Donal Óg (Perhaps 8th Century; From the Old Irish)

It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.

It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday.
And myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.

My mother said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you that put that darkness over my life.

You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!

by Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

For a wonderful recitation, you might want to go here.

Carol Sorrow, Melanie Johnson, Deborah Long, and Others

Carol Sorrow grew up in Sylvan Heights, Atlanta, Georgia. Melanie Johnson attended Augusta College in Augusta, Georgia and became a Delta Flight Attendant. Deborah Long worked for Harris-Teeter’s real estate in Charlotte, North Carolina; then, went into commercial real estate in Charlotte

If you know them (they all have married names I’m sure), tell them to send an email to jerry.pounds@plantationcable.net. I have not seen Carol in about 45 years; Melanie in 30 years; Deborah in 25 years.

Why do I want to talk to them now? Any reason I would articulate would appear to be irrational. Closure is a word that describes what I would like to achieve. But, I would also like to hear about their lives – in hopes that they have lived happily.

I’ve been looking for an old friend – James Dean originally from Felsenthal, Arkansas. We went to school together in Tampa, Florida in 1960. And, Wayne Messer, a friend of ours that joined the Marines in Tampa – then vanished.

If you know LeCroy Melton of Dublin, Georgia. Point him toward this blog.

If anyone knows Ralph Willis of Nahunta, Georgia please ask him to drop me a line. I worked with him at Gulf Oil Company on Peachtree Street in Atlanta in 1963. I know he moved on to Ford and then I lost track of him.

Please send any of them my way if you know them or there whereabouts.

The Strangeness of Aging

One of the worst things about aging is creeping ennui – more and more things begin to bore you. I can’t watch local Atlanta news because it’s the same thing every day – rape, robbery, murder, and traffic jams.

Network news resembles reality-based soap opera more than facts about what’s happening in the world. I’ve become more and more particular about my likes and dislike; tired of eating out – tired of eating in.

It’s easy to see that by the time you are old enough to die – you’re indifferent to it; death? – so what. You say yeah but there is still plenty to do. Yes, it’s easy to find time consuming “things” to do. Stay busy till you croak.

Growing old is like having been at a really great party and watching everybody go home. I think people experience aging very differently. There is always some oldster on television touting their enjoyable life and talking about how much fun they are having.

I admire the people who feel like they have lived well – met their expectations for themselves; didn’t care about money or material things and feel like making $50,000 a year was just fine. Or even more, I envy the people who like to “stay busy.” They like working even if the job is some mind-numbing repetitive set of tasks.

I think work is way over-rated. There are millions of people around the world who have inherited incredible fortunes and spend their lives finding novel ways to spend money and occupy their time. You don’t find many of them crying about not having jobs and a boss.

The “stay busy” wealthy often position themselves into worthwhile enterprises. Their energy and industrious natures allow them to contribute in “meaningful” ways. Living things seem to be compelled to evolve, to learn, to move to the next level.

One light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles. Two merging galaxies that the Hubble telescope photographed, NGC 2207 and IC 2163, are 114,000,000 light years away. According to physicists, about 14 billion years ago all of this was compressed into a space the size of an atom; at 10⁻³⁷ seconds after the “big bang” the expansion took place and we obtained the distances of the two galaxies. How do I explain this to the ladies down at the Waffle House?

Yah see; expansion is part of our nature. We’ve been doing it since before 10^−37. Getting older in a universe that is 14,000,000,000 years old is pretty strange. I wonder what the universe will be like when it is 14,000,000,000,000 years old.

The earth and our solar system will have long since expired – our sun becoming a white dwarf – cooling over a few billion years. Yes, when you realize you will expire, the concept of infinity becomes interesting. The mind is capable of positing very elaborate scenarios explaining our origin and purpose. Yet we will never have a means of validating any of it.

In the grand scheme of things, knowing that we are an insignificant anomaly, one still marvels at who we are and the beauty of this place that bore us. Best not to think on these things. Go back to your hobby, your garden, or your crossword puzzle; stay busy.

The Land of Might-Have-Been

I took a course in graduate statistics about 35 years ago; within 2 months I had forgotten everything I learned. Whether or not you can figure the probabilities of events or outcomes using the appropriate formulae, we all have an innate understanding of chance—most of us are its victims.

The randomosity of fortune is apparent as we track our circumstances against those of others. The Bell Curve exists for all populations, so inevitably there is a top, middle and a bottom. Most of us want to be in the upper part of the distribution of wealthy individuals. Bill Gates is on top. Somebody in India or Africa probably has the dubious distinction of being the poorest.

