A Refurbished Part for the Engine

I have never had the imaginative cues that would have me starting a book nevertheless a saga, I have never done much writing at all other than journals and these few unscripted scribbles, so I don’t know the rules or guides for starting a new chapter, finishing another. About all that I know is intuitive aided by the thoughts of just a few authors and a friend or two.

I know intuitively that I have just completed a chapter of what voyage.

Without resorting to those rules and guides for either novels or non-fiction writing I figure that a chapter has characters whose role grew, diminished or evaporated through the circumstances that the protagonist experiences and how the characters may fit and be important, appropriate or irrelevant. Out of the weather of events and fates the main character emerges into the next chapter a different person, one who is more fitting to his fate. Routes and passageways have been explored carefully so as not to damage the keel although the loss of a little hull paint is no great price as it will be replaced at the next haul-out.

It is not that there are or ever will be winners and losers, instead there is a crew who may or not be aboard for the whole voyage. One plans then begins a cruise with the idea that the plank owners, the original volunteers and the paid crew will be there at the final port; there is no reason at all to believe this, it is a wish coming from inexperience and love. At each port along the way there is the opportunity for some to leave and some to sign on; there is languishing on docks ahead a few whom I have no reason to choose or be chosen because they are as yet unmet. There may or may not be berths open at that time, and once leaving port it is rare to return to sign on someone who had been left on land.

Yesterday I was informed that the engine needed a new auxiliary part and that it would lengthen the time I can be at sea and maneuver me more easily through squalls; this addition came as a complete surprise to the engineers but it will be installed shortly.

Right now the pilot is obtaining charts of what opportunities have just been offered by the current repair, the charts he thinks he needs are now being drawn as the previous are now out of date and will be stored away in the map drawer. Like all charts they provide information, but no chart, no meteorologist, no pilot knows all that lays just beyond the horizon—and that uncertainty is what makes everyone anticipate the long cruise. The pilot has a few more lines from squinting in bright sun , he is not as quick to bend or haul a line as he had been, but this is of little concern because the tackle we carry has been proven and maneuvers well practiced.

The boat will make a test run of but a few days to check out the maintenance and fitting of the rig while thinking again on those new charts that are arriving piecemeal from the cartographer. The anticipation, that anticipation, tomorrow’s anticipation sparks the crew-ready to embark and hoist sails.

Another gray day

A gray morning following the gray day of Thursday, the forecast for today is gray; does this morning reflect a mood or does it cause it?

If the day was bright and warm, if birds were singing and people were out and around, doing spring things in the warm sunlight; if that was the day would a mood be different?

Both of the above are examples of my superficial mood, one that has no more substance than the underwear I put on today and the underwear I put on yesterday, or that I will put on tomorrow. I have automatically put on the mood of this gray, cold morning, I have let what is there determine what is here. I have forgotten earlier comments about the depth and layers of our being, that I am more than the superficial and shallow; when perhaps I am not so much.

There is nothing going on right now that is bright, nothing that will bring excitement or surprise; isn’t that the definition of a ‘gray day’?

I know that what I have just written is wrong. We are in a gray time, the only brightness in the sky comes from fireworks that last ten seconds before becoming a wisp of dirty smoke. The forecast doesn’t have promise, and that’s the way it is. Perhaps here is an opportunity to see the difference between a series of gray days and the defeat of depression; a chance to realize again that we are more than bright days and sunny beaches, that we have always been more than that.

I hope that beautiful weather will come soon, no one will enjoy being out in it more than I will; but if it doesn’t come soon or at all we will not be changed, the only difference will be putting on long winter underwear or light and roomy boxer shorts. Nothing more important than that.

Cause of emptiness

When I feel empty I know that it is because I live in a universe where I am the center, all revolves around me…Today I feel that emptiness.

I acknowledge the feeling and the cause, don’t dispute either, and yet can’t go that next step of somehow stepping from the center of the universe, becoming more of an observer, I am stuck here feeling pretty lousy.

In my dream last night I was carving a human figure that ended up looking more like the shape of a mummy than a man with outstretched arms; there was no features on the head, not much of a head, no arms nor legs; I had been carving a large bar of Wisconsin Parmesan style cheese. The reason for the cheese is that I bought some recently, it was about six dollars a pound cheaper than authentic Parmesan, the only problem with the cheese is that it has no flavor nor odor, no character. But it carves easily and without surprises.

So what do I make of this featureless man, with neither odor nor flavor, armless and legless; just an ingot of nothing much at all?

