Saying Goodbye

Today, we left our oldest grand-daughter off for a pre-College Summer program for bright/nerdy kids ... it was wonderfully joyous and painfully sad to participate. Grandma and Grandpa were called in to taxi her 85 miles to the West as Mom and Dad were taking her ten year old twin Sisters 150 miles North to spend time on a farming camp.

Oh, did it resonate. It was twenty years ago that we drove our youngest child to leave her off at College ... I sat outside, as M and our daughter unpacked and wrote the following:

Once Before the Altar

The skies above were clear

His eyes were sore,

No pause for crying anymore.

McDowell, Randal, and Campbell Halls

Sycamore trees above a mall.

She’s inside

Unpacking her childhood and leaving behind

The dolls and toys that  filled her mind

For eighteen years that came before

When she and dad played on the floor.

Not at the altar he gives her away

But today

To McDowell, Randal and Campbell Halls.

The Sycamore trees above the mall

Can offer neither peace nor solitude.

No time for age old platitudes

From Dear Old Dad and what he’d say

To take his little girl’s pain away.

But a few more words, he’ll pass her way

Before they hug and wish good day

No matter what, you’re not alone.

Don’t forget, you’ve still a home.

And please, oh please,

Use the phone.

Today, I refused to stay outside and went inside to witness the unpacking. It didn't help. It was still sad and happy. Don't get me wrong, I don't see the denizens of the Last Quarter as being left behind or even lagging behind ... but there is something sad about saying goodbye.

Driving My Grand-Daughter

In an online discussion among people who are talking about the benefits and limits of pastoral counseling, I wrote a bit -- in response to his comments on Renaissance periods and people -- about how I saw the Good Life ....

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 Renaissance ... to me .... refers to a period of time when in spite of the previous dousing of the Creative Pagan Fires by the Church, the intellectual and artistic and literate communities were able to rekindle those creative embers .... I don't know when Renaissance came to be used adjectivally to refer to someone who indulges a multiplicity of interests. So let me confess: I don't read much fiction, I don't care to learn but a few other than dead languages, feel about the hard Sciences ("Vulture whose wings are dull realities") kinda like Poe did, and am more familiar with Dr. Mercury's lyric about "pain is so close to pleasure" than with the Trio Sonatas.

I use in my own thinking a notion of the Good Life as fourfold:

(1) An ability to cherish the inner workings and relationships of others, particularly near and dear;

(2) An ability to be playful which I consider a corollary of (1);

(3) A recognition of one's wishes, a willingness to put them into the crucible of whether they're harmful to self or others, and then a capacity to act on them if and -- generally speaking -- only if they're not harmful; &

(4) Aristotle's measure of virtue ... the interest in doing battle with the horror that the Good Life involves choosing often between two conflicting Goods or two conflicting Bads and rarely is so simple as choosing between a Good and a Bad (as Deuteronomy and much of religion and ethical codes offer as a simplistic model).

Betimes, I add, as separate from (1):

(5) Being on time to greet the visitors to my office.

I hope these visitors who seek me out regain their interest in the quotidian ... in how ball-cock valves and flushmeters work in indoor plumbing .... in how their lover's vulnerability (hurts?) is far more interesting than their defenses (how they protect against hurts ... eg, with anger or withdrawal) .... and in watching the baby tomato, this time of year, grow inside that little flower on the vine.

I served lunch yesterday to my wife of 49 years, two of my kids (38 and 48) and three of my grandspawn and Gunther Dog and Pretty Girl Freud the Cat ... life's a fucking miracle.

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Today, M & I get to drive our Sweet Fifteen Year Old Grandchild to a Summer Program for nerdy kids. What a thrill it's been to watch her grow into precisely one of those people who still fascinates about so much. 100 miles out and 100 miles back with tears and joy.

It starts in adolescence ... if I'm lucky, such fascinating about the everyday continues for much of the Last Quarter.

On Self Importance

Old story about a Rabbi, a Cantor and a President of a Congregation. In a moment of experienced humility before his god, the Rabbi prostrates himself and says: God, before you I am nothing. The Cantor moved by the Rabbi's closeness and devotion to his god and to tears falls to the ground and repeats: Before you, god, I am nothing. The Executive Officer of the Board, the President, quickly drops and admits his nothingness, too.

With all three now lying flat in front of the Congregation, the Cantor turns to the Rabbi and says: He-He-Hee ... Look who thinks he's nothing, now.

