John Swinburn

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

   ~ Bertrand Russell ~

Acknowledging one’s own secrets can feel as though lightning bolts are coursing through one’s veins, setting nerve endings ablaze in tiny, but palpable explosions. The idea of divulging those personal secrets can augment the explosions with the sensation of shredding, like a million miniscule scalpels are slicing one’s nerves into long, thin fibers. And then dipping the shredded filaments in a mercurochrome bath. Oh, it might extinguish the blazes, but it may be like dousing the burn of a ghost pepper on the tongue with a swig of hydrochloric acid. At some point, the idea of severing one’s own head seems a reasonable option, thereby eliminating the source of the problem. That’s a crazy idea, of course, but keeping a single-use guillotine in the back of the closet—just in case—doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

The world can, at times, seem too burdensome to tolerate. But, as we all know, the world can change in an instant. Peacefulness can become chaos in the blink of an eye. Yet the reverse is true, as well. Calamity can dissolve into serenity, too. Anxiety can be transformed into tranquility just as quickly. In those seconds beforehand, though, the metamorphosis from negative to positive can feel like light years, multiplied by themselves. If only we have enough composure and patience to wait, the universe eventually sorts itself out into a rather ordered, calm, placid place. Usually. If we cannot muster enough restraint, though, we risk severing our head just before witnessing an impossibly beautiful sunrise. That’s the problem with certainty. When one is certain the end of the world is seconds away, it is. But when one is willing to wait it out, just to see, seconds can turn into decades. Our lives are studies in risk. When we can prevent others from stumbling into an abyss, we should. And we can prevent others from that stumble—always .

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Both the Right and the Left whine about the other side’s intransigence while exhibiting extraordinarily intransigent behavior. That is true of Washington politicos, of course, but it’s equally true of damn near everyone who identifies as either Republican or Democrat. Or, for that matter, Independent. Or Green. Or Tea Party. Or Libertarian. If every person absolutely certain of his or her rectitude suddenly vaporized into a pleasant, vanilla-scented mist, the air would have an overwhelming, cloying odor of vanilla beans and the world would be a far more peaceful, agreeable, and enjoyable place.

Although I find almost every Republican in Congress as disgusting as I’ve ever found a person to be, I cannot say many positive things about Democrats in the same institution. They are, with rare exceptions, partisan scum. Their philosophies are not their own. Their beliefs are fed intravenously to them by monied power-mongers, whose ideas they greedily consume. They regurgitate those philosophies as their own in return for the trappings of power and the illegitimate pecuniary rewards they “earn” through their unwavering allegiance to hateful ideas and their promises of support to the endeavors of their masters.

I feel rage inside me for the people “we” elect to Congress and to various and sundry other institutions we vest with the power to control our lives. But, that rage notwithstanding, I will harness my ill-will and place it in a paddock with the other animal-like ideas trotting around in my brain.

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The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

   ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ~

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I wonder whether any of what we call “morality” is innate? Without being taught that killing another human being is wrong, would we be more likely to kill people? Are any parts of our internal “moral” codes part of us when we emerge from the womb? Without the constraints imposed by artificial limits, would the survivors among us be killers? Would we engage in child-making behaviors with random strangers on a regular basis? Would we take others’ belongings without any sense of guilt or concern? Would we cheat on tests, or lie about income to avoid taxes? Conversely, would we come to the aid of a person injured in an auto accident, without the guidance of a social moral code? Would fidelity be automatic? Would we avoid taking things that do not belong to us?

So many questions. And the answers are colored by what we are taught.

When I woke this morning, I remembered everything—the whole dream. I should have transcribed it then, because now I remember only fleeting scenes. I remember the woman’s friend, Max Sabrrir, finding me after we got separated while he was inquiring about my lost overcoat. I remember her exiting a magnificent building where her friend lived, when she told me not to worry about the coat; “we will find it.” She led me through a building that had once been the setting for Homicide: Life on the Street. When we left that place, we went out into a dense, frenzied cityscape, where she stopped to buy enormous avocados from a street vendor. I remember another woman, a massage therapist, with whom I had an appointment. I arrived at her place of business, a former mattress store inside a mall, on time. But she came in late. Then, as she asked me to get onto an odd table outfitted with pulleys and weights, several members of her family came into the store and made quite a fuss. They knelt at a large table, like a big rectangular dining table, and prayed aloud in a language I did not understand. I think it was Arabic. Max Sabrrir (odd that I saw his name on the side of a building, which is why I remember it and its strange spelling) had been prepared to spend thousands of dollars on some sort of reception in his effort to find my lost coat; it was worth no more than $300. I was embarrassed by how seriously Max and the woman took the loss of my coat.  I remembered it all when I awoke. But now, even the parts I remembered—when I wrote about them moments ago—are disappearing into a mist; grey vapors enshroud the scenes as if they are taking place in a room filled with operating theatrical fog machines.

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Last night was my first using a bilevel positive airway pressure (BPAP) machine. The device, similar to a CPAP machine, pumps air into the lungs through the mouth (by way of a mask connected to an electrical device). The mask, attached to the machine with a hose, is worn during the night to facilitate breathing and to reduce sleep apnea and/or episodes of arrested breathing. The reason I am experiencing this oddity is that mi novia asked me, months ago, to participate in a sleep study to explore the reasons for the odd noises I make while sleeping (or trying to sleep). The study determined that my breathing stopped for brief periods about seventeen times per night, enough to warrant prescribing a machine to improve my breathing during sleep. For a variety of reasons, the device was not available until this week. I went in yesterday morning to get it and to sign my name multiple times to documents attesting to my promise to deliver my soul and many thousands of dollars if I fail to use the device at least 70% of the time I sleep for the next thousand years. Or something like that. Thanks to the mask, I woke this morning with two permanent marks on my face, marks I believe are signs announcing to the world that I am now possessed by a demon who controls my breathing. Eventually, if I survive a certain number of months, I will no longer be under a financial obligation should I stop wearing the mask. Based on last night’s experience, I cannot wait until that certain number of months have passed. There is some suggestion that I could get out from under the obligation earlier if I were to lose a considerable amount of weight, whereupon a doctor might say I no longer need the instrument of torture to accompany me to bed. I may adopt a water and radish diet to test that suggestion.

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I used primer to cover the dark walls of the room in our new house that will become our guest room/TV room. I hope to finish priming those walls, as well as the walls in the master bath, today. And I hope to take care of many other tasks associated with finishing the preparation of the house for move-in. And I hope to finish some work in the current house, too; some cosmetic stuff that will make it “show” even better than it does without the special attention. Soon, I hope, the Realtor will announce that she is ready to list it. I fantasize that she will say, even before then, that she has a cash buyer ready to buy before it is listed on MLS. I have to restrain my fantasies, though. They could get me in trouble, if I let them convince me it’s all peaches and cream and everlasting wealth.

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Even though I am very happy with mi novia, I find myself missing my late wife enormously. This morning, I read several blog posts I wrote about her just before and after her death. They brought back memories, both so painful and so beautiful, I could not control my sobs and my tears. The universe is immensely unfair and uncaring in shattering bonds so strong they could last more than forty years. And it is even more heartless and unsympathetic in allowing such memories to erupt with such power and with such frequency.

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Life changes a little every day. It is crazy to let fleeting moments pass without taking advantage of them. We should stop, often, and observe the beauty of the world around us. Steal the kiss. Smell the flower. Drink in the nectar or the pure water or the distilled spirits. Eat the most flavorful food, regardless of how fattening or how laden with cholesterol it is. In every case, do not go overboard; be brave and take risks—just be prudent and cognizant of their eventual consequences.  Worship the ground upon which we walk; this Earth is covered with the only ground we will ever know.  I feel especially grateful this morning, yet I have an unquenchable longing to experience everything outside of what I have experienced thus far. I wonder why that is?

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Time to rein in the fantasies and the dreams of riding on the backs of dragons. It’s time for breakfast.

A few days ago, in a conversation with a friend, I revealed that I often had been extremely demanding and hard on my staff during my work life. She said she, too, had high expectations of her employees—when those expectations were not met, she reacted harshly. Like me, she did nice things for her staff, too; gave them “goodies” on a regular basis, gave them discounted prices on products the business sold, etc. In both our cases, those niceties did not seem to overcome the exacting expectations and the consequences of failing to meet them.  In hindsight, both of us see the errors of our ways with painful clarity.

After our conversation, I gave the  matter considerably more thought. And I explored how, and whether, I could make amends for years of being the kind of employer I would never tolerate as an employee. There are dozens of resources, online and otherwise, about how to deal with an overly demanding boss. It is easy to find suggestions for successfully navigating a workplace with a boss whose expectations are unrealistic and who readily demonstrates his or her displeasure with performance that does not meet his expectations. But it’s not so easy to find out how to seek absolution for what, in hindsight, seems unforgiveable. Perhaps a letter to people one has “wronged” would suffice.  But the task of finding people is almost insurmountable. And, it occurs to me, letters would be written as a means of making me feel better; not to lighten the load of people who undeservedly incurred my wrath. Perhaps I do not deserve absolution; perhaps I deserve to live with the realization that I once was (and may still be?) an inconsiderate bastard who does not merit forgiveness.

Those are issues I am afraid will not be resolved for some time to come, if ever. They have been on my mind for a long time and they will remain there, gnawing at my sense of self-worth like a dog chews on a bone.  Perhaps that is the price one pays for allowing oneself to let unreasonably high expectations of performance overwhelm one’s sense of compassion. You live with who you are until you no longer can.

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Never inflict your rage on another. If you hope for eternal rest, feel the pain yourself; but don’t hurt others.

   ~ Omar Khayyam ~

When I awoke this morning, I heard what sounded like torrential rain on the roof. But I did not attempt to look outside, to see whether it was, in fact, raining. A few minutes ago, I looked outside but could not see whether the deck was wet. It was not raining then, but it might have been raining earlier. I just do not know. Sometimes, it pays to verify one’s perceptions of the world in which we live; otherwise, we might as well be living in a dream. Or a nightmare.

I dreamed last night I was in a long line of people waiting to board a cruise ship. I worried that I had no ticket; nothing that would prove I had paid for the cruise. But when I made it to the ship, I was allowed on and, at the reception desk, my name was found on a passenger list. I was given a questionnaire to complete. From there, I suddenly found myself in a swimming pool full of people; everyone in the pool was completing their questionnaires. Someone asked about a drink of water. “Don’t drink from the pool water, it’s very dirty,” came the reply. My recollection of the dream ends there. There may have been more; maybe not.  In the dream, I thought it odd that I would be in a swimming pool, trying to complete a passenger questionnaire; but I did not inquire about the oddity of that strange circumstance. I thought asking the question might reveal that I did not buy my ticket; and, because whoever did was not there, I might be thrown off the ship. So I simply went along with the weirdness. I wonder whether, in the real world, I would behave like a sheep that way?

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We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves, otherwise we harden.”

   ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ~

“Sleeping in” is, for some people, a luxury. For me, it plunders my sense of serenity—when I sleep late, the day loses its footing even before it begins. And it doesn’t take much to lay waste to what might be an otherwise productive day. Yesterday was such a day. I slept in until “only” almost 6:30. Consequently, I did not write a legitimate blog post. I did not get to Lowe’s to investigate utility sinks and faucets. I did not finish painting the “bonus room” in my current home. My list of to-do items grew longer, not shorter. But I almost finished painting the laundry room (which I’ve intended to paint for the entire eight years I’ve lived in this house)—although an uncooperative dryer vent hose slowed progress to a crawl. And I moved quite a few tools to the new house. And I returned a long-ago borrowed item to a friend, which led to a lengthy visit and, therefore, away from productivity. However, as is often the case, I realized I needed that break from “productivity.” As the day began to dim, I called it a day and I took a much-needed shower. Then, I sat in my recliner to relax. Mi novia made me a drink. A little later, she made me another. I let that one sit, untouched, while I “rested” for awhile. Until it was time to discard the untouched drink and go to bed early. I think I may have needed to get up late and go to sleep very early.

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Profundity refuses to spill from my fingers this morning, so I will rest them for awhile. Perhaps tomorrow I will have recovered a tiny bit of my sense of self; enough to write something that matters.

Today’s blog post has been detained for questioning. In the event the answers do not lead to criminal charges, the post will be released on its own recognizance and will be free to muddy the internet with random thoughts and grandiose ideas.

