koans with teeth

Every now and then, there may be a news report of a man-eating tiger in some rural part of India. Such incidents, which understandably put villagers in fear, seem to have similar characteristics from one to the next. If I recall correctly, the tigers are frequently described as being slowed by age or infirmity and so pick on some slower prey. Also, they attack their prey from the rear, leaping on its back and inflicting what wounds may be necessary to provide a breakfast, lunch or dinner.

A passing brush this morning with the Mumonkan and the Blue Cliff Record, two books of koans and commentary that are part and parcel of the Zen Buddhism I once signed up to follow, put me in mind of the tigers.

Koans are intellectually insoluble riddles aimed at demonstrating the limitations of the smart-as-a-whip intellect. An example: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Or, "What did I look like before my parents were born?" By focusing whole-heartedly on the issue, the student is invited to see a wider, clearer world.

At one time, I was dying to be given a koan. I wanted to be more closely aligned with the Zen group to which I belonged at that point. I wanted to be thought fierce and sincere. If a teacher gave me a koan to work on, it might indicate my advance upward through the Zen ranks. Eventually, I was given one and set to work holding it in my mind and butting my head against its impossible, immuring nature. I tried and tried on my meditation cushion. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to ingest or care about it. What a chickenshit!

I was a bad Zen student: A koan taken from a revered text simply did not bang my chimes. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself of the serious and deep meaning ... I remained unconvinced. I was a bad Zen student, which, from today's perspective, is a pretty good Zen student.

How long did I keep all this up -- this comparing myself to a revered text and its conundrums? I don't know, but eventually something just gave up the 'revered text' perspective. If I didn't give a shit, I didn't give a shit. If I was scared of what I might find out, well, hell, I was just scared. If the wise men who compiled these wondrous texts were wise, well, I couldn't help that or imagine I might match them in some shiny, esoteric wisdom. They were dead and dead people have a tendency not to argue.

My problem, among others, was that I could not bring my heart to bear. What someone else called important simply did not imply anything I considered important... sort of.

The tiger was creeping up in the grass behind me ... careful, lethal ... but for the moment I was held in thrall to the 'right' way of doing things, the Zen student way, the best-advice way I imagined I must take and yet somehow couldn't.

And then one day, a koan pounced without any particular effort -- leaped on my back and proceeded to make a meal of me. The line might be old and infirm and slower than it once was in the predatory pecking order, but here was a koan that sank its claws and teeth into me.

Try this on for size: "I love you."

As far as I knew, the line had no place in the revered texts. It just hung out in my mind like some saucy teenager leaning against a lamp post, smoking a cigarette, asserting its power without ever moving a muscle. There was no solution and no escape.

Not that I could 'solve' it any better than I could 'solve' the sound of one hand clapping, but still, this koan was close to the bone -- a real marrow-muncher. Fuck the commentary. Fuck the answers. Fuck everything and anything else. "I love you."

No, I never did become a good Zen student and tigers, man-eating and otherwise, still scare the crap out of me. But I did get some hint that when anyone bleeds, the blood is red.

No need to seek out or memorize or mythologize or aggrandize koans. They come creeping and tip-toeing until, until, until ... well, even an old fart still has claws.

assisted suicide

In the past two days, I have taken two of the pain pills I hate taking because they make me dumber in the aftermath than I already would be. Perhaps the pill popping made me sympathetic to the 104-year-old Australian who traveled to Switzerland in order to end his own life.

“My life has been rather poor for the last year or so. And I’m very happy to end it,” Goodall said Thursday in the room where he died shortly after.
The British-born scientist said this week that he had been contemplating the idea of suicide for about 20 years, but only started thinking about it for himself after his quality of life deteriorated over the last year.
He cited a lack of mobility, doctor’s restrictions and an Australian law prohibiting him from taking his own life among his complaints, but he was not ill.

 Assisted suicide is illegal in Australia. Switzerland takes a different view. And after a couple of pain pills I hate taking, I bemoan the idea that death is somehow the "ultimate sacrifice" or otherwise crazed. Gautama the Buddha, in one translation of the "Dhammapada," is said to have observed, "All fear dying/All fear death." I wonder if, given the latitude, he might likewise have said, "All fear living/All fear life."

How I wish assisted suicide weren't such a hot-button topic. Those slip-sliding into pill-popping and doctors' prescriptions and endless possible 'improvements' know the weight and know the freight. Things hurt more and other things are less efficient and on top of that, those with whom to share a good dirty joke have often already "joined the majority." Stuff is taken away and taken away and taken away until a little control over this life/death is about all that's left.

No, I am not thinking of running out and slitting my wrists, but I damned sure will continue to lay claim the option ... and understand a little of what the elderly may gnash what's left of their teeth about.

The Swiss federal statistics office says the number of assisted suicides has been growing fast: Nine years ago, there were 297. By 2015, the most recent year tabulated, the figure had more than tripled to 965. Nearly 15 percent of the cases last year were people under 65 years old.

When it comes assisted suicide and those whose nostrums seek to short-circuit the activity, all I can think of is Clint Eastwood's crabby line in "Gran Torino:"

"Get off my lawn!"

airheads unite!

Too busy to take part in social intercourse? Google has got you covered with something called "Smart Compose," an internet application that makes coherent what you're too busy to actually email to all those "friends" you have.

The days of having to think about and physically type out emails is over, at least if Google’s new “Smart Compose” feature for Gmail has anything to say about it.
Much like autocomplete in the search bar or on your smartphone’s keyboard, the new AI-powered feature promises to not only intelligently work out what you’re currently trying to write but to predict whole emails.

