Prince of Light/Purveyor of Darkness

Is it possible that, after all these years, I am still surprised by the acts of kindness that I witness and receive and the curious acts of pettiness with which I'm confronted? Apparently, so. One might think that with entrance to the Last Quarter of Life, one gets a card that reads:

Long-lived and Seen It All 

And, while I suppose I/we have, seen it all that is, the sense of surprise remains.

Kindness requires so little. A asks B to do C or shows B their need to receive C and B -- if s/he has the resources to do so -- says "sure." I suppose this applies in Spades to promises made, but applies just as well to these quotidian requests that seem to arise often enough in a day to provide both the Giver and the Given-to a sense of hopefulness about the future.

I haven't been writing much, lately. I think I've been witnessing too much of the darkness. Indeed, I've come to recognize a certain sense of pressure and heaviness not in my heart but right down the middle ... esophageal mourning of some sorts. I think it an old feeling but still one that I've only recently come to fully experience. It happens routinely when I witness A asking B to do C and B almost reflexively needing to say "no" before agreeing to the requested favor.

Por Favor!

My visceral response goes beyond the heaviness down the middle of my chest. Glimmers of tears
warm my eyes. My entire body feels heavy. My speech becomes difficult and words don't come. We were mere children when the lyricists of Hair, the Musical wrote:

How can people be so heartless?

How can people be so cruel?

Easy to be hard, easy to be cold

How can people have no feelings?

How can they ignore their friends?

Easy to be proud, easy to say no

And especially people who care about strangers

Who care about evil and social injustice

Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?

How about a needing friend? I need a friend.

Frankly, I think it may be altogether too obvious to anyone reading these notes -- about an aging-guy's attempt to deal with a World that leaves too many behind -- that the author got mud-stuck in the romanticized ethos of the so-called Sixties. And even though he may not be hunched over the keyboard smoking dope, it is still the case that he mourns.

 Just these weeks on both the world-stage and locally in his four cubits:

Beheadings and Burnings.

Hate speech about others who are different.

Failures to keep promises to Near-and-Dear.

Sharing by a friend turning into shaming by others.

Lovers gratuitously saying "no" to each other.

Politicians squabbling with and slandering other politicians.

I thought about this outloud with someone I consider a kind friend. They cited a poem by Rainer Rilke that -- as far as I allowed myself to hear -- spoke of the need to befriend the reality of the shadowy and aggressive and powerful parts of our personality. Maybe it was his Hymn -- frankly I was too busy thinking in my own head about the horrors that I just noted, above:

For the first time I see you rising,

Hearsaid, remote, incredible War God. 

How very thickly terrible action has been sown

Among the peaceful fruits of the field, action suddenly grown to maturity.

Yesterday it was still small, needed nurture, now it is

Standing there tall as a man: tomorrow

It will outgrow man. For the glowing God

Will suddenly tear his crop

Out of the nation which gave it roots, and the harvest will begin.

At last a God. Since we were often no longer able to grasp

The peaceful God, the God of Battle suddenly grips us,

Hurling his brand: and over the heart full of homeland

Screams his crimson heaven in which, thunderous, he dwells.

I found it hard -- whatever the poem -- to take it in and rather reflexively suggested the reading of Lagerkvyst's (one page) The Venerated Bones to act as counterpoise:

Couldn't get a link to it but it's online and very brief, if you're curious.

Indeed, I know! I do know that I'm a hopeless romantic here in another loving-and-brutal century in which I do not feel quite at home.

Sam Hinton -- I think he was a Biologist and Folk singer but, anyhow, I seem to recall listening to him with M. at the Newport Folk Festival in maybe 1965 -- used to say:

The Choice can be no clearer: Peace to the World or the World in Pieces.

Cheer up, Howard. Fifty years ago, today, you and M met.

Hear! Hear! A Toast to that brave Soul, M!

  

Eyes that Warm in the Last Quarter

Can't say that a week has gone by in many years in which I haven't seen a child (we have three), their spouse, or their children. Friday nights -- typically -- 2 families of my clan show up for dinner ... a shared ritual. That I feel loved? is not in question. The mind is a very messy place, though, wherein conflicting feelings intercalate ... interweave ... interloaf ... intertwine .... ... as the kids say: 'get into each other's shit.' 

