SNOW, PIE, STONES, DOG-TALK, THE CALL TO PRAYER, AND WISHES
A COMPENDIUM OF BREIF OBSERVATIONS INSIDE THE COMPENDIUM
• This morning I woke to snow. My usual early morning mood, my pre-work grubbing around the dark house for the various accoutrements, the getting-ready-to-GO mood, was lightened, I mean, literally lightened when I noticed that three or four inches of snow had fallen overnight. The bird feeder out the kitchen window had a cake of snow on it. The street was white. No pavement was showing. I was excited to get out in it. I went out in my getting ready to go attire to start the car, that is, allegedly to start the car... start the car so it would be easier to clear the windows of snow once I was ready to drive off into the rosy snowy dawn. Is there anything as quiet and stunning as a snowy morning? And the perfume, the perfume of snow as the pre-dawn sun is making everything glow. Nothing, or very little, makes me as grateful. And here, on the northeast shore of Lake Michigan, we are blessed with amounts of snow that while terrifying to many people, are the entire reason anyone who loves it here loves it... that and those incredibly long and glowing days of summer when they come, and they come regularly enough to not mind so much when they are given away to the rains and brilliant falling leaves of October (September often holding the last incredible weeks of summer, absent tourists, albeit with colder nights). This morning I woke to snow. It’s still out there. The street has popped through, and it, the snow, is no longer falling, but it lights up these otherwise dim few weeks before winter solstice. It is so dreary and dark otherwise. I love snow and I will argue vociferously with anyone who does not. • Apparently, there is some argument among those who argue about such things about whether or not Kyle Rittenhouse, the young guy just found not guilty of murdering a couple of anti-racist protesters in Wisconsin, was... is... a true dyed-in-the-wool White Supremacist. Clearly distinctions must be made here, and just as clearly these distinctions, once made, would be able to clarify whether or not he is formally a member of, or associated with, one or more organized white supremacist organization. Oh, for god’s sake. It hardly matters. The murders he committed were only possible, only occurred, because of the prevalence and predominance of the cultural phenomenon, the stink, of white supremacy. • Why has mincemeat pie become so rare during the holidays? Why have people turned their backs on this fragrant, deeply flavorful, sweet and savory, succulent pie? I’m at a loss. As it is, every year I search high and low for others who might share a mincemeat pie with me, so I won’t be forced to eat the entire thing myself. Not that I mind. Not really. Susan doesn’t like it. I’ve even found a sugar/fat free recipe for the filling. It sits on the shelf for several weeks after making it, before I laboriously, with great love and adoration, put it in a pie shell and top it with a tightly woven lattice-work. I promise you, the pie gets tastier the longer it sits after baking. I have witnesses to this fact. But why am I so alone in this limerence? This preoccupation with minced dried fruits, nuts, fats and brandy? Ach! The world is a cruel and lonely place. • This past summer I planned and actually executed the painting of a large mural on my back fence. There was a wide space of nothing that after 30 years begged me to fill it. It became a rather wild and colorful blast that turns more representational the further one stands from it. We can see it from our wide kitchen window. It’s called “Belly-Up Walks into the Garden”. Belly-up is my entirely unspoiled Lhasa Apso, an amazing gift from our friend, the singer-songwriter Ferron, for which we can never be grateful enough. We’ve been talking about how this rather “Land of Oz” inspired garden-scape will be enhanced (or not!) by the snow. And this morning we were gifted with the first substantial snow of the year. The mural is complete, I think. The mural is finished. Although I may add a forest of redwoods on the blank left end of the fence next summer. • NPR has become such a disappointment. I suppose that was predictable when tax cut mania took aim at it and it moved toward corporate sponsorship. And all media changed after 2001 anyway, especially any in which a large portion of the programming was news. Lately, they’ve been, NPR has been, obviously working hard to attract a younger audience. Clearly, they are less and less interested in me and people my age. We will die soon, or our incomes will no longer accommodate being partners in crime with the Mrs. McDonald’s mega donors of the world in scamming people into believing it is something other than another corporately controlled media outlet. They don’t mind that you donate. Hell, they are owned and profitized by state-of-the-art hoarders. It used to be so fine to come upon some really compelling radio journalism squeezed in between all the redundant classic rock stations that took over in the late 80s. I’m still reeling a bit from the numerous times Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” came on repeatedly over a so-called mellow hits station. So, for years NPR was a pretty constant companion, especially since my job primarily involved home, hospital and foster care visits. Problem? All this push to find a place with younger listeners sounds suspiciously like a bunch of 50–65-year-olds coming up with programming they THINK younger people would like. As if the pre-corporate Joan Kroc-based donor programming... incisive, exploratory and sometimes hard-hitting investigative news series... would not appeal to any intelligent 25-year-olds looking for an alternative to the fluff and swell of the mainstream 24-hour news and opinion/human interest cycle and reality-show psychosocial diagnose-and-ruminate-on-your-minor-neuroses programming. Today (I kid you not) the program on the way home from the swimming pool where I swim laps was a discussion about how one should offer one’s thanks to throat lozenge wrappers for the service they have rendered you... because (really, I’m not exaggerating) that wrapper has held that lozenge for you for longer than you know! What planet is this? ***
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• My dog has taken to having conversations with me now. After the majority of the day has gone by and we are, all three, settling in on the couch, he has developed a penchant for conversing in a wide range of sounds and little barks. We talk back of course. He appreciates it I think, though I think he wishes we would familiarize ourselves with, become more fluent in, a greater range of his vocabulary. Clearly, when he is asking for water, and it takes five minutes for us to translate and respond correctly we deserve his sharp little yips and sudden loud retorts. But we are learning.
