Surprise attack

A profound disinclination to any kind of exertion: this is what you've infected me with. For two days until the fever broke last night, I was desperate to not teach, not move, not think, just sit, eyes closed, letting images swirl and play before my mind's eye, till sleep enfolds me. No congestion,  only flitting headaches,  a little totteriness, really the only symptom was the overwhelming lassitude. As soon as I had finished any duty, I closed my eyes and drifted deliciously. 

What have you done to me, microbe? Somewhere deep in my lungs you found a niche and made it a stronghold. My gallant white cells launched attack after attack, gnawing you wherever you were found, and my thermostat system opened the dykes and flooded me with heat. I was fairly glowing.

You came on like this week's blizzard, intense and extended.  I'm surprised that something with so little warning could lay me so low. Hours in the evening just dozing in an armchair. 

Compass

You care in a way I don't. Yes, the poor woman is dying. Yes, I remember her on her wedding day, her gown of apple green silk, and my brother, all dressed up, aspiring for the moment to respectability. I remember their daughter, so like her father. Yes, there's a link, but it's so tenuous; first the marriage went, then my brother.

A great-hearted person would ignore the attenuations, and seize whatever could be grasped of responsibility for the relationship. Clearly it's not me, but just as clearly you, mother.

As you head down south (with my sister) to help in the last hours,  making arrangements and simply being present, I think of other trips you've made and phone calls and contributions financial and otherwise, not to mention the anguish you've felt (and shared).

I'm ready to find excuses,  but not you. This was your daughter-in-law,  your grandchild and great grandchild. You feel the obligation as a compass needle feels the pull of the pole. Loving my grandson is less problematic but no more compelling.

Oh, the issues are complex, overwhelmingly so. My hands are ever ready to be thrown up. But your moral compass is clear: no one should live like this; no one should die like this. You're right: we deserve to be companioned right to the edge, and mourned on the other side-which you will make happen.

There's a certain hardness in me concerning my late brother and everyone associated. I suspect it's a kind of snobbery and nothing to be proud of. You too, mother, know how to be critical, but right now though those things are unimportant; you're on your way.

Sister-in-law,  I hardly know how to address you. It's too late to gin up a lot of sentiment. You worked hard but your life has been full of trials, and now this. You're a reserved person, and I'm negligent about relationship maintenance. Our distance is understandable, if not excusable.

Still, you'll have with you soon someone you've opened your heart to,  and whose heart has always been open to you. In that encounter God-in-love will surely be present. Blessings upon you both.

Orogenesis

Oh, lady. You are heavy. From inside, watching you whisk your veils of snow dust about, you seem light as a ballerina. Outside, disinterring my buried cars, I find you are as ponderous as the ruins of a library. Books are heavy and so, shovel by shovel,  is your snow. Behind the car, away from the road, lighter, fluffier paperbacks. Next to the road, pressed by the plow against my car door, salt and sand sprinkled in as stiffener, hardbacks, leather bound. stacked.

This snow that you leave behind was once water invited up into the air for the grand adventure of a storm. Now, it's abandoned and cursed. There's a wall of snow next to my fence which was built with repetitive bend, shove, lift and throw over and over. Now it's higher than I am. If  a sister storm  of yours comes later this week, will I be able to heft the loads over the mountain I've already raised--and I understand snow is coming Friday? Oi vey.

Once my cars are freed up, I more or less forget the snow, as do you, Juno, heading northeast as you are into senescence. But a new drama is beginning under the snow cover. Progressively the light fluffy crystals congeal into crust. Mice tunnel underneath protected from the cold. Bernd Heinrich, the Maine naturalist, says that even birds burrow in it.

Progressively the snow changes as it ages, then there's a new layer on top, and another. A whole nival geology arises. You may move on, sister-wife of Jupiter, forgetting what you've left behind, but as cover and as pack, it begins to establish its own presence, make its own contribution.

All the neighborhood is out. Across the street an army of shovelers plus a blower. Their driveway, swish, clean. I'm still feeling my shoulder and back muscles jittery; and the memory of the overwhelming prospect--so much snow!--that confronted me when I finally went out still appalls me. So much. So much! You've really been too good to me, Juno.

Wait, it's still snowing. My windshields are dusted again and the plows are creating their little berms next to my car. Juno, if you'd like to go, please don't let me keep you.

Juno

I'm fascinated by you. You're a beauty. I sit next to the window looking out over my yard, the street, the yard beyond, the cemetery behind that, at white, shadowless white, white on the ground, billowing in the air, the sky itself (though a little greyish. Against this, trees, fencing, windows and doors on nearby houses all are black. In flock fluttery by: black  birds. Navigating very carefully the top of a chain link fence: a black cat.

Plows go by, their normal clangor muffled as they push a thick quilting of snow off the roadbed (and onto my cars). I don't hear traffic, I don't hear people shouting at each other as they scrape with their shovels. The only sound is the consistent, sometimes soft, sometimes loud, roar of the wind.

This is a found day. News of your coming started to grab my attention yesterday morning, fueled by gleeful predictions of record-breakings and hardships. My students, all from blizzard-free zones, were curious, nervous, excited. Announcements of T shut down, school cancellations, declarations of emergency: it was clear yesterday that today there would be just you, Juno.

We tracked your progress up the coast, dodging this way and that, your core of low pressure pulling in cold, moist winter ocean air and whipping it into high velocity snow aimed all day at the New England coast. White out? I don't see it. Still, you're a lollapalooza of a storm, and far from done, judging by the great plumes of snow you are swooshing off my neighbor's roof.

These days storms have names and you are named after the jealously vengeful wife of the lord of Olympus, Jupiter, the wielder of thunder and lightning. But you are also goddess of the hearth, and last night, sitting in my living room with its read furniture, curtains drawn a great book on my lap, my wife working on a jigsaw puzzle, the prospect of a day ahead unexpectedly swept free of obligations, I felt the warmth, the coziness, that is your hallmark. How much more snug we feel inside, the more blustery you are outside.

And you are blustery. Predictions are be made about whether you'll dump more story than the previous record holders: the mid-February storm of 2013 that gave us over 27 inches or the wonderfully memorable Blizzard of '78 that brought the region to a dead stop for a week. The actual amount of snow can vary from nothing where some vortex of wind sweeps the ground bare or three feet or more in drifts, not to mention the amount piled against my cars by the plows.

We'll have to get out and move it all and find places to put it. The work is yet to come. A snow day has its own agenda. But Juno, my atmospheric inamorata, local and recent expression of the air we breath, as I look out at the swish and register the roar, I find you wonderful.

Sleeper

Bagdad Cafe: the second selection of the Sunday afternoon film club my wife and a friend have initiated. The site, Dedham's Riverdale section, overlooking the Charles. Present, besides founders, a couple we had met before and an older lady from down the street. The talk: Canadian politics of the late sixties, travels in girlhood with a favorite uncle, the value of single sex schools. Very affable, though I felt my opinions turning a little argumentative. Down, boy.

The film, about a stranded German woman in the Mojave Desert, was a hoot. We loosened up even more as we laughed, commented, urged on the characters. How wonderful the way acting people can transform the way they seem. The stiff and portly Marianne Sagebrecht, much like a porcelain doll, glowing with sweat, at the beginning was by the end  relaxed, loose, dancing and doing magic on stage, glowing with inner radiance.

After the film, we asked, 'Why have we not heard of the film before?' Our children were small when it came out in the late eighties, and perhaps we had not been able to afford video tape players. The movie, however, was a real treat, we agreed.