It was last night. One child with their spouse and three kids (one young woman and 11 year old twins) came over for a snack on their way to a school concert. I was glad to see them but oh! so complex are the stirrings inside. After they left, M and I watched the Musical production of Shrek. It was great but, still, Shrek "in the tongue of a foreign nation" (the great Old French scholar Rashi would abbreviate that wordy idea with four letters ... בלע׳׳ז) means to scream and a minority voice in my head could've voted for just such a scream. I was -- if only for moments -- Shrek whose eyes filled with tears as he feared that his only love would marry some feckless and Shrekless King-Schmendrick-Wannabe. No. I wasn't worried that M would run off with some small-person-with-a-crown-and-an-Ego to fit it! M was there for the long-haul ... We got together 50 years ago and the bond we formed on our first walk from Summit Avenue to her home on 5th Street in Providence holds to this day ... as our hands did.

It was different. M and I had run out to pick up a Pizza and a Greek Salad, knowing they'd be in a rush to get their nuclear clan to the acapella fete. We set the table and did what grandparents like to do. The oldest child is home from school on break and we'll not see her, again, for 4 weeks or so. The youngest two are quite civilized ... but, what to say: they're 11 years old. They eat with gusto ... they talk over each other ... they can never quite get over the penchant for keeping their world waiting ... they behave like the not-yet-born children of Mother-Rebekkah in Genesis: "And the sons ran about inside of her" .... May they compete for many, many joyous years. And they -- with no doubt -- do wonderful things for their grandparents. It was nothing they did that had me wistful.

How to explain?

There was a doctor named Hans Loewald who didn't die so many years ago. He once wrote that in the very act of growing up and becoming competent ... of feeding themselves and independently walking and talking and running and writing and becoming googoo-eyed over cute boys ... in doing what they're supposed to be doing, these children are making their parents irrelevant ... OK ... you wanna say "Less relevant?" I'm good with that, too. The very people who once did all for their spawn and whose ministrations to their little rugrats were seen as the major duties in life ... those very people were now -- so to speak -- unemployed. Loewald described it as psychic parricide ... doing in the parents by no longer needing those functions that once had made life itself possible.

When this occurs .... 

Very disturbed parents look down at their children and what's clearly discernible in their gaze is: 

Well! You don't need me anymore. 

So, hit the road, Jack ... and Jill ... and Jennifer!

I don't need you, neither.
Vaia con Dios!

Deluded parents who remain oblivious of any pain associated with their children's imminent departure into autonomous adulthood pretend:

Oh! Isn't that wonderful.

Look. You don't need me anymore and never will, again.

How much happier can a parent be?!
(is there an emoticon for 2 fingers down the throat?)

In my own understanding of the unfolding of life, the parent closer to their own feelings communicates with warmed eyes:

I'll always love you.

I think you're doing great.

Still, I miss those days when you curled up in my arms.
They were wondrous.

And while you don't need to be in the crook of my arm any longer,

You always have a place, here.

I'm coming to learn that there is a variant on these options that apply to Grandparents ... us frequent denizens of Life's Last Quarter. Last night, I watched as my youngest child and her family had come together as a cohesive and cohering family ... with their own way of being ...

For Grandparents? No longer is it the child drifting into a successful independence, but now each of the new families created in these folds of the life lived that moves into its own World.

Hokey! Hokey! Hokey, Howard!

OK! I knew this all before and, yet, each time I witness my own response to such situations ... Joy and Sweet Sadness mixed together with Pizza and Greek Salad ... or Cassoulet (cholent) and Potato Puddings (kugel), I choke up just a little like Corny Old Green Shrek when he fears that Fiona is gone for good ... and truthfully? I wanna scream ... I wanna Shrek .... No-o-o-o-oh!

So goes it! Enough!

I long have been a fan of Gibran's comments on parents and kids .... I think they apply to Grandma and Grandpa's feelings, too ... mutatis mutandis.

On Children

 Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, 

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might 

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Tears and Laughter (again)

Nice weekend!

Family! People who might as well be Family!

Thirty Five years ago, M and I had a surprise party for Milt, Alu and Boris, three friends who were all turning 40. One of them had then just recently had a coronary and the gathered guests in our home spoke a bit before the arrival of the guests of honor ... "How loud?" "What do we do if he has another myocardial infarction?" "Now that would be hard to explain!"

Now Milt and Alu were turning 75 and M was celebrating a birthday, as were my daughter-in-law, another M, and a number of M and my grandchildren. No surprises, this time, and Boris had gone over to the dark side -- he retired/moved, that is, in/to Sunny San Diego. No. No surprises. At 75, one doesn't take chances. It's likely a sufficiency in the Last Quarter to take such chances during sex and sex may be better than Surprise Parties ... hard to say. I digress!

It wasn't a huge party but big enough to fill up three or four rooms.

