Struggling

17 December 2019

There are times when no matter how much I try to come up with a post nothing comes.  Today I am on my third attempt.  ‘Tis a sad thing to have some many ideas die on electronic paper.  Maybe the better choice on such days is just to keep my thoughts to myself.  Better to be thought a fool, than to prove it so in a unquestionable manner.

I tried to write about my lack of action toward Christmas obligations, but it just sounded like whimpering.  I tried to write a bit on personal peace, but again it didn’t feel right.  I ain’t no prophet or philosopher or song writer.  

So today this space is just a list of observations.  Today at the coffee shop the music is too loud for the holiday season.  How loud is it?  Well, it is bleeding through my ear buds.  Right now my aural sphere is a clash of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Crosby Still Nash and Young.  (CSNY is on my earbuds.)  The Peppers are winning over the tight harmonies and conga drum backbeat.

At the table next to me two twenty something women are talking with passion about Scooby Doo’s origin story. One of them is gesticulating in ways that seem to imply she is scratching the Hanna Barbara dog’s ears. WTF?  (And yes I hope those are invisible ears she is scratching). 

Who really cares about an origin story for the mumbling doof of a dog? Unless you are writing a treatment for the next Scooby “Let Me Scrape the Money from your Pockets You Parents of Young Children” Doo movie, there are a hundred better topics to be talking about.

Outside the sun is out in full.  It is not a cloudy, or a partly cloudy day.  It is a fully sunny day.  We don’t get money of these in mid-Michigan. We really don’t get many of them between November and March.  But the sun today as it shines through the coffee shop  windows is a delight.  What I really, really want to do is my cat imitation.  I want with all my soul to curl up on the carpet and let the warmth of the sun just bathe me.  

My lunch hour is over now.  So to finish this off I will offer one of the abandoned ideas.  Feel free to offer suggestions as to where I should take it....

“For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.” Baruch Spinoza

Ours is not a peaceful world, not now, probably not ever.  As a result if we are to have peace it is something that we must individually create on the small scale. The peace we experience will have to be a personal experience, something we draft subjectively inside ourselves and something we create in those we live with and among.

So how do we get there?  How do we find peace first for ourselves and then for the small part of the world we live in?  And if peace holds within it a balance that requires justice be factored in, how do we get there in the environment that surrounds us now? I don’t want to abandon the light that the concept of peace is, but I am left with serious reservations about how I get there if I am living out my obligations to humanity in the storm of waste that is swirling around us in this country right now.   [And this is where the idea died as Elton John and Leon Russell sang “Never Too Old.]

https://youtu.be/RqBA76-oIr0

Monday in the Empty Coffee Shop

16 December 2019

Monday in the Empty Coffee Shop. The students are gone. Peace and slow motion living. 

Don’t really know what to talk about.  The weekend was filled with work for my wife.  To keep her focused I worked on the mundane, the laundry.  Graduation occurred and was celebrated with beer and oysters.  My oldest ordered half a dozen on the half shell and ate them all by himself.  There was no offer to share.  He washed it down with a couple of porters and finished off the celebratory event with fish tacos.  

I had fish tacos too.  Got some hush puppies too.  The weekend food was clearly of a southern bent.  One meal involved fish and hush puppies.  Another involved black eyed peas, ham steak, cole slaw and corn meal muffins.  Yup, did dip into my family’s roots food.

Call it what you will, superstition or faith, I went to church last night.  It was the third Sunday of Advent.  I offered up a prayer of thanksgiving for John Lee’s graduation.  With the students gone there were maybe ten congregants in the sanctuary.  But the Christmas wreaths, the garlands wrapped together with lights and the subtle Christmas trees made it feel special to be there.

I feel like I am looking out an open window looking out on my beloved Atlantic. It feels like summer is coming to an end.  Labor Day is here and everyone is going away from the water’s edge.  The water is still warm.  The air is still warm.  But other people’s routines are drawing back to school and work.  Me. I am looking out at an empty beach and feeling the joy of a special uncrowded few weeks.

The Sound of One Voice Talking

12 December 2019

What I Will Miss

When I think of the next chapter of my life I know that there are things I will miss.  

