John Swinburn

I read a letter to the editor in this morning’s local newspaper. The letter, in expressing appreciation for the Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding LGBTQ rights, referred to last week’s regular column by our church minister. The writer wrote:

“…it was very encouraging to read Rev. Walz’s column in the 6/23/2020 Voice, offering to welcome members of the LGBTQ community and to share his church’s resources with them.”

The person who wrote the letter has been deeply involved in Village political matters in recent years; I found some of his positions irritating, annoying, and offensive. Based on positions he took and what I considered the “trouble” he caused, I have made a number of assumptions about him, some unconsciously. One such unconscious assumption was that he was probably intolerant of people whose sexual orientation did not fit his definition of what is “right.” His letter brought me up sharply; it reminded me I should not be so quick to judge without having all the facts.

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I know an American blogger who now lives in Sweden with her Swedish husband. Her blog is far more engaging than mine. Actually, I don’t really know her; but we’ve read one another’s blogs and we both comment on them from time to time. Neither of us are regular readers of the other’s blog, nor do we comment every time we read, but we pay attention on occasion.

The reason her blog is more engaging than mine, aside from her writing style and the content of her posts, is its frequency. Unlike me, this American-Swedish blogger apparently does not feel pathologically compelled to write blog posts almost every damn day. I checked this morning; her last post was made on June 14. She has gone roughly two weeks without posting. I pride myself on missing a day or two at a time. And I have, on many occasions, posted several times within a single twenty-four-hour period. Pathology.

The difference between us, then, is that she posts only when she actually has something to say. I other the other hand, feel obliged to write every time I feel words clogging my fingers, backing up from my fingers to my elbows to my upper arms, continuing on to my shoulders. When that happens—almost every day—I have to turn the spigot, releasing the linguistic pressure, lest my brain explode, flinging letters and shattered words and shredded syllables all over my desk. That would be an ugly sight, indeed.

I think the reason I write so often is to remind the few brave regular readers that I am still here. Were I to write less often, I fear those brave few would forget I exist; and, then, when I were to write, no one would remember to read. There’s a psychological connection between what I’m suggesting and my blogger friend’s point in her most recent blog post: that we all need to focus on being better at listening. She points out that, too often, rather than truly listening, we hear only enough to trigger a response about our own experiences. A response to really hearing someone validates the speaker’s experiences, not one’s own. More engaging, yes. And more thoughtful.

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Yesterday’s pounding rains flooded many local roadways, though only a few Village roads. I saw photos of Hot Springs that stunned me, cars submerged in several feet of water and rushing water that could have carried away houses in the current. We are fortunate to live on the side of a mountain, with natural drainage offering considerable protection from rushing water; no dams of any kind, either, to cause water to back up and inundate our house.

It was during some of the heaviest rains that I drove my wife to the dentist’s office to have  a permanent crown installed to replace a temporary one. After an hour, she called me to pick her up; the permanent crown was not made properly, so they reinstalled the temporary one. They will call to schedule a return appointment, once a new permanent crown is made and ready. By the time I picked her up to take her home, the rain had subsided.

We can’t control the weather and we can’t control the quality of dental crown manufacture. Lessons that, one day, will make sense as part of a pair of insights about life.

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How much of the time we invest in “making a difference” really makes a difference? How much makes a difference only insofar as our investment of time gives us a sense of value, accomplishment, relevance?  I ask the questions because I sometimes feel that “helping” organizations like churches are simply applying feel-good band-aids to problems; they feed the poor and destitute, for example, rather than enable the poor and destitute to buy and prepare their own meals. A food pantry, as vital as it often is, does not address the underlying problem of hunger. But it addresses an immediate need and gives donors of food, money, and time a sense they are contributing to helping the needy. Yes, food pantries are needed. But, at the same time, more permanent solutions that take far longer to create and even longer to implement are needed.  How do we balance meeting immediate needs with creating lasting solutions?

Structural change in society could be of so much more lasting value than temporarily filling a crying need. But if the choices are to allow some people today to starve or to enable many more people tomorrow to feed themselves, how do we justify choosing structural change over urgent care? That’s one of those questions whose answers prove how incredibly difficult life is.

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I think about a few people several times a day; people who are in my life only tangentially. If they knew how often they are on my mind, they probably would think it strange. Maybe it is. But I don’t think so. But I wonder why these people seem to matter to me more than others whose roles in my life are equally tangential? It’s not that any one of them “matters” more or less; it’s that something about them sparks my attention and ongoing interest.

As I consider this matter, though, if the shoe were on the other foot, as it were, I would find it more than a little strange. I might find that it borders on stalking…not behavior, but…what?  Why am I on that person’s mind? Is it physical? Mental? Pathological? What? So I would understand someone thinking it strange. I wonder whether I am alone in this odd sense that I cannot justify in my own mind why some people, some of whom truly are on the periphery of my life, are on my mind with some regularity?

Why is it, I wonder, that people seem to feel so constrained from revealing what’s on their minds? I suspect they fear how others will perceive their thought processes; that “they’ll think I’m crazy, or worse.” Maybe. I’ll probably never know. Because people are uncomfortable talking about matters that make them, or others, uncomfortable. And, so, we go on living in the dark.

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I cannot conceal,
how fragile I feel.
But I will reveal
what’s under seal,
what’s false
and what’s real,
if you will treat me tender.

~The Caretaker’s Son~

It’s normal, I guess, to simply run out of creative energy from time to time. No one can sustain creativity every waking moment; not even half the time. Creativity burns a mysterious fuel that is most definitely not limitless. When the fuel runs low, when the flames turn to embers and the embers turn to ashes, it’s time to let the blaze die for a time. One must give the ashes time to cool before attempting to replenish the fuel and strike a match. I wonder whether the dissipation of the fuel is a conscious decision made by the fuel itself, in the knowledge that the inferno is capable of consuming itself if allowed to burn unchecked. Odd that I anthropomorphize a mysteriously combustible fuel that, I claim, sustains creativity. That’s what people do, though. We attribute human characteristics to animals and inanimate objects and atmospheric events. Thunder and lightning are expressions of the displeasure of angry gods; that sort of thing.

If I could remember the details of a dream I had last night, and could relate them here on this screen, readers who stumble upon this post might be shocked at what my mind is capable of creating. Nothing horrible like wholesale butchery. Just base human desires and behaviors that run contrary to the morality defined by our puritanical roots; libido unchecked by social convention and personal moral code. But my recall of the dream is fuzzy, at best, and subject to “inventive recollection.” That is, when I cannot clearly remember what took place or what I was thinking during the course of the dream, I think my memory manufacturers fantasies to fill in the gaps.

In my conceit, I thought I had coined the term “inventive recollection;” a quick gaze at the results of a Google search proved otherwise. I was intrigued as I read a few paragraphs from Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain, by Sol Miguel-Prendes, published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and available at the discounted price of $110.65:

…I must stress that the act of writing depicted in penitential fictions is the meditation on, and moral interpretation of, an author’s own past or poetry, either read or composed. Tears, moans, and laments gesture toward the agitated mood that precedes inventive recollection. The initial mental disposition—their affectio—is identified with erotic desire and curiositas, which drive the protagonists to the darkest recesses of their minds—the memorial hells of Ovidian myths, passionate feelings and love poems—in search of subject matter.

