To thine own self be true

Watching highlights from my Carson DVD set. What a truly interesting, fun guy who came into people’s bedrooms 5x a week for 60-90 mins. for 30 years!

So much of the pleasure of watching Carson came from watching for the spontaneous humor and unexpected live moments, and, especially from enjoying how he, a kind of hip Everyman, reacted to these openings, opportunities, and possibilities.

So much of life is about play and its possibilities as he showed, whether he was reacting to something unexpected an animal guest would do or a child guest would say.
It is the play that gives us the most pleasure of all–whatever it is. The most delight, the imaginative and funny bone turn-on, the word play, the situation comedy play, the spontaneous stuff, that breaks through the otherwise humdrum, conventional, steadily serious surfaces.

Most of my best and past has been about play whether it be from public performances with an audience or private play with individuals such as my grandson. In many ways, it is my most essential and potentially entertaining self. Possibly the freest and most loving self as well, I might add. In quite another sense, “The play’s the thing” as Shakespeare said. Play–a definite quiddity. Yes, I had and, luckily, still have that–my surface bloggish seriousness and thoughtfulness aside.

A dog day afternoon, dogsitting Saturday.

Observation: The dog’s eyes constantly watching you. “What’s on now?” “Are you going to be sitting there for a while?” “Where are you going?” “Will you be back soon?” “Are we eating soon?”(one of my favorites) “Are we going out for a walk?” “Where’s my bathroom now?” “When will I be going homes?” An ongoing, neverending experience of observation and, in the humans’ case, one of being observed for various cues and information (pets easily seek info as much as humans).

Anticipation: For the pet, perpetually. Again to do with possibilities (pets’ lives being about possibilities as much as humans’)–anticipation, desire, hope–all for what might happen, especially for what is already doggily known to be possible.

Dependency: If you have ever owned a dog, the dependency of the animal on the owner for just about everything, including shelter, food, exercise, play, etc. And when the pet goes down–as in sickness or decline–you quickly find out about responsibilities you weren’t expecting, about the limits of your own caring and loyalty–very instructive and heart-wrenchingly taxing. The Price of Love.

All that I’ve just said applies to very young children who take their cues from their adult role models, who anticipate whatever family adventure or activity, and who need parents for everything from toilet-training to meals, to play, etc.

I will definitely say that taking care of both pet and child (or grandchild) are similar experiences, though the pet usually requires less engagement. The play possibilities are greater with the child, though I have seen the intelligence of poodles and their play, and know of how some breeds–like Jack Russells or Border collies need a lot of exercise. Of the heavy-to-carry dogs, like St. Bernard’s or Standard poodles, there are more implications for responsibility and difficulty just because of their sheer size.

Unconditional love? Especially obvious with dogs if you’ve ever ‘come home’. Children, too, though this excitement eventually diminishes: “Oh, hi, Mom.” Well, isn’t that the main reason why many people want to own a dog in their heart-of-hearts–that Lassie-like unconditional loyalty? Sometimes reciprocated when the human goes over the edge to save the animal in a life-or-death situation. Built-in strong, deep relationships quite often as much so as some human relationships.

The awnings and umbrellas
line a too-narrow street,
shoppers rushing both ways
their bags, frowns, and sandals
de rigeur here.
Sound of tinkling bells
as bikes run into walkers.
Smell of fish and vegetables.
Four plastic tubs
splash frenzily in fear.
No one sees a fish
escape the red one
except the stall owner,
cigarette in mouth,
who nonchalantly
throws it back
to destiny.
Out of nowhere
a golden lab appears
to sniff the tubs
before gliding on
alone, unnoticed.

O brave new world,
what fools these mortals be!
They found me under a car park
several feet down–Richard.
A gentle woman’s touch
released me from my private peace.
A slow, loving process
I had never known before.

Conniving and entitlements,
I once wanted it all.
Little did they who found me
know I wanted to be left
alone where I could not be hurt
again, to suffer more indignities.