With this, we entered the ranks of cult movies enthusiasts, the informal community which had posted many online responses to the film. Almost uniformly, we spoke of coming across the film by accident, then of being perplexed by its first few minutes, then of being 'strangely drawn in'.  We admitted it's a movie not perhaps for everyone, but a winning tale, nonetheless--this seemingly haphazard account of odd characters finding ways to befriend each other. Virtually plotless, character-driven, with an appeal hard to convey, it's a movie we reported we were all were delighted to have found.

Now some of you say it's a treat you give yourselves regularly: 'For me, it was like a great book that you just can't put down, and that you want to read over and over again to see if you missed anything, or merely to recapture the warm feeling you got the first time through.'

I may join you all in the once a year club. Our Sunday movie club just expanded.

Heart to heart

Let's try an experiment. Until now, I've been exploring direct 2nd person encounters, ones in which the I in the I-You interaction is me. Are discoveries possible in the contemplation of indirect encounters?

Of course, they are. Book and movie discussion groups do it all the time. Sometimes in acts of imagination we put ourselves in the place of characters and try to appreciate the situation characters find themselves in as if we were they. Then we might, as those characters, address their others as 'you' in 2nd person encounters.

In my direct 2nd person encounters, there's always the implicit questions: what moves me as desire and what do I dare. The other of a direct encounter represents a challenge in the world I inhabit day to day. Contrast this with the world of retired FBI profiler Terry McCaleb played by Clint Eastwood in his Blood Work (2002) which I watched last night. The twist of the thriller is that the heart transplanted into the detective is that of a woman,murdered (spoiler alert) to make the heart available to him.

The action begins when he obliges himself to solve the death of the person, her name Gloria or 'Glory', whose heart beats in his chest, a chest he frequently tenderly touches throughout the movie. Progressively he realizes that her slaughter and his survival are not accidentally connected, that beyond his knowing, he was the reason for her death.

Other characters in the story include the unappeased sister of the victim, Terry's exasperated physician, the grateful police official who owes him a big favor, and, of course, the killer.

Okay, Terry to heart donor: I don't know who you are, just an unfortunate person whose rare blood type happens to match my own, but, though it's not consolation to you, you were the giver of the gift of life to me. Others have to wait, languishing, for the right donor hearts to appear, sometimes even to death. Others, like certain former vice-presidents take replacement hearts on demand as their due. But your death and my need coincided according to the wonderful coincidence arranging habit of the world.

Donated heart to Terry: I'm just doing my job now for you as I sustained the life of the one in whom I was born.

Terry to the sister of the victim's sister: Your life brutally snuffed out in an act of random violence. Those left behind grieving, seeking resolution--revenge maybe but at least clarity--speak about you with love, describe you as a responsible person, a caring person, one striving to live a good life. You stand in stark contrast to the one seen on the surveillance camera who took your life, took all your life except for that of your heart, the 'home' of all noble or ignoble character traits, 'source' of vitality, which was good in you and now in me.

Terry to Gloria: As I investigate, I'm learning that you, Gloria, whose heart now beats in me, was sacrificed, unwittingly for me. I am the beneficiary of your ugly end. Would it have been better if you had continued in life and I had died? What obligation does this knowledge, and this heart that I feel thumping in my chest, now quietly, now loudly, lay on me? A heart is just a piece of flesh. Cardiac cells spontaneously contract and together in a Petri dish, coordinate their beats. Nothing mystical or even mysterious but still we human beings always see ourselves as part a web of connections and obligations. I owe you.

More than this, I wonder what kind of a world is it that brings us together, that puts the living artifact of a stranger, albeit admirable, in my chest, to pump my blood, energize my limbs and mind? Were we always connected? Are we all somehow always connected? That's too broad and encompassing to mean much of anything, but still here is your heart, one domiciled beneath your breast, now resident in mine. I'm awestruck.

Terry to Glory: Now I know all; now some kind of justice has been done. Your death was not meaningless but the product of a peculiar twisted love kind of evil, and yet a source of life. Your son and sister secure and fulfilled as you wished them to be, and I revitalized. Your heart is not just hyrdraulic machinery, but access, indeed incentive, to a new, unexpected quality of life. I'm in relationship, through your agency direct and indirect, with what energizes and inspires and satisfies me.

Glory, by one definition, resplendent beauty or magnificence, is what I feel sometimes glowing in me when I consider my new life. Just a heart, you are not just a heart. Your life, if extended, would have had its own adventures and achievements. Perhaps you would have enjoyed the same fulfillment I do now. Perhaps I just hijacked your future. I wish you could still have it as well as me. However we are one, and I'm the one.

An interesting experiment worth repeating. I could feel it somehow compelling. New thoughts came to me. The time component seems significant. This is fiction; would an indirect 2nd person encounter with a historical or current figure be different?  I can try and find out.

Fixer

When I want to find him in the winter, I go into the garage, where, at the back, there's a wood stove crackling away and a half dozen men sitting around its heat. In the summer, the door is up and the men are outside in front of it. The car being repaired is up on the lift exposed from below.

He's a big man  with a short white beard, and a quiet voice and smile who gives me his wrist to shake since his hands are always dirty.

Both of my cars are from his used car lot. Tthey have good quality and low cost. The one I drive has low mileage but is nearly 24 years old. When there's a door that won't close (the hinges had rotted away), or shot shocks, or a failure to pass inspection (exhaust, emergency brake, rear light problems), he fixes it for me quickly, inexpensively and well.

Last night, when I went to pick up my car, there was crowd in the garage-snuggery, including some women. As he rose and left the group to lead to this office, he said, 'My sister is here from Puerto Rico, Mr Peter. My great aunt died yesterday.'  'I'm sorry,' I said. 'Don't be, she was 103 years old.'

As he handed me the keys and took payment, he told me: They delivered the wrong emergency brake cable twice which is why it took so long.'

I'm somewhat abashed. Ours is a commercial transaction, but I feel I get the better. Yet, it's more than that, and what I don't know. I am very grateful for your willingness to help me so readily, so well (the vehicles always pass inspection) and with such friendliness. What do I do to deserve this consideration? What more can or should I do?

Your world is full and your life has its mixture of challenges, some of which I know a little of. Of what I have or am, I would gladly share more if I knew how. In any case, let me wish you and the business well. I'm not sure I do you much service having you fix my clunkers rather than buying new ones from you, but...

As I walked away, you said, 'The car should last perhaps another year. When you come to get a new one, I'll give you a deal.'  You already have, my friend. 

Putting off

You're nearby. We've been friends and co-workers for years. We're interested in each other's projects. You renewed contact recently with a card after an extended lapse, inquiring about a mutual acquaintance (about whom I don't have any current info.) So why am I delaying my reply?

It's absurd, and ever more so as time passes. I find myself deeper and deeper in the rut of reluctance.

What, my friend, is my problem?

Have we fallen out? No, not at all.

Have our interests diverged?  Uh,uh.

Would we have a good time if we arranged to meet, perhaps somewhere in Harvard Square?  Certainly.

So why don't I reply to your query?

Oh, the lunch hours we used to sit out on the lawn in the park. Before that, in the middle of winter, when the park was still under construction and off limits, we transgressed and played on the slides and the climbing toys. We talked about Jung, and movies, and relationships, about politics, music, work (just a little) and life. You always had a point of view a little slant of mine. You and I were perhaps the only people we knew who would go, separately, see a movie about a silent Cistercian monastery in central France, and love it. I remember you were becoming more and more passionate about solitude, about silence.

