on ... ach du lieber ... aging. And asking Jim Hillman? He died last year. He called himself a Renegade Jungian after leaving the training faculty in Zurich where, as I recall (or where my mind invents?), I met him when I and Marsha and the older kids visited in 1970. I think he had been training director in the educational institute, there.
How the years pass! And how quickly things are forgotten! Not just the four generations that are typically sufficient for familial memory to lose track of Great Grandma or Great Grandpa. But now I find myself confronted with losses of collective memory in a decade or so.
I don't much remember his response, though it was full of freundlichkeit, friendliness, as I recall.
The editor has lost old copies of that issue.
I never thought to keep them.
My computers won't translate the old files.
And Jim Hillman died.
Zo!
Pfffft! They're gone.
Think that may be connected to yesterday's feelings that had me remembering Lee Hayes singing "How do I know my youth is all spent."
Think I'll go for a run, as soon as the Sun begins its run for the day.
In any case, a couple of days ago someone contacted the Editor of the rag asking if the column with my letter to James Hillman and his response might not be available. They contacted me as they could no longer find a copy of that issue. I checked my present computer and my last one and found files that must contain the sought after copy but couldn't open the file of Hillman's response to my review of his volume on ... ach du lieber ... aging. And asking Jim Hillman? He died last year. He called himself a Renegade Jungian after leaving the training faculty in Zurich where, as I recall (or where my mind invents?), I met him when I and Marsha and the older kids visited in 1970. I think he had been training director in the educational institute, there.
How the years pass! And how quickly things are forgotten! Not just the four generations that are typically sufficient for familial memory to lose track of Great Grandma or Great Grandpa. But now I find myself confronted with losses of collective memory in a decade or so.
I don't much remember his response, though it was full of freundlichkeit, friendliness, as I recall.
The editor has lost old copies of that issue.
I never thought to keep them.
My computers won't translate the old files.
And Jim Hillman died.
Zo!
Pfffft! They're gone.
Think that may be connected to yesterday's feelings that had me remembering Lee Hayes singing "How do I know my youth is all spent."
Think I'll go for a run, as soon as the Sun begins its run for the day.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Have had better days
Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes used to sing some truths (see below) ... how is it possible that years of energy are followed by dragging one's ass ... as often as not. De-energized, today .... I'll be back ...
My Get-Up-And-Go Has Got Up and Went
- Anonymous…
But sometimes I wonder, as I crawl into bed,
With my ears in a drawer, my teeth in a cup,
My eyes on the table until I wake up.
As sleep dims my vision, I say to myself:
Is there anything else I should lay on the shelf?
But, though nations are warring, and Congress is vexed,
We’ll still stick around to see what happens next!
- How do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got up and went!
But, in spite of it all, I’m able to grin
And think of the places my getup has been!
I could kick up my heels right over my head.
When I was older my slippers were blue,
But still I could dance the whole night through.
Now I am older, my slippers are black.
I huff to the store and puff my way back.
But never you laugh; I don’t mind at all:
I’d rather be huffing than not puff at all!
- How do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got up and went!
But, in spite of it all, I’m able to grin
And think of the places my getup has been!
Open the paper, and read the Obits.
If I’m not there, I know I’m not dead,
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed!
- How do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got up and went!
But, in spite of it all, I’m able to grin
And think of the places my getup has been!
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Looking Presidential
Watching the Presidential debate, last night, was a tormenting experience ... a tired warrior ... in a Tenth Heavyweight Round .... and someone who was saying a great deal that seemed to boldly contradict what he had said on many previous occasions. Some people come and visit me and oftentimes will talk about what it's like to be living in the declining years of a once-proud civilization.
De-energized! That's it. It's difficult enough getting older but to do so during the Fall of Some Empire seems like a cruel joke.
I feel worried and de-energized. It was Erik Erikson who a half century ago, in describing the variety of conflicts that occasion an unfolding life from childhood to the grave, suggested that in the last stages of life the choice was between what he called generativity, the sharing with one's progeny, and despair.
I feel worried and de-energized and despairing. What could I tell my grandchildren that will be hopeful? A great nation was founded on the magic of balancing free enterprise and individualism with some form of the social contract. And now that nation seems locked into poisonous and betimes dishonest representations of its attempts to deal with a changing World .... A world in which a goodly percentage of the population has become somewhat redundant ... in which change has occurred maybe too rapidly for us to adjust.
I think I'll join some Luddite organization and fight against industrialization or something. The French Legion, alas, won't have me!
Glad that I'm not President.
De-energized! That's it. It's difficult enough getting older but to do so during the Fall of Some Empire seems like a cruel joke.
I feel worried and de-energized. It was Erik Erikson who a half century ago, in describing the variety of conflicts that occasion an unfolding life from childhood to the grave, suggested that in the last stages of life the choice was between what he called generativity, the sharing with one's progeny, and despair.
I feel worried and de-energized and despairing. What could I tell my grandchildren that will be hopeful? A great nation was founded on the magic of balancing free enterprise and individualism with some form of the social contract. And now that nation seems locked into poisonous and betimes dishonest representations of its attempts to deal with a changing World .... A world in which a goodly percentage of the population has become somewhat redundant ... in which change has occurred maybe too rapidly for us to adjust.
I think I'll join some Luddite organization and fight against industrialization or something. The French Legion, alas, won't have me!
Glad that I'm not President.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Taking Oneself Seriously ... Seriously!
Sktrbrain asked if I was joking about my comment about feeling as if meetings were readying me for life in the Day Room of an Alzheimer's Nursing Home .... I had just the previous night been in the company of a group of folk who all have worked in my field and they were driving about -- conversationally -- like so many smashed up stock cars in a demolition derby ... hither and yon ... crash ... bam ... wandering off. Not a Second Quarter Player in the mix. Almost no one ever speaking to the point of the meeting. But each taking themselves very seriously ... myself, included.
I've been busy for the past couple of days ... juggling all the details of life in the Fourth Quarter with those matters that remain in my working life ... I work about 3/4 time ... I waltz.
Here, Sktrbrain, are just a few of my scattered thoughts that have dominated my thinking.
One had to do with the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament. The scholars from two millenia past suggested that there were 613 commandments listed. 248+365 ... for their estimate of the days of the year and the number of bones in the human body ... positives and negatives. I became preoccupied with whether the divine comment to Adam (literally, Earthman) after he screwed up by eating the wrong stuff and diming out his lady (some commentaries say that that was his central sin ... primal sin ... his lack of gratitude for the gift of a partner) was one of those commandments. God tells him: "with the sweat of your brow, you'll eat bread." Was that just a curse or was that a recommendation.
Last night, I was hanging out with a bunch of Fourth Quarter types and one relatively young carttonist ... he couldn't have been more than a year or two older than my oldest son ... maybe 48 or 50 or something. That conversation was scattered, too, but had a quality of "lemme tell you where I've been". There was a sweetness to it .... Towards the end, three couples remained ... married 44, 47 and 50 years, respectively. At least one party to each contract was still working ... actually, all were at least somewhat active. I left that meet feeling hopeful and going back to my morning thought about the value of sweat equity.
As I pulled in front of our home, I looked lovingly at a path that I rebricked (not too well) and a brick planter that I fashioned at the bottom. Blessed are you Animator of the World (Anima Mundi) who still permits me to mix mortar and concrete. Amen.
As one bit of liturgy goes: Listen up to our voices: ... don't toss us out in our dotage; as our strengths wane, don't toss us out!
