Precursor to a Kiss

Posted on October 14, 2018 by John Swinburn

I am convinced that, during the fugue state between rousing from a deep sleep and becoming aware of one’s wakefulness, there is a period that can last, figuratively, for days. Let me explain by example.

A few weeks ago, as I lay on my right side in bed, I opened my eyes and looked at the clock on the bedside stand next to me: 4:43 a.m. I rolled over onto my back and closed my eyes, engaging in an internal conversation with myself about the relative merits of getting up or going back to sleep. The conversation included an argument that, if I were to get up, I could get a start on writing something of merit.

That’s when I imagined a scene from a story in which a woman is standing and glaring at a man who seems to be shrinking away from her. The look on her face is one of anger, but she isn’t speaking. Instead, she is simply staring at the man while pointing to a hardback book on the bedside stand beside him. The black linen cover of the book bears its title in gold leaf on the front and the spine: Precursor to a Kiss. The man looks down at the book, picks it up, and thumbs through several pages. Every page is blank.  The scene looks like a painting. There is no motion, not even breathing. But it’s not a painting. I know it’s not. It’s a snapshot that they want etched in memory.

Finally, the man speaks and the painting comes to life. “I didn’t mean for you to see it. It was going to be a surprise.”

A sneer crosses her lips as she responds. “A surprise? You wanted to surprise me with a book that says what we have between us is nothing?”

“That’s not how I intended it. I meant we can write our lives any way we want. We can create our own ideal lifetimes, just the two of us.”

“I’m not buying it. I’m just not buying it. You’re making this up. My name isn’t even in the book. It’s blank because you can write your life with someone else when you think the time is right.” The woman turns and walks out the door, slamming it behind her. Her footsteps echo as she clicks down the long, narrow hallway outside the room.

The man waits for her to return. He waits all day and all night, just standing next to the bed, staring down at the book. Finally, she returns, flinging the door open so hard the knob smashes into the wall. “And what’s more, ” she screams, “it should be ‘prelude,’ not ‘precursor.’ That’s enough to make me scream.”

All of this took place in my mind in real time. Even the long wait, with nothing happening while I was watching the man standing by the bed. It took place as it was happening. But I opened my eyes again and turn to look at the clock: 4:44 a.m.

My description of the experience and the words I ascribe to the two characters may not be precise, but they’re close. It was a while ago, after all, and all I did when I got up was to jot some rough notes, rather than record the conversations in detail. But I think I got most of it just about the way it happened. It’s impossible, though, that the entire interchange—including the entire day of waiting—could have occurred in my imagination in a minute’s time.  Yet it was possible. It did happen. Somehow, my brain processed the entire imagined experience in a minute.  During that minute between the moment I woke from a deep sleep and the time I looked at the clock the second time, I experienced something akin to mental time compression. It’s odd. But there you are. Precursor, prelude, either way, there was no kiss.

 

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Another Ode to Edward

Posted on October 13, 2018 by John Swinburn

A year ago this past June, I wrote an “Ode to Edward Gorey,” which was in reality a poorly-done knock-off of his The Gashlycrumb Tinies, which I’ve always just loved. My sense of humor is admittedly macabre. Well, I wrote another, equally poor, knock-off this morning and I can’t think of a better time to post it than right now.

Twenty-Six Kids Who Died (Another Ode to Edward Gorey)

A is for Andy who smoked crack and died
B is for Bonnie who fell off a slide
C is for Connie, ate tablets for pain
D is for Darwin, beat with a chain
E is for Ernie, who poisoned himself
F is for Frankie, killed by an elf
G is for Glynda, who breathed in some wax
H is for Harry, succumbed to attacks
I is for Irma, who swallowed some pills
J is for Julie, felled by the chills
K is for Karin, attacked by a stray cat
L is for Larry, struck by a bat
M is for Mary, who fell off a house
N is for Nancy, pecked  to death by a grouse
O is for Opal, an alligator’s dinner
P is for Paula, ‘cause she was a sinner
Q is for Quincy, stabbed with a pick
R is for Ronald, bit by a tick
S is for Saundra, beaten by thugs
T is for Terry, too many drugs
U is for Ulsie, who fell from a tower
V is for Vickie, drowned in the shower
W is for Werner, pierced by an arrow
X is for Xeno, who chewed on some yarrow
Y is for Yana, scalded in lye,
Z is for Zane, while trying to fly.

If I could do pen and ink drawings that rivaled Gorey’s, I might feel more pride about what I wrote. But I can’t. So I don’t.

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More Medical Journaling

Posted on October 12, 2018 by John Swinburn

During my annual visit to the cardiologist yesterday, I revealed that I had been conscious of a reduction in my stamina when walking, accompanied by a slight burning sensation (without pain…hard to explain) in my chest. I told him, as well, about the CT scan results and suggested that was the reason for the symptoms. He did not want to make that assumption, so he scheduled me for a “treadmill cardiolite stress test” early Monday morning in Little Rock. I don’t relish driving to Little Rock early Monday morning, especially because the preparation for the test requires me to avoid caffeine in any form for twenty-four hours before the test. The test will, according to the instruction sheet, take four to six hours. The test actually sounds like a convoluted series of tests involving walking at high-speed on treadmills made to mimic steep hills, while technicians inject radioactive dyes into my veins. Sounds like so much fun I couldn’t turn it down! At least I get to wear “comfortable two piece clothing and good walking shoes.” One aspect of the instructions for the test that concerns me is that “it is very important that you remain very still during the imaging,” referring to a segment of the process during which a “gamma camera will be moved over your heart and take several images of your heart…” I have a very, very hard time remaining absolutely still while on my back on a hard surface. My inability to do so is what made it impossible to complete an MRI last year when the doctors wanted a good look at the bone spurs causing pain in my neck and arms.  I will just have to wade through it, I guess.

That’s Monday. Then, on Wednesday, my primary care physician scheduled the PET scan. I don’t have full details, but I know it will involve time on a flat surface during which someone will instruct me not to move. Same concerns as above.  I don’t yet know when or where the biopsy of the lung mass will be conducted. I assume they will conduct the biopsy regardless of whether the PET scan shows a bright spot (or spots) that could be cancerous. Here’s an explanation of PET scans that I found interesting and informative:

Cancers grow as dividing tissue require nutrients. Cancers require sugar. In order to perform PET Scans a particular sugar is manufactured. This sugar is radioactive. Fluorine-18 flurodeoxyglucose, known at FDG, is the radioactive tracer used in PET Scans. The patient receives this as an injection, getting a small radiation exposure, less than most CT Scans. Cancer cells take up this FDG sugar and it is trapped inside. The PET Scanning machine then measures the radiation signal.

The more radiation the cancer cell takes up, the “hotter” it is on the scan. A lesion that is hot may be cancer. By matching the PET Scan to other tests (such as a CT Scan as in a combined PET-CT) it is possible to tell where a tumor is located, what it is touching and by how hot it is, how likely it is to be cancer.

…PET Scans can detect the spread of cancer. It is critical at the start of the cancer process to accurately “stage the patient.” By knowing whether a cancer may have metastasized, the oncologist can design the proper treatment.

I’m probably getting ahead of myself with this exploration of PET scans, but it’s better to know what I may be in for than to wander into it blindly.

Sometimes, I think patients can explore too thoroughly the procedures they expect to undergo. For example, I could feel my level of anxiety grow while reading about the processes involved in a needle biopsy of a lung mass. It’s one thing to know what the doctors will do; it’s another to imagine the experience in details before the procedure actually takes place. On the other hand, conducting research into the processes is fascinating. I did not know, for example, of the existence of a specialty called interventional radiology.  Assuming my reading material is correct, my biopsy will be performed by an interventional radiologist. After the procedure, which typically takes less than an hour (according to what I’ve read), the tissue sample extracted from the lung mass is sent to a laboratory for testing. The results may be known shortly after the procedure, but it could take several days for the report to be delivered to the doctors. Once that happens, I’ll have a much clearer picture of what, if anything, will follow.

