Feeling Sorry for Myself

So, yesterday, it became clear that little children -- maybe, especially boys, adore their Mothers. A friend wrote: "When I was the object of my eldest son's appraisal, as per the cartoon, I emerged from a shower, he coldly looked me over, top to bottom, and gave this assessment:

"Next time, get a penis"

OK, OK ... Moms have it tough. Still, even if criticized, they do seem to get protected and loved. But what is it about children that they become so aware of what we don't have. I remember -- maybe 35 years ago -- my eldest son couldn't stand the way I ate. Apparently, I ate like an exuberant pig at the trough. Same guy had a party and we had a brief conversation:

Son: I was just wondering. 

When you meet my friends could you tell them that you're my uncle.

Dad: I could just tell them I was gardener.

Son: That's a good idea. Thanks Dad, could I borrow the car?

The Good Dokteur Freud from Vienna spoke of two impossible professions in addition to his own: the governance of nations (how would Boehner [sp.?] like the President to introduce himself?) and parenting. But dammit, at least Moms do get a lion's share of affection -- oh! they get the hate, too, but I got the floor for the moment and I'm feeling like an unappreciated Dad. After a day of warning about the Biggest Snow since the Ice Age, I woke up this morning to the sight of six inches. Six inches? and no one to shovel it but me. Y'know. Had it been 22 inches as the Seers saw in their entrails and said repeatedly in their televised expostulations, at least after shoveling out I would have been seen as ... the first to Climb Everest  ... as invited to the party that arrived at the South Pole ... as Baalum the Great Hunter God ... as Nanuk of N. Dakota or as Abayoyo ... or ... or something. Instead, I got to shovel 6" (and then got to kvetch about it: Poor Howard!).

No wonder, then, that Peter Arno portrays Mom as the great Mother of Desire (yesterday's cartoon) and Dad as the schmuck incapable of busting himself out of a stall shower. A 75 year old colleague put it well, to my way of thinking in a recent correspondence:

Timely, especially after I experience the increasingly  aging-related 

phenomenon of being viewed as increasingly irrelevant 

(as my competence increases).

May ... Be. Not so certain, though, about my competence being on the rise. It was even before I entered the Last Quarter that I sorrowfully penned the following ditty, as I recognized where I saw myself situated on the food chain:

The Peripatetic Animal-Phobe Home Alone

Yesterday, I jumped up on my bed

And heard a scratching overhead.

Had I heard this sound before

Perhaps a’scratching on my door?

Ghosts of road-kills from the past?

I got down from my bed real fast.

I fell upon a cold hard floor

And scurried fast right outside my door.

There they were six feet or more

Rockie Raccoon and his sister Lenore.

Coons you’d never chance to feed last

Whether in the attic or on your grass.

So now I’ll sleep a’standing on my head

While Rockie and Lenore scratch in my bed.

& the dog hates me, too.

.

Many years, ago, when the readers to this Blog were young or maybe not-born-yet, Peter Arno memorialized  the Big Eyes of the little child trying to make sense of what Freud called the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes. He called it "Lady in the Shower" To be fair, he had a male version, as well, which he called "Man in the Shower." There, a man is swimming upside down in a stall shower pointing to the door handle, obviously beseeching his wife to unlock the door and let him out. 

Winter, not infrequently, reminds me, as well, of other distinctions in the way we see (or, at least, the way Peter Arno -- blame him -- saw these distinctions) differences between the sexes. I don't quite know how to fairly parse the distinction between a Mother who is looked upon in wonder and as someone the child might be drawn towards and the Man who without the help of his Wife can't bust himself out of a stall shower. Still, I'm thinking of my snow-shoveling and gas-filling and plumbing and carpentering duties as pater familias in a home in which the kiddies have absconded and in which the only other male, GuntherDog dislikes getting his feet wet and whose only trick is a cow-eyed handshake. No argument, our Mothers in the 1950's were given far more time-consuming tasks ... cooking and cleaning could go on all day, as could taking care of the brats ... sorry cute-little-spawn ... err ... "our shared blessings from God" ... and keeping the family in one piece ... To paraphrase Sam Hinton: 'Peace to the Family or the Family in Pieces.'

