Sailing to Byzantium

Did You Ever

2011-11-18T13:26:00.001-05:00

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

2011-09-20T17:33:00.000-04:00

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

2011-09-11T12:21:00.001-04:00

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

2011-09-07T11:54:00.001-04:00

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

2011-09-04T15:41:00.003-04:00

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

2011-05-11T15:37:00.002-04:00

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

2011-05-09T16:30:00.002-04:00

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.

May 4, 1943

2011-05-02T16:44:00.002-04:00

I know that most of the people who stop by this blog are searching for information about W.B. Yeats, so as Yeats headstone says, “Horseman, pass by.”

On May the 4^th I am 68. I have been very fortunate to live such a life. Those who might know my personal history would be surprised that I would come to that conclusion. My life has been turbulent; I have had my fair share of a wide range of experiences that are unavailable to most people and unappealing in many ways.

Raised in the city and in the country; lived in ghettos and projects; beaten by gangs and engaged in gang fights; rode with the motor heads and had many heartbreaking and passionate romances: fought the demons that the children of alcoholics live with and behaved toward others both abominably and admirably. I have had many failures and moments of personal triumph.

As George Cluny said in a recent interview, “Getting old is not for pussies.” He is right; the psychological effects of knowing you may have one more day, that you no longer can have dreams of alternative careers and that your experiences in life are going to be limited – is a gruesome thought. Looking back and admitting your mistakes honestly to one’s self is just as painful.

The aged creep among the living – barely visible and mostly irrelevant, yet their personal turmoil, the riotous emotions elicited by the reality of soon ceasing to exist is never far from conscious thought. For some, senility conquers awareness and their interior dialog no longer speaks to them so they no longer suffer the agony of regret and the absence of a future.

Think of all those who ever were – the billions of dead; and how many are remembered – perhaps only the villains and kings. Soon you and I will join the countless unknown dead. No one will remember that we ever lived past perhaps two generations of your children’s family and then only when an old picture of you emerges from a pile of junk stored in some attic. If the picture survives for a couple of hundred years, it will become the picture of an unknown man or woman. More than likely all the pictures you cherished will be lost or thrown away by future generations.

The sadness that accompanies one’s thoughts about the end of life is unrelenting; I have begun to notice the small things in life – not because of any aesthetic significance attached to this or that object, but when compared to the eternal darkness of non-existence – every moment of life become something special; every visual experience is one more that will be lost to eternity.

But as King Lear said, “Let not women’s weapons water drops stain my man’s cheeks;” we have to suck it up because there is no escape - neither fee nor fortune will absolve us of our genetically programmed destiny. Again to quote Lear, “You think I’ll weep? No, I’ll not weep. I have full cause of weeping, but this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, or ere I’ll weep.”

Well he was a better man than I because the thought of degrading into sub-atomic particles and joining the universe’s endless darkness and frigidity is enough to make you weep.

But on the positive side, I lived during the best of times; growing up as a teen in the 50s – I saw Elvis perform and stood no more than 20 feet from him for 2 hours in 1956. There were only 4,000 people there at the Tampa National Guard Armory – where I also saw James Brown, Little Willy John, Brenda Lee and many others.

I have met many celebrities in my life, made love to many beautiful women, had a lot of fast cars, and tasted the euphoria of many drugs. I worked as a consultant so I never had a boss to report to or a schedule. I’ve made good money for working 6 months a year and spent most of my life in front of small and large groups of people – something that not only gives you confidence but encourages arrogance as well.

I’ve been to most of the states and many foreign countries – and still travel internationally – because I still have to work because I was a real estate developer who was “all in” when the recent economic unpleasantness struck. I had to reinvent myself at age 65, going back into consulting after many years removed from that field.

But I have the resilience evident with many children of alcoholics; I had to look out for myself and my parents from an early age – going to the dentist by myself at age 9 and enrolling myself in a new grammar school at age 10 because of mother was indisposed.

Thankfully, I was born with some intelligence and street savvy so I see reality and understand our species; I don’t resort to the spiritual escapism of the masses – who think God guides their son’s performance on the football field, but was on vacation when 20 million civilians died during WW II (40 million died altogether; I assume because they did not pray good enough).

It is no mystery why most people need to believe in an afterlife; only the strongest of us can face the reality of eternal nothingness and still function normally. Living without hope is a hard row to hoe.

It took me many years to figure out that politicians are all corrupt at some level and the world works through the manipulation of power and money. It is best to stay out of their way; better still, in carping obeisance to their moronish reasoning, send your son off to die in some shithole country that will revert to radicalism as soon as we have spent every penny in the US budget and we have enough dead patriots.

Visit the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington, and explain to the 58,000 dead men why we are now doing business with Vietnam and allowing Vietnamese immigrants into our country. After all, most of those dead men were drafted and thought the war sucked but religious zealots and political fag-hags supported Nixon until the end. They were sent to die for no good reason and now everyone has forgotten as we send our troops to the Middle East to die for no good reason.

The great thing about being 68 is that you can say what’s on your mind with indifference to what people think about it. You don’t like my opinion – I don’t care. I may be dead tomorrow and I don’t give a shit. Not that I ever did, but I had to act like it when I needed to be accepted to earn a living in this sanctimonious theocracy we call a democracy – which is Latin for government by the cognitively disadvantaged.