As I read that paragraph from an academic treatise, I became enamored of the term “penitential fictions.” My interest in the phrase led me to a University of Texas doctoral dissertation by Catherine Marie Meyer, entitled “Producing the Middle English Corpus: Confession and Medieval Bodies.” Though I did not read Dr. Meyer’s work (I assume she was awarded her Ph.D.), I read enough of the acknowledgement section to learn that Dr. Meyer considers herself a medievalist. It is that sort of laser-focused interest that appeals to me most about academia; reaching the pinnacle of academic achievement (well, I suppose post-grad work represents an ongoing, moving-target pinnacle) gives one an expertise in a narrowly-defined subject that few others can claim. Non-academics and those who envy what they perceive as the impossible-to-attain knowledge of academics, laugh at academic precision and depth. I’ve gone off course again; my mind is sometimes incapable of even moderate focus, which explains in part the fact that my academic achievement ended when I withdrew from a graduate program, never to return to academia. Oh, well. “Penitential fictions.” I love the term because it can be interpreted in so many ways. I choose to view it as a reference to fictions produced by authors seeking penitence. I suppose I see it that way because I see my writing as a means by which I seek something like penitence (“like” but not really the same thing) for something (but not really sure what).

Like many mornings, my quick check of Google turned into a untargeted hunt undertaken for no other reason than to feed my curiosity. I learned, during my unintentional foray into Spanish literature, that the author of Narrating Desire, Sol Miguel-Prendes, is Associate Professor of Spanish at Wake Forest University. And, as I was wandering the internet in search of curiosities about Cathryn Marie Meyer, I came across Guy P. Raffa, whose latest book, Dante’s Bones: How a Poet Invented Italy, was released last month by Harvard University Press.

Writing fiction vignettes and stream-of-consciousness drivel, along with conducting aimless, pointless internet research, is escapism. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. The question is whether those endeavors are attempts to escape from the world for a while—efforts to find peace and serenity in a chaotic world—or represent attempts to escape from myself (and my chaotic mind). Perhaps both. Perhaps that dual escapism is akin to burning the candle on both ends. Eventually, the creativity represented by the wax, melts away in response to the flame. Okay, which is it? The mysterious fuel that runs low and leaves ashes or the wax that melts? Maybe dual escapism leads to depleting two kinds of fuel. I doubt I’ll ever have an answer. Not just to these questions, but to any others. No question has just one satisfactory answer.

Last night, I read an intriguing essay, entitled, “Let It Fall: Collapse and Ecological Metanoia,” by Rev. Matthew Syrdal. These words, early on in his essay, struck me:

Anger at my own complicity and the church’s complicity in a system that is designed to suppress our connection with these deepest energies in the soul and Earth, as we turn a blind eye to the ravishing of ecosystems and poisoning of the soils and biosphere.

Complicity. That’s what I think I’m finding in myself. I am complicit in the same way Syrdal is, but in the context of what I’ve written this morning, my complicity is in participating for most of my life in a culture that eschews uncertainty and rejects interests and desires and ideas that fall outside a narrow framework we define as “normal” or acceptable. I have been complicit by failing to take an active part in protestation against both mindless individualism and the collective idiocy of group-think.

I could go on forever. But I won’t. One day I’ll just stop. We all do. When it all becomes too much, we simply reject the breath that follows the last one.  But until then, I will keep blathering on about things over which I have little or no control. I can do that, at least. I can shout into the wind, during a hurricane, after everyone else has evacuated. It’s what we do. It’s what I do. My fingers are experts at screaming in the wee hours, when no one is listening.

It’s almost seven o’clock, though, so I’ve been at this for a very long time. I got up at four and have spent the majority of those three hours right here at the keyboard; not always typing, of course. A good chunk of time has been devoted to reading abstruse literature intended for people more intelligent than I; that’s why it took me so long to wade through it.

My coffee mug has a quarter of a cup of cold French roast coffee, complete with thick sediment. I think a fresh mug is in order.

The usual Saharan Air Layer is said to be between two and three miles thick, its base about a mile above the surface of the Earth. The size of this year’s phenomenon is, according to atmospheric scientists, considerably larger than usual; I don’t know if that means it is deeper or broader or both. I know it is not a sandy-colored layer of dust; it is more like grey putty, concealing every bit of sky. There’s not a trace of blue above. I question the distance from the ground, too; it seems to have filled the atmosphere all the way to the Earth’s surface. The fact that very high air quality indices (meaning very low quality air) are reported all along the southern/Gulf tier of states reinforces that perspective, I think. People with breathing difficulties are experiencing more distress than usual, according to what I’ve read. I would have thought the cloud would have moved on by now; no, but when?

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Last year, on my wife’s birthday, we went to dinner at kBird, a northern Thai restaurant in Little Rock. This year, we are avoiding restaurants entirely for the time being, so I will prepare her birthday dinner: sea scallops with a chipotle glaze (or something like that), along with boiled potatoes with butter (and loaded with chives from the chive farm on our deck) and steamed green beans. I may sneak out today and get some ice cream for dessert.

The only celebrations we ever have for one another’s birthdays are dinner out. Usually, it’s a more upscale, expensive dinner than normal “dinners out,” but rarely anything earth-shaking. We’ve been married forty years; even special occasions have taken on an aura of “routine” about them. We’ve even stopped buying cards for one another. I wonder, are we unique in the abandonment of that age-old ceremonial acknowledgement of such events?

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Spikes and valleys. That describes my intellectual activity of late. I go from excited enthusiasm about ideas that challenge my thought processes to a dull lethargy in which thinking is equivalent to mind-numbing factory work. Maybe it has always been that way. Probably.

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The sound of wind chimes, loud and intrusive, is interrupting my ability to think (or to work effectively on the assembly line). So, I will go in the kitchen and see what damage I can do. Pour a little wine in my half-empty coffee cup, perhaps, or have a bowl of cereal doused with tomato juice and dressed with salt and cinnamon. No, that won’t do. I’ll just engage in robotic actions that result in something moderately edible. More coffee, though; hot, strong coffee. That might get my head out of the Saharan Air Layer.

I am driving to Little Rock today. I would rather not, but my wife has an appointment with her cardiologist and is scheduled for lab work, so I will. We’ll have lunch in the parking lot before she goes in for her appointments. She has already ordered our sandwiches from Panera Bread.  A positive aspect of going to a medical office is the fact that everyone will be wearing masks. There will be no protestations (I surely hope) that masks are the work of Satan or that the requirement that people wear masks is an infringement on one’s rights to randomly infect passers-by with all manner of deadly viruses. People will willingly wear masks because they are decent human beings who respect the best advice of healthcare professionals. At least I hope those are the kinds of people we are apt to encounter at the medical office. And, I hope, at Panera Bread, where we will notify the staff by clicking a link provided to us via email that we are ready to have our sandwiches delivered to the car.

This is a different environment than we were used to six months ago. While we may not like it, I think we have to consider the similarities to another scenario. Consider this: you emerge, in the aftermath of a hurricane or a tornado, to see that the house you  live in is no longer habitable; you don’t like the new environment, but you move on to another place where life can go on. You adapt. Same thing with masks and social distancing and different protocols for grocery shopping and dining out. You adapt. Unlike so many catastrophes that have befallen us in the past, this one knows no borders. There’s no escaping to a different place where the hurricane or tornado did not hit; no place escaped this catastrophe. So you adapt where you are. Or, if you are willfully stupid, you refuse to wear a mask and claim it is part of a massive hoax; you behave as if you are immune and cannot be a carrier and you watch as your children and your spouse and your parents die as a result of your “freedom tantrum.”

We may learn in six months or six years time that masks are not as helpful as healthcare professionals today believe them to be. Probably not, but maybe. So what? When we know more, we react accordingly. In the interim, we react by following the best advice they can give us, based on what they know today.

I feel very sad this morning. It’s not just that the mask-deniers are on my mind. I don’t know what it is; just a sense of hopelessness, that there is nothing I can do to retrieve the serenity that is regularly snatched away when I learn of more and more serious tears in the social fabric. I feel like the earth is rupturing beneath my feet and everything and everyone is in danger of collapsing into a bottomless pit below me. If I could just fall into a long, long, long dreamless sleep, maybe I would heal from this darkness. But I can’t. And, in a few hours, I’ll be happily on my way to Little Rock, with this overwhelming sadness long since forgotten. That’s the plan.

