RESIGNATION

Sometimes life just gangs up on you and hits you with a sequence of troubles which seem unfair. One wonders, “What did I ever do to deserve this?”

You probably don’t want to know. The actions and reactions which govern Creation are perfectly balanced, and obey laws far over our heads.

If we received an answer to our whining, it would likely be an answer along the lines of the answer Job got, when he questioned God a bit too stridently about all the bad things he had to go through. God silenced Job, basically by asking Job, “Were you there when I created all this?” Once Job got around to contemplating the intricate details of Creation, the actions and reactions involved in all things, even things as simple as sap rising in the spring, he was humbled by how minor his own concerns were, in comparison.

The same revelation appears in the movie “Casablanca“, when Rick Blaine states, “…the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

In other words, one must let go of their selfish concerns about their personal desires, and have faith they are part of something bigger, which they don’t understand.

I was hit by a triple whammy of hardships which were hard to take, as they insulted my sense of myself as a family man, with strong “family values”.

First, despite all our loving efforts, dementia made my mother-in-law impossible to care for, and we had to put her in a “memory care” institution. She knows she is “locked up” but can’t remember why, and resents everyone’s efforts to make her comfortable. She wants to get back to the life she remembers, but her memory is so weak she no longer has the capacity, but she doesn’t remember she constantly loses her keys and wallet, and only remembers being capable. It’s the saddest thing, and strange as well, for she was an extremely self-reliant and capable woman from her early teens on, for seventy years, before coming to this confusing end. Saddest is that she can’t sit back and enjoy people trying to make her comfortable. You can put the nicest cushions on her rocking chair, but she defines the expression, “off her rocker.”

The things she did when off her rocker were amusing, if you don’t mind a bull in your china shop. My customers at my childcare would arrive to pick up their children, and she would come storming up to them and demand they find me or (more usually) my wife immediately, because it was “urgent”. So my customers, who are often quite young, would tell their children to wait and would rush off to do the good deed. And we would thank them, blushing, because we knew damn well what was “urgent” was that old lady couldn’t find her wallet, and thought it might have been stolen, when she in fact had hidden it under her pillow, but forgot she hid it.

Someday I may be able to write a post titled “Dementia” full of funny stories, but the joke gets old when it is the present tense. The question arises, “Why would God allow this to happen to someone?”

It is not a happy-ever-after ending to a long life, and it is not a situation where the caregivers involved get gratitude, for the elderly victim of dementia is in no mood to thank anyone. In any case, that was a long and exhausting decline I had to weather, and was challenge number one.

Second, a daughter went through a rough divorse and a custody battle involving whether her two small children would/will be brought up speaking Portuguese in Brazil or English in New Hampshire. There is no solution which is acceptable to both sides, so far, (which is a prime ingredient to any divorse).

Divorce has always struck me as stupid, ever since my own parents succumbed to it when I was a boy. Love is beautiful, and when you turn away from beauty then of course things get ugly. Why do people prefer ugliness? It is so stupid it is actually a funny joke, if you are able to reduce things to absurdity, as Laurel and Hardy did with their movie “Big Business” nearly a hundred years ago. There is nothing all that funny about the human tendency to escalate, and make bad situations worse, but they let us see the absurdity. If you have fifteen minutes, it’s a masterpiece.

However, as patriarch of a large family, I could not manage a funny post about a meat-loving Brazilian wedding a vegan American. Too much pain was involved as they made a bad situation worse, and I was ashamed I couldn’t stop it. It is worst when little children are involved.

Lastly, to top off my sense life was completely out of my control, my wife broke her ankle in three places, and was unable to do much of anything for six weeks, so I had to do the work of two. It was a situation where you do everything, but do nothing well. Every job is a slapdash job, and you never get time off.

Mind you, I’m 71 years old, suffering from COPD, and was under a fond illusion I could resign from my position of runner-of-a-childcare, place the business in my wife’s name, and quietly fade away like old soldiers are suppose to do. I didn’t start collecting Social Security until age 70 so I could get the maximum amount, and, in theory, I could help my wife doing old-man stuff like paperwork, or riding around on a lawnmower, but spend most of my time doing what seems productive to me, namely growing good food in a down-sized garden, and writing poems, and lastly writing my memoirs, which will contain some remarkable adventures. However….

God did not accept my resignation. The only resignation God accepts is resignation to His will. Consequently I have spent little time pottering about in my garden, nor writing my memoirs. Instead I’ve needed to rush about dealing with an old lady off her rocker, with a young couple more interested in drama than peace, and with witnessing the sunshine of my life become bedridden.

What surprised me was how little time I wasted whining, “Whatever did I do to deserve this?”

Not that I didn’t roll my eyes to heaven and mutter things, as trouble followed trouble, but I just dealt with things as they came, one after another, until it occurred to me I was a changed man. I surprised myself. Usually I loose it. Usually I tirade. Maybe I was just so worn down that I lacked the available energy to throw a fit. But do you want to know something? I sort of liked the peace I felt. Rather than weak I felt strong. You have to have some sort of strength to be in the middle of a hurricane, and to just plod along saying, “Ho hum. Another day, another breeze.”

Not that I get a bit of credit for this. Believe me, it was not in my plans. To God goes the glory, for He shapes those who honor him.

But now I’m curious. Could I withstand a complete reversal of my fortunes, and be hit by three wonderful events, and not be swayed into the opposite of a tantrum? Would I become wildly manic, or could I keep the peace?

Suppose I wrote a sonnet that went viral, and, as swiftly as Oliver Anthony became famous, I went from being shadow-banned to having millions of views, and my website went from being unknown to huge. Suppose I went from having to pay people to help me, to having people offer to pay me for being my helper? Could I keep my poise, and say, “Ho hum, another day; another breeze.” ???

My conclusion, at age 71, is that the ups and downs of this world breed happiness that doesn’t last and sorrow that doesn’t last. Nothing of this world is lasting. To build on this world is like building an igloo on an iceberg that is melting away. When we die the billionaire leaves earth as naked as he came, just as the debtor does. So, what really matters?

I assert what matters is resignation to the will of the Creator. His love is infinite, His compassion towards us is infinite, His bliss is infinite, His joy does not end, He wants us to join Him, and He is everlasting and eternal.

My old goat, (the sad, final survivor
Of my herd), hobbled out into spring's balm,
And I'll be darned if spring didn't revive her.
She refused to behave demure and calm
But gamboled and frolicked, despite her age.

So too does mankind, when it has been spared
A wintry death, go pursue the next rage
And skip into quicksand. I have despaired
From ever hoping we'll learn from mistakes.

God's mercy makes us so hugely joyous
We forget discipline, and forget what it takes
To be healed; we chase what will destroy us.
Spring's a reminder we're all April fools
And makes me most happy that God's mercy rules.

POTATOES

It definitely seems the lunatics are running the asylum. The entire “green energy” effort seems like an attempt to create a crisis where there wasn’t one. Global Warming will cause people to swelter, not because it is hotter outside, but because people will not be able to afford air conditioners inside.

I could go on and on, but you probably already are depressed by the state of affairs the world is getting sucked into, like poor bugs into a bathtub’s whirlpool. (Or perhaps, for those losers who think they are winning, like a moth circling around the seduction of a candle’s deadly flame). The spectacle is especially depressing when the mismanagement starts to make our food too expensive.

In their Ivory Towers, academics, without calluses on their hands, like to advise hard working men that they should not eat the food that sustains them. They scold that munching meat causes Global Warming due to the methane in bovine flatulence. Workers should instead eat tofu. The problem is that, on modernized farms, fossil fuels not only power the mechanized equipment, but also provide the fertilizer that grows the soy beans that make the tofu.

In other words, academics did not “think things through.” They had a first idea, and (perhaps due to marijuana) it seemed like sheer genius, so they never did the follow-up thinking, the feasibility studies.

Meanwhile the working man must do feasibility studies every day, just to survive. You don’t need to go to collage or smoke marijuana to have brilliant-seeming ideas, but they get checked on a regular basis by the harsh realities of life, unless you’re in an Ivory Tower.

Lastly, some academics forget they would starve without the working man. When they mock the working man, they are biting the hand that feeds. They are not as intelligent as they think. In fact, they are imbeciles, lunatics running a world which doesn’t have to be an asylum, but which mad-scientist academics make crazy.

One crazy thing I have heard some academics proclaim is that the world is overpopulated and that it would be a good thing to reduce the population by seven billion. I can only respond by saying that, if academics reduce the population by seven billion the decline will not be due to overpopulation, but rather due to academics so devoid of humanity that they make Hitler and Stalin look like pipsqueaks.

Worst is that these idiots will not listen to reason. If you are patient and kind, and try to very gently lead them in the direction of follow-up studies, they become furious and cancel you. They are bound and determined to be idiots all the way.

What to do? I personally just shrug, and plant potatoes.

Potatoes do have a vulnerability, as the Irish learned when their crop turned to slime and they suffered their terrible “Potato Famine”, but most of the time it is an amazingly productive crop, and doesn’t turn to slime, and therefore potatoes are a good friend of the poor. The reason so many Irish starved was because their population had boomed, not due to any largess on the part of their greedy English overlords, but because they could fall back on potatoes as a crop. And though many Irish starved when the crop failed, (especially their poor children), many emigrated, and England’s loss was America’s gain. Eventually England lost Ireland, just as England lost America, which weakened England, for the Irish were some of its finest soldiers. Intellectuals can parse the reasons all they want, but the Great British Empire’s fate was not determined by intellectuals, but by potatoes.

Where I used to skip working out in a gym, and instead got a wonderful workout spading, hoeing and raking soil in the garden each spring, I now am an old man with COPD. I used to love the way all my muscles burned in the spring, due to so much digging, but now I’m pathetic, and huff and puff after forking a single forkful with my spading fork. If I had any brains I’d give it up, and focus on writing.

But when I went to buy food for my Childcare’s rabbit, goat and eleven chickens, I passed by the bins of seed potatoes. I just couldn’t resist. I knew I didn’t have time to slice potatoes and dust the cut sides with sulfur, so I poked through the bins for the smallest seed potatoes, which do not require cutting. I found around sixty.

Today I got the last potato planted. Even though I do such work when I am officially “off duty” at the Childcare, I am seemingly a magnet, and children are allowed by those “on duty” to rush over and “help” me. They are no help at all, but I do enjoy their interest. They ask all sorts of questions, including “why do you huff and puff so much.” The “older” children, (age five rather than age almost-three) tell the younger ones how much fun it is to dig up the potatoes, in the late summer and fall. It is an education few get these days.

There is still much work to do, to get a good crop. The potatoes need a light top dressing of manure, and then to be “hilled”, and then (as we use no pesticides) there is a war with potato bugs. (“Hilling” is interesting, for some potatoes produce all their new tubers by the potato you planted, while others produce tubers along the up-growing stem, so if you pile four feet of dirt atop the tuber you planted you get potatoes all along four feet of stem.)

I am well aware I’m getting a bit old for such work, and today I began the process of getting a graduate of my Childcare to be a sort of “intern”. Back in the day you could just hire a twelve-year-old after school without paperwork, but with the lunatics running the asylum there is a slew of paperwork, pertaining to child-labor-laws, and various tax codes. Hopefully we can just get that useless, bureaucratic stuff done with, and face what really matters, which is growing potatoes.

And if our work is blessed by God and prospers, what will planting sixty potatoes roughly the size of ping-pong balls be?

Twelve were “Pontiac Pinks”, which are the fastest to mature. Each little potato should produce around three potatoes the size of oranges, as well as numerous small potatoes the size of marbles or peas. These are thin-skinned “new” potatoes which, when served with salt, butter and chopped parsley (grown nearby), or boiled and turned into various potato salads, are quite popular with the small children. For some reason new, pink potatoes apparently have more vitamins and antioxidants than regular potatoes, but small children could care less about nutrition; I think their appetite is born from being part of the process. In any case their parents are amazed that their children devour them; “He never eats potatoes at home.” But, to stick to economics, we could get twelve pounds of pink potatoes from those twelve little seed-potatoes.

Twelve were “Yukon Golds”. They take longer to mature, and are remarkable because their flesh is yellow. If you mash them they look like they are already loaded with butter. But I like them because they produce very big potatoes. Whoppers. Treat them right , and you can plant a potato the size of a ping-pong ball and get at least one the size of a grapefruit. We could get twenty pounds.

Eighteen were “Russets”, which are baking potatoes. They tend to be elongated, like overly fat pickles, and have thick skins. The larger ones are good baked, and the smaller are great when arranged around a roast in the oven, browning and sucking up the the flavor of whatever meat you are roasting. If you treat this group well you could harvest a crop of twenty-five pounds.

Lastly I planted eighteen “Kennebecs”. (Named after a river in Maine). These are best mashed, though they can be baked. They seem to like our local climate, and often produce more potatoes per plant than the others, ranging from as small as a pea to as large as a grapefruit. Mashed, they are especially creamy. In a best-case scenario, planting eighteen little seed-potatoes the size of pingball balls could produce a crop of thirty pounds.

Most of the pink potatoes get eaten up during the summer, but one might, (if one avoids goofing off), be blessed with a fifty pound sack of other potatoes to face the winter with.

A doddering old man like me might also be expected to successfully raise ten winter squash vines, which could produce between two and six squash per vine, and squash tend to weigh five pounds, so I’d have somewhere around one to three hundred pounds of squash.

Then it is not so hard to grow a short row of turnips and winter cabbages, and short rows of carrots and beets, so your root cellar also holds maybe 20 pounds of turnips, fifteen big, fat ten-pound cabbages, (150 pounds), plus 20 pounds of carrots and 20 of beets.

Also, to hang in the attic, one should grow a row of onions, and some garlic.

In other words, if one has a patch of dirt, it is not so hard for even a doddering old fool like me to face next fall unafraid of famine. I’ll have hundreds of pounds of starch which even a toothless old crone like myself can mash, and not bother with chewing. As young mothers go to the grocery stores and weep, for the shelves are empty due to election-year craziness, an their children are hungry, I can just sit there with what my hard work produced, munching my mashed this and my mashed that and smacking my lips, ignoring the crying children.

Sigh. I don’t think so. I don’t think I could stomach the mashed potatoes, because woman and children have an unfair advantage over men. They are allowed to cry, where men are supposed to die.

I have already lived a good life and been blessed far more than wealthier people. I have been through adventures that would freeze the blood of the wealthy, and, to be honest, their lives seem tedious and boring in contrast. Where they sit by a pool, and sit by a pool, and sit by a pool, and call it luxury, I have been on a sailboat in a screaming gale where the seas were higher than the mast. So who was more fortunate?

In any case, as I approach my end I really can’t imagine I would hog all my potatoes and turnips and cabbages and carrots and beets and onions and garlic to myself. For one thing, it is a ego-trip to give stuff away. For another thing, personal fasting supposedly has a spiritual benefit. For a third thing, I am more interested in the next world than the complete balderdash this world is increasingly entangled in.

Famine will come as quite a shock to young mothers who are currently deeply concerned about their son’s “sexual identity”. Some of these witless females are wandering a wilderness of disturbed values. Was George Washington a racist? Was Jesus a sexist and Satan a saint? Are men men and are women women? They haven’t got a clue, but famine has a wonderful ability to clarify the mind. When faced with the fact their child is starving, politics can be damned; they want a potato.

I’ve known poverty and hunger, due to my foolish choices, and I can assure you that there are times holding a fat, baking potato in your hand is worth more than holding an ingot of gold. You can’t eat gold, but, poke a potato with a fork a couple of times, put it in the microwave, and even without salt or butter, your child will stop crying, even if the child is within yourself.

What this means is that, when hunger gets bad, people will “sell their birthright for a mass of pottage”. Evil takes advantage of this, bribing people with various sorts of potatoes. However evil grows no actual potatoes; it prints “money” which “guarantees” potatoes. But if you grow none, a day comes when your “money” can buy none.

(If you want to see how swiftly “money” can become worthless, study the Wiemar Republic of Germany in the year 1923.)

And should that day come soon, due to election-year craziness, I’ll be happy to hand out my potatoes. It will be an ego-trip, to see the same women who mocked me thanking me, for a potato.

I will then pray to God that he forgives me for my ego trip. I’ll ask that he help me focus on what really feels good: Feeding the hungry. That is truly good, and while I can’t multiply fishes and loaves, I can grow potatoes, and it is an honor to make children happy with what I grow.

But….

Man does not live on potatoes alone. A filled paunch can’t end the ache of a hollow heart, while the aching of an empty stomach is greatly eased by the joy within a brimming heart, as you give your potatoes away.

Besides growing potatoes, I also grow poems. This is a different crop on a different level, a sort of inwardly Honest News, at a time too many genuflect to outward Fake News. In any case, even as I planted potatoes I harvested the following three sonnets,

Tonight I'll plant a garden in my mind.
I'll strew some stars and braid a comet's tail
And then stand back and hope the weather's kind
And doesn't shock my fields with nightmare's hail
But rather rains sweet honey, and the milk
From Milky Ways, so my strewn stars can sprout
Long rays. A child sees such rays in the black silk
Of night. Adults don't. For what brings about
Such rays are eyes full of tears, but dry 
Grow the eyes of so-called maturity.
Only in theaters do the grown-ups cry;
Only in the dark can the brighter stars show
The rays all deny, yet secretly grow. 

When you get old you are in no hurry
To go where you are going, for it's the grave,
And it seems a waste of time to worry
How one will be received. The peace we gave
Will await, so steep a tea of it now.
In the cool of the morning, be kind.
You need no wallet to smooth your creased brow
And still the roughed waters of your mind.
The fact is, we depart this world flat broke
And naked as we came, with our to-do list
Left behind, so it's something of a joke
To fret about tasks undone. What most have missed
Is the Peace that brings the sun up each day
Which has walked with us every step of the way. 

They're just clouds, but springtime transforms them
Into parades. A dream is nudging edges
Of the woken world; claw-branches again
Grow soft with lacy green; marsh's stark sedges
Also soften as an emerald stain
Expands like tea through the clear waters
Of azure skies...Am I awake? A strain
Of music dances unwritten. Otters
Poke up inquisitive. They're asking me
What I will write. I can't say. Like a calm
Before a storm, it's what you cannot see
That wants to manifest. Then, like a bomb
Of flowers, sudden sunrise will break
And end this dark dream we call being awake.

