Another Visit to My Mental Clothing Store

Posted on July 7, 2020 by John Swinburn

I sit at my desk in my “morning clothes” (t-shirt, gym shorts, flip-flops), thinking these clothes should be perfectly acceptable any time of the day or night and in any place I find myself. They should be just fine at the grocery store, at church, sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, whatever. In fact, I wore essentially the same outfit (different shirt of a different color, and tennis shoes instead of flip-flops) yesterday morning (I had to be at the hospital at 5:30 a.m.; I am grateful to my dear friend for the ride to and from the visit) as I waited to be called back for my cystoscopy and bladder biopsy.

Once I was called back to begin the process, I was instructed to remove every stitch of clothing and to replace them with a gown; the right side of the gown’s shoulder area had snaps that formed an arm-hole, but the snaps on the left side were not closed. Try as I might, I could not form the proper left-side arm-hole. Fortunately, a guy came in shortly afterward to take my vitals; he snapped the left shoulder properly so I could slip on the gown and tie it, as earlier instructed, at the rear.

I have an idea for hospital pre-admission visits, like the one last week when I submitted to blood-letting and other pre-procedure tests and questions: why not give the patient a gown to take home with them? They could put on the gown before leaving for the next hospital visit, saving the embarrassment of hurriedly fumbling with snaps in an effort to be properly covered before the pre-procedure stabbings begin.

Once again, I swerved sharply from my intended lane this morning; I intended to write about comfortable all-purpose clothing and, instead, veered into the vagaries of hospital gowns. Mea culpa.

I have long been fascinated with various forms of Asian men’s clothing: tunic shirts, dashiki shirts, churidar pyjamas and lungi pants (both of which are comfortable-looking pants) and kurta (shirts), the latter three of the Indian subcontinent. I’ve never owned any of them, in part because I do not know where to buy them and, even if I did, I could not be sure that I was ordering the proper size. That is, a size that will comfortably drape over my overly-ample stomach. Also, my arms of unnaturally short, so the sleeve length would be problematic. The same is true for the length of pants legs; my legs begin far closer to the ground (or, conversely, end to soon before reaching the torso) than clothing manufacturers seem to think appropriate. I could, of course, have a tailor alter my clothes, but the expense of modification would probably compete favorably with custom-tailored clothes. That is an idea I’ve played with, seriously, for quite some time. Not seriously enough, of course. I’ve toyed with the concept of buying and learning to use a sewing machine, too. Again, I’ve stopped short of executing the ideas.

As I consider the desirability of simple outfits that ought to work in any setting (the t-shirts, gym shorts, flip-flops combos), I wonder about whether investing in custom-tailored lungis and tunics and kurtas and so forth makes good economic sense. Probably not. But, then, are my “morning clothes” as all-day, anywhere wear going to catch on? Probably not. It has considerably better chance of catching on than does my wish that societal condemnation of public nudity would disappear.

One positive aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic is that I am spending far more time at home, where I can wear my “morning clothes” far frequently than normal. But, as I venture out more and more (but still with social distancing and wearing my mask), I am forced (make that strongly encouraged) to wear clothes that are more constricting, less comfortable, and are considered more socially acceptable than my morning wear. Oh, well.

If I were reading this post, I would question why, if I’m so enamored of nudity, I wear “morning clothes” at home. Good question. The answer is simple: windows. I like to let the light in. There’s a window high about the front door through which people driving down the street above our house can see into the house clearly. I do not want to be responsible for auto crashes involving distracted drivers.

Tomorrow, I have out-of-house obligations that will require me to shed my “morning clothes” in favor of  clothing socially-suited to interactions with humans outside my household. Then, on Thursday, other humans will visit here, again requiring me to wear more socially-acceptable clothing. Ach. It’s a shame we cannot all be casual in the extreme. But, then, I wrote not long ago how I occasionally desire a more “spiffy” look, with traditional slacks, a shirt with buttons, and a stylish blazer jacket. There’s room for everything, I suppose. It’s the frequency, then, that’s of concern. That’s it. Maybe.

Before I leave my John-focused comfort conversation, I should say I have seen a number of memes on Facebook of late that say, in effect, that COVID-19 has allowed women the rare comfort of spending entire days, even weeks, at home in bra-less comfort. I’ll go on record, here and now, to say I think brassieres seem to be designed to minimize a women’s comfort and, therefore, should be abandoned (if that would suit women, of course…I don’t wear a bra and, therefore, don’t have a dog in this hunt). Of course, certain types of bras, like sports bras, if they actually add to a woman’s comfort, would be perfectly fine. At any rate, the acceptability of the social convention of bras for women should be determined by the wearer.

All right, that’s enough. It’s 7:30 and time for thoughts to turn to breakfast.

Posted in Clothes, Covid-19, Nudity | 2 Comments

Feelings, Food, and Film

Posted on July 5, 2020 by John Swinburn

I watched a brief, animated video produced by BBC this morning. Entitled, “Is a Crisis a Chance to Reset the World?” It parallels what I’ve been thinking and hearing from others who want the COVID-19 pandemic to serve as a trigger for massive, positive social change. The video gives snippets of information about other global crises that sparked enormous social changes, everything from ending the 100-Year War between France and England to spurring the creation of Britain’s National Healthcare Service.  I hope society collectively sorts things out to create good from the very bad that is the pandemic. Give it ten years; that should be enough time (more than enough time) to determine whether we’re taking advantage of a bad situation or simply using the pandemic as a nail in humankind’s coffin. I have a feeling we might know within months, rather than years.

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For the second time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, we gathered last night at the home of friends who are members of our “world tour of wines” group. Some of them also are members of our church. Practicing social distance as much as possible, we gathered on the deck and enjoyed drinks, conversation, and a dinner of brats and potato salad and corn salad and various sides and desserts. Everyone brought something to share; we brought a dessert of coconut-topped brownies my wife prepared. I did not pay attention to who brought what, but while we were on the deck eating, I learned the source of a simple but delicious corn dish I want to make one day soon. One of my favorites was a fresh jalapeño salsa and chips;  I could have made a meal of that by itself. Everything was good, made even better by the presence of friends. Simple, face-to-face conversation is one of the things from “the way things used to be” that, apparently, I  miss the most.

During dinner, our conversation naturally turned to food. Among the myriad topics we discussed were sardines and steak tartar. One of the folks at the table loathes sardines, but her husband (seated elsewhere) loves them. Another of our table-mates loves them. The topics of our conversation included a dish my wife and I enjoy, named by Alton Brown, “Sardicado sandwich,” a concoction involving mixing together canned sardines, avocados, lemon zest and juice, and chopped parsley and served on dark bread. The outcome of that part of the conversation was to tentatively arrange for the sardine-loving husband and the table-mate sardine aficionado to visit us for a sardicado sandwich lunch sometime soon. The sardine-loathing table-mate asserted that steak tartar originated in France; I thought it was Germany. A quick look online this morning suggests it originated in some form or another in Central Asia as raw meat and was then adopted by the Russians, who exported the concept to Germany, where the additional garnishes (onions, capers, raw egg, seasonings) were added. This explanation came from frenchcountryfood.com, as well as Wikipedia. My assumption about the source has, therefore, been vindicated.

The hosts of last night’s dinner have a beautiful home, made all the more spectacular by her green thumb and his skills at design and building. Last night was our first time seeing a garden “wall” he built using wood and wine bottles (and a few colorful plates). He also built a walkway out of crushed stone, outlined with large stone blocks and hand-made concrete pads. Aside from the enormous amount of physical labor involved in the project, the planning and carpentry/building skills involved must have been quite significant. If I were ever to have such a feature in our yard, it would cost several thousand dollars more than I have at my disposal. My building skills would not do the trick; I would have to hire it done. Oh, well. Such is life.

When we returned home, I spent some time on the deck watching distant fireworks and listening to and feeling the concussions of their explosions. The moon was extremely bright, which made for a beautiful sight, especially when strips of dark clouds passed in front of it. A lunar eclipse occurred last night, but I became impatient waiting for it after viewing the fireworks, so I missed it and watched The Valhalla Murders, instead. The Valhalla Murders is an Icelandic-language (with subtitles, of course) Netflix police procedural drama series. I gather it is based, quite loosely, on a series of real-world events from the 1940s and adapted to modern-day Iceland. The series begins with a murder in Reykjavik harbor; I have watched only the first three episodes thus far; I am enjoying it quite a lot. We shall see how much I enjoy the remaining five episodes.

Most of my television viewing during the past several months has been Netflix-based. I think most of the series and movies I’ve watched since the beginning of the year have been thanks to Netflix.  I claim I do not watch much television. The list of things I’ve watched in recent months says otherwise. Here’s a sampling, off the top of my head (and with a little help from my tele-viewing notes and my Netflix viewing history):

  • After Life
  • Collateral
  • Pandemic
  • The Platform
  • Fauda
  • Unabomber: In His Own Words
  • Dead to Me
  • Ozark
  • Narcos: Mexico
  • Code 8
  • The Laundromat
  • The Stranger
  • American Odyssey
  • Happy Valley
  • Messiah
  • Occupied
  • Taken
  • Da Five Bloods
  • The Foreigner
  • Better Call Saul
  • The Art of Racing in the Rain
  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Of course, some of these are series I began watching last year (or even the year before). But, still. I am too entertained! My wife and I, though sharing similar taste in film to some extent, do not have the same viewing habits. So, I watch my television and she watches hers, nestled in her study with her television.

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Today, I begin my service on the board of my church with a “board retreat” via Zoom. Having spent several hours watching Zoom-based sessions from the UUA General Assembly in the past week or so, I can say with certainty that participation via Zoom is more taxing than being physically present. I do not know why that it, but it’s true. For me, anyway. I have no idea how long the “retreat” will last today, but I hope it does not exceed two hours. We shall see.

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Posted in Film, Food, Television | Leave a comment

Escapism

Posted on July 4, 2020 by John Swinburn

I said recently my writing is, for me, escapism. Escape from what, though? Specifically, from what does writing allow me to escape? When I insist on an answer, I feel like I’m taking on the identity of an unwilling patient, prodded and poked by a psychiatrist or psychologist and forced to divulge secrets to which I am not privy. It occurs to me that my role is judge, jury, prosecutor, defendant, and executioner; the finding of guilt was predetermined from the start, as evidenced by the fact that there is no defense counsel in the mix. The sentence, death by guillotine, seems harsh for a parking infraction. My thoughts seem to stretch around themselves like rubber bands; if the stress on elastic materials exceeds their elasticity, all hell breaks loose.

Writing is an insufficient escape. Escape involves digging tunnels and plotting ways to disable the guard for long enough to allow me to steal a get-away car. But maybe the prison has no walls, so tunnels and guards are not obstacles to escape. Maybe, instead, the obstacles are imaginary chains whose links cannot be broken with bolt cutters. Perhaps the chain’s links are hollow tubes, bent into ovals inside which my arteries and veins form intricate circulation patterns that cannot be safely interrupted. Ah, so it’s fear that prevents my escape? No, that’s not it. It must be something more powerful than fear. Few things are more powerful than fear.

Five years ago today, I captured the perfection that is chaos. I articulated escapism in words that cannot be enhanced. This is what I wrote:

Much is said about symmetry, but little about the divide between symmetry and satisfaction. We need a little chaos in our lives to appreciate perfect circles and dodecahedrons.

That having been said, I was mesmerized yesterday when I stumbled across an assertion that a tetrated dodecahedron is a near-miss Johnson solid—one with full tetrahedral symmetry—that has 28 vertices, 28 faces, and 54 edges. That explanation provided all the chaos my mind needed.

That escape took me places my mind had never been before and has rarely been since. It took me to a place where trouble cannot find a foothold, where worry is illegal, and where pleasure accompanies every breath one takes. Did I mention nirvana yesterday? It can be found only in the states of intense presence and utter absence. Escapism is available all along that spectrum, but nirvana only at both far ends.

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I purposely avoid writing much about Independence Day, the Fourth of July. If I were to write what I feel about that celebratory moment, I would be branded a traitor. Yet from my perspective, only by refusing to celebrate the hypocrisy of promises made versus actions taken can one truly be patriotic to an ideal. Only by acknowledging unforgivable flaws can forgiveness be received. Only by exposing and condemning oppression and imperialism and exploitation can we burnish the ideals that have been so badly tarnished by the mockery we have made of them.

