Did You Ever

 
Every life is unique; mine has had some unusual experiences:

Have you ever thrown rocks at passing cars?

Have you ever been awakened by a roach crawling in your hair?

Have you ever stepped on a rattlesnake?

Have you ever pulled leeches off your body after swimming in tropical water?

Have you ever had the dentist assistant rub her private parts all over your hand - when you were underage?

Have you ever had sex 6 times in one day with the same woman (or man depending on your sex)?

Did you ever outrun the police on a motorcycle?

Have you ever gone over 160 MPH in a car - on a public street?

Did you ever drink coffee and smoke cigarettes with you neighbors mother while waiting for the school bus when you were 10?

When you were in the 7th grade, did you ever attend the Christmas Pageant in the school auditorium and cut a loud fart while they were singing "Silent Night" on stage?

Did any of your uncles every spend time in prison?

Did you ever peek through the blinds at midnight and watch the prostitute who lived in a one room cottage behind your house while she was practicing her trade?

Did you ever French-kiss your 1st cousin?  OK, but did you then have sex with her?  Aha!

Did you ever get bitten by a monkey?

Did you ever see your father pull a gun on your uncle?

Did you ever see your mother come at your father with a knife?

Did you ever go through a red light at over 90 MPH?

Did you ever see someone eat their own feces?

Did you ever drug a woman and then have sex with her?  Neither did I, but I just wanted to keep you on your toes.

Have you ever had to give someone and  enema?

Have you ever been in a gang fight?

Have you ever been in weather where the wind chill factor was over -140 degrees Fahrenheit?

Have you ever had any teeth knocked out in a fight?

Have you ever spent over $3,000 in one week eating out?

Have you ever been outside on a day when the temperature was over +135 Fahrenheit?

The Meaning of Life

I believe to believe that I will never discover a meaningful answer to any of the great questions that had persistently evaded my pursuit: 

  

Who are we? 

Where do we come from? 

Where are we going?

Apparently, others have effectively given up the hunt as well, if the results of my casual research for the last 40 years are considered credible evidence. It appears that the best minds have their explanations—physicists, philosophers, spiritualists, cosmologists and even poets have expended considerable effort to articulate their perspective on these questions. 

When taken to the lowest common denominator, their answers seem to reflect their personalities, prejudices, and a plethora of very personal experiences and perceptions that are not available to others. Their answers do not seem to fit for anyone other than themselves.

Mans’ search for meaning continues, but I don’t think the answer will be a philosophical generalization that fits everyone. We will probably discover as George C. Scott’s character, Thomas Hudson did as he was dying in the movie Islands in the Stream—that “There is no one thing that is true, it is all true.”

I think Thomas discovered that the truth—value, meaning, significance, purpose—of life is in the living; it is experiential. I am not trying to be cryptic; my statement only appears to be because the answer is paradoxical. If you subscribe to supernaturalism, then one of the organized religions will provide you with an answer which you can adopt. 

If you follow a philosophy or a specific philosopher, then your answer has been provided you by that source. The rest of us are left to walk the earth in uncertainty, assigned to an indeterminate metaphysical chaos.

Emotions have developed to guide our adaptation to our environment, and these bio-chemical experiences are, “all we know of Heaven, and all we need of Hell.” Neuropsychologists, neurologists, neurobiologists and a cast of thousands have confirmed that intellectual experiences are molecular, biochemical, and electrical.

So what, you say? Well for some of us, it means that the eternal quest for objective answers is a futile quest; life’s meaning is subjective—personal. 

This sounds ludicrously logical—easily acceptable—until you extrapolate that notion to its logical conclusion which is that no one can give you the answer, you will have to discover it for yourself. Life, to quote and age old axiom, is about living; it’s about experiences and emotions—feelings, sensations—whether ethereally aesthetic or coarsely sensual.

I understand how some people become addicted to work, or are compelled to perform endless tasks around the house. Accomplishing small tasks feels good. Shopping feels good as does eating and getting a few laughs in front of a crowd. I think that’s all we have. 

The big experiences and the small ones all add up to our life’s meaning—its truth and value. I understand the fun that intellectuals have playing with words, concepts and puzzles, but I think the end result—in regards to the metaphysical questions—is negligible.

