Long Winters

A number of visitors to my office, mostly those over 60 and either Playing in the Last Quarter or pretty damn near to it, have been expressing how long this Winter that is threatening to end has been. I'm in agreement with them. Some many years ago, I've been told, someone introduced a non-migratory Goose into the Northeast of the USA that looks a lot like a Canadian Goose but doesn't remember how to get out of the way of Winter. They gang about in fields all year not knowing where to go, inciting the locals to complain about the mess they leave behind. "go South," I tell them. "Winter is long and cold." Each passing year makes me more sensitive to the cold .... Makes the passage in Psalms ("before his chill, who can stand?")more understandable. I suspect M and I have been together for 48 years in no short measure due to her warmth ... Not only her emotional warmth but the fact that her body temp is several degrees higher than mine. I air conditioner her in the Summer; she warms me in the Winter when I can get snarky and 'discontented' by the slowing down of my Thyroid gland .... that little piece of tissue that among many other functions acts to heat the body indirectly by controlling metabolism and such. 'Silly Goose, fly South. Get thee to Costa Rica or Rio ....' Half the folk in the USA think that Global Warming is a hoax perpetrated by young scientists on old hypothyroid people huddling together to stay warm. As it is not written: 'Oh, my Sweet Lord ... Next year in Costa rica! .... For it gets so cold, You know ... My Sweet Lord!'

2nd Posting: Duvet Diving

M stayed in bed for an extra hour, today, while I and GuntherDog came downstairs; Gunther's bladder ain't what it used to be. I did my things and went back upstairs. Sleepy M was just waking under our duvet cover that had a huge bulge on the bottom ... Someone had mentioned the Battle of the Bulge, yesterday, in the office. I guess I was inspired. M was up on her feet. I unbottomed the bottom of the duvet cover and I was ready. M noted: He's going in. And go in I did. I struggled with that duvet cover, getting the old goose down comforter back up near the top. M noted: He's coming out. .... So perspicacious, that wife of mine! .... What to say? A small victory for mankind; a great victory for Howard. ... As I withdrew from that Duvet cover (we now have to name it) ... M noted that my anatomy and my hind quarter were both still intact. .... Ain't life grand? Off to the office with that victory in my pocket!

Morning Similarities

M and I are hipsters. Awoke this AM to pain in the same-side hip. Did we do something last night that we shouldn'ta oughtn't have done? Maybe? Who can remember? Was it fun? I hope so! My memory is really not THAT bad .... short term retrieval and general retrieval issues. Names are difficult and I'm still younger that Pope Francis I .... I met someone new yesterday and remember much of what he said to me which was very little. I hope I was helpful in getting him on a path. The young obsess about finding their path .... the Middle aged about getting it right .... the old about its end and leaving something behind. "There'll be one child born and a World to carry on" the song says. The emperor says "apres moi la Deluge." I guess a truth lies somewhere in between. So, we both woke up ("We offer thanks before you, oh Lord, living and everlasting King; you returned unto me my Soul, (so, I offer Thee thanks) with ample gratitude for Your faithfulness!") with pains ... and laughing about those pains. Two hebephrenics lost in the Day Room of their own Psych Ward reminding each other of what day it is! Thursday! Hah! I got it. And after hours, tonight, I get to go to an Older Adult Subcommittee that is trying to put together a snow-shoveling program for poor, older folk in our township. Better bring the Ginkgo Paloba, M ... and a note about where we left the shovel! Ho-Ho-Ho .... ha-ha-ha! .... hidee-hidee-hidee-ho!

