Even if I cannot leave the world behind on vacation and I occasionally feel that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are closing in on me, there is something quite wonderful about having time to watch the Sunset each night and ride to marvel at its rising the next day.
And it was evening and it was morning the Sixth Day!
I've long been the kind of person who revels in words ... In English something to CREATE with RECREATE. In Biblical Hebrew the words for CREATION בריאה and HEALTH בריאות have the same roots.
Until now, in my adult life, I've "vacated" for some 5 weeks, each year. I've upped that, now, to 6, planning to eventually arrive at working for 3 weeks each month. I don't yet understand the notion of retirement ... maybe someday I will. I can say that I, well into the Last Quarter of life, feel an impulse -- I cannot quite call it a need -- to take time for long rests and for short naps.
I listened to a spritely Jimmy Carter, this morning. 90+ years old (I think of 80 and over as OVERTIME) and talking of his illness and treatments with distinct clarity. He stumbled in retrieving one word and one word only ... and now just a few hours later, I can't retrieve it, either. Maybe it will come to me ... maybe it doesn't matter.
The sunrise this morning mattered to me. Out over the Atlantic, it rose into an almost linear array of clouds on the horizon. On both sides of the first rays of light, there were clouds shaped like mice standing on their hind legs, facing the place wherethe Sun was busy starting its trajectory. Two mice on either side ... and me on the Beach. A not-so-large number of other Solar Pagans were there taking in the sight.
Something about watching the Sun rise?! I came from a family whose vacations were visiting Aunt Helen and Uncle Linwood on the Farm. When I began vacationing with my own family at this Virginia beach 36 years ago, I would take my older kids each morning to take in the spectacle ... they were 12 and 13, then, and could share that space and time with me. As a youngster M and I worked with 40+ years ago noted: "When I hit puberty, puberty hit back." Our kids' adolescence temporarily removed interest in the rising Sun ... life IS, indeed, about change. It would've been nice to have my boys out there. Alas. Gatitude is about our revelling in what we have even if our human sense of awarenss and our memory tell us about what no longer is.
Still, I have a great deal ... and for an example of the uniquely human capacity for reflection? I have President Carter. And for someone who sees nothing but his own reflection in the Looking Glass? I will always have folk like Donald Trump.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Exquisite Sensitivity
M and I have both been struggling with some physical ailments but I can't rightly tell if that has anything to do with my comment to her just before we closed our eyes. I said that I was getting more and more sensitive to the witnessing of inhumanities from one peson to another. "It goes right into this hollow feeling in my chest," I commented, "and then seems to quite on its own translate into a cardiac arrhythmia." Then the three of us (GuntherDog was on the floor needing a Good World of loving up his head, too) closed our eyes for the day. Three Last Quarter types done for the day.
It was by no means a bad day. M and I have a great deal for which to feel gratitude. Three kids ... Six grandkids .... I know, I know .... I amuse myself by calling them my Spawn and Grandspawn in these scribbles ... but they're really quite wonderful. Indeed the oldest child with our youngest grand had come down to spend a few days. But lemme back up.
The ealymorning was fine. I rose and dittled around ... wrote yesterday's Scribble when R came downstairs. K, her 24 year old grand-daughter was sick. Vacation food? Who knows? Didn't sound serious. Gunther had stayed upstairs with his Beloved ... M. He doesn't like stretching his arthritic legs until the Sun is nearly up. I spent sme time wiring some lights ... each day replacing a few that the years of salt air had corroded. M came down ... walked the Old Guy ... and we spent an hour. I cut up fresh fruit, tossed in some dried fruit and added a good helping of Arugula. I'm on an Arugula kick and a beach salad like this has my fingers twitching with some perverse joy at my freedom to eat such a salad anywhere I like and with my fingers. As if the fork might create a profane and violent barrier between my receptive mouth and God's best Greens. We packed up and I did my usual ... biked the 6 miles to the lifeguarded beach we frequent, meeting M there. She was already on the Beach. I did my thing ... my ritual. My 1974 bike, the Raleigh International, "the one that I love" (as in God's description of Isaac) gets stood up in the sand. One pedal is lowered to the bottom of its orbit and bolstered with sand ... acting as a kind of kickstand. Chairs, umbrellas? go up.
