Pale Lights in the Night

Posted on October 19, 2016 by John Swinburn

Very early in the morning, just after midnight, the dim night light in the bathroom provides just enough illumination for me to avoid bumping into bedroom furniture. An hour and a half later, the faint glow of the microwave’s clock does the same as I make my way out of the bedroom into the kitchen. By three in the morning, I follow the pale blue flicker of the modem’s lights toward the guest room, where I keep my notebook computer. That’s the room in which I do most of my writing. There, I can turn on the light without worry that I will wake my wife; I often worry that, if I turn on the kitchen or living area lights, I’ll wake her. It hasn’t happened yet, but I worry. I am, by nature, a worrier, even when evidence suggests it is a pointless pastime, as evidence usually does.

Lately, for three or four nights, anyway, I’ve had a great deal of experience with the different ways dim lights provide beacons for my forays about the house. I’ve had a great deal of trouble getting to sleep. I stare at the ceiling, or keep my eyes closed, and wait for sleep to come; forty-five minutes, an hour, two hours. And then, once I’ve finally drifted off, I awake again, either with a need to pee or a sense that sleep is trying to avoid me and, therefore, I must seek it out. I do that by wandering the house.

Perhaps the difficulty in going to sleep and staying asleep has to do with my recent affinity for massive amounts of iced tea in the evening. That should not be the cause, for I drink decaffeinated tea, but maybe the sheer volume of icy liquid is playing havoc with my sleep cycle.

But might there be an underlying psychological cause, something bothering me? Perhaps, though I can’t guess what it is. Yet it’s not outside the realm of possibility that I’ve allowed things that really have no business bothering me to do just that. I think I might need to recline on a couch in the presence of a skilled and gifted psychotherapist who could, through his or her superior skills in ferreting out motivation, uncover the culprit that’s causing my insomnia. Or, I could write string of consciousness blather in the off-chance I might simply allow the reason or reasons to slip out of my brain, down my arm, to my fingers, and onto the keyboard. I sometimes believe that’s the way I think; without a willing keyboard, I might be unable to form complete thoughts.  Even with a keyboard, my thoughts often clash with my fingers, refusing to have anything to do with them, in the fear my fingers might expose thoughts unsuited to polite company. Whatever the hell that means.

Returning to the lights, at times I am struck by the fact that the moon can fill the sky with brilliant light but, because of its location in relation to the windows in my house, I cannot rely on the moon for illumination. Instead, I must depend on electricity. Colored filaments and blinking lights and dim glows that offer clues that allow me, usually, to avoid slamming my head or my feet into something that too closely resembles the dead black air surrounding it.

Off I go, to try again to take a break from wakefulness.

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Race in America: 13th

Posted on October 18, 2016 by John Swinburn

Last night, I watched a documentary film, directed by Ava DuVernay and entitled 13th, named after the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ostensibly, the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed and eliminated slavery. The film convincingly argues slavery was preserved and sustained through mass incarceration of people of color.

DuVernay argues that the words of the Thirteenth Amendment have been twisted by what she calls the prison industrial complex. The amendment reads as follows:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

DuVernay posits that the words I’ve highlighted above have been used as a means of perpetuating slavery and controlling people of color. Her presentation offers a compelling argument that institutional racism is not simply a byproduct of prejudice and bigotry but, rather, an intentional mechanism to overcome the prohibition against slavery.  Data she incorporates into the documentary provide ample evidence to convince me that she is right. Assuming her numbers are correct (and I do make that assumption), the U.S. accounts for just five percent of the world’s population, yet the country accounts for twenty-five percent of incarcerated individuals worldwide. More than sixty percent of people in prison in the U.S. are people of color. Corrections Corporation of America and other for-profit prison management companies have contributed heavily to the American Legislative Action Council, a conservative assemblage of legislators and their corporate financiers, writing laws making incarceration of people of color a money-making opportunity. The “war on drugs” launched by the Nixon administration and supported by administrations since has treated people of color differently from others. For example, possession of crack cocaine, a cheaper product than powder cocaine and therefore easier for people of limited means to obtain, landed people in prison for life, whereas sentencing guidelines were much more lenient for suburban white users of the powdered form.

The prison population skyrocketed after the war on drugs was declared: 357,292 inmates in 1970; 513,900 in 1980, 2.3 million today. The Black community improperly bore huge proportions of the increases.

Prisoners today are used to produce products sold by many companies whose names most of us would recognize.  While some companies may have stopped the practice of contracting with prisons for product manufacture, in the past (and possibly today), Walmart, Victoria’s Secret, companies involved in telecommunications, and many others benefit from mass incarceration. In one example, the specifics of which I can not recall, a telecommunications company charged outrageously high rates for outgoing telephone calls home by inmates; in order to make a ten minute call, I believe, an inmate had to work three hours at a tiny hourly wage to pay for the call.

I am not a Pollyanna. I realize many people in prison are bad folks who need to be kept behind bars to protect society. But I cannot accept that a one-time user of crack cocaine with no other convictions of any kind should be put in prison for life without possibility of parole. The minimum sentencing laws, ostensibly adopted as harsh means of dealing with a scourge threatening this country, created a monstrous system of oppression. The massive numbers of people unjustly incarcerated for so long presents an enormous problem for society; we’ve warehoused these people and haven’t attempted to rehabilitate them or give them marketable skills, so releasing them without massive aid probably would boomerang. Yet keeping nonviolent offenders in prison under utterly unjust and oppressive sentences is just as bad or worse. I don’t have an answer. But I believe we must hold our political leaders’ feet to the fire and demand they address these injustices.

