Another kind of fear

Yesterday I wrote about my fear of having to make a lot of decisions, as one obstacle that stands in the way of my getting published. But there's another.

I am really afraid of putting myself out there.

"I find out what I really want …," 2

Long, long ago—more than fourteen years ago, now that I look at it—I posted a quote from Orson Scott Card's Children of the Mind, where Andrew ("Ender") Wiggin says to Miro:

"I find out what I really want by seeing what I do. That's what we all do, if we're honest about it. We have our feelings, we make our decisions, but in the end we look back on our lives and see how sometimes we ignored our feelings, while most of our decisions were actually rationalizations because we had already decided in our secret hearts before we ever recognized it consciously."

So now I wonder: can I use this insight as an analytical tool? Can I—in fact—find out what I want by seeing what I do, or does it just sound good? I guess the thing is to try.

What could be wrong with metta meditation?

 One of the standard Buddhist meditations—at any rate you find lay practitioners in America using it a lot—is the so-called "metta meditation." It's a meditation you can use to wish for peace and metta (loving-kindness) for every living being in the world, or the Universe. One version goes like this:

May I be filled with loving kindness.

May I be safe from inner and outer danger.

May I be well in body, heart and mind.
May I be at peace and completely happy.

May my loved ones and friends be filled with loving kindness. 
May they be safe from inner and outer danger.
May they be well in body, heart and mind.
May they be at peace and completely happy.

May even the people I have difficulty with be filled with loving kindness.
May they, too, be safe from inner and outer danger.
May they, too, be well in body, heart and mind.
May they, too, be at peace and completely happy.

May all beings everywhere be filled with loving kindness.
May all beings everywhere be safe from inner and outer danger.
May all beings everywhere be well in body, heart and mind.
May all beings everywhere be at peace and completely happy.

Taking good care of fear and anger

Last week in Sangha (a meeting I described here) we studied a selection from Thich Nhat Hanh's posthumous book Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet. ("Posthumous" means in this case that it was edited from his talks and published after his death by Sister True Dedication.) One passage* struck me, and I want to quote it at some length to explain why:

"A yogi, a practitioner, is an artist who knows how to handle their [sic] fear and other kinds of painful feeling or emotion. They do not feel they are a victim because they know there is something they can do.

"You listen to the suffering in you and get in touch with it. Breathe in and out deeply to see, 'Why am I suffering? Where has it come from?' ….

"The meditator breathes in, and says, 'Hello, my fear, my anger, my despair. I will take good care of you.' The moment you recognize the feeling and smile to it with love and care, embracing the fear with mindfulness, it will begin to change."

Then a little later** he comes back to this theme:

"There is a deep connection between suffering and happiness; it's like the connection between the mud and a lotus flower. When you take time to listen to your suffering and look deeply into its true nature, understanding will arise; when understanding arises, compassion is born …. You make good use of the suffering to create something more positive: compassion."

Meeting Beryl

So I have met Son 2's girlfriend. I'll call her Beryl.

Yesterday the two of them (Son 2 and Beryl) undertook the long drive from where they are now living (together) to this neck of the woods, where I, and Son 1, and Wife, and Mother, and Brother + SIL all live within an hour or two of each other. For geographical reasons, my apartment was the first stop. So I cleaned the place (which was a benefit right there) and planned a bunch of food for them. They arrived in the evening: I cooked, we ate, and the conversation flowed freely. This morning I made breakfast. Then they drove off to spend Christmas Eve with Son 1 and Wife. They will be coming back some time tonight, because they left their stuff here and are sleeping here. But we didn't make a plan, and I don't know what to expect. Nor do I know whether they will have eaten dinner by the time they get here … though as it gets later, I assume the odds go up that they will be already well-fed.

Tomorrow we drive, all three of us, to Mother's place. Brother and SIL are already there helping to get things ready, and we'll have a Christmas gathering there.

Milestone Sangha?

We just wrapped up our weekly Sangha Zoom meeting less than an hour ago. (This is the UU Sangha that I attended for years before COVID-19, and which later started reconvening over Zoom.) Marie has joined us for the last couple of sessions. I forget whether I mentioned it, but way back when she and I were first getting back together I talked to her about meditation, and at the time she found a Buddhist sangha in her area that she attended for a while. But then after a while she stopped going—maybe it was because of COVID-19, or maybe it was something else. And she told me she missed it. On the other hand, until very recently she has had a commitment on Tuesday nights, so she hasn't joined our UU Sangha Zoom meetings before now.

There were a couple of times back when the Sangha used to meet in person that Marie happened to be in town visiting me on a night that Sangha met, and so she came along with me. But that was quite a few years ago. Most of the Sangha membership has rolled over since then. (Wow, does that make me one of the old-timers already? Scary thought.)

Anyway, tonight was a milestone in my mind, though I don't know if anyone else thought of it that way or even noticed. Tonight Marie was in the Zoom call, and so was Debbie. So far as I can remember, this is the first time they have ever seen each other or communicated at all in any way except indirectly through me.

And so I wonder: Were they watching each other? Were they sizing each other up? What were they thinking?

Changing a lightbulb

Over the weekend I visited my mother, and on Sunday we went out to a concert at the philharmonic in the big city nearby. I always enjoy visiting my mom, and the concert was delightful. But just at the moment I'm feeling very thoughtful.