EVERYTHING WRONG

H.T. Webster was a cartoonist who was very popular in my parent’s and grandparent’s time, and who is now largely forgotten. Like the painter of Saturday Evening Post covers, Norman Rockwell, he felt it was his duty to help us to smile at ourselves. He didn’t much want to deal with the heavy duty stuff, such as racism and genocide, and preferred the innocent problems of old fashioned sexism, back when there were only two sexes. Of the over 15,000 cartoon panels he published in newspapers, hundreds were entitled either, “How To Torture Your Husband” or, “How To Torture Your Wife.” However even these cartoons tended to make the reader smile and shake their head over our insensitivity, rather than to infuriate people into holding demonstrations and fomenting riots and revolutions. Not that he was unaware of the horrors humanity is capable of bringing about. Rather he felt his job was not to further horror, but rather to make people smile. The cartoon below is from 1940, as the storm clouds of World War Two gathered.

The first cartoon is from 1938, when the suffering of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl were to some degree lessening, though many were still hard pressed to get by. By poking fun at a schoolboy’s deep depression over a temporary state of affairs, to a degree where the schoolboy states “everything wrong”, it reminds us, as adults, that whatever hardship we face is only temporary. “This too will pass”, and even, “Some day we will laugh about this.”

H.T.Webster left the world shortly before I entered. Perhaps we waved at each other as we passed. In any case, a memorial anthology of his best cartoons was in my parent’s bookshelf, and as a small boy I recall very much liking the “everything wrong” cartoon. I very much identified with the boy in the cartoon.

Perhaps it is because there is a power in New England which is resistant to spring. The warm air surges north from the south, but can’t quite make it all the way north. Various meteorological factors are involved, including but nor limited to “back door cold fronts” and “cold air damming”, but in essence what resists the surging warmth is a mighty sea-breeze. The high sun warms the land so that air rises, and draws the cold air inland from over the chilled North Atlantic to fill the vacated space. This might be bearable if it was only on the coast, but it often is hundreds of miles inland, past the Hudson River to our west, and hundreds of miles south, sometimes to Virginia.

Rather than the winds from a benign “Bermuda High” to our south, from the southwest and balmy and dry, we get winds from a high pressure to the north called “The Newfoundland Wheel”, and get cold east winds and drizzle. You want to play baseball but the base paths are muddy and the grass is wet. You can’t garden because the soil is clinging mud. Perhaps the only good thing is that sometimes the temperatures drop below fifty, and then even the black flies and mosquitoes go dormant and don’t bite. But for the most part one has the discouraged, depressed sense “everything wrong.”

Perhaps I should add to this the fact that, as the end of the school year approached, time slowed down, and it seemed the end of school would never come. Even back then, just as is true now, being normal could get you sneered-at in schools.

The so-called “teachers” doing this “disciplining” may change their definitions all they want, but sneering remains sneering, and boys remain boys. What was politically correct may be very different now from what it was in 1959 when Eisnerhower was president, but teachers are still bullies, for all their mouthing about how bullying is bad, and ordinary boys are “disciplined” by sneering as badly now, if not worse, than in 1959. Which makes boys yearn for the end of such a cold wind. They long for the summer, when the awful school is shut down, and the sneering ceases. But it seems summer will take forever to get here. And so “everything wrong”.

However, after what seemed like five or six forevers, the future would at last arrive, and I’d escape the sneering, and enjoy a wonderful time of healing, called “summer vacation”.

I don’t get to have summer vacations any more. I haven’t had one in over fifty years. But I still entertain the idea a beautiful future will arrive, and be much better than the present.

Back in 1923 H.T. Weber penned a cartoon imagining life a hundred years in the future, in 2023. It is interesting how he, without describing computers, glimpsed Spell Check and AI.

RIGHTEOUSNESS MILLING AROUND

People who define “milling around” as “loitering” do not understand the process of milling, as it was once done. Back in the “modern” world of our great-grandfathers, power, usually supplied by a water wheel of some sort, turned a great granite disk atop a stationary great granite disk. The top disk had slots cut into it towards the axle, something like the spokes of a wheel. The grain or corn to be milled started down these slots, but seldom made it to the center without being overridden and crushed between the two stones, becoming flour or meal which exited at the center. (Or perhaps it went the other way, from center outwards, in some cases.) In either case, as the grain or corn was trickled in to this grinding process there were initially no high tech scoops that efficiently pushed it into the slots; rather it agitated and bounced about at the entrance to the slots until dumb luck popped it into the slot. In other words, before it was milled it “milled around.”

My point is that “milling around” was part of the process. If grains or kernels stood still they would never enter the slot and be ground. There was no “loitering” involved in “milling around” (or “milling about”). In fact the agitation of grains of wheat or kernels of corn at the entrance of slots was necessary, if those wonderfully simple mills were to work.

As I have been feeling agitated, yet seem to be far from becoming any sort of refined “flour”, I therefore I think “milling around” is a good description of my current state. I am not loitering. I am part of a process above my pay-grade, in God’s hands. I am troubled, agitated, outraged, but lack the power to influence those who trouble, agitate, and outrage me.

I am not alone. The so-called “swamp” in Washington DC has resorted to corruption, calling it “ways and means”, which just isn’t right. Everyone knows it. They themselves know it, which makes them increasingly take steps to oppress the backlash they know is brewing, because they know they deserve it. They hope to delay the backlash until after they have lived their glutted lives, and then, like the French King once stated, “After Us, the deluge.”

However the American Revolution was not like France’s. It definitely had an ugly side, but nothing like France’s. Loyalists did hang the young schoolteacher Nathan Hale, but then acted astonished when they themselves were not hung, but sent packing to Canada, after they lost the war. And as these poor refugees fled north they received food and shelter from the very patriots they had despised. This is different from what the French revolution would have given them: The guillotine.

Despite all the wars and bloodshed, compared to other lands there is something very nice about America. It seems almost too kind. And, whatever it is, it is currently “milling around.”

I don’t find milling around a comfortable place to be. To be so agitated is all wrong. The righteous are overruled by bribed judges, over and over, as if filthy lucre mattered more than God. But what can we do? We “mill around.”

If I were given the time and resources to debate, I could explain why what is wrong is wrong, but such debate is exactly what “they” want to prevent. Therefore I, and countless others, wind up shadow-banned, marginalized, cancelled, unheeded, and part of a population “milling around.”

This is part of a repetitive process which occurs and reoccurs and re-reoccurs in history until we get sick of it. Good gets established as the “Law”, (or Constitution, or Bill of Rights), but then some slime-bags come along and think only suckers follow such sissy, Sunday-school rules, and they briefly prosper by cheating. I say “briefly” because, in the long run, history teaches us that “cheaters never prosper.” However, for a while they think they are smarter than everyone else.

The concept of there being a “Law” we follow to our benefit (and break to our detriment) is very ancient, and predates Moses and the Torah. Through the mists of time, scrutinizing clay tablets, we can catch glimpses of a “God of Righteousness” with a name something like “Zedek”, and this animates the mysterious appearance of Melchizedek, a “high priest of God”, in the wanderings of Abraham, long before Moses wrote the “Law” down.

The “Law” was written or dictated (or perhaps recalled after-the-fact; there is much debate about this,) by Moses as the Torah, which is basically the first five books of the Bible. It is not merely the foundation of Judaism, but also Christianity and Islam. Islam? Yes, for, although I am no scholar of the Koran, in 5:44 It states,

Indeed, We sent down the Torah, in which was guidance and light. The prophets who submitted [to God] judged by it for the Jews, as did the rabbis
and scholars by that with which they were entrusted of the Scripture of
God, and they were witnesses thereto. So do not fear the people but
fear Me, and do not exchange My verses for a small price [i.e., worldly
gain]. And whoever does not judge by what God has revealed – then it is
those who are the disbelievers

 

My personal reading of the above suggests that followers of Islam (and indeed everybody) had best be wary of hating Jews, lest in the process they hate those who are following the Torah, which would make the haters themselves, and not the Jews, the “disbelievers.”

Sadly Mohammedans, and Christians, and Jews, have all at times failed to “Judge by what God has revealed.” That is how religions founded on love are corrupted to hatred and horrible wars. The hypocrisy gives religion a bad name. The behavior of Catholics and Protestants towards each other, and Sunni and Shiite Moslem towards each other, has been barbaric. And that is between followers of the same dogma, who you would think could get along. If you can’t even get along in your own cult, how can you love your enemies? Consequently we see the mayhem of crusades. It is enough to turn anyone towards Atheism. However the fact of the matter is that this disgusting behavior is not proof religion is bad, but proof some don’t practice what they preach.

The sad fact (that we mortals are able to be seduced away from obedience to the “Law”) is ancient. One delightful thing about Judaism is that they don’t hide their failures, in their histories.

One thing that has always fascinated me is the political situation which is apparent in the time when Jews had no overlords, described in “Judges.” They were apparently what we now would call “Libertarian”. They needed no police, for they knew what the “Law” was, and obeyed it, until they got seduced and didn’t. Then all hell broke loose and they became terribly upset, and milled about, whereupon a “Judge” appeared to rescue them and get them back on track, in terms of obeying the “Law.”

Though this was occurring 3000 years ago, it seems suspiciously similar to our situation today, as we mill around. I am wondering if we are wishing for a modern day “judge”. Perhaps Donald Trump?

But the ancient scriptures also describe a time the Jews didn’t just want a “judge”, able to discern between good and evil, but rather wanted to abdicate their personal freedom and accept a “king”. I delight in how the prophet Samuel warned the Jews how costly such an abdication of freedom would be.

So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12 and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15 He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16 He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle^b and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17 He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.

America’s founding fathers wanted presidents to be short term “judges” and not long term “kings.” The first furthers freedom, and the second ends it.

In any case, I have no such power, as we currently mill about.

In some ways I’m glad I have no power, for the burden of telling people the difference between judges and kings would be great, especially because as soon as you have power you face an onslaught of seductions. What sort of fool might I make of myself? Suppose some publisher (who actually gagged at my poetry) told me he wept reading it, or some nubile maiden (who actually found my decrepit body so loathsome she wanted to vomit) told me I was irresistibly attractive? There’s no fool like an old fool, and I confess I’m susceptible to flattery, and therefore it is a good thing I never get any. Instead, I’m just milling about, with all sorts of other people who never get flattered.

Of course, there is something dangerous, even explosive, in the “milling around”. To continue my millstone analogy, people don’t think of flour as being like gunpowder, but when flour dust in the air was ignited by a spark in the old mills, there could be amazing explosions.

Perhaps we saw such an “explosion” in my little town, in broad daylight, at the “big” intersection of Main Street with the “Turnpike”. I pass through that intersection on my way to work, but not on my way home, (because I take a one-way road going home). Therefore I saw nothing unusual when I headed out to feed the goat at the Childcare at 2:00 PM, but later, at 6:55 PM, as I headed out after supper to a Bible Study, the intersection bore a remarkable graffiti.

(I took the above pictures a week after the event. The “burn outs” were even blacker when fresh.)

Usually such “burn outs” are the result of rebellious teenagers going wild at two AM, when no one can see them and report them. What I found striking was the above vehicle did its screaming pirouettes in broad daylight. Also there are some rumors the rebel wasn’t a teenager.

At this point there tends to be discussion about the danger involved, and the foolishness of risk, but there can be little doubt the graffiti which the burn-outs left in the center of a small town expresses a certain contempt towards authority. Then the discussion moves on to which authority is the contempt directed at: The “Law”? Or the busybody ordinances of bureaucrats who themselves are contemptuous of the “Law”?

I can’t say. Maybe a little of both. But I will say that I sense a pent up tension in the air, as people “mill about.” Nor do I feel it is only experienced by a particular political party in the United States. It seems to be world wide. People are simply fed up with a leadership which is increasingly contemptuous of the the “Law”, and increasingly disdainful of ordinary people who simply want to be left alone, and to live ordinary lives, where two sexes have babies in a wholesome and natural way, and support, nourish and raise their children to be good citizens. The simple and ordinary, which the “Law” teaches us is noble and beautiful, is increasingly under attack as being “racist” and “sexist” and “exploitation”, while that which is deviant and criminal is mollycoddled and praised and released without bail after committing horrific crimes.

We are pitted against each other, rather than brought into the brotherhood of unity, when in fact we are all in the same boat. Americans are at odds with the leadership of Iran and China, but the people of Iran and even China are also “milling around.”

Do you think the hard working people of China are not well aware of their government’s shortcomings? They are perhaps more aware than anyone else on earth. They laugh at us for ever trusting those we are starting to distrust, for they have experienced a century of cruelty. They have developed their own way of whispering what the government wants unspoken, and they are well aware of awful deeds, such as organ harvesting from hapless Uighur imprisoned without cause. They are “milling around” too, you know, and their leaders are very worried about it.

And so are the ordinary people of Iran. They too know about the Uighur, and they are incredulous that their leadership, which is so high and mighty about upholding Islam’s “Law”, is friendly with China and says not a word about China oppressing people simply for being Islamic.

In fact the whole world knows about the Uighur, but the leaders do nothing. Inaction is just one more unlawful thing they do among all the rest of the unlawful things they do, laughing up their sleeves at people who try to obey the “Law.” However the “milling around” seems to be getting louder and louder.

For the moment the “Law” seems powerless, but in fact it has a power greater than any leader’s. The “Law” is based upon Truth, and Truth remains true even when dictators disallow It being spoken. Dictators can scream and rage all they want, but Truth silently keeps smiling at them, for Truth cannot be anything other than what it is. It is invulnerable, and there is no kryptonite that can harm such a Superman. Most amazingly of all, Truth is Love, which is unfathomable to greedy, lustful and hateful dictators, and Love has a power so far above the heads of those who sneer at the “Law” that they are like worms under rocks.

This is what I personally feel is building in the “milling around” which I notice more and more.

The founding fathers of the United States were well aware of how people in leadership, (even they themselves), could be seduced and corrupted by greed, lust and hate, and they tried their best to create a government which would prevent such moral failures from gaining control. One device was free and fair elections. Free elections allow the “milling around” of the public to manifest in a manner that avoids bloodshed. However our last election was not free and fair, because the scofflaws in the “Swamp” don’t care about what the Founding Fathers cared about. I can’t imagine the upcoming election will be any different. However in a way it will be different. The “milling about” is far greater.

Many are nervous about bloodshed, and I confess I worry about that myself. But I also have a strange hope that the United States is different. We are a kindly nation, founded on the “Law”, and there may be something in our make-up that skips the bloodshed, and allows Truth to manifest in a way we can’t even imagine.

This strange hope was supported by the fact that on three recent occasions my intellect was reduced to despair. The current nonsense where students chant “Destroy the Jews” an “Death to America” is typical. Intellect is useless when you are dealing with appalling ignorance. One is reduced to moaning.

What good is moaning and groaning? Well, it seems fairly useless, but I chanced on something that struck me as rather wonderful in the sixth Chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

“….the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”

My current woes are not worth recounting, but take my word for it: On three occasions my intellect felt as smart as the wrong side of a rock. I had no answers, and if I was younger I might have expressed myself by screeching tires on a road, and leaving burn-out graffiti of black rubber. Instead I expressed myself by writing three sonnets. In each case I began without any idea what the poem would be about, and in each case they began basically as a groan. Yet in each case I amazed myself. The groan flowed out easily, without correction, and when I was done I felt amazingly revived.

For what it’s worth, here they are:

After outrunning the wolves, the lone stag
Stands on the hill, quietly contemplating 
Where to go next. Shall he climb yonder crag
And watch the sunset, or graze lush grass, sating
All hunger? Even beasts must make decisions.

I, too, must decide, but stand in a place
With no paths, or perhaps my vision's
Too weak to see them. Or maybe I face
Many paths like the spokes of an old wheel,
And I stand at the axle. Where to go?
What to do? I wish I could hear God's will
But my own logic's the poor guidance I know.
I run from wolves like the stag on the hill,
And then? I'm no shepherd. I'm a lost lamb.
I am a not-ness in need of "I Am."

It's spring, but the yellow flowers seem sad.
Sun's bright, but the north wind's crooner chills
With his piercing song. The world has gone mad
And the flowers all seem like a funeral's.
Where has gone hope? Forsythia splashes
Its yellow clowning, bobbing in the breeze,
But I'm not amused. Something glum dashes
The uplift, and If I wrote symphonies
They'd sing of sadness. Someone is missing
And the flowers remind me they're gone.
My lips are cold. They want to be kissing
As daffodils gleam their gold in the dawn.
This ache in my heart makes it quite clear
Love has not gone though love is not here. 

I am hungry for that first drumming roll 
Of thunder in the spring, informing all
We are under new management; the toll
We paid is abolished; Winter's downfall
Is accomplished; the wall that divided
Is smashed like Berlin's. Yet today's rain
Brought no lightning; it just provided
The spring with more chill. I tire of the pain
And look to the clouds for the longed-for shift.
All the world seems awaiting. Where's the thunder?
Wheres the glance of warmth that strangely uplifts
Without words? All the world seems to wonder
In a night so chilled the frogs cease their peeping.
Though men go to bed, no one is sleeping.

TAXTIME TURTLE

Below is the total mess I make of my wife’s lovely dining room when it comes time to do the taxes.

There is order in this chaos. The four piles on the far side of the table and eight piles on the counter represent the twelve months of the year, and I meticulously collect every bill and receipt I can possibly use as a “business expense”, because the more my business expenses are, the less my “profit” is, and profit is what they are after.

In actual fact my profit is zero. “Child Care” is no way to get rich, and for most “child care professionals” it is a way to scrimp by. It is a hand-to-mouth existence, a labor of love, a Christian ministry, and there is something vile about oily accountants from The Swamp wanting to know every detail of how you get by. It’s none of their business. It’s mine. They are ignorant of what I know.

First, in The Swamp’s eyes it tends to look like something fishy is going on, if you work hard and have a charitable nature. Saint Paul said spiritual behavior, to the worldly, looked like “foolishness.” I’d take it a step further, and say that, to a communist, charitable behavior looks like the counterrevolutionary acts of the petite bourgeois, who need to be purged, for only the state is allowed to be a benefactor.

Second, The Swamp wants you to divide yourself from your work, and keep careful track of what you do for your self and what you do for your business. This is absurd, when you are so absorbed in your work that it is your life. But bureaucrats likely want mothers to say, when they breastfeed, how much is for the child and how much is for the mother. They divide what is whole, and it rots what is wholesome.

Bureaucrats can never understand the generosity of the poor. How is it poor people give more than rich people? (This is an established fact, statistically proven by careful research, and should put every rich person to shame.)

The fact of the matter is that such charity is how the poor “get by”.

I took economics in school, and passed my A-level exam in the British system of 1971, even though me and math do not get along. Because I am educated in this way, I am fascinated by the way the poor “get by”, and seek to find a way to make it look more sensible in terms economists understand.

