Mathias B. Freese's Blog, page 11

Why I Write

The blurb “About OLLI” reads: “The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas…is a member-led, vibrant learning community of more than 1,300 retired and semi-retired adults…Our classes are purely for enjoyment — there are no tests, grades, or credits. Prior college experience is not required, only a desire to join our peers in the joy of learning. Each of our study groups is led by OLLI members who ring a lifetime of personal and professional experience to their classrooms….”

And so as much an attempt to get out of the house, to form new relationships I laid down my bucks and enrolled. I took two courses having to do with writing and was disenchanted with both. I began to make contacts with the administrators as I wanted to present my own workshop which would be grounded in the nitty-gritty of writing, the craft and the need to self-clarify one’s self.

I got the opportunity to teach in the spring semester, if I attract sufficient students. However, I began to think now about what I would do if all went smoothly. And the first question students need to explore is why they write, and so this essay is my response to that very question.

I cannot answer the question even after four decades. I don’t know why I write, although, of course, I have all kinds of feelings about that, like porcupine quills hiding the porcupine underneath.  I write to express myself. I can’t play drums, ride a horse, play third base, change my car’s spark plugs, but I can type or hold a pencil in hand. Since I am a sedentary self, writing is an “easy” way to send out what I am feeling. I have a need to say something about myself and my place in this world. Oh, by the way, you cannot be taught to be a writer; you can be taught tricks of the trade which are helpful. You make yourself into a writer. I find that a cheerful hope and opportunity. No one is required. Like eating dinner, you don’t need assistance.

Recent readings of evolutionary scientists have convinced me that we are bags of sinew, flesh, bone and gristle that contain packets of DNA that run everything; we are sacks of fat, shit and piss driven by genes struggling to survive and an elephant’s trumpeting, a Van Gogh painting, and Magellan’s voyages are just the diversions of being human, but the real dynamic is the self-gratifying needs of genes to mutate and evolve. We, in short, are held hostage to our genes.

So my need to write is not genetic, merely surface matter, but that surface matter is all I know consciously. And all that is pretty spectacular.

I have discovered over the decades that I don’t only write to be published, although to be in print is sweet and really satisfying fun. I write not to be read necessarily, although that is sweet as well, for it leads to conversation, good feelings and good talk.  I don’t write to be known, for I have never earned enough royalties to buy a good meal with. One is lucky to sell 500 paperbacks, for self-published authors sell much less than that. So why do I write given all the exceptions listed here. I write because I am compelled to do so by my feelings, thoughts, all that noise I have in my mind.  I guess that writing is an ordering of all that cacophony we each have in our minds. You cannot say it as well as you can say it in print.

So writing gives me organized expression and makes what I feel and think that much more coherent to my self. In short, it is like writing one’s name, it is identification with one’s self. Again, it is not subject to evaluation, criticism, or to be critiqued. I write my expression to discharge what I am in a coherent way, not only to make myself clear to you but really to make myself very clear to myself. “The unexamined life is a life not worth living.” I subscribe to that.

I may say it differently. I write to state what I am aware of, in my soul, in my guts. I write as a self-purpose and not for the community at large, although others may sup at my table if they wish to partake of what I can offer.

So I write as an expression of my own awareness. Given that, any other need such as publication or marketing what I have published are ancillary needs. They have their place. I would not have gotten this writing job if I did not have works published. Nevertheless, over the decades I have determined or fate and the market has made clear to me that I will not be considered a near great or great writer. I never thought that of myself. So what did I think of myself as I struggled to master my craft which is an impossibility.

It all came down to my very personal need to pursue what I felt inside and to elucidate it first to myself, with the hope that if it was well done any other human being would understand. And that did come true. A clarified awareness of my self was my task, although years ago I had no idea that was what I was doing. It is much like wandering into an underground sewer until one sloshes oneself free.

Continued writing brought daylight. Practice made it so.  I set no deadlines. I wasn’t even that hard on myself. I wrote until skill appeared, like the first glassine sheets of ice on a pond during a wintry day. As a writer you need to be obsessive — or a little nuts. Writing is like parenting, you are never done with it.

I can say that while I’m writing I just feel good, feel better as me. As I pound the  keys for this essay, sentences come out, so fascinating, coherence appears or if not, I can go back and repair all that; but it is the flow that makes it all, as if am a paper boat set sail on a stream running down a city block, unfettered.

Now the hardest part of all. Do I lie to myself and thus lie to you, the reader? I speak here of telling truth and how to go about that. How does one avoid the slippery self lies we all use to get through the day, through life? What good is any expression if soiled by untruths? What good am I if I live my life that way?

I just associated to Citizen Kane. As a former psychotherapist I have been trained to go with associations, much like thumbing a ride on a road. In several scenes Welles is seen writing a statement of principles for his new newspaper and in later scenes he has much violated his own “truths,” and reminded of that by Leland, his now former friend.  I suppose truth, for my purpose here, is just not lying to yourself, to be honest. It is the latent river in every therapy session. If you want to lie, I guess it is best to lie to others; but to lie to yourself, makes you an outer-directed human decal, fit to go on a Kenmore refrigerator door.

What does this have to do with being a writer? Never lie. Each sentence should struggle to be truthful to the best of your ability, reared as you were as parents who taught you right from wrong, domesticated by society, as best as your own self learning has given you, to tell the truth. The wondrous serendipitous result of this struggle to tell the truth is that you will learn to tell the truth if you are at it for a long while. All writing should have the Hallmark imprimatur on it — “If you care to send the very best.” If you wish to be meretricious and still write, send a Norcross card.

One last thought. Excellence! I have a thing about that.  Some of us from long-lasting habit match up socks and with a twist bind them together and others, like me, roll them up into a ball. Does it make a difference? No, but for me it is a way of doing things.  I would suggest that you adopt excellence as if you adopted a child. If you submit a manuscript to an online manuscript, follow the rules of the professional; if you think the essay is not quite good enough (see truth) don’t submit it; only share your best, share that which is excellent about you as a writer. Excellence, to my mind, is an expression of personal self-esteem. To do less is not to wash your hands after visiting the rest room.

 

 

 

 

Traveling the Mobius Strip: Excerpts from All my books and the Story Told

Traveling the Mobius Strip

 

Childhood and Adolescence

The Parable of the Sea Wall

 

“Something by someone close to me has been done to me and so well and so insidiously and so powerfully, systematically, slyly and cunningly and incremently, over eons of psychic time, that it has taken more than half my life to become “aware” of it.”

 

The Parable of the Sea Wall

“…Without words we headed home. My mother (The great She!) walked behind me, strap in hand, never used, her Roman fasces, her emblematic authority, her sign. She followed me across the breadth of the project back to729 Langham Court, barefoot son in the lead, Indian file, Mother with strap in hand, shadowing behind like some ascending thunderhead.”

 

Down to a Sunless Sea

 

“…fed by a grandmother who constantly praised his hazel eyes, long eyelashes, his good looks…she would gather him up upon her lap, feel and jostle his testicles – for fun, in front of the family, who went along complacently. He could not have been more than 5 or 6.”

