Season's Greetings

Merry Christmas! I hope you're not offended that I used the C-word, but in my defense, I am not a particularly religious holiday observer. I attend Christmas Eve church services when we are at one mother's house or another, but this holiday has always been about presents, decorations, family, and goodwill in my book. You show me a day when every store in America is closed,* and I will show you a secular holiday.

I suspect Christmas gains at least some of its power from its ties to the winter solstice and the beginning of a new year. Combining the message of peace and goodwill with the reflection and renewal of year's end creates a potent cocktail of emotion. Evergreen foliage, drinks made from eggs and cakes full of fruit, red, green and gold color scheme -- it's a Technicolor holiday for sure.

Life is a chain -- a line made of circles -- and this is the time when one link is closed and the next begun. Not coincidentally, December and January see more funerals than any other months of the year. (The most births are in August.)

There is comfort in the constancy of the seasons, and a reminder that history repeats, or at least rhymes.  Boxing up an old year and opening a shiny new one flavored with Christmas cheer brings a sense of relief and hopefulness, despite the fact that exactly nothing has changed except the date. Our traditions fortify these feelings.

I haven't written as much this year as some others, either professionally or here. I have always been a cyclical journalist, so I am neither particularly surprised nor distressed. Writing for me is inherently reflective, and I have been looking forward and outward this year, acting more than thinking.  My career change to academia inspired a great deal of self examination. I feel now like I am finding my identity, and steadily becoming a more competent professional me. My home life is as pleasant and stable as it has been at any time in my life. In short, I am currently too happy and boring to have much to write about.

But life is change, and this year is likely to see its share. A number of potential disruptions are floating about, personally and professionally. Career opportunities, home projects, unexplained rashes. I may buy a new car. And there will be the unexpected gifts from the fates. The quiet times never last forever, partially because I get bored. I try to savor the constancy while it lasts.

I hope you have a great holiday season and a wonderful 2015. Let's be careful out there.

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* With the exception of Asian restaurants and movie theaters, of course.

Out of Time

I guess it's natural for each of us to be comfortable in our own time. The world we grew up in is our baseline, and every year brings changes that make everything feel a tiny bit less natural. I think this is the main reason old people are cranky all the time. That, and the sore everything. Middle age has brought  not only an acceptance of mortality, but an appreciation of it as well.

There are usually a handful of changes that we treasure, though frankly I'm having a hard time coming up with any at the moment. It seems every advance during my life has been a double-edged sword, trading diversion, minor convenience, or economic efficiency for a more complicated life and erosion of our environment. I make my living from technology, and I'm not sure how we watched television before there was Google, but there are days I would gladly trade the whole thing for forty acres and a mule.

On the other hand, many of us long for some aspects of life that may have passed away before we were born*. Jimmy Buffett apparently wanted to be a pirate, and not the Somali kind. Mine is a world with space for solitude. The thought of walking for weeks without meeting another person carries great appeal for me at times.

There is a park in Northwest Arkansas that has been my favorite place in the world since I was a child. Part of what I liked about it then was that it was quite inaccessible and not very well known, so there were few visitors. The trails were long, mostly deserted, and so quiet you could hear gentle breezes blowing down the valley. It was a place where you instinctively spoke quietly.

There is an interstate within a few miles of it now, and it is covered with tourists during the summer, but last time I was there during winter it was still pretty deserted. I spend a few days there as often as I can, which usually ends up being only about once a decade. I walk, and climb, and sit, and walk some more. I don't exactly feel like I'm alone in the world, but I usually do get a chance to remember what it's like to be a human being.

Maybe this fall will be time for another visit. I've been looking for an excuse to buy a new pair of hiking boots, and I could certainly use the quiet. Did I mention there is no cell coverage, no television, and only one phone in the entire park?

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*How else do you explain Renaissance fairs? And NASCAR?

Behind the swell

Have you felt a change in the blogosphere in the last six months or so? For one thing, I don't think anyone says blogosphere any more. But more significantly, blogging seems to have passed its peak as a medium, or at least the phase of rapid growth and rabid press that typifies popular new things. There seem to be fewer new blogs, fewer new readers, and fewer posts. The mantle of all things to all people seems to have passed to Facebook and Twitter. This was confirmed for me in a recent NY Times article.

It's like when you're surfing*, and you ride the swells, waiting for the right wave, and eventually you see it coming and you start to paddle. Sometimes you start too late, and never really catch the break. Sometimes you go too early and it crashes over you. When it's perfect, you ride and cut and sometimes you even get tubed. But no matter what happens, eventually the wave passes and you're left behind, watching it go (if you're lucky), and you have to paddle back to catch the next one.**

Life is a little like that. Sooner or later, you notice that you're not thinking as much about changing the world as finding a way to enjoy the time you have left in it. You see the younger generation raising their kids, worrying about their careers, and making all the same mistakes you did, and realize that the peak has passed. At least, you do if you're paying attention. And whether you kicked ass or never really got started, there will be no paddling back for another.

It can be a jarring realization, and depressing or frightening for many people, but I find it strangely comforting. In blogging and in life, the pressure is off. Sort of. At least, I know what I've got to work with, more or less how I'm going to handle it, and I feel more comfortable working to my own purposes.  Sensing a decline in something is realizing that nothing lasts forever, including screw-ups.

It doesn't mean we have to retire to the porch and blog about knitting. I'm starting a brand new career, for crying out loud. But I am doing it with a different attitude than most of the twenty-somethings who comprise my competition. No matter how far I go, or where I end up, I will try very hard to treasure the experience.

Who knows, I may even take up surfing.

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* I have never surfed, but I liked the Beach Boys okay. If I ever did hang ten, I would definitely call myself "Moondoggie."

** Yes, I know sometimes you can surf right to the beach, and chicks will run up to you as you pick up your board and toss the water from your hair, and you will all run up the beach to the bonfire and play guitar and do the twist, but I'm trying to build a metaphor here.

A Tale of Two Watches

It was the best of time ... no, I can't do it. Anyway, a long time ago, in a land called "The Eighties," I was married to a crazy woman, though that's really another story. The point is her parents were nice. For example, they brought me back a watch from a trip to Switzerland. Because they knew I would like one. It was perfect. An Omega self-winder, water-resistant, simple, analog, easy to read, luminescent hands, and appropriate for any occasion.

