Advice
It has been the common belief for some generations now that young people do not appreciate advice, unsolicited or otherwise, particularly from their elders, in whom there can reside no conceivable relevance, at least in their view. Older and wiser people are thereby inhibited from offering their wisdom and experience lest they be seen as foolish or vainglorious, instead forced to bear silent witness to the most obvious mistakes and poor decisions.
There are, after all, in the course of a human life, eternal shoals to be navigated: whom to marry and when; by what means to earn an honest and decent living; whether to have children; and if one does, how to deal with them over the decades of their development. Parenthood alone produces a plethora of tangled issues. Of course these are individual matters upon which the ultimate decision must be personal. Indeed there are those who can only learn by making a mistake, and some so rigid they fail to learn even then. Yet it is ironic to observe, in these years since our elders have been constrained from speaking up, how often we may find ourselves reflecting, "Why did no one tell me this? If only I had known!"
And so parents, grandparents, please tell the youngsters what you feel they will need to know. They will appear to ignore you, and you will feel old and silly; but trust me, in years to come they will remember what you once said - "So this is what he meant!"
For the Birds
My post of two weeks ago observed the increasing urbanization of the world's population and the unfriendliness of this urban environment. Cities are not only rugged but unnatural, exacerbating the already yawning gap between humans and all other life forms, aside from their pets.What brings this to my mind is the nesting season. City dwellers have a tendency to assign a certain degree of beneficence to the natural world, especially in the spring. They imagine that the birds pair off at this time, build their nests, raise their young, and thrive in perpetuity: the geese by the closest runoff pond; sparrows in the eaves of shops; wrens in the housing of an unused exhaust fan, and so on. Yet anyone who has had the opportunity and the inclination to observe nature closely over some period of years can easily disabuse them of their naiveté.
It is in fact very problematic for birds to raise their young to adulthood. Goslings become dinner for any turtle in the pond; eggs of any kind are a delicious breakfast for the likes of raccoons, snakes, and foxes. Those nestlings that survive long enough to fledge are easy prey for a stray or feral cat waiting under the tree; and this is not even to mention competition with other birds for nest sites, and hawks who also have young to feed.
But don't be glum, children. Here is your take-away: should you chance to see a parade of goslings marching behind their mother, baby sparrows flapping their wings to be fed, or fledgling cardinals taking their first awkward flight out of the nest, be advised that you are witnessing no small miracle!
Discrimination Redux
When my friend Anna read the post on discrimination, she took me to task, understandably, her point being that in Buddhist practice we endeavor to transcend the discrimination of dichotomy. Indeed the extreme polarities we come to experience by so discriminating are viewed as a root source of human misery. But this is a complex matter, one of several such that make Buddhism difficult for logical people.
We are configured by evolution to perceive and to discriminate, these capacities honed by the blade of natural selection. It is true that the unitary nature, the oneness, of our perceptions is their ultimate essence, just as pure light is the essence of a rainbow; but it behooves us to discriminate red from green at a stoplight. As my friend well knows, it is our bodily configuration that supports the very consciousness which makes available to us any insight into the ultimate. In maintaining it, we should be discriminating.
Cities
I railed again a few weeks ago about the tendency of humans to over populate, inducing the desperation of crowding. In modern times, contributing dangerously to this condition, is urbanization. Not only are there more people than ever in the many hundreds of millions of years of the history and prehistory of the species, but they live ever closer together. These urban environments, whether old or new, are not for the faint of heart. Indeed, they may be safely navigated only by the hearty, able-bodied, and fit, i.e. the young. They are noisy, polluted, and despite the promise of having all necessary services close at hand, sprawling. To be sure, in the best of them, one can hop on a train and ride to the farther end of the metropolis, and then walk - and walk and walk.
This phenomenon is especially sad given the aging of populations, and the pathos is augmented by this peculiar observation: the young, and even people in their middle years, regard old age as a condition far removed from them, as if occurring only in some other species. They themselves will certainly never incur the crippling disability of degeneration, and there is the rub. Individuals age and die, replaced by individuals who all along considered themselves immortal, while they in turn are moved aside by the hail and hearty, destined, they firmly believe, to be ever so. When time overtakes them, we can only hope that Africa will continue to bestow her dark angels to wheel them through the congestion.
Mad Men
The first half of the twentieth century was a time of considerable upheaval, when it became normal for each generation to rebel against the last - the "generation gap" as it came to be called; and no generation was more rebellious than the post-war cohort, known as the Baby Boom. Coming of age in the decade of the sixties, they threw over all the traces. They rebelled against the draft, against race and gender discrimination, and rejected absolutely every cultural vestige of prior generations. Gone were the clothing styles of the forties and fifties, the uniform of the "gray flannel suit" replaced with a new one - jeans, tee shirts, gym shoes. Then armed with oral contraception, they tossed aside the old sexual morality as well, allowing themselves any and all indulgence, including recreational drugs.
But now the most curious thing about this generation: neither their children nor today their grandchildren have rebelled against them. To the contrary, Boomers have reeled watching subsequent generations taking their lead to bizarre and destructive extremes. Free love? Date rape, binge drinking. Marijuana? Heroin. Hard rock? Gangsta rap. And all still in the uniform - jeans, tee shirts, gym shoes - now virtually planetary.
The popular cable series "Mad Men", now having run its course, depicted the culture of Madison Avenue prior to the sixties. How alien it must have seemed to young people to see the realistic portrayal of a way of life to which they have been kept assiduously oblivious. Do you see children? You can change the world. Your grandparents did.
Discrimination
The word "discrimination" fell into considerable disrepute back in the 1960's through its persistent and now ironclad association with racial discrimination. Of course, in the immortal words of the Reverend, an individual should be judged on the "content of his character" and not the color of his skin. This precept is morally just, if difficult in execution, given the subconscious tribal instincts of our species. But an equally unfortunate aspect of human nature is to take things to extremes, to ride the pendulum of history from one far height to the other. So today even innocent or necessary acts of discrimination may be frowned upon. Oh, we are allowed to discriminate among different vintages of wine or between restaurants, though we will use another term. But we are not permitted, for example, to discriminate "Ukrainian rebels" from invading Russians; or in another instance, we are doubtless by now without the ability to discriminate "news" from propaganda.
The ability to be discriminating was once not long ago regarded as a strength. It means to judge a thing on its relevant merits; a candidate for a job would be judged on his competency, irrespective of race. And a modern civilized society would be able to recognize its friends by their shared values: tolerance, justice, protection of the weak, rights of minorities. Like the Kurdish people, as I read, standing alone in a sea of barbarity. But who are we to judge? Who must we be?
Desperation
The most unfortunate aspect of human history is that the young people do not know it, and so it cycles. The young today, for example, are accustomed to twelve lane highways, camping on airport floors, standing in line all night at the Apple Store - and not for apples. The day when four lanes made a "super" highway is outside of their experience. The human population climbs gradually, albeit exponentially, long ago having surpassed past levels; so the stress is applied slowly, as to a slowly boiling pot, unremarked except by the old fogies.
The cardinal sign, though, that overcrowding is boiling us alive is desperation, particularly from the most populous regions of the earth. When someone in Mumbai persists in calling you day after day begging to clean your air ducts, and admitting that he is paid for every call he makes, regardless of whether or not you succumb, he is clearly desperate to survive. Great numbers of people are unneeded, even for tasks they were once allowed - agriculture, pumping gas, building pyramids. It is no surprise that political unrest arises in the most crowded areas.
But there are thresholds. What always breaks the cycle in the history of human civilization is war, great war. It is the only way we control our numbers, the discipline of war.
Lucky Dog
I have not taken a poll nor conducted a survey, but I have it on the authority of my old friend, Anna, who has been married for almost half a century, and was once herself a young woman, that many approach marriage with the dream that they will ever after have someone who will sleep with them through the night. She bases this observation on a life-long devotion to advice columns. In discussion, we have concurred that this may indeed hold true throughout the reproductive years - reference my essay on the subject here on the blog - or if the woman marries a Frenchman.
As time goes on and passions run their natural course, too many disillusioned and disappointed wives will begin searching, in vain, for a reliable bed partner. The wiser ones will get a cat. Anna once had a dear old tabby who would stay on the next pillow at night, at least long enough for her to fall asleep. But cats are solitary animals and nocturnal besides; and so my old friend has concluded that young women need to know this starting out: the only creature one may count on to be with you through the night, every night, is a dog - just choose a breed that is not prone to snoring.
Inertia
Life is full of these ironies; I am known for harping on this fact. We know, for example, that things change constantly; we are well persuaded of that. The weather alone is proof, ones face in the mirror, aging at various rates. Styles of clothing change, or cars, prices change. Modern technology changes at breakneck speed, leaving whole sectors of the economy in ruins.
How then to account for inertia? We often come upon situations in life that cry out for change. We think that surely such a condition cannot go on much longer; then time and again we witness this status quo year after year, unchanging, endless, inert. It could be an abusive relationship, addictive behavior, a frail elderly person living in squalor, tribal warfare wherever humans populate. Even in nature there are examples: an old tree, damaged by lightning, riddled with insects, pecked by woodpeckers, but living on; or a shrub browsed by over-populous deer to within a hair's breadth of its twigs, still putting out foliage season after season.
Those of us suffering with untreated obsessive-compulsive disorder may easily become frustrated by such irony, but we must take some comfort in the second law of thermodynamics - entropy - captured in the immortal words of John Dunne: The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.
Review
A first for the blog, but I really must review a book I am reading entitled At the Edge of Uncertainty, by the physicist and science writer, Michael Brooks. Not since The Tao of Physics in 1975 by another physicist, Fritjof Kapra, have the parallels between modern science and the ancient religions of Asia been rendered so clear, even when not recognized. Chapter by chapter, Brooks looks at the cutting edge of various scientific disciplines, as new research sends them beyond what we once believed was certainty. He writes engagingly, and does a good job of explaining these mysteries for a lay readership.
Here is what he comes up with: "...the sense of self is like a concept... it's an idea in your brain"; "our universe is ephemeral, a ghostly illusion... a hologram"; "there are issues of time at play here". He does fall prey in the end to the inescapable reductionism of science: "the neuronal firings and consciousness are inseparable... they are just one thing". Thus to science we are nothing special. But we know better, because ultimate reality cannot be explained from without. Nevertheless, this book had a good go at it. Fascinating!
Hand Me Down My Walkin' Cane
The degree to which times may change over generations is extreme and accelerating. Examples abound, but I offer just one as indicative, and that is the walking cane. Up until the early twentieth century no proper gentleman would leave home without this accessory. Ladies would often carry one as well, and they could be quite ornate, with for example a curved handle in silver or one carved of ivory or wood in the shape of a horse head, rabbit or hawk. The cane might also conceal a weapon such as a sword or a derringer, or it might hide a flask of whiskey. Of course times were harsher then, city streets tending to be unpaved and muddy; a neighborhood might be known for ruffians. So one can imagine a stick could often be helpful.
Today we are more civil; presumably, no one needs a stick. Indeed, even the old and infirm, who can barely stand, strenuously reject the support of a cane, loathe to be seen as old or infirm. Just the other day I witnessed an old man trip on the curb and fall flat, striking his forehead on the concrete. He was bleeding from the abrasion as his daughter brought up the car and hauled him off to hospital.
I have acquired a few walking sticks, which I now have occasion to use when arthritis in my back acts up. For that matter, I always carry one on my walks, to fend off any dog that may have broken free of his invisible fence. But should any of my friends see me using one, I am accosted with bewilderment and chagrin, bordering on horror - "Grey! A cane?!"
Imagine That
Many things in this life, especially in modern times, are hard to imagine. It is hard to imagine, for example, how a creature with no inhibition against killing its own kind, even in mass numbers, can come to over-populate the planet; or how a rich and powerful country can allow itself to become dependent on computer systems that are fragile at best and inimical at worst. But there is one thing that is not just hard to imagine, but beyond the capacity of human imagination; and this is most unfortunate because it lies at the core misery of the human condition. It is timelessness. It is impossible to imagine, even though it is experienced in every sentient moment; and without the realization of this fundamental truth, we fall prey to the dread and the grief of our individual mortality.
Time is an illusion created by the motion of things in relation to other things: the hands of a clock in relation to its face; the movement of stars and planets in relation to each other. To speak of such things, we need this illusion. Timelessness then is not eternity; it is not an abundance of something that does not exist. It is the state of its nonexistence. Unimaginable!
Nesting Time
It is the lengthening of day, the angle of sunlight, that signals spring in the avian realm and sets the birds to their urgent work of the nesting season, ignoring late snow or frigid temperatures. It begins with the stentorian call of the male cardinal, proclaiming his territorial imperative to warn off interlopers. The cavity nesting birds are most interesting, since like humans they compete for limited housing opportunities of varying quality. Adequate nest boxes are rare, leaving whatever cavities have occurred in old or dead trees.
The chickadee nests early, so he and his mate may use a nest box and be done raising a brood before other species begin. The wren is the most aggressive, filling every box or tree hole with his twigs, thereby preempting others. But the quiet, pacifist bluebirds are by far the most endearing and sympathetic of the cavity nesters. With great care they go about assembling a soft bed of dry grasses inside a nest box or cavity, despite great and serious threats: that their young may be smothered by the twigs of a compulsive wren, or pecked to death by the sharp beak of a nuthatch.
Forget the "mustard seed"; oh, to have the faith of a bluebird!
************
Control Yourself
"Why let your body control your mind? Let your mind control your body!" Thus spoke an old zen master long ago, as I have read. But is it really possible for the mind to control the body? After all, our autonomic nervous system regulates much of the body's function without conscious awareness: heart, lungs, core temperature. Even our behavior has come to seem suspiciously predestined by the body's inheritance, as with addictive propensities.
Yet concentration practiced in zen meditation is indeed credited with prodigious feats, in the martial arts as an example, or the zen of archery as another - spontaneous accuracy without taking aim. So here the mind is controlling the body, but it is not the conscious mind, which as I observed controls almost nothing; neither is it the mind referred to by the old master. The mind that has the potential of control over the body - to an astonishing degree - is accessible only through the difficult exercise of toning down the noise of consciousness.
Polarity
The perceptible universe of which we are consciously aware during our lifetimes is a dichotomous realm, beginning with the very symmetry of our bodies. We accept that with one side of a dichotomy must go the other: left and right; hot and cold; light and dark, ad infinitum. Moreover with each dichotomy there are extreme opposite poles: the cold of deep space versus the surface of the sun; the dryness of a desert versus the wetness of an ocean. We know and cannot deny these realities.
Remarkable therefore is our incredulity concerning our own kind. There can be no doubt that our species, relatively freed of instinct and endowed with a superior brain that is eminently adaptable and adept at learning, has produced extreme examples of intelligence, creativity, even compassion: the profound insights of Einstein; the prodigious invention of Bach; the selflessness of Schweitzer, and nonetheless the blessed legions of men and women whose job it is to protect and to save others, even at risk to themselves. And yet we are forever amazed at the opposite polarity: the dark ignorance and brutality that allows a person to sever the head from the body of another human being without pity or any feeling of identity. Surely such a monster is unnatural, inhuman.
Sadly, no. With our extreme potential on the side of heaven must attend its extreme opposite. Such is the nature of duality, the fundamental character of the perceptible universe, our intractable bewilderment in this regard all aside.
Misogyny
The roots of misogyny have long been an utter mystery to me. If men love their mothers, as surely they must, how can they come to hate the gender to which mothers belong? Of course, some may have been mistreated in childhood, and disseminate their justifiable anger to all women, albeit irrationally. But then there are entire cultures seemingly based on a distressing contempt of women, who are covered and segregated so as not to offend the tender and pure sensibilities of their male rulers. How strange this is, when ever since the evolution of sexual reproduction, the genders must come together to procreate, and the species flourishes to the point of exhausting the resources of the planet!
The solution to this mystery, I now believe, lies in my own essay, posted below in its entirety. Since the definition of life itself is reproduction, human behavior is governed fundamentally by the agenda of the germ cells. It reflects the extreme disparity between sperm and ova: the latter seeking to protect and nurture the few that are fertilized, out of the limited number available; the former driven to compete for reproductive rights with countless other germ cells, as ruthlessly as necessary. Translate that cellular behavior to the whole organism and can there be any doubt as to the basis of antagonism? Certainly the matter is more complicated, especially in a social species, but sadly with no natural affinity for nurturing - and superior muscle mass on average - men will see women as weak, thus contemptible.
How Many Flavors?
I have complained in these pages before about the phenomenon I call "proliferitis", the emergence of myriad varieties of multiple brands of any given consumer product diminishing the odds, ironically, of ever finding a particular item in a particular retail store, unless it is a mega-Wegman's, already an exhausting experience. Perhaps the root cause of this condition is global competition. Even at a national or local level, competition may breed this sort of thing; after all, if you are making and selling three flavors of yogurt, and your competitor comes up with five, you must keep up. Add any number of yogurt brands worldwide, and you may soon need to come up with forty-five flavors.
Another factor is novelty. No matter how satisfied your customers may be with the electric toothbrush you manufacture, to the extent of paying ten dollars each for new brush heads, when upstarts come along from the far corners of Earth to steal your business, you must think of something new. How about more powerful, oddly shaped brush heads that will not only clean ones teeth but destroy the gums they are supposed to protect?
Well, well. Into the global future we go, if toothless; at least there will be dozens of yogurt flavors from which to choose!
Econ 101.2
Now, as to the genius of Bill Gates, highly and perhaps strategically overrated, it was simply this: much like Walmart, to give away your product until you have eliminated any competition, at which point the consumer, the entire world when we reference Microsoft, is at your mercy. Thanks to this genius, and to the hubris of Apple in its dealings with IBM, the personal computer, the PC, was inflicted with an inferior operating system created over a weekend in the garage of a geek enlisted by Gates.
Years later, after it had become obvious that the Mac OS was far superior, Gates came up with Windows, a copycat and clearly an infringement; but by then he was so wealthy he could easily buy off any judge. Apple went into decline, until its rescue by a true genius, the late Steve Jobs, who unfortunately did not exercise the same acumen with respect to his own health.
To this day, Apple software is always more intuitive and user friendly than its complex and cranky Microsoft counterparts, with which most of the world, sadly, is still saddled.
Econ 101
Practitioners of the dismal science dither about what may be wrong with the economy - the wealth gap, low wages, health care costs. Leaders try to help - well some of them. Nowhere however, have I seen mention of a quite fundamental problem: the brightest people do not go into business, which instead lures only those not intelligent enough for the professions. The economic impact of stupid business people really needs to be studied.
Any consumer can think of countless examples; they abound, but just one will make the point. As successful as Starbucks is in taking over the world, how many decades did it take for them to realize that were they to offer warm pastries, they would have even more customers? A favorite of mine, however, is retail clothing. The end of the season, in temperate zones at least, will find a clothing store stuck with unseemly piles of large and extra large sizes. There will remain few medium and zero small garments. This circumstance obtains year after year, apparently without a single buyer stopping to consider the imbalance. Women are huge, are they not? Especially Americans. In menswear, the smallest inseam in a pair of pants is 29 inches. If a store happens to have, on a rare occasion, pants with the 28 inch inseam, these fly off the rack immediately. How puzzling this must be to the captains of the clothing industry! Where are all those short men coming from? Surely we must be witnessing an invasion of Bolivians!
I will not get into the case of that "genius" Bill Gates. Well maybe next week.
Gentlemen. Please.
Upon the now suspect report of rape at a fraternity at the University of Virginia, Richard Cohen wrote a column in the Washington Post. Of course it later turned out that the real outrage had more to do with shoddy, unprofessional journalism by Rolling Stone - well consider the source - but Cohen's remarks are still important. At the time I replied as follows:
I never fail to read your column in my morning newspaper, assured that you will say what needs to be said and what I myself would love to say, as for example your comments regarding rape. Surely the civilization is beyond redemption if you are "geezered" by stating that the first rule of true masculinity is to treat women with respect. Of course you are right. I am responding only to add certain reflections of my own on this troubling subject.
When a person has relative strength, as most men do, sufficient to harm those weaker than himself, such as women and children, he faces the moral challenge to choose when and why to exercise that capacity. There is no more beautiful being on this earth than the man who chooses righteously never to exploit his strength in such manner. He is the gentle man. We used to put those two words together, and it was every young boy's aspiration to enter those august ranks, to become a gentleman. The question of where we have gone wrong in raising boys is a complex and controversial one. But you have put your finger on the true crux of the matter, which is not really about laws and enforcement and punishment. It is a matter of the standards of behavior men have and hold among themselves. For illuminating that point, which has gone unremarked apparently for some generations, I am most grateful to you!
