January 31, 2019

The temperature when I awoke this morning was -14 F.  Even though I live in the northern tier of the United States this temperature coupled with the windchill and the duration of the low temperatures is a relatively rare occurrence.  Such cold is extreme, a once in a decade or maybe a once in a quarter century event. I have seen colder here but that was forty years ago.  

Because of the cold I have been off work for two days.  Have I done anything productive?  Well, no.  I have spent most of my time under the covers watching TV serials in binge fashion.  I have move a few books from one room to another. I have sorted out some bedclothes that should be donated to charity.  Still, my fascination with vampires and demons trapping over the television landscape has be at the forefront of my behaviors.

Currently I am being more productive than I have been in the past several days.  I have a load of general laundry going, I am tending the fire in the wood stove and I am listening for the dishwasher to finish.  As the dishwasher ends it cycle, I will put dishes away.  When the washer is done I will move the load to the dryer.  About every twenty minutes I will see if the fire needs the logs to be rearranged or the bellows need to be brought into play.

Hark, the washer has rattled to a stop.  Time to walk away from this.

Washing is now in the dryer.  The bed is made.  A box of “important” papers has been brought downstairs to review and sort.  The fire has again has been stoked.  Three pillowcases have been put on three pillows on the couch.  The couch has become the family nest over the past few days of this cold.  Now, I can get back to pounding on my little toy keyboard that is Bluetooth connected to my iPad.

What I said earlier about doing “nothing” productive is not exactly true.  I have been reading small bits of Simon Blackburn’s The Big Questions. I started out reading it on an Amazon Fire device.  On that device you can cut and paste text.  Then, I had shifted over to reading it on my iPad.  On that device you can only copy a link to the text but not the text itself.  Pain in the tail when you want to use a quote.  And I had really wanted to paste this quote from the text:

“Our theories about ourselves matter. If I believe that everyone is ultimately selfish, I will conduct my life differently, and may myself become selfish, untrusting and untrustworthy, and other people may follow suit. If I believe that our genes are our fate and that culture does not matter, I will not willingly pay taxes for schools or care what my children watch on television. A mistaken view of human nature may be the beginning of a downward spiral. So not only are these questions interesting in themselves, but they have a direct practical importance”.

I get this quote, I really do.  For years I have sat mostly passively and listened to people explain the arc of theirs lives to me.  Understand that with very few exceptions the arc of these people’s lives have been troubled at best, and quite often their path has been simply disastrous. So many of the folks I see feel that they weren’t given the break others were and the perceived slight has raised a bitterness inside each of them which has only grown over the years.  In addition, there is an almost complete distrust of any governmental or other overseeing authority. 

The two groups I see most often are males.  They are either relatively young, 25-30, white and with a high school education or middle aged 42-58 and established in a trade or profession.  The younger group are more angry but less bitter.  Mostly they think they had bad luck.  These people learned how to drink at university, after football practice, after the union iron workers finished up for the day. 

The older group however are more bitter and distrustful.  They are more likely to feel that everyone and everything is out to get them.  At some point in their lives there has been an event which they view as setting them on a skid.  Pick a trauma, they had practiced regulated drinking, but then it happened and their boundary lines vanished. Their control was disregarded.

I get psychological reports on these people.  Most of both groups rate their growing up experiences as a six out of scale of 1 to 10. Of the older, distrustful, stressed group there is usually an event such as a job loss, a divorce, the death of a spouse or a child that seems to be the catalyst (or they assert is the catalyst) for their descent into alcohol dependence.  

However, if you get a good report on their early life you will see signs there such as Dad was an alcoholic, or abusive, or Mom left at an early age that triggered distrust of pretty much everybody else in their lives forever. If these issues exist early on the odds are their adult relationships both familial and work have signs of strain. They may have played the game working with a facade of normality to move along in the world but they were hurting the whole time. 

Blackburn a bit after the above quote offers this thought as he tries to work through what defines us in our human nature:

“Perhaps what is constant is not a simple trait, such as being selfish or aggressive, but an association of environment and the trait, such as being selfish if brought up to be, or aggressive if surrounded by aggressive adults, just as what is constant about language learning is not that children learn French or learn Chinese, but that they learn whichever mother tongue surrounds them.”

Yeah, I kind of buy into the genes determine a great deal of who we are school.  But I am also a believer that genes are only the starting point for some traits.  The smart ass gene will result in only mild quips if surrounded by a family of loving and nurturing people.  However, if one is raised steeped in sarcasm and relentless verbal Bulding you get somebody like Denis Leary or Sam Kinison. I think that intoxicant issues are more tied to environment than not.  However, this is my anecdotal based view.

