John Swinburn

I sometimes imagine myself spending time alone in desolate places—places essentially inaccessible except to me. The time I spend there is not necessarily lengthy, but is long enough for me to dig out, briefly, from under all the sediment of daily life. I shed the weight of humanity in all its beauty and its ugliness, leaving only a graceful but strong framework; a skeleton that looks fragile and delicate but is, in fact, as strong as it is precarious.

This imaginary experience may sound a bit like a fairy tale, but it is more like an intensive care unit that attempts to rebuild broken and irreparable lives. Its abilities are more akin to the magic of a team comprising ICU doctors and highly skilled watchmakers than to the powers of a comic book hero. These magicians, if that’s what they are, might be called resurrectionists; they do not practice body snatching but, instead, mind and body reclamation.

Lest the reader think I actually think my visits to these desolate places seem real to me, let me emphasize I know otherwise. They are, clearly, contrivances of my  mind. They arise from my imagination. And from a mind that is exhausted from dealing with an inexhaustible supply of humanity’s flaws, including those from that very same mind. I know this escape is artificial. It simply suppresses reality in favor of wishes and dreams.

I know, too, someone reading this post might well think it just another absurdist fantasy of a lunatic. And it may be. Just a laughable, pointless, idiotic rambling suitable only for  memory erasure and dismissal. Given all the bullshit I write and speak and otherwise express, dismissal may seem the most appropriate way to process my thoughts. But even in the impossibly crazy swamp that is my mind, there are kernels of sanity that struggle, collectively, to sprout into forests as expansive as the dying Amazon. It is when those kernels are discarded like spoiled seed that I attempt to retreat into the desolate places that give me a reprieve. So, in a sense, I create my own endless cycle of burning down the same forest that I try to plant and nurture and save. Or, at least, abandoning efforts to quench the blaze. Catch-22. That was Joseph Heller’s phrase describing situations from which individuals cannot escape, thanks to contradictions in the rules governing those situations. In other words: “to fight the rule is to accept it.”

It’s probably easiest for people who observe my “madness” to deride or ridicule it, rather than give it serious thought. Trying to unravel complexities that may appear, on first glance, to be matted tangles of fishing line saturated with treble hooks and lures can seem a  hopeless task. This post, for example. A jumble of accusations and recriminations and hopes and escapism. I could revise what I’ve written, extracting unwritten statements from between the lines, but that would suggest an easy solution to an impossibly convoluted and complex problem.  So I ignore it. Except for this tangential acknowledgement that it’s there. Just hidden beneath red herrings and chronic complaints.

No, I do not really expect anyone to wade through this in an attempt to “understand” something that’s not understandable. Hell, I can’t even understand it myself, sometimes. I just know I have to imagine my getaway to those desolate places. One day, I’ll escape to a real place, a spot where serenity is assured by virtue of its desolation. Maybe unannounced road trips to unknown places. Or a one-way flight to Santiago, Chile, where a rental car awaits. I would like to drive the 15,000-mile Pan American Highway. That’s the kind of adventure I wish I’d embarked on when I was in my thirties. But I did not. It’s a tad late now.

Yes, I’ve switched gears and run off the rails and otherwise left the theme with which I began this post. And I would be surprised if anyone actually read this entire post. Skimming my idiocy and madness probably accounts for 90 percent of the “readership” of this blog. And I account for, perhaps, seven percent of the rest. I often wonder who “out there” actually reads what I write. And how does that break out between perceived obligation and actual interest? I do not know and I am relatively certain I will not find out.

It’s time for the second cup, the one that will replace the cold 3/4 cup that sits, unfinished and unappreciated, in the porcelain-white vessel.

About a year ago, I wrote a moderately rambling post in which I mentioned my interest in writing the autobiography of fire. As I mused about fire—what it is and what it does—I felt its connection to the sky. These words I wrote during that troubling, terrible time a year ago bring back, this morning, that sense of the connection:

The sky’s hunger is raw and unforgiving. The sky is like fire in that sense…The sky, though desolate and awash in passion, is an enigma. The sky is love in another form. In this cold predawn darkness, I feel the sky’s tender but passionate embrace.

I did not realize how close I was to the edge when I wrote that. Only when my world ruptured a few weeks later did I realize how badly I wanted to be consumed by fire so I could legitimately write its autobiography.

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I expect to receive an email alert any moment know, telling me my online order for groceries is ready for pickup. I prefer grocery shopping online to fighting the crowds in grocery stores, despite being unable, online, to select my own fruits and vegetables. Normally, I would already have received my email message, but I haven’t yet this morning. Perhaps it’s the fog that is keeping my email at bay. Perhaps the grocery store staff responsible for arriving early at the store and wandering the empty aisles on my behalf have been unable to get to work, thanks to the fog. There could be a million reasons I have yet to receive an email message. Even if I do not receive it, though, I will go to the store. I will take my IC’s car, since the cargo area of my vehicle remains filled with folded cardboard boxes, evidence that we have plans to pack our things and move in the near future.

Wait! I just got an email, informing me that my rye bread order could not be filled and that, instead, a different brand of rye bread would be substituted. I was not only happy with the substitution, I was ecstatic! I had mistakenly ordered the wrong brand; the store substituted the brand with which I am familiar. There is a god, after all!  So, within just a few minutes, I will wander into the darkness to pick up yesterday’s grocery order. Hallelujah.

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I think I write best when confronting personal emotional turmoil. I’d rather write poorly, if that is the trade-off.

Expecting perfection in oneself is a recipe for disappointment. Even striving for perfection leads to dissatisfaction with one’s failures. Yet using perfection as an ever-illusive yardstick against which one measures not attainment, but merely progress, is wise application of experience. There’s danger in measuring progress, though, in that the measure itself can become a target, leading to failures in one’s wake. I am too familiar with the dangers of perfection and the allures it leaves in its path.

Perfection does not exist. It is a myth. And, like all myths, perfection is rooted in the soil of reality, but its nutrients live in the pristine air of cages built from artificial ideas.

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The headache that woke me just after 4 this morning has not disappeared, but it is no longer the ferocious beast it was when I got out of bed. Oh, how I loathe throbbing headaches! I have no idea what causes them. That’s good, though, because if I knew, I might withdraw from the world.

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It’s now almost 6:40, leaving just enough time before my IC wakes to get a little more sleep…maybe. I am not sleeping enough lately. Even I, who needs rather little sleep, needs some more. I feel it. I might sleep in today. Or I might not.

Timothy McVeigh was executed three months to the day in advance of the September 11, 2001 attacks: on the World Trade Center, on the Pentagon, and on a hijacked plane that crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. The terrorist act for which McVeigh was executed, which was perpetrated on April 19, 1995 and which killed 168 people, took place just over six years before his execution. That heinous act ostensibly was undertaken in revenge for the Federal government’s 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, where 168 people were killed, and for the government’s 1992 siege of Ruby Ridge in Boundary County, Idaho. While the September 11 attacks had no connection (as far as we know) to McVeigh, nor to the events that sparked McVeigh’s unspeakably horrible revenge, they were related in the sense that every one of the violent acts were expressions of moral bankruptcy. War, whether undertaken by nations or conducted by individuals guided by insane delusion, is monstrous and indefensible. All of the acts woven together in the years between Ruby Ridge and McVeigh’s execution constituted a prelude to a stretch of time in which psychosis has ruled, and continues to rule, our common psyches. But Ruby Ridge was not the start. It was simply an almost irrelevant milepost in the drive to eradicate decency from the human experience.

In the years since front page madness insinuated itself into breakfast conversations—long before Ruby Ridge—we have grown horribly accustomed to violence as simply incidental to humanity. Murders of students in school and theater-goers watching movies are commonplace. Bombs that destroy families and villages and works of art are just elements of the cost of consolidating power. Stabbings, rapes, road rage, and senseless beatings of gay youths and derelicts and prostitutes are the price of admission to city life and, increasingly, rural life as well. Arson, poisoning, and throwing people off of buildings or into the paths of oncoming trains or cars are becoming so much a part of normal, day-to-day life that we do not flinch when we hear about them.

We blame the speed of the internet for the rapidity with which we learn of these horrors. We tell ourselves this is nothing new; it’s only the improvement of the delivery of news that makes it all seem like the world is decaying around us in ultra high-speed-motion. No. That’s not it. We’re deteriorating. We’re spoiling, turning into the equivalent of the plague infected with depraved motives. Every abomination we see or hear about that does not leave us horrified is just one more shred of viral damage from which we cannot recover. It all melds together in a way that makes unrestricted global thermonuclear war seem like a just and proper solution to the problem we have become.

Depending on one’s perspective, it’s either a good thing or a terribly unfortunate thing that I do not control the “nuclear football.” If there were a way to cure us—to repair the damage we have become—I might feel a little hope for humankind. But we have become skeptical even of cures. We have decided doctors and scientists are, in fact, politicians whose only aim is the eradication of middle class power through chemistry. The only true “cure,” we’ve apparently decided, is to put our faith in some magical, benevolent god who has has a monstrous mean streak in him. And, by the way, only those born to be “saved” need apply for salvation. Yes, that’s me screaming, screaming, SCREAMING!!!!!!!!!!!!! I did not want to wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but I had no choice—Santa Claus was there, right beside me, thrusting a red-hot poker in my eye and accusing me of sacrilege for which there is no forgiveness.

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Okay. Maybe I’m over it. At least some of us. But there’s an irrepressible piece of me that wants nothing more than to start over, from scratch, with a small population that willingly will agree to practice round-the-clock decency and goodwill. See if we can get it right this time.

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I’m not sure how I’m going to fit in with the “men’s group” from church this morning. They might throw me out if I open my mouth.

Yesterday began far too early and lasted far too long. I privately had hoped to cap off the day with a celebration of the house-closing, coupled with a much-delayed birthday steak dinner, at a nice restaurant in town. But the real estate deal did not close, thanks to complex issues surrounding easements running through the middle of the house, which was built on top of the property line of two adjoining lots. So, instead of a steak dinner celebration, my IC ordered pizza for delivery. And I drowned my disappointment with three fiercely-powerful mixed drinks: gin & tonic in which the tonic barely flavored the gin. The third drink sat untouched in a glass next to me as I nodded repeatedly. After a failed attempt to stay awake long enough to watch a movie, Frozen Ground, I discarded my perfectly good drink in the sink. We gave up before 9 and went to bed.  I do not remember the specifics of my dreams; only that they somehow exacerbated the torture of the previous day.

The tension I feel this morning, without a doubt, cannot compare with the stress the disappointed house sellers must feel. I had no pressure of any true consequence to complete the house purchase yesterday. The sellers, on the sellers, on the other hand, were and are under enormous pressure to get the deal behind them in their frenzied rush to complete their move toward North Carolina and their next home—which they have yet to purchase. Though my stress cannot compare to theirs, their stress is adding more to mine. I want this experience to be over for them almost as much as I want it to be over for us.

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This morning, I will go in for a scheduled pedicure. I scheduled it for one month after my last one. Based on the appearance of my toes this morning, I have decided once-a-month is far too frequent for a pedicure; I can barely tell any difference between freshly-pampered toenails and nails with a month’s worth of life experience behind them. Today, after the foot-pampering, I may schedule the next follow-up for two or three months hence. Or I may opt to defer scheduling until I better understand how quickly my freshly-treated and wonderfully-comfortable toenails morph into troublesome stumps of deformed alpha-keratin. According to a blog about nail care (Christopher Stephens: The Hair Salon), “Toenails grow slower than fingernails, at a rate of about 1/16 inch per month.” So, if I set a schedule for every other month, my toenails should never grow more than 1/8 of an inch between treatments. Frankly, though, I question the legitimacy of the numbers. In months and years past, I have gone far, far longer than two months between trimming my own nails and rarely have I encountered long, weapon-like knives. Perhaps my nails “self-trim” by virtue of their exposure to the inside of shoes, which may act like emery boards. Interesting stuff, isn’t it? If one allows oneself to question the most mundane aspects of life, even the most mundane becomes deeply fascinating. After writing the preceding sentence, I looked for quotations about the mundane. I found this one especially intriguing:

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.