• I’ve just finished a collection of novellas by the mid 19th century German writer Adalbert Stifter, "Motley Stones".
It is so fine to be introduced to a new, to me, author of such depth and magic. Apparently Stifter is a favorite of a whole slew of favorites of mine: Hermann Hesse, Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Rilke, though I had never heard of him until I read a review of this book in The New York Review of Books. Motley Stones is a collection published by the New York Review book series. It is a new translation by Isabel Fargo Cole. The novellas, six in all and each one named after a type of stone or mineral (Stifter, apparently, cultivated a lifelong interest in rocks and minerals), with a preface and an introduction, are deceptively plainspoken. The story telling is seductive and has an almost Grimm’s Brother’s allegorical flair. Uneasy and unpredictable, sometimes mysterious, happenings prevail, unfold quite beautifully, and create odds and issues for the characters that are most often, not always, managed and resolved if not overcome. Some even have happy endings, but many do not. At least, not in the way Americans have been suckled on the happy ending as a pre-requisite for any story telling. I am enthralled. It has been a while since I have felt this way about any fiction, and in spite of the fact that all of the stories occur in the century that Stifter lived, the early and mid 1800s, every one of them becomes remarkably timeless. They reverberate and transform. Here’s a little excerpt, just to give a taste of the writing, from the story, “Granite” (please excuse the potentially triggering Christian references... or don’t excuse them, I don’t care... there is religious iconography that transcends the religion it belongs to, so get over it): “...When we were alone once more, striding homeward up the hollow-way, my grandfather went on: “In the depths of fall, when the lingonberries ripen, and the mists rise on the mossy meadows, the people returned to the ground where the dead had been buried without consecration or ceremony. Many people went out to gaze at the fresh mounds of earth, others asked the names of those who were buried there, and when the ministry in Oberplan had been fully reestablished, the place was consecrated like a proper cemetery, a solemn service was held beneath the heavens, and all the prayers and blessings that had been neglected were made up for. Then the place was surrounded by a fence and strewn with quicklime. From that time onward, the memory of the past was preserved in many things. Surely you know that many places in these parts have ‘Plague’ as their byname, for instance Plague Meadow, Plague Path, Plague Slope; and if you weren’t so young, you’d see a column that’s no longer there, that stood on the marketplace in Oberplan, saying when the plague came, and when it ended, and bearing a prayer of thanks to Christ on the cross, who adorned the top of the column.” • I’ve taken on a little weekend job to help me avoid digging into my retirement accounts. One always wonders what one will do if one lives to a really ripe old age and the private accounts the public agencies I worked for provided instead of contributing to Social Security deplete, run dry. Plus, because of those private retirement accounts, my Social Security allowance has been penalized and reduced. It took them three years to figure out how much my monthly check would be reduced. Of course, they demanded I repay that three years’ worth of “overpayments” immediately. Luckily, having worked with this insane system as a social worker I was ready for this, but I can assure you, when agencies sell these private accounts to their workers as a better alternative than Social Security, these details are hazily included at best. Anyway, the job is a kick. I’m a greeter at the entrance of the hospital here. I’m the first person anyone sees when they enter the building. I pass out masks and ask questions about visitors’ Covid status. People, overwhelmingly, are polite and even eager to share their experience with vaccines, masks and their efforts to stay safe. Of course, some people are quite preoccupied, sad, stricken. I saw a grandmother in a wheelchair say goodbye to her grandkids and children in the lobby this Saturday after Thanksgiving because the kids could not come up to the unit. The grandchildren and children, after the visit, would be on their way to the further reaches of the state. Apparently (people just tell me this stuff!) the daughter was a cancer survivor. It was moving... the bittersweet moment of goodbyes in a time of an unpredictable future. • Why don’t Americans eat lamb much? Best stuff. We have a leg in the freezer, and we think we’ll have it for New Year’s dinner. Just had some exceptional lamb chops the other night. From Aldis (do you mind a little backhanded advert?). I like mint jelly on lamb. Our favorite lamb story is the lamb dinner we had during our visit to Mont St. Michel in France... that castle on the island in the crotch of France where Normandy meets Brittany. The tidal flats that surround the island and that are flooded during high tides (announcements over the island loudspeaker system urgently encouraging people to move their cars from the lower-level parking area outside the walls of the community are common) at low tide serve as pasture for sheep and lambs that are butchered for market. The grass on the salt flats that feeds the sheep infuses the meat with a particularly fine brackish flavor. Yum. We routinely make