When I was a teen, Elvis and James Dean were cool. We discovered cool in the 50s thanks to Elvis. Before that, it was butch cuts, pants around the waist, sliderules and psalms. Everybody resembled the characters in a bad movie about small town Pentecostals in Missouri. It was square to the max. Dorks and Geeks.

Elvis taught us to be cool, to wail, to dance—to let loose and defy the cultural codes that had restrained our personal freedom. Elvis freed our souls from bondage. The cool guys work long hair and had ducktails. They smoked and sulked and it was energizing and dramatic—emotional mutiny in the land of Perry Como and Frank Sinatra.

The dorks buttoned their top button, carried a briefcase in the 11^th grade and had pencils in their top pocket—and short hair parted on the side. Elvis taught us how to synchronize our bodies and our hearts—how to feel—to break out of the social bonds that had made life like it was presented in the movie “Pleasantville.” Elvis gave life meaning for the culturally constipated.

Passion and pain, the two extremes of our emotional aptitude, seem to create the intensity that makes life memorable. Love and hurt are mostly hormonal, so when you get to be a geezer your emotions are mediated and you feel “peace of mind,” or “comfortable within your own skin.” A bromide to stave off the goblins of discontent.

Deeply disturbing romance is no longer an option; lust, passion, flirting, and the endless possibilities of engagement with members of the opposite sex are memories. But you have hobbies; you can spend your time doing wordpuzzels, traveling—destination with certainties, without the romance of a liaisons, trysts, or affairs.

No intensity. Meaning goes out the window with emotions. No passion, no reason to live. Life’s tenderloin is over by age 55. But what about plays, novels, the symphony, ballet, art, and poetry?

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

The Waste Land,              

T.S. Eliot

Self-Awareness

I have no idea what others say to themselves in their heads; I don’t even know if all people have verbal cognitive behavior.  My internal dialog – mentation – is a mishmash of spontaneous phrases, images, fantasies, memories, simulations, reflections, hopes, and questions.

Unless I’m focused on some particular subject, my thoughts – the mishmash – are relatively random.  At my age, reflection becomes an avocation; any deadspace between focused activities engenders remembrances and analysis and emotions.

Aging facilitates self-appraisal and therefore heightens consciousness – that bastion of humanness that protects us from the perception that we are merely clever animals.  Unfortunately, the questions that arise during episodes of heightened consciousness  are usually quasi-philosophical or cosmological.  Meaning, they don’t lead to answers they just lead to more questions.

Some of the questions are about “being;” questions like have I used my time well, am I where I wanted to be, have I done anything of value, do I really know the people I call friends and talk to, what is love, and does my life have meaning?

These are not pedestrian questions that can be dismissed – although the average human will default to “I have two fine children,” in response to the question about whether their life has meaning.  Die gestalt of this issue is best communicated by the scene in the move “About Schmidt” when Jack Nicholson rises up on his elbow and looks over at his sleeping wife.  His expression captures the daunting befuddlement of realizing that one’s life is only existence, without intimacy, purpose, or intensity.

I think the people who stay out of their heads are well advised to do so.  Many people have inherited disadvantages that self-examination would intensify.  Realizing that one is morbidly obese, intellectually disadvantaged, or aesthetically unappealing would be a harsh experience.

Fairly bright people are at a disadvantage because they are gifted with enough intellect to see where they fall in the great chain of cognitive capability and they know that the extremely bright and gifted have pronounced advantages over them.  The bright are just smart enough to know who is really smart.

Smart people who have appearance problems probably investigate the deeper questions about existence with a propensity to most easily see the negatives.  Their experiences have probably not been positive socially and particularly with the opposite sex.

As Larry Darrell, a character in Somerset Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge said,

“I'm not only my spirit but my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy?”

But, I’m just guessing; I have no idea what goes on in the heads around me.  It would be an amazing experience to have the opportunity to experience life through someone’s consciousness.  We might find some disturbing thoughts and fantasies.  But to paraphrase an observation Somerset Maugham made in his non-fictional book, The Summing Up – if others knew everything that went through our minds, they would think we were monsters.