Real is Beautiful
My version of full frontal nudity is the rising sun smacking me full in the face as I take my walk of a winter morning. It is only at this season that one sees the sun at all, through the trees, and in summer dawn is much too early. Even now the sun often hides demurely behind a bank of clouds on the horizon as it comes up. So a clear morning in January when the solar brilliance fills the vastness of visual space, so that one must shield ones eyes even to see how it has turned the frosted lawns into fields of glistening diamonds, is an absolute sensuous thrill.
We regard the majesty of nature as beautiful, more so indeed than any representation of it by even the most skilled photographer or talented artist. A poem in this space, under The Carriage Lamp, just recently alluded to this curious tendency, that what we see as supremely beautiful is considered so because it is real. But the cryptic ending of that poem, "Duly Noted", that the equivalence of beauty with reality may reveal an unacceptable truth means simply this: that reality must be transcendent, even therefore the moon-faced Buddha. What we discern in the glories of nature is not beauty but Suchness.
One and the Same
By and large, people fail to understand that they do not need to be the same. They do not need to think alike, so long as they agree to disagree. Provided they are not forced to live together, they may exercise whatever personal eccentricities they please without bothering others. They could even consider regarding the variousness of humanity as wondrous, miraculous. They might enjoy the wide gradients of skin color, as long as the daughter doesn't take up with one of those people. For further thoughts on this subject, I refer readers to my essay, The Sexual Theory of Everything, now posted in full at the bottom of this page. Click on the title.
The topic is sadly current with civilization, i.e. France, under attack from the tribes. These conflicts are of course overlaid with political and historical complexity, but still they boil down to my first sentence: people fail to understand that they do not need to be the same. All sentient life, indeed all of perceived reality, is of one nature, but this oneness by no means translates into sameness. Paradoxically, the realization of oneness affords a much keener appreciation of duality, and of each dichotomy, the glorious distinctiveness of its polarities. Vive la difference!
Whipped
ISO: a nondairy whipped topping. To wit: I nearly passed out this morning. I awoke with a bad case of hives from a chronic dairy allergy, and no sooner had gotten out of bed then I felt dizzy, light headed and nauseous. Breaking out in a cold sweat, I staggered back to bed, where I slowly recovered.
If you have ever had this experience, you may share my wonderment at how tenuous consciousness really is. The slightest interruption of blood flow to the brain and one is out in seconds. As I lay waiting for my blood pressure to return, I reflected on the further miracle of the heart muscle continually pumping against gravity to get that blood to ones brain. Of course, over the millions of years that we have been bipedal, evolution has provided homo erectus with this capacity, so apparently the use of our two hands, with opposable thumbs, outweighed the risk of passing out.
It behooves, I daresay, to take good care of that hard working pump, and nonetheless to make good use of that miraculous brain while we still can. As for me, I am wondering if soy creamer would whip up?
Christmas Music
The music of the Christmas season - the real music that is, not the trumped up variety - is uncommonly emotional for anyone the least bit sensitive to such things. Of course, it was created to evoke in the listener whatever emotion he may share in common with the composer, music being the language of emotion. The musically educated will recognize the means employed: a peaceful beginning in the major key giving way to the relative minor, upon which the eyes well and the tears flow. Even the secular tunes play upon the poignance of Christmas nostalgia.
But in the religious music surely there is a resonance with the symbolism that may affect even the nonbeliever: the fragility of infancy; the beauty of parental love, human or divine; the eternal mysteries of human existence, which seem to confound us inexorably. We look to the heavens as always. We pine for God, for the love of God, and most especially for the capacity to feel that love. We look in the wrong direction. In our very essence, we are the love, wisdom, and power of that which we seek in supernatural agency.
OMG! No, really, children! "Fall on your knees! Hear the angel voices!"
Gender
I have every intention of writing a fictional biography of the late Jeremy Brett, the British actor who won renown as the quintessential Sherlock Holmes in the late eighties. His personal life is a fascinating story, in part because he was both bisexual and bipolar. The subject has me thinking about gender differences, and gender stereotypes, especially in modern America. For many generations, throughout the twentieth century in fact, caveman machismo became the image and the very definition of masculine, smothering and ultimately suffocating the softer potential that was once available to men. At the same time, the women's movement, fighting to shed feminine stereotypes, led to considerable confusion among women; and I would argue that we are still a long way from sorting this out.
We forgot that women can be hard and men can be soft, without crossing some imaginary line that we draw at random. Instead, if a young man takes on the care of his children, or shows gentleness and affection, he is regarded as "feminine"; and a like fate awaits the woman who becomes a world-class athlete. Jeremy Brett was a tall, strong, virile man, and he was also kind and gentle, true to his Quaker heritage, or some would say his "feminine side". To my mind, he embodied the fullest masculine potential, so much broader and richer than the machismo culture accepts.
Tribalism
What better time than Christmas to talk about tribalism, except for which Christians might be less reluctant to share such a lovely, innocent occasion with other faiths. I realize of course that most people in the civilized world, even those most obvious afflicted with it, believe that they have overcome primitive tribalism. Bring it up in conversation and eyes will roll. We have long since moved beyond small kinship groups. We travel the world easily, live far from relatives, and we are fine with friends and associates of other tribes. But, "I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one of them."
Perhaps even this perverse sentiment, long considered to be based on racial and cultural bias, is giving way, albeit with predictable backlash. Moreover tribes have been typically wont to interbreed, often coercively. Nonetheless, civilized people want to believe that we choose one another rationally, based on common interests, character and personality.
I wonder then, how we account for attraction, which tends to bypass the filter of reason. Are we attracted to the person who resembles us - the same stature, coloring of skin, hair, eyes? Or is it the urging of our primordial DNA? Might our brains have inherited a tribal archetype of the ideal mate? The idea is dangerously close to determinism, which can and has historically led us far astray; and yet surely there is something compelling in the eyes of that man or that woman. They are not merely blue or brown, but the same subtle shade of gray green, that I see in the mirror. N'cest pas?
www.
I have written before about the idea that the World Wide Web may be the early sign of a nervous system in the evolution of a social organism. It is a social network, with the terms net and web used interchangeably to describe the linking of minds. The analogy of mechanical with organic may be specious, but in these times it becomes compelling. Images, ideas, emotions, flicker through the world on electrical impulses at lightning speed in the same way they do within the individual brain.
Accepting this comparison then, we should look upon those hordes of people walking down the street with eyes affixed to some gadget or other in the palms of their hands as evolving nerve cells. Do they not communicate with one another in the same manner as dendrites, instantly, electrically, constantly? That line waiting uncommonly long outside the Apple Store for the first opportunity to purchase the latest uncommonly expensive device, consists of lowly but ambitious cells hoping thereby to join the elite - the nervous system - transformed by the stem cells of global commerce.
Special Gifts
I suspect that the average person considers all writers to be egocentric, their creative works being embarrassing evidence of conceit. For that matter any creative person falls prey to such thinking. I must confess that, under sincerely objective scrutiny, I have always thought of myself as special, different. But then, with the same objectivity, must every person who thinks himself special be wrong? To quote Holmes, who was not known for false modesty, "To the logician everything must be seen exactly as it is". Surely any person of above average merit in whatever arena is, for that very quality, able to recognize the fact, and with it his responsibility to use his gifts wisely. But there it is: the operative word is "gifts".
Unfortunately, the negative stereotype of creative people arises from the sad fact that many of them are egotistical, eager to broadcast their conviction that they are, personally, God's gift to lesser mortals; and these, devoid of humility, are always the ones in whom it would be most appropriate. No, no, the truly creative person, genius or not, will know that his gift is received, and will nurture it with humble gratitude in the hope that it may benefit others. We should hesitate at least to judge him for simply recognizing his relative ability.
Consciousness Redux
We naturally think of consciousness as life itself, and indeed look upon death with dread as the permanent loss of it. However, it occurs to me that our conscious minds are quite limited, in the same way as our senses. We may be conscious of anything just as we may see anything, but not everything. We have a conscious sense of but a small part of manifest reality, let alone the ultimate. The great depth and breadth of it escapes consciousness. But our hope lies in this: realization, i.e. to make real, to enter and to merge with all that consciousness cannot hold.
Look up, for example, and you are conscious of the blue sky with clouds drifting slowly across it. Look for very long and you realize you are not looking up but out, from a round planet swirled with cloud, fixed to its surface by the gravitational field resulting from its motion. And this is only the manifest reality, the glimmering of Form upon the transcendent Emptiness, two sides of one singular Ultimate Reality!
Book Makers
In the past few years, the publishing business, along with other traditional media, has been thrown into disarray by the internet. With the ascendence of ebooks and now "self publishing" services, not to mention Amazon and other online behemoths, large publishing houses have lost not only market share but also the power they always had to filter what was available to readers, to smother creativity and strangle young talent in the crib. Gone are the days when one sent out a carefully crafted query letter to editors and received back a demoralizing flurry of impersonal rejections. Long ago the point was reached where big publishers, never risking a cent of profit on the unknown entity, now produce only those books that they themselves solicit from authors who are sure to sell on name recognition alone. Small publishers sprang up to fill the void in niche markets, and now authors are in total revolt, publishing their own works as ebooks or resorting to self publishing websites, a burgeoning business.
And what of the fat cats? Perhaps hoping for a deathbed redemption, they are rushing to align with this self publishing wave offering the service through contractors. They have only themselves to blame for not knowing: the creative spirit will out!
Ritual
Anything that is uttered repeatedly tends to become meaningless over time. The one who goes about saying, "I love you", consistently sooner or later encounters an indifferent response, because,"You always say that." Indeed any sort of ritual bears the risk of this fate. Organized religions, for instance, that make a point of adhering to old forms eventually have a falling off of followers, though this may take generations. Historically, the disenchanted will flock to charismatic new leaders bent upon reviving spiritual zeal. Thus the Protestants, the Quakers; even Buddha broke away from his Hindu origins.
But is this numbing the inevitable effect of ritual? I think not, and I would cite the Japanese tea ceremony as evidence. The challenge in this very precise ritual, as in anything that is done or said repetitively, is to hold in ones mind the ultimate reality of change, which allows of no exact repetition. With practice one may pour the tea, or say the prayer, or hear "I love you" and never grow bored, though it helps to be Japanese.
Politics
It is election season, and ironically a frustrating time for the electorate, as no one seemingly is interested in listening to them. Candidates standing for office have their own ideas and agendas to put forward, which they do in silly, repetitive, mind-numbing ads. Besides even if they were inclined to be representative, it is not an easy matter to discern the collective will of the voters. Polls are biased; "town hall" gatherings are a minuscule sampling. Much easier simply to assure that your district incorporates only your own partisans, trash any opponent foolish enough to run against you in that purified place, and walk easily into office time and again, there to do just as you please, voters be damned!
But this mass market phenomenon is not confined to politics. The czars of fashion, some shadowy, obscure elite, determine what styles will be available to the multitudes, regardless of what those consumers may want. Should they fail to manipulate your desire - not for want of trying - they have the power to dictate what you can buy. It is easier than discerning your taste. Like the politician - why should he care what you think?
Commentators fret over the state of the economy, consumer confidence, and especially politics. No one dares point to the arrogant stupidity of the business or the political world, their contempt for the very classes to which they should be accountable.
Bar Harbor, Maine
My favorite place on the eastern seaboard of North America is Bar Harbor in the state of Maine. One needs to go that far north to escape the subtropical summers, and Mount Desert Island has the incomparable Acadia National Park. Overall, the place reminds me of home, and no jet lag.
I always stay at the Bar Harbor Inn, and would never betray that loyalty. It sits right on the Shore Path lining Frenchman Bay, and offers the graciousness of its century-plus history. Over the years I have come to know some faithful members of their staff, and some eventually began to recognize me, in that offhand Yankee manner, as a regular visitor. Tyler, for example, has been with the Inn forever, and seems to be indispensable to its smooth operation. When we meet the first topic is often the winter, always of interest in that latitude where the summer is so pleasant. Against reason, one imagines it might be always thus; but no, winter is harsh.
Last summer, Tyler was unusually talkative. His aged mother had passed away; and his car was totaled in an accident, in which, fortunately, he was unscathed - a bad year. A year later, having inherited his mother's house, situated next door to him, he has become a landlord, renting it out to an Indian doctor and his family. Good fortune for the island, since Indian professionals tend to be relatively accomplished. I just hope they like the winters!
Born of Worms
Surely in this dark time something must be said about the human capacity for evil, as every thoughtful person wonders anew about how such cruelty and barbarity can fulminate in others of his own species. Unfortunately for followers of Islam, it is a growing contingent of their co-religionists bringing this age-old question to the fore in their eager resurrection of ancient barbarism. How does a human being cut off the head of another of his own kind? What seed of humanity is missing from such an individual?
Granted that man's inhumanity to man is not unique to any sect or race nor to any time in human history and prehistory. The evolution of the human brain bequeaths it with extreme capacities, including unnatural behaviors unknown in other animal species; and yet despite our inclination toward mutual annihilation, we somehow survive and even prosper.
In this present case though, in Islamic radicals, smothering that seed of humanity, is their strange attitude toward women, who by nature must be their mothers. They cover their women, to the extent that the women resemble nothing so much as the pupa of some insect, or the prey of a spider, enrobed in silk, trapped in the web. There you have the answer then to the question of how these men can bring themselves to sever the head of another person - with a dull knife: they are born of a class of people whom they despise; they are born of worms.
The Vegetarian Diet
All creatures, in the Buddhist view, are naturally enlightened, including the so-called "lower" animals, those without the capacities of human consciousness. (Though what could be lower than an animal capable of beheading one of his own kind - only certain insects come to mind.) And it is the Buddhist compassion for all sentient beings that underlies the precept against killing them, not only other people but animals as well - hence the vegetarian diet, which nevertheless can be problematic culturally and economically in parts of the world. Nutritionally, it is difficult to get all the essential proteins that homo sapiens no longer can synthesize; yet one can do well as a vegetarian, with care. And of course modern people are by and large at some remove from the actual slaughter, which meat eaters insist can be done humanely.
But that is the very point, not the killing - all creatures will die - but the suffering, being the cause of it. Still the compassion of Buddha is both subtle and boundless, not clad in the iron of ideology; it extends not only to helpless animals used for food, but also to humans helpless in the grip of their karma.
A Closet Buddhist?
I have always held the heretical idea that Jesus was a closet Buddhist; indeed I am privy to a Tibetan legend that he was a bodhisattva who entered an ill-fated manifestation, with mixed results. His message was Buddhist in essence, and badly misunderstood, causing me to wonder whether this errant bodhisattva might have appeared subsequently to other Christians, perhaps in the attempt at clarification.
For example, the Church of Latter Day Saints, founded upon a vision of the angel Moroni: was it bad moonshine or a visit from Jesus? But surely the most likely evidence of this possibility occurred to George Fox in the middle of England in the middle of the seventeenth century. It was upon his revelation that the Society of Friends was founded. The basic Quaker principles, which have survived centuries of sectarian schism, are to my mind the closest Christianity has come the true Path. Their tolerance and temperance, pacifism and quiet worship, are suggestive of Buddhist precepts and practice.
Chiefly though, Fox's inspiration that every person may have within himself a direct, intimate connection to the wisdom, love, and strength of God, compares to Buddha's reassurance that we each have the potential for enlightenment. The Quakers remained theist of course, and Fox believed it was Christ he saw. But might it have been that erstwhile bodhisattva speaking to a receptive soul to set the record straight?
Throughout the centuries, true to Fox's belief, the Quakers have maintained that any authentic revelation would adhere to scripture. Only in modern times have they accepted the notion that the Almighty might wish to reveal something more. Have they finally gotten the message?
Live and Learn
How long does it take us to learn? How many times saying, "I should have known"? When attempting to fly anywhere in the United States on a commercial airliner, one should surely know by now that the most anyone can say, even in the best of circumstances, is that one plans to take a given flight, affording only the possibility of arriving at a given destination at the scheduled time. The system is so precarious that a disruption on any one of its spaghetti legs brings total collapse, or near to it.
But as in any devolving process, generations pass unaware of the slow degradation. Young people take for granted the need to sleep on airport floors, cold and starving, or to be bounced from one city to another like billiard balls in order to finally land days later at their intended destination. They have no recollection of air travel before deregulation, when only severe weather might stop a flight. There were planes to spare for other exigencies.
Competition has been good for the industry - right? Air travel has been democratized, which is laudable - right? Surely the USA will be wealthy enough to maintain a state-of-the-art air traffic control system, no matter by how many tens of thousands of flights it is eventually encumbered - right? Personally, I find it ironic that in the capital city, at the very airport now named for Ronald Reagan, people may be found standing in exhausting queues or indeed lying on the floor in their feeble attempts at a most uncertain mode of "travel".
Summer Color
Before summer slips completely from memory, I must observe that it is indeed a colorful season, especially if there is ample rain. As I enjoy the burgeoning petunias here in the village, in their several colors and myriad shades, I am ruminating about color itself - the bending of light in infinite refractions. Pure light may be said to encompass this infinite variety, while itself exhibiting only purity.
With this thought winding though my mind, an analogy forms with all of reality. We perceive reality in infinite forms - fantastic, miraculous forms - whether as sight, sound, smell, touch; but our consciousness remains ignorant of their ultimate nature. This ignorance is the prism bending ultimate reality into myriad forms.
When you see color, you also see the pure light of its true nature; likewise when you perceive reality, you perceive simultaneously its ultimate essence of oneness. To hold this awareness is a hard but vital practice. The colors of summer are a joy to behold; much greater is the joy of that pure, infinite light that transcends them - and you are already looking at it!
It has been the common belief for some generations now that young people do not appreciate advice, unsolicited or otherwise, particularly from their elders, in whom there can reside no conceivable relevance, at least in their view. Older and wiser people are thereby inhibited from offering their wisdom and experience lest they be seen as foolish or vainglorious, instead forced to bear silent witness to the most obvious mistakes and poor decisions.
There are, after all, in the course of a human life, eternal shoals to be navigated: whom to marry and when; by what means to earn an honest and decent living; whether to have children; and if one does, how to deal with them over the decades of their development. Parenthood alone produces a plethora of tangled issues. Of course these are individual matters upon which the ultimate decision must be personal. Indeed there are those who can only learn by making a mistake, and some so rigid they fail to learn even then. Yet it is ironic to observe, in these years since our elders have been constrained from speaking up, how often we may find ourselves reflecting, "Why did no one tell me this? If only I had known!"
And so parents, grandparents, please tell the youngsters what you feel they will need to know. They will appear to ignore you, and you will feel old and silly; but trust me, in years to come they will remember what you once said - "So this is what he meant!"
For the Birds
My post of two weeks ago observed the increasing urbanization of the world's population and the unfriendliness of this urban environment. Cities are not only rugged but unnatural, exacerbating the already yawning gap between humans and all other life forms, aside from their pets.What brings this to my mind is the nesting season. City dwellers have a tendency to assign a certain degree of beneficence to the natural world, especially in the spring. They imagine that the birds pair off at this time, build their nests, raise their young, and thrive in perpetuity: the geese by the closest runoff pond; sparrows in the eaves of shops; wrens in the housing of an unused exhaust fan, and so on. Yet anyone who has had the opportunity and the inclination to observe nature closely over some period of years can easily disabuse them of their naiveté.
It is in fact very problematic for birds to raise their young to adulthood. Goslings become dinner for any turtle in the pond; eggs of any kind are a delicious breakfast for the likes of raccoons, snakes, and foxes. Those nestlings that survive long enough to fledge are easy prey for a stray or feral cat waiting under the tree; and this is not even to mention competition with other birds for nest sites, and hawks who also have young to feed.
But don't be glum, children. Here is your take-away: should you chance to see a parade of goslings marching behind their mother, baby sparrows flapping their wings to be fed, or fledgling cardinals taking their first awkward flight out of the nest, be advised that you are witnessing no small miracle!
Discrimination Redux
When my friend Anna read the post on discrimination, she took me to task, understandably, her point being that in Buddhist practice we endeavor to transcend the discrimination of dichotomy. Indeed the extreme polarities we come to experience by so discriminating are viewed as a root source of human misery. But this is a complex matter, one of several such that make Buddhism difficult for logical people.
We are configured by evolution to perceive and to discriminate, these capacities honed by the blade of natural selection. It is true that the unitary nature, the oneness, of our perceptions is their ultimate essence, just as pure light is the essence of a rainbow; but it behooves us to discriminate red from green at a stoplight. As my friend well knows, it is our bodily configuration that supports the very consciousness which makes available to us any insight into the ultimate. In maintaining it, we should be discriminating.
