Since having a truly brutal wisdom tooth extraction yesterday, I have been following the doctor's prescription of antibiotics and...somewhat guiltily, codeine. It's like when you're driving and see a cop car, you feel a little rush of fear and guilt, even though you're not doing anything wrong. I'm just born for guilt I guess.
The codeine dose is extra heavy and takes some getting used to, as my jaw swells and bruises and I see a nasty place at the corner of my lips where the oral surgeon apparently had to rip my mouth open. In my twilight sleep I remember him saying "I just can't get this damn thing out!" (Of course I have a tremendous crush on him now)
Since I really should be going back to work on Monday, I'm getting a tiny bit worried about having to give up this nice codeine relief, and wondering omigod am I getting addicted after just two days?!" A little while ago, I thought "God the heat today is really getting to me. I feel like hell. I just have to go upstairs to my air-conditioned bedroom and have a snooze." Then I realized I was already there, having a snooze. This is spooky.
Suddenly I remembered this old song from 1964. There's a 5 minute version that is the most depressing thing you've ever heard, which of course I used to love back then. But I will spare you and show you the one-and-a-half minute version. Check out the audience- just itchin' for a change! What do you think those guys looked like a year later?
From the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, right before all hell broke loose in the good old USA, here's the short version of Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Cod'ine" - (before she defected to Sesame Street). Gotta love that shaky voice!
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Dream of my Father
I was beginning nursing school with some of my daughters in an upstairs open-air hall or casino in a section that looked like an airport gate waiting area which had desk tables and chairs in a long curved line. Jule didn’t want to sit with us but she was there too,and gave us a little wave and smile, like "I'm fine" - also Lelah and Ava were there, We were all excited to be taking the same class, becoming nurses.
My father appeared…First I saw him attached to an IV in a hospital gown…he said he was going to go to the bathroom….it was a unisex bathroom and I went in too…I waited while he went in one of the stalls…and saw other people washing their hands etc. The floor was covered with water, I didn’t want my dad to slip when he came back out….but I went back to the class and left him there.
I said to Nancy S., an old college friend, "My dad's here, isn’t it wonderful?" I realized I shouldn’t have left him alone in the bathroom so I started looking for him. Suddenly he appeared in the classroom area, dressed in one of his beautiful light brown tweed sports jackets… looking hale and hearty, smiling at me with that gleam in his eye, about 60 years old, one hand in pocket, one holding a beer can, so happy and alive and smiling…looking so good! I could tell my young medical instructor was impressed that I was his daughter ....the great Dr. Chapman!...…I was so proud!...
Daddy sat down on the windowsill behind me as I took notes then I turned around and he was gone, there was just a stain - and a dark organic thing like a griffin on a tree stump in the window area where he had been, he had changed form. I started to cry at the table where my notes were. I asked Nancy if she saw him too…and told her, crying, that he was gone…
Then I got up from my seat and turned around and there he was again, restored, looking wonderful. He had just gone to get something! He held up a wide but short piece of paper that had numbers and writing on it, he looked amused…,he knows how messed up I am about money...and most clearly I realized that it was a bill he had picked up at some "office"....there was an $8 charge to be paid by me to "the main office", for seeing and feeling him so clearly. He kind of pointed to his pocket with a smile and made me realize that since he was not really of the flesh, he couldn’t pay it, and he was asking with a twinkle in his eye if I could take care of it. I said “Daddy I would pay $8 every day ! For this! “ He gave me that smile. I reached up and hugged him, feeling his broad shoulders and rubbing my hands along his back, feeling only the most fragile bones,not at all like shoulders and a spine, so differently aligned from human form....puzzling...…but holding together for this brief moment, so alive! It was a wonderful warm real big bearhug, we both knew it was in the dream world, and I said “Oh Daddy, Daddy thank you. Thank you. I miss you so much. You’ve been so good to me.”
The simple words I wish I had said at his deathbed. Thank you so much. I'll miss you. You've been so good to me.
Then I woke up. And decided to try to find out if this dream came via India. Because I have definitely had some supernatural experiences lately involving people my daughter knows, a guru and a swami in India.
ADDENDUM: Several days after this dream I spoke by phone to my daughter in India and she told me about a dream she had had of Grandpa. She was fascinated by the dream and (not knowing about my dream) described it something like this: "Grandpa came to see me and he looked just like his old self. He said some really nice things about me being in India and then gave me a big hug. I noticed that some make-up rubbed off from his face and he smiled and winked and said that he just needed to put on some regular-world stuff so that I would recognize him."
My father appeared…First I saw him attached to an IV in a hospital gown…he said he was going to go to the bathroom….it was a unisex bathroom and I went in too…I waited while he went in one of the stalls…and saw other people washing their hands etc. The floor was covered with water, I didn’t want my dad to slip when he came back out….but I went back to the class and left him there.
I said to Nancy S., an old college friend, "My dad's here, isn’t it wonderful?" I realized I shouldn’t have left him alone in the bathroom so I started looking for him. Suddenly he appeared in the classroom area, dressed in one of his beautiful light brown tweed sports jackets… looking hale and hearty, smiling at me with that gleam in his eye, about 60 years old, one hand in pocket, one holding a beer can, so happy and alive and smiling…looking so good! I could tell my young medical instructor was impressed that I was his daughter ....the great Dr. Chapman!...…I was so proud!...
Daddy sat down on the windowsill behind me as I took notes then I turned around and he was gone, there was just a stain - and a dark organic thing like a griffin on a tree stump in the window area where he had been, he had changed form. I started to cry at the table where my notes were. I asked Nancy if she saw him too…and told her, crying, that he was gone…
Then I got up from my seat and turned around and there he was again, restored, looking wonderful. He had just gone to get something! He held up a wide but short piece of paper that had numbers and writing on it, he looked amused…,he knows how messed up I am about money...and most clearly I realized that it was a bill he had picked up at some "office"....there was an $8 charge to be paid by me to "the main office", for seeing and feeling him so clearly. He kind of pointed to his pocket with a smile and made me realize that since he was not really of the flesh, he couldn’t pay it, and he was asking with a twinkle in his eye if I could take care of it. I said “Daddy I would pay $8 every day ! For this! “ He gave me that smile. I reached up and hugged him, feeling his broad shoulders and rubbing my hands along his back, feeling only the most fragile bones,not at all like shoulders and a spine, so differently aligned from human form....puzzling...…but holding together for this brief moment, so alive! It was a wonderful warm real big bearhug, we both knew it was in the dream world, and I said “Oh Daddy, Daddy thank you. Thank you. I miss you so much. You’ve been so good to me.”
The simple words I wish I had said at his deathbed. Thank you so much. I'll miss you. You've been so good to me.
Then I woke up. And decided to try to find out if this dream came via India. Because I have definitely had some supernatural experiences lately involving people my daughter knows, a guru and a swami in India.
ADDENDUM: Several days after this dream I spoke by phone to my daughter in India and she told me about a dream she had had of Grandpa. She was fascinated by the dream and (not knowing about my dream) described it something like this: "Grandpa came to see me and he looked just like his old self. He said some really nice things about me being in India and then gave me a big hug. I noticed that some make-up rubbed off from his face and he smiled and winked and said that he just needed to put on some regular-world stuff so that I would recognize him."
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Le Bassin aux Nymphéas by Monet: Eighty Million Spent Today, for a deathbed comfort?
I don't know about corporate art purchases and how that works, but tonight I have a fantasy about a man who has just spent $80,000,000 for a soothing painting to hang in a room where he will die someday.
If money were no object and I were that man who had lived a long and busy life, acculturated by education and life-style to the finer things in life...perhaps had many lovers, many wonderful dinners,a spouse or two, some children perhaps, much travel, and then found that life was closing in on even me.... and that my days were numbered... I might buy a remarkable painting by Monet of a soothing pond of water lilies. At this point in my life, I would be thinking of my dying days and wondering which face I might be looking into in my last moments. Good God not THAT ONE I hope!...Being none too sure about that, and whether I would really want any of them there, I might choose to run the gamut and purchase something of solid provenance...a soothing Monet. Blow my wad on the thing. Hang it in the bedroom. Be sure to have beauty there at the end, and peace.
People run their own little trips on you when you're dying. They think you need to hear a certain Bible passage or a certain poem or a certain song. They think you need to have certain memories. They argue at the deathbed among themselves and their old little personality conflicts come to the fore while you are getting oxygen and breathing your last. The only really meaningful thing anyone could say is "Thank you." "Thank you for all you have done in your life and for what you have done in our lives, and all that you have meant to us. We'll carry on, we'll carry you on in memory. Thank you, thank you."
But it doesn't go that way. People mess up. They can't make it there, their plane is late, the kids are sick, they're in the middle of a divorce, they're upset, they say the wrong thing, they're uncomfortable guilty and sobbing, they're broke, the doctor or night-shift nurse says no-no to letting the little ones come in, the ones who might have reminded you at the end of your tenderest times. The times before you got caught up in life. The times when you were a child being adored, playing outside, feeling curious, the times when you were a young adult, feeling the sweetness of life.
So as insurance against things going wrong at the end...you spend $80,000,000 on a Monet that won't let you down. Your children will prosper, they can sell the thing when you're done for whatever price, but there's no reaon why you shouldn't have it all right there in front of you at the end. You deserve it.You can stare at it until they turn your bed around for their own convenience and say "oh he can't see that anyway. Can he?"
I imagine this man tonight and congratulate him on his heroic effort. But, sir, I would be there no matter which way they turn your bed. I would make sure you could see what you want to see and hear what you want to hear and feel what you want to feel and have what you want to have. I will read to you and we will admire reproductions of Monet in excellent large books, I will soothe you and herald the way for you. You are someone in my dreams and I am in yours, and rest assured, I am always here. No price attached. I'll bring the books.
If money were no object and I were that man who had lived a long and busy life, acculturated by education and life-style to the finer things in life...perhaps had many lovers, many wonderful dinners,a spouse or two, some children perhaps, much travel, and then found that life was closing in on even me.... and that my days were numbered... I might buy a remarkable painting by Monet of a soothing pond of water lilies. At this point in my life, I would be thinking of my dying days and wondering which face I might be looking into in my last moments. Good God not THAT ONE I hope!...Being none too sure about that, and whether I would really want any of them there, I might choose to run the gamut and purchase something of solid provenance...a soothing Monet. Blow my wad on the thing. Hang it in the bedroom. Be sure to have beauty there at the end, and peace.
People run their own little trips on you when you're dying. They think you need to hear a certain Bible passage or a certain poem or a certain song. They think you need to have certain memories. They argue at the deathbed among themselves and their old little personality conflicts come to the fore while you are getting oxygen and breathing your last. The only really meaningful thing anyone could say is "Thank you." "Thank you for all you have done in your life and for what you have done in our lives, and all that you have meant to us. We'll carry on, we'll carry you on in memory. Thank you, thank you."
But it doesn't go that way. People mess up. They can't make it there, their plane is late, the kids are sick, they're in the middle of a divorce, they're upset, they say the wrong thing, they're uncomfortable guilty and sobbing, they're broke, the doctor or night-shift nurse says no-no to letting the little ones come in, the ones who might have reminded you at the end of your tenderest times. The times before you got caught up in life. The times when you were a child being adored, playing outside, feeling curious, the times when you were a young adult, feeling the sweetness of life.
So as insurance against things going wrong at the end...you spend $80,000,000 on a Monet that won't let you down. Your children will prosper, they can sell the thing when you're done for whatever price, but there's no reaon why you shouldn't have it all right there in front of you at the end. You deserve it.You can stare at it until they turn your bed around for their own convenience and say "oh he can't see that anyway. Can he?"
I imagine this man tonight and congratulate him on his heroic effort. But, sir, I would be there no matter which way they turn your bed. I would make sure you could see what you want to see and hear what you want to hear and feel what you want to feel and have what you want to have. I will read to you and we will admire reproductions of Monet in excellent large books, I will soothe you and herald the way for you. You are someone in my dreams and I am in yours, and rest assured, I am always here. No price attached. I'll bring the books.
Monday, June 23, 2008
A vignette of India
In the interest of keeping the homefires burning, I spoke by phone to my daughter in India and suggested that she go see a recent U.S. block-buster movie, just for fun. Thinking I might be irreverent and manifesting horribly,since she is there studying pranic healing, I said "Go see something like Sex and the City, they must show it there." She, ever ahead of the game, said that in fact, she had seen it last month in Bombay. I, having read "How to Manifest Horribly and Enlighten Others" back in the sixties, backed off.
Although she had no intention originally of going to Bombay on her present journey, she did end up there for a few days after being waylaid by riots in Jaipur. She had been in Rajasthan, the area where Guijars were closing down railroad transportation and torching busses and so forth, and had had to sacrifice her ticket to Delhi and fly south to Bombay to circumvent the riots. She claims she never felt endangered. Sitting at home watching the news reports, I saw it differently.
While in Bombay, which was oppressively hot and congested, she and a friend decided to escape to an air-conditioned theater to see some Bollywood, but they ended up seeing "Sex and the City." Before the curtain went up, the entire theater audience stood up to sing the Indian National Anthem. Imagine! Why don't we do that in America? It reminds me of the 50's here in the USA. Whose economy is on the rise?
I don't know economy, but isn't theirs doing pretty well, all things considered? I know that people who will rise to sing their National Anthem before watching "Sex and the City" have a mighty special place in my heart and remind me of those times as an innocent child when I sang loud and clear, hand on my heart, fifty some years ago, about how much I loved my country. Maybe afterwards, on the weekend , I paid a quarter to go see "The Blob" or "Return of the Mole People", but my heart could sing out any patrotic tune with love, anytime anyone expected me to. I'll be glad to do it again. Someone make me!
Although she had no intention originally of going to Bombay on her present journey, she did end up there for a few days after being waylaid by riots in Jaipur. She had been in Rajasthan, the area where Guijars were closing down railroad transportation and torching busses and so forth, and had had to sacrifice her ticket to Delhi and fly south to Bombay to circumvent the riots. She claims she never felt endangered. Sitting at home watching the news reports, I saw it differently.
While in Bombay, which was oppressively hot and congested, she and a friend decided to escape to an air-conditioned theater to see some Bollywood, but they ended up seeing "Sex and the City." Before the curtain went up, the entire theater audience stood up to sing the Indian National Anthem. Imagine! Why don't we do that in America? It reminds me of the 50's here in the USA. Whose economy is on the rise?
I don't know economy, but isn't theirs doing pretty well, all things considered? I know that people who will rise to sing their National Anthem before watching "Sex and the City" have a mighty special place in my heart and remind me of those times as an innocent child when I sang loud and clear, hand on my heart, fifty some years ago, about how much I loved my country. Maybe afterwards, on the weekend , I paid a quarter to go see "The Blob" or "Return of the Mole People", but my heart could sing out any patrotic tune with love, anytime anyone expected me to. I'll be glad to do it again. Someone make me!
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Trans-global Pranic Healing Experience
My daughter is currently studying Pranic healing in India. On short notice, by phone this morning, my beautiful daughter Honna arranged a long-distance half-hour meditation for me in Cape May USA, with her, her teacher by her side, and her teacher's teacher (both of them older men in Uttar Pradesh- aka Uttarakhand) at some distance in another part of town. My daughter told me to sit facing east with my feet on the ground and my palms open facing up. She called to say that the session would begin and then called half an hour later to say it was ending, to instruct me to give thanks for the healing and to pray that I will receive positive benefits from it, which I did.