I should be taking long bike rides like my 71 year old brother, instead of eating Bon-Bons and getting fat while writing but my arrhythmias have made it pleasant to join in on online discussion boards with colleagues. It beats the crap out of re-runs of Lassie and the Cisco Kid, y'know.

And it never fails that there is some kind of kerfuffle between various folks involved in some theoretical pissing match. nd if one thionks that only men try, many a woman joins in the Winterfest Activity of trying to demonstrate that she, too, can do a job on melting the snow with their god-blessed stream. I remember a dear friend who would continually say that her latest theoretical incarnation represented the "cutting edge" in thinking about what we do. She's 83, I think, right about, now ... maybe not Cronus ... just the Old Crone God. She was very smart and maybe still is. Haven't seen her in a bit.

Whenever I visited Day Rooms in Psychiatric facilities, there was never a lacking of Christs.

"I'm Jesus."

"Funny you should say so, I'm Jesus, too. Was your Mom, Mary."

"Yes, Mary and Grandma Anne. What a coincidence!"

On these discussion boards, when Jesus meets Jesus, there are sparks.

Left Fielder: "I got the ball."

Center Fielder: "No. I got the ball."

Third Base Coach: "Hey, just somebody catch the fucking ball."

Strange to me at this juncture in life ... all these people fighting ... jockeying for position ... hell, some falling over the rail or off the wagon. I've come to believe that the Archangel Michael visits each of us in our Mom's belly and gives us a canvas ... a blank, stretched piece of canvas over a wooden frame. From that moment on, we get to scribble, fingerpaint and eventually play beautifully on that canvas. Canvases are similar ... person to person ... but by no means identical. I was blessed that my particular canvas -- even if it wasn't cast among the canvases of the 1%'ers -- was set out to play among those who do love to paint ... errr ... to write and to think and love.

"Make Love, not War," 

the posters -- when I was coming up -- read pretty clearly.

Today ... the dew point is supposed to be in the 50's and the temp warm. Sphinctor Magnums will be arguing online about who melted the snow faster and others will just be pissing and moaning that they deserved a richer or better ir bigger canvas. My collocutors online will do fine blowing their own horns without me. I and M will be seeing three of own six grandkids and half of our own kids. Maybe I can get one of them to join me on a bikeride in the afternoon. I know this lake, Lake Galena, with a six mile path around it. Or maybe, I'll just ride around with whoever joins me, singing:

"How great is the nature you made, god; How deep! your thoughts." 

It ain't bug-free and some hills need to be walked by old men in a-fib, but the air promises to be fresh and the company fine and my 1974 Raleigh International pedal-bike must've been fashioned by someone sitting just to the right of the godly throne.

"Blessed are you, god, master of the Universe, who has lent me this wondrous machine."  

Do Numbers Count?

Non-mathematically inclined folk seem to think that Mathematicians -- and I guess ex-Mathematicians like myself -- sitting around counting numbers -- perhaps, in order to prevent their being replaced by magnetic tape and intelligent computers. Actually, I don't spend a lot of time counting. One of my grandkids on a road trip spoke up from the backseat, apparently after doing some counting, herself: "Twenty years and bye-bye Grandpa." Chances are an optimistic and kind guess. Levinson when he studied "The Seasons of a Man's Life" and Sheehy when she investigated the "Passages" that women make concluded in broadly similar conclusions culled from the same data sets that people do begin counting backwards sometime in their 40's ...  my grand-daughter was doing that for me.

Last night at dinner, two of my kids and 4 of my grandkids were eating up Grandpa's cooking and Grandma's fixings when hurt feelings arose over not-so-much ... most wounds in families wouldn't make the front page of the Jessup Journal and this, at least as far as the surface/content issues went, was not important, in and of itself. Still there was heat. The Psalmist rhetorically queried:

"Can a horn blow in the city and the people not tremble?"

I suppose not. The next generation was pretty oblivious to the differences of their parents bust must've heard or felt the rumblings. M was quiet. My heart began to show that it was ready to lose its rhythm but my head said: Let it Go.

Letting go ... What is that religious expression ... Let Go and let God! ... Was it Patti Page who sang "What will be, will be" .... Was it Moses' God that introduced him/herself as "I will be as I shall be" .... and who hasn't these days said "It is what it is."

