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Borges at Disneyland

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Painting of Argentinean Poet Jorge-Luis Borges (1899-1986)

This was a dream I had last night: I was taking my favorite 20th century writer, Jorge-Luis Borges on a tour of Disneyland. It wasn’t the real Disneyland: It was a dream Disneyland whose dimensions were two kilometers by two kilometers. It was interesting because it taught me something about Borges as well as something about myself.

We started in a two-story pavilion dedicated to horror. I was eager to guide Borges through the different galleries, promising a special treat on the second floor, where there was a gallery dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe. At this point, Borges started to say something disparaging about Poe; but I shrugged it off and went on to the second floor, while the poet got interested in one of the ground floor galleries.

I looked forward to taking Borges to one of the restaurants in the park, but Borges said he had no interest in another buffet.

Suddenly, we cut to the railroad that circled Disneyland. It wasn’t anything like the actual railroad that goes through the park, but a more modernized train with multiple passenger cars in which we were seated on long benches facing the direction the train was going. In Disneyland, the round-the-park train seats passengers facing to the right, so that they could see the many dioramas.

At the station, I took a seat and turned to my left to see if Borges was following me. He wasn’t. Instead, a middle-aged couple sat next to me. I became agitated, as the train passed seemingly through miles of open country—a far cry from the city of Anaheim around the park. Around the halfway point, I stopped at a station and started looking for a Disney public relations rep so that he could stage a search for the lost Argentinean writer.

At this point I woke up and said to myself, “What a strange dream!”

Overlays

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Because the previous two Thursdays were holidays—Christmas and New Years respectively—I missed out on two weeks of the Los Angeles Central Library’s Thursday mindful meditation sessions. Fortunately, yesterday’s guided meditation was something of a breakthrough for me.

Over the days of our lives there are a number of overlays, like street networks and buildings over a basic topographical map. By using our breath inhalation and exhalation as an anchor, we are near the base level of our being. Many of the things that distract us are familial, occupational, religious, or cultural overlays on this base level.

One of the advantages of being retired is a diminution of the overlays that affect us. Yesterday’s half hour guided meditation felt as if it took place within five minutes. I focused on my breath pretty much exclusively.

This evening, I was looking for an illustration that I could use to illustrate my point, but I could find only map overlay images that were too technical and were themselves distracting. In the end, all I could find was the standard lotus position figure. I couldn’t even assume a lotus position without having a crane or several firemen lift me from being all tied up in a sitting knot.

So when I talk of meditation, do not think of me as sitting in a lotus position with an epicene smile on my face. Think of me as seated on a sturdy wooden library chair in relative comfort.

Reindeer Games

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Christmas Display at the Grier-Musser Museum

Just what are the reindeer games that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was prevented from participating in? I strongly suspect that it involved buying into the whole michegaas connected with the holiday. Sometimes it seems to me, too, like a weird cult similar to the celebration of potlatch by the Indians of the Northwestern U.S.

Now that I’ve utterly confused you by introducing two unfamiliar terms in the opening paragraph of this post, I will admit to being of two minds about the season. On one hand, it is totally stress-inducing, with endless traditions and practices to make one feel guilty through their non-observance. On the other, it has the potential of bringing happiness to children and even to adults who don’t expect too much out of life.

If you take a close look at Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, you can see it espouses some truly admirable virtues. And, really, it was this novelette by Charles Dickens that was responsible for much of what Christmas has become.

If you expect too much of Christmas, it will disappoint. But if you go for “Christmas Lite,” picking and choosing carefully how deep you step into the morass, you can actually have a pretty good time.

Martine and I are celebrating the holiday simply. Last Saturday, we saw Laurel and Hardy in March of the Wooden Soldiers at the Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo. I ordered a box of Royal Riviera Pears for her from Harry & David. Next Tuesday, I’ll cook up a big pot of beef stew from the New York Times recipe and serve it with Martine’s favorite Hungarian wine: Bull’s Blood of Eger (Egri Bikavér).

