Camping in Tennessee with Cari

Posted on October 16, 2019 by John Swinburn

The intricate complexities of dreams challenge the brain’s ability to process information. The dream from which I awoke this morning confirmed my assessment; dreams ignore impossibilities and cast aside conflicting experiences as if fact and fiction have no place in the dreamscape. This morning’s dream was among those one buries in one’s private, unwritten journal. Despite its demand for eternal confidentiality, though, it urges exploration of how the mind can so readily accept the impossible as if it were not only possible but commonplace.

For instance, how could one’s dreams accept without question boarding a wooden ship in font of one’s home and driving it along city streets to an empty parking spot that’s seemingly in the middle of a massive, unending prairie? And how can it then seem normal that the ship’s wheel has turned into the equipment used by a fununcular operator? Dreams often abandon logic, leaving it unused and gathering dust in the recesses of one’s brain.

Despite the fact that, after awakening, one notices impossibilities and illogical connections in dreams, their existence isn’t relevant and isn’t even recognized during the dream. Only in attempting the impossible task of “processing” the dream after one awakes do the fallacies make themselves known to the conscious mind.

I recall reading and hearing that dreams often represent one’s repressed desires and/or fears. I can see kernels of truth in that. But I’ve also learned that dreams constitute random shreds of data the brain attempts to organize during sleep. And I am sure I have heard several other explanations of dreams. The truth is, no one knows with any degree of certainty why we dream nor what functions our dreams serve, if any.

Dreams may arise from misfires of synapses that the brain attempts to interpret, using memories of experience as the means of translating or decoding those misfires. I doubt that explanation. In spite of the impossibilities in dreams, there are too many obvious desires and fears at play for random misfires to adequately explain the processes.

Damn! I wrote about six more long paragraphs, but either the Internet connection got dropped or WordPress failed me. Too much to try to reconstruct.

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Distant Presence

Posted on October 10, 2019 by John Swinburn

I wonder if she hears me rifling about in her dream? Probably not. We’re both fast asleep and many miles apart. But if there’s anything to the occult, she might sense my presence as I pull back the covers and watch her nightgown gently rise and fall with her slow, rhythmic breathing. And she might feel me stroke her shoulders and her neck…though probably not. We’re both dreaming, after all. And, as I said, we’re distant; miles apart. This is not real, not in the physical sense. Yet I am only an arm’s reach away from her. I see and touch her across distance. In the same way, she knows how very close she is to me.

We’re having the same wishful, wistful dream. She wants to caress me as much as I want to caress her. Synchronicity is the reason I feel her presence so much of the time. We both want the same things at the same time. It’s a metaphysical thing. But very physical, too.

If I listen, as I sleep, I can hear her breathing. I can feel her urgency as she stands near my bed, wanting desperately to join me in my cocoon. But she dare not. Her husband would hear her rustle and my wife would feel the presence of another woman in the room. And, of course, neither of us could control our vocal acknowledgement and appreciation of flesh upon flesh.

I said she probably wouldn’t hear me rifling about in her dream, didn’t I? I wonder whether I believe that or… I wonder whether we both feel such a deep emotional and physical desire that we risk erupting in unbridled passion at any moment? Even now, as our spouses sleep soundly next to us, are we in danger of an explosive revelation of our indescribably powerful sensual magnetism?

***

Day breaks, prying loose the vice-like grips of magnetic lust. Morning rips at me as if I were a tiny, newborn lamb and it were a ravenously hungry wolf.  I disappear in shreds down the gullet of the day, consumed as a pitiful stand-in for raw energy.

I keep my distance from last night’s dreams, if that’s what they were. More likely they were delusional fantasies, fed by recollections of my time in the Second World War. I spent months in Africa, defending humankind against God knows what. It was there I met Lisa and broke every vow I’d ever made. But that wasn’t me, was it? I wasn’t even born during the Second World War. Yet I remember clearly the brutality of battle. The horror of losing friends to grenades and bullets and shrapnel is etched into my brain so deeply nothing can remove the images from my mind.

These are the components of madness. These experiences across time and distance shred my brain into fibers so thin and fragile I cannot imagine ever healing, no matter how much medicine I apply. These experiences are unquestionably real, but they are no more than my imagination, damaged and let loose by alcohol and muscle memory. I flit between the blood-soaked sands of Africa and Lisa’s bedroom, crossing massive amounts of time and distance in the time it takes to inhale the odor of state cigarette smoke and the stench of urine. I can’t stand this! If I weren’t tied to the four posts of this institutional bed I would scratch my eyes out!

***

By the time the medications begin to take effect, the hallucinations…if that’s what they were…subside into the sticky fog of uncomfortable memory. The metal bedframe to which I am tied shows evidence that I am one of many who have tried to escape.

I’m trying to type this on my notebook, without my mouse and my detachable keyboard. It’s not working. I keep getting lost in my technological madness, veering away from my mental decay, so it’s hard to keep going. Enough of this for now. We’re off to Dallas in a while and, then, tomorrow, to Mexico. Whether I’ll blog while I’m there remains to be seen.

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On Time

Posted on October 9, 2019 by John Swinburn

Days race by, behaving as if the clock hurries to complete its tasks quickly, lest time render the hands of the clock unable to accurately measure the duration of the unfolding of experience. There will come a moment, or perhaps it already has come and gone, when “hands of a clock” is a meaningless phrase; an arcane reference to an artifact of human history as precious and pointless as a sundial.

Physicists and poets argue about the genesis of time, though quiet conversations about competing theories of the physical and spiritual worlds hardly can be called arguments. The measurement of time is both expanding and contracting. By the way, can theories that do not intersect, even tangentially, be called competitors?

We speak different languages, hopelessly engaged in innocuous gibberish communications. Some argue that red is a point on the spectrum of physical light, while others assert the superiority of salmon as both a flavor and a hue. Yet both assertions rely on the supremacy of time to define the moment at which a fact can be measured.

We must know both “where” and “when,” but “where” cannot be without “when” and “when” relies on “where” as well. Yet we hedge our bets with “sometime” and “someplace,” hoping to escape the certainty of when and where.

For example, a street corner in New York City exists only within precise parameters of time, so location really is time dependent. That street corner did not exist a thousand years ago and will not exist a thousand years hence.

And time’s measure, whether on a clock’s face or in the shadow of a sundial, depends on where it is taken.

 

 

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Adequately Altruistic or Acquisitive

Posted on October 7, 2019 by John Swinburn

Among other difficulties with wealth redistribution programs is the problem that involves reaching agreement on the definitions of two adjectives: “enough” and “too much.” If we could achieve collective accord on what constitutes enough and how much is too much, the problem of wealth inequality might vaporize in an instant.

“Enough” is probably the easier term about which to come to agreement, although having “enough” to simply sustain life bears little resemblance to having “enough” to live comfortably. The definition of comfort, then, enters into the equation and, of course, the idea of what is comfortable seems to vary radically from person to person and place to place. I might insist that comfort must include a home whose ambient temperatures range between 68F and 78F, while someone else might be perfectly happy with 58F to 65F (and uncomfortable outside that range). And comfort can involve the degree to which one’s belly is full and one’s hunger sated.

Luxuries, too, begin to invade the territory of comfort. “Enough” whiskey for one man might mean an amount sufficient to deaden the pain of his sense of inadequacy, whereas “enough” for his wife might equate to the absence of its odor within thirty yards of the house in which she lives.

Obviously, I think, the problem of wealth redistribution rests squarely with a common human character trait: greed. But even greed is not subject to readily agreeable measures. When does “need” morph into “need” and when does desire blossom into full-formed greed? It depends on who you ask. The complex web of want and need and desire and willingness (or unwillngness) to sacrifice for the greater good creates an impossibly byzantine labyrinth. A willingness to share—to sacrifice a part of one’s own wealth so that others might enjoy a greater degree of comfort—is possible only when everyone is asked to do the same. But when is that the case? Individual greed or fear or envy can wreck the concept that “a rising tide raises all boats.”

I know I could keep my thermostat at a setting lower or higher than my “normal” and still be reasonably comfortable. If by doing so, I could be assured that someone else—someone who has been unable to achieve that level of comfort—could have an improved life, I might do it. But I’m likely to do it only if I believe I am not being asked to absorb the full weight of the sacrifice; others must do the same. And the same is true when considering the number of pots and pans in the kitchen, the number of beds in the house, the blankets available during the cold of winter, and the amount of food in my refrigerator. And whether I even have access to a refrigerator solely for my own use. If we all shared, we could all be happy. Or could we?

I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I know many people who would, I think, give the clothes off their backs to help others. I know many others who wouldn’t give uneaten food off their plates to a starving child.

The answer, if there is one, would have to begin in infancy and continue through adulthood; we would all need to agree to teach what churches and temples and schools of philosophy have attempted to teach for eons. But it hasn’t worked so far, has it? If it had been sufficient, hunger and homelessness and unemployment and starvation would not be so prevalent.

I think about such matters all the time. Literally all the time. And that constant contemplation does nothing but drum into me the hopelessness that humanity will ever rise above its pitiful level of petty greed. But maybe, if enough people continue thinking about such stuff, eventually a solution will emerge out of the collective consciousness. Do I believe that? The answer depends on whether my mood is that of an optimist or a realist. I try not to be a pessimist; realism is sufficient for that.

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Retrospective Contemplation

Posted on October 6, 2019 by John Swinburn

Roughly one year has passed since my lung cancer diagnosis. The process of exploring it began on September 7 last year, when I saw my doctor for a persistent cough. Two x-rays and a CT scan later, a preliminary diagnosis was made; around October 10. From there, the number of types of tests accelerated. PET scan, lung function test, biopsy, etc., etc. The result of the PET scan, delivered to me on October 19, reaffirmed the preliminary diagnosis of lung cancer. But, still, a biopsy would be necessary to be certain. It wasn’t until November 2 that I got the final, official word: the biopsy confirmed lung cancer. And, after a rush of tests and doctor visits and other such stuff related to my medical condition, I underwent surgery on November 19. The surgeon removed the lower lobe of my right lung, where the cancer had taken hold.  After a seven-day hospital stay, I returned home and limped along for quite a while, recovering from the gashes in my back and side and the holes left where drain hoses had been thrust into my lower chest from the side. My six-weeks of radiation therapy, five days a week, began in January, as did my four-courses of chemotherapy. Though I’ve said many times I was lucky and I had it easy (and I believe it), the experience was a bitch and I don’t want to go through it again.

So, why am I writing about this again? I guess it’s the fact that I recognize that I’m in the midst of a “moving anniversary” that began with my first doctor visit on September 7 and my formal diagnosis on November 2. That, and the fact that most recurrences of lung cancer occur during the five years following diagnosis. So, I’ve almost completed the first year; if my CT scan tomorrow (the results of which I won’t know until my appointment with Dr. Chen on October 24) is clear, I will have finished a year cancer-free. Just four more years to go before I can begin to feel some degree of comfort that recurrence isn’t likely. But, in reality, a recurrence is possible even well beyond five years. It’s just a fact of life that cancer can return. Such is the way of the world. There’s not a damn thing I can do to change it. I might improve my chances if I change my diet and engage in a consistent exercise regimen; whether I do either of those things reveals the value I put on extending my life. That’s a bit of a grim thought.