~ Bill Moyers ~

That, in fact, is what artists of all stripes do. Whether painters, sculptors, photographers, or creators of any other kind, artists delve into prosaic fields of the dull scraps of daily life to find unspeakably beautiful gems.

I intentionally omitted writers from the list of artists. Though extremely talented writers can have a profound effect on the way their readers see the world, writers can never hope to achieve the impact with their words that visual artists can achieve with their art. Words take time to read, to digest, and to analyze and assess; words cannot have the instantaneous impact that visual art can have. Words often owe their impact to their context, which often the mind finds difficult—with only a glance—to fully capture.  It is for those reasons that I am jealous of talented visual artists. I envy their ability to create immediate reactions in the people who view their work and I envy the instant feedback they receive from viewers. Writers have to wait, sometimes forever, to know readers’ reactions to their words. Even after eons, though, feedback may never come.

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Several times during the past week, while standing in the shower under a spray of water so hot it is barely tolerable, I have dreamed of having a Jacuzzi/hot tub. Years ago, after my late wife and I bought a house in Arlington, Texas, we contracted to have a large, two-level Pavestone patio built. We bought a Jacuzzi and had it installed on the patio. I spent untold hours in that tub, letting jets of luxuriously hot water eliminate the stresses that accrue after eight or ten hours behind a desk. But we sold that house, and the tub went with it. Later, my wife’s medical conditions prompted doctors to tell her to avoid hot tubs, so we never got another one. But lately I recall how good it felt to have the jets of super-heated water eliminate so many of the aches and pains of daily life. I realize, of course, my fantasy involves a luxury no one really needs; but I shamelessly desire that luxury, pretending that it might actually save me from just giving up and giving in to the incessant hardships of life on Earth. I think in theatrical episodes. Life, for me, is not a simple process; it is a melodramatic series of acts and scenes that, taken together, explain the inexplicable and make the pain of living almost tolerable.

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I try to take time to devote attention to everyone in my life who matters to me. But the demands of life sometimes draw more of my attention than I think is reasonable, yet those demands sometimes are out of my control. And, then, when I might have more control, I opt to rest and recover, rather than reach out to the people in my life who I might need, or who might need me, more than I realize. Guilt starts to seep into my pores. It fills me so completely that it can topple me if I let it. But the heavy burden of guilt makes the simple things much more difficult.

I need to revise my will. It is no longer valid, as written, because of my wife’s death. I need to decide how I want my assets divided when I die. That’s an odd way of putting it, I think. When I die, nothing will matter anymore. I won’t be conscious of my assets. Or myself. Only for those who outlive me will my assets matter. And, depending on how I rewrite my will, my assets may or may not matter to them, after all. Between now and then, though, I need to watch over my assets so that I do not carelessly discard them so quickly that I have nothing left to ensure that I do not become destitute. It could happen faster than anyone might think, unless I remain vigilant.

Isn’t it a pity that money and assets matter so much? We rely on them for almost everything. Too often, money and assets dictate how we live, how we think, what is important to us, and who matters to us.

I think I just felt a very slight earthquake, a tremor so slight it might go unnoticed, but it lasted for almost half a minute. I need to to see, whether any earthquakes were detected by the sophisticated equipment that monitors and measures the earth’s tendency to stretch and moan, as it tries to shake off the troublesome beasts that cling to it.

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It’s nearing 7 a.m. I must shower and shave and prepare for my foot-pampering. A phrase from one of my favorite poems is: “pleasure, with pain for leaven.” That is what life is all about.

We were almost finished signing papers on the closing for our next house when things fell apart. Because the survey revealed that the house was built on two lots—the property line dividing the lots running right through the house—our Realtor questioned whether the easements adjacent to the property lines might create problems for us should we decide at some point in the future to sell. A series of long, drawn-out conversations took place, both between Realtors and brokers and a representative of Cooper Communities, Inc. (CCI), the developer of Hot Springs Village. The CCI representative announced, after considerable discussion, that the existence of an easement between the two lots could “put a cloud on the title.” She suggested that the only way to remove the cloud was to go through a rather involved process involving utility providers, CCI, and the Hot Springs Village Property Owners Association. And, she said, there was no guarantee that the process would yield a clear title; even if it did, she said, the cost to address the easement issues would be $750 per property line. Fifteen hundred dollars, in other words; at least. The bottom line: we delayed the closing. The sellers will be responsible for addressing the issue and paying any costs associated with it. Assuming they resolve the matter, we will set another date for closing.

I feel much sympathy for the sellers. They have scheduled movers for December 7. They already have made at least two trips to the Carolinas, where they intend to move, taking trailer-loads of their belongings and putting them in storage. They have not yet bought a house, though they have tried. They are under enormous pressure to sell their house and move. But we cannot agree to take on the potential liability associated with a cloud on the title, especially if there is a possibility it cannot be resolved. The title company says title insurance does not cover such matters. And no one seems to take full responsibility for failing to uncover the matter until today, during the closing.

Fortunately, I have not yet taken steps to sell my house. This new development, though, will impact me in another way: my current house, too, sits on two lots, crossing two easements. So, before I sell, I will need to address the same issue (and the same expenses) with my current home.

The Realtor, in talking with the CCI representative, tried to get a sense of how long the process to “correct” the situation might take. She asked if two weeks was a reasonable timeframe. That would be “extremely optimistic,” came the reply. Someone else in the room mentioned that a similar situation had taken several months to resolve.

So, for the moment, everything is on hold for us. While it is upsetting to us, the situation must be absolutely maddening to the sellers of the house we are trying to buy. I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. I feel such pity for them. And I feel a little guilt that we cannot do anything to ease their troubles. But it’s not our fault and there’s really nothing we could do to ease the burden on them short of putting ourselves at risk. So all I can do is hope they can quickly find a way to get through the process so we can move on to buy the house.

Time will tell.

The one-year anniversary of my wife’s death looms, less than three weeks away, and I feel an overwhelming sadness grow inside me like a treacherous tumor. I cannot seem to excise that emotional sarcoma that wraps itself around every shred of my consciousness. I try humor and utter silliness and anger and sullen emptiness, but nothing is capable of cutting through the sinewy rope of sorrow that chokes me. Grief wells up in me like tears, threatening to drown me. Even the excitement of buying a house is overcome by a flood of memories that chastise me for every brief moment of respite I find possible to experience. Even the comfort of my IC’s tender and loving embrace cannot always hold the river of tears at bay.

I awoke just after 3 this morning, the sadness suddenly with me and telling me I would not be able to get back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried. So, I got up and made coffee and, as usual, read a bit. Among the bits and pieces I read was a poem—Antidotes to Fear of Death—sent to me by a friend, Robin, less than three weeks after my wife’s death. Though I was not and am not afraid of death, the poem resonated with me. In thanking her for sending its healing words to me, I said this to her: “What a wonderful way to awaken to my new perspective on the world.” The poem did not heal the pain of my loss, but it put a different slant on it. It lifted some of the sadness and sent it away. Even though I have no delusions of an afterlife or a world beyond the one each of us will one day leave, the poem’s imagery comforted me in the early days of intense, heartbreaking grief. The poem was written by Rebecca Elson (1960-1999) an astronomer and poet who died too young of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Her comforting words about death translate into healing words about grief. Yet their healing power does not remove the thick scar that death leaves; they only mask…thankfully…the excruciatingly acute pain beneath it. But the words comfort me a little as I think my wife “flew off on bright wings.”

Robin, if you read this post, know how much I appreciate you for thinking of me and helping me get through that terribly rough time.

Antidotes to Fear of Death
by Rebecca Elson

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.

And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.

This morning, my cheeks are wet, with no signs they will dry anytime soon. Regrets about words I failed to say or said infrequently hound me. Guilt that, not even a year in, I am “moving on” with my life stabs at me. Even my appreciation of Elson’s beautiful poem belittles me for finding any solace in words my late wife never heard or read. And I think my tears are for me; they acknowledge only my pain, not the emptiness left behind by my late wife’s absence.

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My IC and I close on our new house this afternoon. Before long, I will put my house on the market and, if all goes well, I will sell and vacate the house where I’ve lived for more than seven and a half years. Maybe leaving this house and the memories etched into its walls and floors and ceilings will help soften the acuteness of the grief I feel at this moment. Maybe, once the anniversary of her death passes, the pain will ease a bit each year until I  no longer feel the wound, like a sharp, stabbing pain that won’t leave me; won’t even subside. Maybe won’t do; I must insist on working through the pain, not just for my own well-being but for the well-being of the woman who now shares my life. Both of us can live with moments of grief, but we have to be able to keep it from intruding to frequently or too deeply.

We’ll make the new house ours. We’ll leave the stunning view of this house for the spectacular solitude of the one we are buying. I will adjust to a different architectural style and décor. I will keep trying to experience obstacles as opportunities. I will continue to work at being grateful for what I have, not unhappy for what I don’t.

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I remember, when I was a child—perhaps a little older, maybe a teenager—that I was afraid of getting too close to the edge when I was in a high building or on a bridge or near a precipice. My fear was that I would be unable to resist the urge to throw myself off. It was not so much suicidal as it was a desire to know what death was like. My fear, gratefully felt in hindsight, was that I would be unable to return to life once I experienced death. Fear can be life-saving. Even today, I still try to stay a safe distance from dangerous high places, just in case I have not completely overcome irreversible morbid curiosity.

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It’s a few minutes past 5 and I think I’ve overcome my early morning grief, for now. I have to keep at it, though, so my IC and I can enjoy one another’s company for years to come. More coffee, now, and something to eat. My IC will be awake in just over an hour, prepping for her hair appointment and, then, our walk-through of the new house before closing (to ensure our requested repairs have been satisfactorily made). I want to greet her with a happy face.

In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.

~ Thomas Jefferson ~

Social cues about masculinity and femininity may not intentionally steer us into dark, bigoted corners of the psyche. Those sometimes almost-invisible prompts do it, nonetheless. Both insinuation and exhortation prompt us to develop attitudes that, in my view, poison our judgment and advance the causes of misogyny and misandry. Collectively, we claim we have contempt for the idiocy that suggests “real men” don’t cry and “real women” should behave like delicate flowers, but our behaviors say otherwise. We offer both verbal and unspoken rewards for identifying stereotypical male behavior and stereotypical female behavior.  We equate stereotypically masculine traits like emotional toughness, assertiveness, physical stamina, and ruthlessness with “real” men. And we inflict the same judgments on women by supporting the idea that the “ideal” woman is the accommodating, emotional, weak, submissive, and soft counterpart to her male friends or partners.

Gender stereotypes have, as long as I can remember, just pissed me off. They are so obviously unhealthy that I find it hard to understand why we accept them and engage in behaviors that reward them. But we all do. I do, must to my chagrin. We do it because that is what we are taught to do. Even when we know better, the social indoctrination we undergo from the moment we emerge from the womb is damn near impossible to successfully counter. The fact that it begins so early and is woven so tightly into the fabric of nearly all cultures suggests those wrong-headed ideas may, in fact, be hard-wired into us. Yet innate behaviors or beliefs are not necessarily correct behaviors or beliefs. When we notice the harm they do to ourselves and those around us, one would think we would strive to correct whatever “natural” tendency we have toward embracing them. But observation of the world around me tells me we tend to ignore actual experience in favor of buying into idiotic tales that worship the falsehoods of “proper” gender roles.