How do people become corrupt? How do people fail to embrace ethics and consequently engage in unethical behavior? Or, after accepting and internalizing an ethos of integrity that translates into moral behavior, why do they abandon integrity in favor of deceit or corruption? And how does corruption blossom into something as terrible as full-scale war?

Those questions rattle around in my head this morning as I think about Vladamir Putin and his deadly catastrophic misadventures in Ukraine.  And I wonder why good people seem unwilling to stop the bad people, the latter of whom are far fewer in number? Why can’t good prevail, when there is so much more good than bad in the world? Or is that a Pollyanna attitude? Some days, I want to beat my head against a stone until I am no longer able to experience the madness this planet brings to my doorstep and into my mind.

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There is just so much hurt, disappointment, and oppression one can take… The line between reason and madness grows thinner.

~ Rosa Parks ~

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“Leaning into pain.” That phrase never meant much to me until I had such intense pain I thought I would rather die than allow it to continue. Somehow, though, I managed to understand the concept of leaning into pain. I approached it from the perspective of learning what pain is to me. I visualized pain as a part of me from which I could take away knowledge by attempting to understand it. I measured its intensity and its duration, focusing more on measurement than the experience itself. That helped me get through that awful experience. Several times, in fact. Later, I read something that I keep trying to internalize, but haven’t always done successfully: The Buddha said, “You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere.” I suppose the problem with internalizing something so profound is that it is very difficult to actually believe it. Maybe impossible. But even in disbelief, it can help measure pain and may contribute to the ability to tolerate it.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

~ Ernest Hemingway ~

Mi novia and I got our second COVID vaccine boosters on Friday. Mine had no effect on how I felt yesterday, but mi novia felt achy and very tired. In fact, she spent much of the day either sleeping or in a recliner, resting. She also had a fever and there was a large, red, raised area on her arm around the injection site. I have never had any appreciable after-effect of any vaccinations (knock on wood). I hope mi novia feels better today.

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I spent a good part of the day yesterday painting the “bonus area behind the garage;” a white primer over the rather dark brownish-beige paint. Like the laundry room, the finished room will be a light grey. I wish I had painted both rooms this way eight years ago; they look absolutely spectacular! I know, how can a laundry room look spectacular? Well, maybe the laundry room simply looks very good; clean, fresh, inviting. The bonus area, which has its own HVAC system, separate from the main house, consists of two distinct rooms, separated by a door between them. Several windows bathe both rooms in sunlight, but light-blocking roll-down shades can block virtually all external light. When I finish painting the bonus area, it will be gorgeous. I used the rooms both as storage (they have enormous numbers of cabinets and drawers) and as a “getaway,” where I could burn my incense and write and simply “chill.” I’ll miss that area (especially now that it will be so beautiful) almost as much as the room I call the “sky room,” the room off the master bedroom that has three walls made mostly of windows. But the new house will have its own superb attributes, as well. Life goes on.

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Blessed are the hearts which bend, they never break.

   ~ St. Frances de Sales ~

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I have written so much for so long. Writing is both therapeutic for me and  presents an opportunity for me to express my appreciation to the universe for being here with me as I travel the roads of life or sit in the sun and watch life go by. If the Pareto Principle represents reality—and I think it does—twenty percent of my writing represents eighty percent of whatever value I might have created with my words. My problem with that reality is the difficulty of separating the wheat from the chaff. As an aside, that phrase, “separate the wheat from the chaff,” has biblical roots; depending on which version of the Bible one consults, its origin is from Luke 3:17—but so many versions of the Bible have been produced and so many different translations have been made that the real origin and the real meaning of the phrase always will be suspect. But, back to my thoughts: I hope there is, in my writing, at least a kernel of value to be found. Otherwise, pounding my keyboard for umpteen years has been a monumental waste of time.  This blog, the third or fourth I have produced, has been around since 2012. It contains more than 3900 posts. Somewhere in that collection of moderately organized characters of the alphabet, there must be something meaningful. Something thought-provoking. Something worth keeping. Ah, but everyone thinks they have produced something of value in their lives; whether a lasting thought or an ability to make people laugh or a legacy, like a farm or a business. Oh, well. Whether it’s valuable or not, I’ll keep pounding out characters from the keyboard. Maybe one day I will return to writing fiction or philosophical essays or even poetry. For now, though, the “value” is probably all mine. I’m the only one who gets value from using this platform as a daily journal of sorts. I know that and I am okay with that. Life goes on.

I want to be remembered as a poet, a peacemaker, and a philosopher who played.

   ~ Mattie Stepanek ~

Matthew Joseph Thaddeus Stepanek died of dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy at the age of 13. Before he died, he wrote seven books of poetry and peace essays.

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I spoke to a Realtor yesterday about selling my house. Now that our new  house is nearly ready for move-in, we can begin moving “stuff” out of the “old” house so it does not look over-stuffed with furniture, etc. I want the current house to look as inviting and charming and lovely as possible; that cannot happen until we get some furniture out of here. That, of course, suggests we’ll have to pare down “stuff” before we move into the new house, lest it, too, look over-furnished. And that is what we will do. I suspect we’ll discard (either give to Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore or sell or…) a lot of stuff before we move. Between now and then, though, I want to make this house just as appealing as it was to my late wife and me eight years ago. I remember walking in and instantly falling in love with the place—the view, the modern style (more or less) with clean, simple lines and beautiful wood floors throughout. When we entered the house, my wife’s face told me she felt the same way I did: this was the place! We had looked at around 40 houses and I think our real estate agent was about to drop us because we were too time-consuming. But, finally, we found this one. It will be a fond memory. The Realtor said it should sell quickly and should be priced to maximize profit; if she is right about the value and her suggested listing price is correct, I will be thrilled to sell it. Bring on the buyers. Yeah, but I have mixed feelings. It’s a mixture of excitement and nostalgia; not only for where I have been, but for who I was when I was there. The quotation that follows hits home with me; I will never again be the man I was when I was who I was before now.

You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place… like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.

~ Azar Nafisi ~

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Breakfast, then church, then painting. The day holds promise. And here I go.

Yesterday, I painted the laundry room in my current home. Today, I will finish that job with some touch-ups and will tackle the big “bonus area” behind the garage. I should have painted both rooms years ago; I intended to do just that, but time got away from me. Now that I am about to put my house on the market, I want it to be as fresh and inviting as it was to me when I first saw it. The “bonus area” has already been refreshed with a new LVP floor. New—lighter—paint, along with removing the “junk” from the room will complete the task. That room, with its own separate HVAC system and a half-bath, is like a private retreat. I used it as my retreat from the world many times. I sat at one of the big counters overlooking the forest and valley below, watching clouds and the world go by and soaking in the scent of burning patchouli incense. Perhaps I’ll burn some incense today while I paint. I expect to hear from a real estate agent today. I expect to put my house on the market within a week or two. The “new” house will get a thorough cleaning today, now that the flooring and door work is complete; mi novia found a couple who does top-to-bottom house cleaning. Listening to these women talk, it is apparent they understand what we want and they know how to address our expectations. Once the house is clean, we can begin moving “stuff” over there. We’ll find a way take some of our furniture over there so the current house will not look cluttered with the contents of two complete households when I put it on the market. The end of this much-longer-than-I-ever-dreamed odyssey is in sight.

The tension in my arms and legs and back has reached the point of physical pain. I need this process to end so I can relax and regain my ability to “chill.” Once the current house sells and we’re settled in our new place, I may treat myself to a full-body massage by a professional; something that might drain the tightness and tenseness from my body. Even before that, I want to chew a gummy or inhale the vapors of burning medical marijuana, and sit out on my deck with a friend. We will unwind with a glass of wine. We’ll discuss our philosophies of life and living and we’ll laugh as the effects of the experience overtake us. I hope that will make the next phases of this transition more palatable; more tolerable.

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Almost seven years ago, I wrote a semi-autobiographical piece of fiction that approached the idea of shaving my head. I have never shaved my head, but I’ve thought about it. If not for the possibility that my hair hides a hideous set of bumps, ridges, scars, etc., I might have done the deed by now. Actually, it’s not the possibility that my appearance could be made worse by denuding my scalp; it’s the likelihood of others’ reactions to my cranial nudity. Even though they may not say it aloud, at least not within earshot, people around me might find my naked head an affront to their visual senses. I know; I’ve said a thousand times that others’ opinions about me should not guide my actions. And I’ve repeated many times the fundamental truth espoused by Eleanor Roosevelt, who said: You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do. But, still, I worry. It’s either vanity or something like it; maybe a type of fear that erupts on occasion from narcissism. I should recognize that, even if I were shave my head and it revealed a hideous appearance underneath, hair grows back; it recovers from even the most egregious treatment. Except when it doesn’t.

My late wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003. She had a total mastectomy of her right breast; no reconstructive surgery. The follow-up treatment for her cancer included massive doses of chemotherapy. She was told she would lose her hair, but that it would grow back just as thick as it had been; perhaps it would initially look different, but it would return to “normal” after a relatively short while. It grew back, but much, much thinner. It never returned to “normal.” Her scalp was always visible beneath the wisps of fine hair that returned. And her delicate head of hair continued to gradually thin for he next seventeen years. At first, she wore a wig. But after just a few months, she courageously abandoned it. She decided the stares of strangers and the forced disregard of her appearance by friends was more tolerable than the discomfort of wearing a wig. In so many ways, she was much stronger than I have ever been.

With that departure from my train of thought behind me, I return to the idea of intentionally becoming bald. As I consider the possibility, I wonder why I keep thinking of shaving my head. What possesses me to consider taking a razor to my scalp? Is it curiosity about what I would look like? Is it a matter of comfort? Ease of care? I answer in the affirmative; each question addresses part of the motive I have for thinking about attacking my scalp with a sharp razor. But I think there’s something else; something I cannot quite identify and articulate. Maybe it’s a reaction to the fact that I did not shave my head when my wife first realized her hair was not growing back as “normal.” Maybe my failure to even think about it then finally began to catch up with me. And it’s still attempting to measure my lack of bravery against her courage. The idea of shaving my head in solidarity with my wife did not occur to me until years after her mastectomy surgery. And then, when it did, I did nothing about it. And, still, I do nothing but think about it. Maybe that’s the “something I cannot quite identify and articulate.”

The sense that one is inadequate as a human being is a painful possibility to have rattling around in one’s head. It slams against all corners the brain, tearing at the diaphanous fibers that define one’s worth, Those thin fibers grow like hair, but much more slowly. They are nourished by behaviors and by thoughts. They feed on acts of compassion and kindness. They strengthen when fed a diet of ideas that surround them with the stuff of human decency. But they can be twisted and torn. They can burn in the flames of anger and they can smolder in the heat of mindless reactions to life’s little disappointments.  When those fibers are damaged or burned away, it takes a lifetime to repair or replace them. Unlike hair, that usually grows back, damage to one’s sense of worth can be slow to heal. That kind of damage can be irreparable. Even when repaired, the scars remain. They may not be visible, but they are there; thick and distorted like physical scars on the flesh.

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My complaints amount to nothing. I have nothing of substance to complain about. My life is easy compared to the lives of billions of others on this planet. I live a life that is filled with largess. My every need is met. I have more than enough to eat. I have a roof over my head. I am not the intended prey of wild animals, nor am I the target of assassins. Where do any of us get off complaining about slow service or excessive costs for luxury items? We might have legitimate complaints if people with guns were invading our homes. Or if all the shelves in grocery stores were empty. Or if all farmers’ fields were fallow. Etc., etc. But at the moment, we live in undeserved luxury, our every need and want easily met. Appreciation and gratitude should be our watchwords. Should be. Should be. Yes.