Saturday evening I went to turn on some lights in the living room. One lamp wouldn't light up, and I saw right away it was unplugged.

"Why is this lamp unplugged?" 

I forget what she said. It was something about Son 2 visiting during the weekend before, which indeed he had. Whatever she said didn't make a lot of sense, so I was only half paying attention.

I tried plugging it in, but the light still wouldn't illuminate. The socket was controlled by a switch, but I checked the other light plugged into the same socket and it was on; therefore the switch was turned on. 

"I wonder if the bulb is burned out. Do you have any other bulbs?"

Blast from the past: Boyfriend 1 aftermath (B1. part 3)

We never had another day as glorious as that first one. Wife continued to be married to me. (In fact, Boyfriend 1's older brother warned him, "If you love this woman encourage her to stay with her husband. Otherwise you will set up a pattern for her of leaving whenever things get tough.") But from time to time she continued to see Boyfriend 1. Sometimes he would visit us. Sometimes she would visit him. Mostly Wife was shy and embarrassed at letting one of us see her fucking the other one, so she tried hard to devolve the threesome into two twosomes. Ironically, this was the wrong choice on her part. What I found, speaking purely for myself, was this: 

If there was a closed door—or thirty miles of freeway—between me and some place that Wife was having sex, I felt insanely jealous. But if she was having sex with someone else right there directly in front of me, I felt fine because I figured that it would be my turn in a few minutes.

I don't know if anyone else in the world feels this way, but I bet they do. I assume I'm not so unusual as all that. But this means that, ironically, Wife's shyness and embarrassment led to maximal levels of jealousy on my part … and probably on his as well.

Blast from the past: Boyfriend 1 visits us (B1, part 2)

I told the beginning of this story yesterday, in this post here. (And, to some extent, in this post from two-and-a-half or almost-three years ago.)

So Wife and I left graduate school, and moved home. We found an apartment. Wife found a well-paying legal secretarial job, got fired, found a second legal secretarial job, got fired, and finally in November found a teaching job that she kept for the next three school years. Somewhere in those first few months I found a job as well. (It was after she found her first job, but before she got the teaching job.)

Boyfriend 1 lived in the same state, but some considerable distance away. Wife had gone to visit him for a weekend earlier in the summer, before I moved back with our stuff and before she had secured an apartment for us. (She was living with my parents at the time, and my father was pretty sure she was fucking someone else. Wife was never nearly as good at secrecy as she prided herself on.) After we were settled … I forget. Did she spend a weekend with him? Possibly not … her job situation kept her pretty well occupied for a while, and not in the fun sense.

But sometime in those first few months, Boyfriend 1 finally made the trip to visit us.

Blast from the past: Wife meets Boyfriend 1 (B1, part 1)

Many years ago, when I first started this blog, I figured I would write a post sooner or later about Wife's involvement with Boyfriend 1. Someday.

Well, it's been fifteen years since I started the blog, and I haven't written it yet. How about if I start writing it tonight? I may not finish it all at once, but maybe it will take me less than another fifteen years to finish.

One other thing: the events in this story mostly happened 36 years ago. That's more than half my lifetime. It is inevitable that my memory will be a little foggy around the details. And if you ever hear the story from anyone else, it might sound different. This is what has stuck with me.

So … 36 years ago last summer, Wife and I had been married for two years, and had been in graduate school for two years. We had problems adjusting to married life. Each of us had unstated expectations that conflicted with the other's unstated expectations, and we weren't good at talking about these things. We were also really bad at communicating about sex, and the pressures of graduate school didn't give us a lot of space or freedom in which to get better at it. (One of our neighbors summarized the graduate school experience all too well by joking, "It's Saturday morning—time for sex!")

"You knew what I was ...."

I've spent the day mulling and fretting over what I saw when I visited Son 1 and Wife yesterday, and what I heard from Son 2 afterwards. I'm sad that Son 1 is so unhappy now that Wife is living with him. At the same time, I'm kind of amazed by Wife.

In other news ....

In other news, it's been two days since I've heard anything from Marie. Right now I think we're kind of pissed off with each other, although I haven't had a lot of time to think about it the last day or so, for obvious reasons. I think it started last week when we were talking and it came out that I wasn't up to date on COVID vaccinations, nor had I gotten this year's flu shot. My opinion on either of these isn't exactly doctrinaire, but I'm unconvinced of the need for COVID boosters (as I explained recently) and hadn't gotten around to getting a flu shot. 

A couple days later, Marie sent me an email ordering me to get both sets of shots, or else give her a damned good reason why not. When I was silent for a couple days more, she followed up with a letter apologizing for calling me "stupid" but reiterating how desperately important these shots are. I answered saying that it's very hard to accept direct orders from a partner while retaining any self-respect, or indeed to reply with anything other than "Go fuck yourself." And she said simply, "Thank you for clarifying how this disagreement looks to you."

We haven't said anything to each other since. At this point I assume we'll talk on Monday evening as usual, and work it out there. I have some thoughts about what might be behind the whole situation, but whenever I try to read other people's minds I'm usually wrong. So maybe I'd better just wait and see. 

Progress of a kind

The last 24 hours have been … really informative. And they've meant a kind of progress in my relationship with Wife and Son 2 … and maybe even Son 1, though that's harder to tell. But explaining it is going to require backing up for a minute. 

