ONCE UPON A TIME 0.3 : DAY 151

I watch old, DVD movies on my computer. In the new normal, one finds them self exploring unfamiliar options. With only an antenna for local stations, television offerings are thin and weak with reruns. The schedule worsens every week. So I’ve gone to my DVD library. At present I have around 150 movies but that’s not enough. So I have begun replenishing my cache. In the old days, before new normal, you could find decent films for $4 or $5. I must not be alone in the search for cheap, DVD movies. Supply & demand: prices have gone up. This week the cheapest, desirable films are running $10. Most of them are movies I already have in my collection. But do what you must. I have three on order, due to be delivered soon and my Amazon cart has six more, waiting for me to place the order. The virus isn’t going away like the man said it would. My takeaway; don’t trust a narcissist hack when you need medical advice. My simple minded solution is, I’m not spending money on gasoline now so I can afford more DVDs.

Last night I watched ‘Gladiator’ with Russell Crowe, released in 2000. Last week I watched ‘Road To Perdition’ with Tom Hanks, released just two years later. What I couldn’t ignore last night was, if you reduce them both to bare bones they are the same story. One was set in Rome, the 2nd Century AD. The other, 1931 in the upper midwest. In both cases, wise, old rulers who carved out empires, they grew old and were forced to choose a successor. Both had wretched, evil sons. They also had beloved, loyal, generals. Both rulers die. Their beloved,(should have been sons) die valiantly and their worthless progeny, they die of their own treachery, pathetically. In both stories, a young boy of high birth survives, hope for the future. 

From the Storytelling tradition you learn that there are only so many story formats, like fifteen or so. Beginning with bare bones, they get fleshed out through different time periods, locations, cultures, characters and plot twists but the skeletons, you can copy the list on a scrap of paper. But they unravel into millions of different versions. I ordered three different films that revolve around Richard Nixon’s undoing, all with different characters, different twists and personal narratives but the same historical benchmark, the same bones. I’ve seen them all and the bones they share is Nixon’s doomed effort to avoid the inevitable downfall. 

On a grand scale, I love the ‘Geology’ story, how tectonic plates shifted and slid around the planet for a few billion years with violent upheaval and slow motion uplifting, subduction and voilá, there it is, a land bridge for people to cross between Siberia and North America. You have to get your mind around very long periods of time and that is more difficult for some than others; it takes practice and repetition, maybe even a little leap of faith. But the story is irresistible. Those paleolithic folks who came across that land bridge, they peopled a hemisphere with cultures and history. They precluded the age of European exploration by 12,000 years. Add people to the story and anything can happen. With that in mind, it is truly difficult for me to glorify mankind’s righteous, pure side without balancing the equation. 

In that long climb down from the trees, civilization has advanced by leaps and bounds but the planet's only self righteous animal can’t shake his case of arrested development. Moral failures of lust and violence are ageless. They are only one side of the coin but reliable as the rise and set of the sun. But I don’t want to go there today. If I have to fall back on a DVD movie tonight it need be a feel-good tale like ‘Groundhog Day’ or ‘Sleepless In Seattle.’

ONCE UPON A TIME 0.2 : DAY 149

Yesterday I discovered an online, not for credit, philosophy course from Yale University. It is an attempt to correlate both the philosophy and the science of human nature. Naturally, that pairing turned my head. In the introduction the professor used the classic “Trolley” problem. You remember: a runaway trolley is out of control. Ahead on the tracks there are five unsuspecting people. Between the trolley and the people there is a switch that can reroute the carriage onto a siding. But on the siding there is one person. You can not control the trolley but you can throw the switch to the siding. Whatever you choose to do, someone will be killed. But if you throw the switch, only one person will die. If you choose not to throw the switch, five will perish. What do you do?