I encourage everyone to watch 13th. It’s available on Netflix. Invest one hour and forty minutes to learn what people of color, especially Blacks, deal with in society today. It is a sickening embarrassment. It won’t stop until White America joins with people of color to demand the dismantling of the prison industrial complex and the undoing of public policies that effectively subject a large proportion of our population to involuntary servitude as a means of enriching corporations and the politicians who reap the rewards for their obedience to their corporate masters.

Posted in Philosophy | Leave a comment

Flaws, Faults, and How We Define Them

Posted on October 17, 2016 by John Swinburn

If you’re looking for flaws, look inside yourself. Look at your own behaviors, behaviors for which you would condemn others were they to engage in them. If you judge other people for failing to meet standards and expectations you are incapable of meeting, the hypocrisy of your double standard will speak volumes about your character. Be firm with yourself for all those many flaws and take steps to attempt to correct them. But don’t be too hard on yourself; you probably are your own worst critic; you probably recognize those faults and already flog yourself for them. Understand that flaws comprise more than a fraction of each of us. Humans are no more perfect than any other creature, though the genesis of their flaws may be far more complex.

That having been said, I think it’s reasonable to assert that some flaws, some behaviors, are inexcusable. No pardon can erase the behaviors arising from them nor in many cases their effect. Some actions cannot be excused. Murder, for example, or rape. But what about actions that could lead to the inexcusable? A failed attempt at murder. A foiled sexual assault. What of those and a thousand other points along the continuum from accepted and appreciated to unacceptable and forbidden? Where do we as society draw lines? And how? More importantly, where do we as individuals draw our own lines? And, are they solid lines that reveal absolute limits, or do they creep back and forth along a shifting boundary?

The incivility of the political discourse since June 2015, and even before, suggests to me that this, and most, conversations fall on deaf ears. Instead, we throw barbs back and forth. I certainly have. Decency is a moving target. The definition of decency is flawed today. But so is the dictionary that allows it to be defined in ways harmful to social cohesiveness. We’re responsible for writing the dictionary, aren’t we?

Posted in Philosophy, Secular morality | Leave a comment

A Bit of Background

Posted on October 16, 2016 by John Swinburn

Whisper. Tell the story, but tell it at such low volume that the audience must strain to hear it. Tell it like the truth can’t bear loud noise. There, now you know the predicament I’m in. Truth dare not speak in a loud voice. 

I spent the night on the sofa. Not because I was sent there in punishment for bad behavior, but because I fell asleep after too many shots of whiskey. Who can understand how that comes to pass? Who among our parishioners can remember awakening at six in the morning, sitting on the sofa with the TV blaring? That’s what too much to drink and too little to think can do to a man. You just implode. You just become the vapor you hoped you’d never have to inhale.

My story began way before I began to tell it. It owes its beginning to seeds that sprouted after we sent fifty thousand of our finest young men to die in Vietnam. Do you know about that war? Do you know how we, this society of ours, treated the men we sent there? We cannot begin to understand the depths of our psychosis until we admit to what we did to the young men who did what they were told to do. 

So, now you have some sense of how it began. I can’t assure you it started quite that way, but it was something like that. It ripped through Melvin Toot’s brain like that. It caused his struggles. He was not to blame for his behavior, not any more than the cop who shot him was responsible for the fear that drove him to pull the trigger, killing an unarmed Melvin just days before his sixty-third birthday.  The thing is, if the cop hadn’t killed Melvin, he would have done it himself.  So, I need to tell the story of how it all played out, just so you’ll understand. Somebody has to reveal the truth. I didn’t wish it would be me, but sometimes you don’t have the choice. If I’m going to tell Melvin’s story, I’m going to have to be honest about myself. Please don’t judge me until you have all the facts. Please. Don’t assume you know what’s in my heart until I tell you. Life isn’t as simple as you may think.

 

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Malaise

Posted on October 15, 2016 by John Swinburn

My waning interest in writing troubles me. Or, perhaps, it’s my willingness to invest my fingers in fiction that’s atrophied in recent weeks. I want not to write, but to have written. I think Dorothy Parker wrote something like that. I understand the sensibility. It’s as if my best writing, none of which is completely satisfactory, is all behind me. Ahead lie only poorly constructed sentences devoid of the beauty I wish for them. When I write, I feel as though my words are slogging through cold maple syrup that crystallizes a bit more with each key stroke. This is not writer’s block. This is different; this is the sense that language—every shred of meaning having been extracted from each word and every individual letter—is moribund. The language available to me may no longer be adequate to convey significant thoughts or emotions; it may no longer have the capacity to depict scenes, evoke ideas, or summon affection or antipathy. This is, of course, absurd. But that’s where my mind is going this morning. I’ve been awake for quite some time and am now working on a second or third cup of coffee, but my thoughts remain a porridge of mush and misgivings. I wonder if I should turn my attention away from fiction and focus, instead, on writing essays? Opinions and beliefs, many competing fiercely with one another, fill my head. Perhaps I should form them into cogent arguments by putting them in writing. I might thereby successfully claim one or the other of my many clashing ideas as truly my own, one I can champion without arguing against myself.  This long, convoluted paragraph has taken far too long to compose. The malaise has won for now.

