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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.

The Dalai Lama and I

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Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

I first posted this on January 22, 2021.

The circumstances behind my seeing the Dalai Lama in April 1991 are indelibly etched in my memory. I arranged to first meet my friend George Hoole at his girlfriend’s apartment in Santa Maria, and then we would both go to the University of California at Santa Barbara to see the Dalai Lama give a speech.

I had only been driving for six years at the time, and I did something that killed the engine on my 1985 Mitsubishi Montero. Instead of staying on U.S. 101, I decided to take San Marcos Pass to Solvang, where I would have lunch before making my way back to the 101. Unfortunately, I drove up the pass in second gear. By the time I got to the top of the pass, my engine was a smoking ruin. I arranged to have the car towed back to Santa Monica Mitsubishi for repair, which was no easy thing as ’85 Monteros with automatic transmissions were a rarity.

George came to pick me up in Solvang and I was his passenger for the weekend. We heard the Dalai Lama give a great talk in his broken English … and this turned out to be the beginning of a difficult period for me. I teamed up with George to start a new company called Desktop Marketing Corporation, along with several of my co-workers from Urban Decision Systems, where I had been working since 1971.

It never took off, and I had to live on my savings for over a year, Ultimately, I left Desktop Marketing and managed to get a job in a Westwood accountancy firm called Lewis, Joffe & Company. Plus I had to shell out several thousand dollars for a new Montero engine.

Things don’t always tend to go your way. The early 1990s were a time of career change and retrenchment for me. But I never regret seeing the Dalai Lama in person. There is perhaps no religious figure I respected more, not even Pope John Paul II. There was something about the twinkle in his eyes which helped see me through a difficult period in my life.

I’d see him again if I could, but I would definitely avoid San Marcos Pass.

My Video Collection

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When I bought my first video cassette recorder (VCR) in the 1980s, I thought I had it made. I had a great cable television setup near a neighborhood where many film industry moguls lived, and I could record films that were being broadcast on the many channels to which I had access. Eventually, I had a library of several hundred films that any film fanatic would be proud to own.

But then, little by little, they started to go bad. The VCR units had a hard time rewinding. And, of course, you couldn’t view a film until you rewound the reel. The tapes got stretched and started to go blooey. And rewinding became more and more of a chore.

When the DVD players first came out, I thought that was the way to go. I mean the laser didn’t even make contact with the surface of the DVD the way a VCR did with a videotape cassette.

One of my friends even suggested I convert all my videocassettes to DVD. I quickly pointed out that it would take years to accomplish this feat, during which my cassettes would continue to deteriorate.

Then I found out about a thing called “laser rot.” Even DVDs were not immune. After all, there was this metallic coating on a thin plastic disk. And plastic, as we know, won’t last forever.

In the age of streaming, people don’t keep the films they see: They just play them while downloading them. After viewing the film, it is gonzo!

The Oldest Book in My Collection

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It was September 1962. I was 13½ years old, and newly enrolled as a freshman at Chanel High School in Bedford, Ohio. The school was a Catholic school and taught by the Marist Fathers, who lived in a community on the top floor of the high school building.

Probably the strangest (to me) course in my first year was Latin 1, in which we studied Julius Caesar’s The Gallic Wars in the original Latin.

Most of the kids from wealthier families picked up a copy of Cassell’s Latin-English dictionary, but I chose instead to get the Collins Latin Gem Dictionary, which could fit in my shirt pocket. (Eventually, I also got the White’s Latin Dictionary, which looked to have been originally published in the 1800s.)

My Collins Latin Gem Dictionary is still in good condition and still eminently usable. The nice thing about Latin is that books in and about the Latin language never go out of date.

Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est.

Saxophone Lessons

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Downtown Cleveland When I Was Young

At the time I agreed to take saxophone lessons, not only did I not know what a saxophone was, but I had no idea I would have to spend hours each week “practicing.” I wanted to play a trombone, but the music store salesman saw the look in my parents’ eyes and said something to the effect that I had the wrong kind of teeth for blowing into a trombone. It worked: He made the sale.

My music teacher was Jack Upson, who had a studio on East 4th Street, almost in the dead center of the postcard image above. (The tall building was the Terminal Tower, at that time the tallest building in the U.S. outside of New York City.)

Every week, I took the 56A bus downtown. It let me off at Prospect and Ontario. From there, I walked two blocks or so to Jack Upson’s studio.

Truth to tell, I never liked the saxophone as a musical instrument. The moisture from my mouth formed a gooey discharge that made the reed of the sax very mucky after a while. What I did enjoy was being downtown on my own. I would eat lunch at Woolworth’s lunch counter, walk around a bit, and hang out at Schroeder’s book store on Public Square.

I started playing the sax at age nine and quit at age eighteen, when I went out of town to college. Seeing that my parents weren’t there to force me to practice, I just quit playing altogether. I was no good at it anyway; and it was no fun playing an instrument only because my mother and father liked it. More importantly, I didn’t like it.

Fun With Sharks

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Great White Shark

It all started last year when the National Geographic Channel put on their annual SharkFest. There s something so beautiful, yet so menacing about these predators of the sea that I am enthralled.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I used to love going to the beach and going in the water. Some ten years ago, I stopped going—mostly because the ocean was getting more polluted, and my blepharitis began bothering me increasingly during the summers.

Although I never encountered a shark in the water, I was always conscious of the life in the ocean. There were all the large strands of kelp and, from time to time, dead fish.

I live only two miles from the beach, but I have yet to visit the sands of Santa Monica Bay this year. When it gets hot, I do go to Chace Park in the Marina to enjoy the sea breeze while picnicking and reading. There I get the smell of the sea and also get to watch the sea lions and gulls the alight on the shore.

As for the sharks, I would rather see them on television. No in-person shark encounters for me!

Dropping Off to Sleep

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Before I retired, I had difficulty falling asleep. That was primarily because, in all my jobs, my bosses were megalomaniacs who were experts at fomenting stress in their work force.

Then something interesting happened. It suddenly became cheap and easy to go downtown. The opening of the Expo Line (now the E-train) from Santa Monica to the L.A. Financial District. I wasted no time in getting a senior citizen TAP card, which meant I could whiz downtown in 45 minutes for a mere 35¢ each way.

One Thursday, I went to the Central Library at 5th & Spring Streets. I noticed that there was a free half hour mindful meditation session at 12:30 PM in one of the two meeting rooms. I attended and suddenly things seemed to change for the better in my life. I was still working, but it was apparent that the accounting firm would close at year’s end.

It suddenly became easier to fall asleep. Martine usually fell asleep around 11:00 PM, and I followed a little more than an hour later. I still chewed a 3 mg Melatonin tablet, but I started to fall asleep by using mindful meditation. I started off with three deep breaths, followed it up with an inventory of my body, from the blepharitis in my eyes to my tendency to develop ingrown toenails. Next, I would concentrate on my breaths and incorporating the outside sounds of traffic and aircraft.

Usually, I would be out within 30 minutes. Sometimes it would take longer; sometimes, shorter. I had difficulty only if I had a long drive ahead the next morning, which wasn’t often.

The key: With mindful meditation, I have a way of neutralizing stress.