I'm sorry, but is this idiotic or is it just idiotic? If social interface is part of the internet promise, how does ducking that interface fulfill the promise? Worse than the idea itself is the deep suspicion that there are actually people out there who believe this shit.

Airheads unite! It might be funny if it weren't so sad. 

 

the wiles of curiosity

It seems to me that younger people lack curiosity. That statement alone should put anyone on guard: Everyone's curious, I imagine, but curiosity has implications, not the least of which is the sub-rosa premise that I-don't-know.

For a younger person who may already be floundering in a search for a well-tailored, savvy persona, not-knowing takes the stitches out of the cloth in hand: I'd rather be smart and knowledgeable and together (and thereby happy or at least look that way) than to be ignorant and somehow exposed as weak.

This morning I wondered where the word "gandy" came from in the descriptive role it played among the "gandy dancers." Gandy dancers were usually poor people who needed work and thus hired out to the railroad, straightening ties and rails. The group of (usually, but not always) men used chanting as a means of synchronizing their efforts. Blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, newly-arrived immigrants and yes, sometimes even women.

But who cares what "gandy" means or derives from? I care, because the work was hard and men in need of food money for their families found the pay better than in other venues. They actually did something. An "app" had not yet been fashioned.

Some quick research left me with no fixed answer about the word "gandy." And still "gandy dancer" is a descriptive that tickles my ivories. It has a lilt in its step, for me.

I have a gandy dancer's steel pole out in the shed -- bought it at a tag sale for $2 a number of years back. I love the heft of it and the stories it might tell, even if I lack the ears to hear them or the muscle to wield it. A great tool for leveraging heavy rock, for example.

But who breaks a sweat any longer? Yesterday, my younger son got a part time gig with a landscaper who needed some help. My son came home refreshed from the outdoors, the air, the movement and, dare I say it, the sweat. He said the walkway he was helping to rip up prior to laying a new one was made largely of brick and so he had no need of a gandy-dancer's pole, which I described despite his lack of curiosity.

In the news of late, U.S. President Donald Trump announced yesterday that his country would back away from a nuclear agreement that had been reached with Iran. The treaty, which lifts U.S. sanctions against Iran in exchange for a downsizing of nuclear experimentation, is reported near and far as having been observed by Iran. Inspectors have been allowed on sites. But Trump called it a bad deal and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu called Iran a liar and ... well, even the first Bush who became president made it clear that he wanted to bring Iran to its knees. I suppose the uptick in potential violence in the Middle East will distract voters from the tax burden that was levied in December and benefits the companies that contribute to Republican causes.

If Israel can have nuclear weapons and the U.S. can have nuclear weapons and India can have nuclear weapons and Pakistan can have nuclear weapons and North Korea can have nuclear weapons ... on what grounds does one sovereign nation tell another to knock off the nuclear weapons? Weapons are the last option in the diplomatic arsenal, so ...?

The U.S. does not keep its word and as a result distances itself from allies which helped to broker the deal with Iran. The U.S. does not keep it's word.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the landmark nuclear accord with Iran, abruptly restoring harsh sanctions in the most consequential foreign policy action of his presidency. He declared he was making the world safer, but he also deepened his isolation on the world stage and revived doubts about American credibility.
The 2015 agreement, which was negotiated by the Obama administration and included Germany, France and Britain, had lifted most U.S. and international economic sanctions against Iran. In exchange, Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program, making it impossible to produce a bomb and establishing rigorous inspections.

Donald Trump is a man whose curiosity leads him to wonder about money, and not so much about those who will need to pony up.

Why is it that the longer anyone lives, the more shabby money appears?

... but that's just my question, the question I am curious about.

I wonder if we might reinvent the woodpile behind which dads used to take their erring sons for a good spanking.

Oh wait ... spanking is out of fashion and besides that, it might invoke a sweat.

a little James Taylor

Ran across this again today and lolled in it:

bling ... KA-CHING!

"... a three-tiered concoction that gleams with 19,000 gems — 18,000 of them diamonds, along with rubies, sapphires and emeralds. It was a gift from Queen Isabella of Spain to the 19th-century Pope Pius IX, who wore it at Christmas Mass in 1854."

There is something utterly human and utterly grotesque about the upcoming exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Entitled, "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination," the show plans to display just some of the riches the Vatican has accumulated through the centuries.

To hear Jesus tell it, there is something attractive about modesty in wealth and acquisition. On the other hand, what I understand to be the wealthiest corporation in the world -- the Vatican -- has had a lot of practice in the art of advertising and wooing those who may admire even if they cannot own.

Is there a well-regarded spiritual persuasion that does not have its bling? I doubt it: Like fly fishing, there has to be something noticeable to bite down on. Parishioners may bridle at the two, three, four Rolls Royces gleaming in religions' garages, but, too, there is admiration, there is something to notice ... if this guy has cars, he must have money; if he has money, he must have believers who give; if he has believers, the belief must have some basis in social agreement, which is sometimes used to mean "the truth."

"The love of money" may be the (Christian) root of all evil, but 'evil' is the only ground from which goodness stands a chance of rising up ... except of course that it is also the ground from which more 'evil' can spring. It's a mind-fucker all right.

Referring to God, American comedian George Carlin noted and it's hard to disagree, "He (God) loves you and he NEEDS MONEY...."



Sometimes I marvel at the good fortune of those who thought they might give religion a whirl and then found one that demanded their own, very individual, practicing effort. You can't bullshit a practice that is practiced whole-heartedly.

Not that I would mind having a Rolls Royce, of course.