I loved my watch, and wore it virtually every day. Alas, watches like mine are mechanical, and things wear out over time. After a while, watches don't hold their value well enough to justify the cost of continued repairs. Sort of like people. So when my Omega started to betray my habitual punctuality, I started stepping out, going through a series of cheap Swatches and flashy Indiglo's. But nothing could really take the place of my beloved Omega.

Nothing, that is, until Biscuit presented me with a Citizen Corso Eco-Drive for Christmas one year. Or maybe it was my birthday, I forget, but I loved it. It was everything the Omega was, and more. Titanium case and band, scratch-resistant mineral dial window, and driven by light. How can you not love a watch that's driven by light? And while the Omega's style was great for the 80's, the Citizen's look is perfect for who I am now.

Titanium, just like the SR-71 and my King Cobra driver

Everything was great with my new watch until I lost it. One day it just seemed to vanish. I racked my brain for months, trying to come up with any clues to its whereabouts. I searched the car, moved furniture, and looked in places too small for it to fit. I even cut the bottom fabric and looked inside my favorite club chair, which has eaten two Swiss Army knives, one phone, a lot of change, and countless M&M's over the years. No luck.

After a couple of years, once it was obvious that my watch was truly gone for good, Biscuit took pity on me and presented me with a replacement this past Christmas. I was planning to bake bread all day on the 23rd, and we were driving to see family on Christmas Eve, so we exchanged gifts on the evening of the 22nd. I was excited to have my new watch, and since it was identical to the old one, it lessened the sense of loss.

I jumped up early the next morning and made breakfast, as I had about a half dozen full size loaves to bake, as well as sixteen mini chocolate loaves for family presents.* I decided to put on my apron, which was also a present from Biscuit, and wearing it reminds me to check on things every now and then. I forget to wear it most of the time when I'm cooking, but I had one loaf rising, one proofing, and one in the oven pretty much all day, and I tend to get distracted, so anything that helps keep me centered is, well, helpful.

Good advice when I'm cooking

I had the apron on for about five minutes when I noticed there was something in the pocket. Why, what could it possibly be? Infrared thermometer? Tiny measuring cup? Muffin ring? Why it's ... okay, at this point you should be feeling almost as uncomfortable as I was. Even before I got my hand in the apron pocket, I had a premonition of what it was going to be ... my other watch!

For a second, I seriously considered not saying anything, and maybe hiding it in a drawer against the day that I lost the new one, and I could replace it without saying anything. But that's not really the kind of relationship we have, and besides, I felt way too stupid to get away with this. Biscuit was incredibly gracious and good-humored about the whole thing, partially because she's always relieved to find something good to buy me, but mostly because she's really nice.

I walked within six inches of this several 

times a day, the entire time it was missing.

We talked about sending back the new one, but given my track record, in the end I thought it was probably wise to keep them both. Plus, I feel like some sort of country gentleman with matching watches.

So the next time you think you couldn't possibly feel stupider about something, remember that it was a far, far dumber thing I ... nope, still can't do it.

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* I don't normally give bread to people as if it were a real present. It's bit of a long story, but the important thing to know is that each loaf came with a bottle of champagne.

Movie Sunday: Fun with physics romantic comedy triple feature

Streaming Netflix and I have been down a bit of a rabbit-hole lately, and I've watched several quirky little movies that involve manipulation of time and space in one way or another. While none of them are exactly Sleepless in Seattle, I think we have to classify them as romantic comedies, since they revolve around relationships and nothing much explodes.

It all started with Cashback, a likable movie with the worst title since Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane, and an even worse poster. As Biscuit said after resisting the first dozen times I suggested we watch, it looked like it was going to be a film for fifteen year old boys. Not that fifteen year old boys wouldn't like it. There is a decent amount of nudity, tastefully done of course. Also, a couple of fart jokes and a soccer game.

Image from here

Cashback is the story of a young art student who has just broken up with that girl who was the new Bionic Woman, though that has nothing to do with the story. He is so broken up that he stops sleeping, and ends up taking a job at an all-night grocery store to fill up his nighttime hours. Eventually, he figures out how to stop time. Wackiness and a touch of romance ensue. It's a bit of 500 Days of Summer meets Employee of the Month, but everyone in it is a much better actor than Jessica Simpson.

This is probably my favorite of the three films, both because of the quirky characters and because it's British, so you know it's good. Also, I believe I mentioned the nudity. I don't expect everyone to share my preference, but it did win some awards and stuff.

Image from here

Next came TiMER, which takes place in a world where science* has invented an implant that can determine exactly when you will meet your soulmate, assuming they are also wearing a timer. The story revolves around two sisters, one whose timer hasn't started, while the other's has quite a while to go. The  interest comes from pondering how you would live your life if you knew your perfect relationship was x years in the future. This show is very clever, fun to watch, and the cast is just about perfect. I have mixed feelings about the end, but all in all it's a good way to pass 99 minutes.

Image from here

The last of our trio is Happy Accidents, which of the three is probably the closest to a traditional romantic comedy. It stars Marisa Tomei as a girl who is so bad at relationships that she and her friends seem to have formed some sort of club for girls who only date losers. She meets a young fellow (Vincent D'Onofrio) from Dubuque who seems strange, even for an Iowan. As she learns more about him, his story becomes increasingly unbelievable, and the tension of whether or not we are going to believe him drives us forward through the story.  Like the other two, it's mostly light-hearted, and easy watching, though with some substance.

There were a few more in this odd little thread, but not really that notable. Except for Uncertainty, which I didn't care for. Biscuit liked it a little better, but it definitely was not on the level of these others. So the next time you're about to watch Pretty Woman again just because it's on TV, try streaming one of these instead. It will entertain you, and make you think.

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* This is romantic comedy science, so think of it more as magic.

That's a wrap!

Is it just me, or has it been a strange year? Of course it has. Most years are strange when you look back on them, because we live in a weird world. Maybe I'm just getting more attuned to the oddity of it all.

