John Swinburn

Last night, we attended our fourth (is that right?) Wines of the World dinner at Coronado Center. The theme country for the night was Portugal. After beginning with a far-too-sweet-for-my-taste port, the wines ramped up in interest and quality. Two vinho verde wines, both inexpensive, were very nice; dry, crisp, and clean. The first, Salvador Lago Vibrant & Aromatic Vinho Verde, was cheapest, at $8.50, but quite good. The next, only around $10 or $11, was Portal da Calçada Reserva Vinho Verde 2015; while I probably couldn’t tell them apart in a blind taste test, I think I allowed myself to like the latter wine a tad better, perhaps because of the price. The next red wine was Prazo de Roriz Douro, 2013. It was quite good, but also considerably more expensive (by my standards, not by the standards of people who can better differentiate and appreciate wines).

The food served as an excuse to drink the wine were interesting. We started with an amuse bouche of a bacon-wrapped date, accompanied by two olives. Then, we had an interesting and quite flavorful potato soup (accompanied by garlic bread), followed by an interesting Cornish game hen served with more potatoes. We finished with an interesting dessert cake, which was best when the last port of the evening was poured over it.

During dinner, I talked with a guy who, I learned, is a writer and intends to join the Village Writers’ Club. He’s an interesting guy, a retired architect, who spent eleven years, off and on, in Japan. He’s interested in writing short fiction for his own amusement and has done a bit of writing. He said he attended L’Audible Art and claimed to have appreciated my reading. Inasmuch as something I’m writing includes an important Japanese connection, I asked him if he’d be willing to read some of it when it’s far enough along, with the objective of determining whether my writing captures (or, conversely, tortures) the culture appropriately. He said he’d be glad to. We didn’t talk politics, but I’m guessing the guy may be fairly progressive. He mentioned having felt, at some point during an exchange while in Japan, embarrassed at being an American, due to the American motivations for entering and staying involved in the Vietnam War. I learned that he studied under E. Fay Jones, the famous Arkansas architect whose work is visible in and around Hot Springs Village, Hot Springs, Eureka Springs, and so on. And he mentioned having intended to have built a house in Hot Springs Village (in a more modern style) until he learned the cost of new construction versus existing homes. I, too, had hoped to build here (a modernist style home), until I discovered the costs.

So, all in all, I’d say the evening was a great success. I was reasonably happy with the wine and food and was glad to have engaged in conversation with a fellow writer who, perhaps, might become part of the entourage of writers I’ve been hoping would develop here.  As that entourage stands, Maddie and Myra and Millie form the core, with Judy and JoAnne being good prospects; and, now, it’s possible that Paul might one day join the crowd.

It’s almost midnight. I should be in bed, but I’m not. Instead, I’m reflecting on the day just ending, stunned that the frenetic pace led to something so smooth. The morning started with coffee with friends who happen to be writers. Then, a flurry of activities concerning a function for which I volunteered but later regretted taking on the task. My regret has subsided a bit, though it remains alive and kicking.  Then, I had an unexpectedly positive experience at an event in Hot Springs. My wife and a friend and I drove to town to participate in an educational program about the history of Hot Springs and, specifically, the Hot Springs National Park. Frankly, I was expecting to be moderately bored. Instead, I was spell-bound! The information was intriguing and presented in a way that made me want to learn more. I discovered so many things about Hot Springs I had not known heretofore…incredible history, both on the human scale and the geological scale. And, if that wasn’t enough, we enjoyed a delightful evening participating in our “dinner for eight” group. Our hosts’ home on a small lake was welcoming, the food (made by all participants, with the entrees and some main sides provided by the hosts) was excellent, and the conversation was truly fascinating. We learned a bit more about our fellow diners and they learned a bit about us. The evening was absolutely outstanding; I could do it once a week!