After a decision has been discussed and agreed upon, the problem is rebooted with a new wrinkle thrown in. This time, no switch, no siding, only a bridge over the tracks with one very large person on the bridge. The question is, if you chose to throw the switch in the first case, would it be alright in the second case to push the person off the bridge in front of the trolly, slowing the carriage to a stop? This is followed by a third option: if you chose not to throw the guy off the bridge, imagine that the five are hit by the trolly but not killed instantly. At the hospital they all need a critical body part to survive. There is a patient in the emergency room who will survive his/her emergency. If you remove one vital organ from the ER patient for each trolley patient, all of the trolley patients survive but the ER patient dies. You must choose. 

It is a moral dilemma any way you turn. But the problem is not the choice you make, but how you weighed the morality of each step? Philosophy is one thing, human nature is another. We are by nature, moral beings. We care a great deal about what is right, as in righteous, and what is wrong, as in immoral. It is in our nature to want to be right but even more so, not to be wrong. 

Then the professor identified two types of people. First was the person who is able to plan reflectively and follow through with reason & commitment to the plan. The other type may reflect and make the same plans but is vulnerable to procrastination/switching, to a temporary but more appealing plan: saving money to pay the rent but changing in favor of betting on the horses. The procrastinating substitution isn’t bad necessarily but tends to create more problems than it solves. But it’s not the result we will address here, it is the process. Human nature pushes our buttons and how successfully (how righteously) we navigate that experience depends on how well we reason/commit or procrastinate/switch at the time. 

The class is geared to explore how we arrive at right and wrong, and then the likelihood of channeling our inherent nature to a happy conclusion. I am going back for the second lesson. We will no doubt revisit Socrates and Plato, Epictetus, David Hume and others but it is Yale after all and it is after all, a philosophy course.

ONCE UPON A TIME 0.1 : DAY 147

Había una vez . . . that’s how stories almost always begin. Once upon a time: cuando un abuelo cultivaba nabos en su jardin. Pero un nabo creció tanto que no pudo arrancarlo. I have been telling story all my life but never thought of it as a calling, as a profession until the late 1990’s. I found myself working in front of audiences that included Latinos who spoke little English or none at all. Often they were studying, learning English, but learning a new language, any language in the conversational mode is really difficult. My own brand of survival Spanish has been sufficient for me to make myself understood but coming at you at the speed of story, the words run together like one big word, a thousand letters long. With story, if the listener looses a couple of key words they are hopelessly lost. Unlike reading, you can’t slow down or go back to reread the lost words. When you get a sentence or two behind, there is no catching up. 

With that caveat in mind, I translated three short, simple, children’s stories into Spanish. I practiced, memorized difficult or complicated phrases and was able to surprise my unsuspecting audience. They had come to listen to story in the language they were studying and they got language they understood. My fist, best story was about an old grandfather who grew turnips in his garden. One grew so big that he couldn’t pull it up. He called for help and someone came to help, then someone else came until there was a string of helpers lined up, single file behind the old man, pulling on the one in front of them. Each helper got smaller and smaller, from grandmother to mother to granddaughter to dog to cat to mouse to last of all, ‘una hormiga’ an ant. Together, they pull up the turnip and all fell back in a heap on top of each other. It is a good story with ideas to follow up on, lots of opportunities for group interaction, helping the teller remember their order in line. From start to finish this story can be crafted to fit an 8-15 minute time slot. 

From the barrio in Grand Rapids, MI, to migrant farm children in Immokalee, FL, from affluent academy students in Santiago Chile to adults learning English as a second language in Ushuaia, Argentina, everything began with, “Había una vez”. I’m thinking I would need a couple of hours to review verb conjugation, to refresh vocabulary and rehearse the transitions. But I could tell the story and Latinos of all ages, they would love it. In Nome, Alaska I found Spanish speaking kids. I told this story in my best Español, in short clips. The Latino kids took turns translating it back into English for the others. It was a great game. I think storytelling is an incurable affliction. Once you sip from that cup you are hooked forever. 