I did the Pater Familias stuff. Went back to the car ... got another chair and umbrella and little folding Army shovel ... and set up camp. M and I have been coming to this beach since 1979 ... I think we missed one year when we vacationed with B and his crew ... B who just had very serious surgery and may still be in the ICU. I do accept that my Friends and I are aging and there is a reason the National Park Service sells you a Lifetime Pass for only $10 right near the beginning of the Fourth Quarter. All was as good as could be. R and K would show up when they would and our new guests would arrive in their time, if not sooner. Reminds me ... Isaiah ends one of his chapters with something like בעיתא אחישנה ... "In its time, I shall hurry it."
Any case ... My ride to beach began in cardiac arrhythmia and ended in normal rhythm and all seemed good as we planted ourselves not far from a quite active Atlantic Ocean. There's a song in Carousel about a Clambake that has a great lyric: "Then, at last, came the clams." I've never tasted clams but moments after we arrived a rare family -- rare for this beach -- arrived: The King Crab, his silent wife and the three kids. He was round, tatooed and verbally violent with his kids.
"you damn well get up from that chair because I say so."
The rest is commentary and I'm confident you can imagine the rhetoric. We didn't endure very long and I decided it would do no one any good for me to confront him ... not him? he wasn't gonna change because an Old Man set him straight..... his kids? would likely fare worse for their vacation ... and I would be Charlie Horsed in the County Jail for weeks if I tried to show him what it was like to be physically challenged by someone who thought that schmuck should be sent for a good tan to Guantanamo!
I thought about it as I sat and read about one of those mystics who had a dark sexual side ... "None of us are perfect," I thought ... nah! I obsessed. M and I solved our problem by moving our gear 30 feet Southward but even the finger-fed Arugula couldn't quite take away the shadow and the darkness of that overfed, tatooed, sonofabitch or the annoyance of an arrhythmia that would come and go.
Oldest and Littlest came; it was great. Son took his Dad for an iced triple-shot espresso in his triple-shot Car ... zoom-zoom. We talked. All was good.
Later ... in the evening ... we went out for a bite .... someone spoke abusively to a waitress. It was like "a kick in the nuts" .... pardon, the obvious anger ... "who would I like to kick" and what locks it inside of me, getting my smooth musculature to abandon its usual pattern .. 40-45 beats per minute ... "nice and steady, as she goes."
Trump's critical rhetoric I can metabolize and evacuate, like ... well, you know like what. George HW Bush used to speak about softer times ... I like to dream of them.
Any case? I immediately felt it in my esophagus .... and I could feel my heart rev up erratically to 4+ times its usual rate.
An old friend/ colleague whom I had no contact with for some years had started my day by emailing me a paper she was writing about teaching kids to respond to others' vilnerabilities and not their masks. I had started well. Alice Maher is on a mission to teach people how to tussle without hurting each other.
"God bless you, Alice."
The day ended with a dream about a Big White Car that I don't and have never -- except in this dream -- owned. The car was towed even though it was in an OK parking zone. Maybe there never was a Big White Car!
Odd ... how Gratuitous Enmity ... שנאת חינם ... can pass directly into my heart .... the surgeons would like to interrupt that pathway ... I'm not yet so certain that I want to dam up that river that makes me so exquisitely sensitive.
It was by no means a bad day. M and I have a great deal for which to feel gratitude. Three kids ... Six grandkids .... I know, I know .... I amuse myself by calling them my Spawn and Grandspawn in these scribbles ... but they're really quite wonderful. Indeed the oldest child with our youngest grand had come down to spend a few days. But lemme back up.