Posted in Philosophy, Writing | 1 Comment

Broken

Posted on October 14, 2016 by John Swinburn

Redemption is a fallacy, a wish without reality.
Mistakes are not corrected, they’re simply patched and painted.
Atonement comes through action, if it ever comes at all,
penance is a token, a souvenir of all that’s wrong.
Forgiveness is just a hope to make whole what we have broken.

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Without a Plan

Posted on October 14, 2016 by John Swinburn

I’m drinking coffee in a thunderstorm. Well, not really IN a thunderstorm; that is, I’m not getting soaked. But I hear it. Cracks of thunder punctuate the sound of rain pounding on the roof. I can only imagine what the wind and rain are doing to the leaves on the trees that only recently commenced the annual process of denuding themselves. I spent a few hours outside two days ago, electric leaf blower in hand, in an attempt to get a head start on clearing out the leaf fall. That, my friends, was a delusional and utterly quixotic undertaking, akin to sitting on a sand dune in a gale in an effort to keep each grain of silica safely affixed to the ground. The leaves I managed, last year, to encourage down the steep hill behind the house now feed pine seedlings, another force of nature I would rather not have to fight. So, too, will the leaves I chase this season. I am a hamster on a wheel, chasing after something just beyond my line of sight,  in a futile attempt to reach freedom. Ah, but it gives me something to do, right? I might just as well roll a stone up a hill, watch it roll down, and repeat the process. Eternal punishment for a multitude of my sins.

Today, we drive to Little Rock to see about selecting furniture to replace some delivered just a few days ago. After delivery, we decided some of the stuff was not suitable. So, the seller will send a truck to take them back. And we will, with good fortune, find something that better suits us at the same furniture store, in which case the new stuff will arrive in exchange for the original purchase. Otherwise, we’ll have empty spaces to fill and will have to look elsewhere. After the trek to Little Rock, we’ll go to Hot Springs for the first of a three session class to learn about jazz. And, later, I will contemplate what I’m after in what’s left of this life of mine. I never actually decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. And here, suddenly, I’m all grown up without a plan. I do hope it’s not simply to blow leaves or roll stones, though those are better than many other possibilities.

 

Posted in Philosophy | 2 Comments

Trapped in a Mine

Posted on October 12, 2016 by John Swinburn

Today, while looking through old notebooks, I came across a note I wrote six years ago. Late in the evening of October 12, 2010. The note, dated October 12, 2010 and marked with the time I wrote it 10:28 p.m. read, “I am deliriously happy with tears in my eyes. They’re bringing the miners to the surface.” I knew, instantly, the subject of the note, even though there was no more specificity in what I wrote. It reminded me of a post I wrote last year a few days after the fifth anniversary of the rescue of thirty-three men (thirty-two Chilean and one Bolivian miners) who finally returned to the surface after sixty-nine days trapped in the mine. In last year’s post, I recalled the flood of emotions that the rescue attempt and its ultimate success triggered. Today’s discovery of that note brought back all those emotions, too. But my memory of exactly what happened, other than my emotional reaction to it, was a little fuzzy. So I did some research to try to recall details about the event that touched me so deeply.

The story that ended with such spectacular joy began with a monstrous cave-in on August 5, 2010. The San José mine, located in the Atacama Desert about forty-five miles north of Copiapó, Chile, was an old copper and gold mine whose owners had a history of breaches of safety regulations. A number of miners had died in the years before the August 2010  calamity and the company had been accused of ignoring miners’ complaints about unsafe conditions.

Two groups of workers were in the mine when the cave-in occurred. A group nearest the mine’s entrance escaped immediately after the cave-in, but thirty-three men were trapped. Initially, the men tried to escape through ventilation shafts, but the ladders required by mining safety codes were missing. Additional ground movement made the ventilation shafts unusable by rescuers.  The men organized into groups to take care of specific survival tasks during their ordeal. They rationed emergency survival supplies intended to last for only two or three days so that they lasted two weeks, instead.

While the trapped men collaborated with one another in their efforts to survive and cope with the horror of being trapped below ground and with no assurances they would be found, rescuers worked feverishly to find where they were in the mine and rescue them. Several boreholes were drilled in an attempt to locate the men. On August 19, two weeks into the rescue operation, one of the drills reached a space where they believed the miners were trapped but encountered no signs of life. On August 22, the eighth borehole broke through into the miners’ location. The men, who for days had heard sounds of drills approaching them, had written notes to send up to rescuers. When the drill broke through, they attached one such note to the drill tip with insulation tape. The note read: “Estamos bien en el refugio los 33” (meaning, roughly, in English, “We are well in the shelter, the 33”).

Between the time the drill reached the men and their rescue, food and water was sent down to them, but by the time they were finally brought to the surface in mid-October, they had lost an average of eighteen pounds each. In addition to strain on their bodies, their ordeal took its toll on their minds. From what I have read, only their recognition that they had to work together as a cohesive team kept them from utterly cracking, psychologically, during the more than two months they spent underground.

The shift foreman, Luis Urzúa, is credited with leading the men through the nightmare with sensitivity and wit. I read somewhere that he said, after he came to the surface (the last man out), he said, “It’s been a bit of a long shift.”  I think the stories I heard during the ordeal, about how the men were dealing with the crisis facing them, may have been the source of my exceedingly emotional response to their final rescue. When they started being lifted to the surface, I felt as if these were members of my family who were being saved. And when Urzúa finally left the mine, I was overjoyed. I wanted all the people who worked for those long weeks on the rescue to get as much recognition as the miners, though I knew the spotlight late that night and into the early morning rightfully belonged to the miners.

