Failed again

Yesterday—good Lord, was it only yesterday?—I had a totally pointless fight with Son 1. I don't even know if "fight" is the right word. All I know is that—ironically for someone who talks and writes as much as I do—sometimes I really suck at explaining what I mean. (As a point of comparison, consider, "I never could teach my sons to do their math homework.")

If you are reading this and you have any suggestions for how I can fix it, please leave me a note in the comments. 

Background

It all started ... well no, it started long before that. Years ago, when the boys were first graduating from college and starting out on their own, they authorized me to have access to their bank accounts. From time to time they needed little boosts of cash while they were getting their footing in the real world, and it was easier for me simply to transfer funds than to write a check, mail it, wait for it to arrive, and wait for them to deposit it.

But it turns out that an arrangement like this is a lot easier to set up than it is to discontinue. The only way to cancel it is for the owner of the account (this means, respectively, either Son 1 or Son 2) to walk into the bank and ask for a new account number. (Actually two new numbers, one for checking and one for savings.) Then as the bank sets up the new accounts and transfers over all the history from old to new, the account owner has to say, "Oh yeah, one more thing: don't put my Dad on the new accounts." This is cumbersome. Also it's a nuisance in case (for example) the account owner has set up Direct Deposit for his paycheck, because now he has to re-set it with the new account number. Then he has to wait for the bank to issue new ATM cards, and all that. It's a pain. And since at this point Son 1 and Son 2 each live somewhere else, we haven't gotten around to dealing with it.

It's weird. If Father had ever had access to one of my bank accounts (which he never did, once I was in college), I would have been eager to shut off that access as soon as I possibly could. I suppose in some sense it is a vote of confidence that the boys have been so blasé about the issue.

Exercises in compassion, part 2

As I mentioned in the earlier post, the dharma teacher at this meditation retreat integrated his spiritual teachings with a political point of view. Occasionally this made his teachings sound distinctly un-Buddhist, like the time that he suggested that We often believe that our moral authority is proportional to the extent to which we cling to our views, and to our moral anger at the malefactors in public life. He spent several minutes describing this perspective, and seemingly warming to it. The attendees were lapping it up. Finally he said No, no, it's all false and this approach doesn't work. Clinging-to-views isn't a productive way forward after all. (But I wonder how many people truly heard him say that.)

But as he discussed these things, he introduced the concept of "pathological do-gooders," or "pathological altruism." This is when someone just can't stop doing things for others, or when someone does things for others with a reckless disregard for his own well-being, or indeed for any cost to himself at all. I think the teacher's motivation must have been that many of his listeners sub­consciously believe that to be their moral ideal. That's what they believe they ought to be doing! Of course that's crazy, but consider the audience. And much of the teacher's advice here was very sound and sober. He reminded us that "Caring is costly," and that if we cling too tightly to our ideal of eliminating all suffering everywhere, we will burn out. One of the most basic Buddhist teachings, after all, is that clinging causes dukkha, or suffering. So to the extent that he was able to wean people away from their fantasies of redeeming the world, his teaching was entirely orthodox and wholesome.

What caught my attention was one of his incidental comments. He may have been quoting another author—my notes don't say, and I don't remember for sure. But he pointed out that there is one circumstance—and only one!—where "pathological do-gooders" seem normal, and where it seems the most natural thing in the world to throw away all other considerations in order to help others.

That one, unique circumstance is war. (Then as an afterthought he included floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters as more or less equivalent.)

My first reaction was a sardonic smile: Gosh, could someone spin this into making a Buddhist argument for more wars? But then I began mulling.

In his classic memoir Storm of Steel, Ernst Jünger describes that when World War One broke out, Germans greeted it with enthusiastic idealism.

Movies made after World War Two—movies like The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956)—treated as a commonplace the trouble that soldiers had returning to civilian life, because it lacks all the unity, cameraderie, ésprit, meaning, and purpose of life under fire.

Even an antiwar vehicle like the television series M*A*S*H could not help but celebrate the common purpose of the team at the (fictional) "4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital" during the Korean War. The last episode, in which a ceasefire goes into effect and the characters all go home, is both celebratory and deeply poignant. 

And surely we have all heard stories of people who accomplished deeds of great bravery and daring in wartime, who rescued their team from certain death with no thought of their own safety, who nonetheless could never settle down in peacetime and make something of themselves. The image feels like it should be a commonplace. Isn't it?

War puts all conventional values in question. 

• Rank and status? Sure, they matter. But the man commanding an assault might be killed in the next moment; and any grunt with gumption and initiative can be given a battlefield promotion to take his place.
• Wealth and acquisition? Anything you have acquired can be lost just as easily. But unexpected loot can also be found. It all comes down to luck, although some people may argue that the valorous tend to be luckier than the cowardly.
• Comfort? As if!

So maybe it is possible to understand Jünger's talk of "idealism." Maybe I wasn't crazy a couple of years ago to argue that the experience of war really is the experience of "pure dynamic Quality" seen through a Social lens. Maybe when all life is being lived on the extreme edge, it makes sense that extreme, pathological altruism becomes the order of the day.

This is not an argument for more wars. But it does leave me with some sense of why certain authors have found peacetime petty and squalid and corrupt, compared with the moral purity they feel they have touched in war.

Maybe we, as humans, truly are made for war and catastrophe, not for peace and prosperity.

It's a conundrum. 