Me, I am a creature of rituals and habits.  From making coffee to being at certain places to be assured of having someone to talk to, there are patterns in my current day to day to life.  Despite the wide range of damaged, wounded and sometimes depraved human beings I come into contact with, I like to talk to people.  Conversations are both my job and part of my personal life that I love. Leaving a job where I have easily conducted 20,000 interviews and, in reality closer to 25,000, I will be walking away from an average of 10 significant conversations with different people every single weekday.  

On the morning of January 13, 2020 that guaranteed pool of interaction will be gone.  From baristas, to coworkers, to my clients…all that will be gone. Of course I will have to find other things to allow me connection. In that I will probably be yo-yo-ing back and forth between continents and communities I am a bit unsure of how I will structure my interactions.  Don’t get me wrong I will not miss the totally bat shit crazy moments, and there are a goodly number of them, but the quiet conversations, the sincere conversations, their absence will leave an empty space in my life.

My carving out a hour to write these little posts will also be different.  If I do my keyboard ponding during the day it is usually at the Biggby on Friendship Circle in Lansing.  If I am doing it at night I have my table at the East Lansing Public Library I almost always use.  All in all I will have the time to expand the locales I want to work from.   But the feel of these places has almost become a part of the writing experiences.  Changes upon changes….

Time to wrap up, lunch hour is almost over.  The last song to finish on the music service here at Biggby was Walking in a Winter Wonderland. The song now beginning is Little Pink Houses.  Right now, right here at this time both of these songs have meaning to me.  It is cold.  Christmas is but two weeks off.  Gotta get some stuff done this weekend.  Sunday will be tree cutting.

But the lyrics“…ain’t that American, home of the free…” God how they stir my soul.  I hope the America John Mellencamp was depicting survives what comes next.

800

On 03/23/08 I wrote a two sentences. These were an answer to a my first blog post title and they comprised the entire text of that first post.  The questioning title was,  “Why?”  The body read,  “Because the desire to create and think out loud is very strong. My hope is that this turns into something with usefulness, at least for me.”  With that sentence I began my blog.  In 11 ½ years I have, with this entry, created 800 posts.  Some were no more than a sentence.  Some were thousands of words long. With those posts I am pretty sure I have created something useful, at least for me.

Topics I have talked about include Easter memories at my Grandmother Joyner’s in Horry County.  Also I raved about the delights of an oyster roast. My musings have broached, on numerous occasions, the challenges of parenting an autistic child.  I have talked about my love of riding my bicycle through my home town when I was 10 or maybe 11.  I have ranted about politics.  Some of the pieces I am proudest of are tales of the Ocean City I lived in between 1971 and 1976.  And by that I mean Ocean City, New Jersey, America’s Family Resort.  

When I first starting writing, I posted things that I wanted. At that time I really didn’t think I had any kind of audience.  Some of what I wrote is uncomfortable to me now, but I am not going back to change it. Over the years I have talked about two bouts of cancer.  In addition I have talked about books that made a difference to me.  I linked to music that really moved me.  Some of those links are dead now and I really don’t remember who I had situated on those pages.

800 posts are not a novel, sorry Muse.  But 800 posts are the chronicle of one being’s life as he moved from mid-career to retirement.  800 posts are a chronicle of faith and questioning.  800 posts are how I set down some of who I am so that you can understand it, if you wanted to.

To keep a blog is out of fashion now.  In many ways I am out of fashion now.  In a few weeks I will be mostly irrelevant, just old and in the way.  But up until I can write no more I am going to keep posting.

Maybe somebody will find something to turn into an episode of some TV show. Maybe they will find something to make them laugh at a time they really needed to. Maybe they will find a thought that just resonates with something they have felt inside, but just couldn’t formulate and capture in their own mind.

For more than a decade I have tried to remember, I have tried to think and I have tried to entertain.  Jean Shepherd convinced me that a self deprecating narrative, with an eye to the absurdity of the situations we find ourselves in, is worth the telling.  Here is a link to a favorite.

https://onetruenorthspace.blogspot.com/2008/06/hot-monkey-love-meets-3rd-grade-science.html

Fire, Cold and Regret

10 December 2019

A Cold Tuesday, A Clear Evening, A Warm Fire, and a Reflective Heart.

Didn’t expect snow this morning.  Didn’t expect winter to turn it on full blast.  Didn’t think I would be making a fire in the wood stove tonight.

