Aftermarket Parts

It's three and a half weeks since M had the surgery. Lot of pain remains and the move from walker to cane is happening in its time. Isaiah said in his language: בעיתא אחישנה ... a paradoxical phrase "In its time, I will hurry it." The medieval commentaries waiting for better times, themselves, argued that if the People were Worthy, Better Times would be Hurried Along by their god. If not, they were Screwed ... Waiting in this Exile or Another. Frankly, I always liked Malachi's view that the Better Times would be recognizable by the fact that the Generations would learn to treat each other with dignity and kindness. והישיב לב אבות על בנים ... and the Hearts of the Parents would be returned to the Children and vice-versa or else all kinds of shit would rain down from Above. 

Well, I am pleased to report that M and I have survived these first 25 days, in spite of the possibility of antipathy between Nurse and Patient. The Nurse's humor has been accepted as just that and the Nurse has accepted that the Patient's recovery will, indeed, come "in its own time."

For instance:

Last night, M didn't much sleep but at 2:50 reported a Dream in which I (aka Nurse Hatchet) invited some 60 people over to a Superbowl party, including my now-long-gone Mother-in-Law. I hadn't bought enough food and nothing was ready. Nevermind the fact that in the first 3+ Quarters of life, I've never attended a football game ... and she had ... with her Dad who died nearly twenty years ago. See. I told you she gives the Nurse a C-!

I responded with:

I love you in spite of your growing list of aftermarket parts. (ISYGLOAP)

Maybe that's among the major accomodations required for being married to the same unreasonable person for Fifty+ years: 

Take things personally, if you like, but never seriously;

Be Almost Always Agreeable (Triple-A Rating -- describes me to a T 😇);

When your spouse asks for something easy -- just say "yes;"

Do stand-up, even when you're horizontal; and, always, I say always ...

Give your Primary Other the Presumption of Good Intentions.

It has been -- dare I say -- an experience not without its blessings. The surgery went fine ... Mother and New Knee both doing well. Terri and Ya'aKov, Ruth, Carol and Jon, Dov and Barbara, Ralph and Deb, and Reba and David brought over foods for us to eat; and JR brought a box of Chocolates. Our kids brought lots of foods and our eldest grand-spawn brought a Vegan Cheese Cake. Good stuff and full of kindness and love. Sickness does come along with the possibility that you'll learn that others do love you. Or, if you're a schmuck (sorry, Donald: a Schlonnnng -- god ... what a schmuck he is!), you'll misread it.

They don't believe I can cook.

No, Howard, they're just being kind and loving.

M and I went out 5 times, including our anniversary on Tuesday, two snacks, a trip to visit our friends, Milt and Ruth, and a trip to Dr. Frankenstein's Office; I managed to work; PT's, OT's, RN's got in without being mauled by GuntherDog; we watched a couple of bad movies and one good one; we ate pretty well; and Life is Good, if full of pain.

As to that pain? M reports hers being mostly down to a 3 on a 10 point scale and she's moving towards OTC pain-relievers, though walking obviously adds to the pain considerably. Moi? M told me not to do some work in the office, advice which I ignored and I managed to inflame my carpal tunnel but the new floor in the office is done and, most importantly, my noncompliance didn't inflame M. 

And Global Warming is grand ... Temps have been in the 60's and 70's.

The moral? 

One can still Play in the Last Quarter 

even with its expectable forays into discomforts and pains.

Carpe Diem, Baby!

I say: Love thine Enemy (Matthew/On the Mount)

2015 is closing up shop. Those reading likely remember Young Simon and Garfunkel's rendition of Silent Night played to a wartime background. We likely remember, as well, the song from HAIR ... "Three Hundred and Fifty Six Viet Nam captured." And South Pacific's "You have to be taught to hate."

The cacophonies in our heads are different, these days. One of the Prez Candidates -- the Cruz Missile -- talks of "Carpet Bombing the Shit Out of Them." He should try some Dulcolax and see if he can get relief some other way. Another makes fun of people and excuses it as an antidote to Verbal Kindness or Christian solicitude or what the Jews call גמילת חסד (g'milas chessed) and the Muslims have a name for it, as well, ra'ufun rahirn. I have no doubt that Buddhists and Bahai's and Hindus and Sufis have similar mandates for the faithful. This latter Clown (above) calls it Political Correctness.

But, as I leave the year, I know that there are parts, too, of my aged Self that cannot meet ideals. If nothing else, my dreaming mind (my unbewusste, in Freud's lingo) tells me otherwise.

It was just last week that I dreamed that I had Forrest Trump the Simpleton in a choke hold and broke his neck. I was then left holding him and realizing he had flesh  like the Pillsbury Doughboy ... white and untoned flesh without substance. I woke up amused. Maybe more? I woke up pleased. 

I don't kill even if I recognize a shadowy part of my mind that realizes that, as an animal, I have the capacity to hate and maybe even to kill ... and, need I add, a capacity to not kill.

God. The day before the one on which nearly 2 Billion people celebrate the birth of a baby and buy, if they have the means, for their own babies gifts to tell them just how much their birth meant and means to them ... On such a day, I confess a selection from my Sins of Hate.

Dear God ...

I have hatred in my heart for those who gratuitously murder.

I have venom for those, like Jeroboam ben Nvat, 

who would not only Sin 

but bring others to Sin.

I have contempt for anyone who would seek to disturb a suckling at its Mother's breast.

I revile those who would dare disturb that Mother in her ministrations.

I resent those who abuse children and innocent animals,

or who abuse me, for that matter.

I have loathing for all who would put "a stumbling block before the blind 

or who would curse the deaf."