Another issue that probably influences me to continue thinking about my cancer is that I’ve not yet fully recovered. I still can’t walk up a hill or up many steps without getting badly out of breath. I tire easily. I’m still dealing with a godawful cough about which no one seems to be able to determine a cause or prescribe a successful treatment.

Last year, when faced with the possibility of surgery and subsequent treatments, I seriously considered having no treatments. I did not want to deal with the possibility that surgery could leave me in much worse condition than I started. I did not want to live as an invalid who could do nothing for himself and who very existence could be a monstrous burden on my wife and others. But I chose to go ahead with it because I was led to believe the process would be challenging but “doable.” And that’s true. But if faced with it again, I don’t know what I might decide. And that’s one of those things on my mind during this “anniversary” period.

I wish I could erase these matters from my mind, but I know I can’t. But I can try to minimize them and hide them from view. As hard as I am to live with on normal days, I must be an especially difficult person when death is on my mind.

The time is ripe for a shower and shave, followed by breakfast. Or maybe I’ll reverse the order. And, then, a bit later, off to church. I’m not in the mood for that, but I’ll go. I think the holiday from church services while we were in Europe got me used to owning my own Sundays again. I rather like that. But I should be willing to share them. Should. That’s the operative word.

 

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The Man Who Loved Poetry

Posted on October 3, 2019 by John Swinburn

Poetry did not die with him, but it
might not have lived without him.
Bud Kenny loved poetry almost as
much as poetry loved him.

Absent Bud’s unapologetic shoulders
upon which to sit and proclaim its
fierce entanglement with the head
and the heart, poetry might not have
become the emotional anchor for a
thousand men and women who needed
an outlet to express despair and passion,
rage and affection, sorrow and sympathy.

But he taught all who crossed his path that
poetry, as both a shield and a sword, demands
justice and metes out healing love with
phrases that capture all of life’s complexity.
Bud transformed poetry’s reputation from the
weak baby brother who hid behind the superior
power of prose to the ferocious big sister
who extracted every ounce of raw emotion
from each beautifully sculpted syllable.

He taught Hot Springs to love poetry
the way a parent loves a child; as a
gentle coach, always urging offspring
to become their best and most beautiful selves.
In Bud’s eyes, we were his lyrical children.
And Bud Kenny loved poetry almost as
much as poetry, his lyrical children, loved him.

It was perhaps fitting that Bud Kenny died on a Wednesday, October 2, 2019. He was a creator and promoter of Wednesday Night Poetry for many, many years (the first one being February 1, 1989). It has not, to this day, missed a single week, thanks in large part to Bud Kenny’s fierce dedication. I already miss Bud.

Posted in Poetry, Writing | 2 Comments

Cars Bite

Posted on October 2, 2019 by John Swinburn

The Subaru had its 60K maintenance yesterday, along with new brake pads. I feel confident I could have purchased a serviceable used car for what we paid to keep the four-year-old vehicle operating as intended. Except there’s this one thing…

For literally a couple of years, I’ve been meaning to mention to the service advisors that the automatic tracking headlights (or whatever they are called) don’t seem to work. When we first got the car, I noticed the lights (at night) seemed to move and “wash” the roadside as we rounded curves. Sort of cool. But that stopped at some point. We don’t drive much at night, so we didn’t notice the absence often; but I noticed it. I just kept forgetting to inquire. Well, yesterday I did.

I was told our car does not have auto tracking lights. Maybe fog lights, but not headlights. Okay, I said, what about that. They checked. No, you don’t have any of that stuff. I left; dissatisfied and a little miffed. I pulled out the sticker that was on the car window when we bought it. Sure enough, it had the fog light package; lights that “moved.”

I’ve decided the problem began in 2017 when we had the 30K mile maintenance. It was then that we complained about the GPS not working properly. They reinstalled the software. Yesterday, when the guys were checking, I noticed that they checked the software associated with the GPS; that’s where they looked but did not find the fog light sofware. Bingo! When they “fixed” the software in 2017, they must have deleted or overwritten the fog light software.

So…I will take the car back to Subaru after our next road trip. And we’ll see what they decide to do about it.

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You Would Look Just Fine if You Were Naked

Posted on September 30, 2019 by John Swinburn

I chose to ignore the clock’s suggestion after I awoke to pee, opting instead to remain upright and awake. The time, 3:48 a.m., suggested a return to bed and to sleep would have been appropriate. But putting on my morning clothes and making a cup of coffee seemed right to me.

Am I in the minority, I wonder; I mean, do others have “morning clothes,” a wardrobe subset between sleepwear and daytime apparel?

I’ve seen others’ morning clothes, but I don’t know whether they also constitute sleeping clothes; for some reason, I’ve not been invited in to others’ bedrooms to view their nightwear. Yet I have seen people emerge from bedrooms, dressed in outfits that readily fit into my category of “morning wear.” I would inquire about the nature of their clothing, except it might seem slightly creepy. It might even seem unacceptably forward (or, perhaps, far worse) to ask a woman friend, as she emerges from the guest room in the early morning hours, “Are you wearing what you wore to bed?”

As I consider my “morning wear,” it occurs to me that part of my wardrobe also constitutes what I’ll call “post day wear attire.” I’ll describe it: a baggy pair of workout shorts with an elastic waistband, a baggy t-shirt, and a pair of flip-flops. Generally, this extremely comfortable part of my wardrobe constitutes my clothing before I must leave the house in “presentable” form and after I return for the duration; that is, after I’m “in for the night.”

Part of the allure of “home,” I think, could be the comfort one associates with one’s dress at home. Social conventions that call for clothing that binds the body and the feet in unnatural ways may be abandoned at home; unless, of course, one expects more formal visitors to come calling. If one has real friends who might appear at one’s doorsteps, one does not need to put on pretensions by dressing up for them; friends accept and appreciate the casual and slothful comforts of one another.

I started to call my footwear by another name that I used to use to describe them: “thongs.” But the definition of “thongs” has morphed to describe clothing that barely covers one’s genitalia, it seems; other terms for “thongs” include “G-string” and “butt-floss.” So I chose the safer, less suggestive, alternative. Being unwilling to rely entirely on my memory to recall other terms for my favorite footwear, I looked it up; I have a very close relationship with dictionaries and their ilk.

The footwear we lately called “flip-flops” goes by several other names in other cultures and countries. Here’s a partial list:

  • zōri in Japan
  • dép tông or dép xỏ ngón in Vietnam
  • chinelos in Brazil
  • japonki in Poland
  • dacas in Somalia
  • sayonares in Greece
  • jandal in New Zealand
  • slippers in Hawaii, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Netherlands
  • infradito in Italy
  • djapanki in Bulgaria
  • charlie wote in Ghana
  • japanke in Croatia
  • vietnamki in Russia and Ukraine
  • yezenes in Latvia

I’ve chosen not to mention the specifics of my sleepwear; it’s not that I’m shy, it’s just that the discussion probably belongs in another, yet-to-be-written post.

But back to the matter of those elements of one’s wardrobe one wears around the house when greater formality is not expected but comfort is demanded: I wonder whether I am in the minority. I slog through most days in reasonable comfort, wearing shorts (with a belt), a moderately loose shirt (long pants and a sweater in days gone by, before climate change robbed us of Fall and Winter), and tennis shoes. Even those clothes, though, are too constrictive. Belts (as necessary as they are to prevent pants around the ankles at inopportune times) remind me of ties; they must have been born in years long past as instruments of torture. And shoes, with or without laces, represent vestiges of foot binding; they should be regulated to ensure non-constriction.

Ultimately, it all comes down to comfort. And, of course, it comes back to one of my favorite, but socially-unacceptable, topics: nudity. Why the hell don’t we just get over our puritanical psychoses and accept nudity as a natural aspect of humanity? “Nakedness” is the ultimate comfort (granted, for men (at least this one), wearing briefs prevents potentially painful swings and dangles). We’ve been trained to look at certain parts of the human body as either ugly or forbidden or both. And I’ll admit that there are certain parts of certain people (here, I raise my hand) that are not particularly pleasing. But we can get over that if we give ourselves time. People whose faces were disfigured by fire may not be immediately attractive, but we get used to seeing them and, if we get to know the people, we find their unique appearances appealing. The same would happen were nudity to be the next fashion trend. But we’re not even willing to entertain the idea, are we? No, I’m afraid we are not. There are too many wars to fight and cultures to conquer for us to think about the idiocy of legislated and enforced non-nudity. Jesus! Don’t get me started.

Okay, I’ll admit that some clothes are appealing. Like I said, I’m apt to wear briefs, even after the Apparel Enlightenment comes. And if I’m cold, I’ll cover up. And you can bet that I’ll wear long pants, both to protect me from the cold and to keep me from getting scratched as I amble through blackberry patches. Hell, if the environment calls for them, I’ll wear chaps, for God’s sake. But, generally speaking, I advocate for comfort over beauty. Beauty has its place, of course; I’ll never argue that beauty should be erased. But let’s be reasonable and conscious, always, of comfort, shall we?

This diatribe started with my contemplating morning-wear. I’m still waiting for an answer. Are there others whose uniforms are day-part specific? That is, certain attire for post-sleep pre-departure periods, other attire for walking around in the world, and yet other (or a return to post-sleep stuff) upon return to one’s lair. I think an exhaustive Gallup survey or full-scale information inventory should be conducted to answer my questions. We should know whether our habilimental habits are unique or whether our behaviors are widespread and embraced by our fellow human beings. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say access to this knowledge is a fundamental human right, I think it’s not wrong.

Back to clothing that I’d happily wear (beyond briefs), even after the Apparel Enlightenment. I’ve written before about my desire to design and produce clothing that has sufficient pockets of adequate size in appropriate places so I can carry all my “stuff” in readily accessible locations. I still want that. Nudity does nothing to make cell-phones and car keys and pocket knives and note pads and pens easier to carry. A well-designed shirt (or vest or pants or wearable “man-purse”) can better meet those needs than can a naked body. There’s a place for clothing. I’m not anti-clothing; I’m just opposed to forced cover-ups.

This one-way conversation seems to have gotten away from what I call flip-flops. I cannot convey specific attributes of flip-flops that make a particular pair appealing; but there must be certain characteristics I like and others I don’t, because I don’t like every pair I’ve worn. Yet I can’t say why I like some and don’t like others. I’d better hurry up and find out, though, because my remaining pairs of flip-flops are nearing their end-times. I’ve repaired a couple of pairs within the past few months. And I’ve reluctantly discarded others that were beyond repair. I’m left with very few pairs of usable flip-flops, each of them with limited lives left to them. So I need new ones at the ready. Now, as Fall approaches from a blazing distance, is not the time to buy flip-flops. I should have bought new ones in early Springs. But I may need replacements before next Spring (I wear flip-flops indoors, even in Winter). Achh! Well, I will have to make do with what I have, I suppose. I’ll have to wear a pair or two that do not fully measure up in terms of comfort. I like spongy soles and soft straps. Some of my remaining pairs have hard soles and leather straps I’ve allowed to harden into strips like dried mesquite branches. I’ll accept the lessons those flip-flops are teaching me.