Here is an example:

I thought I’d be faster than usual, and complete my taxes way ahead of the deadline, but no sooner had I made a mess of my wife’s dining room table, when my wife broke three bones in her ankle, which involved surgery. The mess on the table just sat there, barely touched, for weeks, for I had to care for my wife, and also do all her work. A man never appreciates his wife’s workload until he has to do it. He seldom thinks about things such as the fact there is always toilet paper in the bathroom, until there is none there. Then the belittling ceases.

For example, I kid my wife a lot about how fast I go in and out of a store, while she takes longer, however when I had to do all the shopping, it took me three times as long, and I often forgot important items yet came home with some unnecessary stuff. (I bought “scrapple”, made of pork byproducts and cornmeal, because I liked it, sixty plus years ago, drenched in maple syrup during boyhood breakfasts. I didn’t know it existed any more, and when I saw it I figured I needed pampering, with my wife down and out.)

I was hard pressed to find time to cook the scrapple, or anything else, but grimly determined to be a good husband and provide my wife with all the weird stuff she eats, (not scrapple), but then all sorts of other kind women, or their husbands, began arriving at my door, with all sorts of dinners. It was so kind. I did cook breakfasts before rushing to work (when I’m supposedly retired), but when I dragged my butt home I think I only cooked three dinners in three weeks. The hearts of others provided. And some of the dinners that appeared were better than anything I could concoct.

I would have been grateful even if every meal was macaroni and cheese, but that is not my point. My point is how do you show such kindness, when doing your taxes? Can the people who brought me dinner take a deduction for the food they bought?

Not usually, but they should be able to do so. Not that The Swamp even wants to know about such generosity, let alone reduce your taxes if such kindness rules your entire life.

The United States was founded upon ideas full of such kindness. That is why there were so few taxes at first. There was no such thing as an income tax, because the traditional family farm fed, sheltered and clothed many, but the “profit” was minuscule. The government raised most of its money with tariffs on imported goods, and the Custom House at each port was a marble structure, sometimes with pillars in the front of it, for they had the power of the IRS.

It must have been nice to be alive before the income tax existed. Now, when I take kids fishing, I must save a slip of paper that shows I spent $2.50 on worms.

Once I could put the pedal to the metal
And burn the midnight oil. Those days are gone. 
Those hormones are gone. I yawn. My fettle
Is lacking. I'm slacking. I ignore dawn
And I'm not attacking the damn taxes
Like I should. Yet why should I worry?
Even if a man never relaxes
Age makes him like a turtle in a hurry.
My high speed is now to plod a bit faster.
I plod and I plod, and never scurry, 
As life doles out yet another disaster.
I'm not a pleased cat, arching and purry,
For I plod and I plod, which shows I care
And is how an old turtle outruns a young hare.

Sailing through night, my bright guiding star 
Is not made by me. Instead it's a gift.
I did not hang that light, twinkling afar,
And the same is true when my eyes uplift
In worship. My surging inspiration's
Not mine. It's a gift. All the good things 
In life are presents, yet also our nation's
woes, and all that clips our outstretched wings,
Are part of the given as well. Give credit
Where credit is due. We did not make God.
He made us. Grasp that tiller. Embed it
On heart and brain. I know that it sounds odd,
But God wants us shining like yonder star.
The less that you own, the richer you are.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EVERLASTING AND ETERNAL

(This being Sunday, I decided to go off on a esoteric tangent.)

It seems a cynical thing to say, but one thing I have learned in my time is that often the surest route to a complete debacle is to try to improve myself. My New Year’s Resolutions usually end in embarrassment.

Not that we should stop striving. I just had my seventy-first birthday, and I’m still striving to stop being such a moron. And I’m certain our efforts don’t go unnoticed in heaven: “No good deed goes unrewarded.” However we don’t live in heaven, which has led to the sardonic, earthy counter: “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Often our punishment is self-inflicted. Our vision of a better way involves a degree of arrogance, and pride is a dirigible just begging for a pin. Many times, when I became aware that my vanity was getting out of hand, I resolved to stop being vain. I strove in vain.

It turns out that, while egotism may be selfishness, it is a sort of necessary evil. The wild winds of this world would disperse us like a puff of cigarette smoke in a gale if we didn’t have some way of standing our ground. So we become like turtles, and our ego is our shell.

Living in a shell gets old. For one thing, it gets lonely.

Long, long ago, when I was a teenager, men were very tough, but perhaps some began wondering if there might be some way to escape the lonely suit of turtle-armor they were clanking about in. “Peter and Gordon” had a hit song called, “The Knight In Rusty Armor,” back in 1967, which, though in some ways risque for it’s time, typified an unspoken restlessness men felt with being turtles, forever tough and “macho”.

Personally, I wasn’t all that macho to begin with, and my sensitivity was worsened by the fact I had skipped a grade and was the youngest boy in my class. Consequently I went to great lengths to prove I wasn’t a weenie, doing things I didn’t much want to do, to prove I wasn’t a coward. For example, at age fifteen I hitchhiked from the coast of Maine up into Quebec to Montreal, and then southwest to the far eastern suburbs of Toronto. While in Montreal I spent 25 cents to take pictures of myself in a “photo booth”, (the equivalent of a “selfie” in those departed days,) putting on my toughest face, but when the strip of four pictures came out I was slightly horrified. I didn’t look tough, but instead terrified. (I looked like a fifteen-year-old all alone in an alien city where many didn’t even speak the same language.) I think I invested a second 25 cents to do a better job of looking tough.

Experiences such as this made me aware, early on, that there was a gentler, kinder side of myself. I wrote a slightly absurd poem at age 16 describing myself as, “a peach, but a peach in a gravel pit. I bruise too easily.” I recognized I wasn’t as tough as I pretended, and even acted. I could crash five cars, just about kill myself with drugs, be involved with drug smugglers and thieves, but another side of me could sob like a baby, when I was hidden within the dark of a movie theater, watching a tearjerker. Which was the real me?

By age nineteen my life was wreckage. All my efforts at being “tough” were a miserable failure. Therefore I went the opposite direction, and became a miserable failure at becoming a “sensitive male.” I studied all sorts of psychologies and religions, and joined “men’s groups” where we deflated our toughness by punching pillows and weeping about how Mommy was mean, and Coach made us run an extra lap. Beyond doubt this put us in touch with a side of ourselves which being “Macho” denied, and even (somewhat accidentally) connected us to the lower echelon of some sort of spiritual hierarchy which had a vague idea of an Almighty, whom one couldn’t see, far above. But this involved an added humiliation, for I had started to see myself as “religious”, but swiftly also saw I failed to live up to my new, high standards. In fact, when push came to shove, I behaved in a downright unspiritual manner.

Perhaps the worst, and most humorous, failure involved a time I was preaching to an elder brother that “peace is the answer,” and he responded that I was only saying that because I was a prissy little mamma’s boy with wrists too limp to fight. I then attempted to punch his lights out, which wasn’t too peaceful of me, was it now?

Now it is fifty years later, and I seldom try to punch anyone’s lights out anymore, for two reasons. First, my withered testicles are failing to produce enough of the hormones which fuel blind fury, and second, if I got into a physical fight I’d very likely get knocked out in fifteen seconds.

I still do enjoy a good brawl on intellectual levels, but an odd detachment seems to have possessed me. I have the awareness that we mortals lack the brains to find our way out of the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into:

Yes, there is a difference between good and evil, but they are of the same coinage. They need each other to be defined. Good is “less evil” and evil is “less good”, but neither achieves the Absolute. The only way to the Absolute is through the Absolute, which is why Jesus said, “The only way to the Father is through Me,” which was the Christ’s way of declaring he was not a mere philosopher of this world, nor a particularly zealous idealist willing to sacrifice His life for His idealism, (which was how I was brought up to view Jesus), but instead Jesus was from Beyond this world.

Beyond this world? What is Beyond this world?

This world is creation. Beyond this world is the Creator.

The Creator didn’t just create small stuff like galaxies; the Creator created time. The Creator is beyond time.

Can any of us imagine what life is like is without time? I think not. And this is one reason we cannot escape the trickery of this world. We require help. Our own efforts are doomed to failure.

As an optimist, it is hard for me to say we are all doomed, but we are, as long as we insist we can do it on our own. We use creation’s standards to envision what the purpose of life is, but the purpose of life is join our Creator, who is utterly beyond worldly imagination. Our minds create many mental tools which are helpful within creation, but they are of no use when it comes to getting out of creation. In fact the mind itself, like time, is a creation, and something short of the Creator.

Artists, when inspired, gain hints of glory beyond ordinary imagination, and strive to share this amazing beauty with their fellow man, and quite often wind up in some way crucified. They are in some ways like small children copying their father. Their creations are nowhere near as grand as God’s; are like a cardboard box is when a child emulates his father’s truck; but this world has a nasty response, when you in any way, shape or form dare say creation is merely a road, a passageway you walk upon, and that the real goal is the Creator. In a sense you are daring to tell the world it is useful, but like a Kleenex is useful; in the end it will be wadded up and thrown away. And none of us likes being treated like a Kleenex.

I could embark on a long digression at this point, describing in intricate detail the various ways this world insists it matters, and its Creator does not. I’ll skip that, and just say whatever your worldly goal is, it is not the End. You may sweat and strain and strive to be world champion, and even if your dream comes true and you become world champion, it is not the End. Your achievement of the pinnacle is followed by a decline. You get old, as I am now, and then you point out (to people who want to be world champions) that such a worldly goal is not the End, and how do people respond? It is as if you have spoken blasphemy. How dare you! How dare you say being world champion doesn’t matter! Are you trying to discourage our youth?

No, but as an artist I see that what really reaches “the people” is not worldly, but otherworldly. Most artists can’t explain it. They just do it. And when they succeed it is glorious, but besides the ecstasy there is agony. “You gotta pay the dues if you’re gonna sing the blues.” If you take on the role of creator you must also accept the crucifixion.

You may say this world does reward it’s best artists, with millions of dollars, and appreciative audiences roaring approval, and adoring groupies, but in my life I’ve watched how such great men suffer. John Lennon got shot. John Baluchi died of debauchery. And the delightful Robin Williams hung himself. If that is the reward success gains you, I feel blessed to be unsuccessful. It seems even in the small world of art, people prefer the creation more than the Creator. People will spend millions for a painting by Van Gogh, but if they ever had met the agonized man, they likely would have found him weird, and wouldn’t give him the time of day. And, if that is true in the small world of art, is it any wonder that, in the giant world of Absolute Reality, the Creator himself got crucified?

However the Good Book states the Creator bounced right back. Jesus rose from the grave. Creation cannot obliterate its Creator, nor negate the reason for being created, which is to join the Creator in “timelessness”.

And what is the punishment for refusing the Creator’s compassionate invitation? It is to remain in time, which is called the “everlasting.”

In other words, we are given the choice to leave creation and join our Maker in the bliss of Timelessness, or of staying stuck in time. Most chose to stay stuck.

The fact we are given free will, and tend to prefer the known to the unknown, is frustrating to some preachers, who want people to Love God, and accept God’s invitation, and therefore they attempt to bully their congregations into submission. Rather than “everlasting” they like to add horror, and say “everlasting hell” and “everlasting lake of fire.” They desire to scare the bejeezes out of you, which makes them quite different from our compassionate Creator, (and in many cases makes they themselves become candidates for hell). Our Creator does not bully; he gave us free will; He wants us to follow His advice because we adore Him, not because we are cowering in dread.

As a person attempting to be a poet, I have blundered into some inspirations that can only be described as “heavenly.” However they did not last. They obeyed the Law of time, which is that nothing in creation is Eternal. All created things have beginnings and ends, in terms of time. “This too must pass.”

In other words, “everlasting heaven” would still be within the traps of time, and less than the bliss of joining our Creator outside of the trap of creation called time. Therefore, as attractive as such heaven might be, it would still hold the pangs of separation from the Creator. Even as one reaped the rewards which the virtuous deserve, one would know they were still on the road; they had not shed the shell of a turtle and become absorbed in What We Cannot Imagine.

Seen in this light, a person enjoying “everlasting heaven” is not that far removed from “everlasting hell.” The former are experiencing enjoyment as the latter experience suffering, but they are stuck in time.

One of the most intriguing statements in the Bible is where Saint Peter states what Jesus did during the time between when his body was “dead” and when his body was “resurrected”. Peter states Jesus went to hell to “preach to the sinners of Noah’s time.”

(If Christianity had the eraser of “cancel culture”, this statement would be scrubbed from scripture. It has caused problems. Why would Jesus preach to the damned? Were they not “everlastingly” damned? Or is there an escape from hell? Jesus would not preach just to rub it in that the damned were forever doomed, but rather to save them from doom. So there must be an escape hatch from hell, which led to the concept of “purgatory”, which is “derived but not mentioned” in Christian scripture, and has led to one heck of a row.)

Personally I’ve tended to retreat from all religious squabbling. It has gotten out of hand. I study history, and know “the Pope”, (actually many Popes over 2000 years), has authorized the deaths of roughly fifty million Christians. Hitler only killed six million Jews, and he could claim they were “not Christian”. As the “Pope” killed fifty million he knew they were fellow Christians, but didn’t agree with Rome. God may have given such free thinkers free will, but the “Papacy” did not approve of freedom. In response Protestants have killed millions of Catholics. Likely their numbers are less, but only because Protestants have only had five hundred years to butcher within. And the peculiar thing is both sides insist they are not aggressive, but merely “defending” their faith.

Islam is no different. Millions have died in wars between Sunni and Shiite. They are no different from Catholics and Protestants. They took otherworldly Love and made it dirty and worldly. They used scriptures of Love to make war.

And if Christians can’t even get along with Christians, and Muslims can’t even get along with Muslims, it is little wonder that when these two supposedly spiritual groups meet the sparks fly, and our planet sees all the pleasantries of crusades and jihads.

That is why I tend to retreat from all religious squabbling. The “experts” so obviously miss the point. I want to use the free will God has blessed me with to be a free thinker.

What I have concluded, with my puny intellect, is that there is a big difference between the “everlasting” and the “eternal.” The “everlasting” exists within time and space, but the “eternal” exists in timelessness and spacelessness. And, around the time my thinking gets this far, there is smoke and the reek of burning rubber, and my brains burn out. For even the perfected mind of a mastermind cannot comprehend God, and therefore my puny intellect hasn’t got a prayer, (yet, oddly, when you haven’t got a prayer tends to be when you pray most.)

The mind too is a creation. It is the most useful tool of all (when it properly integrates the heart) for traversing creation, but in the end it is shed, like a useful knapsack is shed at the end of a long, long journey. But who can imagine this? The very idea of losing our minds tends to fill us with dread.

(I warned you at the start this would be an esoteric tangent. The definition of “esoteric” is “a subject few understand.” I am not one of the few who understand. I am one of the many who don’t. But I do like to look at Infinity, and be humbled by wonder.)

THE DRAB DAYS

We are into the drab days of winter, when life assumes the pleasureless aspect which a long distance runner endures just before they experience the euphoria of a “second wind”. Life hardly seems worth living. People don’t try as hard. Down at the local market, one notices that bad-hair-days are becoming more commonplace. The winter is relentlessly grinding, wearing people down. Around this time of year the old-timers used to greet each other with, “Have you surrendered yet?”

Around February 15 the old-timers would say, “Winter’s back is broken,” and there would be a revival of hope, for by then the sap would be running and there would be the sweet smell of maple syrup in the air. Hope still seemed new and odd, for often the worst snows of the winter hit at that time, and continued right into March (when the legendary “Blizzard of 1888” occurred), but people seemed downright jolly midst such storms, and even when cleaning up afterwards, compared to how downcast they were at the start of February.

The downcast state is a mood we need to recognize.

This winter drags its drab, dirty charcoal
Across the dry parchment precious time becomes
When simply to endure's the only goal
And hope becomes a hurt that caution numbs.

How listless the pathway home is seeming
And how steep and stern my front steps. The smile
Is gone from friend's faces, and my dreaming
Is dulled. Pour me no wine, for every mile
Is just the same. and nothing changes
The ordeal. Yet I feel a Deja Vu
Midst such boredom; Winter deranges
But its monotony hides what is true:

What is true we have seen many times in the past:
The Spring will triumph. The cold cannot last.

The period of time between February 1 and February 15 may seem a short period, but it is not laughable when it is spent in withdrawal from drugs. It then becomes a sheer hell to endure, to regain hope.

It is important to recognize how terrible the drabness can feel, and yet also to offer the hope that avoids the tragedy of suicide.

Drugs are only the most obvious of addictions. Any desire we own can humiliate us. One time I was in a car crash and a close friend had a gashed forehead. I had a valuable shirt I could have used to press against the bleeding, but I hesitated. I didn’t want to ruin the shirt. I only hesitated a moment, but during that moment someone else stepped forward with some other piece of cloth. The incident shamed me, for it was plain to me, if to no one else, that I was addicted to a stupid shirt.

In terms of drugs, my own efforts to quit in 1972 resulted in humiliation after humiliation. The climax occurred when I had quit for three weeks, but received a “hashish brownie” as a gift for Christmas. I had no desire to eat it, but a person I was angry at said, “Oh, you have quit. Give it to me.” I immediately gobbled it, to get revenge of some weird sort, but this was so against the spirit of Christmas I was completely repulsed by myself. I was the opposite of a giving person. God must be disgusted with me.

But this self-disgust had me having a heart to heart talk with God, wherein I basically said, “Well, I sure did screw up this time. What can I do? I guess the only thing is to try, try again”. That must have been the right thing to say, for I was immediately hit by a stunning sensation of merciful benevolence that healed me in ways I could not heal myself. I quit drugs.

For this reason I always advise asking the Big Man Upstairs for help.

However once I had quit I was not spared the withdrawal symptoms. That winter was the worst, in terms of being a gray stretch of time without hope. Without drugs to get me high, I never was high. I was never inspired. It was just dull day after dull day. What was the use of being good when being good was so damn boring? But I hung in there, and finally had a slight inspiration. It was only a hint, and nothing like the demented highness of drugs, but I did write a song, and did walk about singing.

During the drab days of the current winter that old song I wrote fifty-two years ago came back to me, on a drab day when I could not muster the inspiration to think of a new song to sing. I think the song originally had four verses, but I could only remember two.

Is that there
A willow tree
In the winter's gray
Clowning yellow happily
And laughing in its play,
"Spring will come some day."?

Can it be 
A hidden grin
Is bursting out aloud?
A boatless sailor's porpoise fin?
I see you're in
Beneath your shroud.

Hang in there.

TO STOP A JEEP FROM BEEPING

I’m sitting in a rocking chair by a window with the fire roaring inside and the wind roaring outside, watching the snow swirl. A squall is moving through. In the summer we’d be having thunder and a heat wave would be ending. This being January, thunder is unlikely, but the sharp drop in temperatures is the same. Thaw is ending, and a cold wave’s in the cards.