I have a healthy skepticsm about these things, but if you read my earlier post you will know I have a healthy skepticism about modern medicine as well. When I was young, I identified myself as a "seeker" and went out in the world looking for some truths. I still look for the truth, and am particularly interested in things that are always true. I have found that it's always true that the gentler side of life, people who have kind, light and gentle spirits, wildflowers, simple things, are sources of comfort. And more than all else, faith.
While in my shared meditation extending from my living room in Cape May to the Himalaya, I experienced the most logical and clear feeling I could have: that I was being helped, that there was positive energy coming my way, and I felt the love of and for my daughter shining like a golden sparkling spinning healing orb.
During this remarkable experience, as I felt a number of physical phenomena, many memories opened up of my own youthful searches. I remembered my children, my beautiful babies around me in meditations ranging from Vedanta meditations in a dark room in Pittsburgh, to a Quaker prayer meeting, to Hands Across America on the Ben Franklin Bridge, to some whole earth meditation at dawn years ago on the beach, to solstice parties, glorious Thanksgiving meals, transcendent moments at the altar rail in the Episcopal church. I know things will go along well, all forces combined. And I remember the Reverend Claude Jeter singing "All Things Are Possible If You Will Only Believe."
I have a healthy skepticsm about these things, but if you read my earlier post you will know I have a healthy skepticism about modern medicine as well. When I was young, I identified myself as a "seeker" and went out in the world looking for some truths. I still look for the truth, and am particularly interested in things that are always true. I have found that it's always true that the gentler side of life, people who have kind, light and gentle spirits, wildflowers, simple things, are sources of comfort. And more than all else, faith.
While in my shared meditation extending from my living room in Cape May to the Himalaya, I experienced the most logical and clear feeling I could have: that I was being helped, that there was positive energy coming my way, and I felt the love of and for my daughter shining like a golden sparkling spinning healing orb.
During this remarkable experience, as I felt a number of physical phenomena, many memories opened up of my own youthful searches. I remembered my children, my beautiful babies around me in meditations ranging from Vedanta meditations in a dark room in Pittsburgh, to a Quaker prayer meeting, to Hands Across America on the Ben Franklin Bridge, to some whole earth meditation at dawn years ago on the beach, to solstice parties, glorious Thanksgiving meals, transcendent moments at the altar rail in the Episcopal church. I know things will go along well, all forces combined. And I remember the Reverend Claude Jeter singing "All Things Are Possible If You Will Only Believe."
Cynical about the Medical Establishment: Old root canals and old wisdom teeth acting up
My sister must have a tooth pulled this week and says it makes her mad that an old root canal has somehow gone wrong. She has taken very good care of her teeth all her life. This is the third story I have heard in one week about old root canals causing problems. I was interviewing someone this week who was hospitalized recently for nearly a week because of a serious infection in her head stemming from an old root canal. My son-in-law's father, aged 80, was hospitalized in Italy this past week for a similar problem. And now my sister. It turns out I may have oral surgery this week as well because of an impacted wisdom tooth gone bezerk here at age 61. The first x-ray said "dislocated jaw" - All of us have been vigilant, well-insured, and are of above-average intelligence. We go to good doctors whom we trust. Who really knows what lurks beneath? What doctor, what diagnostic test, is 100% fool-proof? At the moment I'd wager to say none, unless it's already too late.
The whole medical establishment makes us feel that if we pay good money to take care of our health then we will be ok. It's like a security blanket to go to good doctors on a regular basis. But it’s all kind of fake. You are either healthy because you live a healthy life style and/or have great genes, or you aren’t healthy and/or don’t have great genes. Tim Russert thought he was going along just fine. But the finest doctors didn't see it coming and neither did he. And I know of four people in the last week who have been surprised to discover that although they have not been neglectful,they're completely vulnerable.
will continue above with my pranic healing experience this morning
The whole medical establishment makes us feel that if we pay good money to take care of our health then we will be ok. It's like a security blanket to go to good doctors on a regular basis. But it’s all kind of fake. You are either healthy because you live a healthy life style and/or have great genes, or you aren’t healthy and/or don’t have great genes. Tim Russert thought he was going along just fine. But the finest doctors didn't see it coming and neither did he. And I know of four people in the last week who have been surprised to discover that although they have not been neglectful,they're completely vulnerable.
will continue above with my pranic healing experience this morning
Saturday, June 21, 2008
"You Can Call Me Al" - by Paul Simon, with some pretty enthusiastic assistance from Chevy Chase
This is one of the all time greats, a family favorite for years. My son Will loved this so much when he was five years old, totally got it, every nuance. It's crazy to say, but this video was truly formative in my kids' lives, they all have the best sense of humor, and I thank Paul and Chevy, in part, for that!
And while we're at it, Lelah's favorite from when she was twelve: "Take On Me" by A-Ha!
Lelah used to take countless photographs of the TV set when this came on MTV and she was twelve years old!
Friday, June 20, 2008
My Daughter's Beck and Call To India: Easy
So now I'm going too. To India. Bought my ticket, destination Ladakh, way up there on the Tibetan plateau. Can't wait. It won't be hard, as long as I survive the altitude. If I don't, put me out for the vultures on a hilltop, or whatever is easy....please don't drag me "home" - please just let me drift away in the Himalaya, according to local custom, and according to my life-long dream. I have loved my life beyond measure, my children and their mates, and parents and sister, and nieces and nephews, and cousins, and friends and all into eternity..... I have experienced moments of exhilaration beyond measure- it's almost unfair to those who struggle in this lifetime without joy, how much happiness my children have brought me. But thank you, my children, from the bottom of my heart. Let's hope for many more years for all of us.
So now I have purchased a ticket to India, way out of my budget, but within my crazy reach. My daughter kept encouraging me to join her - then an old practically anonymous college-time friend from 45 years ago gave me the push I needed....saying can't be sure how much time we have left...then Tim Russert died and that day I bought the ticket..just a moment in time in cyberspace, not quite sure how it all happened... My goal is to go to Leh in Ladakh with my 22 year old daughter who is presently feeling comfortable in Dehra Dun, and to not succumb to high altitude sickness nor, well , God forbid, cerebral edema. I've wanted to go to Northern India and/or Tibet, since I was a kid reading my grandparents' old National Geographics, and saw those beautiful Tibetan faces. I used to dream and sing words like "Shey" and "Ringdom" before I ever even knew there really were such places.
I feel my old 60's exhilarating fearlessness coming back to me in my 60's. The same feeling I used to have when I hitch-hiked across country a dozen times, invincible, or slept under bridges in Paris, or lived in a lean-to on the beach in Mexico. How great is that? It was great then and it's great now. I'm ready for anything. I'm not easily fooled anymore, which is good for India, but I remember the joys of illusion. And would welcome those joys again any old time. Going to give it a go. The Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir, here I come.
So now I have purchased a ticket to India, way out of my budget, but within my crazy reach. My daughter kept encouraging me to join her - then an old practically anonymous college-time friend from 45 years ago gave me the push I needed....saying can't be sure how much time we have left...then Tim Russert died and that day I bought the ticket..just a moment in time in cyberspace, not quite sure how it all happened... My goal is to go to Leh in Ladakh with my 22 year old daughter who is presently feeling comfortable in Dehra Dun, and to not succumb to high altitude sickness nor, well , God forbid, cerebral edema. I've wanted to go to Northern India and/or Tibet, since I was a kid reading my grandparents' old National Geographics, and saw those beautiful Tibetan faces. I used to dream and sing words like "Shey" and "Ringdom" before I ever even knew there really were such places.
I feel my old 60's exhilarating fearlessness coming back to me in my 60's. The same feeling I used to have when I hitch-hiked across country a dozen times, invincible, or slept under bridges in Paris, or lived in a lean-to on the beach in Mexico. How great is that? It was great then and it's great now. I'm ready for anything. I'm not easily fooled anymore, which is good for India, but I remember the joys of illusion. And would welcome those joys again any old time. Going to give it a go. The Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir, here I come.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Waiting Neurotically For the Doctor to Call With the Test Results
A week ago I went to bed happy as a clam, perfectly healthy and woke in the middle of the night, unable to open my jaw. Ah the pain! Oh well, probably slept in a funny position, not to worry. Took a few ibuprofen and woke the next morning, it was worse: lockjaw for sure! It got a little better during the day, and not wanting my doctor to think I am neurotic, I held off til Saturday morning, suffering every night, before asking his opinion. My father, a doctor, used to always say that for neurotics, "A few good diagnostic tests are often the finest cure." I didn't want my doctor thinking that about me, Lord knows!
Luckily I had preserved a tick the size of a poppy seed in a napkin, having written on it "Deer Tick? June 5, 2008, found behind my ear" then stuck it in a Ziplock. My family, one and all, had squinted their eyes and sized the little thing up, assuring me it was not a tick. The doctor took a light and a magnifying glass to it and said yes, it's a tick, but it's intact, you're fine. "Wait a few days," he said, "and see what happens."
By Tuesday of this week, no relief. I felt a little feverish. I had researched TMJ, Lyme Disease, bone and thyroid cancer, arthritis, the works. The doctor ordered a TMJ xray, a hard one to get. It took the technician a few tries, increasing my exposure and making me wish I had fought the insurance company to go straight to an MRI.
So I got the xray Tuesday night after the radiologist had gone home, and I would get the results on Wednesday. "But my doctor is off on Wednesdays!" I mouthed in sorrow. They said "If it's an emergency we'll contact the doctor through his answering service." He worked today, Thursday, but doesn't make his calls until dinnertime, of course. Still no call. Is he putting it off because it's not important or because it's the Big One, the news that's hard to break?
Oddly enough, in the past two days, while waiting for the results, and going about my daily business at work, dining out, and at home, taking my temperature now and again, I have heard not one but two tales of people hospitalized for infections in their jaw and head that resulted from root canals gone wrong years after the fact.
I have never even considered going to the dentist! The pain in my jaw and under my ear, seemed so far removed from my mouth! But after all, really, how far is your mouth from your jaw? I mean, forget what your brain thinks: just look in the mirror.
It's probably that. Instead of panicking and thinking big, I should have thought small. Now the dentist is on vacation.
And so now I'm off to the opera at my local movie theater, a high-definition presentation of Puccini's La Rondine from Teatro La Fenice in Venice. I have found some old expired codeine- (never believe expiration dates!) So off I go- the doctor will have to wait to tell me what it is I long to know. Just what the hell is this excruciating pain? A week has passed since it started. I could blame the medical establishment, but it's nobody's fault but mine. He who hesitates is lost. Oh God! Lost!? Farewell!
Addendum: The phone message from the doctor later tonight says it's a dislocated jaw, and next I need an MRI.
Luckily I had preserved a tick the size of a poppy seed in a napkin, having written on it "Deer Tick? June 5, 2008, found behind my ear" then stuck it in a Ziplock. My family, one and all, had squinted their eyes and sized the little thing up, assuring me it was not a tick. The doctor took a light and a magnifying glass to it and said yes, it's a tick, but it's intact, you're fine. "Wait a few days," he said, "and see what happens."
By Tuesday of this week, no relief. I felt a little feverish. I had researched TMJ, Lyme Disease, bone and thyroid cancer, arthritis, the works. The doctor ordered a TMJ xray, a hard one to get. It took the technician a few tries, increasing my exposure and making me wish I had fought the insurance company to go straight to an MRI.
So I got the xray Tuesday night after the radiologist had gone home, and I would get the results on Wednesday. "But my doctor is off on Wednesdays!" I mouthed in sorrow. They said "If it's an emergency we'll contact the doctor through his answering service." He worked today, Thursday, but doesn't make his calls until dinnertime, of course. Still no call. Is he putting it off because it's not important or because it's the Big One, the news that's hard to break?
Oddly enough, in the past two days, while waiting for the results, and going about my daily business at work, dining out, and at home, taking my temperature now and again, I have heard not one but two tales of people hospitalized for infections in their jaw and head that resulted from root canals gone wrong years after the fact.
I have never even considered going to the dentist! The pain in my jaw and under my ear, seemed so far removed from my mouth! But after all, really, how far is your mouth from your jaw? I mean, forget what your brain thinks: just look in the mirror.
It's probably that. Instead of panicking and thinking big, I should have thought small. Now the dentist is on vacation.
And so now I'm off to the opera at my local movie theater, a high-definition presentation of Puccini's La Rondine from Teatro La Fenice in Venice. I have found some old expired codeine- (never believe expiration dates!) So off I go- the doctor will have to wait to tell me what it is I long to know. Just what the hell is this excruciating pain? A week has passed since it started. I could blame the medical establishment, but it's nobody's fault but mine. He who hesitates is lost. Oh God! Lost!? Farewell!
Addendum: The phone message from the doctor later tonight says it's a dislocated jaw, and next I need an MRI.
Friday, June 13, 2008
For Those of us Who Love Tim Russert: Watch Him Passing the Torch
On March 5th Tim Russert came onto the set of Morning Joe in a curiously elevated mood and talked briefly about a new age, and appeared to be greeting everyone effusively on the heels of some sort of Obama victory, and seemed to be passing the torch. I wondered why he had such an air of satisfied finality, pulling away, and he was over-the-top with happiness. Watch it if you can- probably only his wife or son Luke could have the clout to access it. But I swear, he seems to have a notion during his entry to the studio that he is nearing his end, there's a sense of finality, job well done. I know this because I started a blog about it that day that I never published because it seemed too strange.I don't know how to access footage of that day or I would post it here.
Friday, June 6, 2008
David Brooks' Column "Growing Up" (About Our Bi-polar Abe Lincoln)
Interesting article about one of our greatest presidents: Abe Lincoln, believed to have been bipolar, and one of the all-time best lines of thought: character building achieved by rooting out weaknesses forthrightly and with self-discipline, instead of brushing them under the carpet, talking a good game, and pretending they don't exist.
The Art of Growing Up
By DAVID BROOKS New York Times Op-Ed Columnist
Published: June 6, 2008
"In January 1841, Abraham Lincoln seems to have at least vaguely thought of suicide. His friend Joshua Speed found him one day thrashing about in his room. “Lincoln went Crazy,” Speed wrote. “I had to remove razors from his room — take away all Knives and other such dangerous things — it was terrible.”
Lincoln was taking three mercury pills a day, the remedy in those days for people who either suffered from syphilis or feared contracting it. “Lincoln could not eat or sleep,” Daniel Mark Epstein writes in his new book, “The Lincolns.” “He appeared at the statehouse irregularly, hollow-eyed, unshaven, emaciated — an object of pity to his friends and of derision to others.”
Later, Lincoln wrote of that period with shame, saying that he had lost the “gem of my character.” He would withdraw morosely from the world into a sort of catatonic state. Early in his marriage, Epstein writes, “Lincoln had night terrors. He woke in the middle of the night trembling, talking gibberish.”
He would, of course, climb out of it. He would come to terms with his weaknesses, control his passions and achieve what we now call maturity.
The concept of maturity has undergone several mutations over the course of American history. In Lincoln’s day, to achieve maturity was to succeed in the conquest of the self. Human beings were born with sin, infected with dark passions and satanic temptations. The transition to adulthood consisted of achieving mastery over them.
You can read commencement addresses from the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the speakers would talk about the beast within and the need for iron character to subdue it. Schoolhouse readers emphasized self-discipline. The whole character-building model was sin-centric. So the young Lincoln had been encouraged by the culture around him to identify his own flaws — and, in any case, he had no trouble finding them. He knew he was ferociously ambitious and blessed with superior talents — the sort of person who could easily turn into a dictator or monster.