It’s nearing 6:30 and I’ve allowed my first cup of coffee to go cold. Time to replace the tepid liquid in my cup with hot stuff. I have to shower and shave before long, in preparation for my visit to my doctor for my annual physical. That means I’ll abandon my morning clothes for attire deemed more acceptable in the broader society outside my doors. Lace-up shoes; belted shorts, and button-down shirt (but not tucked in, by God!). After the physical, I’ll reward myself in some fashion. Perhaps it will be lunch at the newest Village restaurant, xPlore Lakeside. Or maybe I’ll wander into Hot Springs in search of flip-flops. Or something else. Time will tell. My spouse has another doctor’s appointment in Little Rock this morning, so I’m on my own for awhile after my physical; I have the freedom to wander aimlessly through the countryside if I wish.  Ach! Just two more hours until the physical. I’d better go for coffee while I have the chance.

Posted in Clothes, Fashion, Nudity | 1 Comment

Visionarium

Posted on September 29, 2019 by John Swinburn

Malcolm Disarray’s eyesight decayed over the course of ten years, beginning when he was thirty-one years old, at the rate of less than six percent per year. By the time he was forty-one, he was nearly blind. What little he could see was black and white, like smudges left on one’s clothing after handling the remnants of partially burned firewood. Despite evaluations by the country’s best ophthalmologists and neurologists, no one could find even a hint of a reason for his loss of sight. All the medical professionals who examined him agreed on one thing, though: his diminished eyesight must be related in some way to his simultaneous loss of the ability to taste and smell.  Unlike his eyesight, though, those senses were completely gone by his forty-first birthday.

While Malcolm’s eyesight and sense of taste and smell degraded slowly degraded, his remaining senses sharpened. His hearing improved significantly; he could tell who was in the room just listening to a single breath. He could tell by the flutter of their wings what kinds of birds were flying near. Malcolm’s sense of touch improved so enormously it compensated for others. The change was so dramatic and so sudden it surprised him. And it surprised his wife.

“The red sauce is good but the green sauce is absolutely out of this world!” Malcolm smiled as he nodded in his wife’s direction.  A wrinkle knotted Linda’s forehead as she looked up from her plate to see Malcolm’s fingers touching the enchiladas on his plate. “Wh-wh-what? What are you doing to your food?”

“I can see the colors on my plate and I can smell and taste the food,” he replied. “But it’s not like it was before I lost my senses.  I can do it with my fingers, but it’s more intense. It’s hard to explain.”

A look of alarm crossed Linda’s face. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but didn’t make any sounds. Finally, words escaped. “I don’t understand. You can taste and smell with your fingers?”

“Yeah. It sounds crazy, but I can. And when I brush my fingers across your face,” he said as he smeared his sauce-laden fingers across her check, “I can see you clearly, too. I can see the color of your skin and I can tell that you’re wearing a green blouse. And I can smell a hint of Proraso aftershave on your neck…”

Suddenly, Malcolm’s previously joyous expression turned dark. “Where did that aroma come from? I don’t use Proraso.”

“You’re mistaken, Hon, I’m not wearing any aftershave!” A hollow, artificial chuckle accompanied Linda’s words. Her eyes narrowed and beads of sweat seemed to erupt from her forehead.

“I didn’t say you were wearing it. I said I smell a hint of it. Like you’ve been with someone who was wearing it. Who would that be?”

“This is crazy, Malcolm! First, you surprise me with the revelation that you can see and smell and taste by touch and next you suggest I’ve been with another man because you think you smell aftershave! Get a grip!”

Malcolm sighed deeply. “Okay. You’re right. It is crazy. I’m sorry. I just felt this sudden burst of sensations…they’re just overwhelming…I don’t know…” His voice trailed off and his head slumped forward.

Linda reach across the table and put her hand on his shoulder. “Let’s focus on what you’ve just discovered. That you’re able to actually replaced senses you lost long ago!”

***

Four months to the day after smearing enchilada sauce over his wife’s cheeks, Malcolm Disarray was involuntarily committed to a psychological hospital in Syracuse, New York, well over one hundred miles from his home in Poughkeepsie. It wasn’t his claimed abilities to “see” and “smell” and “taste” through his fingers that got him placed there. Those remarkable abilities were clearly real for anyone to witness. What got him placed in a psychiatric hospital was his insistence that his wife and her unknown lover were plotting his demise. He had no evidence, only a “feeling” that his murder was being planned.

“Just like I can see her by touch, I can feel their planning with my fingers.” That sentence, alone, convinced Judge Armory Mason to grant the order of commitment. As he was being led from the courtroom, Malcolm screamed at the judge, “They’re going to try to make it look like suicide! You just wait, they’ll find me hanging by a bedsheet within a matter of days or weeks!”

And they did. But there’s more to the story than that. There must be. Mustn’t there?

I think the story went off the tracks before it reached the station. But it was moderately fun while it lasted.

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Exploring an Empty Barrel

Posted on September 28, 2019 by John Swinburn

I spent part of the last hour of this morning reading bits and pieces of about six months’ worth of newsletters from the Lake Chapala Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. I’m not sure just why I found my way there. I started my related web travels by exploring car rental agencies in Ajijic but somehow crept across the street and down the road to the LCUUF , located in the same building as the Naked Stage, a readers’ theatre that is, as far as I can tell, like readers’ theaters everywhere. LCUUF, from what I gather from its website, is like other Unitarian Univeralist congregations, as one would expect. The difference, of course, is that it is located in an extremely “multicultural” community. I was interested to learn that the October 20 service, entitled “Crossing Cultures,” described as follows:

Most of us are migrants, people who’ve chosen to live in a culture different than our birth culture. How we do our living in a different land varies: some of us attempt to recreate ‘old home’ behind walls and gates, others ‘go native’, others somewhere in between. What does our approach to multiculturalism say about our worldview, our relationship with other people? How do we deepen our awareness and engagement with people of other cultures? How do we learn to live in ease in a multicultural world.

I wish I had known about the service before I bought our tickets; I might have stayed a few days longer just so I could have attended. Surprisingly, it has never occurred to me that ex-pats from the U.S. (and elsewhere) experience many of the same challenges and opportunities and fears and joys that immigrants to the States experience. Fortunately, ex-pats in Mexico don’t experience the level of rage and hatred and contempt (at least not yet) that so many immigrants in the U.S. experience. My interest in the service is based, I suppose, on learning what migrants say about their experience. And my interest in the LCUUF website, I suppose, is based on understanding the extent to which UUs in Mexico are (or are not) living within their own, non-multicultural world. That is, do they isolate themselves (at least socially) from the culture of which they are now a part? Or do they embrace the role of “minority” participant in a society that is truly foreign to them? Based on the service description, I suspect there’s a range of levels of integration and/or isolation; I’d like to hear the issue of integration discussed by people who live it; or don’t.

As long as my wife is not enthusiastic about exploring life in Mexico, I will not make any plans to do it. Which means, I expect, I will not do it; not now, not in the future. We bought our home here with the expectation and agreement, I think, that this would be “it.” Our final home. That sounds, to me, a little restrictive; a bit like deciding to live in a cage with no escape. Oh, I know, I’m being overly dramatic. I do that sometimes.

I wonder, though, if some day she might be amenable to living in or near Ajijic (or somewhere else, for that matter) for at least a few months at a time? I doubt I’ll ask her any time soon. We both have our own medical issues with which to wrestle, which makes the idea of embarking on a foreign adventure of any significant duration a bit more than ill-advised. But I can dream, can’t I? Yet I don’t even seem to have sufficient discipline to learn Spanish; whenever I begin, I encounter the idea, a few days in, of “why the hell bother…I’ll never really use it enough to go the trouble, will I?” For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been able to call up some legitimate reason to back away from significant commitments like moving to Mexico or living life on the road or what have you. I don’t know whether I’m afraid of the decision or the way it might wreck my stable, if somewhat boring, life. Stability. It has its benefits; it has its prices, too. The bottom line is that I’ll never sacrifice my wife’s happiness and comfort to enable me to pursue a wild hair that might well turn to a steel piano wire with which to strangle myself.

Back to LCUUF. I think I visited the website for the same reason I’ve visited several other UU websites in months and years past: to find something that will convince me the people are, or are not, “my people.” I’m still not sure. The simple fact that they do not buy into religious dogma does not make them intelligent, nor does it make them progressive or possessed of common sense or other traits I find appealing. So I suppose it’s safe to assume involvement in UU is not a sufficient measure that a person meets my measure of someone who could be “my people.” And, frankly, I’m not sure there are such measures. I mean, I know people who are conservative, very religious, and seemingly void of common sense that I find appealing (though they are not “my people,” by the way). So what is it that I’ve been after for these past 66 (almost) years? I’ve found a few of them. But even a two or three hour drive seems like a long drive when there are so many meaningless, mundane, utterly annoying errands and obligations to fulfill. Achhh!

I envision a small group of people who are fun to be around (and who find us fun, too) who meet regularly for drinks or dinner or both, who enjoy similar activities, who are willing to explore one anothers’ interests even when they don’t mirror others’, and who otherwise are appealing. And intelligent. And nonjudgmental. And progressive. And who can laugh…but who are fiercely opinionated and who, therefore, can snarl appropriately with the best of them. I’m wandering around my own mind as if it were an empty barrel and my ideas were bouncing off the sides in ricochet fashion. And that’s precisely what’s happening, I guess. Empty. That word always triggers the memory of a line from a Paul Simon song: “Kathy, I’m lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping. I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.” Let me begin to close this with a flippant comment; “I don’t know who the hell this Kathy is.” Seriously, though, the sense of emptiness always accompanies tentative explorations of things beyond my reach. Which may explain why emptiness is such a common companion; there are so many things beyond my reach. But, then, there are a million things beyond the reach of billions of us. Does that mean that we’re all awash in emptiness? I suspect not, but there’s no way to determine whether that’s true or not.

It’s past 1:00 p.m. I haven’t yet showered or shaved. What a sloth I am. Time to get tidied up for an early dinner out; only four hours away (our neighbors eat early; they agreed to an hour delay as a compromise, I think). That parenthetical comment is not entirely true. But they do prefer to eat early. Which is fine. To each his own. Or her own. I’m trying to teach myself not to be tolerant but, instead, accepting. I think I could use a tutor.

 

mood

Posted in Friendship, Philosophy, Religion, Stream of Consciousness | Leave a comment

The Sickness

Posted on September 27, 2019 by John Swinburn

I’ve felt a little weak and feverish and achy for several days, as if I were trying to catch a cold or the flu. This morning, after I returned from having a blood draw in connection with my annual physical scheduled for Monday, the sensations intensified. I asked my wife to feel my forehead to gauge where I might have a fever; she said I was a only a little warm. She asked whether I wanted her to get a thermometer to measure my temperature more precisely; no, I responded, that seemed like too much effort. And so I sat in my recliner, vegetating. Finally, fifteen minutes ago, I forced myself out of the chair. I suspect my next step, after finishing this brief post, will be to undress and get back in bed. But I am not sure whether that will help the way I feel; I’ve spend too much time in bed lately, causing my achy body to react negatively to being bed-ridden.

