Bad hair day? Only, it's not my hair. with all the snow and the changing times at which visitors are scheduled to arrive, I couldn't recall if I made an appointment for 700AM. I knew there was no six, negating the hypothesis that too much snow shoveling had rendered me brain-dead ... only that due to advanced neuropathy, the message had not yet arrived at my prefrontal cortex .. 50 cent way to say that I've become a cockadoodle-doo away from a rooster without a head!
Philadelphia, a friend noticed, looks like Buffalo where our families spent much of the late 60's and early 70's.Didn't feel so bad, then. I guess if there are enough people around you blowing Woostock Mixture .... blown snow and blown dope .... shoveling seems to pass in an enjoyable if attenuated flash. It's different in the Last Quarter. The Prophets tell you "you're gonna die" if you shovel that wet stuff ... We call it the "widow maker."
My dreams are frightening and tend to fly off in the middle of the night when I wake up with "horror" and "atrial fibrillation." Not certain which way the arrow points .... Frightening Pavor Nocturnis dreams yielding atrial fib or vice versa. My young Cardiologist assures me that each of these snow events acts like a cardiac tread mill test ... I stress my heart ... if I don't keel over ... chances are that the Ole Pump is A-OK.If not, he'll fill my appointment with another guy around his Father's or Grandfather's age and whisper sweet NOTHINGS in his ear.
Many men come and visit me ... I suppose? half my visitors. They are struggling either to enter, to stay or to leave the role of Pater Familias ... of the guy who knows how to do it all .... like he was one of these special-ops types wearing all white and carrying Kalishnakovs and RPGS in their half track trek in the Northwest Territories ... trying to find the headquarters of Icy Finger and Snow Job ... shoveling, driving in snow, keeping the burner working and the fireplace full of split and air-dried maple ... knowing exactly what to do when Junior is poised to crash into a tree while her Daddy is thinking about how well he looks in his new down jacket ....
Can you imagine the irony ... CAN YOU DIG IT .... living in what used to be the Presby Widows Home and shoveling heavy snow to try to make certain that no beds go empty.
Hey! It's hard nowadays to figure out which are widows, nevermind which are Presby's.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Not Only Moses has to Deal with Pragmatics
Just in from second shift of snow shoveling. The snow is medium heavy and so-so deep .... maybe 10". The Prophets predict another 5" or so. Brings two things to mind.
1) Jeremiah's first prophecy comes to mind. God troubles him for his free associations ... Go, figure ... God as psychoanalyst. Poor depressed Jerry says ... Hey, Big Guy ... I don't have my own voice. Go is not pleased.
No Jerry, tell me what you really see and stop all this resistance.
Jerry responds reluctantly.
I see a pot and it's boiling over from the North.
I never quite got God's interpretation but I've been told that patients don't always understand the deep interpretations of their therapists .... for God tells him that armies are going to gather in the North Country and swoop down on Jeremiah's people, cause they done God wrong. As a kid, when I first read it, I was convinced that the pot shoulda been boiling over it's South side if the enemy was to spill in from the North.
No matter. Jeremiah, who was also told a little later -- after this deal with his God was brokered -- that he couldn't have a woman in his life, in his prophetic vision may have not only seen the exile but may have divined that Handel was destined to choose Isaiah 40 for the Libretto for his Messiah Suite. No women and no concert halls! Dang. This snow storm came -- not from the North but -- from deep in the heart of Dixie!
2) Shoveling snow may well be God's way of culling the herd after the indentured children have found lives of their own. Each storm finds some number of men failing to get back inside and failing to make any snow angels ... just lying there inert in the snow ... Now, that I think of it, I wonder if those little kids with their snow angels aren't attempting to channel Grandpa? or Grandma? "Grandpa's shoveling clouds in the sky." Oh, those sweet little grand-spawn and their imaginations.
Any case, made me think about my own life and that of my older visitors. Spouses tend to express concern after activities that involve muscle training with repetitive motion. Indeed, the most common three occasions that I hear stories about in which partners of all stripes ... first-time-arounders and repeat-offending partners, alike ask: "Are you really OK ... are ... I bet you can guess ...
Vigorous sex-play
Snow shoveling and
Potato peeling.
More shoveling to do.
