Behold and Beholdin'

There is a song taught to children: Hineh Mah Tov .... Behold just how good it is for Brothers and Sisters to sit down together.

The verb "party" is relatively new. I think I heard the infinitive first walking between meetings  in Center City Philadelphia in the mid-1970's. An attractive youngish woman stopped me on the street and asked: "Do you want to party." And while I had not heard that usage prior to that moment, I divined precisely what she had in mind. I explained to her that there were three problems.

First ... I had to get to a meeting.
           "Do you really HAVE to go," she queried.

Second .... I'm married.
           "Well so are most of my best customers."

Third .... My wife gives me a quarter in the morning, tells me to have a good time and that's all I got.
          "Oh, well" she sighed and trotted off.

In the subsequent years, I became comfortable hearing my childrens' generation use the verb in its many forms ... "I'm gonna go party" ... "Philly is partying tonight" .... I even used it in a bit of doggerel in the mid-1990's. (I'll post that, later.)

But last night was a party. The men averaged a bit over 70 years in age and were all pretty much deaf. The young chickies closer to 65 and could hear even their spouse's mumblings pretty well. One of the couple's were newlyweds ... less than 20 years, together ... The other two married for a combined whopping total of 99 years. Three cats and a 24 year old grand-daughter who didn't look uncomfortable in this cursorily assembled Old Age Home completed the invitation list.

As it is not written OR sung:

            Let most of the cocelebrants be wined and dined ...
                   For between them they have no rhyme ....

                           Let most of the cocelebrants be wined and dined ...
                                   For they forgot the lyrics and even how to spell "Auld Lang Syne."

All but one of the celebrants were born in America ... he, in India. Then, there was Hungarian, Native American, English, Irish and Scottish, and Russian blood all flowing through the veins of the revelers at this American celebration of still another year. There were two retired university administrators, a retired Industrial Engineer, a retired Mathematical Statistician, another who was still working, an ex-Mathematician who retooled as a Healer (that would be me), and a Linguist Wannabe ot to-Be. 4/7ths of us admitted to needing to get to bed before 10:30 and the Industrial Engineer was just this side of pickled and very funny when she is.

I made the Soup but couldn't tell nosy people what was in it (cause my Brocca's area in my brain is broken and my Wernicke's don't work too well no more), though I could tell them the dozen or so things that weren't included due to animal rights preferences and allergies. The soup was a big hit which made me do a Happy Dance, inside, but without a recipe is not likely to be repeated. Then there were Vegan delights and some dead animal all dancing around the table. Half of us got high on Sparkling Apple Juice .... the other half on Foreign Fermented Sparkling Grape.

I do hope that you who follow along with the tragedo-comedy that is the Last Quarter of Life had at least half the fun I had plaing with people, most of whom I've known for over 40 years, with M who has shared my bed ... or have I shared hers? ... for over 48 years and two younger interlopers who I've only known for a quarter of a Century.


            Let most of you celebrants be wiined and dined ...
                   Except those in Denver who are smoking Pot .... ....
                           Let most of the cocelebrants be wined and dined ...
                                    And find gratitude for friends and parties we've got!


FELICE CAPO D'ANO

AND "PARTY-AND-PLAY-ON" WORLD

OF LAST QUARTER PLAYERS!



                                 

The Cast Continues

The die is cast .... Cast fishing ... Casting aspersions .... Castigation ...

When I was a schoolboy, I was asked to read Edwin Arlington Robinson's poetry. "Miniver Cheevey, Child of scorn, grew old as he assailed the seasons. He cried that he was ever born and he had reasons." Miniver Cheevey, Arlington explained at the close of the piece, was the town drunkard and "kept on drinking." Simon and Garfunkel traded on our generation's love for Robinson by enshrining Richard Corey, another one of Robinson's Cast of Characters, this one who "went home one night and put a bullet in his head." Robinson's poetry fell out of favor; I don't know why.

