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A Different Order of Beauty

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Orchids at Honolulu’s Foster Botanical Garden

At first, I saw nature from the point of view of a Midwesterner. Cleveland had some few beauty spots in its extensive park system, but they tended to be muted. And then there was the matter of Cleveland’s horrible weather.

Then, when I came out to Southern California, I saw that the desert had an entirely different beauty. I am still exploring it slowly. After all, the desert is not an inviting place during the summer months.

In our recent visits to Honolulu, Martine and I visited a couple of botanical gardens, most notably the Foster which abuts Chinatown on the north. We didn’t see any of the other islands, though I am sure there were eye-opening botanical gardens elsewhere, too.

I am eager to visit Alaska. There is yet another order of beauty: Majestic and huge, dwarfing the human scale.

In 1965, John Ford directed a film about Sean O’Casey entitled Young Cassidy. In one scene, William Butler Yeats offers the O’Casey character some advice which has kept rattling around inside my head:

You’re young Cassidy, and that makes your passion effortless and artless. Think towards the day when you are old and the passion is painful and remorseless. What you have now has given you pity. What you must one day find will give you compassion. Age, the winter days, make the chill of the frost as compelling as the heat of the sun. Lovers look towards the time of day when the sun goes down. But give a thought to the time, when as an old man, you’ll be surprised to see the sun come up. The warmth of your girl’s body inspires you now, Cassidy. There will be a time when you must be inspired by the Arctic waste. Prepare for that.

Yes, I can see myself being inspired by the Arctic waste, or the Mojave desert, or the tropical islands of the Pacific. It’s all part of really and truly being where you are, and allowing yourself to be acted upon by all the flavors and colors and tonalities of life.

Selling Our Birthright

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Hendrick ter Brugghen’s Esau Selling His Birthright (1627)

The original text comes from the Old Testament, namely Genesis 25:29-34. The quote is from the New King James Version:

Now Jacob cooked a stew; and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary. And Esau said to Jacob, “Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary.” Therefore his name was called Edom [Red]. But Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright as of this day.” And Esau said, “Look. I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?” Then Jacob said, “Swear to me as of this day.” So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils, then he ate and drank, arose, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

I cannot help but think that we Americans are Esau. We were once fairly happy and somewhat more united. Then came the Depression. Then World War Two. We were briefly on top of the world, except that somewhere along the line, we had sold our birthright.

Who is Jacob in this story? Actually, there is no Jacob to whom we sold our birthright. We just dribbled it away, then ate, drank, arose, and went our way, like Esau in the Bible story.

We are not a happy people. Look at our violent movies, our angry music, our wannabe warrior tattoos and facial hair. We had freedom, and still have a lot more than most peoples. But we are fearful and growing stupid with our fear.

We regard it as almost normal that a mentally disturbed person will collect guns to shoot up children at a school or worshipers in a church or—what the hell—random people gathered together for whatever purpose.

Oh what a great fall there was when we sold our birthright. Did we enjoy our pottage? If anything, we enjoyed too much pottage; but for how long can we continue to do so?

It’s a Dog’s Life

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I could not believe my eyes. When I woke up this morning, I joined Martine on the living room couch while she was watching the news. Fox news, as it turned out. Somewhere in South Los Angeles, a pedestrian was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The newscasters practically ignored the dead human, spending all their sympathy on the victim’s dog. Much was made of the fact that a good Samaritan had volunteered to take the dog.

In some future newscast, I fully expect to see the dead pedestrian ignored entirely while an ambulance and psychiatrist are called in for the victim’s pet.

Only in America …

Fantasyland

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Young American men lead a rich fantasy life. It is not enough to be a macho beast: One also has to look like one. In fact, the look is more important than the reality. All one has to do is get the appropriate tattoo, wear intimidating facial hair, drive a 4×4 pickup truck, and hang out with other macho wannabes at the appropriate meeting places.

I became ever more aware of this tendency when I reached an age which would make any macho pretense ridiculous.

As I drive the highways of Los Angeles, I see all around me vehicles for which the owners put up huge amounts of money—not for any realistic expectations, but to belong to a “fantasy league” of young men pretending to be tougher and more suave than they could ever be in real life. They want the street cred of a Danny Trejo while subsisting on Honey Nut Cheerios.

