When Madness Strikes

Posted on July 11, 2018 by John Swinburn

Too much time has passed since I last hosted a tapas party. Actually, it wasn’t a party, it was just a few (make that four)  friends I had invited to show off my culinary talents. Well, not talents; more like my culinary aspirations. You know, I wanted to show off what I wished I could do better. That sounds strange and it is. I will admit to being moderately strange, occasionally drifting from “moderately” to “rabidly.” But that’s neither here nor there. I intended this post to be about tapas, not about me. But I suppose there’s no escaping egotism, especially when it’s being modeled at the highest levels of government. But I don’t want to get political here, so I’ll slide back into my comfort zone, which involves gluttony.

During my first cup of coffee this morning, I wandered the Whorl Wide Web (I know, but just let it be) to explore the whorl of tapas. I do love tapas. Always have. Always will, methinks. Anyway, this morning I got rather serious about compiling recipes for my next tapas party, which will be more than just a gathering of a few folks. And here’s what I came up with for the menu:

  • Moorish Pork Skewers
  • Shark Chunks with Pine Nuts and Tomatoes
  • Flank Steak with Goat Cheese on Toast
  • Bacon-Wrapped Dates with Manchego Cheese and Romesco
  • Bomba de Patatas
  • Champiñones al Ajillo
  • Pincho Ribs with Sherry Glaze
  • Chorizo Poached in Red Wine
  • Albondigas de Cordero a la Hierbabuena
  • Papas Bravas
  • Cauliflower Fritters topped with Yoghurt
  • Mixed Olives
  • Seasoned Almonds
  • Garlic Shrimp
  • Peppers with Raisins

Yes, I know. Too much meat and too few vegetables. And I need to be consistent with my language; either all English or a Spanish instead of the mixed bag. Before I lock in the menu, I need to consider just how many people I expect to come to this party and how gluttonous they are apt to be. Of course, I need to consider whether I’ll be able to pull it all together so everything is ready at the same time. That’s always a tricky situation. A very real constraint on the menu may well be the number of burners on my stove; it’s hard to prepare six dishes that require stove-top real estate with only four burners, don’t you know.

I can buy the obligatory sangria and sherry to drink with tapas, though decent dry sherry is rather hard to come by in central Arkansas for some reason. Most sherry here is sweet and cheap; I like the cheap part, but sweet is not my thing. For the drinkers of non-alcoholic beverages, I’m thinking lemon-infused sparkling water, iced tea, and iced coffee.

For the last tapas-bash we hosted, I created a Spotify play list of Spanish guitar music. Next time, I think I’ll create a list that includes a mix of musical genres. My limited exploration of current Spanish music revealed that the group, Manel, which mixes pop and folk and performs in Catalan, is popular. Another Spanish group whose music I’ve enjoyed for several years is Jarabe de Pelo. I’d have to say the music of Jarabe de Pelo is among my favorites. Yeah, I’ll mix it up. Some Andrés Segovia, Raimundo Amador, Rocío Dúrcal, Concha Buika, et al.

In an ideal world, my circle of friends and acquaintances would be as insanely “in” to such things as tapas parties as am I. They would insist on exploring exciting recipes and seeking out popular Spanish music. They would want to contribute to the food and drink and music and general atmosphere. Alas (there’s that word), my friends are not as crazy as I am about such stuff. They like to eat, drink, mix, and mingle, but they’d rather “leave the preparation to someone else, thank you.”

Now that I think of it, my friends and family and people with whom I associate are not as hyper-focused as I on anything. Maybe I’m the strange one, indeed. Last year, I insisted that we’d have a food-focused gathering at our house on September 7 in celebration of Brazilian  independence day. I wanted to have Brazilian food, Brazilian music, Brazilian themed decorations, etc. And I planned to do significant research into Brazilian history to be able to speak with some degree of knowledge about Brazil’s history and its independence, which was declared on September 7, 1822. There’s a term for this madness that drives me in such matters, but I can’t think of it at the moment. I wonder if I really do suffer from some form of mental malady that causes me to hone in on things of interest to me to the extent that I go a bit overboard. Hmm. Well, enough of that. It’s time for me to get practical about our next tapas party. And I suppose I’ll have to ask my wife if she’ll allow me to pursue this madness again.

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Raccoon Encounters

Posted on July 9, 2018 by John Swinburn

For the second time in just over a week, a raccoon managed to make its way to our back deck, which is at least seventeen feet above the ground. Metal tubes, wrapped around the middle sections of six by six posts supporting the deck, ostensibly prevent the beasts from reaching the deck. The tubes are useless. Raccoons have made their way up to the deck before. But, until just over a week ago, they waited until it was dark. No more. Now, they seem willing to venture out before the sun goes down. Yesterday, for the second time, I confronted the masked criminal directly. The encounter did not go as planned.

My intent was to frighten the beast so badly that it would dive off the deck to the rocks seventeen feet below. I was that angry when I saw it greedily slurping the sugar-water from the hummingbird feeder hanging from a metal arch affixed to the deck railing. I crept out to the screen porch, then carefully opened the screen door and stepped out onto the deck. With my right hand, I reached for the walking stick I’d made from a thick crepe myrtle branch late last winter. I crept up behind the raccoon, raised the stick high above my head, and–as I slammed the stick down on the top of the horizontal railing next to where the raccoon was crouching–screamed “Hey!”

Much to my surprise, the raccoon did not, in abject terror, spring off the deck. Instead, it spun around and leapt at me, hissing and growling and clawing at me. I tried to escape by stepping backward, but I was too slow. I felt the beast’s claws slice across my face, though I felt no pain. I reacted by grabbing the monster by its neck and squeezing, hard, as it wiggled frantically, trying to free itself. I held my ground, squeezing hard. All the while, both its front and back claws spun like it was running. Every stride struck my lower arms, drawing blood from deep scratches. My face started to sting and I saw blood dripping on my shirt. I felt the creature’s jaw and neck muscles flinch as it tried to open its mouth, no doubt intending to bite its way out of my grip. I knew it could do serious damage if I let it loose, so I held on for dear life, hoping to feel the animal’s body go limp from lack of oxygen.

Suddenly, as if an enormous surge of power filled its body, the raccoon put its two front paws between my hands and its neck and forcefully loosened my grip. At that moment, its eyed locked on mine and its mouth opened wide, revealing teeth that looked like long, white sabers. I swung at the beast with all my strength, but it dodged my arm and, taking advantage of the fact that my right arm crossed my chest, thrust its right paw at me, striking me directly above my mouth and below my nose. I felt like I’d been punched by a boxer as I stumbled backward. I tried to stay upright, but the back of my knees hit the arm of a wrought-iron chair, causing me to fall backward onto the chair. The raccoon was on me in an instant, hissing and growling and biting.

Though I continued trying to push it away, I couldn’t. It was moving too frantically for me to grab its neck or legs. It must have been only seconds, but it seemed like hours, that it was on me. During that time, I imagined the newspaper headline: “Man Attacked and Killed by Angry Raccoon.” About the time I had given up hope, a blackening sky and a loud hum stunned me. Hundreds of hummingbirds descended from above me and attacked my attacker. I saw their long beaks zip through its fur into the raccoon’s flesh. The raccoon squealed and spun away from me. The hummingbirds were relentless, jabbing it in the face and  legs and back.

As quickly as the event started, it was over. The raccoon leapt over the railing to the ground below. I heard it crash through branches to the thick bed of leaves covering the ground. I heard it scramble through the bramble and leaves, evidence that it was alive, at least, if not uninjured. The birds flew away in all directions. I was alone in my embarrassment, sitting in a pool of my own blood. If the raccoon was rabid, I suppose I’ll develop symptoms in three to eight weeks, though they could come sooner or, according to Wikipedia, as late as seven years after exposure. In the meantime, I’ll hope it was just an animal with attitude and that my scars will heal quickly, without any infection.

You will, by now, have deduced that this story was fiction, bunk, hallucinations flowing from my fingertips. But it is true that, a few weeks ago, I frightened a raccoon away, before dark, as it was drinking hummingbird nectar from a feeder on our deck. And it’s true that, yesterday, a creature that I assume was a raccoon, knocked that same feeder to the ground seventeen feet below. I haven’t climbed down there yet. I hope the feeder is not broken.

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Filtered News and Compartmentalized Compassion

Posted on July 8, 2018 by John Swinburn

The horrific, deadly flooding in Japan, not widely reported in Western media yet (it seems to me), is a nightmare of epic proportions. Two million people have been ordered to evacuate in western Japan. Hiroshima has been hit hard by flooding and landslides caused by extraordinary volumes of rainwater. “We’ve never experienced this kind of rain before,” a weather official was reported by BBC to have said. Sixty people are dead and dozens are missing. The numbers must be too small for most media to consider it newsworthy.

What captured the world’s attention, though, is the plight of twelve boys and their soccer coach, trapped for more than two weeks in a flooded cave in Thailand. And I understand that focus of attention. I’m just as concerned about that as anyone outside the immediate sphere of family and friends and countrymen can be. But are we incapable of being empathetic across a broader range of tragedies? There are so many from which to choose our “favorite:” wild fires, landslides, floods, violent demonstrations, fascism catching the imagination of world leaders everywhere…

I can control only my own little piece of mental real estate. I can express my solidarity with people undergoing heartache and horrors, regardless of whether others do the same. But the sense of helplessness I feel makes my expression of concern seem useless and unnecessary. “So what, you’re upset by people dying in floodwaters in Japan, what are going to do about it?” Nothing. There’s nothing I can do. I can only watch in horror and appreciate that, at least in Japan, the government seems to be trying to rescue people and protect people and property.

Bits and pieces of news I’ve seen suggests strangers are helping strangers in Japan. But that’s nothing new; it happens all the time. We don’t necessarily see it and the scale of assistance is not necessarily so dramatic, but it happens. I have taken, of late, to look for it. I consciously look out for people doing little things for strangers. You know, like picking up a piece of fruit someone drops at the grocery store. Or rushing after someone who left a purse or a wallet in a restaurant. Or helping an elderly person get across a busy intersection. Such things make the paper only when they are a bit “bigger” in that they take a tad more effort: a group of folks paint an injured person’s house; pulling someone out of a burning car. That last one is not just “nice.” It’s a risky life-saving endeavor. I’m happy when I read about such things. I wonder if I’d have the courage to do it? Would I risk my life to do it? Or, rather, would I risk utterly destroying my wife’s happiness by doing something that could kill me? Questions that have no answers, at least none that can be believed, until tested against reality. I’d rather not, thanks.

I guess my mind is awash in confused hurt with all the terrible things going on, every day, in the world. We’re not necessarily embroiled in more tragedy today than in other times, but we know about the tragedies more immediately. Except in the case of the Japanese flooding and mudslides, about which I found nothing this morning on CNN, NPR, Associated Press, or Fox News (yes, I actually do look online at Fox News on occasion, just to see what swill they are throwing at their biased nemesis at the other end of the spectrum, CNN). I found information about the flooding on BBC. Nothing on Aljazeera, either. Oh, wait. It’s Japan. That’s an entirely different culture. Uh huh.

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Planetary Perturbations and Insomnia and Pamplona etc.

Posted on July 7, 2018 by John Swinburn

I went to bed early and went to sleep right away. But two hours later, I was awake. I tossed and turned for what seemed like hours. I got up around 1 a.m. for a few minutes, then tried again to sleep. Maybe I got a little sleep, but not much. At 4 a.m., I decided to give up for the night. For the last hour, I’ve been playing Words with Friends and reading depressing news. I tried to resurrect a post I wrote last night, but to no avail. It wasn’t worth resurrecting, anyway.

Here I am again, attempting to turn a play-by-play of my unsuccessful attempts at sleep and the succeeding endeavors into something worth writing about. Where might this lead? I could write about the coffee I just made, but despite the fact that it’s what I drink most days, it’s deeply unsatisfying this morning, its flavor an odd combination of sour, steely bitterness and grass mowed days ago. I wonder if mood affects one’s taste buds? I’m tired, very tired, but my efforts at sleep failed and I have no reason to think they would succeed if I were to try again now. I really should attempt to get some sleep sometime today. We’re having dinner with a couple we haven’t seen in many years. They moved to Hot Springs from Las Vegas a month or two ago and invited us to have a Russian dinner at their house (she is Russian; I’m not sure I’ve met her, but I recall him talking about her years ago).

Yes, sleep would be nice. Restful sleep. Sleep uninterrupted by harsh dreams. Though I’ve not been able to remember much about my dreams of late, I know I’ve had them and they have been the kind of dreams from which one awakens disoriented and afraid, as if a solar eclipse that was supposed to last an hour has continued for days and no one can explain what is happening or why.

Speaking of things celestial, I heard yesterday on a radio program, Science Friday, that the planet Uranus rotates at an angle almost perpendicular to its orbit around the Sun, with one of its poles pointing at the Sun almost year-round. A theory, published recently, suggests that a planet as large as or larger than Earth may have struck the cold planet during its formation, knocking it out of its normal and expected rotation.