"M ... I'm gonna be just fine .... pass the defibrillator."
1) Jeremiah's first prophecy comes to mind. God troubles him for his free associations ... Go, figure ... God as psychoanalyst. Poor depressed Jerry says ... Hey, Big Guy ... I don't have my own voice. Go is not pleased.
No Jerry, tell me what you really see and stop all this resistance.
Jerry responds reluctantly.
I see a pot and it's boiling over from the North.
I never quite got God's interpretation but I've been told that patients don't always understand the deep interpretations of their therapists .... for God tells him that armies are going to gather in the North Country and swoop down on Jeremiah's people, cause they done God wrong. As a kid, when I first read it, I was convinced that the pot shoulda been boiling over it's South side if the enemy was to spill in from the North.
No matter. Jeremiah, who was also told a little later -- after this deal with his God was brokered -- that he couldn't have a woman in his life, in his prophetic vision may have not only seen the exile but may have divined that Handel was destined to choose Isaiah 40 for the Libretto for his Messiah Suite. No women and no concert halls! Dang. This snow storm came -- not from the North but -- from deep in the heart of Dixie!
2) Shoveling snow may well be God's way of culling the herd after the indentured children have found lives of their own. Each storm finds some number of men failing to get back inside and failing to make any snow angels ... just lying there inert in the snow ... Now, that I think of it, I wonder if those little kids with their snow angels aren't attempting to channel Grandpa? or Grandma? "Grandpa's shoveling clouds in the sky." Oh, those sweet little grand-spawn and their imaginations.
Any case, made me think about my own life and that of my older visitors. Spouses tend to express concern after activities that involve muscle training with repetitive motion. Indeed, the most common three occasions that I hear stories about in which partners of all stripes ... first-time-arounders and repeat-offending partners, alike ask: "Are you really OK ... are ... I bet you can guess ...
Vigorous sex-play
Snow shoveling and
Potato peeling.
More shoveling to do.
"M ... I'm gonna be just fine .... pass the defibrillator."
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
The Young Weatherfolk
They appear to revel in their youth and their prophetic vision on the depth of the next snow-blanket.
I remember in the winter of 1954, someone wrote in to the weatherperson ... Noe email, then, but a postcard:
"I just shoveled 18" of partly cloudy from my front walk."
I'll take Nehemiah!
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Mo' Moses
"When I woke up this morning, you were on my mind ...." Who sang that? I don't remember.
M told me that Shirley Temple Black, the curly-girly that boys and girls alike fell in love with ... Heidi, the naturally born physical therapist who cures her friend, Klara's hysterical inability to walk, had died at 85. But that wasn't on my mind when I rose.
I guess the "you" of the above song refers back to Old Man Moses and the suggestion made by a friend that I, maybe ... just, maybe, identified with my Dad, a raging Moses of the 20th C, as well as the Moses who lived maybe 3400 years ago..
My second thought was a "aha!." With all my protests against such identifications, I could hardly deny that when I wanted to pen a painted document commemorating my youngest child's confirmation into her people, I began it not with some modern poetry, not with Shakespeare or Omar Khayyam and not even with the ambivalent Swan Song blessings that Moses offered up, at the end, but with his poem that followed.
"Ear up, Heavens and let the Earth hear the spoken words of my mouth." He continues his introduction describing what is to come in his soliloquy ... "My teaching will drop like heavy rain ... my words will flow as dew ... as the light rains upon the Desheh and and the later rains upon the blades of grass."
Moses, at least at the end, wanted to wax poetic; so do I .. Maybe we both shoulda sung: "On the good ship, Lollipop, it's a sweet trip to the candy shop."
Alas ... Moses turn to the perfection of his God who spoke with him face to face but couldn't stand back from his horror at the "twisted and perverse generation" that was his life's-job to lead., "A stupid people? And not wise!" He advises them to seek counsel from parents and the aged .... that would be him, I suppose ... and now it would be us. He clearly worries that without him, nothing good will be allowed to stand.
If you read Moses' "slam," (Deuteronomy 32) you may feel the arrhythmic rhythm of a person falling between two stools ... the one representing the restful lap of his loving God, the same one who is about to end his journey just shy of his goal ... the wish to enter his Promised Land. Crane wrote something like the following about life's journey and our hopes:
I saw a man
Pursuing the horizon.