          

Exercises in compassion, part 1

A week ago, I attended a weekend-long non-residential retreat at the local State University. The theme was "Love in Turbulent Times"; based on my sense of the practitioners and the attendees, it could probably have been subtitled "How to Preserve Equanimity When the Bad Guys Won the Last Election." The dharma teacher tried valiantly to keep overt political statements out of his talks, but didn't really succeed. I wasn't surprised: I know this town and at least some of the local Buddhist community, so I expected that going in. And mostly it wasn't political, or not very.

He talked about compassion, among other topics, and this is one of the themes I found myself pondering. In particular, I remember when I first read Jack Kornfield's A Path With Heart, Kornfield wrote that one of the ways to test whether your spiritual path is a healthy one is to check whether you have become more open and compassionate with time, or more isolated and hard-hearted? (I discuss this passage in this post from eleven years ago.) So I asked myself: Am I more compassionate than I used to be? And I answered, Partly yes. I think I am more compassionate towards people I know, like Wife or Father. Certainly I get angry at them a lot less. What's less clear is whether I am more compassionate towards strangers, and the dharma teacher seemed to put some emphasis on compassion towards strangers in his talks. (You could probably use this recent post to argue that my compassion for strangers is not high.) On the other hand, I wonder how often "compassion for strangers" counts as real compassion, and how often it is merely performative, in order to make the do-gooder look good? So I've got something to meditate on.

Then the morning of the second day, I was confronted with a concrete exercise in compassion! I got to the university early, and pulled into the parking lot. As I pulled in, I saw one party just walking away. They were elderly, obviously not University people, and obviously attendees of the meditation retreat. So far, so good. But when I got to the parking kiosk, I realized they had walked off without paying. More exactly, they had activated the parking kiosk, and had recorded their license plate number. But they had not actually fed the machine any money! I assume this negligence has to have been caused by confusion or ignorance; if they had intended to park-and-dash, they wouldn't have initiated the process. What should I do?

I thought about it while paying for my own parking, and for too many minutes thereafter. I saw three options:

1. Forget about the problem. In that case, campus parking enforcement would probably give them a ticket.
2. Write down their license number, and then ask around at the retreat "Is this your car? You need to go back and pay for your parking!"
3. Just pay their damned parking myself. (It didn't cost much.)

As I say, I spent way too much time thinking about this. In the end, I just paid for their parking. It seemed the easiest thing to do. (Strictly speaking, I guess it would have been easier to do nothing. But it would have bugged me if they had actually gotten a ticket.)

I do not know whether my decision was influenced by my rumination the previous day on the role of compassion in my life.  

Then the dharma teacher's remarks the second day sent my thoughts down a whole new path! See Part Two for details. 

    

Golden Bough in concert

OK, here's something different. The Celtic folk band Golden Bough, in concert.

I didn't attend in-person, but I did get a link to watch it live-streamed.

There were a few hiccups and glitches, but they are still recognizable.

They are still a delight to listen to.

One warning: you have to advance the video past the 16:00 mark (that's 16 minutes!) before you get anything. But after that it should be fine. Leave me a note if it's not.

I can't get Blogger to put up a window, but here is the link. 

Feeding a coyote

Sometimes fate arranges the perfect metaphor. If only I felt I could take advantage of it!

When I talked with Marie a week ago, she was solemn and worried and upset and frightened, all over the deportations that the Administration has recently started enforcing. Mind you, Marie is a natural-born citizen. Her parents were natural-born citizens. She looks White, though apparently if you go far enough back one ancestor was Chippewa. In other words, there is about as much chance that she'll be deported as there is for Melania Trump. But that doesn't stop her from worrying. I've mentioned before that Marie suffers from TDS somethin' terrible, so naturally she believes the very worst it is possible to believe.

What does Marie know about immigration? She is friends with two different families who both think they have to leave the United States proactively before they are deported. In one of these families, the husband in English and the wife is Canadian; their son is a natural-born American. In the other family, the husband is American and the wife is Mexican, though you wouldn't guess it unless she told you. In both families, all the paperwork is in order and has been for many years. Again, these people are not the targets of any deportation effort. But try telling them that.

So I spent our weekly call a week ago trying to talk Marie down from what seemed to be—figuratively or emotionally speaking—a very high cliff.

When we talked yesterday, she was in a much better mood. It seemed that she had forgotten her earlier worries. But buried in her chit-chat about what had gone on the previous week was the news that she had seen a hungry coyote.

Marie lives in the suburbs. This is not normally coyote country. There are wild areas within driving distance, to be sure. But for a coyote to wander all the way into Marie's neighborhood, it must be either desperately hungry or else really bad at directions.  

And Marie has been leaving out food! What's more, she has seen the food disappear. So while she can't be intellectually certain that it's the coyote who has eaten it all, nonetheless she is morally certain that she has saved the coyote from starvation!

I asked her how long she plans to keep leaving out food? She didn't give a date, but in general she wants to keep him alive until he learns to hunt for himself.

Really? How's that going to work?

Boxes of books

As usual—at least if you don't count when I spend the holiday with Marie and her family—I spent the Fourth of July with Mother, Brother, and SIL. (See also, e.g., here and here.)

The Fourth was on a Friday. I drove down in the late morning, and encountered pleasantly little traffic. 

Brother and SIL did all the cooking, and we started to eat in the very late afternoon, as the heat started to lift.

