"Let us Eat and Let us Drink, for Tomorrow we Die"

If there was a celebratory funeral that I've attended, it was today's. A friend's 80-near-90 something Dad died. I don't know that I ever met Hal but clearly told myself that I would've liked to have spent some time with him. Politically argumentative, aggressive at 9-Ball, and loved by his two grown kids and his live-in girlfriend (who he was with for 6 years after the death of his 50+-year bride). The kids and his woman-friend spoke of a charismatic old codger who lived the Good Life. Pretty cool!

"Don't ask for whom the bell tolls" and all that, I was sitting there pretty much silently with M, remembering Jeremiah, the Bachelor Prophet's words: "Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Somewhat younger denizens of the Third Quarter on nearby benches were talking about commuting and what a pain it could be. Fourth Quarter types and Overtimers seemed to be a bit more circumspect. Most of the gathered smiled at the jokes the kids told about their Dad ... M and I did, as well.

Couple months back, I was at another memorial service for a near 90 year old. He had an active professional career ... plied his trade for some 60+ years. A number of wives ... bunch of kids. Lots of folk said nice things and one who had taken care of him at the end wanted people to know that he had left a bunch of kids -- including her -- when they were quite young.

Then, there was Lily's funeral. Snow had already begun when her body arrived quite late. Clergy spoke for well over an hour and a half as Lily lay there in her casket saying nothing. Then ... nobody knew the way to the cemetery and by the time the procession of cars arrived two accidents occurred ... One between a Pontiac Grand Prix and a Family Funeral Car and the other between an Oldsmobile 98 and a number of tombstones. And the gravediggers refused to open the gates to the Cemetery until they got their overtime. People can get pissed off even at or in the details surrounding a funeral. Most of the people at Lily's funeral are, themselves, dead, now.

I can't quite figure out whether life -- including its closing Act and Scene -- is more a Comic Tragedy than a Tragic Comedy. What carries through is the depth of feelings than anthropos feels for a certain limited number of other members of this curious tribe. I wondered walking out with M whether Jeremiah -- the Prophet that was disallowed the symbiotic attachments of matrimony -- could understand, even in his facetious aside to the sinning Jeshurun, that the attachments we make that draw us to mourn together may make the whole screwy and very complex stage show somehow worthwhile.

Chesterton put relationship this way in his homage to Dickens:

"The hour of absinthe is over. 

We shall not be much further troubled with the little artists 

who found Dickens too sane for their sorrows and too clean for their delights. 

But 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 travelled. 

But this at least is part of what he meant; 

that comradeship and serious joy are not interludes in our travel; 

but that rather our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy, 

which through God shall endure for ever. 

The inn does not point to the road; 

the road points to the inn. 

And all roads point at last 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."

Dismissiveness and Irrelevance in the Last Quarter

M and I were sitting over salad and coffee musing about some of our own feelings about growing personal irrelevance in the Last Quarter. We wondered what it must have been like for our parents towards the end of their lives.... my Father's difficulty in accepting that maybe we weren't home when the Answer-call came on.

"C'mon. Pick up the phone."

... M's Mom's distress at no longer being necessary, not infrequently taking the form of angry outbursts towards the end of her life ... criticisms of grandchildren ... oh! and in-law sons.

We fascinated about how -- as our connections to groups dissolved due to retirement and our relationship to family was altered due to the no longer deniable fact that our children and even our grandchildren were 'all growed-up' -- that personal relevance diminished, in kind.

It begins early that our powers are usurped by children. Where did they get the nerve -- the Old Folk say with either or both a smile and a scream -- to:

Turning over in the crib & then, later, standing up                       

Putting spoon to mouth & No longer needing to be carried about

Choosing their own toys  & Walking, then Biking

Going to school and accepting succor from teachers (mere strangers!)

Waiting at the bus-stop alone  &  Dating ... (Really?)

Driving  & Hooking-up (as they say, nowadays)

Building their own Families

and, finally, 

Not picking up the phone when you call!

Yeah! It begins early and the offensive usurpation of our powers eventually becomes nearly complete.

Hans Loewald once (1978) said that in order to develop, the child in a psychological way needs to perform a kind of killing of the parent. 

Well! Nice for the individuating kid but what about the parent who has, indeed, thus been left behind and made irrelevant.

                                                        "Hey! C'mon. Pick up the phone."

We wondered, too (M and I) about the speed at which one is forgotten when one leaves an organization or work-situation. 