I find abominable those who seek to humiliate others

with their obsequious bullshit.

I have contempt for all who would seek profit from others' pain.

I have no stomach for those 

who while and by denying their malevolence towards others,

do them great harm.

Dear Sleeping God who has forgotten Me and My Fellow Creatures ... Let me rouse you with my confession. 

The non-thought is, truly, Father to the Deed. I am no Prince of Peace ... 

I am full of anger and rancor and resentment for those who hurt others 

and, yet, my hatred, itself -- even here and now in the Last Quarter of my Life -- 

must sully your Creation ... just as the actions I hate do. Forgive me! 

I have a sign on a kitchen cabinet in the original biblical script that I teach to my grandchildren:

..... בנפול אויביך אל תשמח

In the falling/failing of your enemies, rejoice not.

And in his stumblings, let your heart not revel. (somewhere in Proverbs).

Aspirational goals, only? I suppose so ... at least, considering my Dream of doing-in the arguably Foulmouthed Philandering Fool who would be Leader of the Free World.

Good that Dreams are just that ... Dreams.

Merry, Merry!

"Teach Your Children Well" ... Maybe, It's the Arithmetic

Yesterday, M and I went out to lunch commemorating 50 years since a clergy-person -- actually a snarky middle-aged man who was an ordained clergyman -- declared us married. Fifty years? Those of us who have stayed married for many years can whip up some quips as to what our secret is ... Like the Old Person who is asked: What's your secret for long-life.

"I get up each morning."

I do feel blessed to have met M way back then in the Mid-to-Early Sixties ... talking to a religious youth conference about traditional attitudes towards pre-Marital sex. Funny, now that I think about what I seem to remember saying that day in late February. How does the Ipinima song go:

Tall and Dark and Tan and Slender.

M showed up ... day after returning with a Florida Suntan ... One only knows that life would have been different otherwise. So much is encapsulated in the ability to embrace and cherish what is. Neurotics fret that they could've done better. They rarely think of all that wouldn't have been or what coulda been worse.

Any case ... M tried transitioning from a walker to a cane, yesterday ... some success. Exhausted after such excursions, she napped after our luncheon frolic ...

Emile Coue would have the visitors who travelled to see him from around the World sit in circles and recite:

Tous les jours a tous points de vue

je vais de mieux en mieux.

Each Day and in Every Way

We get Better and Better.

I suppose we'd say, now 21 Days after M's surgery:

Fake it until you make it!

So much counting in life ... 

When You're Old and Grey

16 days post-op. M is improving but exhausted from the pain of surgery and the (I suppose necessarily) sadistic tortures provided by visiting PT's and OT's. The Physical Therapists, in particular, have their measuring tools ... "gotta get to 100 degrees" on bending the newly-born knee towards kicking yourself in the ass. I have a secret theory ... Kind of like the old Kung Fu bit with Carridine ... 

"Grasshopper! When you can kick yourself or PT in ass, you must leave!"

or

"If you meet the PT on the road? Kill her!"

Actually, the visiting PT, OT and RN are great but each day with therapy becomes exhausting and pain-filled for M. And, not to complain (I did get 50 years out of M before her parts wore out ... used to be a transmission was rarely good for more than 40,000 miles ... Lord knows, how many miles are on M's chassis!). But, shit! Why not complain? This Blog started as a Kvetching Platform for Old Foagies ... well? for me! and anyone else who dares write in about the vagaries of aging in the Age of Donald to-the-dump-to-the-dump-to-the-dump-dump-DUMP.

Yesterday, Howard the Nurse cooked from 430 to 630 AM for 6PM incoming Spawn and Grandspawn ... saw 8 hours of visitors in office. Monitored the crazy barking Gdog while professionals were with M (not the Vet! the Vet wasn't there to see M) and coordinated through PT/OT/Visiting Vet (for failing Pretty Girl le Chat), serving dinner with guests and not sleeping. 

It's no longer a stale/impersonal feeling for me in worrying about Caretakers. Poor Howard! (LOL)

Found myself humming a rather nasty Tom Lehrer dittie about spousal aging:

Since I still appreciate you,

Let's find love while we may.

Because I know I'll hate you

When you are old and gray.

So say you love me here and now,

I'll make the most of that.

Say you love and trust me,

For I know you'll disgust me

When you're old and getting fat.

An awful debility,

A lessened utility,

A loss of mobility

Is a strong possibility.

In all probability

I'll lose my virility

And you your fertility

And desirability,

And this liability

Of total sterility

Will lead to hostility

And a sense of futility,

So let's act with agility

While we still have facility,

For we'll soon reach senility

And lose the ability.

Your teeth will start to go, dear,

Your waist will start to spread.

In twenty years or so, dear,

I'll wish that you were dead.

I'll never love you then at all

The way I do today.

So please remember,

When I leave in december,

I told you so in may.

We're coming on our 50th and 51st Anniversary, depending on how we count. Still, I think both M and I thought Old Tom was kidding when as a relative youngster in the early 60's, I suppose, he penned and sang these words. Check it out, Oh, Ye Players in the Last Quarter ... you'll soon be humming along, too ... maybe a duet?

                                                   www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NOZH0y7VxE

Hats off to your prescience, Tom!

"Something in the Way She Moves"

Watching your spouse learning how to walk, again?

As a Nurse? Grade? ... C-

Alas ...

They Say It Ain't Easy

I'm sitting next to my sleeping wife's bed in the hospital. After 50 years of marriage, she has apparently given birth to a new knee. She is giving Mother Sarah a run for her money, in terms of later life additions. Both Mother and Knee seem to be doing as well as one has any right to expect. Still, who would have thought in 1965 that M's (or my) parts would begin to wear out.

