John Swinburn

I watch online news video as people morph into the emotional equivalent of dried leather; tough, hard, inflexible, uncaring, bitter, cold-blooded, and callously inhumane. These people occupy philosophical space on the far ends of both sides of neutral—and every inch in between. Their political affiliation is irrelevant; they are dispassionately certain of their heartless positions that “the other side” is dangerous and should be eliminated by any means necessary. Any. Means. Necessary. And, while witnessing these transformations before my eyes on the video screen is frightening and repulsive, an even more upsetting scene takes place when I see the metamorphosis occur, with lightning speed, in my mirror. I imitate that repugnant conversion from decent to abhorrent. I feel the supple malleability of my own ideas and opinions—perspectives shaped by exposure to facts— harden into intractable judgments.

When I am sharply judgmental of any other person, it’s because I sense or see reflected in them some aspect of myself that I don’t want to acknowledge.

~ Gabor Maté ~

The facts do not change. My willingness to change with them ceases. Like the monsters I view on the television and computer screen, I allow my opinions to harden into immutable beliefs without the benefit of exposure to facts. And I find that reality both horrible and unstoppable. I hate that people make up their minds without the benefit of information that supports their positions; I especially hate that I can be, and too often am, one of them. Even when I recognize myself in videos and in the mirror, I loathe the fact that I seem unwilling to stop taking hardened positions without the benefit of logic or compassion or even accepting simple facts.

But there’s a silver lining to this recognition and to the embarrassed realization that I have become what I abhor. We can change only that which we know needs adjusting. We can modify only those behaviors and attitudes we recognize need to be changed. So, the fact that I am conscious that I am transforming into dried leather may be enough to prompt me to try to reverse the process. That, I suspect, is long and unpleasant. But, at least it is preferable to becoming the monster I hate. We’ll see.

I thought my critical thinking and my willingness to listen to and evaluate “other” positions was enough to keep me open-minded and unbiased. Not so. Without constant reminders to be impartial and tolerant and willing to truly hear every side to an issue, one can become complacent of one’s rectitude. That’s what I’ve allowed to happen. I have stopped listening to and trying to truly understand positions that differ from mine. That’s a bad habit and one that is not easy to break. But break it I shall. One way or another.

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It is easy to be too easy on a person. It is just as easy to be too hard on a person. It is hard to identify that desirable sweet spot, that optimal place at which appreciation for trying is offset by just the right amount of disappointment in failure. Once identified, though, it is just as hard to act accordingly. My tendency, when viewing the statements or actions of another person, is to be too judgmental; too hard on a person. My tendency, when it’s me I’m assessing, is to be a little too easy on myself. I give myself the benefit of the doubt far more often than I should. But when I decide I’ve done enough of that, I tend to go overboard, just like I do when assessing others. There’s not enough appreciation for trying in either case. Yet another change I need to make in the pursuit of, not perfection but, adequacy.

When you judge others, you do not define them, you define yourself.

~ Earl Nightingale ~

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If what I have written thus far this morning does not make it clear enough, I am in a pensive mood. I am in the mood to examine myself and my motives, without judgment by myself or by others, just to better understand why I am who I am. And, of course, I always wonder who I am, deep at my core. I doubt I’ll ever understand who I would be in the absence of nearly seven decades of external influences that modify my thoughts and behaviors; but I wish I could understand that person. I wish I could know who I would have been without all the modifiers so I could know whether I would like that person or not. And, of course, that wish transfers to everyone I know. If I knew them better, would I have as much admiration for them as I do? Or would I allow my unpleasant self to judge them negatively, even with the realization that their imperfections might have arisen from experiences over which they had no control? It’s a complicated web. Way too complicated to think I will ever find a way through it. It’s like the massive spider web outside my front door, by the garage; big and unwieldy and almost impossible to see until it wraps itself in my hair and face.

+++

Sometime today, I will make meal plans for this week and I will arrange to get groceries to let me execute the plans. That will give me a sense of accomplishment I might not get from anything else I do today. I need something to bring me into positive territory.

My to-do list has grown since we left for Fayetteville, Arkansas last Monday, our intermediate stop between Hot Springs Village, Arkansas and Fairfield, Iowa. Perhaps the most pressing of the items on the list came as the result of a big F-250 (or was it a 350?) pickup swiping the side of my car. Almost the entire driver’s side of my car was scraped up, including big swaths of side molding that were ripped from the car. The largest piece of molding, though, remains on the car; what’s left of it bent outward in an attempt to grab and dirtify passers-by. When the car is traveling at 75 miles per hour or so, the force of the wind pins it back against the left rear door panel and beyond, but it springs back like a flailing arm when I stop. Today, I’ll open the email links sent to me by the offending driver’s insurance company and will send them photos of the damage. It doesn’t look terribly bad (just hideously ugly), but I suspect it will be extremely expensive to repair. I’ll probably take the car to the Subaru dealer in Little Rock for the repair. They will (I hope and expect) provide me with a Subaru rental while my car is in the shop. We’ll see.

Other items not on my to-do list when I left but that have since been added include getting a CT scan of my neck and skull (sinus area) in preparation for a referral to an ENT doctor. The referral is part of the continuing saga of attempting to figure our and correct the medical issue that causes me to have an never-ending need to clear my throat and attempt to clear my clogged sinuses (which, together, cause me to have a horrible cough that prevents me from sleeping like I should). Another, related, item, is a follow-up sleep study component, during which I will be forced to sleep with a CPAP machine nailed or otherwise affixed to my head. Again, it’s about helping me sleep better. I’m not sure why, but I tend to get extremely tired after driving for only an hour or two (or sitting in a chair or walking a high wire or whatever). Yesterday, I awoke in time to swerve away from the center line of the highway; had I not awoken, I probably would not be writing this, nor would my IC be sleeping soundly in a room on the other side of the house.

The to-do list is full of other things that I’d rather not think about this morning. Suffice it to say these things interfere with my desire to be utterly carefree and instantly available, on a moment’s notice, to get in the car, randomly pick a direction, and drive in that direction for eight to ten hours. Soon enough, I hope. Next trip may be to New Mexico or a return visit to Fayetteville or, if I can convince myself and my IC, a drive to somewhere we’re not exploring for the purpose of long-term housing.

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All of this “must do” stuff is getting to me, both psychologically and physically. My words cannot do justice to the state of exhaustion that embraces and pervades me the way water fills every ocean and every river and stream and lake and pond. In order for me to explain how the universe has captured me and holds me under a constant stream of liquid torment, I have to resort to attribution-plagiarism, the practice of quoting poetry written by others to express how I feel. Dammit.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this,  for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.
—Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

~ William Wordsworth ~

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If I were more intelligent and had the ability to overcome my own frenetic reaction to a chaotic universe, I would simply do what happy people do every day: just go with the flow. It sounds so easy, but it’s so impossibly hard; allowing the world around me to set my course and periodically correct my direction, rather than attempting to do those things for myself. But those attempts are fruitless efforts to take control over things outside my ability to govern. I do not administer the interactions between facts and fantasy any more than dogs control the seasons or giraffes establish the color palettes used in painting realistic representations of the summer sunset in the winter sky. Go with the flow. It seems so simple and logical, as if the process of being guided by an imaginary sailor’s control of the sails on his imaginary vessel were easy. Would that I believed in ancient Greek gods. Would that Zeus and Poseidon and Athena would impart to me their knowledge and wisdom and supernatural powers. I would use them wisely. I would wrap my arms around travelers and would guide them to secret safe harbors free from the pandemonium of life in a hard, uncaring environment run by politicians and greed-merchants.

A verdant island, flush with food and drink, opportunities for play, and never-ending supplies of whatever suits our whimsy, would be our home. All would be right with the world. I would walk barefoot and naked in the sand, rinsing off the salt water and sand under a perpetually flowing waterfall near the front door to my comfortable abode. Early in the morning, I would walk ten miles around the beach, gathering conchs and picking strawberries from the nearby dunes and bananas from trees that lined the waterside. Conch fritters would serve as lunch, too, along with freshly-caught fish. Dinner would vary between sauteed, vegetables and hearty soups filled with the bounty of the island.

Did I go slightly off-track? Excuse me. I must leave now and make more coffee and consider breakfast options. What does one do when one returns from days away, with no plans for meals? If I lived on my imaginary island, the problem would not exist. But here, I must find a toaster and bread and other edibles. They sound so overwhelmingly blah.

We drove today from Columbia, Missouri to Hot Springs Village, stopping for lunch in Branson. Missouri. It was my first trip to Branson and if I am lucky I will not need to stop there again. Though the visit was short and cursory, I saw nothing that would cause me to want to return. Just not mu cup of tea.

We plan another trip soon, either to Las Cruces, New Mexico (and possibly other spots in that state) or back to Fayetteville, Arkansas. In spite of its size and density (and the fact that it’s crawling with students, including football players (and their obscenely overpaid coaches) and woo pig worshippers), the place has some appeal. But so does Port Townsend. Washington, though PT is not nearly as affordable. I would need an extremely wealthy and fabulously generous sugar mama to make my dream come true. My IC, despite her many fine qualities, is missing that one so crucial to the Port Townsend good life: incomprehensible wealth. I suppose we could live there without immeasureable wealth, but the good life and abject poverty do not fit well together.

Once again, thanks to my worthless little piece of bad plasma (or whatever), I am one-finger typing this post. That, my friends, is an abomination to my sense of decency, kindness, and justice.

All right. I will stop. I have so much more to say, but your eyes should be shielded from the worst of it.

As intriguing as Fairfield, Iowa is, our experience there offered evidence that even fields of wild flowers can be degraded by noxious weeds. Confederate flags hanging in windows, Trump flags spilling out of yards littered with trash, and clear lines of demarcation between rich and poor demonstrated that utopia remains just an idea, not a reality. So, for now, Fairfield is off the table. It wasn’t the prospect of winter weather that took it off the table. It was the reality that humankind has yet to evolve into a state of human decency. Thus the quest for a more perfect place continues. During the course of these last several days, distinct differences between my IC and me in how “the perfect place” might manifest itself have become apparent, too. I can envision how a smaller house on a bigger piece of land might be right, in the proper setting. Not so my IC, I think. More than that, though, both of us see how “perfection” is more illusion than fact. I want so much for there to be a place where everything is just right. It doesn’t exist. That is true in large part because friends and places do not pair up in the real world. In an ideal world, friends would be part of the search; they would move to the perfect place when we found it. But the perfect place is different for each of us. So we have to decide that point at which place and people are in the best achievable balance.