Long day ahead ... and then the debate. May whoever our president is not toss us out, either. I've just noticed how the carmakers are producing cars that stop on their own before we baby-boomers bash into the cars we're following ... Just in time, I'd say.
I've been busy for the past couple of days ... juggling all the details of life in the Fourth Quarter with those matters that remain in my working life ... I work about 3/4 time ... I waltz.
Here, Sktrbrain, are just a few of my scattered thoughts that have dominated my thinking.
One had to do with the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament. The scholars from two millenia past suggested that there were 613 commandments listed. 248+365 ... for their estimate of the days of the year and the number of bones in the human body ... positives and negatives. I became preoccupied with whether the divine comment to Adam (literally, Earthman) after he screwed up by eating the wrong stuff and diming out his lady (some commentaries say that that was his central sin ... primal sin ... his lack of gratitude for the gift of a partner) was one of those commandments. God tells him: "with the sweat of your brow, you'll eat bread." Was that just a curse or was that a recommendation.
Last night, I was hanging out with a bunch of Fourth Quarter types and one relatively young carttonist ... he couldn't have been more than a year or two older than my oldest son ... maybe 48 or 50 or something. That conversation was scattered, too, but had a quality of "lemme tell you where I've been". There was a sweetness to it .... Towards the end, three couples remained ... married 44, 47 and 50 years, respectively. At least one party to each contract was still working ... actually, all were at least somewhat active. I left that meet feeling hopeful and going back to my morning thought about the value of sweat equity.
As I pulled in front of our home, I looked lovingly at a path that I rebricked (not too well) and a brick planter that I fashioned at the bottom. Blessed are you Animator of the World (Anima Mundi) who still permits me to mix mortar and concrete. Amen.
As one bit of liturgy goes: Listen up to our voices: ... don't toss us out in our dotage; as our strengths wane, don't toss us out!
Long day ahead ... and then the debate. May whoever our president is not toss us out, either. I've just noticed how the carmakers are producing cars that stop on their own before we baby-boomers bash into the cars we're following ... Just in time, I'd say.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Another Meeting
Last night ... one of the attendees just final galley proofs of book on kids' development, particularly around language. The group is, indeed, getting old. Maybe 60-90 or a little better. I was sitting there thinking as the conversation wandered from what chickens experienced before being slaughtered to the % of genes separating chimps from hominid chomps, from the territory shared by Philosophers, Psychologists and Theologians. I think we likely spoke about one of the chapters of the soon-to-be-published and decided, if I may be permitted to wander as I do anyway here, what to read but not talk about next month ... I was thinking how such meetings might prepare one for the Day Room of a Nursing Home. Loose associative paths connecting A to B to Chickens and Chimps.
My Grandmother, Mother and Mother-in-Law all ended up in such places, suffering from Alzheimers. Many of us Last Quarter folk carry with us the knowledge (if not the gene itself ) that we may be beyond any point of return from a trip to some specific illness that our forebears bore.
Still, I went out this AM to try my return to running. My heart wasn't cooperative but I kept up my jog at 6. A neighbor was out with his two pooches behind one of those invisible fences that's supposed to keep les barkers at bay. Life is, in part, I suppose, about trust. All my parts are intact ... though my heart continues its refusal to settle down into a comfortable rhythm, this morning. I remind myself of Kunitz while remembering that my people begin their days with a prayer thanking God for giving strength to the weary, to which I typically respond with a more than hearty Amen:
Stanley Kunitz
My Grandmother, Mother and Mother-in-Law all ended up in such places, suffering from Alzheimers. Many of us Last Quarter folk carry with us the knowledge (if not the gene itself ) that we may be beyond any point of return from a trip to some specific illness that our forebears bore.
Still, I went out this AM to try my return to running. My heart wasn't cooperative but I kept up my jog at 6. A neighbor was out with his two pooches behind one of those invisible fences that's supposed to keep les barkers at bay. Life is, in part, I suppose, about trust. All my parts are intact ... though my heart continues its refusal to settle down into a comfortable rhythm, this morning. I remind myself of Kunitz while remembering that my people begin their days with a prayer thanking God for giving strength to the weary, to which I typically respond with a more than hearty Amen:
The Layers
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face,
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Homilies and other Happy Tales
Heard someone deliver a sermon on "transitions" ... It was nice! hopeful! New way, she intimated, of looking at her life ... her first son was just married ... about to become empty-nester. We Last Quarter daredevils, on the other hand, have long said goodbye to our kids ... grandkids have come as the next redeemers and they've turned out to be come as they wants. One Poet Laureate recommended that we "live in the layers, not the litter" ... I could go for that, too. Or as my Father years ago would say to Marsha, his daughter in law, if he wanted to eat something that was out of arm's reach at the table: Lemme see some of that.
I haven't run for a year until just recently. Just barely running 2/3 of mile compared to what had been 4-6 miles each day until I began breaking metatarsals Summer of 2010. Sometimes, it feels like transitions and at other times it feels like walking blindfolded over a cliff.
Did feel great to go out in the cool early morning Fall air ...
Think I'm gonna do that .... each morning! a run, however short, out in the World of which I'm still a part. Maybe I can end each day with a similarly brief ride on one of my 1974 pedal bikes ... they deserve to breathe, too.
I haven't run for a year until just recently. Just barely running 2/3 of mile compared to what had been 4-6 miles each day until I began breaking metatarsals Summer of 2010. Sometimes, it feels like transitions and at other times it feels like walking blindfolded over a cliff.
Did feel great to go out in the cool early morning Fall air ...
Think I'm gonna do that .... each morning! a run, however short, out in the World of which I'm still a part. Maybe I can end each day with a similarly brief ride on one of my 1974 pedal bikes ... they deserve to breathe, too.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Response to Sktrbrain + the Sense of the Mischievious
Sktrbrain: The areas of taboo have yet to be delineated and so the candid little cherubs are free to run amok. Not so for us -- us aged individuals.
....Perhaps the reluctance in speaking on such things as you've described above is a result of people not wanting to feel attached to someone's death, better said, to not feel implicated -- as funny as that might sound.
HHC: Thanks for interest and joining in. The taboo to talk about death, in my experience, sets in by middle elementary school ... by age 8 or less ... but this may relate to my own idiosyncratic experiences. One of my grandchildren ... 13 yo girl ... writes macabre tales that include death and murder and what have you ... in the style of HP Lovecraft or Poe but still is somewhat reticent when it comes to her Grandpas' aging processes. I find older folk, too, sometimes symbolizing rather than talking straight out ... images of manifestations before or after sleep that run the gamut from wondrously heavenly beings to flaming ones. And I don't know if that sense that if I think it, it is (a variant on Pres. Carter's heart lusting taken from Matthew 6) plays much of a role ... I suspect it's there for some. Do remember once talking to my Father-in-Law about the sadness and terror he must be feeling over his Stage IV cancer 20+ years ago and a couple of years before he died. Everyone was telling him that he had to "think positive" which I thought a great disservice to this nice guy. My Mother-in-Law, on the other hand, showed her superhero listening power and thereafter expressed her disdain for my comments in brutally direct tones. My youngest child remembers it, too; it was her 16th birthday. Obviously, if there's a prohibition against talking about our feelings for end-of-life issues, it DOES get the juices going.
Thanks, again for getting in my boat, here, and rowing with me.