M has her first Physical Therapy session in just a half hour ... She seems frightened, as I suspect anyone would be. The Doctor came in earlier ... Vlad the Impailer's younger brother ... dressed in his Civies -- tie and jacket -- and full of good humor. Truthfully, we both like him ... and, still ....

The Fourth Quarter not only witnesses one's own challenges but, if one is fortunate enough, the pains of one's other.

My mind is pretty empty, right now. Worried ... remember one of Munch's paintings. Not The Scream, though there have been times. More the one where a Mother is leaning over a sick child, laying in bed.

To care and to be cared for!

For the The Times They Aren't a-Changin'

In spite of a highly touted new TV Series fictionally accounting for what transpired in the years and decades after Naziism took over ... after the Third Reich dominated the World by winning WWII ... the House that Hitler Built did fall and a period of somewhat greater caring for each other did follow. Here in my United States, we did pass a Civil Rights Act and for a long time did put forth effort in preventing local municipalities from blocking many from voting. There are, indeed, in the US of A many places where people who are different than others in certain ways can walk unmolested.

Maybe it's just the places M and I tend to go, but:

mixed race and same sex couples walk without obvious fear;

folk from minority and ethnic bakgrounds are welcomed to dine and travel, live and recreate among their privileged brethren; and

people who pray differently are not assumed to be worshipping the devil.

It's not that I don't remember; I do. I recall folk trying to beat me up because of my religion (1950's thru early 1960's) and times when my Dad lost his job because of his religious practice (1956) and  I do recall my Mom speaking of a time (1932) when she couldn't take the entrance exams to a New York Art School because the tests were only available on her Sabbath. I remember being asked (1972) just how it felt to be a Christ killer and someone counting me in the ranks of AIDS victims for counting myself among the Jews (1994). 

I still do remember .... When I ran a school for disturbed inner city kids in the mid-70's, having lunch in a tavern in one of the Whitetowns of Philadelphia and folk smashing a glass ritualistically against a
brick wall if it was used by a black patron ... after they left. I recall people threatening to rape my wife after I integrated the school (1977). And I recall people in Saxis, VA and Greenfield, IN (there, it was the police after impounding our car on the highway after our alterntor failed) making it clear that I wasn't welcome in their towns. And I still can recall Larry King interviewing 3 or 4 Christian clergyfolk and one of them saying: "The problem with Muslims is that they,re praying to the wrong god" (during the 2004 election, I think). Funny. It was 800 years ago that Maimonides reminded his readers that all monotheistic religions must-of-necessity be praying the the same One-God!

I feel sad. Maybe large parts of my sadness are directed at my fears about an upcoming surgery that faces M in a just nine days ... Those of us in the Last Quarter know that if we are to continue Playing,  some of our parts need to be replaced, especially when we realize that one or another "joint ain't jumpin'" without excruciating pain. M version 2.01 is about to be released. Does, indeed, make me sad to watch now and to anticipate the pain subsequent to her "Black and Decker" surgery.

Still, the schismatizing hate speech of the liks of Carson, Cruz and Trump and some of their confreres pains me, at least as much, as M's surgery and the angry atrocities perpetrated by groups who seek retaliation and terror against the civilization in which I live. 

There is, I suppose, a form of what the Social Psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Bias. The usual applications of that are to situations, such as:

If you succeed in life, it's dumb luck while if I do it is due to hard work and perservearance;

If you fail, it is due to your own malfeasance, while if I do, it was just misfortune.

In these months, the mouthings of the right wing Politicos make their view clear that Radical Islam is a type all to itself and has no similarity to Rad Christianity as in the Crusades or killing abortion
doctors or Radical Judaism as portrayed by the likes of Dr Baruch Goldstein who killed many during
their prayers in a mosque.

I suppose, for me, Radicalism, in its simplest form, is the blinding of oneself to the pain of others .... Radicalism is the denial that The Stranger in Your Midst, the Other, is a child of some Mom and a Subject in their Own Right.

I suppose I could reduce the above to a pithier:

RADICALISM -- IN ALL ITS FORMS and INCARNATIONS -- IS THE ENEMY.

Donald Trump/Forrest Gump 2016

As it is not quite written .........

“Blessed are those who think a lot of themselves,

    especially those who have made Billions.

Blessed are those who never say they made a mistake,

    for they won't be blamed or feel guilty.

Blessed are the haughty,

    especially those who have already inherited the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for winning it all,

    for they will be filled with more $Billions.

Blessed are the merciless,

    for their path is uncluttered by doubt.

Blessed are those who've sinned a lot,

    for some good reason yet to be determined.

Blessed are the warmongers,

    
    especially those killing for Truth, Justice and the Am-Way.

Blessed are those who've been unjustly persecuted because of big favors and bluster
     for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the thugly!

 “Blessed are you when people attempt to insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you just because you're great. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward for putting Christmas back onto Starbucks cups and planning to bomb the shit out of Foreign Oil Fields, for in the same way you persecuted the immigrants who came long ago shall you be blessed with the opportunity to persecute others.

***********************************************

I struggle with the way I take in to my heart the contemporary scene, dominated, as it is, by those who believe they possess the only truth. There are many, these days, who firmly believe that they possess the only truths. They promise to thus wreak havoc on the rest of the World and, thereby, to bring it to the "Better Days," promised by their Prophets of Old. 

Is it -- apparently -- my lot in life to spend my Last Quarter listening to those who thus believe and who speak in Platitudes, as they prepare to wreak havoc on the World ... whatever language it is that they speak.

