John Swinburn

After going to bed rather early last night, sometime before 11, I heard and felt what sounded like a violent clap of thunder, followed by a roar like a freight train. That first loud noise shook the house. The roar that followed continued the shaking. Dishes rattled. Pictures on the walls vibrated. The sound was exceptionally loud. I got out of bed to explore.

At first, I thought the roar might be a tornado. But the sound and the attendant vibrations did not change in volume or tenor. I then thought the noise might be caused by military aircraft practicing night maneuvers. After ten or fifteen minutes more of the sound, with no change, I abandoned that theory. I had nothing to replace it, though. I was baffled.

My wife heard the same sounds, of course, and went about exploring. She went outside to determine whether there was anything that might explain the noise. It remained a mystery.

After a while longer, the noise diminished ever so slightly, so I decided to return to bed. After almost an hour, I got up again and checked online news feeds. Finally, I learned that the noise was the result of the rupture of a thirty-inch gas pipeline. I estimate the pipeline, located off of Glazy Peau Road and Highway 7 North, is roughly two miles from us. Residents within a one mile perimeter were evacuated. They have since been permitted to return. Apparently, there was no fire, just a rupture. And the gas was under such enormous pressure that, once the line ruptured, the escaping gas caused the deafening noise.

Maybe I’ll learn more today. If I do, I’ll return here and update the post. I’m writing this only to record the events of last night.

I don’t remember when I started shaving. I suppose I was in high school, but the possibility exists that it was earlier, perhaps the last year of junior high, AKA middle school. Not that it matters. But the transition to manhood seems to be connected in some way to shaving. Among other things, of course. Yet I don’t recall that transition, at least not with respect to shaving. I remember other things, but only vaguely. Shaving probably doesn’t resonate in my memory because I’ve always had a rather light beard, both in terms of density of whiskers per square inch and with respect to the thickness of individual whiskers. Or their thinness. Some of my whiskers have always been almost wispy. And a few have been thick and strong like stalks of mesquite wood protruding from my skin. Most are somewhere in the middle, leaning toward wispy.

In spite of my poor memory about the timing of my introduction to shaving, I recall some fundamental changes in the practice of shaving over the years. One more thing I don’t recall, though, is the time-frame at which it became a necessary daily habit. But some things I remember.

In my early days of shaving, whenever they were, I shaved in one direction. Down. Down the side of the face. Down the upper lip. Down the lower lip to the chin. Down from the chin to the bottom of my neck. Always down. Those early days lasted for years and years. Sometime in my early thirties, I think, I began to notice that I got a MUCH closer shave if I  followed the down stroke with a pull of the razor up my neck, from the base of my neck to my chin. Not too long after that, I realized my shave still wasn’t awfully close; to make it as close as it could be, I had to then pull the razor horizontally from each side of my neck to the middle. Sometime later, I started doing the up stroke on my cheeks,  as well. Finally,  not so many years ago, I began the side stroke on my cheeks. I realized, along the way, that there’s a place on the left side of my neck that requires an angled top-down stroke after I’ve finished shaving. If I don’t finish my shave with that angled top-down stroke, I can feel an annoying stubble after I’ve rinsed and dried my face.

My shaving practice is actually somewhat more complicated than I described, but the additional complications are not worth describing. (Nor, the reader probably thinks, were and the descriptions of the shaving process and practice.)

Actually, I feel quite fortunate to have a rather thin, slow-growing beard. I can easily go a day without shaving and almost no one will notice. Even at two days, only a relatively few people notice that I have some stubble. Grey hair and a pasty complexion help, too, conceal the fact that I haven’t shaved.

I’d prefer not to have to shave. I suppose I could simply stop, but eventually my face and neck would look awful. Before looking horrible, though, my meager whiskers would drive me crazy. Scratchy whiskers, jutting at odd angles, bother me at the corners of my mouth shortly after a period of not shaving. Shortly thereafter, my entire face protests the growth. I’ve tried. I’ve had almost invisible mustaches on more than one occasion. Even when I allowed the strands of hair to grow to two or three inches in length, they blended with my face. My mustache made my upper lip look like I was sporting an odd camouflage lip garment.

I know men who, if they want their faces to look freshly-shaven, would have to shave every two hours. Given the fact that I do not like to shave (and, by the way, nick myself almost every morning), I can only pity having such fast-growing beards. Especially fast-growing beards flush with the mesquite stalk style of whiskers I mentioned a few paragraphs above.

And that is the saga of shaving as told by a sometimes shavist.

A grotesquely gnarled tree limb, torn from its trunk years ago during a fierce windstorm. A distorted, dried, weather-worn dead branch so monstrously misshapen as to be profoundly beautiful.

How is it that something so obviously distorted and, in the traditional sense, hideous can be so splendid? It goes to the heart of why we have a word like oxymoronic; we need an adjective that describes such contradictions. How is it, though, that such incongruencies can exist? How can something monstrous and misshapen be, simultaneously, fabulous and perfect?

I don’t have the answer. Oxymorons are irrational but they allow us to use language to both describe and to account for the existence of the irrational.

I’ve been up since around 4 and have written and discarded the equivalent of a short novel, I think. Nothing I’ve written resonates with me. At one point, I wrote about an ugly bush that blocks the view from our kitchen window. I intended to dig it up and replace it, but can’t now because a cardinal has built a nest in the gangly bush. I suppose I could dig it up, anyway, but I would consider myself a monster for doing it; so, I will wait until eggs (assuming there are eggs) hatch and the cardinalitos flee the nest. I spent a good thirty minutes writing about that earlier this morning. I discarded it. I just spent 30 seconds replacing what I’ written earlier.

The cardinal fiasco was just one of many that consumed my thoughts earlier in the day. I wrote about them and discovered, much to my chagrin, that they, too, warranted disposal. That happens sometimes. Frequently, in fact. The reason I finally opt to discard what may have taken me hours to write is simple: the words seem to be monstrously misshapen, with no corresponding oxymoronic beauty. I think I’ll be better off cooking or washing dishes than writing this morning.