Brother and SIL have also been working their way through boxes of papers in Mother's garage, mostly papers left behind by Father when he died. They have been looking for things that might be worth saving, and trashing the rest. There has been a lot to trash. I don't know how carefully they are filtering them, but I do know that he left behind a lot of junk. That said, I did scan through a box of papers that they had marked "Trash" and found a draft copy of Mother's doctoral dissertation, along with a letter to her from her old faculty advisor. I hope this was an exception.

Meanwhile, Brother has asked me to go through the boxes of books in the garage. There are a lot of these. But I wonder if we are all agreed on what to toss?

When I began to tackle this task on the Fifth, I found—in boxes that had been sitting in the garage—books that I had given as gifts: at the very least there was one that I gave Mother after Father died, and one that I gave Father while he was still alive. Why were they in boxes in the garage, when they used to be on shelves in the house? Clearly someone had decided that they didn't deserve shelf-space. I don't credit Mother with that much energy or initiative these days, and I know it wasn't me. That leaves Brother and SIL. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I judged that both books belonged in the "Keep" pile. So now I wonder if I'll have a fight with Brother and SIL when they find out. (At the moment, I think they don't realize it yet.)

My first pass through the boxes generated three categories of books. 

Death by laughter

Chrysippus of Soli died from laughing.

Can you die from laughing? Today I learned that Chrysippus of Soli, the Stoic philosopher, was said to have died laughing at one of his own jokes.

I remember Father mentioned one time that he thought he was going to die of laughter. I was somewhere else for the event itself, possibly away at college. But it was one evening and he was sitting up late. I don't remember if Mother was sitting up with him, or if she had started getting ready for bed. Also, I don't remember what provoked his laughter—whether it was something he read (perhaps The Funniest Joke in the World), or just a funny idea that occurred to him. Probably it was something he read.

Anyway, he described that he started laughing and laughing, and then found that he couldn't stop. This "couldn't stop" experience wasn't frightening though—just very pleasant. Finally he laughed so much that he felt himself detach from his body. He said it felt like he could just float away and go somewhere else, and he thought about it for a while. Finally he decided, no, he would rather stay where he was. So he nestled back down into his body, stopped laughing, and let his life return to normal.

When he told me this story, Mother commented that she could hear him laughing (or, as I say, maybe she was still in the same room), and was worried if he would be OK because it went on so long. She did not say she was afraid he would die. And for his part, he didn't appear to regard the prospect of death with fear. The way he described it, it just sounded interesting. But no, he had responsibilities still in life, and people to attend to. So he decided not to move on just yet.

If I've remembered the approximate year correctly, that would have been before his grandsons were born ... possibly even before I married Wife. So he would have missed a lot.

When he finally did die, it wasn't from laughing. I hope it was as free of fear and as interesting to the inquiring mind as the time he almost laughed himself to death.

I guess there's no way to know.    

      

Blast from the past: Intentions

Hosea's log: Star date 1992-10-11 ... or it might have been 1992-11-10. It was well into the autumn of 1992, and right around the full moon—maybe plus or minus a day. No more than a day.

People who are comfortable with what might be called the woo-woo end of New Age spirituality sometimes talk about "releasing intentions into the Universe." It's not always clear how this differs either from prayer or from magic, but the language is vague enough to offer plausible deniability if one is challenged by a hard-core materialist. "Oh no, I wasn't doing anything supernatural. I was just focusing my attention on a certain goal for the sake of psychological clarity."

The thing is, sometimes it works. Debbie once told me that a few months before she and I met up again after twenty years, she found herself getting tired of living alone after her divorce, and released an intention into the Universe that she meet someone romantically. Then she met me.

Normally I'm not really organized enough to do the same thing, but I remember one time that I definitely did. It was a long-term intention; and while I didn't follow up scrupulously to check every bit of it against a schedule, in the long run it did more or less come true as well.

The time was 1992. I was working a contract job nearly 120 miles from home—by which I mean the apartment I shared with Wife, while she was in graduate school. I drove down on Monday morning and back on Friday evening. During the week I stayed with my parents, which was just a little over 40 miles away from my work. The traffic was terrible, and I wasn't making a lot: enough to pay our rent, but not enough to keep up with Wife's already-riotous spending. But it was what I could get, and all that driving didn't leave me a lot of time to look for a better job.

For some years I had still nursed fantasies of going back to graduate school myself. I had left abruptly (as I describe briefly here) and my faculty advisor was kind enough to hold open my space in my fellowship program for one year. Well, by this time it had been closer to six years, and I wasn't still in touch with him. But I still clung to the fantasy that maybe someday I could go back.

Then in the fall of 1992 I learned that my former faculty advisor had died. Of course there was no realistic way that I would ever have gone back, but this shattered my fantasy. I wept for him—by which of course I mean "for myself and my lost dreams"—harder than I have ever wept for a dead relative. And then, not long after, I found myself walking out to the parking lot after another long day, after sunset, with the stars twinkling, and the most enormous full moon hanging just over the horizon.

Parallel lives

As I listened to Schmidt talk about the Hired Hand this spring (as I discussed in my last post), I began to think about the unexpected parallels between Schmidt's life and mine.

Plutarch of Chaeronea, author of a more
famous set of "Parallel Lives."

___

Schmidt and I met in college. He was quiet and introverted; I was loud and seemingly more sociable, but my loudness and sociability were protective masks no different from Schmidt's quiet and introversion. "Talks loud, laughs louder, thinks silently." When we talked about things that we both knew, we found that we nearly always had the same take. We both had fathers who were loud and boisterous, and who not infrequently offended people; also mothers who were quieter and could get along with anyone.

