Archive for new day
Two thoughts on 2017
Contempt – even at its most hateful – is a form of *audacity* – and it can animate the creative imagination as truly as any other form.
That person over there doesn’t need to speak in order to beat you in an argument, only spit. You overvalue nuance and number in your vocabulary.
And one from 2015, apropos:
Liberals loathe the political Right’s hypocrisy and unfairness. Conservatives loathe the Left’s immorality and weakness. The groups’ estimations of their own qualities, though, are less precise.
The question of “hypocrisy” is particularly interesting. La Rochefoucauld noted that “hypocrisy is the respect vice pays to virtue.” One can’t be a hypocrite without recognizing that virtue – that morality – exists. This recognition it itself makes hypocrites superior (in their minds) even to decent, noble liberals who discount “morality” as dogmatic and unrealistic. Think of fundamentalist Christians who think that belief in Jesus is the sole criterion to enter heaven; one’s behaviour is beside the point. So, to the Right hypocrisy is a good thing, though they don’t say so.
Fall
This is such a beautiful time of year in Vancouver, the golden lateral light in between the rainy times, the leaves lining sidewalks, Goths with hidden tattoos coming at you with boots more dangerous than axes, & swift fragrant winds reminding us to look high & look over & to feel great & teeny & essential in these moments.
Amateur recreation
“Amateur” comes from the Latin word for lover, “amator.” This spring I found a new recreation: translation. I have fallen in love with it. That doubtless I will never be very good at it is beside the point. I will always be a thick-fingered butcher when practicing the harp.
The magic thing is to have the harp.
The gift
I watched most of the funeral for Nancy Reagan the other day – and was strangely moved, when I could subtract my feelings of revulsion for what happened during her husband’s presidency (his silence on AIDS, his support for the contras in Nicaragua, his race-baiting …).
Nancy protected her man. And that really is something, and it touches me deep down.
I recalled the funeral of Kostantin Chernenko, who was the leader of the Soviet Union for a brief time in the mid-1980s. His wife, Anna Dmitrevna Lyubimova, had to be dragged away from his open coffin. It was a flash of colour and human heat in a field of obedient grey souls. (After Chernenko’s death, Ronald Reagan said to Nancy: “How am I supposed to get anyplace with the Russians if they keep dying on me?” I digress.)
—
I remember another funeral, one held for USA statesman George Schultz’s first wife, Helena Schultz, at Stanford Memorial Church, in 1995. I was walking down the hill from the student union to the English department – which was adjacent to the church – and I saw a coffin, on a rolling stand, unattended, behind the church, and thought, “No need to worry – nobody is going to steal a coffin.” When I stepped onto the sidewalk of the Quad, I saw a small crowd in front of the church. I went into the English / Writing building and asked my friend Dolores what was going on. “It’s a funeral for George Schultz’s wife. That’s her, in the coffin” (which was just a few feet outside the window).
I was struck that all these people (including George and Barbara Bush, I later saw) were in front of the church to commemorate her life but no one was watching her coffin, where her body was. But of course.
Back out in the Quad I saw an Asian family – parents and two daughters – who were visiting the campus. The older daughter had a shiny bicycle. The Mom asked her husband and daughters to pose for a photograph and instructed the girls to hold hands. When they did so, the bike fell over, and the whole family started to laugh, and I felt the torrent of life, to tears, into my bones, which kept me standing as though aloft in my breath. What Mrs. Schultz, I thought, would have given to have seen this moment with me, to witness such careless and happy and shared life!
Thinking back, I remember something my friend Cindy told me, that in dying the dead give you their greatest gift. I have puzzled over these words a lot in the years since she said them, an understanding of them arriving only in glimpses before leaving again and again. But the vividness of that scene, the girls, the bike, the parents, the unattended coffin out of view, the mourners, has never left me. It reminds me, with great force every time, of evanescent magic, miraculous living life.
That reminder has indeed been a great gift – from someone whom I never met, who was alone in her coffin.
Hellos
A dear old friend of mine recently returned to the Vancouver area, where he is living alone in a barn that he turned into a beautiful studio apartment a few years ago. Although I know maybe no one more ‘out and about’ than my buddy, he told me he was concerned that if something happened to him while he was at home, it might be days before anyone found out about it.
He came up with a good plan. Every morning we would send a little text to one another conveying news of our continued existence. (I live alone, too.) It’s become a favourite part of my day.
My friend and I are heading into week three of trying to schedule lunch, so these morning greetings are especially happy ones to me. You can’t make new old friends.
It’s about time
An old friend is publishing online, chapter by chapter, a roman à clef in which yours truly plays a pivotal if not a leading role. No, I am not giving you the URL. And yes, I should return to my own memoirs before it’s too late.
Thank you, world
I am really feeling the love this Christmas season. I am very grateful.
what a year
Loyal friendships. Unanticipated turns. Rediscoveries. And an ever-growing love for Vancouver.
Thank you for reading, everyone. I hope you have a holiday filled with love and delight.
Elementary
The source of my greatest anguish, St. Paul’s School, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, closed down this year. I found out yesterday. Part of me felt relief. A bigger part felt ill. The biggest part felt anger, that the school died before I could get even (so to speak).
No Loss
As a young man, running was right up there with hitch-hiking as one of my favourite things to do. By the time I was in my mid-twenties several of my running partners could no longer run; their knees or feet or back had finally buckled; road-running’s no good on the joints. I knew that my time could be up in a day or a year or in ten years.
One day while visiting my parents in Fairport, NY, I went out for a long run down by the Erie Canal, then along some paths dividing farmers’ fields, then out to my old high school. It was a hot hot HOT; and no wind; it was *lovely*. Heading home on Ayrault Road I was running up a hill and felt the sun just burning the back of my calves; this elated me. I knew how lucky I was to be able to run. I knew that I had enjoyed every step of every run in my life.
Then I realized something. I saw into my future, to a time when I would no longer be able to run: I would have no regrets, because I had never taken my gift, such as it was, for granted. I had always thanked my lucky stars.
Sometimes I find myself running in my dreams – and when I do, I *know* that I am dreaming; I am having a lucid dream, and I can run anywhere I want. And *do* – having been given a gift from my younger self and from the magic of life.
Up
Part of my mindfulness practice these days is paying attention to acts that make me happy.
I have found that for this flâneur, looking straight up while walking around fills his sensorium with delight and gratitude.
(The picture above and the others in the new batch – click on the pic – were taken on Burnaby Street in Vancouver, a few blocks from English Bay.)
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