For us, the big news for the year was the BP oil spill, which now seems to have faded from the collective consciousness. Not quite as big of a bust as the last visit of Halley's comet, but I got the distinct impression that newspeople and environmentalists* were really hoping for more oil-covered birds and blackened beaches. Given our national addiction to oil, they will have to content themselves with unknown long-term environmental damage, and the chance for a repeat as we continue to push aggressively into deeper water. Maybe we will eventually awaken Godzilla.

Only slightly less believable than the twists and turns of the BP story was the New Orleans Saints winning Super Bowl XXIV. Five years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is still a shadow of its former self, and the character of the (non French Quarter) city has probably changed forever, but that silly football game was probably more significant for the residents than any sporting event since the Miracle on Ice in 1980,

Politics seemed to get even stranger, if that's possible. The nation's ability to believe things for which there is considerable counter-evidence continues to increase, as evidenced by the fact that our most influential politician is a belligerently ignorant housewife/governor/reality star who two-thirds of the population believes to be either dangerously unqualified or some sort of sinister media mastermind. Delaware came very close to electing a witch to congress. Okay, not a witch (I saw the commercial), but I'm sure Christine O'Donnell was one of those crazy drama majors in the dorm who burned incense all the time, held seances, and probably wore a cape.

I'm currently reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and it has taught me two things. First, the issues in politics haven't changed at all in a hundred years. In 1910, the big issues of the day were Arab nationalists blowing things up, and giant corporations taking over the government. But if the issues haven't changed, the people in politics certainly have.  Roosevelt wrote around eighteen books (most in several volumes), not just about himself. He was an avid naturalist, historian, and pursuer of "the strenuous life." He led a cavalry charge and earned a brown belt in judo after he detached a retina and had to give up boxing. He was shot in the chest in an assassination attempt and still gave the speech he was scheduled to deliver. He had beliefs, and didn't care who knew them. He would never get elected today.

But I digress. Biscuit and I had a pretty good year overall. We managed to stay hurricane-free, and actually made up some ground on our home improvement project backlog. I am very close to finishing the never-ending bathroom remodel. The cats stayed healthy, I finally finished Moby Dick, we saw Buddy Guy in concert, and we got to see a shuttle launch.

We did lose an old and dear family friend a week before Christmas, but that seems to be part of my life now. My parents' generation is on the far side of the current expected lifespan, and very few months go by without another one passing on to what my grandfather termed "whatever is next."

Oh, I totally spaced on Movie Sunday last week. My excuse is that I was driving all day, traveling from the wine-fueled chaos that is my family Christmas to a more sedate late holiday celebration at the in-laws. I'll be back at it this week, but in the meantime you can enjoy Amy's review of True Grit. It's better than anything I could have written, anyway.

Anyway, it's been a good year, is the point. And I hope you have at least as good a year in 2011 as I had in 2010.

Happy New Year, everybody!

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* I'm a huge advocate of preserving nature, the importance of biodiversity, etc., and probably maintain more extreme views of the importance of environment vs. economic development than many Sierra Club members. But I am wary of organized movements. It seems the successful ones always end up with money as their primary goal, and the rest usually fall under the control of a small group of zealots.

Looking for a One Man Dog

Dramatization*

I received a comment on a post a while back, from someone I respect, questioning my taste for a specific music artist. It didn't particularly bother me in the "oh, no, she doesn't like my music" sense. My tastes in music are all over the place, and I have never really met anyone who likes exactly the same things I do. But it did leave me pondering how I might convey the impact that some of these artists had on the period of my youth, which I think we can (mostly) all agree produced a lot of amazing music. I have struggled somewhat to find a foothold, because most of these people have long been relegated to the genre of "music old squares listen to," while many of their contemporaries have been credited with helping to change the world. But at the time, it was all one tapestry of far out groovy heavy sound.

One possible stroke of fortune in my search for common ground is that my wonder years bore some striking similarities to the present time. There were contentious racial, economic, and political divisions in the country and the world. Common people were struggling. It seemed then, as it does to many now, that global industrialization and unbounded capitalist greed would put an end to the American middle class once and for all, and that our country was being divided cleanly between the "haves" and the "trickled down upon." The country was suffering through a long, increasingly unpopular war, and optimism for the future was at an all time low.

The media narrative of the time was almost universally grim. Body counts from the meat grinder that was Viet Nam topped the news nightly. Ghettos burned in cities across America. Churches were bombed. Banks were bombed. The Manson Family unleashed their special brand of helter skelter. American college students were shot dead by the National Guard. One political figure after another found the wrong end of a gunsight. Stories like the Son of Sam killings that would dominate the national media for months in today's climate, struggled to stay on the front page. The Apollo missions were virtually the only national bright spot in this violent, troubled landscape.

They say great art is born in suffering, and the young and rapidly expanding genre of rock produced some lasting and powerful music during these years. You've heard some of it, if only in movies. Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, CSN (and sometimes Y), CCR, Richie Havens, Edwin Starr, Steppenwolf, and dozens of others produced music that was fresh, relevant, and powerful. They are the soundtrack to the pain, confusion, fear and hope of a generation of Americans. Their message was simple and compelling. Get yours now; the country is burning.

In the midst of all of this, a different movement emerged. Unlike today, this was not a movement of angry and frightened old people. Those were the people in charge. These grass roots were mostly young,   overwhelmingly white, and decidedly middle class. Their fathers fought in WWII, or Korea, and went to college on the G.I. Bill. Their mothers were housewives. Their grandparents had struggled through the Great Depression. These people believed in the innate goodness of America and its citizens, but could not delude themselves that what they saw in front of them was the American Dream. Instead of taking to the streets, they turned to each other.

The soundtrack for these people was written and performed by Simon and Garfunkel, Harry Nilsson, Van Morrison, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King, Jimmy Buffett, and John Denver. That's right, I said John Denver. I dare you not to think of a John Denver song right now. And almost everyone my age liked his music, whether they will admit it or not. I knew people who had his albums right next to their Iron Butterfly. 

The music did not usually focus on the burning of America, but it also wasn't about surfing, or sock hops, or fast cars. It was music of the land, the seasons, and the road. Songs about love, and growing up, reflection, and loss. These songs reminded us that every story is a personal story, and that the only way to really make the world a better place is to be kinder to the people around us. It was about the things we valued most about our country and our lives, back then. These were the songs that people would play -- and sing -- at this time of year, outside around a fire, sometimes with a goat on a spit, or a pig roasting in a hole, but always with beer, and wine in skins or screw-top bottles. They were songs you could sing while holding your breath, which was very handy in those days.