Vital signs (body temperature, heart/pulse rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure) provide medical professionals with a broad overview of the state of a person’s physical health, offering warning signs about problems that may reside within. Obviously, those four measures barely scrape the surface of the assessments that may be required to determine a person’s level of physical health, but they almost always constitute the requisite first-level assessments.

What of a person’s mental health? Are there any agreed measures that can give mental health professionals an almost instantaneous reading  of the state of a person’s mental health? The limited reading I’ve done suggests there are no quick and dirty measures, suggesting the need for more “tests.” There are plenty of means that involve evaluating a person’s self-reported measures (e.g., self-perception of mental health, level of available external emotional support, self-assessment of coping skills) and evidence of anxiety. But in every case (at least from my perspective), these are highly subjective measures. And they take more time than taking one’s blood pressure and temperature.

Maybe the efforts to identify and measure mental health “vital signs” are more intense than I think they are, but if not, I think psychiatry and psychology are missing the boat. I believe (in all my untrained wisdom) there must be ways of quickly determining an individual’s state of mind, at least to the extent that a need for immediate and urgent intervention can be identified.  Yet, as far as I know, thus far any such measures rely on self-reporting and other highly subjective observations. Might it be possible to develop ways of determining, from physical measurements of some kind, a person’s state of mind? The technologies associated with lie-detector tests come to mind; the skin’s electrical conductivity, and so forth. Or eye movement. Or multiple observations that, taken together, provide indicators of emotional well-being (whether caused by physical issues or not).

Perhaps the state of a person’s mental/emotional health is simply too complex to measure. The spectrum of emotional responses to external stimuli is, quite obviously, extremely broad. The points along the spectrum at which we might agree that a response is “abnormal” leaves an enormous span of “normal” responses. Multiple measures, taken together, could require such sophisticated analyses that a supercomputer might be required to reach any sort of conclusion as to which pairings of responses (or multiple pairings) signal potential problems.

Unlike physical vital signs, over which most of us have little direct control (I realize, of course, that we can be trained to modify our respiration and our heart rate…), most of us can control to a great extent the subjective appearance of our emotional/mental responses to the world around us. We are practiced dissemblers, both to protect us from judgment and to shield others from pain. Maybe the idea of a readily-available, easy-to-administer, rapid-feedback measurement of mental and emotional health is a daydream. I have plenty of those. But, daydream or not, I would like to know such a measure (or a measurement package) is available, if for no other reason than to measure where I fall along the spectrum at any moment. It would be nice to know, for example, whether my responses to the world around me are “normal” or not; understandable or not. And whether they can be modified with the right treatments.

Just me, thinking, at 6:00 a.m. In three more hours, I watch and listen to a program on “Why We Want and Resist Diversity.” That makes me wonder, by the way, whether we sometimes put too much on our emotional plates. I think we need, from time to time, to let the world be ugly and unpleasant and problematic without our participation.  We need (I need) to be able to ignore the problems of humankind and simply relax and enjoy isolation, without trying to solve any problems. Just listen to birds and marvel at their ability to make noise. And to fly! They can actually fly! Just thinking about the spectacular, stunning, almost unbelievable wonders of the physical world can bring tears to my eyes. Is that normal? Is that a sign that I’m unable to cope with reality? Who knows. I don’t.

Already this morning, I’ve written quite a lot. But none of it will ever find its way onto this blog, at least not in present form. My drafts from this morning and the last two or three days include: Ancestral Serenity; Plumbing the Depths; The Accomplice; Facing the Bastard in the Mirror; and Politics Leads to War. None of them are complete. And, quite possibly, none of them ever will be complete. That’s true of a lot of what I post on here (despite its incompleteness, I often post, anyway). I should apologize for that. Anyone who happens upon this blog expecting complete, coherent thoughts is apt to be sorely disappointed. I am sorry. I try, sometimes, but usually my words slip from my fingers as disjointed thoughts connected only in the commonality of their incoherence.

I was challenged recently to write something more upbeat than my usual depressive drivel. I try, and sometimes I succeed. But I think I’ve finally articulated, in my mind, something I’ve known all along but haven’t put into words until just this morning. While we all recognize that some people see the world through rose-colored glasses, we do not pay as much attention to the fact that some of us often see that same world, but through scratched lenses, tinted dark grey. Unfortunately, those lenses are not the kind that one removes before going to bed.

A photo of a cute puppy might elicit a smile from you but I might notice the signs in the photo of mange on its left rear thigh and wonder what kind of monster would ignore the poor dog’s need for veterinary treatment. I find the puppy cute and cuddly and smile-worthy, too, but I see the sinister side of the photograph. And, then, I wonder whether the photographer might have intentionally snapped the image she did in the hope that someone would notice the dog’s malady and take action to help the puppy and penalize its owner. Maybe the grey tint has worn off the edge of one of my lenses, revealing a thin rose film beneath.

In spite of those scratched, grey lenses, I sometimes get a glimpse of the world as it appears in fairy tales. Colors are brighter, images are all crisp and clear, and the air surrounding us radiates oxygenated joy. Yesterday, or maybe the day before, a fierce rainstorm swept through, dumping an enormous amount of rain that swamped all of my struggling little tomato plants that I have grown from seed. Just as quickly as the monsoon roared through, though, the air cleared and a rainbow formed behind our house. I have never seen a rainbow so close and so enormously wide. It’s bands of color looked like they were each several hundred feet thick. The right side of the rainbow touched the ground a quarter of mile or so behind our house. The arc of color extended into the sky but disappeared half-way through the arc, so the rainbow looked like the outer edges of a quarter of a sphere of color. It was truly magnificent. Just as suddenly as it appeared, though, it began to fade. Ten minutes later, it was gone.

And a day after my wife spotted a bear cub lumbering up our driveway and across the street, we both saw a beautiful fox streak alongside the house and zip up our driveway and across the street, following the same path taken the day before by the bear. These sights makes more tolerable the misfortunes of witnessing the misbehaviors of people. But they do not erase the recognition that people can be monstrous and unfit to walk the Earth. This morning’s draft of Facing the Bastard in the Mirror begins to acknowledge the story of one of them. It may, one day, be published posthumously as a memoir of atonement, begging forgiveness for the unforgivable.

I once attended a writing workshop led by an author I know—a woman for whom I have enormous respect, Sylvia Dickey Smith. She said “Write through the pain.” She advised us not to worry about who might be hurt by what we write because the writer is writing for himself. I remember thinking that was an extraordinarily selfish attitude that justifies shifting pain from oneself to others. I wrote later, “That’s inexcusable, especially if others are innocent bystanders who simply cannot get out of the line of fire before the bullets start flying.” But I understood her point. She was saying the only way to get through a personally painful story is to write through it. That’s the only way the story will be authentic. It’s the only way to reach the reader; with honesty. That’s why the memoir, if it’s ever finished, will be published (if ever) posthumously, and only after all the people who might be hurt by its contents also are gone. By then, it will be only a cautionary tale from which, one would hope, others might learn.

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Well over a year ago, I posted for the upteenth time a list of regional foods of North America that I want to make (and some I’ve already made). Have I made many of them in the year and then some since? No. Dammit. I’ve got to get with it. And, if anyone reading this can offer any more quintessentially regional North American dishes I should add to the list, please send them on!