You seemed to me so cosmopolitan; your evaluative senses so sensitive and articulate. I feel I'm none of these. I felt somewhat provincial and uncritical.  At one point you offered to help, but I wasn't ready to accept. Perhaps I'm still not. My various projects, of which this is the most recent, may have seemed to you interminable, and I somewhat feckless.You weren't the first to feel this way.

You're in school now studying to to be a therapist. I'm not up to anything as defined.

You were also so generous; perhaps I feel like I have an outstanding debt I can't pay.

Still none of this add's up a cogent reason from my dilatoriness. Maybe I'm just lazy; maybe I'm waiting for something special to say; maybe I don't know where our relationship will go. Maybe I'm not sure I'm interesting any more.

It would be fun to see you. I do want to hear how your studies are going, and I have things to share too.I'd like to hear some of your jokes again, and your special take on things.

So what am I waiting for?  Act now. But I feel flat out; do I really have time for any new or renewed relationships? Of course, I do. Well, then, maybe you who are too busy.

Do you see just how silly I am? Enough. I'm getting in touch with you tomorrow.

Trust

He was the star of the evening. The milling crowds at his entrance, the serried ranks during his speech, all were riveted on him. Over six feet, with a sunshine-breaking-through smile, a comfortable-in-his-body ease, a natural confidence, reinforced by his current nothing-to-lose circumstances, a quick wit, a clear and informal voice, he looked ready for the attention he was accorded.

What he was going to say had already been published so those who objected had had time to formulate telling replies, and those who were disappointed, could itemize its inadequacies. So all he had to do was say it, which he did in a way that showed how much potent the vision he was articulating was for him. Impossible, improbable, desirable or not as his proposals might be, he portrayed himself as undismayed, undeterred, indefatigable, irrepressible.

I love looking at you looking at the people around you. I love tracing your words back to thought operations in your mind. I love watching your basketball player's loose grace. Your words, your sentiments and convictions: I've heard them all before, but I love hearing you articulate them again.

I've disagreed with you, and been frustrated by you, and sometimes just perplexed, but as often uplifted, proud, encouraged and pleased. You're your own person and I trust you.

Others don't, of course, and have their reasons (or not.) But I do and pretty consistently since I first had a chance to concretely show my support. What is trust, then?  You spoke several times about a 'trust deficit,' but that's easy to describe: a certain wariness, reluctance to engage, unwillingness to depend on.

Trust doesn't seem to eliminate these things completely but mutes them in favor of a positive conviction of reliability. Trust is sure that the basic principles of a person are still operative, not matter what we might see or hear at any moment.

One of the standard moments in dramas is when that in which the one proven trustworthy says to the suspicious, 'Why didn't you trust me?' Why indeed?  'I just couldn't be sure,' or some variant is the reply. Of course, the opposite is often true; the scam artist has the undying loyalty of the gulled.

In fact, most people I work with I trust, if not their judgment at least their intentions. The smooth commerce of our days relies on this trust, not absolute, not unlimited, but ready and actionable. The cheater wouldn't be as attractive an entertainment option if actually the norm.

Still, when I think about active trust instead of default trust, I always think of the crises when contrary evidence compels me to look again at what I'm sure I know about someone. Time often clarifies the truth, and the trend lines of successive crises are also illuminating. Yet, we can be mistaken. I hate it when I've mistrusted someone unjustly, not because of my embarrassment but my failure. I should have seen.

Well, I've followed you for years. Early on, I became convinced that you knew what you were doing, understood what was going one as well as anyone else, and that your heart was in the right place. I think so still, and it was good to see you show it off. My judgment is on target, not for my sake alone, but for that of all who watched.

Woodworker

Why, after years of not remembering him, suddenly in the middle of class, looking at a website about fine woodworking, did my grandfather come to mind?

I don't have a rich stock of family memories I can call up when I want to think about the people in my family tree. Perhaps I wasn't paying attention. The upshot is that so many of the details of my grandfather's life in Scotland and with us here in America are lost to me. But there he was before me, not as the skinny guy with the shock of white hair, big red nose, tweeds, pipe, and amused smile, but as the maker of the coffee table that I've put my coffee down on so many times at my mum's house.

He was an excellent woodworker, as his work shows. Sturdy, elegant, smooth as silk is this elegant table. I do remember him working on it in our basement. Step by step, he cut the pieces, shaped and sanded them, assembled them, then finished the work with layer after layer of varnish. It was his gift to us, and it's still the pride of his daughter.

What a man! Originally surnamed Joel, he took the name of his tools, Redman, when he went to work in the same factory as his brother. He fought in the first world war in East Africa (am I right about that?) and was (certainly) a pacifist in the second. He raised four admirable children on a modest wage in a tough section of old Glasgow. A passionate reader, he was ever, I remember this clearly, ready to discuss books, especially of history, and all matters of life.

Generous to me, to all your grandchildren, I think I never thanked you enough. You and Granny were the age then that we are now--the age of still living out your lives (something I never really appreciated about you two) while doting your grandchildren (as we do ours).

Why then did I feel this pang today, Bert (as Granny used to call you)? Was it the image of worked wood, and the love you lavished on it?

As I write this, memories long inactive have stirred. It may be that more will arise. Be it so. For the nonce, I am so happy to enjoy your presence again. It's often been said I take after you. If true, I feel it's an honor.

Cascade

I hadn't expected the word to be as prominent in today's encounter field as it turned out to be.

Point one: a op ed piece in the New YorkTimes by somebody I don't know about the idea of 'rewilding' as solution to a  malady he calls 'ecological boredom'. Response: should read again.

Point two: a friend's reference to a short movies about the effects of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, narrated and made by the same person (with a noticeable British accent). Reference in the film to 'trophic cascades', an unfamiliar term. Thought: does human society need more top predators?

Point three: run the name by Google. There's a website. The fellow is a well-known, rather controversial, columnist for a prominent British newspaper. Lots of recent writing on liberal vein, mainly criticizing the Conservatives and corporations. On list of recent work, film on the ecological significance of whales.

Point four: watched whales. Fascinating stuff, especially that on the significance of 'fecal plumes', the sort of theme that could keep elementary school boys in stitches for days. Whales as swizzle sticks, wow!

Point five: (all in one day just noodling around the internet) TED talk by said columnist on 'rewilding' in front of Edinburgh audience. Nostalgia for Paleolithic big beasts: where are aurochs when we need them?

Point six: screened whales and wolves for wife. Sampled some of his feuilletons. Dismay: the man is much younger than me but with messages I endorse and...an audience.

Point seven: He calls himself an 'investigative environmental reporter,' and recounts in his online autobiography some of his adventures (and discoveries) in Indonesia, the Amazon, Kenya. Now more sedentary, he's got a long list of things he loves: my family and friends, salt marshes, arguments, chalk rivers...; a long list of things he tries to fight:.undemocratic power, corruption, deception of the public, environmental destruction....; one thing he fears: other people's cowardice.

He writes, 'I still see my life as a slightly unhinged adventure whose perpetuation is something of a mystery. I have no idea where it will take me, and no ambitions other than to keep doing what I do. so far it's been gripping.'

You don't know me, George, and until today I had no idea you existed, but all day I've been steeping myself in your words, your productions, your story. Through the extraordinary capabilities of the internet, you're on my map now. In fact, I rather like you and have a feeling you're somebody worth following. Your narrative voice in your films is full of wonder. Your journalist voice is argumentative and relentless, funny and furious at the same time. I'll find another another of your voices when I read your books, as I plan to do.