Today, we will wander toward the place that’s now home, the place where friends await.

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I may have more to write later, but I’m still doing in on my phone, with one finger, so I must stop for now. Continue reading →

I will post again, eventually. After my mind clears and I come to grips with the scrapes on the side of my car and I understand how a cool little town can be home to gods and devils, angels and demons, Ethiopian restaurants and McDonald’s. For now, we’re off in an as yet undecided direction. Probably not another night in Fairfield. But where? Who knows? Time will tell.

Oh, I must have been tired when I posted yesterday. At least twice I referred to Fairview instead of Fairfield. And now that I am using my phone to post, instead of my horrid little uncooperative laptop computer, the errors may multiply. Yesterday’s errors could be attributed to my tiredness and creeping senility; today’s can be blamed on one-fingered typing, which exacerbates my creeping senility. Fortunately, I slept pretty well last night, in spite of being absolutely unable to breathe through my nose. I woke myself repeatedly by closing my mouth, which replicated the sensation of having my air supply cut off, as if someone clamped shut the hose to my breathing apparatus.

Today, we will make our way to Fairfield. We will explore the area around Central Park, including restaurants with an international flair and little shops and other such commercial establishments. And we’ll look at houses, at least from the outside, that looked attractive on Zillow. But we won’t leave the Des Moines airport area until the heavy fog advisory lifts. I hope we can talk to a real estake agent or two, as well, just to talk about the attractions of this area. We’ll see.

As for where we will stay tonight. God only knows. Maybe we will learn today why every motel within driving distance of Fairfield was booked last night. (As I mentioned, I misposted “Fairview,” which is another Iowa community not far from Cedar Rapids.) We may have to drive to Minnesota or Michigan or Illinois or Quebec this afternoon to avoid the intense overcrowding of motel rooms. Perhaps we could impose on Deanna or on Janet and Mike, asking them if we might sleep on the floor of their self-powered houses on wheels. Yesterday’s experience, being unable to find a place to stay, resurrected my interest in exploring an old RoadTrek or Winnebago or Drunken Dutchman or whatever. Of course last-minute set-ups in a Walmart parking lot is not especially appealing, either.

I read with grateful appreciation the comments on yesterday’s post comments left by two blog follower friends…thank you Debbie and Becky. It’s nice to know we’re missed as we wallow in nearly-homeless self-pity among the barren cornfields near the Des Moines airport. Seriously, it is nice to stay connected outside the superficial  boundaries of Facetank and such.

I’ve already showered, but it’s time to shave and dress for a complimentary motel breakfast. I doubt this morning’s meal will compare to yesterday’s smoked salmon frittata at First Watch. But it will do, whatever it is.

Here’s to a grand morning to all! News that Gavin Newsom survived (in a landslide) his recall election cheered me up this morning! Good day!

The plan was to arrive early Monday afternoon in Fayetteville, after a leisurely drive from Hot Springs Village. A very rough, almost sleepless Sunday night, though, argued against both an early Monday departure and a straight-through drive to Fayetteville. So, we took it easy. And we figured we would still get to Fayetteville relatively early in the day. But by the time we got to the turnoff to visit a few Arkansas wineries (Weidekhr, Post, etc.), I was absolutely exhausted. I told my IC I needed to take a 20-minute cat-nap. So, I pulled off the road at the entrance to an RV park near the entrance to a winery, locked the doors, kept the car running, and closed my eyes. An hour an a half later, I awoke in a confused panic. I thought I was at a stoplight and had fallen asleep while waiting for the light to turn green; as I said, I was in a confused panic. After I got my bearings, though, we decided to drive to the Post winery restaurant (the Weidekhr place was closed) for lunch. It, too, was closed. But we did partake of a wine tasting, each of us sampling six dry wines. A few were quite good; the rest were acceptable. After drinking lunch, we hit the road again, enjoying candy bars as  dessert.

We got to Fayetteville and wandered a bit, taking a look at the UU church there and otherwise slinking around. Then, we went for an early dinner at Doe’s Eat Place, where we shared a monstrous porterhouse and a bottle of Freakshow cabernet sauvignon, make with grapes from Lodi. After dinner, we went back to our motel (an extraordinarily cheesy Best Western), where we had a shot of high-end tequila and went to bed relatively early. I tried to log on to my computer, but the miserable piece of rotted plastic and magnetic dust would not cooperate. So, I did not even blog yesterday. Not a bit. Argh!  Again Monday night, I slept very, very poorly; I tossed and turned all night. If I got three hours sleep, I’d be extremely surprised. I woke feeling a little like I’d been pinned under a Greyhound Bus overnight. I took a shower in a miserable excuse for a bathtub/shower and dried myself while hoping I would not slip on the dangerously ugly and useless floor.

This morning, we had a superb breakfast at First Watch, then hit the road toward Fairfield, Iowa. We had not made a reservation for the night, figuring it would be easy. But a few hours before we would have arrived, we tried to make hotel reservations. Nothing was available in Fairview, nothing in Ottumwa, nothing in Mount Pleasant…nothing! So, after a number of dead ends, we opted to try Des Moines, the state capital and largest city within easy driving distance. We finally scored a room at a Hampton Inn at the Des Moines airport. On the way there, just after crossing the Missouri state line into Iowa, we stopped at the Amish Welcome Center, where my IC spied an Amish family riding in a horse-driven cart. She pointed and said, “Look, Amish!” For reasons that were easier to experience and understand than to explain, that was incredibly funny. We joked back and forth about being in other circumstances, seeing local natives, and pointing to them: “Look, Cajuns!” “Look, Mexicans!” “Look, Texans!”

Dinner on Tuesday was Mexican at a restaurant just a few blocks from the airport motel. And here we are.  There was probably much more. But I’m writing this a capella and, so, I am leaving out what I don’t remember or forgot to ask about.

Tomorrow (Wednesday), we’ll try to see what Fairview looks like. We have no idea where we’ll stay tomorrow night. We may not stick around Fairview as long as we’d planned. Perhaps we’ll zip up to Decorah, maybe even as far as Minnesota and try to catch up with a friend who’s attempting to outrun us before she circles back to Fairview.

This trip has been interesting, if not especially fruitfull, thus far. We left Fayetteville this morning before getting out to see a tiny musical house, but we vowed to return to Fayetteville in the not-too-distant future to take alonger, more indepth look around.

I wrote the first iteration of this poem, Independent Thought, about two years ago. My flagging memory makes it impossible for me to know exactly what prompted me to write it, but I could hazard one hundred guesses and they would all be wrong and perfectly correct. Everything around me—every experience, every lost opportunity, every hard lesson, every glorious moment of good fortune—becomes a trigger for prose or poetry. When everything in my little sphere of thought is intertwined, I get the urge to revisit what I’ve written and to update it to reflect what I think is my current thinking; but it may just be my current confusion, disguised as thought.

This poem is the personification of bitterness and anger. Despite that undisputable fact, I am not bitter and angry this morning. I am, instead, resigned to the fact that I do not control the world; I know I should have the absolute control that would give me comfort and would improve the lot of humanity. But I don’t and I won’t, so getting over it is urgently important. Getting over it requires humility and an overriding sense of superiority. I’m nothing, except not conflicted.  And, so, here is my thinking of two years ago, recast to reflect my current state of mind.

Independent Thought, Revised and Reconsidered

Their independent thoughts
are mass-produced by
idea merchants whose
currency is artificial
intellectual superiority,
unmarred by exposure
to cerebral depth.

They pat themselves on the
back as they recite popular
mantras fed to them by their tribe of
like-minded merchants,
attacking those with whom
they claim to disagree.
They don’t know why they
disagree; only that they do.
It’s popular behavior
within their tribe.

They claim the mantra as
their own creation, yet they
recite it like the Pledge of Submissive
Docility, degrading
others whose only crime—
unlike their own
intellectual plagiarism—
is independent thought.

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It’s interesting that I think of “them” as having a tribe when that’s precisely what I want. A tribe that embraces one another through the good times and bad. A tribe whose affections are unshakeable and who its members can rely on the others to always have their backs. A family unit similar to, but stronger than, the one that held us all together as children. A permanent, unbreakable unit that is as dependable as the sunrise. A unit unfettered with self-consciousness embarrassment or fear or bravado.

Ach, that’s a fantasy, just like all the rest. Fantasies are a dime a dozen.

No matter how hard a person works or how much effort he puts forth in setting the course for his life, circumstances over which he has no control direct the course of his time on Earth in many ways.

It begins early, with his “choice” of parents or siblings. Whether by birth or by luck of the draw, our early lives are molded by both genetics and the environment in which we develop. It continues with school and his teachers—people over whose selection he has virtually no input. Even the curriculum his education follows generally is not within his, or even his parents’ control; the State or the Church or some other controlling entity makes the choice for him. In connection with that prescribed indoctrination, vast periods of his society’s history may be erased or reimagined. He learns what he is told to learn; he is taught what people who manage his environment decide he should be taught.

All during his maturation, decisions over which he has little or no influence set the direction of his life. And, then, simple chance enters the process. Which students or neighbors become his friends or acquaintances or lifelong enemies. Which girls he dates or, depending on factors within and outside his control, which dates he foregoes because his social development lags behind his peers. And later still, more semi-random circumstances chip away at his options by steering him in directions he may or may not embrace: Higher education. Jobs offered. Jobs refused. Jobs accepted. Marriage or bachelorhood. Participation in social activities or decisions to refrain from them.

A million situations, circumstances, decisions made or foregone, marriages begun or ended…and on and on and on. Though he may make many decisions along the way, he has no way of knowing which ones will be impactful and which will lead to others that could alter the course of his lifetime. He is buffeted by howling winds of change, sometimes thinking he has control when, in fact, his decisions are more like desperate efforts to take charge of a runaway train. That train’s speed and direction can be influenced only so very modestly. He has no say over whether the train runs on steam or electricity or diesel; those crucial decisions were not his to make.