As I think back on the day just ended, I appreciate how incredibly fortunate I am to live in this time, in this place, and alongside the people with whom I share my life. Too many people on the globe do not have ready access to all the luxuries, both substantive and intellectual, available to me. That’s a terrible fact that I think all of us ought to take action to correct. Where’s the line, though? At what point do I sufficiently diminish my luxuries to ensure the availability of necessities to others? It’s a philosophical and moral question; I can’t answer it with any consistency. I bounce between wanting to be an ascetic, giving my worldly goods away to people in need, and wanting to joyously accept the bounty of my good fortune. Somewhere in between, I would like to believe, there’s a morally defensible point at which I do not have to suffer unnecessarily, but neither do people who might benefit from my willingness to replace my gluttony with comfort.

God, I’ve done it again. I wanted to be joyous in my good fortune, but instead I’ve wallowed in a pit of self-blame that still smells of greed. Ach! If I could snap my fingers and make the world a better place, in which people willingly toiled for their good fortune and willingly shared with those for whom good fortune has given way to bad fortune, I would do it. I really do want every human being to be fed, clothed, sheltered, loved, and free of hatred. And I’d rather like the same for the creatures that share our planet. What a pipe-dream. No wonder people sneer and laugh at dreamers. But wouldn’t it be great if we could somehow turn the world into a utopian wonderland? Well, we could. But only if you join me on the quest. I’ll call you Sancho Panza. You can call me Al.

Back to today, though. This evening was the closest I’ve come to thinking, “you know, even though the idea of ‘church’ is anathema, I might be able to get over it if this is what I might get out of it.” I’m too set in my ways, though, to come to that conclusion so quickly. No. I’ll stay a friend for awhile…or forever…before I stumble into a role I might not want.

A rancid, acidic stew is coursing through our nation’s veins, sickening the heart and gut of the country that once offered the world promise and served as an imperfect, but hopeful, model for humanity. Today, that ugly slurry—a foul mixture of hatred, lies, hunger for power, and naked greed—pours from open wounds, spilling onto an international stage whose audience looks on in stunned horror, as if witnessing a once-loving parent swallow poison and attempt to slash, with jagged pieces of her own broken bones, the womb from which her grateful children emerged. The body politic, infested with rabid, disease-ridden vermin, struggles to rid itself of a cancer so invasive that death beckons. Rainbows and unicorns are powerless against this beast that resides in the recesses of our collective brain. The only cure is a cleansing transfusion of new conviction and steadfast insistence on nurturing the wounded cells that gave birth to the nation so they will divide and multiply, filling the empty veins with resolve.

I just watched a YouTube video in which Emmanuel Macron, the newly-elected President of France, invited U.S. climate scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to come to France to pursue their work on climate change. In my opinion, the invitation was a stroke of genius. It also made me wish I were a climate scientist. Recent skepticism about science in all its forms, fueled by what I believe is conservative and religious idiocy and ignorance, is sweeping across the U.S. and is growing in many other places. Countries with intelligent leaders (e.g., France, Canada, Germany) are countering that dangerous ideology by embracing the idea that we who have put the world in danger can save it; I hope they are right. It’s a shame that the United States, once the undisputed leader in science, technology, and pure research, is on track to lose some of its most precious resources and, in the process, its preeminence as a champion of the pursuit of knowledge. Much of the rest of the world is actively encouraging pure research, knowing it offers opportunities for both environment improvement and economic growth. Those lead to happier, more productive societies. There’s an entire world “out there,” calling on decent, forward-thinking people to join in the pursuit of decency. That, alone, is reason to consider traveling the globe.

We had a house guest not long ago. When one has a house guest, one tidies up. One washes the guest towels, put fresh sheets on the bed, sweeps, mops, dusts, and otherwise behaves in ways foreign to one’s daily routine. And we did all the above. But, during the process, as I was putting fresh sheets on the guest bed, I flipped the fitted sheet a little too hard. I popped the beast to straighten it. But it caught the ceiling fan blade. The fan blade arm, the piece that attaches the blade to the body, broke in two pieces. Had the part been fabricated of decent material, I would not be writing this. But it was made of soft metal combined with the breath of a baby. This pairing was insufficient to withstand the snap of a bottom sheet. I erupted in anger at the broken pieces on the unmade bed. I cursed builders who use crappy products. I cursed the original owners who did not replace the fan with something decent. I cursed the subsequent owner, just because. And I cursed myself because flipping the sheets as I did was the act of an imbecile on drugs and sleep deprivation.