On another note ... the Last Quarter does seem to give me/us the right to indulge some mischief. Something came in the mail that I had written about not understanding at all some new forms of thinking/writing. My review of this had been -- no holds barred -- mischief and a source for great amusement to me, even now, a year or more after writing it. Sat there with Marsha -- as her now-long-gone Father would say -- reading it and laughing my ass off.
I suppose it may be as simple as: "what do I got to lose?" Now, I DO know that I cannot rightly tell if the reason I find that I need a dictionary of what-the-Hell usages and semantics of the English Language to understand these new writers has to do with my incredible shrinking brain, but I do find the contemporary mannerisms of speech, especially among some folk who call themselves post-Modern or Lacanian, laughable and intentionally un-understandable. I read a sentence and wanna go out and buy an arsenal of super-soaker water guns and go after these folk ... or tie them up and have a heard of second graders tickle them silly. I recall a picture in GK Chesterton's autobiography of something called, as I recall, the Great Barrie Hoax. Barrie and George Bernard Shaw and a couple of other of Chesterton's friends dressed up as cowboys and crashed a very proper British party of "those in the know."
The urge becomes strong for me to enter the world of the absurd ... to ... (I better not admit to these urges in public) ... to be mischievious. Just one example: I have difficulty following commercials ... hardly ever know what they're selling and turn to Marsha and quizzically wonder. Marsha is one and a half years younger and is, therefore, supposed to be 'with it' but does, betimes, look at me as if I missed the Sunday night bus to the nursing home. Any case, I have the urge to interpose myself into the TV commercials telling dog jokes ... Did y'hear the one about ... just popping my head up ... Woof!
Enough ... I'm in enough trouble, perhaps, already for writing my little review (which they put in the way-back of this publication, hoping, perchance, that it would get lost) ....
....Perhaps the reluctance in speaking on such things as you've described above is a result of people not wanting to feel attached to someone's death, better said, to not feel implicated -- as funny as that might sound.
HHC: Thanks for interest and joining in. The taboo to talk about death, in my experience, sets in by middle elementary school ... by age 8 or less ... but this may relate to my own idiosyncratic experiences. One of my grandchildren ... 13 yo girl ... writes macabre tales that include death and murder and what have you ... in the style of HP Lovecraft or Poe but still is somewhat reticent when it comes to her Grandpas' aging processes. I find older folk, too, sometimes symbolizing rather than talking straight out ... images of manifestations before or after sleep that run the gamut from wondrously heavenly beings to flaming ones. And I don't know if that sense that if I think it, it is (a variant on Pres. Carter's heart lusting taken from Matthew 6) plays much of a role ... I suspect it's there for some. Do remember once talking to my Father-in-Law about the sadness and terror he must be feeling over his Stage IV cancer 20+ years ago and a couple of years before he died. Everyone was telling him that he had to "think positive" which I thought a great disservice to this nice guy. My Mother-in-Law, on the other hand, showed her superhero listening power and thereafter expressed her disdain for my comments in brutally direct tones. My youngest child remembers it, too; it was her 16th birthday. Obviously, if there's a prohibition against talking about our feelings for end-of-life issues, it DOES get the juices going.
Thanks, again for getting in my boat, here, and rowing with me.
On another note ... the Last Quarter does seem to give me/us the right to indulge some mischief. Something came in the mail that I had written about not understanding at all some new forms of thinking/writing. My review of this had been -- no holds barred -- mischief and a source for great amusement to me, even now, a year or more after writing it. Sat there with Marsha -- as her now-long-gone Father would say -- reading it and laughing my ass off.
I suppose it may be as simple as: "what do I got to lose?" Now, I DO know that I cannot rightly tell if the reason I find that I need a dictionary of what-the-Hell usages and semantics of the English Language to understand these new writers has to do with my incredible shrinking brain, but I do find the contemporary mannerisms of speech, especially among some folk who call themselves post-Modern or Lacanian, laughable and intentionally un-understandable. I read a sentence and wanna go out and buy an arsenal of super-soaker water guns and go after these folk ... or tie them up and have a heard of second graders tickle them silly. I recall a picture in GK Chesterton's autobiography of something called, as I recall, the Great Barrie Hoax. Barrie and George Bernard Shaw and a couple of other of Chesterton's friends dressed up as cowboys and crashed a very proper British party of "those in the know."
The urge becomes strong for me to enter the world of the absurd ... to ... (I better not admit to these urges in public) ... to be mischievious. Just one example: I have difficulty following commercials ... hardly ever know what they're selling and turn to Marsha and quizzically wonder. Marsha is one and a half years younger and is, therefore, supposed to be 'with it' but does, betimes, look at me as if I missed the Sunday night bus to the nursing home. Any case, I have the urge to interpose myself into the TV commercials telling dog jokes ... Did y'hear the one about ... just popping my head up ... Woof!
Enough ... I'm in enough trouble, perhaps, already for writing my little review (which they put in the way-back of this publication, hoping, perchance, that it would get lost) ....
Friday, September 28, 2012
Response on Linkletter
sktrbrain has left a new comment on "Need a New Art Linkletter Show":
Interesting how we always look to children for guidance nearly as much as they look to us. The areas of taboo have yet to be delineated and so the candid little cherubs are free to run amok. Not so for us -- us aged individuals.
I wonder what is the reluctance (or the flat out aphasia) that arises when an older family member confronts one on the subject (or a subject related to) his or her impeding death. Not necessarily what it stems from, but what it is. It's not as if anyone (hopefully not) believes that by speaking on such a matter the death will come at once, that there open unfettered acceptance of a loved one's eventual death will pave the way for such an event. ...Or maybe they do! There's a popular phrase "don't jinx it" that I have encountered many times in my life. One might be surprised by how many people mean that phase when they say it. Perhaps the reluctance in speaking on such things as you've described above is a result of people not wanting to feel attached to someone's death, better said, to not feel implicated -- as funny as that might sound.
Posted by sktrbrain to Playing in the last quarter at September 28, 2012 4:22 AM
Interesting how we always look to children for guidance nearly as much as they look to us. The areas of taboo have yet to be delineated and so the candid little cherubs are free to run amok. Not so for us -- us aged individuals.
I wonder what is the reluctance (or the flat out aphasia) that arises when an older family member confronts one on the subject (or a subject related to) his or her impeding death. Not necessarily what it stems from, but what it is. It's not as if anyone (hopefully not) believes that by speaking on such a matter the death will come at once, that there open unfettered acceptance of a loved one's eventual death will pave the way for such an event. ...Or maybe they do! There's a popular phrase "don't jinx it" that I have encountered many times in my life. One might be surprised by how many people mean that phase when they say it. Perhaps the reluctance in speaking on such things as you've described above is a result of people not wanting to feel attached to someone's death, better said, to not feel implicated -- as funny as that might sound.
Posted by sktrbrain to Playing in the last quarter at September 28, 2012 4:22 AM
No Narcs, just NORCS
I think it was the Capitol Steps, a DC based singing group, who in a satirical redo of some Bob Dylan suggested that a whole generation had turned 'its weed in for weed whackers.' Well, yesterday I visited a NORC ... I think it stands for Naturally Occurring Retirement Community. A township group is thinking of looking in to opening one in my Town. NORCS provide limited and idiosyncratic assistance to older folk ... Last Quarter players.
A lady who had been married for 67 years and just two months ago lost her husband, handyman and bulb-changer warmly explained how these little bits of help ... well ... helped. An Elder Lawyer, 'Elder' both chronologically and by her chosen work, was trying to help her understand when the optimal time was for moving into a Continuum of Care facility ... "Now ... while you can make lots of friends to help you later, if necessary."