Over the course of his young adulthood, Lincoln built structures around his inner nature. He joined a traditional bourgeois marriage. He called his wife “mother” and lived in a genteel middle-class home. He engaged in feverish bouts of self-improvement, studying Euclid and grammar at all hours. He distrusted passionate politics. In the Lyceum speech that he delivered as a young man, he attacked emotionalism in politics and talked about the need for law, order and cool reason.
This concept of maturity as self-conquest didn’t survive long into the 20th century. Progressive educators emphasized students’ inner goodness and curiosity, not inner depravity. More emphasis was put on individual freedom, authenticity and values clarification. Self-discovery replaced self-mastery as the primary path to maturity, and we got a thousand novels and memoirs about young peoples’ search for identity.
In the last few years, we may be shifting toward another vision of maturity, one that is impatient with boomer narcissism. Young people today put service at the center of young adulthood. A child is served, but maturity means serving others.
And yet, though we’re never going back to the 19th-century, sin-centric character-building model, for breeding leaders, it has its uses. Over the past decades, we’ve seen president after president confident of his own talents but then undone by underappreciated flaws. It’s as if they get elected for their virtues and then get defined in office by the vices — Clinton’s narcissism, Bush’s intellectual insecurity — they’ve never really faced.
It would be nice to have a president who had gone to school on his own failings. It would be comforting to see a president who’d looked into the abyss, or suffered some sort of ordeal that put him on a first-name basis with his own gravest weaknesses, and who had found ways to combat them.
Obviously, it’s not fair to compare anybody to Lincoln, but he does illustrate the repertoire of skills we look for in a leader. The central illusion of modern politics is that if only people as virtuous as “us” had power, then things would be better. Candidates get elected by telling people what they want to hear, leading them by using the sugar of their own fantasies.
Somehow a leader conversant with his own failings wouldn’t be as affected by the moral self-approval that afflicts most political movements. He’d be detached from his most fervid followers and merciful and understanding toward foes. He’d have a sense of his own smallness in the sweep of events. He or she would contravene Lord Acton’s dictum and grow sadder and wiser with more power.
All this suggests a maxim for us voters: Don’t only look to see which candidate has the most talent. Look for the one most emotionally gripped by his own failings."
The Art of Growing Up
By DAVID BROOKS New York Times Op-Ed Columnist
Published: June 6, 2008
"In January 1841, Abraham Lincoln seems to have at least vaguely thought of suicide. His friend Joshua Speed found him one day thrashing about in his room. “Lincoln went Crazy,” Speed wrote. “I had to remove razors from his room — take away all Knives and other such dangerous things — it was terrible.”
Lincoln was taking three mercury pills a day, the remedy in those days for people who either suffered from syphilis or feared contracting it. “Lincoln could not eat or sleep,” Daniel Mark Epstein writes in his new book, “The Lincolns.” “He appeared at the statehouse irregularly, hollow-eyed, unshaven, emaciated — an object of pity to his friends and of derision to others.”
Later, Lincoln wrote of that period with shame, saying that he had lost the “gem of my character.” He would withdraw morosely from the world into a sort of catatonic state. Early in his marriage, Epstein writes, “Lincoln had night terrors. He woke in the middle of the night trembling, talking gibberish.”
He would, of course, climb out of it. He would come to terms with his weaknesses, control his passions and achieve what we now call maturity.
The concept of maturity has undergone several mutations over the course of American history. In Lincoln’s day, to achieve maturity was to succeed in the conquest of the self. Human beings were born with sin, infected with dark passions and satanic temptations. The transition to adulthood consisted of achieving mastery over them.
You can read commencement addresses from the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the speakers would talk about the beast within and the need for iron character to subdue it. Schoolhouse readers emphasized self-discipline. The whole character-building model was sin-centric. So the young Lincoln had been encouraged by the culture around him to identify his own flaws — and, in any case, he had no trouble finding them. He knew he was ferociously ambitious and blessed with superior talents — the sort of person who could easily turn into a dictator or monster.
Over the course of his young adulthood, Lincoln built structures around his inner nature. He joined a traditional bourgeois marriage. He called his wife “mother” and lived in a genteel middle-class home. He engaged in feverish bouts of self-improvement, studying Euclid and grammar at all hours. He distrusted passionate politics. In the Lyceum speech that he delivered as a young man, he attacked emotionalism in politics and talked about the need for law, order and cool reason.
This concept of maturity as self-conquest didn’t survive long into the 20th century. Progressive educators emphasized students’ inner goodness and curiosity, not inner depravity. More emphasis was put on individual freedom, authenticity and values clarification. Self-discovery replaced self-mastery as the primary path to maturity, and we got a thousand novels and memoirs about young peoples’ search for identity.
In the last few years, we may be shifting toward another vision of maturity, one that is impatient with boomer narcissism. Young people today put service at the center of young adulthood. A child is served, but maturity means serving others.
And yet, though we’re never going back to the 19th-century, sin-centric character-building model, for breeding leaders, it has its uses. Over the past decades, we’ve seen president after president confident of his own talents but then undone by underappreciated flaws. It’s as if they get elected for their virtues and then get defined in office by the vices — Clinton’s narcissism, Bush’s intellectual insecurity — they’ve never really faced.
It would be nice to have a president who had gone to school on his own failings. It would be comforting to see a president who’d looked into the abyss, or suffered some sort of ordeal that put him on a first-name basis with his own gravest weaknesses, and who had found ways to combat them.
Obviously, it’s not fair to compare anybody to Lincoln, but he does illustrate the repertoire of skills we look for in a leader. The central illusion of modern politics is that if only people as virtuous as “us” had power, then things would be better. Candidates get elected by telling people what they want to hear, leading them by using the sugar of their own fantasies.
Somehow a leader conversant with his own failings wouldn’t be as affected by the moral self-approval that afflicts most political movements. He’d be detached from his most fervid followers and merciful and understanding toward foes. He’d have a sense of his own smallness in the sweep of events. He or she would contravene Lord Acton’s dictum and grow sadder and wiser with more power.
All this suggests a maxim for us voters: Don’t only look to see which candidate has the most talent. Look for the one most emotionally gripped by his own failings."
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Congratulations to Barack Obama: So This is Christmas
Tonight I think about Barack Obama's victory and I am filled with all of the very best feelings I used to have when I was young. Can't stop thinking of how graceful he's been throughout. Can't stop thinking of Ted Kennedy's endorsement even from the throes of his illness. Can't stop thinking of John Lennon. Can't stop thinking of what it would be like to be young and filled with hope. Can't stop thinking how wonderful it is to be in my sixties and feel that way again.
With love, respect, and gratitude for all that Barack Obama seems to understand. And though I probably should apologize for posting this sad video accompaniment to John Lennon's Happy Christmas, War is (almost) Over. I know Mr. Obama understands, and will do something about it.
With love, respect, and gratitude for all that Barack Obama seems to understand. And though I probably should apologize for posting this sad video accompaniment to John Lennon's Happy Christmas, War is (almost) Over. I know Mr. Obama understands, and will do something about it.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Adventurers in India
In the last several years two of my daughters have gone to India, incidentally fulfilling one of my own lifetime dreams. It has thrilled my soul to "picture them" there. All of my children, their mates, and my grandchild thrill my soul day in and day out. But this India thing has me entranced, and I mean majorly entranced.
Why do people go to India? In my family, India has been salve and sustenance. I would say that my girls have gone for spiritual reasons, soul-soothing. One went to Darjeeling to work in a Tibetan School after heartbreaking revelations by her fiance, and a disastrous end to their engagement.
My youngest, my 22 year old, is in India now, headed off suddenly after working for eight months in Manhattan, feeling unfulfilled. She has been staying for the last few weeks in Udaipur in Rajasthan in a guest house called Dream Heaven, in a room with a beautiful view of a lake and her own bath and shower. Originally the room was $4.50 a night, but she and a friend who works in Udaipur bargained for $1.50 a night. The room was sweetly painted and decorated and clean despite having some lizardy things like geckos climbing on the walls. She has loved it there in her little room in that beautiful city, and is sad to leave.
Today she wrote to say that she has extended her trip annother six weeks and had checked out of Dream Heaven. She's on the move, alone, by bus to Jaisalmer, a ten hour ride, and thence to Chandighar, Amritsar and Dharmsala in time for the monsoon. She has signed up for a highly intensive ten-day meditation course, Vipassana, in Dharmsala. Then she'll head across to Darjeeling.
She sent me a phone text message from the bus she's on right now saying that she was in a cupboard above the seats, no air conditioning in 100 degree heat, and the "cupboards" were like fishbowls. She thought it was funny. But how funny can something be when you're alone in that situation, right near the Pakistan border in an area where rebels have been disrupting public transportation with the most primitive of weapons, including sickles?
I've been trying to think of a word to describe how I feel. It's an agitation, fear of the highest order, concentration, constant prayer, and excitement that defies description, my molecules are all astir, I know there's a word for it on some planet somewhere. That old nut Gurdjieff probably made up a word for it. I'm so glad that my girls have had this experience as young women. I feel enormously proud of them, but that's not even it. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh...in ancient crazy wild wonderful India! Drawn to the Himalaya, they journey north and leave bits and pieces of their DNA in the sworl of humanity there, as they brush their hair, touch the flowers, swim in the waters.
Even the thought of the Himalaya and beyond that, the Hindu Kush, sets my blood on thin-speed, and makes me feel an exhilaration I cherish.
I'm on edge.
I pray.
I'm there with you every step of the way.
I think of coming but may be too old,
I can't stand extremes of hot and cold.
When I was young
a room for a dollar a day
was just fine.
Do you think
I could still be that way?
So do me a favor
and try not to stare:
just tell me if you can
picture me there.
Why do people go to India? In my family, India has been salve and sustenance. I would say that my girls have gone for spiritual reasons, soul-soothing. One went to Darjeeling to work in a Tibetan School after heartbreaking revelations by her fiance, and a disastrous end to their engagement.
My youngest, my 22 year old, is in India now, headed off suddenly after working for eight months in Manhattan, feeling unfulfilled. She has been staying for the last few weeks in Udaipur in Rajasthan in a guest house called Dream Heaven, in a room with a beautiful view of a lake and her own bath and shower. Originally the room was $4.50 a night, but she and a friend who works in Udaipur bargained for $1.50 a night. The room was sweetly painted and decorated and clean despite having some lizardy things like geckos climbing on the walls. She has loved it there in her little room in that beautiful city, and is sad to leave.
Today she wrote to say that she has extended her trip annother six weeks and had checked out of Dream Heaven. She's on the move, alone, by bus to Jaisalmer, a ten hour ride, and thence to Chandighar, Amritsar and Dharmsala in time for the monsoon. She has signed up for a highly intensive ten-day meditation course, Vipassana, in Dharmsala. Then she'll head across to Darjeeling.
She sent me a phone text message from the bus she's on right now saying that she was in a cupboard above the seats, no air conditioning in 100 degree heat, and the "cupboards" were like fishbowls. She thought it was funny. But how funny can something be when you're alone in that situation, right near the Pakistan border in an area where rebels have been disrupting public transportation with the most primitive of weapons, including sickles?
I've been trying to think of a word to describe how I feel. It's an agitation, fear of the highest order, concentration, constant prayer, and excitement that defies description, my molecules are all astir, I know there's a word for it on some planet somewhere. That old nut Gurdjieff probably made up a word for it. I'm so glad that my girls have had this experience as young women. I feel enormously proud of them, but that's not even it. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh...in ancient crazy wild wonderful India! Drawn to the Himalaya, they journey north and leave bits and pieces of their DNA in the sworl of humanity there, as they brush their hair, touch the flowers, swim in the waters.
Even the thought of the Himalaya and beyond that, the Hindu Kush, sets my blood on thin-speed, and makes me feel an exhilaration I cherish.
I'm on edge.
I pray.
I'm there with you every step of the way.
I think of coming but may be too old,
I can't stand extremes of hot and cold.
When I was young
a room for a dollar a day
was just fine.
Do you think
I could still be that way?
So do me a favor
and try not to stare:
just tell me if you can
picture me there.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
"Uncontacted" Amazon Tribe - What Is Right?
If you click on the title above you will come to the website for survival-international, which has been featured lately in the news because of photos of "an uncontacted tribe" living in the Amazon.
Did any of you see this? Deep in the Brazilian forest at the Peruvian border, live people who point their bows and arrows at a plane flying (for the second time) overhead, and paint their bodies red and black to show their aggression..Their houses look almost like termite mounds. Something about it makes me so sad that my stomach brain and heart ache.
I don’t know how I feel about preserving these indigenous tribes. Why? So a few select scientists can get PHds, or daredevil adventurers can plow through the jungle and, mingle and breed and photograph, making their money writing books about it? Loggers in Peru are moving closer and closer, not caring and not able to care about such primitive Indian tribes. Human nature being what it is, the natives will be exploited in the most insidious fashion one way or another as they die out forever. What does "protecting" them really mean?
Have these people erected astrologically significant structures,cathedrals, produced literature or music that speaks to the grandest reaches of human endeavor? Doesn't look like it, when you examine the photos. Do they sit around at night upon a vein of emerald, diamond, sapphire, gold, or valuable oil? Have they developed a language or a religion which could solve the world's problems? Are they heirs, through hope, of an everlasting kingdom? Sure could be.
But I see frightened people living in abyssmal poverty. Fascinating beyond belief, fragile beyond belief, vulnerable beyond belief. I went to the website and nearly signed up, nearly wrote a letter to the Peruvian president to stop the loggers, protect the native people and preserve their environment. But why? Is that what's best here? Leave them alone, put a barrier around them, so they can die out in peace?
Why not assimilate and integrate them gently, gradually, lovingly over several generations, with the hope that we can learn from them, comfort them, honor them, cherish them, save them and help them become part of, and enrich, the larger blended human community? Is it possible? We've all seen the trials and tribulations of assimilation and even of affirmative action, and we know it takes generations even under the best of circumstances. Can we start from scratch and only show them the best of what we've achieved? Maybe send them a revised edition of the Voyager Golden Record? Introduce them to opera? Rembrandt's most soothing art? Honey-Nut Cheerios? I doubt we have any drugs that are better than theirs, so skip that. Why contaminate?
My heart is in shreds when I think about these people. I would love to go there and be with them, feel and touch and warm with them around a fire, share their meals, stare and cascade into their faces. But that would never work or do a bit of good. They wouldn't be afraid of me after they got to know me, nor I of them, that I know. If I could do it, and survive to tell the tale, and adopt one of their children, Madonna-style, sure that would be a thrill of some sort. I would be enlightened by them no doubt, their survival skills, their nimble limbic structures, their crazy godliness.
Should we leave them alone because they may be superior to us in some ways? Who do we think we are? Do we have anything to offer them? From the looks of things, I'd say we probably do. But they should decide what they want to do about the world, and then we could help if they want help.
They have to have the same problems the rest of us have. They are no doubt slaves to their hormones and their appetites- they must have leaders who have developed based on physical qualities of strength, attractiveness,or less tangible qualities such as wit or wisdom. They must have birth defects, addictions, mental illness, anger, grief, insecurities, betrayals, successes, joys. They may be brutal, apparently we don't know yet. But they're only human.
And so, flying out of Brazil with my thrill, back to the "developed" world, my heart would be heavier than ever. Wouldn't yours? Because there is no answer. It's all just going to happen. Someone will take charge, laws and human nature will click into action, and what will be will be.
Many of us know or have encountered people whose ancestors a few centuries back were "indigenous peoples." Many American Indians are enjoying life in the world as we know it, contributing to the arts, culture, and business. They may wish at times, as most of us do, that they could turn back the clock to a more pure and authentic age. But we all learn eventually that time stops for no one. Honor your ancestors, whatever bits and pieces you can salvage of their goodness. Carry on.
