"Getting to Know You"

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  Howard Covitz

  It's complicated being a person. Learning how to relate to a friend, an intimate, a therapist or a patient requires huge investment and, to my way of thinking, needs to move through and not around either party's need for privacy or aloofness ... their need to distance .... But that's true for all those of us who believe that unwellness of the Soul/Psyche has to do with unwellness in relationship. I have long thought that this is true of us human-folk as a result of many and many years of his man development. Those of us who didn't find value in being close wondered off from our Mothers, ages ago, and were lunch for Lions and Bears. Those who stayed near and their children and children's children survived.
  
  Many have said that if you save a Single Soul, it is as if you saved a World.
  
  Some (at least me) will say: Learn to openly relate to a single Other person and you've created a World.
  
  I recall once saying that in a talk I gave and a psychologist interested in the relationship between the therapy he did and the Laws of Quantum Physics began explaining that to me. I couldn't muster up any more than a wish to be close to him ... the detachment of his theory was for me too much of a wall to really getting to know him, even in that moment and just a bit. For me, the core of health is in mutuality and our vehicle for that is exploration ... not seeking the end but learning to revel in the joys (and sometimes the pain) of being together in a certain space and time without the need to cover up. Explanation cuts off exploration. After the explorer arrives, he may seek to become the Plantation owner and forget about the uncharted Seas that brought him or her there.
  
  While I need to return to my office, tomorrow, my only really young Grandchild is arriving, today, with my eldest. She's at what I call the Early Inock-Knock Phase.
  

  Knock-Knock! 

  Who's There? 

  Salami! 

  Salami who? 

  Salami's going to the beach, today! 

  Followed by enormous laughter.

  
  What my Little C wants, I claim, is to have the listener join her in that moment ... laughing even if her knock-knock shtick doesn't quite get that in at least slightly older folk the laughing follows a shared play on words. The pleasure for the older ones is in the arrival at the same time and place of that little witticism. Little C is ok just with the wish ... if her listener joins in. If the listener has a Canadian Pool Cue (they're 3" longer -- at least for playing Snooker on those long Canadian greens) where it doesn't belong and refuses to laugh, poor Little C can't laugh.
  
  I think this may be implicated in all human interaction ... tete-a-tete or online. People indulge a variety of ways of attempting "to meet" others. Ain't easy. One method used by adults who have visited me has been, in their lives, promiscuity or compulsive sex .... to my way of thinking, this represents a way of connecting with a known choreography or choreographies ... even the Kama Sutra has a small finite number of dance steps that may be tried. Again, of course for me, trying to too-completely understand another's behavior is like that ... a dance with a known choreography that precludes the need to go through the usual slow process of "getting to know you."
  

  
  

  Lots of things can get in the way. M and I, for instance, are at the "Waddya-say" phase of communication. Slow processing and beginning hearing loss in the Fourth Quarter has folk waddya-saying a lot. Danger is that either folk will tire of asking "come, again" or even get into angry exchanges: "Y'just phuk'n don't have any interest in what I'm sayin'".

  
  

  Ain't easy to "Keep on truckin" in the Last Quarter .... or any other.

  "Keep on truckin', Mama ... Truckin' them Blues away." 

  (who sang that? waddya'say?)

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

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God Cries

I remember an ancient story from the time of the Babylonian Exile that ended with by noting:

God cries for whomever can learn God's ways but doesn't.

הקבייה בוכה על כל מי שאפשר לו לעסוק בתורה ואינו עוסק

Yesterday, I wrote about some unattractive ways of being in which humans partake (pathological narcissism, envy, lack of gratitude, misery, and a few others) ... ways, as I said, of being that potentiates changes to the beauty of the face and even the posture of each of us, when enacted. I went out on a political limb and praised my President for embodying those other characteristics that add to his attractiveness as a Creature of God, if you like, ... or, anyway, as a guy I can identify with without feeling dirtied or sullied. The way he gets on with his family and his engaging style with audiences plays an important part.

Yesterday, too, I got to watch clips of him eulogizing a person assassinated in his church by someone who had become posessed of a hatred for people unlike him. I watched these clips of Obama ... I guess pushing 60 when he'll be old enough to join my merry band of Last Quater folks who betimes read my ramblings ...

I watched him be Sad, 

I watched him fill with Glee, and

I watched him shamelessly Sing off Key.