1. Minorcan Clam Chowder (Northeast Florida)
2. American Chop Suey (Connecticut/New England) [AKA “Goulash” in the U.S. Midwest]
3. Sseafood Gumbo (Creole/Coastal Louisiana)
4. Rappie Pie (Acadian/Nova Scotian)
5. Sausage/Chicken Gumbo (Cajun/Louisiana)
6. Philly Cheesesteak (Philadelphia)
7. Chicken Booyah (Northeastern Wisconsin)
8. Smoked Salmon Tartare (Pacific Northwest)
9. Arroz con Camarones (South Texas Coast)
10. Succotash (New England)
11. Jiggs Dinner (Newfoundland/Labrador)
12. Pan-Seared Grouper (Southeast/”Floribbean”)
13. Tourtiere du Shack (Quebec)
14. Cincinnati Chile (Cincinnati)
15. Spiedie Sandwiches (Binghamton, New York)
16. Muffuletta Sandwiches (New Orleans)
17. Cornish Pasties (Michigan)
18. Chicken with Tamarind Ginger Sauce (Southeast/”Floribbean”)
19. King Ranch Chicken (Southwest)
20. Fish Tacos (West Coast)
21. Oyster Pie (Northeast-NY)
22. Grilled Pacific Halibut w/ Rhubarb Compote & Balsamic Strawberries (Pacific Northwest)
23. Cannibal Sandwiches (a Milwaukee/Wisconsin specialty)

That’s enough depressing happiness for one sitting. Monday officially has begun.

I first wrote about it on May 8, 2019; Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, a documentary film. A year later, just last month, I stumbled across information that it would finally be available on Independent Lens on PBS this month (June). I recorded it and, last night, watched it.  It is a fascinating documentary. Marion Stokes recorded more than 70,000 VHS tapes during the course of thirty years. She recorded television twenty-four hours a day, beginning with the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 and ending when she died during television coverage of the Sandy Hook massacre. She recorded television that, except for her bizarre fascination with capturing facts so they could not be conveniently forgotten or altered, might be lost. The Internet Archive will (or, perhaps, already has) digitize her tapes so they can be searched at no cost. Stokes was a rich reclusive Communist (a strange package, that) whose madness was both devastating and ingenious. I think I’ll have to watch the documentary again to fully absorb the scope and value of her work.

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Arkansas once was known as the “Bear State.” Before the territory was settled, it was home to an estimated 50,000 black bears. Destruction of suitable habitat and over-hunting, though, decimated the black bear population, reducing it to roughly fifty in the 1930s. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) imported 250 black bears in an effort to replenish the state’s population of bears. That effort, coupled with a ban on hunting black bears (which was in effect between 1927 and 1980), resulted in a black bear population estimated at between four thousand and five thousand today. Female black bears rarely weigh more than 300 pounds, but males can reach 600 to 700 pounds.

I did research for this little lesson in Arkansas black bear ecology because there have been several bear sightings in Hot Springs Village of late, including some on our street. Yesterday, my wife spotted a bear cub or yearling (not a full grown bear, at least) walking up our driveway and crossing the street, disappearing into the forest on the other side. Unfortunately, I was not home to see the event and my wife was unable to get a photo. Such is life. Other people in the area have been able to get still images and a few videos. I think it’s cool that such creatures are wandering among us. I hope they flourish.

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Thus far this summer (which has not yet officially begun), the temperatures have not been intolerable. Highs in the mid to upper eighties are extremely uncomfortable, but not intolerable. Today, the high is forecast to reach only 81; by Tuesday, meteorologists and their amateur wanna-be brethren say the high will reach only 79. Tonight’s low should be 68; I am comfortable and happy at 68.  I wonder whether this summer will be a sweltering Arkansauna or, like our first summer here, a soothing extended spring? I think the soothing spring possibility has already left the station, but a less-than-molten summer remains a possibility. I will offer the Universe my heartfelt advance thanks for a less-than-molten summer, anticipating that the Universe would not want to be placed in a not-so-positive light by seeming to dismiss a heartfelt expression of appreciation. I am devious that way. Of course, the Universe may be even more so. We shall see.

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An odd bit of inexplicable curiosity led me on a search for the largest cauldron available for purchase online. Thus far, it seems an eighty-five gallon cast iron cauldron, weighing 505 pounds, is the limit. At $1,195, it seems like a bargain. After examining details of the cauldron, I began looking around the page on which I found it: www.magicwicca.com. About the company that operates that page, the header says, “We Provide the Tools you need for your Beliefs and Rituals.” [Capitalization as shown on the page, by the way.] Hmm, I thought to myself, given the company’s emphasis, I wonder whether the intent of such a large cauldron is to deal with such stuff as:

Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

But then something else on the page caught my eye. Under a small header on the right side of the page, labeled “Best Sellers,” was a link to this item: “Body Oil Sex Only With Me.” Out of growing curiosity, I explored the link, where I read a description: “Pheromone Oil Use on wrists and neck to keep your lover faithful to you.” Alas, the $7.25 product is “currently out of stock.” And I can see why, of course!

Oh, well. There are other interesting products available for sale on the site. For example, incense, herbs, athane, magic dust and eye pillows, among others. Athane? What the hell is an athane, I wondered? I checked it out; an athane is a witch’s ceremonial knife, used in rituals as opposed to a cutting tool. Well, of course. And who can live without lavender and jasmine-scented flannel eye pillows? This website is a gold-mine!

The subject of sex, once raised, cannot be dismissed so easily (you do remember the “Body Oil Sex Only With Me” that’s out of stock, right?). So, my mind went back to a conversation yesterday afternoon with my sister-in-law, when she mentioned Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest shock products, including two candles labeled, respectively, “This Smells Like My Vagina” and “This Smells Like My Orgasm.” Seriously. Gwyneth Paltrow sells all manner of dangerous products she claims are good for people (not that these are dangerous, you understand). I wonder how she has managed to stay out of jail? Ah, yes, she’s filthy-rich and a Hollywood actress. Those attributes help keep the jail-house doors from slamming behind her, I’m sure.  I suspect a claim of false advertising against her two shock-value-for-the-pocketbook products would have essentially no chance of succeeding.

Plaintiff’s Attorney: “Your Honor, the plaintiff contends that Ms. Paltrow’s products falsely claim to exude the odor of her vagina and orgasm, respectively, and we ask the court to require her to immediately cease advertising those products. We ask for punitive damages in the amount of $650 million and attorney’s fees.”

Judge: Let’s see, or sniff, your proof. [Pause] Oh, I see. Case dismissed.

Back to the cauldron. I got side-tracked somehow. Eighty-five gallons. Depending on where you look, you will find that the average human body contains between 11 and 16 gallons of water and that water constitutes roughly sixty percent of the body’s mass. Erring on the upside, that means that approximately 28 gallons of “content” comprise the human body. Properly configured, my big cauldron could conceivably hold three people, then. Fear not; I’m not planning on verifying my arithmetic. I’m just trying to get a comparative sense of the volume of an 85-gallon cauldron. My next problem, of course, is to find a suitable stove-top to accommodate my culinary interests.

+++

We’re taught we should not hate. The concept that we should never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, wish death on another person is pumped into us like water from a fire hose. But does any of it stick? Do we occasionally (or somewhat more frequently) daydream about plunging a dirty, rusted sword (to which large filthy fish hooks have been welded to prevent the sword’s removal without also removing significant portions of the viscera in the process) into the mid-chest of a vile, narcissistic, utterly immoral human-look-alike animal? Of course not. Who would even think it? I bet Stephen King would. Speaking of Stephen King, I wonder if I alone have noticed the extraordinary long distance between the base of his nose and the beginning of his upper lip? It is remarkable to me. I am conscious of large empty spaces, such as the diastema between my two front teeth.  And, with regard to wide spaces between the two front teeth, I have noticed (and it’s purely annecdotal and observational on my part and may be entirely untrue, so take it with a grain or two of salt) that very visible diastemas are much more common among people of African, versus European, descent. Which may mean that I am African-American.  And speaking of noses, too, were you unaware, as I was, that the indentation that appears on many people beneath the nose and above the lip is called the philtrum? It is also called the medial cleft. Stephen King’s philtrum is, in most photographs I have seen, essentially invisible.