The allure of video games is beyond my comprehension. That may be because I’ve never had an interest in playing them. I’ll admit that I might get hooked if I permitted myself to spend time on a game console. But when I’ve been presented with the opportunity to play, I’ve always found something I’d rather do. Until now. Maybe still. But there’s one old video game that I’ve long wanted to explore and I learned this morning that it’s alive and well and into its umpteenth iteration (it was first published in 1989). It’s SimCity. You’ve almost certainly heard of it and may have played it.

As I understand SimCity, it’s a simulation/strategy game that allows players to create imaginary cities from the ground up. Players decide the types of industry their cities will allow and establishing zoning to restrict (or permit) those industries in certain areas of the city. Levels of taxation, environmental regulations, tourism options…the list of areas over which players have control is stunning. In one sense, I think the idea behind the game is absurd; it’s a time-waster of extraordinary proportions. But in another, the game could be extremely educational.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an intense interest in urban planning. I considered  the discipline as a career as one point (maybe several points) but decided for various reasons not to pursue it. My interest, though, has remained.

Today, though, my interest is not in creating and molding and shaping and coaxing a city into existence. Instead, I’m interested in creating and molding and shaping and coaxing a small, declining town on a path toward either extinction or rebirth. I’m not sure SimCity would be of use to me, though. I’m not sure whether the game would be helpful to me as I envision the effects that actions taken by characters in my story would have on my little town.

I’ve incorporated my fictional town into a few stories I’ve already written. To date, though, they have been simple vignettes. Now, I have in mind a much longer story that follows my protagonist, Calypso Kneeblood, as he copes with the decline of the town in which he lives, the tiny businesses he runs, and the lives of the people with whom he interacts. Perhaps SimCity would allow me to create backstory about Struggles, Arkansas. I don’t know, though. I’ve done only cursory research about what the nuts and bolts of the game, so I am not sufficiently familiar with the degree to which I might use the game to model my little town.

Given that my story is character-based, versus action-based, it’s possible that a simulation game would prove utterly useless. I’ve never before used a crutch to aid my writing. But I might give SimCity a try, regardless of whether I use it in connection with my story. I might even incorporate the game into my story. Calypso Kneeblood, who runs the Fourth Estate Tavern and Struggles Brewery, could conduct SimCity simulations in an effort to determine the likelihood that sales of the brewery’s Desolation Stout would be adequate to warrant having the product bottle (or canned). But I doubt the game goes into that level of detail. But maybe. I’ll explore what’s involved in buying or otherwise getting access to SimCity. But not today.

We often judge others by the machinery they own. I submit that it’s true of the cars they drive. For instance, I am quite certain that two people who are otherwise virtually identical would be viewed quite differently if one of them drove a Hyundai Accent and the other a Porsche 911 Carrera S Cabriolet. The Hyundai driver, compared to the Porsche driver, would be judged as less affluent, more reserved, less of a risk-taker, and more modest. Conversely, the Porsche driver would be seen as more affluent, more flamboyant, more adventurous, and more egotistical.

Now, if both of these hypothetical people drove Porsche 911 Carrera S Cabriolets, one car white and the other red, observers would view the driver of the red car as more flamboyant, more adventurous, and more egotistical. I’m not sure about whether color would translate into assessments of affluence. Actually, I not sure about any of this. But I’m quite confident that my perspectives are on track with reality.

It’s not just cars, either. The same thing applies to household appliances. Take, for example, the devices coffee-drinkers choose to make their coffee. Most of us would view a person whose morning brew comes from a Miele CVA 6805 built-in coffee machine with bean-to-cup system differently than we might view someone whose coffee leaks from a ten-year-old Keurig machine. And we might ascribe still different attributes to a Mr. Coffee aficionado. We would probably ascribe the following characteristics to the Miele owner:

• arrogant, grandstanding braggart
• obscenely, unjustly affluent
• name-dropping pretentious snob

Hmmm. Perhaps you wouldn’t be so blatantly biased in your assessment of the Miele owner. The question arises, doesn’t it, of whether my assessment might be related to envy and blind resentment? But let’s get beyond that, shall we? What about how we see the Keurig owner? Some of us might assume he’s lazy and can’t discriminate between French roast and green tea. Others, like me, might assume he hates to waste good coffee and would rather drink a single cup of mediocre French roast than brew an entire pot of what could be the world’s richest, most spectacular coffee, the majority of which would be thrown out.

And what of the fan of Mr. Coffee? Some people would assume he; does not have a discriminating palate; is not particularly affluent; doesn’t drink much coffee; and/or thrives of his self-described persona as “the common man.”

Reality speak to the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of our machinery-based judgments. While some of our biased assessments might have a modicum of validity, most probably do not. But we let ourselves judge people on the basis of factors utterly unrelated to their personalities or behaviors. We don’t need to know anything more about a person than the car she drives or the equipment she uses to make coffee to begin painting, in our own minds, a portrait of her personality.

What do we do when confronted with facts that, taken separately, say one thing but, taken together, say another? For example, the Miele coffee maker owner who drives a fifteen-year-old white Hyundai Accent? Or the Porsche Carrera driver who makes her coffee with a fifteen-year-old Mr. Coffee machine?  The incongruencies are almost limitless. The guy with the Miele who uses Folgers coffee. The Mr. Coffee owner who, with his Krups grinder, grinds custom-roasted Ethiopian yirgacheffe beans every morning. The Porsche owner who relies on GasBuddy to find the cheapest regular, low-octane gasoline.

For the record, I used to buy expensive, freshly-roasted coffee bean blends and grind just each morning enough to make a small pot. Now, I pop a recyclable pod (just to clarify my stance on treating the planet well) of San Francisco Bay brand French roast coffee into my old Keurig most mornings. The flavor isn’t as good as the freshly-roasted beans, but it’s good enough. And I am able to make just enough; I don’t drink a lot of coffee. Laziness does factor into it, though. If I wanted better flavor badly enough, I’d use an Aero Press; but the preparation and the clean-up are more involved than I’d like.  But when I have a cup of coffee, expertly brewed from freshly-ground beans, I almost decide to repent by vowing to grind and brew and to discard the Keurig. But “almost” is never enough.

And, inasmuch as I’m revealing things about myself that might factor in to the way you judge me, let me reveal this: I drive a 17-year-old Toyota Camry. When we drive together, I drive my wife’s car (I prefer to drive and she prefers that I drive), a three-year-old Subaru Outback.