Among the things I read this morning before deciding to blog was a report that four men were injured during the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain earlier today. I remember a time when I longed to be able to go to Pamplona. I remember, only vaguely, that I had read The Sun Also Rises (about which I recall almost nothing). Something about the book appealed to my sense of adventure and my budding sense of what masculinity meant. I’ve since come to think the running of the bulls (especially involving people with no connection to the towns in which the events take place) is a remarkably stupid cultural expression of misguided bravado masquerading as masculinity. But I once dreamed that I would demonstrate my masculinity by fearlessly exposing myself to danger. There’s something incredibly immature about such an attitude.

One of the bits of news that has me on edge has to do with the twelve boys and their coach trapped deep underground in tunnels in Thailand. When I first heard the news that the boys had been found alive, I was jubilant. But as news came out that their rescue was by no means certain, my mood sunk. Now, as fears of torrential rains in the area grow, I’m growing more fearful that they may not be rescued. Those boys are not the only children on my mind this morning, either. I’m concerned about the immigrant children who have been taken from their parents and are being confined by the U.S. government. The U.S. government’s actions enrage me; if I could, I would dismantle the entirety of the current administration and would replace it with people who demonstrate compassion, decency, and humanity.

I’m tired. So damned tired. And no longer in the mood to write.

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Empty Explanation

Posted on July 5, 2018 by John Swinburn

It has been days since I’ve posted here. The number of possible reasons for the dry spell could exceed the largest known numeral, cubed. But probably not. I attribute the emptiness to emptiness. All the good ideas have fled my head, leaving a balloon appearing larger and more imposing and more interesting than it is. A balloon, after all, is simply a membrane that imprisons gas, usually air. And that’s what my head has been of late. If ideas reside there, they are too soft and dull to pierce the thin film that separate the imprisoned molecules from the air flowing freely around the empty sphere.

What causes emptiness, by the way? Can ideas have emotions of their own so that, for instance, they might be afraid to expose themselves for fear of ridicule or rejection? Or, perhaps, ideas might grow angry with their host and demonstrate that animosity by refusing to reveal themselves. The most frightening explanation for emptiness is one that suggests permanence; that the ideas have simply left and won’t be back. But, you might have noticed, the preceding sentence suggests ideas may have been replaced by fear. The obvious next question is: fear of what? Fear of emptiness? Fear of an endless dullness, a drab existence from which creativity has escaped? The answers to these questions do not reside in balloons engorged with air. The answers live amongst brain cells that collectively assess and analyze a massive volume of data. But those brain cells seem unwilling to engage in the collection, assessment, and analysis of data for the moment. Perhaps they share with their brethren, ideas, emotions that prevent them from performing their usual duties. Fear, anger, disgust.

You can see evidence of the emptiness when you look in a mirror and see no reflection. No smile, no sneer, no eyes peering back at you, only the wall behind the place you’re standing.  And that makes you wonder if others see only emptiness when they look in your direction, a vacant space that doesn’t merit even a pause as their eyes scan the space around you. Invisibility has its advantages, I suppose, but I don’t know what they are. Contemplative thought would be required if one were to understand the advantages of invisibility and, unfortunately, that practice seems to have eluded me for the past several days. That’s what fills the pages or screens or whatever one considers the holder of the words on this blog to be. Contemplative thought, spilled into the universe from the confines of my brain. Thoughts, molded into words that convey ideas and emotions. But, of late, they just haven’t come. Maybe all of them escaped. The 2,603 posts that preceded this one may represent all the ideas available for me to express here. Perhaps there’s nothing else left. Perhaps it’s not that my ideas have gotten angry or afraid to reveal themselves. They’ve all just left the building. Poof. Empty.

I didn’t see nor hear fireworks last night, the Fourth of July. Even the world around me is empty.

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Vicarious Escape

Posted on June 15, 2018 by John Swinburn

A eighty-year-old friend whose husband died recently called me from her road trip this afternoon. She was waiting in her grandson’s driveway in Prescott, Arizona for his arrival. She had just gotten to his house when she received my text, in response to an earlier phone message from her, expressing interest in her follow-up ideas for a book about how the U.S. would be different if Europeans hadn’t invaded it. I wrote about that a few days ago. She wanted to talk about “the book,” as if I were going to write it. We had a brief conversation about it, but then talk turned to her trip.

She had stayed with relatives in Kansas until a week or two ago, when she embarked on a road trip that took her to Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada (the latter two, she admitted, only because she went to the “four corners.” She stayed in  an AirBnB room in a house in Taos and a in a “dump” motel in one or more of the other towns she visited along the way (Mesa Verde (CO), Santa Fe, Las Vegas (NM), Flagstaff, etc.). Last night, she stayed in a seedy motel in Flagstaff, but had a wonderful experience over dinner at the Weatherford Hotel, an elegant old place (she said), where she dine alfresco and talked to visitors from France and Belgium and where her waiter agreed to serve her a martini and toast her late husband (“but he was probably drinking water,” she said).

I admire my friend for her adventurous spirit and her determination to do what she said she would do. Long before her husband died (but when it was apparent he was dying), she said she wanted to take a road trip after he died to visit friends and family and to experience life “on the road” as a solo traveler. In fact, she wrote a number of “travelogues” that were written as if he had died and she was on the road. She read some of them to her husband. Now, she’s actually doing it. Her dog, Cooper, is not with her as her stories said he would be, but she’s living the stories nonetheless.

I’ve had similar “fantasies” about embarking on a solo road trip all over the U.S. and Canada, stopping along the way to work (if I could get it) just to get a better sense of who these people I pass on the streets really are. I’d like to get to know people, more than just superficially, who are utterly unlike me. People whose lives followed different paths than mine or whose circumstances simply prevented them from following their dreams that may well have mirrored the life I’ve lived.

On an entirely different topic, a Facebook friend and fellow blogger (Chuck Sigars) who I’ve never met posted some intriguing bits and pieces today about a film in which he played a starring role. I decided to download the film from Vimeo for $8 ($4 to watch online if you don’t want to buy it). I haven’t watched it yet, but I will. And when I do, I will offer my honest assessment of the film. That’s scary. What if I don’t like it? Hell, it’s just like critiquing someone else’s writing. You don’t say “you should be eviscerated for writing such swill!” (At least I don’t.) If you don’t like the intensity of the narrator’s obvious lust for the protagonist, you might say “I think your narrator’s emotional attachment to the protagonist came through clearly. I think you might want to consider distancing your narrator a bit, giving the reader the opportunity to come to her own conclusions about the protagonist.” Anyway, when I’m in the mood to watch Winning Dad, I’ll watch it and write about it.

Continuing my stream-of-consciousness diversions from linear thought, another Facebook friend (I met her once while I was in California) posted a photo of herself on Facebook, along with the caption, “61 yo and my upper lip is disappearing. A lifetime of giving lip, I guess.” My response, based on a hilarious exchange with my brother and his wife while we were visiting in Mexico, was “This reminds me of a misunderstanding of a Simon and Garfunkel lyric from Outrageous. ‘Who’s gonna love you when your lips are gone?’”

Everything is a memory. Nothing is now. Nothing is this moment. That makes the admonition, “Be here now,” a distraction, a misdirection, an attempt to distort the present, which comprises nothing but memories, with a present void of both memories and wishes.

The paragraph above is irrelevant to the remainder of this post. But, then, you may have noticed.

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If I Were a Tailor, I’d Stitch a Book

Posted on June 14, 2018 by John Swinburn

I suppose I always intended to write a book. Or, rather, to have written a book. I’ve never wanted to begin the process, only to complete it. And I wanted no part of the effort involved between starting and finishing it. That’s not true, not really. I enjoy writing. Sometimes, I love it. Sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps me moderately sane and prevents me from shattering into a million pieces.

Occasionally, I sit at the keyboard and think through my fingers for an hour or more at a time, pausing only briefly between spurts of creative energy to make coffee or flex my hands in a futile effort to relieve arthritic pain. I’d like to compile what I consider the very best of my writing into a book. I don’t know what the compilation would be called. Not an anthology of short stories, because much of what I’d want to include are not short stories. Not an anthology of essays, because…same thing. I suppose I could simply stitch together a stream-of-consciousness compendium that no one, other than I, would want to read. Actually, the compendium may be the best option, if for no other reason than it would enable a reader (if there were one) to develop a picture of who I am, who I have been, who I wanted to be. But, for that to work, the reader would have to care who I am, was, wanted to be. Regardless of arguments against the compendium, I certainly have plenty of material. I’m approaching twenty-six hundred posts on this blog, alone. At the end of August 2015, I recorded how many posts I’d written for other blogs that I either abandoned or, in a fit of writer’s existential rage, destroyed. Musings from Myopia, my first blog (that died at my own hand) lasted 1262 posts. I stopped posting on It Matters Deeply after the 82nd post. I’m not even bothering with other blogs I started but almost immediately abandoned. Thus, I have more than 3900 posts from which to draw material. Let’s be optimistic and say five percent of my posts might be worthy of being edited for inclusion in an anthology of sorts; that gives me 195 posts to massage into a book. But, perhaps I should be more realistic and say only two percent of my posts have a modicum of redeeming value. Still that’s 78 posts. I think there’s a book  hidden in my writing. There’s plenty of material in pieces that never made it to my blogs, too.

I’m thinking all of this to myself, documenting my thoughts on the interwebs. I wonder, could I actually stitch together a readable anthology of—something? Actually, I don’t wonder. I know I could do it. The question is, will I?——

 

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We Actually Joined a Church

Posted on June 4, 2018 by John Swinburn

I joined a church yesterday. I’ve lived my entire life up to this point being “unchurched.” I have never wanted to join a church because…well, for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, I suppose, was the dogma, the creed, the insistence that I relinquish control over my interpretations of the world to…a book, a set of arbitrary rules, ceremonial nonsense that deflects thoughts away from reality toward…something or someone outside myself.

But minds change. Open minds allow firmly rooted concepts to bend and flex. I discovered that not all churches insist that they have the answers. I discovered a church that doesn’t even suggest there are answers, only questions worthy of attempting to answer.  Yesterday was a milestone. The only requirements to join were that: 1) I participate in an orientation that explained the history of the church and the seven principles that guide its activities and 2) I agree to affirm and promote the following:

  • The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
  • Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations;
  • Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual grown in our congregations;
  • A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
  • The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our own congregations and in society at large;
  • The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
  • Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

I’ve had “problems” with some of the statements. I have difficulty affirming and promoting “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” But I’ve learned that we’re striving to adhere to those statements, not necessarily that we’re “there” when we join the church. And I appreciate the objectives that the statement imply. What I appreciate as much as, if not more than, the fundamental tenets of the church (and its willingness to accept people regardless of whether they believe or do not believe any creed), is the genuine sense that the people in the church are trying their very best to love one another and to love people in the larger society. They want to make a better, more peaceful, more just, and more respectful world. And they’re willing to try to do their part, knowing full well the world we wish for and hope for won’t be achieved for a long, long, long time, if ever. But they are willing to strive toward achieving it. In some sense, it’s ridiculous; why try to change the world when you know you don’t have the power to change it? It may sound trite, but the reason to try is that you may not be able to change the world for everyone, but you may be able to change it for someone, maybe only yourself. So you try.

For much of my life, I’ve been extremely judgmental about religion and about religious people, even people in my own family. I’ve thought they were allowing themselves to be deluded into beliefs that made no sense. I’ve thought they were subverting their own intellectual capacities and allowing others to think for them. My judgment has softened considerably in recent years, but it hasn’t disappeared. But the past two-plus years of pretty regular attendance at a Unitarian Universalist church, coupled with reflections and considerations of my own, have softened my thinking even more. Though I’m a far cry from sharing beliefs that would make me feel at home in any church expecting me to buy into its creed, I’ve changed. I’m willing to acknowledge that people are perfectly capable of making their own choices about what they do, or don’t, believe. In fact, one does not need the church—any church—to make your own choice about what to believe. But collective endeavors tend to be more fruitful than individual efforts. And being in the company of people who want to improve the world is satisfying. What I find especially gratifying is that the people I’ve come to know at my church aren’t “Sunday believers.” Whether they believe in a supreme power or not (I suspect most don’t), they are daily “doers.” They act on the principles they are asked to affirm and promote. I’ve come to find satisfaction in “promoting and affirming” the principles of UU, as well. And I’ve come to appreciate that, while I’m not “there” and probably won’t get there, the simple fact that I’m making an effort is reason to be hopeful.

So, I joined. So did my wife (she was raised Catholic). I’m happy to be part of a group of people who strive to make the world a better, safer, more just place through their day-to-day actions and interactions with other people. The core values that guide the church are the same as the core values that form the basis for many religions. Just without the creed. It’s the commonalities with other churches—the fundamentals of how to treat others—but the absence of forced acceptance of world views that make no sense to a lot of people, that makes Unitarian Universalism appealing to many people, I think.