Our trip back demonstrated, if nothing else, that there is value in some technology. A lengthy tie-up on the Interstate demonstrated that Last Quarter legs and Start-Stop traffic are far better suited to each other when the drive to power is through a torque converter on an automatic transmission. Clutching a thousand times in two hours of 2 mph Interstate Tortoise Crawls makes one's left leg feel at least a quarter older than the rest of one's body.

A hot shower might have solved that ... well, except for the fact that the icy cold water on my naked body did little else that further debilitate. Quick trip down to basement was sufficient proof that the water heater that had been installed "11/4/1994" had had enough of my demands for hot water and decided to retire due to incontinence. I suspect my Dad would have reluctantly understood my decision to call in a plumber rather than push the old heater up the stairs without advantage of my indentured sons who've managed to escape into lives of their own and then carry a new 150+ pound heater down the same stairs to take its place. Dad never approved of men who couldn't man-up ... and I was a dutiful son.

Yes! I am a member of the Cast of Characters, as well. I have the odd or oddly discovered and very occasional quirk. Like ... really struggling to leave any morsels of food on my plate ... "Hey, isn't that why God created bread .... to sweep the plate clean?" I reluctantly invite carpenters, plumbers or lawn mowers to my home in recent years. ...  though, I CAN man-up enough to admit that I can still feel the place where my back took responsibility for putting in place a 3/4" subfloor that I precut for a third floor bathroom that I was refinishing maybe 15 years ago. Particularly my left hip area (the bathroom opened to the right) suffered from holding up the ropes that I tied through the various fixture-holes with the bulk of the weight going on the right hand side through the entrance way. I think I'd have no back at all if an ex-student of mine hadn't shown up at just that time to visit M and I and agreed to help me lower the floor into place. She's now a Jewelery maker somewhere in the Northwest ... maybe Oregon ... but was never afraid to throw her back into grunt work. "Go, Ms. H. If you ever give up designing fine jewelery, an Old couple trying to graciously Play in the Last Quarter could always use a hand."

As for my Dad?

"My Father Milton, who art in Heaven: I woulda done it if I coulda done it."

Cast of Characters

It's difficult to describe the Cast of Characters that appear in the Last Quarter ....  that unfold in the natural process of a Life Unfolding over many years. I suppose it is similar for all species and most times of years. Still, the addition of the sense of awareness adds, at least, color to the mix. In the Open Seas beyond one's partner or spouse, Children, Grandchildren, Kin and In-law Kin, ex-kin and soon-to-be ex-kin, Friends and their Coterie of Friends. A travelling weekend at holiday time is not quite like the Halloween House of Horrors Walk that your cardiologist recommended you not take due to idiopathic arrhythmias.

 Travelling with M ... no more than 400 miles ... and we've seen three of our four siblings and their living spouses, 2/3's of our kids and in-law kids, half the grandspawn, at least one niece and her beau, and sundry friends and livestock. One of my grandkids is studying the rapprochement between Jacob and Esau ... I assured her that, for Ole Man Grandpa, it's easier sometimes to read about these meetings than to participate in them. It has little, to my way of thinking, to do with the holidays. People blame these seasonal events on the madness of families ... vestigial families ... those that no longer provide shelter or food to each other except ceremoniously ... the madness of the litter of families gone-by when they meet "to celebrate."

 Thirteen or so years ago, I wrote about self reflection as a process involving a maze of mirrors ... parallel and orthogonal ... smoky ... clear ... cracked ... a maze into which one peers seeing reflections of times, of places and of persons ... current and gone by ... one looks in and finds wonders and also frightening compound and broken mirrored scenes from which ancient images of oneself betimes look back. ... 'Beware of who you look at ... they may look back right at you.'

Children that once populated the back play areas of station wagons in the era before SUV's and even before seat belts now may appear middle-aged and successes in their own right. They're surrounded by worlds of their own making. Older siblings may be more than a bit addled? Younger siblings may reflect curious lives committed to foreign principles of living. At one such Oasis on our journey through the Badlands of Time, we stumbled upon a VHS tape of my parents' 50th anniversary get -together. M and I were barely 40 and our kids were young and quite healthy looking ... unencumbered, still, by relationships with boyfriends/girlfriends. Our four parents were all still with us. Dancing, eating, toasting the lives they had built; our youngest was just 12 years old. VHS = Very Hot Spirits? Now, mostly chilled by the Passage of Time and by Edgar Allen Poe's "Vulture, whose wings are dull reality."