More later.

Loss

January 29, 2019

The cold winter has asserted itself in a brutal frontal assault.  The snow fell yesterday and the cold moved in today.  7 inches (17 2/3 cm) dropped over about 6 1/2 hours. Today the sun is out but the temperature is merely 11 degrees and the wind is blowing at 10-15 mph.  By nightfall the temperature will be below 0 F.  Yup, this is winter.

Yesterday my office closed because of the snow.  All the schools including the community college closed. My sons were headed for a dental visit but that did not occur because the dentist closed up shop at noon and went home. I am talking weather but I am thinking about life and death.

Day before yesterday one of my two remaining aunts died.  She had far outlived the prognosis the physicians had given her.  Through it all she seemed to approach life with joy.  Aunt Kitty was a happy person, the kind of person who saw the good not the bad in pretty much everyone.  She might have an aside but it was cautionary as opposed to character challenging.  

With as large a family as I come from it is wrong to imply that one or another aunt or uncle was a favorite.  What I will say is that she was one of three of my mother’s sisters who really was in my life and touched by life.  Aunt Kitty and Aunt Sugar were the two that really were kind of guideposts on living this life.  Aunt Sugar raised me for a number of years during the day so my mother could return to her work as a school teacher.  Aunt Kitty was the Aunt with whom my family socialized most frequently.  She was quiet, but joyful.  She tried to accommodate. She tried to nurture.

God what a hole in the fabric of the universe, of my universe, she will leave. I wish I could tell you some anecdotes or tales of family apocrypha involving Aunt Kitty but I can’t.  All I can tell you is that when I think of what a normal middle class woman of the late 20th century should have been, she was the archetype.  

Joyful Mental Exercise

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

-  Albert Einstein

 

Today I had lunch with my youngest son and my wife.  My son has struggled getting traction in his education pursuits.  This term he is at 12 credits.  He is taking a history course, a philosophy course (ethics) and a course in basic writing.  Thing is, this term seems different.  Both his history class and his philosophy class seem to engage him.  Unlike past sessions he wants to talk about what he is learning.  He wants to debate big ideas and pull at their loose strings.

From our conversation it seems that the ethics class has recently been studying the Greeks who felt that living a good life was to have a belly full and diversions enough to keep life entertaining.  The coursework has moved on to the school of thought where meaningful work or meaningful study has been added to the requirements for a good life.  As I sat dipping my French fry into a small paper cup of ketchup the lad was riffing on people for whom meaningful study produces nothing of empiric value.  Cue up the objective/subject evaluation debate. And we were all in on this discussion and he was responding to challenges to his ideas and assumptions with fervor.

Whatever he decides about the merit of these particular ideas, and wherever the class heads next, I don’t care.  What makes me happy is that this is real thought.  These debates are the kind of thing university is supposed to bring out in students.  No matter where you stand on the political spectrum or any other spectrum, the point of university is not just to pick up a trade.  The point of higher education is giving one the tools for reasoned and analytic evaluation of ideas and concepts.  The end result being good reasoned choices that bring about more good than bad.

A New Book

I find it easier to write letters instead of long detailed stories or papers. Most of the writing I do any more is for conversations between two or three people.  These are people that I have stayed in contact with over the decades. Once, every now and then, a new correspondent arises.

When I have drafted a letter, I frequently grasp the guts of what I set out and retool it to become a blog post like this one. As I have been engaging a friend on the topic of life with God I have gone running back to a philosophy texts.  I have landed on a new book. Right now, I am reading Blackburn's book called The Big Questions. In the section I am looking at he is working through what philosophy thinks about consciousness.

At the end of the 19th century, based on Descartes comments there were philosophers who thought our mental nature constituted the ghost in the machine. Our hands, eyes, etc., transmitted information the material brain which then relayed the information to our spirit, soul, ghost, whatever and then it relayed back to the body what to do. This is dualism at its most mystic/religious. What we mentally conceive of as who we are, our personality, our morality these philosophers said was to be found outside of corporeal being in an unknowable ethereal essence.

If there is no God or god or divine or spiritual river than this is nonsense. The question then becomes where do we draw any conception of right and wrong from? Is morality relative? Is morality a farce?