I prefer being inside, watching the weather. I might go out as far as the porch, just to sniff the wind and hear the pines roar atop the hill, and perhaps grab a couple logs for the fire, but my hot-blooded youth is around the bend in my rear view mirror. Once I’d be drawn out to stride through such storms. Now getting me out is like pulling teeth.

Not that I don’t remember testing the limits, for in a sense I’m still testing them, only the limits are a lot less. Limits hit closer to home, as you grow grizzled. Walking up a long staircase is my modern Mount Everest, and the second beer now like the tenth. Life has its troubles, all the way through; it’s just that the ordeals of the old seem a bit pathetic to the young, who bound up staircases three steps at a time.

And I must admit I like getting texts from my second son, who lives on the coast of Maine, and must escape his stuffy office when it storms. He’s still hot blooded, and will go out to walk in the screaming wind to witness the wave’s fury at Maine’s stubborn granite shores. His ordeal is actually the stultification of an office, and he experiences an odd envy towards those who push the limits, driving trucks through highway hypnosis, with the wipers lulling and the hurricane gusts shoving the truck towards the verge, or the fishermen out in a storm, rocked drowsy by seas that would make anyone else sick and terrified. `How can one be so exhausted they fall asleep at the wheel in a hurricane?

Think of that, next time you order broiled haddock at a restaurant. We are beholden to people who push the limits.

But age reels in the limits. I can’t push my luck to the degree I once could. The time has come to sit by the fire and write memoirs. I should be retired, but of course Bidenflation has people afraid to stop earning, myself included. I haven’t shut down the Childcare I run, though I don’t hike with the kids as much or as far, and rarely get on sleds with them and go screaming down hills. I may even finally act my age. When the winds cut like a knife, I increasingly find things to do indoors.

I especially didn’t want to go out yesterday morning. I was cozy, in bed, watching the black window slowly purple with the day. The wind was roaring, but from the south, as we were on the east side of the storm that’s now departing. Rain was pelting the window, and the daybreak was late due to the thick overcast, but I didn’t have to get up. It was Saturday, I didn’t have to worry about my Childcare opening. I could drift back to dreamland. I snuggled down into my pillow, and just then there was the loud blaring of a horn.

It went on and on unceasingly. My wife jolted awake and uttered the two words without the third, “What the…” I swung from the bed and lurched blearily to the window. “Guess it’s the neighbor’s car. I can see it’s lights flashing”. Then I collapsed back into thankful sheets.

The horn went on and on. My wife gave up and got up to get coffee, as I tried to hide under my pillow. As my wife left she looked out the window. “Their car’s lights are still flashing. Whatever they are doing with their remote, it isn’t working. They’re going to have to go out into this filthy weather.”

“Poor souls,” I muttered sleepily, nestling back down.

The horn went on and on. I could hear it through the pillow. Finally I said all three words, and whipped out of bed to drag on my pants and my tee shirt and angrily stomp to the front door. Out on the front porch I could see the neighbor’s car wasn’t flashing its lights any more. What’s more, the horn’s blaring didn’t seem to be coming from that direction. In fact…could it be…

Quickly I slipped on shoes without socks and a heavy, cloth coat, and hurried out through the wind and rain and, sure enough, my Jeep was the culprit. The wind must have driven rain through the grill and wet the wiring under the hood. I opened the door and tried putting the key in the ignition. The horn kept baring. I sat down in the car and turned on the engine. The horn kept blaring. I tried to think, but its hard to think when a horn keeps blaring. Desperately I tried opening the door and slamming it very hard. The horn kept blaring. I tried locking and unlocking the locks, turning the engine off and on again, and then even insanely tried the radio and wipers, but nothing would stop that horn. I was going to have to disconnect the battery.

I pushed the buttons and pulled the knob to unlocked the hood and the tailgate (where my toolbox is), removed the key, opened the door and got a face-full of cold, stinging rain. Wincing I swung from the car, and came face to face with my wife, who had come out in a warm, especially fluffy bathrobe, big boots, and a broad rain-hat, and was studying her cellphones screen. “It says you should try locking and unlocking your doors”.

“Tried that.”

“Try starting the engine?”

“Tried that.”`

“Tried…um…” she squinted against a blast of wind, consulting her cellphone, “…um…disconnecting the battery?”

There are times an ungrateful streak appears in me. During such times I find kind, helpful people annoying, even if they are my wife. One of those times is when I’m standing in a wind-whipped rain in a coat designed for snow and not rain, which is rapidly becoming drenched and heavier, with a horn blaring and blaring and blaring. But I fought off a wave of sarcastic replies (my wife has trained me well) and responded, “I’m doing that exact thing right now.”

I turned to get an adjustable wrench from my toolbox, and came face to face with my oldest son and his wife hurrying up in bright raincoats. Wryly I thought to myself, “At least they had the brains to dress appropriately”. My son shouted over the noise, “Hi Dad! We came to see if you had passed out over your steering wheel!” His wife shot him a glance and said, “Actually we thought there had been an accident. Often that is what gets horns stuck.”

“Nope. I haven’t a clue what gives with this stupid horn. Wet wires I guess.” I was fishing about in my messy toolbox at the back of the jeep. “Oh, here it is.” I walked to the front and busily loosened the cable from the battery, as my son looked on in interest. Behind him the two women were chatting, one in a raincoat and one in a bathrobe, in a howling rainstorm. Not a thing you see every day. Even in my bad mood I wished I had a camera.

Abruptly there was silence, blessed silence.

I had an odd and perhaps crazed hope that by stopping the horn I might have fixed the problem. Even twenty-four year old jeeps have computer chips, and maybe those newfangled things just needed to be shut down and rebooted. It works with my laptop, when it goes crazy; maybe it would work with a crazy Jeep. I touched the disconnected cable back to the battery in an exploratory manner. “Blaaa!”

Enough! I disconnected for good, and turned to go. Before I could slam the hood my son reached in to tuck the cable a safer distance from the battery terminal, which I appreciated. Then he withdrew to immediately begin chatting with the women about the abysmal weather.

My wife was quite merry, in her rain-hat and rapidly wilting robe, laughing about how we had thought it was the neighbor’s car, and how they likely thought it was their car as well, which was why we saw the lights in their car flashing. They were desperately trying to stop their horn with their remote, when it wasn’t their horn at all. How funny!

I decided some people have a peculiar sense of humor. Slamming my jeep’s hood, I muttered something sardonic about finding a better place to talk, and headed dripping back through the rain towards the house, the chatterboxes trailing along behind me

My son and daughter-in-law were heading home, but seemed to feel it would be impolite to depart without civilities, so they walked up the drive and climbed the steps and we paused on the porch. I had worked hatless in the rain, which is never a good idea, and I felt on the verge of shivers. The porch was not good enough, so I was about to invite them in, when apparently the civilities were over, and they turned to go. I thanked my son for checking up on me to see if I had died, and he laughed. But I saw him scrutinizing the shrunken size of my porch woodpile. Ordinarily between knee-deep and chest-deep, it was down to six logs. I had my excuses, but was in no mood to make them.

Stepping in the house, I immediately noticed it wasn’t much warmer than it was outside. The roaring south wind had us in a veritable heat wave, for January, and it was nearly up to fifty (ten Celsius). Meanwhile indoors the wood stoves had burned low, and I hadn’t restocked them first thing in the morning, because I was enjoying oversleeping. Inside the heat was nearly down to fifty, which is when the propane heat automatically kicks on. I walked up to the thermostat that controls the propane heat, and cranked it up to seventy. (Twenty-one Celsius.) I’d be darned if I was going to hustle about tending fires and then waiting for them to heat the house up. So what if the propane bill was ten dollars higher? Sometimes a man just needs to splurge.

I hadn’t even had my first cup of coffee. That stupid, blaring horn had stripped my life of any semblance of extravagance. Well, I’d had enough. No more Mr. Nice Guy. I was going to put my foot down, and, come hell or high water, have my coffee.

Problem with putting your foot down is that you, in one way or another, usually step in it. The coffee in the pot was cool, and, even when I heated my cup in the microwave and slouched to my armchair, the wood-stove next to my chair was barely warm. Far away I could hear the propane furnace rumbling to life, but it would take time for that heat to reach my chair. So it looked like I would have to tend fires, after all.

I put my coffee cup atop the stove, crouched down and opened the stove’s door and poked around, gathering the remaining coals to a small pile near the door. Then I fished around in the wood box for scraps of kindling and bark, lay them on top of the coals, and carefully, split side down, put three small logs on top as a triangle. Then I wheezed at the coals with what is left of my lungs.

Something about starting a fire always improves my mood. Maybe its only because I used to get in trouble for playing with fire, as a boy, and now I don’t get in trouble any more. Or maybe not. I still get in trouble, for getting ashes and dirt and bugs on my wife’s clean floor. And also, come to think of it, I enjoyed starting fires even when I got in trouble for it, as a boy.

Instead I think there is something very ancient, even Neanderthal, about starting a fire. It involves power. Once the fire was blazing, even the most wimpy cave-man could cow a sabre toothed tiger, simply by waving a burning branch in its face.

As I sat on my haunches watching my fire grow my mood improved. I stood up and took off my wet coat and hung it on the coat-hooks we have by that fire to dry clothes. I sipped my coffee. I could hear words collecting as sentences in the back of my mind, and a post growing, revolving about the power of a fire. After all, fire also has power as a spiritual symbol.

If our pride, vanity and egotism is seen as the wood, then the fire that reduces such wood to ashes can be seen as a Spiritual Master’s rebukes and/or suggestions, which, in a sort of spiritual “chemical reaction”, breaks down wooden selfishness and frees up the selfless power of heat and light.

Hmm. This could get interesting. I squatted back down to poke intently at the fire.

I toyed with weaving in an image employed by Persian poets: Heat and light has the power to attract moths to circle inward, closer and closer to the flame, despite the danger of their imminent destruction. What might that symbolize?

I reached out, took a sip from my hot coffee cup atop the stove, and considered weaving a more down-to-earth-power into my braid of thought:. Arabs can embargo your oil heat, governments can ration your propane heat, electric companies can cut off your electric heat, but the only way to stop you from burning wood from your own back yard is to step onto your turf, which often, throughout history, has proven to be a bridge too far, for busybody bureaucrats.

As I crouched down and again poked at the fire I sipped my coffee, and decided this Saturday might not turn out to be so bad after all. A really cool post was brewing up in my mind. Even if I flopped at getting my ideas into a cohesive form, it would be fun to try. If I just hurried to finish my chores in my Jeep….

My Jeep. That was one thing Neanderthals didn’t have to deal with. A burning branch might stop a sabre toothed tiger, and back off a gigantic woolly mammoth, but it wouldn’t stop a Jeep from blaring its horn.

I couldn’t make the weekly Childcare deposit at the bank in a Jeep with a blaring horn. I couldn’t drive the trash to the dump the recyclables to the recycling center in jeep with a blaring horn. That meant the only doable chore was to bring wood up onto the porch from the woodpile, before the next storm. I glanced over at the window. The sky seemed darker, not lighter, as the sun rose, and the rain fell harder than ever. Not a good day for an old man with bad lungs to work outside.

My good mood popped like a bubble. Was there nothing I could do?

I supposed I could take my inability to do anything as a “sign”, an excuse to retreat and withdraw from the challenges of life, and be a “poet”. However, after doing this roughly sixty thousand times in my life, I know it only makes my problems, if not worse, then just sit there, looking at me. And I’ve also discovered it is very hard to write well when a problem is just sitting there looking at you, waiting.

With a sigh I faced the last thing I wanted to do: How to stop a Jeep from beeping. I typed that into the search engine of my computer, “How to stop a Jeep from beeping.”

Initially I plodded through various websites cursing my cruel fate. Did Keats or Shelley ever have to face such indignity? The good die young, but I get dragged into my old age dealing with inanity after inanity, until now in my decrepitude I’m reduced to dealing with beeping Jeeps. To think that I ever complained about washing dishes!

Then, abruptly and to my surprise, I found myself enjoying myself. I chanced across a website holding garrulous geezers who were very fond of their old Jeeps, even when the vehicles qualified (like mine) as “clunkers.” With wonderful humor they talked about all the problems they faced, keeping their rusted hulks running.

It turned out I wasn’t the only one faced with a horn that started blaring and wouldn’t stop. Unlike most other problems discussed on the site, no one had a clear answer to the problem. The two solutions to the problem didn’t actually identify what the problem was.

One solution was to pull the fuse for the horn. A old Jeep’s horn apparently was on a circuit all by itself, and no other functions would be effected if you pulled that fuse. However this involved finding the location of the fuse box, and then involved finding the location within the fuse box of the right fuse, and lastly of extracting that fuse, which isn’t always easy after it has been in place for over twenty years.

Easier was the second solution, which was to let the engine dry. This would solve the problem until it got wet again. Usually this happened when the owner’s spouse was borrowing the Jeep, which led to lots of funny stories. However this solution filled me with hope, especially as the window abruptly brightened from purple to gold, and the sun burst out.

The warm front had passed, and we were in the storm’s “warm sector.” It was still humid, and wisps of snow-eater fog appeared and disappeared over the snow-pack, but I ventured to hope my Jeep’s engine might dry enough to stop the horn from blaring.

Waiting for an engine to dry seemed like a chore I could handle, and I sat back to do it. I figured I could multitask by considering my brewing post, “Neanderthal Fires”. But just then my wife came bustling in, and began to regard me in an evaluating way. I hardened my jaw. My wife doesn’t always approve of how I spend my time. Just the way she looks at me makes me fear several items are being added to my Honeydew List.

This is another thing Neanderthal’s didn’t have to deal with. It is very hard to write when my wife is just watching me, waiting.

I decided to head outside and stack a little wood, quickly, before she could add to my list. The effort would get me huffing and puffing, and its harder to add onto an old man’s list when he’s huffing and puffing.

However even as I arose I heard an approaching engine, growing louder and then pausing in front of my woodpile, followed by a clanging. I went to the window and saw my grandson throwing logs into the big bucket of his Dad’s front-end-loader.

The sight made me smile, and it wasn’t just because I like it when my son and his sons stack my wood for me. It was also because we usually use the front-end-loader to transport the firewood greater distances than the fifteen yards from the woodpile to the front porch. It actually would have been faster to carry it armload by armload by hand, than to load it and unload it, into and out from the loader’s bucket. But my younger grandson just turned sixteen, and just loves to drive anything he can get his hands on.

My wife came and stood beside me at the window, and I adroitly switched the subject from my Honeydew List to reminiscing. I far prefer reminiscing to doing actual work, (unless you define my “work” as reminiscing on paper). (As I do.)

In my most sentimental voice I sighed how it didn’t seem that long ago when that grandson was thigh high, and now he’s abruptly big as I am. In her least sentimental voice she said I should pay our grandson something for all his hard work, reminding me this was the third time he’d stacked wood for us.

A spasm of irritation hit me. Since when do you get paid for stacking a old cripple’s wood? I never got paid for stacking my Dad’s wood when he got old. If there is such a thing as “child support” then there also should be a thing called “grandpa support”. In fact, a decent definition of “family” is, “Hard work you don’t get paid for.” But my wife only understands the sacrificing part, and not the receiving part. Fifteen devils leapt onto my left shoulder, suggesting sarcastic replies I could speak to her.

I’ve been well trained. I swiped all fifteen demons aside, scattering them, and I did not speak a single sarcastic reply, but I’ll confess I did sigh. And my wife’s eyes narrow when I sigh, as if a sigh spoke fifteen devils. I sighed, but said, “I agree. He deserves an allowance.” I took out my wallet from my back pocket and opened it. It held slim pickin’s. “Do you have cash?” She went to her purse and returned with two twenties. I had extracted two rumpled fives from my emaciated wallet, and accepted her contribution. Then I turned to the window and reminisced, “I worked for $1.60 an hour, back in ’71…”

My wife didn’t want to reminisce. The front door closed, and in the view out the window my grandson looked up from the woodpile and smiled. My wife entered from stage left, cheerfully exuberant in the sunshine. Meanwhile the devils were crowding back back onto my shoulders.

I don ‘t know what I expected to happen when I reached age seventy, but I did think I’d somehow outgrow thinking crabby thoughts. No such luck. If you want to defeat the habits of a lifetime you’d best begin when you are young, before they become the habits of a lifetime.

A racket was going in my head, sort of like a Jeep’s stuck horn. Out the window a grandmother and grandson were chatting happily in the fits of sunshine, as clouds scudded over in a springlike breeze, but I was fomenting a gloom, thinking up reasons to be offended.

I looked down at the money in my hands. Why didn’t my wife carry it out? Because maybe my son wants my grandson to work for free, out of the goodness of his heart, and maybe we’ll get a lecture for tipping the young man. Or I will. My wife will escape because she didn’t hand him the money. So she doesn’t even have to think about such reverberations.

Nor does she have to brood about inflation, and how the so-called “elite” are screwing the hard working salt-of-the-earth, the people who actually do the work that makes comfort possible. It is as if the “elite” are “clipping” the edges of silver coins, making the coins slightly smaller, and thinking no one will notice. But that was the original reason for “milling” the edges of silver coins, to keep such sneak-thieves at bay. And for the first hundred-forty years the United States existed there was no inflation. A man worked for “a dollar a day”. But then came the taxing and the tax collectors, and money was “clipped” in a new and technically devious way.

I sighed. My wife doesn’t like it when I get all political, but in my life I’ve watched the sneak-thieves prosper. When my generous grandfather gave me five dollars for Christmas it could buy a hundred candy bars, but if I give my grandchildren the same bill, they are lucky if they can buy two. More than ninety percent of the value of a five dollar bill has vanished in my time. Where has it gone?

Basically it has gone into the power (and pockets) of politicians, who do not have to create wealth; they just print money. But the money they print actually has no real value, though people salivate over it and are able to be bribed and compromised. And this worthless money dilutes the value of the real money made by real work. Inflation is to work what adultery is to marriage.

Neanderthals didn’t have to think about such stuff. They had no reason to save, or to save for long, for if you don’t eat the mammoth meat it goes bad. Even a flint spear-point must be used to have value, and if you hurl a spear the flint tip may smash if it hits the rocky ground. They lived more in the Now than we do.

But what was my Now? It was a stupid Jeep with a malfunctioning horn. I went back to the website and glanced for the location of the fuse-box, and then headed out the door.

My wife and grandson were still merrily chatting. Not much wood was getting stacked. I handed my grandson the money, a bit gruffly stating, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.”

