The Cast Continues

The die is cast .... Cast fishing ... Casting aspersions .... Castigation ...

When I was a schoolboy, I was asked to read Edwin Arlington Robinson's poetry. "Miniver Cheevey, Child of scorn, grew old as he assailed the seasons. He cried that he was ever born and he had reasons." Miniver Cheevey, Arlington explained at the close of the piece, was the town drunkard and "kept on drinking." Simon and Garfunkel traded on our generation's love for Robinson by enshrining Richard Corey, another one of Robinson's Cast of Characters, this one who "went home one night and put a bullet in his head." Robinson's poetry fell out of favor; I don't know why.

Our trip back demonstrated, if nothing else, that there is value in some technology. A lengthy tie-up on the Interstate demonstrated that Last Quarter legs and Start-Stop traffic are far better suited to each other when the drive to power is through a torque converter on an automatic transmission. Clutching a thousand times in two hours of 2 mph Interstate Tortoise Crawls makes one's left leg feel at least a quarter older than the rest of one's body.

A hot shower might have solved that ... well, except for the fact that the icy cold water on my naked body did little else that further debilitate. Quick trip down to basement was sufficient proof that the water heater that had been installed "11/4/1994" had had enough of my demands for hot water and decided to retire due to incontinence. I suspect my Dad would have reluctantly understood my decision to call in a plumber rather than push the old heater up the stairs without advantage of my indentured sons who've managed to escape into lives of their own and then carry a new 150+ pound heater down the same stairs to take its place. Dad never approved of men who couldn't man-up ... and I was a dutiful son.

Yes! I am a member of the Cast of Characters, as well. I have the odd or oddly discovered and very occasional quirk. Like ... really struggling to leave any morsels of food on my plate ... "Hey, isn't that why God created bread .... to sweep the plate clean?" I reluctantly invite carpenters, plumbers or lawn mowers to my home in recent years. ...  though, I CAN man-up enough to admit that I can still feel the place where my back took responsibility for putting in place a 3/4" subfloor that I precut for a third floor bathroom that I was refinishing maybe 15 years ago. Particularly my left hip area (the bathroom opened to the right) suffered from holding up the ropes that I tied through the various fixture-holes with the bulk of the weight going on the right hand side through the entrance way. I think I'd have no back at all if an ex-student of mine hadn't shown up at just that time to visit M and I and agreed to help me lower the floor into place. She's now a Jewelery maker somewhere in the Northwest ... maybe Oregon ... but was never afraid to throw her back into grunt work. "Go, Ms. H. If you ever give up designing fine jewelery, an Old couple trying to graciously Play in the Last Quarter could always use a hand."

As for my Dad?

"My Father Milton, who art in Heaven: I woulda done it if I coulda done it."

Cast of Characters

It's difficult to describe the Cast of Characters that appear in the Last Quarter ....  that unfold in the natural process of a Life Unfolding over many years. I suppose it is similar for all species and most times of years. Still, the addition of the sense of awareness adds, at least, color to the mix. In the Open Seas beyond one's partner or spouse, Children, Grandchildren, Kin and In-law Kin, ex-kin and soon-to-be ex-kin, Friends and their Coterie of Friends. A travelling weekend at holiday time is not quite like the Halloween House of Horrors Walk that your cardiologist recommended you not take due to idiopathic arrhythmias.

 Travelling with M ... no more than 400 miles ... and we've seen three of our four siblings and their living spouses, 2/3's of our kids and in-law kids, half the grandspawn, at least one niece and her beau, and sundry friends and livestock. One of my grandkids is studying the rapprochement between Jacob and Esau ... I assured her that, for Ole Man Grandpa, it's easier sometimes to read about these meetings than to participate in them. It has little, to my way of thinking, to do with the holidays. People blame these seasonal events on the madness of families ... vestigial families ... those that no longer provide shelter or food to each other except ceremoniously ... the madness of the litter of families gone-by when they meet "to celebrate."

 Thirteen or so years ago, I wrote about self reflection as a process involving a maze of mirrors ... parallel and orthogonal ... smoky ... clear ... cracked ... a maze into which one peers seeing reflections of times, of places and of persons ... current and gone by ... one looks in and finds wonders and also frightening compound and broken mirrored scenes from which ancient images of oneself betimes look back. ... 'Beware of who you look at ... they may look back right at you.'

Children that once populated the back play areas of station wagons in the era before SUV's and even before seat belts now may appear middle-aged and successes in their own right. They're surrounded by worlds of their own making. Older siblings may be more than a bit addled? Younger siblings may reflect curious lives committed to foreign principles of living. At one such Oasis on our journey through the Badlands of Time, we stumbled upon a VHS tape of my parents' 50th anniversary get -together. M and I were barely 40 and our kids were young and quite healthy looking ... unencumbered, still, by relationships with boyfriends/girlfriends. Our four parents were all still with us. Dancing, eating, toasting the lives they had built; our youngest was just 12 years old. VHS = Very Hot Spirits? Now, mostly chilled by the Passage of Time and by Edgar Allen Poe's "Vulture, whose wings are dull reality."

My Mom and Dad were right in the middle of the Fourth Quarter ... M's parents a half a decade younger. M and I have the roadtrip back, today. We drove up in our older son's 'royal chariot' with his wife and daughter. He followed our trail the next day in our roadster and traded back. The roadster ... we'll go home in the roadster with the top securing us from Winter's chill ... the roadster wouldn't make it up to our younger son's home ... up a dignified driveway to a warm and very religious home. M and I will go home, today, in the roadster to fascinate and laugh and tear up about the past 48+ years, together ... bringing with us thrills and disappointments, packing the boots of our little rover with  all of this and more.