Men who submit to and/or display their emotions are deemed weak, soft…feminine, in other words. Women who are assertive, display emotional resilience and so forth are…masculine.  I have seen men who possess “feminine” traits respond by hiding those aspects of their personalities and bolstering the more traditional masculine behaviors; becoming artificially hyper-masculine in the process. I have seen the same reaction in women, who respond by hiding their “masculine” sides and presenting über-feminine. But I’ve also seen the opposites: men who seem to completely reject socially-acceptable masculinity in favor of embracing femininity in the extreme and women who discard feminine behaviors and replace them with pseudo-masculinity.  Maybe those reactions to society and to their own feelings about gender are healthy and natural, but I suspect they may be angry, reactive responses to what amounts to flat-out bigotry.

From a personal perspective, I have never been able to “control” my emotional side; I possess both deep sensitivity that leads easily to tears and innate responsive anger that leads too easily to fierce displays of its fury. I find it much easier to control anger than to turn off the spigot of emotional tears. But in both cases, I think I should control the emotions because, in the case of anger, it is too hyper-masculine and, in the case of emotionality leading to tears, it is too feminine. Both intellectual/emotional reactions to emotions are stereotypical. And wrong, in my view.

I’ll include a quotation at the end of this post, a reminder to myself that I can avoid much disappointment if only I’ll adjust to life as it is, not as I want it to be.

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I started out writing the masculinity/femininity paragraphs above with a different objective than they finally took. The thesis I intended to address is far too involved to cover in one blog post, especially since it would require more stamina than I have this morning. Suffice it to say that I am tired of witnessing society treating the natural display of emotions and behaviors as “right” or “wrong” depending on the gender of the actor. In my opinion, all of us should adopt a life-long mantra of “live and let live.” I only wish I could really embrace that wished-for attitude, in place of the one I too often embrace. My bigotry against hyper-masculine redneck hillbillies does not fit into my dream culture. But I’m working on it. “It” being myself, not the dream culture.

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The poetry readings at church yesterday were impressive. Our church is peopled with some very talented folks. But my reading was, as usual, a little choppy. I stumbled over words and syllables. And I read too fast. At one point in the past, I thought I had gotten over my tendency to speed through my words, but yesterday I demonstrated that I had not. A few people said they liked what I wrote, but that I delivered the poems too fast. And I knew that. Yesterday, in my defense, I wanted to keep within my five-minute limit; some other readers apparently were not as concerned with the time restrictions they were asked to live within. If I had slowed my reading by twenty-five percent, I would have spent less time than several others did, but my delivery would have been better. Such is life. I read some “old” poems yesterday because I am not satisfied with any of my more recent poetry; it’s all too dark to be suited to a Sunday morning “church” serve.  Whereas others might write about butterflies and newborn fawns, my stuff is more likely to deal with personal demons and intolerable loss. My readings may be better suited to a bookstore than to a church.

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You’ll always be disappointed when you expect people to act as you would.

~ Anonymous ~

Oh, how very, very true.

We watched the remaining five episodes of Clickbait last night. It improved. Up until the seventh episode. Episodes seven and eight become absurd in the extreme. Think of a murder mystery book in which the perpetrator is introduced, for the first time, in the last chapter. Yeah, that’s the quality of writing one can find in Clickbait. To its credit, though, it improved from episodes four through six. Time, once spent, is no longer viable currency.

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I woke after 6 this morning; an oddity, but not an unknown. But the lateness of my start to the day puts me in a time bind. I must prepare to read a couple of poems in church today, part of an “all poems” insight service in which several church members will read. I expect the turnout today to be light; as in lacy or translucent. Perhaps both congregants will show their appreciation for the spoken word. Oh, well. Yet, maybe there will be a bigger crowd than I think. But maybe not. Time will tell.

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The Belgian-Australian multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter who goes by the name “Goyte” but whose birth name is Wouter André De Backer. I know this only because a phrase from his song, Somebody That I Used To Know, features a phrase that resonates with me. The phrase:

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness.

~ Goythe ~

I’ve appreciated the song since the very first time I heard—and watched—it being performed on an intriguing video. I know I’ve written about the phrase before. In fact, I wrote about it on May 10 this year in the same post in which I suggested I might stop writing in my blog and in which I mused about the unlikelihood that I would date again. I babbled on about several other matters, as well, as I am wont to do. But the intersections between what’s spilling forth from my fingers today and what I wrote during the first part of May this year seem unique. Maybe because I am thinking about the same topics now that I thought about a few months ago. Or maybe my mind and the molecules of thought surrounding it are in alignment. “Molecules of thought.” I like that. I may use it one day, though in fact I just did and it is not working any better than any other nonsensical phrase might.

Before I depart this thread, I have to go on record to explain that Goyte is pronounced like the French Gauthier. So says Wikipedia. I’ve donated money to Wikipedia in the not-too-distant past, so it must be correct.

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Today’s weather forecast calls for moderate atmospheric emotion, followed by periods of deadpan sky and a dispassionate stratosphere. Later in the day, though, storm clouds may form at the intersection of celestial rivers of hope and tides of despair. Fierce but ephemeral winds, as deep as the oceans and as transparent as time, may scrape clean the surface of the millennia, leaving a pristine canvas upon which our descendants may paint the future.

+++

And, now, onward through the day.

I knew better than to skim the headlines on the CNN website this morning, but I did it anyway. As I read the words—ostensibly intended to enlighten me about important events in recent days—it occurred to me that the vast majority of the “news” reported to me is not news at all. Instead, it is meaningless drivel; clickbait meant to drive up the volume of website traffic, a key metric in the never-ending effort to sell ad space. Clickbait. Interesting. My IC and I watched a short series called Clickbait on Netflix last night. More on that in a minute; in the interim, though, I contemplate how I define “news” and what it does to my state of mind.

Here are some of the headlines I encountered:

• How US gun culture stacks up with the world
• Why these students dread turning 21
• ‘I don’t respect him at all:’ Taylor Greene rips Republican leader
• Rep. Boebert suggested Rep. Omar was terrorist in anti-Muslim comments
• 1 person shot at Tacoma Mall in Washington
• A British guy crashed her Thanksgiving dinner. They’ve been married for 20 years
• What we’ve learned about global travel this week
• Madonna hits out at Instagram for removing photos
• World Chess Championship: Chess is sexy again. But for Magnus Carlsen, it’s business as usual

During my brief attempt at learning what happened overnight that might impact how I live my life on Earth, I discovered that none of it matters. Not a shred of it. Zip. Nada. The headlines, and the stories they introduce, are unnecessary. My life, and indeed the lives of everyone I know, will be unchanged by this mindless junk. CNN.com is an internet version of The National Inquirer , It is nothing but a slightly different format of tabloid journalism, carefully curated to appeal to readers who stopped thinking after reaching a second-grade reading level. But the website designers—the headline writers and graphic artists other members of the elite team of brainwashers responsible for making the site appeal to the masses—cleverly make the site appear to be a sophisticated resource for the consumer of “serious” news. What utter hogwash! Look again at the sample of headlines. There’s not one iota of serious news buried in those words. Even the one piece that might appear to be both unbiased and newsworthy (How US gun culture stacks up with the world) is awash in bias, albeit bias with which I tend to identify, which of course makes it easier to classify as serious news…

What, exactly, is “news?” In my admittedly imprecise assessment, news is dispassionate, impartial, nonpartisan, neutral information about events or developments that contributes to one’s knowledge of the world. “News” enables the consumer of such information to make educated assessments of the impact of that data on his or her life. The impact might be personal and immediate or it may be general and insensitive to time.  The key thing, though, is that the information is journalistically pure. That is, it is not tainted by bias. Exactly! There is no such thing as news! It has been digested by money-hungry pseudo-journalists and excreted in neat little balls of crap disguised as knowledge. When we read what pretends to be the “news,” we are in effect swallowing the intellectual equivalent of laxatives; real knowledge is flushed away along with the drivel.

Okay. This entire diatribe may be a tad too judgmental. Yes, some news—even the stuff I equate to The National Inquirer for the semi-literate—has some real-world value. It’s not all a vast wasteland of pre-digested stupidity, carefully crafted to dumb-down the masses. But most of it seems designed to do precisely that. And reading this morning’s headlines brought that into clear focus for me. Even after switching to the PBS news website, I was inundated with garbage unsuitable for consumption by people with low-normal intelligence.

I don’t know quite what to do in this environment in which the gold standard of reliable news delivery has shrunk to the level of The National Inquirer. I suppose one has to be extremely skeptical of everything one reads. Read for facts, not opinions. And watch out for opinions disguised as facts; they are everyone. Ignore headlines (and the stories beneath them) that sound like tabloid garbage; because that’s exactly what they are. The bottom line is that, by carefully discriminating between information/knowledge and persuasion/pablum, one can remain at least partially immune to infection. But it takes real effort.

+++

I mentioned Clickbait. My IC and I watched a few episodes of the rather unpleasant short Netflix series last night. It was okay, but I view the time spent in watching it as time I will never recover and time I could have spent in more pleasing and more productive ways. Still, it kept our interest for almost all of three episodes. Watching it was better than licking icing off of scalpel blades. There are five more episodes. I do not know yet whether we will watch them.

Other Netflix stuff we’ve been watching of late includes:

• • Hit & Run (a short series featuring Israeli actor Lior Raz, who I have seen in several “foreign” series and films and who I enjoy watching)
  • Quicksand (a short series; Swedish)
  • How to Get Away with Murder (series)
  • Wind River (a film)
  • Red Notice (a film)
  • Peppermint (a film)

The good news about watching Quicksand and some other bits and pieces online is that my IC says she has enjoyed watching foreign-language flicks with me. So, I translate that into being able to go on a binge of watching some foreign/foreign-language stuff, including:

• The Twelve (Belgian)
• The Trial (Italian)
• The Innocent (Spanish)
• Caliphate (Swedish)
• The Woods (Polish)
• Ingobernable (Spanish)
• Roma (Mexican/Spanish)
• Kitty Love: An Homage to Cats (Dutch)
• Layla M. (Dutch)
• Red Dot (Swedish)
• Forever Rich (Dutch)
• Ferry (Swedish)
• The Resistance Banker (Dutch)

There are more, of course. Much to my chagrin, though, I discovered a night or two ago that several of the Scandinavian series I wanted to watch either have been removed from Netflix or have not yet made it on. For example, I have long wanted to continued watching all the component element mini-series in the Department Q series based on novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen. I’ve seen three of five that have been adapted into short series; but, unfortunately, even those three are no long available on Netflix. The two I have not seen, The Purity of Vengeance and The Marco Effect are not available, either.

I might be able to spend my entire life in the clutches of foreign films, but that’s probably not wise. I have things to do, people to be, and places to see.

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The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.

~ Joan Didion

Interestingly, the refusal to accept that responsibility is the unending source of self-doubt.

Yesterday’s meal was tasty. And the conversations surrounding it were equally pleasing. But when I woke up this morning, long before daylight, I felt rotten. In between visits to the bathroom, I slept on the reclining loveseat, hoping to recover a feeling of health and comfort. Finally, around 8:50, I felt reasonably well…well enough to get up and go about my day. But not well enough to think lucidly. And not well enough to write anything of consequence. So, for now, I will take a rest from writing. And I will hope the remainder of the day continues to improve.

Sometimes, my habit of looking back at my blog to see what I was thinking a year ago is a mistake. Today, for example, I looked back to see what wrote on Thanksgiving, 2020. I wrote that I was making special tapas to take to my wife, whose life was slipping away while she spent another miserable day in a rehabilitation facility. That day, and more that followed, left me feeling empty and aching and wishing I could do something to change the course of history. I did not acknowledge then, though, that my wife was dying. I still hoped that she would recover form her five-month-long deterioration. Even though I did not know her end was near, I felt a sense of unease; dread, almost, that the nightmare would just drag on, with nothing suggesting we would emerge from it unscathed. Yes, it may have been a mistake to look back a year. I hope that mistake doesn’t ruin this Thanksgiving for my IC and me and for our two Thanksgiving day guests who are joining us for dinner, my late wife’s sister and our friend. I’ll figure out a way to pull out of this self-imposed tear-fest before the day begins in earnest. I do not want to experience today this way—this moment that seems to stretch on interminably as an endless sense of loss envelopes me.