With the pandemic upon us there are few opportunities for even a casual conversation, much less storytelling. I take advantage of every occasion, even if it is just here in my journal or my blog. Story is where I do my best, where I have something to share. The overarching story today is Coronavirus. I am not a vindictive person and I believe the argument for punishment as a first resort is narrow and spiteful. But need be said, leadership from the White House and federal government has been painfully absent. Our power brokers have abandoned us in favor of self-aggrandizement and partisan politics. Reelection campaigns and subordination to the big dog has allowed Covid-19 to run unchecked. They know it, I think they are ashamed privately. With a headcount the number of courageous leaders could be tallied on your fingers. I don’t have a good story to close with, nothing to raise hope, no nostalgic reflection. I’ll try to do better next time. Había una vez, yo estaba bien. Nosotros no morimos, pero esto tampoco es feliz para siempre.

JUST SAYIN' 0.6 : DAY 144

Just sayin’. . . I read an article that was extremely critical, strongly disapproving of the slang expression, ‘Just sayin’. Its origin wasn’t confirmed, only that it likely came from a standup comedy routine, Eddie Murphy or Seinfeld maybe. The critic likened it to a, get out of jail free card. It allows you to be rude/insulting with no consequence. At the end of the insult you dangle the disclaimer, get off the hook without owning the insult. I never gave it much thought. I’ve been using it in my journal as sort of a category, a way to say, “. . .what do I know?” My ego isn’t that big and my observations can stray off the beaten path. Then all I’m guilty of is making noise. Sometimes I play the devil’s advocate. But I can’t remember a time when I didn’t take credit/blame for what I put out in the mainstream. Still, I’m not a standup comic. But it has me thinking again. Should I abandon ‘Just sayin’ in favor of something more appropriate, maybe something borrowed like, ‘In the beginning . . .’ 

It has always been easy to lift a few words or a phrase from the text that gives a clue. You can, if you actually read for content, rediscover the title somewhere in the text. But who reads that close anyway. . .just sayin’. There, I did it. I insulted casual, speed readers for not being more dedicated. I am guilty of that myself so I can play the ‘just sayin’ card. All that for what: what if the writer was up against a deadline and had nothing, writers block, whatever? A clever writer can be for or against anything, sort of like lawyers. Guilty or innocent, we don't care, just want to win, meet the deadline. 

I will be truly liberated when we get a safe, effective vaccine for Covid. I will be able to go places and irritate people in person, without clever rhetoric. Stuck in front of the computer is better than on a ventilator so I’ll take some comfort there, continue to stay at home and make excuses for not having more/better to say.

JUST SAYIN' 0.5: DAY 140

Keeping a record of what crosses my mind serves several purposes. Diaries are considered more personal and private while a journal is not. I think of what I do as journaling, not because it’s not personal because it often is personal. But the narrative I try to weave has never been private. It is always open for anyone to read. Going back weeks, years, decades; I can tap back into old stories that had me hooked at the time. No less than old, black & white photographs, I can recapture the moment. The writing allows me to play with words, my favorite toys. At some point, taking notes evolves upward from an outline, (a trail of crumbs so you can find your way home), to a fleshed out story. Then of course, leaving your thoughts and ideas on a journal page is therapeutic. No counselor, no need to schedule an appointment and with nobody waiting in the wings, I get as much time as I require. 

Keeping a journal through difficult times can be repetitious if not redundant. The risk of fixating on one detail, like a dog gnawing on its bone, is real. I taught school long enough I can slip back into ‘Teacher-Talk’ without knowing I’ve slipped. I’ve remarked before, the only thing worse than being subjected to teacher-talk is realizing that you are guilty of it. When I need to say something that may be condescending, I try to frame it in between narratives. 

As the Virus/Economy/Disruption goes; if your income is guaranteed and the virus has left you immune, then things may not be all that difficult. But this certainly is a difficult time. For most of us, the disease may or may not be disabling/deadly but the only way to know is to become infected. Nobody knows for sure how long their job will need them and that leaves a person juggling two hot rocks. To compound the issue, we are entering a general election cycle with nothing but contentious back-biting and desperation to add to our woes. I have a world view, a broad, philosophical sense of how the world should work but everybody has one of those. Like most of my contemporaries, our primary concerns are not so much what we want but what we don’t want. The only thing worse than God Damn Democrats now days are God Damn Republicans. Is there anything worse than a bigot? How about two bigots! 