I do not fly a flag. I read the Declaration of Independence and note the phrase “the merciless Indian Savages” in defending the decision to announce independence. I have pride in my country, but my pride is tempered with the knowledge that many of the great accomplishments of this nation were built on a foundation of genocide and slavery.

When we live up to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, I am enormously proud. When we are reckless in our disregard for our ideals, I get disappointed and embarrassed. When we celebrate our imperfections as though they were lofty goals, I get angry.

Enough about this Independence Day.

Posted in Patriotism, Philosophy | 2 Comments

Lonely versus Alone

Posted on July 3, 2020 by John Swinburn

I feel a need to capture discrete moments, incidents and ideas that grab me by the lapels and slap me in the face. In no particular order:

  • One of my brothers was told by his doctor he has bladder cancer; another brother had it and recovered—I am about to undergo tests that might reveal I suffer from the same familial affliction (though, based on the urologist’s comments, I suspect my ailment is orders of magnitude less severe).
  • Loneliness is not the same as being alone; being alone is a solitary comfort, while loneliness may take place in a crowded theater, at a family reunion, or on a desolate beach.
  • I startled three large deer yesterday afternoon as I stepped to my deck’s back railing—as they looked up at me and froze, I could see the muscles in their backs tense, as if preparing to flee. I spoke to them softly, telling them I was not there to hurt them, only to admire them. They relaxed and returned to their business, tearing leaves from low tree branches and munching on ground cover.
  • My pre-procedure appointment yesterday did, indeed, involve blood-letting; the veins inside my elbows were uncooperative, so a vein on the top of my right hand donated a tube of vampire bait. My vital signs were measured and an EKG was administered; I had never counted the number of wires attached to my body for an EKG before yesterday—the number was ten. I answered a battery of questions about my medical history and my habits; I lied only occasionally.
  • I think, as people get older, we shed embarrassment like dead skin. We’re no longer as conscious that things we say or do might cause discomfort in others. Or, perhaps, we simply don’t care to be held responsible for others’ sensitivities. I am of a mixed mind on this; whether it’s cruel or compassionate or neither. Not that the topic merits several sentences. Yet my habit is to use as many words as possible whenever possible. That is cause for embarrassment.
  • Guðni Th. Jóhannesson was reelected president of Iceland last Saturday with an overwhelming majority of the vote (92.2 percent). In commenting on his reelection, he said, ““It is clear that Icelanders do not want their president to be involved in politics. That would not be in accordance with constitutional practice or the public’s idea of the position of the president, who is meant to encourage unity and solidarity in good times and bad.” Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir said of Jóhannesson’s win, “I’d like to congratulate the president on this landslide victory.” She went on to say the majority of Icelanders are pleased with the way he handled matters during his term. I think I like Icelandic “politics.”  By the way, I could tell Iceland’s first lady, Eliza Reid, is not a native Icelander simply by seeing her name. I’ve probably written about that before. If so, excuse the redundancy. She’s a writer, by the way. And she was born Canadian.
  • I read with interest an article about the status of Brexit. The article notes that Britain had until June 30 to request an extension of the transition out of the European Union; apparently, it did not make the request. So, the U.K. will formally leave the European Union after December 31 this year, with our without a trade deal. Some say without a trade deal, the British economy will “rupture,” resulting in massive job losses beyond those already sustained as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m afraid the economic impact of COVID-19 thus far has offered just a hint of what is to come.
  • During my virtual explorations this morning, I came across Los Alamos, New Mexico and nearby (more or less) Cerros del Abrigo (a mountain whose name is translated into English as Shelter Hills). According to Livability.com, among the several reasons to move there is the fact that “the community is filled with hundreds of interesting intellectuals.” On further review, I found that Los Alamos County (and the town) are “leaning Democrat” and have been moving that way for several years. It’s worth exploring. Fewer people, smarter people, more progressive people. Definitely worth a look. A serious downside, though: housing prices are steep, steep, steep.
  • I bought a nice looking strip steak yesterday. We’re not eating much beef these days, but an occasional steak satisfies my yearning for warm flesh. I suspect I’ll grill it within the next few days. I’ll have to cut it in half first, as my wife and I like our meat cooked to different levels of done-ness: medium for her, rare and bloody for me. While I was at the store, store employees were smoking racks of ribs out front; they smelled absolutely wonderful, as always. We bought some once, though, and were unimpressed; they lathered them with a sweet sauce, which masks the flavor of the meat and introduces sweetness that is unnecessary and, in fact, offensive. But why am I complaining about ribs I chose not to buy? My curmudgeonly nature is showing.
  • It’s after 7; time for more coffee, breakfast, and a well-deserved nap for my fingers.
Posted in Just Thinking | 4 Comments

The World Around Me

Posted on July 2, 2020 by John Swinburn

When I walked out onto the deck this morning, the air felt like cracked, bone dry leather and heavily used, fine-grit sandpaper. Yet the density of extremely high humidity was unmistakable, a set of oddly conflicting sensations that felt natural. And just now, back in my study, when I hit the ‘period’ at the end of the preceding sentence, I looked up and saw the mottled greens and dull greys of an inhospitable morning brought to stunning bright life by the passage of a large deer, a regal doe, slowly making her way down the slope toward the back of the house. Both the deer and the environment around her, suddenly, were incomprehensibly beautiful.

Sharp contrasts often can fade into soft harmonies, each component accentuating the beauty of the other, if one’s mood permits. I suppose the mood is as soft as the harmonies it allows; or maybe one feeds the other and then the process repeats itself. As I think of this possibility, my eyes mist a bit, as I long for a return to a time of peace and mutuality among nations and humankind. As if such a time ever existed. Was there ever a time when the contrasts between cultures and skin colors and religious beliefs and all the other myriad attributes of humankind were allowed to fade into harmonies, each accentuating the beauty of the other?

Will that nirvana ever exist? Not if that nirvana depends on my behavior. I am too quick to judge, too easily rattled, too impatient to allow time to wear down obstacles to peace and joy. Sometimes, I think my absence might be the spark to ignite a passion for universal brotherhood. That’s silly, of course, but one’s subconscious can force one’s consciousness toward strange and dangerous directions. When sanity prevails, and the subconscious demons depart, I realize one person’s presence or absence rarely makes a difference. Occasionally, a truly charismatic leader can so engage so many people that they become followers, disciples as it were. But, as history has so often shown, even the words of the best and most generous and kind and loving charismatic leaders do not always lead to nirvana. Sometimes, it’s just the opposite. Often. Usually. Humankind does not seem universally inclined to accept kindness and generosity and love. But that should not stop us from endeavoring to make it so.

It’s nearing the time I have to leave for my “pre-procedure check-in,” which I assume will involve a little blood-letting, insurance verification, temperature-taking, and who-knows-what-other-forms-of-torture. After the process is done, I’ll drag myself to Kroger to do a little grocery shopping. I loathe the idea of entering a crowded grocery store, especially in an environment in which it seems the majority of people seem to discount the benefits of social distance and wearing masks. But I shall wear my mask. Perhaps I should brandish a weapon, too, just to assert my claim to my social distance spacing? No, I’d like to think I’m not entirely consumed by lunacy, stupidity, and testosterone poisoning. There you go, John, be the change you want to see in the world. Right. I’m not entirely judgmental; just mostly.

Time to go. Enough blathering about the world around me and the me within the world.

Posted in Philosophy | 2 Comments

A Course in Calamities

Posted on July 1, 2020 by John Swinburn

Before I begin, I note that my Google calendar tells me I have a pre-procedure check-in at CHI St. Vincent tomorrow morning. The procedure, a cystoscopy and biopsy of the lining of the bladder, under general anesthesia, takes place next Monday at 5:30 a.m.  I may decide not to write much, if anything, for a while. Or I may continue without interruption. Regardless of the findings from the procedure, I consider the process at least a minor calamity.

All right. Here we are at July 1, halfway through a year engaged in a competition to be named “Most Miserable Stretch of Time in the History of the Planet,” yet we struggle on. I suppose we know, in our hearts, that 2020 will not win. In spite of the Australian and Amazon wildfires, the ongoing pandemic, and the rampant racism and police brutality playing out on television, 2020 has failed thus far to equal the most brutal periods of time on planet Earth. Even the thoroughly incompetent and deeply dangerous dimwit in the White House, ripping the U.S. economy (and its moral standing) into tattered and torn shreds and taking the world’s economy into the sewer with it, has failed to push us forward to merit a win in the abominable competition.

Unless the remainder of the year brings with it pestilence and calamity several orders of magnitude worse than what we have experienced so far in 2020, this year can hope for, at best, a “seventy-fifth runner-up” ribbon. The years of the Irish Potato Famine would take a higher prize, as would each year between 1861 and 1865. And, of course, 1914 through 1918  and their younger siblings, 1939 through 1945, claim more prestigious ribbons. The year 1968 might do the same. There are dozens more. Maybe hundreds. The point is, in the vernacular, “you don’t even know what calamity looks like!” That is not to mock our pain (though it sure sounds like mockery, doesn’t it?), only to put it in perspective. And, by the way, I’m straying beyond the borders of the modern-day U.S.A. only a little, offering evidence of the provincial nature of my formal education.

But consider, for example, how awful the year 79 A.D. was for Pompeiians living in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. Geologists say the volcano could erupt again in an unprecedented explosion any day; millions could perish in such an event, which could quickly propel the year of eruption beyond many other ribbon-holder years.

The winner of each competition thus far has been, and remains, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, that cataclysmic reordering of the planet’s priorities that followed the moment the Chicxulub impactor struck off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. Geophysicists and their scientific brethren say the asteroid could have been as big as fifty miles in diameter when it struck Earth. The poor dinosaurs did not have a chance.

With the exception of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, all of the events I have mentioned were catastrophic simply because human suffering factored into them. What about the miseries suffered by other creatures? Does our empathy and compassion extend beyond the pets we coerce into depending on us for food and shelter? (Have you noticed a change in tone?) I’ll stick to human tragedies for the time-being, nonetheless.

Calamities and catastrophes and cataclysmic events occur at various scales. While death and suffering involving hundreds or thousands or millions is stunning in its scope, individual death and suffering is equally momentous to those most directly affected. When examining calamities on an individual basis, the loss of a parent or spouse or sibling or close friend is apt to be more devastating than the loss of a job or the assassination of a world leader. Yet we seem to measure the size and extent of horror based on volume, either of victims or of spectators. Even though we are emotionally crushed—with far greater personal consequences—by the death of a loved one, that earth-shattering occurrence is not judged by others to be as brutal and difficult as a flood that takes the lives of hundreds of strangers.

I understand all of this, of course. I comprehend the difference between the impact of an individual death and the emotional consequences of massive loss of human life. Because we are, indeed, all interconnected, rips in the fabric of our lives cause us pain, but those interruptions in the cloth have different effects on us, depending on the proximity of those jagged lacerations to our emotional core.

Calamities come in all forms, in all sizes and shapes. Regardless of their size or source, they transform us, either individually or collectively or both. Our private and personal calamities are, perhaps, the most impactful; they are the ones that alter the course of our existence more immediately and more deeply than distant, impersonal calamities. Yet, as philosophers and poets and deep thinkers over the millennia have suggested, each of us humans is simply a tiny cell in a much larger creature; were they thinking of us as cells of a parasite? Probably not, but maybe.

We hope to avoid catastrophic changes in our lives, upsets that upend the serenity we so fervently seek. But life can change, or disappear, in an instant. Our control is limited by circumstances. Everything we think and everything we do relies on context; when context refuses to adhere to our wishes, we must simply ride the waves and hope we do not drown.

John Donne wrote Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII, from which his famous poem emerged and was claimed by the world. His words, taken from a paragraph of free verse, (modernized in spelling, below) and immortalized were:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

To serve as a resource for myself, I will reproduce the Meditation XVII in full below:

PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him.  And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.  The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all.  When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member.  And when she buries a man, that action concerns me; all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another; as therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come; so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.