My good fortune—of stumbling into a relationship with someone who fills me with such joy—will help me overcome the sadness that swept over me as I perused last November’s posts. I feel guilty, though, both for what feels like my undeserved good fortune and for bringing my sadness into her life at the same time she brings joy into mine. I wonder, more often than not, whether my grief will ever become tolerable. I know it will never leave me, but will it ever allow me to keep it locked inside me, so that it doesn’t infect people around me? Ach! I will find a way to harness the power of my grief in positive ways. I am sure many others have done it. It’s just a matter of committing to do the same and translating commitment into action.

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Before I retired, I made a habit of getting up early and going for a walk—between two and four miles—ever weekday. Then, before my wife awoke, I showered and shaved in preparation for going to the office to begin my workday before my staff arrived. Since retiring, I’ve slacked off. Not only have I stopped my habit of taking long walks, I’ve almost entirely abandoned early morning showers. Nowadays, I usually wait until mid-morning or later to shower. But not this morning. I woke at around the usual time, 4:30 or so, and immediately went in to shave and shower. After I got dressed, I put a load of laundry in the washer before I made coffee. I felt so incredibly productive! But then I make the mistake of looking at old blogs… Yet I see how I might reinvigorate myself if I simply got back into an old, familiar habit. Rather than reading old blog posts, I should just launch right in to writing. Or, maybe, I could get back in the habit of early walks. But that might be a tad more difficult than it was back in Dallas; even in early morning darkness, street lights were sufficient to enable me to avoid many trips and falls. Here in the Village, the lights are fewer and less powerful. And I am older and my vision is not what it once was. But even without the walks, I could get into a new version of an old habit; up early, shower, shave, and jump into a productive exploration of what’s on my mind. I’ll give that more thought. It has potential. It has merit. I may still have the ability to launch into something energizing that might start my days with an injection of enthusiasm I’ve been lacking.

+++

Before I began writing this morning, I skimmed emails that came in overnight. One of them struck me at once as a bit odd and rather thought-provoking. The message suggested that Bruce Lee, the actor and marshal artist, was also a philosopher. Hmm. I like the label. I’d like to adopt it for myself. John Swinburn, philosopher. It works for me. But I realize, of course, that we’re all philosophers. We all have philosophies of life that guide how we live; how we behave, how we allow the world around us to steer us in various directions. But I doubt many of us recognize that the way we think and the patterns of our thoughts are the  hallmarks of philosophers. We’re all philosophers. We just do not acknowledge it. We should. We ought to consciously recognize how our thoughts move us through the course of our lives. Only by responding to our philosophies of life are we able to cope with the obstacles and opportunities the world throws at us. But, of course, I’m thinking of something a little more formal. Something I might feel comfortable putting on a business card. “Examiner of Life in a Fiercely Independent Universe.” That may be too long. And it may be the wrong approach. I’ll have to give it more thought.

+++

Once again, I’ve allowed my coffee to get cold. I could save it and drink it over ice, later in the day. But that doesn’t sound appealing to me. When I drink iced coffee, I want freshly-brewed coffee that’s poured over ice; not luke-warm coffee that’s saved from going down the drain by dumping it in a glass full of brutally cold pieces of rock-hard water. For some reason, I just had a vision of pouring too-warm coffee into a glass that contains not only ice but pieces of uncooked salmon. What in the name of God is wrong with me? Who thinks of such miserable, unappetizing stuff at this hour of the morning? Now, even freshly-brewed coffee poured into a pristine cup sounds less than appealing.

+++

Okay. I’m ready for Thanksgiving Day. Before I get too far into it, though, I have to finish the load of laundry. It might have finished washing by now, in which case it’s time to throw it into the dryer. I might finish the load completely before my IC awakes to take her small strange dog out for its morning constitutional. It’s actually a very nice little dog; exactly the kind of dog I have long been thinking about, except it’s a tad small, so it can’t safely hang its head out of the car window and sniff the breeze, as if it were engaged in a wonderful adventure.  Stop changing the subject. Do the clothes. Write later. Maybe tomorrow.

My relationship with religion in general is not simply tolerance. It is more like acceptance, though not in the sense that I accept a belief that runs utterly counter to my own. For several years—at least six or seven, I think—I gradually have come to accept the power and value of religion for individuals who believe humanity owes its existence to some form of divine power or being. I stipulate that I accept the power and value of religion for individuals because I still think religion in a broader sense—as a social structure—often is an ugly and dangerous construct. But, for individuals who believe in a supreme power, it can affirm life and everything in it. It can be an anchor and a guide.

This morning, I read an email distributed by the Unitarian Universalist (UU) Association that captured the value of prayer for people who believe in and need a “higher power.” Entitled “An Atheist’s Prayer,” the message told the story of a new UU chaplain, Rev. Sally Fritsche, an atheist like me, called to prayer with the family of a dying Catholic man. The chaplain hesitated, wondering whether any prayers she offered would seem hollow to a family of believers. But she wrote this, in describing her reaction to the situation:

But a dozen pairs of teary eyes turned to me; what else could I do? I invited everyone to gather close. Together, we prayed the Hail Mary, the Our Father, and prayed that whatever came next would come with peace and overwhelming love. A powerful connection formed when that family reached for me, the chaplain, and asked me to put their sadness and their hopes into words, and to tell their God what they needed. Those prayers were far from empty.

This morning, as I considered my acceptance of religion and, in this case, prayer, I had something of an epiphany. Acceptance in such circumstances is simply an expression of compassion. I need not share the beliefs of someone else to accept and appreciate what they are doing (or hope I will do) by offering prayer. I simply need to share humanity.

The email message in which Rev. Fritsche’s story was told ended with a prayer, one I can embrace on a personal level:

May we release ourselves from the need to fit every truth neatly into our own language. May we occasionally forget ourselves long enough to remember each other.

+++

I spent most of last night after going to bed, and the subsequent wee hours of this morning, in extremely restless sleep and near-sleep. Thoughts and dreams of during much of the night revolved around problems with closing on our next house, scheduled for next Tuesday. There are no such problems, but my thoughts and dreams insisted all night that there are: inadequate funding, mistakes with the title and insurance, scheduling difficulties, errors in arithmetic, lost checkbooks, etc., etc., etc. Those interruptions to my sleep were supplemented with difficulty breathing, including complete and total blockage of the right side of my right; as if skin had grown over my nostril so no air could enter or escape. And the usual joint pain and coughing and dry mouth and headache. The idea of a truly restful sleep is pure fantasy. When I finally got out of bed around 4:30 (at least a couple of hours after I was thoroughly awake), I considered the possibility of testing whether five or six shots of high-end tequila might make sleep come; I abandoned that idea, though, for fear that the “cure” might utterly wreck my plans for the rest of the day. So, I’m simply waiting for my body to adapt to its environment and the torture it must endure.  Ach.

+++

One of my brothers was admitted to the hospital again yesterday. He had breathing problems. Though I have not been able to speak to him, I learned from another brother that the hospitalized sibling was told by his doctor that a procedure to correct a problem with his heart is not longer an option. My brother is not a good candidate, he was told; he might not survive the surgery, the doctors said. This is in direct opposition to what he was told earlier. I wish I were there so I could listen to doctors directly, rather than get information third or fourth hand. But, that’s not possible at the moment. So, I will try to reach my hospitalized brother today to get more information. When loved ones far away are ill, the burden on everyone involved with them is exacerbated by distance and incomplete communication.

+++

This morning, I will prepare a broccoli and rice casserole, which will sit in the refrigerator overnight in advance of cooking for dinner tomorrow. My IC will make a green bean casserole for the Thanksgiving feast, as well as sweet potatoes in some form or another (maybe just baked, maybe jazzed up in some fashion…time will tell). Guests will bring salad and a pumpkin-based (I think) dessert. We’ll have various munchies (olives and other pre-prandial delights). And, of course, wine. Riesling for at least one of us; maybe some Sauvignon Blanc for me (and others); and some nice Cabernet Sauvignon for those who wish for it. I rarely make a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner, but this year I’ll prepare a ribeye roast (which I have done before, with some rather grand success). Oh, yes. Food will be fun. I love ribeye with horseradish; we shall have horseradish.

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“When you know your history, you know your value. You know the price that has been paid for you to be here. You recognize what those who came before you built and sacrificed for you to inhabit the space in which you dwell.”

~ Cicely Tyson

I read in passing in a newsletter [recently renamed The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings)] a mention of “fractals,” a term with which I am familiar but whose definition I have never fully understood. I set aside the newsletter, but the term “fractal” stuck in my head. Later this morning, when I looked up the word, this is the definition I found: “an irregular geometric structure that cannot be described by classical geometry because magnification of the structure reveals repeated patterns of similarly irregular, but progressively smaller, dimensions.”

The definition went on to offer examples: “Fractals are especially apparent in natural forms and phenomena because the geometric properties of the physical world are largely abstract, as with clouds, crystals, tree bark, or the path of lightning.”

A secondary definition, applicable to architecture and decorative art, is offered as follows: “a design or construction that uses the concept and mechanics of fractal geometry.”

Neither definition adequately explained to me the meaning of the word, nor its applicability in the world around me. Only after I searched for images associated with the term did I begin to understand it. Even then, it remained fuzzy until I returned to the natural examples. Finally, while considering the description and another specific graphic example did it begin to become increasingly clear. An abstract tree canopy clarified it for me, as did a magnified image of a snowflake, an enlarged photo of a splash of alcohol ink on a field of pure water, and a photo, taken from space, of a river network. The website of The Fractal Foundation offers what may be a more precise definition; somewhat easier to grasp:

“A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems – the pictures of Chaos. Geometrically, they exist in between our familiar dimensions.”

During the course of growing older, I regularly discover and rediscover the almost incomprehensible beauty of physics. And that discovery upsets me that either I never had the intellectual capacity to understand physics or the ability to regulate my own interests to successfully pursue it or both. I have long since given up on trying to comprehend physics, opting instead to marvel at its incredibly complex beauty and its absolute integration with the natural world around us.

Even now—in what I hope is only the beginning of the very early stages of the long twilight of my life—I still wish I had devoted more of my youth to my own education. I wish I had been smart enough to know how important an understanding of the world and my place in it could have become. If I knew in my youth what I know now, I might have applied myself, even in school subjects that seemed boring at the time. I wish I had been able to appreciate that “practical” knowledge is not the only knowledge worth having. I wish I had understood that the pursuit of “understanding,” in its purest form, is the most valuable gift one can give to oneself. And it is the most meaningful gift one can help others give to themselves.

The beauty of physics and geometry—and fractals—always drives me to appreciate art’s natural attraction. Art captures the mystique and complexity of nature, as if it seizes the importance of never-ending repetition of patterns. Art, whether created with a brush or by hands on a wheel or any other means, uses repetitive patterns of movement to form monuments to the natural world around us. Even abstract art, seemingly unrelated to nature or, indeed, any aspect of the world around us, appropriates observations and translates them into patterns for others to see, if they choose to examine art closely enough.

I cannot adequately explain my thoughts this morning; they are too convoluted to put into clear words. But like so many other days, this morning seems to clearly point me in the direction of “knowing” how important our understanding of the natural world is to our appreciation of life itself. It’s sad to think that most people—like me—fail to devote the time and energy to understanding fractals and physics. If they did, their time on this planet would be more fulfilling, I think. And they would contribute to a more fulfilling time for others. Alas, it’s easy to nourish and hard to starve ignorance, while it’s hard to nourish and easy to starve knowledge.

+++

Grocery stores should open much earlier. Like breakfast restaurants, they should open by 6:00 a.m. at the latest. Only savages stay in bed after 5:30; the rest of us need to be up and productive long before then. And than sometimes means getting breakfast or buying groceries. I admire donut shop/bakery owners and employees; they know the value of “early to rise.” That’s both “pun”-ny and productive.