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Enough of this. Time to explore what the day offers. And offer the day my best efforts.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

   ~ Alan Watts ~

Scraggly. The dictionary definition of the word is: “irregular; uneven; jagged” or “shaggy; ragged; unkempt.” The word and its associated definitions describe my mustache and beard rather well. But even after three weeks of evidence that my facial follicles are insufficiently dense to form an attractive mat of hair, I continue to shun shaving those portions of my face. Shaving only my neck and the sides of my face is much faster than shaving also including the now-bearded portions in the process. But as my whiskers get longer, they tend to cause me to notice aspects of my face that I never noticed before. By “notice,” I mean “feel” or “be conscious of” or “pay attention to.” Before the presence of whiskers, I paid no heed to my upper lip; it was there, but it did not regularly announce itself and ask me to direct my attention there. Ditto my chin. They were present, but they required nothing of me. Now, though, both pieces of facial real estate regularly say, in effect, “hey, I’m here…can you feel me?” For some men, growing a mustache and/or beard is a way of making a fashion statement; their facial hair is adequately thick and the hair’s color is sufficiently different from the skin that its noticeable. In my case (so far), growing my facial hair is simply a way to avoid part of one of the time-consuming elements of daily life: shaving. My beard is too thin and its color, salt & sand, to close to my skin tone to be noticeable. It is NOT a fashion statement. My beard does not scream, “This here male person beneath the testosterone mat is one bad-ass macho mother!”  It sort of whispers, “S’up? I’ve given up shaving, for the most part, ’cause, like, I’m too lazy to shave much and I don’t really care whether I look like I take shelter in cardboard boxes when it rains.” I may keep the beard going for a while. I may shave it off. Who knows? I’m not especially decisive right now.

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We have no idea what goes on in the lives of many of the people with whom we associate on a regular basis. Most of us tend to segment our lives: work, home, friends…some kinds of boundaries that might blend a bit at the edges, but that otherwise are distinct and intentionally separate.

A young married woman who worked for me many years ago had a brief affair with a foreign guy who lived in his home country but visited the U.S. at least once or twice a year. I think the affair lasted a little more than a year, but it was brief in that the two of them were physically together only twice, as far as I know. But it is my understanding that they communicated with one another by mail rather regularly during that roughly one year period (this was before email, etc.). Though the young woman was “happily” married, more or less, I got the impression she had gotten married without having much romantic experience; that lack of experience left her wondering what she missed by making such a commitment at a rather young age. (This is supposition, by the way; she and I never talked about what prompted her exploration.) At any rate, the extra-marital relationship eventually dissolved; by mutual consent, I think. And the woman remains married to her one and only husband, today. They have two adult children who have children of their own. As far as I know, my employee’s husband never knew about his wife’s venture into infidelity. I learned about it only by accident, when I came across a letter she had written but had not yet mailed. The letter mentioned “our long-distance love affair.” There’s considerably more to this tale, but most of it is irrelevant (as has been what I’ve written so far). I do not know why this is on my mind this morning. Yet it is and it causes me to think that such stuff probably goes on far more frequently than most of us know.

This situation involved a “normal” person whose behavior would never have suggested she would have been involved in an affair outside marriage. How many people in our lives carry secrets about themselves or their lives that we would find astonishing, if we only knew? Is the bank clerk with whom you interact regularly involved in a custody battle over her children? Does the grocery store manager have a second wife, one about whom you were unaware, in another town? Has the restaurant owner filed charges of domestic violence against her wife? Is the little old lady down the street required to register as a sex offender? Has your next-door neighbor successfully avoided detection and capture for twenty-five years following her robbery of an armored car service? What about you? Do you have secrets? Can you keep a secret for twenty or thirty or forty years? And what if the secret got out? Would your family and friends reject you? Would you suddenly find yourself isolated and shunned by the people in your support network?

Mi novia and I occasionally comment to one another that people can never really know other people. I think that’s a true statement. We think we know people when, suddenly, we learn something so out of character—so completely surprising—that we realize we know only as much as others are willing to share. And we have to then wonder about ourselves. Are there parts of ourselves that we intentionally or subconsciously hide because we think those secrets would put us in a different and utterly unfavorable light? And do we sometimes hide those secrets even from ourselves? Am I capable of robbing an armored car? Could I be embroiled in a long-distance love affair? Does the persona I present to the world represent the real person who lives behind my mask?

The idea that we cannot ever really know people—including ourselves—is jarring. How can we be certain of anything when we cannot even be certain of who we are?

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God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

   ~ William Shakespeare ~

Several months ago, on a whim, I explored housing availability and prices in various places along the Texas coast. Later, I looked into houses on acreage in places as far-flung as Dripping Springs, Oklahoma and El Paso, Texas and Grant Park, Illinois…among many others. I am not new to this. This fantasy I cannot quite define, but that I know owes its existence to either fear or disappointment, has been with me for as long as I can remember. It comes to the surface with some regularity, usually when I feel overwhelmed with all of life’s options or stuck in a tiny cage of my own making. When I reach the point of deep disappointment with myself or fear that I am locked into inadequacy, I want out. I want to go away. Start over. Eventually, though, I allow my rational self to take control. I realize that starting over by tying myself to a place, whether on the coast or on isolated acreage, would be simply trading one prison for another. And, as I allow myself enough time and freedom to think, I realize it’s not just tying myself to a place. I would be living in a prison cell even if I sold everything, bought an RV, and hit the road. Always, always, there would be something dictating how I live, day by day. Whether that something is a mortgage, the need to appease neighbors in one way or another, or the need to stick to a route with accommodations for RVs, something would always force me to mold myself to the world around me; not vice versa. So, there’s no such thing as freedom. Freedom is a myth created by people who want desperately to escape from prisons that have no bars, no locks, and no guards. No one is unafraid; no one ever will be unafraid. Life itself is a prison.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

    ~ Aung San Suu Kyi ~

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A friend made me aware of a piece of good news. According to NPR, “Terminally ill patients seeking physician-assisted death in Oregon, where it is legal, are no longer required to be residents of the state, under a settlement reached in a federal lawsuit this week.” It’s about bloody time. And it’s time to remove the geographic barriers to that fundamental human right of deciding whether to live or to die. And, while I’m ranting on the topic, the State should have no say, whatsoever, in an individual’s life-or-death decision. It matters not whether a person is terminally ill or not, in my view; a person should have the right to decide, at any time and for any reason, whether to go on living. I would of course discourage making the decision without giving the matter adequate time and external input; but, ultimately, it is the individual’s decision. Not the State’s. Not even the family’s. The decision belongs, in the end, to the individual. We’re all “terminal,”  so the decision is one that should be made on the basis of one’s level of comfort with different amounts of temporal distance. I am aware of many arguments against my position; none of them sway me. And none ever will.

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In less than three hours, I will visit my primary care doctor’s office. He will review the results of my blood tests with me. He will admonish me to eat better, exercise more, and visit my cardiologist. He may prescribe medications for me. He will not tell me I am terminally ill. I am relative sure of that. Even if I were, I doubt he would tell me.

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Today is a friend’s birthday. She agreed to let me take her to lunch in celebration of reaching her 59th birthday. There is no reason to stop celebrating the attainment of 59 years of life on this planet, even years after that point has been reached. So, we will celebrate the fact that she reached that milestone a while ago. Happy Birthday, D! Here’s to many more!

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There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~

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The tip of my proboscis is red and slightly swollen, thanks to a biopsy of a slow-to-heal “bump” on my nose, taken a couple of days ago. I will return on April 11 to visit with the dermatology APN. She will give me the results of the biopsy and discuss what, if anything, I need to do about the underlying cause of the bump; now more accurately described as a wound.

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Two days after my dermatology appointment, on April 13, we will attend a reception hosted by a group of local artists. One or more of the artists, one of whom is my next-door neighbor, will be honored with various accolades for their artistic talents and skills. That day, April 13, would have been my 42nd wedding anniversary. The reception, an annual event that my late wife and I used to attend at my neighbor’s invitation, will be an emotional event for the artists, I am sure. And for me.

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It is easy to recognize love. It is the state of mind in which one is willing to sacrifice one’s own happiness for someone else’s. It is the state of mind in which another person’s happiness is more important than one’s own. Absent that willingness, the emotion that masquerades as love is simply infatuation. Infatuation does not last. Love can, but it doesn’t always. Nothing is rock-solid reliable; not even life itself.

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I suppose it’s time to stop letting my fingers have free rein over the keyboard. Instead, they must make breakfast and such.

Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen.

~ Karl Marx ~

We know the concept, in English, as “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” The concept suggests a philosophy in support of free access to—and distribution of—goods, capital and services. Despite the association of the concept with a failed social movement (communism), it is far more complex than many of us might imagine. In a quick brush-up on my knowledge of Karl Marx and the development of his ideas, I was surprised to re-learn of his earlier intense interest in Christianity. I re-learned, as well, of his initial rejection of the philosophies espoused by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to an embrace of Hegel’s ideas; and then a repeat of the cycle. My very brief and superficial refresher today on Karl Marx, his development, and the philosophies we associate with him led me back to where I started with respect to Karl Marx: I think he was a brilliant, if flawed, idealist whose ideas still have enormous merit as potential springboards for “a more perfect” society some time in the future. If, indeed, humanity has a future where opportunities to advance await us.

I had forgotten (if, indeed, I had ever known) that Marx had advocated for a somewhat gradual transformation from capitalism (and other economic frameworks) to communism. Marx seems, to me, to have been skeptical that members of the proletariat had the ability to make the transition without a significant period of  intellectual development. With the exception of the occasional sociology course, I learned little concrete detail in school about Marx and his evolution. Though the philosophies of Marx and Friedrich Engels were flawed in numerous ways, what I know of the concepts that prompted the development of their philosophies makes me believe both men were devoted humanists. They were idealists, as every philosopher is in his or her own way; as far as I can see, their motives generally were pure. They wanted a better society across all humankind. They recognized the fact that achieving such an ideal was not an overnight endeavor, but would be the results of a long-term struggle. While I think the significant flaws in Marx’s philosophies are apparent as I view them from my role as an armchair quarterback with the gift of hindsight, I think Marx’s utopian visions were well-intended. But we tend to demonize people who oppose our world view; even people whose opposition to our world view might have been based on compassion and hope. And a better understanding of our world view than we, ourselves, possess.

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I do not have the discipline to do more than skate across the surface of ideas I find appealing. I could have delved far deeper into Marx this morning. I could have chosen to begin a week-long or month-long exploration into his philosophies and his experiences leading to their development. But I got tired; sidetracked. I lost a little interest; I still have an interest, but not enough to prolong my investigation. I think I have ADD. And I have something else. I have a much higher than “normal” level of Brain Natriuretic Peptide (BNP) in my blood. I learned this just this morning, when I opened my patient portal to view the results of some blood work I had done yesterday. My triglycerides were high, as well, as they usually are. But my Brain Natriuretic Peptide level was more than double the highest “normal” level. That was a shocker. Although the only other time I had a measure of my Brain Natriuretic Peptide taken, last October, the level was considerably higher than it was yesterday. I did not even pay heed to it last time. But this time I did. And I searched to find the meaning of my higher-than-normal level. What I found was rather scary. According to medicineplus.gov, “BNP levels go up when the heart cannot pump the way it should. A result greater than 100 pg/mL is abnormal. The higher the number, the more likely heart failure is present and the more severe it is.” And, according to an article by the National Institutes for Health, in reporting a BNP study, “The survival rate for 7 years was 89.43% for the group with BNP>100 ng/L while it was only 23.53% for the group with BNP>1000 ng/L.” Self-diagnosis on the basis of articles found in a Google search probably is not especially wise. I have an appointment with my primary care doctor tomorrow; I will wait to make “final arrangements” until I hear his take on the matter. Though I’m willing to bet he will refer me to my cardiologist for further  assessment.

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I just got a call from the guy who we have hired to fix some oddities in doors and door openings at our new house. I had come concerns about what he had in mind for modifications, but he convinced me that his work will actually improve the appearance of the doors/openings, rather than exacerbate the strange appearance of some of them. I told him to go ahead and do his thing. You have to put your trust in people who know what they are doing; if I were to attempt to do what I have asked him to do, I would almost certainly do irreparable damage to the doorways.

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After a bit, I’ll head over to the new house to see what mischief I can get into. I’ll wait to do any additional painting until the dust has cleared, which may be a few days. But there’s more to do. Lots. More. To. Do.

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Off to tackle another day. Or, perhaps I should embrace it. Days react better when embraced than when tackled.