You must think I am miserable; no, quite the contrary. The ability to see reality and face it like a human devoid of the superstitions that horrified our species several hundred thousand years ago, makes you human. Each human is a part of the greatest wonder in the universe; we are miracles of chance and particle organizational patterns. To degrade that wonder by saying some condescending super being dained to give us life if we agree to live it according to his dictates, is to declare yourself less than human – incapable of understanding the wonder of your own being.

It is the highest manifestation of natural selection to be able to discriminate the real from the imaginary - and, to think for yourself while the sheepish masses bray and cobble as the minions of political sociopaths; it is liberating to face reality.

There are a lot of people writing about aging these days, and invariably they make interesting jokes about the idiosyncrasies of thought and action that accompany the long walk to the hangman’s noose. They have no choice; no one wants to hear about the reality of facing one’s demise.

To know life as it is without having to disguise it with personal rationalizations or mythical imagery and symbolism – is wonderful. I have a wonderful wife, nice home, nice income, wonderful job, and a few good friends. No matter how sentient you are – how sensitive your aesthetic and emotional development – death is the irrevocable end of all ends.

It is interesting that death is a fate that faces all humans; it has not served to unite us. It is universally denied or replaced by visions of eternal bliss. How can a planet of 7 billion people come together when they have divergent rationales for death and its meaning? For some, the death of others is assurance that they will go to their heavenly paradise.

I will end this rant with a poem (I was a Lit. major and actually reread the old poets on occasion) from Ernest Dowson – a minor poet who fell in love with a 13 year old girl who threw him over for a waiter which prompted him to drink himself to death at the age of about 33.

"They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for awhile, then closes
Within a dream."

Or for those of you who prefer a more direct representation of the realizations of death:

“And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.”

The Best Tourist Attraction in America

2011-01-28T16:36:00.003-05:00

Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Many people travel to the United States to see the sights; I think many really want to know who we are and what is it about this country that engages the world so totally. If you have traveled to other countries, it becomes clear – and the reasons are much too numerous to list in one blog entry.

Many Americans don’t know who we are; they think we are about democracy and capitalism and freedom and a quality of life that is hard to match anywhere else in the world. I think we are all these things, but we are far greater than all the shitty rhetoric that politicians recant like automatons.

We are a long line of a particular genetic strain of individual – people who did not like to be pushed around and told what to believe. Our progenitors were an elite group of risk-taking independents – rebels who were unwilling to be stepped on.

The first people who came to our shores showed personal bravery, determination, independence, and will. There is no way you can compare them to the people who stayed in their home countries with petty despots and kings and demagogues.

The only tourist attraction in the United States that really tells people who we are can be seen at the changing of the Guard at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. For 74 years, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year our honor guard of elite soldiers has been guarding that tomb.

It is a profoundly moving experience that in several minutes emotionalizes one’s understanding of what the US is all about. Along with many other men I wept as I watched the soldiers following a routine that never varies and that is conducted irrespective of the weather.

Intellectuals and urban dwellers often find it easy to listen to the beguiling words of the ideological diplomats from other countries. When communism was in its heyday, many American intellectuals and artsy-fartsy liberals found rationalizations to support the obviously inhumane and impractical preaching of communist dogma.

I would bet that even today, the brightest instructors at our liberal universities find logic to support nihilism and the radical revision of our constitutional architecture. It is always fashionable to distance one’s self from the rabble that follows constitutional precepts without questioning. One wants to be elite you know.

City dwellers – the urban detritus that volumizes our country – are not what this country is about. When you go to the farms and rural areas you meet the people who matter. These are the people who join the service and die and come home in caskets. Their families are proud of them and honor them as patriots.

If the United States were under attack from a foreign invader, the first people to wave the white flag would be the Wall Street crowd – who would have figured out a way to reach a compromise that would allow them to keep making money.

The last person to die would be a man or woman in a double-wide somewhere in Alabama. They would die with their rifle in their hands and they would die believing that nobody was going to take their country away from them.

The effete snobs and situational patriots in the city would rationalize their behavior for the sake of survival. I might be one of them - unwilling to die to the last man to preserve this country and our way of life. No country boy would make that concession. They would not construct some petty rationale for saving themselves. They would die without question – as they always have.

You think I am exaggerating and preaching a biased personal attitude that favors the poor or the lowest socioeconomic group for a personal crusade I’m on for some distorted reason. No, I’ve just been around for a long time and I grew up with country people and with city people; with intellectuals and with those with average endowment.

I also know that I’m over generalizing and that there are notable exceptions to just about every observation I have made; but, that does not detract from the truth of what I am saying. Anybody who thinks the United States can be brought down had better know who we really are. And, it ain’t the Washington, D.C. crowd who flex the truth to adapt.

If the Chinese invade Alabama, they better be ready to kill every man, woman, and child in the state, because not a one of them is going to surrender; and, even if some suited zipper-head signs a formal surrender paper, whatever foreign power takes over Alabama should know that they will have to fight the rest of their lives – much like we are having to do in Afghanistan.

If they never saw the beaches of Tarawa and Iwo Jima – strewn with thousands of dead soldiers – from small town America, they are missing a basic lesson about American tenacity and will. I am not myself personally brave, but I thank God that I live in a nation that is overpopulated with brave men. I see them in airports and talk to them on planes; I admire their personal bravery and their dedication to our country and their unwillingness to be persuaded that nationalism is a bad thing.