Okay, enough for the clinical language of medicine. My next post will be something very different. I don’t know what that will be, but it will be very different and won’t involve my physical health.

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Medical Journalist

Posted on October 11, 2018 by John Swinburn

I stayed home most of the day yesterday, expecting to get a call to schedule the P.E.T. scan and/or the biopsy, but I didn’t get the call. If I don’t hear anything by noon or thereabouts, I’ll call my doctor’s office to see what gives. Coincidentally, my annual visit with my cardiologist is scheduled for mid-afternoon today. I suppose I ought to tell him about the suspected malignancy.

Reaching the birth month of my sixty-fifth year is revealing more medical “crap” than I ever dreamed it would. Mostly little things that aren’t new but are annoying: a clogged sweat duct on my left foot that makes it painful to step “just so;” a skin rash on my scalp that itches like crazy (and is the reason for a visit to a dermatologist the day after my birthday); arthritic knuckles and elbows; stiff and arthritic knees; the list could go on. Adding lung cancer to it is not the icing I would have chosen  to put on the cake. But none of this crap would have been my choice, so there’s no compelling reason to complain except that I’m in the mood to do it.

I doubt I’ll write much today. I got up obscenely late, after 7:00, which for me is like sleeping in half the day. I feel like I’ve wasted time I could have spent in productive pursuits. Maybe I’ll continue my “medical journal” later. Or maybe I’ll put it off until the wee hours, as I am wont to do.

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Deviant Desayuno

Posted on October 10, 2018 by John Swinburn

Unable to focus on anything more productive since I awoke around 3:00 a.m. and wrote a long, rambling blog post, I turned my attention to something that always captures my imagination and attention: food. The result of my engagement with concerns comestible is underway as I write this. By adapting a recipe for a Chinese breakfast with ingredients suitable for Cajun or Creole cuisine, I am in the throes of making a breakfast that may either delight or disgust my wife when she arises an hour or more hence. (Under normal circumstances, she would be up around 7:30, but given that she had been up for who knows how long when she returned to bed when I arose at 3:00, the hour of her awakening is up in the air.) Back to the food. I’m making congee flavored with about six ounces of andouille sausage. The charcuterie that gave rise to andouille sausage originated in France, so my breakfast this morning, once complete, can claim French, Chinese, Cajun, and Creole lineage. If, as I am considering, I dress the finished product with German mustard, this could be a true bastard’s breakfast with no discernible parentage. Hmm. German mustard? No, I think not. I’ll stick to soy sauce and sambal oeleek; still, the result will be a dish that any self-respecting chef would condemn as an inedible concoction deserving nothing but scorn and a trip to the dumpster. I am no self-respecting chef, though, so I shall look forward, with relish, to enjoying my breakfast this morning. But I don’t plan on smothering the dish with relish, in case you wondered.

The photo is my deviant desayuno (that’s breakfast in Spanish, introducing yet another ethnic influence on my day) on the stove as it readies itself to be eaten. I’ll give it half an hour.

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Thinking Through the Fog

Posted on October 10, 2018 by John Swinburn

I’ve long thought that my wife and I both should have documented our experiences in dealing with her breast cancer fifteen years ago. I’m sure I’ve written, since then, about that time in our lives when our world was turned upside down. My impression then was that she was far better equipped, emotionally, to handle her diagnosis than I. But I don’t know with certainty. She’s never been one to share her emotions on matters so consequential, even with me. I know I was a wreck. And it’s probable that I was a wreck who wasn’t particularly supportive at a time when support was extremely important to her. We don’t talk about that much. Ever. It’s part of a dark history that neither of us documented. I wish we had. I’ve always wished we had documented the emotional roller-coaster that brought both of us face to face with mortality so directly. I remember my panic at the prospect that I might lose her.  I realized how crucial she was to my identity of myself; without her, I knew I would have drifted into a spinning fan blade that would cut me to pieces. That was a bleak time for me; bleaker still for her. She wrestled with whether she would undergo treatment or let Nature takes its course. I was selfish and insisted that she had no choice but to deal with whatever she had to do to ensure that she would remain here with me. I’m glad I was so insistent, but she’s never said how she felt about my selfishness.

Now, thirteen hours after the conversation with my doctor about the results of my CT scan, I’m more conscious of my choices than I was about my wife’s fifteen years ago. I still don’t know, and won’t for a few days yet, whether the 6 cm mass revealed on the X-rays and, then yesterday, on the CT scan is a malignant tumor, but I’m assuming my doctor is right and that it is. I need to know what the tests reveal about its nature, its likely history, and how quickly it is apt to increase in size and scope. And, of course, how far it has come thus far. Maybe it’s sitting there in my lung, as yet alone and unconnected to the rest of my body. Or, possibly, it’s already spread its reach beyond that 6 cm space and has reached into my lymphatic system and my liver and who knows where else. No one knows yet. But the radiologist’s comments in yesterday’s report suggests evidence that it may not yet have metastisized, if the results of my research into the language of the report is correct. I read “No suspicious mediastinal adenopathy” to mean the CT scan image didn’t reveal evidence that nearby lymph nodes showed evidence of malignancy. But, of course, I didn’t ask my doctor yesterday about that; I didn’t know questions to ask until I had wandered the length and breadth of the internet, attempting to learn for myself what no one yet actually knows. For the record, here’s the report from yesterday’s CT scan:

Exam: CT chest with contrast.
CLINICAL HISTORY: Pneumonia, unresolved or complicated; Unresolved pneumonia; Chronic cough
COMPARISON: Chest x-rays dating back to 9/7/2018.
TECHNIQUE: Axial images were obtained of the chest with contrast.
Interpretation: The heart is normal in size. The aorta is normal in caliber. No suspicious mediastinal adenopathy is identified. There is a rounded mass in the right lower lobe measuring 6 cm in size. There are a few air bronchograms centrally. There is a minimal amount of pleural fluid on the right. There are postoperative changes from CABG
surgery.
IMPRESSION:
1. Rounded mass density right lower lobe measuring up to 6 cm in size.
2. Imaging characteristics favor malignancy rather than pneumonia.
Biopsy recommended.

I remember my father’s death from lung cancer. He was in horrendous pain those last few days, helped only modestly by the morphine injections we administered that last horrible day. That was a long, long time ago. Today, it would have been different. Today, his pain would have been drawn out by days, weeks, even months, thanks to the wonders of modern medicine. I know very little about the extent of his cancer, nor the stage it had reached. By the time I knew he had terminal lung cancer, it had reached a point beyond which there was no return, no recovery. My situation is different. For one thing, I don’t even know with certainty that the mass in my lung is cancerous; so far, the radiologist and my doctor only suspect it. And treatments have changed dramatically since 1985, the year my father died. There’s virtually no realistic comparison between the two of us and our situations. He was 81 years old and had smoked two packs of cigarettes a day since he was a kid. I smoked for many, many years, but I stopped when I was 51. Ach. I could go on and on. The differences between us are so great there’s no point, though. And, frankly, it’s morbid to dwell on this stuff. Especially at this early stage, when I know damn near nothing about whatever it is in my lung.

Given all the “ink” I’ve used in connection with an as-yet undiagnosed condition, one might assume I am deeply troubled by something about which there are few hard, cold facts. But, in fact, I’m not. I’m more interested in it than troubled by it. I’m curious and admittedly a little nervous about what the future holds, but I’m not off-the-rails-afraid.