When you are looking up at those stars it is scary to go down these rabbit holes of thought. We want there to be very clearly defined right and wrong. We want existence to be defined and knowable. But we face so many examples of dubiously defined wrong, say Jean Valjean and the stolen loaves of bread taken for the starving children. How do we come to a base for a moral code without having to create a god to set the ultimate rules in place? You know those ultimate rules; do not steal, do not kill, do not fuck somebody else’s partner.

Moving beyond right and wrong the real frightening part is that we are merely an aggregation of molecules bound together for a very short period on the cosmic scale, that in span of eternal space and time we have no meaning whatsoever. Why is there life, why do we live if there is no purpose? If humanity is merely a fungus on a spare rock in the universe why do we struggle and strive, why is that force to accomplish something so strong within us.

I don’t know the answers to these questions and sometimes I feel so lost. Don’t read this to be defeatist or implying a sense of depression because neither is accurate. Up until my last breath I will keep trying to figure this stuff out. I swear.

A Quarter Century in the Ice and Snow

January 23, 2019

Time flies by. 25 years ago, my nephew was killed while visiting me here in Michigan. Sadly, I had urged him to come out to see what a wonderful place this was under snow. During his stay John had a great time. An ice storm on the way home took his life. Less than 30 miles from my house his vehicle rolled, and he was killed.


Mostly the nightmares have stopped now. For the first two decades after John’s death I would wake up at all times of the year sweating with anguish and guilt over what had happened. Without ceasing I have blamed myself for his passing, I shouldn’t have entreated him to come out in such questionable weather.


A quarter of a century, wow. Within that year, within six months of John’s death my wife’s father died and my mother died. Within 12 months of my nephew’s passing we were also facing the impossible, improbable prospect of parenthood as elderly first time parents. 1994 was a year that divided the experiences we would have in this mortal realm from the glassy happy go lucky ones of youth to the much harder edged ones of full on adulthood.


In these the latter years of my life, those after John’s accident I find my life’s experiences both more unifying with and isolating from others. Having dealt with those deaths and recently the deaths of several people who were integral to my life during different eras, I have found that the path I am traveling is one meant for me alone. I have also learned from the experiences I have had, cancer, special needs children, damaged relationships, agonizing years of public service learned that empathy is never to be held back. We are all alone on our paths, but we can reach out and touch those facing moments on the path like what we have experienced.

I remember my nephew’s smile. I remember my father in laws gruff but kind demeanor, I remember my mother’s love. These are things I savor when those late-night moments of terror and total isolation come over me.

1994 brought me one experience I will always cling to. On a February day in 1994 I found myself in Oslo at the site of the Olympic Games from 1954 (maybe 1950?). On an old bobsled run I went luging 7 or 8 times over the course of an afternoon. I had my late nephew’s hat in my pocket. As I flew down that hill on my back just two inches off the ground, I realized that life is about both the exhilaration and the pain. Steering with my feet I was for a few moments part of the most electric part of life I will ever touch.

Twenty-five years since the time of loss. Twenty-five years since that brief afternoon’s window into maximum exhilaration. Life is a mixed-up shook-up mess isn’t it?

Nostalgia and Reading

January 21, 2019 Monday

 

One thing about being an attorney, your work is never really done. Technically I had today off in celebration of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Funny, I am old enough to remember the TV scroll at the bottom of the screen announcing he had been shot in Memphis. I was watching ABC television that night and my parents were out. I remember my father’s comment when I told them about the shooting as they returned home, “The cities are going to burn.”) Despite the holiday I still went to work half a day. From 8 a.m. to noon I reviewed upcoming cases. There was no way I was going to be outside. It was -11 when I went out to the car to come over to my office

The rest of my day was split between watching a Netflix teen sex dramedy called, “Sex Education,” and cleaning/sorting the corners of the house.  “Sex Education” was raunchy, but it had a heart that was in the right place. The gist was that sex complicates the process of growing into an adult. Duh. A great deal of time was spent on the simple in concept, but much more complex in practice, idea/goal of self-acceptance. there was also an ongoing theme of the need to have self-awareness of one’s own motivation. I would give it 7-1/2 stars to the production. It is somewhat higher than I might otherwise give it, but I really liked the performances of the two leads. They were 94% credible.

The rest of the time in the afternoon was spent sorting and packing. I note all sorts of emotions were stirred up by this purge of materials. One of the things I did was to sort out three large boxes of trade paperbacks that could be put up for yard sale. Some were books I can obtain easily and cheaply as a PDF on one of the book sites. Some were tomes that I purchased. with the best intention to read but never got around to. I felt sad that I had not committed to the reading that I should have. Bottom line though is that the books are heavy, and they are not making a move either to a condo or to Portugal. I am shamed, I should have been reading the works of several Nobel laureates but instead I was watching TruBlood.