The Road Not Taken is among that relatively small cluster of narrative poems that deliver a summary of every lifetime ever lived. Robert Frost, in writing that masterpiece, might have felt the overwhelming emotions hidden just beneath the surface of the 144 words that follow the poem’s title. Yet Frost wrote the poem as a joke for an indecisive poet friend; so perhaps the flood of emotions I feel when reading the poem arise not from the poem, but from what I want to see in it. But, still, I suspect everyone who reads The Road Not Taken feels at least a tinge of displaced nostalgia or regret for a lifetime that would have been different, had decisions or circumstances been different. I know I do. Though it’s said to be pointless to ask questions that can never be answered, I wonder how my life might have been different…if…

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

   ~ Robert Frost ~

Of course there’s never a single situation or circumstance in which a decision sets the course for every single future experiences in one’s life. Every decision, every random occurrence—every situation in which choices are made—triggers more and more and more alterations in the course of one’s life. But if a person tends toward sentimentality or if he is apt to ask “what if” on an ongoing basis, he wonders how “everything” would be different. He wonders how each decision one makes influences every other decision. He wonders how a choice made twenty years ago, or yesterday, spurred a flurry of decisions that, taken together, are responsible for how his life has unfolded to this very moment. And he wonders how every decision made henceforth will impact the unfolding of his life as the future is unveiled by the passage of time.

“Little” decisions can be just as transformative as “big” ones. Yet the impact of “big” decisions sometimes carries no more weight than a tiny piece of down feather in a bag full of lead balls. We cannot predict, with any degree of consistent accuracy, how a decision will change one’s life. But we can wonder, looking back, how impactful all the “big” and the “little” decisions have been. Decisions involving such life-altering events as marriage or employment or housing are not necessarily any more impactful than decisions about taking vacation trips or even going to the grocery store. Random event surrounding living one’s life day-to-day can have just as much, or more, as those monumental decisions. The trip to the grocery store could lead to purchasing the winning lottery ticket; or it could result in one’s involvement in a terrible automobile accident.

The unasked question, the hug not given (or taken), the delayed choice—all of them represent “the road not taken.” And they may make all the difference.

A certain philosophy admonishes us to, in effect, “live for today, for tomorrow you may die.” Increasingly, I find myself accepting that philosophy’s premise. I do not subscribe to a related philosophy that excuses an utterly careless lifestyle that involves taking wild, unnecessary risks, but measured risks definitely have their place. One of those risks is abandonment of unchecked “rainy day thinking,” which involves the anticipation of potential financial problems.  This sort of planning emerges either from experiences, stories about, or fears of financial ruin. The Great Depression is probably one of the most powerful and most recent experiences that prompted “rainy day thinking” in the extreme.

Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving.

   ~ Warren Buffett ~

While saving money for a “rainy day” is wise, some of us tend to put too much emphasis on depriving oneself of satisfying experiences now in the fear that that circumstances might rob us of having such experiences later, unless one is prepared. That, in my changing view, unwise. The trick is to save proportionately to the intersection of one’s ability and one’s desires. Warren Buffett’s advice is sound; it is like a stop sign that requires us to stop and take action each time we reach that intersection.

We do not even know whether we will be here to enjoy experiences in the future. Or, if we survive into the future, we have no way of knowing whether we will be healthy enough to pursue experiences that, today, we might find appealing. Saving money so one can leave as much as possible to one’s beneficiaries is perhaps generous, but it is also uncharitable to oneself. There is a difference between frugality and miserliness. It may be a slight difference, but it’s there. My advice to myself: cut loose on occasion. Come to grips with the possibility, I tell myself sometimes, that I might outlive my money. If that happens, be prepared to make the end of life and the end of financial resources take place as close to simultaneously as possible. That is not to say one should buy a Corvette and charter a jet to Nova Scotia if that would mean taking an overdose of sleeping pills at the end of next week. But reasonable efforts should be made to enjoy life while maintaining adequate resources to keep happy for a sufficiently “long time.”

If you can afford it after you pay the bills and distribute some of your largesse to help people in need—take the vacation; buy the 1958 Chevy if you will derive long-term pleasure from it; buy the RV if if will become a significant part of your lifestyle; give generously to causes for social justice if that brings joy and meaning to your life. In other words, do with your money what matters to you. Do not wait until it’s too late. Do not put yourself in a position of looking back with regret that you did not pursue experiences that would have been fulfilling.

The preceding paragraphs were written as admonishments to myself, by the way. If they have meaning to others who may read them, all the better. Time will tell whether I heed my own advice.

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Saturday was a good day. Two good friends stopped for a brief visit on their way to Fort Smith from Little Rock. They demonstrated their kindness and love by showing up with a bunch of cut tulips and a six-pack of Guinness Stout. We went to lunch at the Blue Elephant, where the food was pretty good and the service was laughable; our friends’ good sense of humor made the service tolerable.

Sunday was a good day, too. After the church service, where we were able to visit with many of our friends (but we missed seeing several), we accepted my sister-in-law’s invitation to come meet her cat-sitting charge, Judge. Judge is an extremely well-fed, enormously friendly, and exceptionally intelligent cat. Judge’s masters, who asked my SIL to look out after their feline family member, have a nice home with a nice television. Thanks to winning a bet with my girlfriend about the identity of one of the church service speakers (on video), before long we will have a television much like the one Judge’s family has. The television responds to voice commands (including responding to questions like “when will season 5 of Yellowstone be available?” and “what’s the weather forecast for Belgrade, Serbia?” and “what color emerges from mixing blue and yellow?”). And the television’s size convinced us that large screens deliver a far richer, more engaging experience than do smaller, 42-inch models. Personally, I am now hungering for an 85-inch television. [John, what have you said in the recent past about consumerism gone awry? What words have you used to describe avarice and greed? What kind of person do you want to be?]

Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked.

   ~ Walter Savage Landor ~

After a nice day, successfully avoiding work I should have been doing on the new house (if we’re ever going to be able to move in), my girlfriend took charge of the kitchen to make a delightful meal of salmon and green beans and apple/cabbage slaw. Then, we watched an episode or two (or was it more?) of the series, Pieces of Her on Netflix. We’re hooked. (I promise I’ll watch Last Tango in Halifax in the not-too-distant future. But I may have to come watch it at your house, Deanna). I have an enormously long list of films and series I want to watch; but I have to be in the right mood to watch any of them. Some require intense thought, if they are to be of value to me. Others require simply staring at the screen, receptive to being entertained. Still others appeal to my need for emotional prodding. And others probe issues that get at the core of my social consciousness. I want to watch them all. At the right times.

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There should be terms that better describe romantic relationships. Girlfriend and boyfriend are grossly inadequate. And partner or companion or cohabitee or significant other are too clinical and cold, though modifier words can improve their suitability for describing a relationship. Lover is a bit too personal, on one hand, and somewhat flippant, on the other. Sweetheart harkens back to the clueless fifties and can call to mind dull, shallow innocence. Confidante may be close…but no cigar. Soulmate, too, may be getting near the right term, but…

Ladylove would work for me to describe girlfriend, but what is the corresponding term for boyfriend? So that probably would not work. I could turn to foreign languages: findanzata and fidanzato are Italian terms that might work, though I’ve already dismissed their English counterparts. I think I may settle on the Spanish term: mi novia, roughly translated into “my girlfriend,” sounds like a winner. Let’s see if I can stick to it.

But I can’t leave the subject without calling out a cultural anomaly: Women can speak about “my girlfriends” and we understand that they are referring to their friends who are female. But if men say “my boyfriends,” we assume they are referring to their gay sexual partners. And there, again, is an issue that should have long since been discarded in the waste-bin of history but remains there, sometimes hidden and sometimes blatant: many people remain uncomfortable even with acknowledging, much less accepting, homosexuality (thanks in large part, I think, to idiotic religious perspectives). But I’m getting away from my point: the English language is hypocritical. And unfriendly to certain concepts, like non-sexual relationships between males. We limit ourselves to terms like “pals” or just “friends,” whereas we could adopt and use terms that more completely describe them. There’s a word, used chiefly in the southwestern U.S., that describes friends: compadre. It’s a Spanish word that has been adopted for use in English; because our language is inadequate and we’re too lazy to create our own term. I’m happy with compadre. And I think it can be used to describe either male or female friends or both. Maybe I’ll adopt that term, too, to refer to all my friends, whether male or female. Except I still like mi novia for the woman living with me. And mi novio should work for her to describe me (if she chooses). Those two words could work for unmarried female and male couples, too.

Here I am, trying to solve the world’s linguistic missteps.

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My Mexican brother sent me the text of an interview between Ezra Klein and Margaret Atwood, which appeared in the New York Times on Friday, March 25. The article, entitled, Margaret Atwood on Stories, Deception and the Bible, is quite long but extremely interesting. For those of you who might subscribe to the NYT, it’s well worth finding it and reading it. It is especially compelling reading, in my opinion, as we attempt to understand what is behind Russia’s war against Ukraine and what the long-term holds for that conflict and the planet at large.

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For the last two days, I’ve made a breakfast of clementine segments, sliced avocado, sliced tomato, and small bits of feta cheese. The avocados are gone. I may revert to cereal (the old standby) this morning or poached eggs with toast. We have bacon and sausage, but it’s frozen and I do not feel like thawing it. One day soon, I will make a Japanese breakfast: miso soup, a tiny piece of pan-grilled salmon on a small bed of white rice, and some slices of radish and cucumber. At least that’s my version of a Japanese breakfast. My Chinese breakfast, pork congee, can be used for any meal at any time of day. But so can any meal from any culture; we just have to be sufficiently adventurous. And we have to overcome our usually irrational biases against eating certain things at certain times of day. It’s perfectly okay to have Pepsi and scrambled eggs at lunch. And coffee with milk and cereal for dinner is just fine. A ribeye steak and baked potato at breakfast would suit me just fine. After all, there exists and admonish that we ought to: “eat like a king at breakfast, like a prince at lunch, and like a pauper at dinner.” I’m game.

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Today, I have two doctor appointments and I absolutely must do my income taxes. But at least we will have a nice evening with a friend. We’ll take her dinner and chat with her about all manner of “stuff.” And we will turn her swivel rocker upside down to get details on the manufacturer; we’d rather buy a chair like it than be forced to steal hers. 😉  I suppose we will end the evening with another episode or two of Pieces of Her.  Life is good.

The clothing we wear is dictated, in large part, by our social environments. Our social environments emerge from innumerable factors that combine to create our cultures. According to notes from a University of Michigan “women’s studies” course entitled Gender and Popular Culture, “Culture is a system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society.” Specifically, according to the originator and proponent of that concept, E. A. Hoebel, “Culture is the sum total of integrated learned behavior patterns, which are characteristics of members of a society and which are, therefore, not the result of biological inheritance.” So, the styles of the clothes we wear represent one component of learned behavior patterns.

But why, I wonder, have we learned—in this society, at least—that men and women should wear clothing that, by and large, is unique to the sex of the wearer? Of course there are plenty of unisex clothing styles, but our society generally encourages (or requires) men and women to dress differently. While I have no interest in wearing flowery dresses or blouses awash in sequins (probably because I’ve been taught, successfully, those things belong only on the bodies of women), I wonder why our culture has decided such clothing is “feminine?” My limited research this morning suggests some ideas. First, it is important to understand that “sex” and “gender” are two distinct concepts: “While gender is a social, psychological, and cultural construct, our reason to polarize gender is influenced by sex, that is, the biological dichotomy of male and female.” (from encyclopedia.com, “Gender, Dress, and Fashion”). In our society, we clearly base our clothing parameters around both sex and gender. But so do other cultures; just in different ways.  That same encyclopedia.com article offers this: “In Indonesia, parts of West Africa, and in traditional Scottish dress, men wear an article of clothing that closely resembles a Western definition of a skirt. In Indonesia, both men and women wear the sarong, a length of cloth wrapped to form a tube. The wrapper, a rectangular cloth tied at the waist, is worn by both sexes in parts of West Africa. The Scottish kilt, still worn at many social gatherings to establish a social and cultural identity, represents the height of masculinity (Kidwell and Steele 1989). In North American culture, the sarong, wrapper, or kilt would rarely be seen on men except within the theater, film, or in the context of couture or avant-garde fashion.”

Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.

~ Euripides ~

Everything I read seems to explain the “what” of different types and styles of clothing for men and women, but says virtually nothing of significance about the “why.” Why, for example, is a kilt the “height of masculinity” in Scotland, whereas in the U.S. a kilt is nothing more than a rare glimpse into another culture or a statement of defiance?

