Why Do We Go On?

There was a curious synchronicity between my plans for yesterday, my birthday, and hearing -- the previous night -- that Robin Williams had died. Two weeks ago, plans were set with a friend to meet and discuss a piece written by Annie Pink Reich, first wife of the colorful -- if crazed -- psychoanalyst Willhelm the Mad.

Well, that's not funny ... when a young medical student in treatment with a rather grandiose psychiatrist gets married pregnant, as the biographers claim occurred in 1922 or something. In any case, by 1949, she wrote a piece about a young lady who would use physical comedy to impersonate and embarrass other women, while capturing the attention of other men ... the paper was in the Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, KS and was called something like 'Notes on the Grotesque Comic Sublimation.' Maybe, it's out there on line somewhere.

In any case, thinking among analysts was different in those days and had a lot to do with one's genitals ... their form and function. I tend nowadays to fret maybe-silly but different questions, like:

How might the American Constitution (or any other, for that matter) read 

if it had been written by a bunch of Fourth Quarter activists ... 

say, the Grey Panthers?

How might the theories of the various psychoanalytic schools read 

if they had been written by somewhat older folk? 

Freud wrote his 

Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality a year or so before he turned 50. 

Similar conditions existed in other schools. 

Melanie Klein wrote her scathing judgments 

about the grotesquerie of thoughts unconsciously 

-- or so she claimed -- buried in the minds of her own children. 

(One might not be surprised to hear that her daughter, Melitta, 

chose to present to a scientific meeting rather than speak at 

"Mother, My Dear's" funeral.) 

All this is to say that much is written by the young 

at times when they are caught up in the helter-skelter 

parts of raising kids, earning a living, 

and continuing to prove that one is still hot.  

I have no idea why Robin Williams decided that it was preferable to leave himself for witnesses and survivors hung, rather than continue into that Last Quarter of Life that he had just begun with all that it entails.

Those who have been reading my senescent notes for these past several years well know that I believe that continuing to Play in the Fourth Quarter requires a juggling of glee and sadness ... Each of these two very basic emotions -- one representing the dog's wagging tail at saying hello to a friend and the other the inevitable downward tail when GuntherDog or his cousins are left home alone or when he has to leave something behind and buried -- has two forms ... one of which, I would say, makes one vulnerable to feeling it's just not worth it.

The two forms I refer to will, again, be familiar to those who have been following my path through these scribbles. Either Sadness or Happiness can be used to bring others closer. The Baby calls out in the middle of the night with tears and cries that speak volumes:

Be with me. 

It's lonely in this room and -- lookee here -- 

I haven't figured out how to come to you or feed myself, yet.

Please!

In much the same way, the happy child invites others with his or her smile. Eventually, "the kid" learns that when two people share the same space and see the same thing at that moment, there is pleasure, and "the kid" learns the Art of bringing another to that same spot ... learns the Art of the Punchline and well performed physical comedy routines that bring them into the same space-time moment as the other.

The dark flip-side of both these human capacities -- sadness and glee -- uses these same capacities to push the other away. Depression is not, as the TV Big Pharma ads portray, mucho sadness. No, depression is sadness coupled with a wish or propensity to push the other away.

Life sucks.

I'm going to my bedroom to play dead.

I prefer that human shaped bottle filled with the golden nepenthe of life to you.

Wake me up when the game is over.

Your presence makes it no easier to accept the crazy vagaries of living ... 

excuse me but I need to go hang myself, ... now.

And we all know how humor can be used as a distancing activity ... we've all been the victim of sarcasm, facetiousness and obsequious-flattery-with-a-knife's-twist ... "ha-ha!"

I don't know Robin Williams' story. I was moved to tears and laughter for 35 or more years by his portrayals of a whacked out but warm alien (watching with my own youngest whacked-out pre-school spawn), a good neurologist, a therapist, a teacher ... a father in love with his children -- I was quite moved by Mrs. Doubtfire. Wish someone had been about to convince him that there were enough people out there who could be close with him... enough, that is, to make it worthwhile to go on for another twenty years with physical aches and emotional pains that attend playing in maturity.

Or maybe his story is very different -- I don't rightly know.