Once upon a time, a new name, a new fact, a new book, a new notion would hang in a sort of mental limbo until I found, often through diligent search or by accident, the meat I could sink my teeth into. How many orphan references have disappeared?  Now, however, I can with a little bit of bustling around with search engines sketch in quite a bit of territory in a very short time. Oh, I feel rich.

There's no substitute for reading the books, nor for meeting face to face, just as there's no substitute for actually risking action, as you, my new muckracking friend, would surely be first to agree. I'm open to your suggestions.

Old friends

A Sunday afternoon movie watching club organized by my wife and a friend. I showed up late with ginger cookies and so when I got there a game of dominoes had gotten started. I met a tiny woman in her nineties who told me that she used to enjoy playing the game with her friend of many decades, who'd just turned 103. 'Oh, how I miss my friend. We talk every week on the phone.'

The domino set they used was one her friend had brought with her from Europe. 'It used to be her mother's. It's beautiful and she would win'

'She was on the third floor down in New York and I was on the fourth. We used to see each other every day.'

'I may go down to see her on her birthday. Bus, train, it's all the same. Oh how I miss her since I moved up here.'

I thought of the invisible cord of friendship linking this lady at the movie watching club and her buddy, the many hours they'd spent together talking out problems and playing games. Their children had grown up knowing each other, so each must have been something like aunt to her friend's kids.

Not work, nor war, but the exigencies of care-giving had forced them apart. How they must long to hear the steps of the other on the stair treads,

The old lady sort of liked the film but got tired before the end. Her son, as I or older, came when called to drive her home. No, she didn't need any help with her coat zipper. That done, she took her cane, and with superb dignity, marched to the door. Her driver followed, but not before we'd pressed on him the last of the ginger cookies.

Glamour

The stadium is where the big game will be today, but early yesterday afternoon in the movie theater next door, what generated crowds was the live broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera's The Merry Widow. Groups of men and women, the median age perhaps fifty, even sixty given the abundance of white hair and walkers.

I was there (fitting the demographic) to experience something new. I enjoy operas, though I find opera annoying as background. Looking for tickets on-line the night before, I discovered that to get a seat at all I'd have to travel to Patriots country. There was a hint of secret subculture in all this, but once in my comfortable seat with a huge high-definition screen in front that allowed me to see expressions and gestures close up and excellent sound around that made all the lyrics and dialogue clear, I understood the appeal. The experience was friendly and semi-immersive. Plus there was the perennial favorite with its Straussian rom-com appeal.  Lots of jokes, dances, costumes, singable tunes, lovely young men and women, splendid voices, and a happy ending: who could ask for more?

I have had and renewed twice but until a few days ago not actually read The Power of Glamour: Longing and The Art of Visual Persuasion by Virginia Postrel. In that theater, as I felt tears trickle into my beard at the right times, I thought 'This is what she means. This is pure glamour.' Halfway between grand opera and Broadway musical, the play and production were unashamedly crafted to generate a range of emotions from broad humor to idealistic love, and I gave myself thoroughly into the expert hands of my manipulators.

As utterly improbable as the story is, there's an allure in the style of belle epoque Paris, an appeal in the fast-paced vivacity of the action, and an authenticity in the yearnings of the great songs (which especially touched me.)

Desire in all its forms is what glamour has concrete referents for: some object, melody,  image, style of action that speaks to what is impossible, or at least not here and now, but so worth wanting. Postrel writes the components of glamour:  its promise of escape or transformation, its suggestion of effortlessness, and its element of mystery. Certain on the stage yesterday all were actively in play.

Once the word had the connotation of 'a magical spell', but now it's such a familiar marketing strategy we can laugh at it, while giving ourselves over to.

I've wondered about the glamour of  the presence/adventure/lastingness way of life of the God-in-love framework. Here am I writing blog post after post as a way of teaching (myself first) how to live this life.
The wonderful potential of glamour is its power of evoke and represent ideals we are drawn to; the problem is its artificiality, its superficiality, its tendency to evaporate on serious inspection or reflection.

My new cell phone, almost a phablet, definitely has glamour, and as I discover new features and functionalities, my sense of wonder is revived. Clearly, however, this object is the product of much work over a long time. Inside the black box is the record of hundreds of thousands of carefully calibrated design decisions. Are there things which intrinsically evoke a sense of glamour.  Poetry is on a quest to prove that everything can have for us a kind of glamour.

But can a way of life be glamorous to the person living it? Where's the glamour in brushing teeth, catching a bus, filling out a report? Going to the heart of the question: is there glamour in encounters here and now with others or otherness, at least potentially and upon reflection, and independent of whatever glamour may pertain to the idea of the world to come?

Is this the question I've been exploring all this while? Okay, is it time for an answer? I think, 'Yes.' Even yesterday's event as I reflect on it has a glamour above and beyond the silly, satisfying story. The gathering of so many not just for an afternoon's entertainment but for some X quality of experience that opera offers speaks to an irrepressibility of desire that is perhaps the most glamorous things about us as old folk, as human beings, as organisms, as nodes in an evolving universe.

Chatter

What is in this time: knee, shoulder, instep, groin?  A certain discomfort, perceptible in certain situations, just pops up unprovoked. I could understand if I'd fallen on my knee, or twisted my foot, strained my shoulder, stretched my groin, but I can't link the pain to any specific injuries, so I don't really understand why things just begin to hurt.

My solution these days is to immediately take some OTC anti-inflammatory pills until symptoms abate, which they do, only to give place to some other ache. If I don't act promptly though I'll favor it which makes it worse, turning a little 'tickle' into 'wince'ible and possibly disruptive.

What the heck is going on?  Pondering the question, I start to see you, body, as something like a  dynamic Afar Triangle-like landscape peppered by steam rising from sudden vents. Like the Little Prince's volcanoes, these eruptions have to be cleaned out as part of regular housekeeping.

Let's follow the metaphor. Are these just symptoms of deep developments in the crust which eventually will lead to major eruptions, rifts, droppiung fault blocks, new ocean irruptions? The odd meteor strike could suddenly trigger any or all of these. These might be the physical insults which take so long to recover from or the new configurations which permanently reconfigure the terrain.

Perhaps, though, these pains are a physical Whack-a-Mole. What disappears here, springs up there. Some constituent is always being heard from. Okay, guys. Sound off. If it's important, we'll make adjustments. Meanwhile...oh, a tweak in the other shoulder.  Good to hear the chatter.

Tracks

Dawn is about 15 minutes after 7 these mornings, so when I head to the bus stop at 6:30, it's still dark, which is a relative term considering the yellow light cast by the street lamps on the black pavement and reflected off the snow when it has fallen, as it did last night.

This morning I felt like one of the very first people up.  One or two cars were idling in driveways, those on the street was far apart, and there were no pedestrians. I was alone, first to really breath the air of the day.

Whistling a tune, I strode along the snowy sidewalk like a trailblazer, when I noticed another set of prints in the snow going my way.

Someone before me! A person with big feet. Look how the man (so l thought) scuffed his feet. Wait, there's another set of prints extending ahead of me. A different shape of shoe, narrower and with a pointed, perhaps a woman's.

For a brief moment, I felt like a tracker able to draw fascinating insights from mere indentations in snow.  Quickly, though, all the impressions got confusing. Then I felt more like Pooh following Heffalumps--laughable.

What I finally understood was this: some poor folk were up and out even before me, perhaps to one of those ultra-early coffeeshop gigs. Dark as it still was, the morning was already in play.

Go well, you night-risers, making the rest of us welcome in the day, or going  about other good business. You've shown me the way.