Nobel candidate lost behind the radiator

I realized this afternoon that I had forgotten -- though I recognized I was under no duress to remember -- the meaning of the word "furbelow." But worse than the forgetfulness was the recognition that I no longer could think of anyone I knew to whom I might turn and say, "What does 'furbelow' mean again? I've forgotten."

Perhaps, if I had known what the word meant, I could have returned to work on my magnum opus, "Furbelows and Leukocytes -- a Brief History." A real page-turner and probable Nobel candidate whose early draft I last saw sitting on a radiator top.

And yet another speculative bit of whimsy: Is it true that newborns exiting the womb into a world in which they are destined to join a "minority" of some sort are seldom if ever granted the capacity (as every other individual is) to be a flaming asshole? The gentle "majority" -- the one so intent on making room for those less blessed by numbers -- couldn't imagine saying that a homosexual or black person or woman or transsexual or any other put-upon group had emerged from the womb with a full-blown capacity to be mean, nasty critters. No, they need to work twice as hard for that capacity as well ... along with all the other, more applauded, abilities like kindness, joy, greed, altruism and whatever the latest majority treasure might be.

Women hit the financial glass ceiling and it's a grinding inequality, but in that ain't-it-awful descriptive mix it is rare to acknowledge that the put-upon one is simultaneously a manipulative bitch and a four-star asshole ... that doesn't play well in the kindly panorama painted and extolled by those who 'care.' Why should such a characteristic be withheld along with all the other benefits that being human bestows? It seems mean-spirited if nothing else.

Yes, Virginia and Virgil, you too have the capacity to be an asshole... a right I would never try to withhold since I need some explanation for your nitwitdom as I see it.

taxing times

The Republican self-congratulation that followed December's passage of a tax bill that almost no one read at the time -- the one that benefits corporations and pays little besides lip service to the working class -- has dwindled... dropped 44% or up to 72%, according to Reuters. The explanation, the GOP avers, is that voters have moved on to other more compelling topics.

Democrats licking their chops at the prospect of winning back Republican Congressional seats in the upcoming midterm elections have yet to sharpen their political spikes and call out their victorious counterparts. I have every faith that the upcoming races are, as ever, just waiting for the Democrats to shoot themselves in the foot.

The most vulnerable Republican incumbents in the tightest congressional races in the November elections are talking less and less about the tax cuts on Twitter and Facebook, on their campaign and congressional websites and in digital ads, the vital tools of a modern election campaign, a Reuters analysis of their online utterances shows. 
All told, the number of tax messages has fallen by 44 percent since January. For several congressmen in tough reelection fights, Steve Knight in California, Jason Lewis in Minnesota, and Don Bacon in Nebraska, messaging is down much more - as much as 72 percent.

Hovering or perhaps even giddy Democrats "received some unexpected help from Republican Senator Marco Rubio last week. Rubio, who is not facing re-election this cycle, told the Economist magazine that benefits are going to corporations instead of employees.
“They bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker,” he said."

Trickle-down economics is once again (how often does anyone have to play this record?) bullshit. But I have faith in ignorance and am willing to guess that Democrats will find a way to squander such political manna. The greater hope lies with "Stormy Daniels," the porn actress who alleges she had an affair with Donald Trump and got paid $130,000 to keep her mouth shut about it. Her lawyer shows all the signs of keeping Stormy -- and by extension, his own career -- in the public eye. In interviews, I think Stormy comes off more credible than her presidential antagonist. Go get 'em, Stormy!

Meanwhile, back in what used to be called the United States of America ....

and the beat goes on

As Hawaii's Kilauea volcano munches man-made structures with a slow inexorability that once again brings another perspective to human life and as Maine lobster prices level out ... even so, the Palais du Tokyo museum opened its doors Saturday to art-loving nudists in Paris.

Did the works of art on display blush to see so much humanity en plein air? Was the exhibit itself lacking in customers and thus manufactured a little off-beat publicity?

Strange, the gimmicks and gizmos that draw the attention and yet have no thought of their own gizmo-itis.... like Louis XIV's probably-apocryphal, "L'État, c'est moi" ... Louis had gizmos up the yingyang... "the Sun King" -- imagine that! I doubt that such a man would give it a lot of thought ... of course he was what was important. Volcanoes are scarce in Paris.

When he was nine, my younger son wrote this poem which I found gizmo-less:

THE VERY BIG TREES

The very big trees
Are in my backyard.
I visit them every day
So they won't get lonely.
They give me shade
And keep me dry from rain.
I can climb them
And get delicious fruit --
The most delicious fruit.                 -- Ives Fisher

Which puts me in approximately-remembered mind of the shepherd's prayer I once read was admired by the Baal Shem Tov:

Dear God,
Though I keep others' sheep for money,
For you I would keep them for free
Because I love you.

Naked is interesting as it bubbles up out of the earth and sea.

spring day

A rainy, May, grey day today. Daffodils, tulips, crab grass and more are making the most of it. A quiet, plip-plop of a day.

Yesterday, my son worked a 12-hour shift as a bar bouncer and his lady friend worked her usual eight as the graveyard-shift nurse at the local jail. There were parades for the LGBTQ community and balloons and no doubt both my son and his lady friend were busy, booze being what it is. The school year is winding down and there are a lot of schools around here.

I still haven't got the computer under my belt yet and it's exhausting imagining I could understand the minds that confected the possibilities. The mind cannot idly wander and imagine when the machine sticks its tongue out. Of all the gears in this car, "neutral" is the most appealing.

German students seek linguistic relief

High school students in Germany are complaining about the difficulty imposed by the English section of the final exam they must take in order to get a coveted university slot.