Annie Reich in her 40's knew the answers to such questions. The answers have significantly complexified since I left the age of courtings and begats. Playing in the Last Quarter is, in no small part, about learning to live without answers.

"They Say It's My Birthday"

How does the Beatles song go ... "Gonna have a good time ... Yes, I'm going to a party, party ..." Oh, my God! Half of the Beatles are dead and the other half get let out of Nursing Homes hopefully on the same day other Last Quarter Denizens -- those, that is, who still want to hear them perform "Memorial Concerts" for dead Beatles -- get day-passes to sniff-in the dope-smells of their adolescent years at the concerts.

Well, as far as I know, M didn't get us tickets to go listen to Ringo and Paul (I wouldn't be a Fourth Quarter type if I didn't rattle off: "Do you know what concert tickets cost these days to hear Sir Paul sing in suspenders and Depends?" ...  You say I've gone off the Deep-End! OK ... I'm too old to argue) and I know of no parties for either myself or my 6 year old Alter Ego, Melmo, about whom my youngest grandchild opined: "Melmo's not Real; he just lives in a Stump." Not quite 5 year old C-A was referring to the 7 foot Totem I carved in the back yard when Melmo was just turning 4. 'Melmo ... Big Boy, now.'

No. No parties. No parties, as far as I know. I did survive the sort-of race car driving experience two days ago that I mentioned in an earlier posting. M took pictures of me on the track driving like an Old Man with Colitis running to a roadside bathroom ... Old Man goes "zoom-zoom." There was a guy next to me quite often, Tom ... about half my age with an obviously uncontrolled appetite who was trying to prove that we could still get killed even if it wasn't a real race. When Tom's my age, I suspect he won't fit into a panel van. There IS justice in the World.

Well. Maybe that was my birthday present from my older son, C-A's Dad (Oldest spawn produces youngest grand-spawn ... I'll leave it to the imagination to figure out his game) ... same C-A who thinks Melmo isn't real. Or maybe it was his way of limiting the probabilities that he's gonna have to get me another present.

Old Man Bitching ... OK, I'll stop.

On a positive note, I got what couldn't be much better of a birthday present. D, who married a dear friend (also, D ... indeed, they go by the handle D&D) about 20 years ago sent me a note: 'Ah! You're the author of the Old Fart Blog. Luv it! Read it all the time.'

Well, thanks D ... I needed that.

Maybe D

Will agree

Some time

To post

That would be

Fine.

She has all the bona fidies. She's Fourth Quarter. Just got back from France, i.e., she's still Playing in this Quarter. And she's married to someone who in my counting of 20-year-long quarters is still Playing in Overtime. Pretty cool! And, at least one person must be getting tired of my painfully tired humor ... besides M.

OK. Enough; I could take a nap, now. It is after 5:30 AM ... There is a house-rule never to nap before 6:00, but it is my Birthday.

So, with a grateful nod to M who has stuck by me for 49+ years and has been kind enough not to show me pics of me in a racing helmet (maybe, if I'd've been wearing Spandex), this orphan is gonna go to his office (Oh, I'm already there) to work and then go hunting for a gluten, dairy and sugar-free birthday cake over which candles can burn ... in part to celebrate me ... in part to commemorate the years that my youngest learned of the joys of good humor watching Mork and Mindy.

In Memory of Robin Williams (1951-2014) 

who stopped Playing much too soon.

  

Feeling ....

Thanks, Skittlesbrain, for you comment about the expression "I don't care" -- when expressed with feeling. Shandor Feldman, a long time ago, comment similarly that most often when the word "just" was invoked, that it represented a denial of "much more."

So, maybe we could offer up a general hypothesis about admitting to hurt or any sense of being moved by something a great deal.

One of my most frequently brought-to-mind examples has to do with mourning. One is in the midst of burying someone or saying goodbye to someone near and dear, and someone comes up and says one of two things:

A. It was a blessing that the died so quickly and didn't suffer.
B. It was a blessing that Mortimer hung around long enough for you to say your goodbyes.

Apparently, there's C., but I don't know that that would be that Old Mortie hung around not long enough to suffer but long enough to say 'ta-ta'  or that he stayed just long enough to suffer but missed good-bye by a couple of hours.

OK, OK ... I'm beating up a Dead Mortimer on a Blog about getting Old.