Disasters

The Goya exhibition at the MFA wraps up in a few days so the gallery was full, full of people peering at pictures and manipulating their audio tour cassettes. A broad range of pictures from his long career as court painter to many regimes was on display. I'd just taken some people through the American gallery and only wanted to see his Disasters of War prints.

Rowan Williams in his Grace and Necessity had written: 'Goya, we could say, 'loves' his depictions of the brutalities of the Peninsular War, not because he relishes cruelty in itself but because he paints what is there, not what he wants to see, and is acutely aware of the risks of representing such horrors.'  Was he right?

Out of 80 odd, maybe 24 were on display, aquatint etchings mostly using oak gall ink made between 1810 and 1820 on themes related to the French occupation, then later, after the Bourbon restoration, the reinvigorated Inquisition, through all of which Goya had served as portraitist to those in power.

Made in secret by the artist in his sixties and only made public decades after his death, they are harrowing: images of dismemberment, torture, various modes of execution, corpse disposal,  refugee flight, humiliation, starvation, rape--every kind of human-induced indignity and disruption. Those who suffer are dismal; those who inflict, disgusting. Altogether, a telling argument for our failure as a race.

The etchings seem quickly sketched as if they were eyewitness representations, but they must have been from memory or killing fields and execution sites. What a labor to visit these gruesome places, perhaps at night, to record these pathetic outrages, what discipline.

The captions are often rhetorical questions or ironic assertions, as if the artist were trying to relieve his horror with some kind of hollow humor: 'What More Can Be Done?', 'I Saw This Myself,' 'The Worst is Begging,' 'They Do Not Want To,' 'Nor Do These (these last concerning rape), 'It Cannot Be Helped,' (of a firing squad), 'Bury Them and Keep Quiet,' 'Will She Live Again?' (of a woman being beaten), 'The Same,' (a decapitation).

Susan Sontag wrote about this series: 'While the image like every image is an invitation to look, the caption, more often than not, insists on the difficulty of doing just that.' Indeed. Not simply numbers, not informative, the captions seem to speak a voice of helplessness in sorrow. These scenes must be recorded but the devastation can't be remedied, the pain can't be relieved.

We're all on the moral spot when looking at or looking away from such images; human suffering diquiets and convicts us--as it should. I sense nothing like glee in these prints; indeed they seem like a burdensome labor of love--love of what? Love of mankind? Love of the life of making images? Love of the power of putting the truth (at last, or perhaps still) down on paper?

I was put in mind of the recent film The Missing Picture using carved figurines to represent what no images exist of--the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. Very strange, very moving, as are Goya's works. All must be acknowledged, all must be swallowed. If not this, then what? If not by me, then by whom?

To you, tormented witnesses and victims, I can only provide fellowship by looking, watching, and admiring the doleful but courageous loneliness of your self-appointed but mandatory task.

More than they have

'Bad art is art that does not invite us to question our perceptions or emotions, that imposes an intrusive artistic presence, that obscures both the original occasion of encounter, the original object in the world, and its own concrete life, by drawing attention to its message and willed meaning.'

This is Rowan William on the subject of art and artists in his Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love.  A short book and in places obscure, I've been mulling it for some days, even in my pre-alarm morning dream state.

What if I think of you, God-in-love, as artist, and all this (here I swing my arms to take in the city, the planet, the universe, and the past and future) as a work of art? It's not 'bad' as defined above.

Williams writes: 'Imagination produces not a self-contained mental construct but a vision that escapes control, that brings with it its shadows, and its margin, its absences and ellipses, a dimensional existence as we might call it.' To me, this speak to what seems to me to be the open-endedness of things.

'Given integrity of vision and purpose, consonance of component parts, and 'splendour', the active attracting summons to the viewing mine, beauty is what occurs.'  Beauty.

'The combination of that integrity, consonance and radiance is the work of love...the self-forgetting and urgent desire that there be real life in the product, some sort of independence from will and sentiment.' Love.

And again, 'Art aims at the good of the thing made.' And the result of this focus: works of art are 'more than they are and give more than they have.'

'Art challenges the finality of appearance here and now, the actual 'conditions of existence,' not to destroy but to ground, amplify, fulfil. It aims at "transcendental realism."'

'The maker's obedience is to the integrity of the thing made, to the unfolding logic in the process of making as the work discloses itself.'  Here Williams is echoing Maritain as he Aquinas. 'The artist struggles to let the logic of what is there display itself in the particular concrete matter being worked on.'

All this speaks to me of your relationship with this world and your Beloved.

Williams sees the creativity of the human artist echoing yours.

'The human mind's distinctiveness seems to lie in its responsibility  for drawing out what is not yet seen or heard in the material environment--but not solely in exploiting it for use but in facilitating its constant movement from one material form to another, its generative capacity.'

And more: '...human beings are those creatures who uniquely have the capacity and responsibility to uncover for one another the nature of the world in which sameness and otherness constantly flow into each other, and in which there is no final reading of a 'surface,' whether the literal surface of a sheet of paper or the surface, the first perception, of a narrative, a song, an action.'

'No final reading...' so encountering that continually continues.

My mind is muzzy at the moment but, just having finished the book, I've got a lot to think about.

Rainy day

Around here we're all amazed and delighted by the steadily dropping prices. From nearly five dollars a gallon to now nearly two, we've seen it get easier and cheaper to fill the tank.

I don't drive more than I used to, but still I'm concerned about the general effect of cheap fuel on driving habits and vehicle size. Gas mileage has been going up and is mandated to go up farther. In addition, more people are doing without private vehicles, either renting, biking, or using public transportation, so maybe the net result with be neutral.

The global economic ramifications are huge and multi-dimensional. It occurred to me the other day to see how the nation of Norway was doing. From the beginning of the North Sea oil boom, that country has been salting away a major portion of its oil revenues from the beginning of the North Sea oil boom in a sovereign capital fund now worth over $800 billion.

That's a lot of money for a country of five million, but who can fault a polity that has been prudent enough to save the bulk of what may prove THE windfall of the country's history.

What to do with the money is a live topic of debate but one thing strikes me: having a reserve of this size has its own risks. There's the question of return on investment, which has been low for some time, and may continue so for the indefinite future. Then there's the issue of liquidating the assets without diminishing the value.

All of this brings to my mind the "economics" of this blog. Day by day, I write it hand - to - mouth, as it were. l have maybe an idea or two jotted down for future posts, but too many in the pantry and they tend to go stale. This blog is about encounters, and the discoveries that flow from these meetings.  It's not that there isn't anything to learn from yesterday's experiences, but that there must be regular freshness and immediacy or else I lose interest in the whole project.

Professionals are always making notes, or sketches, or taking down snippets of potentially interesting material for future use. But some things have to be enjoyed fresh, piping hot as it were, to be worth having at all.

These many months, there have been many days when I've not known what my topic of the day would be, yet something has always happened that would be the encounter of the day. Part of that is me being on the lookout which is really the point anyway. The world is full of potential encounters; I just need to keep my eyes peeled, and my heart open.

What works for me may not for you, Norway. We are very different entities, but there are individuals who base their lives on your strategy. There's wisdom in that, but some wisdom also in that old injunction: "Consider the lilies..."

Consultant

You came to eat shepherd's pie and roasted eggplant, return a library book you'd borrowed, and inquire: should you move into a new apartment.

I asked the normal questions: is it more expensive, is it closer to work, is it more comfortable, will there be roommates, do you know the people and like them?