I do take some comfort in friends (a lot, actually), a great deal in M and, also, in comments (some comfort, I suppose) made by Gibran Khalil Gibran 100 years ago:

On Children

 Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, 

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might 

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Standing Alone

We all have our idiosyncratic views, I suppose. I can't tell whether my comfort in being alone on some matter has increased or has always been like that. I find, indeed, far more ease in being with someone who sees the World somewhat differently than I do ... I don't find comfort with those who believe they own the truth ... what I call the Capital-T Truth.

Maybe that's what drew me to Mathematics or maybe I got that from being immersed in Mathematics for some many years. Mathematics is deductive ... that is, after articulating some unprovable and very elementary principles (Axioms or Postulates), proofs yield conclusions. Change your Axioms? Change your Mathematics. Hey, in Clock Arithmetic (Z12 in the language of the Nerdy folk), 2+2 may be 4 but 6+8=2). When I moved to the -- in many ways -- far more complex World of Human Relatedness and the Demons of the Psyche, I came upon thinkers who (almost each and every one of them) believe they have the correct version of reality.

Whether online or face-to-face, I keep hearing in many others' comments their belief that they know that Truth. Just in the past day, my view (often inherent in my comments here on Ye Olde Farte Blog) that Sadness is something akin to the lonely child's cry for company from his or her crib ... much like a night-time jail cell, replete with Bars and Locking Mechanisms. Mom or Dad shows up and Sad Crying can turn to

"Geez! I'm glad to see ya, Mom. 

Have a seat and let's talk about how we're gonna play and explore, tomorrow ... 

Oh, and ya kin hold me, too."

Depression, on the other hand and much of the time, I see as a protective withdrawal from experiencing that Sadness into a kind of:

"Mom, Dad! I don't even expect you to come anymore.

Fuck ya! I'll play dead or angry-dead."

I find it interesting that researchers find it new and reportable that most depressions respond better (at least, as well) to physical activity as to medicine and, in my experience with people, better-still to physical activity done with another. To my way of thinking, this is expectable.

I see Anger as another way to deal with pain and vulnerability and closely tied to Depression. Yeah, yeah ... I have seen a few angry folk who seem to have brain problems ... one who had painfully engorged sinuses ... but almost all who have "crossed" my path seem to be seeking to push me away.

(Please, Please ... Somebody comment with a joke ... I just re-read the above ... Gawd! It's dry.)

Here's one that I heard from one of the great Mathematicians of the 20th C, Alexander Grothendiek, who recently died and who said that he had heard this in either a Concentration Camp or a Displaced Persons Camp ... I don't recall.

A husband and wife -- after years of marriage -- go to their Master 

for a blessing to help them get pregnant. 

The Master cooperates. A year later, the guy comes back.

"Master, Master. 

You gave us a Blessing and now my wife is heavy with child.

It's a Blessing! It's a Blessing!"

The Master continues: 

"Let me tell you a story. 

A man was walking in the woods on a rainy day 

when suddenly he saw an eight foot bear 

beginning to charge him for lunch or conversation or something. 

The man didn't know what to do. 

"Good thing it's a rainy day." 

He got down on his knees and pointed his outstretched umbrella at the charging bear. 

Then a big loud noise was heard. 

BOOM! The bear fell down dead.

"Do you understand, my Son?"

"It was a miracle. It was a miracle."

"That's possible, my Son. 

But it could be that there was a man behind him carrying a shotgun!"

(Now, I feel better.)

Imagine That!

I've long-wondered what it means to be Healthy-in-the-Head .... Some Doc in Vienna (SF) once said that it was "To love and to work" ... to be able to glean gratification from both ... caring/loving relationships with others and the ability to not sully your work ... It's that Season in the Northern Hemi when we plant ... Is it a dirty job? Is it a beautiful one? Planting is not obviously mostly one or the other! ... Then a Doctor in England (DWW) added to the Love-Work formula ... "and to Play," he said. Maybe what it takes to have either of the first two ... Love or Work ... work out well has to do with the ability to play.

It was just a few weeks/postings ago that I mentioned dreaming about Playing Catch with one of my friends, many years ago. I was in love with that game. Ach du Lieber ... I remember my Baseball Glove ... I ordered it through an advertisement in the newspaper ... Six-Fingered Johnny Callison Special ... I think it cost $15 and -- if memory serves me well -- I paid for part of it with ill-begotten gains garnered from my Paternal Grandfather's pants pockets. Poetic Justice or something? In 1997, it was stolen out of the back of my car ... actually the whole car was stolen and then recovered without the glove. I suppose the thieves could tell right-off-the-bat how valuable that glove was. In the 80's, I thought of bringing it in to the Broadway Chrysler Plymouth Dealer where old Johnny sold cars ... Then, it was too late. 

