John Swinburn

I have mixed feelings about inspirational speakers, motivational posters, and other forms of paid encouragement and fee-based reassurance. Saying “mixed feelings” is more polite than using the phrase, “deep, abiding skepticism.” Sometimes, though, I have to admit to myself that my bias against feel good advice is misplaced. My prejudice against what too often seems (to me) fraudulent power of positive thinking gibberish can get in the way of allowing positivity to impact events and circumstances.

I do not subscribe to the idea that obstacles are purposely placed in our way to guide us around them to find greater happiness along another path. However, I believe one’s response when confronting obstacles and agonizing over difficult decisions shapes outcomes. I watched a motivational video this morning, at Facebook’s insistence, that presented an utterly unrealistic set of circumstances in which a woman returned to her “calling” after a her promising career was cut short by downsizing. Though the set-up was obviously manufactured, it caused me to think about my own experiences. Thinking about them made me remember how important it is to view obstacles and negative challenges as simply unpleasant opportunities to find alternate paths.

Attitude is enormously important to one’s ability to cope with pressure. I know first hand how easy it is to become dejected and to believe that hopefulness is sheer folly. That attitude feeds its own self-fulfilling prophecy. While it is hard not to feel wounded and angry and anxious, adopting an attitude of insistent determination that one will survive and get beyond the problem is crucial to overcoming the assault on one’s mental well-being. That having been said, I do not possess a magic formula for successfully adopting an attitude of insistent determination. It may be that one has to recognize the importance of that attitude, even without having the mental capacity to adopt it, so that when a window of capacity opens, one is able to leap through it.

My recollections of serious challenges—job loss, potentially deadly illnesses, financial setbacks, etc.—remind me that, in every case, once I finally recognized it was up to me to act aggressively to overcome the obstacles before me, I was able to make headway. Even though I could not force someone to hire me, I could not cure my illness or my wife’s, and could not manufacture money or snatch it out of an empty box, I could direct my energies toward finding resources that could help solve the immediate problem. There was no assurance, of course, that the problems would suddenly vanish. And they never did, at least not suddenly and not without the expenditure of significant energy and mental reserves. The ultimate outcomes were not always what I hoped, but they always were better than they would have been had I simply given up and shriveled into a corner to waste away.

So, positive thinking can be an effective tool. But like an electric drill without a power source, it is useless without the mindset and the action necessary to put it to work. I am writing this post as an admonition to myself to get my butt in gear. Putting on a happy face is insufficient. Take assertive, aggressive action. The fight is in me.

In reading back on what I’ve written, it’s as if it was written in code intended only for someone who is privy to the translation keys for the code book. My apologies. I know the code and I know where the book is hidden. The only question is whether I will follow my own advice.

A nearby neighbor died night before last, ending a painful vigil for his family and ushering in a new reality for them. Transitions of such magnitude can leave loved ones awash in grief, even when the inevitable end is expected and, in some sense, is a welcome relief. I suspect that the relief comes with painful guilt, though that relief arises from the fact his suffering is over. I do not know they feel relief; experience, though, tells me the emotion is a likely accompaniment to his death. Even so, the guilt probably will never fully recede; it will remain, always causing them to wonder how one can feel relief in such painful circumstances. There is no salve to deaden the pain of that guilt; time is the closest thing to an anesthetic.

+++

Emotional pain is perhaps the most agonizing kind. It isn’t limited to a specific place on the body, a place centered on an illness or injury. Instead, it permeates every cell. It fills the chest full to the point it might explode. It inhabits every square millimetre of one’s head, replacing thought with immeasurable anguish. Time is only a slow-acting analgesic. Crying, unleashed from behind an emotional dam, can relieve some of the pressure. But when a solid emotional dam breaks, it can release a torrent of terrorizing sobs and tears so fierce almost everyone in its path sprints away, seeking safety from the flood. There’s a reason we tend to call such a stunning, unexpected emotional event by a descriptive name: emotional outburst. Emotional outbursts, especially those involving unstoppable tears and sobs that arise from deep within, can frighten people away. That’s why we try to stifle them. Even steadfast friends scatter in frantic attempts to save themselves from drowning when the dam breaks. Subsequently, the dam’s engineer and builder is judged weak and inadequate. It is a bit like finally crawling to shore, only to be crushed by a broken slab of the shattered barrier.

+++

A single pill that would deliver instant serenity. A pill that instantly soothes the tense muscles in one’s neck and shoulders and jaws. A tablet that, the moment it is swallowed, drains cares away. A capsule that transforms anxiety into peaceful contentment. That’s all I want. Even if several pills were required to alleviate all the symptoms, I would take them. And I would offer them to anyone else who would benefit from the magic of the medications. I know a few people who need those pills. I do. My wife does. And there are others. Even if their effects were short-lived, the respite they provide might be enough to let one’s normal defenses take over.

+++

I hear the sound of paper being torn. No, that the sound of a tear in the fabric of my thoughts.  It’s like my thoughts are being run through a paper shredder, but the blades of the shredder are dull. Instead of slicing my thoughts into cross-cut squares, the blades are tearing them into irregular strips. This cannot go on. I can make no sense of these misshapen fragments.

I have been in Japan twice; once when I changed planes at the Tokyo Narita Airport on the way to a conference in Beijing and once when I spent a night at the Hilton Tokyo Narita Airport on the way back home from China. That is to say, I’ve never really been “in” Japan. Fifteen hours, I think, is a good estimate of the time I spent there. But that was enough to spark an increase in my interest in Japanese culture.

Food being one of the chief motivators in my life, it was not unexpected that I would have invested some of my brief time there in trying a Japanese meal. Due to timing, dinner and breakfast were the only meals I ate at the Hilton. Strangely, I recall only that I chose a “typical” Japanese meal for dinner, though I recall nothing more about it. The next morning, I opted for a Japanese breakfast (which I’ve since attempted to replicate in my own kitchen) consisting of rice, a slice of broiled salmon, miso soup, and cucumber. I don’t recall precisely what was used to add color to the meal, but I have a vague recollection of splashes of bright green and red and yellow on the plates. The other interest in which I became modestly invested was the terminology used to describe political subdivisions. In particular, I was struck by the use of the term “prefecture” to describe what I equate with states or counties.

It saddens me to think speakers of the English language chose to use the word “county” to describe geographical administrative or political subdivisions. Examine the etymology of “county” and there’s an unmistakable linkage with the privilege and power of nobility over the common folk. Today’s county judge is a vestige of the lineage of nobility, similar to a viscount of days of old. The roots of privilege run deep through rotting soil. Most U.S. states use the term “county” to describe the inferior geographic subdivisions covering multiple municipalities and rural territories. Louisiana is an exception, opting to call those entities “parishes.” The Christian religious linkage in the use of that term is obvious; it, too, has roots in a power structure, though the power structure in “parish” relates to the church, rather than nobility. The roots of both terms are far more complex than I suggest here; I’m abbreviating hundreds, if not thousands, of years of history for the sake of sparing my fingers from arthritic paralysis.