Cities
I railed again a few weeks ago about the tendency of humans to over populate, inducing the desperation of crowding. In modern times, contributing dangerously to this condition, is urbanization. Not only are there more people than ever in the many hundreds of millions of years of the history and prehistory of the species, but they live ever closer together. These urban environments, whether old or new, are not for the faint of heart. Indeed, they may be safely navigated only by the hearty, able-bodied, and fit, i.e. the young. They are noisy, polluted, and despite the promise of having all necessary services close at hand, sprawling. To be sure, in the best of them, one can hop on a train and ride to the farther end of the metropolis, and then walk - and walk and walk.
This phenomenon is especially sad given the aging of populations, and the pathos is augmented by this peculiar observation: the young, and even people in their middle years, regard old age as a condition far removed from them, as if occurring only in some other species. They themselves will certainly never incur the crippling disability of degeneration, and there is the rub. Individuals age and die, replaced by individuals who all along considered themselves immortal, while they in turn are moved aside by the hail and hearty, destined, they firmly believe, to be ever so. When time overtakes them, we can only hope that Africa will continue to bestow her dark angels to wheel them through the congestion.
Mad Men
The first half of the twentieth century was a time of considerable upheaval, when it became normal for each generation to rebel against the last - the "generation gap" as it came to be called; and no generation was more rebellious than the post-war cohort, known as the Baby Boom. Coming of age in the decade of the sixties, they threw over all the traces. They rebelled against the draft, against race and gender discrimination, and rejected absolutely every cultural vestige of prior generations. Gone were the clothing styles of the forties and fifties, the uniform of the "gray flannel suit" replaced with a new one - jeans, tee shirts, gym shoes. Then armed with oral contraception, they tossed aside the old sexual morality as well, allowing themselves any and all indulgence, including recreational drugs.
But now the most curious thing about this generation: neither their children nor today their grandchildren have rebelled against them. To the contrary, Boomers have reeled watching subsequent generations taking their lead to bizarre and destructive extremes. Free love? Date rape, binge drinking. Marijuana? Heroin. Hard rock? Gangsta rap. And all still in the uniform - jeans, tee shirts, gym shoes - now virtually planetary.
The popular cable series "Mad Men", now having run its course, depicted the culture of Madison Avenue prior to the sixties. How alien it must have seemed to young people to see the realistic portrayal of a way of life to which they have been kept assiduously oblivious. Do you see children? You can change the world. Your grandparents did.
Discrimination
The word "discrimination" fell into considerable disrepute back in the 1960's through its persistent and now ironclad association with racial discrimination. Of course, in the immortal words of the Reverend, an individual should be judged on the "content of his character" and not the color of his skin. This precept is morally just, if difficult in execution, given the subconscious tribal instincts of our species. But an equally unfortunate aspect of human nature is to take things to extremes, to ride the pendulum of history from one far height to the other. So today even innocent or necessary acts of discrimination may be frowned upon. Oh, we are allowed to discriminate among different vintages of wine or between restaurants, though we will use another term. But we are not permitted, for example, to discriminate "Ukrainian rebels" from invading Russians; or in another instance, we are doubtless by now without the ability to discriminate "news" from propaganda.
The ability to be discriminating was once not long ago regarded as a strength. It means to judge a thing on its relevant merits; a candidate for a job would be judged on his competency, irrespective of race. And a modern civilized society would be able to recognize its friends by their shared values: tolerance, justice, protection of the weak, rights of minorities. Like the Kurdish people, as I read, standing alone in a sea of barbarity. But who are we to judge? Who must we be?
Desperation
The most unfortunate aspect of human history is that the young people do not know it, and so it cycles. The young today, for example, are accustomed to twelve lane highways, camping on airport floors, standing in line all night at the Apple Store - and not for apples. The day when four lanes made a "super" highway is outside of their experience. The human population climbs gradually, albeit exponentially, long ago having surpassed past levels; so the stress is applied slowly, as to a slowly boiling pot, unremarked except by the old fogies.
The cardinal sign, though, that overcrowding is boiling us alive is desperation, particularly from the most populous regions of the earth. When someone in Mumbai persists in calling you day after day begging to clean your air ducts, and admitting that he is paid for every call he makes, regardless of whether or not you succumb, he is clearly desperate to survive. Great numbers of people are unneeded, even for tasks they were once allowed - agriculture, pumping gas, building pyramids. It is no surprise that political unrest arises in the most crowded areas.
But there are thresholds. What always breaks the cycle in the history of human civilization is war, great war. It is the only way we control our numbers, the discipline of war.
Lucky Dog
I have not taken a poll nor conducted a survey, but I have it on the authority of my old friend, Anna, who has been married for almost half a century, and was once herself a young woman, that many approach marriage with the dream that they will ever after have someone who will sleep with them through the night. She bases this observation on a life-long devotion to advice columns. In discussion, we have concurred that this may indeed hold true throughout the reproductive years - reference my essay on the subject here on the blog - or if the woman marries a Frenchman.
As time goes on and passions run their natural course, too many disillusioned and disappointed wives will begin searching, in vain, for a reliable bed partner. The wiser ones will get a cat. Anna once had a dear old tabby who would stay on the next pillow at night, at least long enough for her to fall asleep. But cats are solitary animals and nocturnal besides; and so my old friend has concluded that young women need to know this starting out: the only creature one may count on to be with you through the night, every night, is a dog - just choose a breed that is not prone to snoring.
Inertia
Life is full of these ironies; I am known for harping on this fact. We know, for example, that things change constantly; we are well persuaded of that. The weather alone is proof, ones face in the mirror, aging at various rates. Styles of clothing change, or cars, prices change. Modern technology changes at breakneck speed, leaving whole sectors of the economy in ruins.
How then to account for inertia? We often come upon situations in life that cry out for change. We think that surely such a condition cannot go on much longer; then time and again we witness this status quo year after year, unchanging, endless, inert. It could be an abusive relationship, addictive behavior, a frail elderly person living in squalor, tribal warfare wherever humans populate. Even in nature there are examples: an old tree, damaged by lightning, riddled with insects, pecked by woodpeckers, but living on; or a shrub browsed by over-populous deer to within a hair's breadth of its twigs, still putting out foliage season after season.
Those of us suffering with untreated obsessive-compulsive disorder may easily become frustrated by such irony, but we must take some comfort in the second law of thermodynamics - entropy - captured in the immortal words of John Dunne: The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.
Review
A first for the blog, but I really must review a book I am reading entitled At the Edge of Uncertainty, by the physicist and science writer, Michael Brooks. Not since The Tao of Physics in 1975 by another physicist, Fritjof Kapra, have the parallels between modern science and the ancient religions of Asia been rendered so clear, even when not recognized. Chapter by chapter, Brooks looks at the cutting edge of various scientific disciplines, as new research sends them beyond what we once believed was certainty. He writes engagingly, and does a good job of explaining these mysteries for a lay readership.
Here is what he comes up with: "...the sense of self is like a concept... it's an idea in your brain"; "our universe is ephemeral, a ghostly illusion... a hologram"; "there are issues of time at play here". He does fall prey in the end to the inescapable reductionism of science: "the neuronal firings and consciousness are inseparable... they are just one thing". Thus to science we are nothing special. But we know better, because ultimate reality cannot be explained from without. Nevertheless, this book had a good go at it. Fascinating!
Hand Me Down My Walkin' Cane
The degree to which times may change over generations is extreme and accelerating. Examples abound, but I offer just one as indicative, and that is the walking cane. Up until the early twentieth century no proper gentleman would leave home without this accessory. Ladies would often carry one as well, and they could be quite ornate, with for example a curved handle in silver or one carved of ivory or wood in the shape of a horse head, rabbit or hawk. The cane might also conceal a weapon such as a sword or a derringer, or it might hide a flask of whiskey. Of course times were harsher then, city streets tending to be unpaved and muddy; a neighborhood might be known for ruffians. So one can imagine a stick could often be helpful.
Today we are more civil; presumably, no one needs a stick. Indeed, even the old and infirm, who can barely stand, strenuously reject the support of a cane, loathe to be seen as old or infirm. Just the other day I witnessed an old man trip on the curb and fall flat, striking his forehead on the concrete. He was bleeding from the abrasion as his daughter brought up the car and hauled him off to hospital.
I have acquired a few walking sticks, which I now have occasion to use when arthritis in my back acts up. For that matter, I always carry one on my walks, to fend off any dog that may have broken free of his invisible fence. But should any of my friends see me using one, I am accosted with bewilderment and chagrin, bordering on horror - "Grey! A cane?!"
Imagine That
Many things in this life, especially in modern times, are hard to imagine. It is hard to imagine, for example, how a creature with no inhibition against killing its own kind, even in mass numbers, can come to over-populate the planet; or how a rich and powerful country can allow itself to become dependent on computer systems that are fragile at best and inimical at worst. But there is one thing that is not just hard to imagine, but beyond the capacity of human imagination; and this is most unfortunate because it lies at the core misery of the human condition. It is timelessness. It is impossible to imagine, even though it is experienced in every sentient moment; and without the realization of this fundamental truth, we fall prey to the dread and the grief of our individual mortality.
Time is an illusion created by the motion of things in relation to other things: the hands of a clock in relation to its face; the movement of stars and planets in relation to each other. To speak of such things, we need this illusion. Timelessness then is not eternity; it is not an abundance of something that does not exist. It is the state of its nonexistence. Unimaginable!
Nesting Time
It is the lengthening of day, the angle of sunlight, that signals spring in the avian realm and sets the birds to their urgent work of the nesting season, ignoring late snow or frigid temperatures. It begins with the stentorian call of the male cardinal, proclaiming his territorial imperative to warn off interlopers. The cavity nesting birds are most interesting, since like humans they compete for limited housing opportunities of varying quality. Adequate nest boxes are rare, leaving whatever cavities have occurred in old or dead trees.
The chickadee nests early, so he and his mate may use a nest box and be done raising a brood before other species begin. The wren is the most aggressive, filling every box or tree hole with his twigs, thereby preempting others. But the quiet, pacifist bluebirds are by far the most endearing and sympathetic of the cavity nesters. With great care they go about assembling a soft bed of dry grasses inside a nest box or cavity, despite great and serious threats: that their young may be smothered by the twigs of a compulsive wren, or pecked to death by the sharp beak of a nuthatch.
Forget the "mustard seed"; oh, to have the faith of a bluebird!
************
Control Yourself
"Why let your body control your mind? Let your mind control your body!" Thus spoke an old zen master long ago, as I have read. But is it really possible for the mind to control the body? After all, our autonomic nervous system regulates much of the body's function without conscious awareness: heart, lungs, core temperature. Even our behavior has come to seem suspiciously predestined by the body's inheritance, as with addictive propensities.
Yet concentration practiced in zen meditation is indeed credited with prodigious feats, in the martial arts as an example, or the zen of archery as another - spontaneous accuracy without taking aim. So here the mind is controlling the body, but it is not the conscious mind, which as I observed controls almost nothing; neither is it the mind referred to by the old master. The mind that has the potential of control over the body - to an astonishing degree - is accessible only through the difficult exercise of toning down the noise of consciousness.
Polarity
The perceptible universe of which we are consciously aware during our lifetimes is a dichotomous realm, beginning with the very symmetry of our bodies. We accept that with one side of a dichotomy must go the other: left and right; hot and cold; light and dark, ad infinitum. Moreover with each dichotomy there are extreme opposite poles: the cold of deep space versus the surface of the sun; the dryness of a desert versus the wetness of an ocean. We know and cannot deny these realities.
Remarkable therefore is our incredulity concerning our own kind. There can be no doubt that our species, relatively freed of instinct and endowed with a superior brain that is eminently adaptable and adept at learning, has produced extreme examples of intelligence, creativity, even compassion: the profound insights of Einstein; the prodigious invention of Bach; the selflessness of Schweitzer, and nonetheless the blessed legions of men and women whose job it is to protect and to save others, even at risk to themselves. And yet we are forever amazed at the opposite polarity: the dark ignorance and brutality that allows a person to sever the head from the body of another human being without pity or any feeling of identity. Surely such a monster is unnatural, inhuman.
Sadly, no. With our extreme potential on the side of heaven must attend its extreme opposite. Such is the nature of duality, the fundamental character of the perceptible universe, our intractable bewilderment in this regard all aside.
Misogyny
The roots of misogyny have long been an utter mystery to me. If men love their mothers, as surely they must, how can they come to hate the gender to which mothers belong? Of course, some may have been mistreated in childhood, and disseminate their justifiable anger to all women, albeit irrationally. But then there are entire cultures seemingly based on a distressing contempt of women, who are covered and segregated so as not to offend the tender and pure sensibilities of their male rulers. How strange this is, when ever since the evolution of sexual reproduction, the genders must come together to procreate, and the species flourishes to the point of exhausting the resources of the planet!
The solution to this mystery, I now believe, lies in my own essay, posted below in its entirety. Since the definition of life itself is reproduction, human behavior is governed fundamentally by the agenda of the germ cells. It reflects the extreme disparity between sperm and ova: the latter seeking to protect and nurture the few that are fertilized, out of the limited number available; the former driven to compete for reproductive rights with countless other germ cells, as ruthlessly as necessary. Translate that cellular behavior to the whole organism and can there be any doubt as to the basis of antagonism? Certainly the matter is more complicated, especially in a social species, but sadly with no natural affinity for nurturing - and superior muscle mass on average - men will see women as weak, thus contemptible.
How Many Flavors?
I have complained in these pages before about the phenomenon I call "proliferitis", the emergence of myriad varieties of multiple brands of any given consumer product diminishing the odds, ironically, of ever finding a particular item in a particular retail store, unless it is a mega-Wegman's, already an exhausting experience. Perhaps the root cause of this condition is global competition. Even at a national or local level, competition may breed this sort of thing; after all, if you are making and selling three flavors of yogurt, and your competitor comes up with five, you must keep up. Add any number of yogurt brands worldwide, and you may soon need to come up with forty-five flavors.
Another factor is novelty. No matter how satisfied your customers may be with the electric toothbrush you manufacture, to the extent of paying ten dollars each for new brush heads, when upstarts come along from the far corners of Earth to steal your business, you must think of something new. How about more powerful, oddly shaped brush heads that will not only clean ones teeth but destroy the gums they are supposed to protect?
Well, well. Into the global future we go, if toothless; at least there will be dozens of yogurt flavors from which to choose!
Econ 101.2
Now, as to the genius of Bill Gates, highly and perhaps strategically overrated, it was simply this: much like Walmart, to give away your product until you have eliminated any competition, at which point the consumer, the entire world when we reference Microsoft, is at your mercy. Thanks to this genius, and to the hubris of Apple in its dealings with IBM, the personal computer, the PC, was inflicted with an inferior operating system created over a weekend in the garage of a geek enlisted by Gates.
Years later, after it had become obvious that the Mac OS was far superior, Gates came up with Windows, a copycat and clearly an infringement; but by then he was so wealthy he could easily buy off any judge. Apple went into decline, until its rescue by a true genius, the late Steve Jobs, who unfortunately did not exercise the same acumen with respect to his own health.
To this day, Apple software is always more intuitive and user friendly than its complex and cranky Microsoft counterparts, with which most of the world, sadly, is still saddled.
Econ 101
Practitioners of the dismal science dither about what may be wrong with the economy - the wealth gap, low wages, health care costs. Leaders try to help - well some of them. Nowhere however, have I seen mention of a quite fundamental problem: the brightest people do not go into business, which instead lures only those not intelligent enough for the professions. The economic impact of stupid business people really needs to be studied.
Any consumer can think of countless examples; they abound, but just one will make the point. As successful as Starbucks is in taking over the world, how many decades did it take for them to realize that were they to offer warm pastries, they would have even more customers? A favorite of mine, however, is retail clothing. The end of the season, in temperate zones at least, will find a clothing store stuck with unseemly piles of large and extra large sizes. There will remain few medium and zero small garments. This circumstance obtains year after year, apparently without a single buyer stopping to consider the imbalance. Women are huge, are they not? Especially Americans. In menswear, the smallest inseam in a pair of pants is 29 inches. If a store happens to have, on a rare occasion, pants with the 28 inch inseam, these fly off the rack immediately. How puzzling this must be to the captains of the clothing industry! Where are all those short men coming from? Surely we must be witnessing an invasion of Bolivians!
I will not get into the case of that "genius" Bill Gates. Well maybe next week.
Gentlemen. Please.
Upon the now suspect report of rape at a fraternity at the University of Virginia, Richard Cohen wrote a column in the Washington Post. Of course it later turned out that the real outrage had more to do with shoddy, unprofessional journalism by Rolling Stone - well consider the source - but Cohen's remarks are still important. At the time I replied as follows:
I never fail to read your column in my morning newspaper, assured that you will say what needs to be said and what I myself would love to say, as for example your comments regarding rape. Surely the civilization is beyond redemption if you are "geezered" by stating that the first rule of true masculinity is to treat women with respect. Of course you are right. I am responding only to add certain reflections of my own on this troubling subject.
When a person has relative strength, as most men do, sufficient to harm those weaker than himself, such as women and children, he faces the moral challenge to choose when and why to exercise that capacity. There is no more beautiful being on this earth than the man who chooses righteously never to exploit his strength in such manner. He is the gentle man. We used to put those two words together, and it was every young boy's aspiration to enter those august ranks, to become a gentleman. The question of where we have gone wrong in raising boys is a complex and controversial one. But you have put your finger on the true crux of the matter, which is not really about laws and enforcement and punishment. It is a matter of the standards of behavior men have and hold among themselves. For illuminating that point, which has gone unremarked apparently for some generations, I am most grateful to you!
Real is Beautiful
My version of full frontal nudity is the rising sun smacking me full in the face as I take my walk of a winter morning. It is only at this season that one sees the sun at all, through the trees, and in summer dawn is much too early. Even now the sun often hides demurely behind a bank of clouds on the horizon as it comes up. So a clear morning in January when the solar brilliance fills the vastness of visual space, so that one must shield ones eyes even to see how it has turned the frosted lawns into fields of glistening diamonds, is an absolute sensuous thrill.
We regard the majesty of nature as beautiful, more so indeed than any representation of it by even the most skilled photographer or talented artist. A poem in this space, under The Carriage Lamp, just recently alluded to this curious tendency, that what we see as supremely beautiful is considered so because it is real. But the cryptic ending of that poem, "Duly Noted", that the equivalence of beauty with reality may reveal an unacceptable truth means simply this: that reality must be transcendent, even therefore the moon-faced Buddha. What we discern in the glories of nature is not beauty but Suchness.
One and the Same
By and large, people fail to understand that they do not need to be the same. They do not need to think alike, so long as they agree to disagree. Provided they are not forced to live together, they may exercise whatever personal eccentricities they please without bothering others. They could even consider regarding the variousness of humanity as wondrous, miraculous. They might enjoy the wide gradients of skin color, as long as the daughter doesn't take up with one of those people. For further thoughts on this subject, I refer readers to my essay, The Sexual Theory of Everything, now posted in full at the bottom of this page. Click on the title.
The topic is sadly current with civilization, i.e. France, under attack from the tribes. These conflicts are of course overlaid with political and historical complexity, but still they boil down to my first sentence: people fail to understand that they do not need to be the same. All sentient life, indeed all of perceived reality, is of one nature, but this oneness by no means translates into sameness. Paradoxically, the realization of oneness affords a much keener appreciation of duality, and of each dichotomy, the glorious distinctiveness of its polarities. Vive la difference!
Whipped
ISO: a nondairy whipped topping. To wit: I nearly passed out this morning. I awoke with a bad case of hives from a chronic dairy allergy, and no sooner had gotten out of bed then I felt dizzy, light headed and nauseous. Breaking out in a cold sweat, I staggered back to bed, where I slowly recovered.
If you have ever had this experience, you may share my wonderment at how tenuous consciousness really is. The slightest interruption of blood flow to the brain and one is out in seconds. As I lay waiting for my blood pressure to return, I reflected on the further miracle of the heart muscle continually pumping against gravity to get that blood to ones brain. Of course, over the millions of years that we have been bipedal, evolution has provided homo erectus with this capacity, so apparently the use of our two hands, with opposable thumbs, outweighed the risk of passing out.
It behooves, I daresay, to take good care of that hard working pump, and nonetheless to make good use of that miraculous brain while we still can. As for me, I am wondering if soy creamer would whip up?
Christmas Music
The music of the Christmas season - the real music that is, not the trumped up variety - is uncommonly emotional for anyone the least bit sensitive to such things. Of course, it was created to evoke in the listener whatever emotion he may share in common with the composer, music being the language of emotion. The musically educated will recognize the means employed: a peaceful beginning in the major key giving way to the relative minor, upon which the eyes well and the tears flow. Even the secular tunes play upon the poignance of Christmas nostalgia.
But in the religious music surely there is a resonance with the symbolism that may affect even the nonbeliever: the fragility of infancy; the beauty of parental love, human or divine; the eternal mysteries of human existence, which seem to confound us inexorably. We look to the heavens as always. We pine for God, for the love of God, and most especially for the capacity to feel that love. We look in the wrong direction. In our very essence, we are the love, wisdom, and power of that which we seek in supernatural agency.