After the battle of Britain, Winston Churchill was quoted, “Never have so many, owed so much, to so few.” It was his tribute to the RAF and their air war against the German Luftwaffe. In the current political climate I would say, “Never have so many, been so deceived by so few.” That would be my disclaimer regarding our President. I just crafted a paragraph addressing some of his character flaws and demagogue-drawbacks but then immediately deleted them. I don’t want to go there. Not that I want to give him some wiggle room but I think it probably doesn't matter. It feels like my mother’s, how would you rather die analogy (the fast bullet or a slow rope), I would prefer the slow rope. It allows for a glimmer of hope.   

I just walked my coffee mug from my desktop to the kitchen. There were five other dirty mugs in the top rack of the dishwasher. Five days since running the dishwasher. Occasionally I hand wash a few dishes but I will be out of clean mugs in a day or two. So it’s either hand wash everything or everything into the humming, whirring, clunk things clean machine. There are plenty of chores that need to be tended to. Still, with nobody dropping in, no company at all; motivation is weak and slow coming. I ran the sweeper a few days ago. With clean carpets and the washer ready to go, I suppose I should organize and put things away. My pandemic journal is mostly about the writing, not so much the reading. After I finish here I will start fresh on a new piece; idle hands you know. It helps me organize ideas and frame language that may be suited for some other conversation. The confabulated Churchill quote isn’t bad. 

JUST SAYIN' 0.4: DAY 139

Time flies when you’re having fun. The longer you persevere, the faster it flies. Memory serves me well, when I was in high school nothing was more demeaning than riding to school on the bus. You had to sit near if not with junior high twerps and classmates who shared your own misfortune. In good weather if I had no other option I would leave early and walk. It was just over a mile, straight up the road. Often other students who had cars, they might be charitable and give me a ride. It would not be cool to attract attention or appear to be begging but I was begging, just in a subtle sort of way. There I was walking, they recognized me and they had a vacant seat. If a friend passed you by it could have any number of implications. Maybe they weren’t paying attention, or they had a girl with them, or they were tired of my passive-aggressive hitch-hiking. In any case, I never, ever questioned their bypass. That would be not-cool even more than trying to flag them down. There were times when my girlfriend missed her bus, her mother drove her to school and they would give me a ride. I accepted the ride with mock cool but the unspoken question was always there; why didn’t you ride the bus? That was 1956, 64 years ago and I remember details like it was only a few years ago. My buddy Carl had a mustard yellow, 53 Chevy convertible. He picked up his girlfriend on the way but she lived the other side of school and I hopped out before that. Halfway to school I had to pass another buddy’s house. Eddie had a two tone blue, ’52 Ford. If we spontaneously converged I had a ride but most days he was still getting up when I walked by. Occasionally Norman drove his dad’s car, an old four door Chevy. If it was just Norm and his brother they picked me up. But he was one of 2 or 3 top dogs in our class and I was way down with the middle dogs. If he was with anybody else, they didn’t slow down. 

Today is my birthday, August 4. I will get phone calls and cards in the mail but no party this year. Last summer we celebrated 80 years with a long, 5 day weekend on Lake Michigan. My backstory has lots of episodes, from hitching a ride to school to being the reason for a family reunion. At 99, George Burns said, “Age, it’s just a number.” So 81 is just a number too but it’s that and a little more. Life as I’m told, sets us up with lessons. If the lesson goes unlearned, life repackages that lesson into a different set of circumstances and puts it back on your plate. If you never learn the lesson it keeps recycling, over and over, again and again. I’ve learned; my culture is a dichotomy, it allows for amazing success stories and high minded, noble deeds. It also abides with the evils of racism, classism and gender bias. It allows avarice to pass itself off as ambition and thus a virtue. But that is how people work. Seen through the lens of 80 years, we are neither as wonderful nor as wretched as you might believe. I would concur with Epictetus, the Greek philosopher who observed, “There is neither good nor evil but believing makes it so.” Just sayin’: We do in fact make up our own truth and then deem it righteous. 