I’ve gone on much longer than this topic warrants, so I’ll stop. But I wanted to memorialize in “print” my thoughts on these matters of religion and church membership. After almost sixty-five years, I’ve actually joined a church. Who woulda thunk?

Posted in Church, Religion | 2 Comments

Speed Limits in Samoa

Posted on May 23, 2018 by John Swinburn

The laziness, pomposity, and idiocy of the American people should have been evident long ago. Ongoing attempts to adopt the metric system have all failed. That rejection of an invitation to join the rest of the world has put us in the company of only six other countries: Myanmar, Liberia, Palau, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Samoa. God, we’re such a progressive nation.

Perhaps I’m too harsh in saying efforts to adopt the metric system have failed. We (some of us) buy soft drinks in two-liter bottles. Wine and liquor are sold in 750 mL bottles. Some gun fanatics enthusiasts speak in hushed, reverential tones about their 9mm handguns. In medicine, science, and pharmacology, use of the metric system is almost universal. So I can’t say metrication failed. But it certainly didn’t succeed. Our speed limit signs still show MPH, though some also indicate in smaller type “km/h.” Weather reports and forecasts still use Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. Tape measures show inches (some also reflect metric measurements, as well). We monitor tire pressure in pounds per square inch. But wait…aren’t the sizes of tires (or tyres) worldwide measured in inches? Ach. If that’s true (and it may not be), I suspect that’s because of the early American domination of the auto industry. But some places, I think, measure tyre pressure in kg/m2. Right? Or is it kPA? Hell, I don’t know.

My condemnation of Americans as lazy, pompous, and idiotic may have been overly harsh, as well. The conversion to metrics would have required significant investments by some industries. And it would have required re-training Americans in the use of metric measurements. The benefits, in many instances, would be minimal. But, in my view, the single most important benefit that we continue to disregard is that we would be in step with every other developed, and most undeveloped, country. Our citizens would be able to communicate on fundamental matters of weight and distance and speed and on and on, using the same system that almost everyone else on earth uses.

On another matter, completely unrelated, I learned this morning that the speed limit while driving over bridges in Samoa is 15MPH (24 kph). If you want to know more about Samoan driving codes (and I know you do), you may find information at:

http://www.lta.gov.ws/images/fees/roadcode/THEROADCODEREVIEWEDFinal.pdf

Frankly, it’s embarrassing to me that I have not made the effort to use the metric system of measurement. Because I’m used to seeing U.S. Customary Units, I continue to use them. But I do notice that my shampoo bottle is marked as 23.7 fluid ounces, with (700 mL) noted after. So the bottle is sized in metric round numbers, but the U.S. units are printed first. Maybe we’re changing, ever-so-slowly, after all. But I doubt our school children are being taught the metric system (I could be wrong—I often am). And that’s too bad. If kids were taught to use the metric system and could see how much sense it makes, I suspect they would grow up questioning the unwieldy system we use. Who has time (or the inclination) to convert everything in one’s head? Or, for that matter, who wants to grab the calculator to calculate metric-to-US or US-to-metric conversions? What’s the US equivalent of a blood pressure of 185/120?

This matter may not be worth the rant, but it’s too late now. I can’t un-write what I’ve just written. I could opt not to post it, but that would mean the time and energy I’ve spent writing this rant were for naught. My decision to delete this post now would amount to self-condemnation, a habit I’m trying to break. So, instead of deleting it, I’ll proudly proclaim my support for metric measurement and my ambivalence about American ambivalence about it.

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Exhilaration

Posted on May 21, 2018 by John Swinburn

A cool rain washes pollen from the air.
A light breeze chills the morning, just enough.
Gratitude spills from each breath and clings to each step.
Promises are impossible to break on days like this.
Love is the only emotion that survives this onslaught
of goodness, wrapped in Nature’s embrace.
If, for just one instant, the rest of humankind could feel
as I do now, all the world’s problems would be quickly solved.

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Is It Going To or Running From?

Posted on May 11, 2018 by John Swinburn

A friend—a woman who worked for me years ago and is largely responsible for our move to Hot Springs Village—is in town and will spend the next few days with us.  Her husband died a couple of months ago and she is in the midst of transition. She has left her apartment in a Houston suburb and is in the process of moving to Kansas City to be near family. In the interim, she is engaged in her long-held fantasy of spending time
“on the road,” visiting friends and family far and wide. Her fantasy included traveling with her dog, Cooper, but she decided that the realities of life on the road would make Cooper’s life a bit chaotic and unsettling, so she gave Cooper to a family who was delighted to give him a home. And now my friend  is relatively free to wander and spend time with friends.  My wife and I look forward to spending time with her and learning more about her plans for the future. And we’ll probably rib her about luring us to the Village, and then abandoning us. That’s not quite what happened, but what the hell. In fact, she and her husband had retired to the Village from New Hampshire several years before. They were visiting family in Dallas and called to invite us to join them for lunch. We hadn’t seen them in years and were eager to catch up. During lunch, we told them we were planning on selling our home in Dallas and retiring to…someplace as yet undecided. They invited us to visit them in Hot Springs Village and take a look around. “You’ll love it.” We did. And they were right. The natural beauty, peaceful setting, and extraordinarily low cost of housing (and low taxes) got us. We bought a house in the Village only a few months later.

The freedom to travel, to wander from place to place and stay as long as one wants appeals to me. It always has. I’ve never experienced such freedom, but I’ve dreamed and fantasized about it. Before we decided to move to Hot Springs Village, we talked about the possibility of buying a small RV and wandering the country. The cost of gas, the carbon footprint, the cost of RV sites, the cost of an RV, and the demands and complexities of RV ownership dissuaded us. And the idea of leading a lumbering RV, even a relatively agile small RV, in front of an increasingly angry line of drivers on a one-lane road up a steep incline sealed the deal. No RV. Home ownership, though, is as much of a anchor around one’s neck as dealing with an RV. Home ownership absorbs the money one might otherwise use on travel. And leaving a home for months on end requires expenses and logistical planning for mail delivery, turning water and power on and off, having someone check on the house and deal with problems. I’m not opposed to home ownership, but I wish it were simpler. It could be. I guess we just make it difficult to leave our homes and travel. Other people do it. Why can’t we? Indeed? What’s stopping us? Those questions merit serious conversations between my wife and me. I suppose one answer may be that she’s not nearly as in love with the idea of wandering from place to place as I.  After I retired, I hatched a plan to get a one-week-long job in each of the fifty states over a one-year period. The idea was to get exposed to a completely different industry/business/profession every week and write about it. At the end of the year, I’d finish my writing and have a book ready to sell. I called this idea the New Tricks Tour. You know, old dog, new tricks. Proof that someone around or over sixty can, indeed, learn something new and talk about it. It would have required considerable logistical planning, convincing prospective “employers” to let me work for them for a week (with full knowledge of my plan), getting housing in each location, etc.  But it sounded like great fun to me. Like so many other of my ideas, I ended up abandoning it. Other people had done similar things before me. My idea was not new. My enthusiasm waned. When I weighed the fun and new experiences against the logistical challenges and expenses, I tucked my tail between my legs and slunk away from the plot.

Later this summer, near the end of July, we may take a road trip to Corpus Christi, Texas. Corpus was my childhood home from the time I was five until I left home just months before my nineteenth birthday to go to college. Those years of living in Corpus gave me the opportunity to submit a short story for publication in an anthology of pieces by Corpus Christi writers. The publisher asked me to consider submitting something, so I did. And, with only a few edits, he accepted the piece. The launch party will be held in Corpus in July and all contributors—thirty-five in all—were invited. I might be the only one who lives out of Corpus Christ. I don’t know who else is included, nor what sorts of things they submitted. But I’m anxious to learn about the book. My “payment” will be a copy of the book. And free (I assume) booze and hors d’oeuvre if I go to the launch party. Assuming we decide to make the trip. we’ll turn it into a driving vacation. I imagine we’ll drive to Padre Island, where we’ll be stunned and horrified to see what’s been done to the National Seashore by developers allowed to sully the beaches with condominiums and such (I’ll be delighted to be wrong). And we might skirt the coast as we head further south toward Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley. If I hold enough sway, we’ll wander back northward through the Hill Country, where we’ll spend a few days eating Texas BBQ, especially brisket, a flavor I simply cannot get in Arkansas. And we’ll visit a niece and her husband in Houston and a brother in the hinterlands north of Houston. And maybe we’ll drive up to Dallas and visit friends there. We’ll see. The trip I envision would take at least three weeks if done “right” by my standards.

A few days ago, at a birthday party for a neighbor, I got into a conversation with one of the guests about international travel. She told me about some of the places she’s been (she and her husband have  traveled extensively), as far-flung as Chile and Croatia and Argentina and South Africa and Thailand and Vietnam and Russia and…on and on. From her comments, I could tell she is the sort of person who likes to dive into the culture of a place and live like the locals. Her husband follows her, but often is several blocks behind her as they walk because he wants to capture everyone on film. He told me he produces a photo catalog, many pages long, of every one of their trips. Ah,travel to those places is appealing, too, but that sort of travel also requires the freedom and money to go. And the handling of logistics while away at the ends of the earth.

I’ve read such diametrically opposed views of travel. On the one hand, some write, travel is simply an escape, a way to avoid facing problems one wishes would just go away; it is a poorly constructed crutch designed for avoidance. On the other, some describe travel as a marvelous way to expand one’s horizons, open one’s eyes, and educate oneself to the reality that humanity and nature both are far more beautiful and complex and interesting than the cocoon in which we sometimes allow ourselves to live. I lean heavily toward the latter view, but I’ll acknowledge that the former may have some validity.

It happened again. I let my thoughts leak out of the end of my fingers onto the keyboard and up on the screen. It’s time I stop and finish my cold cup of coffee and reflect on why I so frequently return to the themes that spilled into this post.

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Lost

Posted on May 11, 2018 by John Swinburn

Deep in the early morning, even before the wind awakens,
I slip out of bed and roam from room to room, looking
for evidence that I belong here, testimony that I have
a right to prowl in my restless search for something to
replace the sleep that eludes me in the pitch black night.

Not yet half past two, the night is too young to abandon,
yet too old to warrant all the attention I could give it
were I of a mind to fawn over sleep that’s gone missing
like a precious child who didn’t return from school after
boredom led her to wander into a creek on the way home.

Some nights I struggle against an urge to simply slip away,
disappearing into the darkness and emerging days or weeks
or years later in another country or another time or as another
person, cleansed of the detritus of reckless mistakes I’ve made
during a lifetime of clinging to lifeboats earned by someone else.

 

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Stage Terror

Posted on April 22, 2018 by John Swinburn

Last night, we went to see a theater production of Arsenic and Old Lace, the second of three performances. Tomorrow’s matinée will bring the run to an end. We know several of the people who had roles in the play, including one of the main characters (a Brewster sister) who belongs to UUVC and is a member of the Village Writers’ Club. Some others with lesser, but still demanding, parts belong to the church and/or other organizations to which I belong. I can only imagine the amount of time, energy, and dedication required to not only memorize lines but deliver them so they convey the emotions and attitudes of the characters being played. I felt bad for one poor guy who played a relatively small part but who lost his lines on several occasions. He was an older fellow (as most cast members are) who just slipped and couldn’t seem to find his way back to the script. We were sitting in the third row and could read the frustration in his face. We could see the pain in the faces of other actors, too; they felt for him. Twice, at least, we saw other actors come to the guy’s rescue by feeding lines that covered for him.

I have acted in one play, speaking only one line, in my entire life: Little Women. I played a very minor character, a child, whose only line was a response to a question. I said, “Mutter.” Given my aversion to putting myself  in a position to be judged by large numbers of people for my lack of talent, I am sure I must have practiced for weeks just to be willing to go on stage. I was in elementary school at the time. The play was staged by a junior high class at a school where my mother taught English. I am pretty sure she volunteered me for the part. Last night, seeing the guy get lost in front of several hundred people, my stomach tightened and I had a great deal of empathy for him. I remember a poetry reading at which I decided to memorize my poem (see, I can’t even remember the words to my own poetry) instead of read it. Fortunately, I had a copy in front of me. But I got lost and had to stop and stumble. I could tell the crowd felt pain by proxy, the same way I felt for the fellow last night.

Public speaking once sent waves of panic pulsing through my body. It’s no longer particularly difficult for me and, in fact, I rather enjoy it. But I can’t speak from a script. When I’ve tried, I’ve stumbled badly. I prefer having bullet point notes to which I can refer; they give me sufficient prompts to speak extemporaneously, more or less. Memorizing lines, though…I shudder!