Did any of you see this? Deep in the Brazilian forest at the Peruvian border, live people who point their bows and arrows at a plane flying (for the second time) overhead, and paint their bodies red and black to show their aggression..Their houses look almost like termite mounds. Something about it makes me so sad that my stomach brain and heart ache.
I don’t know how I feel about preserving these indigenous tribes. Why? So a few select scientists can get PHds, or daredevil adventurers can plow through the jungle and, mingle and breed and photograph, making their money writing books about it? Loggers in Peru are moving closer and closer, not caring and not able to care about such primitive Indian tribes. Human nature being what it is, the natives will be exploited in the most insidious fashion one way or another as they die out forever. What does "protecting" them really mean?
Have these people erected astrologically significant structures,cathedrals, produced literature or music that speaks to the grandest reaches of human endeavor? Doesn't look like it, when you examine the photos. Do they sit around at night upon a vein of emerald, diamond, sapphire, gold, or valuable oil? Have they developed a language or a religion which could solve the world's problems? Are they heirs, through hope, of an everlasting kingdom? Sure could be.
But I see frightened people living in abyssmal poverty. Fascinating beyond belief, fragile beyond belief, vulnerable beyond belief. I went to the website and nearly signed up, nearly wrote a letter to the Peruvian president to stop the loggers, protect the native people and preserve their environment. But why? Is that what's best here? Leave them alone, put a barrier around them, so they can die out in peace?
Why not assimilate and integrate them gently, gradually, lovingly over several generations, with the hope that we can learn from them, comfort them, honor them, cherish them, save them and help them become part of, and enrich, the larger blended human community? Is it possible? We've all seen the trials and tribulations of assimilation and even of affirmative action, and we know it takes generations even under the best of circumstances. Can we start from scratch and only show them the best of what we've achieved? Maybe send them a revised edition of the Voyager Golden Record? Introduce them to opera? Rembrandt's most soothing art? Honey-Nut Cheerios? I doubt we have any drugs that are better than theirs, so skip that. Why contaminate?
My heart is in shreds when I think about these people. I would love to go there and be with them, feel and touch and warm with them around a fire, share their meals, stare and cascade into their faces. But that would never work or do a bit of good. They wouldn't be afraid of me after they got to know me, nor I of them, that I know. If I could do it, and survive to tell the tale, and adopt one of their children, Madonna-style, sure that would be a thrill of some sort. I would be enlightened by them no doubt, their survival skills, their nimble limbic structures, their crazy godliness.
Should we leave them alone because they may be superior to us in some ways? Who do we think we are? Do we have anything to offer them? From the looks of things, I'd say we probably do. But they should decide what they want to do about the world, and then we could help if they want help.
They have to have the same problems the rest of us have. They are no doubt slaves to their hormones and their appetites- they must have leaders who have developed based on physical qualities of strength, attractiveness,or less tangible qualities such as wit or wisdom. They must have birth defects, addictions, mental illness, anger, grief, insecurities, betrayals, successes, joys. They may be brutal, apparently we don't know yet. But they're only human.
And so, flying out of Brazil with my thrill, back to the "developed" world, my heart would be heavier than ever. Wouldn't yours? Because there is no answer. It's all just going to happen. Someone will take charge, laws and human nature will click into action, and what will be will be.
Many of us know or have encountered people whose ancestors a few centuries back were "indigenous peoples." Many American Indians are enjoying life in the world as we know it, contributing to the arts, culture, and business. They may wish at times, as most of us do, that they could turn back the clock to a more pure and authentic age. But we all learn eventually that time stops for no one. Honor your ancestors, whatever bits and pieces you can salvage of their goodness. Carry on.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Mother's Day on Whitsunday
Today I thank my mother and her mother and my grandmothers and all our mothers back through eternity who gave birth again and again and thereby gave me this great blessing of being a mother.
I wouldn't know where to begin to thank my children and their mates for all the happiness they have brought me today and always. I love you all so much, and thank God ceaselessly for each one of you, and for Maya.
It's thrilling to be a mother and to take part in the evolution of the species! Every one of you is raising the bar for humanity - adding humor, beauty, grace, intelligence, and making the world a better place.
Pentecost (White Sunday)happens to be today also. It is celebrated worldwide in various traditions as a time when the Spirit descends. Originally in the Christian tradition, the spirit descended upon the Apostles seven weeks after Christ's resurrection at Easter. White vestments are traditionally worn by celebrant priests and by babies being baptized.
So. Thank you, my children and all my mothers back into eternity, for making me into a mother. And for the blessing in churches worldwide, "May the Holy Spirit descend upon you and remain with you always."
I wouldn't know where to begin to thank my children and their mates for all the happiness they have brought me today and always. I love you all so much, and thank God ceaselessly for each one of you, and for Maya.
It's thrilling to be a mother and to take part in the evolution of the species! Every one of you is raising the bar for humanity - adding humor, beauty, grace, intelligence, and making the world a better place.
Pentecost (White Sunday)happens to be today also. It is celebrated worldwide in various traditions as a time when the Spirit descends. Originally in the Christian tradition, the spirit descended upon the Apostles seven weeks after Christ's resurrection at Easter. White vestments are traditionally worn by celebrant priests and by babies being baptized.
So. Thank you, my children and all my mothers back into eternity, for making me into a mother. And for the blessing in churches worldwide, "May the Holy Spirit descend upon you and remain with you always."
Old Dogs
A wealthy old Gentleman decides to go on a hunting safari in
Africa, taking his faithful, elderly Jack Russell terrier named
Killer, along for the company.
One day the old Jack Russell starts chasing rabbits and before
long, discovers that he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a
leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of
having lunch. The old Jack Russell thinks, 'Oh, oh! I'm in deep
doo-doo now!' Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he
immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to
the approaching cat.
Just as the leopard is about to leap, the old Jack Russell exclaims
loudly, 'Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there
are any more around here?'
Hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack in mid-strike,
a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees.
'Whew!', says the leopard, 'That was close! That old Jack Russell
nearly had me!'
Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a
nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and
trade it for protection from the leopard. So off he goes, but the
old Jack Russell sees him heading after the leopard with great speed,
and figures that something must be up.
The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and
strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The young leopard is
furious at being made a fool of and says, 'Here, monkey, hop on my
back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!
Now, the old Jack Russell sees the leopard coming with the monkey
on his back and thinks, 'What am I going to do now?', but instead
of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers,
pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close
enough to hear, the old Jack Russell says...
'Where's that damn monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me
another leopard!'
Moral of this story:
Don't mess with the old dogs -- age and skill will always overcome
youth and treachery!
Bullshit and brilliance only come with age and experience.
-thanks to Carmen
Africa, taking his faithful, elderly Jack Russell terrier named
Killer, along for the company.
One day the old Jack Russell starts chasing rabbits and before
long, discovers that he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a
leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of
having lunch. The old Jack Russell thinks, 'Oh, oh! I'm in deep
doo-doo now!' Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he
immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to
the approaching cat.
Just as the leopard is about to leap, the old Jack Russell exclaims
loudly, 'Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there
are any more around here?'
Hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack in mid-strike,
a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees.
'Whew!', says the leopard, 'That was close! That old Jack Russell
nearly had me!'
Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a
nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and
trade it for protection from the leopard. So off he goes, but the
old Jack Russell sees him heading after the leopard with great speed,
and figures that something must be up.
The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and
strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The young leopard is
furious at being made a fool of and says, 'Here, monkey, hop on my
back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!
Now, the old Jack Russell sees the leopard coming with the monkey
on his back and thinks, 'What am I going to do now?', but instead
of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers,
pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close
enough to hear, the old Jack Russell says...
'Where's that damn monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me
another leopard!'
Moral of this story:
Don't mess with the old dogs -- age and skill will always overcome
youth and treachery!
Bullshit and brilliance only come with age and experience.
-thanks to Carmen
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
To Thine Own Self Be True
"This above all: To thine own self be true,
and it must follow, as the night the day,
thou canst not then be false to any man."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From Shakespeare's play "Hamlet", Polonious bidding farewell and giving advice to his son Laertes, who is about to travel abroad to France. He tells him to lay low, stay quiet, (listen more than talk), not draw too much attention to himself, dress conservatively (don't try to outdo the French when it comes to couture!), be careful choosing new friends, stick with tried and true friends, don't borrow money or overspend. Just be yourself. Farewell, you have my blessing:
Yet here, Laertes! Aboard, aboard for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for.
There ... my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel but, being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!
-- William Shakespeare
Farewell Honna! My heart will follow you to India.
and it must follow, as the night the day,
thou canst not then be false to any man."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From Shakespeare's play "Hamlet", Polonious bidding farewell and giving advice to his son Laertes, who is about to travel abroad to France. He tells him to lay low, stay quiet, (listen more than talk), not draw too much attention to himself, dress conservatively (don't try to outdo the French when it comes to couture!), be careful choosing new friends, stick with tried and true friends, don't borrow money or overspend. Just be yourself. Farewell, you have my blessing:
Yet here, Laertes! Aboard, aboard for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for.
There ... my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel but, being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!
-- William Shakespeare
Farewell Honna! My heart will follow you to India.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Got Out the Obama Shirt Again, Gonna Sleep in it Tonight
I almost gave up and thought we'd have to deal with Hillary and Bill ad nauseum. But then I saw what happened in North Carolina tonight, and I listened to Obama's speech.
He's remained cool, calm and collected. He hasn't tried to pretend he's something he's not. He's young and full of promise. As he says, he's not perfect. But we can support and nurture him. I believe what he says about truth and I don't think he and Jeremiah Wright or he and anyone else have a secret agenda. He's not so power hungry that he's sold his soul. He loves the country, and I believe that, when he says it. He can transcend and inspire. The world is better with him in it, wherever he is.
Let's see what happens now. By Jove, I think he's got it.
Obama-McCain will be a much more interesting and civilized race to the end. Won't it? Hope we won't devolve into another civil war.
He's remained cool, calm and collected. He hasn't tried to pretend he's something he's not. He's young and full of promise. As he says, he's not perfect. But we can support and nurture him. I believe what he says about truth and I don't think he and Jeremiah Wright or he and anyone else have a secret agenda. He's not so power hungry that he's sold his soul. He loves the country, and I believe that, when he says it. He can transcend and inspire. The world is better with him in it, wherever he is.
Let's see what happens now. By Jove, I think he's got it.
Obama-McCain will be a much more interesting and civilized race to the end. Won't it? Hope we won't devolve into another civil war.
Sensitive to Springtime: Saved by Dogwood, Luscious as the Moon
When I was a young adventurer just in from California and Europe in the 60's, I drove to visit my grandmother one beautiful springtime evening. She was in bed listening to her radio preacher when I arrived. It was the 60's, and I had done some things I hoped she would never know about, but figured she probably understood through a veil, dimly.
I went into her dark bedroom, where she, hale and hearty at nearly eighty years old, had retired for the evening. I told her not to get up, just wanted to say hello and goodnight and see you in the morning. I saw her silhouette in the dim light from the radio and sat on the bed beside her, listening, but only a tiny bit, to the sermon in the box.
She held my hand and asked me how the drive was. I told her that the dogwood blossoms along the way had been so overwhelmingly beautiful that they looked good enough to eat.
She leaned back against the pillow, running fingers across her brow and through her long loosened grey hair, thinking that over for a moment. Then she said "Well, now I know that you are saved."
I was stunned, knowing in my heart that I could never meet the criteria imperative to her lifelong ideal of salvation. But somehow she managed to reach through eternity to my Druidic soul, and left me feeling open, forgiven, blessed and hopeful.
How did she do that? How did she jump from our preceding generations of indoctrination about what it takes to go to Heaven: daily devotions, church every Sunday, strict adherence to the Ten Commandments, unceasing prayer, hard work - to see that this little unfocused know-it-all lazy me, fragrant with the smells of the 60's, loving her, loving life, loving dogwood - was "saved", and part of God's eternal kingdom? And yet she did it, not through any dim veil, but with the wisdom of her years.
So if you believe, and if you know some young "sinner" who feels like eating dogwood, you can give him or her some hope for his future by taking a chance with your faith, slipping into his world for a moment, and saying something so truly forgiving, generous, loving, and kind.
Every time I see the dogwood bloom again in the spring, so tender, ivory, and luscious as the moon, I believe once again, thanks to my grandmother, that there's still hope for me, and of course always, for those I love.
I went into her dark bedroom, where she, hale and hearty at nearly eighty years old, had retired for the evening. I told her not to get up, just wanted to say hello and goodnight and see you in the morning. I saw her silhouette in the dim light from the radio and sat on the bed beside her, listening, but only a tiny bit, to the sermon in the box.
She held my hand and asked me how the drive was. I told her that the dogwood blossoms along the way had been so overwhelmingly beautiful that they looked good enough to eat.
She leaned back against the pillow, running fingers across her brow and through her long loosened grey hair, thinking that over for a moment. Then she said "Well, now I know that you are saved."
I was stunned, knowing in my heart that I could never meet the criteria imperative to her lifelong ideal of salvation. But somehow she managed to reach through eternity to my Druidic soul, and left me feeling open, forgiven, blessed and hopeful.
How did she do that? How did she jump from our preceding generations of indoctrination about what it takes to go to Heaven: daily devotions, church every Sunday, strict adherence to the Ten Commandments, unceasing prayer, hard work - to see that this little unfocused know-it-all lazy me, fragrant with the smells of the 60's, loving her, loving life, loving dogwood - was "saved", and part of God's eternal kingdom? And yet she did it, not through any dim veil, but with the wisdom of her years.
So if you believe, and if you know some young "sinner" who feels like eating dogwood, you can give him or her some hope for his future by taking a chance with your faith, slipping into his world for a moment, and saying something so truly forgiving, generous, loving, and kind.
Every time I see the dogwood bloom again in the spring, so tender, ivory, and luscious as the moon, I believe once again, thanks to my grandmother, that there's still hope for me, and of course always, for those I love.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Comfortably Numb: Live From Berlin- 1990- Roger Waters and Van Morrison
Celebration of the fall of The Berlin Wall- 1990- Roger Waters with Van Morrison et al
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Breathtaking Human Beauty and Grace From China
When my daughter sent me this this morning, I saw the beginning of the piece, and had no idea what I was about to experience. Can Wu Zhengdan be the most amazing ballerina ever? Sit back and renew your sense of wonder. This video can make you feel just glad to be alive! It's a bit of Swan Lake by "The Great Chinese State Circus" or "Guangdong Military Acrobatic Troupe". I'm actually less frightened now at the prospects for the Olympics in Beijing. And now that I've seen such a magnificent example of true marriage (her partner is her husband), it kind of raises the bar.
Thanks to Lelah
Thanks to Lelah
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
"Cool Clear Water" but not by Slim Whitman
This song was best when sung by Slim Whitman. But Randy Travis gives it a go here, with the real honest-to-God Roy Rogers by his side, off to the side a little too much to satisfy me. Maybe Roy was getting too old and addled to sing by then, maybe grieving Dale Evans, I don't remember, but he still looks very cool, doesn't he, to Randy's left?.
Imaginary Love: Being the Handmaiden
OK, you love your mate, you have a home and maybe a family. You have all the money in the world, well enough anyway, but you feel a little gap, a desire for humility but not humiliation. God forbid you're like me, and live alone, but even so.
