Missing to-you list

No enemies, no lovers, no rivals, no project partners. Only friends, family, colleagues. Well, this limits the 'you' possibilities as I explore the dynamics of encounter in this blog.

If, let's say, I were a John Locke on the run in Amsterdam, aware that my death or my silence would please James II no end;
or if, I had, with countless better men, fallen in love with the inimitable Alma Schindler,
or if I were a founder of Apple toe to toe with a founder of Microsoft;
or if I were an American president trying to make common cause with a Middle Eastern regional power,

then when I made a 2nd person address, I might find my 2nd person encounters fraught with every kind of burden, even the best episodes equivocal, and the worst ones, agonizing. Compared to someone waiting for the footstep of the assassin, or the billet-doux with the time of the tryst, or the surprise behind-the-back move that slams the door of opportunity in the face, or the eye-to-eye assurances that vaporize faster than fluid from a leaking head gasket, my encounters with Others are, well, tame, innocuous. Everybody loves me, nobody hates me; guess I won't eat worms.

So, does anything I've said so far have validity? That is, if the fugitive, the lovelorn, the bested, the infuriately exasperated don't find inspiration or consolation in the God-in-love framework and the practices of hospitality, friendship and exploration, what good is it?  Why not just deep breathing? Why not just c'est la vie, and move on?

I don't wish for the fear, the anguish, the humiliation, or the frustration, but why not for the grand fight (as for better ideas), or the glorious head-over-heels infatuation, or the great game or the world-shaping challenge--these are the great works, the adventures, the large endeavors that push us to the limits of who we are as individuals and as representative human beings, and offer scope for grand deeds of friendship, hospitality, exploration.

I read an article today on the subject of the 'good death,' and came across the recommendation of meditation, especially Buddhist meditation, as the unfailing inner resource that, cultivated to the point of habit, will stand us in good stead when our final days are, as they might well be, painful, humiliating, lonely.

I can't match the author's breadth of deathbed experience, but I do wonder if reflection on what we've dared or done in our lives that express or extend friendship, hospitality and exploration (that triad again) might not be consolation; indeed, whether understanding these to be ever alive in the heart of the love between God-in-love and the Beloved and the world to come might not be comfort.

The cynical statement is that no good deed goes unpunished; but may it not also be that no good deed ever perishes? Perhaps it's a mistaken view, but at least it gives me warrant for risking right up to the end.

Maybe I'll never encounter any of these Grand Guignol situations, but who knows? This is a wild and wonderful world.

Declaration

Guess Who's Coming For Dinner at the Huntington this afternoon: laugh aloud funny, inventive, somewhat bit dated but still relevant, well-structured, with expressive performances from almost all in the cast. The premise: a effect of a surprise announcement of a biracial marriage on two sixties families, and particularly on the two fathers, one black and angry, the other white and 'an unprejudiced liberal'. We know where the story is going  to end up but, as with a roller-coaster, the ride is everything.

Where my eyes dried up, however, was the final speech of the liberal father, not so much in what he said as  monologue rather than a conversation. Of course, it was perfect dramatic logic, and it worked, the play ending with a set of compelling and satisfying gestures.

It got me thinking about strategies for encounters such as depicted: people and possibilities profoundly unfamiliar and threatening. Inquiry, genuine disinterested curiosity, would seem most effective, providing a way to get beyond roles and stereotypes to people in their livingness. On the basis of that contact and the knowledge it provides we can understand, and appreciate Others and the context of their conflicts.

Well, suiting action to reflection, I went this evening to a garden party where several of us on the periphery (all men) vociferously discussed politics as others, mostly women, chatted quietly around the candle-lit table, Oh, the exhilaration of asserting one's convictions and conclusions, arguing, adding to the ideas of others, expressing one's feeling of dread and optimism. Not inquiry here, rather all theater on the level of a bourse.

Later on, in conversation with a music teacher, I got a tip about Bartok's 'En plein air.' Its eerie night sounds lived up to the encomium. We would have continued learning but my interlocutor was swatting mosquitoes and moved inside.

So, declamation and inquiry: the first satisfying, the other profitable. Should not our encounters include both?

Toward the end of the evening, with another fellow whose face by that time I could barely see in the gloom, there was a discussion the inestimable value of honest critics of our ideas, those who question this or that particular notion or production item and so help us think better, a dance of alternate declamation and inquiry that creates the extra space where the new ideas can arise that further our projects. The payoff is for both parties; the feedback provider often as stimulated as the recipient, because we all have projects we're pursuing.

Of course, this response or even the recognition of its possibility on the part of the characters in the play would have forced a radical revision of the dramatic arc of the play. Both patresrfamilias argued that nothing in the country would change for a century or more. But thinking about the relevance of that play from the sixties to today, we might learn a better way of dealing with the unfamiliar, the frightening, the Other: conversation of exploration.

On the other hand, considering the pathologies of thought and discourse rampant these days, maybe a hundred years is too brief.

Invisible

Where is the campaign? Where are the standouts, the yard signs, the placards in the windows? Here we are, the end of the September, and the forest of political messaging that's usually all around is, well, not visible. The campaign isn't on our street, that's for sure. If it isn't here, then where? Perhaps my candidate figures this neighborhood is locked up but she, of all people, must distrust that proposition.

In the square at the Farmer's Market this morning, my politically active buddies were touting an AG candidate and urging no votes on casinos in Massachusetts. For governor, 'Well, we don't want... but we're not excited about..., still at the end of the day, anyone but...'

So I traveled to the new train station on the Orange line to visit the headquarters near Assembly Square. Inside, a typical campaign space, tables with stacks of paper, people on phones, a training classroom of volunteers, young men and women criss-crossing the space. Lights on but no electricity.

Oh, candidate, I'm a partisan and yet still you are indistinct for me. No driving force of personality has driven you out of the conceptual and into my flesh and blood face. I want to be passionate about supporting you, so make me excited about who you are. All the good things I've heard (and bad things) don't yet cohere into a You.

Well, perhaps we have to learn to love: the 'I do' before the 'will you?' Heading back to my car from the train station, a sheaf of placards under my arm, a black guy called out 'Can I have one of those? I want to put it in my window.' As I passed him one, he said, 'That other guy will set us back so far...' That man's face and intensity is vivid to me. Until yours is, oh candidate, his will have to do.

Catalyst

Your sentences are halting and gnarly; your pronunciation is often off-register; you don't hear when I ask questions; the holes in your knowledge are huge. All of this is okay. It's my job to help people with just these things.

But what I don't understand is how over the last week I have found myself presenting to you aspects of my most recent thinking on syntax (and the teaching of it) and, in the process, actually advancing some ideas on the topic.

It's not my usual practice get into structural theory with students at your level, but somehow, your questions got me doing just that, and not to your confusion, I think, judging by the pertinence of your questions along the way.

Delighted, of course, with the rush of new ideas and lines of inquiry, I still am not sure how it happened. Were you catalyst or provocateur?

Perhaps I had left these ideas in an 'unstable configuration' and your initial question about how to organize your sentences shook them into a formulation which suggested new ways of viewing the question.

Maybe, because I've been reading a book about cosmology and physics written as an intellectual memoir, I was already primed to think large and differently.

Perhaps your seriousness, indeed solemnity, and evident intelligence (independent,of course,of your fluency or mastery of the language) gave me that feeling of audience receptivity that stimulates ideas.