OMG! No, really, children! "Fall on your knees! Hear the angel voices!"
Gender
I have every intention of writing a fictional biography of the late Jeremy Brett, the British actor who won renown as the quintessential Sherlock Holmes in the late eighties. His personal life is a fascinating story, in part because he was both bisexual and bipolar. The subject has me thinking about gender differences, and gender stereotypes, especially in modern America. For many generations, throughout the twentieth century in fact, caveman machismo became the image and the very definition of masculine, smothering and ultimately suffocating the softer potential that was once available to men. At the same time, the women's movement, fighting to shed feminine stereotypes, led to considerable confusion among women; and I would argue that we are still a long way from sorting this out.
We forgot that women can be hard and men can be soft, without crossing some imaginary line that we draw at random. Instead, if a young man takes on the care of his children, or shows gentleness and affection, he is regarded as "feminine"; and a like fate awaits the woman who becomes a world-class athlete. Jeremy Brett was a tall, strong, virile man, and he was also kind and gentle, true to his Quaker heritage, or some would say his "feminine side". To my mind, he embodied the fullest masculine potential, so much broader and richer than the machismo culture accepts.
Tribalism
What better time than Christmas to talk about tribalism, except for which Christians might be less reluctant to share such a lovely, innocent occasion with other faiths. I realize of course that most people in the civilized world, even those most obvious afflicted with it, believe that they have overcome primitive tribalism. Bring it up in conversation and eyes will roll. We have long since moved beyond small kinship groups. We travel the world easily, live far from relatives, and we are fine with friends and associates of other tribes. But, "I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one of them."
Perhaps even this perverse sentiment, long considered to be based on racial and cultural bias, is giving way, albeit with predictable backlash. Moreover tribes have been typically wont to interbreed, often coercively. Nonetheless, civilized people want to believe that we choose one another rationally, based on common interests, character and personality.
I wonder then, how we account for attraction, which tends to bypass the filter of reason. Are we attracted to the person who resembles us - the same stature, coloring of skin, hair, eyes? Or is it the urging of our primordial DNA? Might our brains have inherited a tribal archetype of the ideal mate? The idea is dangerously close to determinism, which can and has historically led us far astray; and yet surely there is something compelling in the eyes of that man or that woman. They are not merely blue or brown, but the same subtle shade of gray green, that I see in the mirror. N'cest pas?
www.
I have written before about the idea that the World Wide Web may be the early sign of a nervous system in the evolution of a social organism. It is a social network, with the terms net and web used interchangeably to describe the linking of minds. The analogy of mechanical with organic may be specious, but in these times it becomes compelling. Images, ideas, emotions, flicker through the world on electrical impulses at lightning speed in the same way they do within the individual brain.
Accepting this comparison then, we should look upon those hordes of people walking down the street with eyes affixed to some gadget or other in the palms of their hands as evolving nerve cells. Do they not communicate with one another in the same manner as dendrites, instantly, electrically, constantly? That line waiting uncommonly long outside the Apple Store for the first opportunity to purchase the latest uncommonly expensive device, consists of lowly but ambitious cells hoping thereby to join the elite - the nervous system - transformed by the stem cells of global commerce.
Special Gifts
I suspect that the average person considers all writers to be egocentric, their creative works being embarrassing evidence of conceit. For that matter any creative person falls prey to such thinking. I must confess that, under sincerely objective scrutiny, I have always thought of myself as special, different. But then, with the same objectivity, must every person who thinks himself special be wrong? To quote Holmes, who was not known for false modesty, "To the logician everything must be seen exactly as it is". Surely any person of above average merit in whatever arena is, for that very quality, able to recognize the fact, and with it his responsibility to use his gifts wisely. But there it is: the operative word is "gifts".
Unfortunately, the negative stereotype of creative people arises from the sad fact that many of them are egotistical, eager to broadcast their conviction that they are, personally, God's gift to lesser mortals; and these, devoid of humility, are always the ones in whom it would be most appropriate. No, no, the truly creative person, genius or not, will know that his gift is received, and will nurture it with humble gratitude in the hope that it may benefit others. We should hesitate at least to judge him for simply recognizing his relative ability.
Consciousness Redux
We naturally think of consciousness as life itself, and indeed look upon death with dread as the permanent loss of it. However, it occurs to me that our conscious minds are quite limited, in the same way as our senses. We may be conscious of anything just as we may see anything, but not everything. We have a conscious sense of but a small part of manifest reality, let alone the ultimate. The great depth and breadth of it escapes consciousness. But our hope lies in this: realization, i.e. to make real, to enter and to merge with all that consciousness cannot hold.
Look up, for example, and you are conscious of the blue sky with clouds drifting slowly across it. Look for very long and you realize you are not looking up but out, from a round planet swirled with cloud, fixed to its surface by the gravitational field resulting from its motion. And this is only the manifest reality, the glimmering of Form upon the transcendent Emptiness, two sides of one singular Ultimate Reality!
Book Makers
In the past few years, the publishing business, along with other traditional media, has been thrown into disarray by the internet. With the ascendence of ebooks and now "self publishing" services, not to mention Amazon and other online behemoths, large publishing houses have lost not only market share but also the power they always had to filter what was available to readers, to smother creativity and strangle young talent in the crib. Gone are the days when one sent out a carefully crafted query letter to editors and received back a demoralizing flurry of impersonal rejections. Long ago the point was reached where big publishers, never risking a cent of profit on the unknown entity, now produce only those books that they themselves solicit from authors who are sure to sell on name recognition alone. Small publishers sprang up to fill the void in niche markets, and now authors are in total revolt, publishing their own works as ebooks or resorting to self publishing websites, a burgeoning business.
And what of the fat cats? Perhaps hoping for a deathbed redemption, they are rushing to align with this self publishing wave offering the service through contractors. They have only themselves to blame for not knowing: the creative spirit will out!
Ritual
Anything that is uttered repeatedly tends to become meaningless over time. The one who goes about saying, "I love you", consistently sooner or later encounters an indifferent response, because,"You always say that." Indeed any sort of ritual bears the risk of this fate. Organized religions, for instance, that make a point of adhering to old forms eventually have a falling off of followers, though this may take generations. Historically, the disenchanted will flock to charismatic new leaders bent upon reviving spiritual zeal. Thus the Protestants, the Quakers; even Buddha broke away from his Hindu origins.
But is this numbing the inevitable effect of ritual? I think not, and I would cite the Japanese tea ceremony as evidence. The challenge in this very precise ritual, as in anything that is done or said repetitively, is to hold in ones mind the ultimate reality of change, which allows of no exact repetition. With practice one may pour the tea, or say the prayer, or hear "I love you" and never grow bored, though it helps to be Japanese.
Politics
It is election season, and ironically a frustrating time for the electorate, as no one seemingly is interested in listening to them. Candidates standing for office have their own ideas and agendas to put forward, which they do in silly, repetitive, mind-numbing ads. Besides even if they were inclined to be representative, it is not an easy matter to discern the collective will of the voters. Polls are biased; "town hall" gatherings are a minuscule sampling. Much easier simply to assure that your district incorporates only your own partisans, trash any opponent foolish enough to run against you in that purified place, and walk easily into office time and again, there to do just as you please, voters be damned!
But this mass market phenomenon is not confined to politics. The czars of fashion, some shadowy, obscure elite, determine what styles will be available to the multitudes, regardless of what those consumers may want. Should they fail to manipulate your desire - not for want of trying - they have the power to dictate what you can buy. It is easier than discerning your taste. Like the politician - why should he care what you think?
Commentators fret over the state of the economy, consumer confidence, and especially politics. No one dares point to the arrogant stupidity of the business or the political world, their contempt for the very classes to which they should be accountable.
Bar Harbor, Maine
My favorite place on the eastern seaboard of North America is Bar Harbor in the state of Maine. One needs to go that far north to escape the subtropical summers, and Mount Desert Island has the incomparable Acadia National Park. Overall, the place reminds me of home, and no jet lag.
I always stay at the Bar Harbor Inn, and would never betray that loyalty. It sits right on the Shore Path lining Frenchman Bay, and offers the graciousness of its century-plus history. Over the years I have come to know some faithful members of their staff, and some eventually began to recognize me, in that offhand Yankee manner, as a regular visitor. Tyler, for example, has been with the Inn forever, and seems to be indispensable to its smooth operation. When we meet the first topic is often the winter, always of interest in that latitude where the summer is so pleasant. Against reason, one imagines it might be always thus; but no, winter is harsh.
Last summer, Tyler was unusually talkative. His aged mother had passed away; and his car was totaled in an accident, in which, fortunately, he was unscathed - a bad year. A year later, having inherited his mother's house, situated next door to him, he has become a landlord, renting it out to an Indian doctor and his family. Good fortune for the island, since Indian professionals tend to be relatively accomplished. I just hope they like the winters!
Born of Worms
Surely in this dark time something must be said about the human capacity for evil, as every thoughtful person wonders anew about how such cruelty and barbarity can fulminate in others of his own species. Unfortunately for followers of Islam, it is a growing contingent of their co-religionists bringing this age-old question to the fore in their eager resurrection of ancient barbarism. How does a human being cut off the head of another of his own kind? What seed of humanity is missing from such an individual?
Granted that man's inhumanity to man is not unique to any sect or race nor to any time in human history and prehistory. The evolution of the human brain bequeaths it with extreme capacities, including unnatural behaviors unknown in other animal species; and yet despite our inclination toward mutual annihilation, we somehow survive and even prosper.
In this present case though, in Islamic radicals, smothering that seed of humanity, is their strange attitude toward women, who by nature must be their mothers. They cover their women, to the extent that the women resemble nothing so much as the pupa of some insect, or the prey of a spider, enrobed in silk, trapped in the web. There you have the answer then to the question of how these men can bring themselves to sever the head of another person - with a dull knife: they are born of a class of people whom they despise; they are born of worms.
The Vegetarian Diet
All creatures, in the Buddhist view, are naturally enlightened, including the so-called "lower" animals, those without the capacities of human consciousness. (Though what could be lower than an animal capable of beheading one of his own kind - only certain insects come to mind.) And it is the Buddhist compassion for all sentient beings that underlies the precept against killing them, not only other people but animals as well - hence the vegetarian diet, which nevertheless can be problematic culturally and economically in parts of the world. Nutritionally, it is difficult to get all the essential proteins that homo sapiens no longer can synthesize; yet one can do well as a vegetarian, with care. And of course modern people are by and large at some remove from the actual slaughter, which meat eaters insist can be done humanely.
But that is the very point, not the killing - all creatures will die - but the suffering, being the cause of it. Still the compassion of Buddha is both subtle and boundless, not clad in the iron of ideology; it extends not only to helpless animals used for food, but also to humans helpless in the grip of their karma.
A Closet Buddhist?
I have always held the heretical idea that Jesus was a closet Buddhist; indeed I am privy to a Tibetan legend that he was a bodhisattva who entered an ill-fated manifestation, with mixed results. His message was Buddhist in essence, and badly misunderstood, causing me to wonder whether this errant bodhisattva might have appeared subsequently to other Christians, perhaps in the attempt at clarification.
For example, the Church of Latter Day Saints, founded upon a vision of the angel Moroni: was it bad moonshine or a visit from Jesus? But surely the most likely evidence of this possibility occurred to George Fox in the middle of England in the middle of the seventeenth century. It was upon his revelation that the Society of Friends was founded. The basic Quaker principles, which have survived centuries of sectarian schism, are to my mind the closest Christianity has come the true Path. Their tolerance and temperance, pacifism and quiet worship, are suggestive of Buddhist precepts and practice.
Chiefly though, Fox's inspiration that every person may have within himself a direct, intimate connection to the wisdom, love, and strength of God, compares to Buddha's reassurance that we each have the potential for enlightenment. The Quakers remained theist of course, and Fox believed it was Christ he saw. But might it have been that erstwhile bodhisattva speaking to a receptive soul to set the record straight?
Throughout the centuries, true to Fox's belief, the Quakers have maintained that any authentic revelation would adhere to scripture. Only in modern times have they accepted the notion that the Almighty might wish to reveal something more. Have they finally gotten the message?
Live and Learn
How long does it take us to learn? How many times saying, "I should have known"? When attempting to fly anywhere in the United States on a commercial airliner, one should surely know by now that the most anyone can say, even in the best of circumstances, is that one plans to take a given flight, affording only the possibility of arriving at a given destination at the scheduled time. The system is so precarious that a disruption on any one of its spaghetti legs brings total collapse, or near to it.
But as in any devolving process, generations pass unaware of the slow degradation. Young people take for granted the need to sleep on airport floors, cold and starving, or to be bounced from one city to another like billiard balls in order to finally land days later at their intended destination. They have no recollection of air travel before deregulation, when only severe weather might stop a flight. There were planes to spare for other exigencies.
Competition has been good for the industry - right? Air travel has been democratized, which is laudable - right? Surely the USA will be wealthy enough to maintain a state-of-the-art air traffic control system, no matter by how many tens of thousands of flights it is eventually encumbered - right? Personally, I find it ironic that in the capital city, at the very airport now named for Ronald Reagan, people may be found standing in exhausting queues or indeed lying on the floor in their feeble attempts at a most uncertain mode of "travel".
Summer Color
Before summer slips completely from memory, I must observe that it is indeed a colorful season, especially if there is ample rain. As I enjoy the burgeoning petunias here in the village, in their several colors and myriad shades, I am ruminating about color itself - the bending of light in infinite refractions. Pure light may be said to encompass this infinite variety, while itself exhibiting only purity.
With this thought winding though my mind, an analogy forms with all of reality. We perceive reality in infinite forms - fantastic, miraculous forms - whether as sight, sound, smell, touch; but our consciousness remains ignorant of their ultimate nature. This ignorance is the prism bending ultimate reality into myriad forms.
When you see color, you also see the pure light of its true nature; likewise when you perceive reality, you perceive simultaneously its ultimate essence of oneness. To hold this awareness is a hard but vital practice. The colors of summer are a joy to behold; much greater is the joy of that pure, infinite light that transcends them - and you are already looking at it!
Oscar and Dorian
"The Picture of Dorian Gray" is as remarkable as a vehicle for the wit and wisdom of Oscar Wilde as it is an entertaining tale of horror, the hidden portrait becoming slowly hideous while Dorian himself retains the original youthful beauty. The premiss is provocative in that fractious way Wilde so enjoyed, to his eventual downfall - that as we age our sins and vices leave their ugly mark upon our faces.
It is true certainly that a habitual expression may over time become etched on the face - the laugh lines of a jovial person or the furrowed brow of a worrier. But truth is that the typical facial creases of age result from the loss of collagen under the skin, a process that is hastened by sun exposure. We may stereotype an old man as evil, when his worst sin may have been in loving the sun too well.
Dorian of course sold his soul the the Devil, in the person of Lord Harry, when he said within earshot that he would do as much if the picture could age in his stead. Truly though, the most unnatural thing about Dorian Gray was not that he remained beautiful, but that he remained unchanged.
Nonconformity
The strongest evidence that we have a common ancestry with the apes is our imitative proclivity. We strive to conform with one another, most eagerly and ironically in anything regarded as nonconformity, at least in modern times. Centuries of classical composers, for example, wrote music in much the same style; it requires some expertise to distinguish Mozart from Haydn. Even following the great rebel, Beethoven, composers hewed to the tonal system, the common language of music. Then the twentieth century saw that system overturned, and now all such music must be atonal, subsequent generations dutifully aping the nonconformity.
This observation holds true across the spectrum of art forms, but poetry sticks out in my mind. Poetry once had rhyme and rhythm, making it quite difficult to write. Free verse allowed a much easier poetic expression, but lines were carefully parsed and each one with initial capitals. This parsing itself might be used to convey a subtle meaning. But apparently, even free verse has come to be considered too cumbersome, so that poetry has degenerated into nothing but lyrical prose, distinguished only when it is recited in a sing-song cadence. Confirming its prosaic nature, it is no longer parsed, sentences ending in midline and no initial caps.
"Well really", I imagine the modern poet's retort, "how can you express anything profound in verse?" How?
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Yet even if you should have the gift of that failed New England farmer, you will be constrained from using it. You must conform to the nonconformity!
Life, by Definition
Life is a struggle, by definition, a struggle that began when certain organic compounds evolved the capacity to replicate, sounding the starting gun. There after all living beings were swept willy-nilly into the grand competition, coerced by natural selection, with the fateful correspondence of a mutation with a niche spelling success.
And the competition has always been keen, especially so after the evolution of sexual reproduction: the struggle for resources, for mating rights, the territorial imperative, the conflict between groups in the social species, among which homo sapiens is preeminent. The wild creatures are still bound to this struggle which is life. Even my cat, who loves her canned food, would instinctively prefer to be filling her ancestral role in the food chain, struggling to catch the poor little skinks by the porch.
Only we humans expect to make something more of life than a struggle, and have the ability to do so. We succeed only to the extent that we appreciate this unique ability. Even among the poorest of the poor, the human spirit may blossom with creativity, charity, wisdom. The Zen master, for example, sitting in his humble hut, who one night was robbed of the robe on his back. Left without a possession to his name, he looked out of his window and exclaimed, "I wish I could have given him the moon!"
Celebrity
We think of celebrity as being a modern phenomenon, and global stardom is relatively new thanks to communications technology; but there has always been a trait in human nature, reflected throughout history, to worship certain individuals deemed, with or without apparent reason, to be extraordinary. Think for example of ancient rulers: the sun gods of Egypt; the emperors of China; the sun king of France. Surely there have been superstars from Jesus to Elvis.
The average person eschews the limelight, becomes anxious about any public appearance. Some few in contrast enjoy it, entering fields where they can be the center of attention. If they succeed, they become stars, and to some extent they may be comfortable with that. But superstardom crosses a threshold even for these outgoing souls. They surround themselves with body guards and wave at admirers from a safe distance. Who then are the ones that elicit that worshipful trait?
In my humble opinion, these are the truly rare individuals who enjoy within their souls a deep, joyful and encompassing love. That is what they project and also the nature of the worship reflected back. This is a spiritual gift, and I sincerely believe, quite apart from the person himself, an incongruous fact never noticed, unless perhaps in psychological theories. The man, poor soul, is not what grips his legions of followers, even posthumously, but the potential he has embodied: boundless joy, freedom, love. Too often at his personal and extreme expense.
Mental Health?
A footnote to the last post, upon the stunning news that Robin Williams, of all people, killed himself. At the age of 63. After struggling with depression. How sadly, discouragingly familiar.
So often the comments following a suicide report that the individual was being treated for depression. I am guessing it does not work. But drug companies are careful to cover themselves by including in their blanket media advertising a recitation of the PDR, always rife with disclaimers delivered at breakneck speed. Those for the psycho-active medications are most curious, if you are listening carefully. For the antidepressants: "Tell your doctor if you are having thoughts of suicide." How ironic, and here we thought they were anti-depressant! Then there are the antipsychotics that cause psychotic behavior, not to mention the drug for bipolar disorder - an element also used in metallurgy - and batteries.
One begins to think either that we have gone through the looking glass, or that this particular branch of pharmacology is peopled by conspiratorial sadists. In any case, we are surely led to believe that depression may be preferable to its treatment.
Descartes' Error?
I wonder what it is about mental illness that people find so difficult to face or even to admit, much harder than what they think of as a "physical" malady, so called. Mental illness is, after all, a dysfunction of the most vital physical organ. I have always assumed this to be a matter of Descartes' Error, explained in the book of that title, by neuro-psychiatrist Antonio Damasio. People retain an unexamined assumption that the mind is separate and separable from the body, and so the odd symptoms of mental illness must have supernatural causes - evil spirits, demonic possession.
But another aspect of this problem occurs to me, and that is the relative difficulty even normal people have interacting with one another. Past the social awkwardness of adolescence, mature adults may still feel ill at ease with new acquaintances, or anxious about relating to people with suspicions motivations, e.g. tradesmen, in-laws. So dealing one-on-one with a mentally deranged person is problematic in the extreme, inspiring pity perhaps, but first and foremost avoidance. Were it not for these biases, I believe we would be much closer to viable remedies for these poor souls, superior to the dangerous drugs now used to "manage" their disease. We closed the asylums, and then did nothing but open the jails.
Vines
Surely I have written about vines before. Anyone responsible for the least plot of land in the temperate zone has done battle with them, especially in spring when they are most vigorous. I have read that they are advantaged by increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, making the battle even harder.