The regret of my life is that I have not said ‘I love you’ often enough.

~ Yoko Ono ~

Our lives would be so radically different if only we had made different choices when presented with those limited opportunities to control our destiny. A different job, a different spouse, a different lover, a different location in which to set down root. We control our own outcomes only to the extent that we influence our own randomness in random ways. If I had never picked up a cigarette, I might never have had lung cancer, which would have altered my life in measurable ways. If I had accepted the job offer with the Department of Agriculture, virtually every aspect of my life very likely would have been different from what has transpired so far. I suspect I would have a different take on religion and a different perspective on laws and regulations affecting agriculture. I would have had a different spouse; I would have lived in different places; I might have had a reliable pension as opposed to relying on my own discipline, or lack thereof, to fund my retirement. A million differences. Enormous differences. Incomprehensible differences. And each difference would have been subject to other differences that might have altered the directions my life might have taken.

Regret is among the most painful emotions. It burrows into one’s psyche in ways that make removing it virtually impossible. It is there to stay. It festers and morphs into bitter anguish; self-directed and well-deserved blame.

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I am not in the proper mood to introduce a speaker at church this morning, but I’ve committed to doing it. And then to facilitate a conversation after the speaker’s presentation. What in the hell was I thinking when I agreed to do these things? I’m not suited to such stuff, especially when I’ve been thinking about the messes I’ve tended to make in my life. It’s these thoughts that propel me to a fantasy in which I suddenly and without any notice or fanfare simply disappear. Just get in my car and go someplace no no would ever think to look for me. A fishing village on the coast of Georgia, perhaps, or a desolate few acres in Wyoming. But they can always track you with your money; so, I’d have to forego my Social Security and my credit cards and simply live off of what’s left of a lifetime of saving too little that cannot be traced. But maybe running away is not the best solution. Maybe just wandering off into an impoverished neighborhood where everyone has been forgotten; no one leaves such places because they provide such absolute anonymity.

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I watched a few episodes of Stateless last night. The one-season series is both riveting and ruinous. Filmed in South Australia, it is bleak and parched and painful. I guess that’s what I was in the mood for. Something that would tear at me and shred my emotions into dry ribbons of pain and regret. Regret. There is it again. It’s so damn common that life doesn’t seem the same when it’s absent.

I’ve been hungry ever since I awoke, just before 5:00, this morning. Not just a bit peckish, mind you, but ravenously hungry. My hunger is the sort of sensation one might expect after being kidnapped and held without food—in a distant forest, miles from the nearest human outpost—for ten days. The hunger that causes my stomach to snap and growl like a rabid animal this morning is the absolute opposite of satiety. If appetite were a living, breathing being, mine is a beast so frantic and huge and its breath so furiously consumed in flames that you’d swear hunger and dragons arose from the same seed. Of course, you’d be right. The concept of dragons did, indeed, spring from feelings of intense hunger. It’s well-documented in the Modern American Encyclopedia of Emotional Hunger, fifth edition. There, on page 547, the story of hunger begins to be told. Seventeen pages later, on page 564, the story ends in a fiery, explosive howl. Scraps of habanero peppers, jalapeños, limes, and raw meat mix in a furious concoction that charitably can be described as maniacally hot. The pages on both sides of the entry are scorched; tinged brown from the heat of the descriptive text. It presents an awful image, one burned into my retinas as if I had stared at a total solar eclipse for half an hour or more.

So, have I satisfied my hunger yet this morning? No, I have not. I’m afraid nothing can; at least nothing readily available to me in this godforsaken wasteland. If I were where I should be right now—deep in French Quebec—I would be readying myself for a breakfast of a monstrous tourtière. My meal would have been prepared by a native Québécois woman, Juliette Jade Hultquist. This woman, who goes by the name Jade, has an intense and inexplicable interest in me. She longs to prepare food that will satisfy me at my core. A large, freshly-made tourtière will do just that. Though Jade cannot comprehend my passionate desire to spill almost a quarter of a cup of Tabasco sauce on her baked masterpiece, she does not object to it. She simply watches in appreciative silence as I consume the meal she prepared as fuel for my day.

You see what I did, don’t you? I transformed the auxillary verb, would by using “a bare infinitive to form the “anterior future”, indicating a futurity relative to a past time.” But I took it a step further, creating a present-tense reality from a wished-for and predicted future. Yet that’s irrelevant to the story, isn’t it? Of course it is. But that little detour did provide us both with an opportunity to let our over-heated emotions cool just a tad. We needed that, didn’t we?

Back to breakfast and Jade’s desire to satisfy my hunger for a French-Canadian breakfast. At least my version of a French-Canadian breakfast. While French-Canadians probably prefer tourtières for dinner, I suspect they would gladly join me in eating tourtières for breakfast. Those same French-Canadians might willingly eat poutine, too. I would do that again, though poutine probably will never be my first choice for breakfast. My friends Janet and Mike are in Quebec right now, though I doubt they are eating tourtières for breakfast. They should, though. They should. When they reach Nova Scotia, they should be sure to eat donairs, dulse, Nova Scotian oysters, and rappie pie, among other things quintessentially Nova Scotian. And if they happen to pass through Annapolis Royal while on their tour, they should look up my friend Bev. Bev does not eat meat, though, so tourtières are off the table for their shared meal with her.

Writing about food and its myriad mythic powers has done nothing to assuage my hunger. If anything, my passion has grown stronger and more assertive since I left my bed. Alas, I doubt I’ll be able to find tourtières or anything like them around here. I may have to drive to Iowa if I hope to satisfy my heretofore insatiable hunger. Perhaps the one restaurant I most want to try for breakfast in Fairfield, Iowa is the Istanbul Grill. I might try their Turkish Breakfast Plate, consisting of grilled juicy sucuk (Turkish sausage…usually beef or lamb, but in Bulgaria, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan horse meat sometimes is used), tomatoes, cucumbers, green olives, grilled red bell peppers, and feta cheese.

If I do not eat something soon, I doubt I’ll perish from malnutrition. Speaking of malnutrition, it’s entirely possible to suffer from malnutrition in spite of keeping one’s belly full. Especially if one’s belly is full of donuts, bread, sweetened iced tea, potatoes, rice, angel food cake, and fried bananas. I would avoid those dishes to the extent one’s discipline allows it.

I checked to see when McDonald’s opens for breakfast. They have been open for an hour and a half. I could have run down there and bought several breakfast burritos (which probably are unhealthy and most certainly are not “burritos” in the sense that they are authentic…nothing at McDonald’s is authentic, in my book). But I haven’t done that. Instead, I’ve spend my time wasting away and wishing I could have a Canadian breakfast with my friends who are driving an RV toward Nova Scotia. There’s no point in continuing this diatribe in opposition to the absence of tolerable (and, I must say it, alluring) breakfast.

+++

Today, I will shower. First, I will wrap my left forearm and hand in a waterproof plastic bag. The bag will protect my Mohs-procedure-affected hand from getting wet and soapy, two things I should avoid (plus lifting, bending my hand, and otherwise putting even the slightest stress on the delicate stitches the doctor used to sew me back together after the surgical removal of a significant portion of my left hand (well, it’s more like the size of the fingernail on my little finger).  I will shave, as well. In fact, I will pretend I am a fully-functioning adult male human. And off I go.

When we’re too free with information about ourselves, we risk sabotaging what little magnetism our personalities may possess.  We become open books whose pages hold little allure. I equate the experience to the once-common practice of reading the newspaper. That exercise was largely an automatic response to the presence of the morning coffee; when something of pressing interest took place, the newspaper was abandoned in favor of CNN or the local television news.  So it is with revealing our own activities and thoughts. People become so accustomed to learning about them that the routine is just boring. Almost anything else that captures the attention of people who know us becomes more appealing than our random revelations about ourselves. The only solution is silence. Or so it seems.

But memory is an autumn leaf that
murmurs a while in the Autumn wind and
then is heard no more.
     ~~~~~

If you reveal your secrets to the wind,
you should not blame the wind for
revealing them to the trees.

~ Khalil Gibran ~
1883-1931

+++

Relationships change with the introduction of additional parties to one’s relationships. For example, Person A has two good friends: Person B and Person C. The interactions between Person A and Person B please both parties, as do the interactions between Person A and Person C. And Person B and Person C may have a perfectly satisfactory relationship with one another. But when Person B and Person C engage together with Person A, all the participants may find the interchange somewhat—or completely—unsatisfying. The intimacy of the relationship between Person A and Person B (and all the other combinations) degrades and becomes less fulfilling.

This is not always the case, of course. But it can explain why a person can have multiple sets of friends who, for whatever reason, do not mix well in certain combinations. Forcing the mix can ruin some or all of the relationships because the reason for the strained engagement are not always obvious. Friends can simply seem to drift apart for no reason, all the while the reason (obvious to a disinterested third party, perhaps) is an unwelcome infringement on the type and depth of intimacy in the relationship.  We sabotage ourselves with the most innocuous motivations.

+++

The splint on my left hand is both restrictive and cumbersome. And the pain beneath the splint is growing stronger with each passing hour. There’s no indication that it will become intolerable; it simply will be bothersome until I can remove the splint and/or until the pain fools me and morphs into something more sinister and dangerous. In the meantime, I’ll just whimper and whine.

+++

I hear squirrels frolicking on the roof. While some people would find that noise whimsical and somewhat cute, I find it troublesome and intrusive. I’m of a mind to climb onto the roof with a high-powered pellet gun and launch into an attack on the beasts. I’d take a more powerful weapon with me—a Winchester Model 94 125th Anniversary High Grade 30-30 Win Lever-Action Rifle—perhaps, but I do not own even the imaginary pellet gun, so wandering around on the roof with a $2,000 gun is well beyond the scope of reality. But the dream lives on, if only in muted shades of grey; the dream is not sufficiently powerful to merit showing itself in pure, bright, enhanced color. So the squirrels will live on, as was always the case but which now is acknowledged by virtue of the fact that I’ve abandoned my murderous fantasy.