Okay, maybe I can't explain it after all. That time is long gone, and no matter how similar this time feels to old farts like me, the world is a much different place now. Wood smoke adds to our carbon footprint, and I wouldn't even begin to know where to find a goat these days. Whole Foods, maybe? Young people have more serious things to worry about than "finding themselves," like whether the corporate recruiters are going to find the toga party pictures that their friend posted on her Facebook page.  Taking to the road is something only homeless people and illegal immigrants do.*** 

I guess I will have to be content to know that the people who didn't live it will someday struggle to explain Wilco, or Coldplay, or whatever music touched their heart when it was still tender. And every time I hear Everybody's Talkin', Moondance,  Bridge Over Troubled Water, or  You've Got a Friend, I will unabashedly sing along. Singing makes us feel better, right?

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* The stuff in the picture is a mixture of basil, oregano, and mint. Seriously. I grow it myself.  I wouldn't even know where to look for that name brand weed the kids smoke these days.**

** Okay, so that's not precisely 100% true. I do work at a college.  But it may as well be true. The last thing I need is to be even more confused, forgetful, lethargic, and hungry than I am already.

*** Isn't this really what the Tea Party is up in arms about? The world got more complicated without their permission? After all, these are many of the same people. They are just old, sober, and frightened now.

The End of Time

I think we are living through a significant moment in human history. Something fundamental is changing. The development of human language is perhaps the greatest factor in the creation of civilization, because it allowed people to know about things that they did not experience personally. Writing created a way to store portable information outside of human brains, and the printing press provided an economical way to distribute that information across the world, without being changed in the telling. In essence, printed material provided the blueprints for our global civilization.

But writing is still a fairly labor intensive process, and only a tiny fraction of human experience has been captured in this way. The further back we go, the less we find, and all of it has been written through the filter of its authors' minds. History, as the saying goes, is written by the winners. Fiction helps us understand the people and society of its time, but only the public face. Published authors know (or hope) that their work will be read by a broad audience.

This was the world into which my grandfather was born. The great thing about this world was that the past and future were almost equally abstract and impenetrable. Legend and prophesy can hold great power, but they have less substance than the sounds of a house awakening, the familiar smell of a mate, or the tearing grief of losing a loved one forever. I'm sure it was still common for lives to get stuck at some intersection of regret and lost opportunity, but people eventually forget, or at least remember more conveniently. There is ample evidence that we continually remanufacture our memories to be more consistent with our current world view. This is not some memory defect that comes with aging. It's a design* feature, meant to help us keep our minds in some semblance of order.

This all started to change a little over a century ago, with the invention of audio recording, and then moving pictures**. All of a sudden, not only the words could be captured, but the sounds, and then the pictures. Less was left to the imagination, and we could all share the voice of Franklin Roosevelt describing a day that will live in infamy. No nuclear devices have been exploded above ground during most of your lifetimes, but we all know the horrible beauty of the mushroom cloud.

Like the printing press did for writing, television distributed movies and sound to everyone. As a child, I watched live as little Jack Kennedy saluted the caisson carrying his fallen father. A half dozen years later, a third of the world's population watched Neal Armstrong step on the moon, and billions more have watched it in the intervening forty years. Significantly, the words we heard are the ones in the history books, even though they were not the exact words Armstrong uttered. In those same years, our nation saw for the first time the realities of war in living color, as every night images of Viet Nam were beamed to us via satellite, replete with jungle, and flame, and blood.

Once recorded -- and while preserved -- an event cannot be forgotten, or alternatively remembered. These images become the dots we must connect. John Kennedy still dies in the same way every time, and the bodies at My Lai cannot be denied. There are fewer degrees of freedom, and the past is sticky. Time has less power to wash away our triumphs and sins.

Film and tape were relatively expensive and troublesome for most of my life, and still only a tiny fraction of history was recorded. Home movies of Christmas and Easter made up the bulk of personal posterity. News crews captured a few significant events, and a few hundred hours a day of film and video were recorded for posterity. Most of that has been lost as the media degrade, the playback technologies become obsolete, or people simply decide it is not worth saving. Interestingly, much of the music survived, and it has the power to transport us in time as well as any contraption imagined by H.G. Wells. But that's another post.

The situation is different now. The Digital Age has brought us the technology to record virtually everything we do, and the internet gives us means to distribute it. I still have virtually every e-mail message I have received over the past fifteen years. If you live in an average city, you can expect to be on camera up to a hundred times in an average day. You could record your entire life, including constant video coverage, and store it all for a few hundred dollars per year. And the price is dropping fast.

We are reaching a point where nothing is forgotten. History is online and searchable. And an increasing number of us are recording it. I expect my Facebook page to outlive me -- I just don't know for how long. This post could survive for a thousand years, stuck deep in the Church of Google archives, and read only by machines. Every word you write online, every picture you post, is being catalogued, and indexed, and correlated somewhere.

All of this gave me the serious creeps for several years, and I even toyed with the idea of going "off the grid" at one point. Then I got over myself, and realized that this is the way civilization is going. And I'm not Amish. But I do wonder what it means for the human experience. What will happen to us as our present becomes more difficult to separate from our past?

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* Don't take my use of the word "design" too seriously.

** Damn you, Thomas Edison! Also, I realize that still photography was around for a long time before this, but I really don't think it was a major contributor to the process I'm trying to describe, at least not until cameras and film became commonplace.

Letting go of the rope

A dear friend of my family is dying. Inexorably, painfully, hopelessly dying. Some days are better. Some are hard to bear. But the eventual outcome is not in doubt.

Along the way, he will have spent a double-digit number of weeks in the hospital, an unknown number of days in a rehab facility, uncounted hours being shuffled between the two, and no time in his own bed. He is finished eating, walking or going to the bathroom unassisted. He has so far engaged eight or ten specialists, and not a single general practitioner.* It will -- has already -- cost a fortune.