 

Uncle Seymour

 

“What was even more damaging was that he did not come after me as I went under the ocean – that was unforgivable! He abandoned me to my own devices. I thought I would drown. So obtuse was he to me that I managed to get out of the water forever damaged. I still don’t swim. He, in effect, shocked and impacted upon my children to be, for I could not teach them to swim or partake in water sports. He had driven a stake into my sense of the species.”

 

Herbie

 

“’…and stop whacking off in your shorts like a horny bastard…get a girl.’ At the doorway, he stopped, as if he had a little more to say, and then, ‘You’re a shit.’”

 

Echo

 

“It is as if I endured a loss that was not unbearable but my very first. I had to bear it alone for no one else knew. I didn’t know, or realize until much later in life, how much that separation meant to me. It was the first in life, and so, it was the most ineffable—as if, David, an internal plane skywrote on my innermost tissue for all of my time on earth. As a child I took in; I swallowed the world, David. I observed, and I did not give much out.”

 

The Middle Ages

 

Young Man

 

“And he went into the world snagged on the fang of a job.”

 

For a While, Here, in this Moment

 

“I don’t imagine anymore. What is that, anyway?”

 

Autumn

 

 

From On the Holocaust, a talk on a Day of Remembrance

 

“I dread the Golem within.”

 

The lament of the species is its moral sloth.”

 

The i Tetralogy

 

“I am rectum.”

 

From Gunther’s Lament in The i Tetralogy

 

“Good Americans are much like good Germans: as long as I take care of my lawn, bag the cuttings neatly for garbage pickup, and replace the siding every decade or so and gladly hand out Halloween korn like Gabby Hayes, I’m one of the good guys.”

 

From Gunther’s Lament in The i Tetralogy

 

“You are unwilling to look inward, after all, you are Americans, human decals to the world, with little real substance – your only contribution is marketing!”

 

From the Raison d’Etre in The i Tetralogy

 

“I have come to believe that all I have to give is my being, and writing is my idiosyncratic body scent. Hunt for my spoor, if you will.”

 

Raison d’Etre

 

“I have no need for an omniscient power. In my world, everything is up for grabs. My mind will not be silenced by mere convention – or conditioning, as I have devoted a large measure of my life to freeing myself of the idols of the mind.”

 

Raison d’Etre

 

“I am there, I am not there. I act, I am acted upon. I am unaware in all this, most times.

I hurt so much I hurt not, and I feel pain so much I feel not.”

 

Raison d’Etre

 

“I reach out and with my hand touch your heart, wish you Godspeed in your journey home. It is all too much, too much to bear – but bear it we must; it is part of human suffering – and human strength.”

 

Shuffling the Autumn Leaves for Sign

 

Delayed Children and Delayed Openings

 

“I see the child that with the proper encouragement might have been the artist, the musician or the actor. I see the pip that grew into no tree, but only a rooting sprig. I see the unrelatable sadness of a will that might have soared. And, in a twist of fate, I became a scribbler, a writer of signs and symbols, runes. How odd. After all, to record is a surrogate living.

 

Krishnamurti

 

“Do you not sense that your life, at moments, is driven by an engine and combustible not of your own making?”

 

Krishnamurti

 

“Imagine mankind as a midnight croaking in an indifferent universe.”

 

Krishnamurti

 

“To sit on the cusp of ambiguity, to entertain doubt, to question without need of answer is to create an internal awareness.”

 

What Is

 

“A notion of mine is terrifying in its consequences. I may be ‘living’ an unlived life.”

 

Fears

 

“To be secure is not the issue. To know who you are is always the issue.”

 

An Essay on Finding One’s Self as a Therapist

 

“We never tell people what we deeply want. We cannot do that. It is not known to us.”

 

A Coda Before Dying

 

Reading Rank: A Response

 

“So few of us ever realize in relationship a profound understanding and revelatory joy just in our existence. The very originality of our existence needs to be affirmed. Tell me I am of worth since I was born, anyone, you mister, let my bones rattle off a deeply moving ceremony of being valued above all things, and I shall use my stay on earth not only as a sojourn but a commitment to life and a commitment to others. Give me this indigenously rooted feeling and I can face my death in the words Kazantzakis so eloquently wrote: ‘Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!’”

 

Raison d’Etre

 

I see no meaning in all this but oddly enough, like i, I am grateful, in a way, for the agony. It makes me aware. It is good that it all ends. I felt—and suffered. That’s enough for one lifetime.

Gems from 2012-2013

All I ever need to know about life I learned from Star Trek.

I pre-registered at the UNLV Division of Educational Outreach last Saturday in preparation of taking a few courses in the next few months. I am trying to counter the boredom of this state and to engage my own self in terms of trying to get out of the box I’ve painted myself in. I need more than write. Sorry to admit it, I do need the interaction of other human beings. Shucks! It was refreshing to see so many graybeards of varying dynamism, one instructor of a writing course was in her early nineties. I liked the way they organized the open house: refreshments were plentiful and handsomely set out; instructors sat at tables and explained and clarified their impending fall courses. Alas, someone had the feeble idea that a man dressed as a clown was a necessity, a very poor idea.

As I chatted with and inquired of instructors what they were proposing I began to gather a sense of what these instructors were as individuals. After all, they were to teach these courses. At times I saw instructors who seemed a bit lifeless, or boring; some had a vitality to them. I did not want to spend time in a course with a dullard. I spoke to a writing instructor who was in her nineties and to a woman who was teaching a course on grief. And then I spotted a poster hanging on the wall behind the instructor who was going to teach a course on Star Trek (see above).

A week earlier I had listened as this instructor informed a group of prospective students of how she viewed Star Trek in another setting. In fact this science teacher had brought in a few toy tribbles that squeaked and other pop culture paraphernalia of the show. She made the point that the series was an industry and that she had won awards as a trekkie. Since I am not dead as yet, I wondered about what is the line between fan and trekkie, between enjoying a series and becoming more than an aficionado. Why did she give so much of herself to this cultural artifact? Of course, I had all kinds of psychoanalytical conjectures. And yes, I did say to myself — get a life; is this best you can be in your life? I now associate to Katharine Hepburn in Summertime. At least she had grown by the end of that movie

I am a Christian mother.

In describing a situation in which she made a caring intervention at a park between children and adults, I just listened. And then she added the above that I found unusual if not striking. Do we walk about declaring such things? For a moment I associate now to her tied to a post, faggots on fire at her feet, the smell of burning flesh and hair infusing the air, ah the martyr, singing Hatikvah to keep her spirits up.One would think that any good mother would have done what she did that day to be useful and instrumental. But what kind of conditioning within her must label it as significantly Christian?  I would proffer she has been trained well, religion before humanity. This is the same woman who seriously said to me with a whiff of guilt that she was feeling very “pagan” for not having attended church of late.

I wish I had informed her that Plato had infused the Catholic church for almost two thousand years (the results deleterious) and that Aristotle had a tremendous impact upon the church (and that worked against Galileo). I would rather have a talk with these two men than spend time with Jesus who probably never existed. As for Socrates, she would flee the room. And so this well-trained seal is not very well-educated or knowledgeable about the history of pagan philosophers upon Catholicism. Seals don’t ask, just give them fish.