His face lit up. Youth does like praise, and also money. But then I added, “And if you don’t want to accept it, give it to your Dad, to pay for the loader’s gasoline.” His eyebrows shot up, and he looked a bit anxiously towards the front end loader, which was idling. “Oh, Yes, Absolutely. Gasoline is important. Absolutely.” Apparently I’d touched upon a sensitive topic. What couldn’t I keep my big mouth closed?

Avoiding my wife’s eyes, I continued on to my Jeep, and looked under the glove compartment for the fuse-box. There was no sign of a fuse-box anywhere under the dashboard. With a sigh I opened the hood and dared to reconnect the battery. To my delight the horn didn’t come on. Problem solved.

I ambled back up into the house to see if the web could tell me where the fuse-box was in “certain models”. Or maybe I just wanted to get back to the Jeep website, and enjoy the faceless brothers who knew the joys of being garrulous. My wife was bustling about in her highly efficient manner, but paused in front of me, and inquired, “Should I wait to go shopping to drive you to the bank?” I dreamily looked up, and murmured, “Bank? No need. The horn is fixed.”

No sooner had she driven off when I abruptly heard, “WAAAAAA!” Leaping up, I hurtled out the door and down the steps, nodding at my grandson as I hurried by to stop the awful noise. It didn’t take long to bring back the blessed silence, but as I turned to walk back to the house I had things besides Neanderthals to think about.

Obviously the wiring hadn’t completely dried. However the engine had heated up, so perhaps the engine’s heat would hasten further drying. I just needed to be patient.

Walking back to the house I found I was huffing and puffing. I had hurried down to stop the blaring faster than the prescribed speed-limit for seventy-year-old men. At the bottom of the stairs I nodded at my grandson, and pretended to scan the sky for signs of the approaching cold front. In actual fact those stairs have recently become steeper.

It is taking me a while to get back in shape, after being hospitalized with pneumonia. I’m off the oxygen, and my wife has shifted all the bottles and tubes and other paraphernalia into a back room where it doesn’t disturb the aesthetics of her interior, but I still remain more of a weakling than I like. As I took a deep breath and labored up the steps I wryly thought to myself I wasn’t doing a very good job of, ` “gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”

For some reason that phrase has stuck in my head, from a poster that was on the walls of many college dorms and hippy communes fifty-five years ago. It was an old sage’s serene advice, from something called the “Desiderata”, supposedly written in 1692 and left in a church in Baltimore and only recently rediscovered, (but in fact written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann). In any case, when my father was crippled by polio at age 34 he did not gracefully surrender. He fought like hell, and I seem to have inherited some of his ferocity. There is a Dylan Thomas mood in me,

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

This tends to clash with the serenity I inherited from my mother, who understood rest is a great healer. She was a nurse, while my father was a surgeon and understood running laps is also a great healer. Little wonder they divorced, but I’m stuck with them in my head.

With a sigh I sagged by my laptop again, clicking back to the Jeep website, but my mind off with the Neanderthals. Judging from their bones, they lived brutal lives, yet cared for their injured, (and I suppose injuries are common when you hunt woolly mammoths without a gun). The cold was constant, and caused arthritis. Yet their elders lived after they were able to hunt, and when they died they were sometimes buried with flowers. They sat by fires that burned for decades in caves, talking about what? Jeeps?

How did Jeeps get into my thinking? Oh, yes, my laptop was open to that website, and some practical part of my brain was idly scanning comments the way some people play solitaire when midst deeper thought, and I was noticing something that distracted me from Neanderthals.

Here and there contributors had noticed that their blaring horn occurred in tandem with other electrical problems. Perhaps a radio quit or the heater’s fan quit. They could get by without a radio or fan, but when wipers quit the driver had to grab the bull by the horns and solve the problem, which apparently lay in something called the “wiring harness”. After a couple decades of jouncing across the landscape a Jeep’s wires frayed and then short circuited, and this might allow electricity to invade the circuit that supposedly was dedicated to the horn and only the horn.

I sat back with the serenity that comes from finding an answer. The driver’s side window of my Jeep had quit rolling up or down a few months ago, which was something I could live with, but I could not live with that horn. If drying the wires didn’t work, then I could….I glanced at the clock….

Yikes! The bank would be closing in 55 minutes, and I hadn’t even started on the receipts. And the dump recycling center would close in 120 minutes, and they’d slam the gate in your face if you were ten seconds late!

I’ll skip the details of the frantic rush that followed, except to say that when I reconnected the battery the wires were dry and I made it to the bank on time and without a blaring horn. Then I had to hustle to load all the trash from my home, and head over to the Childcare to grab that trash as well.

Having to hurry annoyed me no end. I like to saunter in and chat with the young ladies at the bank, but I had to fly in and out like the rudest capitalist. Then I always get irritated by how I have to spend time separating our trash for the various recycling bins, when it seems other, unnamed people could show some consideration and themselves do the separating, for an old man like me. Especially annoying are dirty kleenex in the paper bin, which is not allowed, and unwashed jam jars, which are not allowed, and so forth, which seems to indicate people are too prissy to dirty their fingers, and leave stuff to rot and become covered in maggots, for me to deal with. It’s not fair, and soon fifteen devils are on my shoulder, sawing away at the violins of my self pity, and my mind is soon blaring like a stuck horn.

Against all those devils is one sane angel on my other shoulder, telling me not to make a big deal out of minor offenses. I’d like to say this angel is the result of becoming old and wise, and that I’ve learned to be detached and objective, but to be brutally honest I think that angel has been there all along, even back when I was a wild teenager.

The comedian Bill Cosby once described a time he drank too much and became sick, and a conversation he had with a toilet bowl. Apparently we all have an objectivity within us, even when we are at our worst. Even Saint Paul describes how he knows what is good, but does bad things, (in the seventh chapter of Romans,) and I figure that, if a superman like Paul can blow it, it gives me an excuse to ignore the good angel and listen to the fifteen bad ones.

And I have to confess I derive a sort of pleasure out being crabby. I try not to be crabby out loud, or to hurt another, but privately, in secret, I need to express myself. I need to express how it sometimes feels like I go the extra mile for people who won’t go an inch for me. The good angel on my shoulder can remind me I’m not the only soldier in the trenches, and that millions die never thanked, never given a Medal of Honor or even a Purple Heart. The baked haddock I enjoy may involve a wrecked fishing boat. But they are not me. I’m the one suffering here, and therefore I’m the one crabby.

I was especially crabby as I arrived at the Childcare to grab it’s trash. Usually it is a quick job, but my younger daughter insists on living in a romantic novel rather than reality, and the current drama has her destitute with two small children. (I’ll allow you to fill in the details.) The State of New Hampshire, in a rare bit of legislative sanity, refuses to pay welfare for housing when family is available. Therefore rather than serenely retired I am a “support”. In some ways it reminds me of the Robert Frost poem where a hired hand returns to a certain farm to die, and the following exchange occurs between the farmer and his wife,

‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’

                           ‘I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’ 

In any case, she has come home, which irritates me for two reasons.

The first reason involves the fact I have a surgeon and a nurse echoing in my skull, the first saying healing involves exercise and the second saying healing involves rest. Simply avoiding schizophrenia forced me to marry the contradictions, and see both are correct. Furthermore, doctors can’t function without nurses, and nurses can’t function without doctors, and therefore most quarreling between the two is a waste of time, and divorce is the greatest waste of all. Consequently all the drama of romantic novels, and most of the angst in pop music on the radio, bores me. It is all a waste of time, compared to harmony. (Which makes me look like a hypocrite for being so discordantly crabby about romantic drama.)

The second reason for irritation involves the fact a poor old man like myself has to deal with extra trash. Furthermore, because she has little free time with two small children and a job, rather than shopping my daughter orders much through Amazon, which means her trash includes an amazing number of cardboard boxes. However the dump recycling center will not accept boxes unless they are broken down. But did my daughter find the time to break down the boxes? No. And lastly, I had arrived at nap time, (not only for the two little ones but for the exhausted Mom,) so I was expected to work on tiptoes.

But what about the exhausted grandfather?

Externally I try to appear sympathetic, empathetic and magnanimous to a saintly degree, but internally the violins of my self pity were sawing so fast the strings were smoking. Did Shelley or Keats or Shakespeare ever have to break down boxes on tiptoes? I very much doubt it. How am I ever to write my great work about Neanderthals when I have to be nice, and nobody’s nice to me? Worst was that I had to work so fast I was huffing and puffing, because the recycling center was about to close. But did anyone pity me?

Right at this point a text came in from my ten-year-old granddaughter, asking me why the word “polka-dot” has an “L” in it. I had no time to answer, and the irony of the situation staggered the devils on my shoulder backwards. Even they were amazed by the language I used to express my exceptional ire.

The irony is this: For some reason my granddaughter does respect my opinions, (but my daughter has a mind of her own). My granddaughter got her first cellphone for her tenth birthday, and I immediately received a gibberish of imogis. With my replies I hoped to teach her there was such a thing as the English language, and therefore her latest reply delighted me, as it expressed an interest in the language’s peculiarities. But did I have time to dote on this delightful granddaughter?

Noooo. Instead I had to tiptoe at top speed and break down boxes quietly for a daughter who does not want my opinion, which may be a reason she’s housed in the attic of a Childcare. It was utterly unfair. I had to deprive one who cares for me to pamper someone who can’t even break down boxes for me?

It was right when I had achieved the highest state of high dudgeon that, “WAAAHHHH”, the horn went off. Anyone napping in the attic of the Childcare left dents in the ceiling. I, meanwhile, experienced a near instantaneous shift from abused to abuser.

I did some quick calculating. I had ten minutes to drive to a dump that was six minutes away. If I didn’t make it in time I’d have to drive around all week with my Jeep stuffed to its ceiling with trash. I came to an instantaneous decision. Fixing the horn could wait.

Off I drove, horn blaring, past friends and neighbor’s houses, through the town, gradually shrinking down in my seat. Past the mall, past the post office, “WAAAHHHH”. People turning to look at me, in my highly recognizable Jeep, “WAAAHHHH”! Past the doctor’s office, past the Junkyard, past old Widow Simpson’s, “WAAAHHHH!” The six minute drive took as eternally long as the final period Math Class, back in high school, but a last I pulled through the gate and made it into the dump. Once I was through that gate they were stuck with me, “WAAAHHHH!” I hopped out by the glass recycling bins and popped the hood open, and there was sudden and blessed silence.

It seemed odd I was huffing and puffing so much. After all, how much effort is it to drive a car?

While leaning against the hood I noticed a box over at the side of the engine that looked suspiciously like it might be a fuse box. I pred off the lid. It hadn’t been opened in twenty-four years, and looked surprisingly fresh and new inside. It had a clear chart identifying which fuses did what, and the fuse for the horn was number 23. It behaved like a fuse will behave after twenty-four years: It seemed frozen in its socket, and wouldn’t budge. The dump officially closed, and I still worked at wiggling it free. The dump workers regarded me with disapproval.

It occurred to me that, even without the horn blaring, I was a sort of unwelcome noise in their lives. Right then the fuse came out. I reconnected the battery, closed the hood, and in blessed silence went about putting the paper in the paper place, the plastic in the plastic place, the tin cans in the tin can place, all the while getting stern frowns of disapproval. (Gosh! You’d think they could be nicer. After all, my taxes pay their wages.)

I rolled my eyes skywards to the Big Man upstairs. If a superman like Saint Paul could get knocked off his high horse, I supposed a fathead like me could benefit from getting my obese ego trimmed a bit, but there are certain Saturdays when I think I will not mind departing this foolish world in the slightest.

Lord, you are eternal, but I am not.
I am less lasting than the mists of dawn.
I'm no mountain; I'm firm as a stray thought
And as lasting as an echo. I'm gone
To begin with, compared to Your power,
Yet I've endured dawn after dawn after dawn
Going nowhere. I've no fleeting flower
To garland You with. I look back upon
My life, and my name's writ upon waters,
But to You even mountains become beach sand
In the blink of Your eye. Sons and daughters
Of a thousand generations demand 
Less of You than a million galaxies,
So what am I, but some dust in the breeze.

 

It has stung me when my Lord's pointed out
How false are the false gods I've been fond of.
I don't like feeling like a fool. I pout
And sulk, but I needed to see my love
Should be for the Creator, and not for
His creation. Indifference has stung
When I sing, and never hear the crowds roar.
I feel a fool, for all my life I've sung
To earwax. Yet thus God has taught me well.
What good's Hollywood on the day you die?
Maybe the media can make this world hell
But death proves their judgement is a big lie.
When I die I shall see if I have been fake
Or if my Lord's pleased by the music we make.

ADVICE FOR YOUNG WRITERS

I chose to write because I enjoyed it, even as a little child. I didn’t think much about why I enjoyed it. That came later. It was later that I became aware that what I enjoyed might not gain me praise, and might in fact earn rejection.

I can still clearly remember the morning I first became aware of a sort of schism between my self and my society. It was when I was still in grade school. I was working on a book I called “My Book Of Indians”, which basically was a regurgitation of pro-Native-American attitudes absorbed from Earnest Thompson Seton’s book “Two Little Savages“, (1903). It was springtime and I think the clocks had “sprung forward” into Daylight Savings Time, and abruptly there was an hour less daylight before school. This cramped the time I had to write.

How I came to be writing before school I can’t say; perhaps the sun simply awoke me earlier as the days lengthened; but I felt a sort of golden serenity when I wrote, and one morning the golden serenity blossomed into a powerful intuition, “This is what I was born to do.” It was either when I was in fourth or fifth grade, which would make me between nine and ten years old.

On this particular morning I went from my pleasant euphoria to the horrible realization I had missed the bus. I was late to school. Fortunately school was only a half mile away, and usually when I missed the bus I could simply grab my books and run like hell, and arrive before the first class started. This time I was especially late. As I ran to school it was with a sense of dread, and I was wildly formulating responses I might answer the teacher with, when she asked me why I was late.

The joke is, it never occurred to me that, “I got lost in my writing,” or, “I got too absorbed in my research,” might be a good and even pleasing excuse, an excuse a teacher would be delighted to hear. Instead I was desperately attempting to come up with something involving escaped lions or runaway trains.

This highlights an absurd dichotomy which existed (and I myself may have created) between the writing I did at home and the lack of writing I did at school. You might think that my interest and pleasure might have made me a good scholar, but in actual fact my love of writing was more like a secret, which I tried to keep the school from ever knowing about.

At school I got bad grades, was the class clown, and nowadays I likely would be diagnosed with some sort of “attention disorder” and drugged. In earlier times I would have been whipped. As it was I slipped through a loophole, during a permissive time when neither happened.

Anyway, on this particular day I ran like crazy to the school and was horrified to see no buses. I was so late the last bus had already disgorged its load of noise and driven off. A terrible silence filled the air, as I approached the door. Outside the spring sunshine was golden, but inside I could see nothing but a gloomy hallway. At that point I felt a tremendous reluctance to walk through that door. I knew I had to do it, but every fiber of my body loathed it.

Many can relate to how I felt, if they ever had horrible job they hated, yet had to push through the door and punch the time-clock. Just remember the day it was hardest to push through the door, and that is how I felt going to school that day. Just as I had the golden intuition, “This what I was born to do,” when writing, now I had the dreadful sense, “This is not a place I was born to be.”

The juxtaposition of the two strong impressions is what I most clearly remember. A schism was created.

Likely the fact it was springtime intensified the schism. What boy doesn’t want to play hooky from school on a golden spring morning?

(Back in my day a boy wanted to escape the lousy lights, stale air, cloying chalk dust, and dreary drill, and instead be walking in the woods like a free Native American. Modern youth may seem different, but just because the woods they walk are virtual doesn’t mean virtual woodlands aren’t far preferable to a classroom.)

However I believe that, opposed to this schism, is an urge to be understood, (or perhaps to share the beauty one has found and deemed worthy of playing hooky for). Therefore a boy has a divided heart, with one half wanting to flee society, as the other half wants to rejoin society.

Skip ahead a decade, and the young boy becomes a young writer, on one hand loathing professors, editors, agents and publishers, and on the other hand desiring education, correction, help and a way to make money doing what he loves.

Skip ahead five decades and the boy is seventy years old. If he still writes at all, and still derives great pleasure from writing, (as I do), then the intuition he had as a boy, “This is what I was born to do,” has proven correct.

Such a verification is easy for people whose persistence paid off, who became successful writers and who can now sit back and regard rows of published volumes on a bookshelf on a wall. But what about me? I was (for the most part) never “discovered”, and have written most of my life without the encouragement of recognition. Was I not in error, when intuition told me, “This is what I was born to do”??? For that boyhood intuition has not resulted in fame and fortune, and is not that our criterion???

Actually, I reject that criterion. I think I was lucky. Why? Because if an artist finds success in a specific area, he tends to focus in on that area, which has brought him success. If a Saturday Evening Post pays well, then he may spend decades painting covers for the Saturday Evening Post, even if he had great potential outside of that narrow window.

My single success involved being recognized by Anthony Watts on his website, “Watts Up With That” fifteen years ago, and publishing seven articles there. But to some degree this placed constraints on my freedom as a writer. If you look back through this website, at my posts over the past eleven years, you will often see my heart wrestling to subdue my boyish love of freedom in order to discipline my writing and produce what might look scientific enough to be published on that website (which I do admire).

In the end my boyish love of freedom seemingly won. It’s been over a decade since that website has published anything I’ve written, so it obviously did not have the power of a Saturday Evening Post to make a Norman Rockwell out of me.

Don’t get me wrong. The match between Norman Rockwell and the Saturday Evening Post was in some ways a marriage made in heaven. If a young writer meets a professor, editor, agent or publisher who treats them with dignity and honor, they should understand such people are few and far between. Honor them back. For I have met some delightful rascals in my time, but I have never met a professor, editor, agent or publisher who I felt was on my side of the schism. When push came to shove, if I expected money for my writing, they always seemed to want to make a whore or gigolo out of me, and I chose to prefer poverty. (WUWT was an exception to that rule; in that case I simply tired of talking about Truth in terms of arctic sea-ice.)

I likely should provide an example, though it will seem a lengthy digression to some.

When aged 25, when I still had some shreds of faith I might meet a good professor, editor, agent or publisher, I was told, “It isn’t what you know; it is who you know.” And so it was I approached a friend of the family, who happened to be the editor of a small newspaper, with my most recent manuscript, which I thought was truly great.

The editor was a jolly, pink-faced gentleman, with silver hair, married and with a handsome, full-grown son, and I had no reason to suspect he was homosexual. In any case he completely misunderstood the message in my manuscript.

The message was that, if you deeply love your father, but do not get enough of his fathering, you might seek to make up for that deficit by seeking out father figures. I should have added that healthy fathers do not have sex with their sons. I failed to add this, and this jolly soul assumed I was in some way “coming out of the closet”, and that I wanted him to be my next “father figure”.

