Who are you that claim to have once been me? I've seen your pictures: mop head kid in kilt, mop head twenty something with beard. You had a future which, for better or worse, turned out to be me, but it's not clear to me today who you were then. At each moment the answers were manifest, but looking back, I can't recover any of them.
These reflections follow viewing the 12 year time-lapse film Boyhood this weekend. We leave the main character Mason when he's 18 and just starting college. I was 18 once and went to college; were you, 18 year old Peter, like him--taciturn but taking things in? I seem to remember you more talkative, opinionated, filled with urgencies that you struggled hard to name.
I could with effort call more episodes to mind but I'd face the same problem: I only know you, my former self, by interpreted memory, filling in the gaps (many in my case) with inference. I've looked through some of the things you wrote around then and it seems at best callow, at worst silly. You were so naive, and working so hard to overcome that naivete. You might have been him in the movie--confident and insecure simultaneously.
You never had a worked-out plan for the future but rather an agenda for finding a certain way of being in the world. That same mission I recognize in myself now. Your flailings-about in that process seem, from this vantage, a bit laughable. That's certainly not an opinion you would have liked to hear from your future self. You would have wanted me, looking backward, to take you as seriously as you did looking forward.
Perhaps there's a future Peter who's set to get a chuckle out this blog. The discoveries that I make now that seem fresh and compelling will have been integrated and transcended by then. The future is likely to be as complacent about who I am today, as I am about who I was 18 or whenever. Okay, I had hair then, more than enough of it, and all kinds of energy and anticipation. Still I didn't know then what is obvious now, as I don't know now what will be obvious at 80.
I think, Peter then, or Peter now, you can't take too seriously what will come after. The successor is always in a good position to mock or deplore the predecessor, but so what? The point is that we are still on the trail of golden beast we've been tracking all our lives. If by 80 you're not, then the laugh is on the Peter of 2030.
I guess hospitality, friendship and exploration apply to my encounters with my former selves. There's enough distance for you, the college freshman rambling around UVM to be an Other to me, the grandfather pottering around the garden in Rozzie, neither of us with any reason to look down our noses. We each have our place in time, used or being used more of less well. There were chances then as now for lastingness. Did I take them? Am I taking them?
It feels as though you, Peter then, had aspirations not fully realized in who I am now. Where then is that future you hoped for yoursself? Are some parts ahead of me? Are we together in seeking it? Okay, let's go.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Shell-shocked
They were talking about what they know, what they do all day, but listening to them in class, I felt my head ringing as if hit from time to time by rubber bullets: mispronounced words--vowels off register or substituted, accents out of place, consonants missing or distorted or inserted, endings chopped off. I felt dazed and amazed by the stream of these remarkable distortions.
From the context I was able to eliminate improbable possibilities, hazard reasonable guesses and get confirmations, but it's sobering to think how many people in the past might have heard the same fantastic words I did today, been puzzled as I was, and weren't able to decipher them, perhaps never asked, and so never learned.
How frustrating that must have been, unless, of course, everyone just accepted confusion as the norm and was resigned to setting aside a portion of mental bandwidth simply for wrangling clouds and chimeras. What a tax on mental energy that must levy! Let me help.
From the context I was able to eliminate improbable possibilities, hazard reasonable guesses and get confirmations, but it's sobering to think how many people in the past might have heard the same fantastic words I did today, been puzzled as I was, and weren't able to decipher them, perhaps never asked, and so never learned.
How frustrating that must have been, unless, of course, everyone just accepted confusion as the norm and was resigned to setting aside a portion of mental bandwidth simply for wrangling clouds and chimeras. What a tax on mental energy that must levy! Let me help.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Driven crazy
I'd never seen a daytime sky so black. Looking out from my classroom window a few minutes after nine this morning, I could see only some murky street lights down below; otherwise nothing. In fact, the sky like a thick coal ash slurry was present right outside the glass; no farther away than that. Soon, a furious pelting of water, drops coalescing into parallel streams of water that flowed aslant the pane in one direction, then suddenly in another. Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed. It seemed that we, well lit and dry inside, were looking through the window pane into the maw of a monster attempting to devour us. Later, we learned the storm spawned a tornado that ripped up Revere.
Scifi novelists have imagined worlds with multiple suns, decades-long seasons, and other planetary and climate alternatives, notions fun to entertain, but today our world suddenly, actually, gave u a second night which was not an eclipse. You, air, transparent, yielding, are tameable in tires and pneumatic tools, but teamed up with water, a veritable hoodlum.
It's easy to forget, not just the potential for violence of the universe, but of this earth. Roiling magmas in the mantle spurt out through weakness in the crust; faults shifting make the earth ring like a bell; ocean surges wash away islands and beaches; ice rivers scoop out valleys and sharpen peaks; winds move provinces worth of loess; storms ignite forests which create storms of fire; rivers inundate, winds strip and break. How many more things can happen? Perhaps we've not gone through the whole repertoire. Maybe new pieces are in rehearsal now.
However wild you are, my planet, you don't hold a candle to us human beings. You may drive us to shelters for hours, but bombardments can last for days. You may kill a few, but massacres all. You may devastate the land for a time, but sterilizations permanently. Your may let some escape; genocides relentlessly hunt down all to the very least child. You incidentally cause suffering; torture deliberately maximizes it. The dark imaginings of the human heart can make today's second night seem like day.
I like you better sometimes. You're sincere; you relent; you give us as much to admire as to fear; you are not vengeful; you are generous. But is what we're doing driving you to extreme behaviors? Are we provoking you into becoming something like ourselves?
As if Prospero had gestured, the blackness lightened and dissipated. The sky cleared, even showing blue between the cumulus clouds. Later sun shone on the river, and into my room. The morning became memory.
This evening, the setting sun beautifully backlit some towering cloud banks, and suddenly there was a short, stiff shower. You're not done surprising us.
Scifi novelists have imagined worlds with multiple suns, decades-long seasons, and other planetary and climate alternatives, notions fun to entertain, but today our world suddenly, actually, gave u a second night which was not an eclipse. You, air, transparent, yielding, are tameable in tires and pneumatic tools, but teamed up with water, a veritable hoodlum.
It's easy to forget, not just the potential for violence of the universe, but of this earth. Roiling magmas in the mantle spurt out through weakness in the crust; faults shifting make the earth ring like a bell; ocean surges wash away islands and beaches; ice rivers scoop out valleys and sharpen peaks; winds move provinces worth of loess; storms ignite forests which create storms of fire; rivers inundate, winds strip and break. How many more things can happen? Perhaps we've not gone through the whole repertoire. Maybe new pieces are in rehearsal now.
However wild you are, my planet, you don't hold a candle to us human beings. You may drive us to shelters for hours, but bombardments can last for days. You may kill a few, but massacres all. You may devastate the land for a time, but sterilizations permanently. Your may let some escape; genocides relentlessly hunt down all to the very least child. You incidentally cause suffering; torture deliberately maximizes it. The dark imaginings of the human heart can make today's second night seem like day.
I like you better sometimes. You're sincere; you relent; you give us as much to admire as to fear; you are not vengeful; you are generous. But is what we're doing driving you to extreme behaviors? Are we provoking you into becoming something like ourselves?
As if Prospero had gestured, the blackness lightened and dissipated. The sky cleared, even showing blue between the cumulus clouds. Later sun shone on the river, and into my room. The morning became memory.
This evening, the setting sun beautifully backlit some towering cloud banks, and suddenly there was a short, stiff shower. You're not done surprising us.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Girdlers
What topics have I ducked in this blog so far? How about guilt?
Walking in the cemetery today and looking at the stones, I noticed dead branches with intact brown leaves littered on the ground around one of the oaks, and then under another. Inspecting one of the branches, I noticed the branch had not been torn off the branch, but carefully chewed off, and that there was a small hole in the center of the twig.
It turns out a long-horned beetle called the twig pruner or girdler is to blame. It lays its eggs under the bark of a young twig. The egg hatches into a larvae that eats its way down the center of the twig, then cuts its way out toward the bark with a series of concentric, circular cuts. When there's only a belt of bark attaching the twig to the tree, the beetle retreats into the tunnel it has eaten away, barricades itself in with sawdust, and gets ready to pupate over the winter until it turns into a mature insect in spring. A winter storm and the girdled twig falls to lie on the ground unnoticed until the adult emerges to looks for mate and a new twig. Cunning, if there were a conniver.
Our ash trees, our hemlocks, our maples, the very backbone residents of our forests are under attack. Beetles are often to blame, but we don't think of them as guilty, only as obnoxious. Guilt seems more about letting someone down. The brilliant strategy of the beetles is bad news for the trees, but the beetles are just doing what they need to do to make sure they're around for another season.
Sometimes vague feelings of guilt haunt me, especially when busy, stemming perhaps from the idea that somehow I am not or have not been doing what was legitimately expected, but since who and how I've disappointed, I can't name it's more guiltiness than guilt. But it's easy to think of actions I might yet commit that, apart from legal judgment, would set the worm guilt gnawing me till I die.
A couple of days ago, an 80 year old Californian shot in the back a female intruder in his home even as she begged for mercy. "She says, 'Don't shoot me, I'm pregnant! I'm going to have a baby!' And I shot her anyway," he said. Nothing in the news clip I saw, not his face, his voice, nor his words, suggested that he felt guilt. He took the blame for the two shots that caused her death; and the prosecutors and courts might consider that makes him guilty of breaking a law, or not. Whatever they decide, he might still wake up one night aghast--'What did I do?'--and a terrible sense of having crossed a line into a place of outer darkness. Or perhaps he'll continue to sleep deeply. There are many such in the world.
There are lots of situations that we're thrust into without our consent or full awareness where 'it's damned if we do, and damned if we don't', a Sophie's choice, for instance. Our lives can end up haunting those excruciating moments, wishing vainly we could have done otherwise.
Whether we're to blame or not, we can feel guilt. It's like a form of exile, ultimately from what we conceive as our best selves. Sometimes we willingly cinch ourselves tight with the penalties appropriate to our deeds--losses, foreclosed options, amends, ankle-bracelets of hyper-scrupulosity and vigilance--and yet still don't feel we can, even if forgiven, return to that place that feels wholly home. We still wince remembering.
It may be well then to remember some important things: that encounters still occur; that opportunities for friendship, exploration and friendship arise continually and that the invitation to 2nd person relationship forever extended by God-in-love to the Beloved always, always, includes us, even the guilty.
The way to control twig girdlers, by the way, is simply to pick up and dispose of the twigs before the insects emerge. The tree can't do this for itself but we can. Perhaps we're guilty of interfering with the 'natural order of things,' but for the oaks, the girdlers and ourselves, life does continue to unfold.
Walking in the cemetery today and looking at the stones, I noticed dead branches with intact brown leaves littered on the ground around one of the oaks, and then under another. Inspecting one of the branches, I noticed the branch had not been torn off the branch, but carefully chewed off, and that there was a small hole in the center of the twig.
It turns out a long-horned beetle called the twig pruner or girdler is to blame. It lays its eggs under the bark of a young twig. The egg hatches into a larvae that eats its way down the center of the twig, then cuts its way out toward the bark with a series of concentric, circular cuts. When there's only a belt of bark attaching the twig to the tree, the beetle retreats into the tunnel it has eaten away, barricades itself in with sawdust, and gets ready to pupate over the winter until it turns into a mature insect in spring. A winter storm and the girdled twig falls to lie on the ground unnoticed until the adult emerges to looks for mate and a new twig. Cunning, if there were a conniver.
Our ash trees, our hemlocks, our maples, the very backbone residents of our forests are under attack. Beetles are often to blame, but we don't think of them as guilty, only as obnoxious. Guilt seems more about letting someone down. The brilliant strategy of the beetles is bad news for the trees, but the beetles are just doing what they need to do to make sure they're around for another season.
Sometimes vague feelings of guilt haunt me, especially when busy, stemming perhaps from the idea that somehow I am not or have not been doing what was legitimately expected, but since who and how I've disappointed, I can't name it's more guiltiness than guilt. But it's easy to think of actions I might yet commit that, apart from legal judgment, would set the worm guilt gnawing me till I die.
A couple of days ago, an 80 year old Californian shot in the back a female intruder in his home even as she begged for mercy. "She says, 'Don't shoot me, I'm pregnant! I'm going to have a baby!' And I shot her anyway," he said. Nothing in the news clip I saw, not his face, his voice, nor his words, suggested that he felt guilt. He took the blame for the two shots that caused her death; and the prosecutors and courts might consider that makes him guilty of breaking a law, or not. Whatever they decide, he might still wake up one night aghast--'What did I do?'--and a terrible sense of having crossed a line into a place of outer darkness. Or perhaps he'll continue to sleep deeply. There are many such in the world.
There are lots of situations that we're thrust into without our consent or full awareness where 'it's damned if we do, and damned if we don't', a Sophie's choice, for instance. Our lives can end up haunting those excruciating moments, wishing vainly we could have done otherwise.
Whether we're to blame or not, we can feel guilt. It's like a form of exile, ultimately from what we conceive as our best selves. Sometimes we willingly cinch ourselves tight with the penalties appropriate to our deeds--losses, foreclosed options, amends, ankle-bracelets of hyper-scrupulosity and vigilance--and yet still don't feel we can, even if forgiven, return to that place that feels wholly home. We still wince remembering.
It may be well then to remember some important things: that encounters still occur; that opportunities for friendship, exploration and friendship arise continually and that the invitation to 2nd person relationship forever extended by God-in-love to the Beloved always, always, includes us, even the guilty.
The way to control twig girdlers, by the way, is simply to pick up and dispose of the twigs before the insects emerge. The tree can't do this for itself but we can. Perhaps we're guilty of interfering with the 'natural order of things,' but for the oaks, the girdlers and ourselves, life does continue to unfold.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Storming heaven
It felt like pulling a scrambling escapee down from a fence. Gotcha; come on back down. Reluctantly, it let go its grip and tumbled to earth, where I was waiting to cut it into pieces.
This Oriental bittersweet,called a 'thug' plant by some horticulturists, is a vine that strangles trees and shrubs, very difficult to kill, and expanding its range at the expense of its native cousin, the American bittersweet. I got a sense of this when I tackled the dense tangle in my side yard within which, somewhere, was a lilac bush.
I confess I had not paid attention to this area for a year, maybe two. That was enough; the lilac had been engulfed, and enlisted to serve as step ladder for penetration of the big oak above, up which the vine was racing to...what?...storm heaven itself.