I could go on and on, of course. Not just about cars and coffee but about computers and televisions and smart-phones and stereo equipment (do they still call it stereo?).  I recall, even when I was in college, watching eyes bulge when someone would claim ownership of a Marantz or Pioneer turntable. I never knew much about them, personally. But stereo gear was associated with status; I knew that much. Today, the most expensive turntable, according to Mother Google, is the Av Design Haus’ Dereneville VPM 2010-1, valued at $650,000. At some point, pretension comes with an unreasonable cost.

I’ve limited my comments here to machinery. I could launch into a lengthy tirade on other matters involving how we judge one another (and ourselves). Like wine. A simple bottle of wine. Valued at hundreds or thousands of dollars. What?! WHAT?!

A couple of days ago, I wrote that my contractor failed to show up. I tried to remain “chill” about the situation, but my temper got the best of me. I sent the guy two texts, the second one after I tried to call him but got a message saying his voicemail box was full. In the first text, I wrote, “If you’re not going to show up as promised, will you at least call me?” I added a few more comments intended to induce shame and remorse. I ended the second text with “Let me know whether you will be here tomorrow and, if so, a time I can depend on.”

On one hand, I am proud of my restraint. In days not so long ago, I would have unloaded on the guy. I would have allowed my indignant rage to spray forth in vitriolic waves. So, in comparison to what I might have done, my two texts weren’t so bad. But, after he responded via text a few hours later, I wished I would have just kept my fingers in their cases for a while longer. His response indicated he had been without his phone the entire day. He had been at the hospital on a family emergency. He apologized and said he would be here by 10 yesterday. And he was.

He told me the emergency was that he had to rush his daughter to the hospital due to an asthma attack, something that has happened before. Now I realize the story may have been a fabrication, but it’s just as likely it was true. And I felt like a jerk for assuming the guy just flaked out on me. And I recalled the admonition I’ve seen and embraced so many times before: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle about which you know nothing.” Or words to that effect. Some attribute the advice to Plato, Socrates, and various others. It doesn’t matter who first said it, it’s wise advice to follow.

As I contemplated the matter, I concluded that it doesn’t matter whether the story is true. Something kept him from being here. It could have been something else equally serious or more so. Or, it could have been sheer laziness or simple disinterest in showing up. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The condition of my deck is not the most important thing in life. It doesn’t warrant the kind of angst I’ve been allowing it to cause.

***

On March 28, my oncologist ordered an abdominal x-ray, which I had done the same day. The reason she ordered it was that I felt some pretty severe pain in my abdomen from time to time. She also ordered a CT scan, which was done a few days later. On April 18, when I had my next appointment with her, she said the CT scan was normal. She didn’t mention the x-ray. A week or so ago, I received an email indicating I had new test results available on my patient portal. I looked and saw the hospital radiologist’s report on the x-ray. The doctor noted in the “impressions” section: “Coarse calcification in the right upper quadrant may reflect cholelithiasis.” Naturally, I looked it up. Cholelithiasis is a condition where gallstones are formed in the gallbladder, liver or bile duct. After waiting a few days to see if the oncologist would call (and she did not), I communicated with my primary care physician, who said the x-ray did, indeed, suggest the possibility of gallstones and the next step should be an ultrasound.

Aside from being upset with the oncologist for apparently ignoring the x-ray (or being incredibly slow to do anything about it), I’m annoyed at my body for behaving so badly. I’ve had too damn many health issues over the years. Crohn’s disease and the emergency surgery I underwent because of it. Double bypass surgery. Cancer, causing removal of a piece of my lung and a bunch of rounds of radiation and chemotherapy. Arthritis. A clogged sweat duct in my left foot that occasionally makes walking quite painful. And, now, perhaps I have gallstones? All right. I get it. I’m approaching an advanced age. I understand. No need to convince me. I need no more reminders. Stop, already.

On a more serious note, all these things do, indeed, bother me. The collective crush of health-related issues, both major and minor, scream at me, “You are mortal and sooner or later, you’re going to die!” I know that, of course, but the “sooner” part is jarring. I’ve not thought enough about the preparations one might want to make in advance of that eventuality, whether it occurs sooner or later. Making the transition easier for my wife, should I be the first to go. That sort of thing.

Oh, there’s much more on my mind, but I’ve lost interest in sharing it with whoever stumble across these words. The world outside my window this morning looks damp and grey, the sort of day that invites bleakness to enter one’s mood. I suppose I could draw the blinds, but I’m too attached to the view out the window, dreary or not. Maybe another cup of coffee will enhappy me.

I’m in the process of either learning the virtue of patience or enabling my lack of same to overwhelm my sense of serenity.

Yesterday, I expected the deck guy to arrive between 9 and 10; because that’s when he told me to expect him. I sent a text about 12:15 to inquire as to his plan to show up. An apology came back, along with the explanation that he and his wife were on their way; they had been waiting for their helper to arrive but he was a no-show. They arrived about 12:40 and went to work. When they left at 5:30, the guy apologized again for their tardiness and told me they would be here much earlier today. He may have said “by 10.” It’s now almost 1 p.m.. There’s just no way he can be “much earlier” today.

My choices with regard to this situation are many.

I could simply adopt the attitude that “what will be will be.” That would mean I wouldn’t feel compelled to stay home, awaiting their arrival so I can let them in (this house is badly flawed, in the sense that the only ways to get to the deck are through the house or on a ladder perched precariously on steeply pitched ground covered with gravel). I would simply make sure the volumes are set to loud on my cell phone ringer and text alert. If they show up and I’m not home, they could call and await my return.

Or, I could lay down the law when next I communicate, telling them they either show up as promised or get replaced. That would almost certainly result in replacement. Eventually. With no assurance that a replacement, if I could find one, would show up on time. Or ever.

Or, I could simply cut my losses right now. I would need only to get my paint from them (I have everything else) and pay them a fraction of the agreed total job price. And I would then either do the job myself or find a replacement for the fired contractor. Eventually. With no assurance that a replacement, if I could find one, would show up on time. Or ever.

At the moment, I’m leaning toward the first option. These guys have good references. Except one guy mentioned, “like all contractors around here, you can’t depend on them to show up when they say they will…they have a daughter who’s in school and they have to take her and pick her up and go to teacher conferences…” That should have been a strong signal to me. Either get used to the idea that “tomorrow” may mean “next week” or don’t hire them.