Some box lunches were available and some speakers talked of reconnoitering through the local Voter Id Act. Held in a Presbyterian Church, their programs move around to other churches and synagogues and get support from both Catholoic and Jewish organizations.
Nice change from listening to the pundits talk of this year in politics ... as Tom Lehrer years ago sang about National Brotherhood Week ... a time when "All of my folks hate all of your folks."
Am a bit fatigued by the level of vitriol and venom on the air ... My Old Confreres were a pleasant change for a quick lunch.
Make love, not War, Old Friends!
A lady who had been married for 67 years and just two months ago lost her husband, handyman and bulb-changer warmly explained how these little bits of help ... well ... helped. An Elder Lawyer, 'Elder' both chronologically and by her chosen work, was trying to help her understand when the optimal time was for moving into a Continuum of Care facility ... "Now ... while you can make lots of friends to help you later, if necessary."
Some box lunches were available and some speakers talked of reconnoitering through the local Voter Id Act. Held in a Presbyterian Church, their programs move around to other churches and synagogues and get support from both Catholoic and Jewish organizations.
Nice change from listening to the pundits talk of this year in politics ... as Tom Lehrer years ago sang about National Brotherhood Week ... a time when "All of my folks hate all of your folks."
Am a bit fatigued by the level of vitriol and venom on the air ... My Old Confreres were a pleasant change for a quick lunch.
Make love, not War, Old Friends!
Thursday, September 27, 2012
And it's not just kids
Does seem to be a reticense, a shyness, to talk about the vulnerable side of the street .... I have colleagues and siblings who hint at serious illness but hold back on discussing ... though they don't seem to mind, like my children do, talking about my mortality ... Some of them are Physicians with serious difficulties of their own.
I've wondered if there is an embarassment in admitting that death is always lurking somewhere in the Last Quarter ... maybe even shame in accepting that no matter how big a canvas you received to paint upon, eventually it gets full. So many important parts of life seem schmeared with shame .... certainly, illness, sex and death.
We also seem to have a natural tendency to deny other generations these courtesis ... the right to be ill, to die and to enjoy mutual pleasuring with another human being. As one of my inlaw kids said upon receiving any knowledge that 'the inlaws' were still active in the bedroom (nevermind any other rooms): Just shut the door.
Go figger those strange-tagalongs ... children, grandchildren! Interestingly ... I think dogs hasndle these matters better.
I've wondered if there is an embarassment in admitting that death is always lurking somewhere in the Last Quarter ... maybe even shame in accepting that no matter how big a canvas you received to paint upon, eventually it gets full. So many important parts of life seem schmeared with shame .... certainly, illness, sex and death.
We also seem to have a natural tendency to deny other generations these courtesis ... the right to be ill, to die and to enjoy mutual pleasuring with another human being. As one of my inlaw kids said upon receiving any knowledge that 'the inlaws' were still active in the bedroom (nevermind any other rooms): Just shut the door.
Go figger those strange-tagalongs ... children, grandchildren! Interestingly ... I think dogs hasndle these matters better.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Need a New Art Linkletter Show
'Kids say the darndest things' or whatever the title was. Linkletter was chances are 55-60, tall, blonde and looked like a good American. He'd get down on one knee with his microphone and kids would divulge all kinds of homey secrets about the way they thought? but mostly about their parents' quirks and closed doors. Pretty racy stuff for 50's TV, in the days before Weather Ladies were hot all year!
My kids are 46, 45 and 36 ... Oops, Oops II, and the only one that was planned (in that order). Who planned in those days in the 1960's? Who thought about retirement issues? No wonder half a generation is scattering about to fing 3 hots and a cot and doing films about old people's death .... The Savages, Away from Her, ... Who thought about ...? Hell, who could spell eschatology and worry about its four horsemen .... Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell?
Oh, I included Heaven in the Eschatalogical Four. Well, you do still have to talk to your kids about death even if you're scheduled for meetings with the Superos ... There was a Doctor in Vienna who on the frontis piece of his first big book (it didn't sell out a first run ~ 200 copies for years) who wrote on its title page quoting from who knows what Latin speaking scholar: Flectere si nequeo Superos .... If I cannot effectively bend the Heavenly ... Ascheronta movebo ... I may as well deal with those others who live along Hell's River Ascheron.
Talking to kids about details surrounding your own death is like pulling THEIR teeth in Hell. You enter such discussions not thrilled yourself about the prospect ... (Hey! I'm writing to those who haven't given up Playing in the Fourth Quarter) ... I'm just sayin'.
Good that I'm not Bill Gates, Sheldon Adelson, or David Koch .... I was just asking about the family scroll. It belonged to my grandfather's grandfather and my grandfather carried it to the USA when he emigrated in the Teens. It doesn't have a lot of extrinsic $ value ... and there I was asking who might become the guardian of this piece of religious family history.
It was reminiscent of 30 years ago when we took our only male St. Bernard to a Doc to find out about his xenophobia ... he was particularly unhappy about visitors wearing fur. The Doc said: 'Have you considered castrating him?' Poor fellow, took his paw and covered his eyes, as if to say: Hey, Guys ... I'm vaia con Dios outa this place as soon as you look the other way. Just like that, my oldest grandchild explained how she just didn't want to talk about this. Some younger ones said: 'But you're not old.' and one of my kids said: "I just don't feel ready to talk about this."
Maybe I should donate the scroll to the producers of Raiders of the Lost Ark and buy a dusty Stetson.
My kids are 46, 45 and 36 ... Oops, Oops II, and the only one that was planned (in that order). Who planned in those days in the 1960's? Who thought about retirement issues? No wonder half a generation is scattering about to fing 3 hots and a cot and doing films about old people's death .... The Savages, Away from Her, ... Who thought about ...? Hell, who could spell eschatology and worry about its four horsemen .... Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell?
Oh, I included Heaven in the Eschatalogical Four. Well, you do still have to talk to your kids about death even if you're scheduled for meetings with the Superos ... There was a Doctor in Vienna who on the frontis piece of his first big book (it didn't sell out a first run ~ 200 copies for years) who wrote on its title page quoting from who knows what Latin speaking scholar: Flectere si nequeo Superos .... If I cannot effectively bend the Heavenly ... Ascheronta movebo ... I may as well deal with those others who live along Hell's River Ascheron.
Talking to kids about details surrounding your own death is like pulling THEIR teeth in Hell. You enter such discussions not thrilled yourself about the prospect ... (Hey! I'm writing to those who haven't given up Playing in the Fourth Quarter) ... I'm just sayin'.
Good that I'm not Bill Gates, Sheldon Adelson, or David Koch .... I was just asking about the family scroll. It belonged to my grandfather's grandfather and my grandfather carried it to the USA when he emigrated in the Teens. It doesn't have a lot of extrinsic $ value ... and there I was asking who might become the guardian of this piece of religious family history.
It was reminiscent of 30 years ago when we took our only male St. Bernard to a Doc to find out about his xenophobia ... he was particularly unhappy about visitors wearing fur. The Doc said: 'Have you considered castrating him?' Poor fellow, took his paw and covered his eyes, as if to say: Hey, Guys ... I'm vaia con Dios outa this place as soon as you look the other way. Just like that, my oldest grandchild explained how she just didn't want to talk about this. Some younger ones said: 'But you're not old.' and one of my kids said: "I just don't feel ready to talk about this."