The preacher in the casket who had been killed was still dead in the casket and people filled with hate
still and always will walk among us. The man still speaking was demonstrating a healing power in juggling Sadness and Glee and a heartily attractive ability to realize that, in the end, it matters less whether you can sing Amazing Grace like Paul Robeson or Taylor Swift than that you're willing to try to bring those who are substantially with you at that moment  to join together in sharing the same bit of space-time ... together watching how complex it is to be us ...

Let me bring the HAIR soliloquy from Hamlet ... it says a bit about the sadness we may feel in witnessing how sometimes folk fall into ugliness ... and not only beauty ....

What a piece of work is man
How noble in reason
How infinite in faculties
In form and moving how express and admirable

In action how like an angel
In apprehension how like a god
The beauty of the world
The paragon of animals

I have of late
But wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth
This goodly frame
The earth seems to me a sterile promontory

This most excellent canopy
The air look you
This brave o'erhanging firmament
This majestical roof

Fretted with golden fire
Why it appears no other thing to me
Than a foul and pestilent congregation
Of vapors

What a piece of work is man
How noble in reason.

In the end, I suppose, we do what we can.

Obama Cares

Yesterday the US Supreme Court, once again, upheld Obamacare. As a Last Quarter American, this doesn't directly affect me as I have been on Medicare for some years, now. Medicare is our system in America for providing 80% coverage of most all medical expenses. For a few hundred dollars additional each month, most of the remaining 20% is covered, as well. It allows the old and the disabled to pursue care with any Doctor who participates in the program ... the vast majority of American practitioners.

I don't know whether I think of this as "kindness" or "justice." I don't know that it matters to me. But the Affordable Care Act partially extends such concerns to other Americans.

It's to the question of "kindness and justice" that I wish to turn, this morning. I arose fascinating about the question of "attractive feelings and sentiments." Many visitors to my office, over the years, have seen themselves as ugly and unattractive. Sometimes, indeed, they have allowed their physical bodies to fall apart but more frequently I've come to think that they are describing the picture they have of themselves ... inside, so to speak.

Another thought crept into my early AM pillow thoughts. Does Obama care? I have since he was an for Prez of US of A strongly identified with him. He likes to think? So, do I. He thinks well? I did, too, not so many years ago. He has stayed married and connected to his kids? Me, too.  And he seems to care about others? and I do try to care for others.


Had me thinking: what ways of being are attractive? which ones unattractive?



So, here's a beginning list of those I consider unattractive:

Misery

The social Psychologists say "misery loves miserable company" ... I guess the rest of us tend to stay away. Maybe, it's only in my mind, but Obama seems to be a happy guy.

Perpetual Self-Effacement

Hey! If you don't like you, why should anyone else. That little smile at his own jokes ... something maybe borrowed from Red Skelton ... is something, perhaps, that those of us who like Obama find attractive.

Lethargy

The person who has decided to play dead is decidedly unattractive. How does one move towards one who has given up, whether in the Fourth Quarter or earlier. Obama, at least, appears to have a whole helluva lot of energy for a guy nearing Q4.

Self aggrandizement to the exclusion of others ....

I have no problem with Narcissism, as long as the Narcissist affords the same rights to each of their dear and near and can imagine strangers drinking from the same well.

Envy

The envious person, Melanie Klein once reasoned, is a kind of opposite to the grateful person. The
grateful person may recognize the things that are missing but feels blessed in what is there. The

Ethics of the Fathers 2000 years ago put it simply: Who is wealthy? That person who rejoices in what
they have! Envy may be among the least attractive of emotions. The person, indeed, sees the self and,
therefore, presents the self as unattractive. "How can I be attractive if all the good stuff is resident outside of me?" As a Last Quarter type, of course I recognize that the young couple walking their two year old is embarking on a journey of excitement that I shall not, again, taste. Indeed, I'm entitled (I give that to myself) to vicariously enjoy them ... to remember my own days .... and to find my own excitement. Hating others for theirs' is unattractive.

Hate

The hateful person's face looks like Hell ... indeed, like the Hell they put themselves, through. Many
have pointed out the complimentary natures of love and hate. Maybe, just maybe, both begin in
recognizing that the Other has something valuable. In LOVE, I seek to live alongside that Other and
to enjoy their posession ... whatever that may be. In HATE, I cannot endure the thought of them
having that same (?) attribute. I must have it all!

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

I think that covers a lot of ground for me. Maybe, what I've found attractive in my President is my sense that he seems to embody that gratitude .... care for Self ... care for others .... interest in his own agenda ... recognition of the need to recognize that Others, too, are connected to their own agendas ....
attributes  that  I so much connect with the Good Life and with attractiveness. .... With apologies for this morning's preachy tones!