Signing Out

Signing out for the holiday ... Not certain what can be said about it ... Celebrating the birth of a baby (giving gifts) ... Celebrating the continuation of a family (inviting folk to join about a table to prepare foods for each other) ... Celebrating rites together (as part of a community). M and I will have opportunity to share with children and grandchildren ... tasting of the future. We'll similarly have time with all our siblings ... vestiges of families superseded by newer families. I may have written some years ago about walking through my parents home when we were preparing to empty it and give it over to another family. I was with my grand-daughter ... maybe she was ten, then. She asked, looking at the pictures that were still hanging on the walls of her great-grandparents' home: How is a family made? I didn't want to tell her that new families are made by weakening the bonds of older families, even though there is some truth, perhaps, in thinking that no new family can be built without taking apart older ones ... that life is like those fern-like geometric fractals .... a series of families, many, perhaps, taking over where the previous ones have ended or, at least, are in the process of ending and making room. There were mystics who wondered how an omnipresent god could possibly create. If s/he is omnipresent, where is there room for 'the new.' Some of these religious thinkers concluded that there must be a process of redacting the self to make room for another. They called this process ... tzimtzum. Maybe the Fourth Quarter well-Played requires tzimtzum. May it be thy will, Creator, that I may, indeed, savor this process, in spite of the pains that may accompany it.

Memories? All alone in the Moonlight!

Just about every Friday night, at least three of our grandkids come over for Dinner. I'm typically a bit late ... not always easy getting out from the office with visitors. Yesterday was much like other Fridays. This week, I experimented with a Barley Soup with Tomato and a sisterhood of vegetables ... pre-stir fried in some olive oil to give them a trace of smokiness. 5 of my 6 grandspawn are vegetarians and their parents have memories of being served savory stuffed peppers ... stuffed with a bread pudding with too much green pepper in it to make it sweet ... these were cooked up by my Father with just a trace of snarky humor related to his grandkids' vegetarianism. The tomato/barley was pretty good. One of the ten-year olds tossed in some laudatory superlatives ... She tries very hard. I, also, contributed some mildly candied sweet potatoes with walnuts and an experimental Vegan Pesto ... using toasted sunflower seeds instead of my usual cashews ... ?? ... it was OK to Good. Eaters liked it. M inherited the rest of dinner except for a salad brought by "our baby" ... my office partner ... and mother of a 15 yo and two nearly 10 year old twins.

 But all of this brings back memories. My parents enjoyed to cook and to feed others. Really good memories of them pleasantly puttering around in kitchen. I don't recall any tension until the days when my Dad would sit at the stove and watch either M or I cook ... shaking his head on the horizontal ... "Nah ... I wouldn't do that." I remember tension, as well, when my Father's bride began slipping into the fog of Alzheimer's. Like my Dad, it wouldn't quite feel right or manly to use a recipe ... it would be something similar to having to shut off a circuit on the fuse box before changing a light switch . "You just gotta be careful," he would say, "slow and easy."

I have many other memories ... some of which are not .... some of which are not memories, that is.

One of my favorites has my WWII Soldierboy Papa carrying his four spawn on his shoulders to the beach ... 4-5 blocks, away. My three sibs would be on one shoulder (maybe? aged 12, 9 and 8) and I'd be ensconced in regal solitude upon the other. As folk say: 'Them Dogs don't Hunt' ... "It doesn't compute." .... Put simply? It's a memory that ... isn't a memory but a pleasant narcissism.

Another has to do with dropping a watermelon down a flight of stairs ... coming home from shopping ... heading up to the apartment where we lived about my religious leader Grandpa Adolph ... or Abraham, as he became known after WWII. My two Sisters, not my Brother, and I each believe that it was that person who dropped the sacred watermelon ...  kbump-kbump-kbump-k-squoosh down the stairs ... mussing Daddy's Divine Dander, lighting the soldierboy's fuse. There, I figure, I have a one third probability of it being an accurate memory.

The others that come to mind come from repetitive dreams. The memory part is right on ... I have had these curious component parts in Dreams for Two Quarters, if not more.

1. After we left Brooklyn, Dad's work as a Printer took him to Toledo and then to Providence, In both places, we lived in old houses. In the Dreams, there is a staircase that goes way to the top of the house and then a secret passageway that lead to a loft space some steps down -- where old things were kept. Others might be able to look up to that space, though I was not typically visible. .... Hidden parts of myself? Aloneness? Old Things? In the Providence House, I would, indeed, develop film and print negatives in a dark spot under the eaves. But not the same place!

2. Again, in one of these houses, there was a large glassed room ... the kind that might exist in an Old Mountain Resort ... with outside kind of chairs and tables .... maybe 40'x80' ... That room was associated with happiness and playfulness and yellow sunlight, though I cannot recall bumping into anyone I knew. It was easily accessible. Indeed, I've spent many Dreams going in and out of that space.

3. Then there's the dualism that misses the point. ... I think it's younger than the others ... maybe since M and I lived in New Hampshire ... 40 years, ago, with the older kids ... We lived just in front of a Beaver Pond in Beaver Hollow ... very cramped quarters for two parents, 6 and 7 year old sons, and a St. Bernard who wanted to play with the Beavers ... Alas, dogs can't seem to dive to find the submarine entrance to Beaver Lodges. We were there living at a residential facility for very bright schizophrenic and autistic adolescents. Freezing valley in the Winter of the Oil Embargo when only crud was available ... crud that would not infrequently fail to fire the furnace. Saint B. Kazimierza would keep the adults warm -- or was it herself -- by sleeping between us under the covers.

It was after leaving there and moving to Philadelphia in 1974 that in many dreams, I would need to get to a town ... over hill and dale. The access roads were not all that easy to find and up a short bit of the Mountain to a parallel road. If I went right and missed the left hand turn, I'd get caught in a development full of split levels or something. I would always find the house ... a country kind of New Hampshire house. Small outbuildings, all set back off the road. On the left of the house was a bumpy, not very well paved, heavily treed road that went up and over the hills for maybe something less than ten miles. On the right was a clearer path ... a smooth road. I always tended to go up on the left more primitive road but I might return with either. I have long enjoyed getting lost while driving, hoping and allowing for new discoveries. Nah! These roads just went up to this town ... and I was gonna come back. Most recently, I was coming down the mountain and a pickup truck and a Semi were getting onto the road from my left. I passed the pickup but motioned for the Semi to go ahead. I was exhausted and, indeed, I've been tired for the past several months .... Not enough Thyroxin flowing through me we'll see what last week's scan shows ... something? I couldn't keep my head up and was laying down towards my left. Not easy to do that in a Left-hand-drive car and the last Right-hand-drive car we owned was a 1973 Citroen DS-23 that came via England to New Zealand to States. Couldn't be that one, except in a Dream, for we sold that one to a crazed Steeplechaser who mounted horns on the front, drove it disrespectfully and totaled it. I might add: I've never gone into that house on the bottom of the hill, on either side of which a road ascends and remember nothing of the destination. Life? A journey without a destination ....