More on Difference

I've been thinking often about the experience of oddness, these days. Will be leading a public discussion on the Flemish film, Ben-X, at a local training institute ... about a high school kid who has Asperger's AND is bullied. It was a famous Doctor from Vienna who, in talking of one of his well-known cases (the Rat Man), opined that had the patient not come for treatment early (he was 28, I think, when he started with Freud), the illness would have eaten up his normal personality. This is one of the risks Ben faces in the film. Difference is not the killer. But my experience with animals is that when one pet, particularly cats, becomes ill, the instictual wish to dispose of the ill from our midst kicks in. Indeed, thinking back to my own differences and oddities from "the kids on the block," I wonder how much I pulled away and how much I was ostracized by the Others. Is it Einstein's theory that says that it's hard to tell which is happening or is it just good common sense. I was no Ben, growing up, but certainly didn't fit in, either. Fat when I was born, skinny growing up with a speech impediment (stuttering) that lasted into my twenties. Like so many first-gen kids born to families that immigrated to the States (actually, my Dad was born here in the teens to immigrants and my Mother came by boat), there was always the sense of difference ... subtle differences. I still don't have what I feel to be typical (notice the judgement I make on 'the typical') reference points and metaphors, in my thinking. My metaphors are towards bibical stories and religious images ... I sometimes wish I knew the names of the Beatles or the characters on Friends ... then, I tell myself, I'd be part of the crowd. Right. I once wrote that the Group does one of four things to the Other: 1. The Group seeks to destroy the Other without asking for change; or 2. The Group offers the Other the choice to conform or die; or 3. The In-Group pays lip-service to the right of the Other to be different in their silly/stupid/wrong way; or 4. The group welcomes the other in a first among equals way (primus inter pares, just like the Pope who'll be chosen from a sea of Cardinals, each of whom could be Pope) recognizing that the Other also sees their way as best or first. Difference ... the sense of difference ... festering, betimes, into alienation and a sense of not beloging ... in the case of the killers whose names we didn't need to know to lead a rich life here on Earth ... that we could have lived without hearing about ... from Oswald (we know even his first and second names) just 50 years ago to the killer (whose name and whose brother's and Mother's name we know) of Newtown a few months ago ... one can only wonder what would have happened had they been able to feel more accepted by the crowd. I was blessed to find a non-destructive group of similarly odd people hanging around Math Departments many, many years ago. I and M still hang out with one of them and his wife ... Hell! He's as odd as I. I do recommend the film ...

Fitting and Fitting In

I've been watching one of my grandchildren. Indeed, it's "fitting" to watch one of my grandchildren trying "to fit in." When people, kids or adults, try to do so, they take in the perceived environment whole. 'If you're gonna fit, y'might as well do it right.' Y'know ... the clothes, the shoes, the language, disliking all the right things, too. Funny to watch a clatch of kids sitting in a coffee shop or diner ... part and parcel of the scene is the conforming, the passion to fit in ... and part is an attempt to construct a new family, as the old one is coming apart. For let there be little doubt that, as new families are born, old families deconstruct. Playing in the Last Quarter gives you a perch and a view, while you're going through the same thing as those close to you. If there were siblings or friends and they indulged the typical begats of connection and children and grandchildren -- gay and straight, alike -- by now they're off with their own tribe. M and I have 4 siblings between us. Her Sister still hasn't spawned grandchildren but is busy leading her own near Last Quarter life 300 miles away, while my three sibs all have 5 or 6 grandchildren (does conformity never end?) and call on some schedule ... reach out and touch someone, right! ... from time to time. So, for the Last Quarter, we review what's happened and hold onto to some friends. A person on a listserv with me has been widowed for many years (like my older Sister, only younger) and one can hear the pain and, betimes, the bitterness in her writing. Certainly, I'd be afraid to reach out to her ... Older people can still bite pretty hard which can raise one's own 'inner alienated Soul' from slumber. Yesterday, I had time to reflect on the parts of me that have always felt different. I think the reviewing began when our youngest grandchild visited with her Dad for a couple of hours. I'm really quite fortunate, to my way of thinking, to remain married after 47 years and to have 4/6 grandspawn in the area. Indeed, a grand-dog was visiting as her family was off for the weekend visiting friends. This youngest grand-daughter (5 girls and a 12 year old boy call me Grandpa, like the other 5,and to be perfectly frank, the grand-pets, too), they all ... have preferences for M ... M is adored by her trib)e. I have always found it hard to move in the direction of apparent conformity, though no day, pretty much, passes without a double windsor knot in a tie and a sweater vest that makes me a dead ringer for a Mr. Rogers dopplegang-lookalike; I could do a cover-band and lead off with "Won't you be my Neighbor" ... might have to doff a beret that has accompanied me since the 1950's, unless I wanna do Groucho, too. Any case, I spent the evening thinking about my differences. While various doctoring letters grace the end of my name, I never felt the need nor did I act on the wish to secure the conforming trappings implicit to high school or college graduation. I have close contact with one of my graduate school professors ... occasional contact with another ... and no one from professional school or post professional training. I do communicate 4 or 5 times a year with someone I went to high school with ... haven't seen him in about 50 years ... assume he's still a warm and extremely religious round guy ... now clergyman ... living 6,000 miles away. "God bless the e-mail and the-Google, as M kiddingly references our grandparents referencing a car as "the machine." Maybe, I'll write more, tomorrow, about what, I suspect, is a part of us all ... the alienated part. For now, I think I'll go feel it some more.

