The Scholars have Spoken: A Night in the Life of a Fool

The Scholars have spoken: SEX IS GOING TO CONTINUE.

As I fessed up a couple-days-back, I was to attend a meeting of scholars. "It was a cold, dank night" but still the circle filled. All the attending folk are interested in the complexities of being human. Average Age? Maybe 62 ....  13 Good Souls or so. Scholars. Couple a Third Quarter types bring the mean down with the Late Last Quarter folk  to the beginning of the Fourth Quater when flowers still smelled sweet ... Hell! When I could still smell flowers. Really a very nice group of people who have thought deeply about these matters for many years, some more than others ... oh!  and me. About half are MD's or DO's and the other half, if you include one writer, are health professionals with different Letter-Salads following their names. Not a lotta Dr. This ... Dr. That going on but maybe there's a pecking order anywy -- but, at least at the surface, first person and friendly-like.

I was not at the top of my game. A couple of hours prior to the meeting my heart decided to go out of rhythm. (BTW ... not all that dangerous ... the Atria of the Heart can flutter about quite a bit before an event has any significant chance of capturing your "freak flag" ... oh! .... and your humor.) It's funny how the brain interprets irregularities in the heart. It goes something like this.

When my heart is at its resting and rhythmic rate of 38-45 beats per minute, I'm calm and relaxed and pretty easy going. When it moves up to 80-100 because of exercise, it still feels pretty good. I can feel my heart beating: "I'm still alive, God ... thanks."  When I leave rhythm and am moving willy-nilly from the 40's to 135 or 228 and back, again, without any particular pattern, my brain thinks there's something wrong. Maybe a tiger sneaking its head out of the jungle, a tiger who will soon will try to "dine with me" ... or, more to the point, "dine on me." Now, when a person is anxious or their brain gets the "Your heart's moving fast" signal of anxiety, lots of things change. The normal sweating and palpitations are there for getting the person ready for fight-or-flight ... Those parts of the brain that control Abstract Mathematics, Poetry, Near Vision, Memory, Sequencing, and Complex Thoughts, in general, take a nap. There's little point in either writing a poem for a preying Tiger nor of looking closely at his incisors just before he's to claw you and eat you. No. Those functions have learned to disconnect with anxiety and a-fib convinces the brain that it's anxious. Indeed, what the Armies of the world do in Basic Training is, at least in part, teach how not to shut off those protective higher functions and to permit some of that strategic thought even while fighting or running for your life.

All this was to say that when I'm in this state of mind that accompanies cardiac arrhythmias, "Good Comportment" is not likely the highest grade on my dance card ... or maybe I'm making an excuse for being Old! ... and last night was no exception. 

We were all to have read this piece on the need for morality in the health care provider. Now, the author's notion of morality didn't include any prohibitions or compulsions, beyond the usual ... that in my thinking, reduced to "We don't make love and we don't make war." Years ago, a colleague had suggested a simpler version: "We do what we say we were going to do." This particular author that we were reading suggested that morality centered on a capacity to see the other -- say, the patient -- as a person in their own right ... Martin Buber had called this an Ich-Du ... I-Thou relationship to separate it from treating the other as an It (an Ich-Es relationship in Buber's German). 

I would have thought that all this that the author was borrowing (while appropriately citing) from Buber would've been thoroughly uncontroversial. I woulda been wrong.

Do I think human folk can revel in the elegant ideas of another one of our tribe? I used to think that. This morning I bounce back and forth from hopeful playfulness with this simple idea and disquieting disappointments that even those who are professionals at this Psyche game have a difficult time listening to each other.

Or maybe, I'm just an Old Man who finds it hard to be satisfied and sits on a chair near his stoop shaking his cane and kvetching at the same time.

And what does this have to do with Sex and Aggression? 

For that? ... our next episode of Old Guy Kvetching ..... 

Sex, Sex, Sex, More Sex and Aggression

I seem to have been surrounded, this past weekend, by Sex and Aggression. Walking in and out of a room, last night, while the Grammy Music Awards was showing, most of the performers looked "pretty and hot," their lyrics were "if not pretty then hot," and the sets for these performances were "either hot or ejaculatory" (with explosions going off like fireworks on the Fourth of July.)