Additionally, it came back to me as validated gossip that she opined that she found it sad that I was a secular atheist and had no belief in god. The condescension is appalling. In my mind an atheist is a free human being, deconditioned of religion and all that rot, while a religious person, somewhere in his or her  psyche, is enslaved. It stinks of the same grandiosity and arrogance of the Spanish conquistadors for the Aztecs and Mayas, as if their religions were inferior as they murdered them by the thousands. Cannibalism revolted the Spaniards but the attenuated communion wafer and wine, the blood of Christ, did not appall them.

Finally, in banter (ha! ha!) she shared that Jews and Christians are all alike, no differences whatsoever; she was being ecumenical, I imagine When I strongly disagreed, she faded. If you have been prey for 2000 years, there must be some reason for such hatred. I suppose in her religion to make nice is important, especially if you are a Christian mother. Jews do not evangelize and there are substantive reasons for that. We don’t need to. The Gospel, good news, is marketing, look up Paul’s resume.

Suck it up

In terrific pain in my left foot, I went to an orthopedic doctor for an evaluation. It was discovered that I had a bone spur which was pressing against the spine and giving me the equivalent of sciatica from the hip down. While waiting at the receptionist with my wife, I got a spasm of such intensity that I dropped to the floor in some attempt at relief. It was that bad.

After a thorough examination and a cat scan, the doctor diagnosed my situation and advised that I go to another doctor for a cortisone short into my back which would be done under sedation. As I was suffering I asked the doctor if he could give me something or prescribe something for this maddening pain before the intended medical procedure. And he said, “Suck it up.”

If I were not inhibited by old age, pain and social manners, I would have yelled at him, called him out. I am annoyed with myself that I did suck it up.

You’re at risk

After a sonogram of my neck it was discovered that one carotid artery had been devoured by plaque. It could not be recovered. Thankfully we are born with  one or more. Nevertheless, the severity of the situation was not lost upon me when my doctor said to me that I was at risk, I suppose, for a stroke. This led to a cardiologist who did confirm all this but was more encouraging and felt I had years ahead if I would take care of myself in terms of diet and exercise. Perhaps. He also detected cardio-vascular damage to my heart as well which kind of , in my mind, foreshadowed what disease I will die of, except perhaps for terminal boredom in Henderson, Nevada.

For the past year I have had to deal with it on many levels, but I can say I relate to an anecdote about Isaac Asimov who, when asked if he had learned he had a short time to live what he might do, shot back, “I’d type faster.” It is only an anecdote. Being at risk makes me feel all kinds of emotive things. I am still wrestling with it.

Can’t you try to write some light-hearted stuff, some humorous thoughts, something less dour and dark?

My last blog, 1958 – Goodbye to All That, did not resonate well with my wife. She rarely criticizes the writing, often finds it very good. It is the content she at times feels is too sour or acrid. I wanted to tell her and I did in gargled fashion but this is who I am, sorry to say. I am more open to dark reflections than I am to optimistic opinion or joyful celebrations. I know she is advocating a balance to what I write. I am wondering what she will make of this blog of gems. I have tried to inject some humor here and there.

What I am trying to say to Jane is that since no one reads these little essays, what difference does it make if I am grumpy, cantankerous and curmudgeonly. Often I read dictionary definitions by Ambrose Bierce in his The Devil’s Dictionary. Here is a sample: Martyr (see I am a Christian mother), n. One who moves along the path of least resistance to a desired death. Marriage, n. A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two (Whew!) Pray, verb. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessed unworthy. Having defined a year as “a period of 365 disappointments,” Bierce did “not spend his entire life in gloomy fashion most assumed was his lot.” Yes, I, too, can be joyous and the life of the party; it is fun to be bipolar if you don’t allow one pole to annul the other.

So I can be corrosive and acidulous, but I am only the dog snapping and pulling on the man’s trouser leg. It is a basic defense against hurt, so what else is new. So my wife will have to endure or not endure my unwillingness to select more upbeat themes, for I am not an upbeat kind of guy. There must be some worth in being almost expert at writing about darkness and the dank sweat off the beast that resides in that sewer.

 

 

 

1958 – Goodbye to All That

In 1958 Eisenhower was still in office. It felt to me that the country was in a comfortable snooze. I attended Jamaica High School, a huge mound of bricks, granite and concrete that stood on an imposing hillock across the street from a kettle pond made by the glaciers thousand of years ago. In fact it was glacial terminal moraine that ran through Queens out to Long Island. All kinds of students had graduated here, even Josef von Sternberg (Josef Sternberg), the famed director of  Marlene Dietrich. I was in my senior year and it proved to be a bitter one for me.

In those days school programs were tracked — academic, business and general. You knew your place. If you were in the general track you were headed for blue collar work; if you were in business, secretarial work or some kind of accounting, and if you were in the academic program college was next after high school. Of course, teachers and administrators loved their academic pets. I could sense the favoritism. No one spoke about it then. In fact no one spoke about anything of substance then. Like the moraine the building rested on, the world for four years was glacial.

Schools were inflexible and authoritarian in those days, down even to a white line in the corridors which you could not cross even if your classroom was right there. You had to go to the end of the corridor and turn around and then go to your room. Sometimes it was silent passing. Looking back is easier, looking back makes it horrific, but it was mind-numbing and unchallenged at the time. A teacher’s mere look or scowl was enough, if you were a reasonably intimidated young person, to shut up. The classic fear was that infractions of any sort might “go on your permanent record card,” hidden somewhere in the bowels of the school and a lifelong behavioral tattoo that you would wear until you died. How universal it is that distilled fear is driven into each generation by the authoritarians of that generation. It never ends. Have you observed in your own experience how much of teaching is made up of threats? Of course, you have. Paul Goodman labeled it as growing up absurd, in a book of the same title.

I had a difficult and  hard time in high school, excellent in social studies because I read a lot, terrible, really terrible in math, especially geometry, mediocre in language, reasonable in earth science and biology, an eighty student in English. At home I had no support or real encouragement for I bathed in benign neglect, parents who had not gotten through school during the Depression years. They were not active in my academic life, for they were ignorant themselves of, let us say, geometry. I suffered alone. I was depressed and did not know it. It was not like now; it was then; depression was only spoken of, I imagine, in psychoanalytic circles.

In any case I recall the spring semester. I was preparing for six Regents! which were statewide three hour long  New York tests for four years of Spanish, four years of social studies, four years of English, four years of Science, etc. Because I was disordered and disorganized, I imagine, it came to pass that in June of 1958 I stood for these tests. I did pass all of them but the anxiety and studying was stressful. In those days passing a Regents was a mark of scholarship. I must say that my four years in Jamaica high School I would hold up against some community colleges today in terms of what I learned.