As I think about this event that weighed on my mind for the entire time the men were trapped, I cannot even begin to imagine how much more heavily it weighed on the people directly affected by it. I felt emotional pain by proxy. I think I want to read the words of someone who actually went through the entire episode. I am sure there are good books about it. Maybe I’ll find one. I suspect films have been made about it, too. Maybe I’ll find one of them, as well.

Posted in Compassion, Emotion, Memories | 2 Comments

A Critic is Lurking

Posted on October 12, 2016 by John Swinburn

Take responsibility for undertaking a task and it’s bound to happen: someone—who could have taken on the task but did not—will offer criticism about how the job was done. The criticism is not always blunt and forceful; sometimes, it’s hidden beneath faint praise. If one lets such implicit negative judgment get under his skin, it could ruin an otherwise good day. The criticism might stem from the critic’s jealousy or from his self-directed anger than he did not take on the task but, instead, let someone else do it. Or, it might arise from some completely unrelated thorn in the critic’s side, a thorn that prompts the critic to lash out with anger, cloaked beneath a gossamer veil of civility.

Or, criticism may be well-intentioned and legitimate. Even though I am, many times, my own worst critic, hearing someone else’s confirming condemnation of my self-criticism stings more than my own. And, so, what is the point of this mini-diatribe? There seems to be no point at all, except to get it off my chest.

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Open Mic Night

Posted on October 11, 2016 by John Swinburn

Last night, the inaugural HSV Open Mic Night took place. I think the audience, numbering about seventy, was happy with it. I am glad I had friends who agreed to perform: poetry, story-telling, reading short stories, and reading memoirs. And, I was lucky in that the volunteer emcee was entertaining and a far better public speaker than I. The audience included a significant number of members of the Village Unitarian Universalist Church, including the original founders of the open mic night that used to be held there; their support, I think, was key to having a full complement of people available to hear the performances.

Despite the success of the night, I think it largely was in spite of, rather than because of, my efforts. I didn’t put in the effort required to really make it work. I shirked responsibilities for calling prospective participants because I don’t like making phone calls; if prospects didn’t have email addresses, I ignored them. But that notwithstanding, I think the audience liked the event. I stumbled into modest successes despite shortcomings. The feedback I’ve gotten so far has been positive. I’m ready to start working to get a broader mix of performers for the next event, which probably will be held next January.

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Desire

Posted on October 9, 2016 by John Swinburn

Softer. Gentler. More fully engaged. Focused on positivity. Repelled by gratuitous negativity. Disciplined. Decisive. Inspired. Generous. Forgiving. Courageous. Thoughtful. Wishful.

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Decrepit and Decaying

Posted on October 8, 2016 by John Swinburn

Evidence of advancing age and inadequate exercise showed their ugly faces yesterday as I tried to prep for today’s planned paint festival. The urgency of overcoming my procrastination in getting the work done became apparent as I looked at the calendar, realizing new furniture is to be delivered only four days hence, on Tuesday. So, I went into a frenzy of applying blue painter’s tape to protect trim, built-in shelving, and other such stuff that I want to avoid painting. The suggestion of my mortality was clearest when I began taping baseboards. My knees screamed in agony when I knelt on the bare wood floors. Even after providing a soft rubber cushion to support them, they shrieked in pain, protesting the torture to which I subjected them. But it wasn’t until I attempted to stand after kneeling for a while that the real, stark evidence became apparent. Had I not been fortunate that a chair was nearby to serve as a means of pulling myself upright, I would have remained on the floor last night, unable to stand.

Clearly, a whole body transplant is in order. If only I could download from my brain the knowledge and memories and emotions and personality characteristics I wish to retain and save them to a temporary storage device. If only I could then upload those attributes into a new brain that’s part of a well-conditioned twenty-five-year-old body with all the right qualities: strong arms and legs, narrow waist, six-pack abs, well-defined pectoral muscles, a set of sparkling white teeth lacking discernible diastemata, and all the other features necessary for physical and performance perfection.

Alas, we’re probably at least thirty years—maybe thirty thousand—from the eventual capacity to undergo body and brain rebooting. So, for now, I’ll have to settle for what I have and make do. Thus, I’ll have to paint with the same arthritic hands that protest when I make a fist. I’ll climb the ladder with feet that tend to get cramps when I confine them to athletic shoes for too many hours.

The act of preparing for, and then engaging in, painting is a young man’s game. If I were more flush and less frugal, I would hire it out. But I am neither. So, today, I paint.

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Beneath the Daylight Streets

Posted on October 7, 2016 by John Swinburn

When I lived in Chicago, the fact that Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive—both main streets in the thriving downtown/loop area—had multiple levels fascinated me. The pedestrian stairway entrances descending to those streets were my introductions to multi-level streets in the city because my wife and I lived very near some of those entrances. We explored lower Michigan Avenue and lower Wacker, both by foot, and in our car, out of curiosity; there was rarely any other reason to go beneath the daylight streets, except to visit the Billy Goat Tavern of Saturday Night Live fame. The first Billy Goat Tavern opened in 1934 when William ‘Billy Goat’ Sianis bought the Lincoln Tavern on West Madison; it moved to lower Michigan Avenue in 1964. The story goes that, ten years after he took ownership of the tavern, the Republican National Convention met in Chicago. Sianis, a cunning and crafty marketer, caused quite a stir when he posted a sign on his business, saying “No Republicans Allowed.” Predictably, word got out to the Republican delegates, who thronged the tavern with demands for service. The ensuing publicity helped generate enormous visibility for the Billy Goat Tavern, which translated into increased business and a spike in Sianis’ revenue.

