Only a Matter of Time

Time is a continuous and linear kind of measurement. Little kids often think about catching up in years to their older sibs or parents. We look at them lovingly and knowingly and explain that Big Sister Judy is always gonna be four years older than you and even when you're both grandparents she'll remind you of that and that her only regrets are not flushing you down the toilet when you were born. (But maybe time isn't quite as linear as we tell the kids -- well those spawn of ours who are deciding whether to join AARP, anyway. ... Kids, my ass!)

Oops! I got a Big Sister, Judy ... Am I remembering something.

Any case, M has caught up with me. After all these 49 years together and the past seven with my heart going irregularly pitter-patter out of sinus rhythm, M has developed an arrhythmia, herself.

This Summer when we go on bike rides together, we can carry signs for "The Arrhythmics."

Or "The atonals." .... yeah, or just "Fools with  Drools!"

Whoopee!

(Why do I expect the usual flow of questions about whether -- after telling bad jokes -- I'm depressed.)

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

The Good? Going for a bike-ride with M.

The Bad? Another roofer trying to take advantage of Last Quarter Types.

The Ugly? A public speaker who could tell neither his mouth nor his ass from a Cello.

... and not to forget ...

The Funny? A newly-retired friend who wants to study the relationship of Information Theory to Soduku.


I wonder if the youngin's imagine that the Fourth Quarter is all about flat-lining. I imagine it -- when I can -- as the time when the street-noise has sufficiently quieted ... permitting the sounds of Spring's reawakenings to be heard, once again!

"Listen to the Birdies sing!"

"They Call It Sleep"

Interesting .... I've been up since 315 and have already received notes from some Last Quarter Players on being up at 2 or needing to work out "this sleep thing."

Maybe, it's a matter of finding things.

• The melatonin in my brain seems to have been misplaced ...
• Nobody can recall where the Ginkgo was last seen ...
• For that matter, deposit slips went missing, yesterday, too.
• M and I found a bike shop and went for a ride on what may be a new recumbent bike for her ailing back ... couldn't quite find our way back along the side streets near the bike shop run by a Fourth Quarter guy.
• Last night, in order to promote sleep, I was hunting in one of those big Pharmacies for the liquid camphor that goes in cool steam vaporizers. M was hopeful it might quiet my zestful nocturnal breathing that can keep her awake. M walked about the pharmacy and, at last, found me in front of the hundreds of camphor products ... I thought it was called KAZ, just like our first St. Bernard, named at his request. He was the retired head of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Kazimierz Kuratowski, one of the founders of Topology and my early mentor. It was good standing like a confused refugee from Jeremiah's Jerusalem ... a little addled ... unbelieving ... bewildered. I got to think back to Dr. Kuratowski who I chauffeured about in 1968-1969, learning from him the History of Polish Mathematics. It was good to be found, too. I AM a dignified sort and resisted the urge to wail-out: 'MARRRRRSHA! I'M LOSSSST!'  But OK to be staring at all the pretty boxes on the Pharmacy's counters with foreign and microscopically (in)visible writings on their side! I bought the pink and blue box.

If y'gotta Play in the Fourth Quarter, I suppose, y'might just as well enjoy it.

A friend at dinner, last night, told me that he had become delirious and confused in the middle of the night after taking one of the modern sleep hypnotic meds. He remembered that his remote had something to do with the television and the DVR and being able to levitate his wife, but he couldn't qjuite put it together.

Carpe Delirium, Baby!

Writing Remains Tough

On the Fullness of Ink

 

The bottle of ink

Is still half-full.

Missing

May be the words

That once filled

The fullness

Of the empty top half of

The bottle of ink.

Remaining , yet,

Is so much more.

(feeling hopeful)

Gone Fishing

Actually busy struggling with writing up a piece to present in four weeks. As my CPU (Central Processing Unit) ages in this betimes dastardly Fourth Quarter, writing has become harder, more pleasurable and slower. On top of that, Winter took two Butterfly Bushes and disintering them took the lives of two shovels, as Howard and his pick-axe kinda kind-of won against a singular root two days ago ... the wounded warrior with painful wrists, legs and back. "Retire yer pick-axe, Young Man ... it's time to Go Fishin."

So, here I sit on the edge of an old familiar creek -- fishing pole 9errr, laptop) in hand .... waiting for a bite!

"I can assure you"-

I guess we all have bugbears, no matter what decade or Quarter in which we Play. One of mine has to do with the person who, in the midst of a discussion, lets go the "A Bomb" and assures me that this or that is true or has been verified by the most rigorous of means. Frequently, my sense of these people is that they belong to the same sect of Self-Worshippers who leave a discussion with the same set of beliefs they had when that conversation began.