I don’t have any street cred. When I was young, however, I would love to have been thought of as a real dude—rather than a real dud. At least, living as I do is cheaper than trying to shore up a false image.

Not-Doing

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Until 2018, my life was ruled by the clock.

Around then, two things happened that changed my life for the better:

  1. The accounting firm for which I was working shut its doors when the boss retired.
  2. Around that time, I started attending guided mindful meditation sessions at the Central Library.

In the accounting profession, from New Years Day to Tax Deadline Day (April 15 or thereabouts) is sheer, unadulterated hell. By the middle of March, one had to work seven days a week. The stress was beginning to tell on me, particularly with my blood pressure and cholesterol.

The abrupt end to my working career was a blessing. I could read books, see films, and cook interesting meals. I did not find, upon retiring, that I no longer had a purpose in life. My entire working career was as a well-paid mercenary, writing computer programs, handling corporate communications, preparing taxes, and keeping a computer network in working order. My life was ruled by the clock, and I suffered for it.

After many years of doing, I was finding that there was much to be said for not-doing. I didn’t mind waiting at the doctor’s office. If the bus or train was late, what was that to me? I would sit concentrating on my breaths until such time as the train arrived or the doctor called me in. I was no longer worried about being late, as “lateness” no longer had any real urgency or even meaning. I even began to see it as an opportunity to meditate.

When I was in the hospital in January, the nurses could not understand why I didn’t care to watch television—especially as I knew that the selection of channels was not to my liking. All the other patients had to watch the boob tube lest they go stark raving mad.

As a result of my not-doing, I found my blood pressure and cholesterol dropping. I’m still working on my Type 2 Diabetes, but that is partly genetic. Everyone in my family had it, and I didn’t manage to escape the family scourge.

Even though there are a lot of things in my world not to my liking (Trump, MAGA), I feel confident that I can probably hold on for a while longer. Who knows?

A Bulletin from the Ministry of Silly Walks

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John Cleese of Monty Python Shows You How

He’s not just one of the funniest men who have ever lived. He also has a brain, a very good one, in fact. For a number of years, he served as a Professor-at-Large at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. During that time, he showed up occasionally and delivered some fascinating talks, which were collected and published in a book entitled Professor at Large: The Cornell Years.

His first talk was about his reactions to a book by Guy Claxton about creativity. It was called Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind:

It’s a book that addresses a danger that has been developing in our society for several years. This danger is based on three separate wrong beliefs. The first is the belief that being decisive means taking decisions quickly. The second is the belief that fast is always better. The third is the belief that we should think of our minds as computers.

Now, of course, there are situations where you have to think fast, like how to avoid a car driving on the wrong side of the freeway. It seems, however, that many American businessmen have made something of a fetish out being articulate and quick on the draw.

Creativity just cannot be made to order:

The point is, we just don’t know where we get our ideas from, but it certainly isn’t from our laptops. They just pop into our heads. The greatest poets and scientists freely admit that they have no control over the creative process. They all know that they cannot create to order. They can only put themselves in favorable—usually quiet—circumstances, bear the problem in mind, and … wait. Indeed, the whole creative process is so mysterious that academic psychologists who studied creativity in depth in the ’60s and ’70s eventually just gave up because they couldn’t get any further—they literally couldn’t explain it.

Seeing as how John Cleese and his five Monty Python associates are among the most creative comics of the last half century, I can only assume that the man knows what he is talking about. Even if he walks silly.

The End of the Tether

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This is a difficult subject to treat because I myself am reaching the age at which one can pay most grievously for mistakes made earlier in life. I have just finished re-reading Joseph Conrad’s The End of the Tether, about a British sea captain in Malayan waters who has passed up a peaceful retirement to help out his daughter, who had married unwisely.

Although Captain Whalley in his youth was one of the most brilliant sea captains in the South Seas, he has grown old and forced himself to take on a rickety steamship in need of repair. The owner is a nervous former lottery winner who serves as the ship’s engineer. While he spends every spare hour evaluating possible winning lottery numbers, Captain Whalley, with the help of a native serang, handles the sailing of the vessel.

Unknown at the outset is that Captain Whalley is going blind, and it is primarily the Malay serang who is responsible for captaining the ship. As one can guess, things do not end well.

As I approach eighty years of life on earth, I see many of my friends in their retirement years similarly afflicted as a result of difficult situations that over time have gone critical. I earnestly hope that I will not be one of them.