Undoubtedly, you think I am some kind of pro-military nut; no, I just remember what it was like to be bullied and I watched others bullied. Any bully – a person, group, institution, or country – will back off if they know that you are willing to fight them to the death – even if you lose; they will leave you alone. Intellectuals can always find a way to rationalize allowing bullies to have their way – as many countries did with Hitler.

My simplistic vision of America is a country that will fight until the last man is dead to preserve our way of life. Our willingness to do that ensures that no one will ever want to pay the price to try to take over our country. Not to mention that we have nuclear weapons and we will use them; of course, our noblest intellectuals have some really good reasons why we should destroy all our WMD and take guns away from our citizens.

So if you want to get the spirit of America and you only have one place you can go, skip the Lincoln Memorial (though it is beautiful) and watch our well trained average soldiers honor their dead – and in so doing demonstrate the will of the American people to fight to preserve the best country on the planet.

I would also catch the Silent Marine Drill Team if you want to see something that will give you goose bumps. Every branch of the service has dedicated well trained men and women. The Marines are a bunch of guys who have willingly joined a branch of the armed forces that is unafraid – and they are proud to give their lives for our country. The Marine Corps alone makes me proud to be an American.

Watch this video; if it screws up Google the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and watch one or more of the videos. It will make you even more proud to be an American.

Giving Back

2011-01-24T18:07:00.003-05:00

I am apparently becoming a curmudgeon; I have all the symptoms. Discussing life itself with an old friend’s son elicited some interesting verbal behavior from me that I often suppress - because I am talking with other older people who get depressed when you do an executive summary of what it has meant “to be” over a long period of time.

For most people, life and people and psychology and the world in general are a complex subject that is highly variable – and, the variability is beyond any root-cause analysis model to which they have access. I, on the other hand, believe that the complexity expressed in the behavior of others is easily patterned if you begin with the proper etiology.

If you agree with natural selection and the selfish gene, and you recognize that your verbal and non-verbal behavior is encouraged or discouraged by the way people respond to it, then there is a lot of clarity that can be derived from informal observations of the world around us.

As wandering individuals, we hopped down out of the trees and did things that led to food and procreation. When we began to group together to maximize those outcomes, our lives became more complex because we had to coordinate our behavior with others. Our territoriality and aggression (required characteristics when food and procreation are desired) was repressed and sublimated to minimize conflicts with members of our groups.

So we sublimated our libido, our aggression into more stealthy, socially acceptable methods for obtaining power and subsequently sex. Power, and money, and sex; look at today’s society and evaluate the behavior of politicians, celebrities, and business leaders. Do you see any commonalities with our behavior 2 million years ago?

Confusion about humans is bred in the refusal by many to accept that we are animals; once that fact is accepted, then our animal behavior – which has been consistent over the millenniums - is more understandable. Our emotional behavior is more complex due to its origins in the endocrine system, genetics, structural cerebral anomalies, biochemical variations among individuals, and highly unique learning and development histories – that is, widely varying contexts for pairing our personal feelings with other people’s verbal behavior and other environmental phenomena.

Politicians are people who want sex, power, and money – and, they will do all manner of things to get it. Your welfare is a straw man for camouflaging their real motives and rationalizing their lust for power.

Part of my discussion with my old friend’s son elicited a few comments about a common theme that is a core pedestal on the footstool of political correctness that has brain-washed our population into moronic automatons who have cast out all common sense in the service of social acceptance. That common theme is about “giving back.”

Most Americans don’t know who our first President was much less any history of our governments’ behavior toward – “the people;” you know, the voters who put these power-hungry sociopaths into office. We pay taxes to the government and they support the people that we vote for with services that we pay for.

The military-industrial complex and wealthy corporations stack the deck so that the naïve public who believes all the rhetoric (to them politics is like soap operas; dramatic acting) they hear because they can’t think for themselves and pretty much follow the pack. They love all the noble words because if they become cynical then they lose hope and have to accept the fact that our lives are manipulated by the wealthy and special interests that represent the wealthy. They own our ass.

Who the hell are you “giving back” to? The government that is populated with sociopathic politicians and brain-dead bureaucrats? People have forgotten that there was once this thing called “The Draft;” government enforced slavery that required that young men either go into the military or go to jail. If you refused to go into the military then you face social ostracism, shunning, and jail time.

A bunch of bilious old men and women ran the draft and they had few tracks in their heart for students, final exams, and the details of your life. If you go to Washington, D.C. and see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, please remember that about 95% of the men whose names you are reading, the men who died horrible deaths in the jungle far away from home and family – had no desire to either be in the military or to fight in Viet Nam.

The government and our society forced 53,000 young men to die against their will; 500,000 were mutilated or disabled. The war that college kids rebelled against for which the cops and National Guard beat and jailed them was not something anyone with intelligence supported. The brain-dead, uneducated, and thought-deprived ruralites and city dwellers are always supportive of anything an authority figure espouses because they are the type people who would rally around Hitler.

Do you think the 52,000 dead men would want to “give back?” I can understand the desire to give back to someone who has helped you during a time of need or to a friend who has inconvenienced themselves in many ways to help you in the past. But who the hell are all these people giving back to. Are they helping poor disadvantaged people because they themselves were born into affluent families, or got expensive scholarships because they were smart?