I was able to "still my Last Quarter arrhythmic heart" by thinking numbers. My three kids with M are 143 years old ... and with our grandchildren the cumulative spawn-years gives 205. Neither are prime numbers ... 143=11x13 and 205=5x41 and grown children will be as they will be.

I don't know how to explain the mystery of acceptance and a degree of resignation in terms of how things are as we get to 60 and well beyond. Is it having listened to George Harrison sing "This, too, Shall Pass"? Is it just becoming inured to the vagaries of life? I use a theory of thirds when speaking to myself ... in this case ... one third of the time healthy folk are pretty celebratory ... a third of the time in foul moods and a final third they're kinda ok to share space with .... with care. To me, that suggests that one ninth of the time near and dear will be on the same happy-page ... a ninth of the time at each others' throats. But what, I thought last night, happens when "all of us are gathered" in the name of family and there are, say, nine souls. ... This ex-Mathematician don't got a clue.

So, just in case, this Player in the Fourth Quarter took two beta-blockers and continued eating. The Soup was pretty good and the potatoe kugel was made vegan so one of my kids could partake.

Carpe Diem but don't Carp on the occasional Crap

or

Crap on the occasional Carp: 

words to live by? 

who knows? 

WORDS

No Restrictions: No Conditions ... The Myth of Unconditional Love

I was talking to an adolescent therapist and a progressively thinking minister, recently The therapist works with the children in a school that serves a traditionally religious population. She was concerned that the restrictions placed on a comfortable adolescent sexuality; both had been raised in more modern families than my own. They were Second-Half-Third-Quarter Players and I'm well entrenched in the Fourth Quarter. I don't know that that made a difference. They had college aged kids -- one in the Armed Forces. I have my first grandchild leaving home in two months to be in school 200+ miles away from my youngest child.

In fact, thinking of that youngest child years ago ... deciding between a loosey-goosey school and one in which more or less everyone took the same Great Books program, she took the tighter route, explaining -- at least, as far as I can recall -- that the "tight" school in a sense offered a looseness that the "loose" school couldn't provide. After all, when she finished the limited requirements without having to flounder about, she was free to pursue her own academic and personal interests.

For me? I don't recall feeling restricted by growing up -- say -- under the rules of sabbath. Indeed, while some kids I knew had to decide what to go out and buy on the sabbath day, I and my sibs were free to play quiet games and read and walk to services. I don't know ... Loose? Tight? or Boundaried.

Made me think of the popular notion of "Unconditional Love." I think it was Jack London who wrote a short story about a man lost and frostbitten and frozen-wet in the North Country. His matches were wet and he was struggling -- in the good company of his pooch -- "To Build a Fire." The dog was faithful to his owner, until, that is, it became clear to el Pooch that in the absence of success in building that fire, his Master was determined to kill him and be heated in some manner .... As I remember it, the Dog runs off and the story ends, presumably, with the man succumbing to hypothermia and death.

No love is unconditional, to my way of thinking. The partner/child/parent who imagines that no matter what they do or say, Love will carry us through ... In sickness and in health? Well, yes! but everything has boundaries, in the end. I remember maybe thirty years ago speaking to a Tough Love group. I had been invited -- I came to quickly recognize -- to be roasted. As a member of the community of educators and mental health practitioners who had failed to get their kids not to make Mamas' and Pappas' lives unbearable, I was to be fair game in the basement of a local church ... with a podium far away from the door.

Before I started a canned talk that, I suspect, would have gone nowhere, a Mother interrupted me: What does it mean for our kids to be civilized?

"Cut the Bullshit, Howard ... and cut to the chase." I realized that it was not beyond reason that I could be emotionally hung ... drawn and quartered ... by the wounded and angry crowd whose kids had made their lives a living Hell. I settled on telling them that to civilized was the ability to stop in E. Rindge, New Hampshire, Population 75, at midnight at a red light. The crowd was quieted. (Maybe they thought I was psychotic.)

In any case, I was allowed to continue. Civilized behavior is not obviuously rational. Maybe their kids were rationally correct in arguing -- after their homes had been ransacked by search-warrant carrying police-folk -- that marijuana was safer than alcohol. But it thoroughly missed the point. Those of us who are civilized -- and may I add "loving" -- accept the maybe-less-than-rational boundaries ... such, as stopping at a Red Light when visibility clearly shows that no cars are coming cross-traffic for more than a half mile in each direction. No boundaries? No civilization.