Maybe I should donate the scroll to the producers of Raiders of the Lost Ark and buy a dusty Stetson.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Ah, That Explains the Break in Blog
The Last Quarter -- just ask Gov. Romney and President Obama -- is punctuated by celebratory moments during each of which troubles are gone and pains invisible. There are other moments, however, when the petty ailments pile up ... paranoid-like moments when it feels as if the World or its animating spirit
(Anima Mundi) has it in for me. I suppose it's easier to be a little paranoid than to believe that life is a crap-shoot. I awoke thoughout the night with back, leg and foot pain and by 3:00 am realized that my heart rate, my pulse, was way outa whack .... Yesterday it had been in the low 40's even while laying some electrical cable and now, in the middle of the night, it was over 160. I'd been there before ... the arrhythmias of the Last Quarter.
I have a beneficent envy for those who manage to maintain a level of productivity into their late 70's and 80's. Just finished a review of a volume by an older fellow ... first name Otto. Left Europe with his family in 1939 for So. America when he was 11. Emigrated to USA some 20 years later .... and has continued to contribute to his field .... to hang out right there on the top. The book I was reviewing was a collection of published and soon-to-be published professional papers. 83 years young. Somewhere, need I say, I know that Otto has suffered ... burying a wife of many years maybe 5 years ago ... told when he came to NY that he better not bring any of his So. American ideas if he wanted to get ahead ... told that by the leaders of his field.
And it was three years ago that my Mother died ... maybe that's when one feels like s/he's entered the Last Quarter .... when you're an orphan. Talking Wednesday about Jonah's dilemma of doing something for Others .... for people not his own ... God's way of teaching him about this. Gotta go.
The Last Quarter -- just ask Gov. Romney and President Obama -- is punctuated by celebratory moments during each of which troubles are gone and pains invisible. There are other moments, however, when the petty ailments pile up ... paranoid-like moments when it feels as if the World or its animating spirit
(Anima Mundi) has it in for me. I suppose it's easier to be a little paranoid than to believe that life is a crap-shoot. I awoke thoughout the night with back, leg and foot pain and by 3:00 am realized that my heart rate, my pulse, was way outa whack .... Yesterday it had been in the low 40's even while laying some electrical cable and now, in the middle of the night, it was over 160. I'd been there before ... the arrhythmias of the Last Quarter.
I have a beneficent envy for those who manage to maintain a level of productivity into their late 70's and 80's. Just finished a review of a volume by an older fellow ... first name Otto. Left Europe with his family in 1939 for So. America when he was 11. Emigrated to USA some 20 years later .... and has continued to contribute to his field .... to hang out right there on the top. The book I was reviewing was a collection of published and soon-to-be published professional papers. 83 years young. Somewhere, need I say, I know that Otto has suffered ... burying a wife of many years maybe 5 years ago ... told when he came to NY that he better not bring any of his So. American ideas if he wanted to get ahead ... told that by the leaders of his field.
And it was three years ago that my Mother died ... maybe that's when one feels like s/he's entered the Last Quarter .... when you're an orphan. Talking Wednesday about Jonah's dilemma of doing something for Others .... for people not his own ... God's way of teaching him about this. Gotta go.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Ugh!
Hard to have sleep disturbed ... I have visitors whose sleep is more corrupted than mine .... younger people ... older people ... ghosts from the past ... devils from the future inhabit the night landscape .... mine about aging are there ... With all this, my bikes wait, the road and running shoes wait, as well. I'm aiming to get back to the Playing of Playing in the Last Quarter. A persona did appear ... a friendly fellow who we've called Melmo who mostly talks to grandchildren .... he's just 4 and not more than 64 ... he sleeps pretty good but still ....
Witnesses
On the bottom of his closet, like two soldiers they stood
A layer of dust demanded “You’ve seen these before”.
Witnesses for what he now couldn’t and once could
When he bought them.
Was it nineteen sixty four?
One at a time, he picked each up, turned it around,
“Look! The pattern on the toes is just the same,
The leather’s still good, the color still brown,
And inside
The author hadn’t changed his name.Yet they spoke of different times and of a different man
Who wore them then more than a quarter century ago.
These shoes were now witnesses to god’s sinister plan,
That from vibrant forms,
Takes man and transforms him to Lore.110 July 1994
Witnesses
On the bottom of his closet, like two soldiers they stood
With With all this, my bikes waitA layer of dust demanded “You’ve seen these before”.
Witnesses for what he now couldn’t and once could
When he bought them.
Was it nineteen sixty four?
One at a time, he picked each up, turned it around,
“Look! The pattern on the toes is just the same,
The leather’s still good, the color still brown,
And inside
The author hadn’t changed his name.
Yet they spoke of different times and of a different man
Who wore them then more than a quarter century ago.
These shoes were now witnesses to god’s sinister plan,
That from vibrant forms,
Takes man and transforms him to Lore.
0 July 1994
Witnesses
On the bottom of his closet, like two soldiers they stood
A layer of dust demanded “You’ve seen these before”.
Witnesses for what he now couldn’t and once could
When he bought them.
Was it nineteen sixty four?
One at a time, he picked each up, turned it around,
“Look! The pattern on the toes is just the same,
The leather’s still good, the color still brown,
And inside
The author hadn’t changed his name.
Yet they spoke of different times and of a different man
Who wore them then more than a quarter century ago.
These shoes were now witnesses to god’s sinister plan,
That from vibrant forms,
Takes man and transforms him to Lore.
Witnesses
On the bottom of his closet, like two soldiers they stood
A layer of dust demanded “You’ve seen these before”.
Witnesses for what he now couldn’t and once could
When he bought them.
Was it nineteen sixty four?
One at a time, he picked each up, turned it around,
“Look! The pattern on the toes is just the same,
The leather’s still good, the color still brown,
And inside
The author hadn’t changed his name.Yet they spoke of different times and of a different man
Who wore them then more than a quarter century ago.
These shoes were now witnesses to god’s sinister plan,
That from vibrant forms,
Takes man and transforms him to Lore.110 July 1994
Witnesses
On the bottom of his closet, like two soldiers they stood
With With all this, my bikes waitA layer of dust demanded “You’ve seen these before”.
Witnesses for what he now couldn’t and once could
When he bought them.
Was it nineteen sixty four?
One at a time, he picked each up, turned it around,
“Look! The pattern on the toes is just the same,
The leather’s still good, the color still brown,
And inside
The author hadn’t changed his name.
Yet they spoke of different times and of a different man
Who wore them then more than a quarter century ago.
These shoes were now witnesses to god’s sinister plan,
That from vibrant forms,
Takes man and transforms him to Lore.
0 July 1994
Witnesses
On the bottom of his closet, like two soldiers they stood
A layer of dust demanded “You’ve seen these before”.
Witnesses for what he now couldn’t and once could
When he bought them.
Was it nineteen sixty four?
One at a time, he picked each up, turned it around,
“Look! The pattern on the toes is just the same,
The leather’s still good, the color still brown,
And inside
The author hadn’t changed his name.
Yet they spoke of different times and of a different man
Who wore them then more than a quarter century ago.