Based on my experience in Hot Springs Village with several contractors of various stripes, two things are clear to me. Contractors are either: a) not any good; b) not reliable; c) both; or d) obscenely expensive. By obscenely expensive, I mean day laborers tend to expect $25 per hour and people with even the most rudimentary skills like to believe they should be paid on par with the best cardiac surgeons.

If I were thirty years younger, I believe I could create a highly successful landscaping/ handyman business in Hot Springs Village. Just by being dependable, I could develop a rabid following. And I could undercut the prices of my competition and still make a six-figure income.

Oh, I almost forgot another option. I could sit and rant and vent about my deck dilemma and stew about what to do about it while doing absolutely nothing. Yeah, that’s an option.

Just this morning, I began thinking what I might like to do if I were all-powerful and unconstrained by natural laws. It occurred to me that such expansive capabilities would open up an endless array of possibilities, options so utterly infinite that it would seem impossible to select just one. And then it hit me. If I were all-powerful and unconstrained by natural laws, I wouldn’t have to select just one thing. I could do it all. For some reason, that realization didn’t ease the tension. It seemed to exacerbate it, making my selection of the first thing I would do seem ever so important. With that as a prelude to the quandary of making my selection, here it goes: I would temporarily assume the personage of Publius Aelius Hadrianus Augustus, that is Hadrian, of Hadrian’s Wall fame. I would experience his life, up until he became chronically ill, with the aim of learning for myself what it is like to be an emperor. Included among the core objective is an interest in knowing whether writings about his life and times are accurate. I’ve often wondered whether “historical” accounts of periods of time centuries before the invention of the printing press should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.

I don’t know, or certainly don’t remember, much about Hadrian or, for that matter, his wall. I do know of him and it, of course, but that’s about the extent of my knowledge. Before I become the man, I’d like to read considerably more about his experiences. I’d like to go into the process of being him with more than a cursory understanding of what I’m getting myself into. I vaguely recall that he was said to have arranged the murders (or was it state-sanctioned death sentences?) of at least two (or possibly more) senators who opposed him. I’d like to know more about that before I merge with the man’s physical and mental states. And I might like to read the English translation (the original was written in French) of Memoirs of Hadrian, by Marguerite Yourcenar. Although the book is a novel, I would be curious to compare the reality of what I find during my experience as Hadrian with the book. I learned this morning that the book takes the form of letters from Hadrian to his successor, Marcus Aurelius. The book was written in the early 1950s, so I might find it hard to get my hands on a copy. But wait! I’ve forgotten that I’m all-powerful and unconstrained by natural laws! Surely I can lay my hands on a copy of the book. If not, I should be able to simply cause it to leap out of my printer, page by page.

Among the most obvious differences between life today and life during Hadrian’s time would be the lack of many of the amenities to which we have grown accustomed. Things like electricity, plumbing, refrigeration, motorized transportation, telecommunication, etc., etc., etc. I suppose I could avail myself of those amenities during my utter takeover of the man’s experience, but availing myself of such privileges would rob me of the genuine experience, wouldn’t it? Again, with my limitless range of power and freedom from natural laws, I should be able to have my cake and eat it, too, shouldn’t I? Hmm. This dilemma is a little like Schrödenger’s cat, doesn’t it? You know, the issue involving an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which the cat can be simultaneously alive and dead? Yeah, I know, this is not that, but to experience and not experience something at the same time is in theoretical kinship with the unfortunate feline. At least I think so.

Some of this wild drivel spilling from my fingers has story-telling potential. I know none of it is in finished form, but it has some potential. Maybe. Of course, if I were all-powerful and unconstrained by natural laws I could simply will it so. But that might remove the challenge from the situation, mightn’t it? Therein resides the simultaneous attraction of supernatural power and its ruinous nature. I suspect the ability to will anything to happen or to be would soon result in one’s decision to will oneself back to an existence as a simple, struggling human. But I have not way of testing that theory, as much as I’d like to have the capability of doing so.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to be in a position to communicate in advance with Hadrian so that, between the two of us, we could arrange for a switch? That is, he’d take over my experience for a time and I’d take over his. At the end of the period, we’d revert back to our original existences and, then, compare notes. I wonder how Hadrian would characterize his time as John Swinburn? And I’m curious to know how I would characterize my experience as Hadrian? Both of us would have to instantly understand a language with which we are utterly unfamiliar. I can say with certainty that Hadrian would have to become immediately fluent in modern-day English. But am I absolutely certain that Hadrian spoke Latin? Isn’t it possible the he spoke some other language, even though the official language of the empire was Latin? We have no way of knowing, at least not with certainty. I’d have to go into the transfer with faith that I’d be able to get by with my Latin.

I’d also have to know, or learn, some really fundamental stuff about Roman hygiene. What about my dependence on toilet paper? How would I cope without it? And the food…what, exactly, constituted a Roman emperor’s diet in Hadrian’s time? Lots and lots of questions. Before I make the switch, I’ll have to do quite a lot of reading.

The time is just shy of 6:00 a.m. I’ve been up since just after 4:00 a.m. During that almost two-hour stretch, I’ve had half a cup of coffee—reheated twice in the microwave—and read an enormous amount of unrelated stuff online. And I listened to a remarkable rendition of Dust in the Wind (originally recorded by progressive rock group Kansas), played on a harp guitar by a guy named Jamie Dupuis. I was unfamiliar with the harp guitar until this morning. See, you can learn something new every day if you start early enough.

Though I tried to avoid it, I couldn’t remain entirely free of the intrusion of world news during the two hours I’ve been awake. So, I know about the six explosions—three in churches and three in luxury hotels—in Sri Lanka.  At last count, 138 people are dead and hundreds more have been injured. I’ve been fed a diet of details about the blasts, including some speculations that the bombings might be related to the ethnic violence that led to the country’s civil war. But even if that’s true, I don’t know “why?” And I can’t understand “why?” And I don’t think I will ever understand how anyone can reach the point of deciding it’s all right to kill hundreds of people with whom the bombers probably do not know.