As I write this I am playing Bach’s English Suite and drinking strong brewed Garuda Blend from Peet’s; Bach had more humanity than almost anyone who ever lived, Peet’s Garuda made double strength is not to be ignored, but that ain’t it is it? Trying to make something of myself won’t work by using stuff from the outside, no matter how strong they are in themselves.

Somehow I have got myself into a position where I believe that nothing matters unless it refers to me, I have been here before and so recognize the hole I am in.

I went and visited Bert yesterday; it was good to see that his dentures have been refitted, previously they were loose in his shrunken mouth, they moved about, we were both embarrassed. Now there is the dignity of a secure mouth. His medication was working pretty well, no pain, and he didn’t smell badly. There is indignity in sitting in a loaded diaper. We sat side by side in the hallway, listening to the aide doing morning activities, watching the other residents being wheeled in to hear the morning’s news being read to them, listen to the weather report, prepare to watch an old movie; we sat and watched the parade go by. Bert said that his daughter wouldn’t be visiting this weekend, that may or may not be true. He apologized for not keeping up his end of conversation, he does that most every time. We sat calmly, nodding, smiling, a few words going back and forth between us.

All I know is that Bert has some recognition of me, doesn’t know why or when, just that I am a friend; Bert is my friend, is a good friend of mine, has been for about four months now—Bert can’t remember my name, being a hospice patient means that he will go soon.

Maybe reliving the visit is what I needed to knock myself out of that phony position as the axis of everything. I feel the sadness of the upcoming loss of a friend, a more appropriate feeling than I had earlier.

Yes, this is a better place to be than where I was.

It is sad to lose a friend, each time I visit Bert something more of him has gone, has died.  I don’t have many friends, not many at all, to know that one of them is about to die is sad.  For much of my life I thought that sadness was something to be denied, to be replaced with happiness, that was wrong.   A friend is dying, it is fucking right to be sad.

Saying goodbye gently

It was a good thing to do on the last day of the year, visit Bert in the nursing home on the day when the year is wrapped. Bert is wrapping his last chapter, though his memory is lessens he is coming to terms with it.

The city is quiet on this first morning, a couple of inches of snow and the general holiday combine on this blue-gray morning, a quiet, gentle morning.

Bert has both colon and bone cancer, he might also have lung and heart problems, is incontinent; the specifics of his condition are off limits to me a rule that doesn’t concern me. There is a scale they use to measure the level of life, 100 is someone who walks around and takes care of business unaided, 0 is dead, Bert was at 30 a couple of months ago, he has slipped since then. I probably wasn’t supposed to be told that, but what the hell.

He asked for a drink of water, butI am not allowed to give him one; all Ted’s liquids have to be thickened, thickener is added to his cup of water to prevent it going down the wrong way and choking him. Another reminder of his situation.

I have been told that bone cancer can be painful, and I ask Bert each time if he is in pain, he never is. Whatever drugs he is on seem to take care of the pain without making him drunk; but he is dying.

He is dying, there will be a time when I won’t visit him, that time isn’t far away. We had a nice visit, he thanked me for coming, couldn’t remember my name or if I had visited previously, a benign smile, maybe it was the medication, maybe it was the natural process of coming to terms with saying goodbye.

Goodbye is a quiet activity, it is the moments after the visitor’s car has left, the time when everyone has gone and the cleaning up is begun.

I did tell Bert a joke that made him laugh: “Bert I have a confession to make to you, sometimes I feel as if I am a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.” He got the joke immediately, the nurse who was nearby didn’t, she seemed uncomfortable hearing it; a dying man had a laugh, she might welcome that instead of acting otherwise.

I have shut the work radio off, bought groceries for a couple of days, sorting and put away clothes, papers, the empty box from the new tv, books and memories; putting on the shelf all those things that are not being used today. Playing a male Welsh choir recording, remembering my father’s memory of hearing the miners on their way to work before dawn, coming home after sunset, singing as they came and went in the dark, Sunday was their day off, the day to see the sun.

Saying goodbye is a quiet and gentle thing, but it brings great sadness, I am very sad this morning, and know that out of this sadness will come joy, later on today.

Slicing through the now

Yesterday I received two different comments that disturbed me. They disturbed me in that good way, put me just somewhat askew, and I thank both of my correspondent friends for sending them to me, they were just what I needed. I have spent much of the last day trying to nudge my gyroscope back on course. The first comment was in reaction to a shot I’d made about the U/Us, that she felt ‘at home with this bunch of seekers’. The second comment had to do with the birds at the feeder experiencing the joy of being in the present to an extent that man cannot. (I hope that I have transferred both ideas in the correct spirit.)

In 1960 I went to Europe on an ocean liner, the Q. S. S. Arkadia, quadruple screws was the reason for the Q. S. S.; this was still the standard method of going overseas, we were 7 days Montreal to Bremerhaven, with a couple of intermediate stops.