The same applies to love relationships. While harshly-Conditional love, full of ultimatums and unreasonable punishments, leaves no room for love, a love that has no conditions ends up in Sado-Masochism. Sampson Raphael Hirsch, my memory tells me, wrote that Love was the sense that -- without the presence of the Loved One -- the Lover's life would be impoverished. But Love, to my way of thinking, has much to do with  the giving up of the belief that my Lover's love will come in spite of whatever I do and that self-imposed boundaries that I place upon myself for my Lover are well-deserved gifts.

No ... I'm not speaking of accounting ledgers or spelled out quid pro quo's .... but of something else!

Time to begin Father's Day.

Non Offendere ... Beware: Not to Offend ... the House may Fall Down

Things are never simple with parties. The number of people offended by sundry omissions and commissions varies but is typically > 0. I was reminded of an ancient Jerusalem tale of what led up to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem ... I copy the entry from Wikipedia on Kamsa and bar Kamsa ...

"The story tells of a wealthy man who lived in the 1st century CE. For an upcoming party he sent his servant to deliver an invitation to his friend, a man named Kamsa. However, the servant mistakes the recipient as Bar Kamsa, an enemy of the wealthy man. Upon seeing the hated Bar Kamsa at his party, the host orders him to leave. Bar Kamsa, attempting to save face, thrice offers to make peace with the host, first offering to pay for the food he eats, then for half of the expenses of the party, and then for the entire party, each time rebuffed by the angry host.

Humiliated, Bar Kamsa vows revenge against the rabbis present who did not defend him allowing him to be publicly embarrassed. He visits the Roman Caesar who controls the region and tells him the Jews are inciting to revolt against the Roman Empire. The Caesar, unsure of whether to believe Bar Kamsa, sends an animal to be sacrificed as a peace offering in the Temple in Jerusalem along with Bar Kamsa. On the way, Bar Kamsa purposefully slightly wounds the animal in a way that would disqualify it as a Jewish sacrifice but not as a Roman offering.

Upon seeing the disfigured animal, the rabbis of the Sanhedrin present at the Temple have to make a decision as to how to respond to the delicate situation presented. Some advocate dispensing with the law and offering the animal anyway to avoid war. This plan is vetoed by Rabbi Zecharia ben Avkolos who fears that people will begin to bring blemished animals to the Temple to be sacrificed. They then suggest putting Bar Kamsa to death to prove that he is at fault, but Rabbi Zecharia ben Avkolos again refuses, because this is not the mandated penalty for intentionally bringing a disqualified offering to the Temple.

Rabbi Yochanan says because of the actions of Rabbi Zecharia ben Avkolos the Temple was destroyed and the Jews were exiled from the land.

The Caesar, incensed, sent an army to lay siege to Jerusalem, eventually leading to its downfall in the year 70. Josephus (Wars II, 17:2) also ascribes the beginning of the war to the refusal to accept the offering of the Emperor."

Why should my family be any different? ."And the beat goes on" (Sonny and Cher)

On the Public Display of Feelings

On rereading yesterday's Posting, I was struck by an omission ... I hadn't emphasized the tears that M and I both experienced, though seated 50 feet apart, at the celebration of our grandkid's competence and growth as a person. When my Dad was in his Fourth Quarter -- even before entering his abbreviated Overtime -- he would tear-up publicly. I remember -- at our youngest's engagement party maybe 17 years ago -- him tearing up quite openly while I was making some comments to the "engaged" ...

I'm not ready to decide on what allows this .... Is it that the vulnerabilities of human existence can no longer be denied? or is it that one no longer gives two hoots for whether that vulnerability is visible? But there is something cleansing about experiencing the wistfulness that arises in such situations and doing so in front of witnesses.

Who sang: "Big girls? They don't cry-aye-aye! They don't cry. Big girls? Don't cry."

I guess ... Old Folks ... cry-aye-aye!

Surviving Family; Appreciating Family

So, I and M went 300+ miles NorthEast to witness and participate in the celebration of one of our grandkid's religious rite of passage. All my near and dear were present ... M's Sister and her tribe, my Sisters, a Brother, a Sister-in-Law, our three Children and their Six, and Cousins and Nieces and their Spawn. Geez.