It could be that I couldn't see another, or better, way to get at the heart of the coherence problem that your sentences present so clearly--as do the sentences of so many other students.

What about if I was just tired of crabbed micro topics and just wanted to turn my mind to something macro.

Perhaps I felt I was giving you a gift that you would find meaningful later when you'd reached a higher level.

Then there's the possibility that as active Platonic entities these notions wanted out now! Ha! A Marvel comic book image of muscled mental objects moving mightily down from their mountain eyrie.

In fact, these 'insights' are really just small tweakings that improve fit, or fresh formulations that could possibly flower. Yet my wonder and gratitude at their emergence is very real. My projects are small, maybe trivial, but so much better than no projects at all.

If I were to tell you this, you'd probably either not particularly care, or say it was 'perfect' but what's next? Perhaps for the third time, you'll ask a question that rouses some hibernating 'thought in progress' to lumber forth, famished and ready to feed.

You're excused

This 32 bus was, as always packed, even though the second of two. I'd been able to get a seat way in the back, though slow boarding due to numerous people angling in ahead of me. When we pulled away, the aisle was stuffed tight as a sausage.

Well, everyone wants to get home and who can blame them? Sitters with their backpacks or bags on their laps play on their phones. The 'for dear life' standees rock forward and back, side to side, with the movement of the vehicle.

Mt. Hope coming up! I press the stop request tape and struggle to my feet. My shoulder is still sending shooting pains up my neck. I move forward to be ready when the bus pulls over. A solidly built young man hanging from a strap snaps peevishly, sarcastically, 'Excuse me,' as I bump him (I guess). 'I appreciate you letting me pass,' I reply, catching a glimpse of his girlfriend's grin. At that, he bends forward blocking my passage behind him but I push by anyway to the door and hop down onto the curb.

How seldom is there any of that kind of friction on any 32, though we fill every bus early or late. Each of us is in out private space, and though arms might criss-cross to get to a stanchion or bar, we almost never touch. Seaters have complained about my bag in their faces, and I've taken their point. so there's been nothing said about that recently. Our feet sometimes touch as we seek wide-enough footing to provide stability, but we quickly break contact. All this reflects a public forbearance that allows us to be very close to but very distinct from each other.

We even say 'excuse me' or 'sorry' when we push past each other to get to the back door before the driver closes it and the bus moves on to the next stop several hundred yards down the road. I didn't this time because the young man's remark seemed a bit uncalled for; I don't like apologizing for what I'm not even sure I've done. Disrespect meets false accusation: the makings of a war, especially considering the attitudes that instantly sprang up.

Oh, fellow 32 bus vets (including you, young man), how many times we've made space for each other, however tight the fit, and how often we've inhabited those narrow spaces without (vocal) protest. We know the trick of being along together---almost the opposite aim of this blog: to be together when alone.

Colorist

The most fleeting of encounters, she bustling down Pinckney Street to her work, me huffing up the street to the crest of the hill and then on to the gym to shower and suit up for mine. I remember her as compact with full-ish hair of perhaps reddish or black color. Nothing else about her.

What hangs in my mind like the afterimage after glimpsing the sun's disc was what she wore. Was it fashionable or gauche? I have no idea. But a powerful visual experience deserves comment.

It was simple. She wore a yellow brown canvas vest over a carmine knitted top with a full frothing scarf of lavender silk at her throat. I took it in at a glance and pondered it all the way back. Each item had a single saturated hue. Some textures were discernible: the matte weave on the vest, the ribs of the long-sleeved top, the luster of the scarf. But it wasn't any of the elements in the ensemble that hit me; it was the whole. What I wonder is: why?

The day before I'd seen a squashed bird on the street: khaki feathers and reddish brown pool. At the Public Garden, near the Washington statue, I'd seen a bank of blue, light purple intermixed and bordered by yellow flowers. These color combos were intriguing too, but hadn't burned me as Miss Pinckney's outfit did.

I'd be comforted to believe that certain color combinations satisfy because they represent, say, fall or remind us of, say, the palette of some visited place, but as I search myself, no analogies, no associations, no symbolisms spring to mind. The power of the impression seems single and direct.

I like learning of the background of works of art or music. I appreciate commentary. These add dimension to my pleasure, may even teach me how to take pleasure. But nothing is like shock of just seeing. The troika of colors seemed perfectly chosen and balanced to create a unique dazzle.

It's not about the woman who made the wardrobe choices, nor about the runner in the tunnel of brick and asphalt, the morning sun low in the sky aslant the street. In fact, I'm not sure what this post is about. Who's the You in this encounter, the Other? An moment of autonomous intensity? What can I learn? Need I learn anything?

Artists are sensitive to the power of color as I really am not. Was this experience an invitation to explore?

Let go

Well, they won't. Those suddenly tugging cords in the right side of my neck and clenching muscles on the right shoulder blade are not listening to me, however much I call soothing messages down to them. And you, left arm, are complicit, triggering the spasms. I feel I should be in control here but clearly this section of my anatomy is not picking up the phone.

I suppose I'll have to get serious about diagnoses and therapies, rather than just wait it out as I usually do. There are lots of folk remedies on the internet; I'm clearly not alone. Probably some inflammation is involved. But it's the sheer recalcitrance of this muscle/tendon group that provokes me, leads me to cajole it in the 2nd person:: 'There, let go now, relax, down, down, yes; oops, why did you do that?; lengthen out, that's it.' It feels ridiculous, for sure, but...

How can I say I am the owner of this body if these, the voluntary muscles which act like the stays stabilizing the yardarm of my shoulder girdle on the mast of my spine, ignore me. They are close to the surface, traceable to loads and motions, usually obedient to my will--but no, not completely. These muscles have their own agenda, perhaps of protection or of healing, that my beggings and browbeatings don't override.

This is what makes me think about this pain in terms of the theme of this blog: my shoulder, indeed my body as a whole, as a congerie of Others. It's not as if we don't work together happily; when I run these days, all the sensitive spots seem contented, and I don't hobble as I did a year ago. So too, I'm sure, this shoulder business will pass. But I feel sometimes more like leader than master of this corpus, and the followers more like a political caucus than a cadre. There's more negotiation between me and my various members than authoritarian diktat.

As I get older, the parts become more quirky, more querulous, more remonstrative, more like a gaggle than a column parading past some commanding officer in a reviewing stand. Instead of taking each unit for granted, I may have to get to know them individually in their robustness and frailty, work with their strengths and around their weaknesses, listen to their complaints and call on them to cooperate despite their reluctance. When we collaborate in a creditable performance, I'll be sure to applaud...

Which will make how much difference? I don't know. This neck and shoulder does not seem to be waiting for my approbation, or anything I can give it. A third party may have to be called in. Come on, we have to live together. Tell me what you want and I'll do my best to provide. Relax, loosen up, let go.

Loll

How long from Central Park West at 77th  St to 11th Ave at 27th? I don't know but by the time I got to the end of the march, I was foot-weary and overall tired. My poster, light as it was, was heavy on my left hand, exacerbating the spasms in the right side of my neck.

The crowd was tireless, however, raising a cheer at every blocked off intersection. The indefatigable drummers thumping on water carboys and inverted plastic tubs kept up a steady succession of rhythms. Chants--What do we want? When do it want it? --started up spontaneously. Regularly I and others blew on our whistles as we waved at the people on the sidewalks or up in the buildings.