BERLIN (AP) — High school students in Germany have gathered tens of thousands of signatures in an online petition to complain about an “unfair” final English exam, saying the test was much harder than in previous years.
By Sunday, the students from the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg had gathered almost 36,000 signatures — even though only 33,500 people took last month’s statewide exam.
They complained that text excerpts from American author Henry Roth’s 1934 novel “Call it Sleep” were too difficult and obscure to analyze and asked for the grading to be more lenient this year.

Meanwhile, students in the United States -- a country where English is often spoken -- have no such complaints and, to the best of my knowledge have little or no capacity in any language ... even English. Why English should have become the lingua franca of the world beats the hell out of me. It's irregular, often unpronounceable, spelled weirdly ... the list goes on and on. Americans rarely know another language: As Tocqueville noted, America is buttressed (or hemmed in, if you prefer) by two oceans across which language does not flow freely. In Europe or Japan, kids know another language by proximity or because more is expected of them. America requires no such partnership and it is a great pity ... another bit of ignorance.

It strains credulity to imagine American kids banding together to complain about any foreign-language test they might be compelled to take as a ticket to a college that is positively salivating over the potential tuition income.

A clip from the romcom movie, "Love Actually" has always warmed my cockles (you have to dismiss the ad in order to see the subtitles):

crass times

In a time when money and morality sometimes seem to be holding each other in a DNA-helix head lock, I really cannot claim to understand money. Or don't want to. Or something. Each night, on TV, I watch something called "The Nightly Business Report," a public television wrap-up of the bets Americans have placed on the stock market, which is owned most prominently by the clean-finernails cartel in America. 52% own no stock.

To hear the public television show is to see credulity in action. If it's good for Wall Street with its newly-acquired tax rollback, then it's good for America. The tax bill was premised, as others before it had been, on trickle-down economics, a discredited theory that suggests companies that can keep their profits will plow them into workers whose wages have stagnated since the 2008 Depression (called a "Great Recession"). Contrarians dispute the theoretical trickle-down and say the companies will simply buy back their own stock, thus raising equity for those who do own stock. And -- watching the Nightly Business Report -- that is exactly what is happening. Everything's rosy except for the man or woman whose finger nails are not so clean.

But the TV show is based on credulity -- the belief that if you create nothing, still you deserve to be paid for it because you took the great gamble in a rosy society ... and besides, you probably know your wines. Bamboozling others is considered good for a nation ruled by president who sells away the country's patrimony -- a crass and immoral man well-versed in man's lesser angels. Trump's tax bill plays to the politicians who need the money to get re-elected and are loath to surrender anything to anyone. Where there's money, they surrender like nine-pins.

Jobs were created, but what jobs are they, precisely? The Nightly Business Report doesn't tell me that. It doesn't tell me if the man or woman who had once earned a living wage at one job is now reduced to two or possibly three jobs in an effort to stay ahead of the tax man, the doctor, the lawyer, the banker and the others with their droit du seigneur status. 

Millions have been bamboozled into the 401k trap that urges workers to be "productive," a word used to insulate and elevate the well-off and simultaneously immures the well-heeled. Bamboozling is kool, dontcha know. Bamboozling is the way the world goes around, dontcha know. Bamboozing is the way the 'players' of any consequence play, dontcha know. Wouldn't you like to be as well-to-do as those who bamboozle others? Caveat emptor, dontcha know.

In the "Dhammapada," a book alleged to be the encouragements that came directly from Gautama the Buddha, there are a gazillion translations, but one translation of one verse I always liked (if ill-remember) was, approximately, this:

If you meet no equal or better in this life
Go alone.
Loneliness is preferable
To the company of fools.

The loneliness may be awful in a land that can idolize a Jesus who is merciful and gives what he has to those who do not have enough. Fuck-the-other-guy is at war with treat-your-neighbor-as-yourself.

The crassness of our times and its hungry bamboozlers ... I guess that sometimes I wish I knew more about the savvy world of liars and cheats and moral incompetents. I wish I could find out more and be Vaseline-slick in a world of self-serving credulity. But roughly speaking (though far from perfectly), I have chosen a moral skein and it's too late now to go back. I know too much about shame in a world where shame is sorely lacking.

Am I the better for it? I honestly don't know. But I do know I miss living in a matrix in which to keep a weather eye on the those who may claim to espouse morality. Strange to think: There needs to be a moral framework within which to assess the overreach of morality ... is that true? I suspect it is.

The Hindus call this era the Kaliyuga -- the era in which the shit hits the fan and things come apart, the Iron Age. I hate stuff like that ... a lawsy-lawsy confusion that is helpless and tells (Kaliyuga-like) tales and explanations and nostrums in the face of that helplessness. "It is what it is" ... go fuck yourself!

But I miss decency and a mostly-shared outlook that is not endlessly sullied and impoverished and morally corrupt.

I never did learn to sell out well ... complacently ... forgivingly.

Oh well ... too late now.

If wishes were horses
Beggars would ride.

removing 132-pound tumor

DANBURY, Conn. (AP) — Doctors at a Connecticut hospital say they removed a 132-pound tumor from a woman’s abdomen, and she is expected to recover fully.
The ovarian tumor was diagnosed after the 38-year-old woman reported rapid weight gain of about 10 pounds per week over a two-month period.
The doctors at Danbury Hospital announced Thursday that the five-hour surgery was completed successfully in February after extensive planning by a team of 25 clinical specialists.

squeezing the human heart

There they were, today, one stacked above the other in the local paper ... two stories that squeezed the human heart, at least as I read them: 

1. The tale of the former president of the Massachusetts Senate, Stan Rosenberg, 68, who announced he would resign from his political seat today in the wake of an ethics report that found his now-estranged husband, Byron Hefner, 37 years Rosenberg's junior, had compromised Rosenberg's standing by promising to leverage his (Hefner's) marital status in pursuit of sexual favors from those seeking political assistance. Hefner has apparently agreed to alcohol counseling.