Supposedly, a year after the Republican National Convention and Dewey’s loss to President Roosevelt and three years before Dewey’s loss to Truman, Sianis brought his tavern mascot, pet goat named Murphy, to Game 4 of the 1945 World Series. Despite having paid for box seat tickets, the Cubs’ owner allegedly ejected Sianis and Murphy due to Murphy’s odor. The story says Sianis placed a curse on the team that they would not win another pennant or play in a World Series again, saying “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more.” The Cubs have not played in a World Series since 1945. This year, though, according to various stories I’ve heard on NPR, they are the best team in the league, so maybe the curse will break.

It wasn’t just the Billy Goat Tavern that intrigued me about the sub-surface streets of Chicago. Another aspect of the lower levels is their access to building freight entries. Buildings with main entrances on daylight streets tend to receive deliveries underground,. Though not entirely absent freight doors, the fact that these buildings are served below grade helps the heavy traffic above ground stay snarled, rather than at a standstill.

Another aspect of below-grade streets is that, at least when we lived there, the homeless tended to flock to the lower-levels during the worst parts of winter. Though not necessarily warm, sleeping on those streets protected the homeless from the fiercest winter winds and frigid temperatures.

Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive are not the only streets with subsurface brethren. Randolph, Water, and others join their more famous brothers to form a complex hidden network of streets beneath the daylight streets. I explored a little about Chicago’s multilevel streets to refresh my memory and, in the course of my research, came upon information about the multilevel streets of Seattle, called the Seattle Underground. And seeing the term “underground” used in this context, I remembered my first visits to Underground Atlanta, called a “city beneath the streets.” That visit took place between 1979 and 1982; I worked for an association at the time that met in Atlanta regularly. Underground Atlanta, though, is a different beast if my memory serves me correctly. But it is, indeed, a place beneath the daylight streets.

I suspect a thousand stories could be told about life beneath the daylight streets of Chicago or Seattle or Atlanta. But I’ve been away from Chicago for too long to tell stories based in current-day fact and I know far less about subsurface Seattle and Atlanta. I moved away from Chicago in early 1989 to take up temporary residence in White Plains, New York and environs to work for an organization I moved to Dallas about eight months later. I did not see a lot of White Plains while I was there due to my work load, but it did not seem like a city with a life beneath the daylight streets. Nor did Dallas. There’s something edgy and rough about Chicago’s underbelly that most other cities cannot, and possibly do not wish to, duplicate.

Maybe one day I’ll visit Chicago and take a look underground to refresh my memories of that world. With enough exposure and adequate imagination, perhaps I might be able to create a realistic story, after all. I just wish I knew more about everything. I would love to be a polymath but, alas, I was born without either the ability or the discipline to absorb comprehensive knowledge about many things. The other night, attending a potluck dinner, I got into a conversation with a guy, during which we summarized our respective backgrounds. On hearing of my exposure to many fields of endeavor vis-à-vis my work in association management, he said I must know a great deal about many disciplines. I corrected his misapprehension by clarifying that I know very little about very much; my knowledge is wide and shallow.

I now realize I’ve rattled on for far too long. If I had a shred of decency, I would delete this post so that those who visit my blog would not be subjected to this out-of-left-field diatribe. But, apparently, I have no decency. A friend of mine occasionally says to me, “Have you no decency, sir?!” I laugh, but secretly I know it’s just beneath the surface, but not far.

Posted in Memories, Urban planning, Writing | Leave a comment

Social Evenings Can Change Dull to Dynamic

Posted on October 6, 2016 by John Swinburn

This evening, my wife and I attended the second Wines of the World dinner organized by the manager of the Coronado Center, a venue operated by our property owners association. The first event, focusing on the food and wine of France, was interesting but had plenty of flaws that almost made us decide not to attend the second. I’m glad we did not let the problems of the inaugural event keep us from tonight’s program. We had a hell of a good time!

Tonight’s event was labeled Wines and Beers of the World, Germany. Unlike the first event, it was held in the venue’s outside patio, which was a brilliant move. And, unlike the first event, the food and drinks were served; for logistical reasons, the food and drinks at the first event required guests to go through a poorly-orchestrated buffet line and wait in line for wine. Not tonight. We received service relatively quickly, and the beers and wines served were good. Some of the food could have been better prepared or served but the event was, all things considered, a success. The price of the second event increased by fifty percent from the first; it was a well-deserved increase, considering the dramatic improvement in the service. And, at the end of the evening, it became apparent (to me, anyway) why the event had improved; the venue manager listened to and acted on feedback he had gotten from the first. His willingness to listen was on display when, tonight, several people suggested the next event not focus on wines and food of Italy and Spain but, rather, wines and food of one or the other. He responded by saying the next event will focus on Spain, with Italy coming later.