___

College is when a lot of people start dating and fucking. But I didn't lose my virginity until my Senior year. Schmidt flunked out after the end of his Junior year, so he didn't have a Senior year. And I'm pretty sure he didn't fuck anyone while at school. Years later, Wife told me she had talked to Schmidt privately, and he had admitted that for a while he was interested in Flora. She had the right body-type to attract him: slim, trim, and athletic. But she was already fucking a couple of our other friends (R– and Mac), and Schmidt determined that "Everyone who fucks Flora goes crazy." He didn't want to go crazy, so he decided not to join the party. Also I suspect he didn't want a connection with Flora to drag him into any more intimate connection with R– or Mac.

___

After college, I went home. I didn't date anyone. It was only through a weird coincidence that I met Wife, and we started fucking a week later.

After college, Schmidt went home. He lived way out in the boonies, so the likelihood of a weird coincidence throwing him together with someone attractive was correspondingly a lot lower than it was for me.

___

Part of what attracted me about Wife was the powerful energy that accompanied the highs of her bipolar cycle, when the air around her crackled with her enthusiasm and nothing seemed impossible.

It seems like part of what attracted Schmidt to Hand was something similar. He said that he thought Hand was undiagnosed bipolar, and he agreed that the highs of bipolar people can be attractive. Also, remember that Hand lived his whole life in the shadow of colon cancer, and responded to it with a determination to enjoy his short term to the hilt. For someone as broodingly introspective as Schmidt, I think Hand's willingness to live thoughtlessly—taking no thought for the morrow, as Scripture would have it—must have felt profoundly liberating. Even if he couldn't do the same things himself (because he, personally, couldn't stop thinking about his actions), he must have found Hand thrilling to be around. (Why yes, I am interpreting him based on my own personal experience. Why do you ask?)

Schmidt and the Hired Hand

I have one more story left over from my time this spring at the Schmidts. I've got the notes right here, and I keep planning to just sit down and type them, but ... well ... you know.

The story is about a former friend of Schmidt's, now dead. Because he worked for the Schmidts for a while, I'll call him the Hired Hand (or Hand, for short). I think Schmidt showed me a photo of him, but I don't remember what he looked like. Big and gregarious. Beyond that, I forget.

I don't know if Schmidt remembers this, but I remember once, many years ago, getting a letter from Schmidt where he talked about Hand. He said that in Hand he had finally found someone he could settle down with for the rest of his life—except for the awkward fact that Hand was romantically interested only in girls, not guys. To be clear, Schmidt said nothing directly about his own preferences in "plumbing." Wife claimed that Schmidt told her he was gay, and once upon a time I believed her. (See, e.g., the brief reference here.) Now I'm not so sure.*

What did Schmidt find so enticing about Hand? When we talked during my most recent visit, Schmidt said that he thinks Hand was probably bipolar (though never diagnosed). When I remarked that Wife was probably bipolar, and that her highs could often be delightfully charming, Schmidt agreed with the principle.

Anyway, Schmidt says that Hand was probably an undiagnosed bipolar, who self-medicated with "alcohol, methamphetamine, and bimbos in heat." But then he went on to explain that Hand was diagnosed with pre-cancerous polyps in his colon when he was in his early twenties. All the treatment options were terrible, so Hand just decided to live with them as long as he could—and then die. Since he had no idea how long he had to live, Hand never worried about the long term. He lived for today: fucking and drinking and toking like there was no tomorrow, ... because there might not be. (He took this to the extent of driving drunk, and was incarcerated for it several times.) Schmidt says that he wouldn't have made the same decisions Hand made, but he can understand why Hand made them. In a quick formula, Hand was reckless but not crazy.

The other thing Schmidt said about Hand is that he should have been born as a Labrador retriever. Hand was very friendly, winning, charming, and cheerful—also a good builder and contractor. Except for the building and contracting, these are all virtues that make Labradors so adorable. Plus, Schmidt added with a half-smile, if Hand had been born as a Labrador, he would have been neutered at an early age. He went on to say that this would undoubtedly have made Hand's life more manageable. 

In a nutshell, then, Hand was friendly, winning, charming, and cheerful. He was totally incapable of managing his own life, or his addictions, or his libido. And I think Schmidt still misses him. 

Do breakups cause breakage?

So here I am, minding my own business, reading John Michael Greer's "Magic Monday" column, and someone writes in anonymously to say, "at the end of my marriage, everything started breaking, one thing after the other." Someone else replies, "The day [my partner] died my phone went haywire too."

And suddenly I remember. The first time I had Debbie as a guest in my new apartment, after I left Wife, I went to make us a pot of tea and the handle broke off the tea pot. (Interestingly, the tea pot had been a wedding present to Wife and me; I no longer remember who from, but since I ended up with it, it might have been from one of my friends.) Debbie suggested that this was a sign, and I should get rid of the teapot. But I kept it. Only now if I want to use it, I use hot pads so I can pick it up by the body to pour it.

And I remember the first time Marie came to visit me, a few years later. She broke a crystal butter dish that I had salvaged when Wife and I divided everything up. There was no way to keep using that, so yes, I discarded it into the trash.

So now I wonder: is this a repeatable phenomenon? Do breakups cause breakage?