If I were to invest more time and energy into the question of “why,” I am sure I would find plenty of explanations. But that investigation would almost certainly involve a much deeper search and far more time than I am willing to commit. So, I am condemned to simply wonder. As I wonder, it occurs to me that I do not know what I would do with the answer, if it were presented to me. Would it prompt me to wear culottes and high-heeled shoes? Probably not. (Nothing could prompt me to wear high-heeled shoes; they obviously were the creation of callous, lustful men who did not care a whit about the safety and comfort of women—only about the shapeliness of women’s legs.) Although, during summertime, especially, I think I might find capri pants much more appealing than pants with legs that stretch almost to the floor.

As I contemplate clothing styles and wonder why styles are so remarkably different between men and women in this culture, my thoughts return to the general absurdity of clothing. Except to protect us against the elements, the idea of clothing is fundamentally puritanical. We wear clothes to hide our bodies from the eyes of others; generally, but not always, others of the other sex. I believe, with all my heart, that is a silly social constraint we place upon ourselves and willingly accept. Yet I am not the one to lead the charge for public nudity. Although I would gladly defend the person brave enough to do it. As I look at my own body in the mirror, I can imagine that our modesty may not be based entirely on wanting to hide our sexual paraphernalia but, rather, wanting to hide evidence of our gluttony and lack of body-toning activities and exercise.

The different standards applied to men and women with regard to clothing has always bothered me. Men can go shirtless in many situations; in those same situations, women would be arrested. Men have nipples, too, but apparently the size and shape of the breasts to which nipples are attached has something to do with the concept of public indecency. What idiocy. Intellectually, I can condemn the double standard, but in practice I find myself magnetically drawn to the exposed breasts of women, whereas I do not find men’s exposed breasts at all interesting. Is my intrigue based entirely on socialization; is my culture’s teaching responsible for my interest, or is my attention dictated by my genes? Could clothing styles be, in some weird and convoluted way, cultures’ responses to sexual (mostly male) arousal? But, then, why do other societies’ styles of clothing no mirror ours? If sexual interest plays a part in defining socially acceptable style, why in some societies (like some in Africa) are women free to expose their breasts publicly? Do different societies teach their members different lessons about sexuality? Are breasts in those African societies not considered sexual, whereas in most western culture they represent female sexuality?

A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.

~ Émile Durkheim ~

How well I know, Émile. Entire disciplines have emerged from questions like those I ask, so I do not expect short, crisp, clean answers. But I love to think about the questions and I enjoy exploring possible answers. That is one of the things about life that makes it interesting.

How could I have lived this long without being exposed to the incredible allure of the poetry and prose of Gretel Ehrlich? Reading her words is like absorbing a powerful, painful, yet addictive shock–one that cries out for more of the intensity and stunning beauty of her facility with language. Her writing is vivid and forceful, yet the emotions it elicits are fragile; it is as her words erupt from tornadoes that surrender, untouched, the delicate buds of the trees their winds leave behind when they depart.

We Americans are great on fillers, as if what we have, what we are, is not enough…. We have only to look at the houses we build to see how we build *against* space, the way we drink against pain and loneliness. We fill up space as if it were a pie shell, with things whose opacity further obstructs our ability to see what is already there.

   ~ Gretel Ehrlich ~

I was introduced, last night, to Gretel Ehrlich’s splendid artistry with the English language in episode 4 of season 5 of Yellowstone. The series’ incredibly harsh character, Beth Dutton, recited a few lines from Ehrlich’s The Solace of Open Spaces. Beth’s unfettered anger and fierce loyalty to her father drench every episode; the words she uttered from Ehrlich’s book, though, turned her almost one-dimensional character into a complex human being.

Subsequent to hearing Ehrlich’s words on-screen last night, I explored more of her writing. When I woke this morning, I spent an hour or so reading quotes extracted from various of her several books; those quotations further amplified my desire to read her work. People whose comments on Goodreads quoted her convinced me that she and I have similar sensibilities, though she is a better writer than I, by far.  This morning, I ordered a used paperback copy of The Solace of Open Spaces this morning. However, I successfully convinced myself to hold off on ordering several other of her books: Unsolaced: Along the Way to All That Is; Islands, the Universe, Home;  This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland; Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami; and A Match to the Heart: One Woman’s Story of Being Struck By Lightning. I could stay occupied for weeks, just reading Ehrlich’s words. As if I have nothing else to do. Sigh.

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We went to the nearest liquor store yesterday morning, shortly after it opened, to buy a bottle of good tequila.  I had managed, the day before, to learn from the flooring installer that his preferred spirit is tequila. We have been extremely impressed with the work he and his son have been doing, so we wanted to show our appreciation—beyond simply telling him and telling the owner of the flooring store for which our installer is doing the work. When we dropped off our gift, he expressed his thanks in words and with a hug for each of us. I suspect the guy is regularly showered with gifts of appreciation when he takes over from other installers who, though nice folks, cannot compare with his professionalism and commitment to doing a thorough job and keeping his workspace clean and well-organized.

I dropped by the house late yesterday afternoon, just after 5, and they were wrapping up. They had finished putting in the quarter-round and were vacuuming and dusting as they moved their tools out of the house and into their truck. Though I did not inspect the place, I am confident the job is finished and the house is reasonably clean; that being said, we definitely will need to spend considerable time and energy to remove dust from walls, ceiling fans, light fixtures, cracks, crevices, and every other exposed space. With apologies to Robert Frost, we have “miles to go before we sleep.” But the end is in sight.

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I have a new pair of shoes. They are nothing special, just a pair of New Balance athletic shoes. Nothing special except for the price: they are the most expensive pair of shoes I’ve ever owned. I feel like I should insure them separately from the rest of my belongings. How the hell did the price of  “tennis shoes” ever reach beyond $200? Granted, that includes tax, but, still… For that price, I feel that the shoes should not only be incredibly comfortable, they should make me look and feel considerably taller. They also should, once and for all, cure me of whatever ails my sinuses and/or lungs. And my arthritis should be a thing of the past, thanks to this pair of magical shoes. Holy cripes. I prefer open-toed, soft-soled flip-flops. Even those, though, cost through the roof. I should have delayed my retirement by ten years and saved every penny of my income during that time, just to be sure I will have enough money in retirement to buy clothes. I may be forced by economic necessity into a nude lifestyle by the time I reach 73 and a half.

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Coffee—caffeine, more appropriately—has never had the same effect on me that it is said to have on other people. It does not keep me awake. It does not get me wired. It is not the morning drug that activates my nervous system. That having been said, I enjoy coffee. I like the strong taste left behind by exposing ground dark-roast beans to very hot water under a bit of pressure. I’ve recently begun to question whether I allow enough time and ritual to enjoy coffee to the fullest. My answer: no, I do not. I simply let my machine pump hot water through a clump of ground roasted coffee beans and then I go about my business. There once was a time when I spent more time with my coffee. I spent time grinding the beans myself. I measured out with some degree of precision the amount of ground coffee and water I wanted to use, then let the water slowly seep through the ground beans. Today, it’s a matter of slam, bam, done. I may return to the “old ways.” I have long since given away my French press, I think. I should find another one. I should make a meditative ritual out of preparing and partaking of my morning coffee. I already use my mornings to prepare me for the day.

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Speaking of the rituals that I use to begin my day, a friend suggested that, with my morning rituals of solitude and introspection, I am already on my way to addressing my fluctuating moods. She recommended to me a video based on a book, Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself, by Joe Dispenza. She said Dispenza’s “clear explanation of how you change ingrained patterns of thought, behavior,  and feelings” prompted her to direct her attention to his suggestions. Though I haven’t yet explored in depth the video or the book, I plan to look into it. Something we all know, I think, but we tend to ignore in the heat of the moment when need it most, is that the most important first step to accomplishing change is to want it and to recognize that we must begin to take action in pursuit of achieving it. Taking control of one’s moods seems simple; just a matter of discipline and choice. But it is not that simple. It is a matter of changing one’s thought patterns and changing the way we interact with the world around us and how we interact with ourselves. At least that’s how I see it this morning. This morning, I have a fairly intense sense that there are several things about me I want to change. In some cases, I want to return to an earlier version of me. In others, I want to rebuild, from the ground up, the framework around which over time I have padded thoughts and behaviors. It feels a little odd, as my advancing age, to want to start over in a sense. But feeling odd is nothing new to me.

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I would like to have control over the manner and time of my own death. That desire is confounded by the realities of aging, illness, and other contexts over which we have little or no control. But, at its core, the desire seems perfectly reasonable to me. To the extent possible, we should be able to decide how and when we go. After that, it’s not up to us; whoever takes responsibility for my corpse is responsible for its disposal. But until then, I want to exercise control. The State should have no right to intrude on something so exceptionally personal as one’s death. The idea that the State should prohibit suicide, for example, is absurd. And the idea that one can face jail time or worse for facilitating the death of someone who has reached the decision to die is abysmal. My two cents. I wish I could carry with me, in a tiny decorative cannister I would wear around my neck, a pill or two that would allow me to quickly and painlessly end my journey. Given that every human being ever born has ultimately died—or will before a century passes—one would think we would be sufficiently comfortable with death to allow people to choose the mode and moment of their demise. Alas, we are afraid of the inevitable. We prolong it, sometimes beyond the time it should have come. I suspect, if humanity survives its own genocidal tendencies, one day people will be able to choose when and how they die. I know, I’ve said it all before. One tends to repeat oneself in one’s later years, the years leading up to decline, decay, and death.  😉

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I volunteered to take a meal on Monday to a friend who’s house-bound. Though I originally thought of pork congee or bang-bang shrimp, I may change my mind and do something a little different. It has to be fairly quick and easy, as I have a oodles of appointments on Monday. I think I’ll stick with shrimp, though I may vary from the bang-bang preparation. I may veer into shrimp cocktail territory, but with a full-meal twist involving roasted asparagus, along with a spiralized zucchini & tomato “salad” with a pesto dressing. I enjoy cooking. Let me rephrase that: I enjoy meal preparation. It’s not just cooking. It’s design and delivery. It’s flavor and fire and flare. It’s treating food as more than simply fuel for day-to-day activities. Okay, I know how to do this. I’ve done it before It’s just a matter of a few basic ingredients combined in a last-minute swirl of creativity and practicality. Preparing meals is like anticipating passionate kisses.

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It has reached 7:30, time for me to stop writing and start doing.

I thought the problem was my computer. Or my smartphone. But it’s clearly not them. They are not to blame. Google is to blame. Google’s Gmail is refusing to accept some messages sent to me, yet Google notifies no one of its refusal. Messages simply vaporize. For weeks, I’ve been cursing my phone for failing to allow me to forward photos to my email account. Yesterday, messages that were either forwarded or that included content or attachments that Google apparently and inexplicably deems inappropriate were “eaten” by the internet, AKA Google. All of this by way of notification: if you forwarded a message to me or sent a message with an attachment, it’s quite possible it never reached me. You would not know it. I do not know it. Only by happenstance would either of us be aware of the fact that Google Gmail is refusing to deliver mail to me. Damn it! I wish I knew how to fix the problem.

+++

For a couple of weeks, I have been allowing some of my extremely sparse facial hair to grow, unshaven. A few days ago, I suggested I was about ready to give up; it’s just too thin to have any hope of ever looking even remotely “attractive.” But I was persuaded to give it a couple of more weeks, just to see if it fills it. I agreed. But it won’t. I was born with a light beard; lighter than any other male in my family. My brothers have grown beards, though none of them have (to my recollection) been especially full and worthy of shaping into attractive trichological expressions. It’s a genetic thing. And, as the last of a string of offspring, the DNA controlling my trichology began its follicular life at a distinct disadvantage.  At any rate, for a while longer I will look like an elderly prepubescent teen, attempting to assert my masculinity through uncooperative facial hair. I’m in favor of every man bathing in Nair, thereby removing the distinction between hairy and hairless.

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Once again, even though I continue to attempt to use humor and anger as tools in the battle against it, I cannot seem to shake this sense of anxiety or depression or whatever it is; a general feeling of being at a low ebb. I think it’s grief; perpetual, unending, insurmountable grief. I know better than to try to overcome it. Nothing can. People just have to learn to live with it; to accept the guilt and emptiness that comes with it. But I am not its only victim. Anyone who must deal with me has to cope with it, as well. And I realize that is patently unfair. Yet trying to mask it has fallen flat. I’m not even sure it’s really grief. It may be my mind coming to grips with my own mortality. A friend advised me to look more outward than inward as a means of dealing with grief. While that may be good advice, I am not sure how to alter my perspective on the world. Some days I just want to draw into myself and withdraw from engaging with the world. That’s probably the wrong direction, but it seems to be the one that makes the most sense. I’ll figure it out. Thus far, I’ve been able to spring back from these deep bouts of grief-infused ennui. And I suppose I always will. But it gets so damn tiresome, bouncing up and down from day to day. I just wish everything would stop for a while.