Wilde Oscar's Prophetic Vision

I think it was Wilde Oscar who said something about us all being born in the gutter but some of us having been born-such looking up at the stars. Hard to say whether he (assuming my memory, this morning, is better than it was, yesterday, when neither M nor I could remember Glenn Close's name) was prophetically seeing the present era in which we live, during which each of us had to learn to devote a certain amount of time, each day, sifting through our Spam file. I'm confident that I'm not alone in having been invited, this AM, to:

• Get hot with Asians, Brazilians, and Russian Women and/or Men;
• Buy from Walmart, Kohl's, Sears, ToysRUs, the Grommet and others whose names I don't recognize;
• Receive 100's of $Millions;
• "Hook-Up" (some graphic metaphor, aye?) with multiple, horny married folk of both sexes (is Howard that hermaphroditic a name) in and out of the shower* with a varied and explicit menu of gustatory delights;
• Simultaneously get back at Big Pharma and "get hard" by buying ED-Rx knock-offs;
• Vote and Support Donald Trump;
• Cure my obesity;
• Save a friend who was ripped off in a foreign land**; and
• Get degrees that prepare you for a multiplicity of careers helping others.

Ach du lieber ... y'got the picture and if you're reading this, you get similar Spam. My Spam file (I imagine like your's) was 137 deep, this morning, and part of me fears hitting the "unsubscribe" button wondering if it will end in my identity being stolen ... 

Hit that button ... and ... snap ... 

Holy Cannoli and Abra-Cadabra ... 

You'll be turned into a Gremlin or 

Freddie Bartholomew searching 

for a piece of stale bread on a dark London street.

M reminded me, yesterday -- while we were driving and listening to a soft melody, of the kindnesses shown to her by my Mother during our first pregnancy. And, indeed, my Sainted Mither whom we both miss was a kind and caring -- if complex -- person who I suspect favored M over all her children. The mind ... even the Swiss Cheese mind of the Fourth Quarter ... is an associative machine. Give it a feeling-saturated image with which to resonate and it bounces about like a Meson in a Particle Accelerator to all sorts of other images related to that feeling. Two imagistic factoids wafted into my mind, immediately. Poof!

In the first, I recalled December 1956. My Father had come home with our first new Television set. I had been reading through the toy catalogues that would come in the Fall ... heady stuff in 1956 as we were all -- under the watchful eye of Dwight David and Tricky Dick, Adlai and Estes -- unwittingly awaiting the arrival of better times in which: cars would drive on their own; not just Dick Tracy would have a watch on his wrist; and all that glitters would be distributed from Trump Tower and the pyramids that would be filled with grain and not mummies. TV was great ... I could watch Elvis wriggle his hips and Gorgeous George wrestle Killer Kowalski and some other guy who kept pointing to his head, noting how smart he was. Cisco and Poncho. Arthur Godfrey and Kate Smith! ... Any case, I remembered, as well, that it was the next day that my Father was fired from his job and procured one 600 miles away. My parents were 37 and 38 when that happened ... kids ... younger than all of mine, today. Curious how I never considered how hard it must've been for my Mother to again be temporarily left as my Dad went off to fight a different kind of war ... an economic survival one. His Dad, during the Depression, would get on a pickup truck in Brooklyn each Sunday night and travel to Northeastern Pennsylvania for a workweek at a foundry ... only to return to Brooklyn on Friday. 

The second memory was different. A little earlier. There was a guy who -- with a Shetland Pony -- would encourage kids on the streets of Brooklyn to don a cowboy hat and climb on board that Pony. He would take a picture and return somedays later to demand payment from Mothers for these pictures. I remembered the picture and that my Dad was upset that my Mom had been conned into buying it. Not angry, per se, but upset. I suppose $ was hard to come by in 1953 ... but who knew. There was always food on the table and my Mother, the kind lady who effectively adopted M when we got married in 1965, was always there.

Ah! I suppose scams have always been there ... from Jack and his Beans to Esau getting swindled out of his birthright for a pot-o-beans. And, still, I hold on to a wish for a Spam-Free Universe.

Fantasies for the Good, I suppose, die hard. 

______________________________

* Funny. It was just yesterday that prior to beginning a public lecture I was responding to someone else's comparison between the ends of Abraham's and David's lives. I wondered rather cheekily if she was referring to the Biblical claims that Abraham -- after Olde Sarai died -- successfully and repeatedly got hot with a lady named K'turah (maybe Gen: 25 or 26) but David, poor Old David (somewhere in Kings I?) wasn't sufficiently warmed by another purportedly hot lady named Avishag the Shunamite. Think how much happier David might've been at the end with Cialis ... spending the end of his life in a claw-foot tub next to Avishag's? "Shoulda checked his Spam File, aye?"

** Hey, I can get ripped off right here on the internet. Why did my friend have to loose their passport and wallet in Venice?

When You're (much more than) 64

Mon 19 Oct ... 630 AM:

Have been up for two hours ... No coffee or caffs since yesterday AM. No food.  Goin' for a test. I feel like a dog:

Hey, Howard. Wanna go for ride in Car?

Sure! Woof! Where we goin'? (wag-wag)

Yeah, Where are we goin' without my AM usuals? No food or coffee till half-way through. Drivin' with Ms. M for Fun n' Games at the Hospital.  Ach du Lieber! I'm not really a Dog ... no matter how often I open the car window and bark-hello to my cousins with their heads out the window and their ears flappin' in the wind. Anyhow! My ears don't flap.

Still ... Been here ... Done this, before.