Just curious. I’m awake at 4:00 a.m. and have been since 3:00 because that’s who I am and that’s what I do on occasion. It’s not because I’m struggling to deal with my mortality. I’m not. I’m really not. But I do feel a little pressure to become my own copy and content editor, just in case. I haven’t spent the last umpteen years pouring my soul into my writing just to let my words disappear into oblivion without a fight. My legacy. There it is again. What will I leave to the world that the world can’t live without? Hah! We shall see.

I really do wish Janine and I had written contemporaneously about her  experiences in dealing with her breast cancer.  There were lessons learned during what was far more trying for her than whatever it is I’m dealing with is apt to be for me. But we didn’t. She had excuses. She’s not one to journal. But I didn’t have much of an excuse. I just didn’t do it. Nor did I write much, at least at the time, about my bypass surgery or, for that matter, all the hospitalizations and surgeries I had related to my Crohn’s disease. Maybe that’s for the best. Nothing puts one in a morbid state of mind more than page after page after page of detail about one’s illnesses and experiences with the medical-industrial complex.

I promise myself that I’ll document my experiences surrounding this latest medical issue of mine. I suspect I, and anyone else who stumbles across this blog, will find what I write boring in the extreme; I’ll do it anyway, so I won’t curse myself years hence for failing to have done it.

I’ve been writing for the better part of an hour and it’s only 4:20. I should go back to bed, but I won’t. With that, I guess I’ll make my first cup of coffee of the day.

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Surprisingly Calm in the Face of Mortality

Posted on October 9, 2018 by John Swinburn

Perhaps I’m waiting for confirmation of the doctor’s preliminary assessment—that I have a mass in my right lung that’s likely malignant—before I get nervous. Or perhaps the prospect hasn’t fully sunk in. Whatever the reason, I’m not panicking. I’ll wait until I’ve received the results of the P.E.T. scan and the biopsy before I decide how to react. I suppose I also should wait for the prognosis. Even then, I suspect I won’t panic. Something in the part of my brain that controls emotions is telling me to pay attention to information provided to me and to respond with deliberation and resolve. So that’s what I’ll try to do.

This news threw a monkey wrench into my decision, last night, to respond favorably to an invitation to play a speaking role in a play. This afternoon I told my doctor I had just been cast in a play and I asked whether, if I require treatment for cancer, I might have trouble following through on my commitment. He suggested that it might be better to put off my theatrical debut. While he said the possibility exists that the 6 cm mass in my right lung is benign, he said the imaging suggests that it is. So, I reluctantly told the director this afternoon that I’m backing out.

The issue on my mind right now is what I should be doing to prepare. Not for the tests and the prospect of treatment, but for the possibility that “it” could be even worse than I think. Come to think of it, I don’t think I should prepare at all; just let it come as it will. I came to that conclusion after attempting to understand tumor size and its relationship to “stage” of the cancer and their relationship to six-month and twelve-month survival rates. The complexity of those relationships and their potential to foster fear or depression or other such stuff I neither need nor want right now says I ought to leave them alone for the time being. I want to maintain the sense of calm with which I began writing this post. Better to ignore data too complex and requiring too much base knowledge that I don’t have.

My wife opted to stay home from cards tonight because the weather is nasty and even more threatening. That notwithstanding, I am comfortable in my solitude as she watches television, thinking through stuff that one best thinks through alone. I have thousands of documented moods and ideas and wishes and dreams to wade through on my blogs and in my files. Those pieces of me that I’ve shared with myself and the occasional visitor to my blogs merit at least some attention if I am to get them in a shape even remotely suitable for publication, assuming I’m able to do that. Nothing kicks me in the butt harder than knowing my precious writing may simply wither into vapor in the not-too-distant future if I don’t get my ass in gear and do something with it.  Aha! I knew it. My thoughts are not so damn calm as I thought. Well, they’re calm, but they’re not quite so unmoved as I might have claimed. Still no panic, no tears, no raging against the night, but acknowledgement that I’m not a fan of bedtime and I need to revisit my bouncing rubber ball that treats legacy like a demon one minute and a saint the next.

Still, I’m solidly behind the idea that my deliberation and resolve will win the day. They always have, in one way or another. We shall see. Indeed we will.

 

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The Demise of Pie and Mash and Liquor

Posted on October 7, 2018 by John Swinburn

Based on an article I read online this afternoon in The Telegraph, I’m afraid hipsters have torpedoed my chances for ever eating an old-style meal of English pie and mash and jellied eel. Damn it! I really, truly would liked to have had an opportunity to taste a dish commonly served to dock workers and other working class folk in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Even for the bulk of the twentieth century, I understand that pie and mash shops were popular and thrived in working-class London. We (my wife and I), during our many trips to England in the 1980s and 1990s, never had the opportunity to try them. We were always taken to the “upscale” spots, not to the kind of places I really wanted to go. I wanted to experience London as if I were a working class Londoner. Instead, I was treated as a visiting American who, presumably, should be taken to expensive restaurants to eat food more suited to the American palate. I was too bashful to object. Later, when we went back in the late 1990s, we experienced the more common Indian food dives, which we loved, but still didn’t get to the old-style places that had survived for more than a century. Like A.J. Goddard pie and mash shop that closed today (Sunday, October 7) after 128 years. What a bloody shame! Some call the dish pie and mash and liquor (not the alcoholic kind, the “liquor” sauce made from eels). I wish I could try it. I guess there are some shops left, but they’re disappearing rapidly. I’m sorry to know that. Very sorry to know it.

Travel the world and experience it was it once was, and do it soon, or the great homogenization will rip your chances from your grip before you know it.

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A Proper Burial

Posted on October 7, 2018 by John Swinburn

Long ago, a friend taught me the meaning of the phrase “you die twice” and I wrote about it. I’ll get to that in a moment. It surprises me that the very modest traffic that reaches this blog usually gets here from web searches that take them to that post or to another one I wrote about “blind robins.” (A traffic monitor informs me which page each visitor’s IP address lands on.)

If it weren’t for searchers led here by their interest in “you die twice” or “blind robins,” the traffic here would be almost nonexistent. I know a few people read what I write with some regularity (and I thank them!), but that number is extremely small. I can count those fairly regular readers on the fingers of one hand, leaving a thumb free for use in hitchhiking. As I’ve said before, I write these posts for myself. But I admit that the lack of readership among even my friends and family can be depressing at times. I understand that people are busy, but it would make me feel a little less irrelevant to know that people are sufficiently curious to know what’s on my mind to visit from time to time. “Irrelevant” is a bit too strong a term. “Ignored” is the proper term, I think. Yet still I write. So, yeah, it’s primarily for me. I wouldn’t be approaching 2700 posts if I were writing for an audience. I guess it’s to release pent-up thoughts in my head to avoid an explosion.

Back to the phrase I mentioned first. “You die twice” suggests that a person dies the first time when his body gives out and dies when his name is spoken for the last time. Thereafter, he is no longer even a memory that matters. That’s a sad thought in some sense, but natural and understandable and expected in another. I’ve written about the matter, albeit not necessarily addressing it directly, several times before. Memory. Legacy. “One’s mark on the world.” In reality, evidence of most of us eventually evaporates, leaving not even an indentation in the space we once occupied, believing it was sacred space meant only for us.

“Who was that woman who lived alone sixty miles outside of Fort Boise in 1829 but was never heard from thereafter? Who was that bachelor who arrived in Galveston in 1899 and was swept out to sea in the Great Hurricane of 1900?”

Almost no one knew those people then and no one remembers them today. The questions about them are artificial; whether the people were real or simply sprang from my imagination doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter any more than the absence of memories about them. Their sacred space is busy accommodating “butterflies and zebras and moonbeams and fairy tales.” (At least until the memories of Jimi Hendrix fade into oblivion.)