There was a contention as far as a suit (in which, piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest.  If we understand aright the dignity of this bell, that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours, by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is.  The bell doth toll for him, that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.  Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises?  But who takes off his eye from a comet, when that breaks out? who bends not his ear to any bell, which upon any occasion rings?  But who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island,  entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were;  any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors.  Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.  No man hath affliction enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.  If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels.  Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.  Another may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

Posted in Philosophy | 1 Comment

On Belief

Posted on June 27, 2020 by John Swinburn

I think I had heard of John Shelby “Jack” Spong in years past but, if so, I paid little heed to what was said about him. Only relatively recently, when I heard the minister in my church, a church that accepts and welcomes atheists like me, did I pay sufficient attention to explore a bit more about the man. Now retired, Spong served as Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey from 1979 to 2000.

Except for his belief in God in some form or fashion that I cannot comprehend, his beliefs (or, perhaps, his approach to the universe) seem to mirror mine.  But his insistence on differentiating Christianity (even his newly-defined, modern Christianity) from other religions confounds me. Perhaps he feels it inappropriate for an “outsider” to speak to what other religions should or should not do. I do not feel similarly restrained, though; I think all religions should examine themselves deeply from the perspective of modernity and should transform accordingly. Moreover, I think those outside those religions should examine and criticize them without restriction.

In my view, the transformation Spong suggests might well involve dissolution. At the very least, it would involve abandonment of a literal translation of any old texts, including the Bible, the Quoran, the Torah, etc., etc. Most religions, in my estimation, value humanity and the world in which humanity flourishes in rather gentle, supportive ways. It’s the additive options tacked on by aftermarket suppliers that cloud the issue. That’s the way I view most individual denominations and discontented spin-offs: they are like auto dealers trying to sell undercoating, paint protectants, decorative side moldings, extended warranties, and upgraded synthetic oils with each oil change. The religious sects and the quasi-religious cults (think Evangelical Christian Fundamentalists, for example) are, to varying degrees, sleazy hucksters doing their best to slip their hands, unnoticed, into the pockets of the “faithful.”

But back to Spong and his insistence on treating Christianity separately from other major religions; I just don’t get it. And I can’t quite conceive of his view of “God,” inasmuch as he seems to think God, whatever that entity might be, somehow controls the world within which we live. Or maybe I just don’t understand. At any rate, Spong’s thinking is way outside the mainstream. Although it is my understanding he has a rather enormous following among progressive religious scholars and others disillusioned with religion in general. I suppose I am among “and others.” Though I’ve never (since childhood) been religious in the least, I’ve always thought collective conversations about morality and the practice of humanity in the world in which we live should be undertaken.

His “Twelve Points for Reform,” a call to change Christianity, was first published in 1998 in the Diocese of Newark in 1998:

  1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
  2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
  3. The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
  4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
  5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
  6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
  7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
  8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
  9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
  10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
  11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
  12. All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

I’ve recently learned of a subscription website, Progressing Spirit, that apparently was born under Spong’s guidance and continues without him (I gathered he ceased active involvement in 2017; well-deserved retirement, in that he is now 89 years old). I was interested in following the site, but when I learned it costs $4 per month or $40 per year, I decided against it. As intriguing as it might be, I think I’d rather spend that $40 on craft beer and habanero pepper salsas.

Speaking of habanero, the word is (as far as I can tell) a Spanish demonym meaning inhabitant of Havana. And while I’m on a demonymic roll, guantánamera (like the song) is a demonym for a woman inhabitant of Guantánamo (I surmise; I’m less certain of this, but certain enough to claim it as truth). Her male counterpart would be called un guantánamero.

Speaking of church, unless the weather insists that postponement would be appropriate, we will celebrate our achievement of being named a “welcoming congregation.” That recognition of our openness to people regardless of their sexual orientation or expression, race, socioeconomic status, etc, etc., etc. is simply a formal acknowledgement of what the congregation has been all along. I am delighted and proud to be an atheist member of that church.

Posted in Religion | 4 Comments

Struggling

Posted on June 24, 2020 by John Swinburn

I keep coming back to Struggles, the imaginary town in Arkansas that is grappling with its history of poor management, populations flight, and an uncertain future. I say I keep coming back to the town, but I haven’t been writing much about it. I’ve been thinking about it. My mind has been on the people of the town and how they are coping with the less-than-gradual disintegration of municipal services and almost daily business failures. The business that my main character owns and operates, the Fourth Estate Tavern, is clinging to a shrinking clientele who increasingly can’t afford to buy food and drink “out.” But the tavern was ordered closed for awhile to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Many of the tavern’s regulars lost their jobs when Sternberg Refrigeration closed its doors. The three firefighters who lost their lives when battling the blaze at Sternberg’s shuttered plant had been regulars, too. Calypso Kneeblood, the owner, is facing his own battles, aside from a business forced to temporarily shut its doors; his lung cancer surgery and precarious financial situation are both on his mind. Those heavy matters are changing his usual curmudgeonly cheerful disposition to one utterly devoid of cheer. Even so, an unexpected visit from a young woman who offers Calypso a way to turn things around for the town and the tavern.

The reason I keep coming back to Struggles is that the solution the woman offers is hard for me to make real. And the few influential people who remain in Struggles are skeptical of anything Kneeblood says or does, so his attempts to sway them will be rebuffed, automatically. Maybe I don’t want to introduce the reality of COVID-19 to the story. Perhaps I should envision it taking place in another time. Or in this time, but without the pestilence. I think of Struggles and Kneeblood every day. And I think of the young woman. I am trying to imagine her motives for offering to help Kneeblood resurrect Struggles and the Fourth Estate Tavern. Her name and her background remain mysteries to me; the guy writing her character into the story! But I know she and Kneeblood will become involved romantically, despite the fact that he is a good twenty years older than she; maybe more. Whether that entanglement lasts has yet to be determined.

I think I haven’t named her yet because I want her to have a “classic” female name that is timeless. When I look at popular names for women past and present, I see Amber and Destiny and Madison and Zoey and Meghan. While they will be around for years, they will cycle in and out. I want something strong and permanent and awash in respect and admiration. That’s not asking for much, is it? How about Gabriella? Or Stella? Or Josephine? Why her name is so damn important is beyond me. Her background is far more relevant to the story. I have to know her. I have to live with her for awhile. Wake up with her in the morning and observe her routine. Listen in on her phone calls. Watch and listen as she interacts with people, both those she knows and those she doesn’t. I need to know why she and Kneeblood will mesh; what about her allows her to be attracted to a much older man. I already know Kneeblood. He’s not just a lecherous old man. He has crafted a rough, impenetrable, crusty façade to protect his tender, emotional core; the too-fragile, too-easily-wounded framework around which he has hung his work of deceitful art.

Despite knowing so much about Kneeblood and many of the regulars who visit the Fourth Estate Tavern, when I write their conversations and their circumstances, they seem wooden. I’ve been thinking about that, too. Why can’t I bring them to life on the page the way they are alive to me when I think about them? Maybe the problem is the story and the conflicts that must be resolved. I have to know what they are and how they will be resolved—if they will be resolved—before I write them.

So, that’s how I’m starting my day. Bound to the struggles of Struggles and to the mysteries of lives I am living vicariously through characters about whom I know too little. Time to have breakfast. Waffles with pomegranate-maple syrup. I am a lucky man. I have to keep telling myself that.

Posted in Writing | 2 Comments

Thoughtwanderer

Posted on June 23, 2020 by John Swinburn

When Whiskey Advocate came in yesterday’s mail, I was puzzled about why I received it but pleased to have found it in my mailbox. It wasn’t long before it occurred to me that I traded DeltaMiles for the subscription (there’s virtually no chance I will ever accumulate sufficient DeltaMiles to trade them for an airline ticket, so I figured I should use them in any way I can before they expire). Anyway, I thumbed through Whisky Advocate and learned that seeing photographs of full bottles of various whiskies triggers a desire to own those bottles. Actually, it’s not the bottles I want; it’s the contents. But I’m relatively confident the contents would not be nearly as appealing to look at if they were stored in Mason jars or reclaimed peanut butter jars. Packaging matters. Packaging is an aspect of marketing. Marketing is a means of connecting a product (or service) with an intended audience. And, as I just suggested, the audience tends to respond to the subtleties of marketing, such as packaging. So, we’re all contributors to the fact that we’re awash in marketing messages from the moment we wake up until we wake up the next morning; marketing even invades our dreams. That having been said, I’m perfectly happy to contribute to marketing whisky. Or whiskey. Or both. It’s a little early to be thinking of drinking anything but coffee, but I’ll gladly wait until a more appropriate time, when I’ll return to Whisky Advocate and thumb through some more. And even read some articles. But, first, I’ll take another look at an ad in the magazine, promoting gin aged in whisky barrels; I may have to get a bottle of that stuff from the distillery; I think it’s in Kentucky. The gin, I remember from the ad, is imported from England, not made in Kentucky. Kentucky gin just doesn’t sound right.

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Last night, I finished watching a Netflix movie, The Platform, I had started watching the night before. It is bizarre, a Kafka-esque science fiction piece which takes place in a vertical prison. Each level has a square hole in the middle through which a platform filled with food (or remnants of food) descends and stops briefly at each level. At the highest levels, the platform is filled with food. As it descends, there is less and less food left, because the people above have gorged themselves on what was presented to them. The protagonist, Goreng, is there voluntarily, spending a month in the prison in exchange for receiving some sort of accreditation credential. The others…we don’t know. The film is full of violence and ugliness of all sorts, but the violence is a necessary part of the story and is extremely well done. In my view, it is a critique of society and especially of capitalism, an allegory of the rampant and pervasive greed in which we willingly participate and wallow. Despite that cheery description, the film is absolutely worth watching. The ending, as disturbing and difficult to understand as it is, is especially impactful.

Before I leave the subject of Platform: I wrote a short fiction vignette I entitled Platform in January 2016. Here is a link to it.

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I registered a few days ago to participate in the first-ever “virtual” general assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. It will be virtual in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. General sessions will be viewable by all registrants. Workshops require registrants to sign up in advance; I gather participants can interact with the speakers and with one another during workshops, via Zoom. It seems, technically, well-organized and smooth. But I am disappointed in many of the topics. I wrote an email message to others from my church who are participating that:

I was surprised by how few of the program titles and descriptions captured my interest. I had high expectations; perhaps they were too high. Many of the workshop descriptions, especially, reminded me of the days of viewing college catalogs and seeing course descriptions for courses desperate to survive but destined to disappear. That is, topics that do not warrant much attention dressed up in an attempt to look like riveting stuff

I got a response from one other registrant shortly thereafter, expressing agreement with my assessment. I hope my initial reaction turns out to be unfair and unwarranted. I would like to appreciate the sessions I attend and in which I participate; I would like to be interested. We’ll see. I may be getting too deeply involved in this stuff.

I was asked to be the emcee for upcoming Insight services (every other week, instead of the minister delivering a sermon, someone else speaks on a topic of interest). The man who has been doing it will become president of the congregation soon and will, no doubt, have enough other things on his plate. I agreed. I say “yes.” I do that too often. I said “yes” to writing an article about the congregation’s Computers for Kids program and I said “yes” to taking on writing publicity releases in the future. And I said “yes” to serving on the Program Committee. And I said “yes” to participating in a “Green Team” group. And I said “yes” to being that group’s “leader.” I feel obliged to respond in the affirmative, even if I do not want to do what I am being asked. Why is that? I do not mind (and actually rather enjoy) getting involved, but I am afraid I am getting too involved. I’ve said it before. Why don’t I pay heed? I am concerned that, knowing me, I might reach a point of saying, “I am finished. No more” And that would leave people I like in a lurch. Chill, John. You’ll figure it out.

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I use a word that some dictionaries seem to claim does not exist. Others do. Merriam-Webster‘s dictionary, for example, does not recognize thoughtworthy as a legitimate word. I wanted to check out the Oxford English Dictionary, but discovered that I would have to subscribe at the greatly reduced price of $90 per year to be given online access to the OED. I would dearly love to have a subscription to the OED, but I’m not about to pay $90 every bloody year for the privilege! So, instead, I’ll continue to rely on free and incompletely reliable knock-offs, including those that do not recognize thoughtworthy. En.wiktionary.org recognizes the word. So does yourdictionary.com. And lexico.com not only recognizes and defines it (worth of though, of course), but claims its origin is from the mid-19th century. I insist that the word is not only legitimate but, on some occasions the only appropriate word for the circumstances. Dammit! Why can’t dictionaries keep up with my verbality?