I have many real memories, as well. Playing in the Last Quarter is full of Memories ... Mine and M's.

Tomorrow is 48 years since 22 December 1965 when we married. A Long FFFFFFine Time, as the kids might almost say. And, still, I've never stopped by at the house on the bottom of the hill or held memories of the end of the road.

Not Only Rodney Dangerfield Gets No Respect

I received this epistle from my friend, Deane ... loosely, on the perils of aging .... Lord, am I next?

They felt awful about it …… until they got some cocktail sauce and lemon. 

Enjoy!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/11/15/newser-worlds-oldest-animal/3574863/

Scientists accidentally kill world's oldest animal at age 507

The oldest animal ever known lived from 1499 until the day researchers cracked its shell open, killing it in the process.
Ming, an ocean quahog from the species Arctica islandica, was initially thought to be a record-setting 402 years old. But the scientists who found it on a seabed near Iceland in 2006 now say further analysis has revealed that it was an incredible 507 years old, reports CBS.
The researchers, who didn't realize how old Ming was when they first found it, opened the ancient clam up to judge its age by counting growth rings inside its hinge ligaments. That's because the rings are "better protected" there, scientist Paul Butler tells ScienceNordic, which notes that Ming was named for the Chinese dynasty that ruled when it was born.
But the rings were so close together that scientists ended up having to count the rings on the outside to be accurate, leading CBS to point out that Ming could have lived on, had scientists just started there.
"We got it wrong the first time and maybe we were a bit [hasty] publishing our findings back then. But we are absolutely certain that we've got the right age now," says Butler.
The old, dead, mollusk still has a huge amount to offer science, reports the Herald-Sun. Scientists believe it will provide valuable data on changing sea temperatures over the last half-millennium—and maybe even some clues to longevity.
In other fascinating animal news, the "Asian Unicorn" has been captured on camera.
Newser is a USA TODAY content partner providing general news, commentary and coverage from around the Web. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

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Where the Wildthings Still Are

From  1979 until 1993 at 3:05 PM, I had a philodendron on my furthest South bookshelf in my office. Until then, the tendrils reached across all the bookshelves to the Northernmost one 26 feet away. At that moment, a tornado crashed a perhaps 50 foot Beech Tree through the ceiling ... After recovering from damage and shock, I repotted the parts of my plant that with two Sensavaria had been growing across and partially hiding the framed certificates and diplomas and a picture of Freud.

 I renamed her Mathilda. She was a wild woman but a gem who continued to remind me about how messy life was ... how more complicated she was than all my theories and all of Horatio's. A few months ago, Mathilda, herself (Lord knows! she was balding), became too straggly and I replaced her with one of her yet-to-be-named children. Right now, she lives on the Northernmost bookshelf and is beginning her now only 19 foot trek to the South. The other 7 feet? After the tornado hit, some re-architecturing was done turning the last 7 feet into a more convenient waiting room bathroom.

 I should say that while I appreciated Wild Woman Mathilda and cared for her weekly, she was never to be tamed. At one point, she had wrapped herself around a 4 foot fluorescent bulb and strangled it, causing it to explode in the midst of a meeting. "Teeming life" is an expression we use in English. I use it to describe my azaleas enemy, the honeysuckle, that I once wrote about. I thought of it when my youngest child 30 years ago had a sleepover with her friends, though "teaming life" may have been an apt description, as well..

We human beings build models that seek or, at least, pretend to tame the complexities of that teeming life. We then are prone to believing that our models adequately represent all of life. It was Freud, der alte Hexenmeister from Vienna, who liked to comment that madness was the inability to separate the Word or Symbol from the Thing, Itself ... the Model from Reality .... what the General Systems Theory folk (like Bertalanffy) called the need to distinguish the Map from the Territory.

We humanfolk don't like that. I want my 3" toy Corgi-car model of my 1968 Citroen DS 21 to take me to the grocery store. If I believe it does, I'm in trouble, in whatever Quarter of
Life I am Playing.

My brother once cited Goethe, though I don't recall from where: Grey, my friewnd, is all theory ... but Green? the evergrowing Tree of Life. I should give the Old Guy a call, today..

Disgruntled, Again

There's just a little snow, thusfar, this morning. The number-size of the catch in the 5 live-catch mousetraps seem to have reached its maximum and begun coming down. M & I seem to have increasing body pains and somebody asked me why I write these blogs. I kinda snapped back: "Why are y'askin'?"

I don't know how many years it's been, now. Was it Judy Collins who sang "Time Passes Slowly Up Here in the Mountains" and lots of people have said that "Time flies when you're having fun." Abel and Old Doc Freud both talked of the similar meanings of antithetical (opposite in meaning) primal words from antiquity. In Latin, Sacer means both sacred and profane. In Hebrew, Kadosh can mean adjectivize something with its sense of holiness, while Kadesh from the same root refers to a male prostitute. Most people translate the Biblical and Prophetic word Nachamu as "Comfort, Ye," as in the Handl chorus so popular around this time of year. But the Writer/writer of the Bible, also, uses it to refer to "changing one's mind towards disgust," as it is used at the end of the Creation Myth in Genesis: And God 'despaired' about the creations he had brought forth.

Over many years of being and teaching, I've used "I'm brighter than I look" and "I'm not as bright as I look" almost interchangeably. Perhaps, I've used it to tell the person I'm addressing that it's time to consider the what of what I'm saying rather than worrying about the who of its origins. Geez! And why do I say it in such a convoluted way rather than just coming out and saying ... "Hey, you. It don't matter. The imprimatur of my brilliance is not the issue here. Just, stick to matter at hand, if you would."

Why, why, why. Hey, it's kinda like "Whine, whine, whine." 

Lemme go back to Biblical languages. In Hebrew, there are two words typically translated as why. Lemme riff on them for a few minutes and then go shovel the little snow. Don't ask me why ... Actually, the line from HAIR was "Don't ask me why, I'm such a hairy guy" or philosophical questions, for that matter, on why men are born with nipples. Y'know! Some things just come along for the ride.

