In search of energy ... vacation

Is it possible to imagine that energy might eventually be in short supply? Certainly, never occurred to me during the First Three Quarters. My next generation is encouraging me to begin juicing ... JUICING? the Fountain of Youth. Any case, I do have this week to attempt to locate wells of energy, even if no Fountain is to be found! I'll see what happens and get back to you.

There are Perks to Being Old Enough

I'm off to co-lead a discussion with a colleague, my youngest child. She and I share an office.

So, all you Second and Third Quarter types, eat your hearts out ... There are perks to being old enough to have a child old enough to share a stage with you and old enough, herself, to have a child old enough, this Summer, to be off writing good fiction.

Adios for today

On Reading Yesterday's Post

Life may not be about post-mortem's on yesterday's events, thoughts or writing but I do typically begin each posting here by reading the previous one ... Love and Hate ... Sadness and Glee ... Hello's and Goodbye's .... So much of what I write here does seem to be about the paired experiences and feelings that we carry with us into the fields we work each day and this past week or so has been no exception.

I call it juggling ... the capacity, that is, to carry both sides or the many sides of some experience, including those related to getting older. I watched a documentary with M, last night, on the benefits of juicing ... of lengthy periods of time where one consumes the freshly extracted juice of vegetables and fruit, in quantity or alone ... Interesting piece by a youngish Aussie, Joe Cross, who juices and gets juiced on juicing by holding out a hand to others struggling with symptoms and weight. I wondered if the same effects are felt in the Last Quarter ... ENERGY, ENERGY, ENERGY.

But there are, indeed, a number of experiences that I hear about regularly from those who are in the 60-80 corridor and the 80+ folk, as well, including diminished energy levels. Back pain and pains, in general; irregular sleep; weight issues; sadness; aloneness; and a host of "wear and tear" (sexual and bowel and urinary functions all seem to change -- "not covered on your warranty, Ma'am!) problems that don't seem to be covered by the manufacturer's promises.

Some of the readers to this blog think me maudlin .... Frankly I identify more with children book characters like mischievous Madeline ... or Curious George. Looking about ... here and there ... and getting into trouble .... Some keep asking me questions, as if I had answers. There was a how-to manual of sorts for Inquisitors ... the Maleus Maleficarum ... the Witch's Hammer ...

In the work I've done in my professional life, we often contrast EXPLORATION with EXPLANATION. The latter seeks to  provide answers for queries, as if one could provide such closure.

Mom and Dad at the door: Why were you not home at curfew?

Adolescent: Mom, Dad .... I was having a great time with my friends and for a while I was sexually exploring/being explored by &%^$^&. And while I was thus engaged, Oh, Dear Parents ... I really didn't give two hoots about you Old Birds.

EXPLANATIONS are never, to my way of thinking, either adequate or safe; rarely, if a question has been posed, will the other be satisfied with the proffered answer.

EXPLORATION is a different bird, altogether. It looks to what the experience was like ... how it felt ... and whether it's experientially similar to previous such encounters in the world of being.

EXPLANATIONS are ashen grey; dang! EXPLORATIONS are green with potential growth and change.

Going on vacation for another week and a half ... EXPLORING inside and outside.

  

Connection and Friendship

I think it was Sampson Raphael Hirsch who tried to define Love and Hate. My memory has it that he saw Love as the feeling that the presence of the other person made life more worthwhile while their absence would have precisely the opposite effect. Hate? Hate was the sense that the very presence of the other made life less pleasurable and, just maybe, their absence would contribute to a sense of wellness. When I was young and cheeky (before I became Old and Cheeky), I had a sign on my university office door: Never underestimate the value of homicide in solving human dilemmas.

It seems awfully dramatic, perhaps, but just like Happiness and Sadness, Love and Hate may well be these everyday/quotidian companions to the lived life. With those we love, perhaps, we revel in their happiness and in their successes, while even those who imagine themselves present at the Sermon on the Mount find difficulty in Loving their enemies (Matthew 5).

When I returned from my 4th of July four day weekend, there were, perhaps, three types of welcomes waiting for me.

• "Gladdened that you're back."

• "You abandoned me. I hate you."

• "Glad that you're back but, even so, I won't admit to it on a stack of Bibles .... Grrrr."

Feelings are queer experiences and experiencing them in the presence of another and especially in the presence of those to whom they are directed is difficult no matter in what Quarter one is Playing. In the Last Quarter, I can't tell whether it's easier or harder to offer up such expressions. As the air gets thinner and the time grows briefer sitting here in this First Pew, it does appear more important to me to express the Love and both the Glee and the Sadness parts. In Europe in the 19th C., there was a custom of writing an Ethical Will ... of leaving something other than things and property behind.

At the close of the Books of Genesis and Deuteronomy, Jacob and Moses (respectively) intermingle loving and hateful feelings (think it worth reading both) .... Jacob reviews his kids' failings and Moses, calling to the Heavens and the Earth to be witnesses and then announcing "This is the Blessing," reams the Children of Israel (eg, A stupid nation! and not wise ... grown fat only to kick their God) ... cuts them a new one, as folk are prone to say on the street.

I hope to do better.

Bedouin Bandits at Sea

It was 45+ years ago that I and Milton met during my stint as a graduate student and his as a young professor ... just a couple of years out (of his own studies). And now, he we were at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean sitting in a tent shelter like two old Bedouin Chieftains in some Arabian Desert. I do have memories of lengthy conversations in the cafeteria of Buffalo's Interim Campus where the Math and Philosophy (and some other academic departments that I don't recall) were temporarily housed as a new campus, the dream of a visionary gone by, Marty Myerson, was being built. The table I'd typically be occupying was visited by mostly the young faculty .... I had begun graduate school very early with but a year of undergraduate studies officially recorded on transcripts, so that I was still much younger than the crew that made space for me.