You may think I’m being smart-assed or cynical or ungrateful; I’m being sincere. I grew up in projects and worked my way through school and missed exams because the draft board wanted to give physicals and watched friends go to Viet Nam against their will and die at 19 years old. To whom am I supposed to be grateful and want to give back?

A bigger question is, to what degree has religion – the sub-culture of authority and mind-control that is supposed to be looking out for the welfare of people - helped. They supported slavery and racial prejudice and the draft. Doesn’t any of that create any cognitive dissonance in the goose-stepping younkers who bully our society to read prayers or be shunned?

Man, the animal, has a long way to go before the morality and ethics of humanism infiltrates our social conscience. We are not yet human – with the capacity to think apart from authority and the massive mind-control inherent in our politics and educational system. Let old men send the young to die while their parents praise the felonious sociopaths who have been elected to power; while they praise the authorities who wash their brains clean of common sense and the courage to say they will not allow their sons to die in some shit-hole in the Middle East because some business relationship between the Bushes and the royal families of Saudi Arabia can be furthered.

If you want to “give back,” force the felons and narcissist and arrogant liars that have been elected to do something for someone other than the rich contributors who manipulate them.

Fred

2011-01-23T15:24:00.005-05:00

I have not blogged in quite a while; the spirit that drives the inspiration to talk about one’s thoughts and experiences has been side railed by pragmatisms of an economic nature.

But today I had lunch with an old friend’s son, and the experience of talking with him about his father rekindled memories that encourage me to talk about Fred and his passing.

Yes, Jay’s father died about 12 years ago and I had known him for about 30 years at that time. He was far brighter than me, and I have always been drawn to highly intelligent people not only because I learn something from them but because they usually understand both what you are saying and also what you are trying to say.

I could talk to Fred about episodes in my life and he would often – much like an psychoanalyst – rephrase and reframe what I had said into a summary that allowed me to make sense of my chaotic and riotous blathering. He was a good listener. But he would not sully a good observation with advice. We both hated unsolicited advice. Assholes do that.

My relationship with Fred lasted a long time in part because we both listened to each other; I mean really listened – not to judge or recant some pseudo-moralistic pronouncement or condescendingly postured pithy wisdom – but to share the experience and understand the experience and empathize about the experience.

Both of us had worked in psychiatry and in the mental health field, and we understood counseling and facilitating and how listening was used as an essential tool in the helping professions. But, we were both sensitive to and cynical about the supercilious use of counseling tactics frequently evidenced by the practitioners we had exposure to.

Neither of us could tolerate the posturing arrogance of superficial people posing as psychiatric professionals. Most sentient beings can read body language and sense underlying intentions in those affecting some practiced presentations of declarative sentences – the object of which seems to be controlling the perceptions of others.

Good friends don’t have to do that because their friendship is based on a few basic precepts that define it. With Fred and I it was. . .

I know who you are, what you’ve done, your values, your shortcomings and strengths; I know where all the bodies are buried and I accept all this.

I don’t give a shit what you do – murder, theft, philandering, whatever – and I will be your friend in spite of your indiscretions.

You have my support; I have your back.

You never have to lie to me; lying is for strangers and acquaintances and everybody else in the world who wants to manage you, influence you, or judge you or change you. I like you the way you are.

Before you blow your brains out, you have to get my approval because I ain’t going to take it well that I have to stay in the surrealistic, unimaginably irrational hellhole by myself.

Fred contracted cancer without my permission and subsequently had a good excuse to leave, but I was never cool with it and he knew that. So I would visit and sit with him during the last few months; we would go to old haunts and drink beer and smoke a cigarette and look around and say something and watch people and traffic.

We would sit quietly – feeling no need to say what we were thinking because we knew each other well enough to know what each of us was thinking about what was happening and how we felt about it. We knew that after the first death there is no other; we knew the magnitude of infinite darkness and accepted the reality of endless sleep and cosmic dust.

The anesthetism of philosophical claptrap and existential persiflage in the face of one’s imminent demise is . . . well. . . imminent. So the bullshit stops and you fight reality with companionable silence. You want current experience and real time reality to be pleasant; negative talk has no place. So you drink beer and smoke a cigarette and watch people and say something funny about something strange that you just saw and your time together is pleasant.

Fred died like a man; he never whined or complained and I was never patronizingly helpful or sympathetic. That is all negative stuff and it leads nowhere and he knew it and so did I so we drank beer and smoked a cigarette and watched people. He showed strength in passing that I admired at the time; I kept thinking how I might be working the crowd for sympathy or using my situation to manipulate people in some way; I mean, you have tons of leverage that you can use.

Thankfully, I still have a male friend with whom I have a similar relationship and so I am not left completely defenseless against the interpersonal superficiality that haunts male friendships. If I told Will that I murdered someone today, he would probably say – “What did he do to piss you off?” Or, “I hope you did it in a way so that you ain’t gonna get caught.” And that would be that.

I still remember Fred; he would like being remembered. If he were watching me now and reading this, he would just smile. He would not say something bullshitty like, “Gee, that’s great man; thanks for all the good stuff.” Fred was not an asshole. We both hated assholes. He would just smile.

