John Swinburn

Reading letters or emails or text messages a person sends can give clues about the sender. Spending hours reading her personal diary can provide a modicum of wisdom about her. Looking at the images he posts online can offer hints about his emotional or intellectual condition. But those mechanical expressions of an individual’s fundamental state of mind—the core of who he is, at his core—are just pointers. They give tips about who’s “there” behind the public mask. Only by face-to-face interaction does one stand a chance of really knowing someone. Even then, she may reveal who she is only after weeks or months or even years. And that revelation may be made to such a small number of others that only a sliver of his social sphere may have a reliable inkling of who he is. In fact, the revelation may be made only to a mirror. Or not at all. The “real” person may be forever buried beneath layer upon layer of intentional or inadvertent artifice.

I’ve probably written something like this before. That’s because I regularly encounter surprises. People I think I know by virtue of distant interactions suddenly seem to be someone else. Even people with whom I’ve had casual, amiable relationships can reveal a fiery, dangerous core unlike the calm, cool one I thought was resting comfortably inside. It’s best, then, to figuratively undress a person, face-to-face. Remove the protective cladding that conceals sharp edges or soft spots. Like peeling back the layers of an onion, remove the protective sheets that mask the person’s unvarnished self. Engage. Talk. Let one’s guard down, in the hope the person in front of your eyes does the same. Listen and watch and assess. The skeptic in me urges me always to be ready to second-guess one’s earlier opinion of someone else. But the optimist in me insists I should reject that mistrustful attitude.

Nothing in particular prompted these thoughts. Well, that’s not true. Something did, but that something was far more innocuous than these paragraphs suggest. I tend to over-think and over-analyze. Another couple of my innumerable flaws. Which are revealed not just in person, but in writing, as well.

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I woke again around 4 this morning, this time from a worrisome point in a hard-driving dream. It was hard-driving because I was either walking alongside or riding a poor-quality mountain bike most of the time. During the first part of the dream, possibly “day one” of an unwelcome adventure, I was with a group of younger people participating in an organized ride on a mountainous trail. Everyone else on the trek was stronger and more experienced than I, but I somehow managed to follow them to a pickup spot. There, while we waited for our ride back to the base camp, we twice saw a vehicle come to a stop at a stop sign, then take off down the road again. Both times, the same dog was behind the wheel and another dog—again, the same in both instances—sat upright in the passenger seat. I was only modestly surprised. In the second part of the dream, the biking group was of similar make-up, except my friends Lana and Mel were included. The trail, this time, seemed to be outside Austin, Texas; I’m not sure how I know this. Unlike the first day, this day’s trek began with the group splitting up. I followed Lana and one other bicyclist, but they quickly left me behind, as I had a very hard time just getting the bicycle wheels to turn. Another bicyclist was beside me at first. He told me Mel was in a group behind us that would start heading our way later in the morning. The other cyclist and I got separated soon after we started. I reached a point where the trail seemed to end at a road; I started heading right, but quickly decided it was the wrong direction. I turned around and headed up the road and into a old neighborhood filled with ramshackle old frame homes. Alleys behind the houses suggested they must be part of the trail. In both parts of the dream, the trail often followed rock outcroppings that looked like the rock had once been worn smooth by water. And, often, the trail required jumping over gaps in the rock; sometimes, the gaps were in fact narrow but deep canyons. Finally, I saw a group of riders ahead of me, stopped at the top of an overlook. Lana was among them. They seemed concerned that we had gone the wrong direction and there was no way back to our starting point. After that point, I have no recollection of the dream. I suppose it ended when I woke.

Though I don’t know why, I expected to sleep through the night last night. My expectation was dashed when, around 1:30, I woke with a need to pee. Getting back to sleep was a bit of a lengthy undertaking, but I finally returned to my slumbers. Sometime later, I woke again, uncomfortable with my position. I tossed and turned a bit, but finally succeeded in getting back to sleep. Then, I woke from the dream. If I can force myself to refrain from even a short cat-nap today, perhaps I can force myself to sleep through the night tonight.

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Today looks dreary in the extreme. I long for sunlight and a climate suited to short sleeved shirts and shorts. Year-round. With occasional bursts of rain, cold, and even snow. But only occasionally.

The constant “thrump, thrump, thrump” in my ears is just the internal sound of my heartbeat, sending blood coursing through my body. That racket is especially loud and irritating early in the morning when I sit down to write. The noise causes me to wonder whether my blood pressure is high, causing the hammer and anvil and stirrup inside my ear to vibrate more ferociously than normal. It’s my understanding that the  proper names of those tiny bones, incidentally, are malleus, incus, and stapes. Regardless of what they are called, they seem to vibrate with an annoying frequency when I wake up, as I did today, before 4:00 a.m. But the sounds they create are not the only things I hear inside my head; I “hear” the perpetual nighttime noises that crickets make, as well. I have come to think, though, that what I “hear” is a form of tinnitus, the affliction normally associated with “ringing” in one’s ears. Only, with me, it’s not ringing. It’s the constant chorus of crickets. Fiercely persistent crickets that refuse to be silent, regardless of how much I need that silence. I could really use that silence right now. One should have access to the comfort of pure, unadulterated silence at 4:45 a.m. If it weren’t for my fears of its irreversible nature and the associated pain, I might plunge an icepick in each ear just to attain that blissful absence of noise. For the moment, though, I’ll continue to live with it. Ach!

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People remain unknowable to us, even people that we’re very close to. And I think the same goes for our own selves.

~ Katie Kitamura ~

I’ve tried hard my entire life to know myself, though always understanding deep down the effort was pointless. That remains true today. I keep trying, even in the near certainty the attempts are futile. But the harder I try and the more certain I am the endeavor is a waste of time and energy, the more desperately I seek to know the unknowable. That unpleasant circularity is a trademark of either stupidity or madness; I’m not sure which. I suppose I hold onto the hope that one day I will find a crack in the vault behind which I might find the answer. And I hope I can chip away at that crack until it become a chasm through which I can climb into the “chamber of answers.” That illogical hunger, the equivalent of seeking nutrition from a rock, is what leads to religion in its many forms, I suspect. Idiocy, on one hand, spiritual tenderness, on the other. Somewhere in the middle, most of humankind practices an odd form of imbecilic spirituality; unquestioning belief in the divinity of a tale originally spun as a bedtime story.

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Last night, for dinner, I made an ad hoc variation of a Greek roasted vegetable dish. The recipe I had, one I made years ago before we moved away from Dallas, called for eggplant, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, potatoes, zucchini, garlic, and various spices, lots of olive oil, etc. I did not have bell peppers or zucchini, but I opted to make a version of the dish anyway. I added small sliced portabella mushrooms. And, at the suggestion of my IC, I shaved some mozzarella and added it atop the nearly-cooked veggies toward the end of the roasting period. After roasting the veggies, we let them cool. With a little red wine, the meal was outstanding. Both of us commented that we could eat the dish several times a week and be happy about it. And we may just do that as we enter the new year. Both of us, feeling bloated and stuffed after a lengthy period of over-indulgence that has culminated these last two weeks of 2021, have decided we will make the transition to a healthier lifestyle when the food festivities of late 2021 are behind us. Better food and drink (and less of it), exercise, and intention; that’s what will make our lives more enjoyable as we plunge ahead into the unknowable future.

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My brother’s health continues to weigh heavily on my mind, though there’s essentially nothing I can do to change it. His health rests with medical professionals and with his own body’s ability to recover from the maladies afflicting him. In spite of the thousands of thoughts that fill my head about what he’s going through, I cannot seem to fashion those thoughts into coherent sentences that can even begin to explain my thinking or my emotions. Sometimes, my ability to express myself withers into dry dust. No matter what I feel, I cannot seem to put it into words. That’s an odd sensation for me; one I dislike with an intensity that’s rare even for me.

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The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

~ William Butler Yeats ~

I read an article from The Irish Times about intensity. The writer, Patsy McGarry, argues that “He was not saying it is a feature of human behaviour that the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.” McGarry explain why he thinks Yeats was making an observation only about a particular time and place. I wonder whether McGarry knows more about Yeats than Yeats knew about himself. Probably not.

Intensity can be both an attractive quality in a person and a precursor to his utter devastation. In light of misplaced intensity, as is the case when a person fervently believes in his own position but discovers his position is completely wrong, the characteristic is not a strength. Instead, it is a weakness of almost heroic proportion. It is the Titanic of self-confidence. In such cases, intensity morphs into personal despair and the complete distrust of one’s own intellectual competence.

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I gave my IC’s dog a bath yesterday. I’m afraid the lovely little beast tends to stink. Only a few days after a bath, he smells a little like the End of Time wearing a cologne of rotted hope and spoiled children. So, he needs frequently cleansing. As I washed the monster, I pitied him while he stood shivering in the sink. After I lathered him up and rinsed the soap from him, I wrapped him in a towel to dry him as well as I could. I then used a hair dryer to blow warm air on his coat. Before long, he was dry and once again fluffy. His odor was again tolerable. And after his bath, he was extremely energetic. You’d have thought I gave him a dose of doggie speed.  After that experience, though, I think I understand why people take their dogs to groomers for baths. It’s not a particularly enjoyable experience for either the dog or the bath-master.

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I have a love-hat relationship with hats. I like them. I can love them, in fact. But I have always thought hats look bad on me. Or, rather, I look bad with hats on me. For that matter, it’s probably not the hat. But the hat accentuates the obvious. And there’s no reason to do that if it’s not absolutely necessary. But I like hats, nonetheless. I am particularly fond of fedoras. And newsboy caps. And I like Panama hats and bowlers. And pork pies. But not on me. None of them. But I do wear hats on occasion. In the winter, mostly. Even though I think they look good on other men, most hats make me look like I’m trying to be someone I’m not. In other words, hats on me say “FAKE.” But I wear them anyway. Which means either I’m fake or I don’t care whether people think I’m fake or not. Hard to say which.

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If I were to eat breakfast this morning, which I probably will, I might think about bacon. Thinking should be an enterprise. If it involves bacon, I would be willing to call it an enterprise. And so I will.

I have long been enamored of many of the quotes attributed to Kahlil Gibran. It’s a bit of an embarrassment that I personally have read little of his writings; only quotes attributed to him. That oversight or laziness or inadequacy or whatever it is should be corrected. I shall make that a point sometime in the coming months. In the interim, I will continue to ponder the words contained in his quotes. Those words seem to me so imbued with wisdom that I think the man must have devoted every waking moment to deep and productive thought. I’ve dabbled in The Prophet, but I don’t think I’ve ever read it all the way through. That should have been an easy read, though, because the book is so short. So maybe I have read it. But I tend to forget books (and movies) within hours after I finish them. That’s a bit odd. It corresponds to my experience of childhood, though. I remember only paragraphs and an occasional page from my youth; never a full chapter. What is it, I wonder, that causes me to quickly erase even the most valuable or most moving experiences from my memory? I suppose I’ll never answer that question, no matter how many times I ask it.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

~ Kahlil Gibran ~

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Another night of sleeping in front of the television, going to bed early, and then struggling to get to sleep and stay asleep. But at least I slept more than the night before. A marked improvement, in my book. I woke just before 5 this morning. Almost like “sleeping in.” My arthritis is in full bloom, though. Wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees, ankles, hips, etc. But those pains and others notwithstanding, yesterday’s trek to my doctor for my annual “Medicare visit” was generally uneventful and lacking in unwelcome surprise. As expected, he advised me to exercise and lose weight. And he told me about his childhood, riding go-carts and bicycles to the post office and avoiding confrontations with law enforcement…because there was no law enforcement to speak of in the tiny town of 450. He told me he has sworn off visits to San Francisco and New York because of those cities’ high levels of crime. Nice enough guy—an inveterate talker—but I suspect our politics do not mesh well. He spent well over an hour with me, though, so either he’s thorough in his investigation of his patients’ medical and mental circumstances or he’s remarkably slow.