But back to where I began ... What does it means to be Healthy-in-the-Head? Well, another Doc, this one in Philadelphia, said that he made people better by teaching them how to play with their feelings ... to associate to feelings rather than acting, raging, spewing or any of the other very human reactions we have.  Harold Feldman was his name and he called this "a contribution to human nature." If being ill has to do with having a very narrow band of possible reactions to a feeling, then we get healthier but broadening that band. Ah! It's kinda like playing with your feelings. One experiences the feeling and allows oneself the natural flow of other images and feelings that follow it in your Healthy Head. 

....

....

I just closed my eyes and conjured up an image of two young teenagers.  Not surprising! I was just talking about it. (I hear-tell that teens, these days, may be doing more -- as they say -- balling than ... playing catch. But this is not a forum for talking about my conjured images about Sex in the Last Quarter ... or, anyhow, not today. ... Hell! The Blog isn't called Old Folk Playing in the Boudoir.) I know ... I know ... that same Doc in Vienna might've seen playing catch ... two folk ... tossing a ball ... in and out of each other's glove as a metaphor for sex.  And there was an ethnographer at the University of California (Alan Dundes) who saw most games sexually ...  as an attempt to get something in your opponent's end ... What do you do in Hockey and Soccer and such field games? You get the Woo-Woo in the other's crease and ultimately? in his or her end ... or in the net. Hey! The kicker does try to kick his balls right between the uprights. Right?

Anyhow ...  I conjured up an image of playing catch. In the darkness of my closed eyes, my mind moved to a Sun warming ... to the thought/feeling of a Summer Sun ... to an angry face with big eyes and nose ... then to another face smiling .... then to a picture of my Daily Planner ... as if to say ...

Howard ... Y'are still working and y'can't Blog the day away!

Try it, if you like. Given half a chance ... closing your eyes and taking away the glare of external stimuli ... what happens? The mind naturally sets out a sequential panorama of images ... each image, by the way, potentially dripping with feeling (Affekt) (at least according to the Viennese Doc noted at the start of this riff who called them vorstellungen ... visual scenarios ... film clips).  

Now, you may say that the Unhealthy Head may give rise only to nightmarish images but this is not my experience with folk who are suffering badly. Instead, these folk seem to interrupt the process and get stuck ... fix it ... like a photo is fixed in a bath of chemicals, stopping further development of the image captured by the film camera. (Yeah, yeah ... Many of us Fourth Quarter folk still  own film cameras and have a Slide Rule in a drawer ... might not recall which drawer? but in some drawer.)

This came out of a discussion with a friend 300 miles away, yesterday ... another Doc ... this one in Providence ... how Head-Docs tend to get caught in singular theories of what makes up the Healthy Head. And now, I may be doing just that. Hard to tell. Any case, during that conversation I remembered what I think is in the Ethica Eudemia where Aristotle suggested that virtue (health?) is the willingness and ability to recognize that one is typically choosing between two mutually exclusive Goods ... no mean task. Maybe Head Health is resident in the ability to let it rip ... to let the images flow, even when they contradict each other ... how can there be two mutually exclusive Goods without a need to believe that one or the other is arguably better ... more Good! Drs. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young mentioned something that might be similar: Letting Your Freak Flag Fly! 

.....

I reread the above and move between thinking it overly intellectualized or bullshit or interesting or 

Overly-Intellectualized interesting Bullshit. 

Anyhow ... Gotta stop ... Incoming Images. 

Old Dog? New but Unwanted Tricks!

GuntherDog continues his habitual pause at the top of the steps:

"Not comin' down those stairs till you scratch the top of my head ...

And do it well!"

Oh! There have been times when he has to pee "real bad," as kids say, and he'll lead the way ... but only when in extremis like that. So, I scratch his head for < thirty seconds, talk to him in English, his Second Language ... and he begrudgingly runs down the stairs and to the back door where he waits looking disgusted:

"OK, Schmuck! If we're gonna go out and pee, shake yer tail!"

The love of the familiar is no stranger to folks in the Last Quarter. Patterns ... The habitual. I can find a flash of annoyance when my glasses aren't where I put them before closing my eyes, last night. (Like I can remember where I put them!) Finding stuff -- even stuff that I'm better off not finding -- has developed an importance, these days. A sign, perhaps, that my CPU has not crashed.