When I wasn't trying to catch some lyrics that my Fourth Quarter brain couldn't process and my ears couldn't quite make out, I was reading a friend's writing on sexual morality among health care providers and clergy-folk. He made it sound rather simple ... too simple for me. He could imagine having "the hots" for a patient but, with a sense of morality and a sense of the Other as "a subject in their own right" (an expression we've both used in our writings for quite some time), he could never act on it. He was largely arguing from Martin Buber's position on the difference between I-It and I-Thou forms of relating. In the former, the Other is an Object who, at least for the moment, is little else than the thing through which gratification is achieved. In the latter, the Other is, to use the phrase again, a subject in their own right.

Then there was last week. Visitors to my office had referred to "Birthday sex," "Anniversary sex," "Buddy sex," and "Decrease the anxiety sex." Sex, Sex, Sex and More Sex.

By the time someone reaches the Last Quarter, they've likely had sex between 3,000 and 4,000 times, not counting multiple orgasms and -- what to say? -- solo horizontal aerobics. I'm relatively confident in my belief that even our most acclaimed artists fail to produce that many great works of art and that much sex fails the Grammies criterion of loud music, wild lyrics and flames shooting out of all corners of the stage.

I remember living in New Hampshire 40 years ago during the Winter of 1973-1974, the Winter of OPEC's discontent. It was freezing and the Heating Oil wasn't refined enough to keep furnaces burning. I don't recall whether "the Sex was Up" or "Down" that Winter, though I have clear recollections that M and I and the Kids not infrequently slept in our goose-down coats and Kazimierza Kuratowski the Saint Bernard often slept between us ... not certain whether she was there to be kept warm or to warm.

I don;'t recall any longer whether I was present in this particular Bar-Lounge or was the recipient of a Bar-room tale told by someone else. Any case ... At the bar were seated two youngish men, sitting and drinking, together ... and an old Geezer nearby drinking alone. The young guys were describing their sexual exploits. "The Sun, the Moon, the Moving Heaven and Earth" talk went on ... and on ... and on. The Old Guy finally turned to them: "You young whipper-snappers ain't got nothin'. When I fuck there are sparks." Of course, it's not clear that for any of these three men, sex was more than expressions of aggression and the need for tension reduction. Who knows? Maybe they were the last of the great hot lovers?

Anyway. Old sex? Young sex? I don't know. Ask Masters and Johnson! For me the question is far more what we humans are looking for in the sack, against the tree or on the pool table. I didn't -- I might add -- get the answer from my friends' writing. A bunch of folk in a reading group are getting together tomorrow night ... mostly Old Farts from the Last Quarter ... to discuss these writings. I'll get back when the scholars have spoken.

Meantime? As the Capitol Steps used to say: "Keep yer Bousers Truckled" ... or not.

So, I Had a Dream

There are cultures in which the Shamans divide "little Dreams" from "BIG Dreams." I had what I would describe as a little one ... a very little one ... and that following the day that Woody Allen's 100 year old analyst (from Crimes and Misdemeanors and from behind the couch), Marty Bergmann, finally passed on. Will dream analysis ever be the same?

In the Dream, I was doing a "Soup Clinic" .... teaching people how to think of soup. This, in and of itself, in my family might be a source of amusement -- yielding laughter. It's my firstborn who is the one in the family with a flair for cuisine ... haute and otherwise. When he was a youngster -- c. 35 years ago -- a family friend gave him the gift of cooking lessons with a local Chef who drove a big Mercedes and spoke with a heavy German accent ... just heavy enough to overuse cream and have some local TV shows. Since  then, Firstborn has mercilessly criticized his father's soups ... in the large? accusing his Papa of allowing, on occasion, soups to wander beyond a simmer into a boil. Now, I'm getting hot! "A boil on his head for accusing his Dear Ole Dad of such wanton sins and misdeeds."

But back at the Dream. Apparently, I had accepted the Gospel of the Firstborn and was warning the people I had been describing from the Grocery Store (see past 3 or 4 postings) of the near-Mortal Sin of Boiling Soup. It was, let me add, not a pretty scene. Firstly, Firstborn was off in the wings (was this being televised?) looking unappreciatively and disapprovingly of Il Papa's techniques. Not saying a word but with that look on his face ... as if to say: "you MUST be kidding."

Buffy and Burton were asking why I didn't have bottles full of Saffron. "We have bottles of Saffron ... full bottles." And then there were the dissatisfied and the unhappy. One was scowling and the other was demanding that I repeat everything ... repeatedly. I woulda called a manager ... Oh! but we really weren't in a Grocery Store!