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Yesterday, during one of two trips to examine the new house, I repaired a nearby street sign. Ever since we first drove over to look at the house, we’ve noticed the sign at the intersection of Alvero Way and Viscara Way dangling from its post. Though the repair is temporary (the post is in need of replacement, which I will not do), the sign is properly hung for the moment. I took a cordless drill/driver and a lag bolt with me on one of my trips to the house and stopped to repair the sign. As I was leaving, I noticed a neighbor (at the corner of Viscara Way and Hidalgo) standing in front of his house with an HVAC repairman; both were looking in my direction. I waved. The repairman waved back. The neighbor stared. One day I will have to meet the unfriendly neighbor. I realize, of course, that he may not be unfriendly. He may have vision problems. He could be slow to respond to waves. There may be any number of reasons he did not wave. I should not categorize him as an unfriendly person. And I don’t. Anymore, anyway. I also arranged yesterday for both monthly assessments and utility bills to be paid automatically from our checking account. But I have yet to arrange for automatic withdrawal of mortgage payments from the account. Let that sentence be a reminder.

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Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.

~ Kahlil Gibran ~

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Part of my time yesterday was devoted to searching online for adhesive mesh, the stuff used to repair holes in sheetrock. I recently took down a hideously laughable “secret gun compartment” from the master bathroom wall in our new house, revealing four monstrous holes through which the previous owner had plunged large toggle bolts. It appeared to me the guy did not even try to find any studs behind the sheetrock; instead, he rammed toggle bolts through holes he drilled. At any rate, I need to patch the holes before we paint. And I need spackling compound and various other “stuff” from the hardware store. Today, if I’m feeling energetic, I’ll go buy the necessary materials to enable me to patch the holes. And I’ll fill nail holes left behind when the previous owners hung artwork of various stripes. I’ve thought about this before. I’ve just not done it. I have to start it, eventually. My IC says we should finish this week in slothful bliss before we launch into serious work on the new house. But I’m sort of in the mood, more or less, so I say strike while the iron is hot. Maybe.

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How many people in my small sphere know that Khalil Gibran was a Lebanese-American writer and poet and visual artist? Or that he died in 1931? I vaguely remember thinking, when I first was introduced to his work, that I thought he was a Muslim mystic from the twelfth century (or thereabouts). I’m sure that identity did not just pop into my mind; someone, though I have no idea who, must have planted it there. My mind is fertile; seeds left there tend to grow. But I rarely plant seeds of my own. Whenever I think I’ve had an original idea or an original thought, I learn that my pride at my own originality is misplaced. That’s when I remember Herman Melville’s words: It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. I wish I failed in originality more often; instead, I succeed in flattering imitation at times. My originality is either not my own, after all, or it is not worthy of acknowledgement. Such is life.

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I sometimes daydream about you, the person reading these words, and wonder what you’re thinking. You may be someone I’ve never met, or met only briefly, or someone I know quite well. You may be an old man or a young woman or someone in between;  in age or gender or both. Why, I wonder, do you come here to this blog? I’ve heard from one or two people who surprise and honor me with their frequent presence here. But I don’t know what the people from Sacramento or Peoria or Lubbock or Oklahoma City or Fayetteville or Pittsburgh think. So I imagine them and what they think. I’m probably wrong about who they are and what they think about the words I write. I’m not so curious about the people who stumble on the blog, read part of post, and then move, never to return. It’s the returning visitors who, for whatever reason, find what I say of interest. They are the ones who interest me.

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I need time to think. Unencumbered time to sort through a million thoughts and discard the ones that no longer belong in my head. It could take weeks. Or months. Or years. I might need half a century to categorize and classify and judge the validity of all the ideas in my head. I think I try to do it during the night, when I’m sleeping. Or trying to sleep. When I dream about sitting in front of a wood fire in a tiny cabin. That’s when I gaze out the window at the snow-covered landscape and see miles upon miles of lovely desolation. Or when I relax in an aluminum folding lawn chair, its seat and back made of interwoven strips of plastic. From that chair, I can look out over the water and see the shore birds scurry along the empty beach. Ahh! That’s it. That’s the place!

I got back home around 7:00 a.m., having left a few vials of blood and a teaspoon or so of pee for the lab people to test and assess. The blood-letting specialist, a woman who has extracted my blood on a few occasions in the past, did the job again today. As usual, she insisted on trying my arm first. Failing to find a willing vein—but quickly finding and stabbing an especially sensitive nerve—she agreed to try stabbing me in my right hand. That hand has gotten used to being jabbed during the course of blood-letters’ explorations for blood geysers. The hand and its underlying vein obliged immediately, spraying the red fluid of life into three waiting tubes. The woman, apologizing for my excruciating pain, covered the puncture holes with white gauze and white tape, the latter of which was attached to my flesh with low-end adhesive materials that quickly released their hold on my skin, allowing the gauze to flutter in the breeze. Duct tape would have worked better. It might not have been quite as sanitary, though.

Homeward bound, I spied a donut shop. I stopped and picked up some apple fritters for breakfast. I had been prohibited from eating or drinking anything for several hours before the blood-letting, so the sweet seemed like a proper reward for my starvation. Coffee at home would be my reward for forcible thirst.

My physical is scheduled for 11:15. Between now and then, I will contemplate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yours and mine.

I will attempt to get more sleep sometime soon; no later than Friday of next week.

Another night of insomnia, though not as sleepless as the two previous nights. I was early to bed, but late to sleep. And I woke often. At 4:30, I rose for the day, which involves lab work and an annual physical exam. Thanks to my failure to go when and where I was to get lab work last week, I am sitting in the CHI St. Vincent outpatient area, awaiting my blood-letting. I arrived here at 5:20, thinking I would be the sole patient. Not so. A dozen or more sleepy-eyed people await their procedures.

One-fingered blogging does not suit me, so I will stop. Maybe I will think on the screen later, maybe not. For now, I will people-watch the sick, the afflicted, and the healthy who need blood-letting and such.

Perhaps night will become day before I return home and, later this morning, to the doctor for my physical.

Since before midnight, I’ve been more or less awake. The first time I looked at the clock, the digits read 11:58. Every 35 to 45 minutes or so since then, I peered at the clock again, not sure what I would see. Had I slept since the last look…was it nearing time to get up, or had the time actually dragged by the way it seemed? It was the latter. Finally, at a minute or two after 3, I got up. But it wasn’t like I didn’t get any sleep yesterday. No, I fell asleep in my recliner yesterday afternoon, after Christmas dinner and ample refreshments. My IC told me, when she woke me around 8:30 and suggested I go to bed, that I had slept about three hours. I think I deserved it. After yesterday’s tapas cook-a-thon, which began in the wee hours, I was bone-tired. I think I spent about seven hours on my feet in the kitchen yesterday. Enough time to convince me I really need a gel mat in the kitchen. That will be something for the new house.

Twenty-four hours after writing yesterday’s random thoughts, I sit in front of my computer again, wondering what thoughts will spill onto the monitor and into the internet. I’ll soon see.

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Yesterday, while my niece was visiting my brother in the hospital in  Houston, she arranged for a Zoom gathering. My niece, my hospitalized brother, my two other brothers (one in rural southeast Texas and the other in Jalisco, Mexico) my sister (in California), and my nephew and his wife (in Ohio) joined in, along with my IC. That gathering felt very good. It’s rare that my family is able to visit together; even though it was not in person (which is beyond rare), the event was a superb way to spend the midday hour on Christmas Day. An added benefit: I was able to get out of the kitchen and off my feet.

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The intimate gathering at home yesterday was a good way to spend the day. My sister-in-law and a friend joined my IC and me for tapas. Some of my efforts resulted in what I expected. Some were acceptable, even after beginning with a major faux pas;  the meat balls I made were NOT supposed to have included the chopped onion with the ground lamb…but they turned out okay, anyway. The fried olives were, in my opinion, excellent; I had worried they might not turn out as I had hoped. The aubergine balls looked a bit like black 8-balls from a pool hall, but they tasted good. All in all, I was satisfied and I think the others enjoyed the meal as well. The best part, of course, as is always the case was the gathering. I wish we could have gathered other friends and family around us. But if one if smart, one takes what one can get and enjoys it to the fullest. I like to think I’m reasonably smart.

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The top of the news this morning is that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has died. In a statement announcing Tutu’s death, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called Tutu, “A man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid, he was also tender and vulnerable in his compassion for those who had suffered oppression, injustice and violence under apartheid, and oppressed and downtrodden people around the world.”  I think those words describe quite well Tutu and his impact on South Africa and the world at large. I wonder whether his legacy will live on? Or will the forces of repression and global efforts to deconstruct democracy and human rights undo all the good he accomplished during his lifetime? I sincerely hope his legacy will thrive.

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The platforms of political parties attempt to express their adherents’ fundamental values, but usually fail in the effort. They fail because they veer into describing desired outcomes instead of core beliefs. They ignore the fact that core values may be in conflict with the means of achieving outcomes. And party platforms appear to be—and are—meaningless platitudes that conceal the parties’ real interests: to gain or restore and to maintain POWER. Desired outcomes should be outgrowths of party platforms, not the other way around.

The Democratic party platform is an example of the backward-thinking that conceals an  obvious power-grab; an expression of placating a potential audience of supporters by using outcomes as lures. Here are some of the bedrock “principles” from the Democratic Party platform:

• Building a Stronger, Fairer Economy
• Achieving Universal, Affordable, Quality Health Care
• Providing a World-Class Education in Every Zip Code
• Creating a 21st Century Immigration System
• Protecting Communities and Building Trust by Reforming our Criminal Justice System

In my view, the platform should represent unflinching, unchanging principles that do not change from election cycle to election cycle. The outcomes that emerge from those principles might vary over time, but the principles should not. The principles should guide the platform. Every one of the statements above is a statement of desired outcome. One might argue that the statements reflect principles, but I would disagree. The statements are meant to lure a target audience into a fight in which enemies are defined as those who would oppose the means by which the party hopes to achieve the outcomes.  From my perspective, the “platform” represents a naked lust for power, not a set of fundamental principles driven by a sense of morality. I could go on. I won’t.

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I am ambivalent about this Christmas Day. While I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, I know cheer and joy are in short supply for many people. One of my brothers remains in the hospital, awaiting decisions as to whether he will be able to transfer into hospice care. Through Medicare, our society—in its grand and glorious generosity—provides coverage for hospice care…but not in-hospital hospice care. I understand the costs for in-facility hospice care are extraordinary; unattainable by most and certainly unattainable by someone of my brother’s means. My niece, who has been my brother’s primary advocate, continues to push forward, though, seeking options that will provide comfort and providing the kind of compassion all people need. I could go on about our society’s massive, systemic, institutional failings, but I won’t…for now.

Instead, I return briefly to my own gratitude. I am grateful both for the comfort and compassion I enjoy and for the kindness and decency of millions upon millions of people who recognize their obligations to their fellow human beings and who act on them. In spite of all the aberrant behaviors that cause senseless pain and make the headlines, the number that demonstrate goodness and compassion exponentially outnumber the negative. Sometimes, in the face of a constant barrage of bad news, it’s hard to acknowledge that simple fact. But it’s true. Yes, I’m ambivalent. But I’m not a fount of perpetual negativity.

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So, my complaint about waking at 1:30 again and staying in bed—attempting but failing to sleep—until 4 is not negative. It’s simply a minor grievance. Yet the cause of that grievance allowed me to get a lot of work done in the kitchen. I peeled and chopped and cooked and so on from 4 until 6. Thanks to my industriousness, the zanahorias aliñadas are marinating in the refrigerator. The sauce for the aubergine balls is finished, cooling on the stovetop. Most of the ingredients for the aubergine balls themselves are ready for the next step: “whomping them up” in the food processor. Because I expect the food processor’s “whomping up” setting will cause enough noise to wake the dead, I’m waiting until my IC awakens to continue that task. But, after I finish this post, I will return to the kitchen to work on a tomato and garbanzo dish. Thereafter, I will turn my attention to various tapas designed for an omnivore’s palate: lamb meatballs, bites of pork with a sherry glaze (I hope), and various other goodies. Lots more chopping and slicing and such. But not as much as I had originally planned. We scaled back our plans, considering that we might need to drop everything. At this point, we’re planning a low-key tapas Christmas.