My Mom and Dad were right in the middle of the Fourth Quarter ... M's parents a half a decade younger. M and I have the roadtrip back, today. We drove up in our older son's 'royal chariot' with his wife and daughter. He followed our trail the next day in our roadster and traded back. The roadster ... we'll go home in the roadster with the top securing us from Winter's chill ... the roadster wouldn't make it up to our younger son's home ... up a dignified driveway to a warm and very religious home. M and I will go home, today, in the roadster to fascinate and laugh and tear up about the past 48+ years, together ... bringing with us thrills and disappointments, packing the boots of our little rover with  all of this and more.

Signing Out

Signing out for the holiday ... Not certain what can be said about it ... Celebrating the birth of a baby (giving gifts) ... Celebrating the continuation of a family (inviting folk to join about a table to prepare foods for each other) ... Celebrating rites together (as part of a community). M and I will have opportunity to share with children and grandchildren ... tasting of the future. We'll similarly have time with all our siblings ... vestiges of families superseded by newer families. I may have written some years ago about walking through my parents home when we were preparing to empty it and give it over to another family. I was with my grand-daughter ... maybe she was ten, then. She asked, looking at the pictures that were still hanging on the walls of her great-grandparents' home: How is a family made? I didn't want to tell her that new families are made by weakening the bonds of older families, even though there is some truth, perhaps, in thinking that no new family can be built without taking apart older ones ... that life is like those fern-like geometric fractals .... a series of families, many, perhaps, taking over where the previous ones have ended or, at least, are in the process of ending and making room. There were mystics who wondered how an omnipresent god could possibly create. If s/he is omnipresent, where is there room for 'the new.' Some of these religious thinkers concluded that there must be a process of redacting the self to make room for another. They called this process ... tzimtzum. Maybe the Fourth Quarter well-Played requires tzimtzum. May it be thy will, Creator, that I may, indeed, savor this process, in spite of the pains that may accompany it.

Memories? All alone in the Moonlight!

Just about every Friday night, at least three of our grandkids come over for Dinner. I'm typically a bit late ... not always easy getting out from the office with visitors. Yesterday was much like other Fridays. This week, I experimented with a Barley Soup with Tomato and a sisterhood of vegetables ... pre-stir fried in some olive oil to give them a trace of smokiness. 5 of my 6 grandspawn are vegetarians and their parents have memories of being served savory stuffed peppers ... stuffed with a bread pudding with too much green pepper in it to make it sweet ... these were cooked up by my Father with just a trace of snarky humor related to his grandkids' vegetarianism. The tomato/barley was pretty good. One of the ten-year olds tossed in some laudatory superlatives ... She tries very hard. I, also, contributed some mildly candied sweet potatoes with walnuts and an experimental Vegan Pesto ... using toasted sunflower seeds instead of my usual cashews ... ?? ... it was OK to Good. Eaters liked it. M inherited the rest of dinner except for a salad brought by "our baby" ... my office partner ... and mother of a 15 yo and two nearly 10 year old twins.

 But all of this brings back memories. My parents enjoyed to cook and to feed others. Really good memories of them pleasantly puttering around in kitchen. I don't recall any tension until the days when my Dad would sit at the stove and watch either M or I cook ... shaking his head on the horizontal ... "Nah ... I wouldn't do that." I remember tension, as well, when my Father's bride began slipping into the fog of Alzheimer's. Like my Dad, it wouldn't quite feel right or manly to use a recipe ... it would be something similar to having to shut off a circuit on the fuse box before changing a light switch . "You just gotta be careful," he would say, "slow and easy."

I have many other memories ... some of which are not .... some of which are not memories, that is.