meatloaf out of a blend of ground lamb and bison these days. • How do heterosexual men establish and demonstrate real intimacy with other men? I feel sorry for them. It is hard enough for any man to maintain a not necessarily sexual relationship with another man. But heteros have the most issues here, I think. I’ve routinely found that most straight guys are entirely too much trouble to invest much relationship energy in. The very existence of fondness, of intimate connection, toward another guy totally throws them off. They are almost immediately pitched into inner chaos... because, by definition, they have not given much thought to how to express love, endearment, to another guy. The culture disallows it. It only allows exaggerated sexualization of intimacy with women. And they must be the right kind, the right configuration, of women. Such Bullshit. The culture denies that such feelings can exist between men and throws the dedicated straight male mind set into deep conflict. All their automatic, pathologic assumption that any non-straight guy always wants more than a handshake or a quick above the waist hug throws the straight brain into disarray... particularly since the very existence of fondness between men challenges the foundation of their entire psycho-social unconscious architecture. To be sure, I have had and have, close friendships with straight men... but fewer as I get older. In the end it is easier and more satisfying to carry on a non-sexual intimate relationship with a non-straight guy. One is not forced into the dark maze-like world of inner rationalization around feelings of same-sex love that spill out and over every aspect of attachment in the straight male psyche. Issues like who will do the work of relationship maintenance, who will call whom and when, become loaded with less than conscious conflict about sex preference. Sad for them, I think. They miss so much. • What do you think about the manner in which the COVID crisis and pandemic has been thought about by the elite? The lack of rational and consistent public policy across the political spectrum has been stultifyingly absurd at times and merely cruel and unthinking at others. I remember when the spread first became global and finally masks were being taken seriously. When the first lock down was making inroads even to our little town and trips to the grocery store were a challenge. The first death here was a beloved and well-known community college professor who had taken a trip to California before anyone was admitting the virus had even crossed to our shores. During trips to the grocery store I recall a startling involuntary propensity I developed that showed me, visually, the lines of transmission between people and things as people went about their grocery buying missions. It was a little unnerving. Totally bizarre. Like little light lines crisscrossing and traversing aisles, counters, checkouts, carts and produce. Yeesh. Now that the rich countries and the tiny coterie of billionaires that are the primary steam in their engines insist that anything done for the good of the global community must have a price and must involve profit, and it has resulted in predictable and numbing repeated outbreaks of variations of the virus, do you think the ongoing and increasing human cost of such economic narcissism masked as advanced economic theory will break through their demand to build on and protect their astronomical hoards? Is that the way hoarding works? Or do hoarders arrange their mental shelves and cupboards to excuse and pathologically rationalize such cruelties and ignorance ad infinatum? ***
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• I am so pleased with the bidet I installed on my toilet some months ago. You have no idea how satisfying it can be not to have to flush TP that is equal to half a tree after an award-winning dump. The holidays will be so much more satisfying without having to plunge the goddammed toilet every third day. • Moving my swim indoors after the summer cools down enough to make it unwise to swim in the open water, I have to adjust to the absence of the sun over my wet face, the chop and wind that often makes swimming one direction twice as hard as swimming another. I have to say goodbye to the absolutely soul cleansing nature of good, intense, meditative lake swimming. The pool is fine. We have nice public pool. But it cannot compare. Of course, there is a more social aspect to pool swimming, in that one becomes familiar and friendly with other swimmers at times, but by and large swimming, for me, is an exercise in centering, in purging unnecessary angst and rumination. I push the stagnant thinking and feeling out with each stroke. I lose myself. If you think about it, the movements in swimming are very much like a kind of Tai Chi... the water’s resistance a metaphor for how one moves through the great chasm of one’s personal cosmos, with all one’s satellites, moons, and asteroids, cosmic dust and dark matter. • Sometimes I think all the hatred and dread of snowy weather is largely responsible for Climate Change. What would the world be like if people were preternaturally predisposed to love and seek out snow? • Of all my favorite and most instructive travel memories (and there are many) perhaps the ones that are the most transporting are my memories of being in a place where there is an Islamic call-to-prayer. I am one of the most fiercely agnostic people I know... there are few religious observances and customs that strike me as authentic or relatable