Memories of us might linger a little longer through our writing or the music we play, though it seems unlikely in my case, given the paucity of people who’ve read my copious blather. And it won’t be music for me, inasmuch as I’ve never written any. But memories might linger longer if one writes a memoir. A friend asked the other day whether I’ve considered writing a memoir. “You’ve led an interesting life,” she said. I thanked her but silently wondered if she knew of any memoirs of a life like mine that anyone would consider reading. She mentioned something else, a little later,  she said bored her. “It was like watching paint dry,” she said. That’s what reading my memoir would be like, I thought. People who spend their careers in white-collar offices working with people they find only moderately tolerable don’t make good memoirists.

With that as a temporary backdrop, I often wonder what day-to-day life was like for people who lived in farms and in small-town America in the late 1800s and early 1900s; their memoirs or better yet meticulous journals would make interesting reading, I think.  I’m afraid our knowledge of history is too often based not on facts but on our interpretations of evidence that suggest facts. We fill in the blanks with what we believe the evidence suggests to be true, but we don’t know.

All the aforementioned blather notwithstanding, the world would be a dark, hollow, ugly place if people focused their attention on the fact that our brief existence ultimately will matter to no one. At some point in our lives, perhaps for entirety of our lives, we matter to someone. That, alone, provides solace against the knowledge that we’re nothing more than infinitesimally small microscopic specks in an immeasurably enormous universe. That fact that we have the wherewithal to think we matter even a tiny bit to a minuscule sphere of other beings for an instant of time too brief to measure against a spectrum leading to eternity should give us some sense that our presence has some meaning, however brief.

The words we leave behind, whether in our notes or books or plays or blogs or music what have you can postpone but cannot prevent the inevitable. Eventually, our words will no longer be associated with the name of the person who wrote them. Our names will eventually be spoken for the last time. It’s indisputable. The time it takes might be short or it might be long, but time will eventually snatch our memories from the universe.

While we’re here, though, we might as well make the most of it. Enjoy what we can and make our marks, knowing full well they will not be “lasting” in the true sense of the word. All our legacies can do is to prepare our memories for a proper burial in the fog of time, when our names are spoken for the last time.

 

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On Eating Glass and Other Horrible Pleasures

Posted on October 3, 2018 by John Swinburn

I’ve never eaten glass, but if I were to do it, I’d choose to chew ground red glass. I envision a crimson goblet changing from hard red glass into a fine pink powder as the grinder did its work. My imagination will take me only so far when I contemplate the way my mouth might feel as I consumed the remnants of what once was a beautiful water goblet. The revulsion I would feel as the crushed and powdered glass filled my mouth overtakes my fantasy and transforms it into a monstrous phantasmagoria. But I know it’s all in my mind. I would never knowingly eat glass.

Yet the curiosity that gives rise to that imagining gives rise to other, equally bizarre, daydreams. How would I feel if I placed my left arm in a guillotine and the blade suddenly dropped, severing my limb in an instant? I can imagine a sense of confused disbelief and horror, followed perhaps by excruciating pain.

What good does it do me to imagine such things? I think imagining events that almost certainly will never come to pass is an exercise that makes the brain elastic and able to process real events with greater malleability. And it enables me, if I choose, to describe the events or to paint them in words that make the events believable. By “greater malleability,” I mean the brain can more quickly discard the sense that a real event, strange and traumatic though it might be, is a trick played on one’s imagination.

There may be a danger in imagining awful circumstances, though. By thinking them through, applying logic to what happens and the order in which it occurs, one might normalize them. For example, imagining a treasonous politician being hacked to death by someone wielding a sharp machete might lessen the horror of witnessing such an event take place in real time. Maybe not, though. I suppose it would be unethical for a psychology professor to conduct an experiment that measures individuals’ responses to such an action; one group would be instructed to imagine such circumstances before witnessing a real hacking, another would witness the hacking without the benefit of pre-event conditioning. I’m pretty sure that would be a breach of professional ethics. Though I wonder whether the ethics issue could be overcome if the investigator could reasonably claim that the research subjects were incapable of feeling fear or pain…no, just no.

Ghastly though it sounds, the idea of focusing intently on how swallowing ground glass might feel can be instructive. So can it be to imagine all sorts of other horrible experiences. When we remove the shield that protects us from horrors around us, I think we’re better able to understand and express the experiences that arise from exposure to horrible experiences. Granted, one may not wish to understand and express those experiences, but understanding is the foundation of knowledge. So, understanding even the most grotesque aspects of our lives, whether real or imagined, helps build knowledge about ourselves and the world in which we live.

I think I’m spewing words just to spew words. I’m not sure I believe anything I’ve written. That is a clear warning to me a writer; if I don’t believe it, neither will the reader. Yet I started with the premise that I would imagine godawful circumstances and write about how they influenced my mental state. I don’t know that I’ve done that. Instead. I took a sharp left turn down a dark alley, where I was mugged by unethical research psychologists wielding sharp knives. They called themselves “students of darkness,  but I know them by their first names, Brett and Mark. Even from a distance, I can see that they are slimy, as if they had bathed in a tub filled with fish oil and human blood. When they realized I was a male, they pushed me against the wall and shouted “we’ll find another subject, one that we can joyously molest!”

Can you see from the preceding paragraph how the distorted mind works when confronted with obstacles to logical thought? It breaks through those obstacles with madness and brute force and then leaps over the remnants of the broken barricades like a deer leaps over a tall fence. Speaking of deer, I saw on Facebook yesterday that a young woman I know only casually killed her first doe, using a crossbow. I pitied the animal, but envied the woman and her husband for the venison they will soon enjoy. That combination of pity for the deer and envy for its killer is an odd mixture. It’s like love and hate, oil and water, truth and fiction all joined together with a rubbery material that can be bent but not broken. Yeah, I can’t quite describe it, but I can see it behind my eyes.

It’s after 7:30. Way late to be writing anything. The sun is up and light would flood the room if I were to open the shade, which normally I would have done an hour ago. But my fingers lusted after the feel of the keyboard and I had no control over them. But now I do, and so I will divorce myself from the keyboard and go about my bidness.

 

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Published

Posted on October 1, 2018 by John Swinburn

One poem. Finally published. They (Do South Magazine) selected the one poem I submitted, Emotion. Now that it’s in print, I wish I’d submitted something else. But wishing is an idiotic undertaking, isn’t it? So I’ll try to stop. I have written dozens upon dozens of poems, most of which have never seen the light of day. Most of which should never see the light of day. Most of which were errors I allowed to erupt into word-farts. Still, most of them meant something to me when I wrote them. More so, in many cases, than the prose I write. Prose tends to need a structure around which it is built; otherwise, its story is meaningless. That’s true of most of my prose. It has a structure around which it is built, but that structure remains in my head, instead of finding its way to the story. And so the story is a half-thought, riddled with impossible bridges to nowhere, crafted on the edge of a cliff that’s dangerously close to disappearing into the empty sky below.

I wrote a day or two ago, or maybe today, that I’m not, nor will I ever be, and expert. I wish (there’s that idiocy again) I would have willed myself to be an expert in the expression of emotions through language. Such is life, though. It passes by and, unless one takes the early opportunities, it leaves one sad and regretful that one ignored taking advantage of all the opportunities.

Without further ado, here’s the link to the magazine in which my poem was published. It’s on page 6 or page 8 or some page with a number either close to or far away from those numbers.

http://dosouthmagazine.com/roam-october-2018/

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Smoking Cats

Posted on October 1, 2018 by John Swinburn

Last night’s dream was utterly bizarre. I’ll document what I can while the memory is reasonably fresh.

My friend, Jim from Dallas was to smoke a brisket for a large gathering. This gathering was to be held at a house in the country, an older place that sat on many acres. Jim arrived with the brisket, which he put in the refrigerator. He brought two live cats, as well, which he apparently intended to smoke, as well, and asked me to put the live creatures in the refrigerator. I didn’t quite understand the cats, but I tried to do as asked while the cats bit and scratched me. During the attempt to put the smaller of the two animals in the refrigerator (the refrigerator was a small one, like a dorm fridge), I noticed that something was wrong; it was no longer cooling. Jim checked and determined that the refrigerator wasn’t working, so he asked someone else in the room (there were several people there, though I’m not sure who) to go buy ice. I opted to let the cats roam the house while other preparations were underway.