Crap! I’ve forgotten what one is supposed to do to treat a cold. My cough doesn’t seem to have gotten any worse (how could it?), but my body is rebelling against something and I want to quash the rebellion. Okay, I’ve typed as much as I can for the moment. I’ll try bed for awhile to see how that works.

Posted in Health | 2 Comments

On Wisdom and Travel and Self-Reflection

Posted on September 24, 2019 by John Swinburn

I do not know the originator of the following concept, but I applaud his or her wisdom in expressing it:

If you can’t intelligently argue for both sides of an issue, you don’t understand the issue well enough to argue for either.

All of us would be far better informed if we lived in accordance with that precept. Without fully understanding both sides (or, for that matter, all sides) of an issue, we cannot fully understand our own “side.” That is, absent knowledge of the foundations upon which an opinion is constructed, we cannot hold well-grounded, defensible positions. Instead, we are limited to uninformed beliefs—beliefs, by the way, that illustrate the shallowness of our thinking and the breadth of our ignorance. All right, that’s out of the way. Now I’ll move on.

I got word this morning, via email, that our bags should be delivered to our door before 2:30 p.m. today. Assuming that assertion comes to pass, my complaints that suggested our luggage was lost forever will be proven to be based on unfounded beliefs. I don’t always follow my own advice; in fact, as good as my advice can be, I sometimes cavalierly disregard it as if it were guidance from a madman. Which it is, of course, but profundity can emerge from the mouth of madmen from time to time.

I’m still processing, mentally, the adventures of our European vacation. The experiences mixed joy and darkness in almost equal measure. We bore joyous witness to beautiful landscapes and participated in festivities of societies flooded with light and life. On the other hand, we learned about and heard first-hand experiences of people who lived through the hellish war of 1992-1995. Though the war is over, the enforced peace is in many respects a dictatorship of diplomacy that robs people of the right to decide how to rule themselves. I learned, by talking to people who live in Sarajevo, that the Dayton Accord imposes upon them diplomatic solutions that prevent them from making changes in the way they are governed. The war is over, but the wounds are fresh; I suspect they will open again one day.

Listening to people who live in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Croatia and Montenegro, I heard the voices of people who view history from a very different perspective than the one I was taught. For example, the common view in the U.S. of  Josip Broz Tito is that he was an authoritarian dictator.  In the former Yugoslavia, virtually everyone with whom I spoke saw him as a benevolent leader who was largely responsible for building a strong, resilient society that looked after its citizens. Though he was a communist, he broke from Stalin in the late 1940s and led an economy based in market socialism. Evidence exists throughout the region of the reverence in which he was held by the population he served.

As I said, our experiences comprised mixtures of joy and darkness. The joys included experiencing lively cities like Sarajevo, Dubrovnik, Zagreb, and Ljubljana. Public squares, pedestrian malls, and lively street life differ radically from the automobile-owned streets of American cities. We saw and, in some cases, participated in large public festivals: for example, the hamburger festival. Literally dozens and dozens of hamburger “joints” offered their special versions of hamburgers to adoring crowds. Though the burgers we bought were utterly unimpressive, I’m confident we would have found some to our liking had we been able to spend more time at the festival.

The views of old-town Dubrovnik from the peak of Srd, a low mountain just behind the old city, were spectacular. We rode a funicular to the peak (and I did the same in Sarajevo and Ljubljana) to get us to the best viewing sites around. From high above the cities, we saw the majesty of their expansive territories.  And we walked around large, crystal-clear lakes in national parks. We rode train cars into caves where we viewed enormous stalactites and stalagmites. We had home-hosted dinners with families in Sarajevo and in the Croatian village of Karanac, where we visited with “locals” who shared with us what their day-by-day lives were like.  We drank local wine and brandy and ate food raised and prepared by the cooks. I learned that the very best extra-virgin olive oil is strong and flavorful and should never be used in cooking.

Except for the language barrier, which for me would be impossible to overcome at this stage in my life, I think I could live happily in any of the places we visited. Ultimately, the lessons of our travels around the Balkans was this: places can be beautiful, but it’s the people that make them livable. I couldn’t tolerate all the public smoking for very long, I think, but I did well enough on this trip. Only once did I ask to be moved to a different restaurant table to be away from a smoker.  I’m adaptable.

Some day, perhaps soon, I’ll write about the people we met along the way and people with whom we traveled. And I’ll continue to process my experiences during our 17-day trip through the Balkans.

I got an email this morning, suggesting that our lost luggage has been found and will be delivered to our house by 2:30 p.m. today. I hope that comes to pass. We could use some underwear; washing the same pair day after day already has become tiresome after only a few days.

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Implied Promise

Posted on September 1, 2019 by John Swinburn

What is an implied promise? Is a strong suggestion an implied promise? (You’ll have to assume an implicit action is associated with the strong suggestion.) Is a statement of future fact an implied promise? And what, by the way, is a “statement of future fact?”

Okay, I’ll try to be more clear. A promise is not a promise unless it is a declaration of certainty or assurance on which expectation is to be based. Clear as mud.

I suspect I’ll have few, if any, opportunities to write and post for awhile, beginning with our departure for our big adventure. Our travels will make internet access a bit of a problem, for one thing; for another, my computer has again developed a tendency to cut off in mid keystroke. The same computer that did it before but that, I had hoped, the new hard drive had corrected. Not so, apparently. I don’t have time to get it repaired or replaced before our travel, so the computer is not going with me. At the moment, I am using my cheap Chromebook, attached to my big honking keyboard (because the spacebar on my Chromebook requires a hammer blow to advance the cursor by one character’s distance). I may take my iPad on our trip (or maybe not). But I doubt I’ll be able to use it much to post here. So, for anyone who reads this with any regularity, you’re due a much-deserved rest.  Whether I live up to my implied promise remains to be seen, though.

After our trip, I will write about it. During our trip, I will take copious, but illegible, notes. Upon our return, I will attempt to read said illegible notes. I will have some success. Some of the notes, though, will be thrown away because their lack of value will argue for their disposal. Yet my memory will step in and take the place of notes. And, perhaps, a few photos will jog my memory even more, allowing me to express myself in ways I could not have done without photographic evidence of my experience. Words without value, amen.

My wife and I are taking “goodies” to church today; sweets (she) and savories (me). After the pre-service feeding, we will march into the sanctuary for the “water ceremony.”  It’s a somewhat strange pagan ritual that, surprisingly, has some real-world meaning. We, though, won’t be taking water to mix with the rest; we collected no water during our travels this summer, because we did not do any traveling. That’s coming up. Two nice trips. But I doubt we’ll collect water during our journeys, either. It might spoil before the next water ceremony. 😉

Obviously, I had nothing of substance to say this morning, so I droned on as I am wont to do when I am empty-headed and wishing for meaning. I might write again tomorrow. I might.

 

 

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Learning Something Every Day

Posted on August 31, 2019 by John Swinburn

I spent much of the day yesterday in tourist-host mode, first accompanying a visiting friend to bathhouse row in Hot Springs, followed by a short stroll along Central Avenue, popping into a few shops and otherwise behaving as a tourist in a tourist town.  I realized I don’t do that enough; I couldn’t answer several predictable tourist questions, nor could I suggest “things to see and do” that would be second nature to any self-respecting Hot Springs tourist guide.

When my friend first arrived late in the afternoon two days ago, we drove into town for dinner at SQZBX, a pizza joint and craft brewery we’ve grown to enjoy. Though we normally would have ordered the Greek pizza, my friend wanted the Wide Load, a meaty beast with the full array one would expect of a supreme meat pizza, so we went that route. Then, we stopped at Kollective Coffee, where Wednesday Night Poetry was in full swing. Kai, the emcee, greeted us with warm hugs; she was happy to see me finally show up after being absent so long. She is an extraordinary poet, a gracious host, and a political activist whose energy is, I think, boundless. I promised I would make myself visible more frequently, but not until after my upcoming travels.

We enjoyed the poetry, especially the feature poet. She read several powerful poems born of her own painful experiences; many of her pieces were gut-punches, but a few were reminders that, even in adversity, we have the ability to grown and enjoy our own power.

Just a few days earlier, Kai asked whether she could count on me being the feature poet on the last Wednesday of October. I made that commitment, so I shall be there to read my more recent poetry. I look forward to that. Just a few years ago, I would have said I had absolutely no interest in reading my writing to an audience; now, I thrive on it.

Yesterday’s visit to “Historic Downtown Hot Springs” was enjoyable. It reminded me that we ought to take time on occasion to pretend to be tourists and guides in our own environment, exploring our home turf as if we were encountering it for the first time or explaining it to other newly arrived visitors. Not only would that force me to learn (or recall) more about the place I currently call home, it would require me to consider all the disparate things in which others might have an interest.

In Hot Springs, such an endeavor would require me to learn more about the town’s “mobster” past, as well as the era during which it was an enormous draw to people who believed its hot spring waters were healing of all manner of maladies. And I would have to learn more about its time as a baseball spring camp and I would need to know the full story of its days as a gambling mecca and the growth of horse-racing as an economic engine that continues to drive it today. The architecture of the town, too, would need my attention so I could explain how the buildings that are just now being restored (or are in the final stages of neglect and disrepair) came to be.

The real history of a place, whether a town or a state of a nation, has so many stories to tell. Getting to know the real story behind a place forces a person to confront its ugliness as well as its beauty; its shame as well as its pride. I read a story this morning (utterly unrelated to anything I’ve written thus far this morning) that reminded me of the importance of broadening one’s horizons. The story was about the assignment of students to roommates in college dormitories. I think it was the University of Wisconsin that, many years ago, used roommate assignments to expand the perspectives of its students. For example, students from poor families were paired with students from well-off families; students who grew up on farms were paired with city-dwellers, etc. The idea was to expose students to a world-view that differed from their own. The university viewed the process of pairing as part of the educational process of expanding the minds of its students. I like the idea. I wish the private dorms surrounding the University of Texas had done such things when I was a student. I lived in a dorm for my first Fall and Spring semester. I lived in a single room, though, because I had learned the previous summer that my friend, with whom I had already agreed to share a room, was intolerable; a selfish, emotionally and intellectually stunted pig. Had the dorm assigned me a roommate, I might have shared a room with a rich kid from New York or a doctor’s child from Beijing or a poor farmer’s son from the poorest part of Columbia. In any case, it would have been forced exposure to a world-widening perspective. Instead, I roomed alone. My social skills at developing friends were not exercised and improved. But that’s a story for another time.

Though my attention yesterday was directed, primarily, at my friend, I overheard bits and pieces of conversations from other tourists. Some seemed intelligent and interested in history. Others seemed dull and interested in entertainment. Others combined the two sets of characteristics into a slurry of “average Jane and Joe” reality. I wondered whether anyone we encountered in passing might have been an architect or a nuclear scientist or a soybean farmer or a plumber’s apprentice. What stories might they have had to tell? I suspect that, whatever they might have had to say, I would have been exposed to something new, something about which I’d never given a moment’s thought.