Harder still was figuring out what pieces of paper to save from the first, second and third grade works of my two sons. A number of collages and mixed material projects have been stuffed into nooks and crannies over the years. In looking at these it surprised me how much more into these kinds of things my older son, the autistic one, was. He had trouble with fine motor skills, but his ideas were complex and colorful. I know these are just paper and not subject to real preservation, but I can remember every time one of these pieces came home.

Time flies by so quickly now. I am moved to very slight tears when I go through this stuff. A lump in my throats creeps up. My wife spent her childhood moving from place to place. Sometimes the moves were sudden and represented violent upheaval in her life. Her feeling on retaining this stuff is much different than mine. My childhood home was the same for 40 years of my life. My VBS (Vacation Bible School) paper mache projects were there in here house until we cleaned it after she died. I have a hard time letting go.

As I am typing today, I have hooked into Apple’s Classic Folk stations. Right now, the song that is playing is Gotta Travel On by the Au Go-Go Singers. “Laid around and played around this old town too long, Gotta travel on winter’s coming on...”. This song triggers such nostalgia in me. My brother Jerry used to sing this every time he left the house to head off to school, to go to the Army, to go to Vietnam, after a Thanksgiving weekend. I can hear his voice clearly, hear his wry chuckle and I can see so clearly that aw-shucks smile and the twinkle in his eye.  Dead a year and a quarter and I miss him so very much.

Last night I decided that I had watched too much trashy TV. I decided I needed to get refocused, re-centered. I picked up a copy of a book by Simon Blackburn. No real surprise there, eh? The volume was called The Big Questions. I downloaded a free sample of the first chapter and my read of it very quickly sold me on the purchase. In talking about the concept of what constitutes our “mind” Blackburn offered this, “The neurophysiologist, however far he probes, will not be able to hold up a fragment of brain and say, “Aha! Here we have a thought about the boulevards of Paris!” For, alas, the brain is gray but in my thoughts the boulevards are brightly colored. The bit of brain is small, but the boulevards are long and wide. The brain is soft tissue, while in my daydream the boulevards are hard pavement, and with traffic on them.” Yeah, I get that.

Tonight, no more than an hour of television.  Seems to me I have some reading to do.

Cold

01-22-19 Tuesday

The past 48 hours have been very tough weather wise.  Snow fell and then the temperatures fell.  When I went out to the automobile yesterday my smart phone told me that it was 11 below zero based on the Fahrenheit scale.  Very cold was the morn.  The daytime temperatures never really got above 5F or so.

I had taken Friday off because I wanted a four-day weekend, yesterday being the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King and a national holiday.  On Friday I worked, I had a project due.  Came in a little late, left a bit late.  The State of Michigan got a full eight hours out of me so I retracted the day off request.  Yesterday, in that I had to get up and get coffee and the like ready for my wife I got up and came in to prep for this week.  I spent about four hours getting four days’ worth of materials prepared for hearing.

Went home and thought I would spend it with my sons.  Nope, one went to campus to study.  The other went to campus to write.  Me I spent about two hours sorting things to yard sale and putting things in places where they out to be.  I think next weekend I will be doing more of that.  Everyone tells me that when you are thinking about heading out you really should start way in advance with the winnowing.

Coffee is Made and the Fire is Going

January 20, 2019 Sunday

To start with here are the basics.  It is a clear day.  The air temperature is -1F.  I am on my second cup of decaf espresso.  A fire is in the wood stove. I have taken my wife her espresso and her regular coffee each with some cream in them.  My breakfast is gone.  At the store yesterday they were out of Wheat Chex and I had to settle for the store brand.  My breakfast today with thus Wheat Squares with a 1/4 cup of milk, 3/4 banana and a handful of walnuts.  There were 3 ounces of orange juice consumed. To quote Paul Simon, “There’s all that weight to be lost”.

As I headed downstairs it was clear to me I had gotten up during the golden hour.  Often my writing talks about the golden hour. This is because I am visually so intrigued by it.  On a cold winter day, in the early morning just after the sun has broken across the horizon, the light does some wonderful things on fresh snow.  With the bright intensity of the light present in those precious minutes between when the dawn breaks and when the fires orb is fully up, new snow is just alive with thousands of tiny little reflections of the sun’s winter rays.  They sparkle like glitter on a parade float.  And when you turn you head you see some other refractory game this transition from dark to light provokes.