My Black Coffee cup? 

Recommendation: As eyes fade, Howard, 

choose a different color coffee cup Black gets lost in the dark.

That Kid of ours? Where is he, this time? 

First of all at 50'ish, he ain't my kid, no more. 

Secondly ... Better not to know! He does international business ... that's his gig. 

Stop complaining, H: All your kids earn a decent living 

and are engaged doing interesting stuff. They each have managed to spawn ... 

going from youngest to oldest: 3,2 and 1 times.  Saw 2 families, 

last night, and the third, last Sunday. 

Damn Running Shorts? Oops, they're (are running shorts really a they? ... anyway?) under the appointment card from the cardiologist. Like M is saying: Maybe y'should ask first.

(I remember my Grandfather, when he was roughly my age. Didn't matter what the                               weather was like, as a religious leader, he was gonna toddle off to pray each morning --                           no matter the weather. Grandpa used to get upset on Snowy or Cold and Rainy                                     mornings when Grandma would hide his pants and shoes.) 

That Word? Y'know the Word? The one I can't find? 

Well! It just isn't all that important, anyway!

Oh! but How to spell that word? 

ie ... ee ... ea .... Everybody's gonna know the word 

I meen/mien/mean. And you can't think of it, anyway.

The car in the parking lot? 

M says my driving's not so good, anyway. 

Better I should clear my head with two loops about the lot.

Keys to the car? You got it: Better just walk!

Perhaps, what's easiest to forget is one's mind .... minds CAN get lost. Oh, there ARE those who are good linear thinkers in the Fourth Quarter and go through life with a firm grasp on what they want. They find it appealing and not too hard to follow in some well-defined system of thought. Even when no one else is involved, they make firm and immutable decisions. They are Dodgers fans. Republicans or Democrats or members of some very rigid Independent Party. They know whether abortion is OK or not. They know that Euthenasia is not a boy-scout troupe in SouthEastern Asia. They are graduates of this and that to which they sing their allegiances and, damn, they know what songs they sing and precisely what they're gonna order on the menu. If the coach/couch of their college Football Team does something not-so-nice, they defend him till the end. I remember one person that M and I dined with who ordered a Martini with one olive; his came with two. 

"Oh, no! I ordered one olive ... count them! There/they're/their ... are ... two; one ... two."

I have only a little doubt that the waiter -- in doing his bidding -- took some personal revenge on this man's unshakable desire to drink the sweat/sweet/swiet of one -- "read my lips: one" -- olive. 

Need I tell my readers that my mind is looser than all that ... This column, you know, is not about nuts-and-bolts. No step-by-step on how to don Depends without losing your balance. I couldn't do it if I wanted. I AM a good student of one of the earliest Skeptics, Sextus Empiricus and on top of that I identify with dogs. Dogs don't have much of a 5-year plan. Take it easy. I'm not suffering from Clinical Lycanthropy ... I don't believe I turn into a wolf or a dog and howl at the Moon. But I do enjoy the occasional howl ... Howling Mad Howard, if I may borrow from a so-so TV shoot-em-up from the 80's. I don't chase fire-engines but did have a fleeting/fleating Walter Mitty fantasy two days ago of buying a Moto Guzzi and riding West for a while. Throaty Italian Vroooom! I eat more or less everything that I or anyone else puts in my bowl and occasionally need my quiet time. But I now tend to not bite unless bitten.

That brings me back to Sandra H. from Hungary. Y'asked a question ... guess I should answer. 'Why would my Department Chairman jump me at a party -- now, a lifetime ago.' It's the story of a young man ... I was a Mathematician in the very early 70's when jobs suddenly dried up in the universities. 93 rejections of university posts in Spring '71. I was friendly with a Kentucky Colonel, Gail Young, who had been President of the American Math Society and was 3+ times my age. We figured out over dinner that if every working Mathematician were tax-deductibly taxed by the Society at 1%, enough monies would be generated to hire all the new unemployed PhD's. In a public discussion of the lack of jobs, Old Nick K. was talking about his notion that Mathematicians could be hired by Hospitals to run them better than the business folk do (Duh!) and by municipalities to order the filling of Spring Pot-holes on American Roads (Double-Duh). In the public forum that followed, I shared my calculations that I had done with Dr. Young. Dr. K. glared and left the room. Everyone in the Department heard that I had faux-pased. Oooops! It was just a few weeks later that a party was held for a speaker who had come to help us fall asleep after a long week. Most Department Colloquia was greeted by an audience of folk doing the Colloquium Nod ... the ability to shake one's head up and down while sleeping soundly. Back at the Party ... Dr. K. was talking about his years as an Ann Arbor Town Councilman. He looked at me, as if to say:

Whaddya say about that.