By the way, I have mispronounced diastema for my entire life. The proper pronunciation is dahy-uh–stee-muh. I have mispronounced is as dahy-ass-teemuh. What an absolutely horrendous, embarrassing misuse and abuse of the English language! I suspect people have been pointing at me and laughing at me for more than sixty years because of the way I have butchered that word. How in the name of all that’s holy could I have gotten it so horribly wrong all these years? I wonder whether I will continue to mispronounce it going forward? Unlike most people, who rarely use the word, I use it frequently because, as it evident, I am quite conscious of my very own dahy-uh-stee-muh. Will I continue my bad habit? Time, alone, will tell. Others may tell, as well, but they will do it behind my back as they point at me, mocking me for my broken and deformed elocution.

+++

For many years, I have from time to time broken into song, sometimes singing the words:

On the good ship, Poppycock,
A big bad boy defaced a clock
Causing sailors to scream and say
We’re going to catch you, boy, and then we’ll slay
You will truly, truly rue the day
That you murdered time with a rock.

It’s just nonsense and doesn’t even roll off the tongue properly. That’s evidence of something, but I don’t know what.

Yesterday, I decided I would take a break from posting on this blog. Just a few days. Long enough to relax and unwind from the nonstop stress of living in the ugly age of social media and mental meltdowns. Yet here I am, posting again. I can’t even keep a promise to myself; why should I expect others’ promises to me to be kept? And therein resides the problem. We’re all lying to ourselves about what matters. We’re insisting that our problems can be solved through the introduction of mechanical fixes to fundamentally flawed social structures. We say to ourselves, “let’s adopt rules saying no more choke-holds by police,” or “let’s all take a knee to show our support for equality and justice,” or “let’s disregard advice to wear masks and practice social distancing because the rules are being shoved down our throats simply to exercise control over our lives.” We’re lying to ourselves through raw superficiality and nonsensical paranoia. And we’re allowing others to lie to us with impunity. Rather than seeking the truth, we’re almost randomly selecting what falsehoods to believe from a  litany of lies.

Reality is an ugly, pus-laden sore covering the planet. Global pandemic. Systemic racism. Poverty on a scale beyond comprehension. Income inequality. Political animosity. Savagery. Rabid nationalism. The prospect of economic collapse. Religious wars. Mass psychosis. Amorality as a global personal philosophy.

Rules prohibiting choke-holds amount to band-aids made of single-layer toilet tissue, stuff that dissolves at the slightest hint of distant rain. Supporting justice and equality by taking a knee is akin to equipping soldiers launching the Normandy invasion with water pistols and spit-balls. Equating medical advice with propaganda is evidence of severe, incurable, mental illness.  We are in trouble. Deep trouble. We’re mired in explosive, gasoline-drenched quicksand, the nearest firm ground a thousand miles distant, beyond the forest fires that encircle us. Taking a knee doesn’t help in this hellish place. Banning choke-holds cannot quench the fires. Believing the flames are holograms will not save flesh from third-degree burns.

The United States is in large part responsible for the problems that threaten the planet and the people on it, thanks to the current vacuum in leadership (exacerbated by filling the void with toxic immorality and greed) and thanks to several generations shirking their responsibilities and passing them on to future generations. But the United States is no longer in a position to solve the world’s problems, alone. In fact, if the world’s problems are to be solved, that may take place in spite of the United States, especially under current “leadership.”

If I could snap my fingers to make things happen, I would convene an emergency meeting of select world leaders with the explicit objectives of; 1) identifying the most pressing, most dangerous problems confronting societies around the globe; 2) articulating humanity’s responsibilities for confronting and correcting them; and 3) calling on the people of the planet to collectively commit to working together to act accordingly. The world leaders would necessarily include leaders of several industrialized nations but also leaders of the poorest and least developed ones. Every segment of humanity should be represented. And, once the messages have been crafted, the leaders should commit to a single message that would be distributed through all available media at the same time.  And repeated several times. Over and over and over again. The seriousness of the issue would necessarily be stressed; as in, “This is our final chance to do the right thing; if we don’t act with compassion for one another and with deliberate speed, humanity will be lost. All of us must commit to repairing the damage done, whether intentionally or not, by a thousand generations.”

Leadership. That’s what it would take. And charisma. But not just one person. It would take a field of charismatic leaders of all colors, sexes, political perspectives, etc., etc.

It will not happen. It’s too much to hope for. But if I could snap my fingers, we would stop pretending our impotent little shows of “commitment” will do anything of consequence. We would come to the realization that only by retrieving our collective humanity can we hope to emerge from the burning quicksand. Fire-retardant suits are no match for the flames.

Threats to one’s sanity abound. They come in many forms and at any time. Eventually, one or more of those threats will break through the barriers erected to hold them at bay. When that happens, sanity takes on an entirely new appearance, a shape that looks the way madness once did. Sanity becomes the frightening possibility one strives to avoid, building a fortress against it; a mind-set of razor-wire fences and concrete block walls keep out the disappointments that seem to accompany sanity wherever it goes. Yet before sanity lost its hold, the barriers were meant as obstacles to madness. Odd, that.

Earth’s magnetic poles reversed themselves. That is the clearest explanation of the transition from sanity to madness. And vice versa. Attraction and revulsion change places. Creativity becomes dull literalness. Creative juices become fetid pools of stagnant, poisonous sewage. Joy becomes misery and depression shifts into radiant cheerfulness.

The spawn of madness and sanity litter the pages of a thesaurus. Is there any wonder why antonyms live in an edifice built to house synonyms? Language and lunacy are diametrically similar in their common uniqueness, much like silence and sanity. Sanity does call for keeping one’s lips sealed at times, even when the madness hidden deep inside is struggling to issue open-mouthed howls. No, sanity insists, the appropriate reaction is a cacophony of quietude.

These obviously bizarre thoughts are on my mind this morning because I think our default setting—sanity—is sometimes the most obvious outward evidence of madness, whereas the occasional eruption of insanity is evidence of the opposite. Madness is an outlet for sanity; without occasional bouts of madness, sanity cannot survive. Absent periods of mental instability, sanity shrivels into a hard prune, impenetrable except by jackhammers and dynamite. Madness as cure for sanity. Yet I question whether sanity is ever a cure for madness. Sanity, as I ponder it this morning, is evidence of a deeper defect. There’s more to this. And I may write more as my ideas continue to take shape. I have to be careful, though, because madness is not looked upon favorably in this devolving world in which we live. Sanity is valued more than gold and diamonds. Madness is derided, as if it were a carrier of rabies and the plague.

Seventy degrees. At a different time of year, seventy degrees can feel warm and toasty. This morning, though, seventy degrees felt so delightfully cool that I was confident I could live in seventy degree temperatures all day, every day, for the rest of my life and be deliriously happy doing it.

When I walked out on the deck just after daybreak, carrying the hummingbird feeder, the cool morning air met me like a passionate lover. She embraced me and kissed me and urged me to stay with her. “Linger with me. Hold me close. We will make one another happy for the rest of time.”

Her charms almost were beyond my capacity to resist; I could make no argument against the portrait she painted, that of a life of stunning perfection in one another’s arms. But in spite of my willingness to give myself over to her, I broke away and fled her beguiling, hypnotic, intoxicating spell.