When people were talking bullshit and holding forth and epitomizing assholishness with their behavior in our presence, Fred and I would just look at each other and start giggling. We knew what each other were thinking which was- “What and asshole!” Damn I miss that kind of rapport.

Glee Gone Wild

2010-10-20T15:04:00.004-04:00

Seniors don’t get much respect; and I think one reason is because some of them can’t shut the hell up and sit down. I can talk about old farts, because I’m 67 and regaining respect for the aging process is one of the purposes of this blog.

Aging is a harrowing experience – filled with sinister epiphanies and morbid insights; it is clarifying and cleansing and cathartic – if properly lived. The desire to cling to life – even lives not worth living, is a signature stereotype of oldsters. Very few have the courage to overdose once they see that life is not worth living for them.

I understand that rap, and nudism, and violence, and degeneracy are pervasive; and, at face validity they appear to be degrading our morals and values…a descent into social chaos. We are all appalled by the changes evoked by each new generation of humans; most appearing to be a devolution of our humanity.

But for God’s sake quit whining every time some teenager chooses to pose nude or seminude on a magazine cover or within an article. Kids are rutting like stoats at age 13; you remember 13 – in your era men were marrying girls that age and younger; sometimes girls they were related to.

Moral outrage makes old people seem like subhuman zombies; the living dead screaming about Jesus and the poor children that are being used by the cruel media. Shut the fuck up! Go pray or something. Play some shuffleboard or work in the garden or gum your food. If you can’t contribute something besides outrage – because it ain’t like it used to be, keep quiet.

Some of us are trying to grow old and maintain our humanity. Most of you don’t know what the fuck is going on in the world anyway. You see everything through a distorted lens of outdated standards and self-serving mores. It’s bad enough that you elect every brain dead politician that can spout platitudes and vomit hypocritical clap-trap about how much he loves Jesus while he cuts off your Medicare and serves the rich.

The media stirs you up; the media loves to hyperbolize the antics of celebrities. The media lives by the feud; they love to stir the pot and will do or say anything to create outraged readers. And no strata of our society is as quick to outrage as the senior set.

The war fought by your generation that saved the world has been over for 65 years; yet you continue to vote for morons who send young men to die to support the military-industrial complex. You wanted to kill young students that protested the Vietnam War and you whine about the anti-Americanism of anyone who does not support our presence in Iraq.

Nudity is the least of this world’s problems. War mongers in suits waving the Bible and the American flag are what you should be worried about.

When the Truth is Found...

2010-10-09T15:28:00.000-04:00

Why do I look back at the late sixties nostalgically? Was it because I was in my early 20s and I was naïve and romanticized everything? Grace Slick and “White Rabbit.” Everybody was so intense and committed. Turmoil and uncertainty but plenty of drama. Everything was about sex, but everybody agreed to pretend it was all about personal discovery and relationships and love; it was all spiritual… you know?

The social upheaval and the constant anticipation of something meaningful that was about to happen. Fear of being drafted, dying in an unpopular war and college kids making things happen. Chaos and ambivalence evolved into clarity and the polarization of pro and anti-war factions. The young against the establishment. That is the way I saw it, but I am not a social commentator and politicians are just below the Mafia in my estimation; undeserving of too much reflective energy.

I am morose these days; in my youth I was snappy, sarcastic and arrogant. Now I read the obituaries. I think it is a good thing to understand death, particularly the arbitrary nature of it. In the obits, you see teenagers killed in accidents and you read the lame narratives describing someone’s life and the inconsequentiality of the deceased’s existence screams out at you.

Why can’t life be a continual fulfillment of the promising opportunities of Grace Slick’s seductive tones – imagery that foretold the prospect of drugs, sex, and rock and roll in Haight-Asbury? T.S. Eliot said, “I can show you fear in a handful of dust,” and I’m thinking I can get started on a lot less, maybe a pinch.

I keep having this fantasy about moving to Ireland and spending every night at some pub swilling beer and engaging in blubbering sentimental dialogue with people who for some reason like each other. I guess it comes down to that – the connection. I had some connections when I was young working in psychiatry and partying with people who shared the anxieties of that occupation. Great parties where everybody was tipsy and let down their guard to reveal their mutual need for human contact.

I know why zombie movies are so fashionable these days; because they reflect the emotional detachment that seems to pervade our society. I don’t think there will be a rerun of the summer of love. I think obsessive nostalgia is a symptom of regrets and a clear perspective on the part that luck plays in creating an environment that leads to self-satisfaction.

Some people appear to be able to wipe the slate clean – to live today without remorse about “what could have been”; I envy them. The reflective life is doomed to lead to depression…except for the gifted – those people who had educated, mature parents who earned a good living and facilitated your development. The kids that played on the high school football team or distinguished themselves in academics and were socially popular.

The kids that went to Vanderbilt and the University of Virginia Law School or Harvard Law and started out with cars and houses that the rest of us never have the financial grace to reach. The bitterness that accompanies an unloved, abusive childhood never leaves.

One can be proud to have made chicken salad out of chicken shit; to feel that one exceeded one’s early expectation for one’s self. That is something. But even if you have had the cars and the houses and the women – for some of us, there is always an empty spot where self-approval and peace should reside.

