Bedouin Bandits at Sea

It was 45+ years ago that I and Milton met during my stint as a graduate student and his as a young professor ... just a couple of years out (of his own studies). And now, he we were at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean sitting in a tent shelter like two old Bedouin Chieftains in some Arabian Desert. I do have memories of lengthy conversations in the cafeteria of Buffalo's Interim Campus where the Math and Philosophy (and some other academic departments that I don't recall) were temporarily housed as a new campus, the dream of a visionary gone by, Marty Myerson, was being built. The table I'd typically be occupying was visited by mostly the young faculty .... I had begun graduate school very early with but a year of undergraduate studies officially recorded on transcripts, so that I was still much younger than the crew that made space for me.

This seaside dialogue was different and the same. My son-in-law visited our desert abode but he's much older than anyone I can recall visiting our cafteria discussions. His twin daughters would occaaionally come in to stir the pot ... playing like 9.5 year old girls ... originally identical .... now anything but and striving against each other. The Writer/writer of Genesis had a good time describing the intrauterine experience of Jacob and Esau ... S/he took the word run and put it into a reflexive conjugation .... and constructed ... va'yis'rotzitzu ha'banim b'kirbah .... And the boys ran around after each other in her innards (Rebecca's, that is). Life begetting life begetting teaming life.

But the conversations remained. Milt wanted to know how ... or, anyway, quizzed his young "student" on how it was possible that religions so similar to each other 'banished' members of the other sect and how this happened to Otto Rank, Freud's young Secretary of the Wednesday Night Meetings. Banished was a harsh word and harsher deed for someone who expressed a hardly discernible difference. The conversation muddled around a bit and I offered the analogy of flying over a major urban area with lots of little suburban towns clustered about it. From the sky, no stark differences could be perceived. Indeed, if there were any difference it would have to do with the seat of power and each one's idiosyncratic laws. Who's your Priest, Minister, Imam or rabbi? ... Any case ....

Cross a boundary and you could get arrested on on side and told to slow down on the other. I'm no sociologist, but my guess is that people in the various townships are quite similar ... ah! ... but the seat of power ... it's all about power

Milton told me my analogy sucked. I told him that I felt fortunate that he hadn't used one of his favorite expressions (either 'Are you stupid' or 'Just goes to show you don't know everything') and would live with my sense that he was a blind and deaf and obstreperous old man. He laughed. So did I. Would we have said the same if our wives hadn't been sitting outside in the light of day? Who knows?

Maybe Playing in the Last Quarter has as much to do with appreciating the other and your history together than what is said. After all ... it's pretty much all been said before. I'll ride out to the beach this morning and set the tent up, again, so the Old Bedouin Chieftains can carry on conversations that began long before woodstock and Watergate the Religious Right and Tet .... oh .... and grandchildren.