At the end, everyone 'fell out' and crowded the curbs and sidewalk walls like birds on a wire. The People's Climate March, well-done. We were over 300,000 people speaking with our physical presence on site, in motion. We were there and we cared.

Getting out of the city was agonizing slow until I gave up on impatience, gave in to arriving whenever, and turned to talk to my seat mate.The distance I felt separated the people on the bus coming down had disappeared: we had all been part of an extraordinary event, and now were feeling very ordinary fatigue.

As we talked, I learned from the young, bearded man with the name of a constellation about new ways to make forests more fruitful (literally). We discussed 2 years olds (his daughter, my grandson), biking, the prospects of solar energy, the paradoxes of capitalism. I shared with him what I knew about safe nuclear power, explaining it in a way that impressed me with its clarity and articulation; he, soon after, fell asleep. Our defenses were so far relaxed that even shy people talked to shy people, and made each other smile unaffectedly.

Eventually, all the lights in the bus went off. The young man and woman across the aisle talking in the dark went through the whole gamut of conversation topics from professional projects to  religious convictions to bad jokes they would only tell someone they trusted and then they fell asleep, her head on his shoulder. On either side the long tube, heads were lodged, backs were hunched, no snores but the deep quiet of silent breathing.

Meanwhile, staring ahead down the long barrel of the bus and out through the windshield, I stared at road continually being created and consumed in the headlights. I felt like blessing all of us, myself included, but in whose name? Perhaps in the name of God-in-love, for we had given on behalf of the world as a place to be forever inhabitable. Thinking about it now I can see hospitality, friendship and exploration as making the march possible and, sooner or later, successful. But then, last night, in the peaceful darkness of sleeping comrades, I lolled off to sleep.

Multitude

On the way down to New York City for the People's Climate March--a six hour trip--I didn't interact with anyone in particular--my nose in Pinsky's book The Sounds of Poetry.  Families and old friends chatted. I felt alone. Then, as we entered the city (still a long way to go), people went up to the the front of the bus and started to teach us chants and songs.  One went:

We are the change,
We are the rising sun,
We are the ones we've been waiting for,
And we are dawning.

We are the change,
We are the setting sun,
We are the ancestors of tomorrow,
And we remember.

Another with lines like:

Many stones can make an arch,
Singly none...
Many drops can turn a mill, 
Singly none.

 When we got off at 77th Street and Central Park West, the tail of that long serpent about to wreathe itself through the city, we found the wide street packed with people waving banners and ready to go. A group of us walked down the sidewalk, itself jammed with costumed people, to the section we were to be in--environmentalists. The people:, millennials, GenX and boomers, all colors, proclaiming every kind of message that overlapped with concern about climate change, mostly non-political. Babies sat on shoulders or in strollers. A single, 300,000 person voice speaking by their presence in a playful but serious tone: now, it's now.

Suddenly, hands went up, and the roaring noise ceased: a moment of remembrance for those already victim to climate change. Silence, everyone holding in. Then, up the avenue, a roar like a tidal bore, a wave of sound, not-noise-makers but our throats--and we began to move.

Full voice

My poster is made and my pack is stuffed with reading material--check!--sandwich--check!--notebook--check! and all the other things I can think I'll need for the bus ride to New York, the march, the journey home. We set off at 6:30 in the morning, bus after bus of us, heading down for the People's Climate March which starts off from the southwest corner of Central Park.

The theme of the march?  'To Tell the Story of Today's Climate Movement'. To this end it's organized in six sections. In the front, Frontlines of Crisis, Forefront of Change with indigenous peoples, Sandy-affected people, farmworkers, etc.  Next, We Build the Future with unions, public health advocates, parents, women, elder, students (I guess I'm in this group). After that, We Have the Solutions with political organization, musicians, renewable energy activists, and so on. Fourth in line, We Know Who is Responsible with veterans, mountaintop removal opponents, tar sands resisters and similar groups. Next to last, The Debate is Over with scientists, beekeepers, faith communities... At the end, To Change Everything, It Takes Everyone, with representatives of NYC boroughs, other cities, states, countries. So well thought out. Also, I have to say it's been well-organized even at this end, considering the number of update emails I've received and even a phone call making sure I'm going.

Of course I'm going. I remember as a college kid participating in the October, 1969 March on Washington against the Vietnamese war. I traveled down in a crowded van from Brandeis. There were two million of us. One of us, later be a famous cosmologist, was tear gassed, but the rest of us simply walked many abreast, through the city, marveling at our numbers, confident that they would make a difference. We were wrong. The country's investment in the war didn't end, or even slacken.

That war poisoned our politics for a generation. Even today, we see the black POW/MIA flag flying just below the national flag, the bowed, silhouetted head I take to be emblematic of what that war did to us, did in us. This issue, climate change, is on another scale altogether: sea and sky gone rammy, populations of people at risk, plants and animals on the move, changes playing out over decades, centuries, ancient systems spiraling out of control.

There won't be speeches by the powerful or famous. The only noise is to be the shout-out at 1 pm. I have my whistle and intend to blow it. Listen, you participants in the UN climate change conference starting next week. Listen, world leaders. Listen, Congress. Listen, deniers and delayers and despairers. We want to make a noise you all will  not be able to not hear.

If I get to choose the bus for the trip, I hope it's a singing one.

Preferences

The exercise was simple: everyone had the paper with 27 'Do you prefer x to y, or to do x over y' options--owning dogs vs cats, for instance, buying vs selling, being with others or alone. Then I asked one student in my evening English speaking and listening class to stand and ask some other student one of these 'Do your prefer' questions.

The s&l class is small, only about 13, compared to the 21 of reading and writing which meets, with mostly the same students plus some more, later in the evening. The students are from Russia, Morocco Vietnam, Brazil, various Latin and Central American countries, Haiti China, India, Korea, but everyone was ready to stand and call out to a classmate: 'Hey, ..., which do you prefer:...?' Thoughtful answers, then from everyone, 'Why?'  Responses equally thoughful, sometimes delivered with a stammer, or a blush.

Not everything I do releases the energy of the group as well as this activity did. I had taught at the beginning of class some useful phrases for expressing preferences; since then, I've realized I didn't each either/or nor neither/nor, two significant omissions. Still what happened happened and it was eminently satisfying, and good preparation for the next part of the class (which was okay but not great.)

What make the difference, I think, was routinizing the language enough so that the piquancy of the questions could be appreciated. Perhaps it was better not to introduce neither/nor because everyone was left on the horns of the choice: money or time, to love or be loved... I could see everyone really thinking about these choices, unfair or improbable as they might be. In my experience, people are often happy to ponder these questions, and in English?, why, all the better.

My students, you who are so often tongue-tied, shy to speak, uncertain what to say, let this place of ours be your agora where the commerce is in words and ideas--oh yes, and friendships too, because I see fresh pairings and groupings when we disperse at the end of the night.

The power of these simple questions transcends the narrow purpose of our being there; they are universal stimuli: 'I'd rather... Isn't this propensity for preference something makes us all, learners and natives, unique and alike.

Me at my best

Not my query, but really it's everyone's: where do I excel, that is, what is the point where who I am and what I am synchronizes perfectly with  practical situations such that something good that would be otherwise improbable actually happens?