Chapter One: Background

This weekend, Son 2 is breezing through town. A while ago I told you about his opportunity to go to graduate school. Since then he applied and was accepted for January admission. Now that it is December he gave notice at his work and his last day was Friday. This weekend he is moving to the city where his graduate studies will take place, and where his girlfriend has been living for a while. He is taking the long way around to get there, visiting first me and then Wife en route, for a couple of reasons: partly winter weather is forecasted to block the more direct route, and partly there are things in my storage unit and in hers that he wants to take to set up his new housekeeping with. He slept in my apartment last night, and he left early this morning for Wife's place. After that I think he'll wind up with a brief visit to my mother before driving to the new city.

Xanthippe

There is a wonderful passage in Xenophon's Symposium, where someone challenges Socrates to ask him why he ever married Xanthippe. If you're not familiar with the background, Xanthippe has gone down in history as the world's most famous shrew, a nagging harridan second to none. And Socrates, the prototype of all philosophers, was her husband.

You could make a joke here about philosophers being unworldly and ineffectual, but that's not what Xenophon does. Rather, he has someone challenge Socrates: You claim to be able to teach people to be better through philosophy—you claim that philosophy is practical in this way—so what's about your wife? Why is she so awful, if you are allegedly so wise?

And Socrates has an answer. Here is the passage:

“If that is your view, Socrates,” asked Antisthenes, “how does it come that you don't practise what you preach by yourself educating Xanthippe, but live with a wife who is the hardest to get along with of all the women there are—yes, or all that ever were, I suspect, or ever will be?”

“Because,” he replied, “I observe that men who wish to become expert horsemen do not get the most docile horses but rather those that are high-mettled, believing that if they can manage this kind, they will easily handle any other. My course is similar. Mankind at large is what I wish to deal and associate with; and so I have got her, well assured that if I can endure her, I shall have no difficulty in my relations with all the rest of human kind.”

These words, in the judgment of the guests, did not go wide of the mark. 

I wish I could pretend that my own motives in marrying Wife were so far-sighted and so lofty. They weren't. But in retrospect I find it reassuring that even Socrates (maybe I should say especially Socrates!) had his own domestic troubles. I surely knew she would be very difficult. I knew I was signing myself up for something that would be life-changing. I didn't know more than that. 

But ... you know ... these things work out.

    

The hardest school: a fantasy

For many years, I had a fantasy.

It all started because I used to be a really good student, back when I was in school. (Yeah, I know: people who brag about their student achievements forty years later are pathetic. Well I'm probably still pathetic, but I'm not bragging. Just explaining.)

Anyway, for years I fantasized about enrolling in a school that was really hard—so hard that even if I tried my absolute damnedest, I could only barely scrape by with a C-.

The point of the fantasy was what happened next. It was one of those montage scenes you see in movies, where the underdog is preparing for the Big Event, and we're shown in a matter of minutes a grueling training regimen that must span weeks or months. And I meant it as a challenge to myself, or perhaps a question: Could I do it? Could I enroll in a school where my natural gifts left me in the middle of the pack (or lower!), and then by grit and determination fight my way to the top? Could I survive even such a school as this fantasy academy, and still graduate summa cum laude? 

Or—the other alternative—were all my celebrated achievements no more than the accidental result of gifts I had done nothing to earn, so that if I had to depend on my own effort and hard work I would fail?

Lilith

By John Collier - Own work, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=207924

Can you handle one more? Here is another of Marie's early poems. Unlike the last two (here and here) it doesn't really advance the story any. But I like the image; and the more I think about it, the more I like it. Doubtless this just means I'm a lecherous old coot, but—what the hell? I'll take it.     

Lilith

Actually, it was I

who ate the fruit;

Eve’s sin

was in watching

and wanting to.

And it’s true

I steal children

But only girls;

And I don’t eat them

in the sense

that is supposed.

Roads not taken

Gosh, while I'm posting old poems from Marie (like this one), here's one she wrote during our first vacation together, back in the summer of 2016. (That was the vacation that I describe here.) She wrote it there, but she was too shy to show it to me at the time; so she emailed it to me after we had both returned to our respective homes.

The story behind the poem is that she had been lamenting that things turned out the way they did for us, in the sense that our first attempts at romance failed so badly. Also, neither of us did anything academic after our promising undergraduate careers, and wasn't that a waste? (Marie and I were both selected for ΦΒΚ, for example. So was Wife, for that matter. Sheesh!) I replied that nothing is pre-ordained, and that while maybe things might have gone better than they did, they also could have gone a hell of a lot worse. Here and there, over time, I discussed some of the options that we might have taken, and didn't. On the plus side, there was always the fantasy that we might have married and wound up both teaching at the same school somewhere. On the other hand, we each contemplated suicide when we were young, because we each (independently) felt trapped by our lives and despaired of anything ever getting better. So there were always lots of possibilities, and our job is to make the best of whatever we've landed ourselves in.

She mulled this, and then turned it into a poem, as follows.

In the same vein, please note also another poem that she wrote here: Hosea's Blog: It never happened (hoseasblog.blogspot.com).  

Back-story on Marie, year 1½

I posted the basics of this story back in late 2015, or thereabouts: see here, here, and here. But there is always more to tell in any story, isn't there? Recently Marie was looking through some of her old poems from back when we were in school together, and she found one she had written then but never showed me. It was about how she perceived all the failed, abortive conversations we had, where she would try to talk about how she was feeling, and looked for me to acknowledge her in some way ... and meanwhile I was strangling on my own inability to discuss anything emotional. (I've talked about some of that difficulty here, and here, and here.)