This is a man who was a proverbial captain of industry only a few years ago. An actual son of a share-cropper, he worked tirelessly to improve his lot and provide for his family for most of the previous century. He created a thriving business, became a pillar of his church, and a force in political discourse. A generation ago, he's a man who would have died unexpectedly in his sleep, or pitched over into his dessert after a big steak dinner and a couple of martinis. Today, he is a frail, frightened shell of his former self, his body struggling to maintain the minimum requirements for continued existence.

It is the way of life, and American medicine, that many of us will live our final days undergoing every procedure, and receiving every medication, for which our insurance will reimburse the medical corporations whose representatives are working so hard to bring our vital signs back into the range where they may consider the course of treatment complete. There is no talk of cure, or even of going home. Address the current issue, get the patient stable, discharge them from your service, and hope for the best, seems to be the only strategy.

I think the end of life is like water-skiiing. When you feel your balance slipping, you can try to right yourself, or let go of the rope and glide to a stop, more or less under control. The trick is in knowing when to let go. Release your grip too soon, and you may miss a chance to correct and ski on. Hang on too long, and you end up dragged face first through the water, sometimes with your swimsuit floating in the water behind you. It's not exactly drowning -- assuming you let go eventually -- but no one would call it fun.

I've reached the age where I think about these things. Not because I want to, or because I think they are interesting, or significant, or cool.  I think about them because they are happening to people close to me. And because I can feel it in my future, the way we once saw graduation, or marriage, or a new car, just over the horizon. It's all the same journey, but the scenery gets darker towards the end.

Ultimately, hanging on or letting go is a personal decision. Maybe the most personal we ever make. I'm not surprised my friend chose to hang on. It is his nature to struggle, and I always assumed that he would not be one to go gentle into that good night.

For myself, I hope I can be less Dylan Thomas and a little more William Cullen Bryant. Of all the ways we can measure the quality of a life, length is not high on my list. Every story has an ending, and I hate stories that go on too long.

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* Because we don't have those anymore.

Late Bloomer

There has been a wisteria next to our driveway since we moved into this house, growing around a big gum tree. In the ten years we have lived here, it has never once bloomed. Not even a little. For several years, we tried everything that anyone suggested to get the thing to flower. We fed it, we starved it, we disturbed the roots, we cut it back. Nothing.

Eventually we gave up. We decided it was never going to bloom. I intended to dig it up, but have not ever quite gotten around to it. It continued to grow, and every year it continued not to flower.

Then this Spring, just before Easter, for no apparent reason, I noticed a single bloom hanging over the driveway. When I told The Wife, her response was, "Shut up!" She stopped whatever it was she was doing to come see. You would have thought I had found a pot of gold, or the face of Jesus in an oil stain, seeing how excited we were. It was kind of stupid.

Today I turn -- well, older. A little more than twenty years ago, on my thirty-somethingth birthday, I was served divorce papers. It was also my ninth wedding anniversary. At that point in my life, I had accumulated about a hundred credit hours toward no particular major at a series of ever less distinguished colleges and universities. I lived in a strange town, far from friends or family. I had a crappy one bedroom apartment that I couldn't afford, and a new job that I kind of hated. I was ending my third career in twelve years.

In short, I had less than no money, no prospects, and a seven year old Subaru station wagon with a slow leak in the right rear tire. I had failed at nearly everything I tried. My life was over, and I had a lot of sad, lonely years ahead of me. I was destined to end up selling cheap suits at Men's Wearhouse.* I had made a few new friends, and they were about all that was keeping me afloat.

Today, I have been married for more than ten years to a woman who is not crazy, and in fact makes me laugh almost every day. She will undoubtedly buy me a great birthday present and then worry that it is not good enough. I have two college degrees in a field I love. We live in a big, comfortable old house, and most mornings I drive three miles down the prettiest road in town to one of the most beautiful college campuses in the country, where I have ideas for a living. I still find plenty to complain about, but most of it is meaningless. My life is unbelievably sweet.

I hear people talk occasionally about how unsatisfied they are with their lives at 26 or 30, and I find this both humorous and sad. Humorous, because I know how young that is, and how much it can change. Sad, because I know that some of them will give up. A few will even be overwhelmed with despair, and cut the journey short.

Life can change in an instant. Whether lovestruck, lightning-struck, car-struck or hit with a realization, we all have moments on which our whole existence pivots, and takes a new direction. If things are good, savor every blessed moment. If you're waiting for things to improve, well, waiting serves a purpose, too.

In the end, we never know when the first bloom will appear. All we can do is wait, and grow, and try to believe that it will happen.

---

* I guarantee it.

My favorite year

Dixie Chicks have a song called Favorite Year on their Taking the Long Way album. It's a song about nostalgia, and peace, and regrets, and it has been one of my favorites since the first time I heard it, though for different reasons over the years.

I realize now that I have spent the better part of my life either looking forward or looking back, sometimes nostalgic for times past or relationships lost, and at other times eager to reach some milestone so that the next, better phase of my life could begin.  Don't get me wrong, this wasn't keeping me from living and enjoying my life. But no matter where I was, or how happy I was, it seemed somewhere in the back of my heart I was always wanting to be someone* else.

This has been my pattern for so long that I can't really say when it began, and it's so ingrained that I only notice it in when it stops. But something has definitely changed. I don't know what, exactly. I'm older than I ever thought I would be, and I can already feel time nibbling away in my walls and dark spaces. I'm temporarily employed in a vulnerable stage of a new career, in the midst of an economic crisis. I'm sure I drink too much, and I don't often sleep through the night without waking up thinking about something. I have a to-do list a mile long, and a to-read list that's even worse. I have too many hobbies and keep adding more. I'm overweight, out of shape, and quite possibly out of my mind.

For some reason, none of that seems to matter. I seem to like my colleagues and my work, and my wife makes me laugh most every day. I commute three miles down the prettiest stretch of road in town twice a day, and there is a neighborhood grocery store on the way home. I have a few friends whom I rarely see, but am always glad when I do. I write, which is something I always said I would do. Sometimes I take naps.

I guess somewhere along the way I learned to accept myself and the life I am living, which makes it much easier to enjoy my days. So, for the first time in a long time, I find myself looking neither forward nor back (nor longingly at someone else's life). I can honestly say that this is my favorite year.

---

* Someone, somewhen, somewhere. It's all the same in the end.