Wherefore Art Thou, Oh, ROMEEO

Before anyone begins worrying about my spelling abilities, I'll explain. I've spent some considerable amount of time, this AM, on a discussion board among Mental Health types. I don't recall what the topic was ... maybe it was the one about 'staying on topic.' Invariably (maybe that's hyperbolic but that fits, too), it turns into a pissing contest, especially among men and maybe even more prouncedly among old men. "Makes sense," you say, "old men's prostate glands tend to intrude on their ability to even piss with the wind ... and even on a good day."

Any case, in my own way of thinking, I refer to these interchanges as ROMEEO ... Retired Old Men Eating Each Other ... A new form of Porn, I suppose.

An apparent NOG (Nice Old Guy) from Down Under accused me of being "patient." Funny. I never thought of myself as particularly patient. Now, M, m'Lady of 50 years, she has convinced our friends that to live with me, she must have the Staying-Power of the Ages to endure my puny puns (oops!) and my insufferable humor. I do think that as I've slipped and slid into the Last Quarter, I have developed a kind of "shared arrogance" ... that is ... I don't give two-hoots or two-anything-elses if someone disagrees with me and hope for them that they feel the same.

Arrogance for All

is my motto. But that does need a bit of parsing. I think it was Master Ishmael in the Babylonian Exile who said:

Every one should say to themselves: The World was created for me.

The key, need I add, are those words "Every one." I spent many years writing about the Old Testament character Joseph's two dreams that got his brothers to want to knock him off. Without a Bible in sight, here's my memory of them:

We were gleaning in the middle of the field and your sheaves stood up and bowed to mine.

Hey, Guys, I had another dream and the Sun and the Moon and the Eleven Stars bowed to me.

I remember thinking about these while a kindly Old Man was presenting a paper to a large audience ... it was Winter 1978. I had previously read his paper, giving me time to enter a quiet reverie.


Why did the Brothers want to knock-off this adolescent egotist? Each of us is tricked by our senses ... "All sounds come to me, as to all visions! I am at the Center of my own Cosmos." Over the years, I came to believe that the Brothers' rage connected to their sense that Joseph's narcissism went beyond a willingness to share this self of self-centeredness with others. In Joseph's view, not only was he at the Center but no action occurs except through him and people are essentially all the same ... sheaves or stars ... all the same. Hell! He didn't even deem to list his Sister amongst the sheaves or stars. I remembered, as well, a comment Kazantzakis offered up in his Last Temptation book. Jesus has become entangled with multiple women and shares his difficult feelings about this, his guilt, with Paul. Paul says to him (essentially):

Don't fret, J ... There's really just one woman ... 

They're all the same.

Too bad that a lot of the ROMEEO's I meet are like that. They believe they possess the only Truth and I fear will only feel that way moreso, as they travel through this Fourth Quarter with all its slaps and insults against which they sense they must protect.

"People are Strange"

Alice looked through the Looking Glass ... Jim Morrison commented through the Doors .... Poets, I suppose, bring our attention to the unique moment. Much of the time, the sheer lunacy of quotidian life passes us by ... life is busy and messy and takes our focus away from that lunacy ... Poets bring us back to the moment. Vacation interrupts that quiet and hidden-by-being-patterned life by a process of making less obvious the diversionary nature of our everyday worklife and it would appear to do so no less, as the years pass.

I'm on a week's vacation. M, GuntherDog, my two 1974 Raleigh bikes (an International and a SuperCourse Mk ii) and me. Not a lot to do, really. The kids and grandkids will make it down but we'll do more overlapping than covacationing, this year. Finding times that fully coincide becomes difficult ... maybe, it would be easier if I retired. And Milt and Ruth, though retired, have become cat people and need to be home with a sick cat. Hey, I brought my sick cat with me (Sorry, M ... jest being my usual jesting Self (see, below.)

Vacation? The problem with the Air Conditioner will figure itself out and M's 24 (Deo volente) hour flu will pass. I don't run any longer due to my unreliable coronary sinus node but am able to bike ... and love it. There is something about looking at the World while sitting on an ancient Brook's saddle. And I'm really quite good at sitting on my duff at the beach. I have brought along just one book that I'll bevreviewing with a friend for a journal that likes my curious style of writing and did reread a piece by William Vollman from an old Harper's that has been lying around for years.