I was feeling moody when I received notice that after all these years in high school I was on the honor roll for the first time; I felt very bitter about that, beyond ironical considering the quiet suffering I endured — alone. I had been a mediocre student but somehow I caught fire in my last semester and achieved. Related to this I had written a poem called “To Those Who Fail,” in which I expressed my adolescent angst about my struggle, comparing it to a stream that continues to wend its way although obstacles get in its course. I submitted it to my English teacher and to my surprise it was accepted and I knew it would be in my 1958 yearbook. When it was published with a different title, “Destroyer and Builder,” I was distressed no end, for this English teacher schmuck only saw one theme in it, a minor one at that, and so my first editing experience was depressing. And when I unwitingly showed my poem to my uncle in the yearbook, who was unlettered himself, he innocently defaced it by signing his name on it with well wishes. All this compounded my feelings of being fucked over. I still have that original poem after 55 years.

In that spring I went to Mrs. Young who was the guidance counselor to get my scores on the College Boards which is what they were called in those days. I had no training or prep for these tests and just took them; consider all the prep work, tutoring and Kaplan courses today so Johnny can slip into college. I remember her in that Dickensian garret office of hers imperiously hovering over a small wooden box loaded with student scores and how she looked at my marks and then told me, in effect, that I should not think of college and consider some other avenue of effort. She was matter-of-fact heartless. Demoralizing, unkind– and devastating. I would implant a stake in her heart if I discovered her casket. All I knew I could do was read and learn; I had few other skills or attributes, definitely not handy. I felt at sea, without compass. I felt useless because I liked the liberal arts. I was a lost soul, and she reminded me of that condition, my nature. When I think of her I think of Mrs. Farber as well, another soul murderer, a math teacher, who circled a 45 on a quarterly report card in red crayon as if I would not understand what 45 meant. The cruelty was remarkable. I would use a special stake to implant in her heart as well and then circle it with barbed wire.

I have a reminiscence of Iris, the one with the big jugs, who bartered, bickered, slobbered for an extra point in Mrs. Farber’s geometry class to go from a 96 to a 97. I recall hearing that repartee between teacher and very bright student, her pet. And I sat at my desk with my failing grade with shit in my pants and computing in my mind how many points I could take from Iris’s grade and pass(!) yet leaving her with sufficient points to pass as well. The depression was deep. The rage untouched. The anger was red hot. Iris would go on to the next semester, and I would have to repeat the course. I felt emotionally and psychologically left back. It goes a long way to explain my resentment of those who have, the “upper” classes, the well-to-do. It was a class dislike I acquired. I was the oppressed.

There were some interesting young kids in the class of 1958, Stephen Jay Gould, who I never met but probably had seen him in the halls who went on to become  a major scholar of evolution. Unfortunately he died much too young but he was in the broth I swam in. And there was Michael Weiner who signed my yearbook in an undecipherable scrawl who I did know, but not indelibly. And here I will add that he went on for his doctorate in ethnobotany and  wrote many books and then became Michael Savage, the far right or conservative commentator. I did not know but learned later on that he was physically abused by his father and as you can imagine in the Fifties that was not spoken of. In my feeling imagination I can see him coming to school after a slugfest at home. It saddens me to see how far right he has gone and given his home life I can postulate a few thoughts about that veering off. And I wonder now if I have left any impact upon any one in that school. As I look back now I was probably viewed as a nice guy, inordinately shy , harmless, a square, unobtrusive — a schlemiel. And that I was someone who would drift into the great unwashed expectorate of the Eisenhower working masses of 1958.

As a graduation gift I got a sterling silver ID bracelet from my parents. The  summer of 1958 I worked at S.Klein, a department store in Hempstead, Long Island. I would take a bus from the Jamaica terminal and ride out to this suburb and it was tiring, but I was young. In the store I was a clerk in the record department and it was here that I began to appreciate the talent of Frank Sinatra, his phrasing especially, as the record manager played his records incessantly. In 1958  Volare by Domenico Modugno was a hit record as well as another called Patricia had a propulsive Latin beat.

It was also the summer in which Lady Chatterley’s Lover in its famous white cover was a major book release. What I found interesting was that on the bus going home people would read the book in a cover so as not to be considered prurient — oh, the repressed fifties. I later read it myself and thought it was beautifully written erotica, first class with an underlying critique of the English industrialized classes, who were unfeeling, frozen, and like her husband, paralyzed. I had applied to night school at Queens college as I had no idea what I was to do in this world. I recall dimly a call from my mother from our seventh floor housing project window on Parsons Boulevard telling me that I had been accepted into night school at Queens College. Observe that she opened the acceptance, therefore depriving me of the pleasure of notification.

Wisely, a word I would not use for me at eighteen, I took four courses in the arts during the first semester which I loved, music and art appreciation of the first order. I got four A’s and with that average I was able  to transfer into day college.  I had finally made it. I wish I could say goodbye to all that but I can’t because I choose not to.

 

Deja Vu Redux

When I come to write a new blog I review all kinds of things in my mind, hoping to choose a viable theme or a topic that will make me commit myself to writing something of some worth. Unlike other bloggers, I have no “followers.” I just write my merry heart out and post it to cyberspace which really means it is an essay written by myself to myself, because no one gives a damn about what I am writing on this blog. So blogging for me is just a weekly attempt to keep my pen in the inkwell, if you will. [I have lived so long I recall dipping a pen into an inkwell.]I pay homage to myself without any need whatsoever for having my little essay read. The only solace I have attained from all this is that some of my essays here have been published in online magazines as well as serving for the content of my latest book, This Mobius Strip of Ifs.

As I wander into old age and decreptitude, the undiscovered territory, I have dark and depressed thoughts, the usual, given my age — illness, death, dying and denying patent realities, reminiscences, regrets and rueful thoughts, the what-could-have-beens. Quite tiresome at that. I often get fed up with it myself, repeating the historically Jewish oy. One must laugh at oneself or collapse into a morass of self-sorrowing pity, the molasses of life misspent. At odd moments while sitting or lazing about my comfortable couch I discover myself tearing up about a lost wife, a lost daughter, of stupidities I have wallowed in as a young adult, as a man. I become easily touched and maudlin if you will. I self-observe the return of the repressed, decades old anxieties and characterological issues which never seem to extinguish themselves, like homo sapient zebra stripes that never disappear. My capacity to repeat old stuff in my much older body and mind just gives so much credence to Freud’s repetition compulsion. Has any classical author ever written about that in us — perhaps Faulkner? For the past is the present and the present is the past if we see into that.

I play out with my wife old shit that I have played out in earlier marriages, just different permutations. I see all that and it is bothersome. I no longer try to stop it. I just watch it. I see it. I am too weary at 73 to work on it other than try to ameliorate it in terms of cutting some of the shit out. It is tiring, is it not? to keep working on oneself into the seventies. Clearly I am a nettle of burrs for those about me, for I am a difficult man to know, to get close to, to understand at least on the surface level. I am the Cheshire cat. I secrete ambiguity which keeps people at a distance from me. I have been sending out a smoke screen for so long that it is more than second nature. I play games.  Being passive-aggressive is the maraschino cherry on top of this charlotte russe. Close contact with me can drive you to distraction.