Here it is, three years and three days post-surgery. I failed to celebrate the three-year anniversary of my thoracotomy and lobectomy, the outcome of which was to prevent me from dying of lung cancer. On reflection, three days after the anniversary date, I think it appropriate to express appreciation for the enormity of the efforts undertaken on my behalf. Not just the surgery, performed by Dr. Jason L. Muesse and his surgical team, but for the doctors and researchers and other scientists and inventors who made it possible for a patient to survive such traumatic, invasive procedures as thoracic surgery.

Imagine everyone involved in learning the processes and requirements that led to: sterile operating room conditions; special instruments to cut into the body, evacuate blood, monitor heart rate and blood pressure and brain waves, etc.; reliably clean surgical gowns and masks and draping; anesthesia processes and products…the list could go on for weeks. Every piece of equipment has a history of product development and refinement. Every member of the operating room team and post-op recovery team spent literally years absorbing knowledge and perfecting skills. Even the architects and construction professionals involved in designing and building the hospital and its surgery theaters should be acknowledged for their role in saving people, thereby keeping families intact and preventing overwhelming grief from washing over people not ready to face the reality that mortality is not a myth.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not believe doctors are gods, nor are all the people involved in today’s medical establishment heroes. If I believed in the concept of sin, I would say many aspects of the insurance bureaucracy constitute sins against Man and Nature. Doctors and nurses are mere mortals who, in the right circumstances, help delay death and keep the pain of injury and illness at bay. But everyone involved in any aspect (even tangential to) of the various fields of medicine deserves recognition and appreciation for the roles they play in keeping us adequately healthy and alive.

I think humility is an appropriate response to what can seem to be the miracles of modern medicine. Even in light of its failures, medicine is extraordinary. Even when doctors cannot perform miracles—when patients die, leaving survivors in unspeakably difficult mental anguish—appreciation for valiant efforts is, at minimum, appropriate.

Three years after what could have been a brush with death, I am more than a little grateful for medicine. As much as I think the medical establishment is rife with greed, merciless indifference, and inefficiencies, I am delighted to have been (and to continue to be) an appreciative recipient of its capacity to heal me.

+++

Though I remain skeptical, curmudgeonly, and more than a little suspicious of the motives of humankind, I find myself mellowing in my old age. While enormous numbers of people can be counted as parasitic thorns in the side of human decency—and, therefore, deserving of unemotional extermination—quite a few of those who remain are, by all measures, fundamentally good. And those good people merit our goodwill and appreciation.

It’s odd, though. The older I get, the more certain I become that many people—maybe most—simply are fundamentally rotten to the core. But at the same time, I become more and more positive that there are huge numbers of good ones who should be acknowledged for their goodness. Why I see that big divide is beyond me. I find it interesting that few people seem to fall in the middle between the two.

Another oddity: it’s hard to know into which camp people fall until they are past child-bearing age. So, while it would be great to be able to discourage the bad apples from procreating, one can’t be sure who the bad apples are until after their children have already inherited their bad genes. My solution would be to simply skip at least one complete generation. But that wouldn’t really solve the problem. It would simply give us a breather. Which wouldn’t be bad. But it would be equivalent to kicking the can down the road a bit. We do that too often already. Look at Congress and its propensity to delay action on urgent items until it’s too late to take action.

+++

I did not buy milk yesterday, so again we cannot have cereal for breakfast. I did not thaw bacon yesterday, so we cannot have bacon and eggs. I did not make congee this morning, so that item will not be on the menu today. I would like very much to go out for breakfast to First Watch. But the nearest location is three-plus hours from home, so that’s out. Life is such a challenge. But I prefer challenges to the certainty of their perennial absence. I’ll figure something out for breakfast.

+++

My IC and I talked yesterday about how hard it has been, during times of extremely challenging emotional stress, to reach out to ask for help. Or even to ask someone to sit quietly with us as we go through the experience. I think people who have extremely close friends and who think of themselves as worth others’ time are better equipped than the rest of us. People who question their own value have a harder time because they assume any offer of a gift of time will be made from another’s feeling of uncomfortable obligation rather than a sense of a genuine desire to help. The problem with not asking for, or even rejecting, help is that there may come a time when it’s too late. I’ve sensed that I’ve gone too long being afraid to accept help. By the time I’m willing to accept it, the offer has faded or the hugs are no longer available. Emotions are far more difficult to heal than are cuts and scrapes. Just some out-of-the-blue thoughts on a topic often on my mind.

+++

I am ready for another cup of coffee. I wonder why my mind is so much on appreciation of late. Thanksgiving usually does not do that to me. And it’s not Thanksgiving that’s doing it this year, either.

Yesterday, I prepared a broccoli and rice casserole; I will take it out of the refrigerator and heat it for 40 minutes before taking it to church this morning for our pre-Thanksgiving luncheon. If memory serves me correctly, I think I read that the church is providing turkey (or is it ham?) for today’s meal; members of the congregation, like me, are providing the side dishes. I have not participated in a meal with the congregation in what feels like a very, very long time. COVID-19 acted like a wrench thrown into the gears of a finely-tuned machine, slamming on the brakes of group gatherings, especially meals. Today’s meal will, I hope, resurrect the practice of having group meals from time to time.

+++

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

~ Voltaire ~

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This morning, quite by accident, I learned the meaning of a vulgar British slang term: goolies. Goolies refers to male genitals, “more specifically, his testicles or ‘balls’.” While I found no definitive etymology for the word, I came across evidence that the word entered the English language by way of India, where the Hindi word goli mean a small sphere or ball. Language intrigues me, especially language that conveys information about the context in which it is used. I can imagine, for example, using the word goolies in a story to suggest the Indian subcontinent background of a British character whose parents, we might learn later, speak Hindi in the home.

+++

Like millions of others around the world, I was appalled to learn that a jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse on all counts against him in the deaths of three men and the wounding of another in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I thought he deserved to be found guilty on all counts. I was angry that he will not be punished for his actions. But unlike millions of others, I do not think the Federal government should charge him with other crimes; we do not have a “do-over” provision in the Constitution for verdicts we do not like. And I absolutely abhor the signage some protestors displayed in various places around the U.S. after the verdict, including one that says “The people’s verdict: GUILTY!”  Vigilante “justice” is not justice; vigilante means “done violently and summarily, without recourse to lawful procedures.” Too often, when jury verdicts do not go “our” way, I see people who share my perspectives on the verdict decide they should be allowed to overturn it. Yet they do not give the same permission to the other side when the verdict goes our way. Hypocrisy is not a good look for ostensibly intelligent progressives.

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I envy playwrights the experience of watching an audience respond to the performance of their work. Playwrights can see and hear whether their words elicit howls of laughter or shrieks of surprise. When the sound of sobs fill an auditorium or the sight of tears streaming down the faces of theater patrons, the playwright knows whether his writing touched a nerve. He knows whether his words extracted emotions from spectators. My posts rarely prompt readers to reply. Only rarely can I be certain eyes have seen my posts, much less sparked an emotional response.

But, occasionally, someone will respond to what I’ve written. Yesterday, my friend Meg gave me feedback on my musing about eating meat and Colleen noted that I mistakenly titled my post with the wrong day of the week. And Deanna wrote an insightful response, not long ago, to my comments about isolating from the news cycle. And Becky reassured me that coffee would be in my future. And Patty comforted me in her response to my emotional expression of bleak loneliness.

Those rare responses to my sometimes nearly incoherent blather reinforce my envy of playwrights. Comments of any kind let me know someone is out there, reading. Comments function the same way for a blogger as audience reactions function for the playwright. And the playwright has the benefit of knowing the size of the audience, even when the audience sits in uninspired silence. No so the blogger; if he sees no comments, it either may be because his writing had no effect on the audience—or because there was no audience for his words; no one read what he wrote.

A few years ago, a very critical comment about a short post (fiction) generated an interesting dialogue between me and the commenter. The commenter, a first-time visitor to the blog, caught an extremely amateur mistake in the story and she called me on it. Embarrassed, I replied to her and acknowledged the error. We exchanged comments for a bit and eventually, thanks to fortuitous circumstances, met face to face. We since have not seen one another in several years and only rarely communicate, but that simple comment illustrates how interactions between writer and reader can spawn interesting experiences. I suppose it’s that rare result to a rare comment that I envy. Something meaningful can come out of even uninspired writing as long as ideas are exchanged. That is, as long as communication takes place. Communication is not a one-way interaction; it requires information to flow in both directions.

+++

The Ötztal Ice Man, a mummified corpse found on the Hauslabjoch in the Tyrolean Alps in September 1991, had tattoos—sixty-one of them, in fact. Otzi, as he is affectionately known, offers glimpses of the first tattoos known to humankind. Tattooed mummies and remains have been discovered in forty-nine locations around the world, confirming that tattooing has been practiced all around the world for literally thousands of years. The oldest evidence of tattoos is from between 3370 BC and 3100 BC. My point: the recent popularity of tattoos is nothing new.

Today, Goth youth, hillbilly grandmas, bikers with a violent streak, and sensitive and tender young poets share a propensity to have tattoos. It’s interesting that each of them seems to view tattoos as their own personal modes of expressing uniqueness in a bland, ordinary, and common world.

Still, though, I have no tattoo. And I may never have a tattoo. But I might get one on a whim, giving the matter about as much thought as I might give to picking which fruits to buy from the greengrocer. Odd; the idea that a decision about something so permanent and so personal might be made with almost no thought. No planning. No consideration of the repercussions. With regard the latter, I wonder what possesses a person to have a cross tattooed across his forehead or the image of a cartoon character imprinted on her cheek.

While tattoos maintain negative images in many quarters in this era, they are becoming more acceptable. Not long ago, when I went to the hospital to determine whether I might have a pulmonary embolism (I didn’t and don’t), I encountered a young ER doctor—a first-year resident—who had a tattoo around his ring finger. In response to a question from my inquisitive IC, he explained he had gotten the tattoo in lieu of removing his wedding band before engaging in various medical procedures. Subsequent to that experience, I have had vague recollections of seeing other medical doctors with various unobtrusive tattoos.

So what? Why write about tattoos? I honestly can’t say. The subject just arose in my mind earlier this morning and I followed it. Online, I explored a little about the history of tattoos and I examined images of tattoos. I saw what I consider hideous full-body tattoo sleeves. And I saw photographs of women with small, discreet tattoos; images that aroused a wish that I could have known more about these delicate people. Of course, they may not be delicate at all. Tattoos do not necessarily reveal a great deal about a person, any more than do the earrings someone may wear. But the mere fact that a person displays a tattoo—or wears an earring—says something. It says “I am not the average person next door.” It invites questions. It suggests an interest in human interactions. I suppose a tattoo or an earring (or bracelets or necklaces or…whatever) is the equivalent in humans of mating dances or feathered strutting in birds. It says “look at me.” Not necessarily for mating, but for acknowledgement or recognition or simply engagement.

+++

I wish I could harness my curiosity. I wish I could channel to stay focused on a specific subject for longer than a minute. If I could do that, I might know far more than I do about the world in which I live. But I do not stay focused. Instead, my mind flits from subject to subject like a bee zips from flower to flower. The bee is after pollen. But what am I after? I’ve said it a thousand times before: my interests are wide but shallow; I know a little about many things but I know a lot about so very few. I cannot stay focused for long. I get bored or, perhaps more precisely, I encounter a wall that informs me I am not disciplined enough or smart enough to become more proficient or more knowledgeable about a subject. So, I flit on to the next one, always hoping to find one that will be sufficiently interesting to me to enable me to stick with it for a while. But I know better. I am afraid I always will be the impatient bee. He will try to experience every flower, but he will know almost nothing about every one upon which he lands so very briefly.