2. The tale of a local boa constrictor shot to death after it escaped from its enclosure and throttled a small dog or puppy while the owner was overseas.

Both stories springboard my mind to the old Meat Loaf song "I would do Anything for Love." ... a long song by a band I don't much care for, but whose theme I admire.

Both stories made me wonder about the back story ... the longing, the love, the blinkers that a love can seem to impose, and the oh-shit moments that are human-human-human. Aging man, younger spouse; slithering pet doing nothing out of the ordinary ... and then, and then, and then ... the longing, loving heart is pierced.

No doubt there are ways to dance and improve and explain, but in the end ... well, what end? Sad to think the boa constrictor missed its meal; sad to think another marriage hit the rocks ....

I would do anything for love, I guess.

serial numbers/dog tags

In an era when numbers and gods can be hopelessly intertwined, I thought of the dog-tag numbers of my old and now deceased friend William B. McKechnie III.

It always amazed both of us that our dog-tag numbers should be so relatively close, one to the next, and that we should become friends during our (mandatory) military service in the early 1960's. And that both or us became German linguists and ended up stationed in Berlin together.

I had thought to look up on the Great God Google whether there were any recollection of my old friend's serial number ... or mine either, come to that. The numbers were things we had to memorize very early in our three-year hitches. Bill's was 14-779-051 and mine was 14-779-240. Like everyone else, both of had two and they were worn around the neck pretty much at all times. They clinked together. If the numbers meant anything, then Bill an I were in a multi-million-man gene pool. Among millions, somehow we ended up friends, working at the same place in Berlin, sharing beer-drinking extravaganzas and equally-extravagant hangovers.

Unbeknownst to each of us, both of us signed on the military dotted line in Florida. Both went to South Carolina for basic training. Both went to what was then called the Army Language School in Monterrey, Calif., which is where we met. But the closeness of our serial numbers was somehow magical ... think of it: gazillions of recruits and yet our numbers were so relatively close ... a mere 189 separating us. The impact, I suspect, was reinforced when I looked out on the various parade grounds were I was stationed ... zillions of young men running around in green fatigues and vastly different serial numbers. What are the odds?

Well I don't and didn't know the odds and the topic is not top-drawer interesting, but for all the seriousness with which we took our serial numbers (you would get yelled at if you could not rattle it off at some sergeant's command), I thought perhaps the Great God Google would have some record or recollection of those 'serious' times. Gods, and perhaps number gods most particularly, have long memories I imagined ... or was it "hoped?"

My search on Google turned up nothing. Whatever seriousness had been seemed to be long since forgotten. Where do serial numbers go when their users are no longer using them? I remember mine and I remember Bill's, but ... where did all that importance and relevance and damn-near DNA go to? And how is it, so late in the game, that I should wonder where my friend's serial number had got to?

white flag

OK, I've pretty much reached the breaking point. I cannot figure out the new and 'improved' Windows 10. It tires me out trying to get what I want. Surrender, though galling, is pretty much the only option and writing is now outside my willingness or ability, this post notwithstanding. It's simply too tiring. Also it is sad-making, watching old habits evaporate ... how can I possibly think when I have to think about this machine?

I hope someone gets some benefit, but I'd be a liar if I said I weren't saddened and crabby.

Perhaps it's a bit like the 60-odd people in Japan whose roller coaster misadventure left them hanging in mid-air for two hours... you want to trust and be rewarded, but the reward is not necessarily predictable.

masses of democracy

In the down time, as the computer-demise extended its reach, I did watch movies. And one that I couldn't stop watching was "Trumbo," the tale of an American screenwriter caught up in the communist scare of the 1950's. The movie had its critics, but the situation of a certain group caught up in an unsubstantiated smear rivets me. The masses were frightened back then that the communists might mole into American culture and upend the 'democratic' way of life.

And that sort of generalized mind set continues to scare the crap out of me: If everyone says something is true then it must be true, regardless of the fact that no one seems to want to dig a bit, to presume innocence, to assess another point of view, to try to winkle out how communism actually upended anything.

Mass opinion is so powerful.

For good.

And for wretched and wracking evil.

(Wo)men are social creatures enamored of themselves: If we all agree, it must be true because I want to be social with you. I want to be part of the group and damn the expense.

I am frightened by group-think and so I watched "Trumbo," warts and all, and was afraid as I wispily recalled the concentration camps created in South Africa, in Nazi Germany, in the United States, and wherever all else an "enemy" was chosen and everyone cheered. After all these years, I abominate the sacrifices the many may make on the backs of the few.

Mass opinion is so powerful and so lamp-post stupid. Such opinion may or may not help to uproot the likes of Donald Trump, but it would be unwise not to recognize that it was that same opinion that planted him in the first place.

I am glad to know that women-as-sexual-prey are getting a well-nourished chance to speak their grievances after so many years ... but I wonder if the tsunami of powerful men (TV personalities, politicians, Hollywood moguls, clerics et al.) who are the bull's eye of the accusations are really so easily brought down. It may not be a lynch mob and the tsunami may be warranted ... but any time enough people get together and cheer ... I have a tendency to lift my shield ... even as one who has cheered the undoing of the invulnerable when challenged by the vulnerable.

I am sure there are others out there who are more grown-up than I -- who can range freely in the 'democratic' closeness that is not closely examined. Hell, maybe I'm just scared of crowds. However much I may dislike arrogance, still I cannot escape LaRochefoucauld's thrust: "The intellectual capacity of the mass(es) is inversely proportionate to its number."