No fancy camera here, so I can never quite catch the light I love so much.  This morning I hung my upper torso out the front door and with my iPhone 7 I snapped a couple of shots.  Later I will try and massage them to sort of, kind of, demonstrate what I am talking about. The results will be a pale reflection of what I saw.  Reminiscent of Plato’s cave perhaps?  Mere shadows to the reality of nature’s beautiful moments.

Ah, and what is the kitten doing.  Today was the first time since we have had the beast there has been a fire in the wood stove.  As I set about getting the flames to going she was dashing the length of the house on both floors from end to end.  Our circular stairwell was being used much like a high banked turn at a NASCAR track, her front paws clutching the road ahead and her rump dragging the outer wall at speed.  When she saw the fire the laps stopped.  She sat in front of the firebox for a couple of minutes and just starred at the flickering flames.  She walked around circling the unit trying in her cat brain to figure out what this new thing was.  Flames and heat wrapped in metal, how do my large overloads manage this?

I will go to WW today.  I went midweek but I think I am okay to go today.  WW at the meetings is very organized.  WW on the phone is very organized.  WW talking between the meetings and the central office (the phone) not so good. Thus because of a kaffufle of matching up my old account with my new account I don’t know what I weighed in at last week.  I will try and get a base line weight to work from today.

I note that since joining up last Tuesday at lunch I have had two good days and two meh days. One day I am unsure of because I didn’t calculate the dinner meal.  May not sound like much but keeping track of my food intake four out of five days is pretty good. (Oh Well, this plan to hit a meeting has gone out the window. Wife and youngest son have just headed out for “their” breakfast).

The youngest and my wife have a on again/ off again ritual of going to breakfast at one of those places where they serve you two strips of bacon, two sausages, a piece of ham., three eggs and rye toast for $7.99.  The lad scarfs it all down.  The wife eats 1/3 or 1/2 and brings the other part home for the older son.  The Moose sleeps until midday on the weekends.  

The get together is a good time for them.  They talk.  They discuss world affairs.  They throw puns back and forth.  The puns are nonstop and fast, really fast.  Sitting there is like watching a couple of chess grandmasters go at it. The snark is set to eleven.  Me, I would just rather avoid it.  Too much food and I can’t keep up.

As I was starting the fire this morning I was crumpling up newspaper to act as kindling.  I had to stop when I found two articles I decided I needed to read.  One was on the topic of medication and Aspergers and the other on eye strain after long hours of computer use.  Given I live with both these items in my life I guess that after I finish typing this out I will sit by the fire with my cuppa and read both of ‘em.

Well that is Sunday morning for you.

Travel Well

Saturday January 19, 2019

Snow is falling outside.  The Weather Channel says it will end about four in the afternoon.  I have been doing dishes and other household chores.  I did go out and snow blow off the driveway about 2 hours ago.  I would guess another two inches have fallen.  Probably will go back out about four and give it another once over.  If it keeps falling we probably will have five inches of the stuff on the ground by night fall.

Really don’t mind the snow.  It is just another form of water.  What I mind is the cold.  From what I am reading the temperatures will be heading below zero for the next couple of days. Yes, I can dress for the cold.  No, I don’t want to dress for the cold. It has been 

When one is out there pushing the snow blower odd thoughts crop up.  One that came to me was that I remembered an article where some cardiologists stated using a snow blower was no better in avoiding heart attacks than shoveling.  Apparently the stress of pushing the bulking contraptions is roughly the same as the repetitive lifting of snow.  Of course I started factoring in that I am using the lightest snow blower in the universe.  It is battery operated and made of plastic.  Probably I am a little better off riskwise for it.

Yesterday one of the guys I grew up with died.  With the exception of a couple of high school reunions I have not seen him in forty plus years.  Scrolling through his FB feed he seems to have done well for himself.  Given the extensive notes of condolence to his children and family he seems to either have been well liked and/or was a force in the community. 

He was a distant friend when we were kids.  Not one of the circle I ran with.  My strongest memory of him was that he had a pony and he rode it through town on occasion.  He always had a smile, a kind of wry knowing smile.  I am sad for his family’s loss and I am sad at the too young passing of the people who are the same age as I am from our small town.

As I type this I am listening to folk ballads and Irish reels. There was a program a bit back on PBS called the Transatlantic Sessions.  This is an Apple playlist with the same title but I don’t know if it is the same people.  I can hear Jerry Douglas on the dobro.  I can hear Bela Fleck on the banjo.  Such wonderful music is calming. 