Connections?

Our kids, A, A & J (we coulda had a PB&J) forever, beginning 1966 

-- at least, as forevers go.

And their tribes!

For M and I, we've known Milt and Alu for a long time ... 

Milt and his lady, the Unflappable Ruthie? since 1968.

Bill knew them longer and M and I have known Bill and Phyllis since 1968.

Alu? only for 40 years and his wife Bobbi for half that time.

D&D couldn't come. D was turning 85.

Leah, my beautiful niece? for all 48 of her years. Her family? as it grew.

Our neighbor, Patti, for only 33 years.

The Grandspawn? as they came.

I could go on. I found it difficult to toast the crew. Made some silly witticisms. But mostly spoke of being struck by being at a moment in my relationships with many that was special in that it couldn't be repeated. Maybe the Buddhists are right about never stepping into the same river twice and maybe, just maybe, these situations are only dramatically different. Who knows? Do know that I love these people and the many others who came with their Souls ready to Sing in celebrating these moments with us.

M and I met in February 1965 and were married not long after: there is no repetition of a 50 year relationship. Milt, Alu and Bill? The odds of us getting together 40 years from now are dismal ... as the commercial for MasterCard has it: "irreplaceable." The joy of meeting this Sunday? ...

Wistful tears and (enlarged) belly-laughs of a band of Merry Pranksters and Serious Souls that once were and, in many ways, still are? Tears and Laughter, food a-plenty and a half case of wine.

May the Playing in this Sacred Fourth Quarter continue.

By the way ... 

10 hours from now and some many years ago, 

M appeared to her Mom and Dad for the first time. 

Happy Birthday, M.

Feeling Sorry for Myself

So, yesterday, it became clear that little children -- maybe, especially boys, adore their Mothers. A friend wrote: "When I was the object of my eldest son's appraisal, as per the cartoon, I emerged from a shower, he coldly looked me over, top to bottom, and gave this assessment:

"Next time, get a penis"

OK, OK ... Moms have it tough. Still, even if criticized, they do seem to get protected and loved. But what is it about children that they become so aware of what we don't have. I remember -- maybe 35 years ago -- my eldest son couldn't stand the way I ate. Apparently, I ate like an exuberant pig at the trough. Same guy had a party and we had a brief conversation:

Son: I was just wondering. 

When you meet my friends could you tell them that you're my uncle.

Dad: I could just tell them I was gardener.

Son: That's a good idea. Thanks Dad, could I borrow the car?

The Good Dokteur Freud from Vienna spoke of two impossible professions in addition to his own: the governance of nations (how would Boehner [sp.?] like the President to introduce himself?) and parenting. But dammit, at least Moms do get a lion's share of affection -- oh! they get the hate, too, but I got the floor for the moment and I'm feeling like an unappreciated Dad. After a day of warning about the Biggest Snow since the Ice Age, I woke up this morning to the sight of six inches. Six inches? and no one to shovel it but me. Y'know. Had it been 22 inches as the Seers saw in their entrails and said repeatedly in their televised expostulations, at least after shoveling out I would have been seen as ... the first to Climb Everest  ... as invited to the party that arrived at the South Pole ... as Baalum the Great Hunter God ... as Nanuk of N. Dakota or as Abayoyo ... or ... or something. Instead, I got to shovel 6" (and then got to kvetch about it: Poor Howard!).

No wonder, then, that Peter Arno portrays Mom as the great Mother of Desire (yesterday's cartoon) and Dad as the schmuck incapable of busting himself out of a stall shower. A 75 year old colleague put it well, to my way of thinking in a recent correspondence:

Timely, especially after I experience the increasingly  aging-related 

phenomenon of being viewed as increasingly irrelevant 

(as my competence increases).

May ... Be. Not so certain, though, about my competence being on the rise. It was even before I entered the Last Quarter that I sorrowfully penned the following ditty, as I recognized where I saw myself situated on the food chain:

The Peripatetic Animal-Phobe Home Alone

Yesterday, I jumped up on my bed

And heard a scratching overhead.

Had I heard this sound before

Perhaps a’scratching on my door?

Ghosts of road-kills from the past?

I got down from my bed real fast.

I fell upon a cold hard floor

And scurried fast right outside my door.

There they were six feet or more

Rockie Raccoon and his sister Lenore.

Coons you’d never chance to feed last

Whether in the attic or on your grass.

So now I’ll sleep a’standing on my head

While Rockie and Lenore scratch in my bed.

& the dog hates me, too.

.