Anyway, when she sent me this I was struck by how well, how accurately, and with what economy and precision it summed up so many months of our conversations. Also, I think she meant the last line to sound despairing; but looking back from forty years later, I am struck by how prescient she was ... and in a good way!  

The Thief (a poem)

This was inspired by my discussion with Marie. But it goes in a direction all its own. 

 

The Thief 

When she was young, the girl went to a soothsayer, 

Watched as the grandmother laid out her cards. 

"This is your destiny, Seven of Daggers, 

You'll profit from treachery, subterfuge, theft." 

The girl joined the Crypteia, stealing to feed herself; 

Pillaging with the boys, binding her breasts; 

Bathing alone in the freezing-cold Eurotas; 

Never undressing and hiding her sex. 

Then she enrolled in a college for cutpurses, 

Studied from masters the Art of the Steal, 

Learned to abscond with whole civilizations 

And thieving from those who had stolen before. 

_____ 

One day she sat herself down for a reckoning, 

"Is this what I want for the rest of my life?" 

Turning away from her thieving and hiding, 

She made a new life herself, planting and growing things. 

But still in the back of her mind she heard echoing, 

Words that the soothsayer spoke long ago: 

"This is your destiny, Seven of Daggers, 

You'll profit from treachery, subterfuge, theft." 

And truly, the growing things brought her no profits, 

But left her to scratch out a living in sweat. 

She had the respect of her friends and herself too.

But mere self-respect doesn't pay any bills.

Marie and the Seven of Swords

Sometime last week Marie did a daily Tarot reading and she told me the seven of Swords showed up. We discussed her reading briefly and I expressed a little puzzlement at the card. It was in her Self position. Did she feel sneaky or deceptive?

She replied by sending me the following email:

Seven of swords....

It's actually one of the cards with special resonance for me; I got it a LOT when I was first reading/having readings done, back in college.  I even wrote a poem about the card; I never talked about that with you.  

I spent some time seeing if I could find the poem, but failed.  As I recall, I never completed it; it petered off.  I have recreated the first bit, but pretty sure there was a little more than I remember and not sure if this is accurate.  Anyhow, here it is:

Stealing Knives (originally ca. 1981/82)

Stealing knives

and will they slash my wrists?

Stealing knives

and will they cut my hands?

No opinions

I'm flying home from a week visiting Marie, and I heard an announcement at one airport: "This airport uses facial recognition software. Please remove your mask and look straight into the camera. If you prefer not to use this software, please speak to a gate agent ahead of time."

Am I crazy that this worries me? It's not like the use of facial recognition software has been entirely benign everywhere else that it has been introduced. (*cough* China! *cough*) There's an argument that I have nothing to worry about, so long as I do nothing wrong; but to assume that no innocuous actions will ever be reclassified as "wrong" is to assume a level of virtue and probity in every single one of our elected and appointed officials which seems ... I don't know ... maybe "optimistic" is the gentlest word to express what I mean.

Also I wonder if this is the wave of the future? Will it become universal? I suppose I could always stop traveling by air if I don't want to deal with it. That sure sounds practical.

Of course my defense in cases like this is never to do anything overtly non-compliant, and to rely on being boring. Not only do I try to avoid doing anything non-compliant, but I try to avoid doing anything that calls attention to myself at all. And I never express opinions. 

Spaces in your togetherness

When Wife and I were married, the clergyman who did the honors (this was Tartuffe, in case you wondered) inserted a bit of poetry into the service. He selected a passage from Kahlil Gibran, a writer I had scarcely heard of though I did know that his stuff was madly popular in the 1970's. I have forgotten most of the passage, but the one line I remember is, "you shall be together ... but let there be spaces in your togetherness."

Wife and I never learned how to do this. But, quite without remembering anything about Gibran, we kind of managed it with Son 1 and Son 2. Or at any rate I think I did.

The key was sending them off to boarding school: Son 1 to Hogwarts, and then (a couple years) later Son 2 to Durmstrang. Before that, when Son 1 was in eighth grade, he and I were already starting the difficult act of colliding with each other that happens not infrequently between fathers and teenage sons. I would ask him to do something, and he would blow me off in the casual way that he had long used with Wife but never before with me. We'd disagree about some obligation of his, and he'd make it clear that he really didn't give a shit what I thought. I know, I know, this is normal. That didn't make it easy.

Where not to retire

Just now I googled "best places to retire" and I got 87,900,000 results. Clearly this is a phrase that people have written about a lot.

Look at the listings, and you find travel suggestions that circle the globe. "Best cities to retire," "best states to retire," "best countries to retire." Then these choices are broken down by what exactly you are looking for: golf, beaches, health care, low cost of living, or avoiding taxes.

Mother has talked about retiring, and has asked me where I think she should move. She has clients who have moved to this place or that, ... so what would I think if she moved to this place? Or else maybe that place? She could sell the house easily enough—never mind that there are boxes in the garage that haven't been opened since she and my dad bought the place 50 years ago—and be on her way, free as a bird. 

I get it. I never thought I would live all my adult life in one place, but I more or less have. So when I lost my job last year, you heard me fantasize about traveling far away—maybe finding a job in Timbuktu, or joining the Peace Corps.