Round and round, they sped.
I accosted him,
"You can never," I said.
"You lie," he said and ran on.
Moses' other stool? I suppose that was resident in his love for his people and served as good ballast for his opposing sense of disappointment in them.
I don't know whether I identify with Moses, as my friend wondered. I think I do know that the juggling of glee and sadness -- which I have mentioned so often in these ditties -- must be joined by attempts at another balancing act ... the ability to love, that is, to envy those missing parts of ourselves that we see in the beloved and to accept the reality of an unavoidable disappointment in anything or anyone, thus idealized.
I dunno, but worth thinking-on, some more.
Rest in Peace, Shirley!
M told me that Shirley Temple Black, the curly-girly that boys and girls alike fell in love with ... Heidi, the naturally born physical therapist who cures her friend, Klara's hysterical inability to walk, had died at 85. But that wasn't on my mind when I rose.
I guess the "you" of the above song refers back to Old Man Moses and the suggestion made by a friend that I, maybe ... just, maybe, identified with my Dad, a raging Moses of the 20th C, as well as the Moses who lived maybe 3400 years ago..
My second thought was a "aha!." With all my protests against such identifications, I could hardly deny that when I wanted to pen a painted document commemorating my youngest child's confirmation into her people, I began it not with some modern poetry, not with Shakespeare or Omar Khayyam and not even with the ambivalent Swan Song blessings that Moses offered up, at the end, but with his poem that followed.
"Ear up, Heavens and let the Earth hear the spoken words of my mouth." He continues his introduction describing what is to come in his soliloquy ... "My teaching will drop like heavy rain ... my words will flow as dew ... as the light rains upon the Desheh and and the later rains upon the blades of grass."
Moses, at least at the end, wanted to wax poetic; so do I .. Maybe we both shoulda sung: "On the good ship, Lollipop, it's a sweet trip to the candy shop."
Alas ... Moses turn to the perfection of his God who spoke with him face to face but couldn't stand back from his horror at the "twisted and perverse generation" that was his life's-job to lead., "A stupid people? And not wise!" He advises them to seek counsel from parents and the aged .... that would be him, I suppose ... and now it would be us. He clearly worries that without him, nothing good will be allowed to stand.
If you read Moses' "slam," (Deuteronomy 32) you may feel the arrhythmic rhythm of a person falling between two stools ... the one representing the restful lap of his loving God, the same one who is about to end his journey just shy of his goal ... the wish to enter his Promised Land. Crane wrote something like the following about life's journey and our hopes:
I saw a man
Pursuing the horizon.
Round and round, they sped.
I accosted him,
"You can never," I said.
"You lie," he said and ran on.
Moses' other stool? I suppose that was resident in his love for his people and served as good ballast for his opposing sense of disappointment in them.
I don't know whether I identify with Moses, as my friend wondered. I think I do know that the juggling of glee and sadness -- which I have mentioned so often in these ditties -- must be joined by attempts at another balancing act ... the ability to love, that is, to envy those missing parts of ourselves that we see in the beloved and to accept the reality of an unavoidable disappointment in anything or anyone, thus idealized.
I dunno, but worth thinking-on, some more.
Rest in Peace, Shirley!
Monday, February 10, 2014
What to Say?
More Snow to Blow
Less Time for Old Mo-ses ...
Today
Need to return but, for now, extra time
goes back to the interferences laid down
on my visitors' path by Old Man Winter.
This, too, shall pass.
"Shovel, shovel, shovel thine walk
With Equanimity ...
Never get Sour, or Dour or Glower
At what Life has Given Thee"
Less Time for Old Mo-ses ...
Today
Need to return but, for now, extra time
goes back to the interferences laid down
on my visitors' path by Old Man Winter.
This, too, shall pass.
"Shovel, shovel, shovel thine walk
With Equanimity ...
Never get Sour, or Dour or Glower
At what Life has Given Thee"
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Moses, Moses and Me
Until they composted him, Lee Hayes would sing his get up and go song .... "Old age is golden, or so I’ve heard said, But sometimes I wonder, as I crawl into bed, With my ears in a drawer, my teeth in a cup, My eyes on the table until I wake up. As sleep dims my vision, I say to myself: Is there anything else I should lay on the shelf? But, though nations are warring, and Congress is vexed, We’ll still stick around to see what happens next!"