I liked to go to the bow and look down to where the prow cut the water, fascinated by looking slightly ahead at the smooth surface that will be cut and disturbed by this monster shoving through. Tens of thousands of horsepower drove us at 25 knots through cold dark water; the North Atlantic Ocean in October is cold, the water under our keel several miles thick; the contrast of this great ship as just a speck; the little curl of the bow wave and the wake changing nothing of the 2,000 fathoms.

Perhaps a foot or two in advance of the prow a small hill of water formed from the standing pressure wave of our progress, in a way this bump was as looking into the future, the present was where the steel split the ocean, the mound was just prior to that. Looking into the future is impossible but here it was happening, and it was irrelevant, by the time the hill of water was recognized it was under us, gone under foot. Seeing that short distance meant nothing, and once it passed under us it meant nothing. One couldn’t contemplate that patch of water rising to meet us, it would be gone by then.

The only thing that mattered was our moving through. The present is only important because it is now become the past. It is the becoming that is important to our being. One can focus on the wake of the ship, as would a conservative; one could look a mile ahead, as foolishly optimistic as Mr. Micawber; but it is where that hull disturbed the surface of the great ocean that one knows excitement.

To say that the birds feel joy is to misunderstand what joy is, it is because the present passes us and we know it, that is what makes us special, we know that what is is now gone, and that there is more coming. We know grief, despair, surprise, we feel joy in all of it.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense, it did for an hour or so at 5 a. m.

I am not sure that I feel less disturbed than I did, but I sure feel alive, feel the joy of sailing the deeper ocean.

I find nothing enlightening in organized religion: Some guys sitting around a table, deciding a program, that doesn’t enlighten in any way. The only thing holy about that scene is the word hot-stamped on the cover of a book. What I get from the business of Jesus, Judas and the Romans is that Jesus intuitively knew that to transcend what came before he had to feel the depth of scorn and rejection, feel the impersonal indignity of torture, feel the despair of certain and prolonged dying. Jesus had to feel the knowledge that God was not about relieving that pain, it was then that he could and did leave port on a new course. His boat then sailed a different sea. It is now our opportunity and obligation to gain a grain of wisdom from that unique example.

Describing a doldrum

My sloop was a 23 foot Pearson Ensign , Seablade, she was pretty, she was slim, she was more stable than I , and she was fast, she was the boat that taught me how to sail at the age of fifty.

I decided that I had to go somewhere in Seablade , from a here to a there: charts were purchased, distance was respectable, food and fuel on board the opportunity to test my new skill; I left Belmont harbor to head north 150 miles.

But there was no wind, there hadn’t been for a day previous, and there wouldn’t be for a couple more, there was no wind to define how I should sail my pretty wee sloop. I knew something about sailing, not enough about meteorology.
I sat, I dozed, I read, I boiled water for tea with my new little stove, and I continued to sit. The lines slapped against spars, the fittings jangled discordantly from the shivers of air that came out of all quarters, I sat offshore and waited. The boat had an old 5 h. p. Evinrude that could have moved me north, but what was the point of that! I was out there to sail with the wind, against the wind, to make distance because of the wind, without wind there was no point of it all. Eventually I motored back to Belmont Harbor and went home to bed.

It is now the day before Christmas: I am not scheduled to work on Monday, gifts have been sent to grandchildren that I have never met and so can’t imagine their laughter, there are no friends or lovers from that previous life with whom to share memories, no memories worth recalling, everything on my bookshelves is known too well, no book reviews excite me enough to go and buy. My gonads now squirt out so little testosterone that I am not horny and apt to do foolishness. And yet there is a way in which I am more alive than I have ever been.
There is an election going on here but itt will be the best part of a year before the voting , the current occupant becomes thankfully irrelevant, his evil dulled by the implacable core of the Constitution; the fascists required a worldwide depression to provide their fuel, Franklin Roosevelt required the same in order to give spark to the great programs he set in motion, and Churchill would have been irrelevant without Hitler. Here we sit, this great ship needs to be turned about, but not necessarily today, no captain can mount the bridge with new charts because there is no wind to decide his course.

The old men in the Vatican or Westminster burdened by centuries of heavy robes that muffle farts say nothing that pricks our ears or offends our noses, the spats between fundamentalists and scientists are ones that could have been heard in Newton’s time, there will be no wind from those quarters. The Jews seem to be content with what they have, need no more nor fewer, and so say nothing. Muslims do have to hoist sails, tighten rigging, determine direction; they are relevant because of their number and worldwide distribution, and they are beginning to understand that their sails need replacing, their lines renewed, they have rigging fit for ships that no longer sail, that rot in harbor. I have long felt that it will be a female captain who will become their Luther, their Churchill, their F. D. R., someone who fresh, strong and different, in all the ways necessary.