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Last night, we went to our church’s Christmas Eve service and Soup Supper, an event we cancelled last year due to COVID. The service had elements of the UUVC tradition, with carols, stories, etc. The Soup Supper featured an impossibly large number of soups and other dishes, all of which if life were fair I could have sampled. Everything I tasted was exceptional. Our church is awash in chef-quality cooks. We brought home a considerable amount of our Pumpkin-Black Bean-Mexican Chicken soup, which suits me because I am so fond of it. My sister-in-law shared the recipe, which she found somewhere online, I think. It is one of the best soups I’ve ever had, I think; my sister-in-law has a way of honing in on exceptional recipes.

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My mind is a tangle of thoughts that compete with one another for time and attention. I wish I could simply hit a switch to turn off the mass of worries and dreams and consciously mundane thoughts that flood my head. Maybe they are responsible for my insomnia of late. I suspect I may go to bed early tonight. Or I may leave suddenly for a ten-day road trip to nowhere. I’ll place my bet on the former; odds look good for that.

I envy Jason Bateman. Not for having been named Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ Man of the Year for 2022, but for possessing the handsomeness I’ve always wished for but lacked. And for his youth. He’s only 52 years old; a mere child, it seems to me, as I wade through life in what behaves like a retirement village for 80-somethings.  Age, though, is an artificial construct.

Age does not necessarily equate to infirmity or to mental decay. Indeed, I have friends whose 80+ years have done nothing to slow them down. One guy runs a program in which very senior retirees rehabilitate old computers and distribute them to deserving individuals and institutions. A woman I’ve considered young and beautiful since I met her a few years ago celebrates her 70th birthday tomorrow. She looks just as gorgeous and alluring as ever. And my own lovely IC is nearly that age—and only a year older than I; her youth shines through as clearly as if it were the bright light of a 30-year-old.

Still, though, I envy Jason Bateman. If I had his looks, his youth, and could maintain the added wisdom I have accrued since my 52nd birthday, I would be in an enviable position, indeed. “If” is a mournful word. One of my favorite, and most melancholy and wistful, songs of the early 1970s was “If” by the musical group, Bread.  I remember some of the lyrics to the song:

If a man could be two places at one time,
I’d be with you.
Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way.

The entire song is sad, plaintive, and pensive, yet simultaneously uplifting and joyful. I guess that’s essentially the definition of wistful. I like that word. Wistful. It fills me with a sense of unrequited longing.

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I dreamed I had just completed a formal orientation as a new employee of a very large, complex, sophisticated association management company. I was just one of hundreds of association executives completing some sort of training program before being sent out to select en masse to select the company car which was part of the compensation package for each of us. The cars were located someplace within walking distance. To get there, we had to walk through a very seedy, dangerous-looking area; both sides of the stretch of narrow road were bounded by brownstone walk-up buildings. At street level, clustered closely together behind dirty plate glass windows, small shops hawked their wares and services: tattoo parlors, tobacco shops, bars, pawn shops, massage parlors, liquor stores, and assorted other places. Strangely, I felt somewhat more at ease as I passed by the shops than I did in the company of my fellow new-hires and our bosses. Nonetheless, I felt out of place and I wished I could leave. When I awoke from the dream in the middle of the night—around 1:30, I think—the experience was clear in my mind. I considered getting up to write it all down, but I did not. As a consequence of my laziness, I’ve lost what I believe was a significant part of the dream. There was much more, I think. But it’s gone. Just hazy vapor, disappearing even as I try to retrieve my vision of those moments.

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Being grateful for one’s good fortune sometimes competes with one’s sense that the gratitude could have and should have come much, much earlier. Not that the objects of gratitude could and should have come earlier—but that one should have should have acknowledged earlier how much good fortune one has experienced. That disappointment in one’s late gratitude is hard to overcome. Regardless of the difficulty, though, one should overcome it. It is an integral part of maturation. It is a natural byproduct of the accrual of wisdom. One’s understanding of the passage of time tends to intensify, just as one’s experience of time tends to accelerate during the course of one’s lifetime. We should not beat ourselves up because we did not “get it” when we were younger. We should, instead, marvel at the young in our midst who somehow grasp the concepts much earlier than we did. We were not so much slow on the uptake in our youth as those young prodigies are incredibly fast. Granted, they are few and far between, but they are out there. I have seen them.

+++

I try to have a positive attitude about life in general. I really do. But sometimes—far too often—I lapse into a depression, when negativity overwhelms my attempts to look at the bright side. The advice I get during such episodes—see a counselor—seems so vacant and pointless, yet later I wonder whether it might be good advice, after all. Yet I remain firmly convinced that one’s “moods” are largely the results of extremely complex interactions between the chemicals in one’s brains and the effects of external stimuli on one’s emotions upon which “talking it through” probably has little impact. Perhaps I favor the “chemical” explanation because it removes much of the responsibility from me and places it on electrochemical processes over which I have little control…at least directly. But the anti-anxiety tablets my doctor prescribed for me during the last months of my wife’s hospitalization had no effects as far as I could tell. So chemicals to combat chemicals is not a sure thing. Just me thinking “out loud” through my fingers. There’s no resolution; just the musing of a confused geezer.

+++

My fascination with the idea of a small motor-home has returned. Seeing images and videos of tiny, motorized, self-propelled houses again has sparked my curiosity. I really need to experience a slice of life in one of these itsy-bitsy traveling living-dining-sleeping pods to determine whether I really want one of my own. But I don’t want to rent a behemoth. I want, instead, to test a much smaller version. In an ideal world, RV dealers would offer inexpensive two or three day rentals that come complete with an experienced traveling companion who could answer questions along the way and who could respond to minor emergencies involving grey water  or black water or blown tires, or inoperable retractable awnings, etc. Hmm. That might be a business opportunity for me. But, first, I have to find an available rental for that little RV and its human counterpart.

+++

I continue to wait for more definitive word about my brother’s condition. But doctors cannot necessarily give definitive information about matters over which they have neither control nor prescience. We—the collective we—expect medical professionals to have foreknowledge of the future. We want them to tell us, with certainty, things about which everyone, including doctors and their colleagues, are inherently uncertain. We can only wait to see how nature expresses itself and how the body responds to medications, treatment, and time. As frustrating as it is for those of us who remain un-institutionalized and relatively healthy, it is frustrating by a quadrupled factor of ten to the person living through the inherent uncertainty surrounding his own experience. Ach!

My brother—of my siblings, the one closest in age to me at five years my senior—is going into hospice care. Despite doctors’ expectations—that a surgical procedure within the last few days would prepare him for another procedure that would dramatically improve his condition—his condition has not improved. To the contrary, it has worsened. The doctors and surgeons have determined that my brother probably would not survive a second surgery. They recommend palliative care by way of in-hospital hospice care, instead. He has accepted the recommendation. He has told me clearly in the past that he does not want his life prolonged if it means a quality of life involving being bedridden in a hospital and unable to look out for himself.

This unexpected turn of events is extremely hard. My other brothers, my sister, our niece, and I recently had, collectively, finally convinced him to accept our help. Knowing we all had his financial back, he had agreed to move from the ramshackle place where he had lived for many years—where he was completely on his own—to a place where he would have a clean apartment, three meals a day, a solid social environment, and available help twenty-four-hours-a-day. Our niece, the only one who lives close to him, had taken on the task of helping him visit potential places to live. She has been the one, too, to visit him in the hospital and help him maneuver the labyrinthine medical establishment. Now, she is the one coping with his transfer to hospice. And, quite probably, she will be the one dealing with what is to come.  I feel helpless to do anything. And I feel guilt that I have done too little to give my brother a hand in dealing with challenges he should not have had to face by himself. Absent the presence and incredible help from our niece, he would have been dealing with an almost insurmountable mountain of difficulty. He is extremely bright and resourceful, but circumstances have dealt him raw deals for most of his life. If I had intervened at the right times in the right conditions, his financial footing might have been different long ago. He might have long since been in a better position years ago—and better able—to live in a less stressful, more hospitable atmosphere. It’s a bit late, now, to second guess what I could have or could not have done, though. Regardless, my brother is now facing the consequences; waiting in a hospital room to be transferred to hospice care. It was just over a year ago that my late wife moved into hospice care. That was an entirely different debilitating situation, but learning last night of my brother’s situation was also a a gut punch and emotional experience that utterly deflated the holiday balloon.

I hate that I cannot be with him. It’s my understanding that the flood of COVID-19 cases in Houston, especially in and around the medical center complex and Methodist Hospital in particular, severely limits visits. That was true last year when my wife’s life was coming to an end; though I was able to see her and be with her every day, as was her sister. Houston seems like a lifetime away. And I guess it is. The next few days will be, for all of us, an emotional time we do not want but over which we have no control. Christmas wreaths and trees and decorations suddenly seem out of place and awkward. Fragility is in the air. I feel cracks in my emotional armor and I see them in the mirror. Life and death are brutally hard.

Mortality defines the human condition.

~ Drew Gilpin Faust ~

+++

My IC and I decided last night to cut back radically on our Christmas Day celebration. We had planned a gathering of a few neighbors and friends; we planned a non-traditional tapas party. Instead, we’re having just two people over. If I suddenly need to deal with issues outside their control, they are flexible. And they won’t be disappointed that I abandoned the over-the-top food festival I had planned. We’re still planning on attending the services and soup supper at church on Christmas Eve, unless the situation dictates otherwise. We’ll try to keep things as “merry” as we can, given the circumstances.

+++

Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.

~ Marcus Aurelius ~

+++

As usual, I quickly fell asleep in front of the television last night. The two prior nights, we watched episodes of Peaky Blinders. Or, rather, I started to watch them before I drifted off. Last night, I fell asleep while watching The Chair. I wasn’t asleep long. And last night I drifted in and out for just a while. But for whatever reason, I could not keep my eyes open. Until I got in bed. Then, I could not get to sleep for a long while. And when I finally did, it did not “take.” I was awake, off and on, all night. Finally, this morning, I got out of bed around 4. And I thought to myself, “Finally, I legitimately can relate to the opening lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat!”

It’s four in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better…

+++

When the world grabs me by the collar and shakes me until I slip into compliance with its harsh demands, I realize that my normal daily complaints are just minor whimpers. They are undeserving even of brusque dismissal. They merit being ignored outright, as if the air had not been disturbed by my words of grievance; as if my protests had gone unnoticed. We bitch and moan about the simplest, most inane things. When matters of actual consequence arise, their importance is diluted; like an ice cube dilutes a shot of whiskey.

Guns are not intrinsically evil devices. It is what untrained or inept or fundamentally bad people do with them that unleashes guns’ awful potential that makes the need for regulating the use of guns so urgently important. The same is true of Facebook. The tool is not innately stupid, dangerous, or conceivably harmful in the extreme, in and of itself. Dimwits who misuse social media—untrained or inept or fundamentally bad people—are the culprits who misuse Facebook, leaving damage in their wake.

In recent weeks, I have experienced Facebook used as it should be. A tool permitting positive communications; the exchange of useful (or, at least, innocuous) ideas and information. This morning, just after I made my coffee, I saw that use in action again. Several weeks ago I joined a Facebook group called British Food Lovers. In spite of its undeserved reputation, British food can be outstanding; members of the group recognize that and willingly share information and experiences about the cuisine. This morning, I came across: a recipe for Crispy Chilli Beef; images of homemade Scotch eggs done in the oven; lovely images of, and conversations about, shepherd’s pie and its beefy twin, cottage pie; and a discussion of American versus British words describing various meals. The latter discussion arose in response to an image of a 1918 Christmas menu delivered by the Minister, Overseas Military Forces of Canada to Canadian troops in the British Isles; the menu’s reference to the midday meal as “dinner” spurred the conversation.