All people should be required to spend two years of their lives in service to other people. Part of that service should involve listening to the stories of the people they serve. Not just hearing the stories, but internalizing and understanding them. And it would be appropriate to pair people the way the University of Wisconsin once did (and may, again; I only skimmed the story). Republican with Democrat. Militant atheist with evangelical Southern Baptist. Skinhead with a “foreigner with dreadlocks.” Smart-ass kid with elderly retired diplomat. Man with woman. Homophobic white power fanatic with transgender lesbian Black Panther.

After the wounds had healed and the blood had been mopped from the floors, after the assault and battery sentences had been served, I think the people who participated in the endeavor would be more compassionate, more understanding, and more willing to not only tolerate but to accept and embrace people who differ from them in appearance and belief.

Another friend, who visited the Village primarily because of our guest’s presence (and also to see us and other friends), came over for dinner the second night of the visit. I mentioned to her that one important thing missing from the Village is diversity, both in ethnic makeup and in political perspectives. The number of Black, Hispanic, and Asian residents is tiny. Step out of the Village and the numbers rise, but not to the point they should. Yesterday I looked up the demographic composition of Hot Springs; it’s 73 percent, more or less, white. It would be a more intriguing place, I think, if that number were smaller. Diversity is a strength in every community, I think. And its lack is a weakness. And ignorance of the history of the community in which one lives is a weakness. And knowledge of that history is a strength.

Enough babbling. Our guest just awoke from her night of sleep, so I better get ready to spend time with her and welcome the day.

Posted in Friendship, History, Philosophy | Leave a comment

Compensatory Existence

Posted on August 30, 2019 by John Swinburn

I compensate for my shortcomings. If I can. And it’s not always possible. Sometimes, my shortcomings are so extensive, so overwhelming, that it’s simply impossible to overcome them. It feels like I’m trying to perform an appendectomy on an uncooperative boxer who has not been anesthetized; my arms are tied behind my back, I am blindfolded, the only surgical tools available to me are a cross-cut carpenter’s saw and a rubber mallet, and I have no knowledge of anatomy. No matter how much I try to compensate for my shortcomings, I am attempting the impossible.

Sometimes, I feel my only visible attributes are my shortcomings. I could unroll a ten-thousand-foot-long scroll, listing my shortcomings single-spaced in ten-point type and I would need another two scrolls to finish the list. Just compiling the list seems an insurmountable task.

I realize, of course, it’s unhealthy to focus one’s attention on the negative aspects of one’s personality—one’s presence on the planet. Attempting to catalog one’s failings is akin to counting the number of buds that never completed their journey to becoming flowers. There’s no good purpose for the undertaking and it can only lead to a depressing conclusion. Yet there it is. The wheels of the cart get stuck in a deep, petrified rut and stay there until someone comes along with a horse or a tractor and physically drags the cart out of the track. Or shows up with a crosscut saw and a mallet, ignoring the wheels of the cart and eyeing my leg.

Ideally, one identifies one’s shortcomings, develops a plan to overcome them, and sets about the task of becoming a better person. But at what point do we begin from an ideal perspective? Virtually never, I would suggest. Yet, still, we must use the tools available to us and strike out on the journey toward self-improvement. I envision a future me whose failings are visible only in a retrospective autobiography; a book written by a man molded by the sheer force of will and hard work into an admirable human being. The book begins years ago, before his intentional rebirth, in the thousands of pages of self-exploration and stream-of-consciousness expressions that reveal the scope of the required rehabilitation. It continues through a period I’ll call now, through an era of a thousand better tomorrows. All condensed, of course, into a succinct, gripping tale of restoration and renewal.

Books are metaphors for life and all the struggles life entails. They are messy entanglements that, in spite of their chaotic bursts of pain and ecstasy and and sadness and joy, represent the arithmetic mean of our existence. But not always, of course.

Consider the guy who can’t hammer a nail, no matter how much he tries to master the task. He might compensates by perfecting his ability to smoke the near-perfect brisket. Or the woman who can’t carry a note. Her compensatory expression might be creation of sculpture of unparalleled beauty. Or the man who can’t hard-boil an egg; his ability to make children laugh and forget their disappointments compensates for his culinary failures.

Do we consciously compensate, or do we simply stumble into correcting natural failures with natural successes? Sometimes, I know, we compensate for our shortcomings by investing time and energy and discipline in turning them into strengths. The bumbling handyman may, over time, become a finish carpenter—an artist in wood. The howling songstress might evolve into a sensational soprano. It’s all possible. None of it is predetermined. We are who we wish to be, within the context of our desire and the available trappings of change we choose to use.

In a nutshell, we adjust and adapt. We compensate for our shortcomings to the extent that we engage our desire, marry it to our environment, and fashion change from scraps of possibility. My book is only partly written. I will finish it during the course of the months and years to come. I’ll complete it before I complete my life. And that’s the way it should be. I’ll compensate, and that’s enough to make for a happy ending. Many years hence, I hope.

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Silence

Posted on August 29, 2019 by John Swinburn

Silence can be the savior we did not know we were seeking.
Silence can soften the blows we did not realize we were feeling.
Silence can serve as a weapon, as lethal as a knife and as soft as a pillow.

Silence is the opposite of noise, but far more powerful and more mysterious.
Silence is a faded memory dressed in new clothes, shown only to intimate friends.
Silence is a sharp rebuke and a heartfelt expression of unconditional love.

Silence breaks hearts and heals wounds.
Silence buries enemies and hatchets.
Silence struggles to quell fears and launch joy.

Everywhere you turn your ears, you listen for silence, but it’s somewhere else.

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Anchor

Posted on August 28, 2019 by John Swinburn

In Macbeth, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is ambitious and heartless. She believes her husband is too full of kindness and compassion (the milk of human kindness) to take the most expedient path (the nearest way) toward the Scottish crown. That is, killing the king. Given Macbeth’s character, the suggestion that he is too compassionate paints Lady Macbeth as an especially vile person.

I haven’t read Macbeth, or any of Shakespeare’s plays, in years (which reminds me that I should; I remember very little of the plots of the plays I read long ago). But I’m reminded  regularly in phrases our present-day language borrowed from Shakespeare’s writing. The source of the “milk of human kindness” phrase we use today is this:

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
What thou art promis’d. Yet do I fear thy nature,
It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.

Macbeth Act 1, scene 5

Lady Macbeth considered the “milk of human kindness” a weakness; compassion is the capital of fools, in her jaundiced view of the world.

No, I did not reproduce the quote above from memory; I had to look it up. The same is true of many other phrases we use that can be traced back to Shakespeare’s writing:

  • All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players…
  • If music be the food of love, play on…
  • To be or not to be…
  • A rose by any other name would smell as sweet…

The Unitarian Universalist minister who officiated at my wedding read, at my behest, my favorite Shakespeare sonnet, which appears in my blog and my other writing with some regularity and appears here again:

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

Some words and ideas last for eternity, it seems, while some fade away like rose petals growing old and brittle, losing their vitality and flexibility and intrinsic beauty to time and struggle. The words, though, don’t decay; rather, the ideas and images they convey succumb to changing human conditions. The difference between great writing and superfluous drivel is not found in the words themselves but, rather, in the stories they tell and their ability to outlast evolution, at least in the short-term. Here, short-term is relative to the age of the planet.

Emotions and definitions change, as evidenced by “the milk of human kindness.” Compassion was, to Lady Macbeth, a flaw; an unpleasant and dangerous weakness. Today, we ostensibly believe compassion is a virtue. Ostensibly, because I question our collective claim that we believe compassion is virtuous. We need to look no more distant than rallies of Trump supporters. I need not go down that dark, ugly, diseased alley.

People change. The change in language offers evidence of the change in people. Pejoratives become compliments. Compliments become censures. Love becomes hate; or, perhaps, resentful tolerance. But that can’t be, can it? Shakespeare said “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.” What are we to believe? Shakespeare or our own eyes? Our eyes can deceive us, but so can the meaning of Shakespeare’s words change over time. What once was good becomes bad. What was bad becomes good. Some of Shakespeare’s most famous phrases show up on t-shirts, presented in ways that mock his ideas, suggesting he was dangerously naive. In today’s world, perhaps. But not in his world. Shakespeare hasn’t changed, but the world in which he lived has undergone a radical transformation. Certain aspects of the world of humanity have improved immeasurably. But the transformation’s evil twin shadows change, carrying a torch and an accelerant.

What in the hell am I going on about? Maybe I should clarify. Language and people and society change. In the midst of change, confusion reigns. I’m in the midst of a sea of change, as are we all, thanks to a society in turmoil. Therefore, I’m swimming, trying to keep my head above waves of confusion. I see a life preserver coming my way. No. My God, they’ve thrown me an anchor!

Posted in Emotion, Wisdom, Writing | 1 Comment

Beyond 3000: The Good Fight and Restoring a Lost Culture

Posted on August 26, 2019 by John Swinburn

Had I been paying attention, I would have noticed that my post two days ago, the one entitled My Children, was post number three thousand on this blog. Big whoop-de-doo. So, now, I’ll have to wait until I’ve published 998 more posts, after the one I’m writing at the moment, before I reach another big-deal milestone. That may take awhile. In the meantime, I suspect I’ll dig up plenty of things to write about.

The Good Fight

For example, my infatuation with The Good Fight. It’s a television show that recently captured my attention. More than that. It has absorbed me. I’ve been watching hour-long episodes in binge-mode, ripping through the first season in short order. The show is a spin-off of The Good Wife, a delightfully engaging series starring Julianna Margulies. The stars of The Good Fight include Christine Baranski, who was a star in The Good Wife, as well.

Anyway, about The Good Fight. I recommend it (with an implicit caveat; keep reading). I’ve only watched the first season, but that’s enough for me to endorse the program. But I’m worried that I might not be able to watch all episodes. Powerful media moguls may decide to restrict future seasons’ episodes from the air. There ought to be a law. Word on the street (and in the papers and online) is that CBS plans to restrict future episodes to its paid channel, CBS All Access.

The first episode, in early 2017, was shown on CBS. Subsequent episodes were shown only on CBS All Access, until June of this year, when all ten of the first season’s episodes were shown on CBS. My wife recorded all of them. And, as I said, I’ve watched all of them. But I hunger to watch seasons two and three. And I’ve learned a fourth season has been scheduled. I could wait for years until CBS might release subsequent seasons or I could pay for CBS All Access. CBS made a smart near-term move by releasing the entire first season on over-the-air television; it got people like me hooked on the series, possibly sufficiently addicted to part with money to see the next seasons. While that’s good business for CBS in the short term, I suspect that move may come back to bite them. In future, I will be unlikely to begin watching series that have the potential of hooking me, only to require me to pay to address my addiction. I say that now; we’ll see what the future holds.