I’ve said before that I might one day get a tattoo of a dragonfly or a scorpion. I might consider a bee, as well. The dragonfly would have special significance as a reminder of my late wife. The scorpion would suggest something of my false bravado, I’m afraid. But the bee might reveal something of my personality; inherently prone to skip from idea to idea, never stopping long enough to really understand anything.

+++

We bought a large ribeye roast the other day. We chose the prime grade, despite its premium price, because it is for a special dinner. Never in my life, until now, have I spent more than $100 on a cut of meat. This better be damn tasty! In addition to the beef, we’ll have a salad and some nice vegetable sides. Before Thanksgiving Day, when I cook the huge piece of meat, I will buy some prepared horseradish to serve as a condiment. And we will have wine. And there will be music and conversation and laughter.

I’ve written several times before about my ambivalence toward eating meat. While I love the flavor, I loathe the history of the food before me when I am about to eat beef or chicken or turkey or lamb or…whatever. Even fish, sometimes, causes me to wonder whether I would be happier and healthier as a vegetarian. That’s exactly how some people want me to feel. They might say “See! I’m right about this! You should swear off meat in favor of a happier and healthier diet based on gentle sweetness instead of violent dominion!” Or something like that. But I have mixed feelings. I think humans evolved as omnivorous creatures. That is not to say that we could not continue to evolve so that, eventually, we remove meat from our diets. But would that truly be natural? And why does the idea of humans as vegetarians seem natural when, in the world beyond the ends of our noses, other animals are decidedly carnivorous? Why is it okay for a leopard to stalk its prey and to kill and consume its flesh, but not for humans? Why give eagles a pass when they dive into rivers or lakes, their talons snatching fish they will consume? Why not endeavor to persuade the birds to feast, instead, on seeds and nuts?

I don’t know. Like I said, I have mixed feelings. I think I could get used to eating a primarily vegetarian diet. For example, I could be perfectly happy with the pumpkin and black bean soup my sister-in-law made and brought over recently (even without the chicken she included in the dish). And I could easily survive on the vegetarian chili she made and shared with us shortly thereafter. (She makes some incredibly good food, just to mention.) But would I miss steak and seafood and sausage and pork and fowl? No question: yes. But I could get used to their absence. The planet might become a gentler, more healing place for it. But not in my lifetime. I wish I could return for a visit in 500 years to see what, if anything, has changed in human behavior. Will we be just as greedy, just as selfish, just as ugly and violent and vicious as we are today? Probably. But maybe not. Maybe if we just stopped…

+++

The universe is bigger and more powerful than I. It can crush me if it wants; if “want” is within the collection of emotions available to the universe. I doubt the universe has any desires. It is a massive “thing” so incredibly complex that a debate with it would be impossible. There’s no arguing about “want” with this universe. She will get her way, no matter what. The weather forecast could call for molten meteorites to rain from the skies, tsunamis to shred coastlines worldwide, and ice crystals the size of cruise ships to form in the prairies of Canada. There’s just no arguing with Mother Nature. She is crazy and dangerous.

+++

I just drifted off to sleep as I sat in front of my computer screen. In my stupor, I dreamt I stood in front of my kitchen sink and looked down at the floor to see quite a lot of shredded cheddar cheese on the floor. I blamed myself for eating cheese while standing over the sink. But I realized I do not tend to do that. I was mislead on this matter. Goodbye.

FICTION

Plumes of dark grey smoke arose in the distance, evidence of the arsonist’s hatred of the man. The man’s thumb had pressed on the syringe that delivered a fatal dose of poison to the condemned prisoner’s bloodstream. The person the State murdered by lethal injection was the arsonist’s father. The arsonist: Lemma Cartwright, the dead man’s daughter. Jacob Targus had volunteered to inject the lethal chemicals into the inmate’s body. By volunteering, Jacob became eligible for a three hundred dollar bonus. By performing the State’s death duty, Jacob became the target of Lemma Cartwright’s smoldering rage. And Jacob Targus suffered Lemma Cartwright’s immeasurable, burning hatred. Jacob’s agonized cremation at Lemma’s hand was Lemma’s first act of revenge against the State of Florida and a host of contributors to her father’s death.

Lemma Cartwright was sixteen years old when her father, Gideon Cartwright, was convicted of murdering Father Bryan McDaniels. The priest’s body was never found—only scraps of bone among charred remains—but the evidence of his death and the circumstantial evidence of Gideon’s guilt was enough to convince a Florida jury to convict Gideon and sentence him to death.  Gideon’s steadfast denial of his guilt was enough to convince Lemma that the jury had convicted the wrong man.

“Dad, every single person involved in this horrible miscarriage of justice will pay with their lives,” Lemma told her father as he was escorted from the courtroom after sentencing.

Gideon Cartwright blew her a kiss as he was led away. “Honey, my appeals will go on for years. Don’t be foolish. Let the system work.”

And she did. She let the system work for seven years. Until it stopped working, when the final appeal was rejected and the governor refused to grant a reprieve. Four days after Jacob Targus carried out his murder-for-hire function. Lemma began to implement her plan to make everyone who played a part in her father’s death pay with their lives. She had tracked the roles of each player; she decided to execute her plan in reverse order of involvement. Jacob Targus was the last to fail her father, so she chose him as the first to pay for his inhumanity. The governor, who refused the reprieve, would be next on her list.

Governor Lawrence Throp was, in the words of Lieutenant Governor Brace Purifoy, “as stupid as the day is long.” Yet there he was, the top elected official in a state known far and wide as one of the most corrupt and intellectually bankrupt fiefdoms in the United States. One investigative reporter had labeled Throp “a genetic mistake, proof that the spawn of apes and spinach can thrive in a nutrient-rich petri dish fed by dung and malfeasance.” Not surprisingly, though, that investigative reporter’s body was found days later in his car. Beside his body, and next to a hose attached to the car’s muffler, was a “suicide note” that apologized for the genetic mistake comment and praised the governor for his “wisdom in leading Florida to be the best state in the whole United States.” The reporter’s colleagues wrote snide comments about the intellectual capacity of the people in the governor’s inner circle.  “Even dimwits don’t buy that suicide note,” one journalist wrote, “but there’s nobody in the man’s circle-of-stupid smart enough to realize how obviously bogus it is.” Yet that situation, which took place a year before Gideon Cartwright’s execution, simply faded into the background. Only after Lawrence Throp’s body was discovered in a fifty-five gallon barrel filled with wilted spinach and the corpse of a dead chimpanzee was an investigation launched into the reporter’s death.

NONFICTION

Okay, that’s enough exercise for today. I haven’t written much fiction in months…and months…and months. I’m out of practice. I hope my rusty fingers simply need some oil and a few high-energy workouts. Unlike most of my fiction, this little “story” is almost completely worked out in my head. But, fortunately, it’s only an outline up there, so I have plenty of room to maneuver and modify.

Onward. I need some breakfast fuel.

One of the draws of places like desolate stretches of unpopulated desert landscapes is the absence of artificial light. When night falls on miles and miles of empty countryside, the sky takes on a mesmerizing appeal; a wondrous black canvas filled with millions and millions of stars. Viewing our own galaxy—as if through a luminous vapor—inspires awe and clarifies Earth’s insignificance in the cosmos. That planetary insignificance magnifies our own irrelevance; the thought of humans struggling to achieve power in a space so enormous becomes unspeakably sad. At the same time, the idea of our own inconsequence puts us on equal footing with all the creatures over which we seem intent on exercising dominion. In that context, we can see ourselves truly as microscopic threads in the fabric of existence. We can understand we are never more than equally important—or unimportant—pieces of a puzzle  so immense that we cannot hope to understand it. That always-incomplete understanding is a gift; it forces us to return, if only for a moment, to those instances in our childhood when the wonder of the universe around us inspired awe. Those childhood moments allowed us to appreciate the vastness of space. Dark skies stippled with light as old as time give us the same opportunities to acknowledge both the enormity of the universe and the microscopically small parts we play in it. It is for those reasons that I think every one of us should spend at least a full night outdoors, on a crystal clear moonless night, far from artificial lights, every few years…at least. Each of us should do that—if for no other reason than to brush off our dusty humility and let it wash over us. Frankly, I don’t know why that should matter; nothing we do can be as important as the vastness of the sky is large. But an occasional immersion in just how immaterial we are seems, to me, to have the potential for restraining us from doing any more harm to the world than we have done for millennia.

+++

Okay, I’ll switch gears and devote some thought to matters that—in the huge scheme of life and space and time—don’t matter. But they do matter on a nano-microscopic level.

Yesterday, we got good news that my IC does not have any more issues with kidney stones. A short (15-minutes, more or less) visit with the urologist left us feeling very happy with life; no need for drugs, procedures, or whatever. Good news is good to hear.

This morning, we will drive to Little Rock for a few errands. First, we stop for an oil change and tire rotation for the Subaru. Next, we will stop by a bank (the one handling the mortgage on the house we’re buying) to leave off a signed copy of the certification of receipt of appraisal. I would have rather the appraisal come in at a much higher number, but at least it came in high enough that it won’t be any problem. After that, we’ll have lunch at a Mellow Mushroom, a spot we’ve tagged as a favorite. Thence to Costco, where we hope to buy a big prime rib roast for Thanksgiving dinner, along with a few other staples for the pantry. And then, back home.

Last night, we finished watching Goliath. While we liked the actors, neither of us were particularly impressed with the writing. In fact, quite a lot of the story line was irrelevant and obstructionist. A character, Patty Solis-Papagian, was pregnant, for example; an utterly pointless and unnecessary aspect of the story. Ditto the relationship between other characters. And the dream sequences infested with bizarre “old west” themes  was evidence of unpracticed writers who simply wanted to fill space and time. There were more problems, but it’s not necessary to review them. I enjoyed enough of the series to be moderately glad I watched it; I just wish I’d spent only half as much time watching it as I did.

+++

Once again, I had a hard time sleeping last night. In spite of my efforts to facilitate breathing (I inhaled albuterol, squirted nasal spray, and swallowed an antihistamine), my pulmonary system was inadequate for the task. Doctors have been unable to do much for me. They suggest or prescribe drugs of one kind or another, but the drugs do little to nothing to resolve my difficulties. The problems have been with me for a long time, but they have been much, much more noticeable since my lung cancer surgery three years ago. I assume the removal of an entire lobe from one of my lungs must play a part in the difficulties. But, even in light of my difficulties breathing (and the related coughing, etc.), I am fortunate in that I can breathe. My IC and I spoke yesterday about the good fortune I have experienced during several engagements with bad luck. I could have died during any one of several run-ins with health-related emergencies, but I did not. Instead, I was able to limp through to another stage of my life. Wounded, but not fatally. Not yet, anyway. I should be grateful, and I am, but I’d really like to have such an extraordinarily successful health experience that I would feel the need to dance in celebration. Today, dancing would leave me out of breath, struggling to maintain adequate strength to stand. Bah! When we move to a new neighborhood, one mostly flat and ideal for walking, I will exercise more and will recover my strength and my energy. That I will do.

+++

When I was much younger—maybe 30 years old or so—I felt certain I would die long before I reached my sixtieth birthday. I have no idea why I felt that way; I just did. But I’ve recently celebrated my sixty-eighth birthday and I remain very much alive. And I plan to stay that way for as long as possible (as long as I can ambulatory and alert). It amazes me that I am as old as I am (though, admittedly, I know many people much older than I). I’m still the same old kid; the same child wrapped up in an aging body, but still with the same childish brain. The same brain, though, that frustrates me beyond belief when I cannot remember simple words that should be second nature to me. I get angry with myself for struggling to recall words that should flow from my lips as easily as breath…ah, but there’s a matter for concern, huh? I don’t breath as easily as I once did and I no longer think as freely and as clearly as I once did. That’s maddening. It’s more than enough to frustrate the  hell out of me. So I bitch and moan about the natural progression of human decay. Most of us go through it; though some of us may be more fortunate than others, dying suddenly and without warning. But an unplanned death is equally as chaotic and problematic for those left behind as is a slow deterioration that leaves a body limp and useless. What an absolutely cheerless bunch of thoughts this morning! I must stop it! Instead, I’ll return to the idea of buying a standing rib roast and some good wine; and the ingredients for a broccoli and rice casserole or two. That’s the ticket! Food! Food is the elixir of life (especially when coupled with a little wine or/and licores. Hmm. I could turn my attention to becoming fluent in Spanish, which should remove any thoughts of premature death from my brain. Yes, that did it. Time to think more about food. Perhaps I’ll write, tomorrow, about some traditional family recipes. And some not-so-traditional recipes that might prompt me to explore tastes beyond my routine.

