NOT THE SAME

  This blog was born nearly ten years ago. By my definition, “Adventure” would be any activity where something hangs in the balance, either good or bad, gain or loss and it could go either way: Adventure. In 2012 I had several (adventures) going and my house had a stranger living in it so I could stay out on the road. It was a really good time in my life. My stories were either from the road or decompressing at home after a road trip or organizing to get back under way again. Blog post #1 came from Nova Scotia, from a light house where I sat on a great granite boulder with waves crashing below my feet. The sun came up on me there and off to the southeast where the horizon met the sky I imagined, if I could see far enough, the nearest shoreline would be the coast of Morocco. Marrakesh and the Atlas Mountains were on my bucket list even then.
Nearly a decade before that I emailed my kids and amigos with stories and my coordinates. Every small town in Patagonia had an internet cafe and 400 Chilean pesos (about 50 cents) would get me half an hour on line. A hostel bed and breakfast cost about 3,200 pesos and often that included a slow, weak internet connection. From Santiago, Chile to Ushuaia, Argentina I walked or rode a bus everywhere I went.
A friend who retired a year before me advised: If you want to have a great adventure or do something on a grand scale, do it right away. It was a caution, there are no guarantees. I felt obligated to all of my amigos who ‘adventured’ vicariously, not given to wanderlust. The destination took a while to decide. It began by creating a long list, then by process of elimination. Español had to be the native language and not much Ingles. Then it had to be affordable (to walk-about) and a safe place for Americans. The list shrank down to two, Chile and Argentina and I could do both.
I discovered how the world opens up when you leave what you know behind and start again with another culture and another language. I confirmed what I already believed, how the world caters to tourists but embraces pilgrims. I’ve spent time in other countries since Patagonia in ’05 and granted, one cannot help but notice the pleasant absence of American hubris. I have loved my own country with cautionary reservation since my days in the army. That was when it occurred to me; I didn’t choose my country, it chose me. When someone asks (and they always ask) "Where are you from?"  I often answer, “I try not to be.” Where you come from is a tribal remnant that we should have been able to shed. I prefer a global (human) identity. Sharing that revelation with people still immersed in, (God Bless America & We’re #1) can make them uncomfortable or worse.
I didn’t set out today to be critical of my country. Maybe if I reframe the idea, that I am more lucky to be a citizen here than I am proud it won’t discredit me. After all, I think Proud and Pride are perfect subjects for the metaphor, “Lipstick on the pig”. But that’s another story. I am remembering that rooms full of young people used to get up early just to listen to me, but time flies and things change. If I can stir up an adventure, even a little one I can share, it feels like I have work to do. A few folks still come here to check out my story. It’s not the same but it’s not bad. 