For one thing, I did not save up enough money for retirement, having spent obscene amounts of money on books. Today I have a fantastic library of five or six thousand volumes. But what happens if I should suddenly die? That would leave Martine in the position of trying to find out how to turn my library into cash, if possible. This at a time when there are precious few bookstores around that could buy hundreds of books at a time.

At least I don’t buy books any more. The Los Angeles Library and my Amazon Kindle account for most of the books I read.

I owe it to the people I love to whittle away at my library, however it pains me. Alas, I am mortal. I have made mistakes. I will pay for those mistakes.

The Opinionator

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We all have opinions—in fact, lots of opinions. Some of them are based on actually existing situations, and many are so wrong-headed as to be laughable. And yet, try to go up against someone else’s opinions, and you are likely to make an enemy for life. Attack an opinion, and you are in effect attacking the person who holds it.

I have been wrong about many things. So much so that I tend to regard my opinions as penciled on a scratch pad rather than cut into stone with all capital letters. At age 21, I was all gung-ho for the American participation in the Viet Nam War. I was also a devout Catholic who attended Mass every Sunday. I thought that seafood was terrible (understandable when one was raised on the shores of Lake Erie).

Nowadays, if you impugn any of my opinions, you are likely to be met with a shrug. I do not see an attack on what I believe in as an attack on me. All my friends think some of my opinions are out of line. They’re just different. That’s all.

I look back and find that many of the people I’ve loved in this life held (and still hold) beliefs that were opposed to mine. I guess not everyone I meet is a carbon copy of me. For that I am thankful!

Devoirs

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Yay! I Survived Turkey Day!

Of course, it was nowhere near so bad as I imagined it would be. I tend to get a bit crotchety about holidays. They tend so often to make for bad feelings because there are all those things one has to do to make for the perfect holiday. If it turns out to be less than perfect, one is floored by feelings of inadequacy.

The French have a word for it: devoirs. Check out the Alpine French School website for a discussion of the different meanings of the term, particularly the second meaning. The devoirs for Thanksgiving include:

  • A turkey dinner with mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, etc etc etc
  • Getting together with as many of your family that you can sit around your dining room table
  • Discussions about politics with that uncle with whom you do not wish to converse

If you think that’s a lot, let’s take a look at thge many devoirs pertaining to Christmas:

  • Expensive and thoughtful gifts for everyone
  • A tree in the living room with ornaments, tinsel, and lights
  • Multi-colored lights festooning the front of your house
  • Maintaining harmful myths about Santa and elves to your underage children
  • Sending Christmas cards to family, friends, acquaintances, and just about everyone else

Just remember one thing: You don’t have to buy into all the “oughts” connected with the holidays. Your more conventional friends will probably think you a bit of a Grinch. Note, however, that it is better to be thought a Grinch than to be depressed and broke.

I took Martine out to Cafe 50s so she could have her Thanksgiving turkey, while I, of course, ordered something other than bird. She also had her favorite Hawaiian Tropic milk shake, so she is quite pleased with our quasi-celebration of the holiday.

The Man Who Killed Thanksgiving

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The Famous 1975 Cartoon by Ron Cobb About Thanksgiving

Even back in 1975 when I saw the famous R. Cobb cartoon depicting a family saying grace over a Thanksgiving turkey while the ground beneath them is littered with the bones of massacred Indians. Of course, even back then I didn’t like Thanksgiving. I had too many memories of dry bird carcasses drenched in fat to make them palatable.

Curiously, we never had Thanksgiving turkey at home. Turkey just wasn’t a Hungarian meat; and my father, like me, didn’t want my Mom to ever cook any. So we always went out for Thanksgiving.

The whole nonsense about the Pilgrims making nice with the Indians before wiping them out in King Philip’s War and other conflicts. The holiday is based on a myth designed to make us feel good about violently supplanting the indigenous peoples of the New World. If you want to get a more balanced picture of what happened, I suggest you read Eduardo Galeano’s trilogy entitled Memory of Fire. I read all three volumes in the 1980s, which served only to solidify my dislike of the holiday.

On this and many other issues, I find myself in the minority. So enjoy your dry bird. And think of all the football games you can watch this weekend!

By the way, Martine loves turkey; so I’ll be taking her out for a turkey dinner tomorrow. Needless to say, I will order something else.