Reading Bernd Heinrich's Summer World these days, I'm mightily impressed by the relentless, merciless opportunism of organisms. He devotes chapters to wasps, caterpillars, birds, frogs...and in each details how each is under intense pressure to grow, get ready to mate, and reproduce in short windows of opportunity while constantly targeted by greedy predators, themselves under similar stress.
This afternoon on my porch, recovering from the morning's bittersweet struggle, I saw a small bird, perhaps a sparrow, land on my porch shrub, look sharply around, hop to other branches, look again, and fly off. Now I understand what it was doing: looking for caterpillars hidden, camouflaged, immobile or otherwise trying to escape notice. The bright eye of the bird scanned the little bush thoroughly, found nothing and left. Whew! must have thought any caterpillar (if any were there), near miss.
The activity is incessant, the production prodigious, the losses tremendous. I realized with new clarity: every living thing is somebody's food. That there are beautiful forms and elegant strategies is a natural product of this unceasing jostling for space, searching for food, attracting a mate, consummating, producing another generation.
In this context, friendship, exploration and hospitality seem a little precious; of course, social collaboration, reconnaissance, symbiosis and other behaviors which resemble (perhaps actually express) these are natural phenomena. What I think makes these principles for us more than just strategies is their 2nd person character inspired by the relationship of God-in-love and the Beloved.
Wading into this mess with nothing but clippers and bare hands, I was finally able to extract the vines from the tree and lilac from the vines. A big heap of flexible stems and soft, oval leaves attached with green petioles (these leaves must have squeezed out of the stem like toothpaste) lay ready to be bundled on the grass. The lilac, extricated, looks airy and relieved. However, a nest with a blue egg that had been constructed in the matted knot up in the tree had been tipped nearly over and almost dislodged by my violence. What a deeply snarled world we live in.
This Oriental bittersweet,called a 'thug' plant by some horticulturists, is a vine that strangles trees and shrubs, very difficult to kill, and expanding its range at the expense of its native cousin, the American bittersweet. I got a sense of this when I tackled the dense tangle in my side yard within which, somewhere, was a lilac bush.
I confess I had not paid attention to this area for a year, maybe two. That was enough; the lilac had been engulfed, and enlisted to serve as step ladder for penetration of the big oak above, up which the vine was racing to...what?...storm heaven itself.
Reading Bernd Heinrich's Summer World these days, I'm mightily impressed by the relentless, merciless opportunism of organisms. He devotes chapters to wasps, caterpillars, birds, frogs...and in each details how each is under intense pressure to grow, get ready to mate, and reproduce in short windows of opportunity while constantly targeted by greedy predators, themselves under similar stress.
This afternoon on my porch, recovering from the morning's bittersweet struggle, I saw a small bird, perhaps a sparrow, land on my porch shrub, look sharply around, hop to other branches, look again, and fly off. Now I understand what it was doing: looking for caterpillars hidden, camouflaged, immobile or otherwise trying to escape notice. The bright eye of the bird scanned the little bush thoroughly, found nothing and left. Whew! must have thought any caterpillar (if any were there), near miss.
The activity is incessant, the production prodigious, the losses tremendous. I realized with new clarity: every living thing is somebody's food. That there are beautiful forms and elegant strategies is a natural product of this unceasing jostling for space, searching for food, attracting a mate, consummating, producing another generation.
In this context, friendship, exploration and hospitality seem a little precious; of course, social collaboration, reconnaissance, symbiosis and other behaviors which resemble (perhaps actually express) these are natural phenomena. What I think makes these principles for us more than just strategies is their 2nd person character inspired by the relationship of God-in-love and the Beloved.
Wading into this mess with nothing but clippers and bare hands, I was finally able to extract the vines from the tree and lilac from the vines. A big heap of flexible stems and soft, oval leaves attached with green petioles (these leaves must have squeezed out of the stem like toothpaste) lay ready to be bundled on the grass. The lilac, extricated, looks airy and relieved. However, a nest with a blue egg that had been constructed in the matted knot up in the tree had been tipped nearly over and almost dislodged by my violence. What a deeply snarled world we live in.
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Bump
This morning the oddest thing: as I ran under the Longfellow Bridge heading west over the built out section of Memorial Drive that presents the impressive view of Back Bay and its two towers, another runner, a man perhaps in his forties, held out his fist to bump mine. I was surprised and responded late and awkwardly. He gave me a thumbs up, a smile and loped on ahead. He was faster than I so I saw his lead growing as we together went toward the Mass Ave bridge.
What were you thinking? Was it the perfection of the sweet air and the refulgent light and the fact of Friday that put you in an alls-well-with-the-world mood that led to this gesture of mutuality. Maybe you were amused by the clownishness of the boney old guy in yellow shorts, blue striped tank top and colored shoes. Had you passed me before and so knew me by sight?
I pass so many people, walkers alone and in pairs, cyclists, runners, more often coming the other way than not, most occupied with their thoughts or conversations and so not making eye contact. But what about this: a little bit further along and on the same day, a smile of acknowledgement flitted across the face of a young woman. Had my face been open enough so as to invite response? I remember myself thinking about revisions to a sentence in the post I had just published. Was friendliness in the air?
Even more, what about the person in a motorized wheelchair with whom I often cross paths as I run from Boston to Charlestown, he on his way to work in, I guess, a bank. I've been thinking about how to greet him as we pass but shy because our circumstances are so different. Well, also today, a quick look and the briefest smile for the first time ever. Was this just one of those days when the unexpected happens so often and so naturally that you begin to think that even improbabilities could become the rule.
I confess, I'm gratified. These contacts make me feel connected, but not contained. It does make me wonder, though, about what messages I broadcast as I run, ones I may not be aware of. What expressions do people see beneath sheen of sweat? Is there something in my glance? I'm interested in looking at everyone I meet; perhaps my pleasure in faces shows.
Well, it's not a serious matter because these encounters are few and infrequent. But you, fist-bump fella, had come up behind me. You introduced yourself to me as fellow runner on this glorious mid-summer morning on which it was so good to be alive and active. I send my greetings after your receding back, and to all others. Vaya con dios.
What were you thinking? Was it the perfection of the sweet air and the refulgent light and the fact of Friday that put you in an alls-well-with-the-world mood that led to this gesture of mutuality. Maybe you were amused by the clownishness of the boney old guy in yellow shorts, blue striped tank top and colored shoes. Had you passed me before and so knew me by sight?
I pass so many people, walkers alone and in pairs, cyclists, runners, more often coming the other way than not, most occupied with their thoughts or conversations and so not making eye contact. But what about this: a little bit further along and on the same day, a smile of acknowledgement flitted across the face of a young woman. Had my face been open enough so as to invite response? I remember myself thinking about revisions to a sentence in the post I had just published. Was friendliness in the air?
Even more, what about the person in a motorized wheelchair with whom I often cross paths as I run from Boston to Charlestown, he on his way to work in, I guess, a bank. I've been thinking about how to greet him as we pass but shy because our circumstances are so different. Well, also today, a quick look and the briefest smile for the first time ever. Was this just one of those days when the unexpected happens so often and so naturally that you begin to think that even improbabilities could become the rule.
I confess, I'm gratified. These contacts make me feel connected, but not contained. It does make me wonder, though, about what messages I broadcast as I run, ones I may not be aware of. What expressions do people see beneath sheen of sweat? Is there something in my glance? I'm interested in looking at everyone I meet; perhaps my pleasure in faces shows.
Well, it's not a serious matter because these encounters are few and infrequent. But you, fist-bump fella, had come up behind me. You introduced yourself to me as fellow runner on this glorious mid-summer morning on which it was so good to be alive and active. I send my greetings after your receding back, and to all others. Vaya con dios.
Friday, July 25, 2014
Skewered
Traveling east or traveling west has to start somewhere. How about a line that runs through Greenwich, England? Let that be zero. But then, when do the directions make their switch in direction? Well, let that be a line running through the Pacific.
Of course, the decisions are historical and arbitrary---zero longtitude could run through my house--but there does need to be a reference, a getting-closer-to or farther-away-from line. At 180 degrees away, there needs to another line where leaving becomes returning, and vice-versa. All of this is necessary when we move around the earth in the way that day does. Of course, the 24 time zones zig-zag like lightning strikes north to south, but they more or less correspond to an hour's passage of the sun.
Arbitrary but essential. I'm put in mind of this as I ponder the relationship of God-in-love and the Beloved that I've been exploring in this blog. I need (perhaps, others need too) to gird this rolling world with a system of stripes that take their meaning from some prime meridian of fundamental value, so that I can know where I am on this journey. The God-in-love framework may serve as such.
In contrast, the lines of latitude are not arbitrary. They puff out from the north pole, maximize at the equator and shrink at the south (or vice versa), perfect rings. It wouldn't do to make the circles emanate from my house; the axis around which the earth spins doesn't come down my chimney, but it does touch down at a point under Polaris, and it's distance from that point that determines whether day and night share each 24 hours equally or trade it between them season to season.
One way to have a fixed north/south reference line (without the concept of axis and pole) would be to know the ratio of daylight and darkness on, say, the longest day, the summer solstice. Then, with the help of menhirs and megaliths, you'd say this is the place where the longest day is of this length. There may many be other such places, but this at least is one. Where I take the measurement may be arbitrary, but the length of day on the solstice at the point is not.
Of course, we could make magnetic north the point from which the ripples of latitude expand but it's in migration, perhaps in preparation for topsy-turvy reversal. Imagine having to navigate by a moving reference point and one linked to the turbulent inner life of the planet itself.
Maybe God-in-love will turn out to be less like a Greenwich serving as a conventional zero meridian and more like a pole, a specific point on the surface of the earth through which runs the axis upon which the earth turns. The calendar day begins and end where we choose it to, but the seasons depend on the tilt of that skewer vis-a-vis the ecliptic, and thus the whole solar system.
These reflections are an exercise in analogical speculation, something like a game. But live we must, and navigate as we can the seas of significance. If we find that the chart we use for convenience is pegged to the cosmos, all the better.
Of course, the decisions are historical and arbitrary---zero longtitude could run through my house--but there does need to be a reference, a getting-closer-to or farther-away-from line. At 180 degrees away, there needs to another line where leaving becomes returning, and vice-versa. All of this is necessary when we move around the earth in the way that day does. Of course, the 24 time zones zig-zag like lightning strikes north to south, but they more or less correspond to an hour's passage of the sun.
Arbitrary but essential. I'm put in mind of this as I ponder the relationship of God-in-love and the Beloved that I've been exploring in this blog. I need (perhaps, others need too) to gird this rolling world with a system of stripes that take their meaning from some prime meridian of fundamental value, so that I can know where I am on this journey. The God-in-love framework may serve as such.
In contrast, the lines of latitude are not arbitrary. They puff out from the north pole, maximize at the equator and shrink at the south (or vice versa), perfect rings. It wouldn't do to make the circles emanate from my house; the axis around which the earth spins doesn't come down my chimney, but it does touch down at a point under Polaris, and it's distance from that point that determines whether day and night share each 24 hours equally or trade it between them season to season.
One way to have a fixed north/south reference line (without the concept of axis and pole) would be to know the ratio of daylight and darkness on, say, the longest day, the summer solstice. Then, with the help of menhirs and megaliths, you'd say this is the place where the longest day is of this length. There may many be other such places, but this at least is one. Where I take the measurement may be arbitrary, but the length of day on the solstice at the point is not.
Of course, we could make magnetic north the point from which the ripples of latitude expand but it's in migration, perhaps in preparation for topsy-turvy reversal. Imagine having to navigate by a moving reference point and one linked to the turbulent inner life of the planet itself.
Maybe God-in-love will turn out to be less like a Greenwich serving as a conventional zero meridian and more like a pole, a specific point on the surface of the earth through which runs the axis upon which the earth turns. The calendar day begins and end where we choose it to, but the seasons depend on the tilt of that skewer vis-a-vis the ecliptic, and thus the whole solar system.
These reflections are an exercise in analogical speculation, something like a game. But live we must, and navigate as we can the seas of significance. If we find that the chart we use for convenience is pegged to the cosmos, all the better.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Home alone
If I speak, no one answers. You're away at the Cape, so when I go to bed, no one to say Good night to; when I wake, no one to say Good morning to. No one to talk about the 'wardrobe malfunction' at work today. No one to point out funny things in the newspaper to. No one to share my new flavor of ice cream with. No one to commiserate with about the heat. No one to run my new idea by. When I call out about something I'm watching, no reply will be forthcoming. Alone.
I prefer to be alone away from home. I have no trouble traveling for days on end sleeping in a tent sending (admittedly intermittent) messages back about where I am and what I'm doing. Then you're the one alone. I'm making it up as I go along, but you're observing the old rituals with something missing.
Now the tables are turned. You'll be back soon with good stories of the things you've done, the pleasures you've enjoyed. Can't wait to hear. Stay away much longer and I'll miss not just your companionship. As it is, these last evenings, everything we normally share has been like towels hung on slippery wall hooks: everything ends up crumpled on the floor.
Hope you're having a good time; don't mind me being nonplussed. Come back soon.
I prefer to be alone away from home. I have no trouble traveling for days on end sleeping in a tent sending (admittedly intermittent) messages back about where I am and what I'm doing. Then you're the one alone. I'm making it up as I go along, but you're observing the old rituals with something missing.
Now the tables are turned. You'll be back soon with good stories of the things you've done, the pleasures you've enjoyed. Can't wait to hear. Stay away much longer and I'll miss not just your companionship. As it is, these last evenings, everything we normally share has been like towels hung on slippery wall hooks: everything ends up crumpled on the floor.
Hope you're having a good time; don't mind me being nonplussed. Come back soon.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Walk around
'I'm too old for all nighters,' said my friend Yori as he told about working till 5 in the morning on information packets for each of the city officials scheduled to attend the neighborhood walk-around inspection last Friday.
The packets were impressive: separate maps for each kind of concern--doubled up power poles, unshoveled sidewalks, crumbling road verges, sections of the cemetery fence in need of repair, suggestions for build-outs to slow down through-traffic--along with annotations and photos. Since people from parks, highway, electricity and other city offices as well as police officers and staff members of the various legislators (even the lawmakers themselves) in whose districts this tiny neighborhood is located were to attend, that meant a massive amount of printing and collating and...it was dawn before Yori had it all in order ('And there was one more map I should have included,' he said ruefully.)