It is my birthday, a day to reflect on myself. If I were the praying type I would pray a thankful prayer. On Christmas night, 1961 I went skydiving. My landing was in deep, crusted snow and I twisted my ankle so badly they put me in a walking cast. My job was on the assembly line at the General Motors plant, I couldn’t work in a cast. The union couldn’t protect my job during the first three months of probation and they let me go, I was unemployed. For that blessing I give thanks. It put my journey on a different trajectory. I give thanks for all of the failures and mishaps that have led me to this particular place in time, here & now. Without those faux pas, who knows how my life would have spun off. I like my backstory the way it reads; don’t want to swap it out for something else, maybe better but I doubt it. 

After being thankful, I would beseech the Great Mystery, that force which I can not comprehend. My wandering has been marked with unfathomable experiences, baffling but also very real. To dismiss them out of unbelief would only expose a case of prideful arrogance. I am just a puzzle piece, not a puzzle master. I would implore that inexplicable Mystery for a good night’s sleep and to keep my people safe. 

JUST SAYIN' 0.3: DAY 138

‘A long time ago’, an hour, a century, a millennium; leave it to me to fuss over a few ticks of the clock. Still, the best stopwatch will die of corrosion and decay before the earth clock reverses its magnetic field again. That would be a single tick/tock on the earth clock. Its pendulum oscillates once every couple-hundred thousand years. You know, there was no such thing as time until humans invented it. Our ancestors needed a practical way to put things in chronological order, a way to correlate what had passed and anticipate when/what was yet to be. But you knew that. I’m just regurgitating, long time ago stuff that tasted good the first time. 

I like numbers almost as much as I like words but the numbers can make me crazy. When you start adding digits on either side of the decimal point it doesn’t take long, as in a  long time, for the number to stretch beyond one’s ability to imagine. The gap between 1.0 and 10.0 is only one zero, equal to the years between the third grade and army boot camp. That was easy. Adding zeros; add another and 100.0 years is longer than most of us get to live. Another zero back in time and you meet William the Conqueror and the Norman conquest of England: the Battle of Hastings. That’s a (1) with three zeros ahead of the decimal. This compounding by tens goes off the chart in short order. Keep adding zeros. With six that’s a million, add three more zeros and it’s a billion. It’s wild, from the number one to a billion in just 9 zeros. Enough, enough! 

Time: long story short - time, long time or short time, it is a tool. It makes life easier than it would be otherwise. Eckhart Tolle, (spiritual guru) makes a convincing case for ‘Now’ rather than time. He reasons that, nothing ever happened in the past and nothing will ever happen in the future. Everything that ever has or ever will happen, it does so in the moment, in the fleeting present. Imagine a tiny ant stuck on the headlight of a speeding train that will never slow down, never stop. At any given point, you could plot its coordinates but by the time the numbers come up, in the next split second, those coordinates would change. Where you were 1.0 second ago is history, it was real then but it isn’t real anymore, only in your memory. You can reflect on the story but the action is fixed, you can’t alter it, you have moved on in the moment. For the sake of precision, the time is ‘Now’. The time is always ‘Now’ Every blink of the eye, you change coordinates, something happens, you breathe in or breathe out and it is part of your story. But like the ant, when we arrive at the next breath, the future has advanced correspondingly and the time is still ‘Now’. We can not escape the ‘Now.’ 

Time is the tool we need to keep things in order, to organize, to anticipate and to recall. The reason we put so much import on past or future is, I suppose, because the perception of moving out of the past, into the future feels so real; sort of a common sense validation. I don’t put much stock in common sense. Albert Einstein would seem more reliable than common sense. He said, “Common sense is the collection of prejudices one accumulates in their youth.” Before I discovered the Einstein quote a very good, maybe a great child psychologist (we were struggling with a troubled teenager) he told me that common sense was neither common nor made sense. Just sayin’, that was a long time ago. Just looked out the window: grass needs mowing and Covid-19 numbers are still going up. But that is another story.