Then, of course we’ll look for some of our favorite Christmas films on TV, such as A Christmas Story, the Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Bishop’s Wife, and Miracle on 34th Street.

We don’t have a Christmas tree (no room for one), but we did send out a handful of greeting cards to our closest friends.

Approaching Infinity

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Why do I love chess so much? Let me count the ways:

  • It has been around since the 7th century AD.
  • It is played around the world, with the current champion being from the country of origin, namely, India.
  • “There are even more possible variations of chess games than there are atoms in the observable universe.” Read about the so-called Shannon Number.
  • It is possible to improve one’s game by studying games played in the last 200 years.
  • Hell, the number of reasons I love chess also approaches infinity.

Among the top fifty players in the world today are representatives from Norway, the United States, Germany, India, France, the Netherlands, China, Hungary, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, England, Poland, Armenia, Croatia, and Sweden. In fact, the only parts of the world that are under-represented are Latin America and Africa.

I learned to play the game at the age of nine from the Hungarian husband of one of my mother’s friends. Since then, there has never been a time when I didn’t follow the chess news.

That does not mean I’m particularly good at the game. I may be just another patzer, to use the Yiddish term; but I am still working on improving my game whenever I can. Though I may not have too many years left, I never regard the study of chess games and puzzles as time wasted.

Recovering from Illness

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Mother and Daughter by the Sickbed of a Child by Diederik Franciscus Jamin

The above sketch from Amsterdam’s Rijks Museum pretty much describes how I spent most of this week. Something I ate on Tuesday violently disagreed with me, so in addition to the usual messy food poisoning symptoms, I was totally prostrated. Picture Martine at my side feeding me endless glasses of water to avoid dehydration along with hydrocortisone to make up for my body’s inability to produce adrenaline. Without the hydrocortisone, I was likely to die.

To avoid concentrating on the messy details, I would like to present a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson I remember from when I was a boy of ten sleeping in my parents’ bed while I was sick and they were at work. Half the time, my great-grandmother was around to feed me. It presents a very vivid picture of illness seen from the point of view of a child.

The Land of Counterpane

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay,
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

Acres of Cheap Crap

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Several days ago, Martine expressed some interest in going to a Walmart … because, well, she hadn’t seen the inside of a megastore for several years. With some reluctance, I drove her to the giant Walmart in Panorama City, at the corner of Roscoe and Van Nuys. Originally, I intended to drop her off and go to a huge bookstore nearby. But then I asked myself, “Do I really need to buy more books?”

That was my mistake. For almost two hours I wandered around the store looking at all the merchandise. In the menswear department, I didn’t see any pants under 30 inches in the inseam. I looked at the shirts: They had flimsy pockets that would dump my reading glasses on the ground every time I bent over.

I guess that for some people seeing so much merchandise and so many services in one place was exhilarating. For me, it was profoundly depressing.

It brought to mind the Atlantic Mills megastore in Bedford, Ohio to which my parents took me. I remember we bought a clunky Recordak tape recorder there. Then there was the huge Fedco Store on La Cienega whose late night pharmacy I had to visit after a visit to the emergency ward for urethral strictures.

I was delighted when I got Martine to agree to leave after purchasing a box of cheap light bulbs. From there, we drove to Otto’s Hungarian Import Store and Deli in Burbank to buy some gyulai kolbasz sausage. We ate lunch nearby at Lancer’s on Victory near Magnolia. It’s one of those 1950s style coffee shops that managed to make it to the 21st century.

East Is East

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Budapest Parliament

Whenever things go blooey here in Sunny California, as they are wont to do from time to time, I remind myself that I am at the center of my being an Eastern European. I may have been born in Cleveland, Ohio, but the language that spoke most intimately to my emotions was Magyar (Hungarian).