After an exchange of several letters, (his short, handwritten and terse, and mine many pages of half-space typing, with a typewriter that had both a black and a red ribbon), a meeting was arranged.

He welcomed me into his office with open arms, which seemed innocent enough, but his further advances shocked me. After a somewhat humorous retreat, involving me back-peddling frantically several times around his office desk, he got tired and also seemed to conclude I was terribly naive. I concluded I understood how innocent actresses feel when they want roles in Hollywood movies and are confronted with “the casting couch.” When I explained to the merry man that he misunderstood what I meant by “father figure”, he looked at me with incredulity, and then remarked, “No writer has ever made it without either fucking somebody, or being fucked.” I reared up righteously and replied, “Well then, I’ll be the first.”

It may have been noble of me to say that, but time seems to have proven the fellow correct. Here I am, after decades of writing, and also after never fucking or being fucked to further my career, and I’ve never “made it.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not homophobic. I actually liked the guy. Considering I recall his words after 45 years, he may even qualify as a sort of minor “father figure”. I just had no desire to have sex with him. However I did appreciate him. After I had rebuffed his advances we spent a cordial afternoon together.

It began by us sitting back down in his office, and him being charitable enough to read my 265 page manuscript despite the fact I had no payment to offer.

He read with stunning and slightly offensive rapidity, for he had the gift of speed reading. I watched him go through my manuscript so quickly it seemed impossible he was thinking about the hour’s worth of thought I put into each page. It took him two seconds to glance down the page, and put an X across the page with his pen. 250 pages got the X. But 15 pages slowed him down. Most were the pages that skipped philosophy and actually involved my interactions with my father. They got no X, and on one page he wrote “touching” and on another he actually scribbled a paragraph, commenting that my assumption was not true, bringing in a rebutting proof from his own boyhood. But for the most part, at two seconds per page, he went through thirty pages in a minute, and two-hundred-sixty-five pages in less than fifteen minutes.

Then he had things to do, places to go, and people to meet, but he invited me along. He didn’t do so to demonstrate how amazingly packed the life of an editor can be, but rather because he found me odd, and was curious how I came to be so weird. He asked questions which proved to me he had actually absorbed some of my manuscript’s ideas, despite the fact he turned pages so rapidly it seemed impossible that he could be doing more than turning pages and putting an X on most of them. He asked these questions even as he dashed hither and thither, talking to printers and advertisers and reporters, and drove from here to there in a small blue car. Most of the questions were asked as he drove.

One thing that baffled him was how I could say I preferred the company of men to that of women, and not be homosexual. I felt inarticulate and mumbled some clumsy rhetoric about how a man needed to learn how to be a man before he’d be worthy of a woman, and he just laughed and called me a hopeless romantic.

Another thing he was curious about was my idealism regarding Truth. I stated honesty was the wellspring of morality, and if men were truly honest there would no need for laws. He rolled his eyes, stated I was proposing anarchy, and then shot me such a significant, eagle-fierce glance that I instinctively knew the glance meant that I should think hard about what he had just stated. And I did think hard about it. I had heard that I was a hopeless romantic before, but this was the first time I heard I was an anarchist.

Then, as irony would have it, he zipped his little, blue car to a lurching stop at a curb, hopped out, and proceeded to hurry up a wide, marble staircase to a wide, green lawn. He moved with surprising speed for a portly man with silver hair, his leather shoes pattering smartly on the marble. Apparently we were late to some sort of press conference.

Ahead was a mansion with a pillared front like a Greek temple, and, at the foot of the towering pillars, a fat, well-dressed man was speaking to four microphones, and also to a bunch of reporters who gathered humbly beneath him at the bottom of a second wide marble staircase. Obviously the man was a mayor, or perhaps even a governor, and the irony was that I had only just discovered I might be an anarchist.

As the editor arrived, the politician by the microphones interrupted some windbag explanation he was giving to gladly greet him, and all the other reporters also turned to welcome him. He was obviously well-liked. He delighted in the attention, making jokes I did not get, but which everyone laughed greatly at.

I was struck by how swiftly he changed from a person I could talk to into a person very different, an actor on a stage playing a part. He quite obviously liked playing his role, but it made me uncomfortable. It seemed fake, and I was big on Truth. My discomfort grew worse when I noticed eyes shifting from him to me, and the reporters seemingly going wink-wink, nudge-nudge. They were assuming something I didn’t like. To make matters worse, the editor seemed to encourage them, looking back at me and then back at them, and going wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

I could see how it looked. He was a jolly, happy character with the known foible of cultivating proteges who always seemed to be young, male writers, and there I stood, a big, floppy notebook in hand, obviously the next young, male writer. Abruptly I wanted to scream, “This is not how it looks.”

Instead I had the strong intuition, “This is not a place I was born to be.” So, shortly after the press conference, I left that “opportunity”, after politely thanking the editor for his kindness, and drove off in my tiny brown Toyota from that fiasco to my next one.

I hope you can see I hold no grudge against the man. I suppose he qualifies as being what is now called a “groomer” or even a “sexual predator”, but I just saw him as someone with desires I could not fulfill. And he likely saw me as someone with desires he could not fulfill. But this reality was no reason to be uncivil, and we did share ideas which I can recall even after 45 years.

But why did I have that sense, “This is not where I was born to be?” What propelled me to seek elsewhere?

With 20-20 hindsight, I think I sensed the beginning of what is now called “The Swamp”. But back then the rot had just started, and was a mere blemish on the skin of an otherwise wholesome fruit. The good Founding Fathers had gotten something rolling, and the politicians of 1978 were rolling along on the momentum of that goodness, forgiving of foibles, yet seemingly forgetful of the fact that good, without further good, stops rolling.

Yet I wonder if I ran away from a problem I should have attempted to solve. Maybe I could have kept the goodness rolling, and single-handedly kept The Swamp from becoming a swamp. I doubt it; most likely I would have been seduced and sucked down into the mire like everyone else, but that is something I shall never know. One cannot undo what has been done, and the fact of the matter is that I turned away from situations when intuition told me “This is not where I was born to be.”

This ends my long digression, and returns us to the question I originally digressed from.

Was it worth it?

Yes.

Why?

Because most people live their lives without fame and/or fortune, and are the better for it. They are, in fact, beautiful people living beautiful lives, and are what the Bible calls “the salt of the earth”. And this fact (that such humble people often are more worthy of respect than the fatheaded rich and fatheaded famous are) was something I saw, early on, from my side of the schism.

It is also not something one should expect the rich and famous to want to hear. Therefore, if you write about such reality, you are in a sense insulting the rich and famous, and shouldn’t expect to be showered with their favors.

However one will be showered by the favors of those who have no money to offer, and no fame. In some ways all they offer is hard work; they offer blood, sweat and tears, but, in the end, after fifty years, the young writer may find themselves in my shoes, the grandfather of fourteen, (soon [God willing] to be fifteen, and, in seven months [God willing] sixteen).

Now I will freely admit young writers are not aiming to create grandchildren when they write. But, if pressed, they do confess to hoping some people will still be reading their work in in fifty years, or at least that their work will have such a powerful effect that it will uplift the unborn, even if their actual works are burned and don’t survive. Me? I actually did think about future family, as I wrote.

It had to do with my being from a broken home. I wanted to mend the fracture, and my childlike prayers often included, “And please God, get Mom and Dad back together again.” However it was also fairly obvious such a reconciliation was not going to happen. Their divorce was downright flamboyant in the grandiose levels of discord it attained. In retrospect my parent’s overblown drama seems downright laughable, but at the time they seemed to feel a need to be secretive about what was blatantly obvious. You weren’t allowed to talk about it. But me? I wanted to write about it, on the sly. If I had to be secretive, I’d do it, but, on my side of the schism, I’d be open and honest.

Most young writers are in similar slippers. They want to be honest about something which needs to be addressed, but which it is taboo to talk about. Because it needs to be addressed, some will respond to their work by saying, “You know, I always thought that, but never dared say it.” However the gatekeepers of cancel culture may repress such agreeable encouragement with their insidiously disagreeable discouragement, and so the honesty is not rewarded, most of the time, though there are exceptions to the rule.

Young writers want to be the next exception to the rule. (Even old writers like me confess it might be fun). Imagine what it must have been like to be one of four young men in an obscure rock band called “The Beatles” in 1962. Or what it must be like to be Oliver Anthony, and to have a heart-felt song leap from the obscurity of twenty views a day on YouTube to over a million views in a single afternoon, to six million a few days later, and, four months later, to over a hundred million views. (YouTube pays creators a reasonable amount of money, for a hundred million views).

Lots of young writers yearn for a hundredth as much money, for their writing. If they only got paid, they could quit washing dishes and devote more time to the writing they love. Sadly, for every four Beatles or lone Oliver Anthony there are countless other singers and writers who escape recognition, and never get paid.

To young writers I say this: Consider ye the salt of the earth. Are there not many good, young mothers and fathers who wish they got paid for being good, because if they got paid they would have more time to spend with their children? But they don’t get paid for parenting, and in fact it is often bad mothers who get paid (welfare). But does the fact good mothers and fathers don’t get paid for being good stop them? No. Many of them don’t even expect acknowledgement for their gracious behavior. They just do what they do. Why? Because the alternative is loathsome.

In like manner, young artists should avoid alternatives when they start to look loathsome. Or that is what I told myself as a young man. But I was also told artists were wimps, were terribly wounded by rejection, and were so prone to wilting that one sign an artist was worthy was that he’d keel over and die young. That didn’t appeal to me.

Before very long I knew all about both the agony and ecstasy of art, but the general opinion seemed to be artists had no stamina and couldn’t take it, and, if no one would listen, they’d get crazy and cut an ear off and mail it to a woman they felt unheard by, like Van Gogh did. I did not feel this was a wise way to behave. Nor was it how the salt of the earth usually behaved. Therefore I decided to make a point. And the point was? It was that a writer didn’t have to be a lunatic. He didn’t have to die young. He could live to be over 70 and be the grandfather of 14 (going on16).

“Yes, but…” young writers will say. “How can you call yourself a writer when you have never been published”?

Actually one of the first poems I ever wrote was published in the Manchester Union Leader in 1968. I was fifteen. It didn’t make me a red penny, and in fact misled me to believe it was easy to be published.

Since then I’ve written all sorts of stuff, and I haven’t a clue whether a single sonnet of mine will reward me beyond the pleasure I got writing it. So why write it down?

Well, in many cases the writing was read, and the reader found great pleasure. (O.K., I confess, usually the reader was myself.) However there were a few, rare other cases where people besides myself surprised me by expressing pleasure over what I’d written. In fact, fifty years is such a long stretch of time that I’ve even written a song or two which were small town “hits”, sung in obscure bars, in living rooms at parties, or at church talent shows. There was even one time, midst fifty years of obscurity, when I experienced a glorious evening where I had an audience of over a hundred singing my song’s chorus. But no song ever “went viral”. As far as I know, not a single thing I’ve written will outlast me.

In some ways I hope my writing doesn’t. Why? Because it makes me more pure, if my writing has nothing to do with fortune or fame. It is purer still if it has nothing to do with acceptance or even, believe it or not, with talent.

At this point I imagine some young writers are sitting bolt upright and saying, “Stop right there. Nothing to do with talent? You had better explain that one, Bucko.”

To explain I like to use the following analogy:

Suppose you were lacking in talent, but loved music. Suppose you were tone deaf and knew for a fact your singing made people wince. Would that mean you were banned from ever singing? Or could you not, when no one was home, sneak into the shower and bellow your discordant heart out, and actually derive enjoyment from your singing? The answer to that question is a resounding, “Yes”, for lots of people, with voices less sweet than a donkey’s, get great joy from singing in the shower. Why? Are they not singing to an audience of zero?

Here my explanation drifts into mysticism, and gets a bit weird, for I assert the people in showers are not singing to an audience of zero, but of Infinity.

Most don’t think much about why singing in the shower feels so good. If they think at all, their singing seems selfish, and only done for one’s own well-being, like doing push-ups in a gym. Even if the sour singer imagines a vast crowd cheering, as he (or she) showers, entertaining warm and fuzzy delusions of grandeur, enjoying a flooding fantasy that waves of encouraging applause are giving him (or her) permission to bellow out the wrong notes all the louder, the singer seldom sees that what actually makes them feel so good, and makes such showers so strangely healing, is a mystic mystery.

Said the singer to the song,
“It is for your lips I long
But I cannot reach the charms
Of my creation.”

The song came singing back,
“You are everything I lack
And we need each others arms
For celebration.”

Even after fifty years, I can’t fathom the mystery. But I think it has something to do with creative people entertaining the Creator.

As a young writer this caused me problems. I didn’t want to be a bit religious. To be religious was to be a copycat. It was to recite by rote. It was to be stale, and never think. I would rather be original. I wanted to say the things that stale people didn’t. I wanted to be reinvigorating, to be fresh and new.

However there came a day when I was attempting to write about some element of Truth, in a fresh and new way, when, while rereading my first draft, I saw it was pathetic. It was like I was trying to trace the flickering movement of a flaring, crimson sunrise with tracing paper, using charcoal. Once the sunrise had faded, and was no longer there to inspire me, I was confronted with how I had portrayed it. It depressed me. My work was just charcoal on tracing paper, stagnant and stale, and such a bad representation of Truth that few could look on my work and even imagine a shade of red.

It was a humbling experience, for it showed me my “originality” was not so original as I thought. Yes, it was better than the religious, who mumbled words by rote and never bothered to think about the Truth their words mumbled about. I was only “original” because I did bother to think. But it did not make me the Maker. I might be what some called “creative”, but I could not create like the Creator did.

I did not create the sunrise, and therefore when I tried to artistically show how beautiful the sunrise was, I was just a copycat. I might produce a copy of a sunrise better than even a camera could, but still it would fall short. After years of failure it occurred to me my sunrise could never match the sunrise the Creator had created; my best attempts were my poor copy of a Genius far better.

At some point you need to tell your pride to shut up. Even if you are far better than most at seeing the beauty of life, you need to confess you are not the originator of that beauty. You are not original. You just copy better than other copycats.

I’m not sure why it was so hard for me to hear I was not original, but it was. I wish I had understood earlier. I urge young artists to understand what it took me so long to understand.

One way to look at it is: The Creator is the father, and artists are his adoring children. They want to be like Him. So they emulate Him.

At my childcare I often see children emulate their parents. It doesn’t matter if their mother is a seamstress or their father is a surgeon, the child will stitch with a make-believe needle made of straw. There is such child-like admiration involved I would never scold the child, though the simple fact of the matter is that the child is not capable of being either a seamstress or a surgeon. (Yet).

In like manner, no artist is capable of being the Creator. At best, they are just copycats. Even the most heroic and magnificent art, such as Beethoven’s ninth symphony, is but a joyful representation of what the Creator’s already made, but which most ordinarily don’t see (or hear). It takes a deaf Beethoven to open their eyes (or ears).

In terms of the issue of “originality”, there is no danger of stagnation when attempting portray Truth, for Truth is, by definition, the opposite of sameness; no two snowflakes or fingerprints are the same; even identical twins are not identical; even desert sunrises hold something new in their cloudless daybreaks. The only danger of stagnation arises when someone attempts to tie the Truth down, to limit it in the manner religion often does.

Perhaps that is why young artists so often become atheists. Goodhearted preachers, in their attempts to steer their flock away from evil towards good, have accidentally limited Infinity. Infinity laughs at limits. Young artists laugh at goodhearted preachers, unaware they themselves are limiting Infinity by saying it does not exist.

I could have saved myself from a great deal of trouble if, as a young artist, I had not wasted so much time being “original” in ways that denied the Truth which, in fact, I was trying to copy.

However I suppose it is part of a process. It does not occur to one that the father-figure one is looking for is Truth itself, and so one first works their way through a whole series of lesser, inferior father-figures, over and over sensing, “This is not where I was born to be.” Such incidents are part of learning, even when they are fiascos. An acorn does not become an oak all at once.

Even if one has the good fortune to draw a get-out-of-jail-free card, (which I suppose would be a father-figure who confessed he was inferior and pointed one towards Truth, as the only worthy Father), one retains doubts. Atheism lingers. Even saints have a devil on their shoulders.

Hardest to shake is the sense Truth has no heart. One prays, but hears only silence. One receives no instruction, so what is one to do? One sighs and turns away. But what does one then see?

One is looking at silent blankness, when one opens a notebook to an empty page. It is as blank as a crystal ball, but it does not stay blank. Lines of letters appear like the footprints of chickens. Then a line is scribbled out. Then the page is torn from the notebook, rumpled to a ball, and sails through the air to a wastepaper basket.

What just happened? You say you received no instruction, but in fact you just had a conversation with Truth.

These conversations can be quite a battle, because besides the Truth there are other voices, sometimes louder than the silence of Truth. There is the sneering of every bully who ever belittled and the snickers of every Karen who ever backbit. Onto the empty page can spill the gatekeepers of cancel-culture, repressing all agreeable encouragement with their insidiously disagreeable discouragement. Even when one consciously scribbles these snide voices out, they remain lurking in the subconscious, poisoning the very springs of creativity. The struggle seems so unequal one wants to go mad, die young, and cut off their ear like Van Gogh, but then one remembers Beethoven had his ears cut off by life itself, and it never stopped him. That is a truth so amazing that one’s faith in Truth revives.

My advice to young artists is to revive your faith in Truth. Not truth, but Truth, with a capital “T”. For, in its Infinity, Truth has a power few expect silence to have: The power of Love. All the other voices that spill onto the empty page twist truths with a small “T”, and in that swirling confusion of lesser father-figures one needs an Absolute they can cling to like a child clings to a father’s pants-leg on a crowded city street. And Truth, with a capital “T”, will respond.

Even if a young writer is sick of priests and preachers, (and communists are the most preachy of all), and any hint of religion (even a godless religion) makes them want to vomit, and they have been made allergic to the word “God”, they should be able to recognize they are repelled from some things because others are more attractive, and that they need a word for what attracts them. I suggest they use the word “Truth”. (This entire subject is absurd, when you understand our choosing this defining word is attempting to encapsulate Infinity. It would be easier to stuff an elephant into your shirt-pocket.) I furthermore suggest young writers give credit where credit is due, confess attraction where attraction is obvious, and investigate being adopted by an Ocean. An Ocean? Well, truth, with a small “T”, may be a cruel truth, But Truth, with a capital “T”, is a sea of Love.

ADIOS ELSIE

When troubles come in clusters I try to take an upbeat attitude, and say something along the lines of, “It’s better to get them all done with at once,” and, “Once I get through this, there will be a long spell with no trouble at all.”