Almost 6:30. Time to finish the first cup of coffee and explore the universe without using my fingers.

The sellers responded favorably to our list of necessary repairs; they agree to have the repairs (all relatively minor) made in advance of closing, which is now scheduled for the ends of this month. Oh, did I mention we’re buying a house? Yes, it is true. We are buying a house. That means, of course, I’ll be selling the house in which we now live. We’re trading an open floor plan for one that’s more “old fashioned” and traditional. But the new house is hidden at the end of a cul-de-sac, deep in the woods; the nearest neighbor (who rarely stays in the house, we’re told) is at the end of the street. And our new place has a fire pit where, I can imagine, we will sit with friends and enjoy evenings of solitude and quiet. We probably won’t be in the new house until after the middle of December; we gave the sellers fourteen days after closing to move out. Ah, another major adjustment in my life.

Within the past year, my life has changed dramatically and experienced weird changes: my wife of almost forty-one years died; I entered into a new romantic relationship; my new romantic partner sold her house and moved in with me; I’m in the midst of buying another house; I’m about to put my current home on the market; and I had a bizarre experience with kidney stones (and the physical and mental aftermath of treatment to remove them). There’s probably more, with my mind blocking them this morning as a protective mechanism. I’ve read many times over the years how major stress—both positive and negative—can lead to health crises. I hope that is not true of me in my current swirl of life upheavals. On one hand, I say I do not feel like I’m under stress. On the other, I actually feel like I’m walking across a wide, deep canyon—balancing on a rapidly-warming tight-rope woven of microscopically-thin crystals of fragile hoarfrost. At any moment, the stress could evaporate or the rope could break.

+++

Last night, I thought long and hard about talking to someone about what is going through my mind—the complex mix of joy and fear and happiness and overwhelming sadness and a thousand other emotions that sometimes seem to have me in a grip so tight I can’t breathe. A disinterested third party, trained to help people wade through emotional crises, might be an invaluable listener. But I am not especially comfortable with the idea of sharing my deepest thoughts with a stranger who, when all is said and done, doesn’t really care about me in the least. Sharing my emotions with someone who might as well be a paid gunslinger doesn’t appeal to me. Yet the idea of burdening a friend by unloading those same thoughts seems terribly unfair. And doing that could dramatically change the character of a friendship; it could evolve into something cold and rational, quite different from what friendship is meant to be.

Maybe my dream last night (or was it this morning?) was the outgrowth of these thoughts. I was sitting with my friend on the tailgate of  her old Ford pickup truck (which she does not own, as far as I know). The truck was parked in the driveway of my new house and we were seated so that we faced the fire pit, maybe sixty feet away. The pit glowed red and orange, but I could not see any flames. My friend said something like “you have to let yourself feel whatever it is you feel.” I responded with “That’s not the problem. It’s not giving myself enough permission; it’s that I give myself too much permission.”  The conversation went on with what seemed like gibberish. At some point, I realized I was alone on the tailgate, which had somehow transformed into the back of my car, with the liftgate raised.  In my hand, I held what looked like a high school photo of my friend and a tiny glass of grapefruit-flavored vodka. I have no idea how I knew/know it was grapefruit-flavored vodka; I just did. In the last scene of the dream that I remember, I was standing on the back of my car, holding one end of a string of lights above my head; the other end was attached to a pole in the center of the fire pit. There were no other cars or people around, but I somehow knew that there had been many cars just a few minutes earlier; but they were all gone.

Yep, my dream must have arisen from my thoughts. It only goes to show that dreams can be triggered by something, yet evolve into something else completely nonsensical.

+++

I was up before 5 again this morning, which I think must mean I am settling in again to my old sleep habits. But I have noticed, too, that I get incredibly tired during the day; so tired that I cannot keep my eyes open. Never one to nap, I have begun taking short (and long) naps in recent months. Napping interferes with my day in troubling ways. I feel like I’m missing something important while I sleep, but I cannot help myself. My eyelids get so heavy I cannot keep them open. There was a time when I regularly went to bed early, slept all night long, and woke up just before 7. That was a time when I got far more sleep than I needed, but I felt better when I woke than I expected. Odd. What is “normal” in one’s own sleep patterns, especially when they change so much from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year?

+++

It is just shy of eleven months since my wife died. Whenever I think of that, my emotions go haywire. I can’t seem to keep myself together. And I know it will be even worse a month and a few days from now, on the one year anniversary of her death. I still feel like I could have done more to advocate for her; that I could have changed the course of her deteriorating health if I had only been more aggressive with the automatons who ostensibly looked out after her while she was in the hospital and rehab facilities. People say I did all I could do. They may believe that or they may assume it to be true or they may say it just to sooth my ragged emotions. In hindsight, I do not believe I did enough. I do not think I was anything like as insistent as I should have been that her doctors treat her more aggressively. But the fact is that, whether I could or could not have done more, there’s nothing more I can do now. History is history; facts are facts. There’s nothing that can be done now. That fact is clear to me, but I can’t help but feel the most overwhelming sense of guilt. And I feel rage against myself for being too weak to sufficiently advocate on her behalf. Some days I want nothing more than to snap my own neck in payment for my inadequacy. But eventually I come around. I never feel really “good” about my responses to my wife’s illness and treatment, but usually I can handle it. Sometimes, though, I question whether I can and whether I should. It’s a little like circumstances when I have to make a decision, but any decision I make is either too close in quality to another or is not good enough to warrant being made. So I feel frozen; like I cannot make a decision because it will inevitably be the wrong one.

+++

When I come back to this post a month or a year or five years from now, it will trigger feelings of sadness and anger. I know that, even as I write it. So, why don’t I write something that will instead spark feelings of happiness and gentle joy? Because that’s not how the mind works. The mind does not allow one to pick and choose one’s emotions. Maybe to some extent. But not completely. The power of positive thinking is not an overwhelming power. It is simply a way to trick oneself into believing in magic. And it’s not a good enough trick to convince oneself that the magic is real, when circumstances say otherwise.

+++

Life would be so much simpler, I think, if we could answer only to our own sense of morality, leaving social mores to wither. But we can’t do that. Morality as defined by the society in which we live grabs us by the neck and drags us through life, forcing us to behave in ways that may be completely foreign to the way we think and feel. Morality. Where the hell does morality come from? Is it fundamental to human behavior? Or do we, as humans, create it to control the baser elements of our behaviors? I would bet on the latter. Knowing how we’d behave without the limits placed on us by society at large, we create and/or subscribe to rules of morality. We police our thoughts and our actions by agreeing to abide by rules crafted by people who lived in entirely different times and circumstances. Morality, then, is situational. And it ethics rely on morality as their anchor, so, too, are ethics situational. God, that argument could go on for years. In fact, I think it has.

+++

I saw a butterfly yesterday; first one in many weeks. I wonder: was it the last remaining butterfly before the brutality of winter sets in, or was it an early scout, looking for environments suited to flocks or rabbles or flutters or flights of butterflies? Hard to say. I’d have to consult with a linguistically-inclined lepidopterist.

Two of the fingers on my right hand are stained with cyan ink, thanks to my handling of a replacement ink cartridge for my printer. “Handling” may not be the right word; “bumbling” probably describes the situation more clearly. I give myself a pass on it this time, though. The time of day had just crept past 4:00 a.m. when I changed out the printer cartridge; though I was “up,” I was not entirely prepared to face the day. I had not yet taken the first sip of coffee. I was not quite ready to function in my usual “morning person” manner. So, I smeared ink on two fingers. Why my printer refuses to continue printing due to being out of cyan ink—even though I set printing to be black and white only—escapes me. I did not want cyan ink on the page; yet my printer ignored my wishes, apparently, and attempted to mix a touch of cyan with the black ink. This sudden need for cyan ink was days ago, by the way. I ordered replacement ink the same day and received it a couple of days ago. It was only this morning, when I needed to print something, that I got around to replacing the spent cyan cartridge. And it was this morning that my fingers appeared to have bled cyan blood. And that’s all I’ll say on the matter.

+++

Have you felt his touch on your shoulder? Did you feel her brush against your hip as she walked by you? When he hugged you, did you notice his slight hesitation to let go? Yes? Then you know what it’s like to feel impossible passion. Passion that cannot be permitted to succumb to the temptation to act. But you feel that passion coursing through your veins with such ferocity that you know, without looking in the mirror, your face is flushed. You are not the only one who noticed, either. He noticed. She noticed. They all noticed. But they remained silent. Visible extramarital passion is not something one talks about openly, is it? No, but you want desperately to have that conversation. And perhaps one day you will.

[This is an example of writing in the second person. It’s rarely done. Even more rarely done well.]

+++

The aroma of the salt air filled his nostrils even before he opened the car door. Forty years had passed since leaving “for good,” he had told himself, yet he recognized that smell instantly. It brought back memories long since buried beneath layers of time and experience. He remembered that time on the desolate winter beach when he made love with Teresa in the back of his friend’s gold-colored Datsun station wagon. He recalled how surprisingly cold the water was when the two of them had dashed into the waves to wash off the scent of love-making. His memory came flooding back, the image of Teresa disappearing under the water as clear on this cold January day as it had been forty years earlier.

“Do you want a piece of cheese?”

Sierra’s voice interrupted his reverie, if that’s what it was, and brought him back to the present.

“Yeah, that sounds good. I wish we’d brought some chili, though. It’s one hell of a cold day.”

Sierra Preston did not know about Teresa’s drowning, nor about the suspicions that surrounded the girl’s death. Todd had planned to tell her, at the right time, but the time never seemed right. He always had a reason to delay the conversation. Now, after living with Sierra for two years, the right time to tell her seemed deeper and deeper in the past.

+++

My coffee sat untouched for two hours before I finally realized how long it had been since I set it down on the desk beside me. Two hours can turn hot coffee into cold coffee. And it can turn doubt into certainty and certainty into doubt. Two hours can change one’s perspective on the world. Two hours can transform a room into a cage. Extension cords can become nooses in the space of two hours. A bright future can melt into brutal regrets about a wasted past.

+++

The thoughts in my head are mixed with visions and images and sensations that belong somewhere else. Ideas do not feel or taste. They do not have weight or color. Visions and thoughts and memories do not have odors. They cannot ride a bicycle. They cannot be pulled around in a little red wagon. The wagon must be a different color; something new and exciting, like a shiny beige tank, freshly delivered by the weapons manufacturer.

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Ye Gads! I feel only moderately alive at this moment. I think I could sleep for a week, but I would miss out on all the excitement, whatever that is. So I remain conscious, if only barely.

Our trip to Galveston last week brought back memories of a trip we took during the waning weeks of 2008. We spent several days in southern Louisiana, where we visited Natchitoches, ate Natchitoches’ famous meat pies, and wandered the Tabasco Sauce manufacturing facility. After a week or so in Louisiana, we drove to Galveston, which was still reeling from the catastrophic damage inflicted by Hurricane Ike, a brutal beast whose destruction remains in evidence even today. Testimony was rampant throughout our drive that Hurricanes Ike and Rita had brutalized the Texas and Louisiana coasts. Abandoned cars, flattened homes and businesses, and enormous volumes of debris littered the countryside. Memories of Galveston from last 2008 were reinforced when I read several blog posts from last 2008 and early 2009, detailing various aspects of our trip. I mentioned, in those late 2008 blog posts, some places where we ate lunch and dinner. I described Joe’s Seafood, where we ate lunch, as “a small place operated by an Asian couple.” I went on to say “The clientele appeared to me to be poor, but working, and was quite diverse; Black, Hispanic, White, etc., etc., etc. The oyster po-boys were excellent.”