This seaside dialogue was different and the same. My son-in-law visited our desert abode but he's much older than anyone I can recall visiting our cafteria discussions. His twin daughters would occaaionally come in to stir the pot ... playing like 9.5 year old girls ... originally identical .... now anything but and striving against each other. The Writer/writer of Genesis had a good time describing the intrauterine experience of Jacob and Esau ... S/he took the word run and put it into a reflexive conjugation .... and constructed ... va'yis'rotzitzu ha'banim b'kirbah .... And the boys ran around after each other in her innards (Rebecca's, that is). Life begetting life begetting teaming life.

But the conversations remained. Milt wanted to know how ... or, anyway, quizzed his young "student" on how it was possible that religions so similar to each other 'banished' members of the other sect and how this happened to Otto Rank, Freud's young Secretary of the Wednesday Night Meetings. Banished was a harsh word and harsher deed for someone who expressed a hardly discernible difference. The conversation muddled around a bit and I offered the analogy of flying over a major urban area with lots of little suburban towns clustered about it. From the sky, no stark differences could be perceived. Indeed, if there were any difference it would have to do with the seat of power and each one's idiosyncratic laws. Who's your Priest, Minister, Imam or rabbi? ... Any case ....

Cross a boundary and you could get arrested on on side and told to slow down on the other. I'm no sociologist, but my guess is that people in the various townships are quite similar ... ah! ... but the seat of power ... it's all about power

Milton told me my analogy sucked. I told him that I felt fortunate that he hadn't used one of his favorite expressions (either 'Are you stupid' or 'Just goes to show you don't know everything') and would live with my sense that he was a blind and deaf and obstreperous old man. He laughed. So did I. Would we have said the same if our wives hadn't been sitting outside in the light of day? Who knows?

Maybe Playing in the Last Quarter has as much to do with appreciating the other and your history together than what is said. After all ... it's pretty much all been said before. I'll ride out to the beach this morning and set the tent up, again, so the Old Bedouin Chieftains can carry on conversations that began long before woodstock and Watergate the Religious Right and Tet .... oh .... and grandchildren.  

And in the seventh year, shall thine fields lay fallow ...

Who wants to up the retirement age to 70? Maybe we should retire them.

I'm tired. I need a vacation. The people who visit my office seem approximately split ... half ok with my going or into "good riddance! I need a vacation freom you" and a second half that is, let's say, not pleased.

There was a volume on Creativity by Silvano Arieti in 1976 ... won a lot of awards ... it was thick ... 500+ pages but very readable. Like her majesty (who's a pretty nice girl but without a lot to say), no great conclusions ... except ... vacations seem to be necessary.

"I really need a vacation. I really need a vacation ...."  and when I return "Boy, did I need a vacation ... boy! did I need a vacation."

Back to Categories

The air in Northeastern USA is not only infused with humidity ... 80-90-100% and heat, but with the media shrieking and shrekking about the Trayvon Martin killing, the discovery that Paula Deen had used a racial eithet, the Dems and the Reps, Liberals and Conservatives and the world splitting into factions, it may be an odd time to be talking categories. Still, the subject came up for me in response to an online friend's comments about her priorities.

I wondered what categories moved me. Ah, but let me explain how I think of such matters. It occurs to me that we human-folk tend to see ourselves as predominantly this or that ... where this+that adds up to a hefty percentage of the population. Let me give you an example. Some time ago, eating with an old friend, she explained that where she grew up there were Whites and sub-Whites and that my geneology placed me on the sub-White side of the street. I attributed her loose-lips to the wine that accompanied dinner but didn't resonate, at all, about skin color. Skin color doesn't work for me as a category ... I don't feel that I belong to one side of this "divide" or the other.

I listed a few for my on-line fiend; here are those and a couple more:

• Kind .... Unkind (that has a place in my mind ... I leave unkind groups)
• Liberal .... Conservative (a kinda muddy distinction)
• Quick-minded .... Slow-minded (Holding less and less for me as my brain seems to be seizing up)
• Educated ... Less-Educated (I don't think so but I did have a lot of schooling)
• Having Children ... Childless (which am I? ... the kids all left except GuntherDog)
• Male .... Female (I don't think so)
• Old ... Young (Something works there ... heading down to VA for weekend with friends ...
• avg age       just below 70 ... must say something)
• 'My religion' ... 'other religions' (I do feel I belong in/to my religious tradition ...)
• 'My skin color' ... 'other skin color' (Feel no belonging on any side)

I've long been suspicious of those who teach multiculturalism, as if I could know another better by knowing their skin-color or religion. I was once castigated in a workshop when I presented the history of an African American woman who would consult with me. The more I thought it silly, the more the group wanted to offer me up on some altar as a burnt offering. The fact that we both grew up in similar areas, in intact families with religious affiliations, etc .... meant nothing to the mob that wanted to hang this so-designated "White Male." (Anyway, as I said, at least one of my friends thinks me "sub-white" [and I don't think she meant 'under Vanna White'] and I don't play football or drink myself silly.) I don't know whether knowing where I fit in the above splits does anything either ... but on this night when an arrhythmia disturbed my sleep, I did, indeed, come back to ask "where do I belong?"