Many years, ago, when the readers to this Blog were young or maybe not-born-yet, Peter Arno memorialized  the Big Eyes of the little child trying to make sense of what Freud called the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes. He called it "Lady in the Shower" To be fair, he had a male version, as well, which he called "Man in the Shower." There, a man is swimming upside down in a stall shower pointing to the door handle, obviously beseeching his wife to unlock the door and let him out. 

Winter, not infrequently, reminds me, as well, of other distinctions in the way we see (or, at least, the way Peter Arno -- blame him -- saw these distinctions) differences between the sexes. I don't quite know how to fairly parse the distinction between a Mother who is looked upon in wonder and as someone the child might be drawn towards and the Man who without the help of his Wife can't bust himself out of a stall shower. Still, I'm thinking of my snow-shoveling and gas-filling and plumbing and carpentering duties as pater familias in a home in which the kiddies have absconded and in which the only other male, GuntherDog dislikes getting his feet wet and whose only trick is a cow-eyed handshake. No argument, our Mothers in the 1950's were given far more time-consuming tasks ... cooking and cleaning could go on all day, as could taking care of the brats ... sorry cute-little-spawn ... err ... "our shared blessings from God" ... and keeping the family in one piece ... To paraphrase Sam Hinton: 'Peace to the Family or the Family in Pieces.'

And I have no interest in arguing fairness ... "who has the harder job?" ... "who does more?" ...  fair is what two people old enough to sign a contract ... fair is what they agree to do ... Still, I do have envy (wrote about it in a chapter of book on Men in the 21st C. http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Man-Into-21st-Century/dp/0763711721) about M's being seen as "The Mommy" and me being portrayed by Arno as being incapable of busting out of a paper bag ... or a glass-doored shower, anyway.

I suppose it hits home, today, as I gird my loins, as the prophets would say, and prepare myself for the shoveling out from the "Historical" Snow-mageddon that the Jeremiahs of my day are predicting. The serious snow is supposed to begin early afternoon and continue through tomorrow morning. Some visitors to my office will decide against driving ... some will don cross-country skis, if necessary, to arrive at my office. It's good to be loved! In any case, I stole a red wool hat with fringes atop points and knitted earflaps from the GrandSpawn, the temperature is not far below freezing, and the snow is not predicted to be the heavy/wet widow-maker variety. I'll go out multiple times and do parts of the 320 feet of walkway. I won't have to do the driveway due to my religious faith that tells me that if I park the cars right at the bottom of the driveway, the Lord will get around to melting the top 160 feet leading up to the garage when She's good and ready. 

I have three pairs of gloves and if I work from a door-INTO-the-snow, my Birkenstocks work just fine. We have one shovel. I guess that's mine? No problem with M ... it's not her thing ... She'll be upstairs taking a hot shower? Nah!

Like last year, I am somewhat preoccupied by the not-quite-delusional fantasy that children making snow-angels in the snow (i.e., lying on their little backs and swinging their arms in the snow -- leaving the imprint of what they think looks like an angel in the snow) are channeling their grandfathers who took their last breaths while making the self-same motions in the snow. Should it ever happen to me, maybe M will have me cremated with my 20" pipe wrench, in one hand, my Wallace open-end wrenches in my pants pocket, leaning on a shovel. When the ceremony ends, there'll be something for "the World to carry on" ... Those wrenches that were my Dad's and my trusty shovel, Mathilda.

Pray for Howard ---- from Psalm 147 ....

He has, indeed, made strong your gates (but the trees may still fall on your house);

He has blessed your children (smart, warm and) inside;

He establishes peace within your boundaries (well, not yet);

And fills you with the finest of Wheat (whether you're celiac or not);

He sends forth his commands to the Earth (Let it snow, let it snow, ugh);

His words run swiftly (before y'know it, the snow's a foot deep).

He gives snow like wool (dries your skin and makes you itchy);

He scatters frost like ashes from a fire (frost-bit fingers raised in praise).

Who can stand before his Icy Cold (I can ... I think, I think, I think I can).

(parenthetical comments added gratuitously).

Finish off, if you would, with "Rudolph, the red-nosed grandpa ... " and Jethro Tull's description of nasal production in "Aqualung" ... 

I'm ready know.

Too Many gods? Too Many God Complexes?

I suspect that most of us Players in this Glorious Last Quarter of Life recall the story of the Pied Piper. A town (Hamelin) was over-run by rats and hired a rat-catcher to rid it of this infestation. Alas, he was interested in taking a fee much higher than that offered and stole all the children by alluring them with his catchy tunes. Some have suggested that the story represented the people's choosing a magician, of sorts, over their God in trying to save their children from the Plague -- and that this was their comeuppance. No matter.