Lots of my kid's friends, too. All gathered to witness this grandkid's soloing in carrying out rituals of the religion of his forebears ... carried out on the designated sabbath -- it, itself, observed in very traditional form and, indeed, the form I knew as a child. Prayers and eating and singing and more prayers and more of everything else. It continues to fascinate how quickly customs can change. Even when M and I moved to Pennsylvania, a mere 40 years ago, there were Blue Laws that kept the majority of commercial establishments closed one day each week, a day designated for rest and maybe contemplation and prayer. Not such a long time, 40 years, and, yet, days, nowadays, are without distinction, except, perhaps, that people seem to do different kinds of shopping on the weekend days than on the secular days of whatever religion they practice. Sabbath is a thing of the past, except in certain small groups. I suppose I miss that specialness of a day without too much commotion, though the rituals, themselves, seemed betimes unrestful. Sitting in quiet meditation, I remembered what one 19th C. commentary had said about sabbath ... that for 6 days each week we pretend to be (as Freddy Mercury of Queen would have it) "Masters of the Universe" ... creators ... but on one day, each week, we admit that we are creations ... like the snail and the roo and the snapping turtle that appeared in one of my weekend dreams.

As to Family and my fears of the quotidian kerfuffles that could arise ... There were no bites ... hardly a nibble.

Blessed is the God 

who sustained us among the living, 

kept us standing and 

helped us reach this day.

Playing in the Last Quarters has been and continues to be a gas! Bring it on!

Bring lots of it on!

Family

Off to join in one of those rites of passage that adolescents and their families celebrate ... one of my grandchildren. By the time one begins Playing in the Last Quarter, the tribe may be sufficiently diverse to pose the risk of friction ... of stormy weather. My sibs will be there ... my kids ... my grandkids ... and others from intersecting tribes that may or may not be warlike.

Will people respect each others' differences? Hey, in the 60's and 70's, I taught university courses on the Mathematical Theory of Gambling ....  I wouldn't take either side of a bet on which way it will go, this weekend.

I'm just gonna get in the roadster with M and pray for Blue Skies in Eastern Massachusetts and begin singin' ...

"I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield ... 

down by the riverside ... hey-hey-hey ... 

down by the riverside.

doo-doo-doo-doo practice war no more."

Hope to be back and alive in a few days.

Expressions! Expressions!

It's good M is around for a variety of reasons. One of those that may be low on hierarchies of importance has to do with the parsing of expressions. I'm not particularly adept at figuring out nuanced differences, even among expressions that other people seem to take for granted. And M seems to have held on to that capacity, in spite of being 49 years older than when we married. Marriage apparently affects people differently and my brain conspicuously has aged more rapidly than her brain.

The simplest of examples came to mind while arising this AM .... arising? "Howard arising and in phase with Jupiter?" Never you mind! The example was this whole thing about "half-full" or "half-empty." I always need to pause a moment to process which purportedly represents optimism? which pessimism? After all, I tell myself often when pondering something that must be simpler than Homological Algebra or the Riemann-Roch-Grothendiek Theorem, "just half-empty" is optimistic but "half-empty" is supposed to be pessimistic. I'm not certain abut "not quite half-empty," either. And the same problems obtain with "half-full," "just half-full," and "not quite half-full."

Each time I come to this expression, I get caught up -- for just seconds, but caught up, nonetheless -- in whether this person is expressing optimism and pessimism. Damn! Just tell me ... are you feeling one way or the other! Inevitably, I ask myself at such moments deserving of some Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award:

Howard, what about your confreres, the proud Denizens of the Last Quarter?

Are we "Three Quarters on Empty," "Still a Quarter Full," "Only a Quarter Full" or "Only a Quarter Full with no Gas Stations in sight?" You get my drift, you're in my draft, the faucets drip, the Buddha laughs.

There comes quickly a time when I look at the speaker and ask the more direct question; I ask it quietly in my mind, for otherwise I get these looks which are equally hard to process and I take to mean:

Poor Ole Boy. 

He used to be able to tell the difference between Lunesta and Levitra. 

Not sure that he knows any longer which is for sleeping and which is for staying "up."

But back to Optimism and Pessimism. The world does seem to divide along somesuch fault with Optimism on one side and Pessimism on the other .... with a Gorge in the middle that most people don't seem confident to cross. And while the Optimists may be deluded, the Pessimists seem to respond to every possible situation with why it won't work or why it wasn't good, afterall. 

It's a Wonderful day, today?

                       But I have a pimple on my butt-cheek.

Spring is here and the Magnolias are in bloom.