Odd, as we get older the thoughts that play with our sensibilities before and after sleep .... the hypnagogic and hypnopompic visions that are always best left on our pillows. This morning, I rose with a question someone had asked me recently .... It was not so long ago that I noticed glimmers of the stutter that accompanied me for about 28 years early on in my life. I sought this person out as they had knowledge of breathing and other parts of life, as well. She had asked me whether I ever considered how I felt about Moses, the betimes angry desert Lawgiver and intimate of his God in whose presence he walked. "After all," she wondered, "you, like Moses, stuttered and recognize an ancient angry shadow that maybe has gone dormant but must still be there."
I forgot about it, woke up this AM and wondered how I felt about Ole Moe! My dad's name was Moses and he was one of the angry soldier-boys who "came marching home, hurrah, hurrah" from WWII. He may have not had a speech impediment, but I suspect that his four kids at times may have wished otherwise.
Moses? Many are the times when I've cited his Five Books ... Interestingly, I more often cite Book I, the one that starts "In the beginning" and doesn't get as far as the Moses story. I've not been critical of him in my writings, but I've also not been praising of him. I've long thought of him as a sharp cookie, not humble like Scripture claims, except and interestingly, when he recoils from taking on a leadership post with his people and when Moses tries to beg it off: But, God, ... I am foreskinned of the lips (whatever that means .... he uses the words 'aral sphasayim' and that would be a literal translation) .... How can I "Go down moses way down into Egypt Land and tell Old Pha-a-aroah to let my people go" when I stutter. Outside of that singular situation at the iconic bush, Moses is a powerful, can-do and sometimes explosive guy.
Me, explosive? I dunno. No one has confused me with Jesus and, in fairness, no one has accused me of being WildMan Barrabas, either. I am interested in my "fuse," but I fear that I can't gage that ... others must.
Me, a "can-do" kinda guy? Well, yeah! Indeed, that's what I and maybe GuntherDog both miss about this Last Quarter gig. Gunther used to run like the wind and I (once upon a youngish guy) would think nothing of building walls or driving extremely fast cars. I "can-do" plumbing and while I would leave a 60' Maple to the young, I see no reason not to take on a 35 footer ... none have hit the house, yet! I once had to build a retaining wall .... mostly about 5' tall and maybe two-thirds around a 70 foot long ellipse. Engineers told me I couldn't built it with the design I worked out. I listened, conscripted my sons into service, and off we went. It may fail someday but 30 years afterwards, it holds up the dirt just the way a retaining wall should. I haven't been electrocuted, yet, and while I lost some friends after writing a controversial book in the 90's and could barely stand on my hips after 10 months of heavy writing, when I reread the book every few years, I still like the author, even if we disagree, here and there.
Me, a Lawgiver? I'm pretty comfortable with other folk's decisions as longer as they harm no one too much. Old Moe and his God had these two kinds of Laws ... sometimes, translated as Statutes (Chukim) and Laws (Mishpatim). The Laws were those that seemed good candidates for what some Supreme Courtiers think of as Natural Laws. Thou shall not murder .... thou shall not steal ... Thou shall not trip a blind person or curse a deaf one ...etc. ... Laws that make the community run well ... allow for individuals to live the Good Life in polities of mutual concern and interest. But, then, he had these other laws. OK to eat most parts of cows but no parts of dogs. OK to wear linen garments! OK to wear wool garments. Not OK to wear wool and linen garments. I got the "Teach your children dilligently" but what's the haute couture value of fringes on garments and what's the problem with pulling some hair or raking your skin when you hear that someone you loved died? I'm hard-pressed to find those kinds of statutes in me and the older I get, the closer to Overtime, if y'permit me, the less interested I get in things and theories that make little sense.
Howard, you're ignoring how often you quote the non-anti-gay portions of Leviticus 19 and forgetting, too, your oft-cited claim that Moses -- by only addressing the pragmatic Z'vulon and not the ethereal Yissasschar in his swan-song-blessing at the end of the Pentateuch and just before he died -- was a fan, just like you, of what the Old French Scholar and scriptural commentary just mentioned, Rashi, called "prakmatia."