When we (M, I and the kids) first vacationed in this backwater town on the DelMarVa penninsula 35 years ago, we came without technology. No TV, no phones except in booths along the road, and no internet. There was no internet. The war in VietNam was just over, at least for the Americans. International terrorism was not really International. And without electronic ignition, there was still opportunity for a guy to get under the hood of a car on a rainy day and file down the pitted ignition points inside of what now are museum quality distributor caps. M had Big Hair and I had at least enough to cover my head's nakedness; I could even see my toes without leaning forward. 35 years is as long as you might imagine. Hell! The kids who were 3,12 and 13 are now all pretty much middle-aged or older ... and ... M and my stable of relatives have greatly diminished in number, as we moved to the front pew, ourselves.

But this vacation, I'm annoyed by something else. The News that is dominated by tragedyand violence is getting to me.. Damn the Pollyannaish 50's but a hearty fuck you to the cynical Teen-years of this new Century. Right now, the 24-7 news cycle is focused on the story of two prison escapees ... dangerous men who've been found guilty in our legal system for murder. I get the need for warning the public but everytime I turn on the News, I get what the kids call Too Much Information. Frankly, I find myself hoping these guys cross over into Canada where Sgt. Preston of the Royal Mounties and (Mush!) King would find them, likely, in a single 30 minute episode. Meantime, hundreds of armed police types are combing the woods ... now, here ... Now, there .... each time there is a sighting ... DNA ...

Then, just about an equal amount of time is spent in the aftermath of still another crazy's killing of innocents, this time a church-full of Bible-studiers who, because of their different color, the crazy in his paranoia thought were a danger. Another poor fucking-crazy kid! A mere 300,000,000 guns in the USA, a hair of the exceptionalistic attitude in the US of ....,  and we seem to have a problem? No shit, as we used to say. So. Carolina, in themeantime, has decided to take a flag down from over its Capitol Building ... a flag that meant to many -- but by no means all -- that the South will Rise, Again, and White Folk will take control back from the marauders ... Blacks, Hispanics, Jews ... How do I tell one of my grandkids whose Mom is Black-Italian-Japanese Brazilian and whose Dad is Russian-Hungarian Jewish that she is seen as a disposable thing by maybe 25% of the world. Kudos to Gov. Haley, indeed, for taking the flagdown and hopes that she goes further still in protecting voting access to all in her state.

Then, with whatever time is left on Cable NEws, Talking Heads go on and on trying to decide whether President Obama's use of the word "nigger" in the context of emphasizing that the polite omission of no word can ever take the place of heart-felt respect, caring and beneficent protecting. As if a hate-filled bigot can feel vindicated if they avoid these words "that sound so nasty" (from HAIR, the Musical). To the contrary, I applaud my President's head-on confrontation with the silliness of imagining that a magical change of words is all that's necessary to cleanse our nation from hatefulness. I remember speaking, some not so many years ago, to a school district ... 4-500 folk in the audience, including the one African American who invited me ... it was, that is, a very White school district. In my talk on diversity, I commented that I had no beef with all the so-called nasty words ... and then I listed them. There was an audible gasp in the audience, though not from the Black lady who invited me.

Some teachers got together to discuss howthey wouldn't be having me over for lunch!

So, I'm annoyed. Big Fucking deal. Think I'll go for a bike ride ... I'm on vacation.

Making Peace with it All

There are languages in which the words for "wholeness" and "peace" coincide. Maybe, indeed,

To make Peace with what is

is

To accept the implicit Wholeness of that which has come to be.

The Fourth Quarter is ripe with opportunities to embrace changes that --if one were to think of oneself as the Creator -- one might have done differently. Oh, the changes that the forces of nature and time seem to have imposed on the human form. The integrity of our aging cells are no match for the natural forces that work upon them. Among the visitors whose anguishes about these realities propel them to visit my office in tears or rages, I can think of many such vexing issues.

Gravity and changing metabolism do their tricks on Buttocks, Breasts and Bellies. Women's external dress just seems to get looser and their undergarments more supportive as their bodices bloom in size and direction. Men seem to learn how to wear suspension cables to avoid the embarassment of pants and belts falling from waists that are no more.

Even the scholarly seem to forget where they hid the Ginkgo Piloba and the Aricept that might help them retrieve a word or understand what is being said to them quickly enough to preclude the listener's louder repetition of what was just said. 

Hey, I said "Bidlibus is GRUNSK" 

I know, I know. I was just busy making the connection

and trying to figure out if Grunsk is BIDLIBUS or Bidlibus is not GRUNSK!

I have known too many a scholarly man or woman who has kept their brains active and still ended up in the State of Addled Oldsters doing their best at word and name retrieval and dealing with a CPU that processes at a fraction of the speed of their grandchild's uncluttered Central Processing Unit.

Grandpa is thinking.