Why, in God’s name, did I do it? For THIS? To sit in front of a tiny little screen and pour out my soul to a machine? Am I out of my mind? Well, of course I am. We all are out of our minds. Instead of exulting in a tryst with an ardent paramour, we pry into our own psyches, attempting to unleash secrets best kept hidden beneath layers of emotional rubbish, sediment left from waves of regret. Had I just stayed outside, I could have ridden the wave of cool, soothing affection. But, no, I slipped beneath the surface, filling my life with the warm, sticky perspiration that drips from my fingers after a pointless keyboard workout.

How’s that for a lesson in mangling metaphors and otherwise throttling language with a cudgel made of scraps of sibilant syllables? When I am otherwise lacking for creative energy, I attempt to make up for the emptiness by using words. Usually, that simply exacerbates the problem, focusing attention on the emptiness of the sentences within which the words are hopelessly lost.

Yet, I can return to my conversation with the cool morning air. I can imagine our conversation deepening. And I feel her embrace tighten, pulling me closer. I feel her, as she strokes my face and my arms and my legs, eliciting from me an urgent desire to envelop her just as she envelops me…but then a damn squirrel scampers across the metal roof of the screen porch, grabbing my attention and shaking it like a roadrunner shakes a snake in its beak. Ach! An out-of-place simile ruins my thrilling entanglement with the sizzling chill of a cool embrace.

I could write about current events and make predictions about the likelihood of an international economic collapse that leads to the use of thermonuclear  weapons in the fight against a global pandemic. But where’s the joy in that? I could write about a sweet group of retired females who, unbeknownst to one another, are embroiled in a torrid extramarital affair with the same guy, a retired professor of linguistics. Or, perhaps, this group of females should be CIA operatives working to thwart the socialist’s (it goes without saying that the linguist is a socialist) plans to recruit candidates for local school boards and such. Maybe the guy is not a linguist; perhaps he is a retired CIA operative who uses linguistics as a cover for his extensive collection of Russian language erotica. None of this sounds especially enticing. I think I would rather just allow the day to play out so that, when five o’clock rolls around, I can make a gin rickey without guilt.

Today’s the day for another Zoom video conference about food. It began as a video conference about fiery/spicy food. It has devolved. I am not sure I have the mental energy to ramrod this failing venture. I will need a gin rickey or its brethren to get me through it. Perhaps I could spice up the conversation by manufacturing a story about cooking up a dish of wilted oleander with summer oysters, which I used in a failed assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin’s bodyguard. I barely got out of the country alive. Speaking of espionage, I wonder whether the life of foreign intelligence operatives is as dangerous or as exciting as books and films suggest? I think I could make a damn fine CIA operative, given my propensity for fabricating elaborate ruses, keeping treacherous secrets, and flirting with danger. Flirting with danger. That gives me an idea for the name and personality of a spy: Danger Sensua, a woman who “retires” from a corporate job in Seattle, Washington to join MI-5, with her assignment being the close surveillance of…no, no, no. This is not working, either.

It is almost nine o’clock, HOURS beyond the time I usually write. This is evidence I should stop early. And so I shall.

Some mornings, words flow like water from a freshly-charged underground spring. Other mornings, language drips from my fingers onto the keyboard in excruciating slow motion, as if I had dipped my hands in hot tar and then plunged them into a bath of dry ice. This is one of those other mornings. I’ve been at it since around four o’clock; I have almost nothing to show. My creativity peaked while cobbling together a recipe for Ethiopian mitmita, using scraps and pieces from cooks and chefs far better equipped than I. As for true creativity, I believe I left it overnight in a chest-style deep freeze somewhere in rural Nebraska. Inasmuch as I have not been to rural Nebraska since I lived in Chicago in the late 1980s, I think the creativity succumbed to terminal freezer burn. I have been to Nebraska since I lived in Chicago, but the sole visit was to Omaha and not to the desolate stretches of rural Nebraska where I must have encountered the chest freezer.

The problem is not necessarily creativity, or the lack thereof. The problem is that I have nothing of any consequence to say. When the value of one’s words evaporates into an invisible cloud and blows away in a fierce wind, one’s mind becomes a vacant wasteland. An empty, irrelevant vessel unable even to serve as a repository of bad ideas. Even the bad ideas leaked out through massive cracks, wider and longer than the walls and fences they replaced. The mind is porous.

The problem with that is easy to see; leaks can occur in both directions, but the pressure inside is greater than outside, so the contents escape like air from a fractured balloon. A balloon can burst, but can it fracture? Perhaps a frozen balloon can fracture, but the volume of air in a frozen balloon would have shrunk from its original size, so the membrane would have wizened. A wizened balloon is not subject to fracture; it simply falls, limp, to the ground, its purpose gone with the volume of escaped air.

What is the purpose of a balloon? Do balloons have intrinsic purposes? I suspect they do. Their fundamental reason for being is to protect contents within the balloon’s sealed membrane from interacting with the external environment. But maybe their real purpose is not to protect what’s inside the membrane; instead, the purpose may be to protect the external environment from contamination by the matter confined within the balloon’s membrane.

I’ve written about balloons before. On one occasion, I wrote, “Emotions are best sealed in casks filled with lead and dropped into the deepest part of the sea; if not that, then released like white doves and helium balloons.”

I am too tired to finish the remaining half cup of my cold coffee. It’s nearing 6:30 and I’m well past tired; I’m worn. This is an unwritten sign; I should let my body try to rest.

Where does one’s energy go when it goes missing? The law of conservation of energy, also known as the first law of thermodynamics, states that the energy of a closed system must remain constant—it can neither increase nor decrease without interference from outside. The universe, we are told, is a closed system. So, all the energy in the universe cannot increase or decrease. That being said, I’ll ask again: Where the hell does my energy go when it goes missing?”

I believe my energy, of late, has been  transformed into unspent fuel. Flab. But what happens to my energy when I spend it? Like when I go into a furious home maintenance frenzy? That energy, I have decided, is simply transformed into another form of energy. Who knew, though, that a clean garage floor and sparkling windows were manifestations of energy? Who knew I have the ability to magically convert raw human energy into clean air conditioning compressor fins? Well, that’s not quite right. The fins were there to start with. It’s the clean that was missing. So, the reality is this: I can convert my human energy into clean. “Clean?” Yes, clean. That must be what’s happening, right? I spend my energy and, in return, I get clean air conditioner compressor fins. I already had the AC compressor fins, so what I really got in the trade is clean. Clean is a product of the first law of thermodynamics.

I’ll add “physicist” to my resumé.

I awoke at 3:51 this morning, earlier than usual, but not by a wide margin. I thought, at that hour, I would have a couple of hours of absolute solitude; not so, in that my wife was up less than nine minutes later. No matter. We secured our individual solitary spaces and dedicated ourselves to our individual routines. She read a book. I read a complimentary email from a friend who had watched/listened to my church insight presentation. His message also included links to a couple of items he thought might be of interest to me; they were. I spent a tad more than one hour and eleven minutes watching and listening to a recommended conversation, a video podcast on Bloggingheads.tv, between Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, two Black academics, on matters relating to race. Their discussion was both enlightening and thought-provoking. I realized, while listening to them, that I might be more willing to listen to them because they are extremely articulate and African-American than I might have been had they been less articulate and/or white. Therein, I think, resides vestiges of racism and convoluted bias that I would have hoped was long gone. Their conversation led me to assess the degree to which my views on all manner of issues might be colored by my own default liberal biases or, in some cases, conservative biases I did not realize hid inside my brain.

Sometimes, I realize I have to “open the hood” and look inside my brain to get a clear image of what’s there. It’s not always pretty. As much as I want to think my intellect and an innate compassion controls my beliefs and behaviors, evidence to the contrary suggests prejudice and animus take charge more often than I would like. But those are issues for another day. This morning, I’m more inclined to explore food interests and the extent to which my likes and dislikes might be informed by fernweh.