Fortunately, I’ve not permitted myself access to any other news. It’s not that I think Easter Sunday is somehow too “holy” to suffer the insanity of violence. It’s that I don’t need or want any more news about the insanity for the moment.

Despite the fact that Easter Sunday doesn’t have any special meaning for me, the day draws out memories (both individual and collective, as in societal) of tradition. And, so, we will celebrate those memories and that tradition with a special meal. My wife bought a ham last week and she plans to prepare a fancy dinner. Her sister will join us for the meal late in the day. We plan to go to church today, where I expect there might be reference made to the fact that it’s Easter Sunday, but the day doesn’t mean the same thing in our church that it means in traditional Christian churches. I’ll offer a quote, attributed to a Unitarian Universalist, from a story I read online this morning:

I believe the real meaning of Easter is the appreciation of life’s renewing cycles and, that for all things there is a season. I believe the real meaning of Easter is the acknowledgment, with its accompanying sadness, of a very human Jesus who was forced to die on the Cross because of his liberal religious views and beliefs. But most important of all, I believe the real meaning of Easter is the Celebration of Thanksgiving for the presence of the sacred in each and every living person and thing; for the presence of the sacred in the birds that sing; for the presence of the sacred in the flowers which sway and the grasses which rustle in the gentle breezes of spring.

In my view, nothing is innately sacred. Humans ascribe to certain things or ideas the concept that those things or ideas should be revered for one reason or another. So, in that sense, reverence is artificial; it is simply “made up.” But that doesn’t quite explain why I view a magnificently beautiful sunrise with inexplicable awe, does it? I wonder whether dogs or cattle or elephants experience that same sense of astonished reverence at that sunrise? I think not, though I have no evidence to support my presumption that other animals aren’t as stupefied as I when they see just another day in the universe. All right, enough about Easter and awe and the tension between being a non believer and being unable to explain the awe I sometimes feel about the world around me.

After church this morning, my primary task for the day is to move all the furniture, plants, grills, etc. from the deck so work can begin tomorrow on cleaning it, patching and/or replacing decking, and painting it. I began the work several months ago but finally admitted I couldn’t do it all, especially after my toils were interrupted by my cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatments. The search for someone to do the work was an undertaking in itself; I hope the guy I picked is as good as he and his references claim. Initially, I had planned to have the railing painted, as well, but I’ve decided to explore replacing the vertical wood balusters with horizontal wire. I have to check into the local requirements/restrictions as well as building codes before moving ahead with that. My plan is to do that checking immediately so the entire deck, including the railing, will be finished with  a matter of days or weeks, not months.

I spent much of yesterday afternoon at Lowes, where I met with my contractor to buy paint, sandpaper, a special router bit, decking lumber, and assorted other stuff. I had no idea that a 5-gallon bucket of paint could weigh so damn much! I bought two such buckets; I may have to buy more, depending on how well it covers. According to the information on the cans, one gallon is sufficient to do two coats of paint for 75 square feet (the paint is heavy-duty stuff, meant to cover defects in old, beat-up decks). I’m not sure of the precise square footage of our deck, but I believe it’s between 800 and 1000 square feet (it’s a big deck). Maybe the guy can stretch the paint a bit. Tomorrow’s weather forecast is good for outdoor work; no rain. Tomorrow, the deck is to be power-washed, cleaned with a special wood cleaner meant for old decks, and badly cracked boards replaced.  But the forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, the days initially planned for painting, calls for rain. But the forecast for next Friday through the following Tuesday looks promising. With luck, we’ll have the deck painted with a week or so, then.

Again, I’ve drifted in and out of focus here. My fingers haven’t been awfully active for much of the last hour. It’s now a quarter to seven and I just noticed through the blinds that it’s light outside! Time to go put the hummingbird feeders out. And more coffee.

As expected, our church “dinner for eight” last night was enjoyable. Good food, interesting conversation, and plenty of laughter. All the above took place in an environment that encouraged everyone to shed at the front door whatever stresses they might have brought with them. And then the music started. It was good music. The musician was a talented guitarist with a pleasant voice. And the music wasn’t unreasonably loud. But it was loud enough to make conversation virtually impossible for us. Our table was too close to the stage to permit conversation without ramping up the vocal volume to uncomfortable levels. One of the couples invited us to their home for after-dinner drinks and conversation. All of us readily agreed.

We followed them to their home and spent more than an hour engaging in conversation. Nothing particularly consequential. But enjoyable. One of the group talked about a surly, Confederate-flag-displaying neighbor in Ruidoso, New Mexico. She suspected he had turned her in for allowing her antique turquoise and white teardrop camping trailer to sit in her yard for too long. Another couple spoke of their plans to take a river cruise along the Danube in Germany. All of us engaged in conversation about favorite “dives;” restaurants that look and feel slightly dangerous but that satisfy our taste for adventure and good food. I don’t recall all the topics we discussed. As I said, nothing particularly consequential. But relaxed, casual, enjoyable. That’s how I like my evenings.

Back to the restaurant. The moment we walked in, I saw several other church members busily consuming their dinners. Only a few hours earlier, I met one of them at a favorite coffee shop (actually the only coffee shop) just outside the Village. She and I meet more or less regularly to talk about writing, publishing, church, politics, etc.  She often shares her astonishment that she has reached the age of eighty and still makes plans or commitments that assume she will be around for years. Things like a three-year magazine subscription. I like the attitude that informs such commitments.

At any rate, my coffee mate told me earlier in the day that she and a few others meet every Friday afternoon at The Beehive. I gather they start with lunch, then clear the table to play bridge. The group had been there all afternoon. Beginning at noon. Our group arrived at six. The husband of one of the bridge players had joined them after choir practice, he said. When I approached their table to say hello, I asked whether they have been drinking all afternoon. “All afternoon? No, since early this morning.” That response was untrue, of course. But its frivolity helped set the tone for the evening.

Last night’s dinner was the last one for the “season.” The other couples apparently travel during the summer or their families visit them with some frequency, so a structured program like the church’s “dinners for eight” or “dinners for six” would be impossible to plan. That’s a key difference between us (that is, my wife and me on the one hand and other couples, on the other). Janine and I don’t plan summer travel. And we don’t have children or grandchildren. So, instead of taking a break from structured social activities for other plans, our break leads us into a time-void. It’s not that we can’t travel or otherwise engage in activities that would replace these social engagements, it’s that we just don’t.