My friend is pursuing this inquiry explicitly, interested particularly in his interpersonal talents that make a positive mark the people around him.

Two episodes in particular stick out in my mind in terms of what you did and how. I remember the pleasure I felt when, several times, I came into my space and found a book on my desk with a note from you recommending it. It's how I got to know T.C. Boyle, for instance; a happy find. You never tracked me with "Well, did you like it?' but when I mentioned it, you were ready to discuss what it was that you loved. Indeed, you're always ready to talk intelligently about what it is you love and why: an unusual, I must say, and refreshing habit. I rely in part on the loves of others to learn how and what to love. Silence deprives me of others' eyes. You are generous with yours.

I remember, secondly, your Proust project, reading the whole of Remembrance of Things Past, a major undertaking. From time to time I'd check in and learn how Proust and his great work were affecting you. Now you were fascinated, now bored, now understanding what has been obscure before, now appreciating what had seemed incidental or arbitrary, finally getting a sense of the grand scope of Proust's ambition, now plunging to the end full of last page curiosity and page after last sadness.

What an example you were, the very kind I admire: doggedness with delicacy. An intellectual project like this is not, of course, unprecedented, but then neither is climbing Mt Rainier. Its accomplishment deserves respect, but to provide real-time commentary to flat-landers like me such that I 'participated' in the achievement and determined to make the journey myself deserves something more: gratitude.

There are other things I've observed, and many things I haven't that I won't or can't report on: so it is with any life. But whatever the reason for the request for feedback, you've given me a chance to reflect on our encounters, on you, in part on myself. We are too seldom invited to, given permission to, contemplate each other seriously with an aim to personal development. Instead we act as if each of us is perfectly aware of what makes us special, what holds us back, and perfectly complacent about it all. But I think, in fact, we're apt to overlook, ignore, under or over value, or misinterpret key aspects of ourselves, and we know this, and it makes us ill at ease, as my students are when they hear some fraction of what someone says in English but not nearly all.

So, I've learned from our encounters. May there be many more.

Broad present

"...the imperceptibly short present [that emerged in the the 19th C] has now been replaced by an ever broadening present of simultaneities. In today's electronic present, there is neither anything 'from the past' that we need leave behind nor anything 'from the future' that couldn't be made present by simulated anticipation." Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Our Broad Present

According to Gumbrecht, the old no longer/not yet view of flowing time, sliced by the fleeting, fugitive present, a view appropriate to an vision of progress, has lost its forward momentum. Now we live in an estuary kind of time, 'in which 'everything melts together, everything is 'fusion.'" It's a time of oscillation, of omni-availability, of global presence and physical absence. There's more he says that's interesting.

The theme of presence caught my attention. The heart of the concept of 2nd person encounter is the mutual presence of Each to an Other. In a world where distance is less and less a barrier, how can contact be authentically 2nd person, and the encounter rich?  And in the electronic realm where myriad opportunities await and switching between contacts is quick, easy and ever inviting, how can we sustain encounters worth reflecting on? And how can I or an Other hold still enough, have clear enough contours in the midst of this press of ever morphing and multiplying differences to have encounters at all?

I've been struck, as the author has, by how our visions of the future have changed. Once the talk was of the glories of the world our grandchildren or great grandchildren would inhabit. Now we talk more of the challenge of saving the world, period, and don't, I think, conceive of the future in terms of descendants. The projects of the present are ones of amelioration and enrichment, and less transcendence. There's just so much to think about and do in the evolving here and now.

But I'm no scientist or scholar. What I want to know is whether I can meaningfully address someone or something as You; that's the heart of what presence means. "By calling them present, then, in the very original sense of Latin prae esse, we are saying things are in front of us and thereby tangible," G. says. Tangible?

God-in-love, I affirm in prayer that you are "present wherever I or any open (or are open) to your energy, power and potentiality." I don't know how these can be normally known except through proxy presence. Does this suggest you have the same issues with presence as we have? That commonality would certainly be enough to warrant us called each other 'You.'

Sky floor

She, in the clear morning after the night's rain for gentle dragon and tiger qigong with friends in the lawns of the Arboretum, and I, strolling with wife and sister-in-law in lusciously golden late afternoon light in the same tree garden, both serenaded by the same bird.

Same bird? Probably not, since the one I heard sang for only a few minutes at the top of the Siberian fir before flying away. Serenaded? Hardly, since birds sing for each other, not for the diminutive head-on beings walking or exercising way down below in the grass on the floor of the sky.

Still, it's a nice error. I imagine my friend luxuriating in slow, deliberate movements in the dry, cool air, and realizing in mid-gesture, the unguent of trills and warbles mixing with the sunlight drenching her. As I ambled among the tall, craggy conifers, it was as if the very apex of the air had taken to expressing itself in a melodious stream of whistling and chirping (recorded and listened to several times since.)

Why shouldn't these songs have been the songster's benediction; and why shouldn't she and I, recipients of the same blessing, not amplify its resonance by mutual acknowledgement?

Aviator, what can we do for you?  Curb our cats? Protect forests and flyways? Provide winter rations? Sing for you? Perhaps we already do, though our voices, even one by one, may be cacophonic compared to your clear, sweet tones.

When we come to your place, may our ears be ever open to the music of the sky.

Wag

As I and others get off the train at State and flow down the narrow platform to the exits, people pour out of passages from the Blue line and down the stairs from outside to rush across the platform to the Orange line, and squeeze in before the doors slide shut. They run, push strollers, hobble on crutches, pull suitcases, swing backpacks, drag children, wave to their friends to hurry up. Coming around the corner of the elevator, I run smack into wide-eyed working women moving full speed through me. Oops. I see intense faces close up one after another. The platform signaler watching the doors waves a flashlight when everyone is inside; the doors shut and the train takes off.

Today I saw a group of, I guess, middle schoolers, a couple of boys and two or three girls, congregated around the entrance of one tunnel. The day-glow vested signaler behind me said something to them. One of the boys called something back, everyone, especially the girls, laughed, and then another boy, short, brown skinned, with short hair, took a few steps forward, swinging his hips, wagging his finger in front of pursed lips, saying 'no, no, no, no' to the T employee at the edge of the platform.

I don't know what the issue was but the face of that saucy child using a gesture surely learned from someone in his family stuck in my mind. 'You, little child, are pathetically mistaken if you think anything you do makes any difference at all to me or us,' is what it said to the signaler. What the man replied I don't know because I passed quickly by.

Groups of kids that age love to laugh at other people, at each other, at what makes them nervous, and at nothing in particular.This froward, arrogant little boy sashaying forward, waving his finger, his audience tittering in the background, deserved some kind of a slap down. That pouting, insolent face wasn't what a hard-working underground worker should have to deal with in the hurly-burly of rush hour.

Oh, wag, you're part of a long, ignoble tradition of scoffers, fleerers, mockers, jeerers, the menagerie of (often besotted) mob material and taunting trolls. The world exists only as gist for your gibes.

You'll probably grow tired of that defiant, dismissive stance, and move on to real relationships some day. But you, annoying little bantam boy, you were bad so beautifully today.

Deserts

A normally upbeat and jolly ceremony of wholehearted celebration was thrown off-kilter recently by some statements of mixed gratitude and grievance. Everyone left with at least a sour taste in their mouth. Whatever the merits of the message or method of delivery, it's a question: how do we entertain such contradictory impulses?