For me, I often find that while there may be a sufficiency of Rats, these days we more often suffer from too many Pied Pipers, each telling us how to live our lives and criticizing the ones we live. (An art student of mine for a class assignment years ago photoshopped the above redecoration of the Vatican ceiling that I borrow here without attribution and with apologies -- having forgotten his name.)

The edginess and gratuitous snarkiness of the world occasionally does trouble me. By the Fourth Quarter, one may be swimming for one's life in an ocean of criticisms. Just this week, I was giving a talk wondering about how Moses got to a place in his conversation with God at the Bush-that-Wouldn't-Be-Consumed (in the first three chapters of Exodus) that moved him to bark at his God and demand rhetorically:

Why have you depressed this people?! 

I had no answer and wasn't seeking one. I was more interested in what is a four-volume dialogue that the Bible records between a man and his God. A friend called to tell me how impossibly non-linear my thinking was in this talk.

Damn, I needed that! 

(like a new sphinctor magnum, I needed that)

Edginess seems to be if-not-the rule then a common occurrence, these days ...  this blog, perhaps, can be accused of edginess, too! I don't know. I do hope it's heard in a spirit of warm sharing. Perhaps, we Fourth Quarter-niks just get sensitive, as we grow long in the tooth. I'm not certain but, if so, I'm no exception. Jim Hillman (now, gone himself) wrote an interesting book on aging ... he called it The Force of Character. In it, he proposes that, as we age, we just get to be more of what we've always been. Not always a good thing. But I'll hold on to my sensitivities ... they add to my humanity.

I could list the curious slights that have collected in just the last week ... but I suspect readers to this blog have been exposed in the same amount of time to snide comments in their own worlds. To paraphrase a title from the Good Dr. Freud:

The Gratuitous Slights of Everyday Life. 

Mine this week came mostly from Second and Third Quarter folk. One did amuse me. It came from a person who was organizing a new program of the type I ran for many years. I made the offer to send some of the literature and brochures from that training program and was responded to with dismissiveness. Can I still remember what it was like to "flip off" the older generation? I suppose so. Still ... How easy is it to simply say "thank you" without the edge.

Let me be clear: I cherish the not-infrequent little supportive comments from children, grandchildren, friends and others near and dear to me. Doesn't get better than that and many of those interchanges came my way this week, as well. 

Zen -- Western-Mother-in-Law Style

Before I understood M's mother's experience

of suffering in the Last Quarter, 

I sent the old lady the following cavalier

(dis)missive about her aching dotage.

I think I now get it! Alas.

Zen ****ism - - 

(You pick the ism -- as written to M's Mother many years ago)

If there is no self,

whose arthritis is this?

Be here now.

Be someplace else later.

Is that so complicated?

Drink tea and nourish life.

With the first sip?... joy.

With the second? ... satisfaction.

With the third? ... peace.

With the fourth? ... a danish.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Your luggage is another story.

Accept misfortune as a blessing.

Do not wish for perfect health

or a life without problems

or a bug-free Universe.

What would you kvetch about?

The journey of a thousand miles

begins with a single "ouch."

There is no escaping karma.

In a previous life, you never called,

you never wrote, you never visited.

And whose fault was that?

Zen is not easy.

It takes effort to attain nothingness.

And then what do you have?

The Tao does not speak.

The Tao does not blame.

The Tao does not take sides.

The Tao has no expectations.

The Tao demands nothing of others.

The Tao is not a Mother-in-Law.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Forget this? and attaining Enlightenment

will be the least of your problems.

Let your mind be as a floating cloud.

Let your stillness be as the wooded glen.

And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha 

with those rounded shoulders.

Be patient and achieve all things.

Be impatient and achieve all things faster.

To Find the Buddha, look within.

Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers.

Each flower blossoms ten thousand times.

Each blossom has ten thousand petals.

You might want to see a specialist.

To practice Zen and the art of Western

motorcycle maintenance, do the following:

get rid of the motorcycle.

What were you thinking?

Be aware of your body.

Be aware of your perceptions.

Keep in mind that not every physical sensation 

is a symptom of a terminal illness.

The Bible says: "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

The Buddha says there is no "self."

So, maybe you are off the hook.

Though only your skin, sinews, and bones remain, 

though your blood and  flesh

dry up and wither away, yet shall you meditate and not stir 

until you have attained full Enlightenment.

But, first, let's do brunch.