Quite some time ago, I stumbled upon a blog entitled Afroculinaria, which as one might guess, is based on an interest in African food. The blogger, Michael W. Twitty, has written extensively about African-inspired food, especially the food of Southern African-Americans that grew out of African roots. He describes his blog as “exploring culinary traditions of Africa, African America, and the African Diaspora.” That encompasses a lot of food. And, of course, he intersperses shards of writing on politics, slavery, bigotry, recipes, and plenty more. My primary interest has been on his recipes. I remember one, in particular, that intrigued me because it was for a dish I had eaten many times, but with a different “main” meat ingredient. Instead of beef, his dish called for bison. Not a huge difference, but big enough. I had never used bison (nor have I, yet). But the dish was a favorite I had eaten only in Ethiopian restaurants, zilzil tibs. Zilzil tibs, as I had known it, was a very rare beef awash in an incredibly flavorful spice mixture. When I have eaten zilzil tibs, it has been served alongside one or more Ethiopian vegetable stews, called wot, and eaten with injera bread. At any rate, I was fascinated with Twitty’s recipe, so much so that I vowed to prepare it (but using beef, not bison). I have yet to fulfill that vow. The reason? I have not yet had, at the same time, the discipline and the ingredients to make injera bread. I know I can gather all the appropriate spices (in fact, I have a source for berbere, so I would not have to create my own as Twitty’s recipe calls for). And though his recipe does not call for it, I would want to use a more traditional recipe that includes niter kibbeh, or spiced butter. As I considered the recipe I wanted to make, I realized I like the idea of Twitty’s recipe, but I preferred the ingredients with which I was familiar. Ach! I talk a good game about making Ethiopian food, but I rarely perform. It’s time I make a commitment; either put up or shut up. So, I shall make an Ethiopian meal, complete with injera, before the heat of summer gives way to the chill of fall. Whether I make zilzil tibs or gored-gored or some other meaty concoction, I shall make a full Ethiopian meal! If I do not follow through, I will limit my food intake to 200 calories a day for a month. That should serve as a sufficiently frightening cudgel. Oh, as to fernweh. I long to have experienced Ethiopia and its foods; I’m not sure whether I really want to spend a lot of time there, though.

But I do long to return to Chile, though I have never been there. I imagine wandering to a quiet Lo Barnechea neighborhood, where I would find Hosteria Doña Tinta. I might order lomo vetado a lo pobre, but I would feel guilty for doing so, simply because of the English translation of the dish: loin forbidden to the poor. But I have been assured, though not without some degree of suspicion, that the name does not have any negative connotations for poor people. Still… But Chile. Frankly, much of what I have read about Chilean food leaves me less than overwhelmed, but I cannot divorce my insatiable desire to experience the Chilean Pacific coast from my inexplicable appetite for Chilean cuisine.  My taste for Chile, I think, can be traced in part to a house on a mountain ridge, right on the Pacific coast. I found the house on a Chilean real estate website and fell in love with the place. The design was modern and minimalist, a style I have loved from the moment I saw such architecture. The home was poised high on on a rocky crag overlooking the Pacific. A huge terrace, facing the Pacific, and a pool suggested to me the place was designed for outdoor living. The kitchen was enormous and well-appointed. Its very large island had plenty of room for workspace and for eating. I recall the kitchen was equipped with two refrigerators; at least I think so. And the price! If I remember correctly, it was priced at the equivalent of less than $200,000 U.S. I wanted to buy the place, immediately, upon finding the listing. My wife, though, being the practical sort, suggested it might be best to visit first. But before that, she suggested, we might want to retire with a considerably larger nest egg than we had at the time. Crash! There went my Chilean retirement. I still long to visit. I missed my opportunity, twice, to live in a country with a female socialist president. Michelle Bachelet served as president of the country for eight years, in two separate terms; during both terms, I remember being slightly miffed that I was not living in my dream house in Pacific coastal Chile, regularly eating fresh-caught Chilean seafood.  My fantasy life takes me to some interesting places; unfortunately, my real life rarely tags along. At least, I say to myself, I can eat Chilean dishes and daydream about engaging in philosophical conversations with Michelle Bachelet.

I really should write more about the real world. But, then, I know so much more about fantasy than reality; I would feel like a fraud writing about the real world.

It should have come as no surprise to me that listening to certain pieces of music early in the morning can have very different effects on my psyche. But I was surprised, nonetheless—when I listened to Ravel’s Bolero and Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and a piano solo of Flower Duet’ from Lakmé by Léo Delibes—that my perspective on the day changed with each piece. This was after I repeated something I did last night, which was to listen to and watch a YouTube performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue by the Royal Academy Symphony Orchestra.

Listening to this somewhat random assortment of music made me feel receptive to whatever the day offers, though that receptivity varied in its intensity and its shape with each piece to which I listened and watched. The “shape of one’s receptivity;” that’s a difficult concept to wrap my head around, much less put into words. I did it just now, I know, but probably with words wholly unsuited to the task. And how does one measure, precisely, the intensity of one’s receptivity? To anything? These words are beginning to sound like so much linguistic mush, a meaningless word porridge that has no substance. But that could not be further from the truth; there is substance in those terms. Admittedly, the substance may be buried beneath definitions twisted to fit my mind and my mood; regardless, there is substance. It is palpable; I feel it as if it were a physical thing.

Music can open one’s mind to possibilities that, without its effects, seem distant and unlikely; so remote that reality could not possibly catch up to them. But music can anesthetize the sensation of impossibility, clearing away obstacles that we allow to block the way before us. Music can make us receptive to dreams and visions and wishes and desires that seem out of reach. And it can shape how receptive we are to exploring ideas that might otherwise be hidden or dangerous or forbidden.  Music can trigger emotions both sensual and chaste and thoughts both passionate and decidedly detached. Sounds molded around notes and melodies can be either manipulative or freeing; or both.

Is it odd that music can open and close our minds? Sounds, arranged just so, can evoke supreme serenity or delirious excitement; sometimes, in a bizarre state of rapture, both can exist simultaneously. I know so very little about music. I cannot read music. I cannot tell one note from the next (I can differentiate them, one from another, but I cannot say which is which).  Yet even in the absence of understanding, I know deep inside that music is a powerful elixir with almost magical qualities. Music can erase cares and surmount constraints. It can overcome hesitations and taboos. I suspect the idea of armies marching into battle to the sounds of music intended to steel nerves and harden resolve is based on the belief in the power of music to conquer fear.

That last sentence triggered another, related, thought. Is there something about music that makes it pair well with alcohol? Both of them, in proper measure, can enhance experiences. Both can diminish inhibitions. Paired together, they can overcome irrational fears (karaoke, anyone?).  I wonder why music sounds smoother or rougher, softer or harder, and more personal with a glass of wine? It could be because they go so well together. This morning, though, alcohol is not involved in these musings. Maybe, though, we (and least I) tend to listen to music later in the day because it pairs well with alcohol. Just a thought. Along with so many others.

Onward toward the brightening day. I can listen to bird songs. Are they music? Or are they simply conversations and pronouncements I overhear as I eavesdrop on the denizens of the sky? I suppose it doesn’t matter, as long as it sounds right and feels right. Nobody needs to know of my love affair with avian cantatas if I decide to keep it a secret.

A few days ago, I mentioned to my sister-in-law that I remembered, years ago, having thought it would be cool to have an app that could identify birds by listening to their songs, sort of like Shazam does with music. Our conversation surrounded my relatively new-found BirdNET app, which does precisely that. Not satisfied that I thought I remembered articulating the wish for such an app, I went looking for evidence of my prescience. And I found it. In a post on my old blog, Brittle Road, dated August 26, 2012, I wrote these words:

The birds’ chatter gets noticeably louder and more insistent as I get closer to the plants where they are hiding. I wish I could tell from their songs what they were.  That gives me an idea!  It would be great to have a smart phone app, like Shazam for my iPhone, that would identify bird songs.  When I hold my iPhone up in the direction of speakers playing a piece of music, Shazam usually is able to pinpoint the name of the song, the artist, and the album on which it is found.  I wonder if there’s any reason the same mechanisms used in Shazam could not be used to identify bird songs?