Aside from the food and drink, we were fortunate to sit at a table with people who were…how do I put this…fun! Janine knew one of the women and I knew one of the men (and she knew a couple of others, but didn’t realize it). The group was a blast. They talked about places they’d been, food they liked, wines they enjoyed. And laughter! There was a lot of laughter!

Though I was the youngest person at the table, I felt like I was among a bunch of people who were very young at heart. It felt wonderful! I had rather low expectation for this evening; those low expectations were exceeded by two orders of magnitude.

 

Posted in Beer, Happiness, Humor, Wine | Leave a comment

Kilns and Flights and Preference for Empty Space

Posted on October 6, 2016 by John Swinburn

Yesterday, I went to the sculpture studio early and spent a short while working on a bust that’s in the same visual style as many of my masks; odd and alien. For many reasons, not the least of which was that I needed to drive to pick up my wife at the airport later, I left and did various errands. As I was engaged in my errands, I daydreamed about how nice it would be if I did not have to drive twenty-five minutes one-way to deal with sculpture-related tasks. If only I had a kiln, I thought to myself. That thought was fleeting, though, as I calculated when I’d have to leave to get to the airport at just the right time to meet my wife, who was returning from a brief trip to Charleston, South Carolina. While I was calculating time and distance in my travel plans, my wife texted to say she was on the way to the airport, quite early, because the Hurricane Matthew evacuations already underway were creating traffic issues; she had no idea how long it would take to get to the airport.

After receiving her text message, kiln-buying opportunities started flooding in. First, a woman called and said Nancy told her I might know where she could find a used kiln. Until I mentioned the call to my wife last night, I did not know Nancy’s identity; my wife knew, because she had told Nancy of my interest in buying a kiln. I told the caller I did not know of any for sale, but that I was in the market to buy one. She said she has one for sale; someone traded it to her for some china dishes, but she wanted a jewelry kiln, not a large one.  I know little else, except that I will go look at the kiln this morning. The other opportunity came in the form of a phone call from a skilled potter who works part-time at the college where I take sculpture classes. I had written on a chalk board in the studio that I would like to buy a kiln. The second caller asked if I had found one. Inasmuch as I had not, I told her as much and she went on to explain that she knew of a woman who has a good one for sale at a price that represents good value. So, I called the woman and learned, during the course of our conversation, that we had been in the same class a year or so ago. Due to scheduling issues, I won’t be able to go take a look at the second kiln until a week from Friday.

Jammed roads led to the airport back in Charleston. My wife’s overbooked flight to Atlanta had a very long waiting list. The airport was clogged with travelers including many vacationers attempting to flee the oncoming storm. My wife spent considerable time at the airport, boarding pass safely in hand, waiting for the on-time flight.

Once we returned home, I looked up on the walls where most of my masks once hung. We took them down so I could paint the wall. I painted that one wall, but still have others to do. But, what’s important is that, with the new paint, we decided we really preferred the wall empty. So that leads me to question whether I really want to buy a kiln, because I may not want to make more masks if I have no place to display them.

What an odd quandary. Too many masks and not enough available wall.

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Bat Boy

Posted on October 5, 2016 by John Swinburn

Last night, toward the end of the PBS Newshour, I watched a segment about the retirement of long time Dodgers’ play-by-play announcer, Vin Scully. The segment honored the eighty-eight-year-old man’s sixty-eight year career. Despite my lifelong disinterest in sports, the segment on his career mesmerized me. I had heard the man’s name on newscasts or sportscasts before, but I hadn’t paid much attention. I wasn’t interested in sports. But listing to a several-years-old interview of Scully by Jeffrey Brown, I learned how sports, at least baseball, can represent both joy and hope in ways that, I think, other sports can’t. Hearing Scully speak in reverential awe of listening to the roar of the crowd, after the team rewarded fans’ loyalty, was an emotional experience. It made me want to enjoy baseball. Actually, of all the sports, the only ones I have actually enjoyed watching are baseball and soccer. Baseball, though, seems more refined, better suited to people who think. Why? I have no idea; it’s just my self-serving emotional response to questioning myself about why I favor baseball.

Watching and listening to Scully last night, I felt time slip away. I felt like I was living in the 1950s, when innocence was, or seemed to be, more prevalent. If I could recapture that sense of innocence and joy and purity that Scully’s remembrance brought rushing back last night, I’d watch baseball every night. Hell, I’d become a bat boy.

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Whole Cloth

Posted on October 4, 2016 by John Swinburn

If we were honest with ourselves, we would admit that our lives are fictions, narrative yarns we spin from experiences as we see them, not necessarily as they are. We write the stories of our lives on the fly, stitching together the fabrics of personal interpretations into whole cloth.  We dress ourselves in clothing of our own making; some wear gossamer gowns, others wear costumes made of canvas.

 

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Driving in the Dark

Posted on October 3, 2016 by John Swinburn

It’s ten minutes shy of four in the morning and I’m scrambling to prepare to drive to the airport. Mi esposa hermosa is off, in just a while, to visit her childhood friends for a two-day gathering in Charleston, South Carolina. This involves me as chauffeur,  driving said spouse to the airport to catch a six o’clock plane. A six o’clock flight from Little Rock requires a four-fifteen departure from “house del Hot Springs Village.” This is no problem for me, of course, except that I’d love to have coffee beforehand, yet I dare not drink coffee for fear I might need to eliminate said elixir from my body en route. So, I will simply cope. In just a few minutes, we will drive away in the dark. The last time I left the house this early, skunks littered the roadway. Today, I’ll take my favorite wife to Little Rock, return to the Village, and (maybe) stop off for breakfast at a dive on the return trip. Actually, getting up at this hour and hitting the road is exciting. We used to do this on a regular basis. I feel young again!