The ealymorning was fine. I rose and dittled around ... wrote yesterday's Scribble when R came downstairs. K, her 24 year old grand-daughter was sick. Vacation food? Who knows? Didn't sound serious. Gunther had stayed upstairs with his Beloved ... M. He doesn't like stretching his arthritic legs until the Sun is nearly up. I spent sme time wiring some lights ... each day replacing a few that the years of salt air had corroded. M came down ... walked the Old Guy ... and we spent an hour. I cut up fresh fruit, tossed in some dried fruit and added a good helping of Arugula. I'm on an Arugula kick and a beach salad like this has my fingers twitching with some perverse joy at my freedom to eat such a salad anywhere I like and with my fingers. As if the fork might create a profane and violent barrier between my receptive mouth and God's best Greens. We packed up and I did my usual ... biked the 6 miles to the lifeguarded beach we frequent, meeting M there. She was already on the Beach. I did my thing ... my ritual. My 1974 bike, the Raleigh International, "the one that I love" (as in God's description of Isaac) gets stood up in the sand. One pedal is lowered to the bottom of its orbit and bolstered with sand ... acting as a kind of kickstand. Chairs, umbrellas? go up.
I did the Pater Familias stuff. Went back to the car ... got another chair and umbrella and little folding Army shovel ... and set up camp. M and I have been coming to this beach since 1979 ... I think we missed one year when we vacationed with B and his crew ... B who just had very serious surgery and may still be in the ICU. I do accept that my Friends and I are aging and there is a reason the National Park Service sells you a Lifetime Pass for only $10 right near the beginning of the Fourth Quarter. All was as good as could be. R and K would show up when they would and our new guests would arrive in their time, if not sooner. Reminds me ... Isaiah ends one of his chapters with something like בעיתא אחישנה ... "In its time, I shall hurry it."
Any case ... My ride to beach began in cardiac arrhythmia and ended in normal rhythm and all seemed good as we planted ourselves not far from a quite active Atlantic Ocean. There's a song in Carousel about a Clambake that has a great lyric: "Then, at last, came the clams." I've never tasted clams but moments after we arrived a rare family -- rare for this beach -- arrived: The King Crab, his silent wife and the three kids. He was round, tatooed and verbally violent with his kids.
"you damn well get up from that chair because I say so."
The rest is commentary and I'm confident you can imagine the rhetoric. We didn't endure very long and I decided it would do no one any good for me to confront him ... not him? he wasn't gonna change because an Old Man set him straight..... his kids? would likely fare worse for their vacation ... and I would be Charlie Horsed in the County Jail for weeks if I tried to show him what it was like to be physically challenged by someone who thought that schmuck should be sent for a good tan to Guantanamo!
I thought about it as I sat and read about one of those mystics who had a dark sexual side ... "None of us are perfect," I thought ... nah! I obsessed. M and I solved our problem by moving our gear 30 feet Southward but even the finger-fed Arugula couldn't quite take away the shadow and the darkness of that overfed, tatooed, sonofabitch or the annoyance of an arrhythmia that would come and go.
Oldest and Littlest came; it was great. Son took his Dad for an iced triple-shot espresso in his triple-shot Car ... zoom-zoom. We talked. All was good.
Later ... in the evening ... we went out for a bite .... someone spoke abusively to a waitress. It was like "a kick in the nuts" .... pardon, the obvious anger ... "who would I like to kick" and what locks it inside of me, getting my smooth musculature to abandon its usual pattern .. 40-45 beats per minute ... "nice and steady, as she goes."
Trump's critical rhetoric I can metabolize and evacuate, like ... well, you know like what. George HW Bush used to speak about softer times ... I like to dream of them.
Any case? I immediately felt it in my esophagus .... and I could feel my heart rev up erratically to 4+ times its usual rate.