“Prefect,” though also rooted in terminology referring to hierarchical structures, seems to me to be more representative of commoners. It has links to civilian or military administrative rankings of authority. Interestingly, in England the term is used to refer to senior pupils recruited to help maintain order in the school. I like “prefect.” And I like “prefecture.” If I could wield unchecked authority for a single day, I would decree that the use of “county” and “county judge” would be replaced by “prefecture” and “prefect,” respectively. (I recognize the irony in that decree; just move on.)

I recognize, of course, that large swaths of the U.S. population (less than 50%, but extremely loud and absolutely certain of their rectitude) would be up in arms about such a decree, claiming the language would lead us on the road to Asian authoritarianism, mask mandates, and tea houses replacing Starbucks. They would insist that the decree was a precursor to orders replacing the traditional American dishes of meatballs, tacos, and pizza with sushi, tempura, and yakitori. Eventually, they would get over it. I hope.

Were I in the business of serving as county judge, I would welcome a change in language; being called “prefect” would elevate my status, changing my image from local lackey to important manager. Referring to the territory under my control as prefect as a “prefecture” would spur the population to take greater care of the land. People would voluntarily clean up litter, tidy up cluttered yards, paint tired old buildings, trim trees, plant seedlings, embrace gardening with a passion, and otherwise take enormous pride in the people’s collective responsibilities. Littering and tagging with graffiti would stop. Crime would decline precipitously, requiring police chiefs to redeploy officers in community service as opposed to law enforcement roles. Members of gangs would reexamine their lives and would decide to redirect their energies toward worthwhile causes such as AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps. Top levels of the U.S. government would respond to the changes at the prefecture level with a sharp reduction in belligerence domestically and internationally. In short, the world would become a more peaceful, more pleasant, and more compassionate place. We all would be happier, healthier and more comfortable in our own skins. Decency would reign supreme.

All this, with a seemingly pointless linguistic adjustment. Words matter. Punctuation matters. As I noted yesterday, the switch in a single letter in a word can mean the difference between paying your bills and being dissected (autopsy versus autopay). You’ve probably seen the admonition, reminding us that punctuation matters:

“Let’s eat Gramma,” versus “Let’s eat, Gramma.”

Predictions about a new face of human society—if this pandemic ever ends—include hopeful prophecies that humankind will have learned a lesson about the significance of community. We will have learned, according to those wishful forecasts, to value time with one another more deeply and to place greater worth on relationships than on things. Would that it were so. I am not so optimistic. I have no doubt that many among us will fully embrace those lessons, but I fear many, if not most, will not. Already, I see evidence all around that suggests greed is in full bloom, even in the wake of monstrous human catastrophe. This is not new evidence; it’s just ongoing confirmation of a characteristic trait of an enormous wave of ego-driven people, a wave that continues to threaten to founder the ship of humanity, drowning civilization under the crushing weight of greed and insistent egocentricity.

While a significant minority of human beings are fundamentally good, caring, decent people whose empathy and compassion and selfless caring are beyond reproach, their numbers are insufficient to assure their attributes survive.  Many others, who are not innately moral creatures, have been molded and shaped by the finer elements of society, repressing their natural tendency toward greed and self-serving behavior at the expense of others. There have been times, I think, when religion successfully thwarted selfishness in those large, innately selfish, segments of society.

Those times are gone, though. Most religion today acts as an accomplice in camouflage, pretending to celebrate the ethic of reciprocity while surreptitiously enabling and encouraging exclusionary greed and selective judgment. Prosperity theology, an increasingly embraced apology and justification for economic inequality, is among the latest religious arguments that attempt to legitimize greed.

Few things would please me more than for my bleak assessment of the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic to be proven absolutely wrong.  I would love to see evidence of a resurgence of generosity, compassion, empathy, and kindness at the same time I witnessed a decline in selfishness and greed. For that to happen, though, a large-scale commitment to change hearts and minds would be necessary. Skepticism, like mine, would have to relax into hope. Wishes would have to transform into productive actions. A deep appreciation of community would have to replace the artificial happiness triggered by rampant consumption and selfish greed.  We collectively would need to recognize money for what it is, a transactional mechanism for assigning value to “things,” not life.

I do wish my mornings would begin in bursts of happiness, rather than muffled explosions of dread and disgust.

I was up before 4 again, thanks to a gut tied in knots and performing back flips. An hour later, I thought it all had been resolved, but as I sat at my desk, attempting to think coherent thoughts that might make sense on the computer screen, the knots tightened again and offered an encore of flips. I opted to avoid coffee this morning, choosing a big glass of cold water instead. That choice does not seem to have helped much. Cold water had no impact on the beads of sweat on my forehead. I climbed back in bed around 6:30 and stayed there, between off and on trips to the room next door, until about 9:40. I don’t think I’ve been in bed as late as 9:40 since my run-in with lung cancer. Shortly after rising, a friend who hosted a gathering a few nights ago delivered two cans of H.E.B. Boracho Beans, following up on a conversation we had that night about how much I like boracho beans. I may delay opening those cans until my gut’s back flip performance comes to an end. With that as an introduction, I will write whatever flows from my fingers; I suspect it will be short.

+++

Our brains fracture reality, subsequently piecing it back together in ways that blur the distinctions between experience and memory. Our recall is dependably erroneous, as if our minds consistently lie to us about who and where and why we are. But our minds are not telling us lies, not really. They are simply expressing our reality refracted through contextual prisms. I know, that sounds like distraction through verbal pretension; but it’s not. I think it’s the best way to describe how we often misinterpret our experiences, based on the filters and biases through which we see and experience events. If my filters interpret certain words or attitudes or responses as “conservative,” I classify an experience that includes those words or attitudes or responses as conservatively biased. Dispassionately “watching” ourselves go through an experience is, in my view, basically impossible. We frame the experience according to contextual cues. Before we even receive enough information to make an informed assessment, our minds have begun shaping our interpretation of the experience. We think we can be unbiased, nonjudgmental, and receptive to untainted reality; I doubt that. We may want to be able to be that android, but flesh and blood and tissue and cerebral interference refuse to allow it.

That is not to say we’re incapable of experiencing reality as it really is, it’s just a rarity. We learn so much and absorb such a vast amount of information that all the knowledge and processing of facts colors our view through that prism. When I realized Mrs Stephenson, my third grade teacher, had a glass eye, the experience taught me to always peer intently into the eyes of people I meet, checking to see whether one of the eyes is artificial. Once I satisfy myself that an eye either is or is not artificial, I continue about the business of deciding what this person is all about. That simple realization, as a kid, has altered my way of looking at, and interpreting, the world ever since. In the end, it makes no difference to me whether an eye is glass or vitreous jelly. But it does matter, doesn’t it? Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my brain, it makes a difference I cannot identify. If it did not, I would not notice it.