I dunno. About 6 hours after having this discussion with a mid-Third Quarter Player, child of mid-Late Fourth Quarter friends, I had a dream that included an office at the post office from a postal worker for a water pitcher ... clear ... with thin light blue stripes that my Mother used this time of year. M and I were in this tiny Post Office mailing a giant box with a stuffed animal tucked inside. The clerk was very much like my friend, Fredericka, who works on programs for old people. She was, as in reality she is, her usual kind and helpful and humorous self, but did, indeed, wish for me to buy the pitcher on some payment plan.

I don't know what the dream was about, though I do long for those days when my Mother was about and the conversation, last night .... the "I can assure you gambit" had much to do with issues surrounding this professors experience of being treated as a Mother by her graduate students. In any case, by the end of the dream, my heart had left sinus rhythm and I was -- and still am four hours later -- in atrial fibrillation.

Frankly, especially when in this state but often during the Last Quarter, I am hard-pressed to "assure" myself that my ass is screwed on to my bottomside -- or, perchance, I just question that it is affixed securely in its proper place. Ha! If Hysteria comes from the Greek for the belief that the crazed often suffered from a wandering uterus, maybe I suffer from WAS (Wandering Ass Syndrome). Y'think?

Indeed, I do wonder what kind of Ass I am to enter these conversations with people who have little interest in what I've thought about or written about. And, truth be told, I do discount any collocutor who already is certain of their position.

Sandor Feldman -- maybe 55 years ago -- wrote up a volume on (I think it was called) 'Mannerisms and Gestures of Speech.' I'm pretty confident that I still own the book and maybe I should check on whether this was one of his speaking mannerisms that he discussed ... but I'm too tired from my heart going pitter-patter at 4 times its usual rate. If recent-past experience is a guide, I suppose "I can assure you" that I will convert back to a normal rhythm ... 40 or so beats per minute ... within another 4 or 5 hours. I'm not nearly so certain about the mounting bolts that attach my ass to the rest of my frame.

Anyhow, I'm getting older and disgruntled-er .... errrr ... and the list of expressions that annoy me is, if anything, growing. I can even, occasionally, picture myself half-deaf  in some House of Drools on Fools, shaking my cane, asking for assurances that dessert will arrive before reruns of Perry Mason end.

I guess I coulda titled this posting: Assurances? My Ass!

The Holidays

Each Season .... each of the times ...  .... we remember who is and who isn't there, this particular year. I don't recall what we were doing or cooking and. I don't recall if it was yesterday or the day before and I don't recall who said it, M or I .... but someone said ....'Someday,  the grandkids will talk about the year that .... .... That Was the Year that Was ... well, it was that year that Grandma and Grandpa did something' ... whatever that was. 

Little faces carefully watching The Ancients ... denizens of the Fourth Quarter ... carrying out rituals that previous generations did had exercised before them  ... cooking the same foods. 

Songs about songs about memories echoing from the past and to the future .... Sonny and Cher's Beat Goes On and Soloman's Seasons Still Go Round and Round. 

Someone once wrote about Ghosts in the Nursery .... Madnesses that seem to be passed on unwittingly to the next generation.

Are there Angels in the Nursery, as well?

This year, I wonder about that.

And, this year, I've passed on the right to lead the rite to my grand-daughter, S.

"Carry it on, S, and make it sweet."

Second Chances?

The kid comes up to the teacher or parent: "Can't I have another chance? Please?"

I began these postings that -- I suppose -- half-humorously and collectively attempt to make peace with the fact (I hesitate to ever use that word ... but) that a season of life arrives when another chance to get it right ... to play-over that questionable call on second base .... that first or second attempt at relationship .... that way of parenting ... there comes a time when second chances are unlikely.

M and I will celebrate 50 years together, next year. Optimistically speaking, we'll have a commemorative celebration ... kinda like a commemorative post-stamp issued by the Postal Services. Somebody at that party ... someone else our age who still believes in "Do-overs" ... will hold up a glass and wish us another 50 years. Someone else will say: "Hey! This time maybe you'll get it right."

The Last Quarter is full of one-time commemorations ... Ever hear of people gathering for a hundredth anniversary celebration? ... Tell the party-planner not to forget the drool cloths!

Second chances! Right. 

I suspect that Moses and Jesus, Muhammad and the Buddha and many of their followers have each made the point that healthy living entails living each day as if it were your last day to make things right. Alas, these sayings of the Elders are greeted by the young (including us, when we were young) as so much dribble precipitating out of the corners of the mouths of those who may not have many more days set aside in order to get it right. 

Well. As Hillel the Elder said: If not now, then when?

And as Mork would say: Nanu-Nanu!

Carpe diem, Baby! Get it right, today!

Postscript: Someone is likely to tell me that this sounds "blue" ... "maudlin" .... "morose" .... So, while you're bothering to write that, I'm gonna go out and try to have a helluva good day!