The “social engagements” that have drawn us in on occasion since we moved to Hot Springs Village constitute a new experience for us. We have been, and continue to be, a mostly unsociable couple. We have very few friends and, consequently, we have very few occasions to happily immerse ourselves in the company of people we enjoy. But these structured activities, like small group dinners and social affairs orchestrated by the church, provide occasions to “pretend” that we’re sociable. It’s not that these activities are artificial, nor that our interactions with the people in these groups isn’t enjoyable; it’s that these “forced” engagements allow us to feel like we’re part of a group when, really, we’re not. It’s odd, in many ways, that we have become far more social and sociable since we moved here. Yet I think both of us, in ways unique to each, value our individual isolation. Both of us remain fiercely introverted. We display that introversion in radically different ways, though. One day, I’ll explore those ways in more depth. I might find that they are not so radically different, after all.

***

A small group of the shrinking group of writers who constitute the Village Writers’ Club have decided to publish an anthology of our selected works. None of us (with one notable exception), I think, took the project particularly seriously. The project came together during meeting I missed over the past several months; the meetings conflicted with my scheduled cancer treatments. Despite my absence, I was asked/encouraged to participate. So I agreed. I selected two short stories, one piece I label “a fantasmagoric fiction vignette written in the first and second person,” and one decidedly dark poem. I wrote none of these pieces for the anthology; I simply picked, essentially with the toss of a dart, pieces I’d written earlier. Two of them were inspired by a neighbor’s art in connection with a VWC activity. One of them is the product of this blog and a strange mood. And another was a short story written to satisfy the requirement that each member of a critique group bring something to be critiqued. None of them represent my best work; not even close. So, now that the book is in the hands of a printing company, I wish I’d given it more thought, rather than haphazardly picking pieces almost at random. I’m too lazy to be a writer. Writers have to devote both time and energy to their work. And they have to avoid offering their least attractive work for publication. Hmmm.

***

My body is decaying. It has been doing so for years, but the evidence of late is more visible and more upsetting than in years past. My emergency surgery, almost thirty years ago now, involving the removal of a long piece of small intestines, started the process. But that scar remains hidden under my shirt. Then, fifteen years ago, my open-heart double bypass surgery continued the degradation. But that scar, too, remains hidden under my shirt. And, only a few months ago, the removal of a lobe from one of my lungs kept the process going. But, aside from the occasional expressions on my face that reveal pain associated with that surgery, the scar remains hidden. What’s not hidden is the very visible change in the appearance of my skin. The skin on my arms, especially, looks like the skin of a very old man. Tiny, almost microscopic, wrinkles make my arms look soft and elderly. Yes, arms can look elderly. Mine are proof.  And my legs look old and used up, too. But, unlike my arms, they’re not awash in microscopic wrinkles. Instead, the skin on my legs is dry and, on close inspection, awash in scales. That is, it looks like dead skin that remains affixed to my body. But when I’ve scrubbed it, in an attempt to reveal the fresh, new, youthful skin below that layer of decay, I find only raw, red, painful marks that morph into dry decay in short order. And I have strange new marks on my face. Moles, I guess, that mark me as an old man whose skin has turned on him after years of neglect and abuse. My distaste for the spots or moles or whatever they are is not based entirely on vanity. Though, I’ll admit, vanity has something to do with it. My concern is that these innocuous bits of evidence of my decay will one day (and it may not be long) transform into not-so-innocuous beasts that will consume the remnants of my sagging skin, leaving me with a grotesque outer layer of shriveled muscles and tendons. Actually, I don’t harbor that concern. If I did, I would be certifiable out of my mind. But my body does show plenty of evidence of decay. And if the body is showing signs of decay, chances are better than fifty-fifty that the cells that form the brain and sustain the mind are morphing into matter better suited for feeding plants than for fueling thoughts.

***

I seem to have an uncanny ability to transform happy, almost joyous, thoughts into gloom. I traveled the road from last night’s enjoyable dinner to social isolation to bodily decay in only 1400 words, more or less. There should be a prize for high-speed, word-based psychological deterioration. There may be such a prize. But I’m not going to go searching it out. I have better things to do. Like rebuilding the happiness with which I began to construct this post.

This morning, I decided to forego my usual breakfast diet of two or three domestic and a sprinkling of international media. Instead of CNN and NPR and Aljazeera and BBC, et al, I opted to explore an online resource I rarely visit: Le Monde diplomatique (LMD). I should have remembered from past visits that I might not be happy with it, but my memory isn’t what it used to be (or never was).

LMD, an English language French newspaper that is published monthly, hooked me this morning. At the same time, its marketing team made me extremely angry. Let me explain.

I first began reading an article about a powerful family that, according to the article, essentially controls the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The piece, entitled “The Irvings, Canada’s robber barons,” says the family has, “…established vertical and horizontal monopolies that allow them to do without suppliers and business partners.” The family owns timber lands, sawmills, paper mills, a home building company, steel and concrete production operations, a naval dockyard, packaging factories, car dealerships, pharmacies, intercity bus lines, and on and on. In addition, the Irvings own all English language newspapers in New Brunswick, as well as radio and television stations.

As I was reading all of this fascinating stuff, I came to an abrupt dead end. If I wanted to finish reading the article, I had to subscribe.  As much as I wanted to know more, I was unwilling to spend a chunk of money to read just one article, especially in a publication I’d be unlikely to visit regularly. So I went back to the home page and picked another article to read.

The next article I found intriguing, entitled “When the US swung a Russian election” claimed “The US intervened on the side of Boris Yeltsin in the Russian presidential election of 1996, offering advice and influence to help him secure the finance he needed.” Interesting! So I continued to read. The article made note of CIA manipulation of elections in Italy and Germany in the 1940s and 1950s and asserted that the U.S. helped overthrow elected leaders in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s. Just as I found myself absorbed in this well-written piece, I came to another abrupt dead end. The same situation as before: if I wanted to finish reading the article, I would have to subscribe. Damn!