+++

The mayor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa is a recently-retired lawyer who also is husband to a woman who worked for me many years ago. The now-mayor and his wife, when the two of them lived in Houston, Texas, visited my late wife and me at our home occasionally, where we hosted them for weekend brunches that sometimes included our versions of Orange Julius. The ingredients in our version, my fading memory tells me, included egg whites and orange juice and ice and a bit of alcohol—maybe Amaretto.

My contacts with the now-mayor and his wife have been relatively rare over the years. Every year, I send her birthday greetings (because of the date of her birthday, it’s extremely easy to remember) and, much more rarely, exchange email updates with her. The only time I recall speaking directly with her husband was during a business event in Cedar Rapids sometime between 1990 and 1997. They had me over for dinner at their house one evening. She picked me up at my hotel, took me to their house, and gave me a ride back to my hotel after dinner.

To the best of my recollection, we rarely if ever spoke of politics. It has only been sometime during the last four years that I learned that the now-mayor identifies as Republican; I do not know how my former employee classifies herself. But I suspect both of them, regardless of their political affiliations, would say they are rather moderate in their political viewpoints; I have no real evidence to support that contention, but I feel pretty confident I am right, nonetheless.

My thoughts this morning about my ex-employee and her mayor husband were triggered, I suspect, by my explorations of various towns in Iowa: Fairfield, Decorah, and a few others. There’s nothing prompting my interest, other than ancient curiosity and recent coincidental explorations. And a recent email exchange with my former employee (inquiring into what she might be able to tell me about Fairfield) revealed that her husband is planning to run for a second term; the nonpartisan election is in November.

I have changed—in massive and fundamental ways—since I left the job where I met and hired the now-mayor’s wife. When I left Houston, the two of them remained there. I do not recall when they moved from Houston, returning to their native Iowa to rear their children. During the intervening years, between my departure from Houston and now, I have evolved into a completely different person. I’ve learned to better control my impulses and my anger and I’ve bounced from politically progressive to conservative to more progressive and then further to extremely progressive; I might even consider myself radically progressive now. My personality, aside from its political manifestations, has changed dramatically since those early days of young adulthood, too. I suspect my former employee has changed quite a lot since then, too, as has the now-mayor. But that’s pure conjecture. I know little of them. I know only slightly more of myself. I’d like to think I am a better person now than I was way back then, but how much do we really change—at our core—simply with the passage of time? Do we just learn to stifle and control ourselves more as the years go by, or do we actually mature and improve (or degrade) over time?

+++

I said it yesterday, but I’ll say it again: Happy Birthday to my brother, whose birthday is today. This morning, I’ll head in to Hot Springs for a Mohs procedure, a process whereby a dermatologist will carve away tissue from an identified squamous cell carcinoma and examine it microscopically. Once the pieces of carved tissue reveal no cancer, the dermatologist will conclude that he has removed all cancerous cells and I will be patched and sent home, hopefully never again to return for further treatment. Nothing is assured, of course, but this skin cancer is not one of the aggressive, dangerous forms. I have nothing to worry about, other than an unpleasant thought process involving the idea of carving away at my flesh. Presumably, a good anesthetic will be used; perhaps I should take tequila and gummies with me…but I’d probably better not.

+++

Later today, one of the beautiful women I sometimes write about will visit my IC and me, when we’ll talk about writing and where we’ll salivate over a chicken pot pie, courtesy of the visiting beautiful woman (differentiated from the beautiful woman who is one and the same as my IC). In the intervening hours between carvery and poetry, I will continue to organize files, one of my favorite pastimes. Oh, boy.

Today is my sister-in-law’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Carol! And tomorrow is my brother’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Tom!

+++

Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.

~ Jodi Picoult ~

I don’t know that I entirely accept Picoult’s statement, taken from her book, My Sister’s Keeper, but I understand it. I understand how disappointment can leave a person feeling lost and alone. It’s as if the world played a ruthless trick—teasing with optimism and hope, only to snatch them away and replace them with pessimism and despair. The cruelest form of bait and switch that takes away the confidence in one’s ability to cope with facts.

Writers of fiction may simply be responding to bitter reality. They replace it, either with more acceptable circumstances or by painting ugly alternatives that make what is seem far more tolerable than what could be.

Suicide is the sharpest, devastatingly intense, and irrevocable response to extreme disappointment. That disappointment with the world—whether external or completely internal—is more severe than most people, thankfully, will ever experience. People respond to excruciating disappointment in radically different ways, ranging from suicide to passionate, almost furious, rebellion against it. I can only barely begin to imagine the depth of disappointment a person must feel to reach the conclusion that suicide is the only acceptable response. The word, “disappointment,” seems utterly inadequate to describe the intensity of the pain; but I think that must be what it is. Disappointment with the world or disappointment with oneself.

To suggest I might even begin to understand the depths of despair that could drive a person to suicide may be considered by some to be the height of arrogance. But I cannot be alone in thinking it; my arrogance is not in thinking it, but in having the gall to share what I think. There are some thoughts that one simply does not share. Unless one happens to be me. That’s one of my multitude of flaws; I express myself, even when what is inside my brain is uncomfortable to the world around me. Maybe that’s the wellspring of disappointment.

+++

I delivered a packet of tax-related material to an accountant yesterday. Whether it is sufficient remains to be seen; I won’t even have the opportunity to discuss the material with her until two weeks hence. And, then, the conversation will be by telephone, thanks to COVID. Time is running low on the extension I was granted to file my taxes. I hope the accountant can zip through it in short order.

Between now and then, I intend to go through the morass of paper I’ve allowed to pile up during the last fourteen months, filing away what needs to be kept and disposing of what can safely be discarded. I loathe disorder, even though often I am the chief purveyor of chaos in my life. Perhaps that statement is telling: maybe I can take from it the simple truth that I loathe myself for being unable or unwilling to keep my life in order.

+++

Last night’s binge-fest, during which we watched several additional episodes of How to Get Away with Murder, was thought-provoking. The evolution of the main character’s personality continued to reveal her as both a troubled woman and someone whose bitter personality is easy to understand. At the core of her deeply unlikeable character traits are responses to terrible emotional experiences; ultimately, she hates herself for who she is. Yet who she is arises from what she has experienced. Her behaviors and her attitudes are predictable in light of what she has been through; yet until those behaviors and attitudes change, she can have no hope of overcoming her experiences. It’s like a Catch-22 on steroids. As improbable as the plot has become, the program is absolutely riveting. We’re nearing the end of the sixth and final season (on Netflix); we’re already mourning the passing of the show as we near the final episode.

+++

I’ll spend the next few years trying to understand the world, a continuation of what I’ve been doing for the past 67 years (almost 68). I don’t think I’m any closer now than I was 60 years ago. I wonder whether Aristotle or Leonardo da Vinci or Dante or the button-maker’s apprentice or anyone else ever succeeded in the quest to understand the world?  Hard to say. I’ve never been able to ask them.

To those I may have wronged,
I ask forgiveness.
To those I may have helped,
I wish I had done more.
To those I neglected to help,
I ask for understanding.
To those who helped me,
I thank you with all my Heart.

~ Adaptation of a Prayer for Yom Kippur ~

A slightly different version of the quotation above came to my attention early this morning as I skimmed a Facebook message posted by a woman with whom I attended high school about six lifetimes ago. I know only a little about her, but her posts often suggest that she is a fundamentally religious person, although she seems skeptical and sarcastic about certain aspects of religion and life in general. I suppose we’re all a little like that.

I know very little about Judaism, but I know more today than I knew five years ago. Five years ago, I would have reacted to the Jewish religion in the same way I had always reacted to all other religions: with disdain, contempt, scorn. But as sometimes is the case, aging has brought with it a bit more tolerance, a touch more humility, and a tad more open-mindedness. And that has coincided with the recognition that  buried in the muck of organized religion and religious thought, there are kernels of truth. Not divine truth, but fundamental human truth; truth that lives within almost all of us in the form of compassion.

All of the foregoing  leads me to say  this: most religious holidays (even those steeped in metaphysical/divine/doctrinaire nonsense) have at their core some seeds of wisdom. Somewhere in there, hidden beneath all the ritual and assertions of divinity, fundamental principles of human decency are exposed; there, amidst the noise, is a vast expanse of silent peace.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is said to be the holiest day of the year in Judaism. With its central themes of atonement and repentance, the day’s importance addresses core ideas upon which Judaism is based. The day is observed not just by deeply religious Jews but by secular Jews who may not observe other holidays of the faith. According to Wikipedia, for many secular Jews the High Holy Days (of which Yom Kippur is the most holy) are the only times of the year during which they attend synagogue—causing synagogue attendance to soar. That’s irrelevant to my thinking this morning, but interesting, nonetheless. By the way, Yom Kippur this year will begin the evening of September 15 and end the evening of September 16.

Coincidentally, my sister-in-law sent me another quotation, based in religious thought, early this morning. I found it interesting, intriguing, and insightful:

Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

~ Buddha ~

Now that I allow myself to absorb the messages of religion (while still rejecting the supernatural or divine premises upon which so many religions are based), I find more and more concepts that coincide with my notions of truth. And it’s not just a sense that those concepts validate my own; increasingly, those concepts cause me to think more deeply about my own world view. Sometimes, they cause me to make minor—and in some cases, major—adjustments in that perspective.

+++

And, so, that’s where my head is this morning, as I prepare for day two of my efforts to finally get my 2020 taxes completed and filed.  Yesterday, I got a great deal done. I really need more than two days to finish the process of getting my paperwork all in order; not just tax paperwork, but general financial and related paperwork. The stuff that my IC admonishes me to leave behind in favor of relying entirely on electronic/magnetic versions of bills, etc. I will admit to getting more than a little irritated by constant snarky remarks about receiving and keeping paper copies of bills. One day, I may decide to rely more heavily on companies that promise to keep my records safe and available, but that day is not today, nor will it be a day this year and probably not next. At any rate, it won’t happen until I am satisfied that all my paper records are completely and totally in order and safely catalogued.

+++

Come hell or high water, I will explore parts of the world outside my sheltered sphere sometime next week. I’d like to experience it in a self-propelled recreational vehicle, but I guess I’ll have to rely on my car. If I could, though, I’d go along for the ride with a couple I know from church; they’re somewhere in Michigan at this point—or maybe in Canada by now—experiencing cooler weather and freedom from the daily miasma of Village politics.  But they are not examining Iowa, which I’m intent on doing, so riding with them would not meet my needs for the moment.