You had ready answers: a bit more to pay, a bit farther to travel, more space, nice guys, and a much more interesting neighborhood. So why did need my advice?

Sometimes we're consulted on things that have already been really decided. As we speak about this or that, the questioner is taking the opportunity to inwardly argue their ambivalence. People appear to listen intently but they have already identified the pros and cons, and only need us to paraphrase them, and so make one consideration appear more decisive than the others Sometimes we just need to say out loud what's on our minds in order to see matters more clearly.

Say 'You should...' and you'll be argued against. Say 'It's up to you', and you're no help at all. We circle around and around the same issues.

So I  said, 'If you need help moving, count me in.' And you said, 'I'll give you a call.'
Do that, and I'll be there for the real work of the advisor.

Turner

Sold out at the Kendall, we headed to the West Newton to see the just-released feature film Mr Turner by Mike Leigh, with Timothy Spall as the 19th C British painter, arguably the greatest British painter, J.M.W.Turner.

With time to kill, we watched the Patriots come back from the their second 14 point deficit in their game with the Ravens. The bar exploded in cheers and claps when Brady made his stunning backward pass to Edelman (!) who passed to Amendola for a 51 yard touchdown. The game was still going on when we settled down to this placid portrait of Turner in his later years. His lop-sided, jowly visage, his grimaces, his indecipherable grunts and deep Cockney, his uncouth (Constable's word) manners, his single-mindedness devotion to drawing and painting make him something like the beast in Beaumont's fairy tale. The film also makes him out to be (true or false) a deadbeat dad and sexual abuser of his female servant. 


But as I became used to his rough voice and face, and ready to accept the character's reticence, I became more engaged in the signs of of his visual intelligence in the service of his art. Though born in low-class circumstances in London, his early promise won him great teachers. He also educated himself in the high culture of the day, the quintessential autodidact. The mind of the man is see in his eyes, his references, his ever-busy hands. In the film and in life, he was continually traveling, obsessively sketching (his sketchbooks at the Tate are accessible on-line) and painting in those indistinct, color-infused land and seascapes for which he is best known ('indistinctness is my forte', he said), always thoroughly engaged.

What was I after? Why try so hard to see a very long movies about...a painter, and a not very attractive one at that?

I'm still sorting out the answer. His sketchbooks inspire me, his late-in-life love affair with a Mrs Booth touched me, his rough authenticity in midst of the mannered early Victorian society (vs, say, the young John Ruskin, his insufferable champion (and, by-the-by, inspiration to much of Boston's Back Bay architecture)) encourages me. His quirkiness and flashes of strong feeling are what I want to be ever capable of. But there's more. He said once

'It is necessary to mark the greater from the lesser truth: namely the larger and more liberal idea of nature from the comparatively narrow and confined; namely that which addresses itself to the imagination from that which is solely addressed to the eye.'  Yet he also said, 'I did not paint...to be understood. I wish to show what such a scene was like.'  That loyalty to both what was being represented as well to his apprehension of it, and thereby to the transcendent significance of light itself (His last words, 'Color is God') are commitments I deeply resonate with.

Whomever you were, Mr Turner, gargoyle genius, you show me a way, and ever more as I study your work. You intended your works to be given to the British nation, and, look, here am I, beneficiary.

As soon as we hit the lobby, the word was everywhere: the Pats had won.

Sibling

The gradations of light from the horizon to the zenith at sunset. Beyond the silhouetted cars on the on-ramp to 93, I saw a pink-yellow subtly grading to yellow, to yellow-blue, to light almost greyish blue, then a deeper, darker blue. Above the the building in the distance, the evening star shone with a steady and strong, if pinpoint, brightness.

In his book Mind, and to the point of the aspectual nature of intentional states, John Searle writes: "For example, I may intentionally represent an object as the Evening Star and not as the Morning Star even though one and the same object are both. The aspect 'celestial body that shines at the horizon in the evening,' is not the same aspect as 'celestial body that shines at the horizon in the morning.'"  

 I can speak to this. That which I contemplated solitary in the sky while I was waiting for the train to go home after work seemed like a spotter in the distances reporting on what it could still see and I not, the steady departure of the sun, after which it is itself dragged down as torpedoed sailor might disappear into the vortex of the sinking ship.


Not so, the morning star I often see as I walk to work, a precursor of dawn, soon to be overwhelmed in the effulgence of the rising sun. No, it would be too cruel for there to be two different dooms for the same doughty 'star' twice a day. It seems like a revenge from Greek mythology. Indeed it's said that Pythagoras first figured out your two disjunct appearances refer to one object--an amazing insight. 

Yet, they are the same object, Venus, even if not recognized as such, and behaving so because between closer to the Sun than the Earth (much of the time), planet of sulfurous storms, kiln-level heat,  and other savage features that belie it's erotic reference. The brightness of this sibling planet is in part due to the reflectivity of its thick toxic clouds We are warned that our green globe may turn into a venus if we fail to control our emissions.

None of this last is evident as I watch the star above the setting sun, bright enough to be visible even in the early dusk, indeed even brighter as dusk deepens. You look to me as a sentinel in the beautifully gradually darkening sky.

Of course, my perceptions of you and what is going on are linked to my very specific point of perception and to the routine as-if translations I make to convert global reality (the turning of the earth, etc.) into local useful reality (the sun is sinking). Yet as the sounds of Holst sound inaudibly deep in my ear; the images of Giotto appear imperceptibly at the corner of my eye, I admire your exquisiteness, evening star, set as you are in a bed of rich colors. I salute you.

Multiverse

Second century

Just a few years ago, I was half as old as Aunt Bennie of Cheshire in west Massachusetts was when she died last weekend. Looking at her at age 115--laughing, playing the piano, enjoying rides and parties, joking, walking--I think 'I'm a child, a beginner.' My worst fears of what's next for me may come true, but not necessarily; I could be like her--a shining example of joi-de-vivre till she died in her sleep in a Williamstown nursing home. She acknowledged on her 109th that all things come to an end, and so five years later her life did, though she could have carried on.

I'm too late, I know, but I'd like express my admiration for some of the few things I know about you. A photo of you in your twenties shows you were a looker and in a recent picture, granting the inevitable changes wrought by the many decades since, the lineaments of the same person can be discerned, and anyway, the wit suggested in that old picture just as quick.

Born in Cheshire when it was even more remote than it is now, you moved to Washington, DC, to work on the war effort--the First World War. You only moved back here in '07.

You were married for 50 years, and your husband, whom you've called your one and only love, died in 1975, nearly 40 years ago--that is, you've been a widow as long as I have managed to be married! In short, your story stretches the spans of human life. Never a mother, a fact to which you attribute, in part, your longevity--'no fuss, no muss'--there are still generations of your family who host your birthday parties, along with a host of friends from the town and the care facility.

You said on your last Facebook post: 'You have asked about secrets to longevity. I have a lot of friends, always have, and I love them all very much. They just keep dying on me. So, I make new ones every day.' Then you added, to whom it's not clear,  Thank you.'

Talking to a colleague, I learned she's my age, her birthday a couple of months ago, and still very active. (I confess I hadn't guessed or bothered to speculate.)  We talked about how the horizons of the possible for the old are expanding steadily. It's as if a new stage of human existence is being charted out these days, as if getting to California, a new continent were heaving itself up out of the ocean extending the country goodness knows how far out west, a new Lemuria. Once, at our age, we would have thought ourselves exceptional to be a healthy and engaged as we are. (Pace all those who gravestones I've read in old burying grounds recording ages well into the seventies and eighties.) Now our cohort is in terra nova.