I sit here just before dawn: the day longer by too few seconds to be noticed, I ate a good navel orange as the water boiled for coffee, the coffee heavy with flavor; but what else is there, what direction or distance should I walk on this winter day?

But the coffee does smell good, I got it just right this morning, 2 scoops of fresh grounds for every 6 ounces of water.

Sitting in the doldrums could be mistaken for depression, in some cases I suppose they are the same, but not today, today the doldrums are just that. Today could be a scene from an existentialist play, the actors ready, sit waiting for a plot.

I could go visit a couple of old guys in nursing homes, they would appreciate it, but they can no longer count days and so don’t know if it has been a week or a day since my last visit,. And to both I must say my name, each and every time. I go today, I go tomorrow, what difference?

Hilary, Barak, Edwards or Romney, what decision?

Go to the Episcopals, the Catholics or the Baptists for Christmas Eve ceremony, what makes me decide other than the music? Going to the Unitarian/Universalists would be like drinking warm water instead of coffee for breakfast.

I need wind, but not wind that is stale, I need fresh wind, something that gives me cause to get up and check my rigging, set my course; otherwise I will sit listening to the maddening clatter of rigging against the spars, arguments of gulls over scraps.

A juicy navel orange, a couple of cups of strong coffee.

Warm Wet Winter Weekend

I’ll try this again, after having erased all that I wrote for the last twenty minutes I’ll see if I can put down a few words that express where I am this morning.

I was dissatisfied  with the way I left the ‘acceptable’ piece that I wrote yesterday, it wasn’t adequate to explain the different layers that there are in a person,  that at bottom there is something that is just right, is acceptable, something is not affected by what goes on in life.  The story of Jesus going up the hill with his cross as an example of this. Buddhist study of mindfulness as another example.   Luther’s proclamation that I can know the divine as well as anyone, and so can you, as a further example.

There must be dozens more, but the message is always the same.

I am not sure that I am satisfied with leaving that idea right there, but it is all that I can come up with this morning.

Here is something else, lighter and fun:

¢ ‡ µ  € Ø ¡ ¿ ¿ ¿
I just learned how to put down here those characters that are not on the keyboard:

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html

There is the website that lists how to do it; there is one thing to remember when you try this, you have to use the keypad on the side of the keyboard, the numbers up top don’t work.  I have all mine on a mousepad from the LRB, but this is the first time I took a look at it.

To get back to that other thing for just a line or two:

This might be the time of year when it ain’t always easy to separate the joy of solitude from that of pure loneliness, there are all sorts of suggestions and diversions offered, but occasionally it is going to be damned difficult, sometimes it will be impossible not to feel loneliness; perhaps that is why I have tried to explain a basic truth of existence, perhaps the basic truth.  I will use it to help myself during those lonely moments, to get back to that place where solitude is wonderful.

It’s time to go and sort out that bird feeder again, perhaps think of buying one that isn’t so prune to clogging.

Drippy, gray weather

I have the desk light turned on even though it is past sunrise,I can hear the sound of meltwater dropping from those heavy pads of snow that sit on garage roofs, see tree trunks, charcoal brown, against the grayness all around.

The weather person on last night’s news said that today’s weather would be “miserable”, an adjective that caught my attention; the sky is gray, the temperatures above freezing, but nothing is miserable, except perhaps what was in that guy’s mind. The weather is whatever the weather is.

Someone asked me last week what it was like to do hospice volunteering, my answer was that a person had to be comfortable in one’s own skin-accept that I am acceptable. As I remembered this conversation I understood that what we offer the dying person is the reminder that he is acceptable as is. It is an ultimate truth.

Brought up to be judgmental meant that I was discouraged from the concept that I am acceptable as is, that others are also not acceptable as is, that love was conditional. As a result I grew up to have a hardened case of major depression, one that began as a child and lasted until just a few years ago. I felt the need to fall in love with women who brought judgment to their relationships; believed that it was my right and duty to judge others.

To get rid of the depression it was necessary that I learn that I am acceptable as is, and a hard damned lesson it was; I fought that concept– gagged, spat, swore, did everything but hold my breath in my refusal to accept that I am acceptable as I am, but in the end I couldn’t refute it. It was as turning an ocean liner around at speed.