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Speaking of words, today’s John-word is a noun, logorrhea, meaning 1) pathologically incoherent, repetitious speech; 2) incessant or compulsive talkativeness; wearisome volubility. Until this very moment, I had never used the word. But, instantly, upon learning of it, I thought of a couple of people I have known. “You can tell Bart is suffering from a bad case of logorrhea by the fact that he never lets anyone get a word in edgewise.” I do not know that I will ever have occasion to use that word again. Time will tell.

Posted in Church, Film, Language, Liquor | Leave a comment

Telenovela

Posted on June 21, 2020 by John Swinburn

It finally became too much. Not too much to bear, just too much to tolerate. Too much to process. Too much boastful self-absorption to willingly witness. And, so, you washed your hands of it. You rinsed off the sticky goo that accumulated over the course of your exposure to the pompous braggadocio and went on about your life. And then you realized how much fresher you felt, how much cleaner and smarter. You wondered how you could have put up with the constant chest-thumping, the smirks, and wave after wave after wave of deceit, acrimony, and contempt. But put up with it you did. Until you no longer could. And, so, it ended like a bag of concrete thrown from a thirty-story building hits the pavement below; with a loud thud, followed by absolute silence and a thick cloud of fictile dust.

That relationship lasted far too long. The fact that you tolerated it for years says as much about you as it says about her. More, in fact. You were more afraid of emptiness than you were of a clearly poisonous relationship. You collected those rare occasions when she made you feel like you mattered and you held them close, like they were rare diamonds to you. No matter that they usually were invisible , buried under mountains of disregard and abuse. At least they were something. It was better than emptiness. At least that’s what you thought.

The emptiness, when it came, was less painful than you expected. In fact, you treasured it more than those rare diamonds that, you discovered, were not real. They were paste jewelry, not even cubic zirconia. You were afraid the emptiness would be too much to take; that you would search for someone, anyone, to fill the void. But you were stronger than you thought. You didn’t rush into a relationship. You were more cautious than you expected to be. More discriminating. More concerned with happiness than with acceptance.

But, now, you have to make a decision. Is Cheyenna the right one? Will she complete you? Do you even need to be completed? If you don’t act now to bring her into your life permanently, will you regret it? If not Cheyenna, will there ever be another opportunity for you to fill that emptiness?

***

Glenn Namir’s conversation with himself took place while he shaved, looking in the bathroom mirror. The man in the mirror looked stronger and more sure of himself than he was. An attractive man in his late forties, he took care of his body and it showed. Though he had a slight build, his muscles were toned and firm. He did not display six-pack abs, but his mid-section was obviously solid, with very little flab. The silver streaks around his temples stood out against his coal-black hair, giving him a distinguished look.  Nothing about his appearance suggested a man in the throes of an emotional conversation about a potentially life-altering decision.

It was a conversation he could not have had with anyone else. He had no male friends with whom he was close. And the only female with whom he would have been able to talk to about it was Cheyenna. Obviously, he could not have the conversation with her. And, so, he silently talked to himself and listened to his self-recriminations. He sought his own advice, but he was loath to give it and even more reluctant to accept it.

[Too much like a soap opera. And not enough backstory that would explain his weakness in the relationship that ended with a thud. I do not like the guy. I do not know enough about Cheyenna to know whether she’s likeable. Do I need to know much about the chest-thumper? I get the sense that this scene, if it works at all, would work only after much work to set the stage for this crucial moment. Contrast, maybe, with Calypso. Or, maybe, Calypso is the only other male with whom he could share his doubts and concerns, etc. Or, scrap it. This might work as a B-roll telenovela.]

Posted in Fiction, Writing | Leave a comment

Better

Posted on June 13, 2020 by John Swinburn

Looking up into the canopy of the forest, I find it hard to distinguish between individual leaves. There are too many overlapping shades of green between shadows and sunlight for me to clearly differentiate one leaf from another. I look at the shafts of light filtering through the leaves and think of the English translation of that Japanese word that has been on my mind so much lately: komorebi, written in the original language as 木漏れ日.

A black t-shirt imprinted with 木漏れ日, the symbols printed with green ink, might help me be more at ease. Those Japanese symbols—carved into a piece of cherry wood that I could hang on the wall near the place on my desk where I keep my book, The Essence of Zen—might temper my mood. Perhaps those reminders of gentleness and serenity and calm acceptance would settle me.

I need settling. My reactions to utterly inconsequential irritants in my world lately have been enormously over-sized. I don’t know precisely what triggered emotional explosions within the past few days, but something is awry. Volcanic eruptions take place for reasons, but explanations do not excuse them.

If I could distinguish between the leaves, would that clarity lead to greater serenity? If the sunlight filtering through the forest canopy were softer, would I be softer, too?

My public persona is a sham. I am not the person I want others to see. Beneath the soft filtered sunlight settling on me is a fraud, an imposter who hopes his occasional good behavior will eventually change his psyche. It hasn’t worked yet and there are no outward (or inward) signs it will. A dog can wish and wish and wish and wish it could become a human but that will never happen. But we don’t know that, do we? We cannot prove a negative theory. So I could become the gentle, caring, accepting, tolerant, hopeful, decent person I have always admired. With practice. It’s possible. Just as it’s possible a dog might, one day, suddenly become human.

I spent all of 2014, every single day, writing what I labeled a “thought for the day.” Every day I wrote at least one “thought for the day;” some days, I wrote two or, perhaps, three. The idea was that I would focus my attention on little things that, at those moments, mattered. It was not all positive, but most were, I think. I continued the practice for each and every day the following year, but in 2015 I labeled each item with the day of the year, from one to three-hundred-sixty-five; I called them “ruminations.”  Two years, without missing a day. And that writing was in addition to my regular blog posts and my fiction and non-fiction outside the blog. It was a two-year attempt to, for lack of a better way to describe it, become a better person. That objective was meritless; goals must be measurable and specific. “Becoming a better person” is subjective in the extreme. No objectivity there. After December 31, 2015, I withdrew from that daily practice, despite promising myself I would continue.  My last rumination for the year was this:

Three Hundred Sixty-Five
In our rush to the next event, the next activity, the next interaction, we sometimes fail to appreciate those precious moments, the moments time snatches away from us as it marches inexorably along. We fail to recognize that, perhaps, a repeat of those precious moments isn’t guaranteed.

I wonder whether I appreciated enough of those moments during the year ending today. I wonder whether I paid sufficient heed to my admonition to myself with the very first ‘rumination’ I posted this year:

Make peace with the past. Make love with the present. Make plans with the future.

By and large, I believe I did. I worked to uncoil myself, a tightly wound spring; though not entirely successful, I made progress. That qualifies both as making peace with the past and making love with the present. I’ve tried, these past twelve months, to make love with the present by accepting what comes my way. I stumbled along, but never fell. And I have plans for 2016.

To all those I love—and I truly hope they know who they are—I wish them a very happy, healthy, and fulfilling year ahead.

Even then, four and a half years ago, I recognized myself as a tightly wound spring. Yet, still, I too often release the constriction of those coils in a split second, unleashing all the tension that should have been soothed and smoothed. I still see the komorebi and I sense in myself the desire to let it sooth and heal me, but that softness is always temporary. Somehow, recognizing one’s core faults and correcting them are light years apart, perhaps even in different galaxies that never intersect. The only solution, I suppose, is to try harder. To stop being an apologist for my failings and, instead, to actually transform my mind so its automatic default response to the slightest stress is not what it has been. Better. I must quantify and measure “better.”

The first thing, I think, is to have that t-shirt made.                  木漏れ日

Posted in Philosophy | Leave a comment

Who Do You Call, If Not the Police?

Posted on June 9, 2020 by John Swinburn

This era, whatever we call it, could usher in massive changes to global society. The death of George Floyd at the hands, make that the knee, of Derek Chauvin sparked outrage that may look to many like an enormously over-sized reaction to a police officer killing a sole Black man while his colleagues stood silently and watched. But the outrage is not just for George Floyd. The outrage is for the hundreds like him who died at the hands of police officers whose sense of power and authority overcame their sense of humanity. The outrage is an explosion of pent-up rage that spews forth from a heretofore moderately contained vessel that has finally ruptured, letting loose the pressure of hundreds of years of building anger.

So, this era could usher in massive changes. I think it already had. Cities are seriously examining de-funding police departments. While I think that is a bad idea, I am open to arguments that might change my mind. I think, rather than disbanding police departments, we should restructure the criminal justice system from top to bottom. That would include changes in laws; decriminalizing behaviors that do no harm to anyone except the perpetrator (and maybe not even the perpetrator). And it would include diverting money from police departments, spreading it judiciously within the communities police departments are meant to serve. So, I see police departments diminishing in size and scope and I see their “policing” duties shrinking along with them. I expect resources will be directed away from punitive enforcement and toward rehabilitation of communities and the people in them. But this may all be a fantasy. We may simply fall back into the same routine we’ve always followed. Because people must change, in their hearts, for real change to occur in society. Unfortunately, I see evidence all around me that minds are closing, shrinking, becoming awash in hatred and fear and indiscriminate loathing.

This will sound a little too much like Hitler’s philosophies, but so be it: the real answer to human suffering and society turmoil and chaos is to remove the ones causing the suffering; all of them. Today, I would identify those people by their affiliation with the Tea Party, white supremacy movements, left-wing anarchists and their brethren, and people who tolerate or are followers of Trump. There may be more. Eliminate them and the problems are no longer insurmountable. I’m not suggesting they be killed; deporting them to an empty planet would work just fine. Once that’s done, problems become issues of ideology that can be argued, debated, and ultimately addressed through compromise. Until compromise is possible, compromise is impossible.

But back to the call for de-funding police departments. Who do you call for assistance when someone is attempting to break if your house if you have disbanded the police department? Who do you call for help, regardless of the problem, when you’re in trouble in a strange city? You don’t call your friends or neighbors a hundred miles away for immediate rescue. Yet we have given police departments responsibilities for everything from murder investigations to robberies and break-ins to traffic law enforcement to entrapment and enforcement of drug laws. The entire system of criminal justice and public safety should be examined with a clean slate; no pre-conceived ideas (like mine), no unspoken assumptions…no assumptions at all!

Finally, before we do anything, we ought to look very closely at other countries that are far more successful than the U.S.A. in terms of policing, public safety, levels of criminality, etc. and we should determine whether we, the self-proclaimed greatest country in the history of the world, might learn a little from some of the more humble nations.

 

Posted in Politics, Rant | 4 Comments

When We Mourn

Posted on June 8, 2020 by John Swinburn

Within the last day or two, I read something that stuck with me. The concept stuck with me, anyway. I have been unable to find the source of the words I read, so I cannot accurately quote the words and give appropriate attribution. It’s the concept that matters, though. Here is an approximation, an attempt at remembering what I read:

When we mourn the death of someone close to us, we mourn not so much for that person, but for the death of the part of ourselves that only that person knew. We mourn the connection between us that cannot be repaired nor replaced.

As I consider the people close to me who have died, I ask myself who I was mourning at their deaths. Was it them, or was it the piece of my life that went missing with them? If the latter, it seems to me some might consider mourning an expression of selfishness, albeit necessary selfishness. An elastic bandage wound tightly around my entire body, mourning may be a garment required to keep the shattered pieces of my life from exploding into a cloud of dust and shrapnel. If that bandage were to unravel, so would I. But over time, the bandage takes on the shape of the psyche it was meant to protect, so it can be slowly unwound and discarded. But the shattered pieces never fully coalesce and heal; they need to be tended on occasion and wrapped anew in a temporary bandage. Regardless of how many times a new bandage is applied, though, the shape of my psyche never returns to the form it took before a death shattered it.

I think there’s more to mourning than self-protection, though. We grieve that death took from the person who died the opportunities they might otherwise have had to experience unmet moments in life. A child’s college graduation or marriage or the pleasures of a relaxed retirement. So many experiences suddenly become impossible for the person whose life disappears in an instant. I think we grieve—mourn—for her unrealized potential and for the ungiven gifts she could have given to the world around her.