I looked out the window and saw that my brother (the one who’s now in the hospital) was driving up the driveway. Then, others started coming down the drive; they were early by a couple of hours, which panicked Jim.

I heard a commotion in another room. When I entered, I saw my late sister and one of my nephews, along with many other people, sitting at a table loaded with baked goods, mostly pies and cakes. One of the cakes was extensively decorated with lettering; there were so many words on the cake it looked almost like the page from a book. My nephew pushed his hand down into the middle of the cake. When he pulled it off the cake, the top of the cake bounced back up, but some of the lettering was gone, leaving smooth white icing in place of the now disappeared lettering, but the rest of the lettering reappeared. My sister was upset with my nephew’s action and gently let him know it.

Another look out the window revealed a semi truck backing a large mobile home onto the field across the road in front of the house. One entire side of the mobile home, the one I could see from the house, was open, revealing several furnished rooms. People were in each room, seemingly oblivious to the fact that their home was in motion and the walls along the side of the house were missing.

While the semi truck was positioning the “open house” across the street, the minister of my church turned into the driveway.

And that’s all I remember. The memories of last night’s dream are melting away as I finish typing this. Strange things bubble up in the brain during the night.

 

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Superficial Thematic Explorations of a Saturday Morning in September

Posted on September 29, 2018 by John Swinburn

I’ve noticed recurring themes involving anger, darkness, and pessimism in both my poetry and my prose. How could I not notice them? They are so obvious as to slap me in the face, hard, when I read them. But when I write them, their starkness hides behind the words I choose to write. They slither amongst my language like snakes moving between rocks, waiting and striking only when their prey are within striking distance. I don’t notice their presence until I read what I’ve written, when they announce themselves with a low, lengthy scream that draws blood.

Why do those themes grow like kudzu when my fingers touch the keyboard? Why do harmless words I use every day transform into psychological cudgels that shepherd me into a dark cave and then beat me senseless? Those questions and many others reside in my brain, where they’ve taken up residence alongside artificial answers. Artificial answers.  Answers that break like cheap plastic dinner forks when put to the test, revealing the broken logic and erroneous recollections upon which they are based.

Cynics are, by nature, suspicious. Suspicion is a breeding ground for unhappiness. Yet one can be cynical without being a cynic, I think. Cynics view the world as a place where selfishness is the motivator of action and altruism doesn’t exist. While I think many people act only out of selfishness, many more exhibit compassion, which I think is a relative of altruism. What does this have to do with my recurring themes? Those themes struggle against their antagonists: joy, openness, and optimism. Admittedly, though, my writing doesn’t often reveal joy, openness, and optimism. But the struggle goes on, if hidden from view beneath a heavy cloak woven from words that distract from the battle beneath.

I believe that, one day, I’ll be able to extract from my writing—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and self-centered ruminations—answers to some of my questions. Not the artificial answers I wrote about but real answers that withstand challenges from every angle. I get the sense that I’m among only a small fraction of the population that haven’t found their answers. Most people, I think, find their answers early on and build their lives on the foundations those answers provide. Even artificial answers, when cobbled together with scraps of lies and baseless faith, can provide a foundation upon which lives can be built. The people who don’t find their answers early, though—or who refuse to build their lives on the broken debris of artificial answers—drift through life as if they were on the deck of a rudderless schooner with no captain and no crew. This is beginning to sound like “it was a dark and storm night.” I don’t mean it to be so deeply artificial as it sounds. I’m actually trying to equate the sense of an ongoing search for an unknown object with something physical. And clinging to the deck of an aimless boat is as close as I can come.

Another theme I almost forgot to mention: violence. I suppose it corresponds to anger, so I won’t devote much intellectual energy to it here. But I wonder whether my aversion to violence, on the one hand, and my not-so-secret fantasies involving violence to people I think “deserve” to suffer its consequences on the other, is symptomatic of the anger that drives some of my fiction. But, then, I wonder whether all of these themes simply flow from a creative well and are not symptomatic of anything other than creativity? I’d rather think that, so I’ll leave it there and go explore how one gets breakfast in a place like this. I know the answer: make it myself.

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In Memory of My Mother on Her Birthday

Posted on September 28, 2018 by John Swinburn

September 28, 1908. That’s when my mother was born. Were she still alive, she would have turned 110 years old today. She didn’t make it that far. She died thirty-two years ago, when she was 78 and I was 32.

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Another Ricochet

Posted on September 27, 2018 by John Swinburn

Murkiness, punctuated by an occasional pair of headlights as darkness bleeds into a dull, grey-blue drabness. As I sit at my computer, watching the day attempt to unfold, it occurs to me that I’m ascribing human attributes to the natural phenomenon of daybreak. I see the transition from nighttime to morning as an effort by nature—or the universe or something I can’t quite understand or describe—to accomplish a herculean task. Is the idea  that nature is attempting to salvage the world, after a night in which the world has abandoned the sun, utterly absurd? Yes, of course it is, and I don’t believe it for a moment. But I’m perfectly comfortable pretending it is so. Make-believe is my way of coping with the madness around me. It helps me make sense of chaos, allowing me to bring order to circumstances over which I have absolutely no control. It sounds a lot like religion, doesn’t it? Yes, I think it does, and that’s a scary thought. Despite my acceptance (or perhaps it’s closer to tolerance) of the religious aspects of Unitarian Universalism, I have problems with what I consider the dangerous potentials within many religions. The creedal nature of most of them tends to enable their followers to abandon critical thinking, relying instead on “higher authorities” to make interpretations of the creeds and to determine appropriate behaviors associated with them.

As usual, I’ve gone off on a tangent not entirely on track with my original thinking as I started typing this morning. Last night, over a vegetarian appetizer dinner with a small group from our church, the subject of adult ADHD came up. Two of the people around the table said, with conviction, they deal with in every day. I have for years felt that I might have a relatively mild form of the affliction. That could be the reason I can’t seem to finish much of what I begin writing. I lose interest or my interest in something else overtakes my interest in something else. Hmm. It’s something to ponder. But, for now, I have to get dressed and go stand in line to get my “enhanced” driver’s license. So I can board planes and travel to welcoming places. That sounds inviting.

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Gliding Colors

Posted on September 24, 2018 by John Swinburn

I passed my physical with gliding colors. Almost everything looks fine. Except for a few aspects of my blood work that are “high-normal,” which was the case last year, as well, with a slight uptick that’s nothing to worry about, but could be if they continue their climb. My doctor suggests, ever so gently, that diet might address them. As in not eating so much. And eating a diet better suited to a lethargic geezer. He also suggests, ever so gently, that a little more physical exercise might be worth considering. My blood pressure could use some adjustment downward, so he prescribed another little pill. And he expressed a little disappointment that today’s X-ray showed no change in the little shadow on my lower right lung. So, he wants me to get a CT scan. But he’s cognizant of the impending formalization of my geezerhood and the Medicare it involves, so he’s agreeable to letting me wait until I’m on Medicare and have my supplemental coverage in place. He wants to make sure it’s not a troublesome mass of some sort. So, I will focus on getting my coverage in place ASAP. This afternoon. After the Writers’ Club meeting. And he suggests I continue taking gabapentin instead of looking for a more permanent correction to my arm/neck/ shoulder pain. “As long as it masks your pain, you’re probably better off taking it. It won’t do any harm.” Though I present that as a quote, I doubt that’s exactly what he said. But that’s what I heard, basically.