Travel well my old friend,

Sail over oceans clear and blue,

Sail above the noise and busy nonesense

Of the too important but not really important

Things of everyday life.

Travel well my old friend,

Find your rest in the sand of some distant shore.

Find your rest beneath the warmth of some distance sun.

Find your joy in the music of the spheres.

Travel well my old friend.

Travel in peace.

Travel withou pain.

Travel into a place of bliss.

Travel well.

Thursday and Sex

Lunch time is here.  I have slipped out of my office again to the Biggby on Friendship Court to write.  Of Monsters and Men was on the speakers here. Hearing this music that would so six years ago my interest was piqued.  As a result I pulled one of their recordings up on Apple Music.  Had forgotten how much I liked the song Dirty Paws.  I had bought the CD but gave it to somebody to listen to and never got it back.  So quickly the day’s fashion falls away.

Today is a cold day. Today is a grey day.  One of the constants in this northern town is the monochromatic monotony of the passing days. My wife and youngest son have headed out to the Detroit Auto Show.  I think this is good for my son.  More in real life contact with people will help move along in his evolution.  I can’t be sure but he seems engaged in his studies at community college.

Funny story on that.  He is retaking a writing course.  Now mind you he is a great writer and very literary.  The. problem is that with his issues with depression he has a tendency to give up on his courses middle of the term.  He has been assigned for the umpteenth time an essay on overcoming adversity.  When I gave him grief about what adversity people in his class would have suffered his response was succinct. “Dad, for a person to be in community college there has been adversity.” Touché.

Today is day two of my return to WW.  Yesterday was easy, today is hard.  My body is now realizing its cravings for sugar and salt are not being responded to.  The feeling is one of almost an outright aching for a candy bar.  Still, I need to do WW’s controlled portions program.  I feel bloated.  I feel slow.  Now maybe these feelings are just the aging process.  Still, I think the winter’s reduction in my exercise regimen and the slip from this is a treat to this is a routine vis a vis inappropriate foods are the real culprits.

Recently my habit has been to binge watch TV.  Over the past few weeks I have watched Happy.  This is a demented SyFy series.  Quinten Tarantino meets H.R. Puffenstuff.  I have also watched the first three seasons of the Magicians.  Right now I am in season three of TruBlood.  Fun, lots of twisted subplots and lots of pretty naked people.

I thought about putting the last sentence in above.  Time has come for a re-evaluation of how our culture deals with sexuality.  The #Me Too movement was long overdue.  But how do we move forward?  Sexuality is something that in the early years of life is basically instinctual.  It is more urges and immediate bodily responses that thought, increasing moisture and heartbeats. Accepting No means No and I do, what are the proper routes of progress forward? Does anyone get to be the initiator of sexual behavior?  

Somewhere I watched a skit where before two people went out on a date they had what looked like a lease set out on a table.  They were initially paragraphs that included sections as to what cues would permit what action. There was a whole subsection dealing with the impact of alcohol use and its negation of some of the consensually agreed upon cues.  Will this be what life will be like going forward?  Will we have to agree that a nod and a look down by a woman will be agreed upon as an okay for contact between a man’s hands and a woman’s clothed breasts?  What happens to this situations where a woman rubs a man’s groin outside his clothing as he grabs her buttocks.  We they have to hold a phone up and verbally communicate their express consent to this and to the following removal of clothing?

I am old and I have no idea how the young will navigate bug lust. The issue is huge and I think we are at a moment where the issues are ripe for careful consideration.  Don’t know what the evolution will be bring, but things have to get better.

Oh well, I spent too long on that.  

Methinks I should focus on the here and now.  I am thinking I am going to have to start rereading Think.  I need something to juice up my mind again.  I need to resubsribe to Mother Jones.  I need to have conversations that are focused and real.  What is it we are living for?  What is it we are working for? Does what I perceive as justice ever win or does it always come in a distant second to social Darwinisn?  When I look in the papers it seems my view of equality is not on the ascendancy.

Oh well I end with a Buddhist thought.

Intense times call for intense practice. But in the world, as in the zendo, intensity does not mean straining or pushing; rather, it is a willingness to begin fresh.

—Bonnie Myotai Treace

Missed Music

Taking a moment from the great cleaning.  (The great cleaning will be going on over the next 360 days.). 