We mourn as well, I suspect, because we did not take all the opportunities we had to take full advantage of the gifts the person who died could have given us, if only we had been less selfish with our time and more generous with our attention. It’s that aspect of mourning, I think, that may be among the hardest because it equates with our feelings of guilt that can never be erased. “If only…” The impossible cannot be recaptured, because it never was.

Other than the words I read but cannot remember where, I don’t know why this is on my mind this morning; no one close to me has died in the recent past. I suppose the words reminded me of those who have died and caused me to think about my mourning and the fact that it never stops. It disappears into the fabric of life for long periods, but it suddenly resurfaces for no obvious reason, resulting in unexplained sobbing and self-recriminations.

This post represents the sort of topic that people seem to tend to avoid. Perhaps it digs too deeply into a fragile area of the mind that requires extra protection, lest that elastic bandage snap and release a flood of private emotions. I know I can “talk” about extremely emotional topics only with my fingers and only hidden a safe distance away from anyone who might see or hear me. That may be a vestige of what my friend calls “testosterone poisoning,” the affliction whose symptoms include exhibiting male machismo. But perhaps it’s just evidence that I need protection. Maybe it is indicative of the observation made by Gabriel García Marquez: “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.” That secret life is the one we cannot reveal to anyone else; sometimes, we cannot even reveal it to ourselves. Yet writing about it is revealing. But it’s not the same—calmly exposing one’s weakest, most vulnerable side on an impersonal electronic monitor, versus risking the wounds that might follow openly unmasking one’s extreme sensitivity. 

As usual, I have drifted away from the topic of mourning and grief. But I think vulnerability and sensitivity play roles in mourning and in grief. The topics have been explored by professionals; there’s really no need for an amateur to offer his  untested and unproven theories and philosophies. But that’s what this blog is for; it allows a rank amateur to pretend to know more than he knows and to ask questions that either have no answer or have long since been addressed. It’s exercise for my arthritic fingers, too. And this blog supplements mourning; I mourn for the intellectual and emotional depth that drown in the shallowness herein. Enough drivel for the day. I have inconsequential tasks calling me.

Posted in Death, Mortality | Leave a comment

Happiness Within Our Grasp, Thunderously So

Posted on June 4, 2020 by John Swinburn

I mistakenly posted something I called “Thunder” a little while ago. It was an accident. Ignore it. But if you don’t, you’ll see I intended to incorporate it here. I think I’m a little distracted this morning; you know, giddy with the sense that happiness is within our grasp!

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Yesterday began like too many days lately, a day soaked in the negativity of the world around me; a negativity, I might add, to which I have been contributing. The day got better, though. After I took my wife to her physical therapy appointment, I came home and got some things done. Nothing earth-shattering, but good. Later, I spent part of the afternoon preparing last night’s dinner of Tilapia Veracruz, accompanied by rice and steamed zucchini. Good stuff! And then, last night, I watched a few episodes of the second season of Dead to Me, a Netflix series. The first season was excellent; the second season, so far…meh. But by the time I watched it, I had mellowed.

Sometime during the day yesterday, I decided I could not continue twisting myself into knot about things over which I have little or no immediate control. This is not a new thing; I often reach such an epiphany. One of these days I’ll figure out how to keep it going. In the interim, I’m enjoying the realization that I have almost innumerable things about which to be happy. Happiness is within my grasp! It’s true of almost everyone, actually, though it requires a different, highly personal, perspective for each person. I won’t go into any of this for now. Suffice it to say each one of us who has at least one person in our lives who matters deeply has something about which to be grateful and, therefore, happy.

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We are rightfully impressed by the ingenuity that led to the development of air conditioning. Willis Carrier is widely regarded as the inventor of the modern air conditioner. What brilliance!  Carrier invented a device to cool the rooms of a lithograph company in Brooklyn, New York. One hundred and eighteen years ago; our lives changed.

Now, consider that vast expanses of Earth’s surface can be cooled or heated as a result of slight changes in the direction or speed of the jet stream. I remember, when I was a child, the thrill of watching and feeling a powerful cold front, which we called a “blue norther,” sweep through Corpus Christi, Texas. A hot, humid day changed in an instant to an adventure in which the air was cold and dry and the sky turned an ominous obsidian blue.

If we thought Mother Nature was a sentient being, we would worship her ability to cool or heat entire hemispheres. But we don’t see her that way; she is simply an expression of complex physics too intricate and complex for us to understand, so we pretend we are far more advanced and capable than she. “She.” Why don’t we say Father Nature instead, or refer to it as “it,” instead? Or “him.” Those questions exceed my ability to understand. Besides, what does it matter, in practical terms? In the abstract, I am happy that Nature has more control than do humans. That makes me happy. Happiness is within my grasp!

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The dictionary might define thunder as follows:

A loud, explosive, resounding noise produced by the violent expansion of air heated by a lightning discharge.

I have a different idea about thunder. It is a mystical, magical, wondrous CRACK!, followed by glorious rumbling growls that shake the foundations of the universe. Thunder explains, in an instant, the pointlessness of attempting to harness Nature. Yes, back to Nature. That wonderful, inexplicable something utterly outside of humankind’s meaningful influence. If I were a dictionary, I would define thunder thusly:

A loud, explosive, resounding symphony of immense sound, followed by glorious rumbling growls that shake the foundations of the universe and give enormous joy to all who listen and feel the unfathomable happiness it brings. Thunder is caused by the clash of lightning gods engaged in intense but enjoyable conversation.

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I have errands to run this morning, errands that I will pursue with aggressive intent. That’s aggressive as in bold or assertive, not as in offensive, aggressive, or attacking.

And that’s that. I shall embark on this day with renewed enthusiasm and a sense that I can change the world when it is my time to do so.

Posted in Happiness | Leave a comment

A Choice Between Retributive and Restorative Justice

Posted on June 1, 2020 by John Swinburn

How many times will we tolerate hearing “we need to have a conversation about race?” How many times will we enthusiastically assert the possibility that, finally, we have reached the point at which a solution to systemic racism may be at hand? How many times will we ensure that the advantaged position of white people is preserved while claiming to be solidly on the side of oppressed minorities?

The answers are just as stale as the questions. The emotionally-charged questions and their carefully compassionate but thoroughly hypocritical responses are utterly predictable and hopelessly pointless. The only logical first step is for white folks to admit guilt, whether through individual responsibility for oppression or through willing acceptance of the spoils of what amounts to crimes against humanity. But because white people fear the potential downside of a bald admission of our own moral corruption, the majority of us will insist, though not necessarily explicitly, on some assurances that the outcome of a guilty plea will be no worse than unsupervised probation. Yes, we want a favorable plea bargain. Never mind that thousands upon thousands of people of color have died at the hands of a brutally racist system in which the perpetrators of murder and oppression escape even a reprimand, much less actual punishment.

Conversations about “race” too often focus exclusively on the plight of descendants of Africans brought against their will to this land. With rare public exception, we seem to have forgotten the genocidal purge that began the moment Europeans landed on the shores of North America. The original inhabitants of the land we now call our own have few remaining ancestors, thanks to our ancestors’ treatment of other human beings as unworthy of life. Our “ancestors” in the form of our government and its policies (and our own behaviors) continue treating native people that way even today.

No, we did not kidnap Africans and enslave them. No, we did not murder native inhabitants of this land and corral them into ghettos. No, we did not write the laws and regulations that effectively subjugate huge swaths of our population to the will of its white majority. But we continue to allow ourselves to deny the guilt that resides in our cultural DNA. And we continue to profit from the misdeeds and moral failings of our ancestors and their descendants.

I read an extremely well-written essay about race a few days ago. The writer suggested we need the equivalent of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He said, “The United States needs a national reckoning of its sins.” We do. I do not think a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the right approach; the economic and racial disparities evident in South Africa today offer evidence that such a model has massive systemic flaws. But we need to do something BIG. Something to shock our systems. Something to eradicate the focus on the individual and on economic and political subjugation, replacing them with collectivism and genuine equality.

We need to acknowledge how we came to be rich and powerful. And we need to find a way to transfer that wealth and that power to people who have been enslaved by a system purpose-built to minimize benefits that otherwise would accrue to them. Even if that means reducing the wealth and power of the white majority. Even if that means accepting a lower standard of self-direction and opportunity.

I am afraid we do not have the political will nor the moral backbone to accomplish what needs to be done. I am afraid the solutions will flow like gasoline from a hose onto a burning inferno. A post I wrote a year ago, in which I mentioned an Ethiopian proverb, suddenly got a lot of traffic beginning a few days ago. I think I may know why, given the flames engulfing many of our cities today. The proverb says, “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” Indeed. Oppressed minorities subjected to systemic abuse represent today’s child. This society built on systemic racism and control represents the village.

We may still have a choice, if we decide now, between retributive and restorative justice. I think it is up to us to decide whether we want the village to burn or to expand into an inclusive city.

 

Posted in Racism | Leave a comment

Snap!

Posted on May 27, 2020 by John Swinburn

On a recent night, I sat sipping a glass of Cabernet/Shiraz blend from a plastic wine glass (purchased when we lived in Dallas and the patio was made of stone, which tends to result in glasses being shattered when dropped…see how easily I get distracted?) and pondering how to attach cushions to our wrought iron furniture. The cushions come with ties, but it’s a bit of a hassle to tie them and untie them. I want something easier. Suddenly, the idea hit me…snaps!

So, I Googled “how to attach snaps to fabric” and up popped a link to a YouTube video. I followed the link. Wendi gave me step-by-step instructions on how to use hammer-on snaps. Problem solved! Well, not yet, but it will be solved. Assuming, of course, I can find the right size snaps from an online source. I feel confident I can.

All I have to do is figure out where to place the snaps on the tie-down straps, install the snaps, and the problem will have been addressed. Of course, I will have to decide what to do with the excess “tail” of the tie-down straps. Perhaps I’ll just cut them off, put some tape over the end (I don’t have a sewing machine, nor have I ever learned to  use one, so I cannot sew the wounded fabric back together), and voilà, perfection!

My mind could not simply stop and celebrate my spectacularly good idea. I had to come up with more. And I did. Many of them, though, will require the purchase of a sewing machine and sewing lessons. For example, my Samsung smartphone is too large for a case that would hang on my belt; I need something that can attach to my pants, below the beltline and to the side. The solution: using a sturdy but lightweight cloth, sew a case that fits the phone. Attach snaps to the phone case and to my pants (every pair) so I can simply snap the case onto my pants. When I need the phone, I simply reach down, lift the cloth flip-top to reveal the phone, and pull the phone out. This solution could be my ticket out of here! I envision going on Shark Tank to ask for investments to mass produce the product, only to have one of the sharks offer me an all cash offer for my business, including all intellectual rights. I’ll probably walk out of the studio with upward of $100 million in my pocket.

Similar solutions would work to attach and store key holders, passport holders, wallets (thereby protecting men’s butts from sitting on billfolds, which no doubt does nerve damage to gluteal nerves and muscles), eyeglasses holders, knife pockets, etc.

They (whoever “they” are) will give me a nickname; The Snapster. Finally, I will be able to buy my private island, far away from the madding crowd, where I can relax and enjoy my enormous wealth and my valuable privacy. Of course, I’ll feel compelled to share my wealth with the poor, the destitute, the unfortunate, and the Wendi’s of the world, the people who produce YouTube videos only to have some schmuck come along and take advantage of their generosity of shared knowledge. And then where will I be? Where, indeed.

Consider just how many snappable holders-of-all-things-imaginable I might have attached to my clothing. To reiterate:

  1. Phone
  2. Car keys
  3. House keys
  4. Billfold
  5. Eyeglasses
  6. Eyeglasses polishing cloth
  7. Pocket knife
  8. Passport
  9. iPad
  10. Writing pad
  11. Pens/pencils

Of course, I could consolidate a few of these items, but most I would want to keep separate so I could easily find the specific item I want. Unlike a purse, this flock of pockets would keep everything separate and within easy reach.

As I consider my flash of brilliance, I think about the travel vests available from TravelSmith and a few others; those vests behave like well-organized, wearable purses, too. But they do not require the installation of multiple sets of snaps on every piece of clothing one owns. This idea of mine has merit; but maybe not as much as I first thought.