I know people who absolutely thrive on acting in live theater, though. Perhaps the rush they feel in the response from the audience in sufficient to make memorization tolerable. Or even enjoyable. I don’t believe there’s a rush of adequate magnitude to do that for me. I admire people who can do it, especially those who can do it well. But even the folks who stumble, like the guy last night, deserve my admiration for being willing to try and for living through the embarrassment of a bad breakdown. He had the courage to stay on stage. I might have crept offstage and crawled to the parking lot.

Back to the play. Though I’ll give credit to the actors, directors, stage hands, and everyone else involved, it wasn’t my cup of tea. The entire cast could have comprised seasoned professional actors and I wouldn’t have been deeply impressed. I was thrilled to see my friends and acquaintances act and to see their names “in lights” for their parts, but the play itself didn’t float my boat. I’m probably hard to please, though.

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Less Traveled

Posted on April 19, 2018 by John Swinburn

My wife and I have had extremely good fortune with regard to travel. We’ve been lots of places, both together and separately, that would cause a lot of people to express envy at our good fortune.  But the degree of our travel does not necessarily equate to the breadth of experience we absorbed as we wandered the globe. Let me explain.

My first international travel was from Houston, Texas to England. I made the trip over the Atlantic to London several times while I lived in Houston, employed by the National Association of Corrosion Engineers. I visited London, Harrogate, Brighton, Ambleside, Leeds, and other places long since lost to poor memory. My wife joined me on some trips and we took time off to travel by train to the Lake District and to wander north, just a bit. We spent a little time to visit with friends in the midlands. We were young and lucky. We didn’t, with one exception, extend our travel by much to take advantage of our good fortune. We stayed as long as we were required to do my business, then came home or, in a couple of cases, spent an extra weekend to see the sights.  We should have taken weeks off. But I was too bloody obsessed and engaged with my job; I had to do a GOOD job and I had to emphasize my dedication to work. I could not let opportunity get in the way of duty.

The same job took me to Saudi Arabia at the conclusion of one of the trips to London. I hated it. I could explain, but I’ve written about the miserable experience before, so I’ll forego reliving it, thank you.

And that same job took me, several times, to Germany. Those trips were worth taking. I learned a lot and felt myself getting acquainted with the sense that international travel was an eye-opening experience, though I made sure I didn’t stay too long; I didn’t want people to think my trip was for my enjoyment.

And then I changed jobs/lives. Fast forward a few years and I found myself regularly  making trips to various parts of the world: England, Germany, Portugal, Spain,  Australia, New Zealand. I was traveling to wonderful places and getting paid for it! My wife accompanied me on a trip to Australia and New Zealand, where we sampled the cuisine in ways we never expected. Kangaroo actually tastes good, we discovered. We felt remorse for days afterward, though, when we were reminded that we had eaten Skippy, a favorite Australian children’s television show character. But we took some personal time (a real rarity) to see a bit of the country and never regretted it. On one trip, to Austria, I was on the ground for only twelve hours before I ended up in the hospital for five days before being taken to the airport for the flight home. I had to speak to the pilot and convince him I was well enough to fly before he would allow me to take my seat on the plane. Ah, memories of travel!

After I started my business, one of my client associations was global in scope and, therefore, my service to the client went global. I traveled to Cancun, Moscow, Stockholm, Montreal, Beijing, Helsinki, and Dubrovnik, as well as all over the U.S. But, again, I allowed my guilt and my need to be seen as ultra-dedicated get in the way of enjoying the opportunities those travels offered. With uncommon exception, I traveled to the site of meetings, participated in meetings, went out to nice dinners in the evening, in some cases saw the “must see” site, then returned home. Little time for real exploration. Little time to get acquainted with a place.

Though I’ve tried to get in the habit of taking photographs of interesting places and pictures of my wife in interesting places, I’ve failed badly. Consequently, I have few pictures to remind me of the places I’ve been or we have been together.  Cameras require more attention than I’m willing to give. The advent of smart phones with built-in cameras increased the number of photos I take, but I still tend to view the process of taking pictures as intrusive to the experience of being in a place. Of course, given that I rarely allowed myself the time to experience much of the places I visited, any images I might have taken would have only offered evidence of an experience I didn’t really have. Maybe it’s best I didn’t take many photos while traveling. They would have been visual lies.

Though the limits on my personal time were largely self-imposed, they were based on taking the temperature of my employers and/or my clients. Neither would be pleased with me if I were to take too much personal time after they paid for my round-trip tickets to exotic places. So, rather than try to judge what was just enough, versus too much, I erred on the side of too little. It’s too late for regret now—well, it’s never too late for regret, but regret accomplishes nothing. I tell myself that. I try to use that mantra to clear my mind. It works sometimes.

Now that I have ample time to travel (if my wife and I chose to arrange our schedule to do embark on travel adventures), I have no income. Every dollar we spend shrinks our retirement savings. The calculation then becomes, “how much can we spend on travel and maintain the likelihood that we will not die in abject poverty?”

That possibility, abject poverty, calls to mind my fictional town: Struggles, Arkansas. I should be writing about the struggles taking place in Struggles. I should be writing about the owner of the Fourth Estate Tavern, Calypso Kneeblood, and his efforts to keep his place afloat while being overly generous, though gruff and cranky, to his down-on-their-luck clientele. Yes, that’s what I should be doing. Instead of reminiscing about the many trips I barely remember to places I hardly saw, I should be writing about a place that is so clear in my head I can smell the state beer as I enter the front door and walk across the worn, creaky wooden floor.

All right. I convinced myself to do something other than write in my blog. I should write my fiction. And I will. But perhaps I’ll shower first, as I have commitments this afternoon at which an unclean man would be unwelcome.

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A Start for L’Audible Art

Posted on April 18, 2018 by John Swinburn

The realization washed over me like a monstrous, rogue wave flushes the air and hope for the future from a quiet cove on a peaceful island. (Too much? Yeah, probably.)  A deadline looms and I am utterly unprepared for it.

I’m in quasi-panic mode. It’s not that the deadline is new to me. I’ve known it for months. It’s just that I have again delayed action on a task I should have long since taken. I tend not to be a professional procrastinator, but I’ve honed my skills in this situation. In less than a week, five and a half days to be precise, I must write (or select and revise recently written materials) two or three pieces of fiction or poetry to read at an upcoming even. The event is L’Audible Art, an annual event at which members of our local writers’ group read selections of their work to an adoring audience. We hope the audience is adoring. Each reader is given five minutes to read. This year, for a variety of reasons, readers may choose to read two or three five-minute pieces (not consecutively). The event will be held May 14. But the pieces must be delivered to the club leader by midday next Monday, following which we will each read our pieces in practice for the real thing. My panic arises from the fact that I want to read something new or, at least, something freshly and radically revised. Not only must I finish the pieces I will read, I must practice reading them aloud so I do not stumble over my words and so I can time myself. Five minutes it the absolute limit. My piece can be shorter, but no longer. I don’t write shorter. At least not well.

I have a few ideas. One is an über-abbreviated short story involving a young Norwegian girl. The story begins with a snapshot of her grandfather, a crusty old fisherman, taking on the dual role of father and grandfather after the girl’s father, also a fisherman, is lost at sea. It ends when, years later, the now grey-haired granddaughter, reflects on what the old man taught her and what he failed to teach her, that is, how to deal with his loss. The reason for the Norwegian setting (this is outside the story, by the way) has to do with a German word I’ve heard before; only yesterday, though, I was reminded of it while listening to a piece on All Things Considered. The word is fernweh, which has no English equivalent, though the closest thing to it would be “farsickness,” according to the program’s host. It means an aching longing for a place one has never been. For me, one such place is the rugged coast of Norway. I have plenty more. I write about them fairly often. I have fernweh for a lot of places in the Maritimes. I’ve been to Halifax, but haven’t explored anywhere else in Nova Scotia. And I’ve never set foot in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, though I long to go there and blend in with the locals as if I were one of them. It’s an odd sort of longing. I guess it must be related to the idea that, if I were able to shed my “self” in a new environment, I might find who lives beneath the façade. Old story. Speaking of stories, I recognize what I’ve just done. I’ve successfully put off doing instead of doing. I’m writing about what I should be writing. And, for a short while, I’ll continue.

Another idea is to take the skeleton of another story, one I’ve written in full, and flesh it out in a new way. The story in question is set in a tavern in the fictional town of Struggles, Arkansas, a once-thriving town that has fallen on hard times. The tavern provides a certain sense of community to the characters in the story. But the community is like that one might find in a leaking life raft hopelessly adrift at sea. The entry of someone from “outside” who sees in the derelict town possibilities for renewal provides a spark that might turn things around, at least for the denizens of the tavern. The trick (one might call it magic or one might call it miracle) is to tell the story in about 700 to 725 words and read it aloud in less than five minutes. Again, I’m thinking about doing what I should be doing.

Another idea, and one I’m seriously considering, is to revise (read: shorten and improve) my story entitled The Awful Secret, which was inspired by a neighbor’s painting (I posted it here some time ago).  It’s 1135 words, more than 400 too long. I think I might be able to shorten it that much…maybe. I think, perhaps, my procrastination is paying off. I’m getting some ideas here upon which I might build a plan.  I’m not there yet, though. I could dust off a poem or two, which certainly would take fewer than five minutes.  One of these two might do:

Armature

You and I have lived this life for an eternity,
detritus of our dashed dreams serving as bricks
and the two of us as mortar, cobbling together
this fragile, monumental tower in which we reside.

We have scuffed our emotions against sharp,
sentimental objects so many times they have
shredded into strings like worn cotton,
as soft and ephemeral as clouds.

The scowls and snarls of daily battles
between us have become so comfortable
I know I could not live without them and
the easy fit between us they concede.

I would not last an instant without them or you,
sitting in your study behind a closed door, book in hand,
exploring fantasies and frustrations, by proxy, of writers
who know you without ever having met you.

I would crumple into a useless hulk of a man
were you not there to inflate my emptiness into a
figure in which you somehow find substance,
a man, in your wisdom and courage, you somehow can love.

Penury

Poverty slams doors
and binds them shut
with shackles purchased
with the fruits of avarice,
thick ribbons of greed
sewn from raw hubris and cold
conceit.

Devoid of the fibers of
kindness, these braids
weave a crusted cloth, woven into
clothing worn in unearned
shame by victims of circumstance
thrust upon them by someone else’s
excess.

Destitution strangles budding
aspirations with colorless scarves
stitched from hunger and ignorance
left in the wake of frenzied gluttony,
as gold leaf becomes fare to feed the ego,
leaving the soul begging for more noble
sustenance.

Carving through this brutal
tangle of malevolent threads and
sinister fabrics demands passion as
stark as cold-blooded murder, skills as
sharp as a surgeon’s healing blade, and
love as tender as a new mother’s
kiss.

The means to rip those damnable doors from
their twisted hinges are the same needed to
shred those shackles and scarves into soft
bandages: a lethal commitment to ending
indifference, a steadfast resolve to rewarding
decency and generosity, and the boldest tool,
compassion.

All right, I’m done here. I need more coffee and I need to get some actual writing done, rather than so assiduously avoiding it.

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Stuck in My Brain

Posted on April 15, 2018 by John Swinburn

My recent post about a guy picking up the tab for my wife’s lunch and some comments that followed prompted me to think quite a lot. My thoughts, both purely philosophical and emotionally introspective, led to no firm “position” on the matter of what I call “unchained generosity.” I defined unchained generosity as an expression of gratitude for living happily in the moment by doing something for (or giving something of value to) another person without the expectation of anything in return. It can be done in full view of the recipients and/or others or it can be entirely anonymous. I understand the perspective that suggests “paying it forward” is simply an inexpensive way to buy a greater sense of one’s self-worth. And I understand the perspective that suggests, whatever its motive, the recipient should be selected on the basis of need, not merely identified at random. Finally, I understand the perspective that suggests the recipient of random  unchained generosity might, one person at a time, improve the world by making the “feel good” element of both the giver and the receiver of unchanged generosity more visible and, consequently, more likely to be undertaken. This is way too long. I still haven’t reached a position. But all this thought led me back to a post I originally posted on another blog in July 2006 and posted again on this blog a few years ago. I’m posting it again below because it really made me think about what wealth and poverty and generosity and kindness mean to people up and down the rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. Warning: the post is long. But, I hope it might strike a chord with some who stumble across it.

An Eye-Opening Experience

We are the proud owners of two hopelessly damaged and tired old windows, one that miraculously still has all its panes of glass, the other which is missing not only all its glass, but some of its structure. They’re precisely what I had in mind. Old wooden windows that, with a bit of paint & whimsy, can be made into points of interest for what I hope will evolve into a funky & inviting backyard.

I could have spent days and enormous sums of money at the Orr-Reed Wrecking Company salvage yard, if I had time and money to spend.