OK, I get the picture. I just reread the above and I find a kernel of truth in the claim that I might identify with Old Man Moses. A kernel of truth all the more evident in my defensiveness. Damn! Sometimes people read us better than we read ourselves. No surprise, I suppose. As a young man, I identified with four old men and took them on as mentors. A Biblical scholar who walked the Earth as my grandfather. Two Mathematicians ... one, Kazimierz K., who nurtured my love of Mathematics and another, Alexander G., who guided me in a direction that had me leave it in favor of something ... aha! ... more pragmatic. Then, there was Harold F., who helped me see the connection of my speech impediment to the sharp letters I revelled in writing and that so often mussed others' dander during the first half of the Second Quarter. I think I need to hear the non-Old-Men voices, too.
And then there was Lee Hayes, and Burl Ives, and ... oh, yeah ... my two sons who are beginning to look like Old Men! I could learn from them, too. There's still time, perhaps! In the Last Quarter, we should be able to laugh at ourselves. No?
Wonder if Old Moe was cool with laughing at his squeamishness when he needed Zipporah, his wife and Mom of their first born, to wield the circumcisers knife in correcting for not her husband's foreskinned lips, but for their son's foreskinned penis.
In the Delivery Room, the first thing I noticed about our only daughter was that she was born perfect .... "no surgical corrections needed on this one." (M's OB quickly complimented me on my perspicacity.)
I need to come back to this ... OBVIOUSLY! later!
Odd, as we get older the thoughts that play with our sensibilities before and after sleep .... the hypnagogic and hypnopompic visions that are always best left on our pillows. This morning, I rose with a question someone had asked me recently .... It was not so long ago that I noticed glimmers of the stutter that accompanied me for about 28 years early on in my life. I sought this person out as they had knowledge of breathing and other parts of life, as well. She had asked me whether I ever considered how I felt about Moses, the betimes angry desert Lawgiver and intimate of his God in whose presence he walked. "After all," she wondered, "you, like Moses, stuttered and recognize an ancient angry shadow that maybe has gone dormant but must still be there."
I forgot about it, woke up this AM and wondered how I felt about Ole Moe! My dad's name was Moses and he was one of the angry soldier-boys who "came marching home, hurrah, hurrah" from WWII. He may have not had a speech impediment, but I suspect that his four kids at times may have wished otherwise.
Moses? Many are the times when I've cited his Five Books ... Interestingly, I more often cite Book I, the one that starts "In the beginning" and doesn't get as far as the Moses story. I've not been critical of him in my writings, but I've also not been praising of him. I've long thought of him as a sharp cookie, not humble like Scripture claims, except and interestingly, when he recoils from taking on a leadership post with his people and when Moses tries to beg it off: But, God, ... I am foreskinned of the lips (whatever that means .... he uses the words 'aral sphasayim' and that would be a literal translation) .... How can I "Go down moses way down into Egypt Land and tell Old Pha-a-aroah to let my people go" when I stutter. Outside of that singular situation at the iconic bush, Moses is a powerful, can-do and sometimes explosive guy.
Me, explosive? I dunno. No one has confused me with Jesus and, in fairness, no one has accused me of being WildMan Barrabas, either. I am interested in my "fuse," but I fear that I can't gage that ... others must.
Me, a "can-do" kinda guy? Well, yeah! Indeed, that's what I and maybe GuntherDog both miss about this Last Quarter gig. Gunther used to run like the wind and I (once upon a youngish guy) would think nothing of building walls or driving extremely fast cars. I "can-do" plumbing and while I would leave a 60' Maple to the young, I see no reason not to take on a 35 footer ... none have hit the house, yet! I once had to build a retaining wall .... mostly about 5' tall and maybe two-thirds around a 70 foot long ellipse. Engineers told me I couldn't built it with the design I worked out. I listened, conscripted my sons into service, and off we went. It may fail someday but 30 years afterwards, it holds up the dirt just the way a retaining wall should. I haven't been electrocuted, yet, and while I lost some friends after writing a controversial book in the 90's and could barely stand on my hips after 10 months of heavy writing, when I reread the book every few years, I still like the author, even if we disagree, here and there.