My life has been a series of shifts from east to west and back again. That has prevented me from being depressed at setbacks that have occurred. We Eastern Europeans are used to suffering. But we have our own insane pride that prevents us from falling apart.

Consequently, I love reading literature that has been translated from Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Serbian, Romanian, Ukrainian, and Russian. And whatever my politics are—and they are certainly not on the side of Vladimir Putin—I see the stories, novels, dramas, and poems the product of a people, not a political system. The people are all right, however the politics might suck.

I have always dreamed of riding from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. To see a vast country unrolling before my eyes on the long trip to the Sea of Japan. I also see myself as reading long Russian novels during that trip. Alas, I think I am now too old for such an adventurous journey.

Currently, I am reading Eugene Vodolazkin’s The Aviator, which makes me feel these things more intensely.

Autumn Heat

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Martine at Chace Park in the Marina

Predictably, we are in the middle of an autumn heat wave. No, I did not go to Chace Park today. This time of year, the wind blows hot air from the desert; so there is little to be gained waiting for sea breezes that are not likely to cool my brow.

Martine went downtown by herself to partake of the high-toned atmosphere around Union Station and the Civic Center. (Am I being ironic? To be sure I am being ironic.)

Tomorrow I may go downtown, though I may bail if the temp gets too high, like 95° degrees Fahrenheit (35° Celsius) or above. That walk from the Metro Rail 7th Street Station to the Central Library would be prohibitively hot. I will check the temp tomorrow morning before making my decision.

I have become very dependent on the weekly Mindful Meditation sessions at the Central Library. Then, too, there are those seven floors of books that draw me in.

The Flying Monster from Mount Aso

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British Release Poster for Rodan (1956)

Don’t be misled by the above film poster: The “Cert X” refers to the British rating at the time as unsuitable for children. When I saw Rodan in 1957, I was scared out of my pants, particularly by all the claustrophobic monster scenes in the coal mine. And now, sixty-eight years later, I saw it again the other night. Both as a twelve-year-old child and as an old codger, I enjoyed the film immensely. It really did have a cast of thousands, and it showed models of several Japanese cities being demolished by the two Rodan monsters.

Mount Aso on the island of Kyushu—the birthplace of Rodan—is Japan’s most active volcano, and among the largest in the world. It has erupted as recently as 2021.

The Crater of Mount Aso, Where Rodan Was Born

Unlike Godzilla, Rodan did not use many of the big Toho Film Studio stars, and certainly none that I recognized. And it did not feature any annoying child stars who made goo-goo eyes at the monsters.

It is always interesting to re-see movies that impressed one as a child. It’s a way of taking a measure of oneself after decades of growth. I do the same thing with books. Sometimes, as a child, I am impressed for all the wrong reasons. For instance, as a college student, my favorite book was Gilbert Highet’s The Art of Teaching. I desperately wanted to become a college professor. Now, after Gen X, Gen Z, and Gen Whatever, I have no desire to light a fire under kids whose sacred scripture is Tik Tok.

Meditation Lite

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Not the Picture in Everyone’s Mind

Picture in your mind a person engaged in meditation. Based on Google Images, that picture is usually of some earth mother with long flowing hair sitting cross-legged in the lotus position, with the hands outstretched over the knees making some frou-frou sign.

If I had to look like that when meditating, I wouldn’t be able to meditate at all. I have had my left hip replaced some quarter of a century ago, and I cannot sit comfortably in that position.

When Martine and I showed up today for the Mindful Meditation session at the Central Library, we just had to meditate while sitting in a chair, preferably with our eyes closed as we concentrated on our breathing to clear our minds. Looking around at the people attending, we none of us looked like earth mothers—just the usual assortment of people looking for a few minutes of peace in their lives.

The Mindfulness Education Center at UCLA which conducts these Thursday meditations has an effective procedure for guiding people through the minefield of stress and an overactive mind.

Curiously, their website shows an image of an earth mother in the prototypical lotus posture. Go figure.