It is easier to whine about our misfortunes than to see ourselves as failures – as someone who could not do as well as others. Fate has been cruel to many on our planet, but we most likely overlook the Thanksgiving imprecation to count our blessings; we often prefer to carp about what could have been.

It is particularly hard to accept that someone we know who we think compares poorly to us in terms of intelligence, ethics, or common sense has somehow managed to become very affluent. All of us know some dumbass that was at the right place at the right time and stumbled into a piece of luck.

No, it was not drive, ambition, energy, persistence, or creativity that made them those millions; their uncle gave them 2000 shares of IBM 25 years ago.

A superficial review of the biographies of the mega-wealthy quickly reveals the benefits of having “flexible” ethics. It irks us that being a good person can easily wind up putting you in the poor house as quickly as being indolent or sleazy. Being good, kind, and helpful can get you an Eagle Scout badge and a job bagging groceries at the Publix.

The media has pandered to our increased interests in the biographies of the rich and famous, so we understand that along with wealth and celebrity there are many temptations and moral potholes. It appears that too much, too fast leads to dissipation, drug abuse, alcoholism, promiscuity, and excessive partying. Does that sound good or bad?

I have schemed and thought and puzzled and engineered and created many opportunities or pseudo-opportunities to become wealthy. All the while, others I know who have done nothing but trudge along have happened upon a chance encounter with good luck. Almost against their will they have been blessed with success and wealth.

The cruelest fate awaits those who want material things but can find no way to acquire them. Some people appear to have no particular interest in wealth; their goal in life is to have an interesting job and live within their means. I envy those people.

It is unenviable to believe that your position in life is under your control – a product of your drive, initiative, competence, creativity, or tolerance for risk. If you hold yourself responsible for your lot in life, you cannot avoid the self-recriminations and personal accountability. You have to admit that you did not have what it took.

Yes, you may see others that walked into success or inherited considerable wealth; you may try to assuage your guilt and the role that self-management played in your own mediocre performance. But, it provides you with little comfort. In your own eyes, you failed.

Cognitive psychology differentiates between those of us who are “High I,” and those who are “High E.” The “High I” folks see themselves as in control of events and outcomes around them; they see themselves as the “captain of their fates.”

Psychologists refer to the principle as “Locus of Control.”

Locus of control refers to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. Individuals with a high internal locus of control believe that events result primarily from their own behavior and actions. Those with a high external locus of control believe that powerful others, fate, or chance primarily determine events. Those with a high internal locus of control have better control of their behavior, tend to exhibit more political behaviors, and are more likely to attempt to influence other people than those with a high external locus of control; they are more likely to assume that their efforts will be successful. They are more active in seeking information and knowledge concerning their situation.

Wikipedia

I envy the “E” people; I wish I had a good rationalization for not having an apartment in Cannes or a flat in London.

Reminds me of a song:

The Land of Might-Have-Been
Lyrics: Edward Moore

Somewhere there's another land
different from this world below,
far more mercifully planned
than the cruel place we know.
Innocence and peace are there--
all is good that is desired.
Faces there are always fair;
love grows never old nor tired.

We shall never find that lovely
land of might-have-been.
I can never be your king nor
you can be my queen.
Days may pass and years may pass
and seas may lie between--
We shall never find that lovely
land of might-have-been.

Sometimes on the rarest nights
comes the vision calm and clear,
gleaming with unearthly lights
on our path of doubt and fear.
Winds from that far land are blown, whispering with secret breath--
hope that plays a tune alone,
love that conquers pain and death.

Shall we ever find that lovely
land of might-have-been?
Will I ever be your king or you
at last my queen?
Days may pass and years may pass
and seas may lie between--
Shall we ever find that lovely
land of might-have-been?

The Edge of Sanity

Psychologists give psychology a bad name. An astronaut goes nuts and does something completely incompatible with her history. The media attempts to drive advertising dollars by hyping the situation ad nauseum. What drove her to do something so bizarre? How do you explain this?

They consult a psychologist—usually someone who fits the visual stereotype we have come to admire in this profession. Beard, mutton chops, Van Gogh, sideburns, moustache, long hair, groomed eyebrows—sometimes just geeky to the 3^rd power—but altogether resembling the mental image of a 21^st Century witchdoctor.