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Much to my surprise, when I searched for posts on this blog using the topic “money laundering,” I found only one post.  Obviously, I have not done enough research on the topic. Which reflects the fact that I do not have enough money to launder.

Posted in Clothes, Fashion | Leave a comment

Rumi

Posted on May 22, 2020 by John Swinburn

I spent an entirely unsatisfactory fifteen minutes earlier this morning attempting to learn more about the Persian poet, Rumi. The time was unsatisfactory because, for one reason, I was unable to wade through the various Persian and Arabic and other names used by or identified with the man. And I had a bit of a hard time understanding how someone born in 1207 (according to what I read) in either modern-day Tajikistan or Afghanistan made his way to Konya, Turkey, where he died. Those places are almost 1300 miles apart, in a geographic area that is inhospitable, at best. That difficulty notwithstanding, I found my brief exploration interesting and moderately enlightening, if not satisfactory. I learned (re-learned is probably more accurate) that Sufism, the religious path Rumi followed, is “a form of Islamic mysticism that emphasizes introspection and spiritual closeness with God.”

It is the emphasis on introspection that explains the appeals of Rumi’s poetry, I think. At least that is true for me…I think. I wish, though, I could read his poetry in the language used to write it. Translations are, by nature, subjective; so, the words we read in English are interpretations filtered through the mind of someone who has made an attempt to write what the translator thinks Rumi would have written, had he written in English. I have a hard enough time with translations from Spanish; translations from Persian or Arabic or Greek (all languages that found their way into Rumi’s work) are less reliable (again, in my mind). So, the translation thing…perhaps the introspection I value in Rumi’s work (when I encounter it; I cannot recite any of it from memory) is an artifact of a translator’s subjectivity.

During my unsatisfactory attempt to learn more about Rumi, I experienced satisfaction in reading some of his poetry. For example:

“Love isn’t the work of the tender and the gentle;
Love is the work of wrestlers.
The one who becomes a servant of lovers
is really a fortunate sovereign.
Don’t ask anyone about Love; ask Love about Love.
Love is a cloud that scatters pearls.”
~Rumi~

There is no point in writing more, for now. I have learned too little and have absorbed the entire lesson.

Posted in Poetry, Writing | Leave a comment

Ova

Posted on May 21, 2020 by John Swinburn

It was inevitable that I would eventually stumble upon a menu item that would entice me to cross many miles to visit the restaurant that serves it.

Actually, I’ve encountered many such menu items, but this is the first of several I encountered yesterday that lured me with eggs. The menu item: The Slut. The restaurant: Eggslut, with locations in downtown Los Angeles, CA; Glendale, CA; Venice, CA; West Los Angeles, CA;  Las Vegas, NV; Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan; London, England; and Kuwait City, Kuwait (which is closed temporarily). What?! A chain restaurant? I’ve been tempted by a chain?  It’s true. I cannot explain, other than to say the allure of the menu is stronger than my aversion to the mass market appeal represented by chain restaurants. Oh, the shame.

Eggslut once had a location in Beirut, Lebanon, but I gather that has gone by the wayside. I assume most of the locations are rather new; the article in which the restaurant was mentioned, from October 2018, said it had only three locations. The likelihood that I’ll visit any of the restaurants is highest with respect to visiting one of the Los Angeles area locations. When I get there, I will order the Slut, which the menu describes as “cage-free coddled egg on top of a smooth potato purée, poached in a glass jar, topped with gray salt and chives, served with slices of baguette.”

During my excursion into coddled eggs as offered by Slut, I encountered another restaurant I want to visit. And I would make the pilgrimage, were the world a more hospitable, welcoming, safer, and more affordable place to be. I would travel to this Tel Aviv, Israel restaurant. Called Shakshukia, the restaurant is dedicated to shakshuka, as one might have guessed. One can get traditional shakshuka at this restaurant, of course, but it also serves shakshuka dressed with a variety of ingredients such a hummus, shawarma, and merguez sausage. I suppose I will have to make multiple trips there, because I will find it necessary to try every one of them.

There were more. I stumbled upon an online article in Travel & Leisure magazine dedicated to restaurants that pay homage to the egg. I instantly became enamored of the idea. And, while reading elsewhere about coddled eggs, I decided I must buy a set of egg coddlers. A recipe I came across intrigued me, as recipes are wont to do. This one was a simple coddled egg, its cap removed, with a dollop of black caviar and a few strands of chives poking out of the egg for taste and appearance. I was hooked the moment I saw it. It looked so incredibly sophisticated, the egg coddler and its cargo sitting on a little plate surrounded by toast soldiers. I could almost taste the English breakfast tea that would absolutely HAVE TO go with it. I rarely drink hot tea for breakfast, but the image of the caviar-dressed coddled egg spoke to me of the impossibility of relying on coffee to complete the atmosphere.

Egg cookery is far more complex and refined than one might think. Consider the orchestration involved in creating eggs Benedict: it requires absolutely, perfectly, crisp bacon, English muffins toasted to a seared-surface perfection, eggs poached to precisely the right consistency, and a creamy warm Hollandaise sauce. This gathering of magnificence must be completed at exactly the same time for the composition to succeed. Poaching the eggs, alone, requires precision and patience rarely matched in the kitchen. And coddling eggs is an art form, requiring not only the right coddlers but the right adornments. I read, yesterday, about coddled eggs served with shredded salmon, capers, and minced onions alongside “points” of warm, pliable strips of pita bread. Almost orgasmic in the pleasure such refined magnificence brings to the palate.

During the exploration of egg fantasy, it occurred to me that an intriguing variation on deviled eggs might also cause me to shudder in delight. I envisioned carefully removing the shells from soft-boiled eggs, halving the eggs with a knife, and then gently scooping the runny yolks into a waiting bowl. I would mix the runny yolks with a little miso paste, some soy sauce, a bit of horseradish, and celery minced so that it retains some crunch but readily mixes with the creamy yolks and other ingredients. I would then fill each egg with the mixture. The experience would be equivalent to gastronomic joy. At least that’s how I envision it.

My investigation of egg eatery continued with an exploration of shirred eggs. I do not know whether I have ever had shirred eggs, but I know now how important it is for me to try them. I will need sufficiently heat-resistant ramekins that can handle both stove-top heat and the fierce heat of the broiler. The idea of shirred eggs appeals to me in much the same way the idea of coddled eggs pleases my imagination. Runny yolks and set whites, for some reason, gratify me. Perfectly-cooked shirred eggs will (or so I read) accomplish that perfect marriage between “rare” and “done.”

The complex simplicity of egg dishes is nowhere more evident than in oeufs en meurette, a Burgundian dish that is said to have originated in east-central France. The dish is made with poached eggs accompanied by a meurette sauce/bourguignon sauce made with Burgundy red wine, bacon, onions, and shallots browned in butter; it is traditionally served with toasted garlic bread. I believe I need this dish if my time of this Earth is ever to be considered a success.

Many years ago, when I was taller and thinner and better-looking, I had Eggs Hussarde at home. I may have had the dish at Brennan’s in New Orleans, where it originated, but I’m not sure about that. I remember, though, the home version. It was an extremely complex dish that involved making Marchands de vin sauce and Hollandaise sauce. Ingredients include Canadian bacon, English muffins, sliced tomatoes, lemon juice, dry mustard, and on and on. It was well-worth the trouble, as I recall. Yet every time I have mentioned it since, the idea is cold-shouldered. I must make it myself. It’s simply a requirement. It must be done.

Baked eggs, too, have their appeal. As do huevos estrellados and, of course, migas and chilaquiles and simple scrambled eggs. Eggs are, without a doubt, the food of the gods. Zeus ate eggs, I believe, though I have no evidence that he did. As did Hera. Neptune did, as well, though he preferred his eggs poached in sea water. Hmm. That might be an interesting deviation from an otherwise rather mundane (but heartbreakingly delicious) dish.

Enough about eggs. I must ready myself for a trip to church, where I will meet other church men in the parking lot, much space between us, to discuss things other than cooking, I suspect.

Posted in Food | 2 Comments

How Little I Really Know

Posted on May 20, 2020 by John Swinburn

As I quickly skimmed a series of video clips this morning on BBC.com, I had to admit to myself that I am not as intellectually humble as I sometimes think I am. Too often, I am highly opinionated and absolutely convinced my perspective on the world is the “correct” one. My certainty dismisses the possibility that I might be intellectually fallible. In reality, though, I might be wrong about matters about which I am absolutely convinced I am right. I am, too often, a victim of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is defined as:

a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability.

Put another way, a person who lacks knowledge or expertise is not in a position to realize he lacks knowledge or expertise. In other words, I don’t know what I don’t know or don’t know what I can’t do. That stings. To acknowledge that I am not as “smart” as I think I am is painful. But a little humility probably won’t hurt me; well, it won’t hurt anything but my misplaced pride.

A social psychologist, in explaining the Dunning-Kruger Effect notes that “we all have pockets of incompetence,” therefore we all fail to recognize our own incompetence from time to time. While it’s nice to be given that opportunity to recover and burnish our pride, it would pay all of us valuable dividends to recognize that, even in our strongest opinions, we might be wrong. And kernels of truth may hide deep in positions held by people with whom we fiercely disagree about matters about which we are certain.

I found it interesting to learn that research has shown no correlation between levels of intellectual humility and intelligence (IQ). But, research found a correlation between level of intellectual humility and the way people viewed their intelligence. That is, people with high intellectual humility tend to be conservative in assessing their own intelligence/ cognitive ability, whereas people with low intellectual humility tend to believe they are more intelligent and capable of solving problems than objectively measured.

Intellectual humility tends to correlate positively with the belief that intellectual ability is malleable. That is, that we can grow “smarter” through intentional efforts. Conversely, a belief that intellect is fixed (i.e., you’re born with a limited amount of intellectual capacity), correlates with lower intellectual humility.

One of the points I found especially interesting as I viewed and read materials regarding intelligence and intellectual humility was a cautionary statement. It said, in effect: we should pay particularly close attention to people whose perspectives are at odds with our own because our perspectives may be misaligned with facts. That is, we may not know what we don’t know, while those other people may have knowledge that we don’t.

I was disappointed in myself for having failed to remember learning about the Dunning-Kruger Effect while I was in college. My disappointment vanished when I found that the research which led to the term’s development was not conducted until 25 years, more or less, after I graduated from college. So, there was some good news in my exploration this morning; I did not simply forget something I should have learned in school.

Speaking of learning: during a recent Zoom video-call with two of my brothers and my sister, I learned that my oldest brother and my sister are using time made available by “the pandemic isolation” to take online courses through the Kahn Academy. I have learned various “stuff” through the Kahn Academy during the last few years, but it has been a while. I think I may go explore what’s available to brush up on my declining knowledge of sociology and social psychology. I might learn more about the Dunning-Kruger Effect in the process. And I might become more intellectually humble as I realize just how little I really know.

 

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Unbearable Ennui

Posted on May 18, 2020 by John Swinburn

Perhaps the enormous consequences of the pandemic are only now beginning to sink in. Maybe that is why, this morning, I feel fragile; as if I were a hollow vessel whose skin is a microscopically-thin crystalline membrane left behind when salt water evaporated. A touch or a breath could shatter that thin film into a million irretrievably broken pieces. The absence of those things, too, could trigger the explosion of that empty shell.

I have always understood the fragility of human life; any life. But life and living are distinct from one another. We can prolong life. But when the ability to live it disappears, life becomes a cage. A prison in which the inhabitants are predatory emotions. This morning, I think I understand how terribly and painfully delicate living can be. When the structures around which one lives one’s life are bent and deformed into unrecognizable forms, the purpose of life is called into question. Is life, in the absence of the ability to live it in a way that adds internal and external significance, really of value?

As much as I disagree with people who call for returning to “normal,” I think I understand their panic. They do not call for dangerous behavior simply because they are stupid (though they justify their demands with logic befitting only stupid people). They refuse to believe in the danger because to accept its existence would make them appear afraid. Instead, they demonstrate deep-seated fear of being unable to live their lives; they choose to ignore one type of fear and to disguise the other with bravado and wave after wave of illogical justifications. They may not know they are asking the same question in an abbreviated way: is life, in the absence of the ability to live it, worth living?