So I am vulnerable to nostalgia; to the small emotions engendered by moments with Gracie Slick and others who were place-holders for memories of times past when small emotional victories occurred and momentarily overrode the bad memories. Age intensifies that has to do with the past and the future. One has a voluminous past of emotional garbage and a limited future in which to supplant them.

The Pavement Grey

2010-08-27T15:29:00.003-04:00

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

W.B. Yeats

The fact that I have not written anything in this blog for 2 months is no accident; it is the logical extension of self-expression – where self-expression is selfish expressionism. One-hit wonders are no accident either; similarly, someone had something to say and they said it. And that was all they had to say.

The people who always have something to say – the columnist and pundits and commentators – usually don’t have anything significant to say. They find some hook to exploit – some faddish prejudice or scandal the public is obsessed with – and they repeat it over and over using different word combinations so as not to appear repetitive.

I find something to say every day, but it is usually just griping and whining about the same old things as they are expressed in the behavior of public and private figures. The greed, corruption, power grabbing, duplicity, mendacity, sociopathy, ignorance, stupidity, and evil of our species is played out on the world stage constantly.

The spirit-destroying aspect of aging is that you have lived through enough events to have a perspective on humanity; and, what you see is not originality, or evolution, or moral development. What you see is the same human behavior expressed thousands of years ago expressed in the context of the present.

When one finally sees past the proselytizing rhetoric of religion and politics and conspicuous selflessness – to the core of intentions and the real objectives…this is the end of hope. You may say that this kind of pessimism is unwarranted in the face of so much good and so many good people.

Unfortunately, they are the exceptions – and rare. And, you might think that with this kind of outlook I must be tragically unhappy. Oh no; I feel fine. I still appreciate the beauty of our planet and the splendor of this miracle we call life. Our presence in this cold, forbidding universe is quite beyond comprehension.

I like eating, drinking, fornicating, the pleasure of observing my fellow creatures, the euphoria of drinking and any substances that happen my way which accomplish the same end. Good movies express and explore the emotions that differentiate us from inanimate objects, beasts, and the psychopaths who run for political office. I love the feelings that a sentient being can experience.

Knowing what we are without sugar coated homilies and fabricating postures is illuminating and cleansing. I observe those around me who search for grand mysteries behind which to hide the truth and the true reality with sympathy. The Pavement Grey leads everywhere and nowhere, and that is the riddle which defines us.

Consciousness Rediscovered

2010-06-03T17:22:00.002-04:00

Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both.

Being alive is easily taken for granted. If I stop and think intensely about the state of “being alive,” it is a wondrous thing. In an endless, dark and forbidding universe of destructive energies, the magic of life evolves from the unfathomable analogues of matter.

Even more amazing, the mindless continuation of self-organization perpetuated over the millenniums creates entities such as ourselves who in turn create complex entities—unimaginable, given the context of our origin.

Our creation is beyond imagination, yet we habituate to our state and lapse into a trance of benign indifference to the sanctity of being alive. I have to admit it is difficult to savor and fully enjoy the process of living. If you focus on the instant, the momentary sensations of being and the magic of consciousness, you are soon distracted. It is impossible to stay within the moment—to revel in the joy of being.

So you forget all that and take out the trash or pay a bill or worry about something—you are easily sidetracked into the mundane issues of keeping up your body and its primal needs—part of the debt we pay to our evolution.

Each passing second is another precious moment lost to us. The more I concentrate on my living state, the more dreamlike it seems. In a physical world where the governing principles are scaled beyond comprehension, where parallel universes are rationally considered, how can we know what we are?

We should be aware of, think often of, the treasure that is ours so briefly. John Keats who died at age 26 focused his brilliant sensitivities on his imminent demise in an Ode that summarizes—for me—the transience of our lives and the tragedy of our passing. It captures the emotions of inestimable loss.

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone,
Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang'rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise -
Vanished unseasonably at shut of eve,

Death's Dream Kingdom

2010-04-21T09:03:00.004-04:00

My dreams have become vivid, emotional images – surrealistic scenes – rambling scenarios with faintly recognizable characters. These unreal stage plays – artifacts of dysfunctionally hardwired neurons – are curiously generative; my brain seems to have its own identity and it is creating scenes and emotions that both reflect experiences and create new experiences from which new emotional complexities are evoked.

I see myself dying, but on that bed I am both observing and observed – by the same entity – me. I have profound experiences and images of a woman that at once I identify as the counterpart of my being – my soul…a word with which I am completely uncomfortable, but in this dream its reality…its existence as part of my being is unquestionable. I recognize that this is the person with whom I have never connected, but have yearned to know. It is a curious, transformative insight…a manifestation of what I know that I am; and, I know that I have hidden this perception from my conscious mind.

As I am dying, all the observations of the soon to be deceased are perceived to be…and I believe they are ultimate realities. Consciousness has no purview; thoughts, feelings – realities cloaked in the veneer of defensive distortions – tip-toe out from beneath the veil and are rendered unto me in disturbing imagery.

It is all at once mysterious and frightening; clarifying and confounding. Unfortunately the things I see and the accompanying feelings allow me to know what I have denied; I don’t really know myself. I am suppressing – what? Thoughts…ideas…longings…behavior…? I don’t know. But the reality of the dream points to a life of experiences without lessons, thoughts without meaning; a free-floating persona that is the product of a delusional consciousness.