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Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.

   ~ Emil Cioran ~

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I stopped by the house yesterday to check on progress. The flooring has all been laid; what’s left for the flooring installers are the quarter-rounds, some replacement baseboards, and a few other odds and ends. And, then, cleaning. And more painting. And touch-up. And fixing the doors. And moving. And on and on and on. I am not certain I have the strength or willpower or discipline to finish it. My ADD (assuming that’s what has kept me company all these years) keeps arguing with me to just abandon the effort and simply start jamming furniture into the unfinished house with the idea that it will be finished eventually. Ugh. I have to brighten up so I can fulfill my obligations as a human being. Those requisites for life will not go away.

When I woke from a dream this morning around 3, I made a point of focusing on the dream so I would remember it when I awakened for the day a few hours later. Then, later, when I finally got out of bed around 6, I remembered the odd dream. I was a guest in the new “getaway” home of a gay couple I knew from before I retired; two very nice guys who, when they got married after we moved to Hot Springs Village, invited us to their post-wedding party. This new home—that I somehow knew was an apartment in a tiny enclave of extremely modern-looking underground apartments—was entirely a product of my imagination; I have seen photos of their grandiose custom-built house in Sedona, Arizona, which is nothing like this little apartment. In addition to these two men, another guy from earlier in my business life—who had been a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio—was present. The three of them walked ahead of me toward an elevator, but I when I saw an ashtray on a table along the route of our travels, I paused to light a cigarette. The smaller man of the couple paused to wait with me while I smoked, but the other two men went ahead into the elevator. But when I realized I had not been told it was okay to smoke, I put the cigarette out. When I looked up, the other man was gone, too. I was alone in the room and did not know how to get to the elevator, though I knew the direction I should follow. And I followed it; but I had to try to step over some large rectangular stone boxes filled with water to go in that direction. I felt embarrassed and out-of-place. Suddenly, the former singer from the trio appeared and told me smoking without being authorized to do it was a serious faux pas. And that’s all I remember. I haven’t smoked in eighteen years. And I haven’t been face-to-face with my singer friend for at least twenty-five years. Odd what can emerge from one’s mind in the midst of sleep.

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It just occurred to me that my little black book of Zen-influenced quotations is not on my desk. I do not recall the last time it was there, within easy reach. The only book within easy reach is The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx, one of my all-time favorite pieces of fiction. It is there because I took it off a bookshelf in my study to give to my girlfriend, who has not read it; she looked at the size of print and said she would rather order and pay for it for her Kindle so she could read the words. I flipped open the book just now and saw these words, which will have to do in place of a quotation from my Zen book:

Through the great storms of life he did his best,
God grant him eternal rest.

Hmm. Those words do not convey a message of the kind I like to include in my blog posts. But they will have to do, in the absence of my Zen book and given my sloth and unwillingness to do an internet search for meaning.

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I woke up considerably later than normal, so I am out of sync with the day. I detest having to cope with days that do not begin with isolation, serenity, and calm reflection. Dream recall does nothing to smooth out the rough edges of an unexpectedly strange morning. Perhaps later in the day I can find time alone to attempt to meditate myself into a state of placid renewal. Between trips to the new house to check on progress and before the church board meeting. Off I go in an attempt to become the gentle, cool, and unruffled man I know is hidden somewhere beneath my skin.

How is it, I wonder, that an ongoing, but unspoken, longing transforms from an aspiration to a concrete action? The answer, I think, is hidden beneath the rubble of private thoughts; wishes kept in a locked box, its key concealed by time and obligation. Once articulated, a desire becomes an ambition. An unexpressed hope becomes a declared request. Interest and opportunity then intersect to incite action. It is that simple and that complex. A friend—who views the universe through a similar but slightly different prism than the one that informs my vision—might attribute the transformation from one person’s wishes to another person’s unplanned and uncoordinated and unconnected response to synchronicity.  That may be it, too. Or it could be simple, random coincidence. There’s too much to think about in the overall scheme of life in this expanding universe to warrant giving the matter any more sustained thought. I will simply bask in my good fortune and refrain from demanding that the universe explain its rationale and its actions to me.

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Finally, our new house has two new toilets and two new faucets in the master bath. And Habitat for Humanity‘s ReStore picked up old light fixtures, ceiling fans, and so forth yesterday; the garage looks far roomier today than it did yesterday morning. Today, the flooring crew is returning, a day earlier than originally planned, to work toward finishing the floor. Either today or tomorrow (or another day, perhaps), the same crew will install newly-stained quarter-rounds along the baseboards. And, perhaps, we shall see evidence the house is nearing completion. Except, of course, I have plenty of painting/touch-up yet to do. Now, though, the floor is down and I have to be much more careful not to spill paint. Earlier, I could be careless because paint splatters fell harmlessly onto the subfloor. No longer. The house requires a gentler touch; a softer interaction; more focus and less wild abandon. I now need to ask you who are reading this post: do you want to buy the house I live in? If not, do you know anyone who does? I’d rather handle the sale without a Realtor’s commission; but I will share the savings with you, of course, if you help in that regard. 😉

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After falling asleep early on during our viewing of season three of Yellowstone a couple of nights ago, I finally caught up last night to the spot where my girlfriend stopped watching. But before I did, I found myself drifting off almost immediately after I sat down to watch. Television series and film, no matter how much I enjoy them, act like an instant anesthetic, the sort of stuff they administer in advance of a colonoscopy. I have to fight to overcome their sleep-inducing power. At any rate, we’re well into season three. Despite the fact that the series is most definitely modeled after the soap operas I recall my mother watching after she retired, it is riveting entertainment. The differences between this soap opera and the ones to which my mother was addicted are these: 1) this one does not take place entirely indoors on a small, stage; 2) this one is laced with all manner of profanity; 3) this one comes with nudity, sex, gratuitous violence, gunfights, bar room brawls, stunning horsemanship, and other such attractions that draw the viewer into the story; and 4) this one’s setting is a place with magnificent scenery. Oh, and the story line in this one is exceptionally well-conceived, although remarkably complex. I’m glad to know that season 5 is or soon will be in production. Thanks to Deanna for recommending we watch it!

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I took a break from blogging this morning to visit with my sister-in-law, who dropped by for coffee and conversation on her way to the post office and to cat-sit for a friend. Her responsibility for caring for a cat reminded me of the responsibility we had until recently (mostly she, not me) for caring for a marvelous little dog. I miss that guy. He was a good companion, even when he was not in the mood to sit in my lap or play “catch” with a soft doggie toy. Yet missing the joys of engagement with a pet carries with it the relief of responsibility for caring for the animal. No more necessary walks (to avoid unpleasant accidents requiring cleaning up smelly doggie droppings). No more regular delivery of doggie medications. No more arrangements for doggie housing to enable us to take trips. But, still, even with those responsibilities, the pleasure of having a grateful, playful creature around the house was great. Maybe we will do that again one day. Maybe not. At the moment, there are too many competitors for our time and energy. And money. Let’s not forget the cost of pet caretaking. Carefree pet ownership requires significant cash reserves or a lottery windfall.

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This afternoon, we will treat two good friends to dinner at a nice restaurant. And Saturday we will treat two other good friends, who will visit briefly, to lunch and a tour of our house “under construction.”  Before long, we will invite a few other good friends to join us for a meal and a tour of our new home. Recently, we went to the house of other good friends for dinner. Our circle of close friends is small but extremely important to our contentment. There are times—many times, in fact—that I wish our friends shared my vision of a “tribal” compound; a place with private homes, “public” shared space for gatherings, wide open outdoor spaces, and sufficient distance from neighbors and the hubbub of commerce…but close enough to commercial convenience that going to and coming back from it was not an onerous chore. A dream, in other words. Enough dreaming. I need to reenter the real world and make some progress today.

Fierce rainstorms—replete with high winds, brilliant flashes of lightning, and house-rattling claps of rolling thunder—began yesterday afternoon and grew progressively more powerful during the night. At the moment, the incessant noise and blinding lightning seem to have settled down; I hope the storms have moved on, but we may just be in a lull. Reading the news this morning, I learned how fortunate we are to have suffered only pounding rain, thunder, and lighting strikes in our vicinity. East, Central, and North Central Texas were hit by much wore weather yesterday and last night, including probable tornadoes in the Houston and Round Rock/Austin areas and west of Fort Worth. I feel for all the people who were impacted and continue to deal with the powerful storms. The weather forecasts for today suggest the middle Gulf coast, among other areas in the southern U.S., will be in for a monstrous siege of dangerous storms.

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Take any word, any word at all, and say it out loud a dozen times. Do it again, using the same word. By the time you’ve said the word two dozen times, it will sound like gibberish. If it doesn’t, you’re not doing it right. So do it again. Eventually, you will conclude that the word is meaningless; it’s simply a nonsense sound—equivalent to the way mud made from dusty dirt mixed with honey to form a slippery waxen goo feels as you try to hold it between your fingers.

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I got nothing done at the new house yesterday except to survey the work in progress and to get a report on when the project may be finished. I seriously doubt it will be this week; I hope I am wrong, though. Most of the flooring, except for the master bedroom and master bath, has been laid.  Installation of new toilets is on the calendar for today and newly-stained quarter-round is scheduled for installation on Thursday. But the flooring guys are not scheduled to return until Thursday, so that may be wishful thinking.  Once the flooring is complete, though, we can begin the task of cleaning up construction dust and debris, after which we can begin moving boxes into the garage for later distribution throughout the house. Still remaining is installation of new plumbing fixtures (faucets) in the master bath, new stationary and door glass in the master shower, and work getting doors in alignment and having them adjusted so all of them properly close and latch. And I am sure there’s plenty of touch-up painting. And I have to repaint the master bath and to put a coat of primer and paint on what we call the TV room (also known as the guest room). We’ll move in, eventually. And I need to sell the house we now live in. Fortunately, only minor cosmetic work is needed on the current house; I hope that minor stuff will help accelerate the sale of the place once it’s on the market. I desperately need a long-lasting stress relief treatment; perhaps a marathon process of chewing gummies so their effects will continue until the projects are completed.

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The official announcement of nominations for the board of our UU church was distributed by email yesterday. My name will be on the ballot as the Nominating Committee’s nominee for vice president and my girlfriend’s name, as the committee’s nominee as board member at large, will be on it, as well. It’s certainly possible that one or both of us will be challenged by nominations from the floor, but I expect that will not happen (if it does, so be it). Assuming we are elected during the May 1 Annual Meeting, we will take office on July 1. I expect our terms will be both challenging and rewarding; I know I will have to be far more engaged with church work than I have been heretofore. Fortunately, the church has a vibrant committee structure to support and implement policy. As I reviewed the bylaws and the church’s master schedule early this morning, the breadth and scope of responsibilities for which I will be responsible became clear. My plans for road trips, etc. will need to account for responsibilities for such activities as scheduling meetings of committee chairs, reviewing documents that detail committee duties, etc., etc., etc. Calendars help me stay organized; so, it’s a good thing I have a calendar to keep me in line!

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The number of Bradford pear trees in the Village is staggering. Early spring is the period when those trees become like beacons, erupting with flowers so thick the trees look like white cotton candy on brown sticks. Though not nearly as prolific, but at about the same time, Eastern redbud trees compete with Bradford pears for attention and beauty. In the space of our three days absent from the Village, the volume of white and pink real estate among the treetops  grew exponentially. But the white petals of the Bradford pears will disappear almost as fast as they sprouted; they will litter the ground and streets beneath them and will disappear in the wind in short order. On their tail, though, green leaves will emerge from their barren branches and limbs, and from other newly-awakened flora, changing the views into the forests into clots of impenetrable green rubble. And the pollen will soon be upon us like a thick yellow blanket, transforming my love of Spring into ambiguous loathing laced with admiration and hate. It is pointless and irrational to hate pollen, but I believe Nature has the capacity to turn us—me, anyway—into irrational demons capable of stripping the bark from trees with our bare teeth in pursuit of a solution to pollen allergies.  Not to worry. Summer will be here soon enough, leaving pollen as a mere memory; the hatred of pollen will transform into intense loathing of heat, humidity, and chiggers. These thoughts are beginning to prompt me to consider moving to a different climate with different flora and fauna. Where, though, would I be free of Nature’s demonic needling?