From 55-65, I found it difficult to remember last names; from 65 and on, I have learned to begin party pratter with:

I know you!  

BTW ... I'm obviously talking about someone else, as I recall all the names of my potential heirs. It is important to know the names of all those who either want to throw out all my valuable posessions and those more plotting others who want to posess them ... right down to the last tchochka.

The list, in fairness, of changes that may be troublesome is quite large and touches on all aspects of
life in the Last Quarter. And one must do little else than listen to Television to hear about some of the more common ones.

Skin thins; pants get peed on; penises only rarely stay erect for 4 hours no matter how long you wait for that Messianic event and vaginas need synthetic oils to get going; hair thins like skin and we all look so much wiser when our forheads get all scrunched up and we appear to be deeply thinking; vagueness, too, seems to mimic wisdom; those once so pretty eyes now have four or five whisker-like etched arrows that point to 'dem peepers;' facial features become more prominent; and toenails hide an ancient Fungal culture of mischevous looking characters who shamelessly saunter about on your toes on the Telly!

Yesterday, it got to me. M, I and our kids have an old house down on the Delmarva penninsula. It's still on stilts but likely has already been earmarked by God, Nature or Anima Mundi as evidence of mankind's Babel-like hubris, here the insane belief that we can build anywhere in the vicinity of Seas that rise and fall as they may. It's a four hour drive and M, I and GuntherDog typically arrive a bit tired; yesterday was no exception. 

To get right to it, flicking on the AC led to a whisper of cool air coming out of half of the air vents and the Hot-Young-Chick Weathergirls were threatening Bikini weather. Just, FTR, Neither M nor I nor GDog should ever again be seen in Bikinis. (Alas, we'd look more like Bikini Atoll than young and chic weatherfolk.) 

OK. No problem. I'll check out the compressor and then crawl under the house and look.

Compressor was chuggin' along but who knew that the AC was done with flexible ducts? Another loss in the Fourth Quarter has to do with not only the difficulty balancing on rooftops and bending into crawlspaces, but the fact that contractors, indeed, know about those disabilities and offer expensive solutions, leading with those that "don't cost that much, Sir" and only slowly arriving at the actual solutions that require deciding whether to giveup your AC, your coronary meds or your first-born grandkid.

Ringing in my ears that rage against the passing years:

You can take care of that.

Echoing back was just one word, though:

Schmuck!

No, no. The moisture must've frozen onto the ducts over a hard Winter, weighed down the flexible ductwork, and shut down the airflow in them.  Then, need I add, comes another reality of the Last Quarter, namely, that the kids who might've helped in cleaning out the Augean Stables with you decided to emancipate themselves from Child Labor, decades ago. What to do?

Think I'll furrow my sweaty brow, look off into the distance, 
and pretend to think on it .... 

As I grow older.

"Did you ever have to make up your mind"

When the Lovin' Spoonful sang that ditty while we Last Quarter types were young, John Sebastian was thinking, I suppose, about two lovers: "Did you ever have to make up your mind ... to say yes to one and leave the other behind." It musta been around the year M and I got married ... 1965.

Choices. We never seem to get away from the need the World shoves in our face to make choices. Oh, there are all those we made in the past -- choosing schools when we were still bopping teeners and, then, a career ... or, at least, a first career. There were the relationships aborted and those we pursued. Then, typically, there were the children not aborted. Would I really have been happier with a 1967 Lamborghini Miura than with my 1966 and 1967 model-year kids ... or with my younger one that appeared when a used Miura might have been $-wise in my reach?? I dunno. I have long found such remorseful looking back of little value. Hell! I made the decisions I did and they are not reversible. Anyhow, however one feels about abortion, in general, and late term abortions, in particular, aborting 48 and 49 year old kids is arguably out of the question ... and just might run counter to those kids' plans for themselves.

Still, there are times when I wonder. Some months ago, there was a clip with Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld driving around in Jerry's Miura ... just for a moment:

Geez!

And, then, there's Jay Leno who may have 2 or 3 of that vintage Lamborghini and another 100 cars, to boot. Most of us who made decisions to live life and raise kids don't have the option to own more than one or two cars ... to raise a multiplicity of families ... to order 3 choices from a dinner menu and a variety of wines ... to move to a different one of our houses while the cleaning staff is cleaning the one we just messed .... or even to entertain every one of our interests.

So, what does it mean to be satisfied with my choices, especially, perhaps, choices that I make now that are, indeed, irreversible? Years ago, Levinson and Gail Sheehy explored men and women in their 40's mostly. They found that -- among just a few others -- two differences seemed typical of those years. 