Inquiring minds want to know ....  

     

Is Wife sundowning?

I learned a new word today. Sundowning. Apparently that's when someone who is suffering from dementia (or borderline dementia, I guess) gets progressively more confused as the evening wears on. Sometimes it can lead to agitation or violence.

Son 1 visited me for a couple of hours today, and he explained it like this. "You remember Joe Biden in the Presidential debate? Everyone said he was fine at lunchtime. But by the debate he was lost, because it started at 9:00 pm."

Son 1 thinks that Wife is experiencing the same thing. Maybe I should back up and tell the story.

Son 1 texted me this morning, asking if I would be here later. Sure, no problem. Turns out he was flying in from a week where he was somewhere else for work. My apartment is en route between the airport and the town where he lives with Wife, so he was thinking of stopping by. Sure, that sounds great.

The nominal reason for his visit appears to have been so that he could wish me a Happy Father's Day, which he did. We never made a big deal out of those holidays when the boys were growing up, but sure that's fine. And it's always nce to see him.

We talked about his work for a while. He told me funny stories about the trip he was just on, and I told him (or reminded him) of comparable stories from when I was working. It's ironic that while his job title is nominally very different from mine, he has nonetheless ended up doing work that is topologically very similar. I asked whether he has any prospects for future advancement, and he discussed one possibility that might be on the horizon. (But nothing is certain yet.)

Then he shifted the conversation pretty abruptly to talk about Wife. At first he was talking generically about her inability to read people, and her consequent tendency to get into fights with everyone. He says he cringes every time she calls one of her doctor's offices, because she always gets into a fight with them over nothing. He described times that he has to handle difficult tasks for her, when he deliberately leaves her at home because it's easier that way. I agreed, and tried to describe some of the techniques that I used to manage her behavior when we still lived together.

Only towards the very end of the visit did he say that he thinks she is starting to experience dementia. He was careful to say that he didn't just mean occasional forgetfulness. But apparently there have been numerous times when he has come home from work, talked with her for half an hour or so, and then gone back to his room to rest before making dinner. If he comes out in ten minutes, all is fine. If he comes out in an hour, Wife says, "Oh, Son 1! When did you get home?" She has no memory of having talked to him before.

And she will get into spirals as the night progresses, where she can't stop obsessing about something long enough to go to bed.

Just as he was getting ready to leave, he asked obliquely if I've had to deal with the same things with Mother yet. (Answer: not exactly, or at least not that I'm willing to think about.) He also said he has no idea what steps need to be put in place to care for her when the time comes: power of attorney, for example? What about her accounts? He hopes maybe I can give him some guidance on these things. Maybe he can come back for another visit next weekend.

Wow. I don't know much about any of this stuff. Maybe I need to learn.

First Ma Schmidt, and now Wife. I'm starting to see a pattern. If these things go in threes, then I guess Mother is the logical third.

I suppose it's a good thing I didn't follow up that job opportunity last year. Maybe. We'll see.     

         

Talking about vacation

Memo to the reader: I thought about titling this piece "On vacation," in the same way that one might title a treatise, "On the Gods," or "On human nature." But I realized that most people would assume it just meant, "I'm going to be away from my computer and not writing for a while." In this case that's not what I mean. Hence the slightly clunkier title.

It's late at night. I've drunk too much. And I need to do things in the morning. Why am I not in bed asleep?

Well, I almost was—at the end of another highly unproductive and useless day. (I keep hoping my days will be productive. But that would require that I actually had the will to accomplish something, and that will is often missing.) But then I thought of an interesting pattern. I wanted to record it before I forgot it, and so here we are.

It's just this. You've heard me complain about being stuck, dead in the water, accomplishing nothing. I've blamed it on booze and on Twitter, both of which are indeed serious contributors to my time-wasting. But both of them are enablers, not root causes. The reality is, This is something I do.

So for example:

The unlived life of the parents

While I'm posting random quotes from Twitter (that's a reference to this post over on the Patio), here's one I found yesterday that is way too accurate.

"The unlived life of the parents," or in other words, we get stuck on the same things that our parents got stuck on. 

Is it true as a general rule? I haven't the slightest idea. But does it explain why I'm so stuck right now? O boy, howdy.

I don't even mean that it explains things at a causal level (though of course it might). But at a descriptive level, it is unerring. Father worked for years running a family business in a field that didn't espcially interest him, but in which he became (by necessity) something of an expert. Then events conspired to allow him to retire early, so that he could do whatever he wanted. He made a few half-hearted attempts to find other work—he got certified as a hypnotherapist, for example, and also as a college-loan planner, and for each job he set up an office for a little while. But what he really wanted to do was to act. And in fact he found work in a few small things here and there—commercials, and bit parts in unsuccessful movies. But he never made it big in acting, and he pissed away a lot of time on the Internet.

Sound like anyone else you know?

The worrying part is that if "the unlived life of the parents" really does affect the children, then I risk passing this very same stasis on to Son 1 and Son 2 in their turn. 

And as if that weren't enough motivation, you remember that Kimberly Steele told me that getting a book published is a major task of mine for this lifetime. So if she is right (and if I have more lives beyond this one), I'd better get my ass in gear or I'll be dumped into exactly the same situation next time (but with less favorable circumstances).

I don't know whether I believe in future lives (except in this sense), but I certainly believe in my children. So maybe I'd better get my ass in gear.

Maybe tomorrow.   