Everything looks just about right to most observers. But there's a little something missing. The water-glass isn't beside your bed at night, full of cool clear water. The room isn't the right temperature. Your clothes, at least decent compositions of them, are impossible to find without effort in the morning. You wake up in the night to run downstairs and lower the thermostat. You worry about the electric bill. You wake up in the morning, and despite all your investments in supportive services and personnel, feel untended. You stop for the perfect cup of coffee, not at the kitchen table with an easy partner, but at the convenience store, where you know the clerk's quirks, and the clerk knows yours.
So far it's all ok. This is life. It could happen this way with no major mistakes. You're getting older, you understand things.You know that no one person can bring all your fantasies of perfection into this plane of existence where we are fortunate enough to abide.
But here's a game you can play, secretly, so as not to arouse suspicions of insanity: You pretend to be the gentle handmaiden for the love object of your dreams, thereby meeting your own needs by transforming your perception of the situation. You walk into your bedroom before the evening meal and you think "I am so sick of this s+++." But you change your tone and pretend to be the perfect handmaiden and you say "He likes it so-and-so. I will turn down these clean bedsheets and prepare the clothing for tomorrow. I will lay out a suggestion for the clothing for the morning, and the hairbrush will be close by. I will use the lint-brush and make sure there is no mark on the clothing from the dryer. I can take and update the beautiful leather Smythson year-long pocket calender that was a Christmas gift, and offer written suggestions on some pretty notepaper, or try to match the handwriting that drifted off before February, to mark the appointments he's been trying to remember from thin air.
I will make sure there are clean towels in the bathroom and that the razor's blade is sharp, and that the soap is sweet and fairly new. I will be sure that the magazine that arrived in the mail today is at the bedside,and I will rearrange into a more dignified position that book that was thrown into the blankets in a slovenly fashion late last night. I will try to reinsert the dropped bookmark into the most logical place.
I will be certain that the light will be appropriate when he returns from dinner to the bedroom, and I will lay the soft robe across the bed, in preparation for his coming there.I will be certain that required medications are in order and easy for him to find. Certainly a few Advil on the bedside table could come in handy. I will lay a pack of matches near every candle, lest the electric go.
I will try to lay a gentle vibe in the bedroom, and I will be certain to leave signature of my regard for all of his personal items. Then I will disappear gently. But if he starts to need me in the night, I will light a candle and I will be there, gently at his side.
It's still you. But it's the real you, you want to help your imaginary love, and there's comfort there.
Everything looks just about right to most observers. But there's a little something missing. The water-glass isn't beside your bed at night, full of cool clear water. The room isn't the right temperature. Your clothes, at least decent compositions of them, are impossible to find without effort in the morning. You wake up in the night to run downstairs and lower the thermostat. You worry about the electric bill. You wake up in the morning, and despite all your investments in supportive services and personnel, feel untended. You stop for the perfect cup of coffee, not at the kitchen table with an easy partner, but at the convenience store, where you know the clerk's quirks, and the clerk knows yours.
So far it's all ok. This is life. It could happen this way with no major mistakes. You're getting older, you understand things.You know that no one person can bring all your fantasies of perfection into this plane of existence where we are fortunate enough to abide.
But here's a game you can play, secretly, so as not to arouse suspicions of insanity: You pretend to be the gentle handmaiden for the love object of your dreams, thereby meeting your own needs by transforming your perception of the situation. You walk into your bedroom before the evening meal and you think "I am so sick of this s+++." But you change your tone and pretend to be the perfect handmaiden and you say "He likes it so-and-so. I will turn down these clean bedsheets and prepare the clothing for tomorrow. I will lay out a suggestion for the clothing for the morning, and the hairbrush will be close by. I will use the lint-brush and make sure there is no mark on the clothing from the dryer. I can take and update the beautiful leather Smythson year-long pocket calender that was a Christmas gift, and offer written suggestions on some pretty notepaper, or try to match the handwriting that drifted off before February, to mark the appointments he's been trying to remember from thin air.
I will make sure there are clean towels in the bathroom and that the razor's blade is sharp, and that the soap is sweet and fairly new. I will be sure that the magazine that arrived in the mail today is at the bedside,and I will rearrange into a more dignified position that book that was thrown into the blankets in a slovenly fashion late last night. I will try to reinsert the dropped bookmark into the most logical place.
I will be certain that the light will be appropriate when he returns from dinner to the bedroom, and I will lay the soft robe across the bed, in preparation for his coming there.I will be certain that required medications are in order and easy for him to find. Certainly a few Advil on the bedside table could come in handy. I will lay a pack of matches near every candle, lest the electric go.
I will try to lay a gentle vibe in the bedroom, and I will be certain to leave signature of my regard for all of his personal items. Then I will disappear gently. But if he starts to need me in the night, I will light a candle and I will be there, gently at his side.
It's still you. But it's the real you, you want to help your imaginary love, and there's comfort there.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Boomer Brain Reflecting on Human Achievement and Culture: Mick Jagger's Someone to be Proud Of
I was sitting in my beautiful marble and tile bathroom, for the very simplest of reasons, and, lost in thought, I put my head in my hands and rubbed my hands through my hair and across my forehead and temples. I became alarmed when I discerned I had a fever, like hot coals, but only in the pre-frontal lobe, and only on the right side, near the temple. That area was very hot, seemingly inflamed. I ran to the computer and searched. Wikipedia, for what it's worth, told me this:
"The most typical neurologic term for functions carried out by the pre-frontal cortex area is executive function. Executive function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social "control" (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially-unacceptable outcomes)".
Naturally we don't want to devolve into anything crumpled up and tortured, and we won't. When we Boomers suspect that our kids have started salivating at the thought of having us declared non compos mentis, it does give us a little boost, gotta pick up our heels. I realize, of course, that the current political situation has driven my prefrontal cortex to the brink of something from "Mission Impossible": "This tape will self-destruct in twenty seconds." I mean how much more can a sane person take? And, uh, what was that mission we were supposed to do, again? Oops too late. Brain's shorting out and getting hot in spots. But hold your horses kiddies, it's just a short, and there are boxes of new fuses down in the basement.
This Boomer generation, so well-intended, didn't get in on the inside track to save mankind, which is where we thought we were going for awhile, but we did ok. Like every generation of warriors before us, we too, like Odysseus, grow old and feeble, and die. Imagine Timothy Leary's ashes, by his directive, shot from some cannon into space orbit, his own little psychedelic redemption. Carl Sagan tried his best to legitimize some of his most far-flung thoughts, and helped NASA send out that Voyager Golden Record depicting our status here on earth. Aldous Huxley thought about it....he was right, we got our Soma, aka Prozac, and we became the Prozac Nation. But we still weren't saved. Who would have thought that some spaceship or some drug wouldn't have come along and rescued us by now?
I like to think at times of John F Kennedy, with his eternal flame at Arlington, fluttering at times, and Jacqueline, her dignified bones beside him, but then what? Then I remember Joe DiMaggio sending roses daily to Marilyn Monroe's grave. And Happy Birthday, Mr. President, courtesy of Jean-Louis couture.
I think of the poets and the playwrights, Shakespeare, Eliot and Yeats and so many more, who seemed so transcendent in my youth,and then I think, or rather I know with great sadness, that fewer and fewer people read and will be educated in such a way that these writers will ever matter again.
And what about our achievements in terms of perfecting the human body, those who have strived to reach the highest levels of physical aptitude? Well then I think about poor Marion Jones in jail. I read this week's Economist and am reminded of the Olympics in Mexico City 1968, Munich 1972, and what may yet happen in Beijing 2008.
We're just like any other athletes, dying young. Well. Younger than we thought we would, considering we thought we were immortal. The Rolling Stones are one of our best stabs at Boomer holiness, they will go on and teach the younger generations what it is to grow old, and what it can be, physically at least. Mick will strut and fret his hours upon the stage, and outdo all others. He'll be irreverent. He'll break rules and keep some. We can't hope for a whole lot more, out of the ashes of our generation's youth, than what old Mick Jagger does, and did. That's exaggerated, but he made people happy and brought them together. Martin Scorcese says the Stones' music helped him him through many a troubled time, and Scorcese will honor them with his upcoming movie.
Mick Jagger honored his father, took him along to Buckingham Palace when he became Sir Mick Jagger. He may have coveted and adulterated a wife or two, but he didn't kill anyone. That's at least a few of the Ten Commandments. He's got an awful lot of energy, it's got to count for something good. I wish I had it. This little flame on the side of my head feels a little better when I think of Mick Jagger. Which figures, since that side is associated with recall of music and art, albeit, if lesions, then losses.
So I rub the side of my head and wonder what's going to go next. No worries about the impulse to perform socially unacceptable acts, or to form new longterm memories worth acting upon, never mind, that's on the other side. I had a killer fever there long long ago. Next to go will be remembering who-the-heck-are the Rolling Stones.
My Master's in Psychology sticks with me enough that I know none of this temple rubbing and frontal lobe localized fever-stuff is really true. But it's fun to speculate about. Like old Heads used to do.
I'll just sit here and wait it all out. Luckily I don't mind playing solitaire.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And for those who didn't make it:
"To an Athlete Dying Young" by A. E. Housman
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
"The most typical neurologic term for functions carried out by the pre-frontal cortex area is executive function. Executive function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social "control" (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially-unacceptable outcomes)".
Naturally we don't want to devolve into anything crumpled up and tortured, and we won't. When we Boomers suspect that our kids have started salivating at the thought of having us declared non compos mentis, it does give us a little boost, gotta pick up our heels. I realize, of course, that the current political situation has driven my prefrontal cortex to the brink of something from "Mission Impossible": "This tape will self-destruct in twenty seconds." I mean how much more can a sane person take? And, uh, what was that mission we were supposed to do, again? Oops too late. Brain's shorting out and getting hot in spots. But hold your horses kiddies, it's just a short, and there are boxes of new fuses down in the basement.
This Boomer generation, so well-intended, didn't get in on the inside track to save mankind, which is where we thought we were going for awhile, but we did ok. Like every generation of warriors before us, we too, like Odysseus, grow old and feeble, and die. Imagine Timothy Leary's ashes, by his directive, shot from some cannon into space orbit, his own little psychedelic redemption. Carl Sagan tried his best to legitimize some of his most far-flung thoughts, and helped NASA send out that Voyager Golden Record depicting our status here on earth. Aldous Huxley thought about it....he was right, we got our Soma, aka Prozac, and we became the Prozac Nation. But we still weren't saved. Who would have thought that some spaceship or some drug wouldn't have come along and rescued us by now?
I like to think at times of John F Kennedy, with his eternal flame at Arlington, fluttering at times, and Jacqueline, her dignified bones beside him, but then what? Then I remember Joe DiMaggio sending roses daily to Marilyn Monroe's grave. And Happy Birthday, Mr. President, courtesy of Jean-Louis couture.
I think of the poets and the playwrights, Shakespeare, Eliot and Yeats and so many more, who seemed so transcendent in my youth,and then I think, or rather I know with great sadness, that fewer and fewer people read and will be educated in such a way that these writers will ever matter again.
And what about our achievements in terms of perfecting the human body, those who have strived to reach the highest levels of physical aptitude? Well then I think about poor Marion Jones in jail. I read this week's Economist and am reminded of the Olympics in Mexico City 1968, Munich 1972, and what may yet happen in Beijing 2008.
We're just like any other athletes, dying young. Well. Younger than we thought we would, considering we thought we were immortal. The Rolling Stones are one of our best stabs at Boomer holiness, they will go on and teach the younger generations what it is to grow old, and what it can be, physically at least. Mick will strut and fret his hours upon the stage, and outdo all others. He'll be irreverent. He'll break rules and keep some. We can't hope for a whole lot more, out of the ashes of our generation's youth, than what old Mick Jagger does, and did. That's exaggerated, but he made people happy and brought them together. Martin Scorcese says the Stones' music helped him him through many a troubled time, and Scorcese will honor them with his upcoming movie.
Mick Jagger honored his father, took him along to Buckingham Palace when he became Sir Mick Jagger. He may have coveted and adulterated a wife or two, but he didn't kill anyone. That's at least a few of the Ten Commandments. He's got an awful lot of energy, it's got to count for something good. I wish I had it. This little flame on the side of my head feels a little better when I think of Mick Jagger. Which figures, since that side is associated with recall of music and art, albeit, if lesions, then losses.
So I rub the side of my head and wonder what's going to go next. No worries about the impulse to perform socially unacceptable acts, or to form new longterm memories worth acting upon, never mind, that's on the other side. I had a killer fever there long long ago. Next to go will be remembering who-the-heck-are the Rolling Stones.
My Master's in Psychology sticks with me enough that I know none of this temple rubbing and frontal lobe localized fever-stuff is really true. But it's fun to speculate about. Like old Heads used to do.
I'll just sit here and wait it all out. Luckily I don't mind playing solitaire.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And for those who didn't make it:
"To an Athlete Dying Young" by A. E. Housman
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
Hillary as Lorena Bobbitt, Cruella Deville, and Dr. Strangelove: Getting Back at Bill for Monica and the Cigar?
This is a repeat, back by popular demand
Hillary as Lorena Bobbitt, Cruella DeVille and Dr. Strangelove: Getting Back at Bill for Monica and the Cigar?
I used to believe that Hillary Clinton wanted to be President of the United States because she felt a higher calling to serve the people. I never doubted the sincerity of her earnestness. I admired her for raising a level-headed, highly motivated daughter. When she apparently forgave Bill for what he did in our nation's Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky and that cigar, I thought "God, that has to have been tough to rise above that, to be so high-minded to deal with the disgrace and humiliation brought upon her, her daughter, and the Presidency, by Bill's philandering, broadcast worldwide." How many women could do that?
But now, through a multitude of debates and because the media captures everything right up to the edge of toilet stalls, we've had a good look at the real Hillary. Despite her most recent civility toward Barack Obama, I find it hard to validate my previous admiration for her. My objections aren't particularly substantive, they're pretty emotional actually. It's just that Hillary's civility seems to be offered with clenched fists and gritting teeth. Her answers come too fast and smooth, verging on pathology. She's too glib. Her laughter is frighteningly manic. There's a Dr. Strangelove quality about her: I think of the way Peter Sellers would lose control of his arm and grab it back. She has used cut-throat Cruella DeVille sarcasm to deflate Barack Obama, subtly revealing how desperate, clawing, clamoring, bitter and vengeful she really may be.
Rather than devolving into Lorena Bobbitt with a butcher knife, she could be getting revenge another way. It's conceivable she rose above Bill's sexual escapades with the ladies, not because she has a well-developed spirit of foregiveness, but because she knew she was going to go for the top prize and that Bill, hate him though she might, would be her ace in the hole. He's pretty efficient out there on the campaign trail, albeit looking crazed and sexually frustrated, using skilled but convoluted tactics to get back to his easy chair on Pennsylvania Avenue. In his own wing.
Could Hillary be obsessed, using Bill to get the vote, with the ulterior motive of humiliating him once the Oval Office is hers? She will have the means at her disposal to do that.
Hillary as Lorena Bobbitt, Cruella DeVille and Dr. Strangelove: Getting Back at Bill for Monica and the Cigar?
I used to believe that Hillary Clinton wanted to be President of the United States because she felt a higher calling to serve the people. I never doubted the sincerity of her earnestness. I admired her for raising a level-headed, highly motivated daughter. When she apparently forgave Bill for what he did in our nation's Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky and that cigar, I thought "God, that has to have been tough to rise above that, to be so high-minded to deal with the disgrace and humiliation brought upon her, her daughter, and the Presidency, by Bill's philandering, broadcast worldwide." How many women could do that?