This blog has turned into a journal. I’m not sure I like that. I am not sure I like that at all. I may clear it out and start anew. Yeah, maybe I’ll do that. Or maybe not.

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Experience

Posted on September 24, 2018 by John Swinburn

Walk through the hardest moments.
Walk without stumbling.
Slice through the fear with a machete
of resolve, tempered with rage and
trembling with unbending purpose.
Step over the broken pieces of bad
judgments turned to ugly regrets.

Push through the mistakes in your
path, thrusting them aside as if they
were merely leaves fallen from
a tree hungering for winter’s sleep.
Give yourself a chance to breathe.
Settle into the comfort of wisdom
gained from painful experience.

Extend a hand to the ones behind,
the ones slogging through fields of
pain waving in your wake, tired
from their journeys but trying
to walk without stumbling.
Let them rest in your hammock, its
threads woven from compassion.

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For future use

Posted on September 11, 2018 by John Swinburn

This just fell from my fingers a while ago. I felt I had to capture it for future use and this is the only place I can reliably find stuff. So…

He lured her in with food. It started with smoked brisket he took to the office for a picnic. Next, he made Korean-inspired deviled eggs for the office Christmas party. Beef jerky was next. Not the leathery stuff that looked and felt like petrified cow hide, but tender pieces of prime meat smoked and dried until they were just south of moist and full of flavor. When he showed up with hand-made sausage and home-brewed IPA, the affair was almost a given. She would go anywhere, do anything he wanted. Katrina was addicted to food and men who take food seriously and Desmond was such a man. The fact they both were married to other people hardly entered into the equation. They simply had to engage with one another intellectually, spiritually, and physically. It was a given, one of the universal laws that simply cannot be broken, lest the space-time continuum be irreparably damaged, leading to the instantaneous collapse of the big bang. No one wanted that, so people at the office ignored their increasingly obvious affair.

Until they broke the one corporate rule whose infraction could not be overlooked.

They were in the midst of becoming carnally knowledgeable while astride the CEO’s desk when he returned to his office with representatives of six of the company’s largest clients. Absent the presence of clients, the CEO might simply have turned and walked out the door when he saw them on his desk. But this infraction of the overriding corporate rule—engaging in sex in the presence of major clients—could not be tolerated. They were unemployed before they achieved orgasm.

Katrina’s features were as Korean as her ancestry. She was born in a village outside Seoul and was adopted by a couple from Kansas City when she was three weeks old. She spent all of her twenty-two years, save the three weeks in Korea, in Kansas City. Desmond, only an inch taller than Katrina at five feet three inches, was wide and featureless. He was not fat, but neither was he average. He was thick. His skin was like a lemon peel, but without the yellow. He had no distinguishable eyebrows and his nose seemed to protrude from his face in a barely noticeable bump. His lips were visible only when he opened his mouth. Otherwise, they blended in with the rest of his face. Except when he was visibly emotional in some way could his face be distinguished from an albino lemon. But, my God, could he cook!

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Elevator Eyes

Posted on September 8, 2018 by John Swinburn

Loudly speak the word “transubstantiation,” enunciating clearly, in a crowded elevator and observe the reactions of the people around you. There may be one or two who, not quite sure what was just announced, will say, “Excuse me?” Another couple will look away in awkward silence, pretending they did not hear anything. At least one will glare in angry disbelief as if an avowed enemy had just urinated on his leg. There may be one who nods and asks, “Are you Catholic?” And, on rare occasion, one might hear a small voice from the back of the elevator say, “That word is meaningless without giving us the context.”

I have never spoken the word in a crowded elevator, nor have I heard it spoken in such a place, so my suggestions about what one might hear were one to speak it are purely conjecture. So, why am I writing about this fictitious occurrence as if it had happened?

Simply to prod my brain into action, forcing it to build a scenario in which the nameless, faceless people in the elevator will come to life.

As I contemplate their responses, I will picture the way their facial expressions will change ever so slightly when I speak the word. I will attempt to understand what thoughts must be going through their minds as they attempt to make sense of an utterly foreign situation, a circumstance in which they have never before found themselves. Tiny changes in their expressions…the way they hold their mouths, how their eyes narrow by just a hair into what could be a squint were the movement accentuated a thousand times…reveal so much about these elevator people. Just by observing them, I can tell who among them are Catholics, which ones are atheists, who has children, and who is married but opted not to procreate. The flutter of an eyelash can reveal to me who has lived a long, anguished life subjected to emotional abuse. I can tell by the set of his jaw and suspicion in his eyes the man who votes Republican and scoffs at the trials and tribulations of a homeless mother and her baby daughter as he passes them in the street. By looking into the pleading eyes of the young man pressed against the elevator door I can tell he has the makings of a minister or a Peace Corps volunteer; he is the one who would have comforted the homeless woman and given her his last twenty dollars. The monstrous diamond-crusted metal cross dangling from the neck of the middle-aged woman standing at the center, coupled with the steely certainty in her eyes, suggests she preaches and flaunts the prosperity gospel. Even in her street clothes, it’s obvious to me that the petite woman in the back corner is a nun, having joined her order twenty years earlier. I can tell that by looking at her gentle grey eyes and watching the way the corners of her mouth edge up at the sound of the word. The short, nondescript man at the very back of the elevator mouths the word “Darwin” in response to my trigger word; he is the confirmed atheist in the group, a label that threatens the stability of his three-year-old marriage to a Southern Baptist woman from Alabama.

The enormous size of this elevator is just becoming apparent to me. It was designed to accommodate enormous couches and refrigerators and pallets stacked to the ceiling with sacks of rice and flour. Instead, it is crowded with an odd assortment of people unused to loud pronouncements of words ill-suited to elevator dialogue. There’s something else about this elevator that is, initially, strange and then becomes frightening as I think about it: there are no buttons to select floors. I realize we’ve all been herded into this large room whose vertical destination is being chosen not by us but for us. None of us knows what we will see when the doors open. We are afraid to say anything more. We know almost nothing about our fellow elevator riders (though I know far more than the rest of them). Every one of them could have been planted, with the sole intent of evaluating the other riders and determining their fates once the doors open. As I consider what I have done by speaking the word, sweat forms on my forehead. Suddenly, elevator car jolts to a stop and the doors slide to the sides. After a collective sigh of relief, we begin to stream out of the elevator car, forgetting those twenty seconds of terror.

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Thinking Beyond the Stars

Posted on September 5, 2018 by John Swinburn

I sat on the deck for at least three hours last evening, watching dull daylight wash into a dim darkness interrupted ever-so-slightly by a few bright stars, the red planet, and the blinking lights of airplanes. The planet I assumed was Mars was directly in front of my field of vision at the beginning, about mid-way between the distant hills of the horizon and the zenith of the sky directly above me. My assumption about the bright celestial body was correct. The Sky Map app confirmed it an hour or so into my reverie, when I took a short break to retrieve my smart phone. As the sky grew darker, the points of light in the sky multiplied a thousand fold, maybe more. Most of the stars were barely visible, their light so faint that I sometimes questioned whether I saw stars or, instead, just imagined their light. But I knew better. They were there, just so far away that the light I viewed was so old and distant that it had begun its journey toward my eyes before the Earth cooled into a habitable place. I wonder, though, whether they remain where they appear, to my eyes, to be. Might they have dissolved into hollow hulks of spent fuel a thousand Earth-years ago? Might they have exploded in a monstrous release of energy that consumed nearby stars? We don’t know yet because the light from that celestial spectacle might not reach us for millenia.