730 AM:

Wonder if M Would have married me in 1965 if she knew I'd be sitting 50 years later in a hospital waiting room till the "guard" comes to get me to take me back for my cardiac stress test today. Checking on Defective Goods, this morning ... a heart that doesn't quite maintain a regular: 

"ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom" 

but, instead, goes its own way. They've already injected me ... nice guy ... had my oldest married young, this guy coulda been my grandson. Good humor ... good IV giver. 

Now I sit for 45 minutes for the fluids to pass into all the arteries that need be seen and wait to be summoned back to the Holy of Holies. Not nearly as much fun as barking-hello to my canine cousins. M is sitting next to me ... most likely worried about the guy she married who grew old (she's 18 months younger than me) and worried, too, about her upcoming joint replacement. I'm sitting here wearing a 1986 T-Shirt that I bought in a Citroen rally in 1986. It has a picture of an early 1970's Citroem Maserati ... an artifact of a Europe that worked on joint projects 40 years ago and the car that Number One Son drove into a curb causing $14,000 worth of damage.

I have on: running shoes, sweat pants, a heart monitor reading 49 bpm and a beret. The wearing of berets precedes M ... When I was a religious Jewish kid growing up in marginal neighborhoods, I found that I was less safe wearing a Jewish skullcap and being recognized as a hated minority than if I wore a beret and other adolescents accused me of being Gay. So, here we are ... waiting for the kid-techs and the relevant Docs to do their magic.Me, M and the Beret.

815 AM:

I get brought back. Been there, done this ... many times. I keep telling my Doctors that I have a stress test every time my atrium does its Wildman Thing its afib. They keep agreeing but want me on the treadmill, hooked up to and EKG and taking Before and After Pictures of the Highways and Biways that carry the nutrients that feed my heart. I begin chugging away on the treadmill while the attending Cardiologist shouts orders to his tech ... 

Doc to Tech: Schultzie, Machen zee elevation higher!

Mach higher, much higher!

Again, Schultze, again. 

Target Zone, Schultze, 130 bpm.

Higher on der elevation, Schultz! 

------

8:45 AM:

The Doc is obviously disappointed. The heart-slowing drugs I took yesterday? The ones my Doctor has me taking? Well. They don't let my heart go as fast as it does when it just wants to go fast ... not as quickly as Doc wants

Doc: We're gonna stop this.

Howard: I'm doin' fine.

Doc: No. It's enough. We'll get you back in 45 minutes for more pictures. See if we caused ya any damage. (Doc titters just a little bit) ... 

"Ah! Just a little Cardiologist joke."

****************************

Making peace with getting older!  What Does it mean?

M is having Surgery ... joint replacement, aka, Black and Decker Surgery where they -- with an electric rotary saw -- cut out one joint and -- with high tensile glues -- put in a steel or carbon fiber stand-in.  

Wouldn't it be easier to just clone your loved-one with one of those 3-D CAD copying machines? 

And the aging visitors to my office are missing -- one by one -- just about every part imaginable ... and I? I? I still can't remember where I put my memory? 

******************************

Fri 23 Oct ... The Docs begin calling telling me that everything's OK cardiologically but they saw something on my left lung. 

Howard: That's just peachy. Not quite like Machu Peachy!

********************************

Mon 26 Oct

Howard brings the films over to a friend. He looks and calls later.

Friend: I'd just ignore it.

Maybe I will.

**********************************

Luncheon time, this week, with two friends who are surviving prostate cancer. Ouch!!

The Psalmist said that our years are 70 but if we're equipped with the trappings of warriorship? then, 80. ... Oh, well! The Cat and Gunther Dog are not likely to be around, but overtime begins for M and H at 80! Maybe, I'll build us a bench to sit upon?!

Blessed are you, King of the Universe, who gives to the weary ... strength.

ברוך אתה, מלך העולם ... הנותן ליעף כח.

Trump and Life Expectancy

When you -- against your own will, common sense and even the advice and "kindness of others"--  enter the Fourth Quarter, your Life Expectancy here in the USofA is 24 years ... 21 if the accidents of prenatal life have blessed you with male genitals. (Freud spoke of Phallic Narcissism ... I suppose all narcissistic inclinations do come with a price! Apparently, a penis costs 3 years.) By 70, you need only plan for 16+ and 14+ years of  light lunches and Depends, respectively.

Lemme cheekily parse that just a bit more. If you're 70, now, you're most likely to live through 4 terms of Donald Trump as President, if you're a woman, and 3.5 terms of his prolonged leadership, if'n you're a man. Admittedly, that doesn't take into account the likelihood that sometime after "the Donald" declares himself the only fit person since Nero to lead America back to Greatness, our little experiment in Democracy may have itself become the recipient of the Darwin Award that prizes those evolutionary freaks who due to their own idiocy have removed themselves from the pool of future evolutions.

It should be said that the USA -- with its own Greatness and Exceptionalisms  -- would, thereby, have become the first country on whom this honorary award has been bestowed. Up to now, it has been reserved for the likes of inventors who put wings on their Stetsons and fly off the Empire State Building, holding on to their hats, proudly proclaiming knowledge of a certain updraft due to come off the Hudson.

Kerrrr...splat!

Now, in fairness to His Towering Trumpness, I recall someone once offering up the notion that: 

anyone who thinks themselves fit to lead the Free World ... 

by the very virtue of that belief ... is not.

But there is a notable difference between the Trumpeter and most of the other candidates for President ... those nobleman and noblewomen who also claim competence in assuming a leadership role in the future of the soon-to-be (likely, in my lifetime!) 250 year old Republic that a bunch of whacked-out radicals put together believing that a Country could be created where  Free Enterprise could be joined together with the Social Contract. 