But now, through a multitude of debates and because the media captures everything right up to the edge of toilet stalls, we've had a good look at the real Hillary. Despite her most recent civility toward Barack Obama, I find it hard to validate my previous admiration for her. My objections aren't particularly substantive, they're pretty emotional actually. It's just that Hillary's civility seems to be offered with clenched fists and gritting teeth. Her answers come too fast and smooth, verging on pathology. She's too glib. Her laughter is frighteningly manic. There's a Dr. Strangelove quality about her: I think of the way Peter Sellers would lose control of his arm and grab it back. She has used cut-throat Cruella DeVille sarcasm to deflate Barack Obama, subtly revealing how desperate, clawing, clamoring, bitter and vengeful she really may be.
Rather than devolving into Lorena Bobbitt with a butcher knife, she could be getting revenge another way. It's conceivable she rose above Bill's sexual escapades with the ladies, not because she has a well-developed spirit of foregiveness, but because she knew she was going to go for the top prize and that Bill, hate him though she might, would be her ace in the hole. He's pretty efficient out there on the campaign trail, albeit looking crazed and sexually frustrated, using skilled but convoluted tactics to get back to his easy chair on Pennsylvania Avenue. In his own wing.
Could Hillary be obsessed, using Bill to get the vote, with the ulterior motive of humiliating him once the Oval Office is hers? She will have the means at her disposal to do that.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Our Own Gladiators: Hillary and Bill by ten points in Pennsylvania?
Ok. So that's pretty much that. We are bloodthirsty Romans encouraging our gladiators to fight to the death. That's us. The Clintons have taught Americans all the worst things but Democrats want them back. We've seen Hillary lie, attack and undermine her own party. We've watched her acting like someone she's not, snorting down whiskey and telling tales about her days out shootin' with dad. Back in the day, Bill taught everyone forever, including our school children who took it to heart, that oral sex doesn't count as "sexual relations", and taught husbands everywhere that marital fidelity is not important in that regard. Hillary taught women that you don't have to love, you just have to use your husband, hang on to him for political and business purposes, even when he does very weird things in the highest office in the land, and says very strange and damning things out on the stump.
We read books and watch shows like "John Adams", full of self-regard for our ability to admire the high standards of the Founding Fathers, but our votes reveal our regard for profligacy and mean-spiritedness. Who are Americans these days?
We read books and watch shows like "John Adams", full of self-regard for our ability to admire the high standards of the Founding Fathers, but our votes reveal our regard for profligacy and mean-spiritedness. Who are Americans these days?
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Mad as a Hornet: Hillary Victorious in Pennsylvania? Where are the Gladiators and the mood elevators when you need them?
Thank God my father the doctor taught me to never throw out old medicine, the expiration dates are just the tricks of the voracious money-hungry pharmaceutical companies...because I'll be digging through my drawers looking for help from the 1990's tomorrow, now that I have got to accept the fact that the Democrats are no damn good either.I want to be a Democrat, I really do, and I have tried, I mean Georgie Porgie has made a joke out of the Republicans, but if you can't be proud of the Democrats either, then what do you do?
This has been ridiculous. The Democrats, hee-haw, hee-haw, donkey-time. Bill Clinton, oink-oink. The Republicans, asses and brain-washees, I can't take it anymore! Michelle Obama said she was proud of her country for the first time, I think maybe I've been proud of my country for the last time, and I can't even remember when it was. Maybe when Al Gore gracefully accepted the Nobel Prize. I forget. I've had it! I'm heading for the hills! How could such dirty politics as the Clintons play lead the voters to the booth in her behalf? I wasn't even that sure about Obama, but this victory for Hillary is enough to make me renounce my citizenship. I am a woman in a fury right now, and at least ready to throw it in and jump back to the Republicans, who rocked my cradle.
No doubt I'll erase this after I sleep on it, but as for now, I'm ready to fight it out for a hundred years. That's no way to go to bed, but there's no one in the bed to make up with, as mom always advised. Don't go to bed mad, they say, work it out, but guess what? Tonight I would take a tranquilizer from the 2000 election days, if I had it, and my brain's internal defragmenter would find what it needs in that old thing, and I'd start new tomorrow. Back to work, back to hope, back to dreaming through the day.
This has been ridiculous. The Democrats, hee-haw, hee-haw, donkey-time. Bill Clinton, oink-oink. The Republicans, asses and brain-washees, I can't take it anymore! Michelle Obama said she was proud of her country for the first time, I think maybe I've been proud of my country for the last time, and I can't even remember when it was. Maybe when Al Gore gracefully accepted the Nobel Prize. I forget. I've had it! I'm heading for the hills! How could such dirty politics as the Clintons play lead the voters to the booth in her behalf? I wasn't even that sure about Obama, but this victory for Hillary is enough to make me renounce my citizenship. I am a woman in a fury right now, and at least ready to throw it in and jump back to the Republicans, who rocked my cradle.
No doubt I'll erase this after I sleep on it, but as for now, I'm ready to fight it out for a hundred years. That's no way to go to bed, but there's no one in the bed to make up with, as mom always advised. Don't go to bed mad, they say, work it out, but guess what? Tonight I would take a tranquilizer from the 2000 election days, if I had it, and my brain's internal defragmenter would find what it needs in that old thing, and I'd start new tomorrow. Back to work, back to hope, back to dreaming through the day.
OK, Here's Pennsylvania's Primary at Last
Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe newsman, just said something really funny on Morning Joe. He said (I'm paraphrasing) that even if Barack Obama ultimately wins the Presidency and is in a limo going down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, the Clintons will be there, throwing down strips of nails to disable the limo...they just won't give up!
I'm amazed at the image being portrayed of Pennsylvania during this election, and particularly that Hillary, who should know better, is playing into it so voraciously. She's been trying to appeal to voters in Pennsylvania by pretending that she's a beer-guzzling, gun-toting hick. I grew up in Pennsylvania, and I know that this characterization is totally skewed. Sure there's a T-shaped demographic there that suffers more than most from poverty, but you don't have to play hick to get along with folks who like to hunt, fish and drink beer.
How did it happen that the Wellesley graduate reinvents herself as a working man's hero, and the street smart, albeit beautifully educated guy, who really did get down in the trenches and jive in Chicago, is now considered too urbane and elitist to win the common man's vote? It's a skewed racism played to the hilt by the Clintons! It's not really that she's the working man's hero, or a woman, she's been playing some kind of crazy white card in Pennsylvania,I just can't figure it out.
I still haven't been able to wear my Obama t-shirt, and I would never wear a Hillary one, she's sold her soul. So much depends on the Vice-Presidential candidates who are eventually chosen in each party. For now I'm lost but then may be found. Maybe we'll all be surprised and educated tonight when we find out what Barack's nine million dollar campaign in Pennsylvania could or could not do.
I'm amazed at the image being portrayed of Pennsylvania during this election, and particularly that Hillary, who should know better, is playing into it so voraciously. She's been trying to appeal to voters in Pennsylvania by pretending that she's a beer-guzzling, gun-toting hick. I grew up in Pennsylvania, and I know that this characterization is totally skewed. Sure there's a T-shaped demographic there that suffers more than most from poverty, but you don't have to play hick to get along with folks who like to hunt, fish and drink beer.
How did it happen that the Wellesley graduate reinvents herself as a working man's hero, and the street smart, albeit beautifully educated guy, who really did get down in the trenches and jive in Chicago, is now considered too urbane and elitist to win the common man's vote? It's a skewed racism played to the hilt by the Clintons! It's not really that she's the working man's hero, or a woman, she's been playing some kind of crazy white card in Pennsylvania,I just can't figure it out.
I still haven't been able to wear my Obama t-shirt, and I would never wear a Hillary one, she's sold her soul. So much depends on the Vice-Presidential candidates who are eventually chosen in each party. For now I'm lost but then may be found. Maybe we'll all be surprised and educated tonight when we find out what Barack's nine million dollar campaign in Pennsylvania could or could not do.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Giuseppe De Lampedusa's one-and-only Book "The Leopard"
Many of us in small picturesque towns like Cape May are, for some reason, of above average intelligence. Some of us have been here for generations and have been loving and contributing to the area forever. A number of us are baby boomers who settled here after weathering the sixties. People keep coming, with stars in their eyes because they see the town for what it is or could be - a little piece of heaven, a great place to pitch stakes and earn a livelihood. Whether we’re idealists who want to settle into paradise or the black sheep of our families, - eschewing cities, suburbs and tangled roots to plant morning glories by the seashore and escape into small town life – whoever we are and any way we got here, many of us are mighty smart, and full of longings still.
We’re all growing older together, and we all benefit from introspection about our lives and the currents of time that bring us to the present. Many local residents travel far and wide. If we had a huge world map at City Hall, and everyone rigged up thumbtacks and strings to show the towns they travel to each year, we would have an astounding tangle of strings: our beautiful minds working together.
We can always learn from others who have gone before us in other places and other times. One man in our last century who had an astonishingly clear sense of place in time and history, and a breathtaking eloquence to portray it was Giuseppe di Lampedusa. He was a Sicilian nobleman who died in 1957. Before he died, at the age of 60, he wrote his one and only book, The Leopard.
It is this book which has brought me out of years of intellectual lethargy and seclusion. This is not really a book review, but an exhortation and a trust that those of you who are thirsting for a phenomenal read will just go to Amazon.com or wherever you go, and thrill, as I have, to this piece of writing.
The story, as you might guess, is timeless. Although it’s been called Italy’s Gone With the Wind, it’s not: it’s short and easy to read. It’s very funny. The setting is Sicily in the 1860’s, during the unification of Italy and the death of the aristocracy. It’s written from the point of view of a Sicilian prince who, with great good humor, comes gracefully to peace with the losses and disappointments in his life.
The man is in touch, well-integrated. He has it together as a contributing member of society, well-respected, in good standing with the church and the state. He is an amateur astronomer, and ponders the celestial spheres through the telescopes in his study. Although his family is not turning out to be quite up to snuff, he doesn’t dwell on his disappointments, it’s not his nature. He delights in his adopted nephew, Tancredi, a budding revolutionary working against him, who captivates, enthralls, enchants, and loves his uncle and all those in his sphere. Although the Prince’s own daughter is in love with Tancredi, she is homely and cannot compete with the beautiful Angelica, and even the Prince does not begrudge his nephew the charms of Angelica.
On a nighttime carriage ride with his priest (as he goes to visit his mistress), the Prince observes the rebel bands at their small bonfires outside the city and realizes calmly “that perhaps Tancredi was beside one of those ill-omened fires, his aristocratic hands throwing on sticks being burned to damage just such hands as his.” The writing, as all of those English majors living here in the community could attest, is superb.
To read this book can be like lifting an illuminated manuscript into your hands and becoming intoxicated by your own understanding. All of the political, community, family and personal issues so brilliantly wrought here will ring true today with the most satisfying clarity. And I hope this book can edify, humor, and comfort many of us, cast now on our various shores.
We’re all growing older together, and we all benefit from introspection about our lives and the currents of time that bring us to the present. Many local residents travel far and wide. If we had a huge world map at City Hall, and everyone rigged up thumbtacks and strings to show the towns they travel to each year, we would have an astounding tangle of strings: our beautiful minds working together.
We can always learn from others who have gone before us in other places and other times. One man in our last century who had an astonishingly clear sense of place in time and history, and a breathtaking eloquence to portray it was Giuseppe di Lampedusa. He was a Sicilian nobleman who died in 1957. Before he died, at the age of 60, he wrote his one and only book, The Leopard.
It is this book which has brought me out of years of intellectual lethargy and seclusion. This is not really a book review, but an exhortation and a trust that those of you who are thirsting for a phenomenal read will just go to Amazon.com or wherever you go, and thrill, as I have, to this piece of writing.
The story, as you might guess, is timeless. Although it’s been called Italy’s Gone With the Wind, it’s not: it’s short and easy to read. It’s very funny. The setting is Sicily in the 1860’s, during the unification of Italy and the death of the aristocracy. It’s written from the point of view of a Sicilian prince who, with great good humor, comes gracefully to peace with the losses and disappointments in his life.
The man is in touch, well-integrated. He has it together as a contributing member of society, well-respected, in good standing with the church and the state. He is an amateur astronomer, and ponders the celestial spheres through the telescopes in his study. Although his family is not turning out to be quite up to snuff, he doesn’t dwell on his disappointments, it’s not his nature. He delights in his adopted nephew, Tancredi, a budding revolutionary working against him, who captivates, enthralls, enchants, and loves his uncle and all those in his sphere. Although the Prince’s own daughter is in love with Tancredi, she is homely and cannot compete with the beautiful Angelica, and even the Prince does not begrudge his nephew the charms of Angelica.
On a nighttime carriage ride with his priest (as he goes to visit his mistress), the Prince observes the rebel bands at their small bonfires outside the city and realizes calmly “that perhaps Tancredi was beside one of those ill-omened fires, his aristocratic hands throwing on sticks being burned to damage just such hands as his.” The writing, as all of those English majors living here in the community could attest, is superb.
To read this book can be like lifting an illuminated manuscript into your hands and becoming intoxicated by your own understanding. All of the political, community, family and personal issues so brilliantly wrought here will ring true today with the most satisfying clarity. And I hope this book can edify, humor, and comfort many of us, cast now on our various shores.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Just for old time's sake
A little three minute flashback to 2001 Space Odyssey, including my favorite scene, the one I loved best, but could never really understand: the scene in the bedroom.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Losing your memory: In case you missed, or think maybe you missed, David Brooks' column in the New York Times last week
This is so funny, and mighty comforting to anyone having senior moments!
The Great Forgetting
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: April 11, 2008 in The New York Times
"They say the 21st century is going to be the Asian Century, but, of course, it’s going to be the Bad Memory Century. Already, you go to dinner parties and the middle-aged high achievers talk more about how bad their memories are than about real estate. Already, the information acceleration syndrome means that more data is coursing through everybody’s brains, but less of it actually sticks. It’s become like a badge of a frenetic, stressful life — to have forgotten what you did last Saturday night, and through all of junior high.
In the era of an aging population, memory is the new sex.
Society is now riven between the memory haves and the memory have-nots. On the one side are these colossal Proustian memory bullies who get 1,800 pages of recollection out of a mere cookie-bite. They traipse around broadcasting their conspicuous displays of recall as if quoting Auden were the Hummer of conversational one-upmanship. On the other side are those of us suffering the normal effects of time, living in the hippocampically challenged community that is one step away from leaving the stove on all day.
This divide produces moments of social combat. Some vaguely familiar person will come up to you in the supermarket. “Stan, it’s so nice to see you!” The smug memory dropper can smell your nominal aphasia and is going to keep first-naming you until you are crushed into submission.
Your response here is critical. You want to open up with an effusive burst of insincere emotional warmth: “Hey!” You’re practically exploding with feigned ecstasy. “Wonderful to see you too! How is everything?” All the while, you are frantically whirring through your memory banks trying to anchor this person in some time and context.
A decent human being would sense your distress and give you some lagniappe of information — a mention of the church picnic you both attended, the parents’ association at school, the fact that the two of you were formerly married. But the Proustian bully will give you nothing. “I’m good. And you?” It’s like trying to get an arms control concession out of Leonid Brezhnev.
Your only strategy is evasive vagueness, conversational rope-a-dope until you can figure out who this person is. You start talking in the tone of over-generalized blandness that suggests you have recently emerged from a coma.
Sensing your pain, your enemy pours it on mercilessly. “And how is Mary, and little Steven and Rob?” People who needlessly display their knowledge of your kids’ names are the lowest scum of the earth.
You’re in agony now, praying for an episode of spontaneous combustion. But still she drives the blade in deeper, “That was some party the other night wasn’t it?”