Those were my thoughts last night as I watched the night sky unfold. I sat in a comfortable metal deck chair, my glass of Merlot on the mesh top of the metal table in front of me, and pondered our place in the universe. All the life forms, collectively, on our planet are so small and insignificant compared to the vastness of the sky and beyond the sky. Vast. That word, even in its suggestion of almost limitless size, is incapable of defining the boundaries of space beyond our atmosphere. We need a word whose utterance conjures a universe of such enormous proportions that it takes our breath away. “Vast” is comparable to our Earth as a speck of dust in our galaxy. We need a word that compares the size of that galaxy to something whose volume is one hundred trillion the one hundred trillionth power larger than that. Perhaps multiplied by an exponent of that number a million times over. These are, to me, incomprehensible numbers. Just as the size of the universe is incomprehensible.

Actually, as I watched the sky last night, it occurred to me (as it has many times before) that the universe is not measurable. Though my mind cannot quite wrap itself around the concept, I think the universe has no limits. It goes on and on and on. It is a never-ending concept. Not an entity, a concept. We understand it only to the extent that we can apply an earthly understanding to an unearthly experience. Maybe it’s an experience of which we are simply a part. Not a concept, but an experience. A transcendent experience of which the planets and stars and the empty space between them are simply physical manifestations.

On the one hand, contemplating the universe and its limits, or the absence thereof, is a fascinating way to spent one’s time, but on the other it emphasizes how utterly unimportant I am. Unlike chaos theory’s butterfly’s effect, my greatest efforts at altering even a microscopic piece of a tiny section of the universe are wasted and impotent. My existence and all it entails will never disrupt the flow of energy in a galaxy a million light years from Earth. I think it’s important for people to understand that, ultimately, they don’t matter. Sure, in a minuscule pocket in a tiny bubble in an infinitesimal spot on the outer fringes of an impossibly small patch of celestial real estate, we matter. But we ought not invest ourselves in thinking we matter beyond that insignificant, microscopic speck of dust.

All that is to say I thought about the universe and me, together, last night. And this morning, as if it mattered, I put my thoughts down. Why do we keep doing this? When we know we’re nothing in an incomprehensively monstrous space, why do we keep trying to pretend we matter? Because we must, I suppose.

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Musings on a Wednesday Evening

Posted on August 8, 2018 by John Swinburn

I got word late this afternoon that my brother will be released from the hospital on Saturday. So, I’ll head down to welcome him to my niece’s home; I should arrive by late afternoon. There’s no time-frame for my visit. I’ll remain there as long as he needs someone to help him recuperate from his lengthy surgery and subsequent hospital stay. My niece and her husband both work (she just started a new job), so they can’t get away. I’m retired and untethered to inescapable responsibilities, so I’m capable of flying the coop with little notice for as long as necessary.

My responsibilities are as yet unknown, but to the extent I can, I’d like to spend some of my time while away from home doing something I’ve not allowed myself time to do here: writing and painting. I’m anxious to give my painting skills (that’s not a legitimate word to describe my brush work) an opportunity to develop. And I really need to focus some attention on pulling my hundreds of stories into a cohesive whole, which will require considerable writing and editing. Will I achieve these objectives? Time will tell. Perhaps I should start by acknowledging they are not objectives. They are merely wishes, desires that can readily take a back seat to responsibilities.

I’ll miss my wife while I’m away. She will miss me, too, but I suspect my absence will give her an opportunity to unwind that’s simply unavailable when I’m home and perpetually “wired.” Maybe I should practice meditation while I’m away, as a present to her upon my return. She’ll be stunned if I return home as the mellow man she deserves. I’ll be stunned, too. And delighted beyond words. I wonder whether pills of the legal variety prescribed by licensed physicians might be more effective and more controllable than meditation. Medication in lieu of meditation. That sounds fundamentally wrong, but closer to the way the world, at least the Western world, seems to be working.

I went to a Medicare counselor today to learn what I could about my Medicare options. The woman was nice and shared a few bits and pieces that I’ll find useful as I do my research, but I had hoped and expected to get more advice. Instead, I was directed to many places online and in hard copy that will fill my head with so much data that decisions will be based more on relieving the pain of choices than on rational thought. I dare not let that happen. A single choice in Medicare can follow you to the grave. Scary stuff. But necessary stuff.

People laugh at others, like me, who take pictures of their food. I equate my habit of photographing my food with others’ habits of photographing their children or grandchildren. You record that which is important to you. Because I have no chirren and therefore no grandchirren, I must photograph something important to me. So, it’s food and beer and places of interest. I read on Chuck’s blog post that he (and it’s true of most of us, I think) hasn’t taken many photos of places he’s lived, environments in which  he’s operated, or streets where he’s traveled over the years. His comments struck a chord with me. I haven’t either. And so big chucks of my life are available to me only through very poor and getting worse memory. Pictures of houses where I grew up are missing from my limited collection. Photos of cars I’ve owned seem to have gone the way of clothes I wore as a child; they’ve simply disappeared, with no recollection in my mind of what happened to them nor any trace of their demise. But, by God, I have photos of food I’ve made of which I’m mightily proud. And meals my wife has cooked. And occasional restaurant masterpieces. Because, well, significant accomplishments of whatever form deserve recognition. They deserve to be memorialized. They merit acknowledgement. My 1971 Ford Pinto doesn’t really merit much, so the relative (or perhaps absolute?) paucity of photos of the deathtrap doesn’t bother me. I wish, though, I had a photo of the shed behind my parents’ house that I helped Dad build. Ach. Well, unfulfilled past wishes are simply failures looking for forgiveness. You can quote me on that. It sounds prophetic, doesn’t it? I mean, seriously, “Unfulfilled wishes are simply failures looking for forgiveness.” It belongs on a motivation poster. Hmm. Maybe motivation isn’t the right word. Disregarding that, the phrase makes very little sense. But it has potential. I can imagine it carved in stone on the side of a mountain. Or, perhaps, melted into the side of a dying glacier with a monstrous blowtorch. Get a photo of it, would you, before it disappears?

Am I rambling? Why, yes, I believe I am. And for some reason a line from a Paul Simon lyric from the song, America, is in my mind today (as it often is) and won’t leave me alone: “Kathy, I’m lost,” I said, though I knew she was sleeping. “I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.” I don’t know Kathy, and I guess it doesn’t matter. She wasn’t listening.

Posted in Family, Music, Philosophy, Rambling | Leave a comment

Wisdom

Posted on August 8, 2018 by John Swinburn

Wisdom grows not from the tender love of nurturing care,
but from the abject neglect and brutal abandonment spun
on life’s loom from frayed spiritual kudzu that tries to
choke and strangle resolve.

Wisdom struggles upward from the darkest depths of the soul,
breaking through impenetrable layers of heartache and failure
toward the open skies of an open mind ready to accept answers
in the absence of questions.

Wisdom sheds arrogance and conceit during its journey from
certainty, through hesitation and ambiguity, toward doubt and
the knowledge that enlightenment is temporary and all answers
are clothed in fallacies.

Wisdom understands enough to comprehend that we know nothing,
even as we build temples to celebrate the knowledge we one day will
cast aside when we find what we will believe are truths hidden
beneath layers of dogma.

Wisdom is vapor—an imaginary mist arising from tears falling on
white-hot convictions that decay into doubts when confronted
with arguments and evidence, both credible and absurd—gossamer
smoke in a hazy sky.

Wisdom is experience adjusted for failure and tempered by success,
an age-worn garment woven from the tattered remains of youth and
the anticipatory shrouds of that inescapable conclusion to
which all of us come.