And I have no interest in arguing fairness ... "who has the harder job?" ... "who does more?" ...  fair is what two people old enough to sign a contract ... fair is what they agree to do ... Still, I do have envy (wrote about it in a chapter of book on Men in the 21st C. http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Man-Into-21st-Century/dp/0763711721) about M's being seen as "The Mommy" and me being portrayed by Arno as being incapable of busting out of a paper bag ... or a glass-doored shower, anyway.

I suppose it hits home, today, as I gird my loins, as the prophets would say, and prepare myself for the shoveling out from the "Historical" Snow-mageddon that the Jeremiahs of my day are predicting. The serious snow is supposed to begin early afternoon and continue through tomorrow morning. Some visitors to my office will decide against driving ... some will don cross-country skis, if necessary, to arrive at my office. It's good to be loved! In any case, I stole a red wool hat with fringes atop points and knitted earflaps from the GrandSpawn, the temperature is not far below freezing, and the snow is not predicted to be the heavy/wet widow-maker variety. I'll go out multiple times and do parts of the 320 feet of walkway. I won't have to do the driveway due to my religious faith that tells me that if I park the cars right at the bottom of the driveway, the Lord will get around to melting the top 160 feet leading up to the garage when She's good and ready. 

I have three pairs of gloves and if I work from a door-INTO-the-snow, my Birkenstocks work just fine. We have one shovel. I guess that's mine? No problem with M ... it's not her thing ... She'll be upstairs taking a hot shower? Nah!

Like last year, I am somewhat preoccupied by the not-quite-delusional fantasy that children making snow-angels in the snow (i.e., lying on their little backs and swinging their arms in the snow -- leaving the imprint of what they think looks like an angel in the snow) are channeling their grandfathers who took their last breaths while making the self-same motions in the snow. Should it ever happen to me, maybe M will have me cremated with my 20" pipe wrench, in one hand, my Wallace open-end wrenches in my pants pocket, leaning on a shovel. When the ceremony ends, there'll be something for "the World to carry on" ... Those wrenches that were my Dad's and my trusty shovel, Mathilda.

Pray for Howard ---- from Psalm 147 ....

He has, indeed, made strong your gates (but the trees may still fall on your house);

He has blessed your children (smart, warm and) inside;

He establishes peace within your boundaries (well, not yet);

And fills you with the finest of Wheat (whether you're celiac or not);

He sends forth his commands to the Earth (Let it snow, let it snow, ugh);

His words run swiftly (before y'know it, the snow's a foot deep).

He gives snow like wool (dries your skin and makes you itchy);

He scatters frost like ashes from a fire (frost-bit fingers raised in praise).

Who can stand before his Icy Cold (I can ... I think, I think, I think I can).

(parenthetical comments added gratuitously).

Finish off, if you would, with "Rudolph, the red-nosed grandpa ... " and Jethro Tull's description of nasal production in "Aqualung" ... 

I'm ready know.

Too Many gods? Too Many God Complexes?

I suspect that most of us Players in this Glorious Last Quarter of Life recall the story of the Pied Piper. A town (Hamelin) was over-run by rats and hired a rat-catcher to rid it of this infestation. Alas, he was interested in taking a fee much higher than that offered and stole all the children by alluring them with his catchy tunes. Some have suggested that the story represented the people's choosing a magician, of sorts, over their God in trying to save their children from the Plague -- and that this was their comeuppance. No matter.

For me, I often find that while there may be a sufficiency of Rats, these days we more often suffer from too many Pied Pipers, each telling us how to live our lives and criticizing the ones we live. (An art student of mine for a class assignment years ago photoshopped the above redecoration of the Vatican ceiling that I borrow here without attribution and with apologies -- having forgotten his name.)