Me, a Lawgiver? I'm pretty comfortable with other folk's decisions as longer as they harm no one too much. Old Moe and his God had these two kinds of Laws ... sometimes, translated as Statutes (Chukim) and Laws (Mishpatim). The Laws were those that seemed good candidates for what some Supreme Courtiers think of as Natural Laws. Thou shall not murder .... thou shall not steal ... Thou shall not trip a blind person or curse a deaf one ...etc. ... Laws that make the community run well ... allow for individuals to live the Good Life in polities of mutual concern and interest. But, then, he had these other laws. OK to eat most parts of cows but no parts of dogs. OK to wear linen garments! OK to wear wool garments. Not OK to wear wool and linen garments. I got the "Teach your children dilligently" but what's the haute couture value of fringes on garments and what's the problem with pulling some hair or raking your skin when you hear that someone you loved died? I'm hard-pressed to find those kinds of statutes in me and the older I get, the closer to Overtime, if y'permit me, the less interested I get in things and theories that make little sense.
Howard, you're ignoring how often you quote the non-anti-gay portions of Leviticus 19 and forgetting, too, your oft-cited claim that Moses -- by only addressing the pragmatic Z'vulon and not the ethereal Yissasschar in his swan-song-blessing at the end of the Pentateuch and just before he died -- was a fan, just like you, of what the Old French Scholar and scriptural commentary just mentioned, Rashi, called "prakmatia."
OK, I get the picture. I just reread the above and I find a kernel of truth in the claim that I might identify with Old Man Moses. A kernel of truth all the more evident in my defensiveness. Damn! Sometimes people read us better than we read ourselves. No surprise, I suppose. As a young man, I identified with four old men and took them on as mentors. A Biblical scholar who walked the Earth as my grandfather. Two Mathematicians ... one, Kazimierz K., who nurtured my love of Mathematics and another, Alexander G., who guided me in a direction that had me leave it in favor of something ... aha! ... more pragmatic. Then, there was Harold F., who helped me see the connection of my speech impediment to the sharp letters I revelled in writing and that so often mussed others' dander during the first half of the Second Quarter. I think I need to hear the non-Old-Men voices, too.
And then there was Lee Hayes, and Burl Ives, and ... oh, yeah ... my two sons who are beginning to look like Old Men! I could learn from them, too. There's still time, perhaps! In the Last Quarter, we should be able to laugh at ourselves. No?
Wonder if Old Moe was cool with laughing at his squeamishness when he needed Zipporah, his wife and Mom of their first born, to wield the circumcisers knife in correcting for not her husband's foreskinned lips, but for their son's foreskinned penis.
In the Delivery Room, the first thing I noticed about our only daughter was that she was born perfect .... "no surgical corrections needed on this one." (M's OB quickly complimented me on my perspicacity.)
I need to come back to this ... OBVIOUSLY! later!
Saturday, February 8, 2014
"I sure am feeling sorry for the pony"
Rogers and Hammerstein in lyrically puzzling over the land wars between the Farmers and the Cowboys have characters attempt to present the opposition in a more appealing light ... one goes somethin like this for the Cowboy:
The road he treads is difficult and stony.
He drives for days on end
With just a pony for a friend ...
When the roasting voice comes in ...
I sure am feeling sorry for the pony.
My Pony? GuntherDog accompanies me through old age. He sleeps in an old overstuffed chair that once sat in M's parents' den where M's Dad tended his fish and read the paper ... watched hockey games and early television. Gunther tries to climb on the bed but a mere nod from his Mom, my Lady, M and he toddles dutifully from bed to chair. Lately, he's been slower at it.
Early AM, I get up, run to the bathroom for a moment and dress sufficiently to get GuntherDog downstairs to the door ... out to pee. Gunther has, for years, paused at the top landing.
"I'm not goin' down stairs till you pet my head, Schmuck."
I don't know why he lacks the respect to call me Dad or Dear Ole Dad or Sir, if he must. So, I pet his head and tell him he's a Good Boy and doesn't have to call me Schmuck. Gunther relents and comes down for his AM toilette.