For, you see, Old Ladies and Gentlemen of the Last Quarter, the others -- by and large -- imagine that their programs and platforms are the moving parts that will lift America and Americans. In his Cult of Personality, Trump -- as he Tramps on Ben, Bernie, Carly, Chris, and Hillary; Jeb, Jim, and Joe; Lincoln, Marco, and Martin -- offers no real platform except his own Greatness and his charming ability to denigrate others. I don't want to leave out all the others that Trump depreciates ... the likes of Senator John McCain, Megyn Kelly, or President Obama ... but there are, indeed, too many, especially if one considers those Central Americans and Syrians who have sought comfort away from the poverty of wars in their countries and that are singled out by him to be seen as No-Goodniks.  

Let me say that I am pretty confident that many of Trump's supporters are good people and are looking for a strong leader to take them out of their struggles and protect them from a Warlike World. Still, I am a little annoyed that I could go out, as well, under one of those leaders that the World has known in the past who say little more than:

I'll purge our ranks of the destructive minority!

I am the only one capable of returning us to the Greatness which is our Right!

And I  -- and I, alone -- have the capacity to Throw Out the Bad 

and to Provide Goodness to the Good by Virtue of my Own Greatness. 

*********

Geez! I'm going with M to see a performance of Antigone, today ... For any who are yet to read/see this Sophoclean tragedy, I can do little but warn you:

Things don't always end well!

Follow the Road

M and my trip to Vermont to visit our Grandchild was in our older son's car. I suppose he lent it to us for some reason other than him wanting me to drive like an old lunatic through the Green Mountains at speeds double my age. Maybe, approaching 50, he gets a kick out of giving Dad the keys and telling him to stay outa trouble and get Mom home at a respectable hour. 

The reversals of life! Thirty plus years ago, he and his brother managed to have three car accidents. The last one was to my Citroen SM ... he bent the passenger side control arm ramming a curb ... disarming the sensibilities of my insurance company when they discovered that the only such control arm would have to be imported from New Zealand. Maybe my son still feels some guilt ... maybe I do for letting a twenty year old drive a Citroen Maserati?

Or maybe? Just maybe? He liked the idea of Mom and Dad having a workable GPS to guide them North and back South. And good thing, too. Heading back, the Leaf Lookers had loaded the roads. Millions of folk NEEDING to see the leaves change color before they drop. Old Folk going to see it before they drop? Any case ... Traffic stopped about 70 miles from the next junction. Inching along ... wondering why my left leg was called into this service of ... clutch ... clutch ... clutch  ... and clutch, again.We gave up!

We boogeyed off the road into the back roads of NE Pennsylvania and back over to NJ ... over hill and dale ... always guided by Phyllis, the name we've given to the female voice of Sonny-Boy's GPS ... Omniscient Phyllis who knows all.

In any case, Phyllis has an expression that she quietly notes as she recalculates the route after her unruly passengers go their own way:

Follow the road.

We did ... and still ... When a 300 mile/5 hour trek morphs into a 380 mile/9.5 hour Road Rally, one has plenty of time to rehash old questions, like:

Why are M and I driving in a 500 horsepower beast?

Why does my husband need to roar by that Corvette LT-1?

Why not drive one of those 

mid-Sixties hydropneumatic boats 

that just float along in automatique?

Why isn't my husband stopping for Gas out here in the Boonies?

What if I don't stop and we really do run out of Gas in Backwoods NJ?

and, finally,

Just what DOES Phyllis mean by: Follow the Road?

Well, I don't rightly know the answer to any of the above questions but I do and we did fascinate about the last one, in particular. Fifty years of marriage ... Fifty years of Following the Road. I know there are folk who plan, plan and plan some more. And M and I must have done some planning in order to arrive at today. But mostly ... Phyllis has got it: We followed the Road. Life is something Mathematicians call a Stochastic Process ... a progression whereby decisions are made not necessarily with a known end in sight but rather by probabalistically making a decision on where it makes sense to go to next. No judgement ... No fault ... Just lookin' out the window as the road unfurls and choosing as best y'can. 

One of the Good Brother Thomas Merton's prayers ... I suppose the one he's best known for ... begins:

My Lord I have no idea where I'm going.

and there's an ancient prayer that maybe expresses the pleasant surprise at having arrived at each seasonal holiday:

Blessed are you, God, King of the Universe, 

Who has Kept us Vital, 

Managed to Keep us Standing 

and Helped us Arrive at this Moment.

שהחיינו וקיימנו והגיענו לזמן הזה

Just Follow the Road, Howard!

Harvest Festival

Not much makes me travel 300 miles, each way. Every passing year and the roads seem to have stretched out. The looming knee surgery for M makes it difficult to drive ... after 50 years of copiloting, M has been demoted to "navigator." And, anyhow, she doesn't much like driving a clutch.

But, hey, our oldest grandchild is in school far away from her  home, her parents and matched-set sisters and her maternal grandparents. The paternal ones live even further away and still we all show up for Harvest Festival at the Kid's school.

I -- maybe twenty years ago -- wrote of how the Wing-tipped Shoes at the bottom of my closet did something towards counting the passing years. This weekend has been convincing in other ways. In addition to recognizing that I have grown progressively sensitive to gratuitous slights coming from others, M and my side-trip, yesterday, to a school just 45 miles East of the Mountain top house we all collectively rented for the weekend. M and I had lived and worked at that school 40+ years ago when our older children were 7 and 8. The mother of the child we were visiting, this weekend, would not arrive for another 5 years and Grandchildren were not yet even among the fantasies. That school was one for very bright adolescents struggling with autisms, schizophrenias and other serious childhood emotional illnesses. We lived there ... M, I, the Boys and Kazimierza Kuratowski the Saint Bernard who had been named after my mentor, the ex-Director of the Polish Akademie in Warczawa. I had, just a year before, given up Mathematics, and decided to work with people ... What a clever idea!