Restoring a Lost Culture

Our culture is broken. Mass shootings and gun violence and a host of other chaotic, monstrous acts clearly show that our culture is in free-fall. Civility is under siege. Human decency too often is viewed as weakness. We’re taught by our institutions and even by parents that “I’ am more important that “we.” The social fabric is in tatters; its threads are thin and broken. We’re on the cusp of absolute collapse. Where and how do we start to recover?

I think semi-automatic weapons should be banned. Mandatory background checks should be conducted on every gun sale; even private party sales. The cost of the background checks should be borne by the seller in the case of commercial sales (which, ultimately, will be paid by the buyer in the form of higher prices) and by the buyer in the case of individual sales. Red-flag laws should be enacted to enable the courts to remove access to guns from people deemed by the courts to be a danger to others or themselves. I’m also in favor of confiscating semi-automatic weapons already in the hands of the public; I have no objection to paying the owners of those weapons with public funds. With all of these steps, though, I don’t think the problem of mass shootings will be solved. Nor will mental health interventions identify and prevent potential mass shooters from engaging in their monstrous acts.

Ultimately, I think, a radical change in our culture is needed if we have any hope of successfully addressing the problem of gun violence, including mass shootings. But it’s not just the gun violence that needs to be addressed. It’s the tenor of our interactions in every arena, both public and private.

Changing the culture probably will require electing a different breed of politician at every level of government. A different breed of politician means this: people who speak and act as if our collective values actually matter. The people in office today should be asked to resign, en mass; absent their willingness to do that, they should be forcibly removed by the voters (of which there should be many, many more).

The replacement politicians should recognize that values matter even more than the legal vessels in which they are housed. Laws on the books are so complex that they do not resemble the values they are supposed to uphold and protect; they are just vessels that house those values and, in many cases, hide those values from view.

Schools should focus on those values, as well. Churches should do the same; rather than absorbing the distorted values of today’s politicians, they should focus on the humanitarian values that underlie their religious teaching.

And here’s where the biggest challenge will be: parents. Parenthood should require licensure. Individuals (both male and female) should be licensed to reproduce only after they successfully complete coursework on: 1) agreed societal values and 2) expected parental behaviors. Then, to maintain their licensure and to be authorized to have additional children, third-party evaluation of their children must demonstrate that the children understand and behave in ways that support our values. Wait, who will determine “our values?” I’m perfectly comfortable with relying on an amalgamation of religious texts (with any suggestion of a deity removed) forming the foundation of value definition, provided that atheists and agnostics (as well as representatives of all the major religions) are represented in the groups that propose them.

This may be too restrictive for some, who might claim the concept is a violation of  individual rights. I believe community rights ultimately supersede individual rights. That is something new for me. As much as I value my rights, if by exercising them I infringe on the rights of the community as a whole (or on the rights of other individuals), my rights should be restricted in favor of the greater good.

Parental licensure is sure to be a hot potato; maybe the hottest. So be it. It’s also the most likely to have the greatest impact. Key in the education of children is teaching the importance of community.

There’s so much more. But those, in my opinion, are the most important. At least that’s what I think early this late August morning.

Posted in Complacency, Democracy, Government, Politics, Secular morality | Leave a comment

My Children

Posted on August 24, 2019 by John Swinburn

Until last night, I’d never thought of what my child might have been like, had I fathered children. I’d never even thought about the “what if” before. Whether a daughter or a son, I’d never considered another human being carrying my DNA and the attendant physical and psychological characteristics. The thought stunned me. It didn’t cause me to wish I’d had children; it only struck me as a possibility I’d never before considered.

What would my son have looked like? What would my daughter’s personality have been like? What would I have looked like; as a father instead of a man without parental obligations? I’m surprised those thoughts had not heretofore entered my mind. At least I don’t think they had.

I don’t know what triggered those thoughts. They arose out of curiosity, not wistfulness. Whatever prompted me to think those thoughts also prompted me to imagine myself as father to an adult son. Would I be proud of him or would I be terribly disappointed that he became a misogynist who joined Proud Boys? If my son were a member, would I be as critical of that far-right neo-fascist organization that promotes political violence as I am now?

A few days ago, I watched a video that showed the mother of a young teenage boy arguing with police officers who had come to arrest him for threatening to shoot up a school. The mother insisted that her son was only playing; he was simply making outrageous statements the way boys sometimes do, she claimed. She could not understand why the police would arrest her perfect little boy. Would I believe my child could do no wrong? Would I defend his threats as simply a matter of “boys will be boys?” I’ll never know, of course. I suspect, though, that I would be fiercely angry with the boy while simultaneously frightened for him and his future.

I said I’d never thought what my children would have been like; and that’s true. But I have said that I think I would have been a bad father. I would have had no patience with a child being a child. That would have shaped my children in damaging ways. They would always be afraid they would not measure up to my standards. And that would crush their psyches in ways I can only imagine.  It’s probable that I would not have been willing to invest as much time with my children as they would have needed. I would have demanded solitude when they most needed a protective parental presence. I would have resented the children for snatching freedom away from me.

And what about my wife as a mother? I suspect she would have been a good one, though it’s possible she would have resented losing the freedom that childlessness affords. People like us should not have children. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to leave child-bearing and child-rearing to people who are better suited to the challenges and who want to have babies. In fact, that choice results in fewer children who suffer from parental neglect or, worse, parental abuse.

Still, it’s interesting to imagine my 35-year-old daughter, Maya, deciding to emigrate from the USA to New Zealand, where she plans to establish a sheep farm and, later, a textile mill that will produce custom wool fabrics for export. I’m proud of her! She has always been a bit of a rebel. And I’m watching Carson, my 33-year-old son who after attending college for two years opted to abandon the drudgery of a higher education in favor of learning a skilled trade. He learned welding and became extremely good at it. After a few years of working as a welder in high-rise building construction, he switched gears and turned his talents to art. Today, he creates elaborate metal sculpture and signage; all of his work is commissioned and he has a three-year wait list of clients who clamor for him.

In addition to Maya and Carson, there’s David, who just turned thirty. David went to college and, finally, finished with a degree in business. After amassing almost $80,000 in student loan debt, he discovered his bachelor’s degree in business was not much in demand. So, after two years of looking for a “suitable” job and one year in jail for stealing copper tubing from building sites, he finally went to work as an assistant manager of a rural RadioShack store in Missouri. When the company declared bankruptcy for the second time in 2017, his store was closed. He then went to work for Dunkers Radio and TV in Atwood, Kansas. He got the job because the store is an authorized RadioShack dealer. He’s not happy there, though. All he does, he says, is stock the shelves and deal with cranky, abusive customers. Despite his unhappiness, he isn’t willing to invest the time or energy necessary to find another job. When he’s not working, he sits in his apartment, drinking cheap vodka and playing video games. His apartment, in McCook, Nebraska, is an hour away from his job. It’s the closest he could find that he could afford. I’ve suggested he look for work in Denver. But he won’t listen to me. Ever since I called the police on his now former wife, a meth addict, he has given me the cold shoulder. He still has some growing up to do.

It’s a surprise that the children turned out as well as they did. We left the three of them at a gas station in Pie Town, New Mexico during a long, aimless road-trip vacation when they were youngsters, before Maya turned ten years old. It wasn’t intentional. We had stopped to get gas and some snacks. The kids got out of the car and ran around the way kids do, burning off energy that drives parents crazy during road-trips. When it came time to leave, we just got in the car and drove off, completely forgetting that the kids were with us. We didn’t realize what we’d done until three hours later, when we got to Winslow, Arizona.  When we realized that we’d left the kids at a gas station, we panicked. We hadn’t paid attention to the name of the town we had stopped in, much less the name of the gas station. Fortunately, it occurred to me that I had the receipt for the gas and the snacks in my wallet. We called the station and they told us the kids were in the custody of the Catron County Sheriff’s Department. Well, the Catron County Sheriff’s Department is not located in Pie Town. It’s in Reserve, New Mexico, a good hour and a half southwest of Pie Town. We called the Sheriff and explained what had happened and that we were on our way back to get the kids. It wasn’t as easy as just stopping and picking them up and leaving.

I tried to make light of the situation by saying to the Sheriff, “Silly us, we forgot we had children.”

The Sheriff was not amused and read us the riot act. Then we were reamed out by a woman from the Grant/South Catron County Children, Youth and Families Department. Two hours after we got to the Sheriff’s office, we left with the kids. They didn’t talk to us for two days after that.

And there you have it. What started as a real-world reflection on what might life might have been like had I fathered children turned into an absurd fantasy. Just like my life. It started out just fine but evolved into an absurd fantasy. I wonder whether I’m just a figment of someone else’s imagination, behaving as a puppet on a string and guided by my owner’s imagination. That’s an ugly thought; “my owner” sounds like a brutal and final pronouncement of a sentence. I’ll change my thought patterns. There, that’s better. I’m a little hungry now, so I’ll make some breakfast and reheat my cold cup of coffee.

Posted in Fantasy, Philosophy | Leave a comment

Meticulous Chaos

Posted on August 23, 2019 by John Swinburn

Brighton Davis joined the crowd of women surrounding the car. “What’s going on?”

A distraught woman replied, “There’s a baby in that car! We can’t get the doors or windows open. I’m afraid it might die in this awful heat!”

Brighton sprinted to his car, parked one row over, and opened the trunk. He drew out a hammer and sprinted back to the baby’s car.

“Stand back! I’m going to break the window.” With that, he smashed the front window on the passenger side and reached back through the broken window to unlock the rear door.

The baby’s eyes were closed and beads of sweat covered its forehead and cheeks. Brighton unbuckled the belt holding the child in the car seat and pulled the baby out of of the car.

Brighton, holding the baby tight against his chest, turned and ran toward his car.

A chorus of voices followed him. “What are you doing?”

“Where are you going?”

“Sir.  Sir!”

“I’m taking him to the hospital. There’s no time to waste. The child needs medical care.” With that explanation, Brighton jumped in the car, still holding the baby close to him, started the engine, and sped away.

Three of the women had the presence of mind to try to take photos of the car’s license plate. Two of them also got photos of Brighton’s back as he rushed toward the car. The plate numbers did no good, though. They belonged to a blue 2017 Kia Soul, registered to a woman in hospice care in Charlotte, North Carolina; not to the orange 2019 Ford Mustang that left with the child.

The crowd of irate women who had been ready to bludgeon the child’s mother when they saw the baby in the hot car softened as the reality of the baby’s abduction sank in.

Police checked every hospital in the area. None of them had treated a baby for heat-related illness that day. The child’s mother, a recent widow who had left the baby in the car, told the police nothing of consequence in locating the child.

“I am driving to visit my parents in Atlanta,” she sobbed as she explained to the police what she had been doing at the mall. “I stopped to use the bathroom. I was gone for no more than fifteen minutes.”

Her story checked out. She left her home in Portland, Maine the day before and spent the previous night in a motel in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The only thing about her story that seemed slightly odd was her decision to get off I-81 and drive down I-581 to Valley View Mall. But her explanation was believable: “I knew how to get there because I’ve been to this mall before when I visited friends who used to live in Roanoke. I knew this place has good bathrooms.”