Of course, anything can happen, but what you show me, Aunt Bennie, is that vivacity and high spirits need not inevitably wane, that it's possible for us to enjoy being alive well into our second century. And perhaps the heart of the secret is the habit of simply appreciating things, and especially other people.

To be positive, and to have my wits about me sufficiently to surprise, along with some mobility and dexterity, is a now even more reasonable aspiration. To have well-wishers with whom to chat (what must our contributions to conversation seem to someone in your vantage point?), better and better.

I hope also, God-in-love, that from now to then, I remain open to you, and the world. Guard my unguardedness.

Gatekeeper

Bitter cold and blowy it was in and around Harvard Yard yesterday evening. We'd been chivvied out of Memorial Hall (private function) and were relieved to find shelter in the rare books library. I was with Scandinavians who braved the ache-bone gusts lightheartedly, but even they were delighted to be in the lobby of this library with its locked glass-fronted cupboards all around the walls displaying editions of the works of different poets--Donne, Milton, Coleridge...Bright, it was inside, and warm, and the hefty guy with ponytail and a mustache with soul patch who manned the desk, someone I've greeted on many previous tours, was ready to get up and talk.

No, the Lowell room at the top of the spiral stairs was closed; 5 pm is the usual time. Yes, there are treasures galore in the library's collections ranging from ancient Egyptian papyri to draft sketches of the costumes of soldiers in Star Wars. No, this is not the only library of the institution strangers can enter and use, but it is the easiest. Yes, there are superb holdings of Keats and Dickinson. No, the gallery was closed, but it would be open soon with an exhibition on an astronomical theme. Yes, there are tours of the building but, no, not in the late afternoon (when I might be free).

We, glowing red-faced, he, relaxed and garrulous, clearly proud of this building, its collection, its mission. Some women came downstairs perhaps from research labors, fumbled to open their bags for inspection, and headed out into the quiet night.

The gatekeeper's job is not glamorous. You read, perhaps write, check email, gaze at the ceiling or the door, answer questions, tell people firmly that no photography is allowed, and so perform a humble but necessary service. But when you spoke to us, pointing out this, gesturing to that, the place took on a grandeur (in addition to its bright warmth) that made it somehow wonderful, and you privileged to watch over it. Perhaps the words of Milton also, in some sense, apply: 'They also serve who only stand and wait.'

Oh, the night has  its it own gloriousness, I thought, as I walked home from the bus, lifting my eyes to gaze on the great white orb of the moon beaming imperturbably down on such as me. Combined with the cold, it evoked in me a sense of immensities of majestic indifference. But you, guardian of the books, with your evident pride pointed us to another expansive but human world.

Only glass doors, easily swung, separated the two.

Doctor

The first class of the first day of the first week in a new location. Two students and I were getting to know each other, when suddenly a knock on the door and a Haitian man in overalls with a watering can walked in, ready to meet the needs of the large sprawly plant growing in the corner. 'May I,' he asked, and I said sure, but I had a question.

How much water is enough, and how much is too much for houseplants? I told him I had used a new moisture meter on the tiny skyflower tree in my living room (the one with the flashing lights draped over it) and it had registered as beyond moist, actually wet.

My students and I was fascinated as, while he picked off yellow leaves, he spoke of roots and water and the proclivities of plants. 'They don't know how to stop drinking, if they are not water plants,' he said, so moist is just fine.

What does 'moist' mean, one student asked.   'If you can hold some soil in your hand and squeeze it and drops of water come out, it's wet,' came the answer. 'If you can hold it, squeeze it and make it a ball, then it's moist.'  Finally, 'if you take some in your hand and it blows away, it's dry.'

'That's very clear,' my students agreed, 'We learned something'.

'That's why they call me the 'Plant Doctor,' he said as he walked away with a smile from our thank yous.

Learning a language is hard, and on the first day, it's easy to feel unconfident. The visit of the horticulturist taught my students something about their ability to understand interesting things presented in English. They knew they were off to a good start.

I understand that watering office plants is your job, but something routine can become special, an encounter, at any time. In those few moments, we all got something we could use from your expressive hands and accented voice. The moment was for watering our lesson as much as the bush in the corner. Thank you. 

Afterlives

I've been reading a rather tongue-in-cheek set of imaginary scenarios by neuroscientist David Eagleman for what comes next when we die. Forty little riffs, well told, fun to read, on God or gods, the large or small scale universe, illusion and reality, mortality and perpetuity, strife and concord.

Consider the title fantasy Sum, for instance, an afterlife where our lives are relived activity by activity: all the sleep hours, all the eating hours, the driving hours, etc. Or Metamorphosis, in which the dead hang about until their names are no longer spoken. Or the Circle of Friends, a post-mortem in which we only ever with those whom we were acquainted with.

The two that most caught my attention were Prism, an afterlife in which we are divided into separate beings by age to accommodate the different drives we have at various ages, and Subjunctive, an afterlife which we inhabit along with our better, more fulfilled selves as well as our worse possibilities. These seemed more about our living condition than anything after our decease.

The idea of our multiplicities separately instantiated rather than sensed dimly within us is a potent one. I am Legion said the spirit inside the pigs, many and one at the same time. Well, perhaps it's true of each of us in every possible way as we actually live, only not as clearly delineated as in Eagleman's afterlife.

Issues of bondage, deception, meaninglessness are raised as if we had to wait to death to encounter them.

Strife, indifference, perplexity and regret can the result of flawed divine intentions or conflict between divinities or sheer blindness: all of which in less fantastic garb are descriptive of our world.

Afterlife fictions are like science fiction, except that the raw material is the human desire for meaningfulness, and the factual basis is that we all must one day die. Why shouldn't we explore them all?

The world-to-come of the God-in-love framework is perhaps of the genre, less explicit than some, more positive than others, and not impossible. It is unwritten by a deity posited to be less hapless than some, less designing than others, and purposive in a positive way (as lovers are.)

One story, Search, is a parable of the dividing and reuniting consciousness which seemed to me wonderful in its way. I only wished you had been in the story, God-in-love, but perhaps you are.

Phases

Goodbye to leisure self; I'm back to work tomorrow. Time off over the holidays, and with family visits, is hectic, but still there's the chance for sleeping in, for midday napping, for fudging schedules. No more. Before the sun is up, I'll be on my way and to a new place.

On any Sunday, I wish for just one more day; on the last Sunday of vacation, I wish so even more intensely. I was afraid when I looked forward at the beginning of my time off that I'd not find anything to do, that the days would be retirement empty. Far from it. there's been lots of work done around the house, writing, reading, visiting, running...I haven't been bored.

Still there's another me that's evident on workdays, a Peter that gets the most out of every minute, who finishes this just in time to start that, one who tries to pack as much into a day as 24 hours will permit. Writing this blog is, not easier, but more regular when I'm in work mode: I make a time for everything.

At leisure, I have to create the structure that I need each day depending on the exigencies of the day. At work, the structure is provided. I have to say, I've been disappointed in leisure Peter. He's kept up with responsibilities but hasn't had any, or few, thoughts that have excited him. Workaday Peter is continually thinking about what to be thinking about next. By the evening, workaday Peter is feels the buffer wheel spinning in his head, but in the morning, he's loading and firing like shooting skeet.

Yet, while individual days of my time off have been hectic, the pace has been relaxed. It's hard to tell how the things I've read and reflected on have percolated into my consciousness, but I sense I've had a thorough soaking.

Tomorrow, however, I'll be grabbing from the clouds. Tomorrow, workaday Peter is going to leave leisure Peter's dry husk in bed, and take to the air. Happy to have you both.