. . . OR REALLY STUPID

Some movies are good enough that you buy the DVD and watch it again, maybe even again. I have a big stack of those. Some surprise you as they don’t lose any of their appeal. I know some of them nearly by heart and even after many reruns they still please. One of those is, Enemy Of The State, a 1998 action flick about government surveillance with Gene Hackman and Will Smith. Hackman has a great line he delivers to Smith, “You are either really smart or really stupid.” Then he gets to say it again near the end of the movie. Their situation and the timing make it both entertaining and hard to forget. 
I have written and then rejected several pieces intended to fill this space. For one reason or another, during the final edit they all fell short of anything I wanted my name on. Not changing the subject, just taking another tack: I remember when my kids had shoe boxes full of matchbox cars. They had their favorites but they  kept them all busy in the mix, all at the same time. Lying prone on the floor or propped up on one elbow they motored miniature cars, trucks and busses around a masking tape grid I had put down on the floor. It didn’t take much imagination with wood building blocks and books for buildings to create a small town. Most of their motoring amounted to moving vehicles from one parking place to another. The crucial, critical element was vocal sound effects. Without the vroom-vroom engine sounds, horns beeping and tires screeching, who would want to have any of it?. 
I don’t play with matchbox cars on the floor anymore but I do play with words, trying to fashion believable, interesting stories. Like my kids, I have favorite subjects or ideas that I fall back on instinctively, the same way they made their tires squeal. They never got tired of their repetition but I tire of mine. Finding a different or better way to make the same observation or to uncomplicate a particularly knotty puzzle, I feel stuck in a rut, like wasted time. Still I come back to dig in the same hole just like my boys went back to their vroom-vrooming. 
Like a big Bluegill guarding its nest, I have taken the bait, swallowed the hook. Human behavior is the bait I cannot resist. It is not so simple as Monkey-see Monkey-do. To even approach that mystery one need know how the brain works and that is more complicated, more challenging than most people care to take on. But I am one of those people who take it on. Common sense (Monkey-see Monkey-do) and the naked eye have been sufficient to perceive a wannabe-wise, world view. But common sense perception can be both insufficient and misinformed and in the case of human behavior, it certainly is. 
Sailors knew for a very long time that the world was not flat but civilization just wasn’t ready for it. Its time would come but it had to wait. Likewise the human behavior paradox is on hold, apparently until the time is right. Still, what is very well understood currently and exploited as well is that; if you have enough data, the right algorithm and a powerful enough computer, you can correctly predict any one person’s behavior (decisions) on anything with about 95% accuracy. What does that say about free will and decision making? In most cases you, me, everyone’s decisions have been framed before you even consider the issue. With such a high percentage of probability, there is nothing to debate. Most decisions come preassembled and quality controlled with noting left to do but make believe you did it all by yourself and take credit for being so astute.
That is the bait I have swallowed, the hole I keep digging in and I can’t seem to leave it alone. It doesn’t seem to matter what idea I start writing about, it defaults back to brain based science and human behavior (decision making). I would appreciate some sympathy but that has been short coming, as if I deserve my fate. At the end of the day I am about to drift off to sleep, thinking about a 25 year-old experiment with vampire bats. One mother is deprived of food and cannot feed her baby. Another unrelated mother bat (that is important) she notices and helps, she feeds the unfed baby. Then the tables are turned and the first mother feeds the unfed baby of the mother who had filled in for her. The pattern is repeated. Then one of the mothers is captured before she can feed, the pouches where she carries blood back to the roost are inflated with air so it looks like she has food but she has nothing to share. The hungry baby goes hungry. After that, the mother of the most recent hungry baby refused to continue the collaboration, (if you don’t help me I’m not going to help you). Sisters may cooperate regardless from a familial bond. But when it happens between unrelated individuals we humans call that, ‘Tit for Tat’ a uniquely human behavior, or so common sense would suggest. 
So there I am about to fall asleep, thinking about a vampire bat experiment and someone sneaks up to whisper in my ear. It sounds like Gene Hackman telling me, “You are either really smart or really stupid.” 
 

A SLEEPY CONSCIENCE

  Life is a highly contagious, sexually transmitted, incurable, always fatal disease. Whoever coined this clever quote seems to be flaunting the biology as much as lamenting mortality. King Solomon addressed it at length in his book, Ecclesiastes. Peel away the humor and you are left with, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” In any case the underlying message comes through, “Life is short, eat dessert first.” On the other hand there are so many inspirational (Life) quotes from popular heroes and wise old-souls that you can’t disregard their bias either. I think it safe to say, “Life is good. . . except for when it isn’t.” 
It is no secret that I use favorite quotes to bridge gaps in This Life’s unraveling the same way Christians fall back on scripture verses. You don’t need persuasion; it works like a booster shot, a second coat of paint. Mark Twain said the ideal life would be comprised of “. . . good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience.” Translated, I take that to mean, “Keep good company, forgive your own foolishness and move on.” More quotes might be fun to roll around but I think I’ve made the point. I rely on many 2nd coats of Twain-paint (quotes). God must have been modeling Mark Twain when he created himself. 
It is no secret either that I gravitate to questions and observations about the human condition. Using old age as an excuse I return to dig in the same old holes I have been crawling back out of for the past forty years. As much as I would enjoy the comforts of tradition and popular culture, it would be no better than teasing a hungry lumberjack with the scent of fresh bread. I keep asking the insoluble question: Why are we here? Ask any mainstream person and I would expect to hear reference to supernatural power or human resilience, to the power of love or evolution, maybe even the pursuit of happiness. The only story I trust enough to sleep with is this: Life doesn’t need a reason. Life is its own reason, it longs for itself, begets new life. We (people) are the conveyance (mechanism) the path it takes. That is our purpose, why we are here. We are one of many means to an end but not the end itself. That is a bitter pill to swallow if you’ve been weaned on religious hyperbole or human rhetoric. But I would rather be disappointed with the truth and make the best of it. Dwelling on Glory-bound expectations in Life’s autumn season would be dreadful if Glory be the myth and the fact be wet, moldy leaves composting in a heap. 
Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” She saw better without eyes than most sighted people. Eat dessert first, life is short. Kurt Vonnegut said, “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” Talk is cheap; who goes to the edge and ‘Self defeating’ in the pursuit of ‘Daring’? I may lack the courage and the perceptive acuity that my heroes display but they left foot prints and stacked stones to show me the way. I can’t really say why I am here but moving my feet in the dark seems preferable to fermenting at the bottom of a familiar hole. 