It's not the same as appreciating the positives and pointing out limitations of something, as I might do, for instance, considering serenity (peace of mind and ease of life) as an ultimate goal.  In such a case, there's no reference to a prior transaction involving some implied or explicit obligation as there is when we feel gratitude ('You didn't have to...') or grievance ('You should've...'), these two depending on what each party felt it had been promised and so was owed, what it had promised and so was obliged to do.

None of this is news, all of this is normal, but I'm struck by the destructive power of nursed grievances to disrupt and poison relationships. Providing opportunities for frank expression of grievances is as much a duty as speaking honestly and forthrightly when chances to speak are provided.

As a married person, I know this. Friday last, there was a discussion around our table. Many of the issues hanging fire from our last go-around on certain issues came up. Phase one was adversarial: highlighted grievances in their passion-provoking complexity. There were strong words spoken, strong feelings expressed. There were attackings and defendings of rights and prerogatives. There was the language of debtors and creditors.

Phase two was explanatory, exploring what we had expected and what we want for the future. We pulled back from some of the language we'd used; we confessed what our feelings made us feel.

Phase three revisited the issues of the grievances: still no resolution, or hope of resolution, though maybe a bit more clarity. Emotions revived, but not as pent-up or explosive.

Phase four: fatigue, a tinge of despair, mutual reaffirmation of the founding commitments of the relationship.

Phase five: a tentative way forward, no promises but some 'let's sees', a willingness to try again. A change in atmosphere.

Phase six: next morning: 'What I meant was..., You were right when you said..., I'm sorry if I..., Here's an idea...'  A gratitude for the other, for the night before.

It's not as if the issues aren't important, nor as if they are finally resolved once and for all; sometimes yes, they are; sometimes no, they're not. It's a process, or rather, a history of fraught encounters between two who are Other to the other. In this story, creditors are as much on the hook as debtors and brooding on our deserts only works the barb deeper so it tears more when it comes out. Over time, we learn how better to speak, how better listen--and respond.

Sweet gratitude frees me to step back from quid pro quo and realize: it's all, all a gift.

My bill

Not enough to buy peaches and peppers and lettuce and radishes, so 'Please, take this off,' and in a moment-- seven cents short--'I guess I'm going to leave this too,' when, out of the blue, the young black woman behind me said, 'Put it on my bill.'

I usually stop by Baby Nat's produce store once a week to get berries for breakfast, lettuce for lunch, and sometimes random Caribbean comestibles I've never eaten before, for the patrons of the place are generally people from that region; Anglos and Asians are usually there for the low prices. The staff is Hispanic--lots of laughing conversation going on between cashiers and baggers--and the clientèle very often Haitian or from the other islands. Lots of yams, rice, sugar cane, big bunches of greens, mangos, papayas are heaped on the counters before being efficiently priced and packed for carrying away.

I, cool, self-contained, enter, look for what I want to find, quickly take my place in line, pay and leave, with only a word or two of greeting to the cashier, and thanks to the bagger. Often I'm behind black ladies, some large, some old and bent, some in the company of others or managing children, their carts often full of bulky items, but sometimes only purchasing a few things, often searching in their purses for coins to make payment. What they are buying is food, the matter of nourishment, that which they will stand in the kitchen cooking and serve to their families, or dip into by themselves.

At Baby Nat's, I feel, not unwelcome, but invisible, but I'm clearly not. For the young woman with the khaki cap with the amused and friendly smile on her dark face had clearly noticed me and decided to make a generous gesture, which, why not? I took at face value.

Had I asked anyone for money? no; had I pleaded with the cashier? no; or promised to come back in a minute with pennies from my car? In fact, I was simply resigned to completing only half my shopping on that trip. So what you, my benefactor, did was obviate a second trip for me (if you indeed thought I had the wherewithal to make one.)

You eased my way in the world, but you did more. You opened a window into a world beyond the pay-as-you-go, the world of pay-as-the one behind or the one ahead-goes. I like the look of that world. I want to help make it work.  

Gift

A surprise. 'I've got something for you,' said Anmi. A beautiful picture book: 'Gus & Me, The Story of My Grandad and My First Guitar' by Keith Richards, illustrated by his daughter. It's a simple story about a powerful phenomenon: the influence of grandparents on grandchildren, in this case with regard to music, musical instruments and the guitar.

Grandfather, grandson and dog walking, walking all over town and in the countryside: a potent image for me, and the story of one night the two spent under a tree on Primrose Hill looking at stars above and the city below reminds me of an excursion my extended family made when I was a small boy to a small island or peninsula in the Clyde estuary down from Glasgow. We'd got there by rowing over a glassy sea. It was a grey day and we built a fire, I remember, in the lee of rocks, but the whole occasion was so jolly I suggested we spend the night.

That memory, one more gift in this gift, in addition to the sheer generous deed itself.  You, Anmi, ardent fan of the Rolling Stones that you are, have with this present fully and finally pulled me close to the fire of your passion through the link with my grandfatherly heart (such a silly thing it is, but wonderful.) I see myself, I see you, I see us in this perfect gift.

So it is with gifts. Lewis Hyde in his classic book on the subject, explores the way in gift cultures that things appreciate in value as they are passed from one to another, each donor's name added to the pedigree of the item; regifting as an economy. That's an explicit, documentable process. But the thing that happened when you, excited, laid the book on my hands was one more step in the endless, implicit circle of giving: Gus to his grandson, his grandson to you as music, as spectacle, as a form of transcendence, and you to me as as a token of your regard.

I'm moved and challenged by this gift. The challenge,of course, to be a grand grandfather to young Myja, to be worthy of the respect of you, my indomitable friend, and to practice giving, being a giver, one engaged in knitting what keeps the world warm.

Sonata

Listening to Lowell Liebermann's Flute Sonata for the first time Sunday afternoon, the music went on and on. I seemed to handle each phrase individually as it came to my ears. Since I didn't know what was coming, but it kept on coming, this encounter was dynamic, immediate, and interminable.

Listening since to various renditions on Youtube, I'm surprised at how short the piece is: two movements amounting to only 12+ minutes. The difference is, I'm sure, the context. The dimness of the under-balcony of Jordan Hall vs the brightness the stage where the flautist and accompanist incarnated the piece, the absence of distractions and competing intentions forced me to attend.

So here's an experiment: Ill listen again intently and see if the time stretches out as it did. To assist my concentration, I'll take notes. Here goes:

Lento: Repetitive piano, flute playing slow Debussy like theme over the top; bass note in the piano, repeated flute theme, the sound seems richer with the bass, the flute hits some discordant notes, piano in the high registers, flute silent, now the flute enters and the tempo picks up, suddenly, some high reaching notes from the flute and heavy thumping on the piano, now quiet, the piano plays with repetition and small melody on top, the flute goes up and down with its own melody, suddenly a walking bass on the piano and the flute plays a syncopated up and down, now both instruments lock in a confusion of sound, now high ethereal piano triplets and the flute in a winsome minor key plays a simple melody, full of repetitious progressions, now the initial theme returns, the piano repeating its initial repetitive sequences and the flute slowly, deliberately singing its song, now the flute on its own in arpeggio.