An old friend/ colleague whom I had no contact with for some years had started my day by emailing me a paper she was writing about teaching kids to respond to others' vilnerabilities and not their masks. I had started well. Alice Maher is on a mission to teach people how to tussle without hurting each other.
"God bless you, Alice."
The day ended with a dream about a Big White Car that I don't and have never -- except in this dream -- owned. The car was towed even though it was in an OK parking zone. Maybe there never was a Big White Car!
Odd ... how Gratuitous Enmity ... שנאת חינם ... can pass directly into my heart .... the surgeons would like to interrupt that pathway ... I'm not yet so certain that I want to dam up that river that makes me so exquisitely sensitive.
Monday, August 17, 2015
"Some are Pretty on the Inside"
Mr. Rogers was this Minister on TV in the late Sixties and for couple decades thereafter who talked to little kids ... and chances are pretty good to their "stoned" parents ... about similarities and differences ... about life and death .... about kindnesses and solicitudes .... and especially about sharing. I'm pretty confident in the likelihood that "The Toddling" (Steven King's missing masterpiece) were, indeed, busy hearing about cardigan sweaters and "the Land of Makebelieve" which you arrived at by Trolley, the Moms were busy sharing intoxicants and the Dads were being Dads ... mesmerized by the beautiful young assistant .... maybe her name was Lady Elaine?
Ah, but Fractals. Fractals emphasize the Similarities. In Sierpinski's Triangle, you see, each of the Little Right-side Up Triangles is identical to the whole ... isomorphic to it, as one of the founders of 20th C. Topology would say. I only met, by the by, Warclaw Sierpinski once ... musta been 1968. He, Kazimierz Kuratowski and another guy -- I think his name was Janischiewsky -- decided that, if Lil' PostWar Poland was to make a name for itself Mathematically, they would have to specialize in some area ... and they chose Topology. I know about this due to a barter. When I was a kid, I worked out a deal with Kuratowski when he was on a speaking tour of the USA. I would drive him in my Volvo and on the way to these talks, he would teach me about the History of the Polish Akademie of Sciences ... Poland's MIT. Fractals? I don't think were discussed until some years later.
For any geeky enough to be interested, I think Sierpinski's interest was in a curiosity that such a triangle might posess. For you see, while the above Triangle covers a bunch of ground, when you take into account all the pieces that have been removed, it's area appears to be "zero" .... Ah! But Get ye Curious Geeks to a book on Measure Theory and all will be explained
OK, OK ... paraphrasing what one Vice Presidential Candidate said to another:
Howard! You're no Kazimierz Kuratowski!
Yeah, yeah! But in some sense, I've taken on his-KK's age when I remember him, borrowed his nerdy style of dress and arrived at his inability to drive, as well. Ask M! Ask'er about what it's like to sit in a car at a Green Light with some Last Quarter type while he waits for it to turn Red! (shhhh! I haven't had the heart to tell M that she's Fourth Quarter, too .... .... Don't tell!)
But back to my point. I think it was Jack Paar who would motion his finger in waves from shoulder to shoulder and asked his guest.
OK! What's that?
The guest's 'I dunno' would be responded to with:
Well, I dunno either but here it comes, again.
So, here I am ... no longer the youngster chauffeuring an old man on a trip to give talks on his lifetime of work ... reflecting on "how I didn't but might've known" about this unbroken circle hat Ecclesiastes fascinated about 3000 years ago, still writing a little and munching on rice crackers slathered with Nutella that rightly belongs to M and my houseguest, sleeping upstairs with likely no clue of how such Fractals just keep comin' .... again .... and again!
Sunday, August 16, 2015
'Little Fractals on the Hillside'
Heard from an internet buddy who is visiting with her son, I think, and grandkids in Oregon. She lives in London and grew up somewhere in post-War Germany. She's very active, as I understand, in developing programs that bring Death into our lives, as a natural and beautiful, perchance, closing act.
An antidote, perhaps, to the anger that many of us fear about needing to end the party ... like the Colonial poet cried:
A fig to thee, Oh, Death.