And so they boxed and dated me,
then stood around my bones
in dark sterile rooms
wondering who I really was.
It was just a matter of more time
till technology and speculation
would have their way with me,
my puzzle bones and their agendas.

They rejoiced to restore me
(or so they thought),
missing every inner bit that mattered
of feeling, dream and passion.
A life, a man, being so much more
than identity and mere evidence
that I was once was and still am here.
……………………………………..
(response to the 2013 King in the Car Park documentary; a rebuttal of sorts)

“Love seeketh not itself to please.”--William Blake, “The Clod and the Pebble”

This is not some wild-eyed love
borne aloft by the winds of despair.
It is instead, a quiet coming home,
a long spring walk in the country.

There is no watchman in sight
to count down our thoughtful days.
Only melting snow, the good sun
and a new pasture to clear.

You are done now with corrals, muse
and it is enough for the moment
that each of us cares,
and that all of our dream-rides
need never be harnessed.

The process of life, of course resembles a narrative, a story as has often been pointed out. Joseph Campbell pointed out that often when one looks back that various events begin to resemble episodes of narrative. Another way of looking at that sweep of episodes is to consider life as process–something ongoing while alive, as constantly open/subject to change and transitory possibilities.

I’ve come to believe that this larger process, which is essentially who one is and who one becomes, is microcosmically made up of many ‘smaller’ processes, what might also be termed areas and aspects–such as one’s relationship with nature, or music, or a hobby or other passion that one pursues over time. There is frequently a developmental or growth aspect to these mini-processes within one’s life. One can look at each of these processes and realize “Oh, that started then or there” or “That’s where I’m at today with this”, or “That is where I’d like to go next with this”–very much a past-present-future perspective.

As I’ve said previously in an early blog entry, pretty much all of life experience is made up of process, context, and personal choice. At any given moment, the individual is living within processes/s which has a context (setting, background), and one responds day to day, moment to moment, with options to choose action or how one will spend whatever free time.

Context–which includes our health, the people around us, as well as where we live–is the main limiting external factor in our lives. We are constantly responding to this context via personal choices which ultimately, and existentially, define who we are, how much personal freedom we will have. (I will just add here that there is also a large inner context which affects us, too, including heredity, memory, desire, and response to past experience.)

Often we may feel very limited by the circumstances, crises, and obstacles that are embedded within many contexts. Sometimes one may even need to change the context–as in a job, relationship, or lifestyle choice. But whatever changes in processes usually come down, again, to personal choices–it is one’s unique life, after all.

One process or limiting factor is the most basic one of presence or absence. Everything changes and as creatures of nature, we are subject to being absent, physically and consciously, down the road. The clock is always ticking, as W. H. Auden illustrated in his various classic poems to do with time (e.g., “As I Walked out One Evening”). Process is always and essentially time-based. And if you’ve ever been seriously ill or experienced a ‘near-miss”, you likely realize the brevity and fragility of life, of process overall.

It has been said that most humans spend most of their time trying not to think. But I believe it is in consciousness and awareness that one will find which of those processes that ‘are one’ or matter to one. A person will also find self through reflection, and often this comes from dealing with inner matters or aspects, which are ultimately most central and essentially our selves. What a person comes to know and realize is the most important information that we can attain. This information defines us and how we deal with our processes and contexts. It is the information that helps us to make important , authentic, actualizing decisions, then, relative to ourselves and others.

By way of conclusion, I will say that process and life are far more satisfying and fulfilling when they are driven by the inner life and inner processes, not the other way around. This is the place of greatest spirituality, transcendence, and creative expression. This is the place where most great men and women–the geniuses and artists have traditionally lived and lived ‘out of’– Beethoven, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Mother Teresa, Emily Dickinson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, van Gogh, on and on.