Me? I was explaining that the most important two things to do with soup were, after vowing to never allow a soup to boil:

A. Pre-panfry any vegetables -- only fresh! -- that are to enter the sacred soup pot.

B. After the panfrying of vegetables is complete, carefully ... CAREFULLY .... with a wooden spoon of curved wooden spatula remove every bit of the cooked vegetables and guarantee their delivery into the pot. Nothing ... lemme repeat ... NOTHING may remain in the frypan.

Then, I left explaining that my Prep-Chef would "close" and pointing to Firsatborn.

The dream ended with all participants complaining by gesture or word that that Ole Man was using equal amounts of dried peas, barley and rice, destroying the flavor of each.

I woke up in a sweat with an impatiently disgruntled GuntherDog waiting to be escorted downstairs for his morning toillette.

And this nightmare? this occurred after the three dining grandspawn all seemed to be thrilled with not only my vegan pesto to satisfy their little vegetarian personnas, but with my cassoulet, kugel, and fruit compote, to boot.

I can only imagine the Dream that might have followed rejection of my cuisine.

How DID Julia Child sign off!?

Before his icy cold, who can stand?

Psalms 147  "He tosses his snow about like fleece-wool ... Frost like ashes .. Ice like little crumbs .... Before his icy cold, who can stand?"

I was writing about that guy in the woolen coat with his black beret pulled down over his ears ... yeah! The guy who can still shake his walking stick and kvetch at the same time. Sleep didn't come easy in the creaky old man's creaky old house and it didn't last. Sleep irregularities seem to be common in the Last Quarter and when the clock turned 4 AM and he could feel irregularities in his cardiac rhythm which bode poorly for continued sleep, he arose. Like Phoenix of his Ash-es ... (couldn't resists).

At least three grandspawn were to arrive after I was done with my visitors, today, and they needed to eat. 4 AM is as good a time as any to cook, especially when atrial fibrillation is doing its things ... one of which is making it hard to think.

So, just happens to be that this is the same guy ... walking in the aisles (hey! any of you Second Quarter types, try feeling for that peripatetic old man ambling with a slightly lost look in his eyes down -- or was it up -- aisle 4 in the Grocery Section. This is the same guy in his not-very-updated kitchen. No tiles sent through Prague. No Convcave Convex ovens ... no ice box big enough for the inlaws who are gone already, anyway.

Just me and what to cook. It's freezing cold? Ah, a cassoulet (Cholent, if you're from Minsk) to warm the two tweens, the adolescent and their parents. They're hungry? A potato, carrot, spinach, onion pudding (Kugel, if you're from Pinsk). Oh! And some hot cranberry, apple, lemon, orange, raisin compote (mashed hot fruit if yer from Selma, Alabama). Goes well with Vanilla Ice Cream for dessert.

Anyhow. As the Old Guy is standing and doing this and that (what did I forget? what should I add? What was my address in Toledo in 1957?), I was noticing how I made a point of completely emptying every sauce pan and dish that was to go into the final mix. Was I a parsimonious, skin-flinty kinda guy who needed to make certain I was getting every last potato-shred into the oven?

Any case? A memory came. There were some Wiseguys ... Scholars ... who live about 2,000 years ago. Their colleagues called them the Ten Waistrels or Time Wasters. They talked and disputed and studied all day. One of their ruminations came to mind, as, perhaps, a result of my thinking about Psalms at 4:00. They were trying to reconcile two passages.

"To God belongs the Earth and all that it contains."

and

"The Heavens? The Heavens are for God. The Earth (S)He gave to the Children of Mankind."

These scholars tended to get nervous ... freak out, if passages in the canonized Scriptures couldn't be reconciled. One of them had an aha moment.

"The first? the first is before making a blessing. The second? after making a blessing."

Ah, so I got it for the Old Guy, too. The first passage is before I totally scrape everything into the final mix ... and the second? you got the second.

Timer is about to go off on kugel.

Bye.... we'll eat at 6:00 in this Icy Northeast Corridor.

Old Man -- Shaking a Stick

Thinking of renaming the Blog ... Old Man Shaking a Stick and Kvetching, at same time.

Beats "Chewing Gum!"