I toast her work!
In any case, I was particularly taken (I've just arisen from the Land of the Great God Sopor and am still soporous if not still stupefous ... or just stupid-fous) by the request from her son's cohort that she (we aging folk) move nearer him .... to Oregon? ... and her response about her life being back in UK. The Fractal part that came in J's life still HAS life even if its newer model has become its own. M and I are back at our place in Virginia ... one kid and grandchild coming for a bit but right now a 70+ yo friend and her 24 yo granddaughter are our only guests ... oh, and GuntherDog. The kid has had a rough ride with her parents (I've known her Dad and GrandDad for 47 years) and oozes into the orbit of her Grandma between grad school semesters. In the midst of a quiet dinner, I commented about what I thought was a quotidian antipathy between children and their parents ... suggesting (a la Loewald, Gibran, and many others) that part of 'the job' of kids in growing up is to make the parents progressively irrelevant. Loewald said it stronger. Something about his belief that 'on the plane of
psychic development, killing off the parents is a developmental necessity. Fuck the Buddha on the
road .... the parental functions need be superceded ... Y'gotta learn how to put spoon to mouth, clean your own butt, balance your own checkbook, read your own stories ... and ... yes! ... eventually write your own stories.
An antidote, perhaps, to the anger that many of us fear about needing to end the party ... like the Colonial poet cried:
A fig to thee, Oh, Death.
I toast her work!
In any case, I was particularly taken (I've just arisen from the Land of the Great God Sopor and am still soporous if not still stupefous ... or just stupid-fous) by the request from her son's cohort that she (we aging folk) move nearer him .... to Oregon? ... and her response about her life being back in UK. The Fractal part that came in J's life still HAS life even if its newer model has become its own. M and I are back at our place in Virginia ... one kid and grandchild coming for a bit but right now a 70+ yo friend and her 24 yo granddaughter are our only guests ... oh, and GuntherDog. The kid has had a rough ride with her parents (I've known her Dad and GrandDad for 47 years) and oozes into the orbit of her Grandma between grad school semesters. In the midst of a quiet dinner, I commented about what I thought was a quotidian antipathy between children and their parents ... suggesting (a la Loewald, Gibran, and many others) that part of 'the job' of kids in growing up is to make the parents progressively irrelevant. Loewald said it stronger. Something about his belief that 'on the plane of
psychic development, killing off the parents is a developmental necessity. Fuck the Buddha on the
road .... the parental functions need be superceded ... Y'gotta learn how to put spoon to mouth, clean your own butt, balance your own checkbook, read your own stories ... and ... yes! ... eventually write your own stories.
"Well the parents don't become entirely irrelevant," the non-M Grannie opined.
Sure, sure and OK ... not ENTIRELY irrelevant ... but pretty much so.
Sure, sure and OK ... not ENTIRELY irrelevant ... but pretty much so.
Irrelevant was the word that worked for me. I was refering to, I suppose, relevance as a set of characteristics that have past, present and future attached to them. I live in Philadelphia (well, thereabouts). When do I follow the spawn into their own living fractals? Do I?
I do want to believe that I'm more than my sore back and Funny Old Grandpa who will teach Chloe how to throw a pailful of water at the beach, today, and the guy who rewrites songswith clever lyrics.
I do want to believe that I'm more than my sore back and Funny Old Grandpa who will teach Chloe how to throw a pailful of water at the beach, today, and the guy who rewrites songswith clever lyrics.
Hey! Long live life in London, Philadelphia and God bless Tiny Tim and all the little spawn wherever they've built their own places of relevance!
BTW ... I tossed in this notion of Fractals and some of you may have never looked at such geometric oddities. Fractals -- loosely speaking -- are geometric constructions with a curious quality. No matterhow much you magnify them and wherever 'in the graphic picture' you search, you keep
finding new versions of the same template. Some of them that you'll find online look like ferns where each sub-piece looks like the whole picture. Get thee to Google, and ogle pics of Fractals. They'll
(maybe) blow your aging mind!
