John Swinburn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ~

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.

~ Joseph Roux ~

+++

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

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

+++

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

~ Khalil Gibran ~

+++

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

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

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

+++

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

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

+++

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

~ Marlene Dietrich ~

May I always be that kind of friend.

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

~ Mahatma Gandhi ~

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

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

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

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

+++

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

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

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

+++

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

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

+++

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+++

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

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Blaise Pascal ~

+++

More Latin phrases, courtesy of one of my brothers:

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

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

+++

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

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

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

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

+++

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

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

~ Blaise Pascal ~

“Always think, and question everything.”

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

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

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

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

+++

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

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

+++

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

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

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

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

~ Sufyan al-Thawri ~

+++

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

+++

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

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

~ Confucius ~

+++

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

+++

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

+++

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

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

+++

My family had pets when I was a child, but like many children, I probably was not especially observant, so it is likely I missed some of the creatures’ attributes and characteristics. Even if I observed them, I have long since forgotten them.

As an adult, I’ve heard many stories about animals’ incredibly sensitivity to the weather. For example, I have been told that dogs and cats can sense impending changes in the weather long before the changes are apparent to humans. Frankly, I’ve dismissed most such claims as the equivalent to belief in magic; all “woo-woo” and no substance…until a few months ago.

My IC’s dog is quite obviously and intensely attuned to the weather. He reacts with obvious when he senses impending thunderstorms, pacing around the house, a favorite toy clutched in his teeth. Even when the weather changes are not severe—just passing rain showers, for example—his behavior changes radically. In place of a puppy-like, playful dog, he becomes agitated and anxious. His movements become slower and more deliberate, like an old man whose arthritis plagues him with pain. In the roughly six months he has spent in my house, I have observed this weather-related behavior many, many times; there’s no question the dog is responding to his acutely tune sense of weather. Whether his reactions are caused by changes in barometric pressure or some other weather-related phenomena I don’t know. But, clearly, the animal is more sensitive to weather than I. Contrary to some people, I do not claim to be able to forecast the weather by paying attention to how creaky or painful my elbows feel. But I would place bets on correctly predicting changes in the weather by observing that dog.

+++

Grief I’ve learned is just love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.

~ Jamie Anderson ~

+++

I skimmed an article this morning that claims Pat Metheny publicly dismissed Kenny G as, essentially, a talent-less hack undeserving of respect or appreciation. Assuming the assertion is true, I have lost all respect for Pat Metheny. I am not particularly enamored with Kenny G, but I certainly respect his talents as a saxophonist. His popularity attests to the fact that a large number of others also respect his talents. And they appreciate him with their decisions to listen to and pay for his music. For Pat Metheny, a fellow musician, to berate another musical talent is crude and classless. While I’m generally not in favor of allowing personal attributes or political positions to interfere with my appreciation of artists, Metheny’s disrespect of a fellow musician pushes the limits. Though I found Kevin Spacey’s behavior off-set abysmal and unacceptable, that did not diminish my appreciation for his contributions as an actor in House of Cards. But Metheny’s inconsideration and his decision to slam another artist pisses me off enough to make me want to switch to another musician in the event his music reaches my ears.

+++

My IC and I spent part of yesterday afternoon putting up Christmas decorations, something I have not done in years. The year before my wife died, she bought a Christmas tree—the fake kind that lasts forever—and put it up, but I had little to do with that endeavor. I guess the magic of Christmas had faded for me over the years, but I did appreciate her efforts a couple of years ago. Yesterday, as my IC and I put baubles on the tree and placed ornaments around and about, the sparkle of the holidays seemed to emerge. My IC bought a lighted wreath that we put up on the mantle and she bought lots and lots of big shiny spheres that we used to adorn the living room. The day before, she put up her little tree and decorated it with pink and silver ornaments. I enjoy seeing and feeling the festive atmosphere. I enjoy listening to the Christmas music she urges “Alexis” to play for us. I think acknowledging and embracing the holiday’s spirit of joy is helping me get through the very tough impending first anniversary of my wife’s death. I hope my appreciation for that shows.

+++

This morning, the term “blue hydrogen” came to my attention. I do not completely understand it, but I think it has the potential to change the future of the automotive industry, along with many other industries. But, first, some serious problems with the processes involved in splitting natural gas into hydrogen and CO₂. And, like all petrochemical-based “solutions” to energy and the environment, it would be a temporary fix, albeit a long-term temporary fix, perhaps. If I could look two hundred years into the future, I might have a better idea of whether humanity will have found any solutions to the problems facing it. But I cannot see into the future; I can only imagine it and write about my mind’s eye experience. And there will be more of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+++

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

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

+++

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

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

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

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

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

+++

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

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.

~ Bill Moyers ~

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

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

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

+++

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time will tell.

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

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

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

Antidotes to Fear of Death
by Rebecca Elson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+++

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

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

~ Thomas Jefferson ~

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

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

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

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

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

+++

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

+++

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

+++

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

~ Anonymous ~

Oh, how very, very true.

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

+++

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

+++

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

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness.

~ Goythe ~

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

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

+++

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

+++

And, now, onward through the day.

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

Here are some of the headlines I encountered:

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

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

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

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

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

+++

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+++

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

~ Joan Didion

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

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