Orr-Reed Wrecking Company is in the dark-side of Dallas, a part of the city that the people in city hall and the folks who foster tourism avoid talking about. It is an area gripped by horrendous poverty. People in that part of Dallas eke out a living by selling scrap metal and found items or working for people who do. In that dark-side of Dallas, homeless and almost-homeless people make do with what they can scrape from the streets. There’s no doubt a fair amount of drug dealing down there, as well, but I think that it’s populated primarily by people who are just deeply down on their luck or who never had a chance. They’re people who have learning disabilities, alcohol dependencies, or drug addictions. Or, they’re people who didn’t have the chance to get an education or who decided, after looking at their options, they would rather not mold themselves around the expectations of a society that discounts large segments of its population. This part of Dallas is home to people who I can’t understand because I’ve never experienced what they have experienced. I’d like to understand what their lives are like, but I’m not willing to voluntarily go through what they go through to experience it. Understanding is important to me, but I guess it’s not important enough for me to make the kind of sacrifice I would need to make to achieve it.

Most people I know would be uncomfortable wandering through Orr-Reed Wrecking Company. I have to admit that I was uncomfortable the first time I went there, and maybe still am to some extent. The people who work there define diversity.

Aside from the Black men in dirty white t-shirts who stream back and forth across the street in front of the building and the Mexican workers who scurry around like ants from building to building, the first person I see who is connected to the business is a middle-aged white guy, smoking a cigarette and smiling behind the front desk. He’s there as you enter the front door of the decrepit old building that looks for all the world like it is about to collapse around you.

The next person is a Black man, probably in his twenties or thirties, smiling widely to reveal only a few teeth, his arms bent and small, victims of a birth defect. The birth defect notwithstanding, he has an amazing prowess at thumbing through a pad of paper to find whatever it is the customer to whom he is talking wanted. He’s pleasant and seems completely oblivious to the fact that his appearance might be jolting to people like me, people who don’t often see the crustier side of our nice, comfortable worlds.

As we wander out back, in the open-air behind the building, we encounter several more Mexican men, Spanish speakers all, who are busily engaged in jobs like pulling nails from old boards and stacking the boards neatly into shelves that I can only describe as the sort I used to see in old lumber yards when I would travel around with my father. These are not the Home Depot metal mega-shelves; these are shelves that are made of the very lumber they are meant to hold and they are solid as a rock. Beneath the stacks of boards, on the face of the shelves, the nominal sizes of the boards are marked in dark permanent markers.

There are more Black men, each of whom seems to have a job to do, scurrying all around the salvage yard. Everyone seems to have responsibilities in specific sections…a vast area of doors of every type, size, and description has its group, the windows section, full of wooden, metal, plastic, and combination windows in every size and condition has its group, and so on.

I remember from visiting the place years ago that open-toed shoes are inappropriate here. There’s too much broken glass and sharp metal protuberances and too many nails and other sharp objects laying around to risk walking in open-toed shoes. Before going to the place, I advised my wife to put on something beside sandals.

We wandered through the place and found some windows I wanted, but I did not recall what to do with them; they were not priced. I did not recall how to get them priced or who to ask. I set them aside and we wandered through the rest of the place, taking it all in. Then, I went back inside where the nice white guy was smoking and he asked if I had seen Alberto; not knowing who Alberto was, I said I did not know. He said Alberto was a Mexican guy in a white cowboy hat; the white guy led me outside, where he quickly found Alberto and told Alberto that I needed some windows priced. I led Alberto to the windows and he offered a price almost as a question, but I considered it fair and did not attempt to negotiate, I just said “that’s fair, I’ll buy them” and he picked them up and walked out the front gate and asked, in a very heavy accent, whether the truck he was standing in front of was mine. I explained that I only had my car, but I thought they would fit in the trunk. After some adjustments, they did, and I thanked Alberto, who walked back through the gate where I had first seen him. I then went back in the front door of the place and explained to nice white guy that Alberto gave me a price on the windows and that I was buying them, but first wanted to know the price of some bird houses we had seen while wandering the salvage yard.

Earlier, as we were wandering through the yard, after having selected our windows and setting them aside, we came across a bunch of birdhouses, all similar in shape and size but each of which had unique characteristics. They were all made of scraps of various sorts and were decorated with numbers, fasteners of various types, bits & pieces of hardware attached to them, etc. They were very interesting and attractive and my wife was very interested. I asked nice white guy the price and he said they were all sold. They are made for Wisteria magazine, he said, which buys all they can make. If there are any available, he said, they would be ones with black roofs and they would be $75 each, he said; the magazine doesn’t buy the ones with black roofs. He said Wisteria magazine sells them for $229. Nice white guy showed us an article from the Dallas Morning News (I think) about the old Black guy who makes these bird houses and has been doing so for years. He also showed us a copy, in a plastic protector, of Wisteria magazine, with photos of bird houses that showed the price at $229 each. We went back to where we had seen them and found a couple with black roofs. My wife selected one and said she wanted to buy it. Nice white guy was happy to accommodate us and offered us a certificate of authenticity, which reinforced what he had already told us: that Mr. N.L. Jones, the old Black guy who builds them for Orr-Reed, had been making them for years and that he has worked for Orr-Reed for more than 30 years. The certificate goes on to say that custom models of the bird houses sit in front of some Razoos Restaurants (a cajun-styled restaurant, I assume a chain, with several in the D/FW area), and that Mr. Jones and his birdhouses were featured on a segment of Texas Tales on Dallas Channel 8. Nice white guy handed me an article, from the Dallas Morning News about Mr. Jones, that I found interesting. The article says the writer asked him how old he was and he replied “about 60.” It goes on to say that, later, he “stopped counting at 75.” Another piece says he was 85 at the time the article was written. Nice white guy said we would normally have been able to meet Mr. Jones, but his wife just died and her funeral was being held today (yesterday, Saturday). “You should come by to meet him sometime,” nice white guy says, “he’d appreciate meeting someone who likes his birdhouses.”

As we were paying the birdhouse and old windows and chatting with nice white guy, a woman came in behind us and nice white guy asked if he could help her. “You’ve got to, yes. I have some things here that I need to get rid of.” I started to move aside so she could move up closer, but nice white guy said no, don’t, take as much time as you like, and he moved around the counter behind us and talked to her. I wasn’t paying close attention, but picked up enough to realize that this lady was in need of money and she had some odds & ends to sell. Nice white guy went behind the counter to the cash register and pulled out some bills; not sure of the denominations or number, and gave them to her. She thanked him profusely and left. As soon as she was out of earshot, he said, “Now what am I going to do with this? I don’t even know what it is.” He held up a piece of very pretty, very decorated cloth, to which was attached descriptive information. A closer inspection revealed that she had brought in upholstery fabric samples from a fine custom furniture showroom in Dallas. I commented that someone could make some pretty decorative accent pieces with the stuff and he said to my wife, “if you like any of them, take them, take as many as you like, no charge.” My wife thanked him and picked up two rich Burgundy samples.

It occurred to me while we were wandering around the place that, while I made a point of saying “hello” to everyone I encountered, most of them seemed to divert their eyes when they responded. The Black guys, in particular, would say “how ya doing?” to me, but didn’t look at me. Their demeanor was not subservient, by any means. Rather, they seemed almost like they wanted to make clear that they were not to be messed with, but were willing to acknowledge my presence. I’m not sure whether there’s anything there, but it was interesting.

After we left, I commented to my wife that I imagine much of the economy in that part of Dallas is a cash economy and no small part of it must involve transactions such as that we had just seen, where someone is paid a small amount of money for something that is, for all intents and purposes, worthless. I don’t know the guy’s motives, but I appreciated his actions. The lady needed money, the guy gave her some. She ‘sold’ him the samples and left with her dignity intact. He had, of course, just made $75 on selling a birdhouse that had been made entirely with scrap, so he may have been in a jolly mood, but I suspect that he was participating in an economy that requires such acts of kindness.

Posted in Philosophy | Leave a comment

More than a Touch of Deviance

Posted on April 11, 2018 by John Swinburn

There resides in me a monster, a deviant who revels in thoughts of the unthinkable and whose taste, in certain contexts, is desperately poor. That having been said, I should continue by making that subtle warning more overt. What I am about to write is apt to be offensive to anyone with the sensibilities of an honorable human being. The words your eyes will read, if you choose to continue, may scorch your corneas and fill your head with visions you’d rather not see. The syllables soon to spill from my fingers onto the keyboard and then burst upon the screen in front of you and me and who knows who else may forever change (or, perhaps, confirm) your impression of the writer. The amalgamation of letters and syllables and words and sentences may cause you to question the humanity of anyone choosing to read on, especially in light of the warnings freely given.

The scene beside the pond was a sight to behold. Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, Snow White, Tinker Bell, Jiminy Cricket, and a host of other fairy tale characters were all gathered in a circle. In the center, were the Seven Dfwarfs. These dwarfs’ names were Blick, Flick, Glick, Plick, Quee, Snick, and Whick.

Rather than the cheerful faces and smiles one might expect from such a group, every one of them looked sad. Beyond sad. Their downcast faces, painted with despondency, were the picture of dejection. For a long time, no one said a word. Finally, Quee spoke.

“Look, we’re running out of possibilities. Hollywood isn’t hiring, sales of fairy tales and their ilk are down to alarming levels, and there’s just a general disenchantment with fantasy and whimsy. From my vantage point, that leaves just one option for us to have any hope of generating sustainable income…crime.  The only question is what kind, isn’t it?” He scanned the eyes of the characters around him, searching for signs about their feelings on the matter.

Santa Clause was the first to respond. “You know I hate the idea of abandoning our principles, but goddamn it, the War on Christmas has damn near bankrupted me.  I’ve got to boost revenue or I’m going to be laying off another set of elves in a month or two. Quee, I’m all in. We just need to agree on the most lucrative crime with the least risk.”

Even before Plick spoke, his scowl betrayed his disgust with Santa’s comments.

“First, there is no War on Christmas. Santa’s just buying in to the bullshit he hears on Fox News. Second, he abandoned his principles when he refused to deliver toys to children in Havana.

“Santa’s failures notwithstanding,” he said as he studied the faces gathered around the table but conspicuously avoiding eye contact with Santa, “I’m in just because we all know we’re struggling and things can’t go on the way they are. We have to do something.”

“Well,” Goldilocks said, “I am not in such bad shape…”

His white fluffy eyebrows twitching wildly, Santa interrupted her. “Plick, you don’t know squat about why I didn’t deliver to Havana. I didn’t refuse.  The goddamn sleigh broke down and they don’t have parts in Cuba, thanks to the embargo. Get your goddamn facts straight before you start making accusations against me! And as for the War on Christmas—”

“—All right, all right, cut the crap,” Whick snarled. “We’re not here to fight, we’re here to talk strategy. Goldilocks, you were about to say something?”

Goldilocks smiled weakly at Whick. “Thanks. As I was saying, I’m not in such bad shape as the rest of you, thanks to my contract for the Sleep Number commercials.  So I don’t think I ought to be part of the decision process and I’ll certainly not be part of any scheme you all launch.”

“Well isn’t that just peachy,” Santa growled, “you stumble into a short-term gig and the problem doesn’t impact you,  huh? You just wash your hands of the problems confronting the rest of us. You’re what I call a bleached-blonde fair weather friend.”

Goldilocks responded to Santa’s rant by throwing a vodka tonic in his face. Santa wiped his beard on the sleeve of his white-trimmed jacket and grinned. “Goldy, with your temper, I’m surprised you haven’t been transformed into bear fecal matter by now!”

“Rudolph has more class in his big red nose than you have in the whole of your stunningly corpulent body,” Goldilocks shouted.

The Easter Bunny suddenly reared up on his hind legs and shouted, “Oh for the love of God, all of you just shut up!”

The silence in the wake of the rabbit’s outburst was deafening. Every eye turned toward the rabbit.

“You pathetic bastards! You’re up in arms about a drop in your income. You’re all upset because you’re not getting the gigs you once got.  Instead of working together toward a solution, you let your egos get in the way. None of you, not a one of you, knows how it feels to be really, truly desperate! I’ll show you what real desperation looks like.”

With that, the Easter Bunny slowly removed his clever disguise, a tailored faux-fur suit that would cause even the most cantankerous, moody, and troublesome child to giggle and reach for the soft, cuddly rabbit.

But when that suit came off, Santa sucked in his breath. Jiminy Cricket bowed his insectile head. Whee’s eyes popped open wide and his mouth opened wide. Snow White turned a whiter shade of pale. Whick and Snick exchanged horrified glances.

Beneath the rabbit’s costume were just a few scraps of flesh and the skeleton of a beast consumed by leporine wasting disease. “This is what desperation looks like, you vapid assholes. And I’ll tell you this. Even though my disease is unique to rabbits, it can jump species, morphing into a completely different, but deadly, incurable condition. Let that sink in for a while.”

Quee stood and fixed a glare on the Easter Bunny. “Are you saying you came to this meeting with the intent of infecting us with some sort of fatal disease? You son of a bitch, I ought to—”

“—Ought to what, Quee? Kill me? You think I’m afraid of a threat like that?” The rabbit’s two front teeth, like white sabres, were visible behind his sneer.