“Tenderness is greater proof of love than the most passionate of vows.”–Marlene Dietrich, Marlene Dietrich’s A B Cs

“Touch is the meaning of being human.”–Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse

“Touch is the landscape/of what is possible.”–Kate Green

“We are what we are, the spirit afterwards, but first the touch.”–Charlotte Mew, Charlotte Mew and Her Friends

Agent Moi. So there I was turning over the Euros in my pocket at Charles de Gaulle Airport. That and eating an orange waiting for Mother. We agreed to meet here where we had parted a week before.

That’s when I saw him from the corner of my eye–a chubby, bearded man in a trenchcoat running, pursued by three airport guards. He was yelling something in French which I couldn’t make out in the din of announcements, bells, and crowd noise.

They tackled him, but he threw them off one at a time as they tried to handcuff him–this escaped mental patient, drug addict, or perhaps escapee from security. When the three guards were finally lying across him, the crazed man’s head gestured upward as he became aware of something on the floor high above us. “Regardez la femme, la vielle femme.”

Then the passengers around him were looking up and exclaiming, “Les anges”. I lifted my eyes briefly too, but saw nothing, before they punched him out, angels not being a common sight at Charles de Gaulle.

My mother and I had stood in about the same place just a week earlier. We were relatively separate souls, mother and son. She had a friend on the Left Bank she would visit “after all these years”. They would do the usual city tours, l’ Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tour and so on, while I headed out to the countryside. I wanted to see Monet’s Garden at Giverny and Dieppe’s beaches. I’m that kind of mix of personal interest and had already ‘done Paris’ the last time over.

She is seventy-eight and we had buried Dad three months before. She declared herself ready for a big trip, the two of us, and we pondered several possibilities before settling on Paris.

My mother is her own person and I am too, so there was no need for checking in on how the other was doing. She is active for her age and once cycled fifty miles and back when she was seventy. I respect her freedom and admire her energy. She has been way busier than me in my retirement.

I did call the number she had left me at the airport when we arrived, but there had been no answer.

And so Agent Moi suddenly surrounded by gendarmes, who named me correctly and flashed a picture of my mother. She had died in the taxi on the way into town and so never saw Paris or her friend. A stroke. I suppose within the realm of possibility given her pack a day habit that had once wired her for previous physical feats.

I wanted to feel something, standing there in a sea of international tourists, mostly French-speaking, but nothing came to me. She had died the way she lived—on her own terms, doing what she wanted I thought, the two of us now separated forever.

And I thought about the woman these many strangers could see, but not I. Her and her heavenly host.

…………………

an imaginative piece from a decade ago

Sensibility is a key construct which people once were more interested in cultivating and developing. As Sven Birkerts describes it, it is, on one level, a range of fine feelings and ability to make distinctions (whether moral or aesthetic, etc.). On another, it is a refinement or cultivation of presence (what one essentially is and could be). On yet another, it is the part of inner life that is not given, but fashioned. On still another, sensibility means a coherent inwardness. For my own part, I believe that sensibility embodies the possibilities of/for resonance, integrity, and appreciation of such ‘old school’ things as gentleness, greatness, order, wisdom, romance, love, truth, beauty, soul, and the arts.

A near-death experience Tuesday of the random, absurd and totally unexpected variety.

Most people, including me, assume there will be conscious time to deal with the end, but that simply ain’t so for many sudden deaths, most notably in the news this week–the two kids strangled by a python in their sleep and the poor guy in Montreal who was taken out by a falling piece of metal as he walked along minding his own biz. In my own case, inches and milliseconds.

Which brought back memories of the Cuban missile crisis of old (commented on 32 pages before in the Nov. 12/12 blog entry) when everyone on the planet was at one minute to midnight (total planetary atomic war annihilation). As Sting sang, “How fragile we are”. Personally and globally.

Many of us know that those closest to us will not necessarily be here tomorrow. The same is true of and for ourselves. We each of us also have unrealized dreams, talents, and potential, which makes transitory possibilities and one-time opportunities so much more important. What Joseph Campbell talked about as The Call (in The Power of Myth–his best book, and the popular tv series) is always to be heeded.