Brighton Davis seemed an unlikely opportunistic kidnapper. He was unmarried, forty-three years old, and traveled extensively for his job as an airport architect, sometimes spending months at a time in places like Hong Kong and London and Zagreb. He had no time for a baby. But, then, he apparently had time to steal an orange 2019 Ford Mustang; it was reported stolen from a dealership in Lynchburg, Virginia only two days earlier. And apparently he had time to steal the plates off a blue 2017 Kia Soul located three hours away.

Newspaper accounts of the abduction said the mother was suffering through a second trauma with the child’s kidnapping. Her husband had been killed just three months earlier in a random drive-by shooting in Washington, DC, where he had been visiting with Congressional representatives on behalf of his employer, the Portland International Jetport.

There’s something fishy about this story. Something’s just not quite right. Where is the baby? 

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Hunger and Everything Else

Posted on August 21, 2019 by John Swinburn

Those of us who have the luxury of savoring our food, instead of scraping just to get enough to survive, are extremely fortunate, indeed. Sometimes, when I’m in the midst of looking at recipes and thinking how delicious they might taste, I’m suddenly struck with an overwhelming sense of sadness and guilt. Here I am, over-fed and moderately happy, musing over how a spice might add a certain flavor to a protein, while somewhere nearby a person, maybe a child, is struggling to find barely enough food to stay alive. I don’t know if guilt is the right word. It’s shame, too; shame that I know hunger is a very real problem but that I’m doing very little to help solve it.

It’s not just about providing food to the hungry. It’s about teaching the unemployable the right skills so they can get a job and buy their own food. it’s about giving kids an education so they can escape the cycle of poverty into which they were born. It’s about convincing corporate overlords that a slight increase in shareholder profits is not a sufficient reason to shutter a factory and move somewhere else, leaving hundreds of people without work. It’s about persuading a grocery store chain to place a store in a “food desert.” There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of other actions that can be taken to alleviate the problem of hunger.

Hunger is just one of the maladies shaping our world. Pollution, climate change, violence, political instability, natural disasters. The list could go on for pages and pages. Thinking about all the problems that affect humanity and planet Earth can paralyze a person into absolute inaction; there are too many problems and not enough solutions…I’m just one person and I can’t have an impact on problems that are so much bigger than me.

Yes, but as I’ve been hearing on a regular basis on Sundays of late, “you can’t do everything, but you can do something.” I often encounter this quote, attributed to Paul Spear (an English comedian and actor), “As one person I cannot change the world, but I can change the world of one person.” I’m trying this morning, but I still feel the shame of how little I’m doing in light of how much I know needs to be done.  I like the attitude the quote represents. I’ll try to adopt it if I can.

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Bless Your Soul

Posted on August 19, 2019 by John Swinburn

The price the fellow offered to pay was more than Sleet McMaster could pass up. So, after an obligatory period of haggling, Sleet agreed to the terms: McMaster’s soul in return for thirty years of exorbitant wealth.

“Just to clarify,” McMaster said after their requisite handshake, “I relinquish my soul at the end of thirty years…after I’ve collected full payment from you.”

“I don’t do business that way,” the man replied. “I’ll pay you over a thirty year period for your soul, which I want right now.”

“What the hell? You didn’t take out a mortgage on my soul; I said I’d sell it. How am I supposed to live for thirty years without a soul?”

“Not my problem, Sport. You should have thought of the practicalities before you jumped on the deal. Greed will kick you in the nuts every time!”

“Look, I’ll live up to my end of the bargain. You can have my soul, but I want you to live up to your end, too. What’s to keep you from taking my soul and then reneging on the thirty year payment?”

“Nothing, actually. But I’ve never reneged on a deal yet and I’ve been doing this for thirty-five years.”

“Thirty-five years? I thought you’d been doing this since Adam and Eve.”

“Who are Adam and Eve?”

“What do you mean, ‘Who are Adam and Eve?’ They’re the source of original sin. I mean, you’re Satan. You should know that!”

“I beg your pardon? I’m not Satan. I can understand from the context of our transaction why you might think it, but, no, I’m Tim Ledbetter. Just a soul trader. Well, not just a soul trader. I’m the best there is. Like I said, I’ve been doing this for thirty-five years.”

“Listen, you misrepresented yourself, so the contract is null and void…”

“…the hell it is! And I did not misrepresent myself. In your hurry for a quick buck, you just failed to do your due diligence.” Ledbetter’s beet red face and clenched fists highlighted the intensity of his anger.

“Okay, okay, don’t get crazy on me. How ’bout we work a compromise, okay? You can have my soul, but you wait ten years to collect. That way, I have ten years with my soul intact and you still get my soul.  I get my payment. Everybody’s happy. Listen, the deal is still on, we just fiddle with the terms.”

“You want to renegotiate the terms after the deal’s done? Okay, I’m flexible. I’ll meet you half way. I’ll wait ten years to collect, but you only get fifteen years of wealth. Take it or leave it. If you leave it, I’m taking your soul right here, right now.”

The stoop of McMaster’s shoulders and the look in his eyes expressed his defeat. Ledbetter probably had seen those signs of resigned failure in hundreds of people during his thirty-five year career. But that’s only supposition because, as you know, we’re not privy to his thoughts.

“Wait,” you’re saying about now, “who are you talking to? This is a little confusing.”

I’m not “talking” to anyone, dear reader, but I’m writing to you. That’s right, I’m interrupting my story to engage you in conversation. Let’s just drop the quotation marks, okay? They seem a bit pretentious, inasmuch as this is a one-on-one conversation between you and me. Let me fill you in, ex parte, on some details about Ledbetter and McMaster.

First, McMaster. He is the personification of greed and sloth. The man is lazy on steroids, but he’ll clean up his act for a moment if he smells an opportunity to make a buck. He’s an advertising copywriter by profession, if you call such a noxious endeavor a profession. He doesn’t do much writing, though. Instead, he skims magazines, looking for catchy phrases. He marks them with a yellow highlighter and, later, has his secretary create lists of phrases from the words he marks and then uses them to craft ad campaigns. In other words, he’s a word recycler who’ll sell those words to the highest bidder.

Now, about Ledbetter. The one word that best describes him is this: delusional. He can no more trade souls than a Siamese cat can speak Portuguese through a drinking straw. But he talks a big game. Scares the hell out of people. Makes them think he’s Satan or Satan’s diabolical twin. But, like I said a moment ago, I don’t know what’s in his head, not really. What would cause a man to lure people into bogus contracts to sell their souls? I haven’t the foggiest idea. But it’s interesting to watch.

Back to the situation at hand. I’ve seen this scene with McMaster and Ledbetter play out hundreds of times. Not with McMaster…he’s a new mark…but with Ledbetter. He attracts offbeat targets with the scent of money, then springs the trap with a cockamamie story about buying their souls for preposterous sums of money. “Money for nothing,” as the song lyrics say.

Well, McMaster was especially easy prey, it seems. He had just invested the last bit of money to his name in a business that was doomed to failure from the start. He’d had the absurd notion that he could sell his recipe for spicy chicken and papaya corn dumplings. He paid five thousand dollars for a web site and hired a competing ad agency to create an ad campaign. (If that doesn’t tell you how much confidence he had in his marketing capabilities, I don’t know whether you’re going to be able to cross the street by yourself.) When the agency finished creating the campaign (and, in the process, emptied another $80,000 from his 401K accounts),  McMaster paid a food marketing guru a flat $14,750 fee to get Costco to let him offer free samples of his dumplings. It seems his expectation was that, once people tasted them, they would happily pay $39.95 to buy the recipe. Not only did people not want to buy his recipe, most of them who tasted his samples took one bite and spit it into the trash bins next to the demo stand, where they also discarded the uneaten remains of the dumpling they had just tasted. The web site did no better. At the end of 90 days, it had received a total of only 71 hits.

That little fiasco is what made McMaster such an easy mark for Ledbetter’s pitch. McMaster was flat broke and the riches beyond his wildest dreams that Ledbetter offered spoke to him in a language he could understand. Plus, McMaster probably never really believed in souls. Souls were the brain-children of people who couldn’t face the fact that humans are just animals that die and decompose, an ignominious end to an artificially fanciful existence.

To bring this little tale to a rapid conclusion, McMaster and Ledbetter came to a mutually agreeable compromise. McMaster expected unlimited wealth and Ledbetter expected another soul to add to his collection. What neither expected was an out-of-control van careening around the corner as they stepped out of the alley at the corner of First Street and Avenue M. The van, its side painted with the words “First Baptist Church of Trinity Acres,” was full of  youthful zealots on their first indoctrination field trip to the seedier side of town. The van’s driver, Pastor Bob Jeffress, if he saw McMaster and Ledbetter at all, saw them through bloodshot eyes. Pastor Jeffress’ blood alcohol level, at 0.242, was three times the legal limit. Neither McMaster nor Ledbetter had a chance of survival; the van’s speed on impact was estimated to be 55 miles per hour.

As you might imagine, the incident caused quite a stir in church circles. Pastor Jefress spent several months in jail before being tried and convicted of vehicular manslaughter, which was followed by a sentence of five to fifteen years in prison. Fortunately for him, Governor Sarah Sanders, a long-time member of the First Baptist Church of Trinity Acres, immediately commuted his sentence.

The uproar following the commutation led to an investigation of the relationship between Jeffress and Sanders, which revealed their years-long extramarital affairs, both with each other and with several others unnamed in this story. Given the endemic hypocrisy one finds in both government and organized religion, the affairs were readily forgiven by the parties’ supporters. But, after their marriage to one another, both were arrested for bigamy, inasmuch as they did not bother to divorce their respective spouses before getting married. That infraction, we learned, was unforgivable. And, we also learned, the punishment was equally harsh. They both were sentenced to death by hanging and firing squad, the sentences to be carried out simultaneously. Public executions, which had been brought back during Sanders’ first term in office, attracted crowds in excess of eighty-thousand. Food trucks park on the streets around the execution site, offering execution-viewers a number of options for lunch: Indian, Chinese, soul food (hmmm), Panamanian, hamburgers, hot dogs, Peruvian (check out the roasted guinea pigs, they’re delicious!), and several Uzbek and Mongolian choices.

On the day of the executions…wait, you’re wondering how I’m bringing this tale to a “rapid conclusion,” aren’t you? Well, I understand. So I’ll just stop here. But, really, try the Peruvian food truck if you get a chance.

 

 

 

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Old Canadian Misfits

Posted on August 17, 2019 by John Swinburn

There are so many possibilities for this little vignette. But I’m getting tired of writing it and I don’t have the mental stamina even to go back and tighten up what I’ve written. Instead, I’ll leave it as a foundation for a future stab at writing a full-fledged story. This is what happens when one encounters insomnia, again, in the wee hours of the morning.

Once upon a time an old man by the name of Codger McDougal lived in a cabin in the backwoods of the Canadian north country. Codger built that cabin when he was a young man with a different identity and a promising future. Back then, when he was just thirty years old, he went by the name of Jeremy Chag. He had been an apprentice metal fabricator or fitter, well on his way to becoming a journeyman, when his life appeared to have come apart at the seams.