 

Solitude

This weekend I visited my mother. I drove down on Saturday. When I got there, she was at her storage unit with Brother and SIL; but it wasn't long before they came back, along with a friend of Brother's. We sat around and talked a while before they all went home. Then Mother and I stayed up until 2:00 in the morning, drinking brandy and talking some more. Sunday, Mother and I drove into the Big City to go to a concert. We met Brother and SIL there, and we chatted after the concert before going home. Today (Monday), Brother and SIL came out, and we all contributed to a nice meal outside in the early evening. So it sounds like I spent the weekend socializing with family.

You'd think.

But in reality, not so much. Saturday, sure, we sat around chatting for a bit, but in a superficial way. I got to talk to Mother more after everyone else left. But then we drank enough and stayed up late enough that Sunday was pretty miserable. I mostly tried to stay out of those conversations because I was still wiped out. And today? Mother was in the kitchen cooking; Brother and SIL were in the kitchen cooking. I tried my damnedest to stay away, somewhere else, for hours.

Why? I worried about saying something thoughtless that might offend someone. I guess I was thinking particularly that I might say something to offend SIL (see especially this post and this one, for example), but at the same time I was prepared for the possibility of equal-opportunity offensiveness. Not of purpose, of course! Just because I don't trust myself a lot in social situations any more. (If I ever did.)

Maybe I worry too much. Besides, if you are weak at a particular skill, you get better by exercising it more, not by avoiding it. 

Right, whatever. Anyway, after we had our meal (where I was careful to praise every dish!) I announced that I needed to get back home. I cleared the table of dishes (see, I helped out a little bit!) and then took off. Now I'm back at home, and I feel much more at ease. So far as I can tell, I didn't offend anyone this time. And thank heavens for that! 

      

Childless cat ladies

Sometime while I was staying with the Schmidts last month, I started thinking about the trope of the "childless cat lady." Of course the phrase got a lot of attention during the last election, because the news media pointed out that some years earlier (before he was a candidate for anything, let alone an officeholder), JD Vance had used it in an interview with Fox News. So in a sense cat ladies had their moment in the sun last year, just as "bad hombres" did eight years earlier.

But what, I began to wonder, really is the distinguishing characteristic of a childless cat lady, and why do they get so much grief? 

Why do people look down on childless cat ladies?

I tried googling this question, and all I found were articles saying that childless cat ladies aren't nearly as bad as everyone thinks. Here's a collection of them:

• The Guardian, "Claws out! Why pop culture clings to the crazy cat lady," April 16, 2018
• NBC News, "JD Vance doubles down on 'childless cat ladies' dig: 'I've got nothing against cats'," July 26, 2024
• City Journal, "About Those 'Childless Cat Ladies'," September 3, 2024
• Ipsos, "Why America's childless cat ladies are more than just Taylor Swift," September 11, 2024
• The Cutprice Guignol, "On Childless Cat Ladies," September 16, 2024
• The Conversation, "‘Childless cat ladies’ have long contributed to the welfare of American children − and the nation," October 21, 2024
• The Guardian, "Fur and loathing: do America’s ‘childless cat ladies’ hold the key to the US election?" November 3, 2024

And that's great to know—don't get me wrong. I guess it's reassuring to hear that the stereotype is incorrect. But I wanted historical information on where the stereotype came from in the first place—and, more particularly, on what the image means in the popular psyche. A couple of articles waved vaguely towards the idea that the condemnation of childless cat ladies was a holdover from the ancient fear of witches. But that doesn't sound likely to me. 

Old friend

This morning I had a Zoom call with an old friend, old enough that I'm pretty sure I've never mentioned him here yet. Before last weekend, our last communication was in … I think  … 1984, so over forty years ago. The last time we saw each other in person was … now I'm not sure I can remember. I know for sure we got together for a week or so back in 1978 (or not quite fifty years ago). There might have been once more since then, a couple years later, but I can't be certain.

But wait! If I last saw him almost fifty years ago, when the hell did we meet in the first place? Oh, that's easy. We met in the fall of 1970, in fifth grade. I even remember a story about the day.

I'd better give this fellow a name. I'll call him Chris, although I reserve the right to change his name to something else if he becomes important to the story and I think of a better one later. (In real life, his name is not Chris.) At the moment, I have no idea what actor should play him, so this installment of the movie meme will have to wait.

History

Chris joined our class a few weeks after the beginning of school. I don't really know why. So the teacher assigned a student at random—I think it was Gavin—to be his "official friend" and show him around. But during recess, Chris and I started talking, and we took to each other immediately. He started explaining some kind of popular science he had recently been reading: I'm almost certain it was about capybaras. I thought it was fascinating, and doubtless started talking about whatever my enthusiasms were back then. (Fortunately I don't remember.) At one point Gavin actually objected, "Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to be showing him around!" Chris replied, "I'll talk to whoever I want to talk to." And pretty much from that first day, he and I were best friends.

Three years later, at the end of seventh grade, my family moved away. Far away. So Chris and I started writing letters. All through eighth grade and high school, we kept up a heavy correspondence. Also we arranged a couple of visits. He came to visit me twice (the second visit was the one in 1978 that I referenced above), and I went to visit him once. We even kept writing each other during university, though less often. For each of us, real life was claiming more and more of our time.