The Mt Hope neighborhood is small, bounded by dtwo perpendicular major roadways and two side by side cemeteries. Yori included streets on the other side of American Legion, and they've go their issues for sure, but the heart of the area under inspection was our side. After a (too, in Yori's opinion) brief introduction at his house, the entourage sallied forth. Soon residents came out to join. As I understand it, it was a large many-legged, many-fingered, many-voiced crowd that went up and down the streets, looking up at this, down at that, telling and being told stories about other things. The whole event was a testament to Yori's persistent dedication to neighborhood improvement.
I wasn't there (though invited) because I had had to work, but I secretly hoped the surveyors wouldn't look into the overgrown vacant lot next to my house where they might have found logs which miraculously appeared there when the tree growing through my fence was cut down.
I'm impressed by both parties that this event, designed to inform and hold accountable city government, took place. It speaks volumes about both civic activism and municipal responsibility. Truly, many of the issues are pressing, e.g.sidewalk snow shoveling. Others seem to me more push-back against city thoughtlessness, e.g. doubled power poles. Others seemed aesthetic matters based on what makes this neighborhood simply look good and cared for, such as cleaning out the weeds in the cemetery pond.
'I'm a detail guy,' says Yori. 'You can't just say 'fix it,' you have to show exactly where, precisely what, otherwise nothing gets done.' Maybe you're right, Yori, but I hate complaining and being fussy. I'm a good-enough kind of fellow and my house and my life show it. Excessive focus on details feels to me like scrubbing myself clean with sandpaper. But it's precise functioning on the level of small-scale operations that does keep us working at all.
That all-nighter represented a level of committment that makes me tired just thinking of it. So, while you're fighting the war against deterioration, carelessness, rust, laziness, city hall fecklessness, and all forms of ugliness in the common space, please don't mind if I just sit here face to the sky and eyes closed. Call me when you need me.
The packets were impressive: separate maps for each kind of concern--doubled up power poles, unshoveled sidewalks, crumbling road verges, sections of the cemetery fence in need of repair, suggestions for build-outs to slow down through-traffic--along with annotations and photos. Since people from parks, highway, electricity and other city offices as well as police officers and staff members of the various legislators (even the lawmakers themselves) in whose districts this tiny neighborhood is located were to attend, that meant a massive amount of printing and collating and...it was dawn before Yori had it all in order ('And there was one more map I should have included,' he said ruefully.)
The Mt Hope neighborhood is small, bounded by dtwo perpendicular major roadways and two side by side cemeteries. Yori included streets on the other side of American Legion, and they've go their issues for sure, but the heart of the area under inspection was our side. After a (too, in Yori's opinion) brief introduction at his house, the entourage sallied forth. Soon residents came out to join. As I understand it, it was a large many-legged, many-fingered, many-voiced crowd that went up and down the streets, looking up at this, down at that, telling and being told stories about other things. The whole event was a testament to Yori's persistent dedication to neighborhood improvement.
I wasn't there (though invited) because I had had to work, but I secretly hoped the surveyors wouldn't look into the overgrown vacant lot next to my house where they might have found logs which miraculously appeared there when the tree growing through my fence was cut down.
I'm impressed by both parties that this event, designed to inform and hold accountable city government, took place. It speaks volumes about both civic activism and municipal responsibility. Truly, many of the issues are pressing, e.g.sidewalk snow shoveling. Others seem to me more push-back against city thoughtlessness, e.g. doubled power poles. Others seemed aesthetic matters based on what makes this neighborhood simply look good and cared for, such as cleaning out the weeds in the cemetery pond.
'I'm a detail guy,' says Yori. 'You can't just say 'fix it,' you have to show exactly where, precisely what, otherwise nothing gets done.' Maybe you're right, Yori, but I hate complaining and being fussy. I'm a good-enough kind of fellow and my house and my life show it. Excessive focus on details feels to me like scrubbing myself clean with sandpaper. But it's precise functioning on the level of small-scale operations that does keep us working at all.
That all-nighter represented a level of committment that makes me tired just thinking of it. So, while you're fighting the war against deterioration, carelessness, rust, laziness, city hall fecklessness, and all forms of ugliness in the common space, please don't mind if I just sit here face to the sky and eyes closed. Call me when you need me.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Back to the stars
Where I get in touch with the night sky is in the cemetery around the corner from my house. A big open area without stones or monuments allows me to bend my head back, and turn around to get a 360 of the sky over Roslindale. Often the sky over Boston, illuminated by city lights reflected from low clouds as pink as a soiled stuffed rabbit. When the clouds are high and thin or patchy, they glow as pale as sheep. When the moon is up and full, matte rather than shiny, and strong enough to cast long shadows at my feet, I love to look on its birthmarked face. In the rest of the sky on those nights, one, maybe two, stars are visible.
Ringing the place are street lights and, at the Walk Hill entrance, a searchlight-intensity 'security' light on the medical lab across the way. So what I don't see is the Milky Way and its plethora of stars, stars in their profusion, stars upon stars, stars in the gaps between stars and, in the gaps between these, stars that are actually galaxies beyond ours, themselves collections of innumerable stars, all extending billions of light years out in every direction. What I don't see is our universe.
Hey, you, universe, the address of all that is, thanks for having me. I want to recognize the fact that you're not a backdrop, some scrim in the back of the stage sprinkled with sequins. Rather you are the place of everything. It may be that nowhere else is there any interest in politics or celebrities or technology or my love, but these things do have their location, albeit less than minuscule, in your vastness.
It's not as though you're nosy or intrusive. Local phenomena like solar storms and asteroids do shake us up, and cosmic rays stream down on us and even through us. A nearby nova, much less supernova, could call down the curtain on us without so much as a by-your-leave. Otherwise, you, universe, just are, on and on. Maybe there are other universes or alternative branes but you are plenty, more than enough. This sky if I could see it would, I'm told, make the point abundantly clear: we are a small part of something huge, one among many many.
People who live where there is real darkness and not this latte substitute say the stars in their multitudes even illuminate the ground below their feet; report awe, bare naked awe, at the spectacle; and sometimes are just silent, lost in wonder, their eyes dragging their minds into the abyss of endlessness.
But I don't see you, oh universe, in this way because we have painted over the window of the sky with photons which direct our gaze down and around, but not up. For sure, our dramas are largely played out inside our light dome, but when our tight little island seems claustrophobic, contemplating your majestic extension may give our minds the room they need. As so often, to see we have to turn out the lights.
Ringing the place are street lights and, at the Walk Hill entrance, a searchlight-intensity 'security' light on the medical lab across the way. So what I don't see is the Milky Way and its plethora of stars, stars in their profusion, stars upon stars, stars in the gaps between stars and, in the gaps between these, stars that are actually galaxies beyond ours, themselves collections of innumerable stars, all extending billions of light years out in every direction. What I don't see is our universe.
Hey, you, universe, the address of all that is, thanks for having me. I want to recognize the fact that you're not a backdrop, some scrim in the back of the stage sprinkled with sequins. Rather you are the place of everything. It may be that nowhere else is there any interest in politics or celebrities or technology or my love, but these things do have their location, albeit less than minuscule, in your vastness.
It's not as though you're nosy or intrusive. Local phenomena like solar storms and asteroids do shake us up, and cosmic rays stream down on us and even through us. A nearby nova, much less supernova, could call down the curtain on us without so much as a by-your-leave. Otherwise, you, universe, just are, on and on. Maybe there are other universes or alternative branes but you are plenty, more than enough. This sky if I could see it would, I'm told, make the point abundantly clear: we are a small part of something huge, one among many many.
People who live where there is real darkness and not this latte substitute say the stars in their multitudes even illuminate the ground below their feet; report awe, bare naked awe, at the spectacle; and sometimes are just silent, lost in wonder, their eyes dragging their minds into the abyss of endlessness.
But I don't see you, oh universe, in this way because we have painted over the window of the sky with photons which direct our gaze down and around, but not up. For sure, our dramas are largely played out inside our light dome, but when our tight little island seems claustrophobic, contemplating your majestic extension may give our minds the room they need. As so often, to see we have to turn out the lights.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Scissor-work
'...All of us from the time we begin to think are on an Odyssey.'
These words of Romare Bearden particularly apply to the black enigmatic figure in his cycle of collages based on Homer's epic on exhibition at the Currier Museum of Art. Here in triumph, here in hell, here suspended in air trussed to a mast, here drowning, here with the sweet Nausicaa, the wily Circe, the aggrieved Penelope, he was a man of always in or on the edge of trouble, trouble (or wrath, or mourning) being his very name.
But that black cutout, puppet-like in the midst of Bearden's exquisite collage work--his sinuous shapes, his startling juxtapositions, his subtle layerings, the rhythms of his forms and colors--is also me, is everyone. Trouble is part of life, inevitably. Get used to it.
What did you artists of this weekend say to me? From Sibelius' 2nd Symphony on Friday building through constant iterations to a triumph tremendous but exhausted, to the man on the run in Khemiri's Invasion Saturday, to Bearden's hero yesterday for whom the only trouble worse than going home would be not doing so, what did I hear you saying?
A friend said to me recently 'I need to find a way to engage with life.' In spite of trouble, perhaps because of trouble, these artists found engagement in the expression of particular odysseys, each one ultimately their own. Could that be for you, my friend?
These words of Romare Bearden particularly apply to the black enigmatic figure in his cycle of collages based on Homer's epic on exhibition at the Currier Museum of Art. Here in triumph, here in hell, here suspended in air trussed to a mast, here drowning, here with the sweet Nausicaa, the wily Circe, the aggrieved Penelope, he was a man of always in or on the edge of trouble, trouble (or wrath, or mourning) being his very name.
But that black cutout, puppet-like in the midst of Bearden's exquisite collage work--his sinuous shapes, his startling juxtapositions, his subtle layerings, the rhythms of his forms and colors--is also me, is everyone. Trouble is part of life, inevitably. Get used to it.
What did you artists of this weekend say to me? From Sibelius' 2nd Symphony on Friday building through constant iterations to a triumph tremendous but exhausted, to the man on the run in Khemiri's Invasion Saturday, to Bearden's hero yesterday for whom the only trouble worse than going home would be not doing so, what did I hear you saying?
A friend said to me recently 'I need to find a way to engage with life.' In spite of trouble, perhaps because of trouble, these artists found engagement in the expression of particular odysseys, each one ultimately their own. Could that be for you, my friend?
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Interlocutor
One funny scene from Invasion by Jonas Hassem Khemiri performed last night out of doors in a Chelsea park under the looming Tobin Bridge carrying traffic high over the Mystic River.
A middle aged bearded man playing a middle aged bearded refugee has to say something to us, but his English is limited. He's lost, he's suffering, he's alone: so why does he get persistent phone calls from some young man who wants somebody (him/a girl?) to (pleading/ordering) reply. The refugee has more to say, he needs a translator, who appears in professional business garb. He begins to speak to us, the audience, in a language that sounds vaguely Arabic, with the relief of someone who can finally say what he wants. Group by group, the translator renders his sentences into clear English.
What we, and he, become gradually aware of is the divergence of his meaning from hers. He becomes more and more relaxed, making references to opera and finally singing Mamma Mia from Abba; she produces suicide bomber testaments, finally statements praising martyrdom. His looks: progressively perplexed and scared. What new mystery has he to cope with here? We ask: how often do translators falsely attribute words or thoughts to those they are serving?
Between the speaker and spokesperson there's a special relationship. We can see this in the way clients keep urgently whispering in the ear of their lawyers, sometimes even taking the floor in urgent frustration. When you are speaking for me, I want you to get it right--to make the points exactly, to convey the significance fully, to be as powerful as I would be if I could speak the language. You are my voice, so fit me like a suit, like a suit of armor if need be.
The interlocutor, on his or her part, must on one hand grasp accurately what the speaker wants to say, but also know how to shape it appropriately and present it effectively for the audience. The idea can be summarized so; the gist is this; the listeners care about that. The message is subtly shaped by the translator into what I would say if I were you.
'If I were you', and yet I am you (for the purposes of the occasion), but really I'm not you. Like flipping of an optical illusion, I'm in and out of your shoes. Meanwhile, you are judging me against your self-perception: That's not right. I wouldn't say it that way. The tone is off. Why would I ever use that strategy? You're like a distorting mirror; you make me look bizarre, stupid, not recognizable to myself.
The play moved down to the dock. Up and down the river on the Boston side opposite there were well-lit industrial or warehouse facilities reflected in the cool water. The play ended an account of this man seen martyring his hand over a stove flame. I'm still thinking about what that meant, indeed, what the play means. Clearly, it's about the way we think about others, especially foreigners, and particularly those from the Middle East.
Theater explores as few other forms do the mysteries of 2nd person encounters. Last night was a refresher.
A middle aged bearded man playing a middle aged bearded refugee has to say something to us, but his English is limited. He's lost, he's suffering, he's alone: so why does he get persistent phone calls from some young man who wants somebody (him/a girl?) to (pleading/ordering) reply. The refugee has more to say, he needs a translator, who appears in professional business garb. He begins to speak to us, the audience, in a language that sounds vaguely Arabic, with the relief of someone who can finally say what he wants. Group by group, the translator renders his sentences into clear English.
What we, and he, become gradually aware of is the divergence of his meaning from hers. He becomes more and more relaxed, making references to opera and finally singing Mamma Mia from Abba; she produces suicide bomber testaments, finally statements praising martyrdom. His looks: progressively perplexed and scared. What new mystery has he to cope with here? We ask: how often do translators falsely attribute words or thoughts to those they are serving?
Between the speaker and spokesperson there's a special relationship. We can see this in the way clients keep urgently whispering in the ear of their lawyers, sometimes even taking the floor in urgent frustration. When you are speaking for me, I want you to get it right--to make the points exactly, to convey the significance fully, to be as powerful as I would be if I could speak the language. You are my voice, so fit me like a suit, like a suit of armor if need be.
The interlocutor, on his or her part, must on one hand grasp accurately what the speaker wants to say, but also know how to shape it appropriately and present it effectively for the audience. The idea can be summarized so; the gist is this; the listeners care about that. The message is subtly shaped by the translator into what I would say if I were you.
'If I were you', and yet I am you (for the purposes of the occasion), but really I'm not you. Like flipping of an optical illusion, I'm in and out of your shoes. Meanwhile, you are judging me against your self-perception: That's not right. I wouldn't say it that way. The tone is off. Why would I ever use that strategy? You're like a distorting mirror; you make me look bizarre, stupid, not recognizable to myself.