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Here is the final stanza of a poem by Pablo Neruda, “Ode to Broken Things.” Something about this poem, especially this last stanza that relies on the ones before it for substance and meaning but stands on its own jus fine, resonates with me.

Let’s put all our treasures together
— the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold —
into a sack and carry them
to the sea
and let our possessions sink
into one alarming breaker
that sounds like a river.
May whatever breaks
be reconstructed by the sea
with the long labor of its tides.
So many useless things
which nobody broke
but which got broken anyway

~ Pablo Neruda ~

We got home last night, a day earlier than we originally had planned, because weather forecasts suggested today would be a miserably wet, unpleasant drive. This morning’s weather forecast presented a somewhat different outlook, calling for light rain in the morning, developing into potentially fierce thundershowers overnight. Still, it was best to have avoided even light rain during a 400-mile drive. We will make our next trip to visit my brother in a small rented box truck, big enough to carry the teak dining table and stainless-steel-topped table he is giving us but small enough to safely and comfortably maneuver during a long drive. And we’ll be able to carry the big mother-in-law’s-tongue/snake plants we had planned to bring back yesterday…but which we were unable to fit on the floor of the backseat of the car.

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Since we’re home earlier than planned, I look forward to going to the “new” house this morning to see how much was accomplished Friday on laying the new floor. Depending on progress and the need (or, better yet, the lack thereof) for additional floor sanding, I may be able to get back to doing some painting and/or touch-up today.  After watching my niece’s incredibly strong and nearly-acrobatic husband work on Saturday, I feel the need to redeem myself by at least climbing ladders and stretching to reach the ceiling, paintbrush in hand. My girlfriend frets when I get on a ladder, concerned that I might tumble to the ground and break my neck. Though I am sure I will not do that, I understand her anxiety.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

   ~ Francis Bacon ~

I remember when my then-sixty-five-year-old (or older) father built a shed in the back yard of his home in Corpus Christi; he climbed a ladder and scurried around on the roof of the shed-in-progress like a man half his age, which I thought was utterly inappropriate and terribly dangerous for an “old man.” I now understand he was not an “old man” at that age and he was exercising appropriate caution while engaging in work he found fulfilling.

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It’s just after 7 and it’s light outside. Time for me to give up on this blog and go take a look at the house, instead.

The motel breakfast bar is bustling this morning with several of the same people who started the day yesterday with dark roast coffee and assembly line eggs and sausage. That description of the breakfast service is not meant to be negative, by the way; it is exceptionally efficient, if not creatively inspired.  That description could well fit the people the breakfast bar serves, too, though I cannot know that. It’s just a stereotyping hunch. A group of guys dressed in jeans, heavy lace cup work boots, flannel shirts, and knit caps or baseball caps look like they might be preparing to work on electric power lines or oil field equipment. But I can’t know that. Hell, they could be surgeons out for a weekend of spelunking or calf-roping.  We are—and by that I mean I am—too quick with our assumptions about people. People about whom we know nothing except what we see in a slice of a moment. My brother remarked yesterday that he tends to make instant and often correct assessments about people—whether they are good, decent folks, for instance. I, on the other hand, tend to incorrectly judge people based on erroneous first impressions. My brother noted that it pays to make note of how dogs size up a person—if a dog dislikes someone, it is wise to be wary of that person. I agree that animals tend to have a “sixth sense” about human decency…or indecency.

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I woke late (for me) this morning, probably as a result of helping but mostly watching my nephew-by-marriage tear down a dangerous set of stairs and build stairs to replace them. He is incredibly strong and has an uncanny ability to apply his numerous technical and intellectual skills with remarkable speed and accuracy. He accomplished in one day what would have taken me a week to do. And his end product was a reliably strong, stable result, whereas mine might have been a rickety and dangerous mistake waiting to claim its victim. I could say his youth (46 years) was his edge; that would have been only a half-truth…maybe a lie. His real-life experience and innate ability to apply experiences in one setting to any other setting had much more to do with it.

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Part of my objective this weekend is to help my brother prepare to relocate to the city where his son/my nephew lives. My brother settled on a new deadline for moving—July 1. That’s two months beyond his original target. That is more than enough time to get it done. But I need to get in gear this morning if I am to help him meet that obligation. Onward with the day.

Huntsville changed dramatically in the nine or ten years since my last visit. Even then, it had morphed from the sleepy college community of the mid-seventies into a sprawling rural town trying desperately—but failing—to be urban. Now, roughly a decade later, it seems to be the young, unsophisticated wanna-be, rife with desire to be a grown-up but perpetually branded by its unrefined rural demeanor. It has the trappings of culture but it carries them poorly. Traffic-clogged streets, evidence everywhere of failed folksy attempts at refinement, and unrestrained consumerism and gluttony abound. Restraint could have channeled development into sophistication. Instead, the town represents what could have happened to Houston without adult supervision and absent the wisdom of experience.

The paragraph above represents my impressions after just one brief evening looking for a place for dinner. In spite of the brevity of last night’s exposure and the paucity of experience it represented, I stick with my assessment of the town. At least for now. I am admittedly judgmental of a town that grew too fast with too little planning and too much desire for unchecked wealth. It would have better served its future had it stayed smallish and rural and tied exclusively to its roots as a college town whose primary industry was incarceration. Its collegiate foundation and its reliance on the Texas prison system for its economy remain obvious, but its development outstripped its ability to maintain any semblance of a unique identity. Today, it relies on economic gluttony to shape it into anytown America, a place with few unique, defining attributes. It could just as easily be a suburb of Minneapolis as an exurb of the Houston-Austin-Dallas Triangle.

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Despite my unfavorable review of Huntsville, we had a decent steak dinner in Huntsville’s downtown last night. At least the chimichurri sauce was good. The steak was adequate. But the town’s small downtown has been effectively abandoned in favor of “urban” redevelopment and new eastward growth. “New” seems to be what the community values now. Speaking of which, we are staying in a very nice, new, upscale motel. New, luxurious, clean. And like any new offering by the same hotel brand anywhere in suburban America.

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I look forward to getting back to our renovation project. I want it finished. But we learned yesterday that our shower will have to wait another four weeks (or more) for a door. By then, I want to be in the house, showering in the guest bath.

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It,s hard to think philosophically in a dark motel room, typing with one finger. I may go search for coffee.

Even in the midst of turbulence and trouble, some days wrap their hours around you in a tender embrace. They remind you that life is, for most of us, tender and gentle. Yesterday was such a day. The few gratifying hours I spent with a friend, over lunch and coffee and conversation, were rewarding, both emotionally and intellectually. Engaging in conversation with a person I genuinely like and in whose presence I feel perfectly at ease is an excellent way to assuage the stresses of home renovation.  Then, last night, my girlfriend and I had dinner at the home of other friends. That same sense of casual relaxation prevailed over an outstanding meal of sous vide coq au vin, followed by conversation on the deck of their lakeside house, as we watched lightning light up the sky and listened to thunder rumble.

As I reflect on other days in recent months, spent with these friends and others, I am grateful that I am fortunate to love and be loved by a small group of people who have become a vitally important element of my life; some of us call this collection of people our “tribe.” And, as I bask in my gratitude for these people, I realize I have begun to regularly write about how important they have become to me. As I told my friend over lunch yesterday, if not for this collection of people who are so important to me, I feel certain I would not have stayed in Hot Springs Village for more than a year or two. But not all of my tribe are here. Two very important friends live in Fort Smith. Others live in Virginia and New Hampshire. Others are in Dallas. Another in Kansas. Others in Tennessee. And my family ranges from California to Texas to Mexico to Ohio. I realize, as I write—again—about my sense of gratitude for this group of people who are so important to me, both their physical presence and their presence in my thoughts keeps me moderately sane. I am fortunate, even while battling what seems like a never-ending renovation; even living with the anxiety about the horrors and wars a world away that could erupt into a global conflagration. Even with concerns about a global pandemic and political tensions and wave upon wave upon wave of stupidity rippling across “civil society,” I am incredibly fortunate.

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We will hit the road this morning for a quick trip that I expect will help me shed even more of my tensions. When we come back, the work on the floors of our new house will be nearing completion. We may have arranged to complete some other aspects of our renovation project—selection of the style and  material for the shower enclosure glass, installation of toilets and faucet hardware, adjustments to doors, etc. And spring may have asserted itself even more aggressively than it has already…a day or two can make a big difference in the buds on trees and shrubs. And we might be nearing decisions on which furniture stays and which goes. And on and on. Things change. And we’re changing with them. We react and respond to change and we cause change. Life is like that. Time to shower, shave, and get ready to hit the road.

My habit of getting up early and—thirty minutes to an hour after I wake—spending a like amount of time writing for my blog, is firmly entrenched. It is sufficiently habitual that I feel uncomfortable when circumstances prevent me from keeping to my routine. I have been doing it for so long that the ritual has become part of me, just as much as are the snapshot memories of my past. This morning, one of those snapshot memories sprang to the surface as I was watching and listening to a BBC video entitled, “Inside the stunning ‘new Athens’ of Central Europe,” a six-minute production about Ljubljana, Slovenia by Martina Zoldos. I recalled sitting with my late wife on a boat as we cruised along the Ljubljanica River. We marveled at the city’s spectacular architecture and at what seemed like an elaborately-planned city, designed for pedestrian enjoyment. I remember taking pictures of the Ljubljana Dragons on the Dragon Bridge and wishing all cities had been planned and executed as beautifully as Ljubljana.

I learned from the video, subtitled in English and delivered in Slovene, that the city was reimagined by Jože Plečnik, a Slovene architect who designed the city as it stands today after an earthquake in 1895 devastated the city. Plečnik called the project The Slovenian Acropolis; he was inspired by the design of Athens, Greece. After Ljubljana’s rebirth, the city served as the model for many other European cities, giving pedestrians precedence over automobiles and ensuring a grand, spectacular cityscape for pedestrians to enjoy.

Though we spent only a couple of days in Ljubljana, we fell in love with the place and occasionally talked about the possibility of returning there on our own so we could experience it at our own pace. Our time there, in 2019, was near the tail-end of an Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) tour. Though the OAT tour was excellent, it did not provide enough relaxed, unscheduled time in any one city to really get the flavor of the place. That said, it was well-designed to provide more time on one’s own than most such tours, I think.

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My intent with the section above was to express my thoughts about my habit of rising early to write. Yet I allowed myself to hijack my own thoughts with memories that my thoughts sparked. That is how I think; in labyrinthine webs that layer upon one another until their intricate design is obliterated by the tortuous paths they follow. My thoughts are connected, but they sometimes seem random or their connections appear irrational—even to me. Because of the way I lay out my thought processes—unfiltered and lacking in discernable planning—I sometimes think people who hear me talk or read what I write must believe I am remarkably stupid. I know I am not remarkably stupid; not stupid in the least. But I can understand why people might sometimes think I am. Perhaps I should give more time to plan what I write. But that would put a restraint on me that I do not want. So I will continue taking the risk of being viewed as intellectually challenged. Even when I look back at what I say or write and feel deeply embarrassed for the way it came out.

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I spent part of the day yesterday cleaning up and organizing the three-car garage in our new house. The work was meant to be only a temporary “fix” to the disorder in the garage caused haphazard placement of workers’ tools and materials , old fixtures littering the floor, and junk left by the previous owners.  Once some of the stuff is removed and shelves and pegboard, etc. are put in their permanent locations, the garage will be extremely useful. I intend for the third “bay” to be our work area. At some point, I hope to get some power tools and related products (table saw, chop saw, drill press, router table, etc.) so I can have a reasonably decent, though not professional quality, shop. And I may eventually invest in some welding equipment and a plasma cutter. I cannot possibly justify the investment associated with obtaining all this equipment except to call it an expense related to a nascent hobby. It will not be an investment; it will be an expense. If I actually spend the money. We’ll see. What was I thinking and saying, recently, about acquiring things?  Experiences are what makes one happy, not “stuff.”