The dreamer talks to me in symbols and images that carry the lessons and truths of a lifetime. I wish I could talk to me when I’m awake; I wish this inner-thing that knows me well could show me the path ahead. I am desperately afraid that the life for which I was intended will pass me by, and I have so little time to discover what little truth is available to me.

Exerunt

2010-04-02T08:49:00.001-04:00

Not many of you who land on this blog stay here; you leave so quickly you would think that a blog dedicated to reflection, introspection, and the search for an elusive “nowness” epiphany is not only disinteresting but also toxic. I know most of you land here because you are looking for information on W.B. Yeat’s Poem, “Sailing to Byzantium.”

Interestingly, this blog – like Yeat’s poem is about aging. Physically, intellectually, and emotionally Yeat’s found himself out of synch with the world…the culture – that bore and reared him. “Sailing to Byzantium” is not a rational analysis of the evolving values and social structure of his time; it is an expression of his emotional conflict – a spiritual and intellectual duel with reality.

Everyone goes through a similar, personal alienation whether they recognize it as such or not; the world that shaped them evolves and is transformed. Soon we all become strangers in a strange land – distressed and astounded that somehow all that was familiar and comfortable about our operating reality is rapidly fading – replaced by values and behavior and symbols and images in which we have no referents.

The brutish opportunism of the young – their deliciously lecherous concupiscence and unrepentant decadence – engenders jealously in the aging. The aged often delude themselves with petty rationalizations about the joy of escaping “the tyranny of the hormones,” and regale the pleasures of distancing themselves from the many turbulent and chaotic joys and sorrows of youth; but, I think it is a fiction…an act that protects against the unfulfillable wish to return to another time.

Life is a raucous emotional journey; Yeat’s “Sailing to Byzantium” presents poetically what many of us feel but cannot express so nobly. The feeling- people engage glimmers of solidarity with Yeats – perhaps without knowing exactly what it is about the poem that compels them. The young have no frame of reference or context available to them to experience the poem; they will memorize its explication from a critics review.

Experiential blogs of value are defined by the vulnerability and emotional truth expressed therein – the personal honesty that is so ambivalently and inconsistently, and often reluctantly articulated – without any attempt to edit-in public acceptance or to apologize for contradictions in behavior and beliefs.

I am astounded at the number of people whose genetics and development alienated them from their feelings and isolated them from vulnerability to the pendulum of alternating dread and euphoria that marks the emotionally sensitive’s stream of reality. The Twitting zombies of this era are all talk – lips without sound, words without meaning; the constant chatter of noise that forestalls true engagement. “And he said, like…”

As Yeats headstone exhorts, “Horseman, pass by”; of what interest is the ramblings of some aging man foundering among the rubble of his years? Some fading intellect that missed opportunities, made legions of mistakes, and is diminished by the guilt of obdurate misbehavior.

Unreal City

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet

T.S. Eliot

Karma Amongst the Ruins

2010-03-31T14:18:00.003-04:00

All the happy people I meet – I mean the blithely optimistic, the insanely cheerful, and those who are looking forward to death gleefully because they are going to be walking with the angels – seem to be modestly endowed intellectually. Everyone I know that qualifies as “bright” (I recognize that is an ambiguous descriptor) are moderately depressed, a bit cynical, and searching for…something.

I say searching for something, because they are not sure what they want or need to make their lives “meaningful” (another ambiguous word) – something to give them hope. They smile like vipers at the country club and their congeniality defines their public persona; but secretly, they are lost.

I blame the media for a great deal of our free-floating anxiety, ennui, angst, uncertainty, pessimism, cynicism, and alienation. It took me 50 years to figure out that the nightly news is largely fictionalized entertainment. Everyone on television is smiling and looks to be relatively sober – although I can tell when someone is zonked on oxycodone or vicodin.

Yes, irrespective of the smiling, the message is somber and unprepossessing; we are going to be blown up by terrorists, the government is spending our money faster than we can make it, and most of our congressmen are drunken felons with bankruptcies and documented misdemeanors on file.

The “intelligent” try to sort through all the misinformation in a secular way – searching for accurate information…reasoning through the misty muddle with logic. This leads to headaches and episodes of situational depression and anxiety. The non-secularist (anyone who believes some higher power has control and is creating all this mayhem and carnage for some ultimate good) don’t have to put themselves to the trouble because they have a superordinate certainty.

I think it is interesting that the media has started showing brief segments on “making a difference,” and “random acts of kindness”; segments about the good things being done by kind, generous, compassionate people. Unfortunately, unless you had your head all the way up there for a good while, you can’t help but notice that the % of humans involved in proactive, positive behavior is very small.

My own modest perspective acknowledges the wonderful people – many of whom I have met – but I am overawed by the unimaginable plethora of evil…the hate…the genocide…the homicide…the human-to-human bestiality and savagery…the greed…the malevolence…and the general mean-spirited unfriendliness of the masses.

I constantly reevaluate my core beliefs in light of the constant stream of experience and information I collect, and I find that my conclusions about our species are unimpeachable. We are in fact clever monkeys – late from the trees to the plain – and the stealth and murderous craftiness that allowed us to evolve and annihilate competing species is alive and well in our genetics. And the media pretends to wonder why people do drugs, drink, fornicate illicitly, and pursue adrenaline–pumping pastimes.