The Canadian menu, using British parlance, included Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper; in the south central U.S., those meals likely would be called, respectively, Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Comments from a few American members of the Facebook group suggested that, in the Northeastern U.S., the meals later in the day mirrored the British practices. Linguistic variations fascinate me almost as much as differences in tastes in food. I remember, years ago, discussions about dinner versus supper. Those discussions, though, suggested that some people either reversed the British approach (calling the midday meal supper and the evening meal dinner) or calling the evening meal either dinner or supper, but leaving “lunch” untouched as the midday meal.

Looking at menus from years ago, I have been struck by how much the eating habits of both British people and Americans have changed over the years. The midday meal seems to have morphed from a relatively small energy booster to a lavish and formal affair and back to something quick and easy. Almost the reverse appears to be true of the evening meal; “dinner” has gone from large and time-consuming to small and simple and then back again…repeatedly. The ingredients of meals between British and Americans sometimes vary just as much. Neither cuisine is dignified by calling it a legitimate “type” of food, though. British cuisine often is derided (unfairly, in my opinion) as bland and unpleasant, while American cuisine frequently is viewed as a crude assimilation of international flavors “dumbed down” for the weak and undiscerning American palate.

I love bubble and squeak, shepherd’s pie, steak and kidney pie, bangers and mash, fish and chips, and the British version of toad in the hole (using sausage). I share the British appreciation of peas and potatoes and just how vital those ingredients are to most “comfort food.” I used to go to England quite often and I loved the food there. In recent years, beginning just about the time I made my first trip there, British tastes have readily accepted the strong and growing influence of Indian cuisine. During my last trip to London, I was stunned by the number of Indian restaurants I encountered; I found one on practically every corner. If American food is a melting pot of international cuisine, British food seems to be changing, too, so that England is almost a “western” outpost of the Indian subcontinent.

Ah, yes, guns and Facebook. That’s where all this started. Unlike discussions of food on Facebook, the conversations I’ve seen about guns has been scary. In my view, Facebook should invest resources in monitoring discussions, intervening when they veer into territory in which gun-worship might spark unspeakable uses of the devices. But more fundamentally, access to guns (and their use) should be regulated to minimize the misuse of firearms as weapons of murder and mayhem. And, before being granted access to Facebook (and Twitter and Instagram and Tic Toc and on and on), users should be required to read usage guidelines and respond correctly to a long list of questions about proper usage. It’s easy to say “Facebook should do thus and so,” but it’s probably considerably harder to actually implement the intent of those prescriptive statements.

People (I include myself, of course) tend to simplify what it takes to achieve and maintain the extremely complex process of living in peace and harmony in a moderately free and open society. We have to curb our own behaviors and allow others more latitude than we might like. We must accept intrusive limitations on our “rights” and permit infringements on the rights of others that, from a safe distance, seem draconian and unnecessary. Those limitations and infringements should, in my opinion, include guns and Facebook. And I might even accept certain limitations on social media involving food; things like cooking living beings while they are alive, keeping animals raised as food in cruel conditions, etc.

Everything is simple, except when it’s not. There are no easy answers, not even to easy questions. Because easy questions, and ostensibly easy answers, hide enormous complexities beneath their smooth, simple surfaces.

+++

I respond to insomnia by sharing all my secrets at 4:00 a.m. Sleep eludes me when I should be deep in slumber. It finds me when I should be wide awake.

~ John Swinburn ~

What follows is a very rough first draft of a poem, rife with disconnects and broken parts–or is it hearts?–that cry out for repair. I haven’t written real poetry for a very long time. This effort, conceived and written this morning, illustrates how rusty the brain can get when it’s not used. I’m especially out of practice writing rhyming poetry; that’s something with which I’ve had very little experience…ever. I wrote the stuff I’ve recently read publicly a long time ago.

Good poetry either springs instantly into being—fully-formed—or its creation takes days or weeks or even months of the mental equivalent of blood, sweat, and tears to be born. This skeletal poem is of the latter ilk. If it’s ever completed, it will look very different from this deformed, premature embryo. It’s just as likely, though, that it will die—along with its father—during the birthing process. The birth of some poems, like the hatching of their prose brethren, can take years, only to yield a clump of stillborn syllables.

I’d rather write prose fiction and nonfiction, but I can’t seem to focus my energy on those things, either. I am scattered and broken lately, as if my mind was a fragile tea cup dropped on a granite floor. The pieces are too far-flung and too badly shattered to be glued together again. Still, I try to piece them back into some semblance of the shape I remember. Instead, I discover that I form the remnants of the tea cup into an abstract vase that’s neither artistically attractive nor utilitarian.

Fragments of Winter and traces of Spring
spark memories of Autumn all over again.
The sky, crusted over with clouds every night,
clears in the morning just ’round first light.
Wind barely whispers, soft like a dream
then, like a banshee, erupts with a scream.

The weather, my friend, is a little like me,
I can’t control what I barely can see.
Hidden beneath my rough outer layer,
my rage battles on with a plea in my prayer,
hoping for something I can’t quite explain,
a tonic to lessen perpetual pain.

Leaves’ litter in forests and on old country lanes;
when the branches are barren, only bark now remains.
Just a skeleton lingers, outlining the life
of a tree dissected with Nature’s sharp knife.
Yet it’s not what you see that’s gone withered and old,
it’s the spirit for living that now seems so cold.

Try as I might I can’t feel like I did
when I was much younger, still just a kid.
Energy ebbs and life takes a terrible toll
when bitterness floods, drowning my soul.
Tree limbs bend, barely able to take
the weight of the ice; finally they break.

Now is the Winter of our discontent,
no bandage can heal what’s broken and bent
from trudging through the snow and the ice.
No prayers can save us from our own device
that battered our psyches and tortures us still
despite intentionally swallowing life’s bitter pill.

Pain doesn’t die with the flesh when it goes,
nor recedes with the pyre nor when the coffin is closed.
Pain ever endures, leaving one for another.
Like a child leaving home, abandoning the mother.
Hurt spins in the wind, regardless of season,
regardless of rhyme, regardless of reason.

3:42. Once again this morning, my tendency toward rising early went into overdrive. Before the digits on my electronic devices’ clocks read 4:00, I had emptied the dishwasher, put the dishes away, made my first cup of coffee, and situated myself in front of my notebook computer. Here I sit, so many things on my mind that I can barely decide which ones to allow to spill from my fingers onto the keyboard. I have to start somewhere, though, so I’ll begin with by relating a treasured experience.

Yesterday morning, I wrote in my blog about my grief on the one year anniversary of my wife’s death. Later in the morning, after the church service—at which one of my very good friends was announced as the recipient of the Meg Koziar Distinguished Service Award—another of my beautiful friends sought me out and handed me an envelope. In it was a card with a handwritten note that illustrated, in just a few words, extraordinary care and compassion—the kind of love one often reads about but rarely actually feels first hand. She had placed a small slip of paper inside the card, on which she had printed the words from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 I had included in my blog post yesterday morning. Also inside the envelope were two small stones, their rough shapes worn smooth.  I could barely contain my emotions. I tried to coax my eyes to refrain from filling with tears as I hugged her. I forced myself to let her go after just a brief hug, though I could have embraced her for a long, long time. I told her I love her and I meant it. I probably could have kissed her, too, but that might have been more than a little awkward, what with both her husband and my IC close at hand. 😉

Thank you, Penny. I hope you know how very much your love and kindness means to me.

During his sermons, our church’s minister frequently talks about love and admonishes the congregation to live by the expression we so readily share when we talk about the church. “Love is the doctrine of this church.” My experience yesterday was an extraordinarily tangible example of the validity of that assertion. It provided me with physical and emotional evidence that my church feeds my emotional hunger for connection and  If other churches, even those flush with dangerous dogma and deeply engrained bigotry, provide their congregations with the kind of compassion and love I experienced yesterday, I think I understand why people feel so strongly supportive of them. If only their congregations knew they could escape the dogma and bigotry and still find the same compassion and love somewhere else, our church always would be full to the rafters. I was grateful to our minister for mentioning yesterday that it was the anniversary of my wife’s death.

+++

Following yesterday’s church service, two other very good friends participated in a  conversation during which a panel of gay and lesbian and bisexual church members discussed with the congregation their life experiences. I had planned on going home immediately after the church service, but when I learned what was planned for the post-service conversation, I decided to stay. I’m glad I did. The conversations were frank, open, and enlightening. Listening to people talk about their life experiences related to their sexuality and what they have dealt with—and still deal with—was a riveting experience. I wish the whole community…the whole nation, the whole planet…could hear their words. The message was so clear: they are just regular people whose objects of romantic love happen to include people of the same sex; they are no different than the rest of us. I am glad that I long ago learned that to be the truth. I wish everyone else knew it, too. The world would be a happier place. The agony and heartache so many people still feel because of their sexuality would dissolve.

+++

I spent yesterday afternoon with my late wife’s sister. We talked at length about her sister and my wife and how she impacted our lives. The hours we spent together yesterday honored the wonderful woman we lost. Tears, laughter, and a flood of memories filled the rest of the day. Sometime in mid-afternoon, we drank a toast to Janine, her memory, and the deep impact she had on our lives. As painful as yesterday’s anniversary was, our conversation about her and her legacy helped sustain me and lifted me up emotionally. I am so grateful for my sister-in-law; yesterday would have been a much more difficult and gut-wrenching anniversary without her.

My IC graciously left my SIL and me alone to share our memories and our grief. I did not ask for her graciousness; she offered it as a given—she would spend her afternoon at the house we just bought, beginning the process of readying it for us to move it. That is one of the many reasons I find to love her. She sometimes reads my emotions even before I experience them.

+++

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

Do you need anybody?
I need somebody to love
Could it be anybody?
I want somebody to love

~ John Lennon and Paul McCartney

+++

It’s past 5 now, edging toward 6, and I still have a million things on my mind—what we need to do before moving in to the new house, what to do with the current house before we put it on the market, when to sell it, upcoming medical appointments, my need to hurry up with the process of year-end financial and tax-related issues, my brother’s hospitalization, the results of the Chilean presidential election…the list goes on.

While all those items, and many more, merit my attention, for some reason I am especially intrigued by the Chilean presidential election. Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old “leftist millennial,” was elected with yesterday’s voting. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, I have been fascinated by Chile for several years. I have followed the country’s tendency toward political ping-pong for several years, beginning with Michelle Bachelet’s first election as president in 2006. Bachelet, a strong left-leaning politician, was succeeded after four years in office by Sebastián Piñera, a right-wing politician. She then was elected to another four-year term in 2014, after Sebastián Piñera was elected again for the 2018-2021 term. Boric’s election, reflecting another shift back toward the left, shows how Chileans bounce back and forth in their political leanings. Though I do not have a dog in their fight, I hope Chileans stay with the left-leaning politicians for the foreseeable future. I think politicians of both conservative and progressive stripes are moving toward the middle in Chile, though Boric’s opponent in the election, José Antonio Kast, has a history of defending Chile’s past military dictatorship. Kast has been a strong admirer of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a fan of Trump. The fact that Kast got 44 percent of the vote suggests that fierce divisions exist among Chile’s voting population, a split we know far to well in the U.S.

+++

Okay. Enough. I have neither the energy nor the ability to control my adult ADHD necessary to keep writing. So I’ll stop. Maybe I’ll have an earlier-than-usual breakfast. If not for the freezing fog advisory that cautions drivers to beware of icy patches on the roadways, I might go out and get a fast-food breakfast. Instead, a flavored yoghurt and/or some cereal may have to do.

+++

I know. I make a lot of typos. I tend not to proof my own stuff. It’s one of my numerous flaws.