As the days go by like the rustle of a great lady’s silken gown,  in one grand movement with no differentiation, I awake grateful for the new day but still perplexed as to where it will take me. Much of my day is made up of mundane things to do - buy – busy myself with – while all the time I feel the passage of time like soapsuds through my hands. You must understand that I am always observing myself without reaching any conclusions, although sometimes I reach determinations which I sometimes share in these essays, this being one example. I am moving ineluctably to my end and yet I am trying or struggling to somehow channel it all into some fervid last orchestral cymbal clash. Much of life, my life, is aimless, thoughtless, without meaning or direction beneath the hurly burly of everyday empty living which we all do to avoid serious seeing into our idiosyncratic dilemmas.

To wit: I write this blog to myself and for myself, no one reads it. I go to physical therapy for a bone spur situation on the spine and go through exercises to prevent a re-occurrence of severe pain; I practice exercises at home, often not doing them because I resist doing them. I resist authority. I watch too much TV, a dying man’s palliative. I stay indoors because of the horrid Nevada heat, what a fucking state to live in. Rarely do you see a human being on the street because of the heat. I’ve forgotten the smell of rain and the different kinds of rain I had growing up in the East Coast. I dimly recall the smell of snow and what good packing was, or what it took to shift gears to get out of a snow-packed parking spot. In Nevada I rarely if ever have to parallel park. Would you believe that? I shamble through my experience knowing better and trying to reach out for solutions, futile all that is. I miss a good kibitzing or the raconteur-ways of urban street living. [Is the lox fresh?...What, I should sell it to you stale?]I live in a desert and a metaphorical desert. I am thought out. I am psyched out.

I am “cursed” by a need to express myself, the unheard scream I have lived since a child. At times I wish I were a Pepsi-Cola empty glass bottle. Alas, I am compelled to untangle my complexities or at least tease out the different threads among the many different skeins I own. What troubles me is that I see much, side-step much, but I know that time is passing in a very fleeting way and I want to hitch myself to that horse in some way so that I am not left at some rest stop waiting for the next bus. I would like to hitch myself to a star. All that passes before me can often be the last. The last time I saw my wife on that fateful 3 July 1999 as she said goodbye and left with Brett on the way to her death. The Honda Civic I drive may very well be my final car. The last pizza I chowed through may be my last. All of life is separation except that when you are my age you savor the “last” of anything as it may be your final goodbye. Curious to experience. Age gives you that — the last feel of a tit, the last great fuck you had, the last smell of her perfume, the rich greasy fat of a hot New York knish or the crackling skin of a frank, kraut and mustard with Hire’s root beer to swallow down and the last good shower.

What would you do, reader, if all your senses were aware and alert to all that I have said? How would you grab on to the essentials that are left to you in the time remaining? Thoreau nailed it — can you live “deliberately.” In fact, I was contaminated early. I did not wait until old age to sense the passing of self in the evolving passage of time. I have sensed that since a young man I have asked questions philosophically about all this but it is in old age that I can taste the gristle of the bone in my mouth. So, unlike others, it is not new to me, therefore fearful and filled with dread. Oh, “miracle” person that I am, I dread and I fear but not so much as others for the asking and posing of questions, for me at least, assuages the angst.The observing of my life running down to the last wheeze of a cosmic bike pump, at least keeps me flitting about, like the good hummingbird, the wonderful driven machine that visits my porch daily, filled with life, and destined to die.

40/150 “Sunflowers” Sarah Rishel

A still life, a table covered in a partially blue checkered cloth with blue horizontal bands on which are pears, what looks like a high bowl of plums and a plate of grapes. On the table is a white and blue pitcher ladened with sunflowers. To the right of this is a window with nine vertical panes which overlooks what seems to be a pond or lake. Trees are here but they are not in flower, perhaps it is early spring or early fall. All in all, it is a pleasant print and perhaps it was calming for my daughter, Caryn when she bought it. She bought it somewhere and that somewhere is forever lost.

When I wake in the morning I look across to the wall and it is there, the print that I retrieved from her apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1998 after she had taken her life.The print is not important. What is important is that Caryn gazed at it, looked at it, took it in or perhaps she paid it no mind after a time. And to Sara Rishel who printed it, where is she now? Is she alive and creating? Or is she dead? Ms.Rishel, are you aware of the contribution you made to my daughter’s well-being? What is infinitely remarkable is how a print such as this is looked on for many hundred of times, perhaps thousands,and what does it take in from the eye of its beholders or do the eyes of beholders shed something of themselves and give to the print a timeless glance? A print gives and a print takes in. All art is an unconscious exchange.

It gives me pleasure to know that my daughter gazed upon this print and that I have it in my possession. It is but a thing, but things can count tenderly. To touch an artifact of her existence gives me a caress of a kind. So the artist, Caryn and I share something of no real importance except to that meaning we give it. It is much like an archeologist opening up a tomb for the first time and breathing the dank air of centuries past. It is a connection of a kind and the print gives me that reasurrance that my child held it, looked upon it, gave it meaning and intention, drew some pleasure from it for she had little real pleasure in life. Her death and the manner in which she died is ever a gaping wound in my side. When I am gone, she will be gone as well, having perished twice. For it is in active and nourished memory that we keep in thrall those who do mean so much to us.

The things we leave behind say so much about us, directly and indirectly. I will leave books to be read, photographs of relatives to be looked at, perhaps considered, boxes of manuscripts or in the “cloud” to be read if anyone will read them. I will leave things such as a camera, rings, one ring I made for my mother in shop at age 14 or so; my mother’s wedding band as well. I will leave prints that I like as well as a large shell I gave to Rochelle for our anniversary for I did not have the wherewithal to buy anything more than twenty-five dollars. Some things do not come to mind but as my loved ones go through my stuff perhaps they will discover other emblematics items that I do not even take cognizance of. I am feeling very sad and touched as I write these words, a sadness that words cannot find expression.

Caryn had no idea that her choice of a print would also be a gift to both of us. It tells me of her taste and her needs. What Caryn never received, if I may draw such an overarching statement, is solace! In this print, not to make too much of it, is a kind of solace, a picture of a calm scene, in no way menacing. My daughter if she were alive would draw out from me a painful expression, for in all my life, I have never found solace. I choose to live, to go on; she chose otherwise, for there are those tender souls who just surrender to the dark voices that seduce them into nothingness.  There was much terrifying physical pain in her life and terrifying psychological pain as well. As was said of the Holocaust, the better part of humanity died in the camps.

Caryn survives in me.