Ultimately, context makes us who we are. That answers a question I’ve asked myself for my entire life. Now that I have the answer, I wonder whether I’ll keep asking the question, thinking there must be some other, more appealing, answer.

There are no miracles. Sometimes, harsh realities scrape away the soft cosmetic maquillage of one’s life, revealing irreparable damage to sinews, feeble muscles, and brittle bones. Beneath artificial calm at the surface, turbid undercurrents claw at what’s left of an emotionally-drained skeleton, leaving a weakening, fragile structure incapable of withstanding the weight of heartache. The pressure of facing a dispassionate, unyielding universe bent on reducing everything to atoms is too much. The universe never loses the inevitable battle. Miracles do not emerge from the carnage.

+++

Time spent alone, essentially in solitary confinement, shackled to an imaginary master, can steal confidence, hope, and love. That time of abandonment replaces value and meaning and desire and joy with emptiness and rancor. Rage and distrust grows like mushrooms fueled by heat and moisture. Emptiness, once it takes hold, does not yield. Nothing can fill that hermetically sealed void, protected against intrusion by hardened steel walls.

+++

Darkness can fill a brightly-lit room. It can drench a desert without a single drop of rain. It can make the sun as dim as a new moon behind a shroud of thick black smoke. Darkness is suffocation and drowning and strangulation combined into a murderous cloud; it consumes air, converting oxygen to sarin gas.

+++

Hopelessness can feel like bullets piercing tenderness. Maybe they are not bullets. Instead, they could be pieces of shrapnel erupting from a suddenly shattered heart; the universe, turned into a transport vehicle for an explosive emotion designed to do maximum damage.

+++

The tether that binds us to each other and to life itself is gossamer thin. It sometimes seems to be made of steel; other times, it is as fragile as a single cotton fiber, severed just as easily by force as by fire.

+++

I prefer to think of smiles between human strangers as natural expressions of friendliness; automatic, nonthreatening responses to the presence of another human being. Wedged in there between amiable welcoming and symbolism of upturned corners of the mouth  suggesting the absence of threats, the smile is a visual sign of at least a touch of joy. That’s what I like to think.

A twenty-one-year-old article from Scientific American, though, offers a slightly less gushing assessment, based on both observation and research. Frank T. McAndrew, professor of psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., who was quoted in that article (How Did the “Smile” Become a Friendly Gesture in Humans?), has done extensive research on facial expressions. He observed that:

In a lot of human smiling, it is something you do in public, but it does not reflect true ‘friendly’ feelings–think of politicians smiling for photographers…What is especially interesting is that you do not have to learn to do any of this–it is preprogrammed behavior. Kids who are born blind never see anybody smile, but they show the same kinds of smiles under the same situations as sighted people.

I liked what McAndrews had to say, so I checked his credentials. He is still a professor at Knox College. He is known for his work in evolutionary psychology and has been cited in the literature 2995 times (the most recent count I could find; with this blog post, perhaps the number jumps to 2996).

My interest in smiles this morning arose unexpectedly and without any trigger that I can discern. Perhaps I wondered to myself how, in the ugly face of a poisonous president and a deadly pandemic, we find it within ourselves to continue to smile every day. The reason for my interest notwithstanding, I found myself intrigued by the very idea of smiles. So, I did what I always do when a question about which I have opinions but few facts arises: I did some superficial research that only barely touches the surface of what’s “out there” for me to learn. I won’t go into the gritty details of what I found, but suffice it to say the research into both smiles and their surly cousins, snarls, is extensive; almost overwhelming. Some of what I read suggested to me (that is, my mind interpreted what I read to mean) that smiles could be in a close race with snarls for the most common human expression. Nothing said so, explicitly, but some of the articles I skimmed (very superficially, I stress) made me wonder whether stressful news and even more stressful experiences may be erasing the emotions that prompt us to smile? That’s an enormously depressing thought, one that all by itself can wipe the smile from my face. Again, though, it’s my interpretation of language that may well have been intended to be read in a completely different way. Superficial research often yields superficial (and utterly unreliable) answers.

I admit I got a bit bogged down by McAndrews’ work. He remains active, it seems, and has published extensively in his field. Interestingly (and suspiciously, in my book), much of his published work can be found in popular magazines, newspapers, television, and radio like Psychology Today, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, BBC, NPR, PBS, the Today Show, etc., etc. It’s probably an indefensible bias, but my trust of the depth of knowledge and quality of research of academicians tends to slide when I learn their academic exposure include extensive mass media outlets. So, McAndrews may be as reliable as my superficial research; but, at least, he’s a professional with credentials far beyond mine, so I’ll stick with him for the moment. To do otherwise would suggest I think my superficial interest has greater core value than does his substantially more expansive knowledge.

But I’ve drifted away from smiles and snarls, haven’t I? Let me close this trivial diversion by saying I hope I find occasion to smile a lot today and I hope I encounter others who smile a great deal. Smiles, whether our own or those of others, tend to elevate our moods and make us happier beings. Smiling tends to bring joy, however brief and however modest, to those around us. Therefore, I advocate that, at least for today and preferably for a lifetime, we endeavor to smile as genuinely and as much as we possibly can. And leave the snarls in sealed cardboard boxes.

Economists (and most of the rest of us) have long since dismissed as utopian rubbish the concept that societies could eliminate money, thereby eliminating the “evil” that grows from the roots of the awful stuff. Yet ideas continue to bubble up; why not eliminate money? I’ll admit to occasionally engaging in such delusional fancies. “Why don’t people just become utterly altruistic? If we would simply become morally better, we would not need money.” I used the word rubbish in the first sentence. Let me use it again. Rubbish!

Money is simply an abstract symbol (that can be in the form of paper currency, coins, beads, pieces of bamboo, or what have you) that represents stored value. That value can be used as a means of exchange (I will give you three pieces of bamboo if you will give me a slice of cantaloupe…and you can then exchange that bamboo for two glasses of orange juice). The “money” also can be used to represent a unit of account in exchange relationships (I will give you ninety pieces of bamboo; in return, I will expect to be able to get thirty slices of cantaloupe or sixty glasses of orange juice or forty-five purple onions).  Without money, I think we would have an incredibly hard time agreeing on and reconciling value. Value, not values. Values belong primarily in a different discussion, though they have a place in the discussion of money, as well.

Another argument in favor of money as an agreed abstract symbol representing value involves funding government. How would government function without the ability to levy taxes, in the form of money, to fund its services to the governed? I doubt the tax collector would be able to accept, in payment for services rendered, cows, sheep, bales of hay, boxes of turnips, tubs of milk, or promises that the recipient will paint government offices or keep the plumbing in government offices in working order.

Money is a convenient means by which we collectively agree to assign value to items of exchange. Without it, the barter economy (a perfectly legitimate means of exchange, in my view) would grow into an unworkable, chaotic mess. So, let me be clear: I understand and subscribe to the concept that money is a necessary abstraction. Every human society, to my knowledge, has some form of money; some more sophisticated than others, perhaps, but, still, they use money.