I remember getting a card from him when Wife and I got married, so I must have sent him an announcement. I remember the card from him, but I don't remember writing a letter. After that time, I lost touch with almost everyone I knew. Partly this was because Wife and I were in graduate school and time was scarce. Partly it was because I didn't understand my marriage, and didn't know how to communicate it to anyone I had known before. I had brief, sporadic communications with Schmidt, with Marie, and with Dale—and pretty much none of my other former friends (such as Fillette or Inga). This also meant that during the long years when I wished I had someone to talk to—a problem I finally addressed by starting this blog!—I had no idea how to contact anyone. From time to time I searched for Chris on the Internet, but his real-life name (like mine) is pretty common. So there was no way of finding the right needle in so large a haystack. (Try to find one specific "John Jones" and you'll get the idea.) 

Years too late … an article about infidelity

A few days ago, I stumbled across an online article from Psychology Today (March 11, 2025) that would have been really useful if I had discovered it twenty or forty years ago. (Oops, bad news, it hadn't been written yet.) The title is "3 Traits That Can Make a Partner More Likely to Cheat," and yes, I have added it to my list of articles posted at the bottom of this page on the left. The short version is that it might have helped me decode Wife's infidelities a lot earlier, though some of what it says finally (belatedly) occurred to me too.

The three traits are these:

1. Narcissistic tendencies
2. Low self-esteem
3. Fear of vulnerability and emotional intimacy

I'll summarize how each of these is supposed to work.

Narcissistic tendencies

No surprise here. The article argues that narcissists use sex to bolster their own self-image, because they need constant validation and praise. So if the spouse falls down on the job—or gets tired, or mad, or bored, or boring—the narcissist seeks sexual validation elsewhere.

When I first married Wife, I didn't even know the word narcissism! The first time I heard about it as a psychiatric disorder was during this conversation with D. Even after that it took me a couple of years before I really understood it.

Does this explanation fit Wife? I think so. Whenever she started a new affair it always made her bubbly with New Relationship Energy, and confident enough to take on the world. I certainly saw that in her relationship with the Church Tenor, for instance. (See, for example, here or here.) Given how low she always crashed later, those highs must have been intoxicating.

Low self-esteem

Of course this explanation is the flip side of the earlier one. Desperately low self-esteem prods the sufferer to do anything to get external validation. I talked about this connection early on, in this post.

The article goes on to say that when one partner commits infidelity, that damages the relationship, which in turn gives the adulterer more to feel bad about (and even lower self-esteem). Interestingly, I caught that feature as well, in this post here. 

Fear of vulnerability and emotional intimacy

The third trait follows a slightly different tack:

For some, cheating is a way to avoid emotional closeness. They fear being vulnerable and may sabotage their own relationships by seeking external connections that require little emotional intimacy....

When they cheat, they often form external connections that demand little to no emotional investment. These brief encounters provide a temporary sense of control or detachment, allowing them to maintain a surface-level connection while avoiding the deeper emotional work required for a healthy, intimate partnership.

It took me a while to understand Wife's fear of vulnerability. I think the most extensive post I've written on it may be this one, which came some five years after the others that I've quoted. But there were certainly signs there earlier. Her willingness to be involved in the torrid BDSM fantasies of Boyfriend 5 was probably one of those signs. Or in any event I remember reading later the assertion that BDSM appeals precisely to people who are afraid of emotional intimacy, because it provides such a rigid framework for behavior that they never have to worry about not knowing where the boundaries are. And Wife regularly panicked over not knowing where the boundaries were.

I said that this article came along years too late. In some senses, I no longer need it because I ended up discovering all these same conclusions myself. But if I had had it available years ago, think how much time it might have saved me!        

           

People are funny

As I left my UU Sangha this evening, I waved to one of the women there and said, "See you next week."

She replied "Inshallah." (One look at her will tell you without doubt that her ancestors must have been English and Scandinavian.)

Then she caught up with me and explained. She has an Iranian neighbor, you see, and so she and her neighbor got in the habit of saying "Inshallah" to each other years ago. Today it's something they find totally natural.

Only she realizes that nowadays, with all the political turmoil in the Middle East, some people get very sensitive about using any conventional phrases from Arabic. So now she feels like she has to watch herself, to avoid saying something that will bother people.

I suggested that she could always just translate it to English as "God willing."

But no, she balked at that. I think it's because she's a Unitarian, and so feels squeamish talking about God.

Even though she clearly has no problem saying "Inshallah," … which is an abbreviation of "in shāʾ Allāh" … which literally means "if God wills" or "God willing."

So why is she willing to talk to God in Arabic, but not in English? (Note that she doesn't speak Arabic or Farsi, or not more than her neighbor taught her.) I think it is for the same reason that profanity never sounds as bad in a foreign language. I have known Germans who are perfectly willing to exclaim "Shit!" but who are far too inhibited to yell "Scheiße!" just as loud. And I've known Americans who feel the same way but in reverse. It's probably the same thing going on here.

People are funny.  

Thoughts on prayer

One evening while I was sitting with Ma Schmidt—I had almost a week to go before coming home, and it was maybe eight or nine days before she died—I suddenly had an idea. She had been moaning "Help me" over and over, even as she was totally unable to answer the question, "Help you do what?"