Passing on the Road: Ian Knight

In general, it seems that road dogs have a shorter than average lifespan. No surprise, really. That's part of what we signed up for all those years ago. Live fast, die young, I forget the rest. As Mickey Mantle is reputed to have said, if I had known I was going to live to be this old, I might have taken better care of myself.

Late last week we learned that Ian (Iggy*) Knight had passed away in London. Ian was never really a friend of mine, but we all knew him. He was a pioneer in staging and special effects design for concerts, and some of his effects inspired pervasive and lasting technology. He is also the inspiration for one of the most important lessons I ever learned about design.

Before you get the impression that Ian was some sort of intense, towering visionary, I'd better stick in a picture. This is Ian backstage at a Led Zeppelin show, striking a welding rod against a piece of railroad track to simulate lightning. He is wearing laser safety glasses, which of course offered zero protection against the welder.

If you don't stop it, you really will go blind.

Photo courtesy of Steve Jander

Also, almost every time I saw Ian he was carrying a rum and coke, probably on the assumption that it was after 5:00 in London. I heard that he switched to screwdrivers for a while after his doctor told him that his drinking was killing him. He apparently decided that the cola was the problem, and that orange juice would set him right. I assume he eventually cut back or stopped drinking, or he never would have lived this long.

Ian is probably best known for some of the effects he designed for Led Zeppelin, but I knew him for the Genesis mirrors. If you were fortunate enough to see Genesis in the late 70's or early 80's, you saw the mirrors. Mylar was only just then becoming commercially available, and Ian designed six octagonal mylar mirrors, each eight feet across, able to rotate 360 degrees on two axes, and computer controlled. They were designed to hang over the stage, and we bounced every type of laser, spotlight, floor light, side light and flashlight we could find off of the things.

Photo from here

Here's where the design lesson comes in. Mylar was important because it was lightweight, so the mirrors could be hung in the lighting rig, turned with small drill motors and transported easily. The problem was that they were built in Holland, where at the time there was virtually no aluminum, and therefore practically no one who knew how to weld it. So they built the mirror frames out of tubular cast iron, which meant the motors had to be huge, which meant more power, etc. When it was all said and done, each mirror unit weighed in at 450 lbs. That meant extra bracing, extra rigging, extra power, and an extra truck to carry it all. As we used to say, from the people who brought you wooden shoes...

The mirrors taught me that one little detail can have tremendous and lasting ramifications. We hauled those things around for years. It drove us all crazy, but Ian took it all in stride. Ian took a lot in stride. I doubt he ever knew how many of us learned from him.

---

*All men from England named Ian were called "Iggy" in those days. I think it was a law.

New Digits

It's 2010. Finally. Frankly, it's about time we got some different digits on the calendar. You kids today probably think that having double digits in the year is your birthright or something, what with the double nines and then twenty-oh's coming right in a row and all. Back in my day we had to wait eleven years to get double digits, and it only lasted a year.

That's probably what has gone wrong the last two decades, what with the unsafe food, global warming, economic collapse and decline of the NHL. It's all this promiscuous double-digiting, I'm sure of it. So maybe now we can get back to some good, solid American calendar years without all of this digit duplication. Perhaps there is hope yet.

Oh crap. Next year is 2011. Hopefully, we can hold out until 2012. And it won't be the end of the world.

Now I really can't go home again

I got an e-mail from my mother a few weeks ago informing me that my childhood home had been demolished. This wasn't completely unexpected, but still came as somewhat of a surprise. My parents sold the house in the mid-1980's to an attorney who had plans for it that apparently fell through, and it has sat empty most of the time since, slowly decaying. It had become both an eyesore and a hazard, and reminded me a bit of Miss Haversham's place in Great Expectations. While I was considering writing this post I realized that I don't have a single picture of the house or property. I'm sure I lost a few just being a young man who moved a lot, and the rest left with my ex-wife.

Unlike most Americans of my generation, I lived in the same house from the time I was born until I left home. And it was no ordinary tract home in a subdivision, though it was certainly not a McMansion, or any other sort of mansion. The house was a modern* split-level on a wooded two and a half acre lot that was essentially given to my parents by the man for whom the street is named. He owned a very large tract of land and "just wanted good neighbors." We had only two other houses within a half mile of us. It was practically wilderness when I was a child, surrounded on three sides by woods, with a small creek running across the property. By the time I graduated from high school, the street was four lanes, there were subdivisions on all sides and I could see McDonald's from the driveway.

The house was very unassuming from the front, but from the back it was two thousand square feet of glass overlooking a large brick patio and a small hillside. My father designed and built the house in three stages, using a combination of subcontractors and child labor. By the time he was finished we had five bedrooms, three baths, two fireplaces, a living room and dining room, den and game room with a pool table, poker table, seating area and a wet bar. He had also put in a large swimming pool with an outdoor kitchen, gazebo and dressing rooms. A friend told me one time that it was the sort of place that should have a name.

Our house was not only the center of our lives, but a frequent stop for a number of overlapping social circles. Between casual gatherings, band rehearsals, poker parties, pool parties, church socials and a ridiculously large all day Independence Day party every year, our house was known by people I didn't even know I knew. To this day, when I meet people from my hometown -- many of whom I may be meeting for the first time -- they are much more likely to ask about that house than about members of my family. In fact, just last week a friend I haven't really seen since high school mentioned the house in the first e-mail message we exchanged after being out of touch for almost twenty years.

It broke my mother's heart to sell the place and move, and I know she suffered watching it erode and finally fall. She raised all of her children there, and poured her own hopes and aspirations and pride into making it a showplace. For my father, I think the loss was balanced by the opportunity to build a better house and avoid some of the mistakes he made with the first. I feel it more than I thought I would, but it's a tragedy of much less than human proportions. After all, it's been twenty-five years since I've seen the inside of the house, and the memories are still with me, even if the building is no longer there.

There is a sort of diffuse, low grade sadness in knowing the place is really gone, sort of like hearing that an old classmate or neighbor has passed away, even if they were never that close and you haven't spoken since childhood. I guess it's just another reminder that time and entropy make fools of us all. Still, when I'm home for the holidays I think I'm going to have to drive by and see the hole. Maybe I will find that G.I. Joe I lost behind the wall.