One year ago today, my wife of almost 41 years died. This awful, painful anniversary is immeasurably sad. Even a year later, I cannot quite believe she is gone. I still have too many things to say to her, too many expressions of deep love and appreciation, for her to be gone. But she is. Yet I still cannot comprehend it. I cannot accept that the woman who literally made me who I am and saved me from myself so many times is actually gone.

My grief is incredibly selfish. Yet I feel her pain, too. I remain bitter about what she experienced during her final five months of life. But I know I cannot change history. I cannot justify being forever angry at the universe for her loss. But it’s still so very, very hard.

In the days and weeks after her death, I felt the love of friends and family surround me, even in the midst of COVID isolation and the fear of the pandemic. Without that, I doubt I could have convinced myself life was worth the pain it inflicted on me.

My wife devoted the majority of her lifetime to me and to us. I miss her more than I can possibly express. Eventually, I’m told, the pain will subside some. Eventually, the bitterness I feel toward the rehabilitation hospitals/centers will diminish. I hope so. I want only the pleasant memories of the good times to remain in my head. I know I’ll miss Janine forever and I’ll love her at least that long.

In spite of the grief, the joy of the memories of our time together sustains me. Often, I recall something that triggers both immense pain and immense joy. The pain is a selfish response to her loss. The joy is an acknowledgement of my extraordinary good fortune for having been the beneficiary of Janine’s presence and love in my life.

Today, even in the face of my ever-present grief, Colleen brings joy to my life. My great good fortune continues, and I think Janine would have wished this good fortune for me. That’s the kind of person she was. Behind her deeply personal and private façade, she was openly kind and compassionate beyond measure. I saw that every day I spent with her.

Janine’s sister and I will spend some time together today in a joint remembrance of Janine’s life and how it shaped ours. Afterward, in grateful appreciation, I will continue to contemplate the great good fortune of having my IC to sustain me in this next phase of my life. I hope I am worthy of my good fortune. I hope my history and my future prove I delivered good fortune as well as received it.

Grief and joy seem so utter opposites, but they can occupy the same space. Today is an immeasurably sad moment, yet it acknowledges a treasured history. And that history is leading the way to the potential for an equally happy future.

For everything there is a season…
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ~

Just before 4:00 a.m., I woke—alone in bed—to loud cracks of thunder and pounding rain. Moments after I woke, I heard my IC speaking words of comfort to her dog. The beast always cowers, seeking comfort on a lap or a cloth mat when the weather outside is loud and threatening. My IC told me she had gotten out of bed at 12:30 and tried to sleep on the couch since then; I’ll find out later whether my snoring was to blame or whether something else kept her from sleep.

I’m sure I could use more sleep, but sleep punctuated by thunder probably would be less restful for me than getting up and having coffee. I chose the latter. And here I sit, pondering how dramatically different—much cooler—the weather will be at first light this morning, compared to yesterday’s warm and steamy shroud of fog. This morning, the fog will have been replaced by rain and the warm, heavy atmosphere will transition to a more seasonal chill. I think the few hours between last night and this morning may represent a microcosm of the changing climate of the planet, though perhaps in mirror image. The planet is not cooling rapidly, it is warming. The speed of the change, once thought to be a centuries-long or longer process, has accelerated. What once was glacially slow has transformed into geologic time on crank. Climate changes that evolved over millennia now occur in months. Or weeks. Or days. Or hours.

+++

It’s after 5 now. The remains of the first cup of coffee, now cold, stare at me from a white mug; “replace me,” they seem to say. “I will,” I say under my breath, “but not just yet.” The howling winds, pounding rain, and incessant cracks of thunder have diminished. Now, I hear only an occasional peal of thunder, followed by a long, low growl. What’s keeping me from making another cup of coffee? I don’t know, but perhaps it’s the fact that the growls of thunder seem to be getting louder and more ominous. Maybe the fierce storms of earlier in the wee hours are returning, hoping to wake those sleeping through the cataclysmic crashes of a short while ago. Time, alone, will tell.

+++

Today’s calendar is empty. Nothing formal on the schedule, but I have plenty to do. High on the non-existent list is grocery shopping for ingredients for an all-tapas but not all-Spanish Christmas. And I will go to the new house and will attempt to connect to the internet, which ostensibly was installed yesterday. While there, I will continue creating my list of things to do before we commence the move, which will take place slowly sometime after Christmas.

I promised my IC last night that I would take her out for breakfast this morning. We did not settle on where we’ll go. Unfortunately, there is no place near for breakfast that is even remotely as intriguing as the chain, First Watch. So, instead of something exotic, we’ll eat more traditional fare. Oh, well, we’ll survive the mundane.

+++

An article on CNN.com this morning was both heart-warming and maddening. The article detailed a situation in which a mother, who was holding a coffee cup, slipped on a patch of ice. The cup shattered and gashed the woman’s wrist; she was bleeding profusely. Her young son called 911. The dispatcher instructed the kid to find something he could use to fashion a tourniquet, which he did. While an ambulance was on its way, the kid kept the tourniquet on his mother’s arm. Though she had to undergo extensive surgery, the woman survived the injury and its associated loss of blood. CNN and the kid’s mother gushed in gratitude about the kid’s actions. What about the 911 dispatcher? What about his/her role in providing instructions about a make-do tourniquet? I hope the dispatcher was given kudos for offering life-saving telephone support that may well have kept the mother alive while the ambulance was on its way.

+++

Unless one happened to read or watch news provided by Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, The Financial Times, The Daily Sabah, or the Hürriyet Daily News, one probably would not know that Turkish trading on all listed stocks halted twice on Friday as the lira crashed a to new low, Borsa Istanbul 100 index fell as much as 7 percent. Sure, today Turkey’s financial instability may not have the makings of the most important, top-of-the-news stuff, but it’s probably more important than news about a professor hiding instructions in a course syllabus to find a $50 bill. The $50 bill story was on CNN. The story about Turkish stock trading was not; unless you dug through gobs of links, ads, and meaningless fluff. That’s one of the reasons I find CNN increasingly irrelevant. Even PBS failed to mention the meltdown of Turkey’s financial markets. I sometimes feel that I am being kept intentionally isolated from the rest of the world by the news media. For what reason would they want to isolate me? I have no idea.

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.

~ Joseph Roux ~

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I think I’ll bring this post to an end and go visit this week’s edition of the Hot Springs Village Voice.

Yesterday, we invited a few friends to come take a look at the house my IC and I just bought. We could have waited until we cleaned the place up, paint, put up new light fixtures, blew layers of leaves off the driveway, and so on. But the point was not to “show off” the new house, but to show friends the place where they will be eternally welcome. Travels and other assorted issues made others unavailable to some get a “first look” yesterday, but no matter. We’ll welcome others in time. That first gathering, though, will be forever etched in my mind as the one at which we popped the first champagne cork. When we opened the door, friends presented us with a bottle of chilled champagne and cups from which to drink it. For some reason, the experience of pouring that champagne and raising our cups in a toast to a new adventure was reminiscent of a time in my youth, as a college student, when friends came together to celebrate the launch of a grand new experience. Back then, it may have been someone getting a new job, moving to a new city, beginning a travel adventure, or even something mundane; but it was something worthy of joining us together to celebrate something we would, eventually, share as friends. That’s what it felt like to me yesterday. Thank you, my friends, for being there and for making me feel young and adventurous again.

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Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

~ Khalil Gibran ~

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Photojournalism leaves us with historical evidence of life as it unfolds across the planet. This morning, as I sipped my first cup of coffee, I marveled at both the unparalleled beauty and the monstrous ugliness of photos on a section of the AP website. The photographic story, entitled, A world ablaze, captured by AP photographers in 2021, was punctuated by captions that attempted to describe what was behind photos that caused me to catch my breath:

• A man lies on the beach in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in northern Africa after swimming there from Morocco on May 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Javier Fergo)
• A migrant is comforted by a member of the Spanish Red Cross at the Spanish enclave of Ceuta near the border of Morocco and Spain, on May 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
• Firefighters battle the Sugar Fire, part of the Beckwourth Complex Fire, in Doyle, Calif., on July 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
• Honduran migrants clash with Guatemalan soldiers in Vado Hondo, Guatemala, on Jan. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Sandra Sebastian)
• A house is covered by ash from a volcano that continues to erupt on La Palma in Spain’s Canary Islands on Oct. 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
• Haitian migrants wade across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas, to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, on Sept. 19, 2021, to avoid deportation ​to Haiti from the U.S. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Those are just a few of the many attempts to convey the “meaning” of the photos. To explain the inexplicable—efforts to put into words the powerful emotions that only photographs can convey. Words, no matter how descriptive and no matter how much they can spark the imagination, lack the power of moments captured as images. In the right hands, cameras can capture reality and the emotions that flow through it, better than all but the very best writers. Poets sometimes come close; the photos in the AP gallery were introduced as follows: “Some say the world will end in fire,” wrote the poet Robert Frost…” Photojournalists, though, meld imagery with imagination, translating reality into emotion-laden explanations of the world in which we live. I am in awe of superbly capable photojournalists. They memorialize the transition from then to now. They suggest, through the crystal clear lens of history, where we will be tomorrow.

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I will spend part of today at the new house, measuring rooms and making note of things that must be done to make the place the home we want it to be. Closing on a house around one of the busiest and most demanding holidays is, in all likelihood, a sign of stark insanity. I’ve never claimed to be the poster child for sanity, though, so this madness seems perfectly normal (if exceptionally stressful in some ways).

During the day, I will call my brother in Houston, who yesterday underwent two medical procedures: one to remove fluid from his lungs and the other a heart catheterization. The trick is to call  him between interruptions; between visits by nurses and doctors and others who are tending to his medical needs. I have a habit of calling at just the wrong time. He has been having trouble calling out, quite possibly because of dealing with all the wires and tubes involved in his medical care. My minor complaints about my madness are trifles in comparison to what he is going through during this holiday season. While I cannot be there at his bedside, he is (and all the family are) fortunate to have a niece who continues to go over and above her familial responsibility to look after him. I suppose it’s out of the question for an old atheist like me to nominate her for sainthood; I would if I could, though.

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It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.

~ Marlene Dietrich ~

May I always be that kind of friend.

The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful then a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

~ Mahatma Gandhi ~

I feel almost powerless to help. Money, alone, seems entirely inadequate, but even if I rushed to the scene of the devastation, I do not have the skills nor the strength nor the stamina to do anything of use. My money seems like a weak, feeble, utterly ineffective response to an enormous need. Really, what effect can one person’s frail monetary contributions have in response to something as overwhelming as the natural disasters that befell so many communities in recent days? I keep telling myself that it’s not just my support that will help; it’s the collective support of thousands of people like me who give what they can to organizations that are able to help, where individuals, alone, are simply impotent. The collective efforts of governments, along with individuals who care and can afford to make donations, must be marshalled to respond to the calamity.

Mayfield, Kentucky was among the hardest-hit locales, but the recent spate of tornadoes spanned beyond Kentucky. They devastated areas of Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, and Illinois, as well. Those monstrous storms left scars that will never heal. The number of deaths attributed to the storms varies between 70 and well over 100; only after the enormous mountains of debris left by the furious winds are uncovered will a more precise number be known.  I cannot fathom the fear, the emptiness, and the outright desperation of people whose homes are gone and who may have lost to the catastrophe members of their families or their friends. The mountains of debris shown in photos and videos from the scenes of destruction are almost unimaginable. People have, literally, nothing left. Everything they owned is gone. And many of them no longer can depend on the comfort and safety afforded by loved ones; because their loved ones were casualties of the unprecedented weather.

The magnitude of the cataclysmic events of December 10-11 will not be fully understood for years.  The absence of loved ones—killed by the storms—at graduations, weddings, and even funerals will cause pain for generations. Memories of old family photographs destroyed by rain and wind will remain for years, but those images will diminish with fading memories. Trees that survived all the Nature could throw at them for dozens and dozens and dozens of years did not survive that awful night; comfort provided by sprawling shade trees may never come again.