One of my favorites has my WWII Soldierboy Papa carrying his four spawn on his shoulders to the beach ... 4-5 blocks, away. My three sibs would be on one shoulder (maybe? aged 12, 9 and 8) and I'd be ensconced in regal solitude upon the other. As folk say: 'Them Dogs don't Hunt' ... "It doesn't compute." .... Put simply? It's a memory that ... isn't a memory but a pleasant narcissism.

Another has to do with dropping a watermelon down a flight of stairs ... coming home from shopping ... heading up to the apartment where we lived about my religious leader Grandpa Adolph ... or Abraham, as he became known after WWII. My two Sisters, not my Brother, and I each believe that it was that person who dropped the sacred watermelon ...  kbump-kbump-kbump-k-squoosh down the stairs ... mussing Daddy's Divine Dander, lighting the soldierboy's fuse. There, I figure, I have a one third probability of it being an accurate memory.

The others that come to mind come from repetitive dreams. The memory part is right on ... I have had these curious component parts in Dreams for Two Quarters, if not more.

1. After we left Brooklyn, Dad's work as a Printer took him to Toledo and then to Providence, In both places, we lived in old houses. In the Dreams, there is a staircase that goes way to the top of the house and then a secret passageway that lead to a loft space some steps down -- where old things were kept. Others might be able to look up to that space, though I was not typically visible. .... Hidden parts of myself? Aloneness? Old Things? In the Providence House, I would, indeed, develop film and print negatives in a dark spot under the eaves. But not the same place!

2. Again, in one of these houses, there was a large glassed room ... the kind that might exist in an Old Mountain Resort ... with outside kind of chairs and tables .... maybe 40'x80' ... That room was associated with happiness and playfulness and yellow sunlight, though I cannot recall bumping into anyone I knew. It was easily accessible. Indeed, I've spent many Dreams going in and out of that space.

3. Then there's the dualism that misses the point. ... I think it's younger than the others ... maybe since M and I lived in New Hampshire ... 40 years, ago, with the older kids ... We lived just in front of a Beaver Pond in Beaver Hollow ... very cramped quarters for two parents, 6 and 7 year old sons, and a St. Bernard who wanted to play with the Beavers ... Alas, dogs can't seem to dive to find the submarine entrance to Beaver Lodges. We were there living at a residential facility for very bright schizophrenic and autistic adolescents. Freezing valley in the Winter of the Oil Embargo when only crud was available ... crud that would not infrequently fail to fire the furnace. Saint B. Kazimierza would keep the adults warm -- or was it herself -- by sleeping between us under the covers.

It was after leaving there and moving to Philadelphia in 1974 that in many dreams, I would need to get to a town ... over hill and dale. The access roads were not all that easy to find and up a short bit of the Mountain to a parallel road. If I went right and missed the left hand turn, I'd get caught in a development full of split levels or something. I would always find the house ... a country kind of New Hampshire house. Small outbuildings, all set back off the road. On the left of the house was a bumpy, not very well paved, heavily treed road that went up and over the hills for maybe something less than ten miles. On the right was a clearer path ... a smooth road. I always tended to go up on the left more primitive road but I might return with either. I have long enjoyed getting lost while driving, hoping and allowing for new discoveries. Nah! These roads just went up to this town ... and I was gonna come back. Most recently, I was coming down the mountain and a pickup truck and a Semi were getting onto the road from my left. I passed the pickup but motioned for the Semi to go ahead. I was exhausted and, indeed, I've been tired for the past several months .... Not enough Thyroxin flowing through me we'll see what last week's scan shows ... something? I couldn't keep my head up and was laying down towards my left. Not easy to do that in a Left-hand-drive car and the last Right-hand-drive car we owned was a 1973 Citroen DS-23 that came via England to New Zealand to States. Couldn't be that one, except in a Dream, for we sold that one to a crazed Steeplechaser who mounted horns on the front, drove it disrespectfully and totaled it. I might add: I've never gone into that house on the bottom of the hill, on either side of which a road ascends and remember nothing of the destination. Life? A journey without a destination ....

I have many real memories, as well. Playing in the Last Quarter is full of Memories ... Mine and M's.