My appreciation for the need for money, though, does not necessarily translate into my endorsement of the way money has morphed into a symbol beyond economic value; I loathe the fact (and it is a fact) that money has been allowed to take on an almost magical aura within which it defines human value, human rights, and the power structures of human relationships. I think we humans need to consider whether we can harness the runaway beast and return it to its comfortable cage, where it can continue to live a long, abstractly satisfying eternity. The question is, how do we do that? I do not have an answer, but I suspect a workable answer could be found if: 1) we acknowledge that we have allowed money to take on far more value than the vast majority of us ever intended; 2) we commit to investing intellectual capital, worldwide, to discovering ways of putting the genie back in the bottle; and 3) we refuse to accept assertions that money has any business being involved in defining or marketing human value, human rights, or the power structures of human relationships.

In my opinion, money should be a simple abstraction, not a maddeningly convoluted multi-dimensional hologram bathed in layer upon layer of logarithmic complexity.  Entire industries have been created to extract monetary value from emptiness and invisible phantoms, thereby corrupting the concepts upon which money is based: derivatives, mortgage schemes (in which interest is presented in different ways, as if the mortgage holder sees the world through a special prism visible only to him), risk (as if risk, as a concept grounded on nothing but fear, has intrinsic value), etc., etc. To get back to the core functions of money (which are not to enrich manipulative bastards whose lifetime goals are to leave destitute as many people as humanly possible), the extremely complex financial schemes which have a history of crashing economies and ruining lives should be permanently dismantled and banned. Any efforts to resurrect them should be deemed criminal (I would go so far as to call such actions attempted capital murder) and the perpetrators, upon findings of guilt, should be swept into dungeons and forgotten. But I’m getting the cart before the horse. First, we must define legitimacy in the monetary sphere. Then, we must establish mechanisms to ensure that only legitimate monetary transactions (and processes) can take place. Only then should we track down and punish the culprits who wreck lives, replace freedoms with economic slavery, and consume, consume, consume!

So, that’s what is on my mind this morning. My mind may change. It often does.

Pouring my thoughts onto a receptive white screen almost every morning for fifteen years or so tends to capture themes I may have missed in the hubbub of daily existence. Reading what I have written, though, reveals those themes. Sometimes they are clear, like flawless glass. Sometimes, they are concealed beneath a smoky translucent film, a camouflage unwittingly designed to hide the frame of mind that led me to write the words. Either way, though, the themes emerge from the flood of words, over and over again, as if—drowning in murky language—they were trying to save themselves and the writer from sinking into impenetrable silence.

That may be overdramatizing, but not by much. Truly, often without even realizing it, my writing, both fiction and nonfiction, translates my state of mind into words and sentences and paragraphs. And those assemblies, collectively, capture distinct themes. And those themes describe the way I think, the way I see the world, and the way I see myself interacting with the world. I attempt to exercise some degree of control over it, but my writing suggests I feel like I am walking into a heavy headwind with occasional brutal crosscurrents. That does not mean “poor, pitiful me.” It simply means I recognize my attempts at control are essentially futile. The world I face is too complex and powerful and its inertia too immense to be shaped and molded by me. And I am not alone. Most of us recognize how insignificant and feeble we are in this immeasurably enormous universe. Yet we keep on trying, half expecting a magical transformation to take place in us, imbuing us with the ability to cause spectacular, positive change. That is to say, we’re all delusional. I know I am.

My themes are riddled with disillusionment and hope; grey dreariness and sparkling optimism. Fear and loneliness. A thirst for love in spite of an unlovable core. Goodness buried within a shell permeated with foulness. Perhaps no theme is as obvious in my writing as the theme of not knowing whether there is a “me” in there or whether I am an apparition created entirely by my context. A writer friend claims I attempt to create characters who are “good people who do bad things.” She says people who are good at their core simply do not do bad things, so my attempts to create such characters are doomed to fail because I attempt to create that which does not exist. I disagree, of course. But, then, I wonder whether our definitions of goodness and badness operate on two different levels; the superficial and the intrinsic. That gets at another theme common in my writing. And the idea of superficiality is important, too. My themes, even after all the years of writing (since I was a kid), are touched on briefly, but never sufficiently explored to yield any significant insights. Which gets to another theme: my interests and thoughts are wide and varied, but shallow and short-lived.

I do not need to re-read what I’ve written to know that many of the themes that find their way into my writing argue against themselves. Ideas about people, for example, that offer either inspiration or depression; bubbling enthusiasm versus crushing pessimism. My emotional themes almost always incorporate those opposites, as if I feel compelled to tell both sides of every story, whether the focus is positive or negative. In that sense, I tend to write as if I were a battery; one positive and one negative terminal.

I am going through this exercise of self-examination—again—with the idea that I might be better equipped to compile some of my writing into theme-based collections that could stand alone or as part of an aggregation of related writing. But I probably won’t finish the exercise. I never do. That’s a theme, too, both in my writing and my life.

+++

Another bizarre dream. I dreamed I was in a car that an older woman friend was driving. She somehow fell forward onto the very long floorboard as the car headed down a hill. I was able to slip past her and put my foot on the brake pedal, bringing the car to a stop. From there, three of us (the driver, someone in the back seat, and I) got out of the car and walked into an elaborate web of tunnels that stretched for miles. The tunnels were packed on both sides with businesses, most festooned with colorful banners, streamers, and cloth. The driver was trying to find a bank called the Tulsa Bank and Trust, which she said had a window where tickets to a Las Vegas show could be purchased. After a long walk through the tunnels, she stopped at a hotel registration desk to inquire as to whether this bank was located. The desk clerk told her it was unlikely the bank would have Las Vegas show tickets. Suddenly, I noticed the woman was gone; the clerk did not know which direction she took. So the other passenger (a man I do not know) and I attempted to make our way back to the tunnel entrance but we took a wrong turn someplace and found ourselves walking along a raised concrete walkway next to a body of water. When the walkway ended, the other guy jumped into the water at a point where a group of teenagers (but looking surly and closer to drinking age than youthful) were playing. I followed him. As we rounded a bend and found a place to climb out of the water, he said he was afraid of the teenagers; he had called the police, he said, and alerted the property owners. I was afraid and confused and felt like we had no hope of ever finding our way out. The dream ended about that point. Crappy way to end a dream, in my opinion.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about fantasy. As I sit here this morning, drinking my rapidly-cooling coffee, the topic remains on my mind, if in a slightly different context. I think, perhaps, I should have pursued a career in psychology, given my attraction to the mysteries of the human mind. But such an assessment inevitably leads to regrets. I do not need any more of those at this moment. So I’ll try to avoid thinking of myself in terms of “what might have been.” That frame of mind is too bleak. I’ll try to think, instead, that my vivid fantasy life is an indicator of my brain’s youthful flexibility and still-active potential.