Last week’s trip reminded me how much I miss life on the Texas coast. Even though it has been many, many years since I lived on—or even near—the Texas coast, memories of that time grab me by the throat every time I’m near. During last week’s trip, we took the Bolivar Peninsula ferry that links Galveston Island with the Bolivar Peninsula. Dolphins followed us across the water, as did seagulls and pelicans. The smell of salt water permeated the air, reminding me of my childhood in Corpus Christi. Unfortunately, though, life on the Texas coast has changed dramatically since I lived there. The housing remains relatively sparse between the ferry landing and Galveston-proper, but even so it is much, much denser than it was in my youth. The same is true further south, along both North Padre Island and South Padre Island, where high-rise condos have overtaken the beaches and changed the complexion of the islands from desolate sandbars to tourist attractions designed for people with poor taste and subpar intellectual capacities. I’m only moderately bitter about the horrors that population growth inflicts on pristine shorelines.

Reading about the world as it was thirteen years ago is depressing. Too much has changed since then. My life has changed into something unrecognizable. I still want to wander desolate beaches and experience life as it should have been one hundred years earlier. Alas, that’s not an option. None of us can live in a time long since gone. We can only dream and fantasize and wish.

Manfred Steiner will celebrate his 90th birthday this month. He has another reason to celebrate. At age 89, he recently earned his Ph.D. in physics from Brown University. “He admired the precision of physics,” an AP article about him says about his pursuit of his lifelong dream. Steiner’s decision to earn his doctorate in physics followed a career in medicine. According to the same AP article, “Steiner studied hematology at Tufts University and biochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before becoming a hematologist at Brown University. He became a full professor and led the hematology section of the medical school at Brown from 1985 to 1994.” His interest in science and physics did not magically emerge late in life; he held onto his dream from the time he was a teenager in Vienna, Austria.

So, what does this have to do with John Swinburn? It’s hard to say. I do not have a single, passionate dream I might pursue now, as a man retired from a meaningless career facilitating pointless endeavors. But I have plenty of old wishes and dreams that, had I followed them, would have led me in a radically different direction from the one I took. Veterinary medicine. Human medicine. Law. Linguistics. Criminology. Architecture. Sociology. Psychology. The list goes on and on. But I settled for something less interesting; in part because my interests were quite wide but extremely shallow. “I settled.” That’s the bottom line. Adequate in lieu of exceptional. Okay in place of amazing. I could have allowed myself to be challenged by a world in which failure was just as much of an option as success. Instead, I opted for easy “success” in place of inspirationally earned accomplishment.

But, as Manfred Steiner demonstrated so well, it’s not too late to pursue a dream. The challenge, though, is to identify a dream worth pursuing. The troublesome aim is to uncover the embers that might spark a fire in the belly. That, I’m afraid, might be impossible, because nothing excites me that much anymore. Not that anything ever did; at least nothing has challenged me enough, intellectually, to trigger my passions. So, instead of pursuing a passion, I’ve waited patiently (more or less) for the flames of an overwhelming passion to consume me. I continue to wait for the magic of compelling interest to overtake me. Maybe, I say to myself, I should pick one of my old, passing interests and ferociously pursue it. But that’s as far as it goes.

Oh, I write; so that could be my “fire in the belly” passion. But writing is a pastime for me, not a serious avocation. I don’t take it seriously enough for it to merit more than a nod. I used to value writing far more than I do now until I discovered what writing is, at its core: the rearrangement of previously used letters and words. There’s nothing unique or inherently gratifying about that. Yet there’s nothing especially enchanting about linguistics or law or sociology or architecture, either. No more so, certainly, than bricklaying or plumbing or installing solar panels or sidewalks. Maybe we (I) need to pay more attention to simple satisfaction than to fulfilling fantasies. No, not maybe. Certainly. That’s what we (I) should do. And I will. Perhaps. Someday. Right. Still, Manfred Steiner is a role model.

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A Florida Seminole tribe has been fighting for years to get human remains back to Florida for “proper” burial. The controversy has raised all sorts of issues relating to archeology and who, ultimately, gets to decide the fate of the dead and buried. Anyone who has skimmed international news over the past several years knows this issue is not new. The questions about decisions about burial sites, etc. have been brewing for years. I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I understand archeologists’ assertions that buried remains and items found with and near them are important to the record of human evolution and societal development. But on the other, I appreciate familial and tribal insistence on reclaiming control over  ancestral remains. But yielding to families and tribes also yields to their religious beliefs; I have some issues with that. On the other hand, even though I am decidedly non-religious, I do not favor discounting religious beliefs simply because they are religious. Yet…and on and on and on. Would that humanity would recognize religion for what it is and, with that knowledge, knowingly leave it behind as an embarrassing mistake in human traditions. That would not necessarily solve the Seminole issue, but it might help narrow the field of possibly solutions.

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Today is a Sunday, one of many such days we have so-named. I wonder how many Sundays have come and gone since we first started calling one of the days of the week by that name? If only we knew, we might either gladly waste them on frivolities or worship their power to direct us toward deeply meaningful conversations. Or something entirely different.

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Without soap or detergent, where would humankind be today? It’s a legitimate question. I hate to imagine the hideousness of the answer. We could be living in unimaginable squalor. Surgery might be unbelievably dangerous. The death rate of children under age ten could be astronomical, thanks in part to the tendency of young children to spend time in dirty places. Who invented soap? There should be a global holiday in honor of that person/those people. We owe them a debt of more than gratitude; we may, in fact, owe them our lives. Yet we chuckle at the very idea of celebrating a holiday in their honor. We’re a hard-hearted bunch, aren’t we?

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Windshield wipers. Headlights. Front window defrosters. Gas take fillers. Modes of opening gas tanks. These are just a few of the items I believe merit Federal government regulation. No, not just Federal government; Global government! No matter what car I enter, I should know how to turn the windshield wipers (and washer) on and off. I should be able to control the headlights. And the front window defrosters. And, without staring at the gas gage in the dash, I should know where the filler is located. And I should know how to open the gas tank so I can deposit gas. These are just a few of the things I believe should be standardized. My beliefs are strong and unwavering. We, the people, should demand immediate and irrevocable action on these matters.

More than one thousand miles over the course of sixteen-plus hours, in just five days. Including three days of kicked-back relaxation. That’s what the five of us experienced, beginning on Monday morning this week. We got home yesterday evening. Worn out, but satisfied, because our trip was a good one. The changes in topography were welcome adjustments to steep hills and thick forests. Taking a ferry across open water, where dolphins broke water as they frolicked next to our vessel, shattered our sense of stagnation. Sitting outside, sipping samples of Galveston Brewing Company brews, woke me to a different place and time. I wanted to stay there. I wanted to relocate to the Texas coast. I wanted to face down hurricanes and join with neighbors as we battled high winds and fierce waves. But that’s all over now. We’re back, sleeping in our own beds and ready to shower under spray heads we recognize for their reliable, piercing needles of pressurized water. Adventure is good, but known comfort satisfies like nothing else can. Home. Even when it is in flux, home welcomes us with open arms, a loving, casual embrace.

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I spent most of five days in a news blackout. It was not necessarily intentional. but it was happy. Few interruptions to remind me that the world around me continues to be flush with rage and bubbling anger. Only a rare intrusion to call attention to the fact that mayhem, death, and human-enabled pain sits just beyond the synapses of my raw nerves. Five days during which I could pretend I existed in a secluded bubble in which I could remain free of the chaotic agony crafted by humans and their criminal stupidity. Even within that brief period of quiet and freedom, though, I felt the encroaching universe doing its best to unravel my solitude and tear holes in my psyche. There it was, just inches away from its sharp teeth ripping my brains from my skull. You didn’t know the universe had sharp teeth? Oh, it does. Like tiny bent razor blades dipped in Merthiolate and hydrochloric acid. Ah, yes. The pain inflicted by small, sharp, angry things. Just beyond my reach, yet close enough to feel as the cruel evidence of humanity tears at one’s flesh. But far enough away to realize it’s all a fantasy; even the little cuts crying out for a stitch or two to seal the open wounds. A happy news blackout reinforced with a razor-wire cage and starving piranhas worked into a frenzy of furious hunger by the presence of fingers stripped almost to bloody tendons. Ah, the days of unfettered freedom!

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Today, finally, is Saturday. We must retrieve A.J. from the dog prison where he has been kept under arrest for five days nearing seven days now. And we must return the big, bulky, obscenely expensive  SUV to its masters. But the SUV we rented was not even close to as expensive as the SUV we had planned to rent. I had planned to pick up a Suburban; they gave us a Tahoe, instead. A Suburban sells from somewhere between $79K and $75K; that’s insanely expensive. A vehicle priced that high should provide excellent gas mileage, unmatched comfort, absolute protection against injury if the vehicle is involved in a wreck, and oral sex on-demand. Christ! $75K for a damn CAR?  Even its cheaper brother, the Tahoe, should provide deeply satisfying massage-on-demand, as well as several other private pleasures. To be honest, though, right now I would be perfectly happy with a deep-tissue massage of my elbows, knees, ankles, and wrists. I think I have contracted some form of contagious arthritis that responds well, but only briefly, to massage. So, I need 24/7 massage to keep my muscles and my tendons happy. And God knows we all need to keep our muscles and tendons happy 214/7.

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I desperately need a shower. And a shave. And cleaner clothes than I’m wearing. It’s not that my clothes are particularly dirty, but I was clothes that are as fresh as a daisy. To match my soon-to-be-cleaner-than-a-dish-of-soap body. I do appreciate cleanliness. If only I could achieve it by snapping my fingers. The work involved in showering is more work than I want to do. I crave magical cleanliness. The kind of cleanliness that comes out of cans but behaves as if it were the real thing. Yep, artificial cleanliness that looks and smells like actual cleanliness. I want to invent a cleanliness spray that extracts all the dirt and odors from one’s body and deposits it, inside tiny envelope bubbles, beneath one’s feet as one walks. So no one can tell one is actually showering on the fly. That could be my ticket out of here.

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Still, even today, I want to start another business. I have a passion for small business. Something tiny and lucrative. Something that takes little effort but yields enormous returns. A miniscule money-spitting powerhouse that requires little energy but produces monstrous, unstoppable income. I’m not asking for much. Maybe $100,000 per month, after taxes. And I want it to be more fun than I’ve eve had. So much fun I’d happily learn how to dance, just so I could celebrate accordingly.

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During our random walks along The Strand and its little shops, I found several octopi that I found quite appealing. One was a nice jade-green glass octopus I could have had for only $800, give or take a few dollars. Another was a similarly expensive octopus that looked real; it seemed to develop quite a liking for me, but its price (something along the lines of $300) was a little rich for my blood. I like expensive things, but something that expensive should leave a lingering aftertaste and a very nice tip. Why do I have such expensive taste? It’s just not fair. I should appreciate cheap stuff.

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It’s just after 6:30 and I’m still extremely sleepy/tired/beat to a frazzle. I need more sleep, but I’m afraid if I get more I’ll stay away for days. So, I will remain awake and tired. Maybe I’ll try to eat a little something. Or take a shower. Or shave. Or all of the above.

The bloody weather may have turned on us, but it’s hard to tell. That’s the trouble with relying on distant visions, through doors. It does’t matter. Either way, we’re homeward bound today. The topography will adapt to the sky, above, and Earth’s mantle, below. And so will we all.

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I would like three days’ time to explore the way home through western Louisiana. No. East Texas, today. One day. Eight hours. The scenery will flood by as if the gates of time were ripped from their hinges. And that is exactly correct.

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Onward!