But I don't have it right and that saddens me. It's hard for me to accept that Gunther is my good Last Quarter "bud" .... that Gunther, as M pointed out to me, yesterday, chances are has some arthritis ... just like his loving Mom and Dad. When we treat someone even a little as an object, we forget that they're aging and suffer all the vagaries and vicissitudes of aging that we suffer. Whether we're idolizing them or depreciating them, when we stop treating our others as changing Souls, we're mercilessly objectifying them. Whether a friend who can't come out and play anymore ... a lover who ain't what s-he used to be ("many long years, ago," as the song goes) ... or a pooch whose gone through too many of the Snows of Killa-ma-mojo and now walks with a limp, pauses before jumping off a chair or is frightened to do that four-legs-flying run down the stairs .... whenever we forget that we're aging together .... whenever we do that we neglect the quintessential human-ness or poochiness of our beloved.
Aging is tough ... Moses goes out with a plea ... 'God! You've just begun with me ... Don't stop, now.' Jesus goes with his Eli, Eli, lamah Sabachtani (which either means my Lord! Why have you abandoned me or My Lord! Why do you slaughter me) and a quick 'forgive them.' Or Mohammad's plaint laying across Aisha's lap that his preference is for God and Eternity .... last decades, last moments, Last Quarters may well be the appropriate time for reconnecting with the Soulness of our others ... not their fixed objectivity but their evanescent and ever-changing subjectivity .... ah! for those of us already there, it's the only time.
Woof! As it is not written in Isaiah 40: A bark calls out from the wilderness .... turn, ye, the way to me, Mom and Dad, you're all I got and I need my Kibble.
Be right there, Gunther!
The road he treads is difficult and stony.
He drives for days on end
With just a pony for a friend ...
When the roasting voice comes in ...
I sure am feeling sorry for the pony.
My Pony? GuntherDog accompanies me through old age. He sleeps in an old overstuffed chair that once sat in M's parents' den where M's Dad tended his fish and read the paper ... watched hockey games and early television. Gunther tries to climb on the bed but a mere nod from his Mom, my Lady, M and he toddles dutifully from bed to chair. Lately, he's been slower at it.
Early AM, I get up, run to the bathroom for a moment and dress sufficiently to get GuntherDog downstairs to the door ... out to pee. Gunther has, for years, paused at the top landing.
"I'm not goin' down stairs till you pet my head, Schmuck."
I don't know why he lacks the respect to call me Dad or Dear Ole Dad or Sir, if he must. So, I pet his head and tell him he's a Good Boy and doesn't have to call me Schmuck. Gunther relents and comes down for his AM toilette.
But I don't have it right and that saddens me. It's hard for me to accept that Gunther is my good Last Quarter "bud" .... that Gunther, as M pointed out to me, yesterday, chances are has some arthritis ... just like his loving Mom and Dad. When we treat someone even a little as an object, we forget that they're aging and suffer all the vagaries and vicissitudes of aging that we suffer. Whether we're idolizing them or depreciating them, when we stop treating our others as changing Souls, we're mercilessly objectifying them. Whether a friend who can't come out and play anymore ... a lover who ain't what s-he used to be ("many long years, ago," as the song goes) ... or a pooch whose gone through too many of the Snows of Killa-ma-mojo and now walks with a limp, pauses before jumping off a chair or is frightened to do that four-legs-flying run down the stairs .... whenever we forget that we're aging together .... whenever we do that we neglect the quintessential human-ness or poochiness of our beloved.
Aging is tough ... Moses goes out with a plea ... 'God! You've just begun with me ... Don't stop, now.' Jesus goes with his Eli, Eli, lamah Sabachtani (which either means my Lord! Why have you abandoned me or My Lord! Why do you slaughter me) and a quick 'forgive them.' Or Mohammad's plaint laying across Aisha's lap that his preference is for God and Eternity .... last decades, last moments, Last Quarters may well be the appropriate time for reconnecting with the Soulness of our others ... not their fixed objectivity but their evanescent and ever-changing subjectivity .... ah! for those of us already there, it's the only time.
- It's 600 AM, do you know where your dog is?
- Have you given him (or her) a hug, yet, today.
Woof! As it is not written in Isaiah 40: A bark calls out from the wilderness .... turn, ye, the way to me, Mom and Dad, you're all I got and I need my Kibble.
Be right there, Gunther!
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