And what is "democracy?" As former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is said to have said approximately, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the rest."

PS Conservative William F. Buckley Jr.'s "Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views" continues to rattle around in my mind, And it made me wonder, if that is so, then can we say, "Conservatives do not claim to want to give a hearing to other views and as a result remain largely pleased with this life and their outlook on it."

when everything is "gone"

What is it like when everything is gone? The question arises in light of my computer's decision to give up the ghost last week. In its demise, all sorts of files and tailings were eradicated. Now, there is a 'new' computer my wife bought. When I asked if I got a say in what she might purchase as a replacement, she said "no." As a result, I have a 'new' Windows 10 machine -- it's undue complications are ... well, all I can think is "stupid," but of course I am the one who is stupid.

But what of the losses. I thought I might be left bereft with all the bookmarks and memories that piled up and piled up in "favorites" bin. Then, in a single moment, they were gone. What is that like ... when everything is gone? I thought I might feel the less without them, but the strange thing was, like books on a shelf, there was an odd sense that I didn't really miss them at all. Very odd.

"All it takes is a couple of days without it and the addiction lets up," my older son, Angus, said.

All those links to news, spiritual life, movies and blah-blah-blah piled slophonus-fashion in the "favorites" bin. Gone. "But what if I needed them?" something shrieked within?

After several days without them, the mirror question raised its head: "What if I didn't need them?" True, I learned quickly that television was no place to look for the amount and kind of news I expected ... there is no news on the television news shows.

I mean that literally and it surprised me. Each outlet -- CBS, NBC, ABC or whatever -- seems to provide three news stories, perhaps, and then the  three or four talking heads -- tastefully balanced with racial minorities, mixed sexes, capped teeth, fashion-statement clothes and vapid opinions -- talking about what to fucking eat or how to arrange your sock drawer. And smiles that would blind a dead horse. OK... no news. And difficulty signing in here and there. There was no serious news.

And there were the endless, endless ads I hope to eradicate ... if I get around to it. Bit by bit, I inch back. Two steps forward and one step back. All I need is a savvy teenager to show me the way ... my family doesn't care much what I want as long as they can shop. Sometimes the selfishness gets to me, but what the hell, it's too late now.

What is it like when everything is gone? I don't know. It seems like everything appears. I will have to reconfigure the day, but since there's not much on my plate, that shouldn't be all that hard. But since I am getting weaker, "hard" is a relative term.

computer hi-jinx

The computer took a nosedive late last week and on this, my stepmother's burial day, I am making some progress reconstituting it.

"Some progress" means just that ... SOME progress. GAKKKKKKK!

$1.2 million in fajita thefts = 50 years in jail

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for stealing $1.2 million worth of fajitas over nine years.
Fifty-three-year-old Gilberto Escamilla was sentenced Friday after pleading guilty to theft by a public servant. The Brownsville Herald reports he told the court the fajita scheme spun out of control.

castrate a congressman

Wispily, I wonder if castration of members of Congress might be apt in the case of American soldiers deprived of their genitalia during wars those congressional members are willing to fund.

What brought this to mind was the successful penis transplant reported yesterday by Johns Hopkins surgeons:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A veteran who lost his genitals from a blast in Afghanistan has received the world’s most extensive penis transplant, and doctors said Monday he is recovering well and expected to leave the hospital this week.
Saying they wanted to address “an unspoken injury of war,” Johns Hopkins University surgeons rebuilt the man’s entire pelvic region — transplanting a penis, scrotum and part of the abdominal wall from a deceased donor — in a highly experimental 14-hour operation last month.

I guess politicians have come to forgetful terms with the loss of arms or legs or feet or hands of those sent off to quietly-ballyhooed battle. But if their patriotism extends so blithely to such things, perhaps a more forceful reminder might be in order for loss of sexual or reproductive capacities. Tit for tat, so to speak: For every service member who suffered such a wound, one congressman might be chosen at random for castration. What the hell -- it's a patriotism these politicians have anointed and prolong.

Some wag might point out that Congress already lacks balls, but that's too facile. A little literal knife-wielding might get the message across better. As an addendum, perhaps an American-flag tattoo could be applied to the empty space.

And it only seems fair that the commander in chief be first in line.

a nudge from Mel Brooks

Part of a Q-and-A with comedy film director Mel Brooks, 91 ... a nudge of sorts:

AP:  What sort of impact do you think you’ve had on American comedy?

BROOKS: One never really sees themselves in relationship to the wide world. It’s rather impossible to judge your impact on moviegoers, your impact on people who like your films or who like your television. It’s serious. When they tell me, I’m glad to hear it, but frankly I’ve got to tell you honestly, I walk past the mirror and I say that’s a cute old guy. I don’t think it’s me! I’m not a cute old guy. I’m still 35, you know? We really can’t see ourselves and judge ourselves in relation to other people. (emphasis added)

marijuana and other drugs

Legality of cannabis in the United States

---

  Legal

  Legal for medical use

  Legal for medical use, limited THC content

  Prohibited for any use

  D  Decriminalized

Once upon a time after I had retired and started collecting doctors and pills, a thin-lipped cardiologist observed with Calvinesque arrogance, "Your business is now your health." Outside the righteousness of his delivery -- a real prig as I discerned it -- I suppose he was right.