These shoes were now witnesses to god’s sinister plan,
That from vibrant forms,
Takes man and transforms him to Lore.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Been a Long Time
It's been a half year or more since I sat down to write to this Blog ... to this Toast to Life in the Last Quarter of Life. It's been a stormy time. Saying goodbye to my wife's Mother ... my Mother -- for better or for worse -- for 47 years. Watching my wife say good-bye .... Saying good-bye is a long process, one that requires great expenditures of work .... There have also been threats of illness in the family ... some have passed ... some continue. As I've said to myself and whoever was listening here ... the Last Quarter isn't for the feint of heart ... no Sissies, as we'd say in the 50's.
A man woke me up. He visited me and told me of his wife ... I'd never met her but she was one of those folk who like to say "no" before they say "yes." He was one of those people who likes sense ... likes things to make sense. They would fight a great deal. Someone once said: 'A Man and a Woman? The Soft Spirit of God (the Sh'chinah) hovers between them.' I suspect that was an aspirational goal!
It occurred to me -- maybe because he was a religious man -- that one may differentiate two types of laws in Scriptures ... those that make sense, that can be reasoned out ... like laws about the common good ... prohibitions against murder and stealing that make grouped living possible. On the other hand, there are laws that make no sense, such as a prohibition against wearing mixed-fabric woven clothing. If one follows such a law, one is doing it as a sort of gift to one's God ... or god, if you prefer. God asks that I follow ... like a young lover would follow their lover ... never asking why.
Poor Jeremiah who was never permitted to marry by his God describes the early relationship between his people and his God ... "I remember," he says in the name of God, "the kindness from your youth, the love (I received from you) when you were a young bride. You followed me through an arid land in a land that had not yet been planted."
In loving relationships -- and maybe it's easiest when we're young -- we do for the other to satisfy what they want ... what do kids say in their regal playgames: You're wish is my command.
Poor Jeremiah ... no one to satisfy his wishes.
It's been a half year or more since I sat down to write to this Blog ... to this Toast to Life in the Last Quarter of Life. It's been a stormy time. Saying goodbye to my wife's Mother ... my Mother -- for better or for worse -- for 47 years. Watching my wife say good-bye .... Saying good-bye is a long process, one that requires great expenditures of work .... There have also been threats of illness in the family ... some have passed ... some continue. As I've said to myself and whoever was listening here ... the Last Quarter isn't for the feint of heart ... no Sissies, as we'd say in the 50's.
A man woke me up. He visited me and told me of his wife ... I'd never met her but she was one of those folk who like to say "no" before they say "yes." He was one of those people who likes sense ... likes things to make sense. They would fight a great deal. Someone once said: 'A Man and a Woman? The Soft Spirit of God (the Sh'chinah) hovers between them.' I suspect that was an aspirational goal!
It occurred to me -- maybe because he was a religious man -- that one may differentiate two types of laws in Scriptures ... those that make sense, that can be reasoned out ... like laws about the common good ... prohibitions against murder and stealing that make grouped living possible. On the other hand, there are laws that make no sense, such as a prohibition against wearing mixed-fabric woven clothing. If one follows such a law, one is doing it as a sort of gift to one's God ... or god, if you prefer. God asks that I follow ... like a young lover would follow their lover ... never asking why.
Poor Jeremiah who was never permitted to marry by his God describes the early relationship between his people and his God ... "I remember," he says in the name of God, "the kindness from your youth, the love (I received from you) when you were a young bride. You followed me through an arid land in a land that had not yet been planted."
In loving relationships -- and maybe it's easiest when we're young -- we do for the other to satisfy what they want ... what do kids say in their regal playgames: You're wish is my command.
Poor Jeremiah ... no one to satisfy his wishes.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Old Guys Say the Strangest Things
One Old Guy!
An old guy (Sylvano Arieti) in a book on Creativity said that vacations are central to remaining creative. Not so odd!
Another Old Guy
Was at a meeting a few days ago .... not a bunch of cub-scouts .... Might've been one person under 60 ... most in the 70-90+ group. I mentioned that my son and I were, at his request, going on a road trip in his Volkvagen on Steroids .... the car we call the Big Beast. Our wives will fly down and meet us at the terminus of our trip with our youngest grandchild ... Our oldest child (46) driving with me ... meeting his wife and mine and his two-year old sweetheart. Sounded like fun to me.
This other Old Guy at the meeting -- in all seriousness -- said there must be something wrong with me ... psychopathologically wrong with me to go on a trip with my middle-aged son. This Old Guy had practiced psychiatry for at least 65 years (Arieti was a shrink, too).
Just goes to show .... (or as the kids say ... I'm just sayin' ...) Players in the Last Quarter run the gamut .... (sage to sphinctor magnum) and some of them should run the gauntlet.
Vaia con Dios ....
An old guy (Sylvano Arieti) in a book on Creativity said that vacations are central to remaining creative. Not so odd!
Another Old Guy
Was at a meeting a few days ago .... not a bunch of cub-scouts .... Might've been one person under 60 ... most in the 70-90+ group. I mentioned that my son and I were, at his request, going on a road trip in his Volkvagen on Steroids .... the car we call the Big Beast. Our wives will fly down and meet us at the terminus of our trip with our youngest grandchild ... Our oldest child (46) driving with me ... meeting his wife and mine and his two-year old sweetheart. Sounded like fun to me.
This other Old Guy at the meeting -- in all seriousness -- said there must be something wrong with me ... psychopathologically wrong with me to go on a trip with my middle-aged son. This Old Guy had practiced psychiatry for at least 65 years (Arieti was a shrink, too).
Just goes to show .... (or as the kids say ... I'm just sayin' ...) Players in the Last Quarter run the gamut .... (sage to sphinctor magnum) and some of them should run the gauntlet.
Vaia con Dios ....
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Forgetting Gratitude
How odd it is that I left gratitude out of my list of core constituent parts of health, in my last posting .... 'Who is the wealthy one? He who is grateful for the hand (s)he was dealt.' (Ethics of the Fathers ~ 2,000 years ago).
Sometimes we forget gratitude.
Sometimes we forget gratitude.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Some Constituent Parts of Health
Someone called me, this morning ... struggling with life, suffering through the day to day madnesses of having an 86 year old mother with dementia and not-a-so-great personality thyat keeps getting her kicked out of one old-timers place after another. She was really suffering with all the complexities this entails and with all the calls that come in .... 'Your Mom did it, again. We're kicking her out.'
It reminded me of some of the constituent parts of health ... three in particular.
(1) The recognition that feelings are not forced upon us directly by external events. Years ago, there was a coffee-house ... and old-time coffee-house with music ... in Buffalo. It was owned by a guy named Jerry Ravens. I remember his name and not his music ... I like to think largely due to a bit of graffitti in the bathroom. One person wrote: My Mother made me a homosexual. Another person apparently came along and penned: If I get her the wool, will she make me one, too.
Most people use such expressions as: You made me this or that .... angry ... or happy ... or .... Maybe external events catalyze certain feelings ... but they don't make them. Exploring the sources inside of our feelings may be the beginning of wisdom.
(2) Talking about exploration. Explaining feelings don't get us anywhere ... but exploring them does a great deal. Feeling our way into 'sadness' or 'happiness' ... pain and pleasure ... lets us feel what's most human in us at the only moment we have ... now. The goal isn't to get rid of feelings .... but to let them visit us ... like a wave ... flow over and through us ... yielding a sense of wholeness.
(3) The third thing that came to my mind talking to this woman was the ability to play .... play has at least two meanings ... one is the form it takes in, say, 'kids' play' .... For two hours on Saturday, a visiting three year old began to play with Melmo ... a funny-talking old man who claimed to be three years old, just like her .... Her older brother already was hesitant to allow someone Playing in the Last Quarter to pretend to be 3 years old and to talk with a squeaky voice. Losing that form of play is tragic ... keeping it may be a bit of health.