Life reproducing itself?
Maybe not the most beautiful but among the cleanest in lines is Sierpinski's Triangle. I'll see if I can
find a picture.
An afterthought. I'm pretty confident that the grown Grand-daughter at dinner has noidea that her Grandpa was one of the folk who thought through some of the convergence theorems that make the
construction of these figures possible .....
BTW ... I tossed in this notion of Fractals and some of you may have never looked at such geometric oddities. Fractals -- loosely speaking -- are geometric constructions with a curious quality. No matterhow much you magnify them and wherever 'in the graphic picture' you search, you keep
finding new versions of the same template. Some of them that you'll find online look like ferns where each sub-piece looks like the whole picture. Get thee to Google, and ogle pics of Fractals. They'll
(maybe) blow your aging mind!
Life reproducing itself?
Maybe not the most beautiful but among the cleanest in lines is Sierpinski's Triangle. I'll see if I can
find a picture.
An afterthought. I'm pretty confident that the grown Grand-daughter at dinner has noidea that her Grandpa was one of the folk who thought through some of the convergence theorems that make the
construction of these figures possible .....
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Sometimes: "There Really Ain't No Contradiction"
The Writings of the Babylonian Exile comprise hundreds of years of discussions on how to interpret the Scriptures these exiled folk and their kids and ancestors brought with them into the diaspora. The Sages often disagreed on how to read those texts. But ... Pages following pages of disagreements are not untypically settled by one of two brief expressions:
לא פלוגתא ... (Lo Plugta) ...
There really is no contradiction, at least if you look at it right.
and
תיק׳׳ו ... (Taiku) ....
A complete answer will, alas, have to await the arrival of Elijah,
(ie, "no time soon," inc ase you were waiting on a quick answer.)
(ie, "no time soon," inc ase you were waiting on a quick answer.)
Like Sextus Empiricus, a founder of the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, these Masters were willing to accept that a question, after all, is most often either too complicated for there to be a single answer or, else, the answer to complex questions often arrives in only-apparently contradictory semantic packages. Message? It's not necessary to know the absolute Capital-T Truth! 'Specially since y'can't.
I'm not rightly certain about what this has to do with getting on in years but I seem to have less patience as the Fourth Quarter deepens for witnessing gratuitous enmities that arise from a conviction held by this or that believer. Taliban smashing Buddhist Idols. Abraham smashing his Dad's! It's my birthday, today, and I feel surrounded in this World by folk who are thoroughly convinced of their rightness ... of their truth. And when I even hear about such folk -- never mind when I meet them -- I feel a pain in the area of my heart ... or is it my esophagus. I don't imagine to know, for certain, but I experience this heaviness which sometimes seems to drive me right into a cardiac arrhythmia.
Now! That really sucks.
After all, I can't do much about it but, still, it seems to upset me ... makes me sad. Chances are it's only obvious to M ... and to myself, of course ... and to those who may read my words.
It may be very different for other Last Quarter types ... they may choose a different path than becoming a radical Skeptic. I'm radical, that is, about not being radical about my beliefs ... except that Olde Time Skepticism!
I guess that was Howard's Paradox, but -- off the cuff -- all the following really get to me.
I could go on. Maybe I will? ... ... My better angels say: Nah!
I'll just sign off ... and plan to head off to Babylonia for my next Birthday.
With luv ...
Angry Olde-Birthday-Man Howard
I'm not rightly certain about what this has to do with getting on in years but I seem to have less patience as the Fourth Quarter deepens for witnessing gratuitous enmities that arise from a conviction held by this or that believer. Taliban smashing Buddhist Idols. Abraham smashing his Dad's! It's my birthday, today, and I feel surrounded in this World by folk who are thoroughly convinced of their rightness ... of their truth. And when I even hear about such folk -- never mind when I meet them -- I feel a pain in the area of my heart ... or is it my esophagus. I don't imagine to know, for certain, but I experience this heaviness which sometimes seems to drive me right into a cardiac arrhythmia.