Posted in Poetry | 2 Comments

Of Words and Weather and Automotive Maturation

Posted on August 1, 2018 by John Swinburn

Uncharacteristically cool temperatures for late July and early August give me hope. Soul-crushing hot weather tends to sear despair into my brain, but the scar heals quickly when evening and early morning temperatures dip into the sixties. Were it not for the encapsulated joints in the middle toes of both feet, I might go walking this morning. Actually, I’m not sure encapsulated joints cause the pain in my feet, despite the podiatrist’s assertion. I may have brought on the symptoms by stooping on my haunches to scrape paint off the deck. This paragraph has drifted from weather and its emotional consequences to the causes of physical pain to home maintenance. I don’t recall ever having crafted a paragraph that accomplishes so much of so little value in such limited space. And the idea that I “crafted” a paragraph attaches far more substance to my creative efforts than they deserve. I didn’t craft a damn thing. The words fell from my fingers like shards of glass from a window shattered by a baseball. Well, maybe my words aren’t quite as chaotic as that, but any suggestion they were, or are, painstakingly sculpted out of letters and syllables mined from a word-quarry rich in deep thought and powerful ideas is ludicrous.

Let’s move on, shall we, to topics more deserving of a limited supply of syllables? The idea that one has a finite number of words or syllables or sentences available to be spoken or written or thought in one’s lifetime is interesting. To me, anyway. The thought reminds me of a television program I watched recently on the PBS Create channel. The program was about the cuisine of Japan and the host spoke of an experience wherein he was with a Japanese chef as they talked about selecting a restaurant to enjoy their next meal. The program host suggested a restaurant that, I gather, was the quality-equivalent of a chain steakhouse in the U.S. His Japanese counterpart said something like, “There is a finite number of meals you will eat in your lifetime. Are you sure you want to spend one of them dining in a place like that?” Granted, the number of words or syllables or sentences one uses in one’s lifetime probably is several orders of magnitude greater than the number of meals one eats, but the concept still applies. Should we pay closer attention to the language we spread in our wake, knowing that it reflects to some degree the quality of the thoughts we allow to form in our brains? Just a thought. Heh.

Yesterday, while I was interviewing people for background material for the book about the history of Hot Springs Village, my wife took the Camry in for an oil change and tire rotation. The mechanic told her the car needs a rear brake job and a brake fluid flush and refill. I checked our records; sure enough, it has been a very long time since we had any work done on the rear brakes (the front brake pads have been replaced twice since we moved to the Village). So, I’ll call this morning to get an appointment. I will leave the Camry with her when I drive back to Houston to help my brother during his recovery from his recent surgery. I want it to be in tip-top shape. I’ll drive the Subaru to Houston, inasmuch as I’ll need its GPS to make my way around the monstrous city. And, inasmuch as it’s a far newer car (by about fourteen years), it ought to be more highway-worthy. Since we got the Subaru, I’ve neglected being as aware of the Camry’s maintenance as I should have been. But the car is now sixteen years old, old enough to look after itself, I say. If it’s old enough to get a driver’s license, it’s old enough to arrange its own oil change, brake jobs, and the like. And it ought to get a job and pay for its own gas, by God!

I started this post not long after I awoke this morning, but got sidetracked about the time I started blathering on about the Camry taking responsibility for itself, given that it’s now a mature car. By the time the 2020 elections come around, it will be old enough to vote. And I think I’ve spoken enough about voting, in its presence, that I know how it will vote. The vehicle, its silver paint job and muted appearance looking as conservative as they come, but it’s a Democratic Socialist through and through.  Okay, this diatribe has gone on far longer than necessary or acceptable. I’ll call it a morning and get on with my responsibilities. Next up, more interviews of long-time residents of HSV. The joys of retirement.

Posted in Cars, Language, Politics, Rambling, Stream of Consciousness, Weather | Leave a comment

A Simple Desultory Dystopic

Posted on July 23, 2018 by John Swinburn

I recall a somber afternoon in January when it all began to fall apart. We knew we were circling the drain, but we didn’t realize just how quickly we would be sucked into the septic tank, that basin awash in bile. The acid and the hatred—so hot it melted steel and shattered diamonds—would strip our flesh down to the bone, leaving only a sharp-edged skeleton where our empathy and compassion once lived. That day seems a million years ago now. All that’s happened since then swirl into indistinguishable memories, a stew of ugly incidents that, against our will, define who we are.

The other candidate and the past president, both jailed on charges of treason, are painted with brushes saturated in lies. Wealthy opportunists scour the economy for ways to fill their already bulging coffers, reporting on their successes to the commander-in-chief, who urges them on to do more. He won’t be happy until he has emptied the pockets of every one of his starry-eyed nationalist supporters, leaving them penniless yet still foaming at the mouth from self-induced orgasms, spewing accolades for his leadership. Those monsters call themselves patriots, but we know them as fervent jingoes and racists, people who cower in fear at the prospect of a majority “minority” country.

But it’s too late now. We can’t turn back the clock. When elections were cancelled, we knew the worst was just around the corner. And it was. The civil war was anything but civil. Children as young as three years old were called traitors and put before firing squads to pay for their crimes. The entire state of Oklahoma was emptied of its citizens, then turned into a concentration camp where anyone deemed liberal or progressive was placed to face justice. All citizens were ordered to government identification offices, where they were forced to have their national identification number tattooed on the backs of their necks. After the deadline date for having the tattoo, anyone without one was subject to arrest and detention. If the person was determined to be a citizen, the tattoo was forcibly applied and the citizen was given a sentence of two years hard labor. If not a citizen and possessing no visa, the alien was killed on the spot by agents of the Immigration Court Executioners, or ICE.

The resistance, comprising fewer than five percent of the population, was crushed under the heels of goose-stepping citizen militias, thrilled at the prospect of finally being allowed to use their precious AR-15s “in support of the Constitution.” With the resistance ferreted out by NRA loyalists, the commander in chief dispatched the military to dispatch the militias. The efficiency with which the militias were eliminated was stunning. They were gone within five days of the order to take them out.

Yes, this is telling rather than showing. This is the sort of stuff that goes on the back cover of the book (though, I will admit, it would need to be shaved down to grace the back cover). And the passive voice here is over the top; if this were serious, I’d fix it. 

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A Miss for the Moonbegotten

Posted on July 19, 2018 by John Swinburn

I spent part of yesterday afternoon painting colorful little circles on a small canvas. The endeavor was part of an art lesson in which the leader was explaining the relationships between primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors. While it was informative, and no doubt necessary if one is to better understand how to pain, it was not what I expected. I expected to attend these sessions and be given instruction on painting techniques, things like: how to hold the brush, how to paint shapes that look three-dimensional, how to look at a scene one wants to paint and determine values of light and dark. I guess that last one could be named “how to see.” But, so far, I’ve only latched on to only a few of those bits and pieces. To be fair, I missed a session. And one three-hour session per week isn’t much. And I probably should be practicing on my own, between sessions. But I’m busy and lazy and feeling especially inadequate as an artist. The few things I’ve drawn and painted in class look misshapen and poorly constructed, as if the artist (me) either has badly warped visual perception or extremely poor hand-eye coordination or both…coupled with other maladies that will likely impinge on my ability to make art that pleases both my eye and my psyche. The trick, I’m told, is not to compare my art to the art of others. That’s tough, when the “others” are all drawing or painting the same object(s) and when the output of the “others” is so obviously superior to mine.

I’m beginning to think I’d rather try to replicate someone else’s writing than their visual art. Perhaps, for example, I could use Eugene O’Neil’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” as a model for my own play. Different characters, different story, but based on the same emotional structure. I’ve not been much of a playwright heretofore, but I am just as capable of failing at that as I am at painting a masterpiece, so what’s the danger? I could entitle my play “A Miss for the Moonbegotten.” It could be set in a retirement village in a deeply conservative southern state. The characters would be a small band of wanna-be writers, most of them never published and unschooled in their craft, yet convinced of their innate ability to craft poetic language that conveys deeply meaningful messages. The key is to “show” and not “tell” what these characters are like and to weave a story from their interactions with one another, showing the undercurrent of panic as they age, risking the possibility of leaving no intellectual nor emotional legacy. With that cheery thought, I’ll go warm up my first cup of coffee, now as cold as the ice in my veins.

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