However this time it wasn’t working. Some things, such as a mother-in-law struggling with dementia, are not a thing you can fix. Other things, which you should be able to fix, (such as the well at the Childcare), defy diagnosis and remain troubles even when you attempt to deal with them head on.

Then, just when I needed to be especially strong, I wound up in a hospital with pneumonia, and my upbeat attitude got a bit frayed. (Usually I find hospitals fascinating places, but there are troubles they face these days I couldn’t fail to notice and be nosy about, and my frayed attitude soured further.) Then, when I got home, I faced a very sick dog that likely would have to be put down.

The vet agreed, and my friend of fifteen years went to the Big Sleep with me petting her.

Then the vet asked me a question he likely asks by rote, somewhat hardened by having to experience the death of pets so often. “Would you like us to dispose of the dog for you?”

“Dispose”. What a word. I shook my head.

“If you wish we can cremate, and give you a box of ashes.”

I shook my head again. Then I found the words. “I think I’ll have a quiet funeral in the back yard, and bury her next to others.” The vet’s staff placed Elsie’s body in the back of my Jeep, and I headed home.

In actual fact I wasn’t at all sure I was being wise. Five years ago I could still dig a hole four feet deep, four feet long, and two feet wide in twenty minutes, in stone-free soil. But pneumonia had made a weakling out of me. Even walking seemed to require a caution I never took before, (unless I was very drunk.) I told someone that rather than spring in my step I had fall in my step. And I expected myself to go out in the back yard and dig a decent grave?

But all I had to do was think of that word, “dispose.” A dog deserved more dignity than that. Elsie wasn’t some tissue you use and then throw away. She held life, and life deserves respect.

I wasn’t being sentimental. To be honest, I surprised myself by noticing a flint-like hardness in my attitude. I reckon it has a lot to do with the political climate we are enduring, where it seems Truth is opposed by a great deal of falsehood, and, in a manner of speaking, life is opposed by a great deal of death.

For example, if you are in a hospital the people who care about life are fairly obvious, for they care about you. However others are detached, and shuffle papers, and, if you express interest in what they are doing, it turns out they are in it for the money. Basically they fall into three categories; they are working for the lawyers, or the insurance companies, or the politicians. (A fourth category might be the people who make pharmaceuticals and equipment, however among such people are some who actually care for patients.)

I admit it is a bit of a leap to connect people working purely for money with people working for death, but that is only because you haven’t thought long and hard about it, like I have. If you don’t care about life, what do you care for?

In any case, I only bring this up to give you a glimpse into what made my attitude so flint-like. The veterinarian likely had no idea of the sore point he was touching upon when he politely asked if I would like to “dispose” of my dog.

The fact we mere mortals bother to make a big deal of how we “dispose” of those we care for makes little sense, if you are measuring all in terms of material gain. But it does make sense if you value life. The fuss of a funeral recognizes that we value life even when it has departed, and this in turn broaches the mystical subject of where life has gone, when it departs.

Pneumonia is a sort of brush with death, but no one at the hospital seemed particularly concerned with the subject of where life goes, when it departs. Some good people seemed interested in keeping your life here, and some less good people seemed interested in profiting over your interest in delaying your exit. But there were no nuns or holy yogis. Not that I particularly desired being preached to, but I think I would have preferred that, to being sold a heap of oxygen equipment.

All the equipment arrived at my house even as I did, when I left the hospital. I’m not sure who is paying for it. Medicare part J4, or something like that, which basically means the taxpayers are paying, or the government is printing money it does not have. In any case all sorts of ugly green bottles and ugly plastic tubing and a grunting, hooting air pump cluttered my wife’s lovely layout. And I was instructed I should be a layabout. I was suppose to sit around and breathe like Darth Vader, (without his very cool helmet).

Fat chance of that happening. In some ways overwork put me in bed, but also got me out of bed. If you are running a Childcare, you can’t have a dog die on the doorstep, so right off the bat I had to take care of poor Elsie. Then I had to drive around with a dead dog in the back of my Jeep, because this blasted world would not have the decency to give me time to dig a grave. I had tried to dig a grave right away, but right away my cellphone called me to work, and the shovel was left thrust into the hillside.

I’ll try to keep this griping brief.

The first annoyance involves office-bound bureaucrats, who sometimes can’t tell a bounding child from Barbie Doll, informing Child Care Professionals how to spend their time.

In reality a Child Care Professional often can handle twelve preschool children at once, however they must swiftly shift to one-on-one attention when a child throws a blue-faced fit and melts down into a tantrum. The workers shift with a grace, dignity and deftness that always amazes me, for they usually occupy the other eleven children with some “craft” or “activity” as they deal with the one. On occasion, two children throw tantrums simultaneously, and I’ve seen Child Care Professionals handle even this stress, (though I’ll confess their lips do compress a bit tightly.) But the bureaucrats and politicians decided a law should be written, and no teacher should have more than six children, when children are so young. This makes little difference, for, when a child throws a tantrum demanding one-on-one care, the second teacher must deal with eleven, and if a second child throws a tantrum we are back in the original situation.

In any case my wife and I are attempting to cut our Childcare down to only six children, so I can retire, but my wife has a hard time saying “No” to mothers in need, so often, though only six are scheduled, a seventh arrives. This in turn requires, by law, a second teacher, who happens to be me.

I usually arrive grumpy because my plans are disturbed (for example, I might have planned to bury my dog.) But what is uncanny is that the moment I walk in the door the grumpiness in me completely vanishes, as does any weariness. Something about small children draws something out of me. Floodgates open, and I am enchanted, and apparently enchanting, as the closest I have ever been to being a rock star is among little children.

However the humorous thing is that my wife doesn’t want me to be a rock star. She would prefer I enter by a back door and remain hidden, so I don’t disrupt her routine or “circle time” or whatever. I am available for melt-downs, but mostly am there in a sort of limbo, because bureaucrats say there must be a second person. On this particular occasion the “seventh child” headed home at lunchtime, which allowed me to leave my wife with the six remaining kids, and head home with my dead dog to dig the dog’s grave. But no sooner had I arrived home when my cellphone began beeping.

This brings me to the second annoyance, which is the fact the water pressure has been feeble at the Childcare. It has been that way ever since a thunderstorm knocked the water out last summer. I replaced a pressure switch, which did nothing, but by fooling about with the wiring of the pressure switch I got a feeble flow going. At times the flow was so feeble there was barely a trickle, so I had to figure out how to remedy that problem, but at least we kept the Childcare open.

After several months of trying this and trying that, (and spending much time on the web researching what people, [both the wise and the foolish], advised me to do on YouTube, to handle problems with pressure switches,) I had to admit I was baffled. I had tried just about everything possible, and was starting to fear the problem was not in the pressure switch, but in the pump itself, a hundred feet down at the bottom of our well. When younger I would have searched for answers on the web, and would have hauled the hundred feet of plastic pipe and electric wire up onto the Childcare lawn, and installed a new pump myself, because I couldn’t afford a plumber and such a job can cost a couple grand. However at age seventy even thinking of such effort got me huffing and puffing, and I decided I should just shell out the damn money for an actual plumber. (I’m not so poor as I used to be, with my five kids all raised).

The fellow I wanted was old Pete, who has spent fifty years around town (and surrounding towns) digging wells and repairing wells and installing water pumps and fixing the pumps when they break. I wanted Pete because he is as old as I am, and also he is familiar with old farmhouses and the weird ways things were plumbed and wired before anything was “done to code.” Whereas younger whippersnappers tend to adopt indignant expressions, upon coming across blatant violations of modern codes, Pete understands how things were done, back in the day, when people often had to do things themselves because they simply could not afford a plumber, or electrician, or new pipes, or new wires. or even new nails.

In a sense Pete was the opposite of a bureaucrat, for he did not sit in an office making rules concerning things he knew little about, but actually dwelt in a world he knew a great deal about, among people who followed few rules beyond, “make it work.” He had come across all sorts of jury-rigged set-ups in his time, and wasn’t the slightest bit judgemental about how risky or inefficient they were; he knew they worked, and what he offered was how to make them work better, with fewer sparks and clouds of smoke.

(Actually the phrase “jury-rigged” apparently originated among sailors. When a beautiful sloop or schooner was de-masted by a savage storm, survival demanded a new mast be raised from splintered remnants of the old one, with awkward and clumsy rigging devised by desperation and ingenuity. The ship might now look ugly as sin, but no one complained about the “jury-rigging”, if they limped back to port all alive.)

Of course men as skilled as Pete are hard to come by, so I felt very glad to get him to schedule a trip to my Childcare, but then I caught the ‘flu and had to postpone. Then I landed in the hospital, and left a message on his answering machine to just head to the old farmhouse and scope things out for himself. He hadn’t had time, and with winter coming I was worried about the Childcare’s well completely quitting. However now my wife called to tell me Pete had just arrived, and that she felt I should be there. So me and my dead dog turned around and headed back to the Childcare.

He was already in the basement of the dilapidated farmhouse with a huge, young intern he was training, when I got there. I went huffing and puffing across the yard and through the ruined building and down the rickety stairs to find them scratching their heads over my peculiar wiring of the pressure switch. I explained it was the only way I could get the pump to work, and they explained I had power going through a grounding wire. It was lucky, they said, that the pipes leading away from the pressure switch were plastic, for if they had been copper I would have electrified the entire system. I just shrugged and said, “I knew things were not right, which is why I called you, Pete. By now, after fifty years, you must have seen every dumb thing a fix-it-yourselfer can do.”

Pete shook his head. “Nope. This is a new one to me.”

I laughed, “Well, we had water and didn’t have to shut the Childcare, but I knew something was not right.”

I then explained one thing that had completely baffled me. The breaker in the panel was a double breaker, which means there should have been two hot wires and the ground, but at the switch only one wire was hot. I finally concluded the circuit must be broken at the pump, which was why I hired Pete, for I expected a big job, costing a couple thousand, involving hauling the pump up from the bottom of the well and replacing it. But Pete and his huge young intern tested wires and concluded the break must be between the pressure switch and the breaker box. This seemed unlikely to me because the box was (relatively) brand new and brand new wire left that box and brand new wire arrived at the pressure switch. Pete insisted in following the wire back to the box, and, as his amazingly bright flashlight probed the cobwebby route the wire took through remote depths of the ancient cellar he abruptly said, “What’s that?”

Midst an enormous clot of cobwebs a rusted square of sheet metal hung crookedly from a rotting slab of wood. The band new wire appeared to pass over it, but closer examination revealed the wire neatly looped down into the sheet metal. Pete worked through the webs for a closer look. Creaking a rusty door open he revealed an archaic fuse box, with two old cylinder fuses half buried in spiderwebs and the carcasses of unfortunate bugs, and one of those fuses was burned out. “There’s your problem.” stated Pete. “You were running on one leg.”

Pete had the right fuse in his amazing toolbox, which apparently held everything known to plumbers, and we replaced the burnt-out one. Then we did a careful check of the pressure switch to see if my fudged wiring had all been set right, and Pete said, “Now we shall see if you destroyed your pump or not. Go click on the power.” I clicked it on, and immediately heard the pipes humming in a far more healthy manner than I’d heard in months. “Sounds like it works!”

When I returned from the breaker box I found Pete scrutinizing the pressure gauge, and I mentioned, “That’s the first time I’ve seen it above twenty pounds in months.” Then I added, “I kept turning up the pressure at the pressure switch, but it didn’t raise the pressure at all.”

When I mentioned that Pete’s eyes grew a bit rounder, and with amazing spryness in a man so old he jumped to the pressure switch and, with a ingenious socket wrench which appeared from his box, he deftly, and very rapidly, turned the nut atop the pressure spring that controls the pressure. “Glad you told me that.” He calmly mentioned, “You’ve got the pressure set at around 120 pounds. We’d likely blow a pipe somewhere. I’m getting it back to 40 where it belongs.” He got it down to 40 pounds just as the pressure rose to 40, and the pressure switch clicked the pump off, in the manner it is suppose to do.

I shook my head. “That is a click I’ve wanted to hear for months. I can’t believe the problem was just a blown fuse, but I didn’t know that fuse box was there.”

“Yup. It always pays to follow the wiring in these old houses. I’ve come ‘cross junction boxes in the strangest places, lookin’ like spiders ’cause they have eight wires comin’ from a single box. But it looks like we solved your mystery. But keep your fingers crossed. It is hard on a pump to be run on 110 volts when its s’pose to run at 220, and we’ll have to see if yours quits after a day or two. However so far I’d have to say you’ve been shit lucky.”

I laughed, thinking to myself I’d never heard the phrase “shit lucky” before, and reminisced, “When they built this house they’d never heard of a junction box; all the wiring was knob and tube. I think the fuse box had just four fuses. They put that new breaker box in because you had to turn the radio off to use the toaster.”

Pete nodded gravely. “Seen a lot of knob and tube in the older houses. It was three times cheaper. So of course they used it in the Great Depression.” He gestured to his trainee to pick up his heavy toolbox, and we headed from the gloomy cellar up the rickety steps.

As we stepped out squinting into the brilliant sunshine I told him, “Write me up the bill and I’ll hustle off and get my checkbook. It’s best you get paid right away. You know how forgetful old codgers like me can be.” Then I walked over to my Jeep, nodded at the dead dog in the back, and rummaged around for my checkbook.

Peter charged me $200.00 for the hour’s worth of work, which seemed on the low side to me, considering some plumbers charge over $300.00 just for driving into your driveway. But some older fellows like Pete charge on a sliding scale, and it pays to wear frayed trousers when paying your bill.

Pete told me to call him if the pump quit (it hasn’t) and then the young fellow surprised me by shaking my hand earnestly and saying how glad he was to meet me. I puzzled over what that was all about. Maybe he liked watching old-timers.

Then suddenly I was alone, again driving home with my dead dog, feeling a smidgen of satisfaction for having dealt with the low water pressure without it costing a couple thousand dollars, but also feeling drained. The doctor said I should rest, and inhale oxygen, but life wouldn’t let me.

When I got home I opened the fridge and looked through all the Tupperware containers of chicken soup kindly church ladies had brought me, and chose an especially good one with dumplings that resembled a chicken pot pie. The doctor said I should cut back on salt but I didn’t. I fed the fires, which left me huffing and puffing, so I attached a little gadget to my fingertip to check out my O2 levels, and it said I should be blue in the face and keeling over. I figured the figure was faulty; my circulation was just not getting to my fingertips, with excellent chicken soup demanding attention in my stomach, but 52% is pretty low, so I turned on the O2 machine and as it chugged and hissed I put on the plastic tubes that interfere with boogers in your nose, and decided to lay down a while and breathe like Darth Vader, before burying my dog. The little clip on my finger rose fairly rapidly to 91%, and I felt very peaceful, and decided a brief nap would be nice, looking at the low, golden sunlight.

The next thing I knew it was pitch dark, and I could hear a whispering hiss. The O2 tube was blowing into my left ear. It didn’t seem to improve my hearing any, so I shut the machine down and got up in a grouchy mood. Where was my wife? Then I abruptly realized it was only 5:15 and the Childcare wouldn’t even have closed yet. It gets dark too early in December. At my latitude the sun sinks from sight at 4:15 in the afternoon and you don’t see it again until 7:15 the next morning.

That is too much darkness for me. I go to bed early and then tend to get up for a while in the middle of the night. I heard the old-timers developed a bunch of chores that they could do by candlelight, (because they had to get up in the middle of the night anyway, to tend the wood fires). There is little for me to do, other than tend the wood fires, because if I make too much of a clatter I risk the ire of my wife, who does not approve of any sort of hammering when she’s trying to sleep, so I write. It is a good time to write, for it’s wonderfully quiet at two AM. When my creativity is drained I go back to bed, sometimes passing my wife who is getting up early for her prayer-time, and some of my best rests are between five o’clock and winter sunrises at seven.

This sunrise was surprisingly frost free, especially as it was cloudless. Clear skies usually breed frost, but the wind was stirring around to the warm southwest, and the forecast was for those winds to pick up as a cold front approached late in the day. I had only three things on my schedule. Eat, rest, and a funeral for Elsie. I was glad it was mild, for I didn’t want to deal with shoveling frozen earth.

I felt ridiculously stiff and sore, like I once felt after serious work, though all I’d done the day before was hurry a little. Pneumonia left me amazingly out of shape, and had melted ten pounds from my scrawny frame, and I decided even hurrying a little must count as serious work, and be capable of making me stiff and sore. The net result was I didn’t even want to get out of bed, and when I made it to my armchair for a coffee, I didn’t want to get out of the armchair.

There are certain times in life when it is a heroic act of will to stand up, for example in the fifteenth round of a boxing match. There is a quitter in us which just wants to rest, and that quitter can be very persuasive, and one really needs to gird one’s loins to get up. However defying that quitter is what makes a champion get up in the fifteenth round and win the title match.

Also, incidentally, it sometimes is what gets an old man out of his armchair. This thought made me smile wryly. I might not be winning the title, but it was the only way I’d get any breakfast, as my wife had to rush off to run the Childcare all alone.

Though the fridge was full of Tupperware containers of excellent chicken soup, man does not live on chicken soup alone. Especially for breakfast. So I opened a can of corn beef hash, noting the 16 oz. can is now 15 oz. (“Shrinkflation”). I fried it up and then dropped four eggs on top. It was a big breakfast, but I have ten pounds to put back onto my scrawny frame.

It was delicious, and added more than a pound to my frame, but initially this consisted of a greasy blob in my stomach. My stomach informed me no energy would be available until it did some digesting.

When younger I could override this message from my stomach. Often I had to, for most bosses wouldn’t put up with me sitting around after I ate. So I’d trudge around working much more slowly than usual until the energy kicked in. But now I’m my own boss, and also seventy, so sometimes I see no reason to override the message from my stomach, and instead I just lay down.

In the morning Elsie would put up with about fifteen minutes of such nonsense, and then start to disturb my peace. She wanted to go out for a walk. Not that she would be so forthright as to bark at me. Instead she’d begin pacing about, clicking her toenails on the floor, and would increasingly talk to herself, sighing deeply and muttering odd noises. I knew I’d better get up, for if I allowed her agitation to pass a certain point her stomach would produce a sort of slimy bile which she’d vomit as a disgusting yellow pool on my wife’s floor. Nor would the dog clean it up herself. The prospect of such a mess nearly always got me up and out.

But now there was no Elsie. I could digest my meals longer than fifteen minutes, if I so chose. And the doctor had told me to rest. So I decided I’d lay down for a half hour, and closed my eyes, and…

…And abruptly it was more than two hours later. I couldn’t believe it. The clock must be wrong, but my cell phone stated the same time. I’d wasted an entire morning, accomplishing nothing but making corn-beef hash with dropped eggs on top, and eating it. Meanwhile my wife was running the Childcare all alone.