“Screw this,” I said to myself, “I’ll have a look at the newspaper’s old stuff. Surely the marketing folk won’t deprive me of seeing a full article published long ago.” But just as I became enthralled by an article about Bagamoyo, a small Tanzanian fishing port that is on its way to becoming Africa’s largest container port, BAM! “You wanna keep reading? Pay up!”

Okay, I thought, I’ll see whether I can buy one-off access to especially interesting articles at a reasonable cost. Nope. It’s full-on subscription or deal with the frustration of being unable to read any complete articles. Okay. How much? Well, for an indeterminate period, I can subscribe at a 40% discount for a one-year period…at roughly $38. Not gonna happen. As interesting as those articles are, I’m not going to spend $38 simply to satisfy my curiosity.

Those dead-ends, though, really irritated me. If the marketing team thinks pissing off readers is a good marketing ploy, they are wrong. What they succeeded in doing was to convince one prospective reader to ignore the paper from here on. They could have sold either full access for a one or two-day period or access to a limited number of articles. They could have made a few bucks off of this reader. Instead, they didn’t make a nickel off of me. And they deprived some good writers/researchers of a slightly larger base of readers.

The worst part is that this paper, based on my limited access to it, seems to be an extraordinarily good publication. Had I been able to get limited access to some complete articles, I might have decided it was worth $38 per year (which is a 40% discount off regular rates, by the way). But, instead, the marketing department just annoyed me.

I sent an email to the subscription department, asking whether limited access is available; I doubt that it is, or I would have found the information. But perhaps my query will spur some creative thinking on the part of the subscription department or the marketing geniuses. We’ll see. I got an auto-response, suggesting a real response should come within 48 hours.

Now that I’ve let my anger, annoyance, and moderate rage simmer a while, I realize there are more important things in the world today than my frustration with limited access to LMD articles. But, still, I just don’t think it’s right to tease me with increasingly intriguing paragraphs, only to slap me in the face and tell me I can’t continue to read them unless I fork over what, to me, is a significant amount of discretionary money. I guess my simmering hasn’t completely cooked my acrimony.

Mood swings. Everyone has them. The question some of us have is whether the ones with which we deal are “normal” or, instead, symptomatic of something ominous. But it’s not just mood, is it? It’s something deeper. Something that defines who we are. Not just mood. But what would you call it? Personality? Nature? Temperament? Psychological makeup? Mentality? What?!

Psychology is imprecise. Psychology is medicine without the foundation of chemistry. Psychology is modern-day voodoo, stripped of magic yet adorned with illusion in the form of abstract art. This isn’t meant as mockery; it is simply an honest interpretation of a discipline in which I have both confidence and doubt. I am reluctant to accept “beliefs,” instead favoring theories that, having been subjected to rigorous tests, survive disbelief.

Yet there are times in which beliefs are simply expressions of untested convictions that, for one reason or another, merit acceptance or, at least, the willing suspension of disbelief. So it is with some theories of psychology. And, I might add, sociology.

Sociology was my college major. I think studying human social relationships and institutions shaped, in large part, my world view as it exists today (though my world view changes with each passing hour). The shifting sands of my view of the world owe their existence to the intersection of time and experience, coupled with the fact that I see human experience through a lens clouded by bias (but with a willingness to occasionally wipe the lens clean).

***

I interpret many of the changes taking place in the world’s societies today as large-scale expressions of individual psychoses, amplified by aberrant forms of groupthink and magnified by waves of unstoppable social phenomena. In a nutshell, Earth’s population has lost its mind and is behaving badly. We haven’t yet managed to create a pharmaceutical remedy for the malady, either, so we’re just stuck with the madness. Fortunately, I am among the select few who have not been infected by the disease (and so are you). Unfortunately, I have little to no power to change the direction of the world’s societies. So, we’re just going to have to watch the decline of civilization from the sidelines. If we were truly smart, we’d begin collecting like-minded people into little tribes. Small tribes of people who respect one another and recognize that we must take care of our physical and mental (or spiritual or whatever you’d like to call it) environments have the best chance of surviving the demise of humankind’s delusion of control over the universe.

***

Speaking of the willing suspension of disbelief (I was, remember?), this morning I read Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in its entirety.  I’m not sure what drove me to do that. Who knows what causes such urges at five in the morning?

I feel sure I must have read it in its entirety before, but as I read it, the words were only vaguely familiar. And yet I recalled bits and pieces with almost absolute precision. “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” And I remembered that the Mariner, with his cross-bow, shot the albatross. I recalled the Wedding Guest, but I’m still not quite sure of his purpose in the poem, other than to provide an opportunity for the Mariner to tell his tale.  I was struck by the length of the poem; damn, it’s really long! But it has to be to tell such a story.

As I read the poem, some of the words Coleridge used caught my attention; for example, he used the term “bark” to refer to a sailing ship. Shakespeare used the term, too. My favorite Shakespeare sonnet, Sonnet 116, includes the word: “It is the star to every wandering bark, whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.” I was either in high school or college when I learned the word referred to a sailing ship. I took a course in Shakespeare while in college, probably during my first or second year. I remember very little of what I read, though I recall being both amazed and confused by Shakespeare’s language.

***

So, the results of my endoscopy on Friday were exceptional. That is, the doctor saw no signs of disease or damage. But that fact leaves me confused about why I still feel pain after I swallow some food and liquid. As in spicy food and bread and either very cold or very hot liquid. And a few other things. Actually, quite a few other things. He prescribed a drug for acid reflux, thinking that might be the issue. Have I already mentioned all this? If so, I am confused about what I’ve written and where I’ve written it. Sorry. Anyway, I’m both happy to know my esophagus and stomach look healthy. But confused as to why my symptoms remain (though they are far, far less painful than they were at their peak). Time may explain.

***

I’ve written all I’m going to write for the moment. I don’t know how long that moment might last, though, so there may be more coming in the near future.

In spite of the routine nature of an endoscopy (though I’ve never had one before, so I speak not from experience, only from hearsay and what I’ve read), its preparatory paperwork is a bit frightening. For example, I was asked to bring my living will with me. And I had to sign documents acknowledging, or at least suggesting, that the procedure could leave me incapacitated, mortally wounded, or dead. Not likely, of course, but possible. I guess they have to cover their bases.