Back to Hebrew:

(Word 1.) LaMah ... comes from the join of two words .... the preposition L' ... meaning towards ... and Mah ... meaning what. Pu'im together and they spell -- more or less: Hey, Bro ... what were you trying to get at (when you cracked the egg on your little Sister's head, or somesuch).

(Word 2.) MahDuah ... again,  comes from the join of two words ....  Mah ... meaning what and Duah (not from scat but rather) from the word  La'da'as, to know. Kinda has the intention of: What were you thinking?

I suppose, I can answer that. When I began blogging, it was right around the time that I showed up at the Gym at around this time ... roughly 5:00 AM it must've been. A conversation, a brief conversation occurred between myself and Gina who was my age, maybe a little older ... the lady at the desk.

H: Hey, G'morning.

G: G'morning. How ya doin?

H: Not bad.

G: No. Y'can't start the day "NOT BAD" ... life is great.

H: Yeah, life is great but my back does hurt and I thought you were actually asking how I was doing.

G: Well, I am!

....

What to say? It got worse. It occurred to me that there was a kind of expectation that A would ask B and then B would ask A and both would respond: "GRRRRRRREAT." I saw it at professional conferences. I remember when a colleague showed me his new kitchen that cost 50 times what my first new car cost in the early-mid 60's and 12 times what my parents' first home cost in 1961 and told me that it made him feel great.

Made him feel great. Really. Made him feel great? Wow! About 1970, I saw some graffitti on the bathroom wall in the Limelight Coffee House in Buffalo, questioning that construction: "made me feel ...."

                              Someone had written: My mother made me a homosexual.

              Someone else penned just below: If I get her the wool, will she make me one, too.

Nevermind the political correctness, for the moment. 

This morning, Gina, I feel shoveling-sore and I feel if not everyone of my days, then most of my years. I know what's written in my appointment book about visitors scheduled to come, I intend to see all of those that trudge through the slushy snow, I have a half a dozen tasks to do including allowing the dentist to finish a root canal, I just am finishing a posting to my blog, and I don't tend to preface any of these tasks with a "why bother?"

One of the simplest definitions of health comes in three parts, like "Gallia in tres partes divisa est," at least according to General Julius in his Gallic Wars.

Part One: Recognize a desire to do something.

     Part Two: Figure out if doing it will hurt you or others.

          Part Three: If not, Jump in and do it.

for if you wait too long, especially in the Last Quarter, the opportunity may never reappear.


It was Brother Thomas Merton who began one of his prayers: Dear God, I have no idea where I'm going (and if Brother Howard may add, no justification for going there. [tomorrow, I may think differently.])

Vaia con Dios, Amigos.

Struggling

It's 5:00 AM on a Sunday Morning. Some slushy snow outside indicates a third more or less minor storm has passed in just less than a week. Heart is coming back toward normal rhythm and rate after being wild at rising .... just wrote down a nondescript dream about being on an army base in the late 1960's or early 1970's. For some reason, I knew that this store (or whatever went on behind this counter) was a good place to have one of my 1950's Eversharp pens refitted with a new bladder (the bladder is the rubber reservoir that holds the ink .... arranged by squeezing a lever in the barrel). The old barrel came apart pretty easily ... no tear in this bladder! ... though odd ... and,yes, for some reason it was time to change that bladder.  Handed it over and someone said that it might be hard to fit ... 60 year old fountain pen .... couldn't guarantee a finish time/delivery date. Woke up to pee. Guess that makes sense? but who is Eversharp? Dunno.

Been having strange dreams. During a Siesta on Friday with M ... awaiting the arrival of afternoon visitors and visiting grandchildren, later .... In the dream, M and I were looking to figure out which room would be available and best for us ... entering and exiting at least one.  I or we were at a conference and everyone was to stay in their own room. No significaant commerce with others. I guess it got worked out ... next thing I knew, I was driving slumped over to the left in a left-hand-steering car ... slumped over, exhausted ... too tired to pull myself up ... too tired to stay up enough to see where I was going .... scene faded out ... some fear I coukd crash.

Woke up (and did, indeed, arise) to find GuntherDog looking at me pathetically ... "Yoh, Amigo ... this is not small town Central America or Mediterranean village ... get up and work, you bum ... My life depends on it." (I actually thought he called me something less friendly than 'Amigo').

I know dogs don't really talk ... still ... the look on his face spoke volumes. 

Neither dreams were accompanied by anxiety ... maybe resignation ... parts wear out like my cardiac rhythm-maker ... the thing that gives the right ba-bomp .... ba-bomp .... ba-bomp ... I think it's still called a sinus-bloc(k) .... .... oh! and my back .... my aching back that my yound Doc manipulated the day before ... Guess he found the spot that hurts. A week, today, M will have tolerated me in a state called matrimony (really!? one Mother ... Mater ... monium) for 48 years. 

I think jokes about anniversay gifts lose their tonus after a number of years. 

                                M to H: What you gonna get me for our anniversary.

                                              H to M: What kind of sex shall we have.

Jokes get stale and worse! They begin to smell like lost cucumbers in the back of the fridge, like potatoes giving off poisonous gasses in their Winter lair.

Thought of getting her a Bernese Mountain Dog ... thought better of it.

I could box myself in a big cake? jump out like Jack! Ah! Jumpin' Jack Flas has lost some. Any ideas welcome? 

'Snow, beautiful snow ... I'm anxious to shovel some' was not exactly the lyric from Oliver on Broadway and it just ain't true. 

Geez, my back hurts. There's a Holiday party at an organization to which I belong .... long ride for an old crippled guy. Maybe I'll take A siesta and try to get back with M to that conference center,

That having been said? It is quite beautiful outside ... GuntherDog likes it as long as it's not raining.

Go, Gunther!

Leaving

Thoughts of Leaving Someday

From ditties et lettre

of Abe Isaacs

Six bookcases lining the wall and filled on the inside with jacketed books and above with two philodendrons (one split-leafed),  two sensaveria that bloom every third year or so, an old microscope, test tubes on a rack, an oak bowling pin, a bulb that he found on the beach, and a glazed bookcase from his grandfather -- a shaman of a different ilk -- that one filled with sacred books. On the wall were diplomas and certificates and pictures of der alte hexenmeister from Vienna. Then, again, there were five chairs, a desk, a couch and an intention to leave this office some day.