As I move out of dusty closets with newspaper globes and stuffed moose dolls, I take on the kitchen for a short minute.  A great ham dinner was made tonight.  It was delicious and came from a MSU hog. While doing this quick clean up I put Mary Chapin Carpenter’s The Calling.  Never heard it before.  Really rather nice.  Good stuff, still relevant too.

Funny how things happen.  This is twice in the past two days I have stumbled upon a good recording that an artist put out after I gave up on them.  Sometimes they have a huge hit or two, just really solid packed CDs and then the next two have just a few songs that past muster.  Later on after members of their audience like me move on they put out a really solid set of songs.  With the constant stream of incoming signals we have been diverted and don’t hear this later good stuff. Glad I took the chance.

When to Retire I Wonder

Just spent about 20 minutes talking to an old work colleague.  He is a couple of years older than me.  I asked him when he planned to retire.  He told me when he turns 70. He is 65 now.  

My response to him was somewhat questioning.  I told him my brothers passed on at 72 and at 69.  I don’t think I am going to push the window that close.  His response was that he had just build a new house and until it was paid off he was a wage slave.

Nothing in living this life is easy.  Guessing when to go and retire is just one more of those hard questions we have to answer on our own, like should I ask her out, should I try and get into law school and just a slew of other life changing should I do this inquiries asked over a lifetime.

On my work desktop is a picture of fog rolling into Porto on October 1, 2018,  On my phone I have downloaded a countdown clock with a street scene from Lisboa.  It ends at five pm Monday January 6, 2020.  Hopefully I will still be kicking when that date rolls around.

The weather here is growing colder.  We are supposed to get a fair amount of snow this weekend.  This warmer than average January couldn’t last forever.

The Wall

Friday has come and it brings the promise of a weekend of work.  I am deep in the middle of generating an Order on a case regarding the denial of a license to a business entity.  Some research will be involved but an argument full of filigree and a web like pattern of precise words will be called for.  The more silence I have the more I can move that project along.  Not easy, but more rewarding than the usual day to day evaluation of claims of redemption that I have to hear.

As I read the headlines I think the country is headed for a constitutional crisis.  The President is planning to declare a notional emergency to circumvent his inability to get some funding he wants from Congress.  

Some emergencies are easy to identify, fires destroying thousands of homes and hurricanes doing likewise. Others like a claim of a massive drug incursion into society or a threat of illegal immigrants are much harder to pin down as emergencies.  Natural disasters, attacks by armed insurgents these are the stuff emergency declarations are for.  Illegal immigration stands out out as something that does not have the suddenness, the exigency, that requires “emergency” action.

If he goes ahead and declares an “emergency” the next two years will be total gridlock.  The matter will invariably be taken into court and all cooperation in the Congress will stall.  A declaration of an economic emergency has failed in the past.  From my perspective despite the hyperbole this does not seem to be an “emergency” as much as an end run around constitutionally established balances of power.  Hey, it is uncharted territory but seems like a dangerous precedent to set. It really kind of implies a shift in the allocation of power under the Constitution, one that if it stands will arise by executive fiat.

River of Understanding

A river it begins

When a cloud empties out somewhere up the road

A pearl begins with a grain of sand 

Wedged into an aggravated oyster

A movement begins

When somebody speaks up (or is it out?)

Oppression begins when someone

Decides to enforce a belief they are better than someone else.

Hatred begins when someone

Decides to emphasize differences

Where does love begin?

Where does tolerance begin?

Where does progress begin?

Where does healing begin?

Well, I think it starts with us.

Tell Me About The Cave

Recently I have been watching a great deal of television. Over the past several days several different television programs have mentioned Plato’s allegory of the cave.  The appearance of this story in three different programs is weird.  The tale of the cave has come up in a ½ hour situation comedy, in an hour-longdrama and in a fantasy show.  I am wondering if someone out in Hollywood is teaching producers about philosophy?  Maybe philosophy majors are now finding work as script doctors?

If you don’t know the allegory of the cave it supposedly arises from a conversation between Socrates and Glaucon. It goes like this:

Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave. Prisoners are in the cave. The prisoners have been in the cave since birth and now they are all chained so that their legs and necks are immobile. These poor wretches are forced to look at a wall in front of them. A fire burns behind them - they cannot see it. Between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, on which people walk. 

These people are puppeteers, carry objects, in the shape of human and animal figures, as well as everyday stuff pots and dishes, whatever. The prisoners see flickering shadow images of all this stuff on the wall. Remember that they cannot move their heads, so they presume the images to be real.