I am to check in at 10:40 this morning. The procedure is to begin at 11:40. I don’t know exactly when I’ll be able to leave the recovery room, but I’d guess I will be in the car no later than 2:00 p.m., maybe much earlier. Whenever the doctor and his team finish, I expect to be quite hungry, inasmuch as my instructions were to cease eating and drinking by midnight last night.

By the time the doctors have reviewed their findings, I expect to have some answers about the cause(s) of the gut pain associated with eating. And I hope the answers suggest a simple, efficient, rapid, and complete cure to whatever ails me.

But while I’m talking to the gastroenterologist, I’ll inquire about what’s involved in correcting what I think is a hiatal hernia. That problem has been present longer than the one for which I’m undergoing today’s procedure. I assume the other gut problem that feels like my innards are being strangled when I move in certain ways is a hiatal hernia. I could be wrong. I think surgery is the preferred (and perhaps the only) corrective action. I’m not particularly fond of surgery, but I’ve had enough of it in my lifetime thus far to understand that it tends to have positive outcomes.

I’ve grown more patient with medical procedures during my time as a patient. There it is. The intersection of language and medicine. I think the practice of medicine involves Latin words and phrases because the oddities of English can test the patience of patients. Or doctors. I wonder whether Latin is awash in homophones? Well, yes it does. Latin, too, is awash in homophones (homographs and homonyms). You’ll have to trust me on that; I’m not spending my time pre-procedure listing Latin homophones.

Speaking of Latin, people can speak Latin. But conversational Latin today would have a limited vocabulary compared to, say, English or Spanish. At least that’s my understanding. I could be wrong. Latin is the official language of the Holy See, by the way. So the language is not really dead. I’ve never fully understood “Holy See,” but it’s not because I haven’t tried. It’s fairly simple and straightforward, until I read a sentence like this one:  “The Holy See is the apostolic episcopal see of the bishop of Rome, known as the Pope, ex cathedra the universal ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the worldwide Catholic Church.”

Maybe Latin’s use in medical terminology suggests some sort of connection with Catholicism? That has the makings of a strange story, it does. But not for this morning. For another time. For this morning, I’m going to focus my attention on what I’ll do for a post-procedure lunch. It’s all about food, isn’t it?

I hereby decree that today is the beginning of Temporal Freedom Season (TFS).

One of the tenets of TFS is that there shall be no constraints on one’s time, no requirements to invest time in a specific endeavor or event. Instead, one may disregard clocks. In fact, one may disregard time in its entirety, relying instead on daylight and darkness as measures of the appropriateness of wakefulness and sleep and activities related to them. Neither state of being, incidentally, correlates directly with daylight or darkness; it is possible to sleep during daylight and wake during darkness. There is no time-dependent penalty of any kind during TFS.

Time, which heretofore has been inexorably tied to aging, stands still during TFS. The length of TFS is impossible to measure because, well, time is unavailable to measure it. So, the duration of TFS is a concept with no basis in fact; the concept of duration is meaningless in the absence of time.  Aging, then, also is a meaningless concept during TFS; “during,” too, means nothing and has no place in the language while TFS is in place. Frankly, “while” suggests a relationship with time so it, too, is an arcane concept in the context of TFS. That’s better. “In the context of” eliminates the outmoded concept of time. But, wait! Doesn’t the concept of “outmoded” suggest an element of “before” and “after,” both of which are time-dependent? I am concerned that the omission of aging in connection with TFS could be derailed if time-related concepts continue creeping in to the reality of TFS. For example, if aging ceases but concepts like “while” and “during” and “before” and “after” continue, how can our permanently youthful (in relative terms) bodies exist? Ach! This dilemma causes my brain to hurt.

How in the name of anything holy can I climb out of this hellish nightmare in which everything is, in one form or another, time-dependent? Must I live under this cloud that relies on the passage of time to provide a context for literally everything I experience? The answer, I am afraid, is an unqualified “Yes.”

Time is an artificial concept, but one without which our understanding of the universe (as limited as it is) could not exist. I cannot conceive of “now” without understanding “before” and “after” and “previously” and “subsequently.” All of them, of course, are artificial. That leads me to conclude, of course, that the artificiality of the concepts that help us understand the universe must mean that we, too, are artificial. And so is the universe. Perhaps we are, indeed, simply players in an imaginary game being played by creatures so immense and complex we cannot begin to understand them. I’ve heard that rumor before. And today, which marks the beginning of Temporal Freedom Season, the rumor is beginning to sound more and more rational. I am simply a fiction, a story crafted to amuse a consciousness beyond my ability to comprehend. Heretofore, when I have read articles about Artificial Intelligence, I didn’t think I was simply an element of AI. But not it’s clear that I am. I’m just a game piece, manipulated by the Mother of All Consciousness to achieve objectives that are as artificial and as meaningless as I am.

The idea of TFS was simply to clear obligations from my calendar. But it has grown into something much more consequential. TFS has caused me to question the existence of the universe and everything in it. I have moved beyond wanting to have control over my days. Now, I want control over my being. I want questions about my own meaninglessness to disappear in a vapor, taking me back to a time when I thought everything and everyone mattered. I want to return to a moment in which I understood the interdependency between all creatures and all aspects of the world on which they depend. I’m willing to live with calendars. Provided they contain a significant amount of blank spaces. Yes, that will take me back to that magical moment, which I hope will last forever.

It’s happening again. My calendar is attempting to control my life. It’s attempting to take charge of every day, forcing me into a regimen of rigid discipline. The calendar clamps my freedom in its powerful jaws, refusing me the flexibility to do with a day what I will. Instead, it insists on an exacting schedule that grips me so tight I can’t breathe.

I have allowed this to happen. I’ve permitted the universe to impose an agenda on me, rather than impose my own agenda on the universe. That’s the problem with calendars. They connive and cajole and collude and conspire to usurp one’s free will, replacing volition with harsh demands.

Calendars engage in their demonic undertakings the way vicious clowns lure children into houses of horror, with sweets and candies. They use seduction to schedule attractive engagements, then drag us into hour upon hour of unpleasant obligations in what I like to call the “between times.” That is, the times between choice, the mandates that straddle opportunities.

I’m considering the pros and cons of setting fire to my calendars or drowning them in thick tar so they can’t escape and take control, again, of every waking hour.