“What the hell, if he’s already infected us with something that’s going to kill us, let’s celebrate our impending demise by making a nice rabbit stew!” Before he finished his sentence, Santa grabbed the rabbit by its neck and slammed its head on the ground.

Plick jumped to his feet and shouted, “Now you’re talking, Santa, a little rabbit stew can do a lot to mend a friendship.”

The story ends. But we don’t know exactly how. Was the rabbit really as sick as he claimed? Was it truly possible that leporine wasting disease could, when exposed to other species, morph into other, equally hideous and deadly diseases? Would a group of greedy fairy tale characters, down on their luck, really speak openly about engaging in crime as a means to make ends meet? Those questions, and many more remain unanswered. For now.

+++

I’ve stolen a good chunk of this from another unfinished story I wrote a few years ago. Some days, the mood just strikes me to write swill saturated with anger and meanness, and awash in skepticism.  I warned you this could get ugly.

Posted in Absurdist Fantasy | 2 Comments

Physics, Philosophy, Phiction, Phriends, and Phiery Phood

Posted on April 8, 2018 by John Swinburn

Michio Kaku labels himself, and is labeled by his media adherents, as a “theoretical physicist, futurist, and popularizer of science.” From time to time, I see his name or his image, but I haven’t paid much attention. Kaku apparently is a regular contributor to CBS This Morning (which I do not recall ever watching). National Geographic and the Wall Street Journal consider him worthy of space in their pages. Among Kaku’s most recent books, The Future of the Mind suggests (according to reports—I’ve not read the book) humanity must leave our planet, our galaxy, even our universe in order to not only survive but to reach our destiny. To quote a blurb about another of his books, The Future of Humanity, on his website:

Finally, he brings us beyond our galaxy, and even beyond our universe, to the possibility of immortality, showing us how humans may someday be able to leave our bodies entirely and laser port to new havens in space. With irrepressible enthusiasm and wonder, Dr. Kaku takes readers on a fascinating journey to a future in which humanity may finally fulfill its long-awaited destiny among the stars.

Wait. Our destiny among the stars? Is this simply marketing hyperbole or does this physicist actually believe humankind is destined to essentially control the universe? I don’t doubt the man is a brilliant physicist, but I question the degree to which we should invest confidence in his work in the wake of a suggestion (intended or not) that humankind ‘s destiny to control the heavens.

I’m writing about Kaku this morning because someone sent me an article about him. I found the article interesting, but not especially educational. The article identified Kaku as a physicist and, in particular, a futurist. As I read what Kaku believes can and will happen (humans will “merge” with their increasingly fast computers), his credibility as a physicist dropped a notch in my eyes. He wasn’t theorizing about advances in physics, he was fantasizing about advances in the adaptation and adoption of science fiction to human lives.

I readily admit a bias against predicting the future of humankind. Too many potential influences simply cannot be accounted for, weighed, and sufficiently and thoroughly analyzed to predict the future. It’s like throwing a handful of darts at a distant dartboard at precisely the moment when a powerful gust of wind blows a tree and five cargo vans in between you and the dartboard. It could be two trees and seven cargo vans and a microburst downdraft. Factor all of that in and you might have a testable theory. But did you account for the fact that some of the darts weigh more than the other? How about the potential that someone behind you pushes you just as you release the darts? Or that, instead of being pushed, you’re yanked backward?

It’s probably unwise to ramble on about the thought processes of a man about whom I know very little and about books I’ve not read. But I am unbound by requiring myself to follow facts and, instead, I have given myself permission to allow my intuition to shape my uninformed opinions.

But speaking of science fiction and fantasy, the concept that our thoughts are simply complex expressions of energy intrigues me. What if, I ask myself, the energy of thoughts stored in our brains release upon our death and, released from captivity in our brains with the decomposition of our bodies, slip out into the universe? What if all the thoughts of brilliant theoretical physicists (e.g., Einstein) thereby released were available for “capture?” What if the thinking that went into the writing of the U.S. Constitution—the thoughts of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, et al—were available for review and analysis? How might the ability to capture these free-floating bundles of complex energy impact our view of the world and our place in it?  I give thought to such possibilities, but haven’t the energy and motivation to expound on them in a coherent way in story or book form. Well, not yet.

+++

Today will be chock-full of activities. First, we will go to UUVC and listen to a woman speak on Soul: CPR, a title that on its surface sounds more than a little too woo-woo for my taste. I hope, once hear her presentation, I will change my mind. Immediately following, we’ll sit with a smaller group than sat in the sanctuary and watch a TED Talk (title and topic as yet unknown to me) and will then discuss the talk and its relevance to us and to UU. Once home and lightly fed, we’ll join neighbors for an afternoon youth symphony concert (they offered us two free tickets that landed in their laps). Upon conclusion, we will join them for a very early dinner at their favorite (and our least favorite) Mexican restaurant in the area. They’re driving and they suggested the restaurant. And they’re giving us the tickets. I couldn’t very well say “Hell, no! We won’t eat in that swill-factory” and expect them to remain friendly. They’re very nice people and exceptionally good neighbors. They just have misguided taste in restaurant selection. And they do not like highly spiced foods. I try not to associate a dislike for spicy foods with deep-seated character flaws, but I’m not always successful. I wonder what monstrous defects are hidden in their brains. Speaking of spicy foods, I found a jar of Mrs. Renfro’s Ghost Pepper Salsa in a local market. Hallelujah! I’ve only just sampled a bit, but it was enough to know the jar will last a long, long time. I’m not sure who mentioned the stuff to me recently, but I owe a debt of gratitude to that person. I noticed, in looking at the label that ghost peppers are much lower on the ingredient list than jalapeños and a bunch of other ingredients. If ghost peppers were the main ingredient, the cartilage in my nose would have melted and my eyes would have disappeared in a fiery mist immediately upon opening the jar and taking a sniff.

Posted in Church, Just Thinking | 4 Comments

A Question of Identity and Hidden Secrets

Posted on April 7, 2018 by John Swinburn

I suspect that many people have at least one secret they are unwilling or unable to share with anyone, even the person (or the people) closest to us. Sometimes, I wonder whether we might be unwilling to share it even with ourselves. We know something’s concealed under self-deprecating humor or defensive anger or some other form of obfuscation, but we’re afraid of peeling back the protective layers. Either we fear what might be hidden beneath or we’re terrified that the impact of unveiling that secret might utterly change the way the world sees us.  The secret need not be something terrible or ugly, just something that might call into question the legitimacy of the façade we’ve spent so much time creating. The more time we invest in obscuring that truth about ourselves, the more difficult it becomes to understand how the secret defines who we are. We ask ourselves questions: Am I more authentically “me” with the secret hidden away, or am I, at my core, the person the world would see if the secret were revealed?

The question of authenticity intrigues me. I often think about the degree to which external influences modify who we are. I wonder whether the more “authentic” personality is the one within which we lived before or the one in which we live after being influenced. For example, let’s assume a person’s personality changes after a life-changing event such as the murder of a parent. Before the murder, he was a gregarious, cheerful, guy who was always ready to help friends in need. Afterward, though, he became withdrawn, sullen, and unwilling to help his friends, even when asked. And let’s assume that’s the way he is today, twenty years after the murder. Which expression of his personality is the more authentic one: pre- or post-murder? I suppose an argument can be made that both are authentic expressions of the person’s personality, but which one represents who he is at his core? Is he a naturally cheerful, gregarious person or is he naturally a person whose attitudes and behavior are shaped entirely by external events? The questions call for either/or answers, when in fact reality is far too complex for simple answers to suffice.

Back to people who hold secrets close: The question I posed might suggest that our authenticity (or lack thereof) hinges on how we are perceived by others. [And the questions about the murder-orphan’s authenticity might suggest the same.] That raises another aspect of “who we are.” To some extent, which I am sure varies according to the individual, we define ourselves through our responses to the way others perceive us. We modify what we say and how we present ourselves in various contexts. We behave like chameleons, adapting to our environments. I wonder how our self-recognition that we change to fit the situation impacts our self-image. We might question whether there is a “real me” or whether “I am defined not by who I really am, but by my desire to be perceived in one way or another.” When I mentioned secrets we don’t share with anyone, that’s the one I was thinking of. Is there, truly, a real me?

A few of the characters I’ve written into short stories question their own identities and whether their behaviors represent who they are or simply how they want to be seen. And they question the extent to which they possess a “real” identity, or whether they simply represent the emotional and behavioral output of their collective life experiences.

I have, on occasion, attempted to have conversations about these issues. Invariably, I get the impression that the topic makes the other person uncomfortable—a common response is laughter or a suggestion that I might be more than moderately crazy for thinking such things. And maybe the ideas are funny or crazy. Maybe I am either or both.  Maybe I, alone, have these questions, though I seriously doubt that’s the case.

I can argue with conviction that our secrets define us. I can argue with conviction that our experiences don’t define, but merely help shape, us and that we are who we are, regardless of how others see us. I can argue with conviction that we are simply products of  socialization and the way we are taught to behave and believe. But I never win any of the arguments. I’m simply left with questions that I may have answered, but the answers don’t satisfy my desire to know more deeply what is real, what is true.

Incidentally, “authenticity” is a word and a concept that’s bandied about far too often in the touchy-feely world of introspective exploration and self-help. “Be the authentic you” is the mantra of the month in some such circles. I have nothing against self-help circles, only in them co-opting such an attractive, genuinely good word. 😉

 

Posted in Just Thinking | 2 Comments

Reprise of Doing Without

Posted on April 5, 2018 by John Swinburn

Even years later, I keep coming back to this. Something about it holds me in its clutches. Something about it calls for action.

Just four months shy of five years ago, I decided to begin an experiment whereby I would test my self-discipline over the course of several months. I labeled this process Doing Without. I suppose one might think of it as an atheist’s version of Lent, without the compelling reason behind it. The idea was that I would give up, for a month at a time, something in my life that I enjoyed. My original plan was to begin with doing without coffee for the first month, alcohol the second month, meat the third month, and so on. I had in mind that I would practice this for one full year. For each deprivation, I would reward myself with a replacement. It was, essentially, controlled asceticism with a reward for sacrifice.

Instead of coffee, I would go for long walks. Instead of alcohol, I would drink as much iced tea as I desired. In place of meat, I would allow myself as many vegetables as I could comfortably consume. Giving up coffee and alcohol the first two months presented no insurmountable challenges. All was well until the third month. Midway into the month, I allowed the work involved in doing without meat to derail the plan. It wasn’t as if my craving for meat made it impossible to stick with my plan. The problem was two-fold: my spouse was not interested in going meatless and the difficulty of menu planning was greater than I realized. I called the third month a temporary setback and went about moving on, giving up social media (except for this blog) for the next month. But like my lengthy experience breaking diets, my failure to adhere to my self-imposed sacrifices made me feel like I’d ruined the entire process. So, even though  the miscarriage of meatlessness caused me to adjust the remainder of the plan with the intention of following through, it was a hollow intent. That hiccup in my performance made me feel inept and inadequate. My heart was no longer in it. Shortly afterward, I quietly gave up my doing without experiment. The experience left me feeling like an abject failure, in terms of self-discipline and otherwise. And, like my experiences with diets, the failure of doing without has haunted me ever since. It’s not like my every waking hour is consumed by guilt at my failure, but I haven’t been able to let the collapse of my grand experiment go.

I think it’s time for another shot at restoring my self-confidence and polishing my sadly tarnished self-image (recognizing full-well that another spectacular failure could do even more damage). It’s time to start anew. If I had the cajones, for the first month of my new doing without program I’d give up food, followed the next month by giving up water. That would be a true test of my will. Speaking of which, I’d best make sure mine is current if I decide to go that route. On a more serious note, one of my multitude of odd character flaws is that I simply cannot bring myself to start any major new endeavor that involves keeping a record except at the beginning of a month. So, I missed starting this process in April by only a few days. To put a positive spin on things, that lost opportunity for an April onset gives me more time to plan my newest doing without program. I will make a few adjustments this time around. For one, I will commit that, should an occasional misstep occur, I will dust my self-confidence off and continue on—a stumble will be no excuse to abandon the race. The new endeavor will be simpler and more flexible. Though I want to plan from the outset what I will give up on a month-to-month basis, I will not feel bound by either the order of my sacrifices or the list of items I intend to give up.

My mental abnormality that prevents me from beginning the doing without program in April does not prohibit me from getting in a little practice. So, between now and mid-month, I’ll decide what to give up in May. I may scale back a bit for the remainder of the month to ease the transition.

The mental acrobatics surrounding the planning for doing without must necessarily include some reflection on the core reason that I feel the need to do this in the first place.  While it’s a test of my self-discipline, why do I feel the need to test it? What flaw in my character am I attempting to work through by engaging in a series of short-term asceticism exercises? I’m just asking the questions here. I don’t yet have answers, at least not ones I’m willing to share yet.