The other meaning the word 'play' carries is 'give' .... without that play, bridges break, houses crack and families splinter.
All three of these constituent parts of health can endure well into the Last Quarter of Life. Play on!
It reminded me of some of the constituent parts of health ... three in particular.
(1) The recognition that feelings are not forced upon us directly by external events. Years ago, there was a coffee-house ... and old-time coffee-house with music ... in Buffalo. It was owned by a guy named Jerry Ravens. I remember his name and not his music ... I like to think largely due to a bit of graffitti in the bathroom. One person wrote: My Mother made me a homosexual. Another person apparently came along and penned: If I get her the wool, will she make me one, too.
Most people use such expressions as: You made me this or that .... angry ... or happy ... or .... Maybe external events catalyze certain feelings ... but they don't make them. Exploring the sources inside of our feelings may be the beginning of wisdom.
(2) Talking about exploration. Explaining feelings don't get us anywhere ... but exploring them does a great deal. Feeling our way into 'sadness' or 'happiness' ... pain and pleasure ... lets us feel what's most human in us at the only moment we have ... now. The goal isn't to get rid of feelings .... but to let them visit us ... like a wave ... flow over and through us ... yielding a sense of wholeness.
(3) The third thing that came to my mind talking to this woman was the ability to play .... play has at least two meanings ... one is the form it takes in, say, 'kids' play' .... For two hours on Saturday, a visiting three year old began to play with Melmo ... a funny-talking old man who claimed to be three years old, just like her .... Her older brother already was hesitant to allow someone Playing in the Last Quarter to pretend to be 3 years old and to talk with a squeaky voice. Losing that form of play is tragic ... keeping it may be a bit of health.
The other meaning the word 'play' carries is 'give' .... without that play, bridges break, houses crack and families splinter.
All three of these constituent parts of health can endure well into the Last Quarter of Life. Play on!
Sunday, February 26, 2012
The Changing of the Guard
Marsha and I are getting the greatest of kicks out of the new crop of on-air pundits ... the young ones. When parents greet their newborns, many can get excited over their ten little fingers .... "Comes with fingernails, at no extra cost" ... and the toes and the little nose. It's not quite like that with this new generation but sitting back and listening to Chris Hayes talk in fully-formed ideas ... 'Geez, Louise ... he's not even Forty.' I think it was on his show that he had an Ezra Klein who according to his Wikipedia page is 26 and actually thinks quantitatively .... puts together solid arguments based on thought and number-crunching. So, here's a Chris Hayes and an Ezra Klein and a Jonathan Capeheart and Alex Wagner (and I could go on) ... and Marsha and I are awestruck by their clarity of thought and -- for that matter -- that a generation is beginning to look like they can get along despite differing religions and skin-tones. We looked at each other, at one point, and opined how sad it was that we couldn't adopt them. True, there are other youngins who are sharpening their teeth and on the attack and whose thinking is purely "which side are y'on" thinking, but so many of them seem to have all ten fingers .... Love it.
I suppose that Playing in the Last Quarter is somewhat akin to playing poker. There are those who, like Miniver Cheevey (sad that feww read the poetry of EA Robinson, these days .. but times change), "curse the darkness" ... always wishing that they had better hands to play. Two thousand years ago, the pundits of the Ethics of the Fathers asked: Who is rich? and answered: he who rejoices in what (s)he has. This morning, the bathroom door was not fully closed and I was seeking to complete the task of clothing myself for what promises to be a quiet Sunday. I was struggling -- well, at least groaning -- getting into my undershorts .... socks were worse. Marsha and Gunther-dog, I'm convinced, were both lying in bed (Gunther has developed an Oedipal problem) amused by der groaner.
And it was this weekend that one of my grand-daughters led a congregation in cantllating part of a liturgy.
Sonny Bono and Cher (or was it Mamma Cass) had it right: And the beat goes on.
Except for those poor wretches who cannot apparently revel in the flight of this next set of shooting stars ... of the Alexes, Chrisses, Ezras and Jonathans.
I guess this was all said by Anna in the The King and I
I suppose that Playing in the Last Quarter is somewhat akin to playing poker. There are those who, like Miniver Cheevey (sad that feww read the poetry of EA Robinson, these days .. but times change), "curse the darkness" ... always wishing that they had better hands to play. Two thousand years ago, the pundits of the Ethics of the Fathers asked: Who is rich? and answered: he who rejoices in what (s)he has. This morning, the bathroom door was not fully closed and I was seeking to complete the task of clothing myself for what promises to be a quiet Sunday. I was struggling -- well, at least groaning -- getting into my undershorts .... socks were worse. Marsha and Gunther-dog, I'm convinced, were both lying in bed (Gunther has developed an Oedipal problem) amused by der groaner.
And it was this weekend that one of my grand-daughters led a congregation in cantllating part of a liturgy.
Sonny Bono and Cher (or was it Mamma Cass) had it right: And the beat goes on.
Except for those poor wretches who cannot apparently revel in the flight of this next set of shooting stars ... of the Alexes, Chrisses, Ezras and Jonathans.
I guess this was all said by Anna in the The King and I
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Pushing on 47 years
I think it a week from today and 47 years ago that Marsha and I met. I won't bother to count the days .... has to be something like 17,000 days .... these are large numbers .... It's not 1-2-3 .... Getting to Play in the Last Quarter, that is.
I was at a meeting last night. There were 6 of us .... I think the group has been meeting for 30 years to discuss children at risk and issues surrounding their treatment. We never did discuss the planned reading on Trauma. Easy to take detours at this period of life. I don't think anyone was much over 90 in the group .... maybe one of the participants is in her early 60's. The men -- between them -- don't have a good set of hair. One person pointed out that using the collective noun "hair" might not be best .... with as few as we had, "hairs" might be a preferred usage ... perhaps we could even number them .... hair #1 ... hair #17. You got the picture ... too late for a comb-over for most. And like Players in the Fourth Quarter of a scrimmage .... there was no lack of wounded warriors.
Not every morning ... but this morning ... it is striking that Marsha and I are both at least a bit tired .... and our kids are beginning to look old.
....
...
..
.
I am taking a vacation in 18 days but who's counting?
I was at a meeting last night. There were 6 of us .... I think the group has been meeting for 30 years to discuss children at risk and issues surrounding their treatment. We never did discuss the planned reading on Trauma. Easy to take detours at this period of life. I don't think anyone was much over 90 in the group .... maybe one of the participants is in her early 60's. The men -- between them -- don't have a good set of hair. One person pointed out that using the collective noun "hair" might not be best .... with as few as we had, "hairs" might be a preferred usage ... perhaps we could even number them .... hair #1 ... hair #17. You got the picture ... too late for a comb-over for most. And like Players in the Fourth Quarter of a scrimmage .... there was no lack of wounded warriors.
Not every morning ... but this morning ... it is striking that Marsha and I are both at least a bit tired .... and our kids are beginning to look old.
....
...
..
.
I am taking a vacation in 18 days but who's counting?
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Weekend of Glees and Sadnesses
How they balance ... Glee and Sadness. A friend invited us to a very crunchy prayer service .... mixture of guitars and drums, liturgy and Scripture. A small group of people, very different than Marsha and I in their take on the world ... connected to each other and to their meditations. I have sought to learn how to cherish the excitement of others .... I suppose that exists as a goodly portion of the core of my religious sense ... the lifelong process of learning to revel in the joys of another's harvest. Ah! And we were invited to lunch with our friend and his family, afterwards.