Now! That really sucks.
After all, I can't do much about it but, still, it seems to upset me ... makes me sad. Chances are it's only obvious to M ... and to myself, of course ... and to those who may read my words.
It may be very different for other Last Quarter types ... they may choose a different path than becoming a radical Skeptic. I'm radical, that is, about not being radical about my beliefs ... except that Olde Time Skepticism!
I guess that was Howard's Paradox, but -- off the cuff -- all the following really get to me.
Radical -ists of any religious ism, including Aetheism ... except, that is, Skepticism.
Radical Laborists and Radical Capitalists;
Radical Animal Rights folk and Rabid Meat Eaters;
Radical Choicests and Radical Lifers;
Rad Democrats and Rad Republicans;
Jingoed Nationalists and Unwavering Internationalists;
Angry Whites and Angry Blacks; and
Pissed off Feminists, Susan Schaffley and Male Chauvinists.
I could go on. Maybe I will? ... ... My better angels say: Nah!
I'll just sign off ... and plan to head off to Babylonia for my next Birthday.
With luv ...
Angry Olde-Birthday-Man Howard
Sunday, August 9, 2015
"Ricki and the Flash" & "Night Train to Lisbon"
I recently watched two movies that moved me in different ways ... The first was about a rocker that never made it but tried. She had left her husband (Kevin Kline) and kids 20 or so years prior to the now of the movie when she returns for two brief stays to help. Brought me to near-sobbing and that uncomfortable throat feeling that follows upon childhood tears. Meryl Streep -- this time with her daughter -- "knocking me alive," once more. Thanks, Meryl!
The second film was another recent one ... "Night Train to Lisbon" ... about a Swiss teacher who precipitously leaves his world when it accidentally intersects with an artifact from the now historical revolution in Portugal that had occurred in the early 1970's. I couldn't move away from the Lisbon film, either, but the Streep-Kline-RickSpringfield piece really got to me -- Ricki and the Flash! Both films about leavings and wishes for reunion. Goodbye's and Hello's. Sadness and Glee! Both quite beautiful, in their own right.
I suppose the films -- both about Third-going-into-Fourth Quarter types -- intersected with my life and with M's ... and, maybe, with the tragedy that surrounds Donald Trump (I nearly wrote Donald Duck) and his rather undignified and disrespectful clown-walk in the direction of political power. I can't imagine Trump's story having an ending that will be satisfactory for him -- that's sad, too; the protagonists in these crafted stories find their own resolutions ... no happily ever aftering ... but resolutions, nonetheless.
Even for those of us who manage not to live solely in the inalterable past or to be terrified by its unpredictable kin, the future, our present has its connections to those distant Worlds. One of my kids just got back from vacation with her family and another is leaving, today, with his. Our third kid (a kid who should get his invitation to join the American Association for Retired People, that is, will be turning 50 pretty soon leaves on business trips to the Lands of Very Far Away every few weeks. Three kids? No more throwing our kids into the backs of a 1969 Volvo wagon for M and I ... Our kids' turn to do so (this time with baby seats and -- when the grandkids grew -- seat belts and cars that regularly start), I suppose. And, now, not likely to be too many more all-family vacations. I'll miss that, am sad about it but hopefully still able to celebrate how my kids have built their own rituals ... their own lives.
In brief, I suppose, the Good Life includes the layering of life's times:
In brief, I suppose, the Good Life includes the layering of life's times:
Allowing Oneself to Miss the Past,
Vigorously Swimming in the Present
and
Fascinating -- even if betimes, nervously -- about the Future.
Stanley Kunitz commends the readers of his poem, The Layers, indeed, to:
'Live among (those) Layers
(and) Not (just) the Litter.'
What an opportunity it is to live!