Towns will be rebuilt. Houses will be constructed and jobs lost when the buildings that hosted them were destroyed will be re-created. Yet there will be scars of unimaginable size and scope. We cannot undo the damage that was done. But, to the extent we can afford to do it, we should offer aid to help communities and individuals and families rebuild their lives.  Some days, though, it seems the number of people and situations and circumstances that cry out for our help are just overwhelming—we may be tempted to just throw up our hands and say “it’s too much!” But I have decided that’s a defeatist attitude.  You just do what you can. Perhaps it’s at random. Perhaps it’s making contributions to organizations that, for whatever reason, tug at your heartstrings. Perhaps it’s an event that means something personally to you. Whatever it is, every contribution does, to some degree, help minimize or overcome the pain. When the whole world comes to the aid of someone in need, scars heal. They become beautiful.

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The horrors of the recent tornadoes got to me. I needed something to counter the pain and depression and feelings of hopelessness that always follow when I consider the almost unimaginable scope of natural disasters. And I found that something. On Facebook, of all places. I stumbled upon a group called the Jacques Pepin Fan Club. Its “About” section says: “Celebrating the best of Jacques Pepin’s continuing contributions to the culinary world.”

What struck me, as I skimmed through messages on the Jacques Pepin Fan Club site was the fact that every post (people showing off what they just made, often using “what’s available”) had a relatively small number of comments (often, just 10-20) but every comment was positive, complimentary, and uplifting. These people just enjoy food and they like to encourage others to do the same.

I was impressed with images of sockeye salmon with rainbow chard, sea scallops with cannellini beans and roasted peppers, shrimp with Italian sausage and Parmigiano-Reggiano polenta, and chicken nasi biryani.

I’m easily amused. And feeling much better about the world.

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While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.
~ Chinua Achebe ~

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Today, finally, we should be able to get the keys to our new house and have a look around. We won’t be moving in for a while yet (cleaning and painting, etc., first), but we’re ready to get a closer look to see how (or whether) our furniture will fit.

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Selling something to a friend is terribly difficult for me. Often, I’ll happily just give an items away rather than sell it because exchanging money seems to me to potentially lessen the bonds of the relationship. On the other hand, it’s hard for me to simply give away something of significant monetary value. Should I discount the price? Should I ignore the monetary value and just give the item away? Should I treat the transaction without emotion and attempt to separate the friendship bond from the economic imperative? I wonder whether I am alone in this dilemma?

You probably do not want to read this post. Whether you read it or not depends on how you feel about the day. And about me. And it depends on your mood. And what matters to you. Whether you read it or not, I wrote it with you in mind. Whoever you are. But, if you read it, I think you know you were on my mind when the topics I’m writing about came tumbling out of my head and through my fingers.

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I doubt I am unique in feeling like I continue to unfurl—like a flower or a flag or an idea—as I age.  There was a time—long, long, long ago—when I believed a person who reached adulthood had completed his or her intellectual and emotional development. I saw life as comprising a fairly limited number of stages, each with distinct beginnings and endings. I must have been very young to have believed that. I’ve long since come to the conclusion that my life, and probably the lives of everyone else, is a little like hair or fingernails. We do not reach the ideal maturity and then stop growing. Like hair and nails, we continue to develop every day of our lives. But unlike hair and nails, our evolution is robust and dramatic, leading us through phases that are in some cases so similar to one another that we can barely see the differences. Sometimes, though, we reach a point at which our evolution erupts in change so exceptional that we can barely contain ourselves. And at that point we hardly believe we are the same person we were the day before. Those changes continue all through one’s life, I think. Some are gradual, some are sudden. While there is a thread that weaves through us the entire time, the thread is thin and not always visible.

Today, at age 68, I feel strongly that I will be a very different man when I am 70 and yet another man when I am 73 and so on and so on. Between now and then, whenever “then” is, I will evolve. I will see the world through different eyes that have different experiences. I will think about the world around me in different ways because I have undergone the kinds of transitions that experience always brings. Change is good. It is not always welcome, nor does it always feel safe or comfortable, but it is good. We need to change so we don’t rot, like apples left on the ground long after the harvest is finished.

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The “new” house closed yesterday, in spite of promises made but broken by the title company and the developer. We closed on the purchase, opting to accept another promise that promised paperwork would be provided to us today. At least we have copies of emails confirming the paperwork was completed; just not FedExed in time for delivery yesterday.

I have grown increasingly skeptical—maybe “distrustful” is a better description—with age. Commitments seem to be treated with less gravitas than once was the case. But, wait. I wrote less than a month ago that my advancing age has led me in precisely the opposite direction. I wrote these words:

“Though I remain skeptical, curmudgeonly, and more than a little suspicious of the motives of humankind, I find myself mellowing in my old age.”

But, then, in the very next paragraph, I said this:

“The older I get, the more certain I become that many people—maybe most—simply are fundamentally rotten to the core. “

Which is it? Or is it both? My answer is “both.” And that ambivalence is an enormous stressor.  Regardless, the house is ours, subject to our payment of the 30-year mortgage. The next steps include cleaning up the new place, getting some work done on it (e.g., replacing some light fixtures, painting some rooms, and a few other odds and ends), and moving our “stuff.” And, of course, preparing my house for sale and actually selling it.

Stresses associated with major life changes amplify the more mundane tensions of day-to-day living. That matter has been on my mind quite a bit lately. I secretly wonder whether little aches and strains, and more acute pains and such, are my body signaling me to relax—telling me to shed some of the unnecessary worries over which I have no control. Easier said than done.

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Last night, we watched Miss Sloane, a political thriller about an extremely powerful lobbyist whose ethical breaches both get her in deep trouble and lead her to exceptional outcomes. One of the major underlying themes of the film relates to her efforts to get major gun control legislation passed. I thought the film was excellent. In reading about it this morning, I learned that it was a box office failure but did receive critical acclaim. It’s worth a watch, in my opinion.

We finished watching Tales of the City, a limited series set mostly in a San Francisco apartment building owned by a grand old dame who is something of a “mother” to all manner of LBGTQ renters. The story is fascinating. I wrote several days ago that I found the overabundance of scenes of gratuitous sex unnecessary; though I still feel that way, I think the series was well-done; though-provoking and engaging.

I have a huge list of both films and series I want to watch. My IC’s reaction to my list has confirmed that I tend, strongly, to favor very dark and sometimes very violent storylines. Most of the shows on my list are hard-hitting dramas that have virtually no humor of any kind woven into the stories. And most are psychological thrillers (some with ample action sequences) that dig into the seedier side of humanity. The heartwarming aspects of Tales of the City were rare exceptions.  I think I need to insist on my IC making some selections and, then, be willing to sit all the way through them without complaint.

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My IC and I share musical and many theatrical tastes, but a number of distinct differences are obvious. And we have very different tastes in architecture and decorating. I gravitate toward more modern architecture, with its clean lines and absence of overly-ornate elements. She likes craftsman style houses; I like prairie style and Usonian. I am a fan of muted greys and mid-century-modern style. While my IC likes some similar things, she prefers more ornamentation. She leans toward beige, in place of my greys, but wants a great deal of color in the mix (with respect to décor). I like bright colors, too. But in less volume. I think the new house illustrates, in many ways, our differences. Unlike the current house, the new one does not have a very open floor plan (an environmental sensation I especially like). But I like the place, too; it will just take me some getting used to a somewhat different sense of spatial volume.

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Speaking of architecture, I appreciate Frank Lloyd Wright’s rather arrogant assertions about architecture. He dismissed architects who, in his view, did not look far enough into the future. He proclaimed that great architects also are great poets. He advocated for buildings to be “of” a site rather than “on” a site. I like Wright’s linear approach to building design; to me, that approach mimics the layers of sediments left by an environment over time, as if the building was crafted out of the ground by forces of wind and water.

It’s 7:04. I’ve been sitting in front of this monitor for too long. I need to get up, stretch my legs, and explore what the day might have to offer.

I once wrote a response to an idiotic post I saw on a public Facebook group. The post, or perhaps it was a response to a post, insisted that homosexuality is a “choice.” My response said something to the effect that “a person no more chooses to be homosexual than you choose to be stupid.”  After I wrote that reply, I added a follow-up: “Wait. Obviously, you choose to be stupid, so the comparison does not hold. I’ll rephrase that as “a person no more chooses to be homosexual than you choose your eye color.” My replies generated quite a few replies, mostly supporting the idiocy to which I had originally replied. I should have learned the lesson: you really can’t fix stupid. But I still occasionally stick my foot in it when I come across something that really annoys me. I allow my anger and frustration to come through in my reply. Predictably, the attacks follow in waves. The subject does not matter: politics, sexuality, health care, unemployment, poverty, etc., etc. In my case, the stupidity is not limited to the post to which I replied; it is in the very fact that I allowed myself to stupidly think my reply could have any impact whatsoever on stupid.

On reflection in calmer moments, of course, I realize that my definition of “stupid” is colored in large part by the philosophies to which I cling. And others’ definitions of “stupid” look, to them, surprisingly like me. Yet even in my efforts to be charitable…even in seeking to be less judgmental…I cannot bring myself to acknowledge the possibility that certain ideas and attitudes are anything but deeply, completely, and irrevocably stupid. Racism, sexism, and bigotry about sexual orientation are among those ideas and attitudes. I think it might behoove society to incorporate in school curricula, from an early age, teaching that depicts such attitudes as deviant, sick, morally bankrupt, and illustrative of fundamental stupidity—the sort of attitudes that warrant incarceration in institutions of which Nurse Ratched would be proud.  Of course, such teaching might coincide with changes in some childrens’ attitudes about their parents—painting them as disgusting demonic creatures whose influences should be avoided at all costs. Oh, well. That would not necessarily be a bad thing. Kids could learn, from an early age, that parents who behave in such ways are mistakes of Nature.

I’m only half kidding, here. Kids are so malleable. They should be protected against being molded into bigots by people who have no business being parents. At the risk of repeating myself (for I’ve said it before), I am in favor of requiring some form of licensing before parents are allowed to take their offspring into their homes. They should be required to demonstrate a familiarity with human decency, a capacity for compassion, and other fundamental characteristics that might minimize the likelihood of doing damage to the gentle psyches of impressionable kids.

Reality, of course, argues against doing what I favor. My arguments assume life is clearly black and white, with no shades of grey to interfere with certainty. I know better. Life is primarily grey, with the rare cases of black and white so unusual as to be surprising to even the most experienced observers of human behavior. Certainty is a trap created by a different sort of bigotry. We, who are positive that we know the difference between good and bad, regularly encounter situations in which our vision is terribly blurred. We know the limitations of our perfections, yet we insist on putting those imperfect perfections on display.

Racism, sexism, and bigotry about sexual orientation are among the matters for which truths exist. But we too often assume the rectitude of our attitudes about those matters apply to matters which are not so clearly black and white. When we encounter greys, we insist they are simply light blacks or dark whites and we treat them with the same certainty as we treat absolutes. Would that we all were able and willing to stand firm on matters that warrant absolutism and willingly bend on matters that don’t. And know the difference.

I feel compelled to write something, just to have a record that I was awake and alive just before 6 this morning. Beyond being awake and alive, I can make no claims. Other than feeling dull and spent and disinterested in writing. Disinterested in anything, really. It’s as if my entire being existed atop a thin layer of dirty crystal. A tiny crack appeared; in less than a second, the fracture turned the layer of crystal into microscopic pieces of sand. So, what? Nothing, what. Time to wade into the day.

Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

~ Blaise Pascal ~

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More Latin phrases, courtesy of one of my brothers:

Vocatus at que non vocatus, Deus aderit: Bidden or unbidden, God is present.
de minimis non curat lex: The law does not deal with trifles.