That notwithstanding, we completed our trip to Garvan Woodland Gardens. We drank beer, sampled tuna tartare and mahi-mahi tacos, and ate decadent ice cream. That does not explain why I go overboard on cleanliness with house guests. Right. It doesn’t.

And so why am I writing this, when I could have been smoking fish or instigating an insurrections that would cleanse this country and bring it into a new age of decency and possibility? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind. How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man? 

But I have another question that’s been on my mind for a while. A Facebook friend I’ve met only once in person, a guy in Florida, has bounced off and on from Facebook for a long while. In the latest iteration, he unfriended me and has not friended me again. I can deal with that; I’ve dismissed people who annoyed me. But I had no clue; no idea. And now I’m feeling rather down; what did I do, I wonder? Why would I be skimmed off into the trash? That’s one of the negatives of social media. The impersonal—that is, not personal—can be misconstrued as personal. A comment can become an attack. Appreciation can become a relationship or an affair.

I took this photo in an interesting shop in downtown Hot Springs recently. 

Until you’ve painted, you cannot legitimately express opinions on the skills of the person holding the brush. I learned that lesson through embarrassing experience. I tried to paint something I thought would be “easy.” I selected an abstract theme, thinking it’s impossible to paint something “wrong” that has no expression in reality. I was wrong. Across the board. And I was chastened to learn that, regardless of how much I wanted to express myself through art, I was not…am not…a natural. I may not be capable of doing what I want to do. And that reality hurts. My inability to transfer what I see in my head to the canvas is actually painful; it causes physical pain, discomfort that seems illegitimate. How could my inability to paint an image translate into physical pain? I don’t have an answer; I just know I have the experience. The reality of being “not remotely good enough” is instructional. It tells me I am not the man I wished I were. It tells me I do not have the innate talents I dreamed I had. It tells me I am more fallible than I wish to be. It’s just disappointing; more disappointing than I could have imagined. I had fantasies of being a late-in-life artistic talent. That isn’t going to happen. I can always return to my writing; I’m not bad at that. But, like the visual arts, I’m not by any means stellar (though maybe more stellar with words than with acrylic). Yet I have to accept that none of my artistic talents is sufficient to warrant calling myself an artist. And I think that is the most painful aspect of coming to this realization. I have always, somewhere deep inside me, wanted to be an artist; that has been my lifelong aspiration. To be a talented artist, regardless of medium, was the dream I never quite allowed myself to articulate. But here it is. That’s what I wanted. And I’ve not reached that goal and have no reasonable expectation of getting there. Knowing this, understanding this, coming to grips with this, is more difficult than I ever imagined. It’s as if the person I hoped I’d be, the person I’d always wanted to uncover after peeling back all the layers, is hopelessly lost. I’m unable to attain the single most important thing. I’m not sure what I feel. What I can say  with certainty is this: it’s not good. Coming to the ugly realization that wishes do not necessarily translate into reality is brutality made real. I guess I’ll get over it, whatever “it” is; but I hate knowing I am incapable of being the man I’ve wished I were. God, what a painful realization. I know I can continue to write, draw, paint, and the like. But I’ve reached the realization that, no matter how I try, I won’t be good at any of them. I might be adequate. But not good. Maybe we’re not all destined to be “good,” if that means anything. But some of us…me, for example…just want to be good at something. It could be anything; fishing lures, sailing, making art, investing in raw land. But none of those things fell into place. And I suppose I’ve not invested the energy and time required to make any of them happen. And, now, I have no energy to invest. I’m just impossibly tired.