Skepticism

I am not infrequently fascinated by a lack of skepticism that people have for their own thinking. When I was 10 or 15 years younger, I thought it might be one of the characteristics of adolescent thinking but the older I get, the more I see the pull towards the belief in one's own thoughts as rearing its head in every Quarter of the life cycle. My own belief in the sanguine value of skepticism may be a case in point. I've long-cited Sextus Empiricus' claim that the suspension of belief brings with it "ataraxia" or quietude. But even this, if I am true to my thinking, must be susceptible to open questioning. Maybe it's healthier to become fixed in one's system of ideas.

Ah, well! That's who I am. I still find myself annoyed when people state their ideas as if they were incontravertible fact. Democrats, Republicans? Liberals and Conservatives? All seem to speak as if God's whispered words were flowing into their ears -- and betimes -- their ears, alone. As I mentioned in a previous posting, I've been involved with multiple others on the distinction between sadness and depression. I find myself surprised to hear just how many people have communicated to me their sense that ...

     # even if sadness and depression are different, sadness leads to depression ...

     # wistfulness, sadness, depression and melancholy are essentiall synonymous.

Yesterday, the Conservative pundit, David Brooks, wrote a column on the experience of vulnerability and suffering .... while we may come from different political camps, I admire the depth of Brooks' thinking .... and so I recommend his New York Times piece:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/opinion/brooks-what-suffering-does.html?_r=0.

Enuff for today. 

Language

Maybe we human-folk were better off before language which seems to act as a barrier to communication .... The Last Quarter generation not infrequently is heard moaning about texting and the thin-on-feeling email World. I guess, for me, language, in general, is often a way of pulling away. Sitting with someone in silence? Holding their hand with but few words? are powerful experiences.

In any case, about a dozen readers to these postings imagine that when I speak of my sadness, I'm in need of some pills or some psychoanalysis.

Zo, as to rumors of my depression? What did Samuel Clemens say of the rumors of his death being greatly exaggerated?

Television commercials and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the psychiatrists in the New World believe that Sadness and Depression "go together like a horse and carriage.".

For me, though (it bears repeating, as dozens of notes have come in about this) Depression is a protective cover against some form of vulnerability -- often, sadness. Instead of feeling "like a Motherless child" or "a lost Soul in need of a hand to hold, a partner to walk with," the Depressed choose to withdraw from others or push others away often using sadness as an excuse. The Depressed pulls away, shuts themselves off like the Dead. Undefended sadness, on the other hand and in my way of thinking about it, is akin to the cry of the baby in the middle of the night ... "Come close, I'm alone or seeing something troubling or experiencing losses of parts of function, self or of my beloved who is no more."

The Drug companies would have us believe that sadness is pathological. Some presuicidal adolescents party hearty before jumping off the bridge or driving into an embankment. It was a truism in the treatment of Depression that when people came out of their Depression they were in the most danger. For me, when we deny the Sadness that is the natural precipitate of many of the life-cycle events, we deny ourselves ... we deny life and we ARE, then, in danger.

Watching children become autonomous ... losing the beneficent protection of parents and others as we grow ... losing the beneficent protectors, themselves .... watching skin lose its elasticity ... losing youthful vigor ... kids moving away, .... for me? not being able to run 5 miles each day .... knowing that a lot of the movie is complete ... all these can bring sad affect But push me away from others? Hardly. It brings me closer to these others who have or will experience similar feelings.

Sadness is very comfortable for me. I share IT publicly.

Freud, as some may know, suggested that Love and Hate weren't opposites ... It was apathy that stood in opposition to those two invigorating human emotions. I suggest that Sadness and Glee are, also, not opposites. I welcome the feelings surrounding goodbye's just as I welcome those around hello's .... the beginning, middle and end of the movie are all powerful in their own ways if they don't need to be HIDDEN.

In my language .... Depression, Anger and Mania are defenses against the rich textured expressions of merry play and wistfulness.

Ah, but that's my language and, for those for whom it enrichens their experience of sadness that draws them to share with others to share in this way, I say, READ ON!

A Time for Every Porpoise under Heaven

When I was a youngster, I wanted to be a cartoonist (or a theologian? or a Mathematician? or a Psychoanalyst?) .... one of my first attempts was a dolphin leaning back on a chaise lounge, drinking a designer cocktail ... the caption noted what the title of this posting announces ... there is, indeed, a time for every porpoise under heaven.

But, so is one of the challenges of playing happily in the last quarter .... accepting that it's the turn of  those youngsters partying till four in the morning ... well ... to party till four. I am no longer young and while I have my wistful moments where I pleasantly remember the frolics of the first three quarters, I do take pleasure in who I am.