The school outside the then tiny town of Rindge, NH population 75! provided us with a trailor ... thanks to OPEC, that didn't necessarily mean reliable heat. M and I slept with Kaz-the-Big-Dog between us for heat and the boys had refused to get out of bed one morning when the outside temp was -35 and inside was -10. Good memories. M and I, before visiting the school, stopped in a Diner that didn't exist for Sunday eggs. I asked the youngish waitress wearing ink that just wasn't done in early 1970's in Rindge.

Hey, where's the Red Rooster?

The Red Rooster was a bar ... by no means a tavern ... a bar where staff at the school who were allowed to leave for 30 hours a week spent the very few pfennigs they weekly received on getting snockered on 151 proof Wild Turkey to bolster something or other. With kids, I can only recall going once and was privvy that time to a conversation between two young guys ... with a 90 year old farmer listening in.

The kids were describing their love life with their ladies in astronomical terms ... stars, moon, earths moving, ...

The old guy leaned in and looked them down spitting out have his rotgut drink with:

You kids are so full'o'shit.

When I fuck, there are sparks.

The Red Rooster was that kinda bar ... but back to the story. Not only hadn't the waitress heard of the Red Rooster but not the owners or the old diner waitresses, either. Apparently ... 40+ years is a long time. 

After eggs, we drove to the school. The field where our little trove of trailers were settled ... was no more. M explained that a lotta growth comes in 40 years. It further struck us that a goodly percentage of the trees growing in Rindge? just plain weren't there when we were. 

I could go on describing the Town Green that no longer was just Sander's Store and a Post Office ... the school where all the kids except our little ones were Blonde Finns named Aho .... 

Sad ... like the time I went looking for a house in Toledo where I had lived with my parents and sibs in the early '50's. M and I, indeed, were on a road trip to Chicago to visit this same grandchild maybe 16 years ago. M and I found the block that 2410 Lawrence was on ... the block where I first planted a garden of radishes and Swiss Chard ... found the block cut off by a fence overlooking an Interstate that was some thirty feet below groundlevel and running at 65 mph.

I know I'm not the first to discover that you really can't go home ... still, other folks' accounts never quite got through. M and I will head back today ... her surgery is 6 weeks off and our older son turns 50 after the turn into 2016.

I could use a drink.

Hope and Disillusionment

Finished seeing the Visitors to my office, yesterday, and went to see a thoughtful man ... Itamar Lurie ... maybe just beginning the Fourth Quarter ... talking about his work among the damned ... working as a facilitator of groups from the the opposing sides of Middle East conflicts (his and the Others') and the complexity of working with "these Others" individually with their life crises. It was -- no other way to describe it -- moving. I was moved to Tears by the Hopelessness: justified or otherwise ... moved to Laughter by his choice in going on with Good Humor and Love, nonetheless. 

"Those who seed with Tears? With Joy will they gather." 

(from Psalms -- where?)

So much carnage ... M who is having a rough time walking listens to the News a great deal ... me, as well. I see Wars and Hatred most places my eyes point ... Acts of Kindness here and there to act as counterpoint, I suppose.

My visitors often get caught up in wondering what the use of going on is ... They see little but illness and death coming towards them. What can an Old Man say? Those of us blessed enough to make it into the Last Quarter and beyond are not unaware of the reality ... Dark times are "nearer than you think." Yes, yes ... 

"Always think of the Bright Side of Life." 

It's a Good Joke and a Necessary Illusion for continuing to entertain the three things the Writer of Ecclesiastes leaves the reader: The Love of Another (Others?); the Love of God; and the attempt to Lead the Good Life. Everything else the writer who calls himself Kohelles describes as Foul Wind ... as so much Farting.

Is there meaning in this Game of Life? Is their purpose in my life? There was a Mathematician (Conway?) who developed a game that allowed the player to play -- well -- God ... to choose a certain initial state for the Universe of Settlements and then to predict how that initial state will play out in thousands of generations where the only rules are that too close and too far both lead to destruction for the unfortunates that are either ... too far or too near to their fellow folk. I'm quite certain that one can find computerized versions on line but our human propensity to see the Other ... the Ethically or Politically or Racially Different ... as the enemy seems unending. 

Go back to the drawing board, Dr. Conway. 

Life is more complicated than any two-rule Game.

Is that among the anguishes of Playing in This Last Quarter? Knowing full well that our fantasy that Wars and Hatred would come to an end during our Pass-By ... our tenure in Life ... was just that ... a fantasy.

I maintain Hope that M's surgery this Fall will bring her relief from walking-pain ... that my kids and grandkids will thrive and that the sundry illnesses in my family will resolve. I am not-at-all hopeful that the Middle East will settle or that the Libs and the Conservatives will stop their deprecating attacks on each other or that violence will stop in the Americas. 

And since I cannot do anything else, today, M and I will travel to go visit one of our teenage Grand-spawn! We'll get in a car and look at the Autumn's Beauty and pause just now and then to cry over the carnage.

.......

So, here's a fragment from the late Stanley Kunitz's poem, Halley's Comet, written when he was very old:

Miss Murphy in the first grade

wrote its name in chalk

across the board and told us

it was roaring down the stormtracks

of the Milky Way at frightful speed

and if it wandered off its course

and smashed into the earth

there'd be no school tomorrow.