The Main Themes of Sailing to Byzantium

Sailing to Byzantium is indeed one of the best known lyrics of W.B. Yeats. Written in 1926, it appeared in Yeats's 1928 collection The Tower. Ever since its publication, Sailing to Byzantium has evoked immense interest among readers and critics alike.

Most of the critics have perceived Byzantium in variety of ways; as a representation of the imagination, the imaginative act, the soul, vision, and Unity of Being. The poem has also been viewed and interpreted as the source and the symbol of supreme beauty and enduring appeal of artifacts.

The poem's major and most obvious theme centers on the contrast between the ephemeral and the permanent. The poem conveys the message that human body is mortal and is sure to decay and perish whereas art or beautifully crafted artifacts are timeless, eternal, unchangeable and of permanent value.

The poem is thus the poet's deepening desire to leave this world of death and sorrow and to escape into a world of immortal beauty perceived imaginatively as an imaginary escape to Byzantium. Raymond Cowell writes, "The poet determines to sail to a place where he will be appreciated, Byzantium. He hopes that he will thus be able to defeat Time ...because art is timeless".

Similarly, another critic Harold Bloom also equates the "artifice of eternity" with artwork. According to Denis Donoghue, "The old man is changed into a poet and he knows his place; it is not on earth, in nature, but in the eternity of art. It makes little difference to the poem whether we feel Byzantium as an island of the blessed, a land of eternal youth, or the holy city of Romantic art, so long as we receive from it suggestions of permanence, perfection, and form".

W. B. Yeats asserted that his images "grew in pure mind". But the golden bird of "Sailing to Byzantium" may make us feel that "pure mind," although compelling, is not sufficient explanation. Where did that singing bird come from? We cannot discard Yeats' note to the poem, "I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang", although its first four words sound suspiciously like the flimsy cloak of respectability that Yeats threw over his boldest inventions.

Some have suggested that the bird came from his reading of Byzantine history, Gibbon, or even Hans Christian Andersen . But a previously unacknowledged source is worth considering: Lear's consoling speech to Cordelia in the play's final act, as they are led off to prison and death.

Yeats was greatly moved by King Lear and referred to it with some frequency in print over 40 years, with the references intensifying as he aged. Whether calling it "mad and profound" in February 1926, several months before writing "Sailing to Byzantium," or explicitly envisioning himself like Lear-elderly yet fierce. Thus, when we read Yeats' wish to be transfigured, we may turn again to King Lear:

“Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium…..”

Characteristically, Yeats's recreation of the impulse behind Lear's speech is entirely personal, but he echoes its emotional intensity and its philosophical direction. Art inspired by love--song, in this case--could defeat evil and render death irrelevant. Spatial and temporal limitations--prisons of whatever kind--do not make it impossible to create beauty. Singing joyously as the golden bird, Lear and Cordelia, caged, could "wear out" their enemies; the singing soul, creating the "artifice of eternity," could escape the aging body's prison.

Yeats' bird, timeless, beautiful, and wise, paradoxically sang of the temporal, but eternal art could take shape only within those limits; thus the time-laden echoes of Lear's "tell old tales," "speak of court news," and "explore the mystery of things" in Yeats's "... past, or passing, or to come."

The fragility of art and love in a threatening and at best unappreciative world was not a new theme for Yeats, nor was a father's desire to protect his beloved daughter from the world's storms (as in "Prayer for My Daughter"). Yet the words of Lear to Cordelia in prison were joyous; facing death, they adopted the heroic gaiety that Yeats commemorated in "Lapis Lazuli."

In Lear's speech, Yeats saw not only the personal--the aging man, artist, parent, menaced by the inevitable; it spoke to him of art's power to combat the world's terrors. The theme of escaping from one’s imprisonment by singing and praying like a singing bird in a prison from which the only escape is death or the theme of getting transformed by love have always been the most powerful human defense against evil, helplessness and mortality.

Yeats acquired his initial knowledge of Byzantine mosaics from the visit he made to Italy in1907. He also read several books focused on Byzantium's history and this knowledge on the subject reflects well in this poem too.

Yeats' imagery and ideas for Sailing to Byzantium surely were influenced by his personal identification with the age of Justinian, an empire which Yeats, in a continuation of the musings on Byzantium quoted above, described as his ideal society, one in which "maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic and practical life were one".