The play moved down to the dock. Up and down the river on the Boston side opposite there were well-lit industrial or warehouse facilities reflected in the cool water. The play ended an account of this man seen martyring his hand over a stove flame. I'm still thinking about what that meant, indeed, what the play means. Clearly, it's about the way we think about others, especially foreigners, and particularly those from the Middle East.
Theater explores as few other forms do the mysteries of 2nd person encounters. Last night was a refresher.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Carried forward
On the train, a young couple, late teens, he lanky with 'Tall Boy' written on his bag, she shapely toward cuddly, and both smitten with each other. No kissing, except for his of her hand. Long rapt looking. She had stories to tell and expressive hands to tell them with. He, quiet, looked up at her with mouth almost open in admiration. I didn't mean to spy but you two looked so beautiful that my eyes keep threading past the waists of those standing crowded in the aisle to where you were quietly exchanging murmurs of mutual infatuation.
In the movie Still Mine, an old couple, near ninety, he tall, grizzled, sharp as a tack, she petite, ponytailed, vague and forgetful, tenderly rehearse an old ritual, she leaning over his shoulder: 'How long since you've had a haircut?' In movies, we get to watch these intimacies openly.
What is the trajectory that connects these points? I should know; I've traveled much of it already. Is it a mathematical arc or the darting flight of a dragonfly or the swoop of busy sparrows? There's plenty of gentle forbearance and quiet affection to be sure. But to be awestruck by the delightful, vivid being I find in front of me and to feel the chant in my chest going 'You, you, is it possible that I'm here with you?' is something worth searching for in what we've brought with us, my dear.
In the movie Still Mine, an old couple, near ninety, he tall, grizzled, sharp as a tack, she petite, ponytailed, vague and forgetful, tenderly rehearse an old ritual, she leaning over his shoulder: 'How long since you've had a haircut?' In movies, we get to watch these intimacies openly.
What is the trajectory that connects these points? I should know; I've traveled much of it already. Is it a mathematical arc or the darting flight of a dragonfly or the swoop of busy sparrows? There's plenty of gentle forbearance and quiet affection to be sure. But to be awestruck by the delightful, vivid being I find in front of me and to feel the chant in my chest going 'You, you, is it possible that I'm here with you?' is something worth searching for in what we've brought with us, my dear.
Symbionts
Something was very wrong when, a week after the tumble on the rock rubble, my lower right shin was shiny tight and very red. The four wounds had scabbed but were surrounded by a livid region around which red dots were sprinkled. Indeed, a double line of dots seemed to be heading down to my ankle. There was little pain, except a sort of ache when I stood for a while. Even when I touched the four crusts that marked where my skin had been torn, the pain was moderate. Still, I was concerned.
They say that if we, our genetic material, were to absent ourselves, our bacteria on our skin are dense enough would be recognizable as us. There's a lot of talk these days about our digestive flora and its effect on our health, even our moods. I'd say, we're just beginning to understand the depth and richness of our relationship with our microbiota.
The question of where I end and you, bacteria, begin is a complex and subtle one. I represent an environment conducive to many species of you prokaryotes; you in turn contribute almost to the point of constituting my eukaryotic self. We've lived intimately together all my life and a couple of billion years before. In fact, the story is that several of your type of cells combined to make one of mine and so the ball got rolling. Symbionts perhaps don't say 'thank you' but at least they shouldn't try to commit suicide by killing each other.
However, the course of antibiotics my doctor prescribed is a step in that direction. The assortments of interacting species that characterize the different bacterial communities in and on me are changed as these fungal derivatived antibiotics subtract this or that variety from the mix. Of course, this is what I want; that the particular strain making my leg septic be subdued and eliminated. I don't know where you came from or how you overrode the natural healing process, but you don't wish me well and I want you gone.
But not you others, my friendly prokes: it's not you I'm angry with or afraid of. If my scorched earth remedy has knocked the systems we've built together out of whack, I apologize. Do continue to think of me as home. Allow me still to harvest the products of your presence. Don't take too seriously the rants that circulate about your kind in general. Don't take it personally if I continue to wash my hands because there are among you some of those bacteria untamed to our common ways.
Of course, my address may seem a little presumptuous since there's perhaps more of you in me than me in me. I may be the minority in myself, and it's inappropriate to be patronizing. Still, halfway through the 10 days of hot pink pills I take three times a day, I'm glad the vandals are visibly vanishing, and that you are still here.
They say that if we, our genetic material, were to absent ourselves, our bacteria on our skin are dense enough would be recognizable as us. There's a lot of talk these days about our digestive flora and its effect on our health, even our moods. I'd say, we're just beginning to understand the depth and richness of our relationship with our microbiota.
The question of where I end and you, bacteria, begin is a complex and subtle one. I represent an environment conducive to many species of you prokaryotes; you in turn contribute almost to the point of constituting my eukaryotic self. We've lived intimately together all my life and a couple of billion years before. In fact, the story is that several of your type of cells combined to make one of mine and so the ball got rolling. Symbionts perhaps don't say 'thank you' but at least they shouldn't try to commit suicide by killing each other.
However, the course of antibiotics my doctor prescribed is a step in that direction. The assortments of interacting species that characterize the different bacterial communities in and on me are changed as these fungal derivatived antibiotics subtract this or that variety from the mix. Of course, this is what I want; that the particular strain making my leg septic be subdued and eliminated. I don't know where you came from or how you overrode the natural healing process, but you don't wish me well and I want you gone.
But not you others, my friendly prokes: it's not you I'm angry with or afraid of. If my scorched earth remedy has knocked the systems we've built together out of whack, I apologize. Do continue to think of me as home. Allow me still to harvest the products of your presence. Don't take too seriously the rants that circulate about your kind in general. Don't take it personally if I continue to wash my hands because there are among you some of those bacteria untamed to our common ways.
Of course, my address may seem a little presumptuous since there's perhaps more of you in me than me in me. I may be the minority in myself, and it's inappropriate to be patronizing. Still, halfway through the 10 days of hot pink pills I take three times a day, I'm glad the vandals are visibly vanishing, and that you are still here.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Doing vs profiting
The other day I watched with a student the Canadian animation of Jean Giono's The Man Who Planted Trees. This allegory of a selfless, solitary man profligately blessing with his persistent generosity a whole region and many generations came to mind as I considered the recent trend in American companies reduce the taxes they pay by shedding their citizenship.
Of course, many of the employees of these companies may remain in this country as may many production or distribution facilities, and taxes may be levied on state-side sales, but the implicit assertion of companies making such a move is that the commonwealth, the common wealth, (through common contribution) is not their concern. International laws allow for arbitrage on taxes; contemporary business thinking allows for arbitrage on the obligations of membership, largely because it absolutizes the value of profit (though absolutes are as good as nothing at all.)
It's easy to see the limit to which this thinking gets ever closer: since doing costs, less of it is better. Ideally, cash just flows as effortlessly as water into a cistern in the form of rent. Doing--exerting, creating--is not essential to the picture.
This week I've been with students each of whom has started, alone or with others, a business. So many challenges each has had to, still has to. face: getting funding, hiring and motivating, managing cash flow, building good relationships with suppliers and customers, managing regulations, differentiating what one offers from all the others, ensuring quality, focusing on the one that should be done versus the many things that can be done. All this while being members of a family and a community, and having personal lives as well.
These people make money, probably good money, but clearly it's the doing that thrills them. I can hear it in the way they talk about the lessons they've learned, the challenges they've overcome, and what's ahead that is going to test them. They speak with much of the same kind of affection that comes through when we share family adventure stories with each other. Their achievement is meaningful as the result of doing, and the doing is meaningful in the context of complex environment which is communal as well as commercial.
The Story of Elzeard Bouffier, The Most Extraordinary Character I Ever Met, and The Man Who Planted Hope and Reaped Happiness is another title of Giono's tale. It's almost too easy to believe all this beautiful story relates, but the idea of a person absorbed in a great project, a grand doing, and transforming thereby a desert into a place of life is no fiction. So many real-life benefactors have already blessed us, many intentionally, many in the pursuit of what is possible and good.
In the story, M. Bouffier is thinking not of the many people who will find homes and refreshment in a rejuvenated land, but of the land itself, abused by exploitation. 'It was his opinion that this land was dying from want to trees,' in need, that is, of the kind of long-term, small scale generosity that he, seed by seed, could supply, each tree itself carrying on and extending the giving. I imagine him wordlessly addressing the earth as 'you' as well as the seeds, saplings, and trees he planted to live intimately with it. He sought nothing but good work.
When I think of this character, I am moved to address him, along with his land and his trees, in the 2nd person: you model for me what I find wonderful in the drama of human beings on this planet. It is this that God-in-love adores in the Beloved, and so do I.
Of course, many of the employees of these companies may remain in this country as may many production or distribution facilities, and taxes may be levied on state-side sales, but the implicit assertion of companies making such a move is that the commonwealth, the common wealth, (through common contribution) is not their concern. International laws allow for arbitrage on taxes; contemporary business thinking allows for arbitrage on the obligations of membership, largely because it absolutizes the value of profit (though absolutes are as good as nothing at all.)
It's easy to see the limit to which this thinking gets ever closer: since doing costs, less of it is better. Ideally, cash just flows as effortlessly as water into a cistern in the form of rent. Doing--exerting, creating--is not essential to the picture.
This week I've been with students each of whom has started, alone or with others, a business. So many challenges each has had to, still has to. face: getting funding, hiring and motivating, managing cash flow, building good relationships with suppliers and customers, managing regulations, differentiating what one offers from all the others, ensuring quality, focusing on the one that should be done versus the many things that can be done. All this while being members of a family and a community, and having personal lives as well.
These people make money, probably good money, but clearly it's the doing that thrills them. I can hear it in the way they talk about the lessons they've learned, the challenges they've overcome, and what's ahead that is going to test them. They speak with much of the same kind of affection that comes through when we share family adventure stories with each other. Their achievement is meaningful as the result of doing, and the doing is meaningful in the context of complex environment which is communal as well as commercial.
The Story of Elzeard Bouffier, The Most Extraordinary Character I Ever Met, and The Man Who Planted Hope and Reaped Happiness is another title of Giono's tale. It's almost too easy to believe all this beautiful story relates, but the idea of a person absorbed in a great project, a grand doing, and transforming thereby a desert into a place of life is no fiction. So many real-life benefactors have already blessed us, many intentionally, many in the pursuit of what is possible and good.
In the story, M. Bouffier is thinking not of the many people who will find homes and refreshment in a rejuvenated land, but of the land itself, abused by exploitation. 'It was his opinion that this land was dying from want to trees,' in need, that is, of the kind of long-term, small scale generosity that he, seed by seed, could supply, each tree itself carrying on and extending the giving. I imagine him wordlessly addressing the earth as 'you' as well as the seeds, saplings, and trees he planted to live intimately with it. He sought nothing but good work.
When I think of this character, I am moved to address him, along with his land and his trees, in the 2nd person: you model for me what I find wonderful in the drama of human beings on this planet. It is this that God-in-love adores in the Beloved, and so do I.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Working stiffs
Yankings, borings-out, fillings in, pressure realignments, implantations: just some of the ways we attend to the two one-on-top-of-each-other circles of standing stones, our mouth microliths, our teeth. Friends have been reporting on their experiences and expenses. Our mouths are resembling archaeological sites.
At the other end of the time line, my grandson is cutting his first teeth and his crankiness is explained away by the birthing of knives in his mouth. A friend's daughter is losing those first biters, exposing broad gaps to be filled with those same snippers, tearers and grinders that we oldsters now wish we had been more careful of.
Once upon a time, the loss of teeth meant death. Cooking was a major step in obviating our oral cutlery, and since then, we've developed replacements that do well enough, but nothing as dynamic as our teeth of pulp and enamel melded together in single specialized units. I am struck by how much they tell about our derelictions, accidents, habits. Forensics use these most permanent artifacts to identify us, but even as they occupy my mouth, I can feel with my tongue, see in the mirror, in the gaps and caps, a life's narrative.
You teeth work steadily, sacrificing yourselves crystal by apatite crystal, ring by ring, to subdue the crisp or chewy structures of the edible universe into a puree, a slurry, at least a bolus which the rest of me can get to work on. Off duty, yours is the flash that makes my smile winning. In emergencies, you can draw blood, or threaten to, in my defense (Grr!) You're also great help in loosening obdurate knots. You even comfort my compulsiveness by letting me polish you against each other when distracted. (Bad habit.)
You've made me suffer, it's true, but I have to accept ultimate blame. An army of restorers is ready to remedy my negligence, but task grows harder since there's less to work on. I may hate but don't resent the twinges and stabs that remind me of your living presence.
You remain adamant but I have tender thoughts of you, especially as your cores are increasingly exposed. My many years, my many meals have worn or broken you. Like soldiers serving an dynasty in decline, you make the best of what is left. My other hard parts are covered and cushioned, but your hardness is unsheathed and exposed--matching that of much of the world. Your bravado is somewhat ridiculous but appreciated nonetheless. So, with pickings and scrubbings, flossings and massagings, I treat you like athletes fresh off the field, but soon to go back out.
I'm waxing poetic, but like most workmen, you have no use for high-flown language when there are tasks to be done. Carry on.
At the other end of the time line, my grandson is cutting his first teeth and his crankiness is explained away by the birthing of knives in his mouth. A friend's daughter is losing those first biters, exposing broad gaps to be filled with those same snippers, tearers and grinders that we oldsters now wish we had been more careful of.
Once upon a time, the loss of teeth meant death. Cooking was a major step in obviating our oral cutlery, and since then, we've developed replacements that do well enough, but nothing as dynamic as our teeth of pulp and enamel melded together in single specialized units. I am struck by how much they tell about our derelictions, accidents, habits. Forensics use these most permanent artifacts to identify us, but even as they occupy my mouth, I can feel with my tongue, see in the mirror, in the gaps and caps, a life's narrative.
You teeth work steadily, sacrificing yourselves crystal by apatite crystal, ring by ring, to subdue the crisp or chewy structures of the edible universe into a puree, a slurry, at least a bolus which the rest of me can get to work on. Off duty, yours is the flash that makes my smile winning. In emergencies, you can draw blood, or threaten to, in my defense (Grr!) You're also great help in loosening obdurate knots. You even comfort my compulsiveness by letting me polish you against each other when distracted. (Bad habit.)