You lose vision. What party? Did you see this person at a party? By now, articulation is impossible. You are a puddle of gurgling noises and awkward silences. After the longest of these pauses, she goes for the coup de grâce: “You have no idea who I am, do you?”
You can’t tell the truth. That would be an admission of social defeat. The only possible response is: “Of course, I know who you are. You’re the hooker who hangs around on 14th Street most Saturday nights.”
The dawning of the Bad Memory Century will have vast consequences for the social fabric and the international balance of power. International relations experts will notice that great powers can be defined by their national forgetting styles. Americans forget their sins. Russians forget their weaknesses. The French forget that they’ve forgotten God. And, in the Middle East, they forget everything but their resentments.
There will be new social movements and causes. The supermarket parking lots will be filled with cranky criminal gangs composed of middle-aged shoppers looking for their cars. As it becomes clear that a constant stream of blog posts and e-mails decimates the capacity for recall, people will be confronted with the modern Sophie’s choice — your BlackBerry or your mind.
Neural environmentalists will emerge from the slow foods movement, urging people to accept memory loss as a way to reduce their mental footprint. Meanwhile, mnemonic gurus will emerge offering to sell neural Viagra, but the only old memories the pills really bring back will involve trigonometry.
As in most great historical transformations, the members of the highly educated upper-middle class will express their suffering most loudly. It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most. First they lose the subjects they’ve only been pretending to understand — chaos theory, monetary policy, Don Delillo — and pretty soon their conversation is reduced to the core stories of self-heroism.
Their affection for themselves will endure through this Bad Memory Century, but their failure to retrieve will produce one of the epoch’s most notable features: shorter memoirs."
The Great Forgetting
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: April 11, 2008 in The New York Times
"They say the 21st century is going to be the Asian Century, but, of course, it’s going to be the Bad Memory Century. Already, you go to dinner parties and the middle-aged high achievers talk more about how bad their memories are than about real estate. Already, the information acceleration syndrome means that more data is coursing through everybody’s brains, but less of it actually sticks. It’s become like a badge of a frenetic, stressful life — to have forgotten what you did last Saturday night, and through all of junior high.
In the era of an aging population, memory is the new sex.
Society is now riven between the memory haves and the memory have-nots. On the one side are these colossal Proustian memory bullies who get 1,800 pages of recollection out of a mere cookie-bite. They traipse around broadcasting their conspicuous displays of recall as if quoting Auden were the Hummer of conversational one-upmanship. On the other side are those of us suffering the normal effects of time, living in the hippocampically challenged community that is one step away from leaving the stove on all day.
This divide produces moments of social combat. Some vaguely familiar person will come up to you in the supermarket. “Stan, it’s so nice to see you!” The smug memory dropper can smell your nominal aphasia and is going to keep first-naming you until you are crushed into submission.
Your response here is critical. You want to open up with an effusive burst of insincere emotional warmth: “Hey!” You’re practically exploding with feigned ecstasy. “Wonderful to see you too! How is everything?” All the while, you are frantically whirring through your memory banks trying to anchor this person in some time and context.
A decent human being would sense your distress and give you some lagniappe of information — a mention of the church picnic you both attended, the parents’ association at school, the fact that the two of you were formerly married. But the Proustian bully will give you nothing. “I’m good. And you?” It’s like trying to get an arms control concession out of Leonid Brezhnev.
Your only strategy is evasive vagueness, conversational rope-a-dope until you can figure out who this person is. You start talking in the tone of over-generalized blandness that suggests you have recently emerged from a coma.
Sensing your pain, your enemy pours it on mercilessly. “And how is Mary, and little Steven and Rob?” People who needlessly display their knowledge of your kids’ names are the lowest scum of the earth.
You’re in agony now, praying for an episode of spontaneous combustion. But still she drives the blade in deeper, “That was some party the other night wasn’t it?”
You lose vision. What party? Did you see this person at a party? By now, articulation is impossible. You are a puddle of gurgling noises and awkward silences. After the longest of these pauses, she goes for the coup de grâce: “You have no idea who I am, do you?”
You can’t tell the truth. That would be an admission of social defeat. The only possible response is: “Of course, I know who you are. You’re the hooker who hangs around on 14th Street most Saturday nights.”
The dawning of the Bad Memory Century will have vast consequences for the social fabric and the international balance of power. International relations experts will notice that great powers can be defined by their national forgetting styles. Americans forget their sins. Russians forget their weaknesses. The French forget that they’ve forgotten God. And, in the Middle East, they forget everything but their resentments.
There will be new social movements and causes. The supermarket parking lots will be filled with cranky criminal gangs composed of middle-aged shoppers looking for their cars. As it becomes clear that a constant stream of blog posts and e-mails decimates the capacity for recall, people will be confronted with the modern Sophie’s choice — your BlackBerry or your mind.
Neural environmentalists will emerge from the slow foods movement, urging people to accept memory loss as a way to reduce their mental footprint. Meanwhile, mnemonic gurus will emerge offering to sell neural Viagra, but the only old memories the pills really bring back will involve trigonometry.
As in most great historical transformations, the members of the highly educated upper-middle class will express their suffering most loudly. It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most. First they lose the subjects they’ve only been pretending to understand — chaos theory, monetary policy, Don Delillo — and pretty soon their conversation is reduced to the core stories of self-heroism.
Their affection for themselves will endure through this Bad Memory Century, but their failure to retrieve will produce one of the epoch’s most notable features: shorter memoirs."
Friday, April 11, 2008
"The Doctor" by Sir Samuel Luke Fildes....(some history for my family)
Fifty-some years ago I would stare at this picture and it would arouse tremendous feelings in me: a longing for love, and pity and concern for all involved: the poor mother collapsed in sorrow and fear, maybe prayer, at the table by the window; the father, ineffectual, at loose ends, standing by her with a hand on her shoulder, and another in his pocket, wondering if maybe he could, in good conscience, head off alone for the local tavern.
The doctor, the one with the power, brains, education, medication, and all the answers, sits puzzled but challenged and confident, pensive, powerful, beside me, oops, I mean beside the sick little girl. The girl is laying, feverish, in a humble and beautiful home I want still, upon pillows and a makeshift bed of beautiful chairs I want still, near I lamp I want still, with a bird in a cage and a glass of flowers in the window that I want still, and the attention of a man who is going to save her, which, well, let's face it, I want still.
A friend from gradeschool has written since reading this post and pointed out to me, most eloquently, that the loving family has made the girl's makeshift bed, using their finest Chippendale chair for her head, and the kitchen ladderback chair for her feet.
One of my grandfathers, Leroy Edgar Chapman, actually was a doctor, who had an office next to his home in Warren, Pa. where he saw patients, x-rayed them with his own little x-ray machine, and mixed up his own pink medication, mostly phenobarbital I suppose, and put it into corked bottles dispensing it to his patients, who absolutely thrived and adored him. He walked across the driveway each day to have lunch with my grandmother Lena, a Swedish woman of some intellect, who, despite having daily household help (from a dear Mrs. Bunck), nevertheless loved preparing the food and the table herself for her big old busy man. He did at least one emergency appendectomy in a patient's home in his sixty years of medical practice. He was proud to have delivered triplets in a homebirth. He was a towering man, 6' 3" or so, and beloved for his intellect, his great humor, his humble, dishevelled brilliant shambling ways, (his occasional whiskey and gingerale),and his years of contributions to the State of Pennsylvania.
My Grandfather Chapman spent a lot of time in Harrisburg while my father was growing up in Warren, serving in the Pennsylvania Senate for thirty-some years, and as Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He gave an impassioned speech to the Pennsylvania Senate back in the early fifties, extolling the history of our Founding Fathers in Philadelphia and urging the allocation of funds for the restoration of Independence Hall, which was falling into rack and ruin at the time. To demonstrate their gratitude for his service, constituents and state officials dedicated 800 acres of land, including a 68 acre lake to him, Chapman State Park and Chapman Dam, in Northwestern Pennsylvania, which has almost faded from my family's memory, since I settled at the Jersey Shore, away from my family roots. In any case, since he was a doctor, it's understandable that he had a reproduction of "The Doctor", (hanging crooked in his office as I recall), most likely the gift of a grateful patient, since he was not one to toot his own horn.
The reproduction of "The Doctor" in my other grandparents' home had a different flavor there. Those grandparents, David Raymond ("Bugs")Thomas and Emma Rebecca ("Peggy") Parsons Thomas, who had four children, were the ones by the window, the hardworking folk who were neat and clean and disciplined, notwithstanding the bottle of whiskey my grandfather kept hidden in the basement for occasional shots. Their "Doctor" print, which was hung in a little guest house, spoke to me of love, of the love my grandparents felt for their children,and probably even their grandchildren, (maybe even me!, little sickly me, when my parents were away and I stayed with them throughout first grade during one of my many bouts of pleurisy and pneumonia?) It spoke to me of the hopeful anguished dependence they had on their doctor, I still remember his name, Dr. Jacquish, in Punxsutawney, because my grandmother talked about him so often.
Once in childbirth, during my grandmother's apparently doomed labor, the doctor had given up, because the baby was a complicated breech. My grandfather "Bugs", occasionally hot-headed, didn't know nothin bout birthin no babies, and had been consigned to an outer room, boiling water in the kitchen maybe. But when he was informed of the situation, and that death was near for somebody, he stormed into the bedroom, said that nobody was going to die, and he pounced on my grandmother's stomach and turned that baby around. It worked. Two of their daughters eventually married doctors. No small wonder.
Imagine what Dr. Jacquish must have seen of my grandmother, a demure and pious Christian woman surely loath to share the required intimacies during those home births, and also during the influenza of 1918 when Dr. Jacquish asked her which of her stricken children he should save, the 4 year old or the infant, and she had to choose one, and asked him to sit through the night with the 4 year old, since she had known that one longer. And so the infant Linford Thomas died. Those were long and heavy-laden nights, and she talked more-than-fondly about that doctor until the year she died, in 1978.
My father William Leroy Chapman also was a doctor, a big-city specialist in Pittsburgh, as was his brother-in-law and partner, my Uncle Bill. There is a wing of Shadyside Hospital, The William M. Cooper Pavillion, named for my uncle. He and my dad and their other partners were top diagnosticians in the fields of internal medicine, hematology and oncology. My dad took early retirement at age 62, preferring golf and travel to work, while my uncle, highly motivated towards academic and professional achievement, decided to go to law school in his early sixties, and continued to work as a physician and attorney into his eighties.
Another uncle, John Urbaitis, the husband of my father's older sister, was a brilliant and well-respected psychiatrist, the chief administrator of Warren State Hospital, a beautiful place then with extensive gardens and old trees. My uncle gave my father a tour of the inner sanctums of the hospital before Thorazine came on the scene. I, five years old and holding my father's hand, (why didn't I stay back at the house with mom?)remember it maybe too vividly. Was there a huge screaming patient chained to a wall, as I thought I saw? No, my father told me many years later, that couldn't have been, no way and no how. But those patients were not looking quite as comfortable to me as the little girl propped on the pillows in Sir Samuel Luke Fildes' portrait of "The Doctor." My Uncle John's son, my cousin John Jr, also became a doctor affiliated first at Johns Hopkins, and later, as psychiatrist extraordinaire, world traveler, and urbane gentleman, remains settled in Baltimore.
So naturally I, who was talked out of becoming a doctor by my father because of what he foresaw as the end of old-time medicine and the beginning of the insurance companies' domination, have a copy of "The Doctor", which hangs above my piano. It's a big old wrinkled framed thing I found years ago in a junk store for fifty bucks...which means the world to me, and which I know will influence someone sometime, and certainly played into the unconscious of all five of my children as they grew up. The picture affected and influenced me profoundly as a child, for more reasons than one. I tell all these things about this painting principally for my family, because the stories are old and will pass away one day, but no need to let them fade yet.
Above all this, the painting gently conveys Sir Samuel Luke Fildes' compassion for the poor, and beyond that, his understanding of the anguish a parent feels when a child is in dire straits. Thank you Sir.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
No way an elephant can paint! (Spoiler)
I just discovered how it's most likely done....it has to be magnets!
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Elephant Painting A Self-Portrait?
Are you ready for this? There's almost no way you could be. Got it in my mail tonight, and it has knocked me for a loop. If it's real it's a psychological revolution, isn't it? It's definitely a revelation. As it says in the I Ching "Far-reaching speculations can be linked with this idea" ....I remember back in the day when I saw something in the eyes of certain animals that revealed they were so shockingly more aware and full of understanding than I was. I sometimes thought certain animals were trying to find a way to demonstrate how intelligent they were. Is this an example of that, developed by loving and caring tenders, or is it illusion developed from tedious and perhaps brutal training, as a money-making gimmick? Could such training exist? Is it an illusion? Is there a hand in a glove? You decide. I have no idea. But I do know it's one of the most interesting behaviors I've ever seen. If only the whole elephant were in view the whole time. And I would have liked to see his or her face, and to have locked eyes, as I have done with elephants in the past.
Thanks to Harriett and Chickenphish
*Day later Addendum: The more I remember my elephant friends, and looking in their eyes, the more certain I am that none of them had the slightest inclination, at any level, from cellular to cerebral, to become an artist, let alone to paint a self-portrait. There's no way this is true. I can't believe I could be so gullible in my old age, even for a moment!
Thanks to Harriett and Chickenphish
*Day later Addendum: The more I remember my elephant friends, and looking in their eyes, the more certain I am that none of them had the slightest inclination, at any level, from cellular to cerebral, to become an artist, let alone to paint a self-portrait. There's no way this is true. I can't believe I could be so gullible in my old age, even for a moment!
Saturday, March 29, 2008
My Favorite Love Song from Love Long Ago: Tammy Wynette and George Jones "Take Me"
Just a good old little love song from a day gone by
thanks to hellkitten23
thanks to hellkitten23
Never Give Up! No Suicide Please! There's Always Another Day
I've had many occasions to be grateful that I've studied some philosophy and watched a lot of movies. Because whenever I'm having a bad, bad, really bad day, I remember a speck of philosophy and one line from one little movie. Both little specks are about how you just need to get through that day.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the existentialist German philosopher, had attained great success in his mid-twenties, being named head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Basel. But the poor guy had health problems and lost his mind eventually, imagining that he had enormous earthly powers and envisioning vast conspiracies against him. He lived out his life with his mother and sister, dying of stroke and pneumonia in 1900. He may not have been the cheeriest soul. But he obviously had a sense of humor. Out of his multitudes of writing, everyone remembers his idiotic "God is Dead." But I have more occasion to remember this speck: “The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night” That is really funny! Thinking of suicide is a solace and a good way to get through the night. Just don't act on it! This too will pass.
In the movie "Crimes of the Heart" (1986), three sisters (Jessica Lange, Diane Keaton, and Sissy Spacek) come together because the Sissy Spacek character just shot her husband and needs some family support. The Diane Keaton character, kind of prissy, has never married and has always taken care of their grandfather. While the sisters, who haven't been together in a long time, hash over old family history, they talk about the shame brought on the family by their mother's suicide many years ago when she stuck her head in the gas oven. Obviously it's had an impact on all of their lives, and they variously blame her or defend her according to their personalities. Jessica Lange's character, the black-leather jacketed, chain-smoking one who's been around the block, finally says languidly about the suicide: "Look. Mamma was just having a really bad day."
Those two specks have sustained me. I haven't seen the movie in 20 years and don't intend to, but I think my memory serves me well. I always loved this idea that life goes on, and you may as well go on too, because no matter how bad it seems, no matter how horrendous this day is, the tide will turn. There will be another day. Your number will be up eventually, but don't rush it.