But we're all idiots. Every single one of us who fantasizes about retiring far, far away.

"Are you going to live alone the rest of your life?"

When I talked with Debbie a couple of days ago, one thing she asked me was what plans I had made for how to live when I get really old? I told her I've made no plans. Intellectually, looking at Father's decline over a number of years and at Mother's state today, I recognize that the options are basically two: either I drop dead unexpectedly, or I will in time get feeble and need help. But I've given no thought and no planning to the topic. (After all, I'm only 60. And it's not like my friends or classmates have started dying yet!)

Of course her question was because Debbie herself has started thinking about moving into a retirement home or care facility, if not now then later. But then she asked "Are you going to live alone the rest of your life?" And she speculated that the answer might be Yes.

Mother is aging

When I started this blog, I talked about Wife. But we are separated now. Then I started talking about Father, but he's dead. And I've talked about my kids and my girlfriends. But maybe I should say a couple words about Mother.

[By the way, I realize that the parallelism in that first paragraph looks ominous, almost as if my writing about someone is a way to get him or her out of my life. But if you look closer that's not true: Marie and Debbie are very much part of my life still, and I write about them a lot. And I wish my mother a long and happy life yet.]

When I started this blog, Mother was just about the age Debbie is today, maybe a few months younger. Today she is in her eighties. She has been living on her own since Father died, which was seven years ago.

Debbie is discontent

A couple days ago I had a phone call with Debbie. She is discontent with her situation at home, and we talked about that. But over dinner that evening I made notes to try to remember what we had discussed, so I could write it up here, and I realized the conversation connects to a number of other topics I could talk about independently. So this single post here may end up spawning up to four others. Let's see how much stamina I have.

As background, remember that Debbie is currently living in a house that she bought for her daughter Mattie, along with Mattie's husband and their two sons (Debbie's grandsons). The idea is that now, while the boys are little, she can help with them as a live-in grandmother. (And wow, let me second the idea that parenthood is too much work for two people, so additional help with young children is always a blessing!) And in the future, so runs the plan, when Debbie is getting old and frail, Mattie and husband can offer her their help in return. It's clear and logical.

Only now she is having second thoughts.

"The ball's in my court"

I just got off of a very awkward Skype call with Marie, one which ended with her saying, "So the ball's in my court," and I agreed. She's trying to figure out what she wants to do with our relationship. I am content to let her.

It so happens that this conversation relates to the Tarot reading that I did for her just two weeks ago today. Not that the Tarot reading, all by itself, caused her to question our relationship. But it helped her clarify some things in her mind, I guess. Maybe I'd better start over, and try a little harder to make this make sense.

Not listening and no accident

OK, this story doesn't look good for me. But hell, when have I ever told you stories that do?

This morning I did a Tarot reading for the day. What it said the day would bring me was the Moon reversed. That can actually mean a lot of different things, and some of them are pretty good. (For example, "Change will not be disruptive," or "Deception will be unmasked.") But my immediate, off-the-cuff reading was, "Things are trying to crawl out of my subconscious, but I'm not listening to them." And of course the word subconscious can also be used to describe any planes of activity or existence besides the material plane that we perceive with our five senses and interpret with our rational intellect—in other words, anything that our conscious minds aren't really aware of.

Was this true today? When I saw it, I assumed that it was a statement about my career and that it's pretty much always true. I tend to assume that I don't have a strong intuition, and therefore that my subconscious has to shout if it wants any chance of getting my attention. I thought, "Maybe I can meditate later in the day. Maybe meditation will quiet my mind enough that I can hear the promptings of my subconscious."

In the end, I didn't find time to meditate. Shocker, that.

But evening came, and I didn't go to bed early because I was working on something. Now, the last couple of nights—for what must be almost the first time in a month—I've had no alcohol to drink. And somehow, at a level that isn't strictly ratiocinating, I've clearly known that this has been the "right" thing for me to do right about now. I have sensed that somehow I've been drinking too much, and it's time to pull back. The only thing is, ... booze (or at any rate spirits) give me a real lift in my energy levels when it gets late. If I want to stop drinking, one thing I have to do is to go to bed early. (Or at least more-or-less early.) But I didn't go to bed early tonight because I was working on something.

My latest tagline

I think I've got a new tagline to post on the header of this blog.

It's the punchline to one of Grendel Briarton's shaggy-dog stories starring his time-traveling hero Ferdinand Feghoot. Feghoot has traveled back to the Middle Ages, where, on visiting the Basilica di Santa Sabina all'Aventino, he finds that Thomas Aquinas (who was resident there) has given up theology for the pleasures of the bath. Feghoot confronts him and urges him to get back to work, but Thomas says, "Oh, I could wallow in these baths forever."

"That may be," replies Feghoot, "but one's wallow won't make a Summa!"

That's where I am. I think I've decided that the point of this post-employment period is for me to write, and so I am discovering every possible distraction to prevent myself from writing! So maybe Feghoot is talking to me, too.

It's even six words long, provided you accept the contraction in won't. So I can call it a six-word memoir.

Back to work, dammit.

      

Hosea ... the movie??

I was scrolling through the Internet looking for something else, as usual, and I found out that two years ago someone made a movie about, ... well, ... Hosea. Me, you could say, but not me. A different take on the story.