You've made me suffer, it's true, but I have to accept ultimate blame. An army of restorers is ready to remedy my negligence, but task grows harder since there's less to work on. I may hate but don't resent the twinges and stabs that remind me of your living presence.
You remain adamant but I have tender thoughts of you, especially as your cores are increasingly exposed. My many years, my many meals have worn or broken you. Like soldiers serving an dynasty in decline, you make the best of what is left. My other hard parts are covered and cushioned, but your hardness is unsheathed and exposed--matching that of much of the world. Your bravado is somewhat ridiculous but appreciated nonetheless. So, with pickings and scrubbings, flossings and massagings, I treat you like athletes fresh off the field, but soon to go back out.
I'm waxing poetic, but like most workmen, you have no use for high-flown language when there are tasks to be done. Carry on.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Summit
The summit of the mountain was, for me, a pole of attraction from the first time I tackled Chocorua. I barely arrived at the trail head because my car had started overheating on the way. Just to justify the long trip, I headed up the trail to the Nickerson Ledge Trail to get some views.
I glimpsed the top far above me and was drawn powerfully to it--but I knew I would be hours going home, starting and stopping to let the engine cool, and I should get going. Maybe that experience set the thorn in my heart because all that winter, I remembered the patterning of light through cool green beech trees, and swore that, come spring, I'd go all the way and attain the citadel.
This last Saturday, climbing one more time, a couple my age who broke a ten for me to pay for parking said they had been heading up to Mt. Washington but were happy to exchange the extra hour of driving for trail time. Sure enough, as I lounged on a granite slab looking out at the panorama of the Sandwich Range, they steadily toiled up to the than which nothing higher.
So why, descending, did I see a group of late teen girls (and two boys sitting apart) standing on an outcrop no more than 15 minutes from the top, call back one of their number saying that they wanted to go back. 'It's right there,' the girl pleaded, but no use.
How could you have so blithely refused the experience of achievement? What had drawn you that high just to turn back? Were you teasing the mountain? On Everest, time and weather can put the kibosh on an ascent, but this was a beautiful afternoon with hours left of glorious daylight. The magnet in me was locked on the top, but not yours, obviously. Further down the trail, I came across two more girls who'd dropped out and were sitting arms around knees on a ledge. 'A party of girls (and two guys)', I asked? 'They're coming.'
There are movies I've walked out of, songs I've stopped listening to, books I haven't finished. It's not necessarily obsession to go to the end of anything, nor fecklessness to not. But then why the cost without the climax? I felt for Jen, who went ahead and came back like a dog to get her friends to follow.
About 20 minutes down from the top, I met a 30- something woman fiddling with her walking sticks who looked anxiously upward and said she had climbed it twice 16 years ago, but now, looking at the rocks ahead and the summit beyond, was afraid to go ahead. What, I wondered, had happened in the interim? Can fear come to life ignited just by memories, the 'I could have been killed' substituting for the episodes of actual danger? It seemed that as she was struggling, the upward momentum that had got her so far along was losing way.
Oh, mountain, you are simply there, picturesque, challenging. The legend of Indian/settler revenge attached to you seems as arbitrary as the stories of any of people who attained the summit or did not. Our efforts on your flanks don't only reveal you but also reveal us, who we are. It's a great gift you bestow, beyond the mountains-beyond-mountains vistas you let us have.
I glimpsed the top far above me and was drawn powerfully to it--but I knew I would be hours going home, starting and stopping to let the engine cool, and I should get going. Maybe that experience set the thorn in my heart because all that winter, I remembered the patterning of light through cool green beech trees, and swore that, come spring, I'd go all the way and attain the citadel.
This last Saturday, climbing one more time, a couple my age who broke a ten for me to pay for parking said they had been heading up to Mt. Washington but were happy to exchange the extra hour of driving for trail time. Sure enough, as I lounged on a granite slab looking out at the panorama of the Sandwich Range, they steadily toiled up to the than which nothing higher.
So why, descending, did I see a group of late teen girls (and two boys sitting apart) standing on an outcrop no more than 15 minutes from the top, call back one of their number saying that they wanted to go back. 'It's right there,' the girl pleaded, but no use.
How could you have so blithely refused the experience of achievement? What had drawn you that high just to turn back? Were you teasing the mountain? On Everest, time and weather can put the kibosh on an ascent, but this was a beautiful afternoon with hours left of glorious daylight. The magnet in me was locked on the top, but not yours, obviously. Further down the trail, I came across two more girls who'd dropped out and were sitting arms around knees on a ledge. 'A party of girls (and two guys)', I asked? 'They're coming.'
There are movies I've walked out of, songs I've stopped listening to, books I haven't finished. It's not necessarily obsession to go to the end of anything, nor fecklessness to not. But then why the cost without the climax? I felt for Jen, who went ahead and came back like a dog to get her friends to follow.
About 20 minutes down from the top, I met a 30- something woman fiddling with her walking sticks who looked anxiously upward and said she had climbed it twice 16 years ago, but now, looking at the rocks ahead and the summit beyond, was afraid to go ahead. What, I wondered, had happened in the interim? Can fear come to life ignited just by memories, the 'I could have been killed' substituting for the episodes of actual danger? It seemed that as she was struggling, the upward momentum that had got her so far along was losing way.
Oh, mountain, you are simply there, picturesque, challenging. The legend of Indian/settler revenge attached to you seems as arbitrary as the stories of any of people who attained the summit or did not. Our efforts on your flanks don't only reveal you but also reveal us, who we are. It's a great gift you bestow, beyond the mountains-beyond-mountains vistas you let us have.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Safe
Friend or foe? I looked at the green leafy, stalky, rooty thing in my hands, plucked out of my flower garden, and made a decision. Goodbye. There were grasses, lanky and luxuriant. Gone. Crabgrass nuzzling the dirt. Outta here. Something with a triangular leaf reminiscent of something I also had questions about last year. Adios.
There were runners lacing together whole stands of other plants. Come out of there, you. The seeds I planted this spring here. Well, you're not them. They're dead, alas, but you can't take their place. Vacate. You vicious vines twining up and around everything and willing to let go of the root so that it survives to sprout again. Sneaky. Take that, and that. And what do you mean crowding out that row of tender plants whose name I've forgotten but which I actually planted this spring and is growing. Them I'll cherish. You, I'll extirpate if I can.
Cosmos are coming up. That's a colorful, bouncy flower. Butterfly bush is burgeoning with big purple flower clusters. Indigo plant from last year seems to still be in deep thought about actually flowering. Tickseed is going great guns, its yellow flowers numerous and bright. My pincushion flower in butterfly blue is making its small contribution. There are still a few roses. Then there the big stalky flower with tiny pink flowers that look like fishing flies. It's big, healthy, beautiful and, though I planted it, not known by name to me.
I'm not a great gardener, no, no. But flowers have unique beauty and I want all the beauty around me I can get. However, every green thing has its own aspirations. I've grown more ruthless in my oversight of my garden. It doesn't seem so much a moral question (after all, I am bleeding heart liberal) as a constant vigilance for my vision of the place, evolving as it is, but never just a weed patch. I'm after an array of color and form that can rest the eyes of passers-by, and me. I want a place that's not like every other overgrown plot.
Plants are as ruthless with each other as I am with them, and more so. They crowd each other above ground and below, seeking sky advantage, water advantage, seed advantage, sheer volume advantage. I've chosen the plants I want to support and I'm sticking with them, even if I don't always remember what they're called. This is the form of my loyalty. Theirs is to flower every year, or later this year. Call us friends.
Okay, the plot is cleaned out, mostly. If it isn't up yet, it's not coming up. Let's put some store-bought hot pink zinnias here, and some unidentified half-price blue foxglovely flower in there to proclaiming itself. It's not very full or striking, but now this garden has more balanced color, and no, at least fewer, weeds. More flowers are on their way. And who knows what that no-name row will produce.
There were runners lacing together whole stands of other plants. Come out of there, you. The seeds I planted this spring here. Well, you're not them. They're dead, alas, but you can't take their place. Vacate. You vicious vines twining up and around everything and willing to let go of the root so that it survives to sprout again. Sneaky. Take that, and that. And what do you mean crowding out that row of tender plants whose name I've forgotten but which I actually planted this spring and is growing. Them I'll cherish. You, I'll extirpate if I can.
Cosmos are coming up. That's a colorful, bouncy flower. Butterfly bush is burgeoning with big purple flower clusters. Indigo plant from last year seems to still be in deep thought about actually flowering. Tickseed is going great guns, its yellow flowers numerous and bright. My pincushion flower in butterfly blue is making its small contribution. There are still a few roses. Then there the big stalky flower with tiny pink flowers that look like fishing flies. It's big, healthy, beautiful and, though I planted it, not known by name to me.
I'm not a great gardener, no, no. But flowers have unique beauty and I want all the beauty around me I can get. However, every green thing has its own aspirations. I've grown more ruthless in my oversight of my garden. It doesn't seem so much a moral question (after all, I am bleeding heart liberal) as a constant vigilance for my vision of the place, evolving as it is, but never just a weed patch. I'm after an array of color and form that can rest the eyes of passers-by, and me. I want a place that's not like every other overgrown plot.
Plants are as ruthless with each other as I am with them, and more so. They crowd each other above ground and below, seeking sky advantage, water advantage, seed advantage, sheer volume advantage. I've chosen the plants I want to support and I'm sticking with them, even if I don't always remember what they're called. This is the form of my loyalty. Theirs is to flower every year, or later this year. Call us friends.
Okay, the plot is cleaned out, mostly. If it isn't up yet, it's not coming up. Let's put some store-bought hot pink zinnias here, and some unidentified half-price blue foxglovely flower in there to proclaiming itself. It's not very full or striking, but now this garden has more balanced color, and no, at least fewer, weeds. More flowers are on their way. And who knows what that no-name row will produce.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Steps
What a sweet trail up Mt Chocorua yesterday. This stand-apart peak in the White Mountains of New Hampshire is a favorite of mine (said also to be one of the most photographed and painted, especially as reflected in Chocorua Lake) but this time I found myself admiring the design and handiwork of those who laid out the Piper Trail I used, who constructed it and regularly maintain it.
My awareness of the trail crew began when I began to notice that, at each incline, large flat boulders had been placed so that I was climbing something like stairs, each next step within easy lift and reach. These were often big rocks, so finding them, fetching them, fitting them must have each of them been a serious project of engineering. How, I wondered, did they do it? and imagined teams of volunteers with winches, levers, chains and other tools manhandling these heavy blocks into just the right position, wedging them tight (no ankle-twisting tippers or wobblers), preparing the approaches with tread of loose granite crumble (looks like dessert topping). I could see men and women, young and old, of this generation and previous,sweating in the heat, shivering in cold gusts, having to continually brace themselves on steep slopes, harassed by insects...
The trail zig-zags up the contours of the hill, so more or less level packed sections switchback at these steep but simple stair ascents--a relaxing alternation that invited me to admire the patterning of light through the leaves of the forest that dropped away beside the path as well as enticing glimpses the summit above and ahead.
In addition to building retaining walls, clearing away fallen trees, bridging streams, the crews had placed 6 by 6s regularly perpendicular to the path to divert runoff. In the higher reaches however, instead of wood, they've planted flat slabs side by side like sets of lower front teeth across the trails prevent trail erosion. There are hundreds of them. I can picture those teams of burly (or if I were part, boney) volunteers with these ten foot (I guess) black-colored baulks on their shoulders climbing up and up to where there were to be placed. This is work in the ancient and honorable tradition of great feats like the Qhapaq Nan network built by the Incas from Colombia to Argentina.
Higher up, narrow trail estuaries onto great slabs of granite ledge, broken to cetacean-shaped rocks as pillowy as granite in the wild ever gets. Cairns, and yellow painted slabs show how to find natural ways for flanking the walls athwart the direct line to the summit. As the top looms above like a citadel, the path goes around the back way and up an easy but steep scramble to where lots of other hikers are lounging, looking at the on and on prospect of peaks to the north (Mt Washington!) and west, and flat country to the south and east.
You weren't on the Piper yesterday, trail crew, but I felt your presence, mindful of me and my experience. The hike was long, nine and a half miles out and back, up and down about 3300 feet, about 5 hours of steady exertion, and you smoothed that into a steady, rhythmic experience that, yes, made me sweat, but without the stop and think aggravations of irregular and off-beat stepping.
This is an old trail, laid out many years ago, but it's clearly been groomed regularly over the years by you people, not so different from me, who love this mountain (and all mountains) and want to make it easier for the rest of us to do so too. You served me the mountain and I did take and eat. On a bright, temperate day like yesterday, it was glorious repast.
New trails are being constructed everywhere around the country. Old trails are being cared for and upgraded. The ancient practice of travel (for even long distances) in wild places on foot is being made more and more possible. Small bands of visionaries with tough legs and strong backs are making it happen. It's time; I'd like to be one of you. But in the meantime, many thanks.
My awareness of the trail crew began when I began to notice that, at each incline, large flat boulders had been placed so that I was climbing something like stairs, each next step within easy lift and reach. These were often big rocks, so finding them, fetching them, fitting them must have each of them been a serious project of engineering. How, I wondered, did they do it? and imagined teams of volunteers with winches, levers, chains and other tools manhandling these heavy blocks into just the right position, wedging them tight (no ankle-twisting tippers or wobblers), preparing the approaches with tread of loose granite crumble (looks like dessert topping). I could see men and women, young and old, of this generation and previous,sweating in the heat, shivering in cold gusts, having to continually brace themselves on steep slopes, harassed by insects...
The trail zig-zags up the contours of the hill, so more or less level packed sections switchback at these steep but simple stair ascents--a relaxing alternation that invited me to admire the patterning of light through the leaves of the forest that dropped away beside the path as well as enticing glimpses the summit above and ahead.
In addition to building retaining walls, clearing away fallen trees, bridging streams, the crews had placed 6 by 6s regularly perpendicular to the path to divert runoff. In the higher reaches however, instead of wood, they've planted flat slabs side by side like sets of lower front teeth across the trails prevent trail erosion. There are hundreds of them. I can picture those teams of burly (or if I were part, boney) volunteers with these ten foot (I guess) black-colored baulks on their shoulders climbing up and up to where there were to be placed. This is work in the ancient and honorable tradition of great feats like the Qhapaq Nan network built by the Incas from Colombia to Argentina.