But let’s be realistic. Some fantasies are impossible. For example, my fantasy about being a middle-aged Scandinavian. No matter how badly I want to be a 43-year-old Dane or a 51-year-old Norwegian, it’s not going to happen. It’s simply impossible. So why even entertain such unattainable fantasies? Why bother dreaming of attaining the unreachable? I suppose it’s a means of escape from life that sometimes feels like it’s taking place inside a cage with hardened steel bars sealed behind platinum locks. Escapism, pure and simple. Maybe that’s what I need from time to time. Or always.

But some fantasies are not outlandish and impossible. Recently, I read an article that suggested realistic fantasies sometimes serve as motivational triggers and actionable propellants. They establish goals with clearly definable interim checkpoints. People who indulge fantasies as cues or realistic aspirations worthy of expending efforts to achieve them have a much better chance of reaching those goals than do people who simply daydream about them. That is, people whose fantasies spur them to incremental actions tend to reach those goals, whereas people who fail to use the fantasies as motivators tend not to. The theory sounds reasonable. I don’t recall, though, whether it was based on research or simply on “common sense.”

My writing tends to incorporate, whether explicitly or through tangential reference, my fantasies. As my sixty-seventh birthday looms just over a month and a half away, I wonder whether old men (and women) who dream of different variations of their futures (that is, people who indulge in fantasy) are deluding themselves.  Achievement of fantasies one embraces in youth and middle age, I would think, tends to have a better chance of occurring than the wishes and dreams that emerge later in life. No matter how youthful I think my brain might be, the body surrounding it is in an accelerating state of decay; that’s true for most of us after we reach our youthful prime.

Somewhere along the line, though, I’m sure I’ve heard and/or read an adage that says something to the effect that “you’re never too old to dream.” I suppose that’s true, though at some point dreaming or fantasies become magical thinking, completely untethered to reality. Would it be good to know precisely when that severance takes place? Or would that knowledge have an ugly impact on one’s sense of well-being…one’s sense of purpose?

I’m afraid many, if not most, people in my sphere would think fantasies/dreams/wishes/ aspirations/etc. at my stage of life are wastes of mental energy—exercises in futility that serve no useful purpose. “Responsible adults do not engage in nonsensical fantasy,” I imagine hearing some of them say. “Who says I’m a responsible adult?” I might reply. My response would vary, depending on context: my mood, the state of affairs in my immediate realm, etc., etc., etc. Whether attainable or not, though, fantasies can provide relief from the burdens of day-to-day life. Escape. Temporary freedom from the realities of a planet whose occupants, more often than not, appear to have gone mad and intent on suicide or, if I might coin a term, humanicide. [As an aside, sometimes I think neologisms emerge from need. With a hat tip to Woody Allen, I am not entirely opposed to humanicide, but I do not think I want to be present when it takes place.]

Seriously, I frequently wonder about fantasy and whether my active fantasy life is evidence of my insanity or simply an outgrowth of writing fiction. I might turn that around, though, and say my fiction is simply a symptom of my insanity. Writing about the questions, I suppose, is as much escapism as is the creation in my mind of communities of like-minded people who love one another, live to serve, and treat the natural world with the respect and dignity it deserves. I’ll have to write more about those communities; my ideas about urban and rural pockets that represent the “salvation” of humanity.

The thunder and lightning outside suggest I should turn off and unplug my computer, lest it be fried like the recent experience with my phone system, television, and DVD player!

I may risk electrocution later this morning. I’ve had a ceiling fan speed control switch sitting on my desk for months, its installation waiting for my rage to subside from the last time I installed one just like it for another fan. When I installed the last one, a project that should have taken 15 minutes, I took about two hours, thanks to the fact that the junction box into which the body of the control had to fit was filled with inflexible wires. In spite of the many obstacles to its installation, I got the last one in. But I had help; I was able to rely on my wife to tell me whether the power was off when I flipped breakers in the garage. This time, I have no one to assist. It will just take longer to ensure that I’ve cut the power. But the longer it takes, the less patient I become. The last installation, for example, was completed two hours in, but only after I managed to put the switch in upside down. Yet it works. It remains upside down. Perhaps I should correct that mistake before making another one.

Whatever. I may not work on either of them today. Perhaps, instead, I’ll spend my morning making and consuming a Bloody Mary or six, thus deadening my rage t fan speed control switches. Not likely; I think I need to conserve celery to make tuna salad. A Bloody Mary is not a Bloody Mary in the absence of a celery stalk poking out of the glass. And drinking alone, in the morning, is a bad sign. “A bad sign.” If I recall correctly, “Born Under a Bad Sign” was a track off an album called Strange Brew by Cream/Eric Clapton. After a pause to explore whether my memory was working, I’m back to report that I was right about the tune, but it was written by Booker T. Jones and was also recorded by blues artist Albert King. I don’t know who recorded it first.

I just noticed I switched from ceiling fan speed control to early morning alcohol consumption to celery to competing tracks of what has become a blues classic. And it’s not even 7:00 a.m. yet.

+++

My interest in the companionship of a dog has surfaced again, as it does from time to time. Except I recognize it, now, as a temporary state of mental exhaustion that will subside when I realize the extent of the obligation and the costs of veterinary care, food, and such. Maybe fostering a little homeless beast for a period would be appropriate? Probably not; my wife, when she returns home, would find evidence that I gave in to my yearning for a pet. Best to let the pet-ache pass.

+++

As I gaze out the window, I see evidence that I might drown if I went outdoors and took a deep breath. The fog is not as thick as it sometimes is, but for some reason it seems more dangerous, as if could replace the oxygen in my lungs with water in a single breath. I think it’s the fact that the fog embraces leaves on trees so tightly that the leaves cannot move. The wet air is holding them captive, motionless, waiting for the leaves to succumb to humid suffocation before dripping away from them, leaving them limp and lifeless.

+++

What am I thinking? This is the weekend! I am therefore under no obligation to do anything other than enjoy my free time. I need not replace fan switches, wash windows, organize household paperwork, shower, shave, or otherwise engage in productive tasks. That does not mean I will not do those things; only that I am absolved of responsibility for them until after 11:59 p.m. Sunday evening.  That takes a modest load off my shoulders. Not enough to eliminate my desire for a thorough neck massage; desire is a wish with no expectation of attainment.

+++

Regardless of obligations, I’ve decided to do something other than write. My fingers need a rest and my expanding belly is screaming to be fed. So I shall feed it. Because I am nothing if not a benevolent servant of my gustatory wishes. Ego sub nullius officium agere. If Google Translate is correct, those words are Latin for “I am under no obligation to act.”