The edginess and gratuitous snarkiness of the world occasionally does trouble me. By the Fourth Quarter, one may be swimming for one's life in an ocean of criticisms. Just this week, I was giving a talk wondering about how Moses got to a place in his conversation with God at the Bush-that-Wouldn't-Be-Consumed (in the first three chapters of Exodus) that moved him to bark at his God and demand rhetorically:

Why have you depressed this people?! 

I had no answer and wasn't seeking one. I was more interested in what is a four-volume dialogue that the Bible records between a man and his God. A friend called to tell me how impossibly non-linear my thinking was in this talk.

Damn, I needed that! 

(like a new sphinctor magnum, I needed that)

Edginess seems to be if-not-the rule then a common occurrence, these days ...  this blog, perhaps, can be accused of edginess, too! I don't know. I do hope it's heard in a spirit of warm sharing. Perhaps, we Fourth Quarter-niks just get sensitive, as we grow long in the tooth. I'm not certain but, if so, I'm no exception. Jim Hillman (now, gone himself) wrote an interesting book on aging ... he called it The Force of Character. In it, he proposes that, as we age, we just get to be more of what we've always been. Not always a good thing. But I'll hold on to my sensitivities ... they add to my humanity.

I could list the curious slights that have collected in just the last week ... but I suspect readers to this blog have been exposed in the same amount of time to snide comments in their own worlds. To paraphrase a title from the Good Dr. Freud:

The Gratuitous Slights of Everyday Life. 

Mine this week came mostly from Second and Third Quarter folk. One did amuse me. It came from a person who was organizing a new program of the type I ran for many years. I made the offer to send some of the literature and brochures from that training program and was responded to with dismissiveness. Can I still remember what it was like to "flip off" the older generation? I suppose so. Still ... How easy is it to simply say "thank you" without the edge.

Let me be clear: I cherish the not-infrequent little supportive comments from children, grandchildren, friends and others near and dear to me. Doesn't get better than that and many of those interchanges came my way this week, as well. 

Zen -- Western-Mother-in-Law Style

Before I understood M's mother's experience

of suffering in the Last Quarter, 

I sent the old lady the following cavalier

(dis)missive about her aching dotage.

I think I now get it! Alas.

Zen ****ism - - 

(You pick the ism -- as written to M's Mother many years ago)

If there is no self,

whose arthritis is this?

Be here now.

Be someplace else later.

Is that so complicated?

Drink tea and nourish life.

With the first sip?... joy.

With the second? ... satisfaction.

With the third? ... peace.

With the fourth? ... a danish.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Your luggage is another story.

Accept misfortune as a blessing.

Do not wish for perfect health

or a life without problems

or a bug-free Universe.

What would you kvetch about?

The journey of a thousand miles

begins with a single "ouch."

There is no escaping karma.

In a previous life, you never called,

you never wrote, you never visited.

And whose fault was that?

Zen is not easy.

It takes effort to attain nothingness.

And then what do you have?

The Tao does not speak.

The Tao does not blame.

The Tao does not take sides.

The Tao has no expectations.

The Tao demands nothing of others.

The Tao is not a Mother-in-Law.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Forget this? and attaining Enlightenment

will be the least of your problems.

Let your mind be as a floating cloud.

Let your stillness be as the wooded glen.

And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha 

with those rounded shoulders.

Be patient and achieve all things.

Be impatient and achieve all things faster.

To Find the Buddha, look within.

Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers.

Each flower blossoms ten thousand times.

Each blossom has ten thousand petals.

You might want to see a specialist.

To practice Zen and the art of Western

motorcycle maintenance, do the following:

get rid of the motorcycle.

What were you thinking?

Be aware of your body.

Be aware of your perceptions.

Keep in mind that not every physical sensation 

is a symptom of a terminal illness.

The Bible says: "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

The Buddha says there is no "self."