I do not know precisely when BirdNET was first made available in beta test mode, but I suspect it has been relatively recent. Regardless of when it launched, it was (and is) a magnificent example of the marriage between curiosity, intellect, and technology. I applaud the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Chemnitz University of Technology for an extraordinary demonstration of exciting technology. A quote from the website linked in the first sentence of this paragraph says, ” Our research is mainly focused on the detection and classification of avian sounds using machine learning – we want to assist experts and citizen scientist in their work of monitoring and protecting our birds.” Such stuff makes me wish I had the wherewithal to absorb enough knowledge of ornithology and technology to participate in the exciting work of the two institutions.

Bird sounds and songs. Most humans, and I include myself, have virtually no knowledge of what those noises mean. We spend our entire lives surrounded by those sounds, but we largely ignore them or appreciate them only to the extent that they are “pleasing to the ear.” But what do those chirps and whistles and calls MEAN? Humans may never truly understand what occurs in the brains of birds as they create their unique notes and spread their voices in the sky and among trees and brush and on wires along lonely stretches of highway. We may never know.

Another mystery we want to unlock. But do we really want to know everything? Aren’t the mysteries of Nature, especially, sacred secrets about which we want to remain in the dark? Do we not long to always have just beyond our reach mystic enigmas, magical puzzles that hold the secrets to life, secrets we are forever prohibited from knowing? I think we want to know, but we don’t. We want to have answers, but we want to be delightfully confused. We thirst for knowledge, but we truly worship its absence. Like birds, we are living conundrums.

Birds, we are told, are modern-day dinosaurs. According to Julia Clarke of the University of Texas at Austin (my alma mater), “All of the species of birds we have today are descendants of one lineage of dinosaur: the theropod dinosaurs.” And there you go! That one bit of knowledge, which has been lodged in my brain for a long, long time, could prompt me to return to college to pursue a degree in a field of study that could expose me to every other field of study: a terminal advanced degree in renaissance multi-disciplinary natural science philosophy, or some other such non-existent educational fantasy. I do want to know the answers! Mystery be damned! I want to know the facts!  Ah, but do I really? I think not. I think I am just like the rest of the human race; largely attuned to science and facts, but steeped in superstition and mysticism with a touch of doubt, and anger at my inadequacy.

I could imagine spending my days in intense field work, watching living dinosaurs soar through the air. Except I would need the body of a thirty or four year-old, if I were to be moderately comfortable doing that. I don’t have such a body. Rats. Just as I imagined what would become BirdNET, I now imagine an injection that will restore youthful energy, strength, stamina, and intellectual capacity. Eight years from now, if such an injection is available, I will insist on taking at least a bit of credit for its creation.

I started the day by writing about the Unabomber. I then switched gears, locating and saving images that might complement my presentation on the transformative power of words. From there, I made a breakfast consisting of a flour tortilla, refried beans, shredded cheddar cheese, cilantro, and salsa from a jar. Then, back to the Unabomber. Then, writing about sitting in a large kettle of water, the temperature of said water increasing very gradually by one degree every three hours; would the eight degrees in twenty-four hours be noticeable? How about twenty-four degrees in three days? That exercise in writing was set aside for another time and another mood.

I took out the trash and drank a glass of iced tea without the ice. I pondered how an elderly gentleman in the mountains of Japan might dismiss my value to humankind without ever even knowing of my existence. So many thoughts race through my mind; unconnected, unnecessary, unproductive thoughts. Ideas with no bearing on reality. Curiosity about the experience of taking LSD; I never did, but would I, if given the opportunity? And I considered an article I read yesterday, describing a woman’s preparations for her planned demise; seeking an end to pointless, incomprehensible pain.

A huge creature, a beast I used to call “daddy long-legs,” is crawling up the screen outside the window to my right. I expect it is spying on me. It is part of an advance party, scouting for potential dangers to the millions upon millions of similar creatures waiting just beyond the edge of the forest. I wonder why the creatures would be interested in us? Especially me? Am I a good specimen of the most savage among my species? That creature could probably write a book at its experiences in the universe, if it could write. And who’s to say it cannot? Just because I do not understand its methods does not mean it does not possess perfectly good methods of written communication. It just has an entirely different means of communicating from me.

I may start doing podcasts or video messages each day instead of writing with my fingers. An audience of six, sleepy and disinterested, would cause my ratings to stay beneath the floorboards of an ancient house without wiring. My experiment would fail. Enough of that.

I must leave soon for my videotaping session. Wish me success, please, and don’t forget to write.

Perhaps when I return home, I will plant some dwarf snapdragons. Perhaps I won’t.

Darkness leaves early of late. Light pours in over the horizon like a silent nighttime flood, with no warning, until it is too late to wallow in the absence of light. The only symptom of the flood is the too-late-noticed dissolution of darkness, stolen by time slipping away with big, fragments of nighttime and leaving hazy horizontal holes in the sky near the edge of the earth. By the time I arose from my slumbers early on this day, the peaceful darkness has given way to chaotic morning, awash in the noise of wild birds prodding the universe with their songs.

By the time I was upright, dawdling time had long-since passed. It was time to prepare and wolf down breakfast and, then, to put the finishing touches on my celebration of words and language and their conspiracy to thrust emotion into the spotlight.  I am writing in this stilted fashion with a purpose that would be almost impossible to explain if I were to try, which I will not. At least not for now. Not before I understand what is happening in interstellar space and not until the edge of the Milky Way is clipped by invading Star-Spirits, those critters who sprinkle hope and the illusion of possibilities in their wake.

The clocks here on Earth measure almost 10:30 in this time zone, swath of sky that looks more like a shard than a slab. Time to devise plans for what the past will look like hours hence.

This bright, cool, rapidly-warming morning invites me outdoors. But I am back inside, dedicating myself to writing a presentation I will make to an empty sanctuary in the coming several days. Before I started writing this morning, I spent some time outside, listening to the birds and attempting to identify them by their songs, with the help of the BirdNET app. I did not see Scarlet Tanagers, but BirdNET assured me that I was listening to them.

My first action outdoors, though, was to hang the hummingbird feeder outside the “sky room.” When I took the feeder outside, I noticed that three of six starter pots of tomatoes had been knocked from the railing to the deck, by raccoons no doubt. Had I not taken in the hummingbird feeder, the beasts would have spilled its sugary cargo all over the deck and probably flung the feeder to the ground far below. Bastards! The tomato plants look like they survived the indignity. Now, though, I have to decide how to protect the plants from marauding raccoons.

Back to the presentation. I’m taking a break from working on it. I do not know yet when I am to go to the sanctuary to deliver my talk to a video recorder. I only hope I have finished writing it and have practiced it enough that it will not be hard for viewers to hear and watch when the video is posted to the church website. The presentation is for an Insight Service; they are held on the second and fourth Sundays of the month on various topics by speakers other than our minister. Before the pandemic, they included Q&A after the presentation. Now, though, I can avoid the embarrassment of being unable to answer questions intelligently. But the lack of feedback will make the presentation less fulfilling for me, I suspect. Such is life. I can live with just talking to an empty room. I do a variation on that theme every day with this blog.

I really have to stop procrastinating. I don’t know precisely when, but sometime during the next few days I have to deliver a finished Insight presentation. So, I must finish writing it. Back to the other writing I must do.