Though Latin is a “dead” language, it is spoken in specific contexts, including certain ecclesiastical, legal, and educational environments. I read that the Harvard Classical Club has a weekly Mensa Latina – a Latin table for any Classics members for whom free food is provided as long as participants attempt to speak Latin at the table. I wish I had been sufficiently intelligent, motivated, and had access to adequate wealth to have gone to Harvard. I might have enjoyed an entirely different—and far richer and more engaging—professional life than the wasteful one I pursued. Speaking of which, on a side note, the other day I came across the certificate proclaiming that I had successfully achieved the designation, Certified Association Executive (CAE). I discarded that ultimately  meaningless proclamation. It served only to stroke my ego and the egos of people like me who were similarly persuaded to believe its assertion of value and distinction.  Translated into Latin, the intellectual value of the CAE is tan vanum: meaningless. I have acquaintances who disagree; they still cling to the misguided belief that their careers meant something. Oh, well. If nothing else, association management allowed me to pay my way into retirement. Of course it meant something; it just was not nearly as important nor as consequential as my colleagues and I tried to believe it was.

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The sky is dark, lit only by the dappled light of sparkling stars occasionally peeking out from behind rivers of clouds as they flow past. Every breath I take is infused with the mysteries of the universe; I almost can feel the beginning of time as it floods my lungs with history. Not just my history; the history of everything and everyone. Every triumph, every defeat, every inconsequential victory and every momentous loss.

I wrote those words long after the experience to which they refer. Writing after the fact is a poor facsimile of contemporaneous experience. The real thing lights up the synapses with enough electricity to power a mammoth city during times of peak usage. Words are inadequate substitutes for raw emotions; but they’re the best we can muster in the absence of actual experience.

For most of my life, I understood loss in the abstract. Even during those terrible, early moments of loss that were real, my comprehension was undeveloped. Understated. The experiences were painful, but they did not crush me the way a true lesson in loss does. That loss explained to me, in ways my imagination could never have done on its own, how loss empties the universe of everything that matters. That loss explained how one’s world can evaporate entirely, while simultaneously burning with flames so horrible and hot one feels as if all the pains felt by all of humankind during the entire expanse of time were being inflicted on one’s mind and body at the same instant. Emptiness, fear, horror, agony, hopelessness, depression, rage, and every other negative emotion—erupting in perpetuity.

Loss became real and permanent when I experienced that one true lesson of loss. The pain has subsided into a miniscule fraction of what it was then, but burning embers still remain. Sometimes they spin into blazing, uncontrollable, tornadic whirlwinds. Consuming everything in their path, they leave dry, dead ashes. And the cycle begins anew. Memories, even beautiful memories, can spark a new conflagration. Sometimes, the flames promise to set fire to everything all over again. But I manage somehow to quench those new blazes for long enough to start a new chapter in my life; hoping to avoid burning the book I am attempting to write.

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The mathematician, physicist, and theologian whose quotation I used to introduce this post is responsible for another one I find intriguing. That other one brings me up sharply in response to my comments about my own curiosity:

Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

~ Blaise Pascal ~

“Always think, and question everything.”

I admire the elegant beauty of the Latin language. Something about it appeals deeply to my sense of curiosity. And to my appreciation for its ability to express powerful ideas with remarkable brevity. Despite its clean simplicity, though, I cannot seem to remember much of it. The title of this post, for example, required some effort; I had to prompt my memory to recall Latin phrases. Even with prompting, I had to correct what I remembered, with help from the internet.

As I struggle to recall even the cleanest, sharpest, shortest Latin phrases, I realize how modern humankind insists on abbreviating even the simplest statements. Members of the U.S. Marine Corps tend to abbreviate their motto, Semper Fidelis, as Semper Fi; as if the more complete version were too complex for their masses to comprehend. It shouldn’t matter to me, but it does. The shorter version strikes me as an offensive bastardization of pure elegance. But my inability to remember even phrases I find beautiful and exceptionally inspirational probably should spark some sense of humility in me; maybe saying Semper Fi is better than empty silence where words were intended.

This morning, as I contemplate various Latin phrases, it occurs to me that the English translations of Latin phrases are, in many cases, just as simple as the Latin. Yet I equate Latin with simple elegance. Why is that, I wonder? I consider these pairings:

No, I was wrong. English does not necessarily possess the unique simplicity of Latin. Then, of course, I know virtually no Latin. I “speak” it in abbreviated phrases, translated sufficiently to convey a concept. Not necessarily translated fully in a context like the English version with which I am familiar.

Curiosity is a gift. Thinking is a gift. Questioning everything is a gift. Latin is a gift, if only we allow it to spark our interest in things we might ordinarily consider mundane.

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Tips for self-forgiveness are shallow. They do not recognize impossibilities. They do not acknowledge the real world. Self-compassion is possible and, indeed, desirable. Self-compassion helps one deal with the real world and helps those around him augment it. But self-forgiveness is a myth told by people who’ve never had to face the impossible. It’s like living one’s life over after death has eliminated every opportunity to experience life. It just cannot happen. Would that it could. Would that the damage done by mistakes, both accidents and errors, could be erased. But they live on and on and on.

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Last night, during the height of the lightning storm, I felt the urge to go outside and climb on the deck railing. I wanted to reach into the sky, take hold of a lightning bolt, and follow it into the upper atmosphere. Of course, I did not follow that urge. But I wanted to. I wanted to feel the fierce wind. I wanted to feel it propel raindrops and hailstones against my face as it launched me skyward, right in the center of the lightning bolt. Grabbing lightning bolts, of course, would not permit me to “feel” anything like rain and hail and the brilliant blue flashes of jagged  electrical currents connecting me to clouds. But my curiosity was high last night. Curiosity of that kind is not a gift. It is more like a jury sentence carried out by an executioner. Curiosity of that kind can be fury by another name. Fury with oneself. Yet it passes, just like the storm. I haven’t looked outside to see whether that fierce weather took down any trees or branches, but I know the storm is gone.

Clearly, I am experiencing an empty spot in my thought processes. I cannot think of anything interesting to write about. Nothing seems especially intriguing. No topic, no current event, no idea seems particularly inviting. So, I write blather. But that’s not new, either. How could I not write blather when I write Every. Damn. Day. Almost. Eventually, it was inevitable that I would run out of anything of merit to say. And it happened. About six weeks ago. And it continues to this day. Every day, I just let letters spill from my fingers, hoping they will form legitimate words that gather into coherent sentences that, in the aggregate, turn into paragraphs. But that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, my writing simply reveals an emptiness that cannot be hidden with words. Sometimes, my writing clearly illustrates the hypocrisy of language and the insanity of what we call communication, if we’re charitable. Enough of this. Let’s see what other nonsense I can spill.

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We think of mental illness as a malady affecting only individuals, but I think it can migrate to collections of people—the populations of towns, cities, states, regions, nations, continents. Eventually, it can infect every person on Earth. The two world wars humankind has experienced thus far illustrate that reality. “Insanity” spread to whole populations, transforming “normal” behaviors into pathological hatred. Enormous numbers of people who otherwise believed in the dignity and value of all humans decided their opponents in the battle for world dominance should be killed or imprisoned.

Madness need not be what we commonly consider evil; in hindsight, world wars might have been the only logical response to the events of the eras. Self-defense can arguably justify battles. Whether it can justify outright global war and nuclear assaults is not so clear. But in the minds of people driven crazy by both the fear and reality of collective pain, the insanity of military attacks is honorable.

But good or not, world wars showed how the insanity of war can spread like a plague. Today, the contagion of collective insanity—in the form of  pandemic denial—seems to exist in tandem with the contagion of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those of us not infected with the mental illness do not exhibit its primary symptoms: pandemic denial and bizarre beliefs that veterinary drugs or mouthwash can cure viral diseases. We sometimes deem the symptoms of mental illness as simple evidence of ingrained stupidity. That position, to my knowledge, has not been tested.

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We’ve been watching Tales of the City on Netflix. With each episode, I’m growing more intrigued by it. However, I have discovered that scenes of neither homosexual nor heterosexual sex contributes even slightly to the story; instead, they seem oddly disturbing and obligatory, as if the series would not have been accepted for airing without meaningless scenes meant to upset the prudes in the audience. That notwithstanding, the story is interesting and the characters quickly appealed to me. We’ll see how it goes.

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I am ravenously hungry. In an ideal world, I would hear a knock on the door and, when I open it, an Indian chef would hand me a large sack full of steaming hot Indian breakfast delights. Dosas, samosas, sambar, chutney, parathas, kadala curries, and more. Or anything Indian. I’m just in the mood for it. But if not that, perhaps corned beef hash with eggs and slathered with Tabasco sauce. Hell, I could go for pancakes, too. Or a waffle. No, I really want something spicy; something with a bite. We’ll see about that, too.

My Christmas spirit seems to have gone right out the window. I was feeling pretty “up” yesterday morning, but my cheerful countenance has been replaced with a sour frown and the attitude to match. Maybe I will be able to replace this unpleasant mood with something more suitable to the season. Maybe not. I know what’s got me down, but it’s something I do not plan to share with anyone, whether in this blog or otherwise. Some things just do not warrant interpersonal explanation. They just need to fester until they either erupt into tumors worthy of amputation or they shrink like cut mushrooms in full sun.

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The Latin phrase, in vino veritas, translates into English as “in wine, there is truth,” suggesting a person under the influence of alcohol may be more likely than his or her sober self to reveal secrets or to speak thoughts best kept hidden. Witnessing the factual basis of the phrase play out in the “real world” can be funny or heartbreaking, depending on the secrets shared and the context—that is, the ears privy to the revelation. Of course, the revelation of secrets or thoughts or intimate opinions can spark more than laughter or anguish; anger, too, often erupts in such circumstances. But when the reaction is anger, it usually cools quickly, turning into a wound with a scab of distrust. Distrust takes a very long time to dissipate; even when distrust seems to have been replaced by confidence, it quickly can catch fire again with even the slightest provocation. In other words, trust takes much time and effort to build, but when rebuilt it rarely equals the strength of the original.

Of course it’s not just alcohol that prompts the revelation of potentially hurtful thoughts or facts. Sometimes, it’s simply oversight or mistake. Sometimes, it’s just non-malicious thoughtlessness. Sometimes it’s the intentional infliction of pain or a willful demonstration of power. And a thousand other triggers can do it. Whatever it is, revealing thoughts or secrets that have the potential for causing harm or grief is a mistake that is impossible to unmake.

If disclosure of a secret or an attitude or a behavior can only hurt oneself, the decision to disclose is clearly in one’s own hands. But if your disclosure has the potential to damage someone else, the secret does not belong to you; revealing it is akin to both theft and plagiarism.

Keep yourself busy in remembering your own faults, so that you have no time left to remember the faults of others.

~ Sufyan al-Thawri ~

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The advice of Sufyan al-Thawri is both useful and potentially harmful. While dedicating time to one’s own thoughts instead of the flaws in others is valuable, one might need be concerned that such an attitude could lead to low self-confidence. Somewhere along the spectrum between humility and pride is a sweet spot; a place where arrogance and modesty meet and agree on mutual respect. Getting to that place, though, involves traveling along a road whose surface is laced with dangerous fractures. Many never make it all the way. Depending on which side of the spectrum one begins the journey, the incomplete trip can be joyous or inconsolably sad.

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A guy who has been blowing leaves for me for quite some time came by last week to have another go at clearing the forest floor. As usual, when he and his partner finished the job, I asked “what to I owe you?” He replied with “$150 this time.” I was so stunned by the size of the amount that I simply wrote the check. After he left, I checked my phone to see when he called to say he was on his way over. I calculated that the two guys spent a total of about 45 minutes on the job. For a variety of reasons, I decided to wait until his next visit before confronting him with me displeasure and asking for an explanation. But yesterday I was convinced I should simply tell him, by text, that his services are no longer needed. So I did. My guess is that the guy did not value my business much; otherwise, he would not have overcharged me by asking for a relationship-ending amount. Until that incident, I would have (and have) recommended him to friends and neighbors. No more. Henceforth, I will warn people away from him. In my mind, he is not trustworthy. On the other hand, I probably should have questioned him right away about the obviously grotesque overcharge. But I did not. My mistake. My mistake and his led to my decision to terminate what could have become a long-standing relationship that might have been lucrative for him. Such is life.