I haven't seen the movie itself yet: I've only known about it for maybe an hour. Apparently it's available on Netflix, if I want to sign up for an account. The movie is called "Hosea" but it is set in the modern day and none of the characters is actually literally named Hosea. But yes, it's about a man who is in love with, and wants to marry, a troubled young woman in the sex trade. That's not exactly my story with Wife, as you know. But finding out this much made me want to know more.

Magic is afoot, part 2

I wondered how long it would be before I told Marie that I've been working with Tarot cards? Turns out that was tonight.

We were talking about news, this and that. I mentioned Son 2's opportunity to go to graduate school in the same city where his girlfriend recently moved, and Marie thought that sounded pretty great. So then I went on to explain (as I told you in the previous installment) that I had texted Wife to ask whether she had done any magic on Son 2's behalf, and that she had said Yes. I went on to explain that the coincidence seemed too outrageous to have "just happened," and that when I had seen magic appear to work before it always looked just like this.

I'm not quite sure what reaction I expected from Marie, but not the one I got. She got very quiet, and very serious. 

Magic is afoot, part 1

A couple weeks ago, I laid out a Tarot reading in the morning to ask, "What do I need to understand about today?" I got a couple of cards, of which the important one was the Page of Pentacles. So I looked up that card in my handy cheat-sheet, and learned that it is a card for students. Huh? Am I supposed to start acting more student-like? What's this about, or is it just random gibberish?

Not long thereafter, I got a call from Son 2. He caught me up on his news. In the first place, his girlfriend had gotten a job a few weeks ago in a city that meant he now had a considerable drive each weekend to go see her. Actually I guess maybe I already knew that part, because he has been starting to look for jobs in the same city. He's doing it responsibly, to make sure he doesn't endanger his nascent career; still, he understandably wants to be living near her.

Then he added the next bit. The person who was his boss during his internship last year just called. She (the ex-boss) is now teaching at a university in the town where Son 2's girlfriend is working. She has a fully-funded research project that has to get done, and the graduate student who was working on it just bailed on her. She always liked Son 2 and thought he would be the best possible person to do this research. So ... has he ever thought of going to graduate school? Would he like to start now? Can he send her an application pronto, so she can grease the skids and get him accepted?

What do I need to understand about today? Student-hood. OK, got that.

Παλλὰς ὁρμάστειρα

In the Orphic Hymn to Athena, the grey-eyed Lady is called "ὁρμάστειρα" [pronounced "hormá-steira"]. One translator renders this word as "impetuous"; another, as "advocate." How could it possibly mean both?

Technically this is Liberty and not Athena, but the
difference is subtle. Either way, anyone who tries
to make a pass at her is going to die quickly. 
Eugène Delacroix, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Of course really it means neither. It comes from the verb ὁρμάω, which means "to set in motion, urge, push on; to stir up; to rush headlong at," and so forth. So to call Her ὁρμάστειρα is to say She's the one to set people or events in motion, to stir people up and urge them forwards. She's the one to rally the troops, to sound the alarm, to whisper through the barracks or the squad in the field, warming hearts, quickening pulses, putting eyes and ears on alert for the signal to leap into action. This is far more than the work of any "advocate." But it's not "impetuous" either. You are impetuous when your stirred-up energy overrules your reason, and I assume that Athena never once makes a rash or heedless decision. But it can also be the part of rational prudence to understand that deliberation by itself doesn't win battles. Sometimes the most prudent thing you can do is to stir up the kind of passion that allows you to smite the enemy. "Dr. Banner, now might be a really good time for you to get angry." I think that's what the hymn is really saying about Her.

And if She sets armies in motion, maybe it's not crazy if I hope for the same thing for me.

Debbie's beef with pacifism, and What about me?

Ever since COVID-19, the Unitarian Sangha that I meet with has been meeting over Zoom. This has meant, in turn, that Debbie (who founded the Sangha years ago) has been able to join us regularly, even though she now lives in a different state far away. We met last night, and during the Dharma study we were talking about some of the Buddhist precepts. 

One of these is the precept not to kill, and—to my real surprise—Debbie said she had a problem with it. 

Old woman

I heard from Marie a couple days ago. She had a painful rash on her face, and finally one of her friends prevailed upon her to go to the doctor and have it checked.

She has shingles.

Since it was on her face, they were concerned that it not get too near her eyes, because if the shingles virus infects the eyes it can lead to blindness. (Or I think that's what she said. I'm not a doctor and might have gotten it wrong.) So they made sure to check out her eyes.

She has cataracts.

Not badly enough to plan for surgery yet, but badly enough that the doctor said she might have trouble driving at night because she couldn't see well enough. She confirmed for me that she hates driving at night these days.

Also she has bad knees. She's considering knee replacement surgery. 

The curious case of Son 2's insurance

A few days ago I got a call from Son 2. His employer is rolling out paid life insurance as a benefit for everyone. He realizes that he doesn't really need life insurance: he's 24 and has no dependents, so there's no urgency. But his company is paying for it, so he figured he'd take advantage while he could.

This means naming a beneficiary. Whom to choose? He's not married, and has no children. And when he called me, he said he'd decided to list me because Why not? and so could I please give him my Social Security number?

Umm, ... sure, I guess so. He added a couple more remarks to fill the empty space in the conversation, but they just made no sense. 