Uniquely 21st Century

Well, maybe not. I'm thinking of those folk who are cloaked in 'the beautiful' -- even when shopping. It's been cold, here, in the Northeastern United States. Oh, and as I've aged, I do wear a coat in the Winter and a hat pulled over my ears. When M and I moved to Philadelphia with our older kids in 1974 from a cold valley in the shadow of New Hampshire's Mt. Monadnock, coats seemed irrelevant ... and hats? who needed a hat? I had a full head of hair and a Thyroid Gland that kept my hair growing and my body-heater fired-up, all the time.

But Thyroids age with the rest of Last Quarter functions and hats and coats are the order of the day. And so the Old Guy walking in the Produce section has on a heavy woolen coat and a black beret pulled down over his chilly ears.

And there they are as big as life ... Burton and Buffy sniffing the organic cucumbers ... and sniffing in my direction, as well. OK, guys, it snowed 13" last night and I have visitors who come to my office beginning as early as 600 in the morning. I haven't been able to find anyone crazy enough to come and clean my walks at 500 and -- get a life -- SHOVEL does come before SHOWER in the dictionary." B & B still hog the aisles and look at me as if I needed to buy my veggies at the Soup Kitchen and 'Buck-up, Boy, and get yourself a proper hat or go back to Brooklyn or to some backwater town in New Hampshire!'

 Maybe if I was younger, it wouldn't get at me. I don't know Burton and Buffy but I have had a repeating experience since this Century began. I'm picking up a colleague ... Maybe going to a meeting. "C'mon in for a minute, I wanna show you something." It sounds safe enough with the homey language ... 'c'mon right on in.' Maybe they're 'gonna' show me something they're working on or offer me a beer. (Well, I don't drink beer or other alcohol, as it tends to get my heart out of it's normal rhythm ... But, still.)

No. It's just about always the kitchen. Refrigerators big enough to keep the in-laws fresh for their 80th anniversary party and enough burners on the cook-top to cater the affair in-house. The tiles are imported from Prague and the countertops passed through Tuscany on their way to the suburbs. The ovens, need I say, are big enough to roast an Ostrich and sufficiently convective to do so in 35 minutes. And sometime before we go to the the meeting with boxed chicken salad sandwiches, the figure $125,000 is snuck into the conversation.

 Need I add the most fascinating detail: it's possible that the kitchen has not yet been launched by use!

Grocery Types (take 3)

Got your running shoes on? If the type that finds no good in the aisles and is critical of every gift his or her god gave them is off-putting, there is another from whom you should run before asking questions. This person, male or female, has a hook that runs sharp and deep and needs major provisions in an almost continuous way.

      "Can you help me find the canned tomatoes?" 

 "I think they're over there."

      "Could you show me." 

 "You bet."

      "Are they any good. I don't know. The picture on the can shows pale tomatoes."

 "Well, lemme see if I can find the better ones."

      "They look expensive." 

 Yes. That's too late to begin running. These people are -- in a broad sense -- healthy, if healthy means knowing how to get out of the World what they want or need and have never received. Indeed, the impression they give you is that you have what they need at this very moment. Trouble is? You don't ... they're insatiable ... Oh ... and your needs don't count.

      "Oh! And where's that good fresh pasta? Could you find that for me, too? I'd really appreciate     it." 

 Laura Nyro had a lyric: "Run, run, run, like a son-of-a-gun." I'm being callous, aren't I? Well, yes. These people have never experienced emotional satisfaction. Maybe their parents were profoundly depriving .,, but chances are pretty good that it wasn't the tomatoes that were held back; once the tomato problem is resolved, what to serve with them is near at hand.

 By the time you become a denizen of the Fourth Quarter, you might hope that you'd figure out what the Good Life was all about ... what the healthy individual looks like ... how the well community behaves. Some time ago, I thought it was sufficient for the healthy person to be one who appreciates and even cherishes the inner world of another. For that person, I imagined and wrote about it quite a bit, every two person relationship includes that cherishing of the Other's Others and Wishes and Beliefs. Unfortunately, that kind of person is easy prey for the tomato and pasta bandit who by now has you answering questions, mopping floors, and bending down to suck the dirt from between their toes. In their insatiable hunger, by the way, these folk do, indeed, feel they deserve what it is that they're asking for ... but will never be filled or satisfied.

"Run, run, run, like a son-of-a-gun."