Higher up, narrow trail estuaries onto great slabs of granite ledge, broken to cetacean-shaped rocks as pillowy as granite in the wild ever gets. Cairns, and yellow painted slabs show how to find natural ways for flanking the walls athwart the direct line to the summit. As the top looms above like a citadel, the path goes around the back way and up an easy but steep scramble to where lots of other hikers are lounging, looking at the on and on prospect of peaks to the north (Mt Washington!) and west, and flat country to the south and east.
You weren't on the Piper yesterday, trail crew, but I felt your presence, mindful of me and my experience. The hike was long, nine and a half miles out and back, up and down about 3300 feet, about 5 hours of steady exertion, and you smoothed that into a steady, rhythmic experience that, yes, made me sweat, but without the stop and think aggravations of irregular and off-beat stepping.
This is an old trail, laid out many years ago, but it's clearly been groomed regularly over the years by you people, not so different from me, who love this mountain (and all mountains) and want to make it easier for the rest of us to do so too. You served me the mountain and I did take and eat. On a bright, temperate day like yesterday, it was glorious repast.
New trails are being constructed everywhere around the country. Old trails are being cared for and upgraded. The ancient practice of travel (for even long distances) in wild places on foot is being made more and more possible. Small bands of visionaries with tough legs and strong backs are making it happen. It's time; I'd like to be one of you. But in the meantime, many thanks.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Shop worn
'Flavor Grown, Taste the Difference' and I tasted one of the peaches from the bag and it was dry, woody, tasteless. I know peaches are tricky fruit and that something has to be put on packages beyond the simple name of the product. But everything, it seems, asserts itself as special, freely ransacking the language for whatever words will make that point. Everything down at Baby Nat's is 'sugar sweet' automatically.
When I want to use some of these glamour words I have to question, 'What kind of company have you been keeping? You conjured up your power of evocation over what kind of products?' They may have become a little beaten down and hard.
Is there no word in the language safe from the predations of the advertisers? Certainly no single syllable one. Any special word I find, any that's precise and powerful I treasure and use sparingly like a chemist adding a reagent drop by drop. Even then, I frequently find that hoarded word has become the talk of the town.
Locals must feel often this way: the places of special meaning ringed with tour buses. If it's in the dictionary, it's common property, so not always treated gently or with respect.
Still there are words, Lost Beauties of the English Language, to use the title of the book by Charles Mackay, not yet rediscovered besides archaic meaning dropped from usage. In them we may take fresh and succulent lisse in the language. ('Oh, Lord of life and light, / Of lisse and payne.' Piers Ploughman).
By the by, the second peach was yummy.
When I want to use some of these glamour words I have to question, 'What kind of company have you been keeping? You conjured up your power of evocation over what kind of products?' They may have become a little beaten down and hard.
Is there no word in the language safe from the predations of the advertisers? Certainly no single syllable one. Any special word I find, any that's precise and powerful I treasure and use sparingly like a chemist adding a reagent drop by drop. Even then, I frequently find that hoarded word has become the talk of the town.
Locals must feel often this way: the places of special meaning ringed with tour buses. If it's in the dictionary, it's common property, so not always treated gently or with respect.
Still there are words, Lost Beauties of the English Language, to use the title of the book by Charles Mackay, not yet rediscovered besides archaic meaning dropped from usage. In them we may take fresh and succulent lisse in the language. ('Oh, Lord of life and light, / Of lisse and payne.' Piers Ploughman).
By the by, the second peach was yummy.
Friday, July 11, 2014
The enemy of my rival
Would you rather Argentina win the World Cup or Germany? I've asked a number of my Brazilian friends and, to a person, and without hesitation--Germany. Why, I ask? Germany just inflicted on your national team the most devastating loss ever. But Argentina, they reply, Argentina!, proclaimed the best in the world in the Estadio do Maracana in Rio? Insupportable.
It seems there are opponents and there are rivals; whereas we wish for victory over the one, we want defeat for the other.
Proximity doesn't, familiarity doesn't diminish the passion of rivalry, in fact perhaps enhances it. These neighboring countries are so close they can hear each other: Argentines singing songs mocking the Brazilians and Brazilians, in deep grief, seething and retorting in kind.
My questions is how to understand this relationship where 'you' is a lacerating word, dipped in bitter bile. Of course, so much more is going on between the countries but this world cup intensifies the zero-sum rivalic aspect. In the throes, it seems that our very identity, even at the expense of our well-being, depends on the humiliation of the other.
Not a big sports fan, I still recognize the myopia of rivalry--the Celtics against the Lakers, for instance. Grrr. Living in a polarized world has a real appeal. It has dramatic intensity. It has focus. The 2nd person reference becomes weaponized, and whatever intimacy was possible is rendered despicable. Marriages are common arenas for this kind of combat. This I know.
One can readily imagine any of the great pairs of lovers ending up this way, their passion for each expressed perversely in excoriation, a 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' scratch-fest. Could God-in-love and the Beloved find themselves at odds this way? Have they not been already, at times? Maybe, maybe sometimes, but some deeper recognition reasserts itself: something about the immense potentiality of the other for being what neither could suspect, about the commerce of love dealing in goods utterly unanticipated, about the improbable meetings of the heart that inevitably open us to ourselves.
The tide of emotions in the next full days will run full. Already, the craft of schadenfreude are afloat and tugging at their moorings. Ears are so thick with blood, it's hard to hear; so much blood behind the eyes, it's hard to see.
I pray that to all of us, sooner rather than later, the gift-like quality of the word 'you' manifests itself, and the intensity and focus we find ourselves craving is found in encounters of hospitality, friendship and exploration.
It seems there are opponents and there are rivals; whereas we wish for victory over the one, we want defeat for the other.
Proximity doesn't, familiarity doesn't diminish the passion of rivalry, in fact perhaps enhances it. These neighboring countries are so close they can hear each other: Argentines singing songs mocking the Brazilians and Brazilians, in deep grief, seething and retorting in kind.
My questions is how to understand this relationship where 'you' is a lacerating word, dipped in bitter bile. Of course, so much more is going on between the countries but this world cup intensifies the zero-sum rivalic aspect. In the throes, it seems that our very identity, even at the expense of our well-being, depends on the humiliation of the other.
Not a big sports fan, I still recognize the myopia of rivalry--the Celtics against the Lakers, for instance. Grrr. Living in a polarized world has a real appeal. It has dramatic intensity. It has focus. The 2nd person reference becomes weaponized, and whatever intimacy was possible is rendered despicable. Marriages are common arenas for this kind of combat. This I know.
One can readily imagine any of the great pairs of lovers ending up this way, their passion for each expressed perversely in excoriation, a 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' scratch-fest. Could God-in-love and the Beloved find themselves at odds this way? Have they not been already, at times? Maybe, maybe sometimes, but some deeper recognition reasserts itself: something about the immense potentiality of the other for being what neither could suspect, about the commerce of love dealing in goods utterly unanticipated, about the improbable meetings of the heart that inevitably open us to ourselves.
The tide of emotions in the next full days will run full. Already, the craft of schadenfreude are afloat and tugging at their moorings. Ears are so thick with blood, it's hard to hear; so much blood behind the eyes, it's hard to see.
I pray that to all of us, sooner rather than later, the gift-like quality of the word 'you' manifests itself, and the intensity and focus we find ourselves craving is found in encounters of hospitality, friendship and exploration.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Piggy-back
When, he asked, were the first swan boats? I dunno, was my reply; at least 40 years ago. A few steps further and he informed me: 1877. A Robert Paget was granted a boat for hire license and his descendants still operate the business of ferrying mostly tourists in a figure eight around two small islands in the Public Garden lagoon in pedal-powered boats inspired by Wagner's Lohengrin.
Well, that's information I'll add to my tour, but I was a bit nonplussed by fact that what I don't know or what I know that isn't so can be supplied or checked on the spot. It puts any tour guide, or teacher for that matter, on notice: your authority is no more secure than what the internet says on the subject at that moment.
This guy was smart clearly, all along the way asking good questions, making astute observations, just the kind of person a teacher loves and loathes. He had the sort of calm confidence that cames from possessing a valuable and undisputed body of knowledge (though what that is I have no idea, not having taught him.) There are others who are as firmly convinced about what they know but who, since they also know their knowledge is in dispute, are aggressively defensive.
What do I know? An assortment of odd facts, some stories, a generalization or two, a mental time line and map, a few ponder-worthy themes that tie things together: that's about it. I review these periodically to see if they still hold, and augment them with new relevant stuff that I put myself in a position to come across. I don't have to know everything. I don't even have to always be exactly right. As long as I stay in the knowledge trunk line, I'm learning and at the same time giving good value.
So thank you for the facts about the swan boats I hadn't thought to ask. I'll happily piggy-back on your newcomer curiosity. At the same time, I'll consider some old-timer's questions: Just how do such licenses stay in families? What other local attractions are family property? Does concession-granting work the way it used to? Is this just a Boston phenom? You likely don't care about the answers, whatever they are, but I should.
Well, that's information I'll add to my tour, but I was a bit nonplussed by fact that what I don't know or what I know that isn't so can be supplied or checked on the spot. It puts any tour guide, or teacher for that matter, on notice: your authority is no more secure than what the internet says on the subject at that moment.
This guy was smart clearly, all along the way asking good questions, making astute observations, just the kind of person a teacher loves and loathes. He had the sort of calm confidence that cames from possessing a valuable and undisputed body of knowledge (though what that is I have no idea, not having taught him.) There are others who are as firmly convinced about what they know but who, since they also know their knowledge is in dispute, are aggressively defensive.
What do I know? An assortment of odd facts, some stories, a generalization or two, a mental time line and map, a few ponder-worthy themes that tie things together: that's about it. I review these periodically to see if they still hold, and augment them with new relevant stuff that I put myself in a position to come across. I don't have to know everything. I don't even have to always be exactly right. As long as I stay in the knowledge trunk line, I'm learning and at the same time giving good value.
So thank you for the facts about the swan boats I hadn't thought to ask. I'll happily piggy-back on your newcomer curiosity. At the same time, I'll consider some old-timer's questions: Just how do such licenses stay in families? What other local attractions are family property? Does concession-granting work the way it used to? Is this just a Boston phenom? You likely don't care about the answers, whatever they are, but I should.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Gone
Laden with the messages of love from her many family members all around, but tired of just breathing, she left. The conversation continued among those remaining, but not with her. She was gone, is gone, will be gone. This is the hard realization that gripped my friend yesterday.
We say 'you' until the moment when we're talking not to someone who might be listening, but to a body. Then, 'she' is the right pronoun. Except the place so freshly vacated continues to invite address: you, my dearest, my loved one, my mother, you at the center of how I came to be in the world, you. As a beacon, we may forever call the departed 'you'.
I bought some zinnias at the store the other day, shamefully wilted from lack of water. Here, drink this, I said, holding the hose to the lips of the soil. Drink deep. Overnight, the slack flowers, the limp leaves stiffened up and the plants looked perky again. Revival, but not resurrection.
Resurrection is such a cartoonish concept. How it actually might work, whether it would be worth working at all are questions that take us quickly into unfamiliar, perhaps fictive, territory. The posited world to come of God-in-love and the beloved Other provides a framework, but only just, for the imagination.
Reading Music, the Brain and Ecstasy by Robert Jourdain over the last few day, an idea struck me that extends the notion of the lastingness of darings and deeds of friendship, hospitality and exploration. What if the deep structures of our lives, corresponding to deep patterns of melody, harmony and rhythm in the most grandly conceived music, say that of Beethoven, are how our presence persists. What if our encounters, like single passages, connect with each other in ways that, altogether and over time, on larger and deeper scales, portray us, are in fact the infinite essence of us, forever sounding. Our identities: a kind of music, unique, profound, a source of everlasting joy.
Maybe the music of she who slipped away, in days to come, is still heard; perhaps better and better heard if deeply listened for, the music of our lives alluding to it; and, who knows, one day finally fully heard, distinct among all the many others, in glorious clarity.
Spider, which I yesterday admired stepping along on the other side of the shower curtain and today flushed down the toilet, you and I may not be in concert on these matters. But I'm ready to grant the existence of your music if you would have it, so that, in some way, the whole cosmos may sing.
Concerning your loss, my friend, may you be consoled as you grieve.
We say 'you' until the moment when we're talking not to someone who might be listening, but to a body. Then, 'she' is the right pronoun. Except the place so freshly vacated continues to invite address: you, my dearest, my loved one, my mother, you at the center of how I came to be in the world, you. As a beacon, we may forever call the departed 'you'.
I bought some zinnias at the store the other day, shamefully wilted from lack of water. Here, drink this, I said, holding the hose to the lips of the soil. Drink deep. Overnight, the slack flowers, the limp leaves stiffened up and the plants looked perky again. Revival, but not resurrection.
Resurrection is such a cartoonish concept. How it actually might work, whether it would be worth working at all are questions that take us quickly into unfamiliar, perhaps fictive, territory. The posited world to come of God-in-love and the beloved Other provides a framework, but only just, for the imagination.
Reading Music, the Brain and Ecstasy by Robert Jourdain over the last few day, an idea struck me that extends the notion of the lastingness of darings and deeds of friendship, hospitality and exploration. What if the deep structures of our lives, corresponding to deep patterns of melody, harmony and rhythm in the most grandly conceived music, say that of Beethoven, are how our presence persists. What if our encounters, like single passages, connect with each other in ways that, altogether and over time, on larger and deeper scales, portray us, are in fact the infinite essence of us, forever sounding. Our identities: a kind of music, unique, profound, a source of everlasting joy.
Maybe the music of she who slipped away, in days to come, is still heard; perhaps better and better heard if deeply listened for, the music of our lives alluding to it; and, who knows, one day finally fully heard, distinct among all the many others, in glorious clarity.
Spider, which I yesterday admired stepping along on the other side of the shower curtain and today flushed down the toilet, you and I may not be in concert on these matters. But I'm ready to grant the existence of your music if you would have it, so that, in some way, the whole cosmos may sing.
Concerning your loss, my friend, may you be consoled as you grieve.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
To speak or...
When the subject came to banking, I took a mental step back. You were clearly strong in your conviction that the big banks deserved some pity; I was convinced you were wrong, radically wrong on every point general and particular. But I danced around to avoid letting on what I thought; what's the point of rebuttal, I wondered. No minds would be changed and the party would become polarized, and less convivial.