Presto: Next movement: fast rolling piano, the flute line up and down with quick upward flings, the tempo so much faster, a sense of desperation, or at least urgency, the piano bass in a repetitive sequence, the flute goading the piano along, breathing sounds, almost as if two flutes, reaching up to touch high notes, then dropping off. Trying. Repetitions of initial sequence.The whole line moves up. Quick upward trills, over and over. Stop.

Clearly I don't know how to express what I'm hearing, but still I can say that the sonata sounded fuller, more structured, progressive in ways I hadn't noticed before. The piano is much more interesting than I'd thought.

Second version, second listening: dripping water piano, haunting flute line, flute and piano meet at certain chords, then part, piano solo passage, water flowing, falling. Faster interlude. Quiet again, piano melody with flute commentary. Now flute melody line, piano solo passage, marching ominous piano, with flute like a bird continually forced to fly to escape the creeping cat, plaintive flute as piano repeats it patterns. Flute in minor key sounds clock like, slowing down to a stop, back to beginning as if nothing has happened. An idle bird singing, the piano bass lending ballast to the ensemble, progressive chords, the flute reaching high to hold on to top note, as piano steps lightly away.

Fast, the energy is with the flute teasing the piano, the flute won't let it alone, try as it might to catch up, the piano is too low, too slow. The flute flies around the head of the piano and it tries to climb but falls away. Last valiant effort, the bird takes off and circles up into the empyrean, the piano leaping, the flute mocking and laughing. Finis.

The time rushed by, especially as I began to anticipate what was coming, still it seemed full, articulate. If not my ears, my mind was handling each passage, trying to hear and name and write. I feel closer to appreciating the intention of the composer. But what engrossed me was the interplay of the two instruments, and how that changed from first to second movement. They never separated, but never merged.  None of this was clear when I heard it the first time. With close attention, on second and additional listenings, you, sweet confection, were fresh over and over.

Bank

Are you just the piggy bank into which I drop the coins of the deeds of hospitality, friendship and exploration that the God-in-love framework refers to as inherently good and  'lasting'?

After all, according to that framework, the standard life values of success, serenity, survival, though not to be forsworn, indeed to be savored, must yet be recognized as transitory, and any significance they have prey to contingencies. Successes are so only in retrospect; while we live, serenity is not perfectly imperturbable; survival is only postponement.  

So, ka-ching, ka-ching, in go my little darings and doings, which you certify as worthwhile because in conformance with your modus operandi.

Ugh, what an terribly mercenary way of presenting what is generated in the ardent give-and-take between you, creator, lover, and your Beloved other, of which I am part. This is not a 'full faith and credit' assurance. These deeds arise within that relationship and partake of the fundamental lastingness of that relationship. Any future these deeds have is as part of the life of that 'world to come' which you and the Beloved are bringing into being.

Even this crafted commentary seems coldly abstract. Hospitality, friendship and exploration, on large or limited scales, are how I am part of what is going on between you, God-in-love, and your loved one. It's that interaction which has value, as wheat's value is ultimately in loaves of bread, and only incidentally in transactions on a commodity futures market. 

Still, I wonder: do I know you as I want to know those with whom I have my deepest relationships? Am I aware of you in my encounters? Do I sense your presence, alert and active? Do I feel the intensity of your intention toward the beloved Other? Am I as effortlessly conscious of you as I would be of, say, a kitten brushing my bare ankle? Do I miss you, or you me? Is contact between us possible purged of the particulars of encounter? 

Even if the bank were broken, encounters would still be worthwhile, and a life of same, satisfying.  

Mirror

Standing squeezed upright among my fellow commuters in the bus, feeling about for footing, heaving sighs at the non-movement of the densely packed vehicle through densely packed roadway, I glanced up at the round rear-view mirror over the door, and in it a diminutive white face looking out from among black haired, dark skinned heads: Who's that? Why, it must be me.  The face looked composed, but the expression faintly quizzical: 'This is what exactly?'

That evening, in my first classes of the new term, an array of new faces were looking into mine to see what kind of teacher they had signed up for--hard to understand? confusing to follow? dull?  I could see, as I kept referring to them to help memorize their names, their faces started to relax from wariness to occasional amusement, as when we made up stories with the words whose initial letters they'd chosen to spell out their names. The mirror of their faces told me they were seeing a face that welcomed them to that learning-English-place.

Full frontal face doesn't tell me much that's interesting; it's just someone giving looks, making faces, my morning washbasin ceremonies. It's the glimpses I sometimes get of my face in flux that I find intriguing.

Yew

When I stride on my way to the bus in the morning, there they are grazing on the surface of the thicket of the parallel yew hedges in front of the small white house on Mt. Hope Street: hundreds of tiny snails busy working their radulas over the what I suspect is a film of algae growing on the flat needles.

(Suddenly, as I write, two black kittens playing in front of my window.  The two are chasing each other around and on top of a dry paper bag of crackling leaves and sticks. Do they live in the little house I discovered yesterday up against the outside of my fence behind my yew hedge?)

The snails are gone by evening, the hedge looking correct, rectilinear, withdrawn. Long before the heat of the sun, in the cool moisture of dawn, these quiet, persistent creatures emerge from their byres in the thicket to browse their little pasture, the muscles in their foot rippling them forward and their tiny rasp-like tongues gently scraping the leathery surface clean of its green debris.

The yew is sometimes said to be the real Yddrassill, or world tree, of Norse lore and it's still got sacred associations. It's extraordinarily long-lived (estimates from 5-9,000 years), able to sprout new leaves and branches from any sun-touched stem, even to survive the splitting of a stem. For its tough flexibility it was protected by English kings for the making of the longbow. When the ancient Astures of northern Spain were pressed by the Romans, they are said to have chose the poison of the yew to commit suicide. Yet the plant has been used medicinally to treat heart problems and cancer.

I know of the vigor of this plant having cut it back many times in my yard (and needing to do it again soon). But it can see how it can be a place 'where snails may safely graze'. I relish the idea of the sudden eruption of shelled molluscs from their chthonic hiding place, their shells like the heads of the men and women popping up out of the earth when Deucalion and Pyrrha threw stones over their shoulders to repopulate the world after the flood.

You, irascible, advantage-seeking yew, and your gentle snails, have formed a delicate but long-lived partnership, good I hope for each. No noise, no drama, just the slow busy-ness of gastropods dining in the cool of  a September morn.

In your face

Looking in the mirror before bed: there on my forehead, blood! This is, two dried blood trails from stabbings I'd gotten that afternoon clearing out barbed quince suckers in my yard. Everyone has reservations about unaccompanied old guys, especially those with hieroglyphs of blood on their forehead. It would have been no wonder if at the 'barn' dance at New England Conservatory (half American square and half Balkan/Israeli circle) people had looked at me with strange expressions, and perhaps they did. My hands are often discolored with bruises, my arms or legs stripped with scratches and so invite the speculation of the curious. But this was much more 'in your face' because actually on my face.

Still the crowd of families and couples and singles from kids to seniors was more interested in dance, and dance we did dance--squares and long ways, circles and marches--for two delightful hours driven by the live music of NEC students playing fiddles, mandolins, banjos, accordions and other instruments.

As we came to the end of the evening, the leader was getting us to do all kinds of things: to loop  around ourselves in long snake-like sinuosities and spirals, to form arches for the others to go under (two irrepressible little girls loved this), and then to alternate over and under, to pair up for polka-like prancings in the middle of the circling circle before blending back into the perimeter. Once, spontaneously, two men, arms on each others shoulders, turned round each other in the center of the ring, kicking and stamping, as the rest of us clapped and whooped.