Went for a walk last night about 10 pm, collar turned up because the wind was really kicking up.  Been here on the border with Canada long enough to know that high winds mean change.  It was 40 Fahrenheit when I went out.  Snow was atop the car this morning. 21 Fahrenheit as I write this. What came was light snow, but it was snow none the less.  Grumbling won’t change anything, but just because I accept that snow will fall, does not mean that I must find joy in it.

Change is everywhere today.  Brown trees and brown earth are now sugary powder white.  Light jackets are no longer an option.  I broke out the ¾ length leather as I headed out. Felt good to wear that substantial shell. December is a good moment to transition to leather coats.

December is also the summing up month of the year.  The twelfth month demands accounts be put into order.  To recognize gains or losses you need to act now.  If you have not maxed out your 401K it is the time.  

But this month, whose name means the tenth month but which is actually the twelfth month, is also 40 days plus past harvest.  On these cold night you check the larder and see if you are prepared for what harsh realities are going to be unleashed upon us after the Christmas holidays.  At Christmas we are extravagant, but come January we are deep in the thick of the cold and the isolation.  We reach for that homemade raspberry preserve to remember what life was like when you could walk anywhere in short sleeves.

As we get ready to send out gifts and cards, especially at my age and later, you start to notice the people who are still in you contacts that are gone.You look at some of the names and you simply note the absence.  You look at some of the names and you think of the pain of loss.  You look at some of the names and you are touched, sometimes quite deeply, with regret. December, the first bit is a time of joy.  December, the latter bit is oft a time of regret.

A quick use of a search engine brought this up as a definition of regret. 

Verb: [F]eel sad, repentant, or disappointed over (something that has happened or been done, especially a loss or missed opportunity).

Noun: [A] feeling of sadness, repentance, or disappointment over something that has happened or been done.

Again back to the search engine and I ask it, kind of like asking the magic eight ball we I was a kid, ‘what are peoples’ greatest regrets?’  What was the answer?  Well, in an October 2018 magazine article these were the top five:

·       I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

·       I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

·       I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

·       I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

·       I wish that I had let myself be happier.

A second article adds a couple of more that merit inclusion:

·       I wish I had been more loving to the people who matter the most.

·       I wish I had been a better spouse, parent, or child.

·       I wish I’d have done more for others.

When I read these bullet points I can say clearly and unequivocally that 7 ½ of them ring TrueType me personally.  One is kind of a trick question.  On the I wish I hadn’t worked so hard, in later life I think it is true.  In my earlier life I think the exact opposite is true.  In my teens and twenties I wish I had worked harder. A little extra effort might have changed the tangent of my life.

Seems striking to me that the first set of five regrets are more egocentric, and the second set of three are more altruistic.  I didn’t really check which magazines these were drawn from but I am sure each has a focus that tracks with the answers given.  I think that in truth the two groups both are present in most of us.

I might have added one bullet point but it is kind of weaved in and out of the things that are there.  Still, I wish I had been more reliable, more trustworthy.  Some friends would still be in my life if this was the case.

Some of these things are subject to amelioration, there are some amends that can be made.  Some of these things cannot be repaired.  In the Christian faith, it is often taught that if God can forgive us we should be able to forgive ourselves.  In the Buddhist mind, we are taught non attachment and acceptance of the moment as it is.  Both take us to roughly the same space. Things and acts we regret are not washed away but neither are they to be an anchor paralyzing us, weighing us down.  

I think that for each regret cited most of us can make choices that will lessen the regret.  The month of summing up, well when infused with the joy of the holidays as a catalyst, is a time when we can make some real progress to alleviating our regrets.  December is also a time when  think that some regrets if not subject to fixing, just need to be put in a mental box and shoved in the back of our minds.

The cat sleeps near the fire tonight.  The wood crackles and orange light dances through the glass doors of the wood stove.  Cold as it might be tonight this is a wonderful moment.  Right now I can think of how I can move forward in life with more joy and less regret.

I Could Have Been a Porter on the Dixie Flyer

12/04/19

Go if you must go, but don’t cry a tear a for me.

Cold stark grey day here in early December.  A short few moments to catch some words on paper.  Today I remembered my ear buds and I am listening to my newly minted Chill Mix for Apple Music.  Lyle Lovett is singing a very carefully crafted song.  What a talented man.  I really don’t think he has every gotten enough credit for the combination of beautiful and unique tunes and careful word-smithing he engages in.