I’ve joked with friends that the female half of the couple wanted to get a smaller RV that she feels comfortable driving so she could, if tight-spaced RV living were to become too constraining, leave her male companion at a gas station along the way as she escaped to total solitude and freedom. No, she is devoted to him, and he to her, so that troublesome fantasy will not come to pass. But if they decide they don’t like their RV, maybe they would let me borrow it for awhile. Hmm. That’s not likely, either. My IC probably would have something to say about that.

+++

If the world were a just, fair, and comfortable place, I would have a breakfast this morning of steak and eggs or congee and miso soup or pork chops with a side of spicy grits. But the world is not that fair, just, and comfortable place. So, instead, I’ll probably have a bowl of thumb tacks drenched in motor oil and flavored with lye soap flakes. Or cereal. Same thing.

Off to the races. Today, I’ll call an accountant to try to take this thing to the next level.

Some days, the photographic reminders sent to me by Microsoft and Google—images from this day three or six or ten years ago—are welcome souvenirs of happy experiences. But some days the images bring back memories that tear me apart. They remind me of what I’ve lost, never to find again. I feel mixed emotions when I see those photographs. On one hand, I want the images etched in my brain forever; on the other, I want to smash the computer screen for its cruelty in taunting me about a life I’ll never experience again. It’s not the computer screen, of course. It’s me. It’s my response to a photographic image. It’s an unexpected trigger that I can barely withstand. Suddenly, my plans for the day are ruined, replaced by memories that cause tears to flood down my face. It will pass. But never completely.

+++

I cannot let photos ruin today’s plans. Today, I must devote my energies to completing long-delayed tax forms. Today, I must find and dredge up 1099s and their brethren. Those forms are convoluted bureaucratic evidence of our society’s worship of and responsibilities for financing war and imprisonment and society restrictions on individual freedoms. And, of course, hurricane and forest fire relief and interstate highways. But getting a reliable picture of how our tax dollars are spent is a little like determining the make and model of cars on a snow-covered highway by examining the tracks their tires make: it’s a long, excruciating, and imprecise undertaking. Here’s a graph showing 2015 figures on discretionary spending; a graph incorporating mandatory spending would present a different picture (with only around 11% of total expenditures going toward military spending, compared to 54% of discretionary spending).

Ah, but I’m getting off-track, as I am wont to do. I need to return to the issue at hand; namely, getting my taxes done. If I don’t, the Federal Government could take possession of my bank accounts, cease payment of my Social Security benefits, terminate my Medicare benefits, and send heavily-armed enforcers whose faces are hidden behind camouflage masks to drag me into the streets to make a bloody, screaming example of me. Well, I may be exaggerating a tad. Suffice it to say failure to file my tax forms, even after paying my taxes, would result in unpleasantness I do not wish to experience. So I better get to it, and soon.

+++

Yesterday’s power outage in parts of the western section of the Village kept us (and all other members and guests) from attending our church. Instead, we took advantage of the unexpected and unplanned freedom by lolling about; eating lunch out and, in leisurely fashion, filling my IC’s display cases (there’s probably a less commercial-sounding name for them) with glass and crystal and other showy pieces of art disguised as drinkware and such. We thought about inviting a friend over to exhibit laughter-inducing behavior, but that thought came too late in the day to act on. So we were modestly productive, instead. And we visited with another friend, who had lent us a spectacularly good book on Hamilton (the musical), to return his book and chat about his impending plans to relocate to another state.

+++

We are not alone in desiring change. Change of scenery, change of climate, change of attitude, change of lifestyle. Just change. Last night, my IC called to speak to one of the organizers of a UU church in one potential destination. The organizer’s involvement in creating a new “fellowship” clearly demonstrates the woman’s interest in change. Everyone wants change; but not too much. We want change sufficient to recognize that there’s a difference, but not so much as to upend our lives completely. The trick, of course, is to know where that sweet spot rests. And it’s vital that we recognize the losses that accompany change, if we have any hope of filling in the gaps caused by those losses. In an ideal world, friends would all simultaneously come to the conclusion that change is right for them, too, at the same time. But deeply engrained idealism is reserved for the young and inexperienced; people who have been around the block a few times know that idealism has the ability to either re-create youth or crush the soul. It’s best to be careful around seeking the ideal in any environment, because ideal circumstances can come with long, sharp knives in the hands of highly-practiced meat carvers who have bad attitudes. That is, the ideal seldom is.

+++

A promise is a promise. I promised myself I would attack taxes today (and tomorrow, if that’s what it takes), and I shall keep that promise. So, no more delays. I’ll wrap up this post, make some more coffee, have a bowl of cereal, and get to work. Please think of me today as you go about your happier-than-mine day. Send good vibes; in anticipation that you will, I am sending them to you.

Attraction and aversion are two feelings
that keep people within the bondage
of ignorant repetitive behavior…
If people do not crave to be pleased,
they will not be displeased.
What causes mental suffering is not the environment
but the mind itself.

~ Muso Kokushi ~

The wisdom of simple thought is both straightforwardly plain and intricately complex. Wisdom arises from the intersection of deep knowledge and good judgment, both of which emerge from experience transformed into truth. But truth is a fleeting condition that changes with every change in the reality in which we find ourselves.  In other word, truth is contextual. And so, too, are knowledge and judgment and everything that springs from them. We live in an ever-changing universe which requires constant and instantaneous changes to our environment if we have any hope of surviving. But survival is not a synonym for happiness, so there must be something else that drives us toward contentment. Survival, alone, isn’t it. That argues for making survival a secondary objective of living. Maybe contentment should be the primary motive. Yet, following the argument in Kokusi’s assertion, if people do not crave to be content, they will not be discontented. Looking backward a bit, if people do not crave to survive, they will not…what? Survive? Care about survival? Wisdom sometimes requires abandoning mental gymnastics long enough to be carried on a stretcher to the finish line.

+++

Why? That perpetual question that children ask is maddening. Why, indeed? Do we ever abandon that innate curiosity? Is our thirst for knowing the unknowable ever satisfied? The answer too many of us accept is, “just because.” That’s equivalent to “who knows?” or “it was meant to be.” There are answers to the question. We may not have the patience to learn what they are, but there are answers. We may not have the mental acuity to understand the answers, but that does not negate the fact that answers exist. We might give up on answers that can be measured against reality in favor of relying on the belief in magic, instead (church, anyone?). There are answers; legitimate answers. But we might not recognize them as answers. We might, instead, think they are questions. Why? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton had the answer to why. We seem to have been unable to accept that realization, though. We can replace “action” with other things, realizing the truth that lies therein: For every emotion there is an equal and opposite emotion. For every truth there is an equal and opposite fiction. Or, put another way, For every truth, there is an equal and opposite lie. For every distance, there is an equal and opposite proximity. For every gentleness, there is an equal and opposite roughness.  For every love, there is an equal and opposite hatred. For every compassion, there is an equal and opposite cruelty.

In fact, the answers are clear and indisputable: answers to “why?” are abundant. And factual and truthful but utterly unsatisfactory because they are never complete. There’s always a follow-up; a second part to the question that circles back on the answer like a cougar on its prey.

Geospatial World reports that the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which keeps a record of  satellites orbiting Earth, says there were 6,542 satellites in orbit around our planet. Of those, 3,372 satellites are active and 3,170 are inactive—as of January 1, 2021. SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, Firefly Aerospace, etc. have been busy since that date launching more satellites. In fact, as of June 30, SpaceX had made twenty additional launches this year. The company provides a “ride-share” program in which it propels rockets into space on behalf of customers that want satellites in orbit; the satellites are delivered to orbit by SpaceX, which then returns its rockets to the ground.

I explored Earth-orbiting satellites as a follow-up to a story I read online yesterday that described the unsuccessful launch of a Firefly Aerospace rocket. The launch was  the company’s first attempt to reach Earth orbit with a rocket carrying a commercial payload of satellites.

Space “travel” has been in the news lately because certain multi-billionaires have famously spent enormous sums of money to take what amounts to space tourism excursions. Some people are up in arms about those expensive vacations, arguing that the money would be better spent on humanitarian efforts here on Earth. While I agree that space tourism is wasteful and decadent, I gladly would take the trip if the opportunity presented itself. But more importantly, I think space exploration is vital. We learn so much simply by sending rockets into orbit. Even the unsuccessful launches and the launches carrying egotists and adventurers can give us important data about our planet, space, and the “glue” that keeps the universe from expanding out of control into oblivion. Or something like that.

+++

If the world wishes to treat me fairly this morning, I will go get a haircut shortly. I plan to arrive at the barber shop just about the time they open so I will be among the first customers. Then, I will come home, pick up my IC, and we will go to Home Plate for a haircutting celebratory breakfast. The remainder of the day will be spent, in bits and pieces, getting things organized. That is, putting things away—things from the merger of two households. This merger continues to drum into me the fact that I own too much “stuff.” Almost everyone does. At least everyone I know in this country built on the premise that “more” is better. This place designed physically and philosophically to follow the mantra “money and things it can buy equate in direct proportion to happiness.” Of course, we know that’s not true. But we continue to behave as if it were. Money and things, especially things attached to sentimental memories, rule our lives. We do not control our lives; we response to monetary and sentimental commands, urging us on to collect more stuff that we believe will give us ultimate and absolute fulfilment. Well, that may be a stretch. But not much.

+++

Time to dress, pee, and flee. Off to the haircuttery for a change of image and, perhaps, a corresponding change of personality. We shall see. We always do.

Unexpected consequences. I’m referring to the effects triggered by COVID-19 on the automotive manufacturing supply chain. An article posted yesterday on AP Online reported that GM and Ford have halted some production in response to a worsening chip shortage. Both automakers have temporarily closed factories in response to disruptions in the supply of chips needed to build various automobiles. Disruption of the supplies was caused by COVID-19 closures of primarily Asian factories that supply chip components.