So, maybe you are off the hook.

Though only your skin, sinews, and bones remain, 

though your blood and  flesh

dry up and wither away, yet shall you meditate and not stir 

until you have attained full Enlightenment.

But, first, let's do brunch.

Little Things

Many a visitor to my office will report of the difficulty of droning on with life's rhythm:

Each day, I wake up and do the same thing ... and then I die!

I'm just a mealticket or a housecleaner or both!

True enough, I suppose, the monotony of life -- punctuated by everyday detours into love and loss -- can get to us. I don't know the percentages, but many of us on God's Good Earth go through the same routine day in and day out.

A Bugle call or alarm clock;

The two fried eggs with potatoes and a slab of fried animal for the omnivours;

Lots of Coffee or Tea;

A trip to the place of our work; 

The job with a sandwich or Tiffin somewhere half way through the slog; 

The return home -- damn that guy/gal who cut me off;

Read the mail and what IT wants from you, this time; 

Some positive, negative, titillating or deadening experience;

Sleep; and, yes ...

A Bugle call or alarm clock to wake me, again.

The degree to which the monotony is -- at any moment -- augmented or replaced by "comradeship and true joy" (Alexander Woolcott?) must be very variable for some 40 - 60 years of our work-lives. How shall one approach most anything that confronts us in our day-by-day activities and still recall that the core of our lives is to be found in the relationships we have with our near-and-dear and with our less-near-and-less-dear ... oh! ... and with ourselves.

Last weekend, I arose, did my usuals and came downstairs with GuntherDog. I let the (other) Old Guy out and heard a curious sound. Oh, my gosh ... water running. Went out to find Gunther lolling about in his shagginess in 15 (F) degree weather and to a different noise ... but still water running. Over the fence? A spigot had blown. Apparently, I had neglected to sufficiently shut down the valve in the basement a few months ago when the cold began to descend on me on all others living in NE USA (maybe 75 Million of my not-so-dear-or-near) and there would be a price to pay.

Went down the basement with the right wrench and carefully -- oh, so carefully, so as not to break the shutoff valve -- shut down the flow of water to the outside.

Part of the price of owning a home. Yeah, there'll be a cost to pay. $10 for a new valve and maybe another $30 for a new copper pipe, as the old one cracked inside the outside wall of the house. I left a note for M and got my office ready for its first morning visitor. Later, I bought a carload full of sand to spread on my driveway and my neighbor's ... she must be 85 and no Sonja Henie.

I'm no Pollyanna and don't see the driveway as a blessing from above. Indeed, when Spring comes with its thaw and I do the work, it will exact its price from me ... at least a couple of hours. I suppose I could hire a plumber. I thought of that and then, last night, had a dream:

I told someone that I needed to go and offer prayers now that my Father had died and the dream -- more or less -- started with me offering up these prayers standing amidst a row of pews in some religious place. As I was reciting whatever it was that I was reciting, people were criticizing me ... loud enough for me to hear and be troubled by the words ... "Why would someone come after me just after my Father had died? Why?" I turned around and showed one or more of them a picture of my Dad ... or was it a picture of me. As I've aged, I tell myself and others that I shave my long-gone Father each morning in the mirror. I don't know what I was trying to communicate but I do know that most everything I know about Plumbing and Carpentry and Not Getting Electrocuted when messing with the house's power grid, I learned from Old Miltie ... well, actually, from Young Miltie. Even after he got old, if I had to do something complicated, I'd call him up: 

"Hey, Dad ... I'm changing this three pole light switch?"

"Hey ... Just calling to get some advice on these old faucets 

that won't come loose so I can pop in a new set."

"Dad ... Shit! An old cast-iron soil pipe cracked and I wanted some sympathy."