WHY SHOULD I CARE

  I make the distinction between ‘disbelief’ and ‘unbelief’. The one is actually a negative belief construct, that something is untrue: “Greed is not good” or “The earth is not flat” Those examples would be ‘disbelief’. The other is like the dollar that is not in my pocket, non existent. Even though my issue may seem trivial it is still my issue, like the faulty screen door latch that doesn’t snap shut. I can fix the latch but not the other. 
Do I believe he did this or she did that; what if I have no opinion? What if I simply have no reason to believe? That would be ‘unbelief’ but common usage begs otherwise, “Yes” or “No”. What I do believe is that clear, concise communication is hard to come by. By not knowing or not caring I have not disqualified the question. Answering one question with another question amounts to a logical fallacy in that it doesn’t address the first question, it only changes the subject. Still, maybe I should do that, “Why should I care?” 
I remember a time when I didn’t have time to dwell on such seemingly irrelevant trivia. But that was when I was paying into social security. It was a time when I would drop in to see my dad. I might find him sitting at the table with milk and cookies or walking around his yard, picking up twigs. At the time my concerns were narrow and short sighted. I didn’t want to believe that I would ever experience, (nothing better to do) than pick up twigs. Now I am on the other end of that Social Security transaction and I have plenty of time.
I enjoy good conversation. A good one can take only a few breaths or require hours to unfold but real dialogue needs to be launched, it needs to have a trajectory and either an end point or an agreement to let it rest. Repetitious remembering and recycling the same ideas fall short of meaningful conversation. I am not good at small talk and I often fail that test. Maybe that’s why I love telling Story. You know where it’s going and you trust the Muse to put the right words in your mouth. If you own the story you don’t need to think about the words. But dialogue needs to be measured, not unlike a tennis ball coming at you over the net. Unlike the hook at the end of a familiar story, the tennis ball’s fate hangs on every stroke. 
I like that about writing. I can juggle words to fit the need for as long as it takes. It may take what feels like a very long time to organize the best words but only a few seconds to read them. In conversation I sometimes do that, pause in mid sentence, searching for a better word. Sometimes the listener thinks I need help. Their well intended offering, finishing my sentence for me can piss me off and I want to say something rude. I know what I want to say but I don’t like the language my subconscious prompter has suggested. So I self edit as I speak and I must admit, it can be as much a distraction as it is an asset. I think about that sometimes after a big wind has cluttered the yard. With nothing better to do I rationalize for the sake of lawnmower blades; walking the yard picking up twigs, it makes perfect sense. 