Politically Correct Is Denial

In 1945 my uncle was with Patton, in the Battle of the Bulge, and was awarded the Bronze Star for gallantry. He was all of nineteen. Rachel Jeantel is nineteen and she is frequently referred to by the media commentators such as Piers Morgan, that egg–sucking sycophant, as a “child.” She is not a child. Undereducated, surly, she spends her time telling Piers about what a “nigga” is as opposed to a “nigger” in her mind and in her community. It is the kind of education I need not pay attention to, for it reeks of grossness and base human relationships. As Larry Elder, a black commentator, said in a heated confrontation with Piers Morgan, she represents nothing good from her black community; that she needed to get an education. Continually referring to her as a child, Morgan fawns over her, extols her for telling the “truth,” but she is a grotesquerie which I don’t happen to like. Not only is her demeanor unpleasant to see, she in no way needs to be enthralled. I do not deny what my mind and education inform me, this is one hell of a narrow and very limited ”woman.” To make any more of her is to be blinded by what is before you. I associate to an old quotation: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Forty-two or so years ago I drove a cab in New York City. My infant daughter, Brett, was a few months old. I was held up by a black youth who asked me to drive to a street that was in shadows. I was so naive. At that point he pulled a gun on me and put it behind my head and asked for cash. In those days cabbies shoved bills into a small vault on the floor of the cab, keeping smaller bills for change, etc. It was a surreal experience as I offered to help him break into the vault. Disappointed by his not getting anything and by my pleading for my life, he went on to say, in effect, that white people fall apart and cry under duress–bravely said. Luckily for me, when he pushed the rear-view mirror to the side and fled from the back seat, I remember I was stunned, for there was moment there, for him, and me, that I thought he was considering to blow my head away, Kennedy style.

When my wife heard my story, she said that she was grateful that he had not shot me, for her own father’s father was killed in a similar scenario when he drove a cab in the thirties. For months after whenever I saw a detective show and some one pulled a gun, I got the willies. I still tremble at how close I came to being murdered. And I associate to my wife, Rochelle, in 1980 having a black man invade our apartment with a baseball bat who beat her over the head with it.  Somehow and in some fashion she fought back and wrestled the bat from him. Rochelle had the courage to strike back, receiving blows which broke both wrists and gave her a concusssion. I missed this bastard by about fifteen minutes as I was on my way home. If I had gotten there, I would be dead or he would be dead. My daughter was traumatized and my son became school phobic for months which really means that he could not abide being separated from his mother. Rochelle was hospitalized.

The point here is that I have taught black students in segregated areas with mixed results and I have been appalled by black behaviors directed at me and my kin. I choose not to deny what I feel, and how I  manage my feelings quite frankly is my business. However, was the holdup in which I was involved a racist act or not? Did my being white strengthen my assailant’s behavior? I know so, it was venomous. I don’t deny my feelings and they are not pleasant ones at that. When I see Piers and others go blind before Rachel Jeantel, I think of that old bromide that a liberal is someone who hasn’t been mugged. Slavery was this country’s original sin and both the victim and the victimizer continue to suffer for it.

Al Sharpton has once again come out of his rathole. Do you remember Tawana Brawly? You should, and how he was convicted for his lies about that case, or the Crown Heights affair in which he fomented racial hatred and one Jewish man slain by a riotous mob. Yet the media gives this man a show. Have you listened to this opportunist who has trouble agreeing subject and verb in his sentences? This cretin is given a show! And then there is Jesse Jackson, whose son is in jail, ladened sadly with psychological problems, doing his old and tiresome routine, the man who referred to New York as “Hymie town.” No one takes these creeps on for it is denial of a major kind. I went to Wikipedia and looked up Sharpton”s “record.” Try it, it is appalling.

And now to the heart of the recent media blizzard about Trayvon Martin. When I became first aware of the case I intuited George Zimmerman as someone other than how he was being portrayed. I sensed a softness in him which belied the sewage thrown at him. I found it hard to consider him as a profiler [parenthically, from day one we profile the people about us--hello!] and murderer. It was a feeling, the same you have about people around you until you learn otherwise! Before long Bill Maher, alas, and other celebrities and commentators built up a case that Zimmerman was guilty. I fought that off.. I felt it was a smog of smears. When a demented jury freed OJ years ago, I recall pictures of black college students cheering in their dorms. Is there any sane person who does not believe he murdered both Nicole and Ron Goldman? Despicable, but who said going to college does anything to you if you are driven by racial animus? I regret that thousands of white people [were we fearful of hurting the feelings of our black brethren?] did not march and protest that horrid jury decision, which was a racial one!

What is the most overpowering shock to my system is that George Zimmerman, as the media constantly drums into us,  will have to fear for his life for decades; that the Black Panthers recently put out a $10,000 award for the killing of him (Yes!); that he is a man without a country. Legally set free, look at the country we live in. We now pursue an acquited man.  Imagine that he has to live in the shadows, live with disguises, cannot get up and go to work like any one of us. (OJ was allowed to walk around for years without such a cloud over his head.) It is a fetid abomination  that this so-called democracy gives him. If I were he, I’d leave this country for if you scratch our so-called civilization you would find pestilence, hypocrites that we are. Few mention the consequences for Zimmerman other than the litany of what will happen to him. We are fucking blind. So if a man is declared free and society feels he is not, he is once again punished by exile within his own country. The species-as well as our culture-is deplorable.

By the by, Rachel Jeantel would not understand this blog.

 

Politically Correct is Denial

In 1945 my uncle was with Patton, in the Battle of the Bulge, and was awarded the Bronze Star for gallantry. He was all of nineteen. Rachel Jeantel is nineteen and she is frequently referred to by the media commentators such as Piers Morgan, that egg–sucking sycophant, as a “child.” She is not a child. Undereducated, surly, she spends her time telling Piers about what a “nigga” is as opposed to a “nigger” in her mind and in her community. It is the kind of education I need not pay attention to, for it reeks of grossness and base human relationships. As Larry Elder, a black commentator, said in a heated confrontation with Piers Morgan, she represents nothing good from her black community; that she needed to get an education. Morgan continually refers to her as a child, fawns over her, extols her for telling the “truth,” but she is a grotesquerie which I don’t happen to like. Not only is her demeanor unpleasant to see, she in no way needs to be enthralled. I do not deny what my mind and education inform me, this is one hell of a narrow and stupid “woman.” To make any more of her is to be blinded by what is before you. I associate to an old quotation: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Forty-two or so years ago I drove a cab in New York City. My infant daughter, Brett, was about six months old or so. I was held up by a black youth who asked me to drive to a street that was in shadows. I was so naive. At that point he pulled a gun on me and put it behind my head and asked for cash. In those days cabbies shoved bills into a small vault on the floor of the cab, keeping smaller bills for change, etc. It was a surreal experience as I offered to help him break into the vault. Disappointed by his not getting anything and by my pleading for my life, he went on to say, in effect, that white people fall apart and cry under duress. Luckily for me, when he pushed the rear-view mirror to the side and fled from the back seat, I remember I was stunned, for there was moment there, for him, and me, that I thought he was considering to blow my head away, Kennedy style.

When my wife heard my story, she said that she was greatful that he had not shot me, for her own father’s father was killed in a similar scenario when he drove a cab in the thirties. For months after whenever I saw a detective show and some one pulled a gun, I got the willies. And I associate to my wife, Rochelle, in 1980 having a black man invade our apartment with a baseball bat who beat her over the head with it.  Somehow and in some fashion she fought back and wrestled the bat from him. Rochelle had the courage to strike back, receiving blows which broke both wrists and gave her a concusssion. I missed this bastard by about fifteen minutes as I was on my way home. If I had gotten there, I would be dead or he would be dead. My daughter was traumatized and my son became school phobic for months which really means that he could not abide being separated from his mother. Rochelle was hospitalized.