Funny guy, Stanley!

Looking Back ... aghast!

It's approaching the Four Year Anniversary ... of my beginning to write down these thoughts about living in the Fourth and Last Quarter of Life. 

It was the 16th of October in the year 2011. 

And no god spake unto Howard, saying:

"Write down ye thoughts, Brother!"

It was four years ago, some 9 weeks after the fall in the Garden that changed my habit of occasionally writing a ditty ... a bit of doggerel ... about the accumulating years on my Birthday Cards into this more frequent and formal -- still sometimes humorous but occasionally and arguably MORBID -- set of reflections on my dotage. I began:

If you're reading this, I'd like to think you were open-minded 

and moving through your fifties or sixties. 

If a good long life is 84 years (four score and four .... 

about the time it took a fledgling democracy to produce the Gettysburg Address), 

then the Fourth Quarter begins at 63 or thereabouts. 

Need I add that we have no way to know for certain how much time we have left 

(one of the curses of awareness ... knowing that we don't know) .... 

My grandchildren are keenly aware that I'm 

-- in the order of things -- next to go, so to speak ... 

that I'm an orphan ... 

that I strain when I do hard labor around the house and 

that grandma is forever warning me not to work too hard (more about that later) ... 

and that I'm a little slow on the comeback (more on processing speed, later, too).

Zo! Now, being maybe 3 Blog Postings away from my Happy 4th, it seems fitting to spend some time reflecting on these four years. I am committed to rereading the 400+ postings over these weeks ... I am a little fearful of what I'll find. If I'm true to my age, I fear, there shall have been a great deal of repetition ... telling the same story over-and-over, again ... Sorry, if that turns out to be true. M and my kids would tell us how my Dad would retell his jokes and his stories about being an older soldier in WW2. Similarly, I wish I could say that there hadn't been any changes in my functioning ... but there have been. My Driving has deteriorated ... ask M. My body has acquired new consultants ... among them, a kindly Cardio-Electrophysiologist who looks like he could date my oldest grandchild ... and others, too. My Pill Hotel has grown additional floors ... My Central Processing Unit has slowed ... and the Photographic Memory I once has dead spots on its hard-drive ... kinda like the Starter-Motor on a '56 Packard. 

So, off I go ... Older than all the Republican Candidates for the 2016 Presidency ... still near the same age or younger than the leading three Democratic contenders ... Hillary, Joe and Old Man Bernie. 

Off to reread my ramblings ... a little afraid of what I'll find.  

Spotty Contradictions

The Last Quarter  

A Spinning Compass  

Pointing now to the Past full of Kindnesses  

and 

Now to Old Sins from and against those Near and Dear  

--- Now and Then ---

Have I given up on figuring out the Sum of Kindness and Sin? Maybe that's part of being a Denizen of Quarter Four. The Kids say: It is what it is! I guess: It's gonna be what it's gonna be!

The new technology is pretty cool. My youngest Grandchild and her Parents gave me a wristband that calculates my steps and my sleep ... My sleep? It tells me how long I've slept and how long I've been restless and how long awake. Is it good to know these things? Maybe. I get to go to a website each morning ... I just did ... and find out the Sum of my steps and Sleep and more. Soon, I suspect, it will calculate details of our sex lives ... duration? thrusts? peak moments? Peek-a-boo!

The Pope is coming to Philadelphia ... Wish I was going to join the throngs of devotees who will follow his words. He does seem like the Good Shepherd. Instead, on Television, I get to watch those devoted, first, to this political whacko and, then, to another. Have I become jaded? Is the whatever off the rose? I dunno.

Here, in Amerika ...

Can there really be a Candidate for President 

who thinks he has nothing to do 

but claim magical powers to heal the scars of the 7 Billion?

Can there actually be multiple Candidates for President 

who proudly pronounce their ability to smash unions?

How many Candidates for President are there 

who think there can is reason not to elect a President 

whose idea of The One God is a hair-different than the WASP ideal? 

How many Candidates for President do, indeed, tell me what they really believe?

Hell! How many Talking Heads are willing to tell me what they believe?

I listen, each day, and have little to no idea what is articulated belief and what is Spin? Spin has become OK. Spin is Reality and Reality is Spin!

Amerika? The Land of the Free and the Brave. Anyone can become anything, here in Amerika. Just look at the composition of the recent debate: A child of Indian Immigrants ... a Black Man who grew up in poverty and became an acclaimed Pediatric Surgeon ... a couple of kids of Cuban Immigrants ... a Woman who rose from being an Administrative Assistant to great prominence in the World of Business ... a Billionaire who thinks the World of Himself, though maybe less of all the others for whom he, nonetheless, professes Great Love .... a number of Illuminaries -- Clerical and Lay -- who have such Faith in the Creator that they see no need for Birth Control or Science ....  

Wow! (or Whoa!) 

My wristband tells me that I was Restless for 32 minutes, last night. I don't expect the day, necessarily, to be much better. 

Maybe I'll have time to ponder a question that Maimonides toyed with about 800 years ago: If Christians, Jews and Moslems (listed lexicographically) are all monotheists, believers in One God,  that is, must they not -- of necessity -- all be singing the praises to and beseeching kindnesses from the same God?

It was quite narcissistic of me, I suppose, to have imagined -- as I suspect I did and maybe do -- that all the pettiness and hatred of the World would have come to an end during my tenure standing erect here on this planet. Children and old folk (like me, thee, the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis) are, I suppose, a bit naive.

Alas!