And just for the record, I'm actually having a very good day. I'm just discouraged about the presidential campaign, but believe me, as my father said when when Jimmy Carter got elected (or was it Bill Clinton?), "Ah well,we'll get through it."
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the existentialist German philosopher, had attained great success in his mid-twenties, being named head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Basel. But the poor guy had health problems and lost his mind eventually, imagining that he had enormous earthly powers and envisioning vast conspiracies against him. He lived out his life with his mother and sister, dying of stroke and pneumonia in 1900. He may not have been the cheeriest soul. But he obviously had a sense of humor. Out of his multitudes of writing, everyone remembers his idiotic "God is Dead." But I have more occasion to remember this speck: “The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night” That is really funny! Thinking of suicide is a solace and a good way to get through the night. Just don't act on it! This too will pass.
In the movie "Crimes of the Heart" (1986), three sisters (Jessica Lange, Diane Keaton, and Sissy Spacek) come together because the Sissy Spacek character just shot her husband and needs some family support. The Diane Keaton character, kind of prissy, has never married and has always taken care of their grandfather. While the sisters, who haven't been together in a long time, hash over old family history, they talk about the shame brought on the family by their mother's suicide many years ago when she stuck her head in the gas oven. Obviously it's had an impact on all of their lives, and they variously blame her or defend her according to their personalities. Jessica Lange's character, the black-leather jacketed, chain-smoking one who's been around the block, finally says languidly about the suicide: "Look. Mamma was just having a really bad day."
Those two specks have sustained me. I haven't seen the movie in 20 years and don't intend to, but I think my memory serves me well. I always loved this idea that life goes on, and you may as well go on too, because no matter how bad it seems, no matter how horrendous this day is, the tide will turn. There will be another day. Your number will be up eventually, but don't rush it.
And just for the record, I'm actually having a very good day. I'm just discouraged about the presidential campaign, but believe me, as my father said when when Jimmy Carter got elected (or was it Bill Clinton?), "Ah well,we'll get through it."
Bohemian Rhapsody for a Down Day
Sometimes this song can fill a void. Poor Freddie Mercury could sure pull your heartstrings. Freddie, born "Farrokh Bulsara" in 1946 to Parsee Indian parents in Zanzibar, attended British boarding school in India, and art school in England before his singing career took off, culminating in the band Queen. After keeping his personal and health issues secret for a number of years, he succumbed to AIDS in 1991.
video thanks to Frozentoast
video thanks to Frozentoast
Got My Obama T-Shirt but Can't Wear It
I don't know what's wrong with me. I just don't have the courage of my convictions. Or worse, I don't know what my convictions really are. I know I'm not a freak of nature, there are people like me all over the place these days, I hear them talking on the TV and out on the street every day, very few people seem 100% sure! I mean, now that Bill Clinton has basically endorsed both Obama and McCain by singing their praises, who wouldn't feel schizo about the political options?
Anyway, my Obama T-shirt finally arrived and I was going to wear it out to the grocery store a little bit ago. But I just can't get out the door. Agorophobic tendencies aside, I think the shirt has something to do with it. Do I detect tinges of fear in myself, Obama's grandmother's kinds of fears - illogical and apparently forgivable- of allying myself with Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, the Black Panthers, the SDS, Hells Angels and who knows who else? I can't make a stand. I started to wonder if I'd be more comfortable in a McCain shirt so I checked out their site, just for fun. Suddenly I felt old. The whole McCain image is a little too old-blue-haired-lady, clean-cut, Perry Como, white-shoed, wannabe-golf-clubsy for me. Although lately he's thrown a little dab of Apocalypse Now into his ads, which I find oddly appealing. What's it all about, Alfie?
At the online McCain store, I liked a nautical lapel pin, which says nothing, and apparently just spells out McCain's name in flag code, good for someone like me who likes mystery and equivocation, but that pin is $200, and I don't want it that bad. Why doesn't Obama's store have that? What's a girl to do? To make matters worse I watched the video of Hillary Clinton talking about her ideas for universal health care at www.nytimes.com and thought she looked tired but sounded right.
I give up. I'm heading for the hills. I'm gonna keep my mouth shut and my head down low. It's depressing. I feel like listening to Freddy Mercury's Bohemian Rhapsody, well the very last line anyway. Tomorrow's another day.
I'll wear it as a nightshirt. It goes halfway to my knees anyway.
Anyway, my Obama T-shirt finally arrived and I was going to wear it out to the grocery store a little bit ago. But I just can't get out the door. Agorophobic tendencies aside, I think the shirt has something to do with it. Do I detect tinges of fear in myself, Obama's grandmother's kinds of fears - illogical and apparently forgivable- of allying myself with Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, the Black Panthers, the SDS, Hells Angels and who knows who else? I can't make a stand. I started to wonder if I'd be more comfortable in a McCain shirt so I checked out their site, just for fun. Suddenly I felt old. The whole McCain image is a little too old-blue-haired-lady, clean-cut, Perry Como, white-shoed, wannabe-golf-clubsy for me. Although lately he's thrown a little dab of Apocalypse Now into his ads, which I find oddly appealing. What's it all about, Alfie?
At the online McCain store, I liked a nautical lapel pin, which says nothing, and apparently just spells out McCain's name in flag code, good for someone like me who likes mystery and equivocation, but that pin is $200, and I don't want it that bad. Why doesn't Obama's store have that? What's a girl to do? To make matters worse I watched the video of Hillary Clinton talking about her ideas for universal health care at www.nytimes.com and thought she looked tired but sounded right.
I give up. I'm heading for the hills. I'm gonna keep my mouth shut and my head down low. It's depressing. I feel like listening to Freddy Mercury's Bohemian Rhapsody, well the very last line anyway. Tomorrow's another day.
I'll wear it as a nightshirt. It goes halfway to my knees anyway.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
No Holds Barred! So, Bill and Hillary, Now it's Obama Against the Catholics and the Jews?
This has to be the work of Bill and Hillary, right?. They would fight this dirty. News reports today are geared towards subtly alienating Obama from Catholics and Jews, by virtue of the fact that Jeremiah Wright has made some crazed remarks in the past about the Israelites and the Italians. Ok. Been there, done that. Even if it's not the work of the Clintons, and surely,there is that possibility, it's pretty easy to imagine them gloating. God knows I'm getting scared, realizing that Obama donated $22,000 in 2006 to a church that honored Louis Farrakhan with a "Social Achievement" award just a few months ago.
Bill Clinton said recently that America is "all about" the fight, and I guess he means, all about the nasty nasty fight he and Hillary are going to wage from here on out. No holds barred. Tyrants aren't born tyrants, they evolve from early power and learn how to take hold by cruelty, intimidation, selling people down the river. A report in the Economist this week illustrates how Zimbabwe's prime minister Robert Mugabe evolved from a bookish freedom-fighter into a murderous thug over twenty-five years. Not that Bill and Hillary would ever start killing us, but they are evolving into something much different than the idealistic intellectual do-good Yale students they once were. They may have many gifts, but they are definitely letting down the guard on their downright nasty side.
So even if it's not the Clintons who have spear-headed this latest rise in news about Obama's church, we know they are going for the jugular. And we've gotten a glimpse of blood, and I don't like it. Today I'm leaning off my chair and coming close to falling into the McCain camp. Why is noone ever perfect?
Bill Clinton said recently that America is "all about" the fight, and I guess he means, all about the nasty nasty fight he and Hillary are going to wage from here on out. No holds barred. Tyrants aren't born tyrants, they evolve from early power and learn how to take hold by cruelty, intimidation, selling people down the river. A report in the Economist this week illustrates how Zimbabwe's prime minister Robert Mugabe evolved from a bookish freedom-fighter into a murderous thug over twenty-five years. Not that Bill and Hillary would ever start killing us, but they are evolving into something much different than the idealistic intellectual do-good Yale students they once were. They may have many gifts, but they are definitely letting down the guard on their downright nasty side.
So even if it's not the Clintons who have spear-headed this latest rise in news about Obama's church, we know they are going for the jugular. And we've gotten a glimpse of blood, and I don't like it. Today I'm leaning off my chair and coming close to falling into the McCain camp. Why is noone ever perfect?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Johnny Depp, Neil Young and Jim Jarmusch's collaboration "Dead Man"- Influenced by William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence"
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
One of my all-time favorite movies, strange, I'll admit:
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
One of my all-time favorite movies, strange, I'll admit:
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Feeling Grateful that I Have Visited Rosslyn Chapel and Found True (A)Symmetry
I had a dream last night about Rosslyn Chapel. Like a lot of my dreams, it was simple and lovely and, well, ...dreamlike. I was just sitting there in the chapel, relaxing with the spirits of people I would have loved in life, the creators and builders of Rosslyn.
While my daughter was in college for four years at St. Andrews in Scotland, I went to Rosslyn twice. The Chapel, built in the 1400's, is just five miles south of Edinburgh. I had wanted to go there since a long-ago teacher enthusiastically showed our class her photographs of this deeply mysterious place.
But by the time I got there, it had become very famous, thanks to The DaVinci Code. I was almost embarrassed to visit, joining with the throngs of curious folk who had seen the movie and were probably hoping for a glimpse of Tom Hanks or Dan Brown. Ridiculously, I imagined myself to be just a cut above the tourists who would be thronged there for all the wrong reasons. After all, I was looking for clues to the deepest mysteries of mankind. But we all are, in one way or another. And Rosslyn's builders really did something about it. Rosslyn's a great pilgrimage, if you like puzzles and mysteries with a spiritual context.
My daughter and I first approached Rosslyn by a two-mile walk along a deserted road, having taken the wrong bus out of Edinburgh. There were apparently no busses directly to Rosslyn that day, and no cars passed us by during the approach to the village. We walked through the village and out the other side without seeing any major signs. The entrance to the hillside chapel was utter simplicity, very few markings. Yes, there was a small parking lot with a few cars, and a gift shop with a few idlers, and the chapel itself, not in the least crowded. Thanks to a preservation project underway to protect the roof in particular, there is scaffolding around the upper outside of the chapel, with a walkway along the upper scaffolding open to the public for up-close examination of the incredible carvings in every nook and cranny.
There's no way to describe it. There's no way to explain what a wonder this place is. There is a fabulous story of a carved pillar that I will let you learn on your own. But suffice it to say, the pillar was carved in the fifteenth century, and resembles a strand of DNA. There are carvings of corn, or maize, grown then only in North America, and supposedly unknown in fifteenth century Europe, before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Throughout the chapel are carvings of the Green Man, who appears around the world in oddly similar carved incarnations. There are carved cubes that seem to spell out a musical code, and one man has recently made a recording of what he believes that code is, after many years' work. There's a fanciful feeling throughout, (cartoon stars in the vaulted ceiling), but serious too, reminding me of the way Antoni Gaudi's architecture is fanciful and serious all at once, oddly out of place and time. But at Rosslyn, there is a sense that every millimeter of carving is heartfelt, thought through by an enlightened mind, never self-indulgent, and always serves a higher purpose, of worship.
But the biggest clue for me that I was walking through the handiwork of loved ones, the thing about it that calls me home, and makes me dream, and holds my heart still and very still, is what I love more than any other communication from the past: an apparent symmetry that is not symmetry at all, or symmetry only in the very largest sense, a sense that easily includes past present and future even now. If you look at the photographs of Rosslyn to the right of this column or if you stare at closeups of the entrances for awhile, you may understand what it is that I love. There's a sense of symmetry at first, but you will find if you start counting things, that, as in life, there's most often an aberration, an asymmetry that relaxes the overall effect. Six rosettes on one side, seven on the other. Four of these, three of those. One this size over here, one that size over there. I've gone out on a limb here, and into cliche, to try to explain the unexplainable. I can't explain it, but it's what I love.
I'm so grateful to have seen it. And I hope to go again and to sit in the comfort of that handiwork. In real time, or in a dream.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And if you're interested, here's a little video (maybe stretching it a bit but who knows?) about just one mystery in the Chapel-that musical cypher and the carving of the stave angel:
Thanks to Stuart7M (Stuart Mitchell, who has done years of research and published the CD last year.)
While my daughter was in college for four years at St. Andrews in Scotland, I went to Rosslyn twice. The Chapel, built in the 1400's, is just five miles south of Edinburgh. I had wanted to go there since a long-ago teacher enthusiastically showed our class her photographs of this deeply mysterious place.
But by the time I got there, it had become very famous, thanks to The DaVinci Code. I was almost embarrassed to visit, joining with the throngs of curious folk who had seen the movie and were probably hoping for a glimpse of Tom Hanks or Dan Brown. Ridiculously, I imagined myself to be just a cut above the tourists who would be thronged there for all the wrong reasons. After all, I was looking for clues to the deepest mysteries of mankind. But we all are, in one way or another. And Rosslyn's builders really did something about it. Rosslyn's a great pilgrimage, if you like puzzles and mysteries with a spiritual context.
My daughter and I first approached Rosslyn by a two-mile walk along a deserted road, having taken the wrong bus out of Edinburgh. There were apparently no busses directly to Rosslyn that day, and no cars passed us by during the approach to the village. We walked through the village and out the other side without seeing any major signs. The entrance to the hillside chapel was utter simplicity, very few markings. Yes, there was a small parking lot with a few cars, and a gift shop with a few idlers, and the chapel itself, not in the least crowded. Thanks to a preservation project underway to protect the roof in particular, there is scaffolding around the upper outside of the chapel, with a walkway along the upper scaffolding open to the public for up-close examination of the incredible carvings in every nook and cranny.
There's no way to describe it. There's no way to explain what a wonder this place is. There is a fabulous story of a carved pillar that I will let you learn on your own. But suffice it to say, the pillar was carved in the fifteenth century, and resembles a strand of DNA. There are carvings of corn, or maize, grown then only in North America, and supposedly unknown in fifteenth century Europe, before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Throughout the chapel are carvings of the Green Man, who appears around the world in oddly similar carved incarnations. There are carved cubes that seem to spell out a musical code, and one man has recently made a recording of what he believes that code is, after many years' work. There's a fanciful feeling throughout, (cartoon stars in the vaulted ceiling), but serious too, reminding me of the way Antoni Gaudi's architecture is fanciful and serious all at once, oddly out of place and time. But at Rosslyn, there is a sense that every millimeter of carving is heartfelt, thought through by an enlightened mind, never self-indulgent, and always serves a higher purpose, of worship.
But the biggest clue for me that I was walking through the handiwork of loved ones, the thing about it that calls me home, and makes me dream, and holds my heart still and very still, is what I love more than any other communication from the past: an apparent symmetry that is not symmetry at all, or symmetry only in the very largest sense, a sense that easily includes past present and future even now. If you look at the photographs of Rosslyn to the right of this column or if you stare at closeups of the entrances for awhile, you may understand what it is that I love. There's a sense of symmetry at first, but you will find if you start counting things, that, as in life, there's most often an aberration, an asymmetry that relaxes the overall effect. Six rosettes on one side, seven on the other. Four of these, three of those. One this size over here, one that size over there. I've gone out on a limb here, and into cliche, to try to explain the unexplainable. I can't explain it, but it's what I love.
I'm so grateful to have seen it. And I hope to go again and to sit in the comfort of that handiwork. In real time, or in a dream.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And if you're interested, here's a little video (maybe stretching it a bit but who knows?) about just one mystery in the Chapel-that musical cypher and the carving of the stave angel:
Thanks to Stuart7M (Stuart Mitchell, who has done years of research and published the CD last year.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