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Today is Genuflectorious

Posted on October 2, 2016 by John Swinburn

I ask the question: is there a law that compels us to label what is commonly the first workday of the week ‘Monday?’ Are we required to call the second day ‘Tuesday?’ And must weekends always fall on ‘Saturday’ and ‘Sunday?’ What prevents us from calling those days, those life events, by different names? If I were to call the day you call ‘Monday’ by another name, say ‘Lugubrionus,’ would that action break the law? If, instead of referring to the second after ‘Lugubrionus,’ I said the day would respond more favorably to ‘Phalaymor,’ would I be subject to arrest?

These thoughts do not belong in the mind of a normal, natural, decent citizen. No, they belong in the mind of a madman. And I readily accept the moniker. It is an honor to be classified among the abnormal, the unnatural, the indecent.

Were I in charge of the universe, each day of the week periodically would be assigned a new sobriquet.  Doing so, though, would cast me as a member of the improper, the wrong and the wretched. But that is a grand distinction, a tribute leading almost to apotheosis (see what I did there, how I got that word to fit in this paragraph?).

For now, let’s make the following transitions:

Sunday=Genuflectorious
Monday=Lugubrionus
Tuesday=Afflictia
Wednesday=Phalaymor
Thursday=Dehydratio
Friday=Inebriata
Saturday=Tranquilismo

I admit, it may take some time to get used to this new scheme of day-naming. And perhaps it will not catch on. One never knows, though, until one tries.

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On the Verge

Posted on October 1, 2016 by John Swinburn

Yesterday, a Facebook friend  posted an appreciative comment on another person’s post. The post was a young man’s progress report on his effort to “reboot” himself. He had made the promise to himself a year earlier to reinvent himself through changes in behavior, attitude, and experience. His promise was not unique; he made the usual promises to himself: cut down on the beer, exercise more, read more, be more understanding of others, and so forth. I don’t remember the guy’s name, nor can I find the information simply by looking at my friend’s Facebook page; my internet browser history is no help. And it’s not a problem, either. Because the specifics of the post are not important; the way the guy’s words made me feel are.

For some reason, the writer’s genuine delight at his one year of progress toward becoming a better person was inspirational in ways I can’t begin to describe. Yet, his glee was simultaneously upsetting because I’ve made those promises to myself—recently, in fact—only to break them in short order. But something about this man’s appreciation for his success, and my Facebook friend’s acknowledgement and regard for it, brought me out of my embarrassment to a new place. It brought me to a place that allows me to acknowledge my failures, but to plan my successes. Between now and my birthday, later this month, I will craft both a set of goals for myself and a series of steps I will take to achieve them. Then, on my birthday, I will announce the goals and the process by which I plan to achieve them. My goals will not be solely directed toward improving myself and my life, but the lives of people close to me. At some point in one’s life, the promises one makes to himself must come with consequences for breaking them. So I will make a solemn vow that my birthday this year will either be followed by a joyous celebration one year hence  or it will be met with the deserved consequences of failure.

This is not the equivalent of a New Year’s resolution. It’s a new life resolution, a new me resolution, and new happiness-for-those-who-surround-me resolution. It is perhaps the most important resolution I’ve ever made. And it was sparked by an appreciative expression and congratulatory comment on Facebook. Go figure.

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Caffeine and Convenience

Posted on September 30, 2016 by John Swinburn

Do pieces of electronics equipment undergo sympathetic experiences? For instance, does a coffee maker get sick when a smart phone dies? I ask this as part of a serious inquiry into the behavior of my coffee maker this morning. When I pushed the “brew” button, it bellowed with a sound like the noise made by an injured calf. Yesterday, my smart phone either died or went into a coma. I’ll take my cell phone in this afternoon for either an autopsy or a resurrection; inasmuch as I’m not a believer, I am not expecting a miracle today. Instead, I expect to be told I’ll need to relieve my bank account of several hundred dollars if I ever want to surf the web  and text and talk on the phone from the same device again.

Though that is an upsetting thought, this morning’s distressing symptoms of illness from the coffee maker were even more terrifying. What if, unlike this morning, tomorrow the beast fails to recover from its ailment and, instead, succumbs to the heartache of losing its companion, the smart phone? The idea of waking to a dead coffee maker is almost too much to bear. I must admit an ugly truth. My bereavement would not arise from the machine’s demise but, rather, would spring from the empty space in my caffeine-starved gullet. That’s right, I would be more concerned about how the machine’s death affected me than about its passing. And in that way I am a clone of Donald Trump. Now that, truly, is a sobering and disgusting thought. I may stop drinking coffee. And I lived without a smart phone for many years. Perhaps I’m capable of living without one again.

What kind of person am I, really? If you see me sipping on a cup of coffee and talking on a cell phone, slap me. For I deserve a punishment far worse than that.