One had to do with beginning to count backwards ... in quiet reveries thinking more of how many years were left to us than how many we had successfully traversed ... or thinking about: "When I get to be 65, I'll have my knee joint replaced ..." has a different tone than "When I get to be 14, Mom and Dad will let me go to the movies alone" or "When I'm just a little older, I'll fall in love." 

Another difference they noticed was that enough time had passed that people began to recognize that if they had had a Dream when they were Second Quartered of how things would be/turn out, chances are pretty good that life hadn't been a by-the-script production. With the dashing of that dream, two paths, indeed, seem to have opened up, with one being a dead-end (... a cul de sac, I suppose, if one's earlier dream was reasonably well-planned for). This first group of folk tended to be prone to ongoing disillusionment and depression.

Another group/cluster seemed to accept that the dreams were not fully fulfilled and chose to edit or to rewrite the dream. Those of us who chose this latter path made an implicit decision to see the dashing of the dream of the Second Quarter as an opportunity to enter a new adventure. That group, itself, tends to divide into two subgroups: those who need to throw out the Old in its entirety and those who choose to tweak what there was in order to make room for the revised Dream.

I don't rightly know (maybe Levinson's  "Seasons of a Man's Life" or Sheehy's Passages have figured this out and I've forgotten) what variables decide what path someone will take. For myself, I have found a number of ways of taking in the World helpful and think of them as contributing to which fork in the road I follow. I'm thinking of the following:

Gratitude for what has been and for what is and a hopefulness for what may still be;

A Presumption of Good Intentions in those near and dear to me;

A recognition of the sanguine value of the Big Two Emotions -- Glee and Sadness;

The possibility of and wish for New Experience;

The pursuit of Mutuality ... of recognizing playmates as Subjects in Their Own Right.

These thoughts seemed to follow my early rising, today, wondering about the translation of the so-called Golden Rule, as presented in its Leviticus XIX form:

ואהבת לרעך כמוך

I've seen many translations ... most having the tone of "And you will/should love your friend, as yourself." I wondered about the similar: "And you shall/should do to your friend as you would have them do to you." 

In that hypnopompic stage between sleep and wakefulness, I fascinated about another more modern line, too:

Who loves ya, Baby?

Translating from one language to another or to one's emphasis in thinking is, at best, an ambiguous project. Literally, the text ואהבת לרעך כמוך reads: 

And you shall/should (offer) love (to) your friend as (to) yourself.

That doesn't sound-out well ... a rough read. Translation is tough. But I wondered, shall I:

Love my neighbor as they love me?

which lends itself to the joke about "do unto them BEFORE they do unto you," or, else, shall I:

Love my neighbor as I love myself?

I came downstairs with GuntherDog, thinking that those last two loves -- love of Other and love of Self -- must be cut from the same fabric. I know, I know. I have abandoned the five categories I listed as central to recasting the early dream into one more suitable for the Second Half of Life. Maybe the next five days will give me time to riff on and fascinate about them.

There are Times

I've been in a cardiac arrhythmia for about 12 hours. Such episodes have become less frequent and shorter in duration than some years ago but recently they seem to be experiencing a rebirth ... an unwelcome renaissance. There are times when I could scream. That's not quite true: There ARE times that I scream.

Days have been pretty good, though. This weekend, I went to hear a youngish psychologist talk lovingly, warmly and proudly about her God, her rituals and her religious patients. I was moved ... not much else to say, except via explanation.

I've worked in a field where the vast majority of leaders and workers in that field saw all religious beliefs as equivalent to the Obsessions, Compulsions and Prohibitions of the emotionally very sick and twisted. Freud, himself, denied his wife, Martha, the right to light ritual candles. Indeed, it is reported that one of the first things she did when Ole Sigismund died was to do just that. She had grown up in such a ritually-centered home but her husband offered no proffer to hocus-pocus-mumbo-jumbo ... and she would neither. Hrrrrumphhhh!

My own mentor after I'd professionally joined his ranks and in some conversation before a faculty meeting (I was by then the Director of our training facility) shared that he thought well of the progress I had made over the many years he knew me but still worried that I might "fall into the bowels of religiosity." He could've lightened the blow and talked of a newly chlorinated toilet ball ... No, no. Harold talked straight.

"Howard. Y'could still fall into the repository of shitty ritual from which you likely came."