In any case, the older I've gotten, the less likely I am to answer questions cavalierly, as if I wanted to express a wish for more substantive communication. Someone comes to my office with the requisite "so, how are you?" It's become my habit to think about it briefly and to tell them.

So, SkittleBrain, I appreciate your reaching out to me; Indeed, just a moment ago and as M is still sleeping, I told GuntherDog how good it was to have responses from the world. BTW, his only response was to call me a schmuck and to go back to sleep.

Any case, folk .... I'm off to play Old Man Racer with my oldest child who is, also, too old for playing Bumper Cars in serious race cars. M is coming to watch and if I don't come back, it's been, what to say, "just right." Life is -- to my way of thinking -- a canvas that we are given when we arrive ... with the option to paint; I feel blessed to have had and to have taken some opportunity to paint upon it.

There are tricks, by the way, to not disintegrating against the wall on a racetrack .... But foremost among them may be not abandoning a decision to follow a certain line around turns. Decisions must be made and some of them kept to ( even if it leaves a preposition or two dangling).

Vaia con Dios!

Come, Again? Whaddya'say?

Language, noun (fr. Latin: Lingua or tongue) -- any one of many specific sets of rules by means of which a group or multiple groups of animals miscommunicate (and betimes communicate).

I recall wondering about language in my early years of studying sacred texts and old languages. How could it be, for instance, that Sacer, in Latin, could describe something that was either Sacred or Profane. Or how could it be that Kadosh, in Biblical Hebrew, means Sacred, while Kadesh -- spelled identically the same in Scripture -- identifies a Male Prostitute. And what, I wondered, did it mean when one person says to another: "you made me angry." I remember being pleased in one of those unisex bathrooms of the Sixties when I found penned on a column the following successive messages which at least questions the meaning of such constructions as "you made me angry":

 MY mother made 

me a homosexual.

  If I get her the wool, 

will she make me one, too?

Or as an easy ti find example, in my scribbles on this so-called Blog, I seem to travel without fanfare from speaking of The Last Quarter and The Fourth Quarter of Life, as if they were the same ... with but a summary nod to the possibility of Overtime when invoking the Blog's second title. Language as miscommunication or am I communicating something about the specific unconscious connection in my mind between getting old and dying.

So ... some quick (and dirty) examples.

Today, in the Jewish faith traditions, is referred to as Sabbath Nachamu ... sometimes doubly mistranslated as the Sabbath of Consolation or Sabbath Comfort. Indeed, the word "sabbath" should never have been rendered as the proper noun "Sabbath" but was used pretty clearly in biblical writing and is best rendered as the common noun "restfulness."   Secondly, the word Nachamu, used by Isaiah quite a long time ago, so fascinated me that it, to this day, it appears as 'the plate number' of my roadster. Everyone who sees it suspects, I suspect, that NACHAMU is not likely a number, by the way, and some-not-so-few make the mistake of asking this Word-Nerd what it could possibly mean.
...
...

Glad you asked.

....

Think I'll tell you.

...
...

Handl's Messiah, performed so often during the Christmas Season, begins in its English translated form of Isaiah 41 (?): "Comfort, Ye! Comfort, Ye, my People!" In Isaiah's language: Nachamu, Nachamu Ami!

As a young Seminarian, this troubled me, for in Genesis when God is pissed off about his sinning creations, the same root-word (va'Yi'Nachem) is used right before God decides to knock off all his creations except Noah and his seafaring zoo ....  but it's meaning is more or less antithetical to comfort. "And God became disillusioned about his Creations."

As neither a linguist nor a lexicographer, I made peace with my own sense that the word, in its many forms, referred to a moving from one state of mind to another ... from mourning to comfort ... from pleasure in one's Creations to disgust .... I came to translate it in my mind as CHILL or THERE IS ANOTHER WAY and thought it appropriate to, therefore, adorn my roadster ripping down the road with its license plate: NACHAMU! .... TAKE A CHILL PILL, BABY, AND GET OFF MY TAIL! (The fact that no one would understand? Hell! I need some humor in my life, too.)

In any case, my interest has long been in language ... its communications .... its miscommunications.