Last Quarter Blues: The Beadle is Tired

Thirty Five years of accepting visitors to this office in which I sit, now, and write. But more than that .... 35 years of keeping the office tidy-enough, the bathroom clean-enough, the flowers arranged, the books and art in some order and the path clear.

I am the Beadle in this church ...
Hey! I am the walrus!

At least, this morning, I am lumbering about like an old man .... my back hurts ... my back hurts a bit every morning but today it hurts considerably. I took on cleaning and arranging and organizing ... concerned that my notes and writings are very private. Lev 19 has it that confidentiality is akin to Godliness ... or maybe goodness ... and is only to be broken in life threatening circumstances. The path is a different matter, entirely. For these 35 years, the Beadle has arisen whenever leaves cover the path or those beautiful blankets of snow.

Maybe the Walrus should describe the office ... the cave in which he has dwelled for half a lifetime.

Structurally, the office has three rooms ... a waiting room/ante-room and a bathroom, as a visitor enters through a now-somewhat-cloudy sliding door which the I-Beadle maintains. A couch and two softish Danish chairs afford sitting in the waiting room. Some samovar/water-heater was there for the first 30 years with fixings for tea; that has now been replaced by a Keurig ... How very modern, Howard. The waiting room gets cold and, anyway, my mind is full of memories and, as a youngster, my first mentor, my Grandfather, would entertain street people and congregants, alike, with a glass of tea and a listening ear, as he first might counsel them before my Grandmother, betimes, interpreted their dreams.

The bathroom is not. Actually, there's a sink and toilet, artwork and some posters announcing awards for a variety of more formal writings than Playing in the Last Quarter. One wall is covered in books, in case the waiting room selection proves inadequate. Some pretty heady books, I've been told, occupy that wall and another bookcase that holds others and plants on top.

The office is bigger. A desk in an alcove holds computer and printer. It's kept out of sight by the glassed bookcase that my Mentor told me I could have on his deathbed (age: c. 99) ... a bookcase which held his sacred books and scrolls for 70 years after his arrival at Ellis Island. One of his scrolls is still in it but I did follow his expressed instructions: It's for you ... fill it with your perfidious writings. (Actually, I've snuck some sacred books in there, as well.) The wall opposite my chair is long and hold about 3 dozen shelves of books which now, as the years and technology have unfolded, could fit on a thumb drive. Even if up to date? an anachronistic library of volumes that -- each in their own way -- pretend to capture the glee and sadness of standing erect on this Earth. In front of the bookcases are two arm chairs that have sat there, except when moved by a visiting couple. There's a chess board there that I made in 1958 and somewhere there's a chess set on the bookshelves and an ottoman that could hold that board when necessary.

There are certificates and diplomas that pretend to attest to competence of the named. There is also artwork and a picture of an old Dokteur from Vienna, now mostly hidden behind a Sensivaria and a rangy Philodendron (named Daughter of Mathilde) ... I guess for those who love the tendrils and dendrites of rangy plants.

To my right is a book table and after that a fainting couch that I found in an Antique Barn in Central Maine, brought back on top of a Citroen Station Wagon, and had recovered in a brown leather ... and that almost touches one end of the book wall. There's my chair and a very similar one across from it. Some tables. Some mostly Turkish rugs ... a 19th C. Yahele Prayer Rug on the wall over the couch.

I am the Beadle. I care for these rooms and prepare them for meetings.

That's the inside. Outside from the curb is a short brick path leading to three stairs and a long brick path with encroaching vines that I must trim ... more often than I do. Visitors, not infrequently, must take refuge on the lawn for a bit to avoid being consumed by those bushes and vines. Three more steps with handrails and 30 more feet of path to the sliding door and the waiting room.

I am the Beadle. I clear the path of leaves and snow. I've kept the path clear for 35 years and, this week, with two relatively minor snowfalls (each about 6 inches), I was leaning on my snow shovel remembering 28 September 1993 at 3:05 PM when a tornado came from above the path leaving someone else's Beech tree strewn on the house ... going up three stories above to the chimney ... leaving the trunk vertically in the waiting room ... through the roof. Fond memories of the Beadle with his chain saw ... two weeks of clearing debris.

But leaning on the shovel and anticipating the back-ache I now have, it became more than obvious that the Beadle needs help. The slaves (who built the 100 foot path with me years ago), my sons, are now looking at 50 and are not likely to show up with shovels to help me dig out before a 6 AM visitor. The Beadle needs help and a bit of acceptance that someday he must leave this office.

Categories: Yours and Mine

Thinking of Mandela ... A man for whom opportunity arose to take extraordinarily consequential action ... and who took it. When Jonah had the opportunity to bring the Word of God to sinning Nineveh, he hightailed it outa town on the red-eye to Tarshish; it took a Big Fish and the Lesson of the Kikayon (the gourd) to get him back to the action. I suspect when the call comes, most of us turn to Fox or MSNBC or one of the Reality shows where others act and we get to munch on Tortilla Chips. When opportunity called on M'diba to take actions that might break down the artificial categories that separated the various colors of So African folk, he answered the call.

For me, people define themselves by the categories that have meaning for them. Race has never been a category for me, anymore than height. I smile imagining a culture in which people are segregated by their height, especially now as I'm in the shrinking years ... my putative Last Quarter. I can tell the difference between the sexes ... usually. But that, too, doesn't get my category juices flowing ... Y'know ... Us and Them. or ... Us, Them and Those.

Over the past going-on twenty years, I've joined many others in the world in online discussions. I find them enlivening and maddening ... like much of life. Recently, I stumbled upon someone who theoretically differed from me; this is a bunch of folk in the helping professions. (I DO remember an expression from childhood years: Gournichte vil helphen ... ain't nothin' gonna help ... oops). We wrestled about some theory ... Lord! It was fun. He was an older guy like me and, just perhaps, a bit wiser. After maybe 6 or 7 postings, he worried out loud that we might be inducing yawning in the rest of the crew. Frankly, I was sad to leave the play. This guy who lived 5,000 miles away and was in the "the grandkids are gettin' older" years, like I, ... this guy enjoyed playfulness. It was like Summertime (between postings, tho, I was shovelling the walk to my office) in the 1950's and I was out playing catch with my neighbor, Ronnie C.