Yeats derived most of his information from the book titled The Age of Justinian and Theodora by W. G. Holmes, and the impact of this book was reflected in A Vision which Yeats was composing during the period when he read Holmes's book . In A Vision, Yeats declares, "I think that if I could be given a month of antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato".

However, if one reflects on the eventual fate of Justinian's empire, and, by extension, the artifacts representative of it, then it would seem that a deep vein of irony must not be in the poem.

In a recently published historical account, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople (2004), Jonathan Phillips describes the ultimate fate, in the thirteenth century, of the aesthetic products of Justinian's reign: "The Church of the Holy Apostles contained a mausoleum holding the tombs of some of the..... great Byzantine emperors of the past, including Justinian. Not content with pillaging all the church's ornaments and chalices, the crusaders broke open the great imperial tombs. These mighty sarcophagi, made of the purple porphyry marble that signified imperial status, held not just corpses, but also gold, jewels and pearls. Justinian's body was found to be in almost perfect condition; in the 639 years since his death his cadaver had barely decomposed. ... While the crusaders were duly impressed, it did nothing to halt their stealing of the valuables lying around the imperial body."

Phillips concludes the with a summary of the drastic effects of the devastation and havoc caused by crusaders, "Constantinople was being transformed from the greatest city in the Christian world to a scarred and ragged shadow of its former splendor.... the monuments that had commemorated and sustained the Byzantines' cultural identity were being torn down. Pedestals stood shorn of their statues, alcoves lay bare".

It seems, then, that in Sailing to Byzantium Yeats intimates the vulnerability of the very artifacts that within the poem, appear to symbolize immutability. This vulnerability, unlike the biological vulnerability of the "dying animal," has been imposed not by time, but by human aggressiveness, greed and avarice as expressed through inevitable cycles of human warfare.

Viewed thus, the speaker while facing his inevitable destruction as a "dying animal" appears to be, in an ironic sense, to be a counterpart of the apparently inviolable Byzantine golden bird whose destruction has merely been deferred and not condoned.

If one accepts this interpretation, then Sailing to Byzantium becomes linked not only with its obvious complement, "Byzantium," but also with another poem in The Tower, "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen," a poem that commences with the statement, "Many ingenious lovely things are gone," a vanishing imposed by the "nightmare" of a "drunken soldiery."

The only "comfort" that the speaker can get is through the consolation that "Man is in love and loves what vanishes," a judgment that may define, though much more subtly, a similar poignant dilemma in Sailing to Byzantium.



Extracted from the blog, Academic Help, posted Sunday, March 09, 2009.  Author unknown.

The Search for Self

Introspection and self-examination – the process of looking inward seems to be unevenly distributed among our species. I have a fairly continuous interior dialog running; I am constantly examining my thoughts and feelings and trying to sort them out.

Many people I know don’t seem to have this affliction. They seldom question their motives, beliefs, or behavior. They don’t tend to upbraid themselves for having done something they think was thoughtless, insensitive, or crass. Many that I know are preoccupied with finances, job tasks, family responsibilities, recreations activities, and so forth.

Those of us who are continuously scrutinizing ourselves seem to suffer for it. In my case, it appears to be driven by some form of search – for what I don’t know, and that is the core of the problem. I’m never content in the traditional sense of that word; I’m always looking for something that I can’t quite put my finger on.

In the past, I have observed this same trait in the writings of different authors who have expressed a chronic dissatisfaction with their lives. If not directly stated in that way, it was implied by the things they say about their lives or philosophy of life.

This search for self-understanding is never-ending and unrequited. No epiphanies or discoveries seem to quell the continued search for – something. Is it a search for some kind of affirmation? For forgiveness? For Meaning? Is it all these and more?

This constant interior mentation creates the impression that I am lonely – at least that is what I glean from this constant self-talk – this consciousness of self that continues unabated. I do feel disconnected, and I have to relate this to not growing up in a loving family – so I never internalized that feeling of unconditional self-acceptance and self-regard I see others take for granted.