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Chronos v. Superman
Lightning strikes outside ... Haven't paid attention to whether they're getting closer or further away. The trajectory of life may have us believing that the destination is always moving closer. Many visitors to my office, yesterday, were busy pondering "what's it all about" ... I think I typically sit and fascinate about what is ... and leave it at that.
My metaphor for Life, as I've mentioned before, is to a stretched canvas with its size and shape partially pre-determined ... and to a palette of paints. I get to paint on it. I can never quite get off what has already taken form and shape ... and dried on my canvas. Oh! I can paint over it but it is not easily -- if ever -- to be removed. Superman flies backwards around the Earth ... really fast ... and can turn the clock backwards and bring his Lois back to life and then change the History going forward. Some manage to reason through arguments purloined from Quantum Physics that there are parallel universes and maybe even orthogonal ones. Y'think there's one where the L4-L5 in my Lumbar Spine never herniated back in August of 2011.
Yeah, Superman. You're never around when we need'ya!
I need a SuperGuy or SuperGal to go back to the Monday before the Friday when it all went crazy and the EMT's came and trucked me to the Emergency Room.
"Hey. Y'want the sirens, Sir?"
Nah. Skip the drama. Just drive fast.
That was a Friday in late August 2011, but it was that Monday night when, in-between two visitors to my office, I went outside to check on something. I was walking in one moment ... then, on the ground and amused just a moment later. They call it "a slip and fall." There was no pain and a great deal of amusement, much like when coming home from an evening meeting this past Winter and walking towards my front door, I lost my balance and fell into the azaleas. In both situations, I found myself tittering with amusement. Maybe the canvas is fuller than I thought.
But back to 2011 and that Friday 97 hours (who's counting) after the fall. Fall? Like a Fall from Grace or just the Fall that is the Fourth Quarter of Life. Dinner was fine even if I began to have twinges in my legs and lower back. M and my youngest was there with her family ... Al, the Ancient Philosopher, and their three kids. By the end of our shared meal, there were more than twinges and within a half hour of their leaving, I was trying to crawl to my car so that M could drive me to the ER. I made it through the front door ... and that was it. Moving or not moving? both came with body-armor piercing pain.
The wailing old man with his wife attracted neighbors by the time M called 9-1-1 and the rest need not be recorded in any Chronicles. I, as I noted, got limo service to the ER and with enough narcotics I was able to eventually go home. I slept for the next few weeks draped over an ottoman in my office and after some shots in the back and a few months, I was walking pretty straight. I suppose, now, that I believed that I had erased that episode ... that L4-L5 herniation had been expunged from my record. I think it was Joni Mitchell who years ago sang "I was a Free Man in Paris."
Whenever I believe that I've erased something from my canvas, Chronos eventually shows up to set the time and date straight.
Afraid! I need her cousins Ortho and Chiro just to stand up, these days. It was most-of-Quarter, ago, that I began realizing that the paint on my canvas and the ink on my letters are both indelible. Feeling a bit sorry for myself ("poor, Howard"), I moaned and kvetched and wrote:
Witnesses (July 1994)
On the bottom of his closet, like two soldiers they stood
A layer of dust demanded “You’ve seen these before”.
Witnesses for what he now couldn’t and once could
When he bought them.
Was it nineteen sixty four?
One at a time, he picked each up, turned it around,
“Look! The pattern on the toes is just the same,
The leather’s still good, the color still brown,
And inside
The author hadn’t changed his name.
Yet they spoke of different times and of a different man
Who wore them then more than a quarter century ago.
These shoes were now witnesses to god’s sinister plan,
That from vibrant forms,
Takes man and transforms him to Lore.
I won't here apologize for feeling a bit sorry for "poor Howard" who -- once again and for the time being -- is wincing with something other than sheer delight each time he stands up. It would do little good and Chronos has, in any case, no Sympathy ... and, just again and for the record, there ain't never no Superman around when y'needs'im!
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