Then, a Grinch came ... to explain to us that what we had been doing was irrelevant, pedantic, of no value, and argumentative. Why couldn't we be like Rodney King implicitly recommended in his "Why can't we all get along." (Damn! I actually ran a conference titled that ... wondering why practitioners in my own field tended to hate each other). I thought I and my Austrian collocutor were getting along just fine. In fact, I thought we were having a great old time.

OK, OK

I had an "aha! moment." I'm not willing to categorize based on Color or Height and I don't want poor or heavy people restricted to Walmart. I'm willing to talk with Conservatives and Liberals, alike. I think Men and Women both have cool-potential. I live an economically comfortable life but don't see natural boundaries set up with $ figures. I feel like the luckiest kid from Brooklyn ... not the most deserving ... not even more deserving ... but fortunate with a natural amount of willingness-to-work.

But I do see an Us and Them between, on the one hand, those who are willing to play and willing to allow others to play and, on the other hand, spoil-sports and those who when they are not included begin "playing rough."  "Ruff to you," I say! Woof!

So, OK ... I figured myself out. I love to play. With M, with my Kids, with my Grand-kids and with people I've never met who show up in the same cyber-cubicles and with friends and visitors. That's it. I think it was Winnicott who said that Herr Dokteur Freud got it two thirds right in saying that health was the ability "to love and to work" ... he missed, Winnicott opined, "and to play."

I feel better, now. I can go back to bed.  (Actually, it's time to salt the icy office path ... but I'll play, later.)  

Amour

A friend lent me a copy of the French film, Amour. I decided to watch it in French, thinking that the words were not most important in understanding the odd combination of gifts and curses that we members of Clan Anthropos face in living. We have inherited all the vulnerabilities of being a living thing among other living creatures, along with the awareness of these self-same vulnerabilities.

Amour centers on a gifted couple Playing in Overtime, I suppose. She begins "to lose it," as we say. Is it a series of strokes or Alzheimer's that has her cascading into oblivion? Maybe the subtitles would have explained that. What becomes so clear is that the world not immediately involved in the day-by-day end of life realities doesn't really, as the kids say, have a clue. Seemingly impossible decisions have to be considered and made. The experts, I imagined, who've preceded them down this road aren't talking ... cannot talk ... have already, as we say, gone to their rest. The thanatologists which the film doesn't introduce ... our scientific experts about death ... they have, indeed, accompanied others on the road ... but they haven't really been there.

And while watching the movie doesn't bring you there and cannot bring you there, either, it may sensitize one? me? us? to consider the trite recommendations offered up by perhaps those living in the Third and Fourth Quarters. I don't know what she said but the rather warm and solicitous daughter of these folk knows that the Old Caretaker is not doing it right for himself or for her Mother.

I often fascinate on how people seem to believe they know the truth. I once presented a talk about words and how they become more specific and, as they do, lose their meaning. Sabbath, Mammon, and Science all became locked into specificity and -- or so I claimed -- lost their original meanings. The fourth word I chose was truth. I was speaking my truth, indeed, when I suggested that its earlier meaning was not some abstract and profound statement about the Universe, but rather the willingness to give witness to the reality that one imagined they perceived ... nothing more.

I do think the people who put together this film were speaking about their truths. I thank them for me.

 

The 50 Year Old Mind

In the aftermath of Mandela's death at 95, M and I were treated to a wistful memoir of someone growing up in So. Africa as a youngster. I don't recall all the details ... I can't say that I recall ALL the details of anything, these days. But he was born in the very early 1960's and left So. Africa in the early 1980's to pursue other dreams. He spoke of how his Father, a White of perhaps Roumanian or Lithuanian extraction, worked defending folk in the ANC ... memories of some of the quiet that, of necessity, I suppose surrounded those details ... memories of the time one of his Dad's legal colleagues had visited their home, as he often had, and was to travel the 4 hours to his tribal-lands, only to be found in the subsequent days chopped to pieces .... memories of the belief that Mandela would never be released and almost forgotten, as a presence ... remembered more as a myth ...

R, the speaker, wove these and other disparate memories and thoughts about liberation and the world, in general, into a cohesive narrative of a man's life that brought at least two listeners to a wistful appreciation for his sharing the memories but, also, for one of us, at least, an awe of his capacity to bind the together into a whole ... as of one piece. The man is not a historian in the professional sense of holding some position in an academic setting and, yet, his mind (without notes) is able to synthesize smoothly complex and betimes dissonant threads. His wife is of the same vintage as R and as I recall her sitting in a graduate class I was teaching maybe 10 years ago as she was changing careers from Law to one of "the helping professions" (Hey, wait a minute! don't lawyers help?), I recall an equally articulate lady ... ah! but I wasn't in the Fourth Quarter, then.

It is the contrast between my slower Central Processing Unit (CPU) of today and that of say the time I was teaching that class that is so striking. There are, in my estimation, three types of envy:

There is a pernicious/toxic envy that seeks to have what the other has 

that is of value and/or to make certain that they don't have it;

There is a beneficent envy that moves us to appreciate what another

 has and to seek to attain something similar ... maybe that is more 

"emulation" than envy; and

There is another beneficent form of envy that values what the other 

has, realizes that it won't come or (maybe) return to you 

and sits back and enjoys the show.

May I revel in the successes of all the late 40 and early 50 year olds (and some older folk? but maybe not me) whose turn it is to now put together the next wave of cogent ideas to come, as they, themselves, inch towards the Last Quarter ... watch their kids leave ... their parents die ... in this unfolding and beautiful fractal of life. 

Patterns ... Some We See ... Some We Don't!

I'm not an oceanographer but still fascinate when I'm on the beach and play-capture the pattern in the waves that I cannot quite structure in my mind. small ... long ... small .... big .... short ... small .... I say play-capture due to the maybe chaotic manner in which a series of smaller waves, for instance, might follow and/or precede a larger one haphazardly. I know enough to know that I know very little about waves.

Hey, Horatio: Nevermind whether light is a wave or a particle? 

What the hell is a wave? 

It's certainly more than simply a bunch of particles!