The week before, in New Haven, visiting novelist Colum McCann (known for helping children in difficult circumstances tell their stories) came across a man shoving a woman to the ground. The woman refused to accept the writer's offer of help, that is, to call the police, and he walked on, only to be punched from behind in the head by the man, so that he fell to the ground and smashed his face. Perhaps he should just have called 911, he speculated after the fact.
Running this morning, I reviewed just what I should have said, as Mr McCann must have reviewed many times what he should have done. 'I ought to have...' is the grammatical formula just waiting to used in these circumstance. The real problem, in my experience, is not that we wouldn't speak or act, but that we haven't thought through our responses, usually because we're ambivalent: the value of a honest argument vs the risk of disrupting the evening for everyone; the scruples about preempting personal choice vs the violation of human dignity (and safety).
The world has no scruples about putting us in difficult spots. Indeed, these situations often arise at such awkward moments that we can imagine a kind of glee at our discomfiture at having to pick which is good and which is better. It's often an occasion by occasion decision but it can be guided (or misled) by principles and is influenced (or protected) by inertia and social timidity. What exactly to do stubbornly refuses to come into mental focus (much like this post as I write it now.)
But isn't this really just our part of our on-going conversation with the multiplicity of Others who inhabit our common space. We interact with each Other on many levels, each of our many agendas and value systems overlapping in the space between us. Conversation is often a complex navigation on a three-dimensional (at minimum) chess board. Absolute prescriptions just don't do justice to the richness of that space between me and you, even if you are misguided or brutal.
Still, the gift of time is to force us to decide or extract unwilling decisions from us. However intricately intertwined the considerations, time cuts the knot. 'Look if you like, but you have to leap,' wrote Auden; and opening night is on a different plane from even the dress rehearsal.
I admire what McCann did, though he might have been more canny, and don't admire what I did. I'm not going to elusive and hard-to-pin-down anymore. I'm going to be a presence.
The week before, in New Haven, visiting novelist Colum McCann (known for helping children in difficult circumstances tell their stories) came across a man shoving a woman to the ground. The woman refused to accept the writer's offer of help, that is, to call the police, and he walked on, only to be punched from behind in the head by the man, so that he fell to the ground and smashed his face. Perhaps he should just have called 911, he speculated after the fact.
Running this morning, I reviewed just what I should have said, as Mr McCann must have reviewed many times what he should have done. 'I ought to have...' is the grammatical formula just waiting to used in these circumstance. The real problem, in my experience, is not that we wouldn't speak or act, but that we haven't thought through our responses, usually because we're ambivalent: the value of a honest argument vs the risk of disrupting the evening for everyone; the scruples about preempting personal choice vs the violation of human dignity (and safety).
The world has no scruples about putting us in difficult spots. Indeed, these situations often arise at such awkward moments that we can imagine a kind of glee at our discomfiture at having to pick which is good and which is better. It's often an occasion by occasion decision but it can be guided (or misled) by principles and is influenced (or protected) by inertia and social timidity. What exactly to do stubbornly refuses to come into mental focus (much like this post as I write it now.)
But isn't this really just our part of our on-going conversation with the multiplicity of Others who inhabit our common space. We interact with each Other on many levels, each of our many agendas and value systems overlapping in the space between us. Conversation is often a complex navigation on a three-dimensional (at minimum) chess board. Absolute prescriptions just don't do justice to the richness of that space between me and you, even if you are misguided or brutal.
Still, the gift of time is to force us to decide or extract unwilling decisions from us. However intricately intertwined the considerations, time cuts the knot. 'Look if you like, but you have to leap,' wrote Auden; and opening night is on a different plane from even the dress rehearsal.
I admire what McCann did, though he might have been more canny, and don't admire what I did. I'm not going to elusive and hard-to-pin-down anymore. I'm going to be a presence.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Yale class
It was New Haven, Chapel Street, Sunday noonish. When at the very briefest of eye contact, the black lady started addressing me, breaking me out of my fuzzy, head-down reflection on the way to the Yale Center for British Art, I stopped and looked around, startled.
This lady, who was just sitting on a some steps, started to talk about Yale Rep and Cambridge's ART, about Bartlett Giametti and whom he fired, about directing Wedekind's Lulu (and gave me a quick synopsis) and a dramatization of Rimbaud's Season in Hell and more.... Wow! I was impressed. Would you like me to perform for you, she asked. Thank you, no. I'm on the way to the museum, and also thinking about something, and she asked and I gave her some money, not very much.
It would scare me to hear your story, ma'am, a tale, I suspect, of talent and high hopes, conflict, bad luck, and a collapse. How quickly, how easily the promising beginning can become a bitter memory. I recognize this fact about the world, but you know the other side first hand. I don't know how to respond to negative narratives, and I didn't want to practice today. I have my own issues to turn over in my mind. So, I am stingy with time as well as cash.
The exhibit I went to see was about British amateur naturalists of the past and modern artists dealing with the same themes: plants, insects, birds. Not so much the collections and sketches teaching the new-fangled (for the time) Linneaean taxonomy, but the delicate attention paid to this indentation, that surface; and not so much the response to the moderns to the Victorians, but the wonderful playfulness today's artists, making collections, for instsnce, of butterflies with wings made vivid fabrics and printed plastics. I remember one: a book standing on its spine half open, the upper outer leaves cut into shapes of trees and the paper charred so the whole thing looked like a burnt forest and, attached with wires, black bird silhouettes flying up and away. I could almost hear them raising ruckus.
I tracked the woodcuts of one particular artist through all the rooms of the exhibit: a Sister Margaret Tournour--a dandelion here, a teasel there, an evocative Paradise Garden. I learned she had been a teacher for 40 years, until at 60, confined to a wheelchair and with the companionship of a pet hedgehog, she turned to making these exquisite little studies.
I broke a bill.and headed back to the car. On the way, I met a man sitting in a wheelchair with a sign: Help the Disabled. I dropped less than a frou-frou coffee into your box, and you said, in the most cultured voice, Thank you (this is after all New Haven) and looked me firmly in the eye. I mumbled, You're welcome, and walked on but (still glowing from the exhibit I had seen) I thought: I am (more) ready now to stand before you, sir, you, ma'am, listening, saying and doing what I can, and confident in God-in-love for other open doors.
Let's see.
This lady, who was just sitting on a some steps, started to talk about Yale Rep and Cambridge's ART, about Bartlett Giametti and whom he fired, about directing Wedekind's Lulu (and gave me a quick synopsis) and a dramatization of Rimbaud's Season in Hell and more.... Wow! I was impressed. Would you like me to perform for you, she asked. Thank you, no. I'm on the way to the museum, and also thinking about something, and she asked and I gave her some money, not very much.
It would scare me to hear your story, ma'am, a tale, I suspect, of talent and high hopes, conflict, bad luck, and a collapse. How quickly, how easily the promising beginning can become a bitter memory. I recognize this fact about the world, but you know the other side first hand. I don't know how to respond to negative narratives, and I didn't want to practice today. I have my own issues to turn over in my mind. So, I am stingy with time as well as cash.
The exhibit I went to see was about British amateur naturalists of the past and modern artists dealing with the same themes: plants, insects, birds. Not so much the collections and sketches teaching the new-fangled (for the time) Linneaean taxonomy, but the delicate attention paid to this indentation, that surface; and not so much the response to the moderns to the Victorians, but the wonderful playfulness today's artists, making collections, for instsnce, of butterflies with wings made vivid fabrics and printed plastics. I remember one: a book standing on its spine half open, the upper outer leaves cut into shapes of trees and the paper charred so the whole thing looked like a burnt forest and, attached with wires, black bird silhouettes flying up and away. I could almost hear them raising ruckus.
I tracked the woodcuts of one particular artist through all the rooms of the exhibit: a Sister Margaret Tournour--a dandelion here, a teasel there, an evocative Paradise Garden. I learned she had been a teacher for 40 years, until at 60, confined to a wheelchair and with the companionship of a pet hedgehog, she turned to making these exquisite little studies.
I broke a bill.and headed back to the car. On the way, I met a man sitting in a wheelchair with a sign: Help the Disabled. I dropped less than a frou-frou coffee into your box, and you said, in the most cultured voice, Thank you (this is after all New Haven) and looked me firmly in the eye. I mumbled, You're welcome, and walked on but (still glowing from the exhibit I had seen) I thought: I am (more) ready now to stand before you, sir, you, ma'am, listening, saying and doing what I can, and confident in God-in-love for other open doors.
Let's see.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Riddles
Being cheap, I haunt the dollar book carts for whatever shows up that catches my eye, like this by John Hollander called En Revenant D'Auvergne:
To sing old songs to little children in
A foreign language made intime thereby;
To pose a riddle, putting one more spin
On words to make them twitter as they fly;
To make words be themselves, taking time out
From all the daily work of meaning, to
Make picture puzzles of what they're about
And thereby keep the constancy in true;
To feel the quivering figure in the rock
Of fact; to know the thrill of the absurd,
Cutting the key with which you might unlock
The chambers of the heart of any word--
These in their faith and hope remain as much
The works of love as all the plays of touch.
I used to, when young, play the game of repeating words over and over until they were bled dry of meaning and become simple sounds, random sequence of consonants and vowels with a certain cadence, but as empty as the creaks of trees or clash of rocks one on another. They were heavy as punctured balls, each with its own pattern of cavitation and collapse. How strange you parched words were: responsive objects gone lifeless, everyday items alienated almost more than words of other languages are.
But you resuscitate quickly, plump up with references and implications as soon as you're passed and headed in conversation, touched and in play. How you flash as you fly, but you scare me when you play dead.
To sing old songs to little children in
A foreign language made intime thereby;
To pose a riddle, putting one more spin
On words to make them twitter as they fly;
To make words be themselves, taking time out
From all the daily work of meaning, to
Make picture puzzles of what they're about
And thereby keep the constancy in true;
To feel the quivering figure in the rock
Of fact; to know the thrill of the absurd,
Cutting the key with which you might unlock
The chambers of the heart of any word--
These in their faith and hope remain as much
The works of love as all the plays of touch.
I used to, when young, play the game of repeating words over and over until they were bled dry of meaning and become simple sounds, random sequence of consonants and vowels with a certain cadence, but as empty as the creaks of trees or clash of rocks one on another. They were heavy as punctured balls, each with its own pattern of cavitation and collapse. How strange you parched words were: responsive objects gone lifeless, everyday items alienated almost more than words of other languages are.
But you resuscitate quickly, plump up with references and implications as soon as you're passed and headed in conversation, touched and in play. How you flash as you fly, but you scare me when you play dead.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
In the toils
It's a great idea: my solar panels pay for themselves in part by the auctioning of certificates denominated in kilowatts-hours to companies needing credits for non-fossil fuel. I win; they win; the environment wins. But just because it's good doesn't mean it's easy.
Like a character in a novel of bureaucratic futility, I find myself sent from entity to entity, registering, confirming, re-registering, and still not clearer about how exactly the system works, where I am in it and what I need to do next. I've been at this for weeks.
Everybody in all the offices and agencies has been pleasant, helpful, ready to call me back with the information I ask for, but who has the overview? Instead I feel like I following one dark passage after another on and on.
The you I want is a guide.
I'm a guide once a week for some of my students, taking them on tours of different institutions or sections of the city. I make my excursions thematic, built around interesting, illustrative stories, yet I have to know where we're going and be able to clip parts of the route when people are tired or the weather's bad. I have to have a map ready in my mind with, at any moment, the nearby T stops, the connectors and the dead ends, the shortcuts. All this because I want you, my students, to understand enough to want to and be able to guide yourselves.
I can imagine such a guide saying to me: Have you registered there and there? Be sure to get this done by that deadline. These two agencies have this relationship. Baffled? Here let me help. This is very important; that not so. Can you see how each entity has its own slightly different mission and mandate, of which you are not the main focus? Do you see the constellation they form? Can you see the end ahead? We're almost there. Keep on.
Missing you, oh guide, I'll prod and pester until I get results, and my money. But like any teacher, I'd like to be able to show others the better way I've learned from my experience, and give them the big picture they'll need to go forward on their own. Let's beat down some paths so that anyone interested in doing this kind of good finds it easy.
Like a character in a novel of bureaucratic futility, I find myself sent from entity to entity, registering, confirming, re-registering, and still not clearer about how exactly the system works, where I am in it and what I need to do next. I've been at this for weeks.
Everybody in all the offices and agencies has been pleasant, helpful, ready to call me back with the information I ask for, but who has the overview? Instead I feel like I following one dark passage after another on and on.
The you I want is a guide.
I'm a guide once a week for some of my students, taking them on tours of different institutions or sections of the city. I make my excursions thematic, built around interesting, illustrative stories, yet I have to know where we're going and be able to clip parts of the route when people are tired or the weather's bad. I have to have a map ready in my mind with, at any moment, the nearby T stops, the connectors and the dead ends, the shortcuts. All this because I want you, my students, to understand enough to want to and be able to guide yourselves.
I can imagine such a guide saying to me: Have you registered there and there? Be sure to get this done by that deadline. These two agencies have this relationship. Baffled? Here let me help. This is very important; that not so. Can you see how each entity has its own slightly different mission and mandate, of which you are not the main focus? Do you see the constellation they form? Can you see the end ahead? We're almost there. Keep on.
Missing you, oh guide, I'll prod and pester until I get results, and my money. But like any teacher, I'd like to be able to show others the better way I've learned from my experience, and give them the big picture they'll need to go forward on their own. Let's beat down some paths so that anyone interested in doing this kind of good finds it easy.
Friday, July 4, 2014
Sky painting
From my perch on the 36th floor, the Fourth of July fireworks (one day early) seems a work of art, not some much a brilliant dazzlement of the eyes or percussion of the chest as it was for my son down by the water, but a succession of set pieces consisting of bursts into being, expansions to brilliant climax, and decayings away. The whole mise-en-scene was lurid. The river and the barges were framed by buildings left and right. Reflecting the succession of skies above it, the boat-speckled skin of the water shone blue or red or dense green.
Even by myself looking out the window, some formations prompted me to 'oooh' in appreciation. Huge balls, cascades, disks and saturns, stars in rings, pulsations and twinklings, swarms, arrays, fountains, interlocking, interpenetrating, expressed in pixilations of retina-piercing light. It struck me, as I watched this pyrotechnic pointillism, that this one-off work of art shared by tens of thousands of people in real time was being asserted in the presence of several Others.
