"Teach Your Children Well" ... Maybe, It's the Arithmetic

Yesterday, M and I went out to lunch commemorating 50 years since a clergy-person -- actually a snarky middle-aged man who was an ordained clergyman -- declared us married. Fifty years? Those of us who have stayed married for many years can whip up some quips as to what our secret is ... Like the Old Person who is asked: What's your secret for long-life.

"I get up each morning."

I do feel blessed to have met M way back then in the Mid-to-Early Sixties ... talking to a religious youth conference about traditional attitudes towards pre-Marital sex. Funny, now that I think about what I seem to remember saying that day in late February. How does the Ipinima song go:

Tall and Dark and Tan and Slender.

M showed up ... day after returning with a Florida Suntan ... One only knows that life would have been different otherwise. So much is encapsulated in the ability to embrace and cherish what is. Neurotics fret that they could've done better. They rarely think of all that wouldn't have been or what coulda been worse.

Any case ... M tried transitioning from a walker to a cane, yesterday ... some success. Exhausted after such excursions, she napped after our luncheon frolic ...

Emile Coue would have the visitors who travelled to see him from around the World sit in circles and recite:

Tous les jours a tous points de vue

je vais de mieux en mieux.

Each Day and in Every Way

We get Better and Better.

I suppose we'd say, now 21 Days after M's surgery:

Fake it until you make it!

So much counting in life ... 

When You're Old and Grey

16 days post-op. M is improving but exhausted from the pain of surgery and the (I suppose necessarily) sadistic tortures provided by visiting PT's and OT's. The Physical Therapists, in particular, have their measuring tools ... "gotta get to 100 degrees" on bending the newly-born knee towards kicking yourself in the ass. I have a secret theory ... Kind of like the old Kung Fu bit with Carridine ... 

"Grasshopper! When you can kick yourself or PT in ass, you must leave!"

or

"If you meet the PT on the road? Kill her!"

Actually, the visiting PT, OT and RN are great but each day with therapy becomes exhausting and pain-filled for M. And, not to complain (I did get 50 years out of M before her parts wore out ... used to be a transmission was rarely good for more than 40,000 miles ... Lord knows, how many miles are on M's chassis!). But, shit! Why not complain? This Blog started as a Kvetching Platform for Old Foagies ... well? for me! and anyone else who dares write in about the vagaries of aging in the Age of Donald to-the-dump-to-the-dump-to-the-dump-dump-DUMP.

Yesterday, Howard the Nurse cooked from 430 to 630 AM for 6PM incoming Spawn and Grandspawn ... saw 8 hours of visitors in office. Monitored the crazy barking Gdog while professionals were with M (not the Vet! the Vet wasn't there to see M) and coordinated through PT/OT/Visiting Vet (for failing Pretty Girl le Chat), serving dinner with guests and not sleeping. 

It's no longer a stale/impersonal feeling for me in worrying about Caretakers. Poor Howard! (LOL)

Found myself humming a rather nasty Tom Lehrer dittie about spousal aging:

Since I still appreciate you,

Let's find love while we may.

Because I know I'll hate you

When you are old and gray.

So say you love me here and now,

I'll make the most of that.

Say you love and trust me,

For I know you'll disgust me

When you're old and getting fat.

An awful debility,

A lessened utility,

A loss of mobility

Is a strong possibility.

In all probability

I'll lose my virility

And you your fertility

And desirability,

And this liability

Of total sterility

Will lead to hostility

And a sense of futility,

So let's act with agility

While we still have facility,

For we'll soon reach senility

And lose the ability.

Your teeth will start to go, dear,

Your waist will start to spread.

In twenty years or so, dear,

I'll wish that you were dead.

I'll never love you then at all

The way I do today.

So please remember,

When I leave in december,

I told you so in may.

We're coming on our 50th and 51st Anniversary, depending on how we count. Still, I think both M and I thought Old Tom was kidding when as a relative youngster in the early 60's, I suppose, he penned and sang these words. Check it out, Oh, Ye Players in the Last Quarter ... you'll soon be humming along, too ... maybe a duet?

                                                   www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NOZH0y7VxE

Hats off to your prescience, Tom!

"Something in the Way She Moves"

Watching your spouse learning how to walk, again?

As a Nurse? Grade? ... C-

Alas ...

They Say It Ain't Easy

I'm sitting next to my sleeping wife's bed in the hospital. After 50 years of marriage, she has apparently given birth to a new knee. She is giving Mother Sarah a run for her money, in terms of later life additions. Both Mother and Knee seem to be doing as well as one has any right to expect. Still, who would have thought in 1965 that M's (or my) parts would begin to wear out.

M has her first Physical Therapy session in just a half hour ... She seems frightened, as I suspect anyone would be. The Doctor came in earlier ... Vlad the Impailer's younger brother ... dressed in his Civies -- tie and jacket -- and full of good humor. Truthfully, we both like him ... and, still ....

The Fourth Quarter not only witnesses one's own challenges but, if one is fortunate enough, the pains of one's other.