I think of this now as I observe both the growing acceptance of marijuana (it's the money, honey)

and the drugged insanity of the current U.S. president, Donald Trump. Marijuana is still a federally forbidden substance and yet states from coast to coast (46 of them) have cannabis regulations that skirt those regulations even as Trump dispenses a kind of America-'lite' form of government that is short on policy and long on demagogic bombast, eyewash and 'false facts.' Under the Trump aegis, things have grown less substantive -- thinner somehow, more watered down, more inclined towards self and its environs. Government by Twitter ... who'd of thunk it? Than what universe are Trump's improvements a feel-better improvement?

Government and drugs are for recreational use. Seriousness is relegated to those who can accumulate wealth of one kind or another. Whatever it is, it is for sale ... everything else is for fun, however painful that fun may be. And where there is pain, can drugs be far behind? The blunting of life proceeds, or that's the way it feels to me. Thank goodness for loud kids whose access to the internet, while separational in nature, can assist in the righting of wrongs.

It all seems a bit weird and confusing to this duffer whose health is perhaps his only rightful business.

utterly irrelevant

Terpsichore

Is it possible to think of something that is "utterly irrelevant?" I doubt it, but I don't know.

Back in the day, there was a fad for a while -- just little sillies like...

Q. What's black and dangerous and lives in a tree?
A. A crow with a machine gun.

The fad was good for a smile. Can a smile be irrelevant?

And the question of "irrelevance" raises the same question about "relevance" -- is it possible to think of something that is "utterly relevant?" Utterly?

A man with a red balloon.
A missing left shoe.
Terpsichore.
Flummox.

The opium dens of China sometimes used to refer to its pastimes as "biting the clouds." Is that relevant or irrelevant, both or neither? It's an odd bit of whimsy.

Maybe the key lies in "utterly."

But maybe not, I expect.

OK ... let's get back to the relevant stuff now .... 

"Plainsong" by Kent Haruf

I woke up dreading the fan mail I felt duty-bound to send.

Kent Haruf

I finished reading "Plainsong" by Kent Haruf last night. Being 78 and recalling a long-ago lifetime stuffed with reading, it had been some time -- long, long ago -- since I was raised up or raised into the universe "Plainsong" took me to. I was consumed and consented to that consumption. I was in love, with all the wispy, unspeakable tendrils that love can entail. I was happy to live on the same planet as allowed such a wonderful, beckoning, ineffable, quiet, what-the-fuck book. I dreaded writing the fan mail because you can't transmit the love that rises up like mist over a graveyard. Jeee-sus! The book filled me up.

I looked for Haruf on Google.

And found out he was dead.

And I am not a fan of being a fan of the dead.

I was stopped in my tracks. I wanted to say thank you and -- perhaps as usual -- there was no one to say thank you to. And still I wanted to say thank you. It was as if something inside me wept, but the tears refused to be wet.

The dread I woke up with centered on ... on ... on....

The book made me feel as once I had felt at sixteen or seventeen when I was in love with whomever I was in love with at the time. Speechless. No words would do, but words were all that there was. I was reduced even as I was elevated: "I love Suzy. Oh I love Suzy so much! No, you don't understand -- I really, really love Suzy!" The more the words, the less effective their capacity.

Ah well. Haruf is dead and I suppose I can say I am more alive thanks to his ... his ... whatever it was that perhaps, were he alive, he would not claim.

I can't recommend "Plainsong." Neither praise it. The last line of the book struck me as not quite consonant, but that's minor.

How I wish I could say thank you.

eine kleine weird musik

Yesterday, by accident, I found myself swallowed whole by a drug-crime documentary about something called Operation Odessa -- the tale, among other things, of a mobster who brokered an attempt to sell a Russian submarine to the Colombian Cali drug cartel as a better way to ship cocaine ... a lot of cocaine.

I couldn't quite keep all the players straight in my mind, but I was fascinated by the untold riches and powers of the men involved in this criminal enterprise: What does anyone do when they have all the money they want -- and then some -- and all the power they want -- and then some ... I mean, when you've got everything you want, what's left? Licit or illicit, the question remains the same. What's left? What resting place or whatever?

Based on the television show I couldn't bring myself to turn off, it seems that the only thing left is to brag on yourself in a documentary. But what does that accomplish? Is that enough? Perhaps so. Perhaps not.

As I watched these meaty men detailing their dealings, the lines blurred between their criminality and the legality of the bankers and brokers you might see in public life. It all rose above anything that might be called moral or immoral. Think of it: If you've got everything, what, precisely have you got?

Cars, bank accounts, private jets, the occasional killing, sex, marriage, kids ... E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. Some of these king-pins in South America sent cards to law enforcement officers in Miami ... Where are you guys? We miss you. Haven't seen you around.

The deals and the size of the deals was dizzying. And still the question nagged, whether it was a question for Donald Trump or for a man who made millions the way the rest of us might pick up a dime on the sidewalk: What do you have when you have everything. What meat is left on the I've-got-everything bone when you've got everything?

The documentary ingested me. It did not detail any deeper satisfaction or joy. Is "more" enough when you already have more? I didn't feel disapprovingly tch-tch about it all. I seriously wondered. Would anyone love God if they already were God (in a manner of speaking)? Is bragging on yourself a place of rest and ease and satisfaction? Stamp-collecting, maybe, or dog-handling, tuna fishing, portraiture ... something?

I was happy when the documentary ended. I felt like a wet wash cloth that had been forcibly wrung out. Drained. Not exactly wet but not exactly dry. Wouldn't you think that anyone who expended so much effort would have a goal to achieve, something that would fulfill some deep-seated desire, some ahhhhhh?

Oh well ... I'm not sure if the weird-shit-o-meter belongs to me or belongs to them ... or both.

Frida Kahlo as Barbie??????