Unintended consequences get to the heart of why you never really understand an adaptive problem until you have solved it. Problems morph and “solutions” often point to deeper problems. In social life, as in nature, we are walking on a trampoline. Every inroad reconfigures the environment we tread on.

~~ Richard Pascale ~

Even before the supply interruption, COVID dealt some blows to production in the form of forced factory closures, productivity declines due to staffing shortages (a result of both sickness and the fear of sickness) and related matters. Will this long-lived catastrophe ever play itself out? And, even if it does, what other unexpected consequences will surprise and startle us and otherwise cause grief and trauma and mounting stress? And what chain reactions will those emotional tolls trigger?

+++

If I had sufficient money and youth (and its attendant energy), I would use this enormously chaotic economic period to start a business of some kind. I do not know precisely what sort of business I would start, only that it would go against prevailing wisdom as to sure-fire failures. Perhaps a pricey, exotic restaurant steeped in international flavors; struggling for staff and product deliveries. Or maybe a hydroponic tomato farm in New Mexico or Arizona, where water and reliable employees can be extremely hard to come by. Instead, I might opt to operate a radio station devoted to news and entertainment with a focus on evangelical atheism. The point would be to go against the grain; provided, of course, innovative market research revealed an unmet demand for the products/services the business would offer. And provided the unusual aspects of the business could successfully generate newsworthy “buzz.” But who am I kidding? I have neither enough money nor enough lifespan left in my respective accounts to see the new business through to completion. So, instead, I’ll just fantasize about it. And maybe I’ll use an imaginary business or two as fodder for some short fiction.

+++

Hurricane Ida did a great deal of damage and ruined a lot of lives. But the worst of the storm may not have been its impact on the Gulf Coast. The worst might have been the horrendous flooding that is taking place in the Northeast. As of this morning, media reports say 48 people in five northeastern states died as a result of floodwaters from the dying storm. That is on top of the thirteen deaths in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Ach! What tragedy.

+++

I woke this morning to the sound of pelicans scooping up fish as the birds glided over the early-morning stillness of a coastal lagoon. It was a dream, of course, but it felt and smelled and sounded absolutely real. I was in a small boat on the shore, alone, just about to launch into the water. It was an idyllic scene until I turned to discover that I was on the edge of a golf course where a tournament was being played. The attention of the crowd of spectators was on me as I slogged through the muddy periphery of the course toward my boat, which had drifted away from me. Apparently, I had interrupted play on a key hole. I was angry and embarrassed until I woke up to discover I was in bed. My embarrassment faded, leaving only anger.

+++

We got a great deal done yesterday, but there is so very much more to do. Suddenly, this morning, I do not care. I do not care that the house is messy. I do not care that we have so much work to do. I just want to relax for a week or two, though I know I cannot do that. Next week, I have to deal with long-delayed obligations. And I have to have my Mohs procedure done on my little skin cancer. And I have a required doctor’s appointment in preparation for a referral to an ENT doctor. Perhaps the following week we can take a road trip. I feel a need to hit the road and let the world behind us just molder while we’re away.

+++

Once in a while you need to take a break and visit yourself.

~ Audrey Giorgi ~

Good morning. I’d love to have a conversation with you over coffee this morning, but I guess this blog post will have to do.

+++

I was biased in favor of students of the liberal arts as far back as the late 1970s and early 1980s. Even earlier, I suspect my favoritism guided my perception of the world around me; and the people in it. A couple of recent email exchanges with a woman I hired back then triggered that recollection; that memory that I was inclined toward hiring people whose educational background appealed to me. It wasn’t just their educational background, of course. Education was simply a bit of evidence, often unreliable, that their worldviews and their personalities were good fits with mine.

The emails in question began with one I sent, asking my former employee (who now lives in Iowa) for her perspective on a town in that state. Something about her response and our subsequent interchanges triggered my memory. I remembered using educational backgrounds, specifically degrees in English, as a screening tool when selecting prospective interviewees. And I remember how much better those interviewees who had that characteristic seemed to fit with my personality than did others who were just as well educated in other fields or were otherwise talented and experienced. I hired the woman I recently asked for advice as much for her personality and intellect as for my confidence that she possessed the necessary editorial and writing capabilities. I hired others on the basis of similar feelings of confidence about how well they fit.

Since then, I’ve come to realize degrees simply were screening tools. And, as I said, they were often unreliable tools. But I used them in the absence of interviewing experience. Over time, my interviewing skills evolved so that I was able to discard educational attainment as evidence of intellectual depth. I discovered that life experience, intellectual curiosity, and raw intelligence were much better predictors of both job performance and personality fit. Formal education, it turned out, did not matter much. “Uneducated” people often had far deeper intellectual capacity and richer mental breadth than their educated counterparts. Gradually, over time, I began hiring “English majors” who had never been to college but who were far more intelligent and much more interesting that mass-produced educational clones.

I admitted, in my introductory paragraph, my bias toward “students of the liberal arts.” I did not say “graduates with liberal arts degrees.” Even though I still use degrees as potential clues about intellect, I put less faith in formal education than in knowledge. There’s a widening gulf between people who are knowledgeable and those who possess formal education. The latter too often are lacking in the former.  Still, liberal arts degrees served as sometimes-reliable yardsticks.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

~ Dorothy Parker ~

The woman with whom I recently communicated was an excellent employee and a friend. Though it has been many years since we might have considered one another friends, we stay in touch occasionally and I still hold her opinions in high regard. And it was her degree, back then, that got her in the door. Similarly, it was another interviewee’s Master of Arts degree in English that prompted me to interview her. There have been others. I favored liberal arts majors to business majors and people who majored in more technical fields. When interviewees had no formal degrees I could use as convenience screens, I explored their interests in literature and social issues; and their facility with language.

So, what’s the purpose of all this? No purpose, really. Only a randomly-triggered memory that unearthed a bias about my own biases. I have dozens of them; maybe even more.

+++

I both admire it and am skeptical of its value. I’ve still not quite resolved that ambivalence. On the one hand, my late wife’s Ph.D. was testament to both her extraordinary intellect and her consuming dedication to achieving a major goal. But I’ve met other people whose Ph.D. degrees masked their unyielding stupidity. Yet I’ve met incredibly intelligent people who did not finish high school, much less go on to obtain impressive terminal degrees. Two quotations address at least part of my ambivalence about formal education.

I didn’t get a high school diploma. I really didn’t have much of an education, which left me open to educating myself throughout my life, without the limitations on intellectual curiosity a formal education can impose. I followed what interested me.

~ Elayne Boosler ~

And this one that shows contempt for formal education, at least as practiced in his day.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

~ Albert Einstein ~

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~

+++

Just twenty more days until we all should celebrate World Peace Day. The International Day of Peace is a United Nations-sanctioned holiday observed annually on September 21. Here’s a snippet of what Wikipedia has to say about the event:

It is dedicated to world peace, and specifically the absence of war and violence, such as might be occasioned by a temporary ceasefire in a combat zone for humanitarian aid access. The day was first celebrated in 1981, and is kept by many nations, political groups, military groups, and people. In 2013 the day was dedicated by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to peace education, the key preventive means to reduce war sustainably.

Consider the impact on people and the planet if every living human being spent the entire day, dedicated to the proposition that world peace is an immediately achievable objective. A single day, focused exclusively on declaring perpetual peace, could have enormously positive consequences. A single day, given adequate gravitas by every living person, could change the course of life on this planet. It could transform an ugly, bitter, dangerous place into a refuge in which everyone would, at least for a day, dedicate themselves to solving problems through cooperation instead of conflict.

But unless we all buy into (and insist on loudly proclaiming our support for) the UN’s quiet little announcements, the day will pass unnoticed. We own the UN; every one of us around the world. We can force the issue, if we want to. How badly do we want peace, though? Enough to risk ridicule for our naiveté? Enough to risk being labeled simpletons who do not understand the ways of the world?

+++

Squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common form of skin cancer, according to an online resource that claims some degree of expertise on the matter. The most common form is basal cell carcinoma. My skin cancer is squamous cell carcinoma. That diagnosis calls for treatment with Mohs surgery, said to be the gold standard method of dealing with this common form of skin cancer. According to Wikipedia, the surgery obtains “complete margin control during removal of a skin cancer (complete circumferential peripheral and deep margin assessment, or CCPDMA)” using a frozen section procedure to perform rapid microscopic analysis of a skin specimen obtained during surgery. Basically, the doctors remove slices of skin until microscopic examination reveals that all the cancer has been removed. I was told I can drive myself to and from the procedure; it’s no biggie, in other words. I’m not amused by it; nor, though, am I afraid. It’s just another minor bump that interferes with my interest in having absolute freedom with my time. I’ll schedule the procedure within the next several weeks. Henceforth, I will avoid travel to Florida; simply a precautionary measure that, I hope, will kill two birds with one stone.

+++

Florida’s number three industry, behind tourism and skin cancer, is voter fraud.

~ Dave Barry ~

+++

The saga continues. Yesterday, we continued to fill the garage with assorted “stuff” from my IC’s former home. There’s very little left to move now, though. Most of the remainder of the work at her former home involves clean-up. Yesterday, I removed picture hangers,  patched the holes with spackling compound, and painted over the patches with leftover matching paint. Except I did not realize the leftover paint did not match the walls in the bathrooms. Oops. I panicked, thinking I would have to hire someone to repaint the two bathrooms. But on the second trip over, we found leftover paint that matched the bathroom walls; now, it’s almost all finished. I only have a couple of larger patches to paint today (the spackling compound needed additional time to dry). We should finish everything at the old house today. Then, for the foreseeable future, we will spend all our waking hours attempting to find a place to put everything that now fills my house and my garage (the latter of which no longer has space for either of our two cars).

+++

I went to bed very early last night—around nine o’clock—but did not sleep very well, again. I was awake, off and on, all night. I finally got out of bed around 4:40. I thought I was sufficiently worn out last night that I would sleep through the night. But, no. My damn sinuses and wheezing and aching joints kept me from sleeping much; I think I will need to stay up for 24 to 36 hours straight in order to be sufficiently tired to actually sleep for an extended period. I do not relish that, but I relish sleep more than I do not relish staying awake so long.

+++

The first day of September is upon us. Eight months of this angry year have come and gone, leaving madness and disease in their wake. Perhaps we can change course during the final four months of this damaged and deranged calendar.