I was reading the early chapters of Ecclesiastes last night with a friend ... another denizen of the Fourth Quarter. Until the author discovered relationship, everything appeared to him "as futile, empty and foul wind." Life is more than foul wind. I don't recall if it was Alexander Woollcott or GK Chesterton who wrote:

'We have a long way to travel before we get back to what Dickens meant; 

and the passage is along a rambling English road, 

a twisting road such as Mr. Pickwick traveled. 

But this is at least part of what he meant; 

that comradeship and true joy are not interludes in our travels 

but rather our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy, 

which through God shall endure forever. 

The inn does not point to the road; the road points to the inn. 

And all roads point to an ultimate inn 

where we shall meet Dickens and all his characters, 

and when we drink, again, 

it shall be from the great flagons in the tavern at the end of the World.'

For the Record = FTR

So, I looked up JPEG on Wikipedia ....

<<"JPEG" stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the name of the committee that created the JPEG standard and also other still picture coding standards. The "Joint" stood for ISO TC97 WG8 and CCITT SGVIII. In 1987 ISO TC 97 became ISO/IEC JTC1 and in 1992 CCITT became ITU-T. Currently on the JTC1 side JPEG is one of two sub-groups of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29, Working Group 1 (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1) – titled as Coding of still pictures.^[4][5][6] On the ITU-T side ITU-T SG16 is the respective body. The original JPEG group was organized in 1986,^[7]issuing the first JPEG standard in 1992, which was approved in September 1992 as ITU-T Recommendation T.81^[8] and in 1994 as ISO/IEC 10918-1.>>

I have every reason to believe either that this was etched into an obelisk by an alien visitor or else that I need to be replaced by some vacuum tubes!

Hope you feel better ... I need a nap.

Time Passes Slowly .. or once did!

A little ditty of mine is to appear in a local rag ... an informal journal for therapists in the Philadelphia area. I received an e-mail from one of the Editors asking if I could provide a picture to accompany it. No problem. I sent a picture -- without thinking much about it -- that was taken in 1998 of me leaning on my 3rd Quarter elbows, looking a bit sullen with hints of annoyance. I gave little thought to the fact that it is now 2015.  What's 16 or 17 years? Yeah, right! Well, I'll tell you. I have too frequently quipped that my hair loss is a product of driving in my roadster with the top down. Truth be told ... that many years is the difference between a little flesh showing through on the back of my head ... out of sight, in fact, when I looked in the mirror, in those days ... and a picture I remember from barbershops 60 years ago ... the one that was called "the wide part." Yeah. I'm a wide-parter, now, though with some wispy stuff in the 6" part!

I might have not given all this another thought, had the Editor not explained that she needed it in JPEG or PDF format ... and ... had I not only seen the JPEG. See, my MAC can, indeed, save things in PDF format ... whatever that means. So, absent the PDF possibility, I asked my youngest child (still not quite 40 years old) who grew up in the World of Cybers and Cyborgs if she would do it for me. She sent me a picture of me from 1999 holding her daughter -- the same teenager/writer who is in the process of re-editing a book that I wrote in 1994-1995 and published in 1997 -- 2 years before she was born. In this picture, I'm wearing a summery shirt ... look tolerably young holding a maybe 6 month old who now is responsible for getting Grandpa's convoluted writings ship-shape! Damn! Maybe I exist only in the past? Ah, well. We Fourth Quarter folk do perseverate a lot on and get stuck in repeating as we meet with other aging Boomers:

Where HAS the time gone? 

or 

W(here)TF did the time go.

If these years and numbers and characters in my everyday-tragedy are turning your head like you were the subject of an exorcism, they've been doing a job on mine, too. I'm no denizen of the Cyber World ... I can't tell my you-know-what from a JPEG ... and don't have a clue of what JPEG abbreviates. I can't figure out how to word process headers on alternating pages -- at least, not half as well as any of my Grandkids except the 5 year old (afterthought) who tried to show me how to use a smart-phone. Oh, yeah! I got lost on the way to a meeting 3 weeks ago and asked a young couple how to get where I was supposed to be going, when through the open window of my car, I heard:

"DON'T ... YOU ... HAVE ... a ... SMARTPHONE?"