You have to be capable of distancing yourself from the human condition to sleep at night. Escaping from reality is not only a reasonable objective, but it is admirable. The government, politicians, and the clergy eschew euphoria as an unnatural state – evil and antithetical to society’s best interest. Society’s best interests seems to be best served by a Stepford-like obedience to the best interests of controlling institutions – the ones that keep us in line…working, making babies, and paying taxes.

I know, you are thinking that I’ve painted a sinister, threatening, and denigrating picture of life; well there is salvation in growing old. My friends and associates and acquaintances are confounded by the mantra…the attitude that dominates my thinking at this point in my life: I don’t give-a-shit. Iran will nuke its neighbors; Obama’s health care law will lead to the Apocalypse; the planet is warming…as Vice President Cheney said, “So what?”

I turn 67 next month; I had a 64 year old neighbor who died in the doctor’s office with a massive coronary. I bet he “cared “about everything…and look where that leads. Once you get over 65 the world does not notice you; you are invisible. Okay, then I will be invisible. World, do your worst. Shot, hack, bomb, defraud, starve, legislate, and condemn. Spend a few billion more tax dollars putting 75 year old people in jail for smoking marijuana. Good for you.

I don’t care.

Busted Flat in Byzantium

2010-03-21T10:43:00.002-04:00

Yeah…I just got back from the Middle East…mmkay. Let’s talk about jet-lag…yuh know. Comatose in a 5 day workshop; dizzy, feeling faint…and listening…listening to the prattle and precious comments of the attendees…mmkay. Thinking if one more person says something dumb I’m going to throw myself out of the window.

Left the US with a respiratory virus and jetted my way into zero humidity and several days of sand storms…just the thing for respiratory distress…oh yeah. Dubai is not a tourist attraction – the tallest building in the world notwithstanding. It is a large city with unbearable traffic and continuous dust storms.

I considered buying a pack of Marlboro and ending it all with complete respiratory failure, but with my luck I would just get hooked on smoking again and return to the US to face a slow death of carbon monoxide poisoning. Then I went to Doha, and then on to Kuwait. They all look the same – the big difference is that in Kuwait people drive like they are in a Grand Prix at all times.

The jet-lag never let up. Do you know what it’s like to have to sit and smile, keep your eyes open and act like you give-a-shit when someone is telling a long-winded personal story that features themselves as the star; and then they tell another and another and you begin to think it is quite possible for someone to be talked to death.

One entertaining event on the trip was my flight from Doha to Kuwait. There were 100 Egyptians, 100 Pakistanis, 100 Indians…and me. I’m serious…I was the only Caucasian on the flight. This flight had all the makings of a very persuasive deodorant commercial or a plausible rationale for never getting on an airplane again. I was verging on respiratory failure at this point – virus, sand granules, and now molecules of unearthly origin – unimagined in your poor philosophy – assaulting my olfactory system.

You never see any women, because they are all wearing black curtains over their bodies and there is no booze. Interestingly, at the Mc Donalds in Dubai terminal #1 – where I was stuck for 2 ½ days after Delta cancelled my non-stop home because of a mechanical – the French fries were better than those in the US, because they still use hydrogenated fat to fry them in. They don’t need no trans-fatty-acidless oil to fry their potatoes.

On one of these days, I wandered around the terminal for 16 hours – moving from coffee shop to coffee shop – trying not to get rousted, because my early flight was cancelled and the next flight was 16 hours later…mmkay. You may say, well buy a book and pass the time. Well, this is one of those occasions where you just have to be there to realize that your state of mind in this context is not conducive to focusing on a mindless book and reading. You’re tense…you’re tired…you’re depressed…you’re bored…and it cost $3 a minute to call home and hear a friendly voice…or connect with Delta’s Special Service desk to try to get some special treatment because you are a Million Miler, a Platinum Medallion, and a Sky Club Member. This is “Up in the Air,” type stuff; I’ve flown 56,000 in the first 2 months of the year and it’s still hard to get an upgrade.

You would think that in these hostile environs – in a place that resembles craters of the moon with highways and luxury automobiles – that expats and fellow travelers would gravitate toward each other; would seek the familiarity of talking with “folks from home.” You would be wrong. Expats in the Middle East – from anywhere – the UK, the US or wherever, are unanimously cold and distant.

I’ve traveled to the Middle East 4 times in the last year and seen hundreds of Americans and Brits on airplanes, in malls and on the streets. No one has ever even said hello. It is a curious phenomenon; it is counterintuitive. When I was in Nigeria – I saw one or two white people in the office building where I was meeting with local management. They never even give me eye contact.

Dubai (The Arab Emirates), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman are trying to create tourist businesses. They want visitors; but, when it is widely publicized that visitors have been imprisoned for things like having .004 gram of marijuana on their shoe (as in Dubai), it spoils any fantasies you may have about rocking and rolling in Dubai. You can be arrested and held indefinitely for a perceived infraction (a violation of Sharia law); and, there is no habeas corpus. You are guilty until proven innocent.

If you travel to the Middle East, be sure and avoid the months of June through September. In the summer, the temperature can reach 125-130° Fahrenheit during the day…mmkay. You can’t breathe or do anything else – except stay inside. It awakens an appreciation for the Arabic people who lived in the desert – in that heat – and managed to survive.