Indeed! I think this is a part of successful Playing in the Last Quarter ... of accepting the unfoldings ... generation after generation. Children, Grand-children.
I suppose another core part is the ability to share in the sadness. An ex-student of mine -- now, I suppose, a 55'ish year old man -- wrote about the death of his Mother, at 90.
Indeed! I think this is a part of successful Playing in the Last Quarter ... of accepting the unfoldings ... generation after generation. Children, Grand-children.
I suppose another core part is the ability to share in the sadness. An ex-student of mine -- now, I suppose, a 55'ish year old man -- wrote about the death of his Mother, at 90.
Sad when we lose our people ....
My religious tradition says two different things in confronting death ....
Baruch Dayan Emes .... Blessed is the Truthful Judge (upon hearing that someone important to a friend has died)
and
HaMakom Y'nachem eschem b'sh'ar aveilei Yrushalalayim .... this one's harder to translate .... usually it's rendered as May God (literally The Place or, I suppose, The Cosmos) bring you comfort (tho, that word used for comfort has more the meaning of Bring You Around) among the rest of the Mourners of Jerusalem, etc.
Much seemed to change in my view of the World as I had to say good-bye to my Mother, even tho she had been victim of Alzheimers for many years and under the spell of both inner and outer directed aphasias. I needed to be "Brought Around" to a new place .... Later, I chose the words "NACHAMU" for my license plate ... it's the imperative form of that same verb "Y'Nachem ... Nachamu" that calls out from Isaiah 41 and begins Handl's Messiah .... Nachamu, Nachamu Ami ... Comfort Ye, Comfort Ye, My People .... says your God. Or as I would have it "Come Around! Come Around!"
May it be that through the door of deep sadness, that we do, indeed, all come around to integrate that cleansing sadness and its cousin, the welcome state of song-infused joys.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Eine Kleine Paranoia
There is a kind of paranoia that seeps in in the Fourth Quarter ... something about the manner in which some members of the younger generation feel a need to disembowel you .... to reach into your peritoneum and rip out whatever organs are still functioning. If there's anyone reading out there, they might think such a view a little paranoid, unless, that is, they've experienced similar occurrences.
Marsha and I were at a religious ceremony and party that related to the birth, one month ago, of a strapping young firstborn to his parents ... Scripture requires that such first fruits either be given over to the priestly-class or, else, redeemed. It's a charming ceremony where the parents have a special "right of return or redemption." There really isn't more than a whisper of tension as the new Father says, essentially: I've decided that I wanna keep the kid! I went through this redemption of my own first-born son 45 years ago ... it was, on balance, a good decision. Indeed, it was on the 50 mile trek to this party that that very son convinced me to take a 1200 mile road-trip with him, as our wives flew there in comfort with our youngest grandchild.
All this is to say that I was feeling a degree of ebullience as Marsha and I arrived ... and almost everything, indeed, was wonderful. I don't get to see my cousin very often ... or his wife, 4 kids (one of whom was the 'new Father') and their 11 grandchildren ... running around and being kids. Other folk in that part of the family were equally "gifts to see" ... one, in particular, another cousin's child, had always treated us with such dignity when we'd attend her kids' weddings. Family is -- or so we wish for in our dreams and waking fantasies -- a safe place.
As we were getting ready to leave early (I had early work to do, this AM), there was that other couple. They are 40'ish and have adorable kids and practice another form of the craft which I practice and have, as well and as many members of the family, stayed connected to different forms of our faith-practice. There are many ways to live and they seem to be living one form of the Good Life and practicing ethically and as they see fit.
Still and all, every exchange with this couple has the form of challenging the worldview that informs my form of the craft that we both practice. It wasn't violent ... more mocking, than violent. More like:
We came to a seminar with so and so. He's brilliant. Do you know A, B and C? You don't? But
they're neighbors of yours, practicing in the same city and very well-known, No. You really
must know them (smile, smirk, ....) I mean, they are your neighbors ... your professional neighbors.
They're world-known. ... 'etc., etc. and so forth.'
We took our leave.
I promise. I am, indeed, Playing in the Last Quarter. I and my style of thinking will inevitably and soon be gone and, yet, I leave such encounters with a sense of being rushed out the door.
In the Babylonian exile, there were codes of law. Among these laws were one that stipulated: if A has pleasure and B has no loss, there is no legal loss. So that if a man is walking in an orchard and sees an apple on the ground and knows that the farmer is overseas for the season and not going to return to harvest this apple, eating it incurs no liability. The reverse, though represents another general principle of ethical thinking: If A has no gain and does something that incurs a loss in B ... gratuitous enmity, it might be called ... is, indeed, a crime.
And it's a crime that left me with glimmers of paranoia in the 50 mile trek home.
Marsha and I were at a religious ceremony and party that related to the birth, one month ago, of a strapping young firstborn to his parents ... Scripture requires that such first fruits either be given over to the priestly-class or, else, redeemed. It's a charming ceremony where the parents have a special "right of return or redemption." There really isn't more than a whisper of tension as the new Father says, essentially: I've decided that I wanna keep the kid! I went through this redemption of my own first-born son 45 years ago ... it was, on balance, a good decision. Indeed, it was on the 50 mile trek to this party that that very son convinced me to take a 1200 mile road-trip with him, as our wives flew there in comfort with our youngest grandchild.
All this is to say that I was feeling a degree of ebullience as Marsha and I arrived ... and almost everything, indeed, was wonderful. I don't get to see my cousin very often ... or his wife, 4 kids (one of whom was the 'new Father') and their 11 grandchildren ... running around and being kids. Other folk in that part of the family were equally "gifts to see" ... one, in particular, another cousin's child, had always treated us with such dignity when we'd attend her kids' weddings. Family is -- or so we wish for in our dreams and waking fantasies -- a safe place.
As we were getting ready to leave early (I had early work to do, this AM), there was that other couple. They are 40'ish and have adorable kids and practice another form of the craft which I practice and have, as well and as many members of the family, stayed connected to different forms of our faith-practice. There are many ways to live and they seem to be living one form of the Good Life and practicing ethically and as they see fit.
Still and all, every exchange with this couple has the form of challenging the worldview that informs my form of the craft that we both practice. It wasn't violent ... more mocking, than violent. More like:
We came to a seminar with so and so. He's brilliant. Do you know A, B and C? You don't? But
they're neighbors of yours, practicing in the same city and very well-known, No. You really
must know them (smile, smirk, ....) I mean, they are your neighbors ... your professional neighbors.
They're world-known. ... 'etc., etc. and so forth.'
We took our leave.
I promise. I am, indeed, Playing in the Last Quarter. I and my style of thinking will inevitably and soon be gone and, yet, I leave such encounters with a sense of being rushed out the door.
In the Babylonian exile, there were codes of law. Among these laws were one that stipulated: if A has pleasure and B has no loss, there is no legal loss. So that if a man is walking in an orchard and sees an apple on the ground and knows that the farmer is overseas for the season and not going to return to harvest this apple, eating it incurs no liability. The reverse, though represents another general principle of ethical thinking: If A has no gain and does something that incurs a loss in B ... gratuitous enmity, it might be called ... is, indeed, a crime.
And it's a crime that left me with glimmers of paranoia in the 50 mile trek home.
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