There, are, though and as I suggested ... moments.

I was at a workshop yesterday and the young and inspired leader ... was ... quite good. The wistfulness was passing and surfaced when he was citing two people, one of whom was my student in a post-professional training institute 30+ years ago ... the other 20+ years ago. How could it be that I was listening to someone t least partially trained by ex-students of mine? And how could it be that it was so good.

Consolation? Last night, M and I had dinner with Milt and Ruth. Milt was my professor in Graduate School
a lifetime ago. And the beat goes on.

Milton taught Howard and Howard taught Paul and Paul taught Neal who inspired Howard with his insights. Milt is pretty cool, too!

Life, to my way of thinking, is grand as long as you can cherish the way it unfolds like a beautiful fractal. Envy fucks the whole thing up. Eschew envy and enjoy the ride!

"Oh, How the Great have Fallen"

When M, I and the kids moved in to our home 35 years ago, this time of year -- a week sooner or later -- a neighbor's Black Cherry Tree would be preparing to do its Spring thing. The first images of the heavy white clusters, splashed with pink, that would visit us as sure as the Hosta would be in bloom by the 1st day of July.

That ice storm that hit in the early stages of what the excitable meteorologists called Snowmageddon laid that tree down .... cracked it maybe two feet above the place where the just visible roots held the base. Odd, these excited meteorologists. Here, in Philly, we have a number of attractive young women and so folk who look a bit like the science types I may have taught 40 years ago .... and then, there's Glenn Hurricane Schwartz. Bow tie .... suit jacket ... moustached and not appearing particularly tall who says wonderfully precise things about fronts and gradients and rotations and seems to particularly come alive when it's time to batten down the hatches. It's "cute," "adorable," and "charming" how they bring Schwartz or some other guy out to say some complex stuff and then one of these young toned model types out to say it for the rest of us.

Can y'hear the rhythm? I find it hard to say that the Lovely Ole Cherry Tree was broken by the ice storm. We had another Cherry Tree ... but that one died years ago. Actually, there were two. Forty years borrowing a property from God, Anima Mundi and the Universe? and much happens. "Oh, how the great ... "

But, to the story. Yesterday, I began cleaning up. Our neighbor had cut the big stuff ... enough to patch the 16 foot hole in the fence. I was working on the fence and the trellis. In 1982 ore 1983, my sons and I built a pool and a 5 foot retaining wall around it to avoid the little mud-slides that happen in nature ... to keep the soil in place in the property that slopes down towards the house. We built some brick decks, as well. It was a hot Summer and the work was tough ... All in still in place.

Except .... the equipment from the pool that looked down from the hill. Ma and Pa Kettle. So, I built a trellis around the unsightly pots. 24 feet on one side ... 8 on the other ... with a half-swinging door that allowed one of GuntherDog's predecessors to race around the property. The door swung on top for people to pass. The bottom was open for Schreber. Oh, Schreber? Xenophobic Schreber who once he met you was good but until then ... a male Bernard who stood about 6'4" tall ... was a scary dude. I remember a scene. Schreber had gotten loose and a neighbor's cleaning person saw this behemoth running down the street; she assumed he was chasing her.

She ran ... Schreber was off at somewhere between a jog and a gallop. ... She cried out to her God .... Schreber had a big smile on his face ... Schreber was free!

So, back in the yard. The Ice weighed the tree. The tree snapped and broke the fence. The fence gave way for the the tree to finish off the trellis -- that I made.

I was sitting with someone who knows me reasonably well a few hours later. I was in atrial fibrillation ... likely, the result of the exertion related to this modest demolition and carting three 50 pound bags of sidewalk salt the 80 feet to the garage where they can hibernate till needed, again? I wasn't upset by my irregular heart ... it's an old friend, by now. Indeed, I don't often get upset but I was clearly sad. Was I sad because my heart has aged and no longer gives out regular signals in a sinus rhythm keeping my heart when at rest at a comfortable 40 beats per minute? It didn't seem likely.

Was I mourning the fall of the Cherry Tree? ... was it the loss of the trappings of memories of a time when I had two later adolescent sons indentured to me in house maintenance servitude? Did I miss them? their much younger sister who now has a 15 year old and two ten year old twins, herself? Was I suffering from a Hemmingway syndrome .... loss of function? Was I one of those listeners to commercials for Viagra and Cialis and Levitra that have many men hoping for the 4 hour erection that's supposed to get you to call your doctor? [I always wonder when the commercials will be rewritten: If you have an erection lasting more than 4 hours, immediately call your Doctor ... AND BRAG! ..... (jest jesting)]

I do miss the trellis ... I will build a new one and, I suppose, my heart will offer up its protestations. The trellis may last for another 30+ years but it, too, will someday fall.

"Oh, How the Great Fall."