John Swinburn

Pay sufficient attention and you will witness words fall out of favor.  This morning, just after the clock struck eight minutes after four, one such verb came to mind: saunter.  I suspect that word is on the way out.  Perhaps it dates its user, when utttered or written; I certainly do not envision a twenty year old using it.  But maybe I have a bias about youth and language that I do not recognize or acknowledge…maybe my reading of the word’s imminent demise is self-delusion.  It’s entirely possible that, at eight minutes past four, the mind plays tricks on perception, wreaking havoc on one’s ability to interpret experience and observation.  Maybe eight minutes past four is not the time to think.

Today is my oldest brother’s birthday, so my thought today is for him to have a very happy one.

Coincidental to that thought, I’m of the opinion that drinking a glass of excellent Belgian style red ale can be a great way to wrap up an afternoon of patching cracks in a long, sloping driveway.

I have seen or read several of Athol Fugard’s plays (the South African writer), though I don’t recall which ones, except I know I saw “Master Harold”…and the boys on stage.  I liked that play, but I hated what it said about humanity.  I recall enough about Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act to know I liked it, and hated it, too, but I’m not sure whether I saw it, or just read it. Thinking of Fugard’s intense focus on apartheid makes me think my writing should have more of a clear focus than it has had of late. Not that I’m in the same league as Fugard; I most decidedly am not.

On September 26, I wrote a screed on the subject of time, asking an absurd question as to whether it possesses any physical properties. Since I wrote it, I have continued to ruminate about physical properties of time. I conclude the passage of time manifests itself, physically, in the changes that take place in entities subject to its passage.  Consider the way in which astronomers determine the presence of black holes. They do it not by observing the objects themselves, but by imputing their influence (e.g., their gravitational pull, etc.) on objects around them.  So must it be with time.  We cannot see it, but we see what it does. This idea may not be new, but looking at time from this perspective is new to me.

A common refrain in advice to young people—and increasingly to retirees— is to “follow your passion.” I may have said it myself.  It seems like such wise, sound advice until the search for the passion begins.  “What IS my passion?”  That’s the question that may have no answer.   And, the admonition seems to hide a reproach: “If no one ‘thing’ drives you, you are somehow lacking, somehow less of a person than others who possess that singular motivator.”

On occasion, and this morning is one such occasion, I take the opposing view.  People who have fleeting (or even permanent) “passions” for many things are no less than those with singular drivers.  In fact, they may be more connected with the real world than those who focus so intently on one thing that satisfies their search for something that matters.

Does this thought attempt to shield me from the barbs of the admonition?  If it does, so be it; regardless of its possibly selfish motive, I believe it.

There are a thousand ways to tell a story and a thousand ways to hear it told. I am reminded every day that each of us sees this world through a different lens. We hear different sounds, although we listen to the same voices.  We’re all struggling toward understanding, just using different means of getting there.

Be soft in your practice.

Think of the method as a fine silvery stream,
not a raging waterfall.

It will go its own way,
meandering here, trickling there.

It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices.

Just follow it.

Never let it out of your sight.

It will take you.

~Sheng-Yen

I sit here, this morning, remembering and regretting how I behaved.  It was long ago, but the recollection, and the results, are as clear as if it were yesterday.  It is impossible to un-live life’s moments. Good, decent people learn from their regrettable mistakes or, in some cases, their regrettable personalities. Behaviors can change.  Can personalities change? And a follow-up question comes to mind: if one’s personality changes, if he the same person he was before?

Who controls us is a question I cannot fully answer, not with any certainty. But I think how they control us is clear.  We are taught our roles are simply to consume what is provided to us and to accept decisions made for us.  Even when we are asked to make decisions, they are not our decisions; we simply affirm decisions others taught us to make. We are trained to be passive participants in our own lives.  Only by being disobedient, by breaking free of the artificial constraints placed on what and how we think, can we take control of our lives. That is hard to do. Whether it is worth doing, that’s what I aim to find out.

Le jeu n’en vaut pas la chandelle. ‘The game is not worth the candle.’

The English translation is almost my trademark phrase…I’ve written about it frequently and I use it often.  It’s such an economical way to say the effort required to attain an objective is greater than the  reward. Victor Hugo used the phrase (though it was not original to him) in his novel, The Man Who Laughs.

From one perspective, the phrase is a cynical way of looking at the world. But from another (and in my opinion, better) perspective, it is an elegant way to express a practical measure of unwarranted effort.

The game is not worth the candle.

Faint sounds in the distance.  Whispers?  Dogs barking? Animals rustling through the underbrush? Birds shuffling through leaves of the trees, far enough above me to be invisible? If I devote my attention to sounds too distant or indistinct to hear clearly, my mind clears of the troubling and mundane, focusing instead on the occasional beauty of noise.