"I figured you'd be sure to have all those numbers handy." Yes, of course. In fact not only do I know my own SSN, but I know Wife's by heart as well. And I've written down yours and your brother's. I could find them if you want.

"I also thought of listing my brother because he's the only other member of the family who's working right now." Wait—did he really mean because, or did he mean although? "But I can't call him at work because they don't allow it." And I guess you couldn't wait till this evening. 

I tried to explain that I have all of these numbers, so really he could pick any of the four of us. I even made a joke of how many times I'd had to fill out Wife's SSN on this or that medical form, so of course I've got it memorized! He laughed and never mentioned Wife in his reply. He wanted my SSN.

I gave it to him, but I also wonder why he asked me for it? 

Talking about anger, part 2

There's a funny aftermath to my story immediately preceding, about the discussion of anger in Sangha last night. Already then I was thinking that I wanted to write about it here. So I'd been mulling that post since last night.

This morning I drew Tarot cards for a basic divination on the question, "What do I need to understand about today's events?" The card that I drew to characterize today's events was Strength Reversed. Really? What does that mean? Well, on my own all I could think of was "Weakness," which didn't tell me a lot. So I checked a little manual that I use often, and one of the meanings that it lists for Strength Reversed is "Fear of overwhelming passions."

"Aha!" I told myself. "This card is just telling me that some time today I'm going to write that blog post. Good to know."

Then at noon I joined an online class on Platonist thought, discussing Simplicius's commentary on the Enchiridion of Epictetus. (Yes, I know, I need to get out more.) Most of the discussion focused on Simplicius's claim that when you choose a friend, the most important thing is to choose a friend who is ruled by reason rather than by irrational emotions. Simplicius talks about this quite a bit, gives many reasons, and the class spent a lot of time deciding whether we agreed. 

Talking about anger

Last night in Sangha, one of our members was pretty upset about something she had done during the week. None of us was there at the time, so none of us knew what it was. She said there were other members of Sangha that she had hurt directly, but they—whoever they were—apparently chose not to show up last night. But she explained about other times that her anger and frustration had gotten away from her recently, and said that she was genuinely frightened of the possibility of becoming an angry, bitter, helpless old lady.

So we all talked about anger for a while. I volunteered that yes, having anger sneak up on you can be very frightening, and I talked about how I struggled with anger when I was younger. When I was a teenager and before—but even into my twenties—I would get angry with no warning, even to me. I wouldn't see it coming and then POW! Then the anger would dissipate just as fast, and I'd be left with the shame of the mess I'd made. That happened a lot, particularly (... oh for example ...) in the early years of my marriage to Wife, and it didn't get us off to a good start. (See here for some discussion of the lasting damage.)

Even into my thirties, I remember struggling with anger. I remember one evening in particular when I was musing on the Seven Deadly Sins (I must have been drinking) and I realized that the one I had the most trouble with was Anger. Many of the others (I told myself) I could take or leave; but even thinking about Anger sparked a resonant chord down deep in my viscera somewhere. 

I assume that must have been in my thirties. That's also the decade when the boys were born. Son 1 was born when I was 35, and Son 2 when I was almost 37. And when the boys were little, they coined a couple of phrases that wrenched my heart, but that they used as superlative expressions of (respectively) sadness or anger: "as sad as Mommy," and "as mad as Daddy." It was awful to hear. (I realize I have already told that story here and here. Sorry for the repetition.) 

"You're stuck in a room ...."

I found the following post on Twitter:

Swallowing bitterness, or, Did I rediscover tonglen meditation?

A while ago I was reading through the comments to a post by John Michael Greer, and one of them struck me. You can find the full comment here, from a reader who goes by the sobriquet Northwind Grandma, but the gist of it is as follows:

... Several readers have asked “how can I help during the decline?” Start with one’s intention. If one wants to “help the world,” breathe in the bad and breathe out the good. Close the eyes, and do this twenty minutes a day for the rest of your life.... It is not a meditative practice for the weak. It may sound easy. It is a practice that makes or breaks a world, not to mention what it can do to a person.

It turns out this is a well-known practice in Tibetan Buddhism called tonglen meditation. You can also learn more about it here. Anyway, several people had further comments in the thread—starting with Mr. Greer himself:

Northwind, if that works for you, by all means, but I emphatically don’t recommend this for anyone at all. I know people whose lives went straight down the crapper when they did this, without doing any measurable good for anybody else.

Then there was some additional discussion, for example in this comment here and this one here.

What struck me so hard about this discussion is that I used to do the exact same thing with Wife, or almost. I didn't think of it as a meditation practice, and so I didn't go through all the formal steps that, for example, Pema Chödrön outlines in her article above. In my mind I called it "swallowing bitterness," and I wondered if it might be a practice someone could apply pragmatically in, say, political re-education camps, or perhaps Hell. 

Blast from the past: Wife on the prayer line

[I'm not sure why this story came to me this evening. Well maybe I can trace how the notion bubbled to the surface of my mind, if I try really hard; but I suppose it doesn't matter. So far as I can tell, it's not a story I've told before now. It's ancient history, but maybe helps flesh out the picture I have tried to draw of those days.]

__________

Hosea's log: Star date ... early-to-mid January 2005.
Location: back in the house we sold in 2013.
Wife's romantic status: Deeply enmeshed in her short but torrid affair with Boyfriend 3.