Inventors

I watched both of you in envy. Playing with my grandson--he of the earnest laughter--you were consistently creative in using simple things at hand to create new games. Empty tissue boxes, flashlights, bottles and scoops, anything one might find in a closet or drawer, on a counter or in the trash, was pressed into service to further the fun. Silly, magical, or manic, the games caused those little feet to stamp, those hands to grasp or give, that face to glow.

It seemed effortless. Each activity grew out of the one before, with a tweak or a new item pulled in from nearby making the game different. Of course, the child was part of the process too, indeed the point, his enthusiasm and mistakes, all expressed vividly in his expressions and actions, what made these play opportunities alive.

You, brother in law, with your boxes and games of hide and seek and quick transitions. You, wife, with your flashlights and dark rooms and progressive developments. I heard the chortling and knew you were at work.

When I think of my capabilities I stand abashed. What they came up with wouldn't have occurred to me. My games are dull, or seem so. At least, I don't see the stuff around me with 'Hmmm, this could be useful' light-bulbs turned on. And it's not just 'Eureka' but the effortless incorporation of resources or transitions to new modes. Oh, I wish I could.

Creativity astounds me. Looking at an artist, say, over a lifetime, we see work after work representing a new take on pretty much familiar material, with an occasional jump-shift to a fresh approach which invites interested exploration. Technique, form, subject, content each can be modified, making the game of integration exciting. It never fails to amaze and delight me that Beethoven is ever himself and ever interesting and he just one of many. At the artists open studios which rotate through the neighborhoods and towns I regularly see things that make me say 'Why could I not have thought of that?

Yet, there are times when I've surprised myself with what I've done or what solution I've come up with. Sometimes the insight comes after I've already started: 'Oh, this can go somewhere.' Sometimes everything comes together up so neatly that I'm rather proud.

But not often enough! And you two seem to have an easy facility that makes me feel dull. I rack my brains. What would I do with what you have found to hand? Nothing but banalities come to mind. Maybe I need more coffee. Maybe more  practice of my associative capabilities. Maybe my creative muscles are flabby.

Whatever the reason and the response I love to watch you two at work. The boy is enthralled and so am I. Whatever else there is about you, I must give you this, and recognize that it's very good.

Quack-aphony

The Canadian geese in Scarborough Pond were thick as Red Sox fans at a victory parade, and just as noisy. Ice had confined this flock to a small area of open water and perhaps in protest they were vociferating: lots of them honking at once, and somewhere always one rising halfway out of the water to spread and flap its wings. I'd seen flights of geese in magnificent chevrons flying overhead. Perhaps this was their destination. Now here, they wanted to register their protest.

A smaller number of ducks were much more discreet, simply swimming single file up and down the length of the ice-free water, then jumping out to walk on the ice while others plopped in.

These are 'wild' animals in the sense that we let them alone. But all this week I've been reading books with my grandson (ah, warm little body tucked into my lap) about farm animals and the noises they make. What a happy place the farm is. Sheep and cows and dogs and chickens are best friends of  each other and the farmer. It's like the world with its many languages, forms and preferences but commitment to peaceful cohabitation.

Even when the books deal with wild animals, they are are stereotyped as this one sly and carnivorous, that playful and cheerful. The forests, seas, plains, all the animal kingdom consists of critters to which we attribute human-type emotions and reactions.

And the room for any animal to conduct its life without interference direct or indirect from human beings keeps getting smaller. Our presence is inescapable. The big wild animals are hemmed in, photographed, leered at on home videos. Domesticated animals are trained, tricked, mocked, and not just to satirize ourselves. See how funny monkeys are when we dress them like people...

The dignity of any creature is in its freedom to live its own life. None of the books I perused with my excited grandson ('Oink, moo, baa...') suggested that pigs, cows, sheep are more than just performers. Later one, he'll learn they are just producers. Perhaps the shepherd knows individual sheep; perhaps the hunter of feral pigs (a plague in places like Texas) can accord respect to his quarry. Our dogs and cats have personalities but in the context of our provision.

If the only way for you, fellow creatures, to be yourselves in your otherness is to be invisible and ignored, then your maneuver room is shrinking. We're moving quickly to label, dissect, and domesticate you. Bacteria, watch out! We're making you into little chemical factories for producing our medicines and materials.

Since our presence is not likely to shrink (barring catastrophe) perhaps another way is to set aside and protect where you can be yourselves. We can't be fully gone, and indeed may even hunt or fish there (I'm thinking of the Adirondacks) but you needn't run into us regularly and so have to adapt to the restrictions we impose. Perhaps, we can train ourselves to see and respect the wildness in you.

I don't much like, you Canadian geese, mostly for the way you befoul wherever you graze, but this evening on my run, I was happy to hear you honking, loud and brash, for whatever reasons you had because you are geese.

No, no

Now that, you, little guy, have gone with your parents to your home far away, an active, vivid presence is suddenly no longer here, and not going to be here: no morning wakings and picture book readings, no sounds of footsteps coming or going, no questions or giggles or protests somewhere in the house, no wrestlings, no walks holding hands, no funny run to laugh at, no rolling giggling on the ground, no game invention, no calling out of my grandfather name, no hugs, no little muscular body to squeeze and soft cheek to kiss, no cracking the nighttime door to peek at the sleeping form under the blankets lying so sweetly still.

Instead there's a shelf of books, a box of toys, a stroller, a crib. All these things seem a little lost as if looking around for you who would put them to use them. They've felt your hand, borne your weight, but now nobody demands them to be anything particular.

The parts of me that have been secondary for this week, the reading, writing, thinking, even running, now can breathe fully, now that you're in Chicago at this moment. But I feel deflated, flabby. It's as if the way I've been living with you has been too big for me. I'll have to grow into my life again.

Long term

All your life I've known you, and this week, back East with your husband and son, I find out more things about who you are, who you have become.

We laugh at stories of your growing up, but you're living out new stories now as training administrator, wife, mother, community activist, avid and interesting reader, parishioner, sister, daughter, loyal friend. How I admire the way you care for, contain, inspire and comfort my grandson. There's calm in your demeanor that's almost majestic, creating around him a space within which he flourishes. You know how to balance strictness and indulgence. The instances I could cite seem trivial--Finish the food on the plate, Time to go to bed, Don't touch; they're not yours--but done respectfully and firmly. And you can be romantic; and you can be diligent and creative. Sure you're not perfect but I don't want to talk about anything else? Have I mentioned how beautiful you are?

As daughter, you give us attention and affection, and indeed I'm somewhat taken aback. What do you see in me that deserves this respect, this love. All I did was father you; I loved the duty and you. How proud I was that you set off on your own and made a life for yourself far away (though not beyond telephone reach). What was mine to do for spouse and child and employer, you do, and well. The benefit needs to flows downstream, why upstream?

I don't know if my regard really catches you where you feel you live, and sometimes I feel you miss what I consider my mark, after all we are of two different generations, genders and individual interests. Still, especially when we talk about, say, your thirtieth book of the year, Moby Dick, we meet truly and fully in that conversation of exploration.

The nature of our encounter will evolve and develop while we're still alive. Indeed you spoke this week of thinking about our care as we get older--a shocking notion. Long before then, in fact right now, I'm enjoying being a friend  as well as father. More talk, more games, more visits, more appreciation of those around us and of each other.

It's all new. I don't quite know what to make of our relationship or how to sink into it. I don't quite understand why I deserve this gift, but for you I'll rise to it.