One learns to be observant of the enemy, since the vine will slyly make its way up the trunk of a tree, and then burst forth at the top. The indifferent gardener will not notice that it is smothering the tree, only the one who notices that those leaves at the top are different. But even the careful gardener can only hope to slow the vine's assault, which he does by cutting it as close as possible to the root; and before he cuts he must take care that foliage attached to that stem is indeed the vine's and not that of some neighboring cultivar. In the course of this battle there are ancillary dangers from ticks, mosquitoes, and poison ivy.
Personally when I have occasion to wade into the jungle, in long pants and sleeves, armed with repellent and lopper, I use it to reflect that the natural mind goes spontaneously to the root.
www ........
As I occupy wi-fi corner here at Panera, surrounded by techies with laptops, I often muse that the Moleskine was a precursor of sorts - the portable journal where one might draft ones creations, whether literary, musical, or graphic, before putting them out to an audience. Of course, in this age of the internet such ideas can be put out instantly for the whole world to see - it is a world wide web, the nervous system of a global social organism, the last coalescence predicted by Pere Teilhard. Simply post your creation on social media, or your own blog, publicize the name and address in chat rooms, and millions will have access to it. But there's the rub - those millions are billions. It is really a tower of Babel. Yes, they have access, but in reality there is doubtless less likelihood of anyone actually learning of your existence than there was in nineteenth century Paris.
Today, internet aside, you are no more than one obscure nerve cell among billions positioned at the distal end of one extremity of this global organism, unlikely to be noticed unless something steps on its toe.
Parents
Unlike the vast majority of people, I am not a parent, and so I avoid commenting on the subject, in deference to so many who struggle with it in this day and age. Parenting has never been a science, but at least in all the generations past there was the example, for good or ill, of ones elders. In each culture, the raising of children was an orthodoxy.
But by the late twentieth century, it was every man, woman, and child for himself, not to mention peer groups, the media, and the steady flow of pop-psyche trends in child-rearing. The most alarming result, to my mind, has been a new level of defiance against parents who sadly neither command nor demand the respect of their children. In my personal experience, this development is more likely among the privileged children, who have no acquaintance with misfortune. Young people I have known who are respectful of their parents are those who have encountered serious insecurity in their lives, thereby acquiring a realistic appreciation of the potential for misery and of their parents' struggle against it. The single, working mother in the ghetto, barring the all too prevalent lure of crime and gangs, may earn more respect from her children than the cliched country clubber whose children grow up with a series of nannies.
Wealth Gap
"Piketty" is indeed an odd name for a Frenchman, and hasn't he made a splash with his unlikely tome (Capital in the Twenty-first Century), concerning the inevitability of a growing wealth gap. The history is quite clear on that point. Every civilized society devolves eventually into a state in which a small elite exploits the struggling masses; and despite the fact that this never ends well, each time this tiny class of the obscenely wealthy rises up, it fails to see any personal advantage in sharing. Apres moi le deluge! Indeed they invariably convince themselves and their heirs that their affluence benefits everyone.
At first the swelling lower class is resentful; they may even rise up in violent rebellion, reducing their civilization to chaotic rubble. However, this may not happen for many generations, during which time the underclass somehow relearns the fine art of bowing and scraping. How long, I wonder, does that take?
Too Busy
Life is full, too full for most people these days. Even in the old people's homes, the staff makes every effort to keep the residents busy. Indeed everyone complains of getting ever more busy with age. I continue to blame population pressure. After all, roads used to have two lanes, highways four; now a super highway must have twelve, a multiplier of three. Our little village grocery store was adequate for generations, but today a supermarket must enclose an entire city block and sell not only "soup to nuts" but also motor oil to sushi. The end result is to make life more complex, the merest form of survival, time consuming. In a word, we are busy. LIfe is full - but of what?
But then, population control cannot be mandated, as the Chinese have learned to their misfortune. The surest way to stabilize population growth is to urge society toward women's rights and influence. But why this does not, and possibly cannot, happen is by far the most curious question.
Left Behind
The jet planes roar overhead as they follow the river away from the airport to their distant destinations. The birds are left behind. Travel season may be upon us, but for them it is the time to mate, nest, and fledge one or two broods, which will be either the next generation of their kind, or food for the fox. Even the hawks - sentinels of the sky - settle into the canopy to breed, and the geese pair off at smaller ponds.
Not that birds are incapable of great feats of aviation: intercontinental migrations in some species, whose navigational skills remain mysterious, despite numerous theories. But once they reach their nesting ground, they are left behind, happily, their various songs and calls enlivening the woods and fields - signaling to mates, proclaiming their territorial boundaries - a soft reply to the roar of planes.
Numbers
The occult significance of numbers is something of which I know nothing. I am not into numerology. But there is the number "3", with a magnetism that seems to assert itself against reasonable odds. It defies the symmetry of nature, which would instead suggest the number "2", a fact that indeed argues against the metric system. For the latter there exists no natural template. There are two legs, two arms, two eyes, two lungs and kidneys, in blessed redundancy, even two hemispheres of the brain.
But "3"? Three legs are either one too many or one too few, depending on the species. Yet in Christianity there is the doctrine of the trinity - Father and Son were not enough - and Christians by custom have three names, a three letter monogram. Every airport, every stock on the exchange, even every disease, also is given a three letter code. The magic of three!
What occurs to me, however, returning to the template of nature, is that the really vital organs are singular: one heart, one liver, stomach, spleen. In the final analysis, the most sacred number is One.
New vs. Old
Unlike my peers, who have taken to computer technology like fish to water, I remain resistant to the constant pressure to keep up. Mind you I have had an Apple computer since 1990, which in tech terms is paleolithic, and am now on my second iMac. The Apple product is very durable and reliable. But this is not a hardware endorsement.
What disturbs me, alarms me even, is software evolution. From system software to basic office programs, mutations take place far too rapidly. To be sure, the young titans of silicon valley are eager to express their creative genius by improving things. But why must the new be incompatible with the old? After all, Cromagnon man lived alongside Neanderthal for sometime before the latter died out - perhaps with myself as the exception.
I cannot but wonder how much work is lost to posterity simply because the latest machines no longer "support" AppleWorks, for example. My guru, who calls herself Miss Pixel, is working on it.
Obsurity
As a rule, we sink into obscurity long before we die. We see this with celebrities, who retire from fame and are only remarked in passing with some surprise that they were not already dead. But then anyone who retires from a career may suffer that fate - lose contact, become irrelevant, old, obscure.
The young people of ones tribe come up and take over, with their natural energy and ambition, their certitude of the future. They mate, they nest, they orchestrate the celebrations of youth. Sometime as they sit by the fire, the babes asleep, it may come to them randomly: Yorkshire? I believe I may still have a great uncle there. If I remember his name, I will Google him.
Ah, obscurity! The blessed peace of it, by Jove!
Music
A most definitive exposition of the essence of western music is Richard Jourdain's "Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy". Surely it is true as he postulates that melody is actually the auditory profile of underlying harmonies. This is clear throughout the vast repertoire of classical masterpieces that make up our rich heritage, and is evident even in popular song up until the early twentieth century.
Since the plainsong of the medieval Church, music of this kind evolved over the centuries very sophisticated harmony and intricate harmonic progressions the fruit of which was melody of the most ecstatic beauty. The fact of this relationship becomes clear in any attempt to harmonize the tune of even a simple popular melody; unless the chords proceed correctly, it will sound completely wrong.
I belabor this point because it occurs to me that the deplorable mediocrity of music today, lacking melody entirely, may thus be seen to rest on the poverty of its harmony. The auditory profile of a song with just three chords will resemble nothing so much as a drone. Well wasn't the old song prescient - Johnny One Note!
The Dashing Villain
An interesting irony I have been contemplating is the "handsome devil", the dashing villain. The irony in this stereotype is its basis in the assumption that good looks are normally associated with good behavior; thus we must be shocked when a good looking person turns out to be villainous. But in fact the stereotype is now so old that just the opposite is true. We assume the handsome one is the devil, with the result that a person fortunate in his physical appearance may be sadly presumed to be a rogue. The attitude seems to be that the handsome one will be favored by others and will thus grow to be shallow, crass, prone to exploit his advantage. Well really, ugly people may also be shallow, crass, and exploitative.
Personally, I hate to see this simplistic type casting. I grew up to believe that "beauty is as beauty does", so that anyone of good character - kind, loyal, generous and loving - should be regarded as beautiful, even if he happens to be handsome as well.
Freedom
Hang on for dear life, we say, but for freedom, let go. I do not make this pronouncement blithely, being a creature of habit myself, thus all too familiar with its steadfast grip. Habit brings order and efficiency, but in time, boredom. Freedom entails a bit of risk, a bit of courage; but surely one may intend toward a balance, knowing, as in a poker game, when to hold your hand and when to fold, the difference being that in this case folding, letting go for the sake of freedom, may bring its own reward.
But here is the paradox of freedom: the exercise of it requires discipline. Freedom suggests an infinity of choice, narrowed of course to the possible and in some degree to the plausible. But for the person who is free to do whatsoever he chooses comes the task of assessing priorities, which takes wisdom, and then following them, which needs discipline. Otherwise there results an aimless drifting. But even if one has the wisdom to determine what it is he wants most to do with this freedom, and has mustered the discipline to rally himself, there is the further obstacle of memory. A person must remember, list or not, what it was exactly that he meant to do, and he must remember in a timely fashion, or be forced to complain that if only he had done so, he would surely have accomplished the thing - before time and freedom ran out.
The Same Thing, Only Different
The question of sexual orientation, like so many controversies, is not so black and white as the arguments make it seem. Surely sexuality manifests on a continuum, with a majority being heterosexual, naturally favored by evolution, the very root of which is reproduction. And there are various theories as to why homosexuality was not eliminated by natural selection, either in humans or in other species where it occurs. The more enlightened among us try to understand our differences, but there are sticking points. For example, I cannot fathom being sexually attracted to someone like myself, since to me the source of any such attraction are traits and characteristics opposite to mine. At the same time, in my experience, homosexuals by and large lack an appreciation of how problematic it can be in the long term to live with someone opposite oneself in the most fundamental ways. Instead as they become able to marry like the rest of us, they may fall upon the peculiar difficulties of being too much alike - too strong, say, or compulsive, or controlling.
Whatever the difficulties, most of us sincerely hope for our friends or relatives who are gay the kind of happiness that was denied earlier generations. Of all places, even India now recognizes a third gender!
Sacrifice
I meet up with my friend Anna in the courtyard, where we are the sole companions of the Easter bunny on a chilly April morning. We talk about people who offer their lives on behalf of others and of a general willingness to let them, or even to exploit them. The passion of Christ is an extreme example, betrayed by his disciple and subjected to the most barbaric torture, which in itself screams of the extremity of human cruelty. But there are lesser cases in our normal lives, often coming through inadvertence or indifference. There are people who serve us in the course of their work, whom we may frequently take for granted; and there are public servants who put their lives at some risk to protect and defend us.
But what about entertainers or athletes, who can slip into the most destructive circumstances, exploited by agents or managers? Well, you may say, they destroy themselves voluntarily and are paid well for doing so. What can we do about it? To which my riposte: at what point do fans, in their deadly adulation, become complicit?
The Mating Phase
Over the millennia of human civilization, courtship has always been a rather hit-or-miss business, even when it was guided by matchmakers or parents. But fundamentally it has been and remains a matter of getting together two people who may be compatible on the basis of significant similarity. Our natural instinct, being the heirs of those self-replicating organic compounds we identify as the earliest life, is to procreate as nearly as we can to cloning. This instinct is at the root of tribalism. We are attracted to people who look like us, have the same language and cultural values.
On the other hand we are a species of wanderers, plundering as we go. For that matter, every tribe has had its mavericks, mating with whomever they please; and thank heaven for them or we would have been extinct long ago from inbreeding. It is a balance then between matching and mixing.
But finally modern man has the perfectly ingenious tool online. Any number of dating websites can pair you up scientifically by looks, if that is what you want, or more importantly by character traits and temperament. Unromantic you complain? Well, with Ann Landers gone, what else do we have to get us over the shoals of her big three: sex, money, and in-laws?
Mirror, Mirror
I find people very interesting, each one unique and impressive in their peculiarities. They are tall and short, old and young, light and dark, slim and stout, male and female. But what I find most interesting and impressive is that despite their uniqueness they have in common a stubborn inability to see themselves accurately. Ugly ones think they are beautiful, beautiful ones ugly. Old ones pretend they are young, and young ones old. Perfectly competent people are fearful and lacking in confidence, while the incompetent brim with unearned surety.
Pondering this idiosyncrasy, I come upon the notion that the reason people may be so uniformly unrealistic about themselves, even when they are capable of perfect objectivity concerning others, is an unacknowledged realization that they themselves are subtly different from moment to moment. The rational person thinks he may be insane, because at times he is; the insane person believes himself to be rational, and in some moments he may be. Contrary to the axiomatic presumption, when you look in a mirror, do you ever really see the same face twice?
Cars
We could not live without the car, and I still am dubious of that possibility in future societies. And yet, these new urban environments are like elaborate warrens of some earth dwelling creatures. To accommodate residual automobiles, parking garages not only rise up several stories but spiral into the ground level after level, which seem to fill up quickly with visitors from the hinterlands.
These cities are extremely hostile to the outsider, not only through sensual assault but by their very complexity. Heaven forbid you should forget where you emerged from the garage elevator, let alone on which subterranean level you left your car. But if that elevator comes up to the ground floor of the new apartment building where you just bought a condo, you might find city life quite charming. You will simply learn your favorite pathways through the warren and eventually abandon your car. When everyone lives in the warren, supplied totally by agribusiness, the parking garage can be demolished and filled in.
The Sun
I have only recently come upon a most interesting and beguiling periodical out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, called The Sun. It is the brainchild and mission of one Sy Safransky, interviewed in its fortieth anniversary issue this past January. He was born the year the Great War ended - the second, not the first - thus of the generation on the cusp between the beatniks and the hippies; and he was one with the courage to quit his day job. That he has been able to make a go of it publishing every month whatever stories, essays, and poems, by writers celebrated and obscure, that he finds appealing and worthwhile is a tribute surely to both his perspicacity and fortitude, especially as he achieves this without advertising revenue. It is also a heartening testament to the tenacity of print, holding out in its last bastions against the swirling winds of cyberspace.
Mr. Safransky and I are the same age, and he also keeps his personal journal using pen and paper, though I do not go so far as to correct mine with Wite-Out. Hats off to you, Sy, and happy anniversary to The Sun!
Phenomenal
The wonderful Yiddish word fep refers to what in English we call a tad, a little bit of something, and the following observation with regard to it is sufficiently recurrent as to be considered a phenomenon, one that seems to defy logic and perhaps the laws of nature. It is so consistent it might even suggest a mathematical formula, one of those theoretical ones that are counter-intuitive, subtly ironic: If the bulk of a given substance (S) is used up in a certain time (T), the remaining fep (.01) will last 10 times T. For example, if in a year one has used up most of a container of hand cream, the tiny bit that is left will last another ten years. The fep is asymptotic with finitude.
To be sure, the discovery of such unexpected generosity on the part of the natural universe should be cause for celebration, at least from a consumer's viewpoint, except for one thing. In spite of being convinced of the fep phenomenon, compulsive people like myself, noticing the small amount of something left, will be driven to immediately go out and buy more so as not to run out, the result being that shelves and cupboards groan with excess, until finally, realizing how many weeks and months a replacement has been taking up space, in exasperation we discard the residual fep!
Names
I often wonder how any number of people come to live up to the stereotype of their given names. Does the stereotype somehow leave an early impression on their personalities, or are they typecast presciently by the parents who named them? As an example, "Howard", a name which for me will always be associated with an old, stodgy, affable but inefficient postal clerk at our local office. Surely that name, for whatever reason, does call to mind a rather dull person. Odder still, in my experience, is the number of gay men named Kevin or Scott. Considering that gender preference is now thought to be inborn by whatever means, how have so many parents recognized it in their infants with sufficient confidence to name them so consistently?
The mystery perhaps has ben solved by Garmin, the company whose GPS, by default, assigns its American voice the name of "Jill", indubitably along with so many "Carols", the bossiest of women!
Politics
Those who dither about the U.S. Congress are blind-sided, I believe, by the assumption that its dysfunction is political. In conversation with old American white men, some of whom in earlier times have been the most moderate, rational, astute observers of the nation's affairs, I must conclude that the bizarre turn of the country's politics is largely psychological. Barack Obama, poor soul, has been made their straw man - a black straw man - for the loss of "their" country, in objective terms the relentless decline of their influence over all the generations since the last world war. Women gained control of their reproductive lives; homosexuality became acceptable; racial integration expanded; and immigrants flooded into a job market for which the native youth was unprepared in one way or another.
These observations are by no means novel, but here is my point. Old men who used to follow the commentary of heavy weights like Eric Sevareid, Martin Agronsky, Carl Rowan, who had intellect and integrity, are avid listeners of Rush Limbaugh, the worst hate monger since - well, you know who. Surely we must wonder why old white men are willing to believe the outrageous, blatant lies of the far right - and vote accordingly. It is not really politics.
Winter Birthdays
Leaving aside for the moment the fact that a great many prominent people in history were born in winter, it is also true that those of us having winter birthdays are, if not great, at least different. Perhaps because our parents were, shall we say, unusual. Technically speaking, homo sapiens does not have a mating season, as do so many other species. Yet it has been my observation that most people conceive their children as the days grow colder and the nights longer, giving birth therefore in the spring and summer. Babies born in the dead of winter have parents who were not thinking - or maybe distracted.
Of course it does not matter much when ones birthday falls in the year; it is after all only the recurring anniversary of orbital revolutions. But being relatively uncommon, winter birthdays are easily forgotten. A sweet old woman I once knew had an April birthday which I never failed to observe. Year after year, however, she would be shamefaced that she had allowed my February birthday to pass unmarked, until finally to relieve her conscience, I told her my birthday was actually the week after hers. She is gone now, and I am too old to care for birthdays; but the ones I will never overlook are those that come in winter.
(PS: If you are reading this, please leave a comment below. I would rejoice to find that, while there may not be life on another planet, there exists at least one reader in cyberspace!)
Thank Heaven
A person having an especially hard day of things going wrong (say the zipper broke on his old coat; the line at the pharmacy was unusually long; the mail came late), and then something goes right (the mail brought a tax refund) may be heard to say, "Thank heaven for small favors." Does heaven take umbrage at such backhanded gratitude? Is it a small favor that he gets back tax money, when his government is in deficit to the point of cutting food aid to the poor and unemployed? Should this person not be thankful that his coat, old as it is, can be buttoned, not only zipped, and that he, along with so many others, can go to a pharmacy for medicine to treat their various ills?
Another phrase of implicit ingratitude is "with my luck", preceding the forecast of some calamity. I have to restrain myself from challenging such a person to innumerate his misfortunes. Certainly there are individuals as chronically afflicted as Job, but most of us surely, regarding the real suffering of some, should remember our good fortune gratefully in all we do and say.
Well, really, I think heaven forgives us our fits of pique, which blessed forgiveness we should bring to mind before we have one.
Social Media
There can be no doubt that the phenomenon of social media is astonishing, not only in the runaway success of the very idea, but as well in uncovering a previously unremarked peculiarity of human nature, i. e. the need and desire to be in perpetual contact with other people. For many generations this trait has lain dormant as civilized society expanded its reach, its members embarking to distant shores far removed in space and time from loved ones. A ship would take weeks in the passage, a letter days, a horse and carriage, even a train, would be many hours in going what we now think of as a short distance. Generations accustomed themselves to this slow pace.
What drifted from memory were the millennia of tribal life when humans lived in these small groups, cheek by jowl with close family, and even distant family just there in the next wigwam. Thus there was no need to "tweet" what one had just eaten for breakfast. All the village could smell it. That is the beauty of this new method I suppose - one can have the comraderie, feel the closeness without the stink of burnt bacon. That shrinking segment of society that pines for the community of bygone days is a bit idealistic, I think. Warty old Uncle Thaddeus, who smoked cigars and exchanged verbal abuse with everyone in the house only lived with his son's family because he lost all his money in stocks - the human drama, warts and all.
Modern?
I often wonder when the defenders of modernism will come to the realization that this movement is well into a second century. Van Gogh died in 1890 after all, a madman whose distinctive style of painting nonetheless hewed to an exuberant vision of things. The world of fine art declined from there, inexorably, killed, as was widely assumed by photography. Impressionist painters had it exactly right - that the artist added to the mere depiction of a scene the vital element of his own reaction in the moment, his impression, his emotion. But then the abstract artists gave it all up, in the misguided view that there was no artistic role served in representing any scene or object that could more easily be photographed, and that once unmoored from this ancient role, art would be free to progress, like science.