My mind is pretty empty, right now. Worried ... remember one of Munch's paintings. Not The Scream, though there have been times. More the one where a Mother is leaning over a sick child, laying in bed.

To care and to be cared for!

For the The Times They Aren't a-Changin'

In spite of a highly touted new TV Series fictionally accounting for what transpired in the years and decades after Naziism took over ... after the Third Reich dominated the World by winning WWII ... the House that Hitler Built did fall and a period of somewhat greater caring for each other did follow. Here in my United States, we did pass a Civil Rights Act and for a long time did put forth effort in preventing local municipalities from blocking many from voting. There are, indeed, in the US of A many places where people who are different than others in certain ways can walk unmolested.

Maybe it's just the places M and I tend to go, but:

mixed race and same sex couples walk without obvious fear;

folk from minority and ethnic bakgrounds are welcomed to dine and travel, live and recreate among their privileged brethren; and

people who pray differently are not assumed to be worshipping the devil.

It's not that I don't remember; I do. I recall folk trying to beat me up because of my religion (1950's thru early 1960's) and times when my Dad lost his job because of his religious practice (1956) and  I do recall my Mom speaking of a time (1932) when she couldn't take the entrance exams to a New York Art School because the tests were only available on her Sabbath. I remember being asked (1972) just how it felt to be a Christ killer and someone counting me in the ranks of AIDS victims for counting myself among the Jews (1994). 

I still do remember .... When I ran a school for disturbed inner city kids in the mid-70's, having lunch in a tavern in one of the Whitetowns of Philadelphia and folk smashing a glass ritualistically against a
brick wall if it was used by a black patron ... after they left. I recall people threatening to rape my wife after I integrated the school (1977). And I recall people in Saxis, VA and Greenfield, IN (there, it was the police after impounding our car on the highway after our alterntor failed) making it clear that I wasn't welcome in their towns. And I still can recall Larry King interviewing 3 or 4 Christian clergyfolk and one of them saying: "The problem with Muslims is that they,re praying to the wrong god" (during the 2004 election, I think). Funny. It was 800 years ago that Maimonides reminded his readers that all monotheistic religions must-of-necessity be praying the the same One-God!

I feel sad. Maybe large parts of my sadness are directed at my fears about an upcoming surgery that faces M in a just nine days ... Those of us in the Last Quarter know that if we are to continue Playing,  some of our parts need to be replaced, especially when we realize that one or another "joint ain't jumpin'" without excruciating pain. M version 2.01 is about to be released. Does, indeed, make me sad to watch now and to anticipate the pain subsequent to her "Black and Decker" surgery.

Still, the schismatizing hate speech of the liks of Carson, Cruz and Trump and some of their confreres pains me, at least as much, as M's surgery and the angry atrocities perpetrated by groups who seek retaliation and terror against the civilization in which I live. 

There is, I suppose, a form of what the Social Psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Bias. The usual applications of that are to situations, such as:

If you succeed in life, it's dumb luck while if I do it is due to hard work and perservearance;

If you fail, it is due to your own malfeasance, while if I do, it was just misfortune.

In these months, the mouthings of the right wing Politicos make their view clear that Radical Islam is a type all to itself and has no similarity to Rad Christianity as in the Crusades or killing abortion
doctors or Radical Judaism as portrayed by the likes of Dr Baruch Goldstein who killed many during
their prayers in a mosque.

I suppose, for me, Radicalism, in its simplest form, is the blinding of oneself to the pain of others .... Radicalism is the denial that The Stranger in Your Midst, the Other, is a child of some Mom and a Subject in their Own Right.

I suppose I could reduce the above to a pithier:

RADICALISM -- IN ALL ITS FORMS and INCARNATIONS -- IS THE ENEMY.

Donald Trump/Forrest Gump 2016

As it is not quite written .........

“Blessed are those who think a lot of themselves,

    especially those who have made Billions.

Blessed are those who never say they made a mistake,

    for they won't be blamed or feel guilty.

Blessed are the haughty,

    especially those who have already inherited the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for winning it all,

    for they will be filled with more $Billions.

Blessed are the merciless,

    for their path is uncluttered by doubt.

Blessed are those who've sinned a lot,

    for some good reason yet to be determined.

Blessed are the warmongers,

    
    especially those killing for Truth, Justice and the Am-Way.

Blessed are those who've been unjustly persecuted because of big favors and bluster
     for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the thugly!

 “Blessed are you when people attempt to insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you just because you're great. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward for putting Christmas back onto Starbucks cups and planning to bomb the shit out of Foreign Oil Fields, for in the same way you persecuted the immigrants who came long ago shall you be blessed with the opportunity to persecute others.

***********************************************

I struggle with the way I take in to my heart the contemporary scene, dominated, as it is, by those who believe they possess the only truth. There are many, these days, who firmly believe that they possess the only truths. They promise to thus wreak havoc on the rest of the World and, thereby, to bring it to the "Better Days," promised by their Prophets of Old. 