Socrates claimed, the images on the wall would be so real to the prisoners it would be a point of honor for the prisoner who could recall the most detail about the shapes. Clearly this was meaningless praise, since the images were not real. 

Eventually one of the prisoners is taken from the cave and brought into the open, the disorientation is severe; the light of the sun would be much more brilliant than the fire. But, as his eyes adjusted, the newly freed prisoner would be able to see beyond only shadows; he would see the real things, their dimensions and colors.  He would also see reflections in the water (even of himself). 

After learning of the reality of the world, the prisoner now sees how awful his former life was.  If he was taken back to the cavehe would take no pleasure in comparing notes with the others about the shadows because he knows what reality is finally.  If he was taken back his fellow prisoners would see him as deranged, not really knowing the reality he experienced.

It is an interesting tale.  It focuses on how life changes when we pursue what is real.  In our lives much of what we do is like the people in the cave we see images shadows of reality.  We accept what others tell us is real.  We only glimpse images of what is occurring through third party accounts. We never challenge assumptions, we never ask the hard questions.  We never look beyond the shadows.

When we get the chance to see what is real it changes us.  People that we used to be able to sit and drink with, sit and have coffee with, sit and make small talk with, well they don’t get us anymore.  We, of course, don’t see the point in talking about shadows.  We want to know more about the real and we go searching for people and experiences that connect us to the real. 

Sometimes I wonder if I scare people with my search for the real.  

Every single person should run into this experience. We have all seen one image of what people have told you that life should be.  But with each passing day we should be seeing more of what life is. Whatever you do, ask the questions and take the chances that expose you to those things that you will inherently know are closer to the truth of life as you want to live it.

This is my thought for you for today.

The Stars are Twinkling Out the 6 Billion Names of God Having Been Written Down

January 4, 2019


Our skin is a boundary. My flesh, your flesh they separate me from you. My flesh separates me from every other living person, just as your does. Endoderm? Mesoderm? Funny I remember these words from high school Biology I with Mr. Martyniak. Still, I don't remember what the real term for my outer skin is. Wait, epidermis that is it!

Why is it the flesh that keeps me intact as a whole being bars me from being anything but alone? From birth to death I live within this prison of cells, cartilage, fluids and bone.

A grey day today I think of boundaries. My mind keeps returning to an awareness of limitations. I am left wanting greater connection with the world. This sense of isolation is not an uncommon feeling for me. Of late this line of mental inquiry has challenged my thoughts of there existing a higher being. I wrestle with the question of the existence of a more sublimely divine spirit of love.

Fear strikes me as I write these words. Putting this though down on paper means that I am questioning a core element of my very personality. To look out into eternity and see only emptiness is one of the most frightening things a human being can do. Some people claim to feel exhilaration and a sense of great personal freedom. Me, I see anarchy and randomness.

When I was paying attention in physics class (i.e., when I wasn’t stoned and playing with the strobe lights in the dark room), I remember being struck by the notion of all things moving toward randomness, toward entropy. At 17 the mind experiment of Maxwell's demon was fascinating. At 62 it scares the living shit out of me, really.

I read Camus when I was young, probably too young. I remember a scene in the Plague when the main character stares up at the night sky. The plague of the title was ending in the walled city. Looking up the narrator mused on the infinite, a universe without divine purpose without punishment or reward.

Right now, right here, I feel like that character felt. The plague that sweeps around me is the turmoil of the modern world in the country where I live. But it doesn't matter. What will happen will happen undirected by any ultimate divine purpose. The stars that I see are not romantic; they are gas and dust. But in the dark sky they are better than emptiness.

If I sign on to this view of life, of eternity, how do I justify morality? How do I achieve a sense of good and evil and all the gradations of these terms? I have read treatises on ethics and morality but to this day without some absolutes, the absolutes that organized religion offers us it all seems to spiral into artifice and to the random atoms in Maxwell's Demon? It is hard not to flinch.

I was raised up in the Word with a capital W. I was washed with water and with the blood. But right now, I feel empty and lost. It is not that I am afraid of a random universe, but I feel a sense of sadness and loss.

A friend reminded me that Mother Teresa, seemingly one of the most holy of Christians, lived for decades in doubt. She believed that God was no longer talking to her after she arrived in Calcutta. Maybe there is something to be said for doing “good” amid doubt.

However, it does not resolve the underlying questions of existence and meaning. Perhaps I should simply keep my doubts to myself and not admit to any weakness of spirit. Still, to do so would not be honest and if my goal is to live with integrity it would render me even hollower.