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Yesterday, during lunch, my girlfriend and I talked about the possibility of buying a neighbor’s party barge. The neighbors have talked about selling it, but have not made any firm decisions. My GF and I would love to be able to cruise Lake Balboa any time the mood strikes us. Buying a boat is another “investment” that is, in reality, an expense. And I am not sure I want to be throwing money at something we probably would use rather rarely. But the idea really appeals to me. If we can’t have a lake property (and we can’t), maybe we can have a marina-based boat at the ready when we’re in the mood to cruise. Hmm. I need to be cautious about spending money that I may need to survive in later years. I should have won the lottery. But you can’t win if you don’t buy tickets. And even then, you probably won’t win. Wait. Didn’t I just reiterate what I said a day or two ago? About “…acquiring things?  Experiences are what makes one happy, not “stuff.” Listen to your wisdom speak, John.

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Time for an early breakfast, then off to the new house to see what I can do to prepare for the flooring guys, who are set to return today after being on other jobs. They worked part of the day last Sunday. They may finish up on Saturday, but I doubt it. I suspect it will be Monday or even later. We’ll see.  Off to the races.

The weather forecasters predict today will be another of those late Winter days when Spring attempts to burst through the wreckage of the previous season. They forecast the day will start clear and cool—temperatures in the low 40s—and will finish just as clear, but warming to the upper 60s or low 70s. I can attest to the fact that the temperature at this early hour—5:30—is, in fact very cool and comfortable; about 43°F.  The light of day has yet to begin to spill from the horizon, so the sky remains dark except for the dim light of hundreds or thousands of stars. When I stepped outside a while ago and looked up at the sky, I felt that sense of childhood awe for a few moments; that sense of intense wonder at the extent of the wide universe beyond our tiny place in it. That’s what into a night sky does for me, even when the glow of nearby communities pollutes the darkness with dim, almost invisible light. Looking skyward, I am struck by the stunning beauty above us. And even when the star lights are dim, like this morning, I recall how brilliant and crisp the stars look—and  how many millions I think I see—when I have been far, far away from the lights of “civilization.” Places like Big Bend National Park and isolated beaches on the big island of Hawai’i and the empty plains of Kansas. Everywhere I’ve ever been…if I am far enough away from bright or numerous lights…a clear night sky is among the most mesmerizing experiences I can hope for. Perhaps recalling those experiences is part of the reason I find seclusion and isolation and desolate places so compelling; so magnetic and fulfilling.

Last night, as we watched another few episodes of Yellowstone (already into season 3), I imagined what the night sky would be like on the Dutton Yellowstone ranch. I suspect it would be very much like the skies I fell in love with when I was in Big Bend and Hawai’i and Kansas and a few other places where nighttime delivered a gift of almost absolute darkness, punctuated only by the tiny twinkling lights of more stars than I could possibly count.  Looking at a dark, dark, dark night sky is an incredibly moving experience for me; it delivers for me a serenity sense of both safety and vulnerability that are at once incompatible and perfectly matched. Odd, that. I suspect believers in religious stories look to emotional experiences triggered by the night sky as evidence of their beliefs. From my perspective, the night sky offers evidence that those stories are simply that—stories. As I see it, the awe inspired by the darkest night skies is much bigger and more powerful than any that could be inspired by belief in a supernatural being.

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Back on Earth, work continued on the new house yesterday. A guy came out to measure for the glass door/wall for the master bath shower. The walls of the master bath, where the old jetted tub was removed, were patched; today, they will be textured. I painted a small area of the master bath with a light grey paint; later, my girlfriend took a look at it and gave it her approval. I will repaint the walls, which earlier I had painted beige, with the grey paint. The grey paint is a much better match with the newly-tiled shower that was the beige—which was a good match for the old, now gone, shower. I do not mind repainting the bathroom, as I think it will contribute to a stunning, modern look to the master bath. When it’s all finished, I think the house will be worth the effort.  Not worth the money, perhaps, but worth the effort.

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Late yesterday afternoon, on a whim while we were out on an errand and a sightseeing drive, we stopped for dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant in the Village. It’s a small place not far from our new house. The owner is almost always there and he circulates among tables, thanking patrons for their business and making small talk. He’s a nice guy, at least he seems that way from my limited interactions with him during several visits to the place over the past few years. Last night, my girlfriend complimented him on his t-shirt, the back of which was imprinted in big, bold letters with “Legalize Marinara!” The waitstaff at this restaurant is always professional, cordial, and attentive, which reflects the owners’ training and staff selection practices. Other—most—restaurants in the area would do well by learning this guy’s secrets and putting them into practice in their own places of business.

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A couple of days ago, a friend returned from a Norwegian cruise to the Arctic Circle. Viewing her Facebook  posts, some of which included images of the Aurora Borealis, sparked a renewed interest in travel to that part of the world. Norway has always been on my wish list of places I would like to visit. I look forward to hearing my friend talk about her experiences and what she saw; and, perhaps, seeing more photos of the places she visited.

Thinking of travel spurred me to retrieve memories of my trip to France a few years ago. My late wife and I joined my sister on a roughly ten-day Road Scholar tour to Provence in the south of France (Marseille, Avignon, Aix-en-Provence, Arles, the Camargue, etc.). Afterward, the brother who lives in Mexico and his wife, along with the brother who lives north of  Houston joined us at a villa in Cabrières-d’Avignon. My sister arranged to rent the villa to celebrate her seventieth birthday. Both the formal Road Scholar tour and the subsequent excursions, using the villa as a home base (and, of course, the time at the villa itself) were extraordinarily memorable experiences. I would love to go back there. My girlfriend and I talked yesterday about the possibility of one day making a similar trip, inviting my sister to join us. It occurs to me that “one day” would have to be soon; all of us are approaching the last few years of the time available to us.

Travel to places where the cultures are different from our own tends to expand one’s view of the world. It broadens one’s horizons and demands we abandon insularity and arrogance. No matter how much one “loves” one’s home country, there always are places “better” in some ways; places one automatically admires because they are different from what we are used to experiencing. We become more open and welcoming and less self-important. Travel opens our eyes and our minds. And, for those of us fortunate to reap the benefits of living in the USA, travel makes us appreciate what we have and makes us more willing to share it with people whose lives would be made better by having what we have.  From my personal perspective, travel also has made me feel embarrassed for our abundance and ashamed of our arrogance; often, travel has led me to want to live someplace else where human dignity is more valued than wealth and prosperity.

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Despite being in the final phases of completing renovations to our new house, lately I’ve been feeling increasingly drawn to a nomadic life. While having a home base is a comforting concept, the idea of being tied to a place disturbs me. Maybe my restlessness is a temporary thing; I’ve felt it before and it has dissipated. But it feels different and strong. Yet as I age at astonishing speed, I suppose a nomadic lifestyle might become too taxing. But being chained to a mortgage may be even more onerous and stressful. If I could forecast with relative precision how long I will live (in possession of my ability to get around on my own), I think I would spend my money accordingly, so that my last penny would be spent as I took my last breath. I would invest in experiences, instead of “things.” “Things,” in many respects, are substitutes for joy. They take the place of experiences. While they may bring temporary comfort or satisfaction, “things” are like addictive narcotics; they must be replaced and replenished with more, more, more in order to deliver the same high.

God, I’m really rambling. I must stop. I have to prepare for a full day of making preparations; taking actions to attach my ball and chain to my ankle so I will be unable ever to leave my cell. A bit dramatic, perhaps, but reflective of my attitude at one single moment in time on this Wednesday morning.

A couple of days ago, at my invitation, my sister-in-law came to my house to go through my late wife’s jewelry. Even though my wife died fifteen months ago, I have been unable to force myself to do anything with her earrings, necklaces, pendants, rings, and other pieces of jewelry. I have no idea whether any of it has any significant monetary value—I rather doubt it, as my wife was inherently frugal—but I did not want to simply give it away to a charity. The idea of turning items of sentimental value into transactional trinkets was—and remains—anathema to me.

As my sister-in-law examined each piece of her late sister’s jewelry, she commented about specific pieces, saying this ring or these earrings or this necklace called to mind specific memories that said, to both of us, “this is Janine.” I was grateful to my sister-in-law for choosing specific pieces of jewelry that she wanted to keep and wear; wearing those pieces would honor my late wife’s memory and keep recollections about specific moments of her life alive.

Most of the items in the jewelry boxes held no specific meaning or memory for me. But I was grateful that most of those that were meaningful to me also were meaningful to my sister-in-law. I was grateful that she would keep them and wear them from time to time.  Some of the items, though, has so much importance to me that I wanted to keep them; to treasure them by bring them out from time to time and letting the memories they evoke wash over me. I know those memories will bring me to tears; they did as we went through the jewelry boxes.  I have no use whatsoever for those pieces of jewelry. But I cannot give them up. I know that, when I open those old jewelry boxes and see those things my wife used to wear and treasure, powerful emotional memories of my late wife will turn my grief at her absence from old and controlled to immediate and acute.

At the same time we were going through emotion-laden jewelry, it occurred to me that my grief at my late wife’s absence might be hard on my girlfriend. My girlfriend, who was away at church while my sister-in-law and I were going through the jewelry, has been extremely understanding of my fragile emotions. But, I thought, might my ongoing grief be hard on her? How would I feel, I wondered, if the shoe were on the other foot? As I mulled over theses issues, it occurred to me that the shoe is on the other foot, though it is not as tight on my foot. My girlfriend was divorced from her husband only a few years ago; and she maintains an amiable relationship with him and his girlfriend. I am happy that their relationship is good; that they can talk with genuine care and interest about their daughter and grandson. And I do not take offense when my girlfriend talks about experiences with her ex-husband—places they visited, foods they enjoyed, experiences they had, etc. So maybe my memories of my late wife, which often are expressed through indirectly through tears, are not intrusive on or injurious to our relationship. I hope no. Yet, even though I think my emotional attachment to those memories is a natural phenomenon, I still feel guilty that I may be unintentionally sending the message that my “old life” was more important or more fulfilling than the one I am living now. On the other hand, I sometimes feel guilty that I might be dishonoring the memory of my late wife by getting such joy from my relationship with my girlfriend.  Both feelings probably are natural, but neither feel “right.” I wish I could erase the feelings of guilt from my life, but I suppose that’s impossible. Those feelings, too, are natural.

Not long after my wife died, I participated briefly in grief support groups. I did not feel like I got much out of them, but I do remember—very clearly—conversations about the part that guilt plays in a person’s grief. What I do not remember, perhaps because it was absent from those conversations, is how to eradicate or minimize the feelings of guilt associated with continuing to live one’s life after the loss of a loved one who was so important to one’s identity and reason for living.  And I remember from those few grief support sessions the admonition that grief is not something one “gets over” or “gets through.” It is a life sentence from which one cannot be granted a reprieve. It cannot be commuted or pardoned. It is eternal. Either one learns to live with it or lets it take on the power of executioner.

I do not need these emotions right not. I am in the midst of making massive changes in my life. A major resurgence of grief and its attendant guilt can have no place during this period of metamorphosis. They must be overcome; tamped down or snuffed out or otherwise prevented from consuming me.

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It is likely that I will regret writing this post. I will regret even more posting it for the world to see, if the world happened to stop by for tea. But, if memory of what I learned in my brief excursions into grief support groups is true, I think expressing my thoughts is better than bottling them up in the hope they will go away. Still, maybe it’s better to express them to someone who can help deal with them. A therapist or counselor, perhaps, instead of a small group of people who may or may not read my posts. People—most of whom obviously are not sufficiently engaged by my posts to comment about them—who may not feel any real connection to me. I’ll throw this question out to those who have read this far: how can I overcome, or at least deal with, being consumed by grief and guilt and a tangle of related emotions? Or might that be an impossible wish, a dream that cannot be fulfilled?

I realize, of course, how insignificant my pain is. When the people of Ukraine are struggling to stay alive, my emotional traumas are utterly meaningless. Yet they refuse to shrink back and let the truly important, life-or-death experiences a world away take over my psyche. And that, too, adds to my feelings of guilt. How can I allow myself to turn inward at a time the world around me rightfully demands my undivided attention and action? There’s no temporary solution. Only the final solution ultimately will resolve the matter. And even thinking that way is enough to make the dams fail, releasing the pent-up energy of all the planet’s oceans as they rush to drown Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Everest.

It’s nearly 6:00. Time for another cup of coffee and some silent reflection, giving my fingers a rest and my mind a respite from the roar of thought.