THINK ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME

  This Human experience, I think about it all the time. Everybody starts the same way, like apples falling from a tree but that’s where the likeness ends. We all take the same leap but everybody gets a different ride. Biographers conduct interviews, draw from many sources, make the (cause & effect) connections and keep after it for as long it takes. It’s like reconstructing the recipe by sampling the pudding. For the reader the difference may be hard to see but telling one’s own story is different. An autobiography is vulnerable to a self serving conscience while biographers are not. Nobody wants to advertise their own worst self and it is not dishonest to put the best foot forward but the line between them is muddy at best. Stories that misrepresent either the good or the bad are soon exposed as whitewash or malice. Trying to get my own story right, no whitewash, no exposé, just follow the crumbs to wherever they go; I think about it all the time. 
I began by drawing the line between others expectations (being raised) and the meanings I took from it along the way (growing up). Somewhere in that compromise I started questioning (quietly, to myself) “Why this and not that?” and “This is more than I can believe.” As a naive kid who never challenged authority or rebelled, I just soaked it up, very slowly, but it accumulated never the less. All of us in my generation were raised and grew up but we were different apples from different twigs, maybe even different trees. Nature loves diversity. We keep getting the message that we are unique and that was a good thing but being too unique is dangerous. So color inside the lines. I was good at that, with reservations of course but still, who notices the quiet kid who conforms? This is where, in all of my self searching, that the story is at risk of losing its way. There are dozens of story killing dead ends beckoning from the bush. So I need be careful, don’t give in to that urge, stay away from that trap. 

        I came out of the military with a newly acquired sense of skepticism. Those years allowed for extra (growing up) time to accumulate experience, skills and making meaning. I resisted the patriotic, we take care of our own, reenlistment  propaganda. At 25 years as a college freshman I experienced the joy of discovery and the power of critical thinking. That was supposed to happen as a preteen but in my case, arriving late has never been a deterrent. I am still discovering, still asking the big questions; Why? How does this work? And after that: Well then, how does that work? More and more, the older I get, the basic meaning I get from navigating my culture is that nobody is in control. Everything is reaction and people often react with no forethought or sense of accountability. I feel a lot like Rip Van Winkle who slept for decades and woke up and old man, almost out of time. Like Rip I feel like I’ve missed out on stuff I should have stayed awake for but now is now and it’s all I have. I don’t want to spend it reflecting on what I didn’t do, making slow circles like a leaf in an eddy while the river keeps moving on. 
Robert Burns (18th century Scottish poet) put the human condition in context better than any clergy or political authority. “The best laid schemes of mice and men . . .” His poem, To A Mouse, rings with reason and candor making it unmistakably clear. In so many words he says, No matter how well you plan, whether a man or a mouse, there is no way to know how it will end. He tapped into the rule of unanticipated consequence (We don’t know what it is that we don’t know). So the best plan is just a plan. Unexpected things happen and if they work out for the better we take credit as if it were in fact, part of the plan. But in the human experience, the ability to redirect and place blame is more profitable than high performance. When shit happens we meed a place to hide and someone to blame. To that I would add, if there is a God or gods then they must be irrelevant spectators. 
I spend way too much time and energy ruminating on religion and God. Like a dog chewing on a worn out bone, I keep going back to it even though I would much rather chew on something else. But again, me trying to analyze how I got this way is well intended speculation. I like to think I know my own story but the first requirement for one's own story is that the good part should be grand and the bad part must be forgivable. So when it reaches the editor’s final cut it may turn out to be more fiction than fact. When you know that about yourself it changes the way you see others, all of humanity. What it means to be human depends on what one believes, not on the reality. For as long as humans can reproduce and replace generations that are passing thru, reproductive success would seem to be the bottom line. The truth is whatever we can agree on, civilized trappings, nothing more, nothing less. 
This whole piece is like mental gymnastics; should I do cartwheels or walk on my hands? Start somewhere, do something well and know when to give it a rest. Growing old is always better than dying young but then comes that caveat; what if I get bored? What if I learn that I’ve been wrong about everything? What if my followers figure out that I am just a foolish old man? What if nobody listens to me or misses me when I’m gone? Leon Trotsky (Russian revolutionary) is remembered as much for his (Old Age) quote as for his revolutionary zeal. He said, “Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man.” Apparently he didn’t see it coming. I can see it coming and I try every day to be ready for it. But being ready requires I marvel at simple experiences like watching woodpeckers at my feeder. Every day is a good time to tell whoever you love that they are loved. Every day is perfect for listening to a favorite love song or steady, Delta Blues guitar licks. I think about it all the time.