Bloody raccoons! I woke much later than usual this morning, around 6, and wandered out of the bedroom without even putting on my “morning clothes.” As I exited the bedroom into the living area, and before even reaching for the light switch, I noticed movement outside on the deck.  My eyes adjusted quickly to the very dim light outside. A large raccoon slithered across the deck (slithered is the only way to describe that furtive, undulating movement). Another smaller one scurried along the deck railing near the hummingbird feeder that I left out for the night, thanks to the lingering rain and my disinterest in tracking water into the house as I retrieved it. A third one on the railing scampered in another direction. As soon as I saw the beasts, I stomped my feet and growled. Their movement ceased. I rushed to open the back door and screamed a few obscenities at the animals. Though they retreated, their departure was unhurried, as if the screams of an angry fat man wearing only underwear and flip-flops were not particularly frightening. Fortunately, the feeder remained, dangling from the hook I once hoped would keep it out of reach of raccoons thirsty for sugar-based nectar. I’ve long since abandoned that hope, replacing it with resigned acceptance that I would need to take the feeders in every night during hummingbird season. Except when weather and sloth conspire to bring out the lethargy in me.

That experience was more than an hour ago. Since then, I’ve donned my morning clothes, made coffee, eaten a ginger snap (dipped in said coffee) and read more than I care to know about the Republican National Convention. I also absorbed information that a polar bear attacked a camp site in Norway’s Svalbard Islands on Friday, killing a foreign national before the bear was killed. The man was taken to a hospital in Longyearbyen, the main settlement in Norway’s Arctic Svalbard archipelago, which is more than 500 miles north of the Norwegian mainland. It was too late; he died.

In terms of raw drama and tragic run-ins with Mother Nature, raccoon invasions and distant hurricanes and the fierce remnants of local tropical storms do not compare to polar bear attacks. Except for the pain I imagine would accompany a polar bear attack leading to one’s death, I think that way of departing this life might have some appeal, if for no other reason than to imprint the memory of one’s mode of death on the minds of survivors. I started to say “on the minds of descendants,” but one without children has no descendants. Oh, well. It’s not a matter that merits much thought, inasmuch as the likelihood I will die at the claws of a polar bear is less than minuscule.

+++

My mood of late has grown increasingly somber, despite multiple inquiries from people who want to boost my morale or provide a sympathetic ear, etc. I am afraid to engage more than superficially because I know, if I were to open up, I would melt into a puddle, an  undeserved pity sponge. It would be especially embarrassing and frustrating, knowing that I am not the one deserving sympathy and support; my wife, stuck in hospitals or rehab facilities for going on six weeks, is the one who needs it much, much more. She is in a place now where she cannot even have visitors, save the occasional visit by her sister and me through a glass window, speaking over a two-way intercom. I am angry at myself that I allow my self-pity to put me at risk of a tearful meltdown. Yet I don’t know how to switch off the emotions that trigger it. Attempts at replacing the fear and anger and so forth with false bravado have failed miserably. A stronger person would be better able to conceal those uncomfortable emotions, presenting a stoic exterior in public and reserving tearful breakdowns for private time. Perhaps the best solution is to avoid opportunities for public humiliation. Stay at home, keep conversations by phone or computer short and focused on other matters, and keep people at arm’s length.

Crap. I can’t even keep my whip-saw emotions in check on the page. My fingers let loose with minds of their own. I think my fingers are deviant; they do not adhere to instructions sent to them by my brain. They reject instructions they find offensive or inane, opting instead to jab the keyboard as they see fit.

+++

I can see a story forming out of that idea. A would-be writer who is too lazy and too unsure of his abilities to attempt to get published discovers over a period of weeks that his fingers are receiving their instructions from somewhere else; they type not what the writer instructs them to type but, instead, what another writer tells them to type. The other writer, a well-known published author, has lost control of his fingers to crippling arthritis and he can no longer speak into a microphone, due to the deterioration of his vocal chords as a result of a lifetime of two-pack-a-day smoking. But the published author discovers his psychic ability to control the fingers of others. The published author has tried several others, but until he finds this one guy, he has been dissatisfied with the speed and certainty of their keystrokes. Now, though, he has found the right one!  Okay, there’s the seed of the story. Now, the question is whether it will ever be written. Silly question! Of course not. The seeds never sprout into full-grown trees; even the bushes usually wither and die before reaching maturity.

+++

The Garage Door Guy came out day before yesterday and adjusted my garage door. At my request, he said he would return the next day (yesterday) and replace the bottom seal; he did. I was extremely pleased with his work. He, on the other hand, was extremely frustrated with what he had to go through to get the seal installed. Nonetheless, he did it and, as far as I can tell, did a good job. He arrived at around 3:00 p.m., during the peak of high winds and heavy rains caused by the remnants of Hurricane Laura. He worked right through it. I was impressed. The other company I had called, Garage Door Doctor, said it would be two weeks before they could get to me, but said it was too early to schedule a visit. Needless to say, I am no longer a fan of Garage Door Doctor; I will, though, recommend Garage Door Guy.

+++

For the last hour or so, I have switched between writing, making more coffee, putting a load of clothes in the washer, and otherwise occupying my time by devoting my attention to radically different endeavors. It’s time I stopped ignoring my “chores” through writing and get to the business at hand. So, enough of the distraction, John; get on with the day!

The scream of the NOAA Weather Radio, alerting me to a tropical storm warning for Hot Springs Village, awakened me completely at 3:31 a.m. Only moments earlier, vague noises emanating from my Echo Dot in the next room prodded me out of a deep sleep. Those vague noises, I discovered a few minutes later, were Alexa’s prelude to the screech from the weather radio; her “notification” that NOAA has something to say.

I suppose I could have turned over and tried to go back to sleep, or tried going back to bed, but the bone-jarring howl of the radio was enough to shock my system into full-on alert. The noise turned on the spigot of my adrenaline valve; I found it impossible to turn it off even fifteen minutes later.

Once out of bed, I further fueled my adrenaline rush with coffee and online news, the latter which told me that Hurricane Laura had made landfall as a strong category four storm two hours earlier at Cameron, Louisiana. Forecasters had predicted the storm surge could reach twenty feet or more and could reach inland many, many miles. We won’t have a clear idea of just how powerful and destructive the storm’s impact was on the coastline until at least the early hours of daylight a couple of hours away; probably much later.

I saw a comment attributed to a NOAA scientist, suggesting Little Rock could experience significant power outages due to high winds later this morning and into the afternoon and evening hours. After yesterday morning’s loss of power (due to a lightning strike on Entergy’s equipment), I hoped we’d seen the last of storm-related power loss for a while. I guess that depends on how one defines “a while.” During the last day, and even during the last ten minutes, I have lost internet connectivity several times; if the power goes, so does my internet and my phones. Like so many others, I have become addicted to the communication lifeline provided by internet connections; it has become like electricity and oxygen and public roadways: socialism’s grip tightening around our necks. {For anyone who does not know me, that last little comment was sarcasm speaking.}

If I were a believer in the idea of a vengeful god or vengeful nature, I might say COVID-19 and Hurricane Laura and the California wildfires and the dozens and dozens of other catastrophes and calamities inflicted upon humankind (and Mother Earth) in the recent past have been retribution. Or punishment. Or something else visited upon us in exchange for our misdeeds and impropriety. But I am not a believer; so, in my view, it’s simply richly coincidental.