On the today show this morning, they showed a clip of just such a psychologist presenting his version of the astronaut’s causal conundrum. Psychobabble about insecurities (deep seated of course) that are part of an obsessive personality—blah, blah, blah. Language without meaning. Words without referents.

The only way we might really know what has happened with the poor woman is to have pre-episode brain scan data (either EEG, CAT, PET, MRI or MEG) combined with biochemical profiles, hormonal measures, behavioral observations and situation stress analyses. If we compare this with her post-episode measures, then we know something about corresponding correlates concurrent with her insanity. So what!

Psychologists are our big “why” boys—psychiatrists too—don’t want to leave out all the voodoo brokers. They try to explain the whole people-snapping-and-doing-something-crazy-as-hell phenomenon in terms they have adopted from thought leaders in their particular brand of explanatory illusion. They pontificate with authority and are given patronizing obeisance by their interviewers.

When you have bio-chemistry, hormonal, electrical-chemical neural activity, molecular, structural and functional anomalies, diseases, trauma, and permutations of dozens of variables interacting emergently, causal complexity makes it probable that we will never know “why” a person suddenly acts in ways incompatible with their history.

The truth is we love the insane. The antics of criminals and celebrities represent 50% of the news. The other 50% are the insane religious cult wars and politician-driven military actions. The news is about insanity. Why is immaterial. Insanity is entertainment.

Normal people (the ones with lives like ours—quiet desperation and such; brew and a sitcom; Jack Daniels and potato chips watching the Travel Channel; boring, uninteresting, redundant) are not interesting. Normal people want peace, security, safety, health care and high school football.

Our species wants power, territory, fame, wealth, sex and control (see—it sounds good even to normal people). The romantic unattainables. When Paris Hilton is on TV, you hear negative comments from everyone in the room. Harlot! Lush! Skank! Exhibitionist! But everybody still watches and can’t wait to hear the latest bit of gossip about her promiscuity. Debauched, degraded and defiled—that’s what we want to see.

Why? Who gives a damn why? What good would it do if we could figure it out? Then Big Brother could intervene and we could structure a society where there were no over-the-top personalities with their obstreperous behavior. Just how boring do you want life to be?

Some of the weirdest, maladjusted people I know are psychologists. They need drugs and electroshock more than most of the patients in the psychiatric hospitals where I’ve worked.

The most extraordinary thing is that there are so few people who do snap. If you have never been really down—lost everything; no money, rejected by wife, husband or lover; no job and no future expectations—then you have no way of understanding what a thin edge the path of sanity provides.

Can We Handle the Truth?

Funerals are probably a good thing—for the family of the deceased. When the deceased was as Gordon Liddy so sensitively put it, “not worth the cost of a 9mm round to blow him away,” the rent-a-preacher has to work hard to make the deceased sound worthy of a ceremony.

A lot of preachers use the deceased as a straw man to promote themselves through a sermon that they think is germane to some point. If not a point about the dearly departed, then a point about how everybody attending the sermon needs to get right with God.

I always thought it was so sad that people are willing to say such wonderful things about a deceased family member or friend—things they never told them when they were alive. You have to die to get people to fess up about you. That’s why I’m recommending that we start celebrating people’s lives while they are still alive.

Why not? Think about how inspiring it would be to attend an event entitled, “A Celebration of (your name)’s life. Friends, relatives, old acquaintances, work colleagues—the people in your life—could get together around food, dance and drink; they could take turns sharing things about you that they liked, found humorous, or inspiring or interesting.

Think how happy your life would be after that—talk about a boost to the self-esteem! Many of us have no idea how the people in our lives—past and present—see us. We assume, based on inference and anecdotal information that we are thought of in this way or that. We most often have no corroboration—no validation of our worth as others see us. Think of the sheer joy of hearing those important in our lives say wonderful things about us.

For truth seekers—people who would really like to know how they are perceived in order to make changes in their behavior—it would be useful to get several of your closest friends in a room and have them talk about you without knowing that you could hear them. I think each of us would be startled by the insights and epiphanies we would experience.

I think you would need both of these experiences to grow—to make real progress toward whatever potential you might have. I think we see ourselves “through a glass darkly,” and, through trial and error—hamstrung by the bondage of emotional conditioning and obstructive biases—try to make the best of a bad show.

I have met and known many people who are perfectly satisfied to ignore any disconnects between their self-perceptions and the way others perceive them. They are not even aware that the self-concept that serves as the foundation for self evaluation is myopic and inaccurate. The discrepancy between the way you see yourself and the way others see you is where the potential for personal growth dwells.