When I'd visit Harold in his home in the mid-80's shortly before his death, he would spit if religious people walked by and Harold left instructions for there to be no fanfare over the interment of his body after he suddenly was diagnosed with Liver and Pancreas Cancer and might not make the week. 96 hours later, on All Hallows Eve, Harold was dead. We were allowed in a month to:

"gather together to ask Lord Harold's blessings"

or, at least, to share good memories as Jussi Beniamini, the Sweedish Nightingale, a great Tenor of Harold's youth, sang in Italian.

And, now some 30 years later, I was listening and this this young lady sitting next to her equally religious husband was talking about how strongly she felt about her relationship to her God. And later in the day I went riding with a 70'ish religious friend whose wife, he learned after our return, had received news of getting a pulpit job. These wonderful experiences couldn't be the bowels of religiosity of which Harold pontificated!

Alas! I grew up in a very religious home and have long valued ritual, even if my relationship to my People's God has not been active. Listening to Dr. S. talk of following "her path" ... "her way" ... I had no urge to scream but did have moments of sweet sadness and tearfulness.

What to say ... Whether in the toilet? in the bowel? or in the Shiny New Kitchens of my colleagues in this XXIst C. ...

Vocatur atque non vacatur ... 

Beckoned or not beckoned ...

Deis Aderit ...

The Supernatural calls out to us.

Don't remember which ancient it was that said that ... Likely, some 4th Quarter Latin Player!

Rebels, Patriots & Free Spirits

Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison:

“I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”

Later Jefferson, speaking of Shay's Rebellion, wrote to Colonel William Smith what is so-often quoted by every sort of politician:

       “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time 
        to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” 

Three of our younger grandchildren are visiting this weekend. Two are just 11 and one is not quite 6. Their Moms and Dads are off doing what Moms and Dads do ... One set is picking up an oldster Sib at the end of her school year ... 300 miles away ... they stayed for dinner, last night. The other set is off trying to figure out things and hopefully to play; they left before we ate together. The younger one hasn't spent much time away from both her parents and was simultaneously looking forward to bunking-up with her "big-girl" cousins who adore her and was terrified of being without Mommy and Daddy. The "big girls" are no-longer-identical twins but have always had each other's backs and much of the time enjoy bringing Little One along into their activities.

Little One began crying a bit and Grandpa got out the funny pictures ... the albums that had snapshots of Daddies and Aunts and Uncles when they were young ... when they had funny faces and haircuts .... and pictures commemorating the Prime of Grannie M and Grandpa Howard when he was still a haired swashbuckler. Don't get me wrong ... Grandpa may have had as much hair as Errol Flynn in Captain Blood but ...

       "Howard ... You were never an Errol Flynn."

Little One was pretty good at identifying these earlier forms as who they grew into ... found it kind of humorous and eventually fell asleep to the stories told by Big Cousins.

But back to what I arose thinking about ... another kind of Once Upon a Time. There was, once, an immigrant Hot Chick named Margaret Mahler ... a pediatrician who studied children and, at the same time, made the stodgy old men of her time a little nervous because of her free life style, free, at least, for a woman in Post WW2 America. Mostly, though, she studied the two Big Forces of the Universe. There was the Centripetal Force of Attachment that drew us human folk to draw near to each other and, then again, there was the Centrifugal Force that made it safest to maintain sufficient distance to continue to see ourselves as Individuals with a unique Identity.

A Mom may say to Little One: "Hey, put on your coat and let's go out for some ice cream." The Little Kid trying to hold on to who s/he is may well respond: "No," all the while putting on a coat and walking to the door. Balance ain't easy!

Mahler was most interested in studying the 18-40 month old kids who were locked into this tension between these two forces, as they attempted to build a comfortable orbit around the adults who, at the same time, were still necessary for their existence and simultaneously a danger to their unique identity. Margaret was studying this at just about the same time that the Russian and American Space Engineers were trying to figure out how to get little capsules -- manned and unmanned -- to attain a balanced orbit around their Good Earth that gave them life. It was tricky business. Send these Cosmonauts or Astronauts too far out of Earth's Gravity and they were Lost in Space. Keep them too near and they would be sucked back by Earth's Gravity and end their journey at Crash Sites. 

Margaret and her fellow researchers concluded that these little kids faced the same kind of Cosmic Forces in attaining a relatively constant orbit about their adults. Two fears dominated them. In the first place, there was the possibility of staying too close and losing who they were. And, then and equally disturbing, was the potential to stray too far and lose the connection to those Caretakers and Beneficent Protectors. She concluded that perfect orbits ... optimal distances ... all these were ideals that would never quite be attained but a certain relative smoothness in these orbits might. She called our attempts to keep our balance in these matters The Road to Object Constancy.