There has been a group, groups, that promote the idea that one is defective, that one has inherent guilt, that one cannot approach the divine—this is wrong. How could it be that I am not acceptable? What separates me, or any of us, from being simply animal is that I know that I am, I know existence and the end of my existence. It would be an oxymoron to state that know I exist means that I should accept guilt, believe that I am defective, that I cannot know what others have known of the divine.

Being mindful of my being is the fundamental and most powerful notion there can be, and with it comes acceptability.

I can’t say it stronger than that; it is when I denied that idea, that I was miserable. It is when my friend Joe couldn’t buy into that idea that he had to hang himself on a rope in a stairwell. I was going to come up with other examples but I realized that anyone who reads this knows dozens of examples.

Old Bert comes out of his dementia for a minute or so, the first thing that he does is to ask my forgiveness for not being able to hold a good conversation with me. As if I was sitting with a dying man in order to have polite conversation. I suggest that we just sit and watch the passing parade: ladies with their walkers, nurses going after one patient then another with medications, cleaners doing the incessant cleaning that keeps the place from tipping into nauseousness, just enjoy the parade, just be.

There are a number of definitions of God, the one I like most often is “the ground of being”: it encompasses acceptance, infinite love, mindfulness, and just being about the day’s business.

Before I turned on the gadget to write this I lay in bed, framing a few phrases, remembering some things I wanted to tie together here, and feeling that this is an idea that I would like to roar from the rooftop. Luckily I can sit inside, drink strong coffee, use a keyboard instead. Now that I have vented I can finished getting dressed, go for a long walk, get on with the day.

Winter storm in Chicago

This morning the temperature is a few degrees above freezing, the rain comes down instead of snow or sleet, the sidewalks have slush but not too much ice on them; not such a bad day for a long walk.  The bird feeder must be frozen or clogged again this morning, I can hear birds nearby, but none at the feeder.

The freezing rain and the anticipation of that iciness slows activities, makes one appreciate being inside and warm, more staring out the window than is usual.

I did make a trip out to the nursing home yesterday, it had been a week since I last saw Bert, at that time he was caught in a cycle of incoherency, it was impossible to reach him; yesterday was different, he was talking with another patient when I arrived, he recognized my face, no memory of my name, said that he remembered me from the past, and that this was the first time I had visited him in the home.  He was in a friendly mood. My visit was cut short when someone came to take him down to the dentist, his dentures need to be relined to fit his shrunken mouth.

I have no academic knowledge of dementia, what I know is from visits and the occasional comments of health care workers; with Bert there are cycles of clarity with no short term memory and then periods where he is fixed on an idea, locked in a circular effort of attention, when reaching him is impossible.  Instead of being alternatively frustrated or thankful when visiting I think that it is better to accept how he is, be friendly, listen to make sure that he isn’t trying to communicate, and know that I can return another time.

There are dozens of birds sitting in the yard, sitting and waiting like a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds.

The lesson I get from experiencing Bert’s cycles is the reminder that everything is changing:

Women I loved fervently are now strangers to me.

My sailboat Seablade is now a series of wonderful memories.

A daughter who was always given unrestricted love now rejects me.

Flag-waving atheism was precursor to an epiphany.

Fine tools kept sharp now sit for years in boxes.

I haven’t fucked a woman in over a decade, haven’t met one that I wanted.

And this day is as good a day as I have ever experienced, and I had thought that of other days.

I have another fellow to visit, Ben, he is not a hospice patient, just a guy with a bad leg and dementia, getting old in a human warehouse.  That fact is something I have to learn to accept every time that I visit him, warehousing is a tough one to accept, a sad fact.

I continue to work on my piece about creation, was going to try and put it on here today, but a new quirk came to me, a question: Were we human before we had language?  The fundamentalists will freak out at that one, that is if they were ever to read something other than what was commanded of them.

It is time to go outside to clear the bird feeder.

 

Writing about the creation

For the last few days I have been working on an article about “creation”, I’ll publish it here soon, I hope.

It goes slower than I had thought because there is tension within me: between wanting to show how I have sorted out the idea of creation and the presumption that this is too large and important a subject for a layman to tackle. This isn’t stopping me, but it is making me go through a number of iterations to get it right. And it is a wonderful thing to have going on in the back of ones mind as the other stuff of the day comes along.

There was a program on Charlie Rose the other night about the aging mind, or that was part of the program; if a person would stretch to look at the big ideas that are completely personal the mind would be challenged in a healthy way. No one knows more about the nature of God than I do, or you do, or anyone, it is intrinsically personal. No one knows more about the creation of the universe than I do, or you do, one’s universe is intrinsically personal. Good and bad fall under the same umbrella. It is fun to wake up wondering just how an idea can be put into words that someone else might find interesting.

There is also the benefit that I can write about writing.