I am angry this morning, too. I am upset with a universe that would dare tease us with such remarkable opportunities for joy and then turn on us and threaten to shred those opportunities into useless rags soaked in misery and sorrow. But I question myself in my anger: how can I be angry at an inanimate “force,” an amalgamation of everything from matter to power to emptiness? My answer: I do not know. But I am. I should have stayed in bed this morning and slept this off. I don’t think it’s possible to sleep off a deep and unbearable ennui, though.

Some mornings, I wake up singing silly songs. This is not such a morning.

Regardless, I will try to flip a switch and turn into my happier self.

Posted in Anger, Depression, Fear | Leave a comment

Mindset: A Partial Circle

Posted on May 13, 2020 by John Swinburn

There was a time, when asked whether I was religious or believed in God, I would respond that I was not religious, but I was spiritual. That response felt utterly artificial, because the word “spiritual” felt like a fraudulent disguise for my mindset. That was a time before I was willing to publicly acknowledge my atheism, knowing full well that many people in my small sphere would recoil in horror at such an admission.

Their “Christian” mindsets had been molded and shaped and carved into attractive statues that, on their surface, seemed nonjudgmental and welcoming, if somewhat stiff and unbending. Beneath that smooth surface, though, was a capriciously harsh and dogmatic swirl that revealed itself in their readiness to condemn beliefs that did not mirror theirs. Even by claiming spirituality in lieu of religiosity, I was suspect. When, finally, I admitted to atheism, I was the spawn of the Devil; or something like it.

When I openly acknowledged agnosticism (my tentative exploration of reactions to non-Christianity; I was not agnostic, I was atheist), I was pitied. I was told I was simply “confused” and could easily be made whole and clear-thinking again with just a little curative religion.  But when I crossed the line and admitted atheism, the rejection was swift. Though I do not recall being openly ostracized, I remember the reactions of certain people: “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll pray for your soul.” That was one of the more compassionate ones.

I am thinking of this history of my transition from secretive to open atheist because it occurs to me that, over time, I came to unwittingly react to religious “believers” the same the way Christians reacted to me. Pity. Scorn. A feeling of intellectual and spiritual superiority.

As my willingness to more and more publicly acknowledge my atheism grew, so did my derision of beliefs in supernatural beings (and in the people who held them). I laughed (usually only in my head) at people who believed the Bible was the literal word of God. I looked on in surprise and with humor as I witnessed people fervently praying to a being I was confident did not exist, nor had ever existed. My reactions to those people and their beliefs included antipathy, condescension, ridicule, and mockery, among others. In other words, the same reactions they had to the Godless heathen who walked among them.

I do not recall precisely when I began to recognize when my contempt for religion and the religious had began to temper. But I recall quite clearly the time frame when I became conscious that my previously steadfast verdict about religion and the religious was softening. It was when I began attending the Unitarian Universalist Village Church. Me, once an almost zealous anti-religious cheerleader, attending church?

The messages of that church—mirroring my approach to humanity so completely—surprised me. I felt that I could have written the church’s principles:

  • The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
  • Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
  • Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth;
  • A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
  • The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process;
  • 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.

It was the third principle, acceptance, that really got my attention. The church willingly accepted atheists, Christians, agnostics, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, ad infinitum. The second element of the church that appealed to me was the recognition that these principles are attitudes to which we aspire, not necessarily intellectual or emotional accomplishments we have already achieved. The message, regularly, is that by pursuing those principles in our everyday lives, we are constantly in pursuit of creating a better version of ourselves.

Another aspect of the church that appealed to me was the subtle way in which one of its messages found its way into my head. That message was, again, about acceptance. If I wanted to be accepted and encouraged  toward spiritual growth, I had to relinquish the judgmental sword I held over the heads of people whose beliefs differed from, or were directly in opposition to, my own.

But that realization led to more questions. What the hell is spiritual? The dictionary comes to my aid and rescue:

  1. of, relating to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal
  2. of or relating to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature
  3. closely akin in interests, attitude, outlook, etc.
  4. of or relating to spirits or to spiritualists; supernatural or spiritualistic.

That leads, of course, to the definition of spirit:

  1. the principle of conscious life; the vital principle in humans, animating the body or mediating between body and soul
  2. the incorporeal part of humans.

DAMN! I hit “publish” instead of “save draft.” So, I guess I better edit the unintentionally published post. This post will be continued, some day, when my still developing thoughts around the subject coalesce in some reasonable, understandable way. In the interim, it stands as is; a partial exploration of my thinking and how it’s still in the process of making a partial circle toward its “final” perspective on looking at the world. In reality, I doubt my  perspective will ever be “final.” It will continue to evolve and, I hope, become shaped more and more by an intelligent way of looking at the world and my place in it.

Posted in Religion | Leave a comment

Insufficient Fire

Posted on May 12, 2020 by John Swinburn

Almost ten years ago, I sent an email to quite a few (roughly 30) friends and acquaintances. Complete with a few glaring typos (corrected here), I think it’s safe to say I composed the invitation—that recipients join me to help support the residents of Grand Isle, Louisiana—after I’d had a few glasses of wine. This morning, as I read the message I sent, my memory was cloudy. What hurricane struck Grand Isle, Louisiana in June, 2010? My message did not mention a storm; I just assumed it was a hurricane. But as I dredged my memories and explored the events of 2010, it finally became clear to me: the crisis that so impacted the tourism industry (and many others) in Grand Isle was the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

Friends and acquaintances,

I have hatched what may be a hair-brained idea but which I hope is an idea you can support. Here’s the deal: The residents of the Gulf Coast who depend on the tourism industry are hurting and hurting bad. Motels and fishing guides have no customers; restaurants are empty. The town of Grand Isle is among the hardest hit and the least able to cope with the crisis. The people of Grand Isle depend on the Gulf for their livelihoods; with the oil spill, their lives are up in the air.

My hair-brained idea is this:

Let’s have a party! All of us who know one another and who can tolerate one another’s company could have a helluva time in Grand Isle, I’m sure. What do you think about picking a weekend (very soon…maybe even the July 4 weekend) and going over to Grand Isle with a group of your friends? We could go over as a group or individually, rent motels so that we’d have places to stay (and they would be able to feed their kids for another day), ask them (restaurants, etc.) to throw us a big party, and just have a great time experiencing the hospitality of the Louisiana Coast. We’d expect to pay their normal rates for hotel and food, etc., but we’d expect them to help us have a good time by showing us how a real Louisiana party is done!

I believe we could do a lot of good for a bunch of good people who, through no fault of their own, are suffering a horrific economic nightmare. Are you in? Tell me what you think! And please, circulate this email as widely as you can. I would like this to be a big, very successful event for Grand Isle.

Please tell me soon whether you’d be in and when would be a good time for you. Let’s assume you’d fly to New Orleans on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, rent a car, and drive to Grand Isle. You’d come back Sunday afternoon or Monday, as you wish (or stay longer and help even more).

I think this could be a lot of fun and could be enormously beneficial to the people of the Gulf Coast. Who knows, it this is successful, maybe we could encourage others to do it for other parts of the coast!

Please, let me know what you think and whether you’d be willing to support this. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for considering this hair-brained idea!

John Swinburn

No one responded in the affirmative, as far as I can recall. Not a single person. Out of all of my acquaintances, apparently no one considered it a serious suggestion. Or, if they did, none of the recipients was either able or willing to invest either the time or the money to support the residents and businesses of Grand Isle, Louisiana. When I got no positive feedback, I abandoned the idea. I certainly could do very little on my own. I had believed I could gather “my people” around so we could collectively do what none of us could have done individually. I was wrong.

During the course of the next several years, money was spent in an attempt to restore the ecosystems so badly damaged by the BP oil spill. Queen Bess Island, an important nesting area for Louisiana brown pelicans, was restored with fines levied against BP.  There were other injections of money and support, mostly geared toward restoring or attempting to restore devastated wildlife habitats. The people of Grand Isle were recipients of such support, albeit indirectly.

Several years earlier, I somehow connected with a woman, Kimberly Chauvin, who, with her husband, were shrimpers and shrimp retailers in Terrebone Parish, Louisiana. They had a shrimp boat, the Mariah Jade. I bought shrimp from her after another disaster, Hurricane Katrina, did almost incomprehensible damage to the shrimping industry and, therefore, to the shrimping business she and her husband ran. My purchase of shrimp was a tiny, almost invisible token of support for them. I think my interest in showing up to support Grand Isle was as much a desire to help someone I “knew” (but did not really) as it was a more global sense of responsibility to the people of the community.

At any rate, nothing ever became of my message asking my acquaintances to support Grand Isle. I never made contact with Kimberly Chauvin again, nor did I do anything else to support the victims of the Deepwater Horizon. Oh, I may have donated a pittance to a fund dedicated to recovery, but even if I did, it was essentially meaningless. I wanted BP to pick up the entire tab for the damage their oil platform’s failure had done. They paid, but not nearly enough, in my estimation.

I was disheartened that no one took me up on my invitation to go to Grand Isle. I’ve still never been there. I doubt I’ll ever go.

The fact that I did not even remember why I had written my message without first dragging memories out of my brain tells me I may not have been as fully engaged and committed as I thought I was. It was just another catastrophe. One of many human tragedies with calamitous consequences for wildlife and the environment, as well. I took one shot at helping; that shot failed; time to move one.

A comment made recently on an older post here give me pause. The person who commented said “I think where we often go wrong, however, is with forced compassion. I’ve become ever more convinced that forced compassion is quite often, the road to hell.”  I responded with, “Forced compassion bypasses genuine emotion; I think it’s bound to be artificial and insincere. Regardless of the desire to be compassionate, if compassion does not arise naturally, I think the emotion that attempts to mimic it is hollow, at best, and as insulting as it is patronizing.” I wonder, was my half-hearted attempt to garner support for Grand Isle just forced compassion? When it failed to generate a response, I let it go. True compassion would have sought out another way, done something else in an effort to accomplish the same objective.

The fire in the belly that sparked the call to action was not hot enough. It was just an ember that died for want of a more vibrant spark. I should have poured gasoline on it and tried to spark it again. Instead, I let it smolder until the ember turned to ash. I sometimes get very angry with myself for my inaction. And that anger can last for years.

Posted in Stream of Consciousness | 2 Comments

Throwing Eight-Balls at Apartment Walls

Posted on May 10, 2020 by John Swinburn

One of the synonyms for ‘dream’ is ‘vision.’ A bad dream is a nightmare. As people get older, they complain of a loss of night vision. But is ‘nightmare’ actually a euphemism for a decline in visual acuity in low light? That is, does that loss of optical clarity in dim or dark conditions cause troubling nocturnal delusions? Or, do complaints about the loss of night vision actually conceal a secret mourning for the demise, as we age, of bad dreams?

One might suspect I am a specialist in circumlocution, an expert in indirectness, a trained tautologist. No, I simply wonder whether our brains are wired in weird and not-so-wonderful ways. Or, I should say, my brain. It is possible that the synapses in my nervous system misfire on a frequent but irregular basis, like a gasoline engine with a cracked spark plug or a semi-clogged fuel line. What, does any of this have to do with throwing eight-balls at apartment walls? Let me explain.

Last night—it may have been early this morning—I experienced an odd dream. It may have been a nightmare,  bad dream, a strange and troubling nocturnal illusion. In this fantasy, I encountered in the hallway outside an apartment, a man who had been throwing eight-balls—the black pocket billiards sphere on which a black number eight is printed on a white circular background—against the inside walls. The sound of the eight-balls hitting the walls was deafening and, I was sure, terribly upsetting to the residents in nearby apartments who could no doubt hear and feel the concussion of the balls.

I somehow knew that this dimwit was headed to the same place I was going, a building across a parking lot, where I would join a friend to participate in a game of some kind, along with my friend’s friends.  Nonetheless, I asked the eight-ball-thrower where he was going. He said he was, as I knew, on his way across the parking lot.

“I  hope you’re not going to be throwing those eight-balls over there,” I said, “because people find that damn noise offensive.”

“Oh, yeah, I am,” he responded. “I don’t care whether they find it offensive or not. I’m here to have fun, not to tiptoe around some dipshit’s sensibilities.”