So to what have we progressed? The beeswax room: a closet with walls entirely coated in wax, illuminated by a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The devolution into madness seems an ironic legacy for a man plagued by insanity. And where do we go from here? Surely modernism is old hat by now, and fortunately there are fine painters lending their vision to art for the edification and enjoyment of others. Working on in obscurity far from the elite of the art world, they sell paintings.
Resolutions
I believe the children should know why it is that, past the age of wisdom, we are ever more reluctant to make resolutions at the New Year. It is simply because as the years have passed, we have become surrounded by the reminders of just such resolutions unfulfilled, often for many years. Resolving to do a thing year after year in the face of visible evidence that it never is done is demoralizing and ultimately unsustainable.
For example, there is a snapshot of my irises in bloom - bunches of purple behind and one white one in close-up, looking for all the world like a visiting angel. For some time, I have had it in mind to enlarge this picture and frame it. I have the very place to hang it, in an upstairs hallway over the Baltimore stand inherited from my late mother, who loved irises. The spot remains empty, and in all due humility before the endless exigencies of life, I do not ask of myself to fill it. Still, imagine the satisfaction when I do!
Traditions
If there is one occasion when I insist on being at home in England, it is Christmas. There is nothing quite like the traditional English yuletide season. For the past several years, my cousin and I have been meeting for Christmas dinner halfway between the family seat and his flat on Clapham Common in London, in the quaint town of Matlock. Good restaurants and the peaceful ambiance make it ideal for the day.
This past Christmas my cousin praised me for creating this tradition. I thanked him of course, at the same time observing to myself the irony in the compliment. A tradition is not something one creates, but a thing adopted by generations subsequent to the original. Thus are the origins of a tradition often so far back in time as to be obscured. His point though was that as our lives change - friends and relatives move, die, new ones come along - we adapt our "traditions". Instead of the home-cooked feast for ten in the dining room, we meet halfway between the 200 miles now separating us at one of the few public establishments serving Christmas dinner. It is no more than a handful of years before we come to regard this occasion as a tradition.
Oh, indeed, we adapt to change, as we must. But in all honesty, we do so by abandoning tradition.
Thresholds
We have lost sight, we modern people, of thresholds, their reality and the limitations they may impose on our lives. Oh, yes, we are prodded about this or that threshold that we are in danger of crossing and for a short while, after some super storm, we may take pause to wonder. But even the victims return to rebuild. It is not alone the question of climate, however, to which we are indifferent. There is the complexity of technology out-pacing the average human brain at a time in our evolution when natural selection cannot be allowed to work, or the requirements of metastatic bureaucracy, becoming so onerous that specialists must spring up simply to file inexplicable forms.
Then there are consumer products. You may be surprised, for example, if you have not shopped for a mattress in some years, to learn that they are now at least two feet thick and sit on platforms making them still higher; they have crossed the threshold where falling out of bed will mean certain death, especially if you are old. But that may be the point. Young people are naturally skeptical of thresholds, contemptuous even. From the perspective of youth, they will hear of no limits. Until modern times, it was always the older generation who held the memory, hence the wisdom, of what may happen when you go too far, outstrip human capacities, violate the limits of nature.
Well, the old fogies may not be able to afford the monthly bill on a smart phone today, but let's make sure they have a new mattress.
More Valuable Time
The difficult matter of prioritizing ones agenda raises an agonizing question. Should it be considered important what one wants to do? There are things one must do to survive, and in the process one accretes responsibilities to many other people. A person should meet his duties before indulging his own proclivities. Right?
But there is one life to live, its length hidden from everyone. An individual's passions express his uniqueness. Surely his fellow man may benefit from that expression. Is it simply a question of balance, of working it all in somehow? Perhaps it is only the well-off, in any case, who may even consider the luxury of self-indulgence. But no, even the ghetto child may find the time to spray paint his signature in voluptuous graffiti. The truth is that in the end it will not matter what we have done, so long as we have come to this: we choose what we do; we can also choose to want to do whatever we are doing.
Valuable Time
The Halls brand of throat drops, endeavoring I suppose to be helpful mentally as well as physically, prints encouraging slogans on the wrappers, a humble sort of inspiration indeed. Well one day to soothe a scratchy throat I opened one that read, "Don't waste a moment of valuable time." This advice is common enough, I thought; then I thought again. What exactly is a waste of time? The matter is highly individual and may vary in ones psyche from one moment to the next. Surely any thoughtful person often searches for the best definition, knowing that in our mortal lives there will not be time to do everything - nowhere near enough! So to prioritize ones activities and goals in a way to make the best use of time is among the great conundrums of the human experience.
Is it a waste of time to sit at a dull job when you aspire to be an artist, or is it a waste of time to be a starving artist when you might be establishing a solid career? Is it a waste of time to sit watching a beautiful sunset when your bookshelf needs to be organized, or the other way round? You decide... personally, I believe what does not exist cannot be wasted.
Alice Miller
I did not learn about Alice Miller, the Polish psychoanalyst who lived in Switzerland and wrote in German, until after she died. She had been very accomplished, though something of a maverick in her profession, an iconoclast even, examining the accepted practices in parenting and pronouncing them cruel. This judgment was corroborated by her clinical practice, in the painful dysfunction of patients clearly attributable to childhood experience.
I found her compassion for the perspective of the child very wise and her writings very useful, yet I had come upon them only through her obituary. In fact, her book Drama of the Gifted Child was out of print, and I had to purchase a used copy on Amazon. This causes me to wonder how much of value is lost in the clamor of millions of voices vying to be heard, when from the legions of the living on this over-populous planet any individual may receive more attention in death than ever she did in life. Sadly we await the obituary page to learn of a person's contribution. The internet? A tower of Babel. Search engines? Doing surgery with a cleaver. Yet some contend that human knowledge is leaping ahead exponentially. Well, creeping. Maybe. If so, where is the cancer cure, renewable energy, or the wisdom to be kind to children?
The End is Near
To approach the end of the calendar year is like watching a toilet siphon. It is not only the rushing but the acceleration of the rushing. Catalogs pile up in great heaps in the mail box, and every charity urgently solicits your donation at the very time you are buying gifts for every friend and relative regardless of geographical distance. Then there are tax deadlines, magazines and coupons expiring and the generalized anxiety that we are all speeding towards an abyss into which we will plunge collectively on January 1, precisely. Why else would anyone buy a car in December? Surely we could not think of starting the year without a new Lexus!
Thus the abyss of January is one of debt, respiratory illness, and the dismal business of taking down the decorations - in other words, the septic tank.
A Christmas Carol
Among the countless Christmas outrages, what could be more disheartening than the wholesale butchery of its traditional music. I understand that for the several generations of younger people coming along classical music is dead - dead as a doornail - though along with Mr. Dickens I should think a coffin nail the deader piece of iron mongery. I understand that from infancy on these people have heard nothing but loud, throbbing sounds of no more than three different tones. I even understand why it is throbbing, undoubtedly better than they do. What I do not understand is why perfectly beautiful hymns and carols, sacred music of the season, hundreds of years old, must be arranged, interpreted, so that it too will rock and throb, as though these several generations of people could not tolerate exposure to any sound that does not. They would be stricken dead on the spot - dead as doornails - for "my hand will not disturb the simile, or the country is done for!"
My praise and gratitude go to the Three Black Tenors, who sing opera - yes opera - and beautifully, proving uniquely to the world that black people can sing without swing. God, let us have our Christmas carols back!
Wraps
On a cold day, one may judge a person's age with some accuracy according to how warmly he is dressed. Young people tend to go about with scant precaution against the cold, as though imagining a perpetual summer. A light sweater or sweatshirt and the individual has left youth behind; a coat and the person is probably of middle age. The elderly will already be in coats, scarves, and gloves, fearing the cold as death, which for them it may be.
I wonder if this is psychological or metabolic. Do young people just not feel the cold, being more active, with a faster metabolic rate? Are old people, with longer experience, simply more fearful of illness? Are the young enjoying their innate illusion of invulnerability? Does a slow metabolism, the same culprit in gradual weight gain, cause the elders to be more sensitive to cold? All of the above, but no matter. If you want to appear younger, shed your wrap and brave the cold - at your own risk.
Ah, Youth!
It is very strange at this point in life to watch young people, realizing you are no longer one of them, then to look back and try to re-imagine, with some difficulty, yourself at their stage. If you can do this with any accuracy and some degree of honesty, it will be evident that you are not really the same person you were then. You have been shaped, distorted, impacted, worn down like an aging tree or a stone in the tide, that tide being years of life. The young people begin to regard you cautiously, some with sympathy for what they assume is frailty, others fearfully, finding the signs of aging to be monstrous.
The accepted wisdom is that old people were once young and that young people will grow old in time. This continuity is a mirage, an effect the cause of which is merely memory. You are not actually what you were, and these youngsters likewise are perpetually reconfigured by causation, that is all. The perceived dichotomy of youth and age is just this: the exuberance of dreaming, and the peaceful realization of surcease.
Three Dogs?
An old friend of mine in Warwickshire, who walks his two small dogs across the moor each day, has reported the following strange encounter:
"Halfway through our daily trek, I looked up the hill to see three very large "dogs" coming down the hill towards us. Two were huge, grey and white; the third was "a la Guernsey" - black and white. I was naturally concerned for the safety of my dogs, though big long-furred dogs are normally friendly and these were so, thankfully, since as they trotted up to us their heads came up to my chest. As I realized they were friendly, I finally turned my attention to the third, slender, smaller, with floppy ears, and stunningly realized that this "Guernsey" creature wasn't a canine but a goat!
"Shortly afterward, the trio symbiotically trotted off past us down the hill. Whence they came or were destined remains a mystery. The more I consider things... perhaps my trio - two small white dogs and a human - was as curious an oddity to them as they were to us. Ain't Nature marvelous?"
Well, there will always be an England, especially on the moors.
Birding
When I catch a glimpse of a bird, in a tree or a bush, I will freeze in place attempting to get a better look. If I am fortunate or foresighted enough to have my binoculars with me, I will slowly lift them so as not to lose the location of my subject. By then the bird is most likely gone, and unless he has graced me with a familiar song, I will only be able to guess his identity.
We birders are the paparazzi. It seems that birds are very shy about being observed; as soon as they see you watching, off they go. In this respect they are not unlike ideas that flit restlessly through ones mind. As soon as you run for paper and pen, anxious to capture it, the idea is gone, and most likely irretrievable, though it may come back in the dead of night when you turn in bed and start awake with it in your head. It will be gone again by morning - a shy, night bird.
Eye of the Beholder
I have observed that the more indistinctly something is seen the more beautiful it appears to be: how a fog, for example, may make the wharves seem atmospheric; or how small diamonds, glistening through myopia, look as flashy as larger ones. Surely this reflects a negative discrimination of reality. Seeing a thing as it really is disappoints us; we want to airbrush it, water color over it, make it beautiful - in our eyes.
What an irony! This reality in its ultimate nature is without form or image, and were we to come upon its true essence we would find it is far more than beautiful. It is transcendent. Light brings a vision into our eyes, but the perception of a thing arises in the mind, where we discriminate it according to our biases. We perceive this mind to be inside our head, but the perception of head also arises in the mind. All perception arises in the Mind, which has no location, and only one Eye.
Charisma
A trait that has always fascinated me due to my utter lack of it is charisma, the way some people become immensely popular, drawing others to them like a magnet. Some such individuals, in addition to being confident, extroverted, and energetic, are also genuinely magnanimous; so it is entirely understandable that they are seen as excellent companions or effective leaders. Most curiously, there are other people with charisma who are conceited and completely self-centered, without the least awareness of a world beyond their bubble of narcissism. Ironically, while demonstrably egotistical, they may be known to reach out to others in need. They care about people, and yet have no interest in them. There is a difference. Yet they may still attract a following, their fans grateful for any crumb of recognition falling from the great one.
What is it? Do we mere mortals imagine that the energy or self confidence may rub off on us? Do we just enjoy watching the effects? Or might it be something else, never suspected, our unconscious intuition that charisma manifests a vulnerability, an over compensation for the kinds of weakness and fear that the average person tolerates within a more typical range of behavior? Perhaps we protect the charismatic among us with our devotion, knowing them to be outsiders for all their popularity.
Rearview
At times it would be nice to be aware of what is behind us, and we say, "I wish I had eyes in the back of my head!" Well in fact we see behind us with our ears. On my morning constitutional, for example, I walk facing traffic, of which there is little on our quiet streets. Nevertheless, when I hear a car approaching from behind I move onto the grass. There is no sidewalk, and the lanes are narrow. This morning the din of a tree crew highlighted this dependence on hearing. Realizing that the noise was in effect "blinding" me to the approach of cars, I walked on the side of the road until I was out of range, and could again hear any cars behind me.
Vision and hearing are closely linked this way. When I hear a bluebird I do not have to see him to know he is near. Taste and smell are also closely linked, and the sense of touch pervades wherever there is a nerve ending. In meditation all of these distinct senses may be brought into one consciousness. They ordinarily restrict ones awareness, much as different windows each frame just one distinct view. Come outdoors, outside the box, and all Reality is yours!
Misogyny
With all due respect to devout followers, misogyny is not unique to Islam, but consider: men make a world to fit themselves - large, rugged - to which women and children struggle to adapt; could that be the problem Mohammed sought to remedy with his misguided rules? Let men be men, bound only by the strictures of righteousness. But segregate the women for their own safety and bind them securely with convention, laws, walls, and especially yards of cloth hiding them from sight. Then if a woman does manage to sin, tie the cloth tightly to encase her and throw her into a pit where she can be stoned to death. It is easy to do, since we have never seen her, and now she appears to be only an insect, a pupa, a chrysalid in a cocoon for us to crush.
A wise and holy prophet indeed. Civilization indulges barbarism at its extreme peril.
Rise and Fall
The barbarians are at the gates once again, the enemies of civilization, and they are not only the Taliban and the jihadis, who would force us all by violence back into feudal times. From the backwoods and the wide open spaces of the United States come these same primitive views held by politicians who represent themselves as wanting only to restore the nation to its origins, ignoring the stubborn fact that there have been a few changes since 1776. At least the Taliban is honest in its brutality: if you espouse the education of girls, we will shoot you in the head.
Our brand are enemies of civilization because they are ignorant of it. Civilization arose when mankind advanced to a stage that liberated individuals and tribes from the burdens of survival. Some few were free for other things - thinking, creating, dancing, exploring - civilized things, "nonessential" things. Most such activities are not profitable; indeed many essential activities are not profitable, like transportation, roads, bridges. Private enterprise cannot be expected to provide for these, nor can we count on the random largesse of the world's multi-billionaires. It is our governments, our common effort for the common good, that support all activity making civilization possible. And now the leaders of government would destroy it, bringing down the pillars of civilization once again, crushing its flowers underfoot, leaving the young and the old, the weak and the sick outside the castle moat. They also are "nonessential". These benighted people may believe that we will do just fine without a government - civilization be damned. The Mad Hatter is having an audience with the Queen of Hearts!
Transitions
Extremes are easy: they are what they are. It is transition that is problematic, like the warring of seasons at the equinoxes. Summer is ending and one bears the heat, expecting cold. Then cold comes, and one is caught without a scarf, knocked off balance, the immune system short-changed while the body works harder to maintain its core temperature. The imbalance is ironic given that Earth itself is in the cyclical process of balancing day and night.
Transitions in the life cycle, of course, are much more unsettling: childhood to adolescence; adolescence to adulthood, with its several phases, i.e. mating, nesting, middle age; then to the last phase, troublesome in many ways. One loses the lifelong struggle against gravity, as the ground beckons. And what is this growing inertia? Have I learned to stop and smell the roses? But there are no roses, and if there were, I would be too inert to tend them.
Well, I do take time to smell the hazelnut coffee. I suppose I will adjust, and remember at the equinox always to take a scarf.
The Force
It occurs to me that before the emergence of "life", having a life force, there was force. The universe is replete with forces: strong force, weak force, centrifugal force, and so on. So force cannot be used to distinguish life. Even the reproductive force or the force of consciousness, while unique to it, do not define life, which is there with or without them.
This then is yet another indication that life is not ultimately distinct from nonlife, in agreement with the earliest intuitions of humans as we emerged from the evolutionary flux. Early man tended not to divide, self consciously, living from nonliving. The mountains, the rivers, the sun - all the forces of "mother earth" - had spirits. And the farther we have come from that primitive knowledge, the more confused we grow.
Beggars
I have observed before the high class of beggar one may occasionally see in our village. There is one well-dressed, thin woman of a certain age, who stands on the median strip with a sign mentioning something about foreclosure and medical bills. I try not to look, assuming she must be mentally unstable. In the same spot there is sometimes an old man in camo, a war veteran according to his sign.
There is always the suspicion that such people are not actually needy. Evidence "The Man with the Twisted Lip", who faked his deformities and gleaned a "gentleman's income" begging on the streets of London in the Conan Doyle tale. But a good friend of mine tells me that it is Jewish tradition to give nevertheless, if one is able, since whatever the circumstances, the resort to begging demeans the person. Indeed it must be a sad and desperate state of mind that leads one onto the street with a sign, begging the mercy of strangers. And yet begging may be delicious; children seem to enjoy it, for example. This puzzling pleasure is the anticipation of something one wants and may with certainty expect to receive. That clever Irishman, C. S. Lewis, once noted that wanting shares something with having, from the standpoint of emotion. Well, unless one is truly hungry.
Sunrise
The sun is rising at a rather awkward time in terms of my biorhythms. It is now too dark to take a morning walk before breakfast, yet if I wait until afterwards I have missed out on the dawn, the sun already quite high. As it behooves my good health to eat at a regular time, I refuse to allow the ever-shifting sunrise to be the controlling factor. Nay, I will wait upon the fall, when the sun is just rising after breakfast!
Thus may civilized life come to be ruled by the clock, unlike that of lower animals, who naturally adjust themselves to changes in daylight in the temperate zones. I now have three clocks on my dresser, in order that I will always know, day or night, what time it is. The numbers on the first clock-radio have become too small for me to see, especially in the wee hours. The second has larger numbers, and as a bonus, just in case I am still in doubt, a projector beaming the hour onto the ceiling as I sleep. The time of night now looks down upon me. Beneficently, one hopes.
To Your Health!
It occurs to me that the surest indication of the wholesomeness of any beverage has to be the speed at which one can drink it. Pure water goes down quickly, without hesitation, a boon to ones health. Carbonated drinks are too fizzy to drink fast, filling a person with gas and too much sugar. Hot things like coffee and tea must of course be sipped to avoid burning the mouth.
Then there is alcohol, an acquired taste, the toxicity of which announces itself as soon as it touches the mucous membranes. The liver does what it can to filter it from the blood, yet it gets through to the brain, where it kills cells; and over time it may become terminally addictive. In moderation and taken slowly it can be oddly salubrious; before modern times, after all, it was used "for medicinal purposes". Is it a gift of the gods or Demon Rum? It depends. Just don't drink it too fast.
Crickets
The fire at the heart of summer does start to wane in August. Flower boxes are dry, weeds are overgrown but tired. As the crackling din of boisterous growth subsides, one begins to hear the chirping crickets. Their sound is everywhere, among the trees and lawns, but also in the village.
Obviously I am fond of the creatures, the way they can turn their legs into instruments, making that lovely rhythmic cadence, so dissimilar from the buzz-saw of locusts. The different species reveal themselves by their distinct tempi, from very rapid chirps to the longer ones, like slow breathing. They go on chirping long after the locusts of summer are gone, well into autumn, with an extended ritardando into the fine of winter. On my morning walk I pick out their sounds, heralding my favorite season; and listen eagerly for signs of that ritard, the heat of summer gone.
My Dear Fellow
Up close and personal, ones fellow man can be outrageously annoying. There is arrogance, greed, injustice, conceit. But stand back a bit, view them generically as it were, from a more distant perspective and compassion creeps in. En masse, they seem like children, tormented by their incapacities, always their own worst enemies.
The trick would be to merge those perspectives, to hold that compassion even as you collide with them. A neat trick to be sure, like landing in an aircraft, when the distant view of the ground gradually turns into houses, streets, cars. But surely one may recollect at the same time that from above things appear different. In the case of your fellow man it will help to know you are one of them. If you can transcend them, you may also transcend yourself.
Timelessness
I do believe that thanks to modern medicine many people now experience, albeit unwittingly, a long phase of advanced age that may be considered a state of timelessness. It is more than not knowing what day it is, or the unvarying routine of each day. Neither is there necessarily any sense of waiting to die -for the other shoe to drop. Indeed, that seemingly is the very essence of it: no sense of waiting, or enduring, with or without patience. It appears as a simple state of being, having transcended all that has gone before in life.
Past the age of 90, having survived cancer and/or heart disease, one is at a lower risk of any terminal condition. Many, of course, are frail, debilitated, wishing they had not survived, longing for heaven, eternal rest. But some few seem to have escaped the delusion of time: nothing passes, nothing moves. Then they are gone. Or so it seems.