This week has been no different in terms of easily-mined examples and during what seemed a never-ending 7 days, at least the following has stopped my thinking for a moment or more. I won't belabor the point of how these represent miscommunications ... it would, I fear, too often lead to further miscommunication.

******

"I have a different way of seeing things."

This expression pretty uniformly is heard as 

"I think you're wrong."

******

Indeed, the "I" in the above ... in "I have a different way" 

is not infrequently heard as 

"I think anyone but an ass agrees with me."

******

"I consider what you said offensive"

is often heard as "I feel hurt or offended by you."

Now, that's a good one, as it puts the purportedly "offended party" 
in the position of being asked to explain.

******

Flipping some of this over:

"You made me angry"

often ignores the principal reality of "I am angry" 
and situates the feeling firmly in the other person's behavior.

******

"I heard you apologize"

is misunderstood as

"I accept your apology," 

an idea somewhat foreign or -- at least -- complex to me.

******

Indeed, the whole idea of forgiveness needs a tune-up to my way of thinking. Many a visitor to my office has struggled with what that means when someone asks them for forgiveness and I've never left such explorations feeling satisfied.

******

"I love you but I don't like you or what you did."

It was maybe 50 years ago when my kids were young that the Psychologist Ginott wrote a book recommending such communications to kids. 'Focus on the behavior,' he would suggest. That works for me, too. But the idea that I continue to love something that I don't like is not so easy to take in. Maybe, if hate and love weren't seen as opposites, but rather both seen as opposites of indifference, as some Viennese Doc once said, maybe things would be different. 

******

Hey! If you have other examples of language used as miscommunication, I'd love to hear from you ... here or at hhcovitz@aol.com. I'm confident there are examples-aplenty in the above posting.

Mass Murderer

I talk a great deal about balancing Sadness and Glee ... juggling these feelings, together. But there are lots of human experiences that require such balance. I think of a few that come quickly to mind:

Self Love vs. Love of Others

Others' Perception of Us vs. Our Own Sense of Ourselves

Humility vs. Self-Esteem.

many others.

This weekend was full of a great deal. My oldest grandchild is going off to school ... Sadness and Glee for a whole bunch of more or less obvious reasons. We had a party ... parties are good. Years ago, people on both sides of her family would show up, especially for Birthdays and Holidays. She was the first grandchild for all the four grandparents and the first niece for uncles and aunts, alike. We called ourselves her "entourage" and would arise like devoted fans regaling a rock star or like Pilgrims bringing presents to our Princess or god. And she was/is a pretty cool kid. A blessing!

The weekend was, in addition, full of discussions (that's a nicey-nice word for knock-down-verbal brawls) about the World's situations ... well, frankly, its Wars and Killing Fields. The cyberworld and the dinner tables both were easily caught up, particularly, about the Israeli incursion into Gaza and the nearly 2,000 who have been killed ... and the rebirth of Russian Nationalism.

A visitor had already reported being more or less ostracized at work for her sympathies for the non-combatant Palestinian deaths. A head of the Political Arm of Hamas had already disinterred the blood libel, accusing all Jews of baking their Passover Matzahs with the blood of non-Jewish children ... I suppose, accusing them of transgressing the rules of being Kosher, at the same time. A colleague online had shot off the classic anti-Semitic shot across the bow: Jews are the chosen people and therefore subject to different rules, a benign comment that historically has presaged the terrorizing or killing or ostracizing of Jews. Another colleague thought it a good joke.

The world was abuzz with discussions and arguments about who was at fault in that little piece of land that seems to foment so much argumentation ... I refer to Israel and Gaza and the West Bank ... a strip of land that represents barely a Piss in the Ocean amongst the great nations of the Middle East ... 1-2% of the land-mass ... 2% of the population. The World, as I said, was abuzz with this when I sat down for dinner with M, my closest friends, and their eldest grand-daughter. Right or wrong, I had expressed my belief that in spite of the devastation and killing of nearly 2,000 Palestinians and the bombing of schools and at least one hospital that the Israeli response was restrained by Middle Eastern standards. After all, the Syrians had managed to destroy cities and kill 150,000 while displacing millions. Hossein had gassed the Kurds. The Iran-Iraq War claimed over 1,000,000 -- many children, in the count. ISIS was on the rampage and Mosul had just been emptied of Christians ... denizens of Nineveh/Mosul since forever.