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

~ Pablo Picasso ~

Procrastination claws at progress, ripping productivity into useless ribbons of wasted time that cannot be sewn or glued or nailed together again. Every delay I allow myself is a wedge that can force me, later, into panic and speedy mediocrity. Or worse. I know this. So why do I sometimes avoid getting about the business at hand? Lethargy. Anticipation of unpleasantness. Sloth. Confusion. Misunderstanding. Inadequate preparation. Lack of knowledge. The reasons for putting things off are as numerous as the things we delay doing. And as unpleasant as are the consequences of procrastination, inaction is the subject of ostensibly cute humor. “I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do – the day after,” said Oscar Wilde.  And Ellen DeGeneres is quoted as saying  “Procrastinate now, don’t put it off.” Neither statement is funny; both simply take advantage of the ease with which we mock diligence, as if productive intensity were a character flaw. 

A sad but interesting byproduct of procrastination is the fact that delaying the unpleasant or putting off the unattractive or prolonging the inevitable does the same for what comes after. The benefits of having accomplished a task or completed an undesirable engagement are put off by delay. Negative anticipation tramples access to its positive partner.

Procrastination is on my mind this morning because I procrastinated filing for an extension on my income taxes this year until almost the last possible minute. And I have put off completing them since I filed the extension. I have yet to complete and file my return; after filing the extension, it seemed I had so much time left to do it. But no more. The deadline is fast approaching; just a month and a half left. I have yet to find (or obtain) all the 1099s and other forms necessary to file. I have to compile all the possible exemptions. I have to calculate all manner of other stuff that will take time. All of this in the midst of merging two households into one and exploring the possibility of an enormous change in my life and lifestyle. Deferring a known obligation is tantamount to pouring salt on a wound; and adding enormous stress to an already stressful period of time.

I’ve set aside two calendar days next week to address the stress caused by my taxation procrastination. And, I set aside time next week to make an appointment with a professional tax preparer to go over my tax work with me to verify my work and catch errors. Once all of this is done and my taxes are filed, I will begin preparing for next year’s tax filing. Next year, by God, I will not do this to myself again. I hope I have learned my lesson. I know the task is not particularly hard, provided one keeps good records along the way and keeps to a reasonable schedule. Failing to do so (as I have done this year) is a bit like swallowing a mouthful of treble fishhooks; the unpleasantness is more than a little painful.

+++

I once thought I was completely alone and misunderstood. That no one but me could see or feel or think what was inside my head. But then, when the only person who ever really knew me was gone, I discovered I had never known myself. And now, I never will.

+++

The results of my DNA assessments should be ready for me within three weeks. I do not have high expectations that I will be surprised, but I look forward to getting the results, nonetheless. It would be nice to find that I come from Scandinavian royalty, for example, and to learn that I am a long-lost heir to a considerable fortune, including massive land-holdings throughout Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland. The near-certainty that my ancestry is almost exclusively English makes the likelihood of my wished-for royal Scandinavian background virtually impossible. But hope springs eternal. Time will tell. It always does.

+++

I try to use humor to bring myself out of the doldrums, only to find that the doldrums are where I belong. Humor is nothing but a shattered crutch in such circumstances. As generous as are others’ efforts to lift my spirits, they are destined to fail and, in fact, change my mood from dark to dangerous. People who try to help can find themselves in the crosshairs of my anger. I should just lock myself in a room until he mood passes. That’s the safest place for me and for those in my sphere. I recognize this only before or after my mood sinks; never in the midst of it.

+++

Sleep eluded me for much of last night. I tossed and turned as I tried to get comfortable and as I tried to breathe, only to find I could barely get enough oxygen in my lungs to survive until the next breath. I must find the time to see an ENT doctor or an acupuncturist or someone else who can clear my sinuses and stop my wheezing.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero ~

Thanks in large part to the generous assistance of my sister-in-law, we moved the majority of the remaining “stuff” from my IC’s old house yesterday to our shared home and garage. In another day or two, all the remaining odds and ends will disappear from the vacant house. The numerous picture hangers will be removed from the walls and the holes left in their absence will be patched and painted. The place will be scrubbed and vacuumed as clean as we can make it. Then, the monumental task of finding a place for everything in our shared house will continue. And, I suspect, much of what we moved (and much of the contents of cabinets, etc. already here) will find its way to the Habitat for Humanity store. Afterward, following a brief period of relaxation, we will investigate places whose appeal surprises me about myself. Fayetteville, Arkansas. Tulsa, Oklahoma. Schenecktady, New York. Fairfield, Iowa.  Fairfield, Iowa? In response to my query about the town, here’s the response I got from a woman who worked for me many years ago and who now lives back in her home state of Iowa (Cedar Rapids) with her husband:

…it is known for the Maharishi University and Vedic City—which when it came to Iowa in the 70s totally blew the minds of everyone in the conservative farm town and all of Iowa for that matter, me included. My impression, though it may have changed over the years, is that it is an incongruous mix of town folk and maharishis who don’t have much to do with each other.

I’m sure the Maharishis have brought some wealth and international influence to the town—they do have some good ethnic restaurants there—but I think it might be an unusual place to live…which may be the attraction!

The little town (population about 10,000) has some interesting ethnic restaurants. That’s part of the appeal. Another part of the appeal is that it’s rather walkable. Many houses on the market are within easy walking distance of the downtown square, where many of the restaurants are: Indian, Ethiopian, Chinese, Sushi, Turkish, etc., etc. And the place is mostly flat; easier for me to walk than the hills around here, which make life a bit difficult for me, with my cancer-compromised lungs and attendant lack of stamina. The fact that there’s an accredited university there adds to the appeal. We’ll see.

+++

My post yesterday about Hurricane Ida prompted David Legan, a periodic reader of my writing, to post the following comment, that I found both insightful and depressing:

My first crash off of a racing motorcycle, in a motorcycle race, was a relatively “soft” one. At a modest speed, certainly under 100mph, I lost the front end and instantly met the asphalt. I was not hurt…or even shaken. But I was shocked that THE RACE CONTINUED. Only for a moment, lying in the Texas weeds alongside the track, I watched as racer after racer simply passed by.

I think that’s a crude representation of what will happen tonight and in coming weeks in the Hurricane Ida damage path. You and I will continue with our daily duties as a couple of million folks reassemble their lives. They lie in the weeds wondering what happened…we keep racing. That’s life, until it isn’t.

+++

Hot Springs Village has the capacity to destroy itself. I suspect the upcoming vote on whether to increase the monthly assessment will contribute to the community’s seeming interest in what I call civitasicide, or systematic killing of a community. Rather than seeing an increase in assessments as the outgrowth of time and natural deterioration, opponents apparently view the process as a means of draining their pockets in favor of somehow enriching the pockets of their opponents. To prevent that inexplicable “theft,” the opponents of increasing our monthly assessments further the process of systematically murdering this once idyllic community by gutting its infrastructure and otherwise causing it to decay from the inside out. That’s what’s on my mind this morning. Among other things. I most certainly am NOT grateful to the people who would butcher an otherwise tolerable community to further their own ability to jack up their bank accounts.

+++

My IC misunderstood something I said the other night. Neither of us remember exactly what I said, nor even the context of the conversation. What we do remember is that my IC thought I said something that sounded, to her, like “you’re my bitch.” That is not what I said. But we laughed until we cried when she told me what she thought I said.

+++

When I mentioned to my IC and my sister-in-law that I thought I might write children’s stories, they both looked at me as if I had just expressed an interest in eating live kittens with just a touch of salt. I’m convinced I could write some pretty decent children’s stories. They seem to think my stories would be grim, deeply frightening tales that would scar children for life. We’ll see.

+++

Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

~ Steven Wright ~

A major hurricane, Ida, is poised to slam into the Gulf Coast today, somewhere in the neighborhood of New Orleans. Fierce winds of 145 miles per hour or more and a monstrous storm surge, coupled with power outages and crippled public emergency services, could make August 29, 2021 an infamous day for parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Unlike in years in the distant past, when my attention was riveted on Nature’s cataclysmic climatic abilities,  my focus this year and in recent years has been on other things: Afghanistan. The global COVID-19 pandemic. Physically moving my IC into my house. Avoiding news of humankind’s astonishing race toward extinction. But, in spite of the distractions, I cannot help but listen for news about the impending calamity. I know, firsthand, how awful hurricanes can be. And I have had a taste of the ghastly aftermath of a powerful hurricane. Though my experience did not approach the level of horror that many have experienced during and after hurricanes, it was enough to make me dread such storms. I experience vicarious fear of a hurricane, on behalf of potential victims, when I learn of an impending strike.

Hurricane Celia attacked Corpus Christi on the afternoon of August 3, 1970. Before the storm was finished with the town on the Texas coast, about a third of the homes in the city were either destroyed or sustained severe damage. Sustained winds of 145 miles per hour and gusts in Corpus Christi of up to 160-180 miles per hour did remarkable amounts of damage.

My parents’ house, where—as a high school student at the time—I lived, was among those destroyed by the hurricane. My mother, father, my late sister, and one of my brothers were at home when the house began to disintegrate. First, the roof of the front porch collapsed. Then, the wind tore off the central part of the roof of the house. As all of us took shelter in a hallway, the fierce winds forced the pull-down attic stairway onto us, striking my sister in the head; she was not badly injured, but all of us were badly shaken by the experience. Window glass broke and several windows flew out of their casings. Cars in the driveway sustained damage as limbs were ripped from the trunks of big mesquite trees and plunged into their rear windows.

By the time the worst of the storm’s second wind had calmed (after the eye passed over us), my parents’ home was a total loss. Mimeograph sheets (my mother was a school teacher; mimeograph sheets constituted part of her arsenal of teaching aids) left their purple scars on furniture, walls, and flooring; the wind and rain that swirled throughout the house after the roof blew off scattered debris all over the house.  I discovered, during the storm’s fury, that I was not calm in the face of danger. I panicked and screamed in fear as my father left the “safety” of the hallway to explore damage to the house even before the hurricane’s winds subsided.