_____________________________

* Modern in the 1950's architectural sense, with a flat roof, clean lines, natural materials and lots of glass. My father was a huge fan of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Gimme the beat boys

I saw a spot on TV this morning about a sixteen year old girl who had stopped growing -- and apparently aging -- at about six months. Her doctor was talking about the hope of someday "turning off aging" and giving everyone an indeterminate lifespan.

I have two problems with this. First of all, we have enough people already, without everyone living forever. Perhaps more personally important, the girl apparently stopped developing when she stopped aging. She still had the mental capacity of a nine month old.

I was reminded the other day by an old friend that a group of us used to sing "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Drift Away" while getting ready for football practice in junior high. A few years later, I was singing "We Will Rock You" with a different bunch of young men in the back of a 44 ft. trailer while we loaded lighting equipment. There was joy that only the young can feel. At the same time, other friends were killing themselves, by accident and on purpose. That amazing range of emotions is driven by youthful hormones and exuberance, but also untempered by the perspective that experience brings.

Wisdom and joy both come at a price. I would love to have my 20 year old body back, but I don't think I would like the insecurity and loneliness that went with. Everything I have learned (and I read a lot) indicates that life is a process, and we interfere with that process at our peril. If we could stop aging, what age would you pick? Twenty? Forty? Something else? I might have to go with seven. I could read when I was seven, and I was no longer forced to take naps, but I didn't have a lot of responsibilities yet.

In the end, I think I will stay on the journey until it ends. Every year has brought surprises and new insights, and I think there is still more for me to learn.

Lost in Time

I've talked a little about my days as a roadie, back in the day when shorts were small and socks were tall, but it's been a while since I've thought about what I gave up to take that job. I had wanted to work for SHOWCO ever since I knew there was such a place, and had already made one ill-fated move to Dallas to try to get hired on. In fact it was the fallout from that move (long story best left untold) that found me living in Fayetteville, Arkansas in the Fall of 1977, sharing a studio apartment with a part time accident photographer and working various food service jobs to make my half of the $125 per month rent. (That's not where most of my money went, believe me.)

About two months after moving to Fayetteville I met Anne. She had attended the college where I met my roommate, and they apparently renewed their acquaintance when both moved to Fayetteville. Anne was tall and blond and beautiful -- I mean really beautiful -- and for some reason she seemed to like me. The next six weeks or so comprise one of the most amazing periods of my life. Without going into detail, let me just say that we enjoyed each other a lot. A lot. A lot. She taught me to drink spiced tea with milk and honey. I don't know if I taught her anything. I don't remember a cross word passing between us. She got frightened once and I was the one she called. We went everywhere together. No wait -- we didn't. We went where we wanted when we wanted and we both seemed good with it. It was perfect.

And then the first week of November I made the call. Every time I called SHOWCO they always told me to check back in a few months. So I would call and they would tell me they didn't have anything and I would live another chunk of my life. Except the first week of November when I called, they had just lost someone and needed a replacement and the RCO All Stars are playing in Fayetteville tonight so why don't you go down and talk to this guy Buddy Prewitt and he will tell us whether we should hire you or not. And I did and he did and they did and I was gone two days later.

And just like that Anne was out of my life. Well, not just like that. We talked of her moving to Dallas after I got settled, and for a couple of months I really thought it might happen. But she got a job she wanted in advertising and our relationship did what long distance relationships tend to do, and within a year or so I had completely lost track of her.

Since then I have evolved really mixed feelings about those weeks. I don't think Anne ever knew how close I came to turning down that job. If it had not been my life's dream* I probably would have stayed where I was. She also has no way to know how long I pined for her, or how close I came to packing it in on multiple occasions that first few months, when I was lonely and homesick and the new job wasn't what I expected. I had some pictures of her that would almost (but apparently not quite) disqualify someone from being Miss California, and I kept them for far longer than was appropriate. My ex-wife finally threw them out during a move about a decade later. No one would ever have suspected how much time I spent looking at her face in those pictures, though the other parts were good, too.

On the other hand, it was six weeks. Almost all good relationships are good for six weeks. And I don't even know how much we really had in common. I'm sure we carried the seeds of our destruction, and if I look close enough I can almost see them. There was probably a sad or bitter or fiery end in our future, and we just never had to live through it. I think in some ways we were too much alike, which I only found out was bad many years later.

Or maybe that's all just rationalization. The entire weight of my life since then conspires to ensure that I am happy with my choice. Either way, the direction of my future balanced on a knife point one day many years ago, with two of the best things I can imagine on either side. I chose. What else can we do?

In the end I decided to treat those six weeks as sort of a capsule, like a great book or a favorite song**. Those weeks are almost completely disconnected from the main thread of my life, no longer food for regret or wistfulness or nostalgia. At the same time those weeks embody for me a feeling of love and relaxation and good fortune that is as personal and private as anything can be. It is without cause or effect or consequence, except to remind me that I have been blessed. Wherever Anne ended up, I hope she remembers the time half as fondly.


*I know. I was 20. Shut up.

** Or the time when I was fifteen and an eighteen year old girl I had never seen before stuck her hand down my pants on the Silverton railroad. It was a really good day.

The Flip Side of Aging

In some previous posts, I might have indicated that getting older is not much fun. I think the word "sucks" may have been used once or twice. Well, that's true in some respects, but there are compensations. At least partial compensations. For example:

1. I know all sorts of stuff. For example, I know what usually causes your air conditioner to stop working on the hottest day of the year, and what to do about it.
2. I don't care about what most people think. I will wear my house slippers to the mailbox, and once even to the grocery.
3. I (usually) know what I'm doing. Corollary to (1).
4. I have my own tools.
   

I realize that these are exactly the things that make older people either endearing or frustrating to young people, and often both. All I can say is, suck it young people. You will get your chance, and you will probably enjoy it as much as we are enjoying ourselves now. I know my parents' generation had a great time wandering around in their bermuda shorts and sandals with socks, eating cocktail wieners and telling us all how we didn't know how good we had it.

They were right. And I'm afraid we may all find out how good we had it very soon. It appears as though there may be challenging times ahead, and we are all going to need each other. Old people may not know how to get the pictures out of their phone, or what the Hell a "Twitter" is, but by and large they know how people and organizations really work, and how fundamentally unfair the world can be, and it is probably worth listening to what they have to say. Unless they are idiots. Aging usually just makes that worse.