In the coming days and weeks, I’ll record my plans here on my blog and will comment over time on my progress. And, if I figure out what I’m trying to prove (or what failing I am attempting to overcome), I’ll write about that, too.

Posted in Doing Without | 2 Comments

We Went Somewhere

Posted on April 4, 2018 by John Swinburn

A fellow blogger challenged a few other bloggers in a small band of writers to write about a memorable trip with my special someone. I thought long and hard about it. I’ve had so many memorable adventures with my wife, it was difficult to pick one. I concluded that, because I have no mementos of any kind to remind me about some of our travels, I should write about a trip about which no evidence exists but memory.

It’s odd, and a bit distressing, that neither my wife nor I have ever been people to make photographic records of our travels, though I have begun to do it a bit more in the recent past. I wish we had taken pictures of our travels around Europe and Australasia. I wish I had taken a camera on my trips to Moscow and Beijing and Dubrovnik. But the trip I most wish I’d recorded on film was closer to home.  At the time (this would have been about 1988) we lived in Chicago. I had recently quit my job with an association management company to form my own ill-fated business venture. But I wanted, first, to take a long vacation, something neither of us had ever done. So we decided to make a circle trip around Lake Superior. My wife took her accrued vacation time, I took time in advance of starting a business, and we set out. We had no particular destination in mind. We just wanted to go see what there was to see.

We drove quite a distance the first day and spent the first night at a tiny motel a few miles outsides of Duluth, Minnesota. The motel was old—very old. It was either poorly constructed or its sheer age had taken an enormous toll on the place. I think ours was the last room available for the night and we were warned that it wasn’t quite up to snuff, but we took it anyway. I remember that the floor tilted so much that it was hard to maintain balance. The bed almost filled the room, with hardly any room for our suitcases.

Much of the rest of our trip is lost in cloudy memories. The lack of photographs makes my attempts at recollection quite a chore. The next day, though, I remember driving alongside the lake, with an occasional detour into heavily forested areas. I have absolutely no recollection of crossing the border into Canada, nor do I remember where we stayed the second (and subsequent) night. But I do recall that we wandered in and around Thunder Bay, Ontario for quite some time, maybe two days or so. From there, we spent a few days drifting around Lake Superior, stopping when the mood struck us. We must have gotten some literature about the area we drove through, but that memory is long gone, as well. I recall two aspects of our trip much more distinctly than others.

Somehow, we learned about a train trip that began in Sault Ste. Marie. The destination or perhaps the end of the line, was a small French-speaking village whose name I do not recall but which, if my research serves me properly, probably was Hearst. On the train ride, we chatted with a couple from Detroit. The guy had just retired from an assembly line job with an auto maker. His wife was a home maker. Both of them were about as free of knowledge about the world outside Detroit as anyone I’ve ever met. I don’t recall the guy’s name, but his wife was Norma. The reason I remember her name is that we cruelly nicknamed her (not to her face, mind you) “Abnorma.” During the day-long train ride, we stopped on several occasions to pick up passengers. The stops were not at stations (they were few and far between) but where people flagged down the train (I assume there must have been designated “flagging” stops). Abnorma complained about the stops and, if memory serves, wondered why the people didn’t just go to the nearest station instead of making the train stop for them.

We had dinner with them at a restaurant near the B&B where several of the train’s passengers stayed. I do not remember the food, but I remember it was truly local fare (which thrilled Janine and me), which astonished Abnorma. First, she wanted English menus. When told they were not available, she complained to her husband. Then, she wanted the ingredients changed because they seemed “odd” to her. Janine and I felt embarrassed to be associated with them. I am sure we tried to establish with the wait staff that we had just met this couple on the train and were not in any way, shape, or form cut of the same cloth. Especially not the burlap bag from which Abnorma must have emerged.  We managed to go our separate ways after dinner and for the remainder of the trip.

The next aspect of the trip that I recall more distinctly than most was the time we spent wandering around Mackinac Island. I don’t recall getting to Mackinac Island, but obviously we must have parked the car and taken a ferry. We visited the Grand Hotel, though we did not stay there because we were on a budget that precluded such luxuries. I remember wandering around on foot for a good part of the day and then renting bicycles and circling the island on two wheels.

I remember, quite vividly, during our drive through northern Michigan that I tried to persuade my wife of the wisdom of buying some remote forested land. The beauty of the forests we drove through enchanted me. I envisioned living far, far away from other people in the heart of that gorgeous forest. Never mind that we had no money to speak of, nor any way to make a living in the wilderness. I have never been a particularly practical person in the aftermath of natural enchantment.

You’d think I would have much more to write about a two week excursion around Lake Superior and, on our return, skirting Lake Michigan. But my memory betrays me as I try to remember more. Photos would have helped. If I had kept a journal about the trip, I’m sure my words would have served as a trigger for memories buried deep inside my head. Alas, I have neither to help dredge up more about the trip. But I remember enough to know we both loved those two weeks on the road. We talked about our trip for a long time, but those discussions have gone the way of my memories. Having written this little bit, I think I’ll see if Janine remembers more than I. She usually does. Perhaps she can resurrect that time.

Subsequent vacations (which have been rare) have been more meticulously planned. As much as I hate to admit it, there’s something to be said for knowing where you’re going and what you want to see when you get there. Our Thunder Bay trip, as I call it, was fun, but I suspect we missed quite a lot by not knowing much about the areas we visited or drove through.

The lesson to me in this trip down memory lane is that keeping a journal and taking pictures are valuable practices. Unfortunately, while it’s possible to create the skeleton of a retroactive “journal,” it’s impossible to produce a photo album from memories.

Why did I choose recollections of a trip taken thirty years ago instead of three weeks in France just two years ago? Because I have photos from France and I wrote some about that trip. If I hadn’t written about the Thunder Bay trip, a year or two from now I might have lost a little more of the fading memories of that time.

Posted in Memories, Travel | Leave a comment

To Sleep, Perchance to Hallucinate

Posted on April 3, 2018 by John Swinburn

I got more sleep last night than the night before, but still…I thought, after being awake for about nineteen hours, I’d sleep through the night. “But I thought…” That will teach me to think.  These images (click on an image to embiggen it—yeah it’s a word, it’s my word, though I admit to stealing it) reflect my bed’s assessment of my sleep patterns for the last two nights. Night before last, my bed tells me I slept well in spurts (the green bar), interrupted by tossing and turning (yellow). I got up during the night (the red line), then slept a bit but tossed and turned until I got up just after 3:00 a.m. Last night, I went to bed even earlier, just before 10:00 a.m., slept well except for a brief period of restlessness, got up once in the middle of the night, then slept in fits and starts until I finally decided to get out of bed just before 5:00 a.m. In the interest of full disclosure, my bed does not always know whether I’m sleeping or just pretending to be asleep by laying motionless. So I can’t be certain that the sleep patterns shown reflect reality. They may reflect the way my bed interprets reality. If you look closely at the image from night before last (again, click to embiggen), you’ll notice that my bed did not detect that I had a heartbeat. I am relatively sure my heart continued to beat all through the night. That discrepancy between reality and my bed’s representation of reality gives me reason to question other facets of my sleep and non-sleep experiences. Was my respiration rate really so much slower last night than the night before, or did my bed make a mistake? Or…I shudder to think it…did my bed simply lie? What possible reason could my bed have for knowingly reporting false information?

There was a time when beds did not communicate with their owners. In fact, I am relatively certain that most beds today are content to remain silent partners in the sleep process. They just provide a reasonably soft surface upon which to place one’s body horizontally. But my bed tracks my sleep patterns. The fact that my bed communicates with me through my smart phone suggests that I may be in danger of being watched by sinister strangers, strangers who might have nefarious reasons for knowing how and when I sleep. My first thoughts turn to the engineers and marketers who design, manufacture, and sell SleepNumber beds. If they can enable the bed to communicate with my smart phone, is it not possible that they have enabled my bed to communicate through my smart phone to them? Good God! My bedroom habits are being scrutinized by people with whom I’ve never slept and, frankly, probably have no desire to sleep with (I can’t say that definitively, for I don’t know them, but the probability is high).

Now that this train of thought has begun to glide along the tracks inside my head, I can see possibilities for my inability to sleep well these last two nights. It’s possible that SleepNumber employees or owners are sending signals to my bed that cause me to be unable to sleep. Perhaps the firmness changes from moment to moment, controlled by the manipulative bastards back at SleepNumber headquarters or, perhaps, in the company’s laboratories. Yeah, they could be toying with me, controlling my ability to sleep by establishing control over my home wifi. I wonder about the clandestine motives guiding this felonious intrusion into my life. And, now, I wonder whether the criminals did, in fact, stop my heart night before last and simply forgot to cover their tracks by changing the data reported back to me.

Ach! I may have uncovered a plot that threatens the sleep patterns of millions! It may be time to take this to the media.  I could become the next Erin Brockovich (though I’m not planning to become a female who stumbles onto…well, I’m just not going to).  And, if I play my cards right, I might get a book deal out of it. And then? I can see the movie version playing in my head. I wonder who would play me in the film? Except for his accent, I think Gérard Depardieu would be ideal in the role. I may be putting the cart before the horse. First, I have to prove that SleepNumber stopped my heart while conducting odious research without my consent.

Until this very moment, I’ve not thought about the fact that I’ve never spoken to anyone, except my wife, about the communications between my bed and me. Are there others out there whose beds communicate with them regularly? Is it odd that my bed shares with me intimate details about my sleep patterns? Is it even more bizarre that I’m sharing these details with as many as five or six others who, either by accident or misguided intent, visit this page?

See, this is what sleep deprivation does. It robs one of his self-discipline and self-respect, causing him to share his intimate sleep information with the world. I think I’ll have to take a sleeping pill tonight. Or maybe I’ll sleep in an unconnected bed to thwart the sick bastards who count my heartbeats and every breath I take as part of their fiendish plans to take control of the world while we rest. That’s it. But, first, I’ll have another cup of strong, black French roast coffee. That will get my heart started.

Posted in Attempted Humor | Leave a comment

Discomfiture Made Me Do It

Posted on March 28, 2018 by John Swinburn

The discomfiture we feel may be our most accurate human sensation; reminding us we are not quiteThe shame and discomfiture of my inactive fingers overtakes me; I must post SOMETHING on this blog or admit I am not a writer. It’s been more than a week since I posted an incoherent soul-search that attempted to discover the source of unreasonable fear and its attendant woes. Perhaps I needed a week to process what I’d written. Or maybe I needed time to process the fact that I’d written such embarrassing drivel. That’s history. I’m here to post something else. Exactly what that is remains to be seen, but I hope it’s not as numbing as the last attempt at writing.

First things first. I read this evening that a green, bioluminescent road marking material may soon become standard for striping roads in the Netherlands. The material absorbs light during the day and, at night, brilliantly illuminates the sides (at the moment) of roads, minimizing the need for street lighting. Following my acquisition of this insight, I learned that some countries use colored road markings other than the white and yellow we’re used to seeing in the USA. Some countries use red or blue markings to alert motorists to specific requirements. I could tell you what they are, but I’d have to go back and look it up. Instead, I recommend you take the time and expend the energy to do that. The expenditure of time and energy will make you a better person. Not that you’re not  a wonderful person already.

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Speaking of double negatives, how’s this for a sentence? “I am not unwilling to reject the fact that I do not dislike the use of double negatives.” If I heard the words spoken, I am not sure I’d not slap the speaker.

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A squirrel zipped and down a tree outside my window yesterday afternoon. The capacity for squirrel activity to make one’s mind wander far, far away from writing astonishes me. I believe the squirrel was trained to do what it is doing. How else could it be that a squirrel would, in full view of a man staring out the window, perform such distracting stunts? Perhaps I should have had some wine to cure my distraction. Or maybe I should start looking for a replacement squirrel to populate the forest outside my window, a squirrel not so immersed in the practice of distracting behavior.

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Nightfall solved the dilemma of the squirrel, so I did not have to replace it. The beast may remain in a state of frenetic tree climbing, but I couldn’t see it. Problem solved. Without wine, I might add. But now that you mention wine, I think I’ll be in the mood for a cabernet sauvignon/syrah blend several hours hence, at or near nightfall. Not that I’d know by taste alone whether I was drinking something composed of either grape. But I do drink the stuff. And I think I should stop. I enjoy it too much for it to be any good for me, especially with such frequency and in such volume. I think alcohol is an anesthetic that erases, for a time, memories we don’t even know torture us. Or perhaps it simply dulls pain we sense is there, yet do not understand its source. That’s my theory. Personal histories fraught with mistakes, embarrassments, bad decisions, broken promises, or moral failings. There are more, I’m sure. The man who cheats on his wife. The woman who married her husband for money and who regrets it. The child who stole money from his mother’s art collection to pay for drugs or cigarettes or weapons. The prostitute who remembers being an innocent little girl, right before slashing her wrists.