When my parents thought it safe, we went searching for a place to stay for the night. We were refused entry to an elementary school, where a janitor had opened the doors to permit his family and neighbors and friends to seek shelter. We found a Methodist church open and willing to let us in. A troop of Boy Scouts, who had been camping on Padre Island when the hurricane took aim at the coast, was there before us. My mother had brought a coffee pot and coffee with her when we left the house. My memory tells me that the Scouts’ leaders initially refused to let her have water for coffee, because water might be needed later simply to drink. I do not recall whether they ever allowed her the water; I recall only that I lost all respect for the Boy Scouts organization that night.

My memory of the days after the storm is fuzzy, at best. I stayed, initially, with friends of friends, I think. My brother stayed at the ruined house for a night or two after we discovered that, in our absence, someone had stolen some of our belongings. My parents were given shelter for a few nights by neighbors down the street, people who until that time we had not known. That’s what my memory tells me. It may be deceiving me, though.  But I recall, vaguely, that people tried to take advantage of the fact that power was out for most, if not all, of the city for up to weeks after the storm. They sold water and ice for exorbitant prices until the authorities confiscated their products and gave them away). The few rooms available in hotels and motels were, I think, priced sky-high. The worst of humanity showed its face during the aftermath of the storm. But the best shown through, as well. A lot of meat from now-powerless freezers was thawed and grilled; whole neighborhoods shared in that bounty. People readily offered strangers places to stay and food to eat. But it was a mixed bag, of course. And I remember the stress I felt. The stress on my parents must have been a thousand-fold worse.

Not long after the storm, my father returned to work with a vengeance. He was a lumber wholesaler, buying lumber from sawmills and selling to lumberyards. He traveled throughout the Coastal Bend (as that part of the Texas coast was (and may still be) called, helping lumberyards stock the massive amounts of lumber products that would be needed in the rebuilding efforts. I do not know just how many flat tires his car had as he drove all through the Coastal Bend and down into the Rio Grande Valley, but I remember the number was significant; lots of debris from destroyed buildings littered the roadways. All the while, my parents had to deal with finding a place for us to live, which they did (a man who owned rental houses nearby provided a place for us not long after the storm). And they had to deal with collecting insurance on their destroyed home and contracting for building a replacement on the spot where the old house had stood. My father and brothers took the ruined old house apart, piece by piece, and sold its carcass. Then, my father served as his own contractor for the new house. I have no reliable recollection as to how long we stayed in the rental house or when the new house was finished. I may have already left for college by the time it was ready for occupancy; I just do not recall. I guess the trauma of the time effectively erased my memories of that large swath of my high-school years.

Hearing of the impending devastation that a powerful hurricane like Ida is going to wreak brings back those fractured memories of my experience with a powerful hurricane. And it makes me prepare myself to make donations to help some unfortunate people recover from an event that truly will be life-changing for them. I await news of death and destruction; of devastation so overwhelming that seasoned reporters and news anchors may be unable to control their emotions while reporting on the catastrophe. But maybe the storm will not be as bad as hurricane meteorologists predict. When murderous hurricanes like Ida threaten, I hope the expert storm prognosticators are wrong.

+++

Today, my IC and I will continue our efforts to move the remnants of her belongings to my house. The movers came yesterday. leaving my house full of furniture, some of which we simply do not know where to put. And there’s still more “stuff” to retrieve: kitchen utensils and pots and pans and baking dishes and on and on and on. Plus more clothes and shoes. And blankets and a thousand “little” things. It shall be down. But the tasks at hand will require us to miss Music on Barcelona at the church today. I sometimes loathe moving, even when the move promises to bring happiness that will grow and thrive.

Onward to face the day and construct a future.

The movers come this morning. They will extract from her house my IC’s remaining household furniture, her refrigerator, a few pieces of outdoor furnishings, and miscellaneous other odds and ends. They will truck the stuff to my house, will unload it here, and will leave us with the chore of making two households fit into one. We already have disposed of a considerable volume of furnishings, but still we have enough to fill a small castle. Enough clothes, chairs, knickknacks, tables, dressers, and assorted other evidence of wealth to spur me to wonder where need ends and want begins. My curiosity is not entirely judgmental; it simply inquires about acquisitiveness. Why do I feel the need, or the desire, to own multiple sets of sheets, for example, or enough chairs to seat all my friends and then some? What comfort do I feel by having bookshelves full of books—many I have never read—or more cooking utensils and implements than I need? Why do I see objects in stores or markets or online and say these words, or some facsimile thereof, to myself? “I want that. I will buy that.” How many pairs of shoes or how many shirts do I need or want? How many pairs of shorts that no longer fit do I need to keep in my closet, especially when I know other people who would fit into them and who need clothing are “out there” and ready to receive them?

Every time I have moved or rearranged my living space or otherwise forced myself to acknowledge the sheer volume of “stuff” I own, I wonder about need and want. Every time I attempt to make room in my closet by eliminating what I no longer (or never did) need, I ask myself those same questions, over and over. Yesterday, I touched on asceticism in my blog. I think the topic came to mind because I recognize how thoroughly I have succumbed to the allure of consumerism and how repulsive to me the lust for “more” can be. A mixture of embarrassment and shame wash over me when I seriously consider how much  crap I own and cart around with me whenever I move. My IC asked me yesterday whether I would want to pay movers to relocate some of the excess evidence of my capitalistic greed, were we to decide to move elsewhere. Well, she did not use those terms; but those terms apply. I don’t want to pay anyone for my mistakes. I just want to learn from them.

+++

Philosophy often differs sharply from practice. The paragraphs I wrote above address both, but philosophy is much easier to embrace than is the practice necessary to implement it. I may feel strongly opposed to rampant “consumerism,” but my behavior says otherwise. It’s hypocrisy in living color, in the weak flesh. Ach!

+++

Last night, we went with friends to eat at a Cajun restaurant at the far end of the Village. The food was good, if not great. The flavor of the fried oyster appetizers was good, but they had cooled far too much between cooking and serving. Étouffée, on the other hand, was hot and spicy and superbly flavorful. The white rice was a cold and gelatinous blob. The jambalaya was tasty but lukewarm. The gumbo was tasty. The bread was a pointless waste of flour. In spite of the hit-and-miss aspects of the meal itself, the evening was an enjoyable and refreshing break from moving.

Spending time with friends can recharge one’s energy and make the hit-and-miss aspects of dining out perfectly acceptable. Every restaurant has winners and losers on the menu. And every restaurant can suffer my heartless criticism, even when undeserved.

After dinner, as I thought back on the early evening dinner, it occurred to me that we could have dined on re-heated tortillas and butter and the meal still would have been just fine. I might have complained about the quality of the butter, but the meal would have been just fine. It’s always the company that matters. One way or the other, it’s the people, not the food. The proof of that statement can be found when eating alone; even at the finest restaurant, eating alone can be a torturous experience with very little joy thrown in, no matter how wonderful the dishes.

+++

Once the move is done and we’ve adjusted our environment to our “new normal,” my IC and I will take some short and not-so-short trips to see the world around us. As I contemplate those trips this morning, I cannot wait! I need to get out and away. I need new spaces and places to take my mind off of ideas that turn my thoughts into grey smudges and dull views through hazy windows.  I am ready for happy excitement! I already have that, of course; but I’m ready for happy excitement in a new place, at least periodicallly.

Refraining from all evil,
not clinging to birth and death,
working in deep compassion
for all sentient beings,
respecting those over you
and pitying those below you,
without any detesting or desiring,
worrying or lamentation —
this is what is called Buddha.
Do not search beyond it.

~ Dogen ~

That admonition is rich with wisdom and, as far as any of us know, truth. But few of us embrace the advice and take it for our own personal guidance. We search beyond acceptance and compassion, looking for something that we are sure is missing; something we cannot define. Yet I think the missing piece is the Buddha within us, buried beneath layer upon layer of the detestation and desire we’re taught to nurture almost from the moment we were born.

I am not a Buddhist. I do not believe in reincarnation, nor do I subscribe to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. But I think the teachings of Siddharta Gautama, the Buddha, hold valuable lessons for every human being, if only they would accept their fundamental application to the real world. Like many others, I know so-called Buddhists who are BNOs (Buddhists in Name Only…clever, huh?); people who pretend to subscribe to Buddhist teachings but who are, in their hearts, self-centered beasts who would not know the Buddha if he stood in front of them, glowing like kryptonite.  But if one shoves those dissemblers and charlatans aside, real “Buddhists,” whether “believers” in Buddhism or not, seem utterly calm; yet extraordinarily passionate about the possibility that humankind can achieve peace.

For years, I’ve felt an urge to explore Buddhism more deeply. Not for its “religious” aspects but as a source of serenity. Several years ago, a friend and I discussed spending a few days at an ashram in East Texas, with the objectives of cleansing our minds of the clutter of day-to-day life and replacing that confusion with serenity and order. I found it amusing that the reason we never pursued it beyond discussion was the fact that she was perpetually too busy. I could have gone alone, but at the time I was nervous about exposing my uneducated self to the already-initiated…without some sort of mental and emotional support. In other words, I was embarrassed by my own ignorance. Instead of doing something about replacing that ignorance with knowledge, I have spent the intervening years since she and I discussed it just “wishing” I had done something about it. Madness on steroids. That, I think, is one of the things Buddhism can help one address. Or maybe not. I don’t have the experience to say; yet I say it anyway. I recognize my lack of wisdom, but I feed it with nutrients comprised of ignorance. Empty calories, in a sense, but they make me feel and look full like a balloon.

It would surprise everyone but myself if one day I simply abandoned the life I’ve lived for the past 67 years in favor of immersion in a Buddhists educational experience designed to enable the participant to follow the Eightfold Path. Just writing that over-long sentence was frightening. Could I ever just walk away from it all? Just relinquish all my material possessions—at least for a year or two—in favor of the life of an ascetic. Asceticism, I think, opens one up to seeing reality more clearly and understanding it more completely. God, I’m writing as if I’m a mystic. I’m not. And I find mysticism more than a little irritating. I am so bloody mixed up. Like a Bloody Mary and a Screwdriver poured into a food processor, along with cake mix and pico de gallo.

I’ve written enough. I’m getting more and more distant from the Buddha that Dogen described.