And for those of us who think we've seen it all and know it all, we would probably do well to remember that the world is very different than it was only two decades ago, and that most of the knowledge taught in college today didn't exist when we were there. The "kids" who we think look too young to drive will do the heavy lifting that determines whether we end up living in our Crown Victorias, burning our 401K statements for heat.

Eight(y) is Enough

The last things I thought I would be talking about when I started this blog were death and old age and other depressing shit like that. But that's what's been happening in my life, so there you go and there you have it and there you are. Anyway, if you're not depressed enough by the post-holiday-economic-meltdown-seasonal-affective blues, let's see what we can do about that.

I sent my father's widow (I've never been able to call her my stepmother, since I was in my 30's when they married) a Christmas card, and got this message in reply:

I hope this is still your correct email address. Merry Christmas to you and (wifey)! I appreciate your remembering me this year. My life is very quiet now and I don't drive very much anymore, so I stay home a lot. Some of my friends cannot even do that. Enjoy each other and do all the things that you wish to do while you and young and able.
Love,

I mean, Holy Shit! What am I supposed to do with that, besides everything in my power to make sure I don't live that long? After sitting alone in the dark for a couple of weeks with a bottle of Jack and a loaded handgun, I decided that the only thing any of us can do is to take her advice. My father went through several careers and started a number of companies, the last when he was 79. He used to say that when a door closed on our lives (NO! Not the window thing!) it was time to pick up whatever we had left and head on down the road. (Whew! Close one.) My father was full of crap about a lot of stuff, but I think he had this one right.

Life is too short, people. And to paraphrase someone smarter than I, it's definitely too short to live it in a way that makes us wish it were shorter. It's also too precious to spend it beating ourselves up because we're too fat or we don't make enough money or our job sucks or we already broke our resolution or our loser <pick one> left us for some <pick again>. I can go on...no?... you get the idea?... good, because we were about to go blue.

So be happy today. Do something you've always wanted to do. Or watch reruns and eat a whole box of Cheeze-its. And if you end up never visiting the Parthenon, don't beat yourself up about it. The thing we can never do later is live our life the way we wanted to live it at the time.

If I weren't so lazy/busy, I would go find one of those Bon Jovi smiley face things to put here. You will have to use your imagination.

An Inconvenient Truth

You know what sucks about the Universe? It's the whole "arrow of time, events have to happen in a particular order" thing. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I have woken up frustrated that I am not a trans-dimensional being.

For example, there's this research paper that I'm currently writing on such a short deadline that I'm embarrassed to tell anyone the due date. And I don't embarrass easily, believe me. If you have doubts, keep reading. Anyway, the thing about research papers is that they are usually written to report the results of work that has already been performed. At least that's the theory. The inconvenient thing about this one is that I haven't done the work yet. At least not all of it. But I know what I'm going to do -- more or less -- and I know that it's going to work -- more or less -- and what more do you need, really? I mean, these things always work out, right?

Why don't I just do the work, you ask? Well, I need to get a draft of the paper to my co-author to review, which is probably going to take as long as it would take to do the work. So if I could just finish the paper and then do the research then I could maximize efficiency and minimize wasted time and have a chance in Hell of making the deadline. But alas, stupid spacetime has to be four-dimensional, like that's going to get anything done.

You know what else sucks about the Universe? Gravity. Gravity is a harsh mistress. I walked out of my lab yesterday and someone had just mopped the floor, so I thought it would be appropriate to fall down. And I don't mean "tripped and stumbled against the desk" fall down. I mean "lost your balance ice skating, high kicking and windmilling arms" fall down. The most amusing part was seeing the "Caution: Wet Floor" sign at the end of the hallway as I lay there trying to decide if I was hurt. I wasn't. I just ended up with one of those face of the Virgin Mary stains on my pants.

So don't talk to me about the Universe this week. The Universe is on my shit list.

Old Friends

Today my mother told me of an old friend of hers who had passed away unexpectedly over the weekend. Earlier in the week an old classmate informed me of her grandmother's passing, expected but never welcome. Last weekend it was another childhood friend relating how her husband and all of his buddies had lost their fathers in the last few years. The previous day there was the former colleague whose lifelong friend had passed away that morning, taken by a disease that progressed more quickly than expected.

This is the life of those eligible for AARP.

It is an insidious but profound transformation for many of us just on one side or the other of the half-century milestone. Our parents’ generation attains the average life expectancy for Americans in the early 21st Century and our own generation reaches the age that Samuel Shem called “young enough to die” in his novel House of God. The increasing number of funerals and “I thought you would want to know” phone calls and e-mails inexorably turn our attention to thoughts of health, retirement and our remaining time in the world.

As the days before us grow noticeably fewer than those behind, hope gives way to regret; for loves abandoned early or never explored, for friends betrayed or forgiveness withheld, for all that we are finally forced to accept will never be ours. Last chances spin past us with the accelerating turn of the seasons. We are getting old. We grow tired. We realize that it takes fifty years for most of us to really understand what it means to be mortal. As my ex-wife always liked to say, growing old is not for wussies, though that’s not the exact word she used. She was classy.

Perhaps the ultimate cruelty is that age does not diminish our desire to do and see and experience new things. We still wish to have adventures and fall in love and be popular. The spirit is not only still willing, it still burns with the same pride and desire and ambition that it has in decades past. But the flesh grows steadily weaker, we are reminded at every turn that we are no longer twenty-something and that even if we are as good once as we ever were, we are not as good as we once were (with apologies to Toby Keith, and to everyone else I know for quoting Toby Keith).
The upside to all of this, if there is one, is that those of us who are paying attention begin to appreciate our time more. We stop thinking “some day” and start acting. We make our bucket list, or start that business, or spend the occasional day at work completely screwing off. Because in the end, there will never be enough days if your life is sweet. But one perfect day can make a life worth living. So if you can see the Old Folks Boogie in your future, don’t waste another day worrying about the past you didn’t get exactly right. Use every day you have left trying to make that perfect day. And if you are too young to know what I’m talking about, just try to take it easy on the old folks. They may be having a hard time.