But I still play at being able to understand and I find that sufficient, for the time being. And I don't know, for that matter, if I'm witnessing an early childhood fear of being tumbled head-over-heels by the big one? or if I'm trying to bring some rationality to the halcyon world of feelings that visit many of us (they assuredly visit me) when we experience that "beached feeling" after a day of soaking up heat. Huh! Mind over Emotion ... or the mental pretending to hold court in the presence of the emotional.

I suppose I was thinking about the randomness of life as I was opening my eyes after a night of Last Quarter interrupted sleep. If I had my druthers, I'd get 5 hours of solid sleep on most nights ... never waking up during those hours -- I'm not greedy. I don't find in myself, M or in the friends I still have or the visitors who occasion my office that undisturbed sleep is all that common after 60. This morning -- still lying in bed -- my mind turned to a familiar sensation ... one I associate with the coronary arrhythmias that are nowadays more an annoyance thanks to the triumphs of modern medicine. (That's a little joke I have with myself ... like trying to figure out waves. My Father gave me a book called the Triumphs of Modern Electricity ... dated 1895 or something. I can't check on that date due to the Triumph of Forgetting over Remembering where I last saw that reddish book in my library.)

In any case, while I sometimes know before my pump goes into fibrillation by that familiar feeling ... sometimes, it just doesn't happen.  These days, I typically have an episode every week or so, though last week I had three; still,  I thank my Good Comets that while for years my atria would fibrillate about 50% of the time, I'm now down to 5-10% of each week. Count your blessings, Howard!

I'm gonna put this down for a bit and jump on my hamster-wheel/treadmill; I'll be back.

The run was pretty good. Heart Rate went up from its usual 45 Beats per Minute to 150 bpm and is now back down to the mid-60's ... Not bad for a guy past his mid-60's.

But my mind is focused more -- and was while I was running -- on the waves of glee and sadness that visit the lives of everyone I know, excepting, that is, the depressed who feel comfortable in neither unbridled happiness nor in the expectable wistfulness of a life that will always have its share of goodbyes ... and, for that matter, its allotment of illness. I wonder ... or, as I'm prone to say, I fascinate about this often.

The treadmill is a wonderful illusion ... it speaks to me:

Horatio ... er ... Howard ... You can control speed and elevation.

You can control it by left hand and right hand switches.

It's all in your hands.

What a great and dangerous illusion that is. Add to the impossibility of predicting exactly what may occur minutes down one's path ... add to that the presence of another ... a friend, a lover, a spouse, one's spawn and grand-spawn ... and the great messiness of life appears.

I have a visitor coming soon. But as I await their arrival, I recall the rule-to-live-by that sometimes I can follow ...

In a relationship, it's typically best if only one person is crazy, at any given time.

May it be Your will, Oh! Great Monarch of the Universe, that I be capable of with-holding my madness when M is down and out ... and that she be capable of with-holding her own when I've lost it!

There are, indeed, advantages to such a blessing that permits waves to come and go in oneself and in others.

"Psychosomatic?" My &%#

Erich Fromm ostensibly told his friend Michael Maccoby that one could imagine that all illness was psychosomatic -- one could imagine that until one reached one's Sixties (from Friedman's biography of Fromm) ... until one entered the Last Quarter.

Don't ask, as neither John Donne nor John Kennedy ever quite did, for whom the aging image in the looking glass is searching, it is searching for thee.

It often has surprised me how well the young singers of each generation projects into the future the vulnerabilities and vagaries of later life. For Fromm, apparently, it grew from the wisdom accruing from a first myocardial infarction.

(Hey, maybe my Doctors get me? maybe my kids, too?)

Get a Grip, Howard

I saw my oldest child (born in 1966) and my youngest (arrival: 1976) on Saturday night and spoke to Herr Dokteur middle-child (d.o.b. 1967), this afternoon, as I was recovering from an unfortunately incomplete root canal done by my DDS (d.o.b. 1969), a day after my Chair of his Teaching Hospital Cardiologist (d.o.b. 1970) told me that it was likely safe to decrease my heart medication that is supposed to keep me from having too many arrhythmias that may keep me awake at night. And while you may get my drift that I'm still awake after Midnight on a night when I have a 7:30 AM visitor, I have done my vetting of all these young folk -- they all have five unwebbed fingers on each hand and I suspect a similar number of digits on each of their adult feet and all other necessary but covered bodily parts. I do have a GP who is old enough to have been toddling when the Beatles sang on the Ed Sullivan show ... that's a relief!

How do I say this? I need to get a grip on myself. M is just 17 months younger than I and one of my siblings is old enough to have changed my diapers. Judy Collins, James Taylor, the two living Beatles, Joan Baez and  little Bobby Dylan are all in their 70's -- and Leonard Cohen and Tom Lehrer are in their 80's. Oh! And Lee Hayes who liked to sing: "How do I know my youth is all spent, my get up and go, has got up and went"
... poor Lee Hayes was composted well over 10 years ago while Pete Seeger and Lonny Gilbert (I think) are still singing.

Damn it, Howard, get a grip on yourself, go to sleep and keep Playing in the Last Quarter, tomorrow; life is still a blast even if you have to chew only on the right side.

Does anyone out there remember Geritol and Serutan ("Natures" spelled backwards)?

BTW-2

So, M read this AM's posts and doesn't like my French spelling of "accountrementes," says my spelling, in general, is poor, and then says to me: Oh, you're never peevish.

There WAS something in her tone suggesting perhaps-just a dash of sarcasm in her comment.

Perhaps-just a dash!?

(OK ... try looking up Perhaps-just in your Funk and Wagnell ... or was it Wagner???)

BTW

Saw a film with M, this weekend ... The Book Thief .... powerful, beautiful, moving ...

And got done with raking the Autumn Leaves ...  powerful, beautiful, moving ...

Pet Peeves and the Accoutrementes of Grouchiness

Those of you who continue reading along with my rants on "getting older" ... on "Playing in the Last Quarter," as I keep saying, as if one can tickle the Grim Reaper into compliance ... those of you still here may well have guessed that I have a curious preference for getting-out in cyber-words what otherwise might be extruded from my very being like cursewords from a thug on a Brooklyn street corner. "He tells jokes and writes funny little ('little-little) ditties to cover up his grouchiness and his propensity to tell people to bugger-off."