Yet, I wonder: am I truly as certain as I think I am that everything is, essentially, an accident of nature? When I listen to old Cat Stevens music, I feel an old— almost buried—sense of childish wonder and awe at the world around me. Morning Has Broken and The Wind are an overtly religious songs, but I think they capture childish awe and wonder more than they affirm a religious world-view.  But I often wonder whether the distance between awe and acceptance of religious interpretations of the universe is as great as I think it should be. There is, for me, an uncomfortable bridge between my sense of awe at the magic of the universe and others’ sense that the universe is somehow the brainchild of an all-knowing, all-powerful deity. I say it’s an uncomfortable bridge because I think my interpretation that “it’s just an expression of physical laws” is as faith-based as their “it’s the work of a celestial magician.”

I do wander, don’t I? And I wonder. There are no answers. Only questions that leave us empty and aching. I think I’d rather be empty and aching that full of something I find offensive and odious or blindly silly.

I hope the people in the path of Hurricane Laura escape with both their lives and their livelihoods.

I altered my routine this morning, but only slightly. I read and responded to an email, explored the extent to which counterfeit scallops are made by punching circular “cookie cutters” through skate wings—there’s ample suggestions that it is done, but I found no evidence that it actually occurs, so it may be an urban (or rural) myth)—and otherwise consumed time as if it was in never-ending supply. Even Fox News, expert purveyor of abundant lies, questions whether counterfeit scallops are a “thing.” They say, “Instances of scallop fraud have largely been relegated to the dark realm of Internet message boards, so it’s unclear how often this substitution takes place, if at all.”  The fact that Fox said it, though, calls in to question its dismissal as myth.

Then I had an early breakfast.

There was a time when I would regularly eat breakfast soon after waking in the morning. My wife’s distaste for early eating cured me of that. I grew to share her desire to put some distance between getting out of bed and filling my stomach. But not today. While I did not eat immediately upon rising, I ate much earlier than “normal.” I had finished eating my unusually large breakfast (two pieces of toast, two eggs, and two sausage patties…evidence of rampant gluttony) by 6:15. I suppose I was prompted to eat early because I expect a 9:00 a.m. visitor, a guy who will look at my deck with an eye toward finally completing the major project of stripping and repainting, the initiative I began when I was a younger man.

Before or after the visit, I will try to find a garage door service company that can come “tune up” my garage door sooner than two weeks hence. I called the Garage Door Doctor yesterday and was told they could not get to me for two weeks; when I said “let’s schedule it,” the representative said they are not scheduling that far out. When I said, “Fine, goodbye,” I think she could hear the astonishment and disappointment in my tone. So, I’ll try to find a company that CAN schedule a visit. My electric powered garage door opener frequently refuses to close the door; I think the door is binding, perhaps because of a loose or weakened cable mechanism. I am not equipped to fix it. Ach!

I have been wondering whether my house would sell—quickly and at a price I would willingly accept—if were to put it on the market. I don’t know where I would go or what I would do, but I think I’d be willing to explore the idea. A new adventure. I’ve lived in this house for six and one-half years; I feel the seven-year itch coming on. That’s not to say I’ve historically changed houses or moved to new environments every seven years in the past. But I’ve felt an urge to try something new every so often; live a different life. When I’ve actually made significant changes, though, only the place changes; I don’t. I remain the same person. That calls to mind the rather cruel management aphorism about firing people for nonperformance: “You can’t change people. So you change people.”

That’s it. I need a new identity. I already have myriad character names in my fiction from which to choose. I just need a personality transplant or something like it to go along with my new name. I’ve used Calypso Kneeblood before. I like it. I could become Calypso Kneeblood, a loner whose few acquaintances and even fewer friends can depend on him to come to their aid without hesitation. A wounded soul whose hard exterior shell hides a dangerously fragile inner life. No, that sounds a little too much like the personality I’m trying to replace. Perhaps Kolbjørn Landvik, but my lack of a Norwegian accent might raise suspicions. Linoleum Price is an option. Fracas Edward Schlattery might do. All of them are fictional characters, though. Do I want to be a fictional character? Perhaps I already am; a creature created from all the chance encounters I’ve had over the sixty-six, almost sixty-seven, years of my life.

Whatever the name, fictional or not, what fiction would I choose to explain myself? My background, I mean. The easiest thing to do might be to say “I was employed by the Federal Government.” Any further questions would be rebuffed with “I was in the clandestine service, so I hope you can understand that I can’t discuss specifics of my job nor where I worked.” I could then drop hints in future encounters by mentioning, in casual conversations, places to which I’ve actually traveled. London. Dubrovnik. Sarajevo. Lisbon. Stockholm. Berlin. Etc. It’s plausible, yes? The trouble with that, though, might be that I would come across someone who has actually served in one or more clandestine capacities. My fakery would, I suspect, become immediately obvious to them. And that would make them highly suspicious of me. Suspicious enough to have their colleagues who still work in the clandestine directorate. Confronted with facts, I might have to say “I didn’t want to come right out and say I was involved in a clandestine affair, so I deflected attention from my personal engagements by claiming to have been a clandestine operative.” Yeah, I doubt that would work. It completely ignores my career. Unless, of course, I were to claim I had enjoyed a 35-year career as a professional gigolo. No, that’s probably not going to win me any Oscars, either.

My new identity needs some work. But, then, so does my old one.

At some point, the stress becomes noticeable; not so much to others, but to oneself. Enthusiasm ebbs, leaving in its place flashes of dysphoria. A harsh, dry cloud of discontent settles over one’s thoughts like volcanic ash, sucking oxygen out of the lungs and replacing it with chalk.  Nonspecific anger increasingly bubbles to the surface, touching everyone and everything in one’s path.

That anger then ricochets off mirrors and lands repeated body blows on your chest, all the while screaming that YOU are to blame for everything that has gone wrong in your shrinking, suffocating sphere. But you, alone, can see that accusatory reflection. And you feel increasingly angry that your faults seem almost invisible to others around you. You feel a growing sense of guilt that you are somehow hiding the flaws that led to this cataclysmic point. The world feels as fragile and delicate as paper-thin porcelain, as if the slightest touch could cause a catastrophic failure, transforming it into razor-sharp pieces of brittle hopelessness.

You see visions of yourself riding in a subway car, your irritation at a group of three insensitive teenagers playing loud radios increasing with every revolution of the train’s wheels. Suddenly, without a specific trigger, the explosion occurs. You hoist one of the youths above your head and throw him at the others who are sitting with their backs to the window. The force of the boy’s body hitting them sends the other two boys backward, crashing through the window of the speeding train, followed closely by the one you threw at them. The subway car erupts in screams loud enough to jar you out of your trance. The upsetting music and the boys’ chatter continues. Perspiration drenches your shirt and rivulets of sweat pour down your forehead as if sprayed from a tiny fire hose. And, then, you realize you are not in a subway car at all but sitting in your recliner in front of the black screen of an un-powered television. Still, you loathe those boys. You miss the almost super-human strength it took to hoist that kid over your head. You want it back. Because if you had it back you would go looking for those boys, or someone like them, and you would erase them from this ugly, painful world.