The point here is that I have taught black students in segregated areas and I have been appalled by black behaviors directed at me and my kin. I choose not to deny what I feel, and how I  manage my feelings quite frankly is my business. However, was the holdup in which I was involved a racist act or not? Did my being white strengthen my assailant’s behavior? I know so, it was so venomous. I don’t deny my feelings and they are not pleasant ones at that. When I see Piers and others go blind before Rachel Jeantel, I think of that old bromide that a liberal is someone who hasn’t been mugged. Slavery was this country’s original sin and both the victim and the victimizer continue to suffer for it.

Al Sharpton has once again come out of his rathole. Do you remember Tawana Brawly? and how he was convicted for his lies about that case, or the Crown Heights affair in which he fomented racial hatred. Yet the media gives this man a show. Have you listened to this opportunist who has trouble agreeing subject and verb in his sentences? This cretin is given a show! And then there is Jesse Jackson, whose son is in jail having learned values from the reverend, doing his old dance, the man who referred to New York as “Hymie town.” No one takes these creeps on for it is denial of a major kind. I went to Wikipedia and looked up Sharpton”s “record.” Try it, it is appalling.

And now to the heart of the recent media blizzard about Trayvon Martin. When I became first aware of the case I used my not inconsiderable skills to intuit, if you will to size up George Zimmerman. I sensed a softness in him which belied the sewage thrown at him. I found it hard to consider him as a profiler [parenthically, from day one we profile the people about us--hello!] and murderer. It was a feeling, the same you have about people around you until you learn otherwise! Before long Bill Maher, alas, and other celebrities and commentators built up a case that Zimmerman was guilty. I denied that. I felt it was a smog of smears. When a moronic jury freed OJ years ago, I recall pictures of black college students cheering in their dorms. Is there any sane person who does not believe he murdered both innocents? Despicable, but who said going to college does anything to you if you are driven by racial animus? I regret that thousands of white people [were we fearful of hurting the feelings of our black brethren?] did not march and protest that horrid jury decision, which was a racial one!

What is the most overpowering shock to my system is that George Zimmerman, as the media constantly drums into us,  will have to fear for his life for decades; that the Black Panthers recently put out a $10,000 award for the killing of him (Yes!); that he is a man without a country. Legally set free, look at the country we live in. We now pursue an acquited man. Imagine that he has to live in the shadows, live with disguises, cannot get up and go to work like any one of us. (OJ was allowed to walk around for years without such a cloud over his head.) It is a fetid abomination  that this so called democracy gives him. If I were he, I’d leave this country for if you scratch our so-called civilization you would find pestilence, hypocrites that we are. Few mention the consequences for Zimmerman other than the litany of what will happen to him. We are fucking blind. So if a man is declared free and society feels he is not, he is once again punished by exile within his own country. The species as well as Americans is deplorable.

By the by, Rachel Jeantel would not understand this blog.

 

In 18 Days

23 July 1940, Brooklyn, New York. Five months before December 7th. In 1939 Hollywood had one of the greatest years in movie-making, Gone With The Wind, How Green Was My Valley. Wuthering Heights etc. In 1941 Citizen Kane was released which would haunt me for decades after seeing it as a very young boy. In 1940 Welles was a mere twenty-five, and so was my father. England was at war with Nazi Germany and my mother capitulated to the old battleax Grandma Flora, my paternal grandmother by calling me Mathias Balogh after her father who was a Hungarian cantor. It was a name that I detested for much of my life. I was born into ignorance, obtuseness and a few steps above poverty, living much of my life to come in housing projects in Brooklyn and Queens. I did not see carpeting in a living room until I was in my late teens. Kentile ruled.

Periodically over the years I have stopped to evaluate and assess my age as I creep toward death. In my recent book of essays, This Mobius Strip of Ifs, I have an essay called “At 67.” In a few weeks I will be 73 and I have no idea what that really means other than its designation. Tempus Fugit is palpable and I can do nothing but watch it pass. Curiously I associate to Miss Mallon’s class in 1952. I recall doing some counting, trying to figure out how old I would be in the year 2000. 60! I don’t remember much of that or why I did it, but I do recall doing it. I could interpret it now, but I write about it because after sixty -one years it still stays in my mind. All of life, if I may generalize, is about the associations we make.  A few bars of music from the Sixties may make me tear up or recall an old flame. What would we be without associations? Less.

The last few years have been ones in which my body has “betrayed” me — cardio-vascular issues, one carotid artery gone, filled up with a cholesterol-like pate, one left, so I am at “risk” the so-called tactful doctor informed me; a bone spur comes out of nowhere like a disruptive rent in the ground and I need to be hospitalized for a spinal procedure to ease the pain which is much like sciatica; the onset of macular degeneration and the need for a cataract operation within two years, the retina specialist informs me; the subtle diminishment of my hearing which I am attending to. All these are precursors to my passing. I have been put on notice. And what am I to do with this knowledge knowing full well that “knowledge is death.” I can’t do anything but wake up and go on. I am open to suggestions.

The cumulative avalanche effect of the above strangely enough does not depress me. At some level I await it, for there is a non-suicidal part of me that accepts the decay and inevitability of my living no more. I believe when it does come  on the paws of cat’s feet that I will fear the loss of control, a major defensive construct in my being, like the Great Wall of China. To give up control, to let go might be more of a task for me than dying itself. It is fear! I am not a brave man, bit of a coward I must say, so I have no idea how I will handle the onslaught. I have no time for heaven and hell, man-made idiocies.  Sedated with the same drug that Michael Jackson had for my spine, very effective for there is no lag or sluggishness after you come out of a procedure, I had no dreams. I had nothing. I awoke. If death is like that, how magnificent. I think the complete absence of self is not so terrifying if you don’t philosophize about it for  that is life guessing about death, ridiculous, I must say.

Parts of my life are in disarray and will be like that to my end. I am estranged from my daughter who, I believe, has no real reason for the estrangement except childhood grievances which she cannot metabolize or put aside — she chooses not to. Most likely she would not come to my funeral, her rage is so great for reasons she has not shared with me. I have a father’s pain beause I do love her very much, associations to her rearing are powerful in me. She lost her mother at 27, I lost mine at 20.  And it will never be the same for her or me and that is part and parcel of living and life. Other than my daughter’s recalcitrance, her unwillingness to reconcile, I do not feel in disarray. I have lived too long, I think, not well, but too long. My successes have not been material ones. I have published books, become smarter and wiser as I learned through the decades, grew professionally, exploded in terms of creativity in my fifties and sixties. I have persevered. I have not quit on myself. I have not been as successful in my relationships which are more important than anything else in my world or yours.

I see myself as a difficult personality to be with, ask my wife. Explanations for all that are as rife as weeds, for they have beene evaluated, analyzed, considered, interpreted and some of it grasped, some of it not grasped. even at this late stage of life. I have always found it difficult to have close friends; I do have one, thousands of miles away and ten years older than myself. I have held people at bay, not drawn them close. I have trust issues, the jargon says, and they are unlikely to be resolved in the years ahead. My alienating behaviors are ones I choose both consciously and unconsciously so that at 73 I just throw my hands up and resolve to accept the grumpy old cocker that I have become. My one old friend said it best about me” “Matt needs to be felt.” In that is everything, from benign neglect, to poor mothering, to dreadful fathering. Boo hoo.