Jeremy’s cabin, which was to be a hunting and fishing retreat, was almost finished when things started to go haywire. One Sunday afternoon, upon returning to his home in the town of Orilla on Lake Simcoe, he was met at his front door by officers of the Ontario Provincial Police.

The stone faces of Sergeant Major Conner Stipple and Detective Sergeant Leona Bywaters suggested the purpose of their visit was grave. And indeed it was.

“We’re here to ask you some questions about your relationship with Mary Margaret Embra,” Stipple said.

“Yes, what of it?” Chag responded.

“When did you see her last? And where?”

“Oh, I dunno. Maybe last Wednesday or Thursday. What’s this about?”

“We’ll ask the questions,” Bywaters piped in, “and then we’ll fill you in on what you need to know.”

Stipple continued. “Where did you last see her?”

“At work. I checked in at the head office to get my assignment and she was there. She gave me my assignment and I left.”

“And that was last Wednesday or Thursday? Try to be more specific. Was that the last time you checked in to get an assignment?”

“Yeah. I took some time off in lieu. I have quite a few banked hours, so I took some. I went to spend some time in the woods.”

“You didn’t answer my questions. What day did you go spend time in the woods? And what do you do when you ‘spend time in the woods’? Are you a hunter?”

“I guess it was Thursday. So I must have been to head office on Wednesday. That would have been the last time I saw her.”

Bywaters chimed in again. “But you first said it was Wednesday or Thursday. How could you have thought you might have seen her Thursday if that was the day you took off for the woods?”

“I don’t pay much attention to the calendar. I just work when I have to and go out in woods when I can. Would you tell me what this is all about?” Chag’s voice was louder than before and his cheeks had begun to flush with pink.

“Well,” Stipple said, “Ms. Embra has disappeared. And we’ve been told you were in a relationship with her. Is that true?”

Chag’s eyebrows snapped at Stipple’s words. “No…well, I wouldn’t call it a relationship. We spent a little time together is all. And that’s been a while back. Wait, you say she disappeared? Like vanished?”

“Let’s just say no one has come forward to tell us where we might find her. We were hoping you might be able to help.” The edge had gone from Bywaters’ voice.

“When did she disappear?”

“She hasn’t been seen since last Wednesday morning, about the time you say you checked in for assignments.” Bywaters’ hesitated for a moment, then continued, ” That’s not to say you had anything to do with her disappearance.”

Stipple shot a sideways glare at Bywaters.

Thanks to a sloppy investigation and inept investigators, the OPP developed no evidence that a crime had been committed, but the rumors and innuendo surrounding Jeremy Chag did not need evidence. Even though the investigation was eventually abandoned, the stories about Chag’s relationship with the woman did not die. And those rumors made it impossible for Chag to stay on the job. Even after he left his employer, the rumors followed him. He couldn’t get work. Less than a year after the visit by the OPP, Jeremy Chag changed his name legally to Codger McDougal.

Even though the former Jeremy Chag had considerable experience as a metal fabricator, he opted to return to the Ontario College of Trades as Codger McDougal and become an entry-level apprentice. But that did not work out. Codger began drinking heavily. First on weekends, then weeknights, and finally whenever he thought he could swallow a swig without being seen. But, of course, he was seen. And, after wasting too many opportunities to turn his life around, losing job after job after job, he was out of choices.

Codger McDougal never told anyone he was building a cabin. When he said anything about his treks into the north country, he said he was going camping. “Spending some time in the woods,” was his refrain. He finished his cabin six months before he lost his last job, during one of his rare sober periods. During the course of construction, before the meltdown, he had dug a well, installed solar panels, and built a septic system, making his little cabin in the woods a fully functioning, self-reliant home. Once the last bit of trim was installed, he returned to his house in Orilla, loaded his belongings into a borrowed panel truck, and moved lock, stock, and barrel to his hermit’s getaway. By that time, he was four months in arrears on his mortgage (still in the name of Jeremy Chag) and six months behind on the payments on his very expensive Ford F-150 pickup. He couldn’t take his house with him, but the following day he drove his pickup to his cabin and disappeared into the woods outside Sahanatien, Ontario.

About the same time Codger McDougal skipped out on his financial obligations, Detective Sergeant Leona Bywaters was placed on administrative leave for an infraction the OPP kept confidential. Whatever it was, the offense was sufficiently serious that her employment with the OPP was terminated without fanfare three months later.

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Intellectual Refraction

Posted on August 16, 2019 by John Swinburn

My college sociology classes exposed me to concepts of social deviance I had never encountered in the “real world.” Once exposed to those concepts, I looked at the world through a different set of eyes. No longer could behaviors be labeled as simply good or bad; behaviors were expressions of a complex set of drivers shaped by the environment, by psychology, and by social structures. “Deviance” was a moving target; unacceptable behaviors during one time frame became not only acceptable but socially embraced in another. Societies changed in much the same way that biological organisms evolved in response to changes in the world around them. Social deviance serves an important role in society by establishing, at any moment in time, boundaries of “good behavior.” But those boundaries never have been solid, firm, or immovable; they are constantly under assault by sociological forces.

The reason social deviance came to mind this morning is that I listened to a StoryCorps conversation between a 42-year-old woman and her 71-year-old aunt. The aunt had come out as transgender in the late 1960s. Her parents had sent her away, concerned that the condition might be contagious. A few years later, she underwent sex-reassignment surgery, now called gender confirmation surgery. Over time, her family came to accept her; she was no longer the deviant outcast she had once been.

The woman’s experience seems, to me, a great example of how social deviance exists—at least in some cases—at the intersection between psychology, biology, and sociology. Her family’s eventual acceptance of her as a woman is evidence that love can overcome fear if given a chance. But her family’s initial rejection of her demonstrates how perceived “otherness” can be a powerful negative motivator. “If you’re not like me, you’re bad or dangerous; not to be trusted, not to be allowed into my inner circle.”

I’ve expressed regret that I didn’t pursue and complete graduate coursework in sociology. I really loved learning about social structures and how they form and change and disintegrate and re-form. I’ve forgotten almost all I learned from my sociology classes. When I read something written by sociologists, some of what I learned tries to surface in my brain, but it never comes fully into my consciousness. And, of course, since I completed my undergraduate work forty-four years ago (!!!), the academic world of sociology must have changed radically. I’m sure some of what I learned has been replaced by better, stronger, and more complex theories. It would have been fun to have stuck with a subject I found so fascinating.

It’s silly to even think it, but I think the world would be a far better, more peaceful, more accepting place if everyone in it had been exposed to some of the concepts I learned about social deviance when I was in school. Though I don’t recall being told this specifically, I remember receiving the message, loud and clear, that social perspectives at odds with one another are not good or bad, they’re just different. Sure, there’s good and bad in the world, but we need not—and should not—look at everything through the lens of righteousness. I think people would be more open-minded if they had been exposed to the things to which I was exposed during my education. That is not to say I am the poster-boy for open-mindedness; my embarrassing biases and prejudices are the stuff of legends. But a little more willingness to accept that people see the world through the lens of different experiences would go a long way toward greater serenity.

I suppose it’s never too late to learn, or to re-learn. But I’m not sure I have the energy nor the discipline to recapture what I once knew, much less to catch up on a discipline that has had forty-four years to mature.  So, I’ll be satisfied, to the extent I can, to learn a little here and a little there and to continue to allow my early education to shape the way I view my world. I think of this concept as intellectual refraction; rather than seeing the world through a black and white lens, I try to see it from a perspective that reveals all its colors and requires me to concentrate on what all those colors mean.

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The Allure of Skepticism and Belief

Posted on August 15, 2019 by John Swinburn

I remain extremely skeptical. But there’s room in my skepticism for the remote possibility that others have discovered aspects of reality that I haven’t experienced. An example of my skepticism that leaves open a possibility that goes against the grain is the Japanese healing art of Reiki. According to the website naturalhealers.com, “Reiki uses only touch and sometimes merely the proximity of the healer’s hands to particular parts of the body, using 12 to 20 prescribed hand positions, depending on the training tradition.” I can readily buy the concept that touch, even light touch, can have an effect on one’s physical and mental condition. But the idea that the mere proximity of a “healer’s” hands can have the same effect is what I find difficult to accept. Again, I’m not rejecting it outright; I’ll readily admit that my immersion in western culture makes me prone to disbelief, so I have to pry open my skeptic’s brain in order to entertain the possibility that such an impact is possible.

The reason the subject of Reiki enters my mind is that I’ve been offered treatment sessions by Reiki practitioners. Two people offered, on separate occasions, to perform Reiki to help relieve the pains associated with my cancer treatments. I expressed appreciation for the offers and said I might accept them later, but I haven’t. At least not yet. Lately, though, I’ve thought to myself, “Why the hell not? The only damage it could do is to cause me embarrassment for involvement in something I consider deeply woo-woo.” I have an innate bias against woo-woo. Practices that seem to go against known physical laws just tend to leave me cold. Metaphysics in general, leaves me cold. One of the definitions of the term appeals to me for some reason: “philosophy, especially in its more abstruse branches.” “It more abstruse branches,” indeed! Follow the synonyms and you’ll find “esoteric” and “recondite” and “obscure.” Perhaps their very definitions lend strength to my bias against such philosophies that seem to have no grounding in the physical world; no basis in science, especially physics. Yet, I purposely try to fight my biases in an attempt to understand an aspect of the universe that has, heretofore, either remained hidden or exists only in the imaginations of people who tend toward the woo-woo.

Even as I sit here, writing about trying to have an open mind about such stuff, my mind keeps warning me not to allow myself to be a sucker. “Don’t buy into anything whose only evidence rests with the words of people of questionable credentials,” I hear myself say. “Don’t be so close-minded,” I respond, while wondering whether my reliance on reason and evidence and measurable facts should be considered biased or prejudiced.

One of the reasons I’m hesitant to allow myself to embrace woo-woo is this: the current administration is engaged in a war against science and the scientific method, preferring instead to rely on the unmitigated bias of people whose motives rest exclusively in the province of greed. I think there’s a significant danger is drifting too far into the woo-woo, giving credence to unsupported claims on all manner of things contrary to scientific evidence.  But that’s far afield of my consideration this morning of Reiki. I have to acknowledge the remote possibility that human bodies in close physical proximity can register some form of force field (I don’t know a better term) that could cause changes in one or both bodies. Electro-magnetic fields can be measured and demonstrated as real, though they are invisible; perhaps some similar phenomena, as yet unmeasured by science, also exists. I’m trying. I am.

Here’s another possibility: the knowledge that someone is holding their hands very close to, but not quite touching, one’s body could very well impact the “target” person’s brain functions. Without his knowledge, perhaps. His skin could become tighter, his muscles could become tense, his body could prepare itself for a potential but unknown sensation. That is, the mind can trick the body into behaving in odd ways.

Ultimately, it comes back to this: “Why the hell not? The only damage it could do is to cause me embarrassment for involvement in something I consider deeply woo-woo.” I still have no firm answer.

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