This Is No Game!

This is straight out of the New Yorker magazine, and if you think it's funny please let me know. This is the only man who makes me laugh until I cry, but not everyone digs this type of humor.

by Jack Handey January 9, 2006

This is no game. You might think this is a game, but, trust me, this is no game.

This is not something where rock beats scissors or paper covers rock or rock wraps itself up in paper and gives itself as a present to scissors. This isn’t anything like that. Or where paper types something on itself and sues scissors.

This isn’t something where you yell “Bingo!” and then it turns out you don’t have bingo after all, and what are the rules again? This isn’t that, my friend.

This isn’t something where you roll the dice and move your battleship around a board and land on a hotel and act like your battleship is having sex with the hotel.

This isn’t tiddlywinks, where you flip your tiddly over another player’s tiddly and an old man winks at you because he thought it was a good move. This isn’t that at all.

This isn’t something where you sink a birdie or hit a badminton birdie or do anything at all with birdies. Look, just forget birdies, O.K.?

Maybe you think this is all one big joke, like the farmer with the beautiful but promiscuous daughter. But what they don’t tell you is the farmer became so depressed that he eventually took his own life.

This is not some brightly colored, sugarcoated piece of candy that you can brush the ants off of and pop in your mouth.

This is not playtime or make-believe. This is real. It’s as real as a beggar squatting by the side of the road, begging, and then you realize, Uh-oh, he’s not begging.

This is as real as a baby deer calling out for his mother. But his mother won’t be coming home anytime soon, because she is drunk in a bar somewhere.

It’s as real as a mummy who still thinks he’s inside a pyramid, but he’s actually in a museum in Ohio.

This is not something where you can dress your kid up like a hobo and send him out trick-or-treating, because, first of all, your kid’s twenty-three, and, secondly, he really is a hobo.

All of this probably sounds oldfashioned and “square” to you. But if loving your wife, your country, your cats, your girlfriend, your girlfriend’s sister, and your girlfriend’s sister’s cat is “square,” then so be it.

You go skipping and prancing through life, skipping through a field of dandelions. But what you don’t see is that on each dandelion is a bee, and on each bee is an ant, and the ant is biting the bee and the bee is biting the flower, and if that shocks you then I’m sorry.

You have never had to struggle to put food on the table, let alone put food on a plate and try to balance it on a spoon until it gets to your mouth.

You will never know what it’s like to work on a farm until your hands are raw, just so people can have fresh marijuana. Or what it’s like to go to a factory and put in eight long hours and then go home and realize that you went to the wrong factory.

I don’t hate you; I pity you. You will never appreciate the magnificent beauty of a double rainbow, or the plainness of a regular rainbow.

You will never grasp the quiet joy of holding your own baby, or the quiet comedy of handing him back to his “father.”

I used to be like you. I would put my napkin in my lap, instead of folding it into a little tent over my plate, like I do now, with a door for the fork to go in.

I would go to parties and laugh—and laugh and laugh—every time somebody said something, in case it was supposed to be funny. I would walk in someplace and slap down a five-dollar bill and say, “Give me all you got,” and not even know what they had there. And whenever I found two of anything I would hold them up to my head like antlers, and then pretend that one “antler” fell off.

I went waltzing along, not caring where I stepped or if the other person even wanted to waltz.

Food seemed to taste better back then. Potatoes were more potatoey, and turnips less turnippy.

But then something happened, something that would make me understand that this is no game. I was walking past a building and I saw a man standing high up on a ledge. “Jump! Jump!” I started yelling. What happened next would haunt me for the rest of my days: the man came down from the building and beat the living daylights out of me. Ever since then, I’ve realized that this is no game.

Maybe one day it will be a game again. Maybe you’ll be able to run up and kick a pumpkin without people asking why you did that and if you’re going to pay for it.

Perhaps one day the Indian will put down his tomahawk and the white man will put down his gun, and the white man will pick up his gun again because, Ha-ha, sucker.

One day we’ll just sit by the fire, chew some tobacky, toast some marshmackies, and maybe strum a tune on the ole guitacky.

And maybe one day we’ll tip our hats to the mockingbird, not out of fear but out of friendliness.

If there’s one single idea I’d like you to take away from this, it is: This is no game. The other thing I’d like you to think about is, could I borrow five hundred dollars?

(Author’s Note: Since finishing this article, I have been informed that this is, in fact, a game. I would like to apologize for everything I said above. But please think about the five hundred dollars.)