The impeachment is ongoing.  As I was eating lunch people in dark paneled rooms in Washington DC were speaking and pontificating. However, the bar were I was inhaling a BBQ pork sandwich, had the sound off. They were also replaying Michigan’s loss to Ohio State from last weekend and the sound was blasting..  Got to have your priorities straight.  We are only engaging in this process for the fourth time in our republic’s history, but people don’t want to wrap their minds around it.  How this plays out will determine what this country will be like going forward for decades. We are citizens, we need to immerse ourselves in this.

This afternoon is pretty full work wise .  People will be second guessing their life’s disasters in front of me.  Me, I will be trying to suss out if they are in a state of mind that justifies some relief.  Each life I see will offer up a road paved with good intentions. Hey, this is what they pay me for me.  I guess I could have opted for another profession.  

Maybe I should have been an escape artist or a human cannonball. Shacked in a box beneath a pool of water or flying across a crowd of people headed for a giant net, maybe one of these would have been the better use of my skills. 

Questions for Angels *

Questions for the Angels. 12/03/19

Dinner was done.  I was listening to a New Music Mix that Apple pushes out to me every Tuesday.  There was a re-recorded version of an old Paul Simon song that came on. Its title and hook line captured my ear. The song was Questions for the Angels.

How does one get to the point where they contemplate questions for angels?  Paul Simon got there, but it was never until tonight, a question that ever floated by in the ethers of my mind. I mean I was raised in the Christian church.  I know that in both the Old and the New Testaments there are angels who appear to carry out some task of divine purpose. But…questions for those angels?  

Trust me I never want to shake anyone’s faith but with all the cameras on our cellphones and with movie making equipment in existence for 130 years old or so, why have we not captured any on film? I know, I know, I can’t see the wind but the wind is real.  Also, I am aware that nowhere is it mandated in the Bible that angels appear to us, we mere more mortals, as they are carrying out their tasks. And a non-appearance by any angels for a mere 2000 years does not even register on the major timeline of the Divine, I mean eternity is a big chunk of forever.

But some things are fuzzy in my mind and maybe a question or two might resolve that blurry state. Like what do angels really do?  Why do angels even exist if we exist, I mean the whole plan of Christian salvation kind of implies we are number one in God’s choice of companions.  What motivates them except for the divine love that they exist in, and are intertwined with?  Do they have free will? Are they the instruments by which tumors disappear, you know the incurable, inoperable ones?  Do they protect us from harms we never realize were going to befall us?  Do they give us the warm fuzzies of love?

A Google search, (I know I could have said an internet search but who uses anything but Google), says that in the Abrahamic faiths angels act as intermediaries between God and humanity especially in the later books of the Old Testament. In this class of faiths, angels act as agents of protection and guidance.  Does that mean they have discretion in carrying out their work, assuming we have free will?  Are they merely messengers?  Are they divine or merely semi-divine, and what does that distinction mean? Are they only sent to us by God, or can we summon them for aid and protection?

The internet search led to a vast rabbit hole taking me into descriptions of angels in various religions, into their roles in various traditions of each religion, and so on and so forth. But to even think of asking questions of the angels presupposes God and duality of the physical and spiritual worlds. I am not sure of the validity of this presupposition, although I tend to lean toward faith fairly heavily. But if that is accurate what would I want to know of angels?

I guess the questions I would have for the angels would be the same I would have of their creator:

·       Why is there evil?

·       Why is there pain?

·       What is the meaning of all this?

·       Is there one true path to God?

·       Why is there a hell, again assuming the Abrahamic faiths are correct?

·       Why are you immortal from the get go, and I am not, at least not in my corporeal form?

·       Why didn’t you intervene when someone was inventing scrapple?

I know the phrase came from just one song in the vast catalogue of a popular music singer.  I know that it really isn’t a topic I would usually chase after, as least not so long as that man is in the White House.  But sometimes you hear a bit of conversation, or maybe a fragment of a song, and then you are gone chasing phantoms in the ethers of you mind.  Question for the Angels indeed. 

I will close with a quote from Wings of Desire, one of the greatest movies ever made.  “When the child was a child, It was the time for these questions: Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Is life under the sun not just a dream?”