Tomorrow is 48 years since 22 December 1965 when we married. A Long FFFFFFine Time, as the kids might almost say. And, still, I've never stopped by at the house on the bottom of the hill or held memories of the end of the road.

Not Only Rodney Dangerfield Gets No Respect

I received this epistle from my friend, Deane ... loosely, on the perils of aging .... Lord, am I next?

They felt awful about it …… until they got some cocktail sauce and lemon. 

Enjoy!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/11/15/newser-worlds-oldest-animal/3574863/

Scientists accidentally kill world's oldest animal at age 507

The oldest animal ever known lived from 1499 until the day researchers cracked its shell open, killing it in the process.
Ming, an ocean quahog from the species Arctica islandica, was initially thought to be a record-setting 402 years old. But the scientists who found it on a seabed near Iceland in 2006 now say further analysis has revealed that it was an incredible 507 years old, reports CBS.
The researchers, who didn't realize how old Ming was when they first found it, opened the ancient clam up to judge its age by counting growth rings inside its hinge ligaments. That's because the rings are "better protected" there, scientist Paul Butler tells ScienceNordic, which notes that Ming was named for the Chinese dynasty that ruled when it was born.
But the rings were so close together that scientists ended up having to count the rings on the outside to be accurate, leading CBS to point out that Ming could have lived on, had scientists just started there.
"We got it wrong the first time and maybe we were a bit [hasty] publishing our findings back then. But we are absolutely certain that we've got the right age now," says Butler.
The old, dead, mollusk still has a huge amount to offer science, reports the Herald-Sun. Scientists believe it will provide valuable data on changing sea temperatures over the last half-millennium—and maybe even some clues to longevity.
In other fascinating animal news, the "Asian Unicorn" has been captured on camera.
Newser is a USA TODAY content partner providing general news, commentary and coverage from around the Web. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

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Where the Wildthings Still Are

From  1979 until 1993 at 3:05 PM, I had a philodendron on my furthest South bookshelf in my office. Until then, the tendrils reached across all the bookshelves to the Northernmost one 26 feet away. At that moment, a tornado crashed a perhaps 50 foot Beech Tree through the ceiling ... After recovering from damage and shock, I repotted the parts of my plant that with two Sensavaria had been growing across and partially hiding the framed certificates and diplomas and a picture of Freud.

 I renamed her Mathilda. She was a wild woman but a gem who continued to remind me about how messy life was ... how more complicated she was than all my theories and all of Horatio's. A few months ago, Mathilda, herself (Lord knows! she was balding), became too straggly and I replaced her with one of her yet-to-be-named children. Right now, she lives on the Northernmost bookshelf and is beginning her now only 19 foot trek to the South. The other 7 feet? After the tornado hit, some re-architecturing was done turning the last 7 feet into a more convenient waiting room bathroom.

 I should say that while I appreciated Wild Woman Mathilda and cared for her weekly, she was never to be tamed. At one point, she had wrapped herself around a 4 foot fluorescent bulb and strangled it, causing it to explode in the midst of a meeting. "Teeming life" is an expression we use in English. I use it to describe my azaleas enemy, the honeysuckle, that I once wrote about. I thought of it when my youngest child 30 years ago had a sleepover with her friends, though "teaming life" may have been an apt description, as well..

We human beings build models that seek or, at least, pretend to tame the complexities of that teeming life. We then are prone to believing that our models adequately represent all of life. It was Freud, der alte Hexenmeister from Vienna, who liked to comment that madness was the inability to separate the Word or Symbol from the Thing, Itself ... the Model from Reality .... what the General Systems Theory folk (like Bertalanffy) called the need to distinguish the Map from the Territory.

We humanfolk don't like that. I want my 3" toy Corgi-car model of my 1968 Citroen DS 21 to take me to the grocery store. If I believe it does, I'm in trouble, in whatever Quarter of
Life I am Playing.

My brother once cited Goethe, though I don't recall from where: Grey, my friewnd, is all theory ... but Green? the evergrowing Tree of Life. I should give the Old Guy a call, today..