Been quite a while. Lost friend Ragavarhao to sudden heart attack. Hindu funeral was mixed with generations of his doctoral students ... "He was my Father" ... profound connections. Then, a few days ago one of M's friends died after long bout with Cancer and I've been on new meds that seem to be regulating my wayward arrhythmic heart. Freddie Mercury said: Pain is so close to pleasure. Lacan's notion of jouissance says the same ... Freud and the poets before him. The visitors who come to my office seem to not pay attention to this factoid ... that life has Sadness and Glee ... Pain and Pleasue. If nothing good is left to stand (title of new book by Leon Wurmser and Jarass), then we're left and bereft with only depression (not sadness) and Pain. Ragavarao's death was painfully sad ... to my friends Miltie and Ruth even more powerfully so and now as their one of their 4 cats is dangerously ill ... and, yet, what a celebration of the goodness of his life. Not his 8 books or the 9th that was on the way but noting the love with which those near and dear to him felt towards and from him. Ill folk get stuck on the dark side but, moreso, when goodness comes they find a way to abbreviate its effects with their realistic expectation of the bad that will come. Many people have come telling me that they are afraid something bad will happen ... illness, loss, ... I tell them that they're confused: somethings bad are assured to happen, just wait. Alas, if I could direct peoiple to embrace the good ... we call it gratitude ... Kinda like the feeling on the street in Montreal when Spring comes and people come out of their winter underground tunnels and fill the street cafes with a sufficiency of love and intimacy. So, nothing new, here. Did have a sad day, last Sunday. Arose to a memory of walking home from school when I was 4 or 5 because classmates had stolen my wax whistles. In the early 1950's in Brooklyn, wax whistles were something to celebrate. Then, I began subtracting. How many ffff(ine)years ago was that. Playing in the Last Quarter, it's easy to get lost in subtraction. Told M and then told people in a subgroup at a workshop meeting. Nancy, a maternal or grandmaternal looking woman about my age, patted me on shoulder and said: we can cheer'ya up. They did,

Some people I communicate with and meet with have been writing ortalking about sadness ... One was sitting outside her child's therapist's office ... another was struggling through with three children who still needed financial support, each of whom was closer to 50 than 40. Another was clearly sad that I wasn't the kind of person who would ever say to my kids that 'everything was gonna be ok' about my health or their health. My friend was sad that I couldn't do more than communicate my willingness to accompany my kids as long as I had the capacity to contribute. We argued about what I had said to one of my kids the first day of college during the AIDS epidemi. 'Remember,' I said, 'the deal is that you bury me.' Another was mourning a marriage that had never been cultivated or nurtured and was now withering. Still another was bemoaning their own behavior that moved their lover away. Finally,one couldn't do anything because she was too old and sick and because she had problems. For myself, I pray everyday to be able to maintain the belief that if I do a Happy Dance and say Hello and experience Glee, there will be Sadness, as well, as I say goodbye. Many of us who are now Playing in the Last Quarter, grew up in the days when Sabbaths were celebrated. Whether you were in the Outer Hebrides or a religious community in New York or in William Penn's Pennsylvania, a weekly 'restfulness' would be celebrated by many. Stores would be closed and work would cease. Many would avoid mechanized travel .... There was a stillness. My family would welcome the day of rest with happy songs and would end up with my Mother and Grandmother sitting by the window and singing a sad song ... Translated, in part and informally ... 'the holy day of restfulness is going away .... May the week bring good things ... Good accidents and blessing, health and sustenance ... On us and those who celebrate with us ... Amen ... Selah!' .... Tears would flow down their cheeks ... Mom and Grandma ... But not tears of depression ... Of death ... Of pulling away from those who were loved .... The psalmist said: Those who plant with tears, reap with glee. Sadness flows into joy, as we say goodbye and the hello. My youngest grandchild visited yesterday. Three and a half years old. She draws and pees in the toilet and sings 'call me, boobies' instead of 'call me, maybe' ... No longer a baby but a preschooler (odd expression for a child who goes to school ... A preschooler?) She sings the song in both her Father's native English and her Mother's Portugese. A bilingual little sweetheart ... and yet my heart misses the baby that once was, just as I revel in watching her sing with her Grandma. Hello's and Goodbye's ... Sadness and Glee ... 'go together like a horse and carriage ... You can't have one without the other.' Getting on in This Quarter, though, requires making peace with the reality that some of one's friends are gone and others are, indeed, depressed ... Playing dead ... Using the excuse of the unfolding infirmities of life to sit before their flat screens and wither ... To not celebrate their relationships .... That, too, is sad.