Okay, so I didn't wash my face, even look at it, before I left to go dancing. Appalled that night as I gazed in the mirror, I wouldn't have blamed any for hanging back, but it turns out the music, the dance, the high spirits trumped all hesitation, and I left the hall not even thinking I might not have had a good time.

Hardy

or not in the seasonal sense, I don't know, but it has flourished on my porch in its little pot inside a bucket. Sensitive to drought as it seems to be, we strive to keep it moist, and it rewards us with a spray of  branches with tiny purple blossoms much visited by bumblebees.

Wait, now I do know what it is. I showed a photo to my friend Kasa who loves challenges like this and found it (I don't know how) on a website for Texas gardeners: it's the Brazilian Sky Flower, also known as the Golden Dewdrop because of its tiny golden stone fruit, but formally called Duranta erecta.

Named or nameless, this cheapo Home Depot plant is a pleasure to watch. The profusion of tiny flowers dangling at the end of pendulous racemes and the busy solicitude of the bees tucking into each whorled four petal purple flower (and sometimes fanning or bumping into me in the process), indeed the whole large reach and flourish of the plant, all serve to make it good company when I sit having breakfast outside, or any time in the day.

Perhaps I should treat you, Sky Flower, with more ceremony now that we've been introduced. (In fact, the sky reference seems apt in the way your tiny flowers at the end of their stalks play in the wind.) And Krsa's no-nonsense about how you're going to need to be pruned and fertilized and, above all, brought in before it gets too cold. I can see I'll have to take pains not to make sure you survive. Our lolling together days may be drawing to a close.

So let's make a date now, you and me (and bees) that, come Spring, we'll get together again for good times on the back porch--and we'll invite Kasa too.

Post trauma

Crimson red leaves, tattered, torn, are scattered among the other leaves still whole and green on my plum tree. The trunk is clearly thicker and the branches longer and more numerous than it had been after the decimation of the spring, but the survivor foliage, perforated, jagged, gnawed, seems to have given up: it's time to turn color and toddle off. Some fall colors, I guess, mark old massacres.

My little pear tree, denuded in May, after struggling successfully to releaf, is now dying down from the top of its central stem. The leaves, once bravely green there have turned yellow, then sere. I cut off the dead section thinking lower down the stem was healthy. More will have to go. Let's hope the side branches are okay.

Clearly the injury these trees suffered from their predator worms was profound and even a summer's worth of sun wasn't enough to restore the status quo pro ante. You've been limping gamely along, pear, plum, but now it's time to own the pain.

Tree pain? Did you suffer as I know suffering? Maybe not. But I feel for you; I too have hidden injuries and carried on. At the moment you're committed to stoic indomitability, but afterwards you feel pity for what you endured..

My late father in law recovered from an iron lung bout of polio and went on to live a vigorous life as camp director, coach, father. When old, however, the effects of the disease became visible in the form of extreme muscle weakness, fatigue, atrophy. His middle years gave lie to the trauma of his youth, but the insult had been too deep, and finally caught up

You are trees not people, it's true, but you strive to survive as vehemently as I do. To live is to accumulate scars, and not all of them quiescent. Now my scars are just patterning on my skin; there may be deep forces perhaps I can't detect yet that will determine if they stay so.

I plan to inspect the leaves of both trees before winter for insect egg masses. Next spring, I want them to leaf out and flower fresh, innocent, and joyous, finally recovered.

Lifelong

First day of classes yesterday at MIT, today in the BPS. Lessons ranging from the alphabet to zeta functions. Acquisitive, assimilative minds at work on both sides of the Charles. Hail, students: I who stand at the other end of life salute you, wish you good learning--and the same for myself. I think particularly of, let's say, Jamal, 6th grader, and Catherine in the 12th.

It's clear from where I stand that it's me that's beneficiary of all the effort put into my education by my teachers, my companions and myself. I am the one enriched by what I have learned. I have it in my hands and head. It's my Comstock lode, my nest egg, encompassing ever more of the world, and with me always wherever I am and whether the markets go up, down or loop-the-loop. This wealth is not just a financial asset; it's the ultimate life-enhancement asset.

It gets better for each of us when we make this wealth common, share it with others; everyone is enhanced. But when anyone walks away from an encounter with a great teacher, or stands up from an encounter with a great book, or, working with some material on a trial and error basis, comes up with a great result, the benefit accrues to that person, the learner, first of all. Wherever you go, whomever you meet, whatever you do, however you do it, your education is with you, and yours, cumulatively enriched by each new encounter.

What are the kinds of enrichment available to us? I think of three:

Masteries: what we can do (and what new capabilities we access as we master more)

Mappings: what knowledge we own (and what parts of the knowledge map we're extending and filling in)

Missions: what network of themes we find persistently interesting to follow (and what missions or quests we are more and more moved to attempt as we progressively uncover and refine our 'themata')

So you, Jamal: you can read some books with pleasure, write some kinds of prose, solve some difficult math problems, play some basketball, do some amazing things on your bike; you know some facts about history, some facts of science, some things about cultures, the names of some famous people; you've made social study projects, explored some of the physics of middle ages warfare, composed a poem which you can sing. Your teachers have introduced you to more and more things that interest you and shown how to go about learning more.You are using these lessons as the basis of your own investigation.

You, Catherine: you can read and draw interesting inferences, write cogent essays, do advanced mathematical analysis, play the flute, handle lab equipment, argue effectively; you know much about current affairs, have a basic structure of general knowledge that allows you to navigate the main periods of history, parts of the world, cultural highlights, are very clear about the details of the research of your favorite professor and are familiar with the other big names in that field; you've started pursuing a career, surprised yourself by what you're good at, initiated some projects that have made interesting things happen. Day by day, you augment yourself.

About me? Gardening, whistling, sketching, teaching English prosody; history, biography, science, especially physics and biology, philosophy, geography, music, current affairs; political activity, writing this blog, articulating the meaning of life.

This being so, at the start of the school year, take charge of charging your mind. As babies new to the planet, you learned immense amounts quickly and without formal education. That potentiality, that energy, that power, are still yours. Welcome the offers of coaching, guidance, and counsel, but remember that, at the end of the day, the benefits accrue to you. It's your mind that will be enriched; your life that will be empowered. There is such joy in this.

Master new skills, and take old ones to the next step of empowerment; map new territories of knowledge, and add to old ones, reappraising, re-appreciating all the while; pick and pursue new projects, and advance old ones already underway.

This is the good work of the 'education' in us--part the gift of teachers, part the gift of life, part the gift of our own efforts--but ultimately ours to enjoy lifelong. I can report this is true for me. Welcome to well-being.

Fields of freedom

One encounter in my life is enduring, of many episodes, but rather than consider details more appropriately dealt with in a different venue, I'll intellectualize. So consider: what are the possibility spaces grounded in any encounter, such as this?  Indeed, what are the fields of freedom of anything?

Here is something actual, say a shoe, photograph-able, measurable, wearable. First of all, it's there: what it is, vs what it can be (a symbol, say), what it can have (a flaw), what it can do (pound a table).