I sort of remember the first time, I gave a visitor to my office "the bird," as it is called. I came to call it and other symbolically aggressive acts "the hat pin." I'm fortuitously in a service business in which there are no absolute requirements to metabolize others' guff. There are boundaries. I don't make love or overt war with my visitors but -- beyond that -- I feel bound only to be of assistance to them in enriching their lives. Zo! When someone comes in all puffed up with their rage, I live under no prohibitive forces that prevent me from asking: "Just what the Hell are you so angry about?"

I don't think it's the dangling participle that gets such people to lay it on me ... It's kinda like opening up a floodgate. The vitriol and venom are forcefully puked out ... oh! ... and typically we both feel better.

I suppose that I'm trying to justify the sundry manners by which my own peevishness becomes manifest ... let me list a couple of my pet peeves:

• People who speak as if they know the truth are on my list and really piss me off. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'm still annoyed by the two women at Thanksgiving who with ease and facility were able to categorize me as a reactionary shit for not having decided how I feel about abortion. I guess I don't like people who know ... err ... I know that about myself.
• There's a similar group of people who reason that if someone disagrees with them, it's because they're wrong. My middle finger wants to snap to attention within ten feet of those folk.
• People without gratitude are center-target for me ... people who one cannot satisfy. I remember at a protest during graduate school days in the 1960's. The students had quite sensible complaints, I think all of which surprised President Marty Meyerson and which he agreed had to be immediately remedied. About a dozen students refused to leave and a huge mess occurred over the next weeks. Yuch! Including Meyerson getting the can for not calling in the National Guard. 
• Then there are the cynics! One of my rules in life, I borrow from the 2,000 year old Ethics of the Elders ... Pirkei Avos, as it was called: Judge everyone to the side of righteousness. Y'know! Innocent until proven guilty. In my mind I've come to call it the presumption of good intentions. I suppose that cynics (not the ancient Greek Cynics but the garden variety type) are those who look for the glitch and that glitch of theirs pisses me off.

But, truth be told, I think I need a guru or someone giving an inspiring Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) to help me get over this disgruntledness or maybe I just need to embrace that part of me that's like Mr. Engler's cane. Old Man Engler would sit in front of his house of W. 5th Street in Coney Island and shake his stick at all us kids ... hey ... just trying to have a good time.

Some years ago, I wrote about my peevishness on a birthday morning:

Being that No One Writes Verse
for Abe Isaacs Anymore

“A mere piss in the ocean, all these years,”
Said Abe, as he trailed down birthday stairs,
To serve birthday kibble to waiting dog and cats,
To fetch birthday coffee, alas! No more birthday cigarettes.
“A day for all to revel with middle-aged me,
How much more pleased could any man be?”

“A cosmic fleck on the Milky Way”
Aside, said he, his fears to stay.
Then appeared in his throat the telltale knot
When noticing the cat’s favorite spot
To shit upon when puss is feeling bitter
That no one had bothered to change her litter.
And while feeding the dog, the wish to run
Realizing that decisions are never made as one
But rather by the rule: my will be done.
“Didn’t we agree on a uniform ban
on inuring the cats to eat meat from a can!?”
Abe found a solution, a tad-bit rash
Abe pulled out his sprinkler and make his own splash.
“I piss on the world! Why the hell not?
Who gives the pussy dominion on that spot?
A day for all to revel with middle-aged me
Please … save your sighs and no sympathy.”

“For I’m no zit on the Lord’s six day creation
Having arrived after all other failed experimentation.
Now, getting’ on, know what I ought’a do”
Abe barks at the rising Sun, “Hey Sun, Hey you!
Most years gone but some remain
Of vigor and charm and hearty refrain
Let all who’ve tasted their own felicity
Come and revel … Mine lives, too!
Inside this protesting but vigorous,
Middle-aged me!”The moral of Abe’s story is plain;
I explain:
Many will scoff when you’re pissed off
And laugh at you if you run off
But if you seek pets, others or missus to be cooperatively compliant
rather than covertly and silently defiant
then the rule is:
He who pisses never misses.

Regards from a Peevish Old Guy

And It Was Evening, It was Morning ... Thanksgiving Day

We dined the Turkey Holocaust with friends, as I knew before. Kids were elsewhere, as were grand kids. Felt a sufficiency of my two richest emotions, happiness and sadness, that day.

I wrote to R and M, afterwards:

Thanks for adopting the us Orphans for the Holy Day.

Just like in CAROUSEL:

The vittles, we et,

Were good, you bet,

the company was the same.

Your grandson is a real charmer. And the three girls are full of life.

The Older Folk could learn how to let the guests clean up

especially because y'knows what they say ... Y'kin lead Miltie

to food but you can't trust'im with the China!

Much love ... Howard

Eating with M & R is exactly like eating with family ... no just-for-show deference shown. Their older sons live 2,000 and 10,000 miles away. The oldest grandchild was there at the table (23?), as was M&R's youngest child (not so young anymore? 45) and a niece from Texas (freshman at College). Somehow the conversation turned to the major social issues of our political discourse: abortion, euthanasia, freedom-to-suicide, and same sex unions. 

I admitted -- not being shy --  that abortion had always been a tough one for me since around 1969. My M and I had two kids when one of her friends flew in from Rhode Island, where abortion was not available. M was busy and I was the obvious choice to drive the friend to a clinic. On the way, she asked how I felt about abortion. I answered that I had never thought about it -- one way or another. About 35 years later when we reconnected with the now ex-pat friend, I still hadn't figured out how I felt about the impact such a "choice" might have on culture. As such, I chose to support pro-Choice voices in elections ... figuring that if I couldn't settle it in my own mind, I had no right to settle it for another ... recognizing that some might say that my thinking should involve the fetus, as well.

I don't know. I began thinking about it when I was barely into the Second Quarter and here I am in the Last Official Quarter -- as puzzled as ever ... true to my Pyrrhonian Skeptic roots. The older two young women quickly labeled me a reactionary shit or some such. 

Alas, the older I get, the less obvious most decisions ... most dichotomous decisions ... become. 

But truly, Toto, there's no place like home ...and when your friends' younger Gens can curse you out in front of a visiting niece and a 6 year old, you know you've made it.

(There's a great song from the Broadway staging of Oliver about adoptive families .... "Consider Yourself.")