To Sleep...
The strange and wonderful phenomenon of sleep has forever been mysterious, but science has lately begun to make inroads of understanding. The proper length and quality, for example, is seen to be vital to good health. The brain, it is believed, needs time to file away the day's experience, and the body surely needs rest. A close observation of ones conscious mind reveals that any level of thought is accompanied with some degree of physical tension, so the wakeful state is tense relative to sleep.
Of interest is what is being called the "mindful" state, which may refer to concentration on the task at hand, or to a focus without object as in meditation. In this latter meditative state, the mind releases thought and the body releases tension. So the mind can be clear of thought yet still conscious, alert only to sensory stimuli in the moment. This is the mind most open to intuition, the mind that is lost when one is "lost in thought". Thus may one rest without being asleep by stepping off the "train of thought"; just be sure to get eight hours.
The 8-ball
Having once realized that we are all constantly fluctuating manifestations of essence nature, we should not be shocked when our expectations of a given personality are disappointed, when a person who has always preferred one thing, for example, suddenly wants another. What we confront in this realm, in other words, are constantly moving targets; they may move ever so slowly, but they move. We must therefore keep on our toes so as to be ready. What is unsettling is to believe in a core persona, of self or of other, and to arrive in the end at the inevitable conclusion of its falseness.
Equally to beware is the naive conviction that one can affect the direction of change, as though in some game of pool: I will strike this ball, which will deflect that ball, which in turn will send another into the pocket. In the cosmic game, each ball already has its own hidden trajectory, and the one holding the cue is blind.
Fitting In
It is certainly curious how people resist stereotypes at the same time striving mightily to fulfill them. Stereotypes in fact are a major cause of mistaken identity. If I see a young woman in the courtyard, for example, with the preppy look - white, straight blond hair, sun visor - I could be forgiven should I mistake her for someone of my acquaintance who used to work for my brother. On the other side of the social spectrum, young black men in recent times emulate the affected criminality of their idols, who of course are actually wealthy celebrities. Nonetheless, the youngsters may pay a price for living a stereotype - by being "profiled".
What accounts for this paradoxical behavior are conflicting drives in our nature: to fit in and to stand out. "I am one of the group, but I am different! I stand out in a crowd - not that you would notice."
Pride and Humility
Pride in ones humility is a disguise for arrogance. Not unusually it is the resort of minorities, accruing some psychological recompense through the belief that it distinguishes them from the majority by whom they are humbled. Are they not more virtuous than those above them in society? They do not dress as well or live the high life; they are simple, humble people. And proud of it! Of course, they fall into the same sin of arrogance all too common in human nature. In some cases they cling to their proudly humble ways long after they have risen in status and affluence, accumulating vast fortunes that are eventually eaten away by trustees. But at least they were special, not like those arrogant high class people.
As Holmes explains to Watson in the adventure of The Greek Interpreter, he "cannot agree with those who count modesty among the virtues. To the logician everything must be seen exactly as it is". False modesty makes me no better nor worse than I am, which is perfect, perfect in every way, making it so hard to be humble. But I manage.
Proliferitis
The tendency for every product to accumulate superfluous variety, to proliferate; I call it "proliferitis". It is peculiar to modern times. Before this malady surfaced, one had a choice of three automobilies: a Chrysler, a Ford, or a Chevy. Then each of those branched out - Mercury, Pontiac, Buick - and eventually there was a whole taxonomy of subspecies, further complicated by the tsunami of imports.
But nowhere is proliferitis more rampant than in a supermarket. There were once three flavors of ice cream, unless you made it yourself - vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Now an aisle-long freezer is required for the varieties. Or consider orange juice, which once not long ago came as a frozen concentrate, unless you squeezed oranges. Now it can be purchased fresh, with lots of pulp, some pulp, pulp-free, and each of these permutations available with or without calcium and vitamin D. Do the math, as they say; it requires calculus!
The result, which one would assume is joyous bounty, is instead a quandary for both consumer and merchant. A person has no sooner developed a strong preference for Toffuti Love Drops than the store is forced to eliminate it to make room for a dozen more flavors of frozen yogurt. Stores must get ever larger to accommodate the proliferation, but no longer can you find anything you need or want.
Growth
Is it not strange that on a planet with finite resources the only economic model that has enjoyed any success is one that demands perpetual growth? There must always be more people to buy more, build more, eat more; and if we fail to reproduce adequately, we must invite immigrants from more populous regions. Surely this is the pattern of a malignant tumor, oblivious that it destroys its host. Yet pity the poor Chinese, whose "one child" rule to control population growth had led to dire, unexpected consequences.
The problem arose with civilization, which in truth is relatively new to a species that existed in primitive tribes for the preceding millions of years. For primitive man, life was a struggle to survive. Civilization brought an easier life, through agriculture and the subduing of tribal conflict by the domination of the strongest. But so far, no civilization has been sustainable, their decline uniformly ugly and violent. This time our finite planet itself is endangered, and still the rulers of the world talk of stimulating growth as the sole means of economic recovery. Until someone comes up with another model - one that will afford a stable population a relatively civilized life - they cannot be faulted.
The "dismal science" should be dedicated to this task. A cancer has to grow - do we?
Time
The strongest evidence that time is not how we think of it is its fungibility. We no sooner determine that "x" will never be accomplished in time, than we get busy and get it done with time to spare. Those of us, myself included, who remain stubbornly skeptical of this quality are chronically early, always allowing way too much time for appointments; while on the other side are the chronically late,who, having discovered that time is fungible, become too relaxed about it.
Of course, there are other equally peculiar and instructive intuitions we have about time: it is the only vector that moves in just one direction; and if it moves at all, why can we not feel this motion? Finally, there is the novel idea popping up in the higher reaches of math and physics that time may not exist. If true, then nothing at all in our conscious experience is how we think of it, being beyond comprehension but, apparently, not intuition.
Photography
I have just picked up photographs, yes, the little ones printed on paper that you can store or mount in an album to look at in the future. These are becoming so obsolete that one must search for a place that still develops film. This is utterly ironic, by virtue of the following. The visual sense is ultimately about light entering the eye and stimulating the retina. In the brain, an image is then created of an object discerned as "solid" because it is dense enough to bounce photons in our direction. But the object is also made of energy, particles of which are held together by nuclear forces strong enough to give it solidity.
Photography transfixes an image to more or less lasting media - film and then paper - some of which has endured since the invention of the process. It is now replaced by methods which capture the dance of light and turn it into... a dance of light. Doubtless as lasting as modern people will want, graced as they surely are with the great gift of foresight.
The Same Person
One occasionally hears the boast from a couple that they have been married a number of decades - to the same person! My meditation has brought a new perspective on the matter. I am not the same person; we are never the same from one moment to the next. We change constantly, variously affected by external and internal conditions. Our cells change over, except in the brain, which is nonetheless, we now discover, malleable by sundry influences. Even memory is not stored, but recreated "on demand" with more, or often less accuracy. It so happens that the temporal persona making up our individual identity does not exist in the continuum we perceive. It is a necklace of imaginary beads strung on the artifice of time.
Still, we think we are unchanging, and we may falsely construe the past in terms of the present: he has always been like that; I have always felt this way. Well then, am I the same person or not? In actuality, the sense of being inwardly the same, like many of our intuitions, does have a valid meaning. It is indeed the very subtle intuition of our ultimate, transcendent nature.
High Tech
Behind me at the bakery this morning were two business types conversing in government-speak. They referenced the SSA, the CIS, the DHS. Then one said to the other, "So you guys have a rugged tablet?" I discerned that "rugged" may be a brand name and "tablet" is an electronic device. It is certainly not a flat stone resistant to breakage.
I reflect upon the brave new prevalence of information technology and its unpredictable consequences. Even aside from the dependency, now nearly complete and global, upon tools that require electricity, which in turn depends at present upon diminishing fuels, there are the human and social concerns. Driving, texting, and killing people is the least of it really. These incessant distractions are time consuming, subtly robbing us of so much we may not be sensitive enough even to miss: contemplation; sun exposure; the beautiful voices of well-loved people through another once revolutionary technology, the telephone. Then it is argued, like the telephone, any new advance is met with criticism, all equally unjustified. It is all relative, right? Are there no limits then, no thresholds? There's the rub: it is not given us to know where those are.
Vive la Difference!
Over the car radio this morning I heard "Dance of the Knights" from Romeo and Juliet by Prokoffiev. It is very masculine and very Russian, causing me to reflect upon the relish we may take in dichotomy. The masculine, the feminine, winter and summer, night and day, rain and sun - the way opposites stand out against each other causes our response, usually relish. It should be greater - a joyous appreciation for the infinite variety, the omnipotential of our experience.
A narrow mind that craves simplicity, and sees just one correct way for life may react with annoyance at diversity. Such a person is unfortunate, and possibly dangerous. More common among us is a casual indifference that takes the miraculous for granted and overlooks the bounty of contrasting forms. The average person tends to see nothing special, no reason to be excited by the vigorously masculine or the distinctly Russian, unless he happens upon Prokoffiev. Most ironically, his nonchalance represents an intuition of oneness of which he is oblivious. Little does he know, he is enlightened by nature!
Irony
A saying I love and oft repeat is that "life is full of these little ironies". And isn't irony delicious after all? An acquired taste perhaps, like gin and tonic, but delicious nonetheless. For example, needy people are clearly unattractive, especially if unduly burdensome. They call at all hour to vent their odd passions, causing you to screen calls. They look to others to provide them entertainment and happiness itself. They expect to be spared any consequence of their irresponsibility. Yet if we are compassionate, we try, within reason, to give help and support, realizing that not everyone is capable and strong.
But the need to depend on people tends to drive them away. The irony is that as soon as you need no one, you become hugely attractive to others. I infer that we all yearn to lean on the strong.
The Infodemic
I remark upon the considerable hand wringing all around concerning the state of the nation, unrest in the world, and on and on ad nauseum. But I chalk it up to the "infodemic". Everyone listens to their own favorite provocateur, each one believing to a man or a woman that this particular view is the absolute truth, and all coming away with the most dire impression of the world.
This kind of slanted information spreads through the populace like a viral disorder of the nerves - an infodemic. So sad that the afflicted cannot see now peaceful the world might seem - and even might become - were they to listen only to music!
Apraxia
In its own secretive language, the medical profession has a term, apraxia, for the lack of initiative. To be sure, they must use it to refer to some extreme condition of mental incapacity, but it works just as well for the kind of lassitude that seems to accompany old age. What is the root of it? Is it increasing complexity, so that filing sits for months in the hallway, along with other stacks - gift bags, photos, unread books, clutter ad nauseum - and house plants die in the guest room? Lists are compiled, then they also stack up. All manner of crucial tasks impend ahead of accumulating trivia.
But there is time, if only one will ignore everything one wants and dreams of doing. Just forget to relax, forget to enjoy, to savor, to think, to write, to attend to loved ones. I believe the apraxia that comes with age, if not caused by dementia, is rooted in defiance: I am old enough to have learned what is important; and moreover, my shrinking horizon demands that I reorder priorities. Let the plumber wait, let the pollen coat the lawn chairs - I will get around to it - later!
The Stupid Robin
A certain robin has become a regular spring visitor, distinguishing himself by assaulting one of the living room windows, compulsively flinging himself against the glass. The window is a tall, double- hung sash style, and it has a large yew in front of it. The robin knocks against the lower half, bringing to mind Poe's raven.
I can only surmise that he regards the yew as the perfect shrub in which to build his nest, if only he could succeed in driving away that other bird reflected in the window, his rival and his equal both in strength and persistence. Also possible is that he is nesting high in a nearby poplar, and defends his family against intruding competition.
What a stupid robin, very stupid, never to learn year after year that he fights his own reflection! Yet he compels me to see that in virtually all of our troubles, we struggle against ourselves, and more precisely, the merest image on a glass, which we take to be real.
Larvae
We could take up the matter of caterpillars, the larvae of lepidoptera. The poor little creatures make excellent bird food, hard put as they are to defend themselves. Some have spines surely, and some may be toxic to predators, but by and large they are no match for bird parents desperate to feed hungry nestlings. In the garden, to be sure, caterpillars are indomitable by any means short of poison. The cabbage looper or the tomato horned worm will make quick work of ones harvest.
Still, the caterpillar is a vulnerable thing, until with luck he makes it into his cocoon, there to undergo his miraculous metamorphosis. Upon emerging he is still vulnerable briefly, until his wings dry. Then he has great power at last - the power of flight!
Bane though some are to the gardener, how lovely are the small white cabbage moths, the zebra swallowtails, the monarchs, and even the sphynx moth - large, nocturnal, mysterious - who gives rise to the voracious horned worm. May we be so lovely, should we make it safely through this larval stage!
Decline and Fall
It is ironic if not surprising when a species, having conquered all of its natural enemies, including the microbial, becomes its own natural enemy, as with homo sapiens, in Pogo fashion. Though it seems a cold equation, surely as human civilization prospers and proliferates, life becomes ever cheaper. Unstable elements, individually or collectively, become stressed, and terrorism arises, random killing of ones own kind. It is not new. Past civilizations, in falling, have experienced this "asymmetrical warfare" with barbarians or anarchists, as they have been called before.
Of course, in becoming human, we ate from the "tree of knowledge", sacrificing instinct for the special capacity to learn and thus to adapt. The accompanying curse was the freedom to kill one another. As long as we were relatively few in number, before civilization, not long ago on the scale of things, tribal society kept this killing in check. It was acceptable to kill those of another tribe, but within the tribe, for the most part, was cohesion, kinship. Before modern times, life was dear indeed, hard won and easily lost.
And now, a pressure cooker - innocents murdered, blown limb from limb as though they were insects to be exterminated. Jihadists? Home grown maniacs? Red anarchists? As the ancient Chinese master repeats in The Blue Cliff Record, "Fortunately, that has nothing to do with it!" Unfortunately, reason also has nothing to do with it.
Urgent!
Time urgency is epidemic in modern life, in which there simply are too many things to do. Of course, for most people, many of these things are compulsory: they have obligations to their employers, to their families; children and pets rely upon them; they have "promises to keep". But to some extent, I contend, even for these busy people, time pressure is self-inflicted. We make up things to do, promise ourselves to do what we really have not enough time for, and thus bring upon ourselves the stress of time urgency. I can say this with the considerable authority of personal experience, as I am as guilty as the next person. Is it necessary to routinely clean things that are not dirty, to cut the grass before it has time to grow, to shop for things you do not need, to add another house plant that will require watering, or a bird feeder that will need filling, a clock that will have to be set?
The accretion of such chores eventually adds up to a daunting sum, and the complaint that there is not enough time. Truth be told, time is ample; there are simply too many things to do. Wisdom lies in this: whatever needs to be done will have its own time.
Modernism
I was recently at a small private museum exhibiting the art of a wealthy local collector, now deceased. While there were several lovely Monets, most of the paintings were modern, Picasso being a favorite. The guided tour was led by a docent who displayed abundant pride in her fund of knowledge and expertise.
With apologies to lovers of the style, I hold that the fundamental truth about modern art is that it was abstracted by photography, in the misguided assumption that representational painting had been rendered meaningless by this technology. That, however, is not the worst result of this modernism, which was the unleashing of two despicable human traits. On the one hand, with no standards by which to judge quality, artists, typically conceited in any case, were free to capitalize on the vapors of their arrogance alone. And then the sycophants they gleefully duped formed their own elite, exclusive groups, redolent with cliche with which to discuss the Emperor's new clothes!
Of course, the avant-garde struck all the arts in the early twentieth century, because surely, it was thought, art like science must progress. Again misguided. Art, in all its forms, is language, and must therefore be allowed to evolve.
Believers
I think there would be widespread agreement that most human beings are "believers". However, certainly it must behoove us to discriminate categories. There are true believers, trusting people who believe even in things they can neither see nor prove, which they call faith. Then there are nonbelievers, who are suspicious of everyone and everything, including the evidence of their own senses; these tend to be scientists. A third category, most dangerous to themselves and others, are the fake believers. They are dangerous to themselves in that, when it happens that they go the way of all flesh, their belief system concerning the nature of this life proves far weaker than they had all along supposed; a danger to others, obviously, when they preach hypocritically about convictions they only pretend to possess, misguiding at the least, but sometimes fleecing their innocent victims.
It is best to be a true believer. But there must never be an end to soul-searching.
Soul Mates
An avid newspaper reader, I consume even the advice columns on a daily basis, these being a means of keeping ones problems in perspective by reading about those of others. Ironically, it is mostly young people who seem troubled. One woman wrote last week asking whether she should marry her wonderful boyfriend of several years, with whom she enjoys a great rapport, her hesitation stemming from his lack of spirituality. She herself has always been very spiritual, she explained.
This conundrum causes me to wonder what it would be like to mate with an avowedly spiritual person. Religious people tend to be prudish; so might one expect such an individual to fail miserably at love making? Or perhaps to the contrary that person could be more loving and affectionate. I should think in any case that a truly spiritual person would at the very least be accepting, and wise enough to realize she will never find every quality she desires in one person, as the columnist pointed out in the reply. With due respect to the sisters, I would have suggested a convent. Spiritual pride, I have heard said, is the final barrier.
Fin de Siecle
For some years, especially in this first decade of a new millennium, the worry has been expressed that our country is in decline, and indeed that Western civilization as we know it is falling into decadence. In response, of course, there are assurances to the contrary: that downturns will be subject to recovery; that new generations will return us to civility, or at least to sanity; that inspite of history, it is different this time. Yet those historical precedents are not encouraging.
I think of the great civilization of ancient Persia, its cultural glory, and then of its long decline until the fall of the last Shah, replaced by the strongest male baboon, whose highest goal is the manufacture of nuclear armaments. Or consider Arab civilization in the Middle Ages, its great advances in math and science, then for hundreds of years, to this day, a backward and barbaric culture, its Islamic roots hideously distorted.
No, indeed, decline is not about a downturn of a generation; the lesson of history is that it is slow and inexorable. And recovery? Ask the Lebanese. Then again, if you would spare yourself this gloom, do read that old Jesuit, Pere Teilhard de Chardin.
*********
Morning Light
When the morning is overcast, one may look to the east assured that the sun is there somewhere behind the cloud, without knowing exactly where. One may believe it to be in the lightest area of the sky; a logical assumption, yet that may simply be where the cloud is thinner. The sun may be concealed behind the thickest cloud, like a gemstone in mud, or a genius hidden by unlikely origins.
Assume nothing. Darkness may hold light, may even be the same. In discriminating them we may even be deprived.
*********
Red Carpet Foundation
Should I die before depleting my assets, I think I must will them for the establishment of a foundation devoted to the support and protection of magnificent people. As the "Foundation for the Support and Protection of Magnificent People" is a tad long, I shall call it the Red Carpet Foundation. Now the curious may wonder why magnificent people would need support or protection. Surely they are strong, resourceful, famous, and rich; and many of course, are celebrities. But there you are: celebrity exposes them to considerable dysfunction, too often leading to premature death, a loss to the world of their talents.
But even in the world of average, pedestrian folk, everyone knows of people who have been magnificent, "large souls" as Mr. Vivia says in describing Captain Crocker in Abbey Grange. They are beautiful or creative or charismatic, or all of the above, sweet natured, generous, in a word, magnificent. And somehow, perhaps in the failure to look out for themselves, they die too soon. One hears the notion that the good die young because God wants them back in heaven; so by inference, sour, mean devils must await their own Master.
Nevertheless, the early loss of so much magnificence deprives us all, and generations to come. Thus my foundation, having once identified a magnificent person, will see that he eats well, gets enough sleep, receives the care of the best doctors when necessary, and will protect him from hangers-on, the media, and harsh burdens, even if self-imposed. It will defend against his own animal spirits and, most of all, the violence of being loved too well.
Devolution
With the historical rise of fundamentalism in all religions, the outrage over the venality of Western culture as promulgated worldwide, there occurs a most puzzling irony, to me at least. Given that the instinctual drive of the male is to procreate widely, this drive only harnessed and to some degree regulated by the social nature of the species, why is it consistently the men complaining of loose women? Surely the sexual mores of the West are a caveman's dream come true. The strange unnaturalness of this fundamentalism is revealed by the following fact: the fertility rate in Iran has plummeted seventy percent. Who would curse their progeny with life under the tyranny of insane zealots?
Perhaps these reactionaries believe they will increase their numbers by controlling their women, but always the inherent arrogance of extreme views will blow back on the extremist. Because you can't fool Mother Nature.
You're An Angel!