The young woman began interpreting my comments as approval of the results ... I was a baby-killer and a hospital-bomber. She screamed. She hollered. Her grandmother screamed at her. Her grandfather quietly disagreed with me ... well, maybe not so quietly but respectfully. After all, we have been friends since 1968 and, in that time, he had ample opportunity to consider whether I was in favor of killing babies. And he was 73.

I make a point of saying that he was 73. There are advantages that accrue to living in the Last Quarter of life. I could certainly understand a 24 year old's fervor and even admire it. Still, the years make it more likely that we develop what I call "The Presumption of Good Intentions" ... the propensity for allowing the possibility that the Other -- the one who disagrees with me -- is coming from a position in which s/he has  maybe-not-perfectly-thought-out but still not thoroughly unreasoned systems of thinking.

Ah. The 24 year old will grow to consider that Great Uncle Howard might not have been a perfidious advocate of infanticide ... whether those children are from his ethnic group or another. Howard will have gone to his reward, sadly, by then.

Cry for Howard!

Metaphors and Similes and Similar Mixed Messages

I was restless during the night ... cardiac arrhythmias are a bitch .... yesterday had its comfortable and uncomfortable interactions and matters of wellness in my future generations has set off a series of waves that come through the rest of my existence periodically and with sadness. The waves are coming right now every hour or two and warm my eyes .... I don't have any inclination to rid myself of these waves nor do they cancel the similarly periodic appearances  of playfulness and glee. It's like so many days on the beach when waves come to the Atlantic Ocean from both the NorthEast and the SouthEast. The waves of later life in the Fourth Quarter don't seem to be prone to the cancellation of competing waves in childhood and youth. Maybe that's what can sometimes be confused with Wisdom .... could be that it isn't related to great insight but to the capacity to juggle glee with sadness.

Anyway, two metaphors or are they similes came into my radar, yesterday. One was from a book on mindful living by Meng Tan, one of the early workers at Google. He focuses on mindfulness (both meditative and during activity), kindness and the hopes for World Peace -- the third being a long term aspirational goal. But talking about mindfulness, he compares it to riding a bike c. p31). When you learn how to ride, the central balacing act, he says, is learning that when your bike is falling left? turn right. And, indeed, that is the intuitive action to take. Alas, this is one of those times when intuition just doesn't cut it. If you follow Tan's method, almost immediately, you'll be scraping your skin off the pavement.

No. When learning how to bike, one needs to train the body to act counter-intuitively .... when falling left? turn slightly toward the left and the bike will right itself. This may well be among the many things people must learn when they're concentrating or focusing or meditating and an errant thought pops into your mind. When that occurs, one learns -- again, counterintuitively -- to note -- even to pay some attention -- to the interfering thought ... otherwise, as on a bike, all may be lost.

The second turn of a phrase came from an online discussion. Someone opined: I approach people like they were a coloring book. Duh! Do you bring your crayons, I thought to say ... No, again. I prefer to borrow from WR Bion who suggested that you enter a meeting with another "without memory or desire" ... and, I might add, without your own crayons that may speak of rigid expectation for the encounter or of the other. Perhaps, among the highest joys is watching someone else (a child? a grandchild? a partner) play with coloring in their own pictures ... in the early morning light .... in the bleached out afternoon Sun ... and even in the dusky richness of light that shows special coloration quite late in the day.

The rumor that the Old are Wise is questionable -- to my way of thinking ... That they may accept the counterintuitive and can often wait a bit as pictures fill out on their own may, nonetheless, appear to be so.

Happy Birthday

M and I have two older kids ... err ... middle - aged men who are both within several years of eligibility for membership in the American Assn for Retired People, ie, nearing 50. Our youngest turns 38, today. She was born the day that the Pope* visited Philadelphia in 1976. We were/are not raised in the Church of Rome but one could only revel in watching the devotion that his adherents brought to their laying eyes on their Pope. Devotion and Kindness and Loving Mothering to her children, her pets, the visitors to her office and her near and dear are inseparable from my image of my daughter and, indeed, represent who she is.

Happy Birthday, J.

Much love ... Dad






* ... Mismemory ... Pope didn't visit till she was three. Wonder?