I thought for a moment and said:

"Hospitals, Potholes? I always knew there was a clerk 

mentality hiding somewhere in your head."

My still-friend Milton was pealing/peeling him off me just a moment later and Nick and I never spoke, again.

So, Sandra ... while there may or may not be a Santa Claus, we were all young and (many of us) impetuous once. Not you? I'm surprised. 

And maybe, just maybe, Sandra, y'think my howling is a form of this impetuosity?

Look ... Try -- just once -- chasing a fire engine 

and see how it feels. Oh! And watch for the potholes! And get back to me!

Chase ye fire engines, while ye may!

A Comment from Hungary

Sandra H. wants to know why anyone (poor dead Nick Kazarinoff) would attack a Sweet Old Man (poor old Howard). I'll try to write before the end of the week about the once-young Howard's capacity to inflame.

I know. I know. I come across as this Sweet Old Guy but Once Upon a Time in a Far-off Land there lived a cantankerous -- if young -- Bull-Frog .... ...

Skipping a Generation: Oops!

Drove 100 miles to see 2 of my grandchildren. An 11 year old seemed surprised that I was pretty familiar with lyrics of a bunch of Broadway shows. She, her older brother, their suspicious dog rescued from the Caiman Islands ("what's a grandfather, anyway" -- Hey, Dog, this Grandpa wouldn't mind being rescued TO the Caimans!) and I sat on the kitchen floor and sang tunes from Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, the King and I, and others; the Caiman Island Dog was unfamiliar with these songs and -- for that matter -- was not a howler. I prefer howling dogs and maybe that has something to do with GuntherDog being uncomfortable with me. Any case, the four of us (the Older Brother wasn't as keen about singing on the kitchen floor or, as I was later to find out, singing while walking in the street.) First Quarter types are not infrequently prone to experiencing shame on their own, nevermind with Grandpa singing a song based on the last lines of Malachi. Alas.

We had lunch together in a place teeming with cute kids and their parents. I don't tend to sing in restaurants ... even Fourth Quarter types have their limits. After lunch, M and I drove the 100 miles back with the top down. Old Man in Roadster trying to slather SPF 50 onto his bare scalp! ... not a totally pretty picture.

Got home early ... not much after 3:00 and visited two other Grandchildren and a bit later went bike riding with them and their Dad. I puzzled a bit realizing that the combined age of the kids (twins make this an easy calculation) was just one third of my age. I asked them how that worked: one responded:

It's Algebra ... just elementary Algebra.

"Not funny," I quipped. I remember those silly puzzles from when I was their age; and they all kinda sounded like:

If Mortimer has 14 coins in his pocket.

Half as many Quarters as Dimes.

Twice as many Dimes as Nickels.

How old was Dick when he ran off with Jane's Half-Sister?

I remember my Algebra teacher; she taught me Latin, as well. We called her Heavy Hips Ronallo. How crass young boys are! (And how crass GrandDaddy is to remember.) I was a strange kid. Immersed in my first serious Mathematics book: Geometric Inequalities by Nicholas Kazarinoff. Years later and for some reason, Nick and I didn't get on real well. But that's another story about when Nick, Chair of a Math Department, then, attacked me at a cocktail party. Back to Mrs. Ronallo. I wasn't particularly interested in her silly puzzles and just plain refused to do them. She called my parents in to tell them that I would never learn Algebra. When I was 19, I brought a copy of a first Graduate Degree in Mathematics to her.

Well this proves nothing!

Suppose that's so but I did get a Cheap Thrill out of putting it under her critical eyes. So, I'm riding with the twins -- complete human beings with their own myth, movies and moods. Absolutely loving it ... on my 1974 Raleigh International ... pedaling away with K&E and wondering what it means to be three times the combined age of these two girls who seem to have it all.

The Sun was bright ... the air just-so ... riding in a place where only the rare car came by. I was repeatedly singing my bike song from Psalms:

How your Creations, Oh, God have grown!

Great is the depth of your thoughts.

... and downright confusing, if I might add, that the sum of my 6 Granspawns' ages is not much less than mine. How CAN that be?!

                     And anyhow! 
                               How old WAS Dick when he ran off with Jane's Half-Sister?