And suddenly I wondered, Is that how God (or the gods) experience human prayer? Everybody knows that the great majority of prayers seem to go unanswered. Could it be that the problem is on our end, not God's? To flesh this out a bit: Maybe it's the case that there is a limited range of things that God can do for us, but "Make It All Better" isn't one of them. Or, well, it might be one of them if we could specify exactly what we mean. But maybe (for whatever reason) we can't ask God to figure it out for us. Maybe He's willing to help if only we can spell out what we want, but remaking the Universe from scratch so that I personally am never unhappy, … well that just isn't on the menu. (And after all, what I want out of the Universe is probably different from what you want.) So the end result, so far as we can perceive, is that our prayers go unanswered. And we blame it on God. Ma Schmidt probably blamed it on us that her pleas for help fell (to all appearances) on deaf ears.

Another song for the road

A few days ago I brought the story of Ma Schmidt up to the point where she died. I don't remember quite when I wrote that part. It must have been less than a week, because I posted this one six days ago, and that was before I wrote the last few about her.

I keep thinking I "should" write some of the other posts I've been thinking about from that time, and maybe I will. I'll start with this one because it's easy.

You remember back in March I wrote about why I find country music good to listen to for long road trips. So I scanned for Country stations on the road up to see the Schmidts again, and on the road home. Most of the songs I heard were songs I had heard before—good enough to keep me awake, but nothing I felt I had to remember for later. Or they were songs that I hadn't heard before, and that I forgot again right away.

But there was one that caught my attention. I'm not sure if it hooked any of my special topics, or if it's just that the tune is compelling and the beat is relentless. But it's all of that, for sure. Apparently it's also famous, so maybe you've already heard of it. The song is "Austin," by Dasha.

P.S.: I just realized that Dasha defines her style as #cuntry, and yes it is spelled like that. I don't know what to make of that, but here's an article about it.   

In case you are tracking my posts, there are new ones about Ma Schmidt

This is just a placeholder here in May—today's actual date—that I'll be adding more posts back in April to continue the story of Ma Schmidt. So if you are following that story, you'll want to back up a bit to find the latest updates. 

Hymn to Hekate

There is no Homeric Hymn to Hekate, or none extant. There is an Orphic Hymn to her, and Hesiod praises her extensively in the Theogony. But when I was sitting for days on end with Ma Schmidt as she drifted towards death, I found myself musing. Hekate, like Hermes, is a psychopomp—a guide of souls of the newly-dead. who steers them from their bodies (recently abandoned in the world of the living) towards their new home in the Land of the Dead. And wouldn't it be nice if She could arrange that Ma Schmidt die without pain or fear? Of course I mean "die at the right time"—I had no desire to murder her! But if she could avoid the pain and fear, wouldn't that be nice?

In the end it didn't work out that way, or not obviously. But even after returning home I found myself wondering if I could write a hymn to Hekate like the ones I have written to some of the other gods. I've mulled it in fits and starts since then, and tonight—nine days after driving home—I think I have four verses of rhyming dactylic tetrameter. So maybe this will work.

Shining Hekate, beloved of Persephone,
Lady of crossroads and Mistress of night,
Your silver hand draws down the moon from the stars for
Thessalian witches intent on their rites.

Torch-bearing Maiden, a spark in the darkness, 
The mistress of magic, Protector of dogs,
You pass through the skies and the earth and the ocean,
And then disappear in the night and the fog.

Friend of the husbandman, laboring farmer,
You dole out success to whomever you choose.
Honor and profit and victory in warfare—
You pick who's rewarded and who is to lose.

Nurse of the newborns just op'ning their eyelids,
And guide of the dying, who close them again,
Help me prevail in my contests while living,
And shelter my soul when I come to you then.

     

Ma Schmidt, requiescat in pace

Then early Tuesday morning, Schmidt followed up with this email, addressed to Marie, to me, and to his mom's old friend, Georgie. The header read, "It's Over." 

Writing in the small hours of April 22...

If I were to go into the guts of my email program I might be able to figure out how to format it to put a black border around my text in accordance with Victorian fashion but I don't feel like taking the time for that.  Mom died about 8:45 in the evening.  It wasn't as peaceful as one would have liked.  I was out much of the afternoon.  She wasn't going anywhere at that point and I had a major problem to deal with: the enormous dead digger pine along the driveway fell (during the previous night I suppose) -- right across the driveway, completely blocking it.  Thank good fortune I was able to get hold of neighbor Kurt, who has a really big chainsaw -- and the mass to be able to handle it!  He helped me clear the driveway, which I knew I'd be needing imminently.  Anyway, while I was in and out, I wasn't monitoring Mom closely. Then there were the usual chores and then dinner time came along.  As I started cooking, I checked on her and found she'd suddenly been sick -- yellow bile all down her front and on the bed.  Ugh!  [Good for putting me off dinner!] I got on the phone to hospice [I must note here that the local hospice entity is clearly a very small organization.  I've met nurses S— (who was on call tonight) and T—, and social worker J— and that may well be the entire field team] and got some advice and instruction on (we hoped) relieving her nausea.  Going over to the bed to follow nurse S—'s advice I discovered Mom had stopped breathing.  So I had to call her back and tell her that our plans had changed... She's been and gone (and it's a good hour's drive from her home to here), cleaned and dressed Mom, dealt with her meds, and called the funeral home.  It's now 1 AM and they have been and gone as well, taking Mom with them.  All pretty quiet and efficient, really. 

And now comes, I guess, the next, differently hard part: all the paperwork! 

Wonder if I'll get any sleep tonight? 

_____

I have a couple of other things to post—topics I thought about during the long hours—and I'll tag them on the end here pretty soon.