I think I've mentioned (in an off-hand way that I don't expect anyone to remember) that for a while Wife was an active volunteer on a prayer line. This was in the years not long after she went onto Disability and stopped working. At the time she was exploring the local Evangelical churches and looking for ministries that she felt called to. This was one of them. She would volunteer to man the phone during certain hours, and they gave her a little gizmo to attach to our landline. [That's how long ago it was.] When her time came, she switched the gizmo on, and calls to the prayer line would be routed to our phone. (Or to anyone else who was on-duty at the same time, of course.) The phone would ring; she would ask the strangers at the other end what they needed prayer with; and then she would pray with them. Rinse and repeat, until her time was done.

Anyway, one day Boyfriend 3 came over to visit—sorry, I mean "came over to fuck"—while the boys were at school and I was at work. 

A superfluous man

Yesterday I went to a performance of Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin. Before the show, I looked up the story in Wikipedia, so I'd have some idea what was going on. The article mentioned that the character of Onegin was a prototype of the "superfluous man," and then there was a link to an article about them.

So this evening, as Marie and I were conversing, we began to talk about superfluous men. I explained that they were a feature of Russian society during the nineteenth century: that they were over-educated, unemployed, and had enough independent wealth that they could afford to stay unemployed more or less indefinitely. So they traveled, they visited each other, they went to parties, and they accomplished nothing. Some of them contributed to the social strains that finally tore apart the Russian Empire by becoming radicals, nihilists or anarchists.

And as we talked, I realized that we were talking about me.

Aren't we? 

• Over-educated? Check.
• Unemployed? Check.
• Money to support myself anyway? Check.
• Accomplishing nothing? My God, have you been reading this blog?
• I've even started the travel, visiting my college reunion, Debbie, and Marie all within the last six weeks.

So what does this tell me? Am I about to become a dangerous anarchist?

Probably it doesn't mean that, or the same argument would indict all retirees everywhere. But the character Eugene Onegin himself, as an individual, is self-centered and oblivious to others—their feelings and the effect he has on their lives. He accomplishes nothing except waste and destruction, not because he wants those things but because he is too thoughtless and too wrapped up in his own story to notice what he is doing until it's too late. Then after he has ruined his own situation, he suffers for it and blames fate or destiny instead of his own damn-fool negligence.

And I suppose I'm at risk of doing the same thing if I don't watch it. So perhaps I'd better watch it.

          

I'm a Doppelgänger

This afternoon I went to the store to pick up a few groceries. I had gotten as far as the produce aisle, where I was trying to understand why mushrooms cost twice what they did a month ago, when a woman I've never seen before walked up to me.

At first she wasn't very articulate, and I tried to ask (mostly through mumbles and gestures) if I were the person she wanted to talk to. This question provoked a sharp "Yes!" but then it was another minute or so before she could collect her words to explain:

"My father died thirty years ago, but he looked exactly like you. His eyes were the same, his hair was the same, ... everything. When I saw you in the store just now, I had to do a triple take to make sure. And, ... umm, ... thank you."

My reply was a little lame. I tried to joke that I'm more than thirty years old, so I'm not her father in disguise. I added that we always hear the claim that everyone has an exact double somewhere in the world, but most of us never meet our double or anyone who knows him. So ... gosh, ... it was great to meet her. She mumbled one more embarrassed "Thank you" and disappeared back into her shopping.

So there you have it. Apparently my exact double was walking around up to thirty years ago. I should have asked her if he lived in the same town, too. That would have been even more remarkable.

       

Poetry from the summer cottage

While we were vacationing at her family's summer cottage, Marie and I started writing a poem about it. Nothing original, mind you! The whole structure was a parody of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan. But it was a fun exercise. I'd render a stanza, then she'd do the next one, and so on. And we gave each other feedback, of course. I wound it up by doing the last 18 lines in a block, but I didn't show them to her at the time. I have just now put the whole thing in an email to her, and of course I want to post it here too. (If she makes any corrections, naturally I will update this post.)

I have changed a couple of proper names, in the hopes of preserving a shred of anonymity. With those changes made, here it is. 

The ironies of purity culture

I'm back from the vacation that I talked about recently, where I visited Marie's family's summer cottage. I've been trying to settle into the things I have to do now that I'm home, and in the process I logged into Twitter. Right away I stumbled across a post about purity culture. I've written about that before, but part of what struck me this time was how closely this description matches what Marie says about her life and her relationship to her own body even long after she had rejected all the religious beliefs that supported it!

Toxic, deadly beliefs. Toxic, dangerous ideas. Don't inflict these on others. And if you believe them yourself, try to find a way to something kinder and more nutritious. 

Interlude: Thor 4 movie review

Our last night at the summer cottage, I went out to the movies with Marie's niece. I suppose I can call her Natasha, maybe because she looks nothing at all like the famous Natasha Fatale, long-time colleague of Boris Badenov. Anyway, no I'm not hitting on Marie's niece. But she wanted to go see "Thor: Love and Thunder", which was just coming out, and she asked "Is anybody here interested in the MCU?" I was the only one who even knew what the initials meant, and I kind of keep up on developments. (Son1 and Son2 were big fans back when they were in middle school and high school, so I've seen many of the movies.) So the next evening I went out with Natasha to see "Thor."

Obviously everything I write here will contain SPOILERS. Consider yourself warned. Also, just so it's clear, I'm back-dating this post to the night it happened, though I'm actually writing it a couple weeks later.