Well, color me gob-smacked:

Distant relatives of Frida Kahlo have won a temporary injunction that stops sales of a Barbie doll depicting the late Mexican artist....
Critics say the doll does not reflect Kahlo’s heavy, nearly conjoined eyebrows, and its costume does not accurately portray her elaborate Tehuana-style dresses.
Barbie is an American icon that has often been criticised as promoting an unrealistic body image and consumerist lifestyle. Kahlo was a lifelong communist who died in 1954.

Frida Kahlo as Barbie?????!!!!! What made Mattel think it could co-opt this tough and/or fragile woman? Barbie is bull. Kahlo is not.

It's enough to make your teeth itch, though I suppose if you can put 'Jesus' on a dashboard, turning Kahlo into a simpering role model is not that unusual. Still, it fries my grits.

kamikazi ants

Woe is the insect that crosses the path of the Colobopsis explodens ant.
Scientists exploring the Borneo jungle have just discovered the species, which dwells in the trees, and they were most intrigued by the ant’s unique ability – to explode and shower toxic yellow goo on to its enemies....This suicidal tendency, which is similar to that of a bee delivering a sting when threatened, is called autothysis, and is common in superorganisms like ants, who work as a collective and where the needs of the group are more important than the individual in a colony.

watching

In the woods, you learned quickly enough: Hands were for doing and it made better sense to own a pocket watch. The small pocket on the Levi's jeans that everyone wore at work was not just decorative in 1959. That small nook at the top of the right-hand pocket and appended at its corners with copper rivets, was protective of a time piece whereas a wrist watch ran the constant risk, when the hands were busy doing, of receiving a life-ending slap from some piece of brush or sapling being cut or trimmed. I can't remember when I traded my wrist watch for a pocket watch, but I learned quickly enough.

And quickly enough I also learned to put the pocket watch away with the glass face pressed towards the body. The metal underside faced outwards in that pocket. The pocket was safer than a wrist watch but it too was open to rare assault -- that was the nature of the brush we cut in aid of running property lines for the lumbering company I worked for that summer. In any event, pocket watches made sense where wrist watches did not.

Watches at the time had no apps other than the two hands that marked socially-acceptable measuring sticks. You learned to wind them at the end or beginning of each day. A wind-up lasted a little more than 24 hours, so you did it every day... with the hands ... which were made for doing in the woods.

I had come to the summer job thinking that pocket watches were for men who wore vests and probably had plump bellies and there would be a gold chain that ran across their tummies to indicate their prosperity. Now, with my cheap-as-possible Westclox, I learned there was a useful function to pocket watches and the pockets to put them in -- something other than the ardor of display. The Westclox was "shock resistant" but who the hell knew what that meant when a maple sapling decided to slap back at my machete's slice? The time piece fared poorly under water: You'd go get another one, not in order to keep up with the Apple-prone, but rather because a watchmaker would probably charge more to fix it than a new one would cost. I guess that counts as conspicuous consumption, but it was less conspicuous somehow than today's get-a-new-one slovenliness.

Hands were for doing in the woods and through that summer, my callouses grew and grew. A crew of three or four people would rough out with their machetes and compasses the initial track that later would be followed by more delicate measurements made by men who knew the wiles of the transit and plumb bob.

When offered a choice of machetes, I had chosen a home-made one -- something someone had hand-crafted out of an old two-man-tree-felling steel saw. It was heavier than the other machetes (of the Indiana Jones variety) and required careful filing, but its heft paid off when it came to clearing rough trails. It meant that what needed to be done by the hands was done more easily. I could cut through a two-inch maple sapling without even breathing hard.

But it was a tool to handle carefully: I once had to help a careless fellow whose machete had laid open his leg below the knee cap and when I rolled up his pants to get a look, his face turned grey at the sight of a very clean cut that nonetheless oozed mightily. I thought he might pass out and waved the first-aid-kit's ammonia ampule under his nose. Everyone had a first aid kit to go with his helmet and spiked boots. It was part of the safety precautions. But there was no precaution for those who were afraid of blood. I wrapped up his wound with the pressure bandage and muttered consoling words of the kind I had heard in war movies -- "You're going to be OK" and "You're going to be fine." And he was fine, but he was also as grey as cigarette ash.

The hands did the bandage work and eventually went back to the work they had been sent into the woods to do. Hands were for doing and doing was what they did.

My Westclox told me it was shortly after 10 a.m. It was 1959 and there were no mobile phones or apps to improve the scene.

Hands were for doing. So I did something, I expect.

I'm not quite sure what brought all this to mind. Perhaps it was the fact that my Westclox seemed to be a way of enjoining me with others ... "I'll meet you at the movie house at 6:30." Now a watch is more pointedly self-referential ... heart rates and restaurants and maps. Or perhaps it's because hands seem less likely to do much of anything outside of finding the next self-improving state of mind or hedge fund. One thing's for sure: Today's wrist watches seem to be in little danger and Levi's have lots of competition, much of which is artfully ripped here and there. In 1959, people still patched the holes in their trousers.

the "cradle of civilization"

One of the world’s earliest known game boards, this board comes from a royal tomb, circa 2,450BCE. Photograph: Photo/Penn Museum

A breathless press release-article about an exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia left me damned near breathless myself. Seriously ... and I dislike press-release writing habits, but....

The fertile lands of Mesopotamia are rightly hailed as a “cradle of civilization”, where some of the most important human innovations originated, from agriculture and writing to religion and music. The Penn Museum in Philadelphia has long been home to one of the world’s most significant collections of ancient artifacts from the region – but for years, only a limited number of pieces were shown in encyclopedic, old-school displays that did not do them justice.

The "cradle of civilization" and the best anyone can do is make war there?