I supposed I could say the doctor had told me to eat and to sleep, so I had accomplished two things. Eating and sleeping. But a man usually does not like the sum total of his morning to be those two things. I paced restlessly about the house, and then headed out the back door and up the hill to dig a grave.

It wasn’t much of a climb, only around fifty steps, but by the time I reached the site I was winded. It seemed ridiculous, but was the after effects of the pneumonia. I was rendered a weakling, and leaned against the handle of the shovel to catch my breath.

I fumbled about in the pocket of my jacket to find the little gadget to clip to my finger. My O2 level was at 69% as I huffed and puffed, catching my my breath, but as I watched it rose back up to 85%, and I risked digging a few more shovelfuls. Immediately I was out of breath, and the gizmo showed my O2 level sink down to 64%. As I caught my breath I wondered how low I could get it.

As I leaned against the long-handled shovel it seemed obvious to me that it was going to take a long time to dig the grave, but that there were worse ways to spend a day than standing on a New Hampshire hill, admiring the view. It also occurred to me that Elsie was once again, for the last time, getting me out to enjoy a view I’d otherwise miss.

As I alternated between scooping a few shovelfuls and resting, I reminisced about all the walks I’d been on over fifteen years.

Originally we’d been more of a traditional town, where dogs ran free, especially on farms, but as houses popped up like mushrooms more and more people moved in who were downright offended by the sight of a dog running free, and Elsie often became the subject of Facebook posts by indignant Karen’s. They were convinced a dog off its leash was terribly neglected.

I didn’t want to tie her up, because the children at the Childcare delighted in her, and also we suffered an invasion of rats when a nearby stable shut down, and Elsie loved to hunt rats. She could snatch one from the weeds and kill it promptly with a good shake. Then she would cast it aside. Elsie ate nearly anything, but not rats.

However she also grew increasingly independent as she got older, and developed a habit of edging towards the bounds of the Childcare, and then abruptly bolting. She’d return in roughly ninety minutes, after making her rounds and investigating every compost pile in the vicinity. This made me more watchful, but that only made the dog more crafty.

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and maybe it wasn’t a new trick she was enacting. Maybe she had been free before, and was just stuck in her old ways, but she became increasingly devious about gaining her freedom, and famous on Facebook. Most people liked or at least tolerated her, but some grew quite angry. One person, (I fortunately never discovered who,) even tied her up and then began spraying her with a can of blue spray paint. She escaped by slipping her collar and bolting, arriving back at the farm looking abashed and like a blue zebra, but, (though she likely avoided that particular yard from then on,) she did not learn to avoid people grabbing her collar, for a few months later she arrived back from one of her ninety-minute escapades with a note attached to her collar. (The note made it clear that authorities would be notified if Elsie ate their cat’s food on their back porch again.) Besides getting me outside on mornings I was sluggish, Elsie also introduced me to neighbors I otherwise would not have met.

Increasingly I had to tie the dog up, but I did not like doing so, especially when I was working outside. I promised my wife I’d keep a better eye on her, because I just liked having a dog with me as I pottered about. This only increased Elsie’s skill at sneaking off. At times her ability to vanish as soon as I got absorbed in a task infuriated me, and I’d drop what I was doing, hop in whatever clunker I was driving, and drive to a place where I knew I could intercept her as she crossed a road. Long time residents would assist me, and I recall one woman, upon looking up from her beautiful flower garden and seeing me lurking on the street, cheerfully informed me Elsie was likely in her compost pile behind her garage. We walked together to peer behind the garage and sure enough, there was Elsie. What amazed me was that the compost pile was surrounded on four sides by chicken-wire four feet tall, but Elsie had managed to get in. The lady stated, “Oh Elsie! Are you ever grounded!”

And Elsie was indeed grounded. It was embarrassing to be seen lurking about, peering into people’s yards, attempting to intercept my straying dog. New residents to town were made nervous when they saw me.

I was determined to teach the dog to stay by my side. But in this case I could not teach the old dog a new trick. She would test doors to see if they were latched, and became an escape artist, learning new tricks other than the new tricks I wanted her to learn.

One unexpected trick she learned was how to get people to pamper her. Besides being yelled-at and spray-painted blue, she also met a fair number of kindly people in her wanderings, and was at times fed by complete strangers. I wasn’t there and don’t know the details, but I do know she developed a pathetic expression she used on susceptible people. A posting would appear on Facebook, wherein someone would ask, “Does anyone know who’s dog this is? The poor thing was lost, and came wandering into my yard half starved to death.” Then there would be a picture of Elsie, wrapped in a blanket of lamb’s wool and eating what appeared to be sirloin steak. A flurry of replies would then follow, informing the kind person, “That is Elsie.” Then I would hear about it from my wife, (because I myself am never on Facebook). And I’d go pick her up.

One morning I had to fly out the door because a cellar was flooding over at the Childcare in a terrific rain, but Elsie whined she hadn’t been for her morning walk. I couldn’t find the leash, but in heavy rain I could usually let her into the backyard and she’d return swiftly. However on this morning a cottontail hopped across the back yard, and a rabbit could make Elsie forget her age in an instant, and she went bellowing and crashing off into the woods. Swearing softly to myself I headed off to the emergency at the Childcare. Even before I got the sump pump going my wife informed me from above that a Facebook post stated Elsie was in safe hands. As I emerged from the basement I inquired, “Where is she this time?” My wife informed me, “The bank.”

I happened to need to make a deposit that morning, so it was actually handy Elsie was at the bank. As I walked in all three tellers looked at me with sympathetic eyebrows. They informed me Elsie had come dragging out of the woods completely drenched, and covered in burrs, and had staggered to the drive-through window and looked up with her pathetic expression. Now she was behind the counter, where I am never allowed to go, getting treated better than that bank ever treats me. She was swaddled in towels and had a large bowl of kibble in front of her that they’d rushed off to buy from the market across the street. I shook my head. I briefly explained the dog had spent less than forty-five minutes in the rain, after running off after a rabbit, after a good breakfast. My voice got a bit lame towards the end, because all three tellers were regarding me as if I were a person making poor excuses after maltreating his dog.

As Elsie grew older she developed her pathetic look to a high art, and could stop cars. I think she may have even exaggerated her arthritic limp a little, to make it more effective. (I know there was no sign of a limp when she saw a rabbit.) I had several opportunities to see her in action, for, despite the fact we increasingly had to obey the leash law, and she was increasingly banned from the Childcare and reduced to four short walks a day, (after breakfast, noon, before supper, and before bed,) I still liked to have with me as I huffed and puffed splitting and stacking wood by my house. On those occasions I’d keep an eye on her, and sometimes watched her walk to the end of the drive, sit down, and look pathetic. I saw cars slow as they passed. Some stopped down the road, and returned in reverse, and they’d open their passenger-side door, but, before Elsie could jump in, I’d shout, “That dog is mine!” Then I’d wave, the kindly person would wave back, and Elsie’s plot would be spoiled, but she never lost hope nor stopped trying.

Sometimes she succeeded. Usually it was when my grandchildren were visiting, and she was playing with them. They’d stop for a snack, and Elsie would be offended she received no snack, walk to the foot of the drive, look pathetic, and hop into the first car that stopped. The first thing I’d know about it was when I heard there was a Facebook post showing her enjoying a sirloin steak in front of a fire in some lavish living-room in some million dollar mansion. (Perhaps I exaggerate, but only slightly.)

Then came a frightening day when she vanished and there was no Facebook post. I had a sick feeling the foolish dog had jumped into the wrong car, as I went to the police station to find out if they had heard anything. The secretary was sympathetic, because she knew Elsie, and shook her head, as she shuffled through the overnight notes. Then she paused and smiled at me. A newly hired officer, who did not know Elsie, had advised a kindly person who had picked Elsie up to take the dog to the regional office of the humane society. I called them up, and they informed me they had her. They were located across the state in Swanzey, more than a half hour drive away. Off I eent.

The people in Swanzey were very nice, and we laughed over Elsie’s ability to get rescued from her own driveway, but once in the car Elsie got a frown. I had better ways to spend my time.

Perhaps the most ridiculous rescue was when the newly hired officer picked Elsie up from my drive even as the grandchildren played in the back yard. He told me a leash law was a leash law, as I paid the $25.00 fine up at the station. The secretary carefully avoided meeting my eye.

In any case, the town changed and dogs definitely didn’t run free any more. I became a grouchy anachronism, voicing garrulous opinions about the direction society was headed, and Elsie became a dying breed, the last of the free dogs.

She still was allowed freedom when I took the goats out to the flood control reservoir behind our Childcare. Originally there were many goats, as well as many small children. Elsie, a mutt with some retriever blood, also displayed some herding ability at times, and developed a relationship with the goats which fascinated me. My fascination grew, even as the herd dwindled down to a single goat.

Above is a picture of Lydia, looking backwards for Elsie, my last goat looking for her nemesis the dog, after the dog had its last swim.

After that last swim the dog began yelping, because she was so tired she couldn’t push her way through the especially thick grass (due to the summer’s extravagant rainfall) to the top of the dam. I had to walk back and huff and puff down the embankment to break a path for the weary, old dog. Elsie gave me her pathetic look, but I wasn’t going to fall for that, and refused to carry her. But it was obvious we were both much older, as we reached the top of the dam. Elsie was dragging and I was huffing and puffing.

Lydia gave us both a somewhat condescending look. She didn’t hold with having anything to do with bodies of water larger than a puddle. Arid-land creatures, goats rival camels with their ability to endure parching circumstances, and, after I stopped milking her, Lydia amazed me by going days without touching her water bucket, seemingly getting by merely on the dew on the grass she ate at dawn. However she would have nothing to do with the flood control reservoir, never drinking from it, nor wading even ankle deep. The fact Elsie loved to swim in it always caused her to wear a look of disbelief, turning to mild panic when, as a younger dog, Elsie would rush up to us and then shake herself vigorously, filling the air with spray.

The two beasts had been juveniles together, and then endured each others company for fifteen years, as the herd grew to seventeen, and I felt rich, and then as it shrank to one, and I felt poor again. As their ancestors had been predators and prey, they had many reasons to dislike each other; one liked meat and one was vegan, (which seems to be a reason many humans dislike each other as well). However their ancestors had been herders and herded as well, so they also had an ancient linkage, though I doubt either would begrudge confessing any such attraction could ever exist.

One thing I never saw them do in fifteen years was to touch noses. It was a common greeting among dogs, and among goats, and there were occasions when I sat looking at clouds and composing poetry when a goat, or my dog, might come up and touch noses with me, but they simply would not do it with each other. It simply was unthinkable. Yet they were strangely attached in other ways. Should a distant branch snap, off in the woods, the goats came rushing to me and my dog, as the dog took a few steps in the direction of the snap, lifted a paw, and freed an inquiring “woof”.

One bond I felt we might have was we were all social animals. Goats have their herds, dogs have their packs, and humans have their small towns or city neighborhoods. There is enough similarity to make partial blending possible.

Not that they didn’t constantly test each other. If a goat became too complacent the complacency may have seemed disrespectful to Elsie, and she’d make a totally unnecessary move, more like a feint than a lunge, towards the tendons of the goat’s rear legs or the goats udder, and that would wake up the goat in a hurry. Usually the goats pranced away from Elsie, even as she wandered by completely disinterested, as if she was a wolf in their midst, which, when you think of it, she truly was. But at times Elsie became a sort of air-headed wolf, so lost in her sniffings she neglected her duties, and I think this must have seemed like negligence even to the goats, for why else would one reach out their herbivore mouth and pull the dog’s tail? Elsie would then wheel and deliver a bombastic lecture of barks and snarls and bared teeth containing every swear-word a dog knows, and the goats would all back away, looking at each other with marveling expressions, apparently very impressed. (But in a strangely pleased, admiring way.)

Watching this strange relationship over fifteen years, and also understanding I was a part of the mix, gave me ample time to reflect upon the strength that comes from differing talents working as a unity. (I could go off on a very long tangent at this point, but just the basics will suffice).

Dogs have amazing noses. They can literally “see” who passed over a patch of earth, and gauge how recently. Only when there has been a thin fall of powder snow can we see the footprints, and get a small idea of the newspaper they are reading when they snuffle over a patch of earth. But furthermore, they read moods. An angry man can falsify a smile all he wants, but if he approaches a child a dog has custody of, the dog bares its teeth.

Goats have amazing eyes. I’m not sure how their square pupils work, but when my herd stopped and all looked in one direction, I too stopped to see if my dim sight could see what they saw. Often I couldn’t, but when I could it amazed me because the only reason I could see was because brown or rust-red fur clashed with green leaves, and goats are supposedly color blind and shouldn’t be able to see such a clash. On one occasion it was baby foxes playing under a low-hanging branch of a bush, mere tiny red specks in the distance. I never would have seen them, had not the goats alerted me.

Often I was humbled, because I lack an amazing nose or an amazing pair of eyes. What’s amazing about me? Nothing, really, except for the fact I’m in charge. I’m the boss, though the beasts do like to see what they can get away with. And I feed and protect them. When the goats escaped and ate the neighbor’s roses, I was the one who made amends. When the dog was at the police station, I bailed her out, paying the $25.00 fine. I’m not sure how amazing that is, but for fifteen years I was the overseer of something not seen very often in modern suburbs. Just a ripple in the waters of time.

I leaned against the long handle of my shovel to catch my breath. It was just my luck to hit a large stone in the usually stone-free hillside, but I’d finally budged it. I put the little clip on my finger and saw I’d set a personal record. 49%! At the hospital alarms would probably be going off, and nurses would be scurrying, but for a tough old Yankee like me, it just meant I’d huff and puff a little longer.

If I did die, it would be with my boots on, and I preferred that to being in a hospital with a ventilator jammed down my throat. Or to be dying with my pants down. Going to the toilet is stressful, and the night before I’d had the little clip on my finger as I evacuated my bowels, and was surprised to see the stress lowered my 02 levels to 56%. Who wants to die with their pants down when they can die with their boots on? But I was being too morbid, even as I attempted humor. Elsie deserved better.

I trimmed the edges of the hole, and the grave was done. I was exhausted. I decided I needed a strong coffee before the burial, and headed down the hill to the coffee pot and my armchair by the fire. I couldn’t resist checking the news, and as usual it was abysmal. Terrorists beheading children, and so on. It occurred to me that, while some wonder if dogs have souls, the question should now be whether humans have them.

In this fouled world, not worth the cheap tintype
It's minted from, the death of a dear old dog
Deserves some blink. Maybe not tears to wipe
And hide from reluctant lashes, nor fog
On the teeth of dawn, but at least a pause
In the never-ending yammer. We're made cold as ice
By the symptoms of survival; the cause
Of cold is its continuation. A nice
Sunbeam might warm, but warming makes no sense
In this gyre with no heart. A black hole cores
Our galaxy. Who in their right mind repents
The death of a dog? It's low spirit soars
While where can we claim our high spirits go?
A dog's death reminds the highest they're low.

The strong coffee must have included too much cream, for I nodded off in my armchair, drifting off into a strange reverie wherein I thought I should have been born a Buddhist. They believe the one life we live is far longer than the three score and ten years allotted by orthodox Christians, and in fact that single “life” included numerous, (perhaps millions), of incarnations, including animal incarnations before we achieved “God’s own image” status as humans.

Therefore dogs do have souls, striving to become human. Humans, however, fail to grasp what Creation is for, and all too often strive to be dogs. Rather than seeking their birthright, and becoming children of God, they backslide, so addicted to Creation they prefer it to their Creator.

Therefore dogs are, in a sense, superior to humans, for they are striving towards God, whereas humans are lollygagging about, treading water at best and devolving at worst. And if you doubt this, ask yourself this question, which I ask myself: Given the choice, would you rather study scripture or watch men run about in shorts bouncing a ball and shooting it through a hoop? For most of my life, given the choice of watching a basketball game or attending a Bible study, I confess basketball would have won every time.

An odd thought occurred to me as I drifted into dreaminess. It was that, whereas physical, Darwinian evolution forces each step to closely resemble the gradation that preceded it, spiritual evolution might escape such limitations, and beasts might reincarnate as whatever seemed most interesting, and therefore Elsie might reincarnate as a rabbit, or even a goat.

Abruptly I woke with a jolt. I glanced anxiously at the window, afraid it would again be dark, but was glad to see it was still golden. I then lurched my aching body to my feet and headed out to bury the dog.

It was a strange afternoon for late November, especially after so much wet weather. The approaching cold front wasn’t just ramming into our local, sodden air, but had peeled a ribbon of very dry air from some place out west, either the deserts of Arizona or the Chinooks of Alberta, and this air was so very dry the wet leaves swiftly dried and began to stir and then to rush about my feet. I thought at one point they might fill the grave, but they didn’t. I again thanked Elsie for getting me out to see weather I otherwise would have missed.

How often she did that. Too often I grumbled. But the dog dragged me out, and how many sunrises did I see and how many bird songs did I hear? How much weather did I sniff even as she sniffed? I recall at least two rainbows I would have been oblivious to, plus night owls that hooted and packs of coyotes that yipped, and much more. (Not to mention that I often needed the exercise).

As I lifted Elsie from the back of the Jeep I was afraid she’d be heavy. Towards her end she couldn’t leap into the passenger seat of the Jeep any more, and I’d had to hoist her bulk. But she hadn’t eaten much towards her end, and was surprisingly light. Rigor mortis made her stiff as a board, but fortunately she was in a position of rest, and fit in the hole I had dug. I stood a while trying to think of some profound eulogy, but couldn’t think of much beyond, “Good dog.” Then I covered her with an old sheet my wife donated, and filled in the hole.

And that was that. I knew it was inadequate, but I suppose we always must be inadequate, when trying to thank something as huge and beautiful as life. But at least I hadn’t “disposed” of her.

Next I had to attend to a hoard of grandchildren arriving for Thanksgiving, and how we were going to maneuver a mother-in-law with dementia through the event. I figured the dog was done with, but she wasn’t. As many old country songs croon, to fill the hole of a grave does not fill the hole in your heart.

In a fall already full of losses
My old dog died. The children felt the space
On Thanksgiving, yet bore their small crosses
But a moment before filling the place
With fresh glee. The sweet stampeding patter
of small feet; the abrupt outrage over
The ownership of a toy: a matter
just as abruptly forgotten; a blur
Of feeding, dishes, diapers, wiped quite clean
The slate of my mind from all morbid thought
Until with shrill goodbyes they left. I had seen
Such chaos that to step in a hushed house ought
Be welcoming, and yet I bit my lip.
No dog's tail greeted me with "tip-tip-tip."