I won't explicitly harp on the obvious comparison with "Rebels without a Cause" or "Blind Patriots" who find no balance in their orbits about whatever Constitution binds them together with their neighbors. Mahler's principle of Childhood Development must, indeed, be a Universal one in both the Physical and the Living Universes. 

Hell! It's even obvious in the Last Quarter of life. You see these old couples in restaurants ... eating together and arguing over the menus ... You see them on the road driving together but sitting in sullen silence ... Some of them come to visit me in my office, wanting to be together but making certain that there is enough explosive energy to keep them just-separate enough. Others come wanting to separate but so clearly need to hold together, even if only by fighting over who gets the dog.

Schopenhauer compared the situation to one that obtains in a porcupine hole on a Cold Night. Without closeness? the terror grows of a frozen and dangerous existential aloneness in the Coldness of the Fourth Quarter. With too much closeness? There is a mutual pricking with sharp quills that cut deep at a time when vulnerability and pain are prominent.

M and I, need I say, never prick each other ... no Porcupines are we!

Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! 
Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! 
Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!
Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! 
Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! 
Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!
Ha-Ha!
!

Inmates and Guards

It was 1994 and I was consulting in an inpatient facility for people who had lost their minds ... kinda literally ... most often to car accidents. Maybe it was the thought of driving a couple of hundred miles, today, that brought the wanderers from that facility to mind. M and I were invited to attend a graduation kinda thing, tonight, for one of our younger grandkids. How can one say "no" to an adorable little kid who plays a saxophone just-about-bigger than her and sings songs from Rogers and Hammerstein's OKLAHOMA with Grandpa while the adults are discussing important shit.

Any case, my mind went back to the folk with Traumatic Brain Injuries ... people with memories significantly shorter than the vast majority of Last Quarter types who, as I've said before, cannot find where they hid their Ginkgo and no longer recall whether they take Lunesta to Keep it Up or Levitra to Go Lay Down and Go To Sleep!

Back to the inpatient place. I remember one morning, I had come to consult with a much distraught Care Worker, K. J, a man in his mid-30's in her care, had just peed out his third floor window. It hadn't been a direct hit on K but spattered she was. I had never thought of it before but I realized that the cone of pee-splatter increases quite a bit from three stories. J may have not known either or maybe he was inclined to direct ... his attention, might we say ... to K. It had just been the previous week that K called me in a panic.

K: I don't know what to do with J.

Me: What's up?

K: I came into his room and he was "y'know" with B.

Me: He was y'knowing?

K: Yeah, you know.

Me: I really don't.

K: Well. He was on his knees in front of B ... Y'know-now?

Me: He was shining his shoes?

K: Not funny. You know exactly what I mean.

Well, I guess I did and I was just being a cheeky bastard. But sometimes I do feel as if I'm back working inpatient with J shpritzing from 30 feet above the fray ... following the elegant principle that: "He who pisses, never misses." Any case, I remembered this ditty from 20+ years ago.

From ditties et lettre du Abe Isaacs (HHC-1994)

GS & JC

Graham, Sylvia and Jesus Christs

Lots of Christs

Have passed this way.

Janet, Charcot and Jung,

They have been here, too.

Nowadays

Most of us keep our doors closed.

I, as well, and yet

as I Stand here,

Not at Salpetriere but Woodmere

(or some such silly-named“Estates”),

My mind turns on its own

Toward a place I could call home

Where I might feel the feelings I feel alone

On my Golgotha

but Separate

From Graham and Sylvia and Christ

And what I,

Just today, did call their fate.

Sylvia,

She wrote about living in an asylum.

I work there.

Really.

That is, I come and go

More or less as I please;

Others remain. I go home.

Today, it was muggy. I had a headache.

Stan was on the jazz.

So were Ferrante and McGreggor,

On the jazz.

They’re doctors. You’d never know.

They think I’m stiff and I am.

At least compared to Stan, Bill and Carl.

Curly, Moe ...

I forgot the name of the other Stooge.

I’m more than fifty and the memory goes.

But today was really not so different:

One man ran out of a group screaming:

“I’m leaving.”

Another stopped me on the road:

“I’m outa here.”

A woman had a fit. I asked

Her for a light.

She gave me a light. I smoked

A cigarette with her. We talked

For just a moment.

She went back to ... I don’t know where.

Ferrante and McGreggor were still on the jazz.

The man, the man and the woman with the light

Were wherever they were and I?

I work in an asylum

And go home at night.

 Alas! Today, I do feel like I live in a crazed world and am going driving in it!