I find myself wondering about angels. Well, it is the day before St. Valentine's Day. Specifically, why in modern times angels are always female, with the rare exception of a Hollywood flutter, further emphasizing the stereotype by its iconoclasm. One recalls Clarence, who earned his wings helping George Bailey in the Christmas classic. Then there was a more recent movie featuring Archangel Michael as portrayed, if memory serves me, by John Travolta. Otherwise, Hallmark rules prevail; angels are female, whereas in olden days, and for that matter in the Bible itself, they were male.
Obviously, modern people consider any creature with wings to be effeminate, raptors notwithstanding. The question is why. How has the image of masculinity become so degraded that it can no longer be associated with heaven? Of the causes one may cite, many are themselves effects: the elevation of sports; media's race to the cultural sewer, with the aid of marketing. At the root of it may be increased competition stemming from overpopulation, especially the overabundance of males in parts of the world due to deliberate sexual selection. The Devil is indeed in ascendence when he is the only one scoring. Brother, reclaim your wings; heaven needs you!
Cat and Mouse
Even though she is a good mouser, Pixie the cat has a strange fear of toy rodents. A toy mouse that squeaks exactly like the real thing, sends her running to hide. A toy rat that makes no sound but is quite realistic looking will frighten her away in spite of the catnip stuffing. And yet should any field mouse foolishly venture into the basement, hoping for a warm winter nest, Pixie, relishing the chase, has no hesitation in dispatching him.
I surmise that as a kitten, born wild under a construction trailer, she may have been menaced by the nocturnal activities of such creatures, but that her lingering fear is not strong enough to override her predatory instincts. I reflect upon the several people of my acquaintance who might wish, like Pixie, to overcome the terrors of infancy and catch the proverbial mouse - figuratively speaking.
Too Clever
A modest proposal, with apologies to Swift: if, through the processes of evolution, a species becomes too clever, eliminating all natural enemies and threatening the environment with catastrophic destruction, despite its cleverness, how would nature go about eliminating it?
I postulate that the following behaviors would become increasingly common: killing of the young; killing of women, including any female fetus that is detected, cleverly; and the preservation of the elders for as long as possible by whatever clever means necessary. This species is on its way to extinction, with apologies to Eliot, "not with a bang, but a whimper".
The Teacup
As soon as the cup slipped out of my hand, my heart sank. It would break, of course, and already its matching teapot had a broken spout from striking the granite counter. The beautiful bone china was gilt-edged and decorated with pale roses. I had no business using it everyday, if I wanted to preserve it.
All the more wrenching was this loss since the shop where I bought it was now closed and gone, making the cup and pot irreplaceable, as virtually all things fine and beautiful were fast becoming. Ironically, the modern world of global trade has brought not variety but total conformity. Global corporations decide what they will sell at maximum profit and persuade consumers to buy it through psychologically sophisticated "marketing". Aesthetic considerations are irrelevant. Thus there are no more beautiful clothes; men and women, young and old, wear a uniform of tee shirts or sweats, jeans, and sneakers. We all go to the fast food place, drink our flavored sugar water out of paper, and eat our deep-fried nuggets of mystery meat from a cardboard bucket. No need for beautiful china cups. Some of us will die of food poisoning, but no need to worry about a burial suit; there are no suits. Instead the cremated remains will be recycled into the mystery meat. Thus will the species succumb to prions.
The cup broke cleanly in two. Overcoming a fit of pique, I glued it together, as I had the broken spout of the teapot, and set the two in the china closet, never to be used again.
No Regrets
I believe that many people, if not most, who come to regret things really have no understanding of themselves. They will say that they regret not having appreciated something that is lost, or worse, a person who is gone. These will often be the very people who have been cajoled with ample advice that something-or-other or so-and-so will not be here forever, and will someday be missed. We must wonder, as they never do, why such advice has inevitably gone in one ear and come out the other, making not the least impression on the way. This is because those things that such people come to regret represent their own incapacities. For whatever cause of nature or nurture, all advice notwithstanding, they were never really capable of savoring what they have had in life, and even less of thoughtfully considering and reciprocating the feelings of loved ones.
It may seem a tragedy and a travesty to those looking on when, upon the passing of a spouse who has for decades been the object of complete indifference, the survivor wails in grief and remorse. But we should recognize, as that person never will, that this indifference was and shall ever be the only available response.
Professor Higgs
The discovery of a Higgs boson has had me reviewing Brian Greene on Higgs fields and the Higgs ocean. I recall that these theories and investigations aim to discover what occupies empty space, the Higgs ocean being the latest version of the ether. The finding of a Higgs particle appears to prove that emptiness is form, but we knew that. It took physicists fifty years, first having to build the Large Hadron Collider, and still they have not transcended. They are chasing their tails!
Dithering about this Higgs boson in the newspaper included a letter from an atheist asserting that it disproves theism. Of course, avowed atheists tend to be arrogant shallow people, with far more pride in their intellect than their beliefs justify. Religions persist not only due to human ignorance, but also human need. It is not enough to learn that the universe is orderly, the stuff of matter decipherable, and to acknowledge that you are of the same stuff. Such knowledge speaks not at all the the existential problems of human experience; and it is inherently limited by the conundrums of duality. While religion is often distorted and misused, its critical flaw is the lack of profundity, except for the Dharma. The ultimate essence of Reality is discovered, not in a particle accelerator, but under the Bodhi Tree.
Idealism
I am wondering about idealism, in all its various guises, whether the passion to save the world through some political ideology or simply extreme fastidiousness in choosing a mate. The striving for perfection is a ubiquitous thread in all human history; it is, moreover, the mother of invention. Could it be the cultural expression of the primordial force of evolution itself - the genes and the epigenes adapting to environmental stimuli with ever new and improved life forms? Consider the exquisitely perfected adaptations in nature: a bird or a bee configured to its own particular flower; the perfectly camouflaged fur both of predator and prey animals.
Why should we be surprised, then, that homo sapiens strives to perfect himself and his society? The religious fanatic, the political revolutionary, the old maid who held out past her prime for the perfect man, demonstrate the perfectionism of evolution. Unfortunately, as man has freed himself from the forces of natural selection, he always fails in this effort, unless you believe like Pere Teilhard that each cycle of civilization spirals upward towards that ultimate perfection - God.
Free Will
In noting that homo sapiens is by and large liberated from the instincts that govern much of animal behavior, we raise the topic of free will. The religions of the world believe this mixed blessing to be God-given, and because of it, hold us all accountable for our actions in this life, which therefore is seen as a test of how we use this free will to adhere to His. There follows endless controversy as to God's will - what it is, who gets to say.
This free will is not so free. Certainly, evolution has given us a great capacity to learn, at the expense of those innate behaviors witnessed in other animals. In other words, we are more adaptable, without those specific rituals, such as the submissive gesture that usually keeps predators from killing each other. We are free to slaughter the next tribe, or trade with them, depending on where we have considered our own tribal interests to lie.
But while we may be free of most instincts, we are not free of inclinations, some of which are indeed inherited, for example, a genetic risk of mental disease. So given that all human behavior is governed by that most complex organ, the brain, which has to a highly variable degree an indeterminate range of options, how can we begin to ascribe accountability to another person? It is the question in many a court proceeding, each of which flies in the face of the doctrine of free will. There exists a very definite human nature, which is far more compulsory than we wish to believe; but it is what we must deal with, in ourselves and in others.
Holy Days
The observance of Christmas has had its ups and downs, acquiring peculiar trappings from cultures the world over, under which the original birth story is now all but buried. Nothing could be more unholy than these modern holidays, which are trying and stressful. Having become more about commerce than ever, Christmas has lost its magic and romance to feverish buying.
As I recall from childhood, Christmas was always a beautiful time, much more so than now. But the problem with nostalgia is that it is usually inaccurate. No doubt Christmas Past was not, as I now look back upon it, a uniformly positive experience. All things change constantly, and so how we feel about them must also change. It is all right to let go of Christmas Past and of its nostalgic ghost. A Christmas Carol is a wonderful tale, with just one flaw: Scrooge is finally transformed only by the fear of death, from which he will not be saved even in the keeping of Christmas. The ghost of the future. This is all about the movement of time, you see, which does not move. If time does not move, it does not exist; and if time does not exist, neither do temporal beings. One is free to be his true and timeless Self - much better than clinging to ghosts!
On Becoming a Curmudgeon
I remark how unsettling is the fact that in this day and age, totally reversing the norm of all preceding human history, the elders are forced to emulate the young. If young men no longer wear the top of a pajama, then pajamas will no longer be sold with tops. If young women eschew any and all leg coverings, then the hosiery department will disappear. Even more dispiriting is the zest with which most older people embrace this phenomenon, begging to know just what the young ones expect of them so that they will not disgrace themselves, ignorant of the eons when an opposite interaction was the rule. Then most demoralizing, for those few oldsters who maintain a standard of appearance with what remains to them of a former glory, are compliments on the beauty and grace of their furnishings, from young people who, despite the obvious fact that as a group they dictate the styles, would never dream of adopting any such beauty and grace. No, no, there must be only ugliness. Everyone will conform, until the last thread of a bygone beauty is moldering in a coffin!
Have I lived too long? Perhaps not long enough.
Well Water
Years ago, a property on my cross street sold to a young couple. It was during the great real estate boom, so they proceeded to enlarge the old colonial house with an addition surely twice as large, thereby tripling their living space. The house was on two open acres, some of the last remaining open area of the original farm that made up the subdivision. But this couple wanted trees. They planted oaks and maples, cherries and elms, very close together, in front of the house.
In some years, they had their big trees; their front yard became crowded with trees. I cannot say how many years; it has not seemed to me a long time, but it may have been. As I passed there the other day on the way to the village, a tree crew was hard at work. All the trees had come down. This morning when I passed that way again, new trees were being planted, fully grown evergreens of the tall, straight habit, to line three sides of the property.
This property is directly across the lane from Mr. Stewart's "meadow". (See Past Posts.) Is it something in the well water?
Bending
The redbud tree was planted under the drip line of larger trees, poplars and locust. As a result, it did not grow straight, but reached out for light at a forty-five degree angle with the ground. In this awkward posture, it was of course vulnerable to storms and especially to heavy snow or ice. Nevertheless, it grew quite tall; and when it bloomed in early spring, turned into a massive ball of pale violet, the color of raspberry sherbet against the vanilla of dogwoods. I have yet to discover how the "redbud" was so misnamed, since it is not red.
Gradually, year after year, winter after winter, one major limb after another cracked and broke, and the redbud lost its grandeur. But the overhanging trees, under which it had struggled, were not immune to damage. The two old locust trees lost many a branch and fell prey to insects, then to woodpeckers, until they were hollowed out and threatened to fall on the driveway. I had them taken down by dear old Mr. Butler and his crew, who have been in the neighborhood even longer than I have.
Now the redbud has more light and all the room it needs to grow again. The first five feet of its trunk, though, will remain at that unnatural angle it acquired in youth. "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree", and at some point it can no longer be straightened.
Why I Write
I just hope I can put it all down, all the things I want to say, things that others may not think to say, get it all down while I still know who I am. And since I am just a pattern of neural impulses emanating more or less consistently over time in certain brain centers that combine to produce consciousness, the whole matter of getting things down is seeming tenuous indeed. If I forget who I am, I may forget what to say. And there is so much the young should know, that they could be spared the learning if someone would tell them, such things as I had to learn because no one told me.
They should know that they are driven by their cells, unconscious, through distinct, foreordained phases of life. They should know that men and women are just people, basically, but beyond that there are differences, irreconcilable. They should know that mothers are very influential, intended or not, but that genes trump all else. They should know, for example, that Jews eat tuna salad and Gentiles eat chicken salad. They should know that trees never stop growing, that raccoons and woodpeckers will dig up the seventeen year cicadas right before they emerge, that the fox makes a wheezing little bark at night. They should know that some things need to be discriminated, like reality from hype or music from noise - while other things do not, like self from other.
But then who am I to say?
Call of the Wild
Pixie the cat dreams of being wild. Rescued from a feral litter, she might have some lineage on that order; but she was just two months old upon being introduced to domesticity. After another two months, spent in foster care with a dozen other cats, she came to me and to a very comfortable, permanent home. She has free run of a two-story house, and a basement where she takes pleasure in molesting the occasional mouse unlucky enough to intrude.
But she also has access to to a screened porch, exposing her to the smells and sounds of the world beyond; and for at least thirty minutes a day, I take her outside on a leash to explore the backyard. Thus does Pixie have the best of both worlds: the security of domesticity with the excitement of the wild. There can be no doubt that to Pixie the freedom of wildness outweighs whatever abstract dangers she may sense instinctively in the smells around her, but of which she has had no experience, living in the luxury of complete protection. The wild animal she dreams of being would run free into the world, nothing to stop her from exploring and owning every inch, free as the birds with all the sky to play in.
Of course, the birds are subject to her predation; they are not free. Just as she would be subject to roaming dogs, larger cats, other predators. Perhaps the daily, though brief, pleasure of pretend freedom is offset by the frustration of an unrealistic dream. Some few, even cats, are wise enough eventually to accept the truth.
Love of Animals
A cause of widespread wonder indeed is the fact that it is easier to love animals than other humans; and the simple reason is that animals cannot talk. People like to consider themselves above it all; they are not "animals"! But of course, they are; and if animals could talk, people would recognize the fundamental similarity. Their puppy might then be a demanding brat, their cat a morose curmudgeon. It is easy for people to believe that animals are driven by instinct, and are therefore less complicated, less challenging, more lovable than other people, who in contrast are seen to exercise God given free will in all their actions, and may thus be culpable in any behavior deemed unacceptable.
The human proclivity for moral rectitude is coupled with a refusal to acknowledge causation in human affairs. Even in modern times, for example, mental illness, and especially addictions, are believed by most people to reflect simply a lack of self discipline. Victims are blameworthy for their failure of self control, because humans, after all, are not animals. The irony inherent in such beliefs is that all animal behavior, human or otherwise, is karmic - the effect of causation - and that any social species, had they the gift of speech, would doubtless give voice to the same moral rectitude observed in homo sapiens. Would they be less lovable?
Words and Music
Music is a very expressive and emotional medium, buy it is dangerously unspecific. When I hear the intensely beautiful music of the Romantic composers, for example, the Russians in particular, but indeed any of them, I relate the emotions it evokes to my own state of mind. It is a personal, psychological response. But I also wonder what was in the composers mind; it could have been some jingoistic sentiment, intended to foment revolution. Or that sweet, tender slow movement - was he thinking of his sleeping child, or his last conjugal encounter - or something else? I remark as well the surprising range of emotional capability revealed by these male creators of music, from the gentlest to the most vigorous. At least this is true in classical music. I venture to say in the lesser forms, the potential is not great.
This characteristic of music - its individual adaptability - makes it universal, a big advantage. Yet perhaps not for the composer, if he meant to express anything specific that was important to him. For that you need words.
Clocks
It is a most wrenching business to change the clocks twice a year for the silly purpose of manipulating the hours of daylight, and not just the chore itself of adjusting all the time pieces in ones environment. The very idea that six o'clock yesterday is five o'clock today, that eight o'clock is now what nine o'clock used to be, is completely obfuscating, upsetting the normal order, not to speak of biorhythms.
Animals never suffer such unnatural dislocations, unless they are domesticated. The seasons change slowly in the temperate zones as the earth moves through its solar orbit, the daylight increasing or decreasing one minute at a time over the course of months. There is never a sudden jolt of an hour lurching forward in a single day then back again.
The cats get very upset when their six o'clock breakfast is not served until what seems to them to be seven o'clock. They accept no explanation, and for that matter, when I go to bed at ten, as tired as though it were eleven, neither do I.
The Mouse
There is a mouse under the refrigerator. The cats have chased it there, but it is not injured. It is, however, a baby, which will not survive long out of the nest in any case. I ferret it out with a broom stick; and since it is now exhausted, I catch it easily in a dish towel and take it outside, leaving it in the sun wrapped gently in the towel.
Here is the frailty of life and early death, the cruelty of predation, the brutal realities of nature. Yet as I drive off on my errands, leaving the mouse to his fate, I am reflecting how ludicrous I would appear to most people. They know what really matters in this life: playing games, having fun, having children, making money, seeing that your offspring reproduce and make money, having a big turnout at your funeral and an eloquent, long obituary ... They are quite certain in their assumptions, so do not question them. I, on the other hand, am just a silly old fool.
When I return from the village, the mouse is dead. I retrieve the towel but leave him, a morsel for the hawk.
Vines
We could take up the matter of vines, which in our latitude are tremendously hearty and strong. The growing season is barely begun before they have overgrown the shrubs and trees, smothering the former, pulling down the latter. We have honeysuckle - the worst - Virginia creeper, wild grape, wild ivy, and poison ivy. Honeysuckle does mitigate its nuisance quality with a wonderful scent, and those that flower - the trumpet vine and the morning glory - while not exactly endearing themselves, manage the same.
There is no way of keeping out the vines, or eliminating them; major landscaping would simply postpone their re-emergence. One only hopes to beat them back each year, far enough to spare the life of ones plantings. And so even in late spring, when they already have revealed their pervasiveness, I wade into the shrubbery, at risk of tick-borne disease and poison ivy rash, to trace them down and sever them as near to the ground as possible.
Pulling them off the tree or bush may break the entangled branches. Thus do the vines protect themselves, entwining and strangling as they overwhelm their host. But one honeysuckle that eluded me until fall, growing way to the top of a holly tree, revealed a vulnerability of this parasitism. It was, of course, still subject to my clipper; but its very bushiness, from a summer of unfettered growth, made it all the easier to pull down. It was strangling itself.
The parasite is incorrigible; to those who would emulate the parasite - a lesson.
Seasons
I harbor no illusions about the fact that most people prefer summer to winter. The latter is cold and often stormy; one has to bundle up, and the daylight hours are short. Whereas, summer tends to be warm and sunny, with long, lazy days lingering into the evening hours. Personally, though, I have always reasoned that while one can always add clothes to keep warm, there is only so much one can remove to escape oppressive heat, before laws against nudity are invoked.
And summer has its own peculiar perils: biting and stinging insects; poisonous plants; food poisoning from bacterial growth, or fungal skin diseases - not to mention tornadoes in some regions, hurricanes in others, and frequent power outages from thunderstorms. To these perils, winter snow is nothing; and respiratory illness can be avoided through vaccination and hand washing. Winter is a restful time, with long nights for sleeping.
The change of the seasons inevitably occasions much activity: taking out the appropriate wardrobe and storing the other; starting the garden in spring, and putting it to bed in the fall, among other numerous chores. As I age, I become far less partisan regarding these annual changes. Winter still holds its beauty and its charms, alongside its harsh disciplines of cold and snow and ice. I understand the allure of summer for other people - its colorful flowers, its comfortable warmth. But dispassionately, just a I see the merit in winter which they fail to appreciate, I view summer as they never should. It is a siren song, a sinister treachery, promising comfort and pleasure, delivering danger.
Mortal Man
When I was growing up, people died with some regularity. I was just four when my grandfather slumped over dead in his rocking chair on a porch at the beach. My grandmother lived on for some years before dying in bed of a stroke. My father's family lived at some distance, a long trip by train. His mother died rather young of thyroid disease, and years later his father succumbed to the old man's friend, pneumonia.
In the meantime, my parent's own generation had begun to shrink in number. An uncle had a sudden heart attack after he was fired from his job. His overly dependent wife died of complications following abdominal surgery. A cousin's husband died of a blood clot before he could be diagnosed with what was likely some form of cancer. It was the youngest of my father's three brothers who went first, of heart disease. It seemed as though we were forever visiting someone in hospital, or paying respects at the funeral home, or taking flowers to the cemetery. It was accepted as the way things happened. A person lived until a certain age, and then he died. That was all there was to it.
I may be forgiven if I must observe that today, even though I myself am much older, people rarely die. They have a heart attack and live on, taking medication; or they have heart surgery and survive. They move to a senior residence, then assisted living, then graduate to a nursing home, where they may pray to die but do not. They sit silently around the table having run out of things to say, knowing that in the natural scheme of things, they would be dead. But somehow these days, dying is not in the normal course of events.
The Stewart Meadow
Mr. Stewart, who it turned out was something of a mad genius, purported to believe, despite that genius, that by not mowing his acreage in the tidy and uniformly manicured community where I live, he would have a natural meadow. Of course, the east coast of North America is by nature forested, so in the absence of mowing, native shrubs and saplings took over. In some years the taller species will overshadow and eclipse the shrubs, and a forest will prevail.
The road frontage of this property, however, has been mowed by the county once each summer in order to prevent a traffic hazard. So there is a swath of the coveted meadow on the edge of the Stewart place. Each year wildflowers spring up in a panoply of types depending on conditions. One season it is all yellow daisies; the next year Queen Anne's lace and blue nicotinia. Meanwhile poor Mr. Stewart, who also used to buy live crickets to feed his purple martins, has moved on.
No comments:
Post a Comment