Unbridled stress. It is invisible, but its destructive power is almost without equal. Its sharp edges can slice through stone and hope like white-hot steel through frozen butter.

My thoughts, some days, are so jumbled and scattered and frazzled that I cannot begin to capture them in language. I try and try and try and come up empty. Nine or ten incoherent paragraphs in, I finally give in and allow myself to give up. Surrender does nothing for my ego, but at least the stress of impotent attempts begins to dissipate. I’m left in embarrassed defeat. Perhaps I need that from time to time. A reminder that my imperfections ultimately will catch up with me; there’s no use in struggling against inevitable failure.

Inadequacy is a reminder that perfection, or even a tolerable facsimile thereof, exists only as an idea, not as an indisputable truth. I suppose what I learn from this is that attempting to write after an essentially sleepless night is a fool’s errand.

I call it Swinburn’s Theory of Beguiling Embrace.  For the sake of my fingers and to  briefly conserve the alphabet, I’ll call it STBE. It explains the magnetic attraction many people find in church participation. And STBE reveals the allure of gang membership. Let me explain.

Every one of us considers ourselves unique. We each pride ourselves on the “fact” that we are one-of-a-kind, an exceptional specimen. At the same time, we crave community; being included as part of a group feeds our need for acceptance and it assuages our fear of being alone as we confront a menacing world. Yet neither our singularity nor our collective engagement satisfies us. We ache for something more. Something that embraces both our exclusivity and our shared identity.

Our seemingly conflicting needs can best be understood by comparing ourselves to pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece stands out as one-of-a-kind, yet the puzzle is incomplete without each unique contribution. But even when every piece has been properly fit into its place, the puzzle remains essentially a two-dimensional image. It seems to take on an added dimension, though, when a layer of lacquer is applied to the finished surface so the puzzle can be displayed as a finished piece, suitable for framing. The lacquer binds all the pieces together into a cohesive whole, recording evidence of the painstaking effort required to forge a unified expression.

Churches and gangs serve both as the finished puzzle and the lacquer that immortalizes it. Churches and gangs “complete,” in a sense, their members. Through STBE, they wrap their members in a comforting blanket, validating the individuality of each member while, at the same time, offering everlasting (as long as the conditions of membership are met) acceptance and embrace. Membership entices unique individuals to become part of a larger-than-life “family.” And, though the family provides the acceptance and protection the members need, it offers each member the opportunity to be themselves within the larger context of the group. Acceptance into the family is equivalent to an embrace, wrapping the member in a protective, loving cocoon.

There’s much more to the STBE, but that’s still brewing in my head at the moment, so I’ll stop and let it settle. I may write more about it later. Or this post may be the one and only time I’ll address the matter. Time will tell.

Why, I wonder, have architects avoided designing steeples into residential construction? Or have they? Perhaps I am simply unfamiliar with a school of residential architecture in which steeples play a prominent part. But if steeples have not found their way into home designs, maybe the architects are not responsible for the omission; perhaps homeowners have rejected designs in which steeples were incorporated. As I understand the term, steeples are ornamental elements of construction, not functional; at least, not functional in practical terms. Maybe steeples are functional to the extent they symbolize a building’s purpose as a religious (primarily Christian) sanctuary? This is supposition on my part. I’ve done no research on the matter; the topic of steeples just popped into my head, a fragment of half-formed curiosity that is insufficiently important to me to warrant even cursory research…beyond a quick Google search, I mean.

Hah! A “quick Google search” reveals an enormous volume of resources about steeples, their history, their design, their symbolism, etc., etc. Apparently, I am not the first person into whose head the topic of steeples has popped. The architecture of steeples has its own terminology, referring to specific components of the ornamental unit we call “steeple:”  spire, lantern, belfry, and tower. My quick search for information about steeples revealed a rich tapestry of the evolution of Americana, including the “fact” that church steeples served purposes similar to coastal lighthouses, except these “lighthouses” are landlocked.

Given my preference for Usonian-inspired residential design and more recent iterations that lack even the limited ornamentation favored by Frank Lloyd Wright, it’s unlikely that I will ever design (or have designed) a house that incorporates a steeple. But, then, one never knows, does one?  Even in my preference for clean lines and the absence of ornamentation, I have room for aberrations. I remember, for instance, falling in love with an apartment building, born of a converted old church, in Chicago when my wife and I were looking for a place to live back in the late 1980s. The building’s Gothic arched windows with meticulously restored stained glass won me over, along with the massive stonework and huge carved entry doors, restored to their original grandeur.

My appreciation for a wide variety of architectural styles, despite strongly favoring a limited number of rather spare styles, echoes my enjoyment of a wide array of music. While I have preferences, I like almost all types of music. That eclecticism is a relative newcomer to my personality, developed sometime in the most recent two-thirds of my lifetime to date. I remember a time when I absolutely detested country music and rap music; today, both genres have their appeal. The same is true of architecture. I once found Gothic and gingerbread styles of architecture patently offensive; while I consider neither my favorites, they both have aspects I find pleasing.

So, what is the point of this morning’s post? I haven’t the faintest idea. It’s just what happened to be on my mind. Steeples. And steeples led to architecture and my experience in broadening my appreciation of architectural styles recalled a similar experience in broadening my appreciation of musical genres. If I continued along with this style of thinking, I suspect I might jump from music to dance and from dance to footwear and from footwear to the sensation of comfort one feels when walking barefoot on a hard-packed sandy beach. Our minds are capable of making enormous leaps, triggered by commonalities as frail as spun glass. That reality is part of what makes being human so fascinating, I think.

In finishing this random diatribe, I want to recall that, when I walked outside this morning around 5:15, I looked above me in the sky and my eyes were drawn instantly to a bright reddish “star” in the sky. I wonder whether that celestial attraction was Mars? If I had been thinking clearly, I could have used my smart-phone sky-mapping app.  Perhaps I’ll remember to inquire of the app tomorrow morning. Or, more likely, my mind will be somewhere else entirely, like exploring the architecture of Islamic mosques.

In the face of challenging ideas and information, one’s mind should stretch like a ball of freshly-minted rubber bands. But whether one’s mind should expand in the presence of such experiences or not, too frequently the response is the opposite. Rather than becoming more pliable, it behaves like ancient strips of rubber left too long in the sun. Those bands lose their elasticity and they harden, turning into fragile, brittle bands that shatter into shards under the slightest pressure.

Odd, isn’t it, that the way to keep rubber from deteriorating—keeping it in a cool, dark place away from light and oxygen—is precisely the prescription to cause the mind to decay?