                       With those sticky petals due to drop next week.

Sex was great.

                       The bed is wet.

Among my favourites, though, are the invitees or guests at a party. I cannot think of a single party in which someone wasn't unhappy about: the food; the directions; who got invited and who didn't; the recommended attire; the dust in the corner; or what the hostess is wearing. I remember a dinner party in 1961. One of my parents' long-time friends, Bessie, had come the day before, borrowed my Sister's shoes and managed to wear them out. Fair enough but that night at dinner, she was shocked and kept repeating:

No Soup! No Soup? 

Whaddya mean, there's no Soup? 

There's gotta be Soup!

One can only wonder how some came to committed to allowing no good to stand without sullying it, in some way. Sad. 

Moral of my story? If you suspect someone of arriving at your Kid's wedding complaining about the directions, next time give them the wrong directions! 

Feeling Philosophical, Today ... The Philosophaster

There was a crazy old man who lived in France .... He ran seminars -- excuse me, Seminaires -- in which he would sometimes fall asleep. He spoke in terms no one could and few wanted to understand. He introduced a few interesting concepts and the notion of "Nom du Pere" ... the Name of the Father. I once wrote an irreverent parody of his students' work in a piece called "Au Nom du Grandpere."

Howard, you should be ashamed of yourself. 

In fact, one of your inlaw kids said you should be thus ashamed.

Ah, well. I'm not.  In his works, Jacques Lacan (Le Con) separated out  the real father, from the imagined father (the inside image of Pops), and the symbolic father. I was thinking of this whole Father thing or Grandfather fling for the past week. Who the Hell am I to my family and to my near and dear. Two of my friends have recently gone into the haze of Alzheimer's and I guess I'm thinking that if I'm ever gonna figure this out? Better sooner than later.

I suppose these are questions that torment Fathers and Mothers, Sons and Daughters, Brothers and Sisters. If a significant component to who we imagine we are is how we imagine Others see us, then this may be one of the great existential questions that plague us in each stage of life, Last Quarter included -- but this, so to speak, the last chance to figure it out.


As any Readers out there have come to understand, I don't have many answers but do like asking questions and fascinating about things (like why my editors keep whining about "fascinating" not
being a verb ... "get a life"). 


So, it was one of those rare days, yesterday ... not humid, not too hot ... "just so," as Goldilocks said about the Baby Bear's bed. It has been just the day for an old person to do some Garden clean-up. And this morning, I loaded up a pick-axe, a shovel and a steel rake to help my youngest clean out some flower beds. I enjoyed it but got caught up in the Fantasy: "I'm Fronk" ....


Who's Fronk, you may ask. Well, when we were young, there was a show about a family ... Father, Mother and the three Lil' Bears ... Betty the oldest was maybe a senior in High School and always wore flared skirts or maybe culottes**. Bud was a couple of years younger and always in trouble. Kathy was the baby -- maybe just pre-teen. The Show was called "Father Knows Best" and was an ironic play on "Father Don't Know Nothin,' as Dear Old Dad, always in tie and buttoned suit jacket, consistently got every-thing wrong. Mom was always dressed in a mid-ankle dress and was always on the right side of history. Dad would fuck it up ... Mom would figure out a way to fix it while allowing Pops to keep face, in spite of his clumsiness in living.


There was, however, another character in the story that would regularly show up ... Fronk the Mexican Gardener. I don't think it was known whether Fronk had a Green Card ... this was before Newt Gingrich got excited ... Newt was, maybe, a social Liberal in those days. In any case, I've become obsessed with the idea that I'm Fronk.


Further support for this fantasy arises from an incident in the year we moved into our present home, 1979. We moved in in the Spring and I spent the Summer working in the yard across the fence from my neighbor Rudie, who spoke German quite well. We would talk about Raspberry Hedges and Cabbage and Celery and Hungry Rabbits and the like. The next Summer, feeling quite comfortable with him and eager to meet his wife, I sent them an invitation to a party; total strangers showed up.


                   Hi. Who are you?


                                We're your neighbors.    


                   From where?


                                From next door.


                   But ... But ... you're not Rudy.


                                Rudy's our Gardener.




Thus, in my mind and at least for today, my existential dilemma is solved: 


          I am not the Walrus ... I am the Gardener .... I am Fronk! … maybe even Rudie!


** If you don't know what culottes are, hang up your i-phone and call your Grannie or go check out a blog about hip-hop