'Well, yeah," I whimpered "I have one but don't know how to use it.'

They, looking appropriately sympathetic, gave me directions from their phone. There but for the kindness of strangers I could be like the Kingston Trio's Charlie on the MTA. 

Back to New Wine in Old Bottles ... or somesuch. The pictures of me -- at least those that were readily available -- are all 3rd Quarter pics or else pictures of an older guy surrounded by grandkids and the one I've been using has an ancient story attached to it. Indeed, the story wraps around with my daughter, my grand-daughter and the passage of time.

The picture was taken at an awards dinner. I just heard disheartening news about the book that Grandspawn is now editing, the one whose back page has an earlier picture of me taken by her Mother in which I look like a Mafioso sitting on a fainting couch. The killer look? I just heard that the person across the table from me had been awarded the Gradiva Book of the Year Award ... LOL I was sweetly glaring at her ... as if she -- whom I had never met before -- had stolen it from me. 

The Purloined Gradiva Award.

In my betimes cheeky manner, I had, at that very moment the photographer was documenting my disheartened look, leaned over the table and noted: I'm having envious fantasies of doing you in and stealing the award! So much for silliness and attempts at youthful humor.

Any case, this is what I looked like contemplating a dastardly deed against a stranger at a rather civil awards dinner in 1968 ...

and that's the way I'll look in the local journal alongside my ditty!

Winter Fatigue

Or is it just Fourth Quarter Fatigue. The defense has been out on the field for most of the past three quarters while the offense has been bumbling and fumbling about for what seems like ages. That's the way the game goes or so it seems, today.

M's parents (maybe mine, as well) used to complain -- Hell! It's Classical -- that we didn't visit enough. We'd explain that life was busy ... raising the kids ... working ... writing ... and they, of course, were always welcome to drive down the 300 miles from New England to visit. Maybe the Last Quarter is about discovery: discovering what your parents meant when you were in the first three quarters. Cutting to the chase: Old People get tired.

Yesterday, one of my kids arranged for his daughter, his wife, two of his kid-sister's kids, and M to go see an on-ice version of Frozen, his daughter's best-thing-ever. It was simple enough. I was to drive M and the two older kids to his home and they'd all get down to the arena where the festivities would occur. And that's what the tired Old Farts did.

Old folks get tired. M was tired and walking with a limp from her right knee. I was tired, too. I drove downtown and found a parking garage that was designed for people with full vision. Tight little corners and tighter parking spots. The celebrants took an Uber down to the venue and I and 48 year old son walked a mile to a deli to make certain that my cholesterol doesn't get too low. We ate too much and walked back. It was now 3:00 pm and time for a rest or a nap. I decided to go home and do some writing that takes me roughly twice as long as it once did. Ugh!

M made it home and the twins were picked up by their parents. We looked around. GuntherDog was doing his typical kvetch as he gets on and off the couch he once jumped over and PrettyGirlFreud the Cat was lying inert on a floor heat-register. I recalled that on my trek back from downtown, I was listening to a song about an orphan who calls out to his Mother and Father. "I'm becoming a man, today. And as you look down from Heaven, I want you to know that my Sister and I are leading good lives." I had it on "repeat."

So:

"Mom, Dad ... Now that M and I are walking tilted, I want you to know that I finally get it. Sorry about not getting it, sooner. Next week on Sunday, we'll be driving up and back the 100 miles each way to see our two somewhat-distant grandkids, two of your many Great-grandkids. While up there, I hope Gunther's aging prostate allows him to keep it in, that Pretty Girl doesn't get pissed about being left alone with GrumpyGunther, and that M and I arrive home safely that evening full of joy, as we plop down half dead in our beds."

Oh, and ...

"Hey, Kids ... If we don't show up, sorry ... text but don't call: you might disturb our nap. Ach du lieber!"