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Dullard

Posted on September 29, 2016 by John Swinburn

Technology is a powerful tool that, if one is not careful, can deliver an emotional roller-coaster. The capabilities delivered through technology can, if one lets them, dig holes in one’s psyche. I have a specific example in mind. The platform upon which this blog is built allows me to see the number of visits my posts get each day and, to a lesser extent, who the visitors are. For example, if I were to receive five visits from an IP address assigned to Verizon in Las Vegas, Nevada, I could look at the list of subscribers to see if I knew of anyone who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. While there’s no guarantee that the subscriber who lives there is the visitor with a Verizon IP address, I would not be out of bounds to assume that’s who is visiting. It’s a bit harder to identify which visitors from a Nortel IP address in Canada are which; visitors who live where I do and who use Suddenlink show up as Nortel visitors. I don’t know which is which. But if I know I have a few subscribers from Seattle, it’s a safe bet that visitors whose IP addresses track back to Seattle are among those I know about. And, the list of subscribers can change; I can see, if I look, the email addresses that subscribe. When an email address disappears, I know the owner of that address has unsubscribed.

None of this ought to matter, because I write this blog for myself. Right. None of this ought to matter. So why does it? I suppose it’s because, when someone stumbles upon this blog and decides to subscribe, it’s troubling to learn that person no longer visits or, even more troubling, decides it’s not worth maintaining the subscription.  Ach, that is no biggie; strangers who check it out and then leave are just that, strangers. But they are not the ones who subscribe and then, silently and without notice, leave. That tells me my chaotic posts, my random spillage of fiction and fact and wishes and dreams, do not capture their attention in a way that is sufficient to warrant an ongoing relationship.

The subscribers who rarely visit, as well as those who subscribe and then leave, tell me important things about my posts. They give me truth that needs no explanation. I can either adjust my writing or my subjects or my approach to topics or I can focus on pleasing myself above all others.

When I’m morose and feeling unloved, I choose one direction. When I’m lucid and focused on something outside my ego, I choose another one altogether. I do hope the two fail in their efforts to cancel one another out, leaving me the dullard I hoped I would never be.

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Stars

Posted on September 29, 2016 by John Swinburn

Last night, as I sat on the deck looking upward, I counted a billion stars. I may have missed one or two, but I think that’s forgivable, considering the scope of the sky. Cool, clear nights are the best ones for star-gazing. They allow one to look upward and count in broad, sweeping strokes, a hundred million stars at a time. The blackness of space and the tiny pinpoints of dim, flickering light cannot be adequately reproduced by artists because the light in the night sky, and the sky itself, is too vague for the canvas.  The colors and texture one sees in the night sky are too imprecise to be matched by paints or pigments. And the human eye simply does not have the acuity to adequately capture the sky. We must rely on cameras and telescopes and other artificial means of enhancing what we see if we want a more precise image of our skyward glances. But when we do that, we change what we see into something different, though admittedly spectacular. So, in my view, the best way to understand the awe the night sky generates in us is to simply stare at the sky through our own inadequate eyes.

This morning, I took my cup of coffee out on the deck again and looked skyward. It’s still pitch black at five the morning, but I believe I saw even more stars, perhaps a hundred billion of them. The dim lights in the sky seemed just a bit more distinct, a tad brighter and more hopeful this morning. It’s considerably cooler this morning than it was last night; maybe that’s why the stars seems so much brighter. Or, perhaps, it’s because I had all night to consider the faint image last night’s viewing left in my brain and, when I looked up this morning, that slightly blurred image came into sharper focus.

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Another Day to Remember

Posted on September 28, 2016 by John Swinburn

Just like every year on this day, my mother’s birthday, I pause to reflect about her. She was a good woman, a good mother, and a good teacher. I owe my love of language and food to her. And, of course, I owe so much more to her; my existence, for one thing. Like last year, I give her the gift of this photo of yellow roses in her memory. I recently commented on a friend’s blog that I wish I’d taken more photos over the years. I have only a very few photos of my mother, but I remember her face without having photos to remind me.

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Moral Equivalence

Posted on September 28, 2016 by John Swinburn

Last night, I posted the following statement on Facebook:

People who claim they will not vote because the choices do not suit them are cowards. Their moral high ground is freakish bullshit. They have no compassion; they have an inability to recognize that the world is not the personal playground they wish it to be. There. I’ve said it. And, if I’ve offended anyone by saying it, I’m willing to accept the consequences of unfriending and the like. By the way, I’m voting for Hillary as a means of doing my damnedest to keep Trump out of the White House.

This morning, I awoke to read the following comment in response to that message:

I’m hearing that your tolerance for and your willingness to take part in violence are greater than mine. I’d already been called apathetic, immature, and irresponsible. You’re adding cowardly, freakish, compassionless, and, if I’m not reading between the lines too much, delusional. Here, John. Climb down off of that horse and hit my other cheek.

Here’s why I think the argument that voting for any candidate is a vote in support of violence is, frankly, stupid and delusional (yes, the between the lines reading was correct). By taking no action (i.e., not voting), people who refuse to take part in the ‘violence,’ as they call it, are engaging in precisely the carnage they ostensibly find so offensive. I equate that choice to an EMT’s decision to withhold treatment from a heart attack victim as a means of protest against what he believes is the inferiority of the brand of AED equipment installed in the EMT’s ambulance. The decision to stay home from the polls is not the moral equivalent of Don Quixote’s quest. Rather, it is equivalent to walking away from someone injured in a traffic accident because “she shouldn’t have been driving after dark, anyway” and “I might get sued if I try to help.”

Making a choice between the only choices available is preferable to making no choice at all. Of course, inaction does give one an opportunity to falsely claim absolution of responsibility for the consequences of the actions of others.

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