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My brother is in the hospital again, just days before he is scheduled—finally—to move into a senior-living facility where he will have: comfortable quarters, access to social activities and entertainment, three meals a day, and people around him who can provide help when he needs it. I am crossing my fingers and hoping with everything I have that he quickly recovers from rapid spikes and dips in his heart-rate so he can get back to his move, soon after which he likely will have heart surgery.

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I had interactions with AT&T yesterday that once again convinced me the company should be dissolved and its executives imprisoned for crimes against a just society. My hopes for the layers of thieves and incompetents in the company go beyond wishing for job loss and incarceration. I truly believe  the Bell system should have been completely dissolved during the 1984 monopoly breakup and AT&T should have been scrapped as a corporate entity. Each local telephone entity should have been required to interact seamlessly with the others; any additional services (e.g., internet, television, etc.) should have been highly regulated and subject to limits on pricing, profitability, and power. Because the Supreme Court has determined that corporations are like people, I think it is natural for me to dislike AT&T in the extreme (HATE, in other words) as if it were a person who repeatedly assaults me and attempts to steal my money and try my patience.

Glower means to look or stare with sullen dislike, discontent, or anger. I hope today can somehow transform my tendency to glower into an appreciation of the beauty of flowers within my line of vision. I’m not betting on it, though.

The urge toward generosity and compassion tends to emerge from its hiding places late in the year, bursting into public view around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Public displays of charity abound around the holidays. In my experience, these visible expressions of benevolence are subject to a wide spectrum of judgments by observers—including me—of the acts. On one end, these acts of kindness are viewed as shining examples of decency and humanity; other the other, they are seen as self-serving deeds undertaken not much to help those in need as to verify the “goodness” of the generous actor.  The latter, of course, is the position of the skeptic; the cynic whose faith in humankind is weak, at best. The former is the perspective of the person who sees the world through a glass that is at least half-full.

As is so often the case with me, I take both positions. My assessment is based not so much on actions taken near year-end as it is on the degree to which behaviors around the holidays mirror practices during the rest of the year. And my perspective is shaped, in part, by the extent to which generosity and compassion are expressed in purely monetary, transactional terms versus true engagement. If the generosity I witness is strictly seasonal, I tend to fall into the same category as the skeptic; if, on the other hand, the acts of compassion take place year-round, my appreciation for humanity blossoms.  My cynicism peeks its head out of my brain when I witness benevolence that involves only the checkbook—and not the investment of time and effort. But I become more the optimist when I see actions that suggest a person is willing to engage personally in providing support to others in need.

Yet many reasons exist for those differences, often negating judgments about the depth of a person’s commitment to generosity and compassion. Some people, for example, have physical restrictions that prevent them from doing the heavy work of non-financial support. Or they may have external constraints placed upon them; access to transportation, demands on their time in support of family and friends in need, etc., etc. Those obstacles to hands-on involvement often are not visible to the judgmental observer, like me, suggesting the judges ought to leave their robes in the closet. Yet, still, I don mine too often.

When I see evidence of goodness and generosity—whether through gifts of time or money or materials—around the holidays, I like what I see. But what I really appreciate and admire are clues that a person’s compassion operates year-round. For example, people who donate financial support every week or every month. Or people who prepare and/or serve meals to the hungry. Or people who volunteer to read to children who need help learning. Or people who spend time with people who are alone, but who should feel wanted and valued.

Ever since I began the relationship with my IC, I have seen evidence of year-round generosity. For example, we recently were in a restaurant having breakfast when she observed a young couple nearby; something about them suggested to her that breakfast paid for by a stranger would brighten their day, so she picked up their tab. And, when we were combining our households, rather than sell some valuable furniture, she gave it to someone who had recently emerged from rehab and was in need of support to make a go of his second chance. And she gave duplicates of expensive kitchen appliances to a couple who was struggling financially.

My observations of my IC are not the only ones that strengthen my confidence that real generosity exists all around me. Recently, a friend read about a group of people who made a practice of going to a restaurant for an inexpensive meal and paying with a $100 bill—and leaving the balance of the payment as a tip. She decided to adopt and adapt the idea, with the support of other friends. This same friend has a history of preparing and serving meals to the hungry, committing time and energy at least once a week to that act of kindness.

And, of course, I see evidence of benevolence every week at my church, when members of the congregation offer money to the church’s “share the plate” program, whereby money collected is contributed to a different charity every month.

As I mull over these matters, I wonder how often the assessment that some people give  out of an interest in verifying their “goodness,” is legitimate. The more I think about it, the more I think people give because they want to do good, not because they want to be appreciated for their generosity. Whether their gifts are frequent or not and whether their contributions are purely transactional or not, they simply want to do good. Maybe part of their motives are to feel good about themselves; so what? Maybe that’s exactly what they need and maybe, just maybe, allowing them that self-serving generosity is an act of kindness in and of itself.

People who have read my blog for long probably recognize that I sometimes use it as a means of  deciding what I think about a subject. I “argue” with myself in some form or fashion, hoping to come to a firm conclusion about the topic of the moment. This post is one such incident. Thinking on the matter of generosity and benevolence, I’ve softened quite a bit. And I’ve come to the conclusion that the ways I help other people, whatever those ways are and whenever I provide my help, are okay. Maybe I do it to feel good about myself. Maybe I do it purely out of compassion. Maybe it’s a bit of both. Regardless, the ultimate objective is to spread human decency around, so that knowledge of the fact that others care is of comfort. So…what began as a treatise questioning the validity of some holiday-based “giving” has changed its course. I guess I’m flexible. Some would call it wishy-washy. I think I’ve simply allowed myself to think, with some focus and intent, about a topic that matters to me. And thinking has solidified my perspective. At least a little.

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Thank you, by the way, to everyone who regularly or only occasionally provides gifts of money or time or anything else to people who need the help and need to be acknowledged and appreciated.

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In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice but compassion.

~ Charlotte Joko Beck, in Nothing Special: Living Zen ~

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

~ Confucius ~

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When I woke, over five hours ago, I glanced at the clock and thought it was a bit after 3:30 in the morning. No, in reality it was only a few minutes after 1:20. But, thanks to my semi-blind glance at the clock, I behaved as if it were much later. I got up, pulled on sweat pants and a sweatshirt, and wandered into the kitchen. Before I made coffee, though, I realized my mistake. All the clocks I consulted assured me it was WAY too early to get up. But I was already up and semi-dressed. So, I decided to slide into the study, sit in the recliner, and try to go back to sleep. That worked, off and on, until about 3:00, when I decided to give up. I shed the sweat-clothes and returned to bed. I was able to get to sleep pretty quickly. I slept until just a shade after 5:30. This is not terribly unusual. But it’s extremely annoying. How I can mistake 1:20 for 3:30 is beyond me. I can do it, though; and do it well.

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Last night’s dinner, salmon chowder, was extraordinarily good. I helped with dinner, as sous chef and entremetier, peeling and chopping vegetables and cutting salmon filets into cubes. My IC planned and orchestrated the undertaking, leading ultimately to a big, orange, bubbling Le Creuset Dutch oven full of overwhelmingly magnificent flavor and texture. I was proud of my self-discipline when, after consuming only one rather large bowl of the stuff, I stopped eating. I could have gone through the entire batch without assistance, I think. My only addition, once at the table, constituted a few shakes from the spice jar of white pepper; for some reason, I find white pepper an almost indispensable pairing for salmon.

I promised my IC that, one day before long, I will prepare for her another of my favorite salmon dishes: creamed salmon. Though my salmon dish, which my late wife used to make occasionally, uses canned fish, it is a gloriously flavorful comfort food especially well-suited for winter weather. And, for me, it almost requires white pepper to attain its status as  comfort food. Creamed salmon is a food for fortunate paupers. Salmon chowder, on the other hand, constitutes a meal fit for royalty. My IC suggested that, one day, we should invite friends over for a celebratory holiday meal of sorts and should serve both her creamed salmon and her beef stew. That event would make for a happy and fortunate gathering.

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Still no definitive progress on resurrecting the closing on our new house. Not that I expected any such news at this early date; but a phone conversation with the seller a couple of days ago offered a glimmer of hope that progress is being made. We shall see. In the interim, we go about our lives and assume we will not be in a position to move and put my house on the market until after the first of the year. Though I try to shed the tension associated with such massive life changes as house selling and purchasing, I am not especially successful in that regard. I feel like the skeleton beneath my skin is crystalizing, becoming increasingly brittle and subject to fracture simply by my body’s exposure to a stiff breeze. The idea of installing a hot tub, once we finally complete the move, continues to grow highly appealing. I can imagine the stress and strain and pressure and pain melting away as heated jets of water caress my body. Of course, the cost of purchasing, installing, and operating a hot tub would probably cause me to choke. We shall see. Eventually.

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Every day, I play Words with Friends with my IC, my sister-in-law, and another friend or two. That daily routine is becoming monotonous; dull and predictable, whether I win or lose. Perhaps the increasing likelihood that I will lose the games is what is causing the tedium. Whatever the reason, I’m thinking of a taking a break from that game. I may suggest to my IC that we play a Luddite alternative that I remember playing as a teen (or even earlier) with my mother. We called it the 5-Letter Word Game. It involved each of two players using only a pencil and a piece of paper. Each player would pick a 5-letter “secret” word that the other player would attempt to guess by announcing other 5-letter words as clues; the opponent would say how many letters the “clue” word were shared with his or her “secret” word. The players then attempted to deduce which letters were in the secret words of their opponents and guess the opponent’s secret word by stringing those letters together. It’s a simple little game, but I remember spending hours honing my knowledge of 5-letter words that way. Maybe word games, nor any “game” pastimes, are not the solution to my monotony. Maybe I truly need to engage in a hobby. Perhaps returning to working with clay or learning to make stained glass or carving wood or painting. The problem, of course, is my lack of talent and skill. I become terribly frustrated with myself when I find I do not possess the requisite abilities to translate what I see in my mind into a physical representation that looks even remotely like my vision. I talk about this with myself far too often and do nothing about it with similar frequency. Self-discipline? Hah! If breathing were not an automatic physical function, I doubt I would have enough self-discipline to keep doing it, even to save my life.

But simple games can calm the mind and clear one’s own clutter. Perhaps they can lead to the realization that self-discipline is far easier than self-recrimination.

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I could become a raving an antigovernment lunatic, if given half a chance. And I’ve been given more than half a chance on many occasions. I believe in government, if only because I often think the majority of people needs to be prompted to behave with decency, humility, honor, and compassion. But when government insists on becoming intrusive, unnecessarily demanding, and demonstrates highly-developed incompetence, I draw the line. That’s when I lean toward anarchy as a form of self-regulation. That’s when I think I understand the motives behind horrific acts of domestic terror, though I find appalling and utterly unacceptable the “collateral damage” done to innocent people under the guise of “securing our freedoms from tyranny” I am of the opinion (at least at this very moment on this very morning) that all branches of government should be subject to dramatic periodic overhaul at the hands of extremely bright efficiency experts. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify. Focus on the objective, clearing away all the underbrush blocking the way to achieving it. Incorporate compassion into the process; but not to the extent that every boo-boo, no matter how small or incidental, is allowed to interfere with accomplishment. I’m not focused exclusively on the IRS, but at the moment that’s where my fury is directed. And at local taxing authorities. And school districts. And elected officials. And judges with lifetime appointments. And motor vehicle licensing offices. And so on.

Now, John: ignore this imbecilic rage and get on with your life. It is not worth losing your serenity.

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