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Jeez, that turned macabre in a hurry! My mind takes me there sometimes and I simply don’t have the discipline to rein it in. I’m a believer in letting the mind wander wherever it wants to go, on the one hand, and taking pains to stunt negative thoughts on the other. Lately, I’ve been hearing quite a lot in my church (Am I actually saying that? I attend church? How is that? I’m an atheist, for God’s sake!) about letting people be who they are and loving them regardless. I’m trying. As someone involved in the organization says, “We’re on a journey toward becoming our better selves. We won’t reach that destination, but we’re obliged to take the trip.” I like that attitude. I try to be better. I try to be open-minded and non-judgmental. I do. But I have a hell of a time reconciling evangelical Christians with their support of—even their acceptance of—Trump. Don’t get me started!

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Yesterday afternoon, I attended for the third time the “Meatless Tuesday” luncheon group, wherein each of us prepares a vegetarian dish to share. Some of the people are vegan, some are vegetarian, some are omnivores. But on our Tuesday, we don’t serve “anything that has a face.”  I enjoyed some really excellent food and shared a dish I’d never made before: roast vegetable quinoa salad (cold). It was okay (I used gochujang paste; another version uses harissa paste.). One of the dishes offered was a splendid noodle dish with “meat balls” flavored with something that I’m sure included soy sauce. The “meat” was, in fact, textured vegetable protein but it looked and felt and even tasted like meat. I was impressed. I could and perhaps should become vegetarian. I would have an easy time becoming pescatarian, though I would miss my beef, pork, chicken, lamb, turkey, and occasional other prepared animal corpses.

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A few weeks ago, at the behest of a friend who lives far away in another state, I began calling her on Wednesday mornings to engage in conversations meant to stimulate her intellect. We decided we’d each watch a TED Talk and discuss it during our Wednesday morning conversations. Her husband had been terminally ill for quite some time and had been, for several months, essentially unable to communicate; he slept almost around the clock. She could rarely leave his side and said she felt she needed to engage in intellectual conversations with someone on a regular basis or risk “decaying” as she waited for her husband to die. Two weeks into our routine, he died. Last week, just three days after his death, we conducted our long-distance discussion. This week, she is visiting family in yet another state, but she asked that I call her at the appointed hour. I suspect she will decide she has better things to do than hear me rattle on about a TED Talk, which will be fine with me, inasmuch as I haven’t made time yet to select one. In a pinch, I could talk about something else, I suppose.

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Today’s weather forecast calls for rain. Lots of rain. Torrential rain. And the rain is expected to continue for a couple of days, followed by a two-day respite and then a week of more rain and much cooler temperatures. The high on April 1 (Sunday) is forecast to be forty-nine degrees. I’m glad I haven’t yet put the sweatshirts away. Gloom. Very cool weather. Wetness. What season is this, anyway?

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These sputters of nonsense have expunged the guilt from my formerly inactive fingers. I am now free to wallow in ennui without the vision of an empty screen, void of words, in my mind’s eye.

Posted in Absurdist Fantasy, Booze, Food, Friendship, Weather | Leave a comment

Afraid of What?

Posted on March 20, 2018 by John Swinburn

For reasons unknown, a memory that’s been hidden for many years surfaced this evening. I remembered being frightened of living in this world to such an extent that I fantasized about living in a granite cave carved into the side of a mountain. This cave had polished stone floors and walls and ceilings. It was unreachable except by me and the few people I might allow to follow a secret pathway to go there. The windows in the thick granite walls on the side of the mountain were just slits in the rock, big enough for me to see out but far too small for anyone to climb inside, even if they succeeded in climbing the sheer face of the mountain to reach my home. I guess it’s the fantasy I remember more than the fear that caused it, but I remember a couple of experiences in young adulthood that triggered the resurrection of the fantasy.

The First Event: I was twenty-six years old, maybe twenty-seven, when my wife and I bought our first house. Ours was the first house to be built in a new section of a sprawling subdivision in Katy, Texas, just west of Houston. Shortly after we moved into to our house, the front yard was sodded with squares of Saint Augustine grass. We were told to keep the yard very, very wet for several days.

One night only a few days after the grass was put down, I heard the squealing of tires in front of the house and then I heard shouts.  I looked out the peep hole on the front door and saw a vehicle in our yard and people running around. It scared the hell out of me. I had no idea what was going on outside, but I knew it wasn’t normal. One of the people came and banged on the door. “Don’t call the cops! Help us get unstuck! We’ll pay!” That scared me even more. I called the cops. Turns out a couple of kids decided they would trench our yard. The sheriff’s department arrived shortly and called the driver’s father (the other kids had beat it). The kid’s dad showed up, drunk, and said it was just a kid prank and urged me not to call my insurance company. “I’ll pay for it first thing in the morning,” he said. The next afternoon, I called my insurance company and gave them the father’s name and number. He called me soon thereafter, cursing and angry that I had not waited for him to come deliver money to me for the damage.

The Next Event: Not long after the first event, someone came banging on our door late one night. BANGING! My mother was staying with us for some reason (not that it matters). I got up and went to the door and yelled “who’s there?” A very drunk man screamed back at me that his car was stuck in the field behind my house and that he needed me to pull his car out of the mud. “I’ll pay you! Here’s fifty dollars!” Through the peep hole I could see him put something down on the front porch.

I told him I was not about to open my door to a screaming stranger and that I would call the sheriff. “No! Don’t call the sheriff! I’ll give you a hundred!” He bent down and put something else on the ground.

“I’ve already called the sheriff. Get away from my house!”

That sent the guy into a rage and he banged and banged on the door. I was scared. I went to the kitchen and picked up a long slicing knife. I didn’t have a clue what I’d do with it, but it was a weapon. I had no guns. Eventually, the cops came. They arrested the guy and had his car pulled from the mud and towed away. For months, I worried that he’d come back for me, because I called the cops.

The Third Event: Our house was still alone in the field, the nearest house at least two blocks away. My office was about fifteen minutes away; between my house and the office the landscape was mostly empty and my drive to and from work was easy, with little traffic. I got a call one day from the construction superintendent responsible for the housing being built in the subdivision. “I was checking on your house and it looks like somebody tried to break in the front door. Must have been scared away, because there’s no one there.” He had been checking on occupied houses for  a week or more because of some break-ins. A neighbor nearby sustained considerable damage when some thieves had cut the water line to their refrigerator ice maker and made off with the refrigerator, clothes washer, and dryer, among other things.  I raced home and, sure enough, the trim around the front door had suffered considerable damage, like someone had tried to pry the door open. I blustered into the house and screamed at whoever might have been there, but I was scared. And I was scared that someone might break in while we were home.

I had a security system installed a few days later. My brother taught me, and my wife, how to shoot his .38 special.  And I bought a gun, a .357 magnum. Until my brother taught me how to shoot his gun, I’d never shot a pistol in my life.

Even after buying the gun, though, I was afraid. The experiences with the drunks and the attempted break-in rattled me. Every minute of every day I was frightened. And I remember thinking I would not be able to protect my wife or myself, even with the gun, if someone decided to harm us. That sense of fragility and inadequacy has never entirely left me, though the protective fantasy that arose from it did. Until tonight.

When we moved to Chicago, I gave another brother the gun. He promptly lost it or it was stolen from him or who knows what. I didn’t want a gun. I thought guns might be more of a problem than a solution. Could I ever use one on another human being? I didn’t know. Still don’t.

But, back to my fantasy safe place. The fantasy arose before those three events, but I don’t know when, nor do I know its genesis. I just remember, after the first event noted above, that I knew that fantasy from an earlier time.  I don’t know why, after so many years, I remembered the fantasy tonight and I remembered the feelings I had while living it. What am I afraid of now? What makes me want to crawl into that cave, cutting myself off from a menacing, terrifying, unfriendly world? I simply don’t know. There’s a sense of unease tonight beneath my otherwise calm exterior, but I don’t know why it’s there.

 

 

 

Posted in Fear | Leave a comment

Tunnels

Posted on March 18, 2018 by John Swinburn

There was a time when the streets were places we all could go to be anonymous. We could walk into the crowds on a downtown street and disappear. Our contexts would evaporate into that amalgam of anonymous others. We could compare ourselves to no one and no one could compare themselves to us. We disappeared into thin air. I miss that. I miss the anonymity of crowds.

How has it changed? Cameras. Cameras are everywhere. There’s no way to escape their leering lenses. They hide behind iPhone screens and Samsung tablets. And, through Facebook and other identity sponges, we willingly (though perhaps unwittingly) reveal who our friends are and what they look like and perhaps even where they live and what they had for lunch. It’s too late to retrieve the data that defines us. It’s stored in server farms around the globe, available for sale and ready for use by marketers and despotic governments.

I suspect our data are readily available, as well, to assassins hired to eliminate people who fit a particular profile. I can imagine the profile given to the hired killers: “democrat, overweight, atheist, reads revolutionary literature, signs petitions, regularly espouses bitter disagreements with elected officials.”

And the instructions: “Kill people who fit the profile; make it look like an accident or a suicide. Keep the per unit cost below $0.75 or we’ll find someone who can.”

Hit people can price themselves out of the market, too, when the market is saturated. You’ll notice I didn’t say hit men; I imagine the glass ceiling shattered by bullets and blades and bags of bitter poison. Who might these hit people be, though. If my data and your data are readily available, if our every move is captured on video feed to the internet, viewable in real time, aren’t the murder-for-hire folks’ subject to the same intrusions?

In a word, “No.” Why? Because they hide behind sunglasses, turned up collars, hats, gloves, and/or veils. Have you ever seen someone wearing a heavy coat with a hood when temperatures hover in the mid-seventies? Hired killer. And what about their online presence? They use the dark web. And they run in the same circles as identity thieves who are only too happy to give them ready access to the clear web with stolen internet credentials and IP spoofing.

The single most important aspect of hiding their identities is this: they live in tunnels. Yes, you read that right. They live in tunnels beneath cities, towns, and even in rural outposts miles from nowhere. That’s right, we live in a two-dimensional, porous society. The borders between the underworld and the surface are riddled with deep, deep tunnels. Beneath us, enormous networks of interconnected tunnels filled with residential, retail, commercial, and manufacturing sectors, all joined together by highly efficient transportation corridors serve, effectively, as an alternate universe.

The hidden netherworld under our feet is alive with alternative facts, coupled with high-speed trains, electric-powered buses, and driverless electric cars dispatched by UnderUber Apps take the denizens of the deep web where they want to go. If you think the borders between countries on the surface are porous (which is why we think we need thirty-foot walls…to keep the riff-raff out), you ain’t seen nothing yet (unless, of course, you’ve spent time in the underworld).

Now, you may think I’ve been drinking high-proof breakfast gin or smoking scented cigarettes laced with hallucinogens and the remnants of yesterday’s leprechauns. And butterscotch pudding. If that’s what you think, you’d be wrong but your mind might be on the same plane as mine. Not an aircraft; a level of intellectual existence that differentiates one level of understanding reality from other levels.

Let’s suppose, for just a fraction of a nanosecond, that there exists an underworld, a physical dimension comprising tunnels as I’ve described and that within these tunnels lives a sinister society of killers and other bad actors. What question immediately comes to mind when imagining this bizarre network that, when viewed from a distance (and with X-ray vision, I might add) resembles Medusa’s head? Yes, that’s it: Where is all the earthen debris removed from the tunnels? I knew you’d ask, which is why I have undertaken meticulous research to find the answer. The answer is that the detritus from tunneling was sent to the bowels of the earth, where it remains to this day.

We’ve all heard about term coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “the willing suspension of disbelief,” haven’t we? What about “the unwilling suspension of disbelief?” That mental adjustment refers to the unpleasant acceptance of a mind-numbing experience that should not have happened in the natural world. Like Donald Trump’s election or his mere existence on the planet. The residents of the tunnels to which I referred earlier are like Trump on steroids. They don’t just talk about shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, they do it and boast about their deeds to their colleagues in criminality. And they launch nuclear missiles into the sea simply because they enjoy killing sea mammals.

These are the folks who are watching your every keystroke and whose eyes are trained on monitors that follow your every footstep as you wander the streets of Manhattan and San Diego and Abilene, Kansas. They listen in on your conversations with your younger sister who is the only resident of a ghost town in Nevada. They have mastered the process of hearing your thoughts, even as you wander deserted island beaches along the southern coast of Texas. Even when you’re being carried by the crowd in mosh pits at loud rock concerts, they know what you’re thinking, what you’re doing, and who you’re with. Face it, friend, you have no secrets and no hope of hiding from their prying eyes, their hypersensitive ears, or the weapons with which they will dispatch you after they have turned your dreams into raw screams of desperation.

All of this on a Sunday morning. I wonder how the rest of the day will go? 😉

Posted in Absurdist Fantasy | 2 Comments