“If that dipshit has a pistol, you’ll care.”

I wanted to be out of that place. I hated being involved in whatever game they were playing. Suddenly, I was like a world-class baseball pitcher, as I threw an eight-ball as hard and fast as I could, right into the dimwit’s temple. Though I did not see it, I knew he crumpled to the ground. By the time he did, I had turned and fled across the parking lot. The last part of the dream I recall was attempting to open the trunk of a car.

The dream seems to make no sense whatsoever. Although, if my subconscious is considerably more complex than I think it is, there might be some convoluted sense in the nightmare, after all. Lately, I have grown increasingly frustrated and angry by posts on Nextdoor and Facebook. Rather than simply ignore them, I’ve let my ire at the posts fester. Finally, yesterday, I decided I’d had enough.

Around noon yesterday, I deactivated my Facebook account and closed my Nextdoor account. Though my Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram accounts remain active, I rarely log onto them, so I will be free of social media except for this blog, at least for awhile. I suppose I could have simply decided not to log onto Facebook or Nextdoor, but it felt better shutting them down. I expect some semblance of serenity to return to my brain in a reasonable time frame; I have been allowing posts on those two platforms to stoke anger, rage, and probably raise my blood pressure to unhealthy limits. I haven’t checked blood pressure lately, for fear the numbers would cause me to have a stroke.

For the immediate near-term, at least, my social media will constitute mostly one-way communication on this blog. I’m satisfied with that.

I’ve already dramatically reduced my diet of television news from every source. Social media was the remaining hot poker that kept stabbing me in the eye; I’ve plunged that weapon into a pool of icy water.

So, perhaps there is a connection between my odd nocturnal delusion, in a labrynthine way, and my myopic inability to simply walk away from the source of distress, instead, taking an ax to it. Or maybe not. For a while, anyway, I will be free of the intellectual blindness caused by dim and dark comments. I’m stretching the metaphors and similes a little too much. If I’m not careful, they might snap back and hit me in the eye like an eight-ball thrown by a world-class pitcher.

 

Posted in Anger, Dreams | Leave a comment

Acceptable Ambivalence

Posted on May 9, 2020 by John Swinburn

The first Icelandic Netflix series, Katla (a sci-fi series) will begin shooting soon in Vík í Mýrdal, Iceland. Part of the town has already been covered in volcanic ash in preparation for filming. Þorbjörg Gísladóttir, the director of the local tourist council, says “the timing (of shooting) is perfect” and further says she understands the series will begin airing next February. Baltasar Kormákur is the filmmaker responsible for creating the eight-episode series with his co-creator, Sigurjón Kjartansson. The series was written by crime writer and playwright Lilja Sigurðardóttir, screenwriter Davíð Már Stefánsson, and Kjartansson, who serves as show-runner.

This is the sort of thing one learns by occasionally reading foreign news websites. I got wind of this information from the online version of The Iceland Monitor.  Because the topic interested me, I explored elsewhere, learning more about the project by reading an article on Cineuropa. I’ve learned other things from The Iceland Monitor in months and years past. I believe The Iceland Monitor is where I learned that Iceland has a Naming Committee that rules on the permissibility of baby names. When I first learned the Iceland had baby-naming rules, I was incensed. But the more I read about it and thought about it, the more I came to appreciate the importance of retaining aspects of one’s culture. It is not about cultural “purity,” as I once thought, but about cultural integrity. There’s quite a difference. Yet the concept remains moderately troubling to me; my feelings are ambivalent, as they often are.

But back to film. In reading about Katla, I learned of another Icelandic series I want to watch, entitled Trapped. It is available on Amazon Prime Video. As I’ve written before (many times, probably), I have become enamored of Scandinavian film and Scandinavian television series, especially crime drama. It’s a bit hard to understand, much less to explain, why I am so drawn to the genre of, for want of a better term, Scandinavian Crime Drama Noir. Suffice it to say I find much of the genre riveting. It entertains me in a way I want to be entertained. In some cases, it is intellectually stimulating, but my primary motive for watching it is entertainment.  But it’s not just Scandinavian television and film I find appealing; it’s foreign fare across the board. In thinking of television series and films I have enjoyed (and plan to watch), it becomes apparent that I am equally taken with German and French and Spanish and Israeli and…so forth. Before I finish this post, I’ll make a list of foreign films and series I’ve watched so I’ll have a single place on my blog where I can find it. If I remember where I put it or how I categorized it.

I’m in the midst of watching another Amazon Prime series, The Man in the High Castle, based on a 1962 alternate-history novel by Philip Dick. I have not read the novel, but I want to. First, I will finish the series. My brother, who has read the book, says the series is far more involved and intricate. The premise of the story (so far) is that Japan and Germany won World War II and have divided the United States into Japanese and German territories. Dick’s daughter, Isa Dick Hackett, is a producer of the series. Not that it matters much to me; just an idle fact rattling around, temporarily, in my head.

I’m also watching Ozark, a rather quirky crime drama series involving money laundering and hillbilly intrigue. The writing is exceptional. I like the series but I loathe it; not the series, but the fact that some of the characters are so absolutely real and regionally unflattering. It’s actually hard to digest how I feel about it. Okay. I love it.

I’m slowly watching The Good Fight, as episodes become available on CBS All Access. Netflix spoiled me for the plodding nature of broadcast-style television series.  And I have, apparently, caught up with (and am having to wait for) new episodes of Better Call Saul.

It looks like I watch television more than I actually do. All of this stuff (and the stuff that follows) reflect a rather long timeline.

All right. Now, for the list I wrote about a few moments ago:

  • The Break (Belgian) (called La Trêve, in French, translated as “The Truce”)
  • Broadchurch (British)
  • House of Cards (original British version)
  • Unit 42 (German)
  • Occupied (Norwegian) (Norwegian title is Okkupert)
  • In Order of Disappearance (Norwegian) (the Norwegian title is Kraftidioten)
  • Department Q Trilogy (Dutch)
    • Keeper of Lost Causes (adapted from  the book, Mercy (English title)
    • The Absent Ones (adapted from  the book, Disgrace (English title)
    • A Conspiracy of Faith (adapted from  the book, Redemption (English title)
  • The Wave (the Norwegian title for which is Bølgen)
  • The White Helmets (British documentary)
  • Fauda (Israeli) (watching another season now)

The Department Q Trilogy is based on books in a lengthy series by Jussi Adler-Olsen. I’m anxiously awaiting access to the next film in the series (after the trilogy) called Purity of Vengeance, adapted from Adler-Olsen’s book, Guilty, (English title). I haven’t found it on Netflix nor on Amazon Prime; I want it, though. I understand it is the highest-grossing Danish film of all time. Hmm. I’m interested in reading the entire series by Adler-Olsen; at last count, there were eight books in the Department Q series.

Some other series/films I plan/want to watch are:

  • Dead to Me (a new season)
  • After Life (a new season)
  • The Occupant (Spanish, via Netflix)
  • Borgen (Danish)
  • The Valhalla Murders
  • Trapped (Icelandic series)
  • La Mante (French series)
  • The Platform (Spanish, via Netflix)
  • Giri/Haji (Japanese series)
  • The Forest (la forêt) (French series)
  • The Midnight Gospel (Netflix animated series)
  • The Breaker Upperers (New Zealand film [in English, of course])
  • The Photographer of Mauthausen (Spanish, via Netflix)
  • No doubt many, many more

I have mixed feelings about globalization. I am afraid globalization has the capacity to erase cultures, just as it has the capacity to enrich them by exposing cultures to their counterparts that are geographically distant from one another. Like so many other aspects of existence, I’m ambivalent about it.

That’s all for this morning. I have people to be and things to see.

Posted in Film, Scandinavian, Television, Television series | 2 Comments

Fetching Tomatoes

Posted on May 7, 2020 by John Swinburn

Slices of green tomatoes dredged in cornmeal and fried in bacon grease. They are slightly tart and incredibly addictive. I believe I could eat two or three pounds by myself; of course, I would later pay the price for such gluttony with abdominal pain. But it would be worth it. Alas, I will not eat two or three pounds by myself. I will eat a fraction of that volume. I will share, because that is what one does. One shares one’s bounty. It is the right thing to do.

At the moment, there are no green tomatoes in the house. Before long, though, I will drive to the Ponce de Leon Center parking lot and will retrieve the two pounds I paid for yesterday. I had planned on buying green bell peppers, purple bell peppers, bok choi, and Napa cabbage, as well, but Ouachita Hills Farm, the supplier, was sold out. So, I have to be satisfied with green tomatoes. And I will be satisfied. More or less. I will want more than I eat, but I will appreciate what I have.

Except for my passion for meat, fish, eggs, and dairy products, I think I could be a vegan. I’m certain I could be a vegetarian…except for, as I mentioned, my passion for animal-based products. I have mixed feelings about eating animal products. On the one hand, killing animals for food is unnecessary. On the other, I think it is natural, much like it is natural for other animal predators to stalk and kill their prey.

You’ll notice I said “other animal predators,” thereby suggesting (rather strongly) that humans are predators, too. Indeed we are. We are predatory by nature. Our predation is not limited to killing and eating other animals, either. We prey upon other humans. Not for food, but to feed our ego, our innate greed, our desire for superiority, and our lust for power. I suggested our predation on humans is not for food. That may be true as a generalization, but it is not a universal truth. If one believes Wikipedia, humans are among a rather large throng of cannibals. I quote:

“Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, both in ancient and in recent times.”

Human cannibalism stuns us. When we hear of it, we tell stories and write books about it, documenting our dismay over behaviors we find both repulsive and, in an odd and macabre way, attractive. Think of the whaleship Essex, whose crew members resorted to cannibalism after the ship was sunk after being attacked by a sperm whale. The experience inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. How many books and films and campfire tales have been spun as a result of the Donner Party‘s  tragic westward migration? And the 1972 tragedy of Flight 571 of the Uruguayan Air Force that crashed in the Andes; the dwindling number of survivors resorted to eating the bodies of the dead in order to survive. One of the first books to be written about the tragedy, Vivir O Morir, was published the following year.

Humans’ relationship with food is one of both necessity and gluttony. We both tolerate and treasure the act of eating. Food is merely fuel, but it can take on an almost spiritual aura. What other fuel can do that? Gasoline? Kerosene? Coal? Electricity? No, food is alone in its unique ability to both feed us and fuel our frenzied admiration. An admiration like the one I have for fried green tomatoes.

But I won’t get away quite that easily; not after having stumbled across thoughts of cannibalism. I have a hard time imagining myself slaughtering a goat or a cow or a pig. The idea of butchering the animal once it has been killed is slightly easier to picture in my mind. Preparing and cooking the meat is quite easy to imagine. I could go back a step and imagine eating it raw, when given the right “cuts.” In fact, I’ve eaten plenty of raw beef and raw seafood. But would I, could I, eat human flesh? I suspect, in exceedingly trying circumstances, I could, especially if the other option was starvation. But would I be as concerned about how to prepare the flesh as I am when considering beef or pork or chicken? I rather doubt it. I would probably try to force my mind to be elsewhere while I stoked the fuel I needed to survive.

I wonder whether, after being forced to consume human flesh for the sake of survival, a person might develop a taste for it? How long would it take for a person to get over the initial revulsion and, ultimately, begin to look forward to it? Revolting idea, on the one hand, but a matter of extreme curiosity, on the other. I’m not prepared to find out, of course, but I might write a fictionalized account of a group of people who, stranded in an unreachable place over a period of years, gradually take up cannibalism as a celebration of the lives of dead members of their tribe. At some point, a member of the group takes the first slippery step down the steep slope by deciding not to wait until a member dies. Is it murder or simply preparation of a meal?

My mind wanders, of course, to character names. What can we make of it when the parents of a newborn decided to call their new son Protein? Do their other children, Harissa and Cinammon, suspect the folks are preparing for an elaborate meal that will be prepared at their children’s expense?

I think I’ll stick to veggies for now. And I’m cutting down on my consumption of meat. So cannibalism is off the table, so to speak. And it’s time for me to don daytime clothes so I can go fetch my precious green tomatoes. My, aren’t those tomatoes fetching? Yes, I believe they are fetching tomatoes. And I will be doing the same. Fetching tomatoes.

Posted in Food | Leave a comment