Is it -- apparently -- my lot in life to spend my Last Quarter listening to those who thus believe and who speak in Platitudes, as they prepare to wreak havoc on the World ... whatever language it is that they speak.

Wilde Oscar's Prophetic Vision

I think it was Wilde Oscar who said something about us all being born in the gutter but some of us having been born-such looking up at the stars. Hard to say whether he (assuming my memory, this morning, is better than it was, yesterday, when neither M nor I could remember Glenn Close's name) was prophetically seeing the present era in which we live, during which each of us had to learn to devote a certain amount of time, each day, sifting through our Spam file. I'm confident that I'm not alone in having been invited, this AM, to:

• Get hot with Asians, Brazilians, and Russian Women and/or Men;
• Buy from Walmart, Kohl's, Sears, ToysRUs, the Grommet and others whose names I don't recognize;
• Receive 100's of $Millions;
• "Hook-Up" (some graphic metaphor, aye?) with multiple, horny married folk of both sexes (is Howard that hermaphroditic a name) in and out of the shower* with a varied and explicit menu of gustatory delights;
• Simultaneously get back at Big Pharma and "get hard" by buying ED-Rx knock-offs;
• Vote and Support Donald Trump;
• Cure my obesity;
• Save a friend who was ripped off in a foreign land**; and
• Get degrees that prepare you for a multiplicity of careers helping others.

Ach du lieber ... y'got the picture and if you're reading this, you get similar Spam. My Spam file (I imagine like your's) was 137 deep, this morning, and part of me fears hitting the "unsubscribe" button wondering if it will end in my identity being stolen ... 

Hit that button ... and ... snap ... 

Holy Cannoli and Abra-Cadabra ... 

You'll be turned into a Gremlin or 

Freddie Bartholomew searching 

for a piece of stale bread on a dark London street.

M reminded me, yesterday -- while we were driving and listening to a soft melody, of the kindnesses shown to her by my Mother during our first pregnancy. And, indeed, my Sainted Mither whom we both miss was a kind and caring -- if complex -- person who I suspect favored M over all her children. The mind ... even the Swiss Cheese mind of the Fourth Quarter ... is an associative machine. Give it a feeling-saturated image with which to resonate and it bounces about like a Meson in a Particle Accelerator to all sorts of other images related to that feeling. Two imagistic factoids wafted into my mind, immediately. Poof!

In the first, I recalled December 1956. My Father had come home with our first new Television set. I had been reading through the toy catalogues that would come in the Fall ... heady stuff in 1956 as we were all -- under the watchful eye of Dwight David and Tricky Dick, Adlai and Estes -- unwittingly awaiting the arrival of better times in which: cars would drive on their own; not just Dick Tracy would have a watch on his wrist; and all that glitters would be distributed from Trump Tower and the pyramids that would be filled with grain and not mummies. TV was great ... I could watch Elvis wriggle his hips and Gorgeous George wrestle Killer Kowalski and some other guy who kept pointing to his head, noting how smart he was. Cisco and Poncho. Arthur Godfrey and Kate Smith! ... Any case, I remembered, as well, that it was the next day that my Father was fired from his job and procured one 600 miles away. My parents were 37 and 38 when that happened ... kids ... younger than all of mine, today. Curious how I never considered how hard it must've been for my Mother to again be temporarily left as my Dad went off to fight a different kind of war ... an economic survival one. His Dad, during the Depression, would get on a pickup truck in Brooklyn each Sunday night and travel to Northeastern Pennsylvania for a workweek at a foundry ... only to return to Brooklyn on Friday. 

The second memory was different. A little earlier. There was a guy who -- with a Shetland Pony -- would encourage kids on the streets of Brooklyn to don a cowboy hat and climb on board that Pony. He would take a picture and return somedays later to demand payment from Mothers for these pictures. I remembered the picture and that my Dad was upset that my Mom had been conned into buying it. Not angry, per se, but upset. I suppose $ was hard to come by in 1953 ... but who knew. There was always food on the table and my Mother, the kind lady who effectively adopted M when we got married in 1965, was always there.

Ah! I suppose scams have always been there ... from Jack and his Beans to Esau getting swindled out of his birthright for a pot-o-beans. And, still, I hold on to a wish for a Spam-Free Universe.

Fantasies for the Good, I suppose, die hard. 

______________________________

* Funny. It was just yesterday that prior to beginning a public lecture I was responding to someone else's comparison between the ends of Abraham's and David's lives. I wondered rather cheekily if she was referring to the Biblical claims that Abraham -- after Olde Sarai died -- successfully and repeatedly got hot with a lady named K'turah (maybe Gen: 25 or 26) but David, poor Old David (somewhere in Kings I?) wasn't sufficiently warmed by another purportedly hot lady named Avishag the Shunamite. Think how much happier David might've been at the end with Cialis ... spending the end of his life in a claw-foot tub next to Avishag's? "Shoulda checked his Spam File, aye?"

** Hey, I can get ripped off right here on the internet. Why did my friend have to loose their passport and wallet in Venice?