If your parents are distant and detached, then you’re alone – and you stay alone for the rest of your life. Connectedness or the ability to connect to others through social interactions is unavailable to you. The emotional component is non-existent for you. The neural pathways that receive and process connection with others are absent. It is like expecting your computer to develop feeling for you because you have spent so much time together.

In the twilight of life, you feel this alienation most keenly; the white noise and distractions available when you were younger are gone. You are left in an emotional void; like standing on shore looking at a vast ocean. Your poetry can no longer protect you.

There is a great sadness inherited by unloved children that cannot be resolved or abated by any means. I think this mundane truth is the source for many writers’ creative energy. It is not the kind of explanation that many want to hear – because it is not changeable.

Many of us are not prepared to think that our brain structure, chemistry, hormones, the absence of certain neural pathways and our early development makes it impossible for us to do or feel certain things. And, that this structural reality creates feelings and behavioral tendencies that are not controllable.

So the self obsessively rehearses and repeats the self-examinatory internal dialog, destined to endlessly roam its conscious moments to find some fulfillment that is never to be found. It is like searching for the meaning of one’s self as opposed to searching for the meaning of life.

At One Time I Was Funny

I love to go to the schoolyard and watch the children jump and scream, but they don't know I'm using blanks.
Jack Handey

It would be interesting to read a study that correlates personality types with humor preferences. I’ve always liked sarcasm, dry humor, and Jack Handey’s brand of absurdity. I’m sure it does not bode well for my mental health status.

I would describe my personality type as “nauseated,” meaning I’m hanging on by a thread and the next stressor may encourage me to hurl. There are probably some choir members that appreciate Jack’s macabre juxtaposition of imagery and convention—but I doubt it.

Anyone you see reading the funny papers and laughing is probably not going to like Jack Handey (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I personally know a lot of Psalm singers and there humor runs to Red Skelton and Tom and Jerry cartoons. I actually envy their healthy perspective and the joyous accessibility of their funny bone.

When Gary told me he had found Jesus, I thought, Yahoo! We're rich! But it turned out to be something different...
Jack Handey

I tend to be sarcastic myself—a trait that seems to correlate highly with weakly suppressed hostility and residual depression. Most comedians say that hostility is part of their muse. They channel it into something positive—actually positive for them but patronizing to their audiences. Yes, comedians are really angry people down deep. Actually, not very far down deep at all.

As an aside, don’t you love it when someone says that so and so may have murdered his family but down deep he is a sensitive person. Or, down deep he is decimated by his conduct and is really quite sorry for his felony.

Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk.
Jack Handey

By the way, if you’re looking for thematic continuity and rationality in this post you may be disappointed. This blog reflects my current mood which is a riot of disturbed contradictions converging within a rapidly compressing space—kind of like Brownian Motion, only less stable.

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is "Probably because of something you did."
Jack Handey

Richard Pryor is my all time favorite comedian. I have recordings of his live appearances dating back to the early 60s. The first time I listened to his angry, violently profane wit and biting irreverence, I laughed so hard my stomach hurt the next day. I loved his caricatures of white people; they were usually extremely accurate composites of our behavior.

Richard Pryor facilitated self-honesty as a mode for me. I also have some friends who call me out as soon as I start becoming pretentious and puffed up. I have the gene for it. I’m really pretty snobby, but it doesn’t show unless I make some money and can act uppity until I spend all of it.

When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges.
Jack Handey

Some people laugh at their jokes—and, comments they make that are intended to be humorous. They will make the comment then hee-haw for several seconds. I never know how I’m supposed to act in these situations. Humor is about timing and punch lines delivered dispassionately. The “comic” or person who is trying to be funny is not supposed to be more entertained than the audience. So…I don’t get it.

I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.
Jack Handey

Some people never laugh. I’ve always wondered (something I do a lot about everything because the older I get the more I realize I don’t know much) why? But then, I almost never laugh at sitcoms—except “Seinfeld.” I watch “30 Rock” (I love Tina Fey) and “The Office,” and find them extremely amusing but I seldom laugh out loud.

Black stand-up comedians used to be my favorite until profanity began to overwhelm the material. Now, many of them think that standing up in front of a group and acting like you have Tourette’s is funny. A lot of their material is still funny, but you have to consciously overlook the bad language.

Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing.
Jack Handey

I used to make people laugh. Then, I moved out to a rural area where I have lived for 15 years; it does something to you. You become anesthetized or something. I think you need the hysteria, stress and tension of the city to incubate humorous comments and observations. There is nothing to catalyze your sarcasm out here with the cows and birds.

Country people have a sense of humor that is kind of coarse—hayseed stuff like the TV show “Hee Haw” really gets them to yukking. They like explicit stuff—slap stick and fart jokes. Lower socioeconomic folks seem to be obsessed with bodily functions. All the things our body does that most of us would rather ignore, they want to highlight—usually during dinner.

I think someone should have had the decency to tell me the luncheon was free. To make someone run out with potato salad in his hand, pretending he's throwing up, is not what I call hospitality.
Jack Handey

When I was young, in high school, I remember there were a lot of guys who were very funny. They were silly sometimes but they could make you laugh with absurd observations or analogies about parents or teachers or authority figures in general. I think rebellion against authority is the inspiration for my kind of humor.

When you get older and you become the authority—the responsible, boundary manager and behavior police—you no longer poke fun at the people in charge. You are the people in charge, and there isn’t anything funny about that.

If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mr. Brave man, I guess I'm a coward.

Jack Handey

What Could Have Been and What Is

I wish with all my heart that I could have been an Ivy League snob, to have attended Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. To be entitled by fortune to feel elite and talk among my peers in smug undertones of sympathy about the poor, deprived kids who had to attend state universities.

Oh how self-importantly I would have savored those mornings on the banks of the Charles River watching the sculls. A touch of humility to affect the proper posture -- gracious but appropriately aloof -- as I attended one of Harvard’s House Crew meetings at the Weld Boathouse – perhaps stopping to talk with a member of the Radcliffe women's crew (their sculling crew is housed at the same boat house.)

Ross Douthat wrote the book, Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class. He describes Harvard as "an incubator for an American ruling class that is smug, self-congratulatory, and intellectually adrift." I can live with that.

Several years of night school at an urban, state funded school provides no context for feelings of upper class arrogance. Sitting in the school cafeteria at 7:30 PM eating a hot dog and watching the other “students,” some still wearing their coats and ties from work, doze and stare eyelessly at their text books – no haughty, arrogant poses among the earnest. Hard to strike a pose wearing a mustard stained tie.

Tired – that’s what I remember about college days. Oh there were some high points – evenings after class drinking beer with other psychology 301 students; pretending to be intellectuals but coming across as office clerks who were pretending to be intellectuals. I received a modest and utilitarian education, but no memories and experiences to create any aristocratic self-assertions.

In my modest sphere, struggling to ascend a gradient of mediocre genetics, dysfunctional upbringing and dispositional deficits I regret that I was not fortunate enough to have inherited a native endowment that would have allowed me to attain some worthwhile intellectual achievement.

It is miserable to know what you are; I envy those whose intelligence does not allow them to reach a level of awareness such that they know how little they contribute to the world. Unfortunately, I am aware of all my limitations; a facility that come along with cognitive ability and the ability to face reality.

Reality is a bitch; best to ignore it and live immersed in fantasy. The movies and novels allow us the opportunity to vicariously experience other “realities,” however briefly.

I don’t think there is any question but that the creative life is probably the most satisfying; more than riches and power – which bring with them a dangerous amplification of self - which seems to slowly poison the capacity for joy. But, those capable of creating something truly original – to achieve a rendering of self in some physical form – must experience the ultimate euphoria.

The whole experience of life is ineffable to me; I will die without understanding much about where I’ve been or why. All of this is an enigma and understanding becomes more elusive the older you get.

Things that in my youth seem simple are now are unfathomable; all the wonder of youth and the hope of understanding have been discarded. The search for wisdom and the pursuit of those who purported to have obtained it has been abandoned.

I would prefer to have a couple of hundred acres somewhere and live in the middle of it. In the evening, I would drink Martinis and watch the deer creep in from the tree line and browse the grass and vegetation. The only sounds would be the sounds of insects and creatures that inhabit the woods.

It is a pretty Buddhist fantasy, but I think I would be happy there. And yes, where I went to school would not matter – in fact, it doesn’t matter now.