Second, it's manifest: plainly evident, vs what's hidden (the construction), what's invisible (the odor), what's suggested (the style of the user).

Third, it's here: what is present, vs what is absent (the partner shoe), what is empty or untenanted (footless), what is missing (the laces, say).

Fourth, it's this one: what is individual, vs the form (shoe styles), the many (all the shoes in my closet), the whole (part of a costume or ensemble).

Fifth, it's now: what is of the moment, vs the past (in the package), the persistent (ever on the ground), the coming to pass (worn out and discarded).

Finally, it's related to me: what is I (or as-if I), vs an other (others' shoes), you (your shoes), myself (mine).

So concerning an Other in an encounter (now I'm winging it): there-ness, manifest-ness, here-ness, this-ness (pace Duns Scotus), now-ness, me-ness (or perhaps us-ness), all part of the immediacy of the encounter as it occurs. But on reflection by one or both participants, possibility spaces offer themselves for consideration. That which had seem wrapped up like a fly by a spider in its actuality begins to be real beyond that zone of confinement, much as quantum particles can show up on the other side of a wall.

The value of such mapping? It prompts no predictions, but perhaps deeper appreciation and perhaps prods to further probing. Yes, in the conversation of our multi-episodic encounter, we do ponder now this, now that point, related to the possibilities of each and the freedom of our relationship, and concerning each of them, there's much left to discuss.

Contra-diction

It's sometimes difficult at Tuesday night contra dancing at MIT to remember in the midst of the swirling and twirling whether you're a leader or a follower, someone in the 'gents' role or the 'ladies'. If you forget, as I did on occasion, you reach out for the wrong person, swing him or her, and realize that your partner and partner of the person you've just spun around are looking at each other not quite sure what to do.

But the music (live: a fiddle, banjo and piano) keeps on, the caller announces each step as it comes up, you figure out (are sometimes nudged to) where you're supposed to be and the recurrent sequence begins again. After a few iterations, you and your partner are at the top or the bottom of the line, whereupon you switch sides and wait to be pulled back into the machinery of the moves.

It was a hot and humid night; everybody was sweating. As we circled clockwise, then counterclockwise, allemanded, balanced, promenaded, hayed, gipsied (eyes locked) and swung with partner, corner, partner, new corner, I was with tall boney-backed young men, short solid older women, short muscular older men, limber-backed young women, holding their hands, gripping their shoulder blades, looking them in the eye, you, now you, now you, in succession--but not too much attention to any particular others, except one's partner, because there's always the next move to be ready for and step into.

Dancing (the caller called it 'wasting time to music') is kinesthetic, tactile, and mental. Head to foot, I was engaged. When the music ended, we clapped and sought new partners; too few women, so two guys who agree to dance have to settle who's leader, who's follower, hence which side to stand on as the music begins.

The sets end with plaintive Irish-type waltzes danced by circled couples one-two-three-ing around the small open floor, a change of pace from the bouncy beats of the contra tunes.

I saw all of you guys last in May (just before the person at the welcome table went for hip surgery (up and down recovery but can't stop dancing)) and this is my first and last time to dance because starting next week, I won't see you again until December. All that time, you'll be practicing the familiar elements put together in new dance configurations regularly concocted by musicians and callers from around the country. You'll be enjoying the rueful humor of mistakes, as well as the red-cheeked exhilaration of feeling your and another's bodies together sketching, with smooth momentum, ornate designs in the air, on the floor--and I'll miss it.

Eyes

Alch and his wife, walking by on their way to the Harbor ferry, saw me through the thick glass fronting the lobby of my building. We stood face to face, he and I, on either side speaking and gesticulating. Couldn't hear anything, understand anything, so I came out and we greeted each other warmly. 'I've seen you around here,' he said, though we've hadn't seen each other for at least a year even living in the same neighborhood. 'I'm on a grand jury and I saw someone running by and said, 'Hey, that's...''

So, are we ever unobserved? Surely sometimes. But do we know for sure when we're not seen? Seldom, I think. The world is full of eyes moving left and right like searchlights, sometimes snooping, but sometimes aimlessly looping, and seeing what they was not looked for.

A world full of looking. Birds and squirrels give us the once over. Strangers' eyes slide right over us after evaluating what's required to avoid collision. Eye contact, look hooking look, is promptly broken. We gaze over someone's shoulder when we have to interact. People watching, a favorite activity, fixes on no favorites.

Yet, sometimes we do see someone we recognize, or take note of, adding that person to one of the open structures of significance we carry floating in our minds. People I've seen for instance, as I run day after day, going through a cycle of recovery from injury. Good for you. Twosomes I've seen sometimes together, sometimes apart. Why? Sometimes there's lifted hand that could be just the normal swing of the arm but isn't.

The improbable happens more often than expect because more things happen than we realize. All the many things that defy the odds are part of the lotteries of occurrences played every second for each person. So Alch, you gazing out the window of a grand jury room a few minutes to nine some morning, thinking perhaps of where you'd rather be, glancing down, see a fellow in tanktop bustling by and think, 'Hey, that's...'

Then luckily you were looking through the glass into the building just at the moment when I'd left the elevator and turning a corner. Seeing you, I was reminded of pleasant conversations we'd had in the past, and wondered why we haven't had more. The luck of this looking may still linger.

Below, above, in the pocket

Women leaning out of their windows rained confetti down like a summer blizzard, a little girl on her father's shoulders had looped a sash of cash over saint's head,  the saint himself then hoisted high on men's shoulders, and white ribbons stretched out on every side like a bride's train, the musicians, wearing black straw hats with red bands, struck up a  rousing tune and the parade moved on--St Anthony's Feast, the finale of the North End's summer saint celebrations.

Later, up in the quiet of Copp's Hill Burying Ground, far above the battling bands in the hugger-mugger streets below, cool grey slate gravestones, gently tipping, with elegantly carved names and dates of Puritan worthies and surmounted by images of winged, grinning skulls--Puritan reflections on mortality.

The almost not-ridiculous visitor to the British island of Sark seeing to convert it to 'a cosmos of healthy and far-reaching love'--Mervyn Peake's satirical novel Mr Pye tucked in my shorts.

Allusions to the big questions, yes, but indirectly and not seriously--at least not today. Down below, the teeming crowds, the ices, sausages and pasta, the T shirt stalls with sassy slogans like 'American born but with Italian parts', the chances to win prizes with darts or hockey sticks, the bands belting out sentimental Italian favorites. Above, tourists moving from stone to stone, or rather display to display, children running to point out, Mommy, Daddy, look at this or that stone, the foot-weary sitting on the ledge of the fence. In the paperback, the over-the-top scene of Mr Pye and his erstwhile hardbitten landlady, he in the garden, she leaning out the upstairs window, improvising hymn verses to each other before breakfast--and more absurdity to follow.

However we encounter you, God-in-love, we have to contend with all the different ways the big questions are dealt with by people who live within a culture. Cultures mediate encounters. Why shouldn't it be so? Everyone respects these questions, so we have festivals, touristy burying grounds, and funny novels, each built around at least a germ of reference to original encounter of some kind.

But encounters are multi-dimensional, layered, their significance unfolding over time with reflection, especially ones with you. As my old film teacher Andrew Silver taught me: all the elements considered together are what the film is about, not just the putative theme of the story summary. Perhaps today a good time was had by all and a 'good' time had by some. Why not?