I walk around like an impacted colon that cannot evacuate waste. I have a great deal to share and give and there are no takers. No one wants to know, like the last self-published book by a struggling writer. No one cares. I have all this learning without individuals who might want to hear me out. I live here in Henderson, Nevada and I cannot discover outlets for what I know –psychotherapy; writing; human behavior; human relationships; the collected intellectual lint of fifty years as writer, teacher and psychotherapist. I cannot give it away. Ebay doesn’t want it. I refuse to retire from life which is a cultural conditioner for the brain dead. You cannot retire from living, ask your DNA.

Should I like an old Inuit woman walk off into the snow storm so that others may live? I think not.

When we are young we can look far ahead and say that we have ten, twenty or thirty years ahead of us. I cannot say that I even have five years ahead. No one, in reality, should prognosticate in that way. We each have the next day. However, we do need to plan, I suppose, seek out, I suppose, so that we give ourselves this mental cushion of years that lie ahead. Perhaps that is the hidden motivation behind my 1952 arithmetic computation. Well, I cannot do that anymore. The time remaining is shorter now. If you are much younger than 73, you cannot get into my shoes, but I can get into what it was to be twenty or forty. You cannot imagine what it is to be so close to human finality as programmed by our bodies and organs. I am there and I can report it is a mystery and I cannot proceed well ahead for I am mystified by it all. I just suck on to the day as long as I can, squeezing the pips out of it.  It is demoralizing to know that the days ahead are fewer than the days I have lived. Sad. Ah, but it is one part of the definition of life.

Feverishly, should I run through the Henderson streets holding in my mind the realization that  time is short, that much is undone, much never realized by my feeble powers of imagination and thought; and what about my bucket list? do I have one? should I make one? Should I panic at what was not accomplished or realized or should I quake at the realization that what is left is much unrealized and unaccomplished? It is like a fevered dream. How do I measure or balance all that I am with all that I have not become? What calibrating device do I use to make some fair  and discerning judgment of my stay on this planet? Funny, this is what I would suggest we do from day one if only we had elders and teachers to instruct us in this perspective?

What I give here is something that just flew into my mind and found a perch. I would like to reconcile with my daughter before I die and express to her the profound love I have for her; I would like to share as a person or teacher some of what I have learned growing up in this world; I would like to have one moment of self-awareness that I would keep private to myself, for it goes beyond insight, because it is an awakening; I would like to have one long and serious talk with another human being about any of my three books so far so that I know I have made some impact upon another human; I would like a little bit more insight into how I have made myelf unhappy throughout life; I would like some order of peace as close my eyes and slip away forever. And most of all, I would to feel or believe that my loved ones, my wife, my son, my daughter keep me in memory, for that is life  of a kind.

 

What I Did for My Summer Vacation

Jane and I went to Cedar City, Utah for a short working vacation. I wanted to see if I could buy into a vacation home away from Henderson, Nevada, a respite from the blandness of that community. I wanted a place that had seasons, rain, snow, mist, fog, as varietal as wines. I am writing this in the hotel lobby of the Crystal Inn late at night, restless, anxious, can’t sleep and the air conditioning hum in our room is driving me batty.

In the morning, on  Sunday, we will drive out to Cedar Breaks, a national park that is said to be geologically beautiful and from there out to Brian Head, a recreational area that gets an abundance of snow which makes me associate toThe Shining. We were searching for a small condo. I can’t ski, and at 73 in a few weeks who needs that lunacy; this trip perhaps is a fantasy, no, it is a fantasy, but it serves to get me away from the blandness of Nevada.  (Odd, but years ago I would be writing these night notes on foolscap and a pen but here I am composing on a monitor. Have I lived much too long?)

The late night is making me woozy, although I had two cups of coffee and I can’t sleep as well.Our first evening in Cedar City had its moments and I was introduced to what I term a Mormon Martini in the Depot Grill on Main Street. The food was good. Jane ordered her favorite, a Grey Goose martini with an olive. Here we both quickly noticed that the drink was not quite up to standards. The glass was not brimming with hooch and appeared malnourished. Asking the waitress who had the face of a fat Grace Kelly why the drink seemed to lack in force, for Jane had sampled it and found it wanting, we were informed that the booze was measured out exactly, that the alcohol was dispensed to a set amount. She further told us that here in Mormon country that was prescribed by the restaurant, at least in this one; in other words we paid the full amount for the drink although it did not measure up as a drink.

So we came to understand as we fled the North Korean mind control police that our drinks were monitored and prescribed; we later heard this night from a restaurant manager that here in Cedar City if you want beer with a shot of whiskey you must first drink one or the other before getting more from mommy. You are not allowed to serve two drinks at the same time to a customer before the customer finishes one, or you can only have desert if you finish your supper. Ah, conditions.

Besides digesting our meal we had to digest what had happened to our minds. At least I thought that the menu should have a disclaimer about all this for the tourist or newcomer to cult land. And then we searched the town for a decent cup of coffee, for this same waitress informed us that coffee was served in her restaurant in what amounted to be expresso cups. Yes, coffee was served in what amounted to an expresso cup, for it is a “stimulant.” We both assumed that this is part of Mormon doctrine as they are not allowed to drink coffee, which means that you are not allowed to drink coffee, ah, there’s the rub. Like all religions we must hear their evangelical message whether we like it or not. Curious, why do repressive regimes seem always to be in beautiful country, like Germany or Utah? Is there some kind of twisted relationship?

Like addicts searching for a fix we found coffee and pastry in our own hotel where we struck up a conversation with the restaurant manager who had left Las Vegas about eleven years ago for his own reasons, but had experienced for himself the Mormon quirks. He disabused our notion that we were being alcoholically Mormonized. He felt that they were just scrimping on booze, which also made sense as well. It depends on how you see it, for it could be a blend of both. He shared how he came to Cedar City and came across the disavowal of coffee as a stimulant in a local convenience store. When ordering a  container of joe the manager refused to serve him that. Stand back and consider. No coffee because it is part of our cult and here in cult land you must follow our belief systems. I  told the manager that substantiates my belief why Romney sucks in bed.

All through this charade Jane and I were laughing at the lunacy of it all, and I  mentioned to her that the Stepford Grace Kelly had no idea she was a conditioned slave. Then I had the chilling feeling of what it must be like to “live” in a repressive regime anywhere in the world. I would die off quickly, given my personality and high blood pressure. I don’t eat shit. However, it is compelling, is it not? to travel 187 miles from Nevada and to come upon this state of Mormon mind. All through history men have tried to tell other men how to live. Mormonism was the wet dream of the charlatan Joseph Smith and what a load of crap it is. Unfortunately if you enter crapland hold your nose while you get out as soon as possible.

Joke: what do you get if you cross a Mormon with a Scientologist? Answer: a Mengele martini.