Running on the Esplanade yesterday morning, I had been blocked by barriers with bright-vested policemen enforcing no admission. In front of the Hatch Shell, teams of men in black with dogs were searching the grounds, serious-looking people were in consultation with each other. Outside, leaning on a fence waiting was an army of men in orange t-shirts waiting the signal to go in and finish setting up. A laager of black official SUVs was behind draped chain-link fences. A queue of people in lawn chairs chatted and consulted their phones as they waited to be let in.
They might have been saying to as if to themselves: You, terrorist, disrespecter of our solemnities, where would you secrete your bombs so as to cause maximum disruption and damage to the tens of thousands due to be here this evening? Are you like the Marathon bombers or even more devious? Where or how would you for whom the Fourth of July is not a celebration but a provocation prepare your baskets not of food and drink but of explosives and shrapnel?
But the Other who did appear was the squall line of thunderstorms marched in from Worcester which prompted the cancellation of the 1812 Overture and the early start of the fireworks. As we painted our mandalas on the black background of the night sky, spikes of gold lightning began to be driven into earth west of us and the sky was sometimes suddenly washed clean of darkness. Something primal was approaching, and the fireworks began to seem less than our shout of exaltation impressive to the universe, and more like the intricate patterns of jewels and filigree on the tunics and gowns of aristocratic Elizabethans admired by other courtiers.
Still, you, would-be wounders, if you were at all, who wished to rebuke our celebration, and you, storm Arthur, who needed no permission to show off the careless, immense power of the atmosphere, were presented last night with our sky self-portrait, not nihilistic, not prodigious, but intricately wrought, cunningly constructed, and intense, if temporary,
Even by myself looking out the window, some formations prompted me to 'oooh' in appreciation. Huge balls, cascades, disks and saturns, stars in rings, pulsations and twinklings, swarms, arrays, fountains, interlocking, interpenetrating, expressed in pixilations of retina-piercing light. It struck me, as I watched this pyrotechnic pointillism, that this one-off work of art shared by tens of thousands of people in real time was being asserted in the presence of several Others.
Running on the Esplanade yesterday morning, I had been blocked by barriers with bright-vested policemen enforcing no admission. In front of the Hatch Shell, teams of men in black with dogs were searching the grounds, serious-looking people were in consultation with each other. Outside, leaning on a fence waiting was an army of men in orange t-shirts waiting the signal to go in and finish setting up. A laager of black official SUVs was behind draped chain-link fences. A queue of people in lawn chairs chatted and consulted their phones as they waited to be let in.
They might have been saying to as if to themselves: You, terrorist, disrespecter of our solemnities, where would you secrete your bombs so as to cause maximum disruption and damage to the tens of thousands due to be here this evening? Are you like the Marathon bombers or even more devious? Where or how would you for whom the Fourth of July is not a celebration but a provocation prepare your baskets not of food and drink but of explosives and shrapnel?
But the Other who did appear was the squall line of thunderstorms marched in from Worcester which prompted the cancellation of the 1812 Overture and the early start of the fireworks. As we painted our mandalas on the black background of the night sky, spikes of gold lightning began to be driven into earth west of us and the sky was sometimes suddenly washed clean of darkness. Something primal was approaching, and the fireworks began to seem less than our shout of exaltation impressive to the universe, and more like the intricate patterns of jewels and filigree on the tunics and gowns of aristocratic Elizabethans admired by other courtiers.
Still, you, would-be wounders, if you were at all, who wished to rebuke our celebration, and you, storm Arthur, who needed no permission to show off the careless, immense power of the atmosphere, were presented last night with our sky self-portrait, not nihilistic, not prodigious, but intricately wrought, cunningly constructed, and intense, if temporary,
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Critic free
That was stupid. How could you say that? On this point you're mistaken. Serves you right. You're not as interesting now. What twisted logic. Vapid vaporings, puleeze. Been done before. Trite. Pretentious. Forced.
I can imagine commnents like these in reference to any or all of my posts, or perhaps others more encouraging, but in either case, they're beside the point, aren't they? An exploration of 2nd person encounters is first of all relevant to the parties involved, and secondly to others regarding their own encounters or encounters in general. That is, this is a criticism free zone. No ranking, no stars, no comparison with the masterpieces, the benchmarks, the generally accepted.
The only ones to be satisfied are the participants themselves and their concerns are directed to each other. We interact with each other, offering hospitality, engaging in exploration, enjoying friendship in whatever way we do, telling each other not only when things are off key or off course or off line, but also when splendidly right and opening up new fields of interaction.
Counselors, mediators, third-parties may be invited to contribute impartial (often valuable) observations and suggestions, but this is a far cry from ex cathedra pronouncements.
When I read reviews in the newspaper or online, words like good and bad, best and worst, are less interesting than the description of and reflection on the work itself: What I notice is... The overall structure... There seems to be a clear distinction between... I'm reminded of.... This seems to be derived from....A missing element might be... Particularly powerful is...
You who read these posts and have opinions, pace. Please feel invited to witness and participate. Who is we can become your 2nd person. Then, let's cross the line into a encounter of addressing and being addressed, committing who we are to an interchange that, who knows, may change both of us.
I can imagine commnents like these in reference to any or all of my posts, or perhaps others more encouraging, but in either case, they're beside the point, aren't they? An exploration of 2nd person encounters is first of all relevant to the parties involved, and secondly to others regarding their own encounters or encounters in general. That is, this is a criticism free zone. No ranking, no stars, no comparison with the masterpieces, the benchmarks, the generally accepted.
The only ones to be satisfied are the participants themselves and their concerns are directed to each other. We interact with each other, offering hospitality, engaging in exploration, enjoying friendship in whatever way we do, telling each other not only when things are off key or off course or off line, but also when splendidly right and opening up new fields of interaction.
Counselors, mediators, third-parties may be invited to contribute impartial (often valuable) observations and suggestions, but this is a far cry from ex cathedra pronouncements.
When I read reviews in the newspaper or online, words like good and bad, best and worst, are less interesting than the description of and reflection on the work itself: What I notice is... The overall structure... There seems to be a clear distinction between... I'm reminded of.... This seems to be derived from....A missing element might be... Particularly powerful is...
You who read these posts and have opinions, pace. Please feel invited to witness and participate. Who is we can become your 2nd person. Then, let's cross the line into a encounter of addressing and being addressed, committing who we are to an interchange that, who knows, may change both of us.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Miss me?
Do you miss me? The assignment was write 10 questions that a friend in their home country might ask the students about their life in Boston. There were several 'When do (no, will) you visit?' questions and then down at the bottom of their lists: 'Do you miss me?'
At first I thought the question was put by my students to those left behind, but no, these students, all women, were imagining the wistfulness of the left-behinds who were saying, in effect: You're caught up in the excitement and travail of making a life in America. Isn't there something back here that's achingly missing from your life there? Namely, me?
When we say goodbye, especially in such a decisive way as emigration, we give each other something like lockets, not empty but filled with potent absence, a non-presence that continually struggles to turn itself inside out into become the actual being-there of the desired one.
When the two finally reunite, they may find to their dismay, however, that the absence has long since ceased its contorting, the anguish abated, quietus made. No, you are not missed.
My wife traveled with her sister this week through heavy morning traffic to a park in Portsmouth to meet, after many years, her niece (visiting from Italy) and, at long last, her niece's husband and grand nephews. Though the journey was long, the time was short, the people had to go, a quick bite, a few gifts, finis. Who are we that they should care? We're so old; they're so busy. Still, there was so little affect, she said. Miss their aunts or great aunts? Maybe not.
Looking around myself for you whom I miss, I don't see many. Daughter and grandson in Michigan, you definitely provoke a pang when I contemplate especially how far away you are and how much of your lives I'm not participating in. Mother down in Connecticut, well, I'll be seeing you this weekend. Friends, you're all nearby. Whom or what do I miss? My youth? The youth of others? Former girlfriends? I wish you all the very best, but I don't miss you.
My friend Ami concedes the Brazilian word saudade may refer to more than homesickness or nostalgia, but a yearning for what may be unattainable, even impossible, which yet tugs at us, leaving us lonely and incomplete.
Is it you, God-in-love, that I miss? The enchantment that presence consistently provides, or at least offers? Is it your dazzling numinosity I crave, or perhaps what I glimpsed a couple of days ago talking with my friend Yori: the fundamental satisfaction of the simple, straightforward 2nd person encounter. Is it possible, in some way, maybe through such as these cumulatively, for us to somehow be fully together?
And, considering where you are, what you're doing, who else you're with: do you miss me?
At first I thought the question was put by my students to those left behind, but no, these students, all women, were imagining the wistfulness of the left-behinds who were saying, in effect: You're caught up in the excitement and travail of making a life in America. Isn't there something back here that's achingly missing from your life there? Namely, me?
When we say goodbye, especially in such a decisive way as emigration, we give each other something like lockets, not empty but filled with potent absence, a non-presence that continually struggles to turn itself inside out into become the actual being-there of the desired one.
When the two finally reunite, they may find to their dismay, however, that the absence has long since ceased its contorting, the anguish abated, quietus made. No, you are not missed.
My wife traveled with her sister this week through heavy morning traffic to a park in Portsmouth to meet, after many years, her niece (visiting from Italy) and, at long last, her niece's husband and grand nephews. Though the journey was long, the time was short, the people had to go, a quick bite, a few gifts, finis. Who are we that they should care? We're so old; they're so busy. Still, there was so little affect, she said. Miss their aunts or great aunts? Maybe not.
Looking around myself for you whom I miss, I don't see many. Daughter and grandson in Michigan, you definitely provoke a pang when I contemplate especially how far away you are and how much of your lives I'm not participating in. Mother down in Connecticut, well, I'll be seeing you this weekend. Friends, you're all nearby. Whom or what do I miss? My youth? The youth of others? Former girlfriends? I wish you all the very best, but I don't miss you.
My friend Ami concedes the Brazilian word saudade may refer to more than homesickness or nostalgia, but a yearning for what may be unattainable, even impossible, which yet tugs at us, leaving us lonely and incomplete.
Is it you, God-in-love, that I miss? The enchantment that presence consistently provides, or at least offers? Is it your dazzling numinosity I crave, or perhaps what I glimpsed a couple of days ago talking with my friend Yori: the fundamental satisfaction of the simple, straightforward 2nd person encounter. Is it possible, in some way, maybe through such as these cumulatively, for us to somehow be fully together?
And, considering where you are, what you're doing, who else you're with: do you miss me?
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
In spate
Midnight. Climbing into bed, cool breezes flowing in one window and out the other, listening to the night, and suddenly--not the yowl of cats or motorbikes, but a gushing sound as of a river in spate. Probably just the sound of a distant wind. Wait! Had some pipe burst in my cellar and was water pouring into that space? Or my dishwasher? Had its connections let go? Hurriedly, I pulled on my shorts and ran down downstairs. Kitchen fine; cellar dry. Then what? I went out into the breezy coolness.
There, a few dozen yards down the road, was a truck, back open, dome light on, with some hard-hatted guy checking his phone; in front of him a hydrant spouting a tube of water as thick as my torso, on and on, seemingly inexhaustible, the water geysering horizontally, onto the road as a swirling sheet, then down the hill in a thick, hurrying stream.
Oh, water. How much of you there was last night and how powerful. In a few seconds as much as I use in a day was hurled away. I've been to the Quabbin, so I know where you came from. Indeed, I used to as a boy walk along the aqueduct that carries you here (I even remember peering down the darkness of the vent holes), but in the cool of midnight, as I stood shirtless in the breezes purling like a stream over and around me, you seemed as miraculous as the rock Moses smote (and lost admission to the Holy Land in consequence) from which leapt forth what quenched the thirst of the Chosen (and their flocks).
I've a new hose nozzle for gently watering my garden. A array of tiny streams in formation arch toward the tomatoes, arc upon arc, like marching soldiers on parade, which I sometimes force to stop and countermarch as I waggle the hose. At times, the ranks collide and mingle as under the influence of competing bands a la Ives. I still my hand not from mercy but a desire to see the beauty of the barrage in the light of the setting sun. Then disruption again. Water, what you let us do to you.
The time lapse wave photos of my friend Rodo suggest in their layered indeterminateness, your readiness for repetition, each iteration as fresh and wholehearted as each last one back to the beginning. I recognize, water, your crowd-of-faces multiplicity spread across the image as by a knife.
'We have to let it run for 20 minutes just to check,' said the BSWC worker to the half-naked guy who'd come out to see what the river noise was. A few minutes later, and they were gone, and you, my mighty Midgard serpent, were safely confined to be drawn off in finger-thick units for showers and coffee.
There, a few dozen yards down the road, was a truck, back open, dome light on, with some hard-hatted guy checking his phone; in front of him a hydrant spouting a tube of water as thick as my torso, on and on, seemingly inexhaustible, the water geysering horizontally, onto the road as a swirling sheet, then down the hill in a thick, hurrying stream.
Oh, water. How much of you there was last night and how powerful. In a few seconds as much as I use in a day was hurled away. I've been to the Quabbin, so I know where you came from. Indeed, I used to as a boy walk along the aqueduct that carries you here (I even remember peering down the darkness of the vent holes), but in the cool of midnight, as I stood shirtless in the breezes purling like a stream over and around me, you seemed as miraculous as the rock Moses smote (and lost admission to the Holy Land in consequence) from which leapt forth what quenched the thirst of the Chosen (and their flocks).
I've a new hose nozzle for gently watering my garden. A array of tiny streams in formation arch toward the tomatoes, arc upon arc, like marching soldiers on parade, which I sometimes force to stop and countermarch as I waggle the hose. At times, the ranks collide and mingle as under the influence of competing bands a la Ives. I still my hand not from mercy but a desire to see the beauty of the barrage in the light of the setting sun. Then disruption again. Water, what you let us do to you.
The time lapse wave photos of my friend Rodo suggest in their layered indeterminateness, your readiness for repetition, each iteration as fresh and wholehearted as each last one back to the beginning. I recognize, water, your crowd-of-faces multiplicity spread across the image as by a knife.
'We have to let it run for 20 minutes just to check,' said the BSWC worker to the half-naked guy who'd come out to see what the river noise was. A few minutes later, and they were gone, and you, my mighty Midgard serpent, were safely confined to be drawn off in finger-thick units for showers and coffee.
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