in a world in which moments of true transcendence and connection to what is greater than me routinely happen outside the confines of the hierophantic practices and demands of any religion. I have my own practices. My own ways to commune. My own hard-earned practices of communion, of prayer if you must call it that, with the divine. But the sound of a muezzin chanting out the call to prayer, throughout the neighborhood or the entire city transcends any ill-conceived and often bloody boundary between the various practices of communication with whatever we call that which is greater than us. We had rented an apartment in the old Moorish quarter of Granada Spain, the Albaicin neighborhood, a tangled warren of old homes, shops and hidden squares and plazas across an arroyo and its river from the spectacular Alhambra palace. This was some years before renting an apartment instead of a hotel room for accommodation during one’s travels was well known. We were always fortunate, blessed, in those years. Our place in Granada was the bottom floor of three-story house. The owners lived in the upper levels. We often found ourselves drinking sangria in the little place next door that had a little fountain and a rather amazing view of the Alhambra from under its canvass covered patio where we sat. We heard our first call to prayer in Granada. Most of the Muslim population was chased out of the city when the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, finally pushed the last of the Moors out of Iberia and united the Kingdoms of Castille and Aragon and modern Spain was born. 1492. The tortures and massacres of the Spanish Inquisition that insisted that all non-Christians convert or die were also born. And the genocide of the native peoples of the Americas. Muslims and Jews fled the country... or, in Granada’s case, many hid in the twisting warrens and steep hidden streets that are made of stairways in the Albaicin. The call to prayer swept down from the highest point of the neighborhood. Even if you did not stop or become momentarily silent to note and acknowledge it, it changed the air, infused it with a request to the greatest forces in the universe to become evident in the sun and blowy white streets and secret gardens, the children, lovers and strugglers. In Istanbul, some years later, the call to prayer was sent forth from numerous minarets throughout the huge and swarming city. We were folded into its recognition of the eternal nature of the cosmos and of humanity’s simultaneously immense and tiny part in its movement, its swell and bloom. One afternoon, when we had returned to Istanbul for a few days before our flight back home, after a three-week trip around the Aegean, Western Turkey, the island of Ikaria, and Athens, we were lazing in bed in our hotel room. The cobblestone road angled up outside our wide windows and the gauzy curtains billowed in the fine breeze off the Bosporus. Our hotel was four or five stories with two rooms on each floor and a cast iron spiral staircase to the rooftop patio that overlooked that busy international waterway. We were lazing in bed in the breezy room after some particularly fine lovemaking when the call to prayer soaked through the air over the city. We could hear at least four different Muezzins chanting... and sometimes it sounded like they were sending out a call-and-response to the entire metropolis. There is something that must be scientifically verifiable in the way the call to prayer changes the relationship of the way the molecular construct and interrelationships of every atom interacts with every other atom in any populated place where it is heard. When I try to re-construct that feeling, those moments of connection to the divine in a kind of unconscious sacred poetic and choral attachment between all that share the experience of the call to prayer, whether one is Muslim or not, or understands the language or not, it is completely uneasy, maybe impossible. The call becomes the air one breathes; one breathes a prayer for unity with the divine. It is heady and earthy at the same time. Unites heaven, earth, flesh and blood, voice, and heart. • What one wishes for. What do I wish for? In a way, I find this an empty exercise. For an old man. An aging man. There is relatively little time left. Why would I wish for anything? The days move so quickly now, the years push themselves in an exponentially quickening sprint toward the finish. Wishes and hopes are likewise folded into a spin of cosmic proportions. One hundred years has become attainable when in the past speaking in decades seemed to concern spanning vast epochs of one’s life. Ten years is yesterday. Forty years is only a little more than half of one’s life. How does this work? The mutability of time becomes more than obvious when in the past it often felt never ending, insurmountable. Its unreality, except in terms of each one of our brief lives, spins in dreams and in the race of every day’s passing. What is a wish? That time would somehow find an opening for a meager response from beyond our puny influence on the ways the stars move? Perhaps I wish for this: that this sped up time becomes more legible, more readable. That I would become more fluent in its language, its messages to me. Its music more immediately discernable in the noise. That I would have the will and the awareness to be aware of how it is expressing itself in my time and how I am expressing myself in it. The world is a beautiful, timeless, place.
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