For Labrys

 She doesn't post to the 'net anymore but since she's still in this space I thought I'd us it to write her back.

Get it?

 

I do enjoy your old-school handwritten correspondence; I promise - really, no shit, promise - to actually write, pen-and-paper, back to you. 

 

But for now, this will have to make do.

Bottom line? I'm...good-ish. The thing I wrote away back still holds; here, now, I'm fine. Oh, sure, I have the usual pissing and moaning any GI has a right to, but it's mostly First World Problems. But I'm still the "optipess" I was then; happy locally, dismal globally.

At home? My Bride is lovely, and The Girl is a lot of salty teenage fun.

The Boy? Is being pretty useless at the moment. 

He's given up pretending to be striking for a PGE lineman job. His latest scheme is supposedly looking for something as a cop...but his "effort" in that direction is lacking, well, pretty much everything. He's talked about applying for the Portland Bureau's "cadet" thing this winter, but the Bureau began taking applications back in September and his is still unfinished. I've pointed him towards the Criminal Justince programs at both our local colleges and he's done nothing there.

He is still doing what he did in high school; hanging around playing videogames all day and into the night. 

If he was actually any good I'd recommend he fly to Seoul and try to get on a professional team, but I'm skeptical he'd have the remorseless drive to do that; as far as I can see he games for the giggles.

Now. Me?

My only real bitch is that my new knees have refused to shake off the weird post-op thing that they developed nearly immediately; my shins and insteps are partially numb.

 

Not completely; I have feeling in them. But they have that sort of tingling you get when you sit or lie on an arm or leg wrong and cut off the nerve impulses? Y'know what I'm talking about? "Asleep" as in "Oh, my foot's asleep" when you've sat with your leg tucked under you too long.

 

The fronts of my knees are like that, too, which isn't really a shock given the massive insult involved in tearing onto them, hacking out the bones, and then shoving in metal bits and sewing them back together.

 

But the instep thing?

 

That's weird, and I figured it'd wear off after a while. Nope. I'm to the point of calling the cutter and asking WTF. Not a life-changing problem, but...weird.

 

Other than that, I'm well and healthy. I'm enjoying the first couple of weeks of my retirement. I'm looking at ideas for more writing, including possibly flogging my "battles" pieces to a publisher or magazines. We'll see how that goes.

 

It's on the larger scale that I despair.

Beginning here in Portland, where the local government has decided to go with the Stupid Option for dealing with the homeless situation. I've been over and over this and it's not really worth rehashing other than to note that with a whole range of options to pick from the City commissioners went for the most crude and dismal - herding the scruffy poor into camps. Yeah, because that's worked so well before.

That and the local version of the "crime" panic has let the worthless fucking Police Bureau off the hook again, another subject we've beat to death here and not worth recounting, but my kid might be involved some day (are you reading this, kid? If you want that you gotta get your shit together!) so I keep hoping that someone or ones will force the worthless bastards to be better.

Then move up to the state, where the even-more-worthless GOP managed slight gains in the lege despite being no less worthless than ever (and even moreso in the case if the idiotic Greater Idaho nonsense) as a testimony to the poor taste of the average Oregon voter.

And from there to the nation, where, likewise, the GQP now will flood the federal House with shit in the words of the immortal Steve "I Fell Asleep Drunk With My Head In The Stewpot" Bannon. We're guaranteed two years of unmitigated monkey-shit-flinging about Hunter Biden, Tony Fauci, China Virus, J6 Conspiracies, and every other looney QANut bullshit thing ever thought of.

And meanwhile the climate continues to slowly boil.

I don't want to be dead any more than any other person who ever existed. But there are times I'm glad I'm old. I don't want to be here when the bills come due, the bills for our fucking stupidity about the industrial age, for our fucking unwillingness to call weird and creepy fascists weird and creepy fascists, for our very-human-but-utterly-dysfunctional happiness to whistle past all the difficult and dangerous issues that we should be willing and able to address.

Fucking people, as SSG Layne would have said, they could fuck up a wet dream.

But.

I'm still here. I'm still trying to do what I can. I'm still enjoying what life and living bring me.

And that's pretty much all anyone can do.

So. I hope this finds you and yours safe and well. May the aches of our age lie lightly upon you. May you find some moments of clarity and peace. May you be well and do well, for yourself and for those you love.

I remain,

your friend.

J

Life is life (da da da da da dum...)

(Soundtrack for this post, from Laibach, my second-favorite group of Slovenians...)

I wanted to post this quickly after my sad little rant from yesterday, because it sort of typifies my position as an "optipess". That is, I am very unhopeful about the overall trajectory of our industrial civilization. I really don't think that anyone will solve the two huge problems that are going to bitchslap us:

1) Industrial civilization is learning how to make things without people, especially things that don't require a special sort of creative process. So the people who used to live by "making stuff" are going to find that they don't have jobs. Or that the jobs they will have are either a) horrible, like hospice and elder care work, b) low-paying, or both. Basically I think that a hell of a lot of what used to be the "working" and "lower middle class" (and even a fair bit of the "upper middle class") won't have a way to make a living. And

2) Anthropogenic global warming.

I think the resulting social chaos - people fighting over water and cropland or trying to escape rising seas while scads of people will be living aimlessly, without work or hope and on the edge of appalling poverty - will make the great migrations of Europe and Asia look like a child's birthday party.

But...at the same time, my own life is fairly sunny. My hip is working much better. The Boy seems to be happier now that he's taking his Brain Medicine. The Girl is her usual sweetie self. And my Bride is, as always, a Garden of Delight, Dispenser of Pleasures and Domestic Goddess.

This, for example, is from the past Saturday. Mojo and I took the Girl to what we call "Sushi Train". It's one of several little kaiten-zushi joints in Portland, and the Girl loves her some sushi. About two-thirds of this stack is hers. That's a LOT of sushi..!

There's always something fun going on at home; yesterday I got back late from a soccer game to hear all about the little fledgling crow that the kiddos had found. They tried to shoo it back towards its' nest-tree (amid great caw-ing from all the neighborhood crows) when some sort of raptor arrived.

From the kids' description you'd think this sucker was the size of one of Tolkien's eagles! But I think it was either a red-tailed hawk or a big accipiter like a Cooper's hawk. Anyway, it took the fledgling for its' own hatchlings to the great excitement (and sadness) of the young people. "It's the Circle of Life..." sighed Little Miss, who then giggled when I reminded her that she says the same thing when she farts.

I'm doing good work and getting paid for doing something I love.

I live in a beautiful part of the world, and I have my books, and my sport, and my hobbies to distract and entertain me. I get to write to you here and get the opinion-kinks out of my head. I have people I love and who love me close to hand.

I have it pretty goddamn good, at least here, and for the moment.

And that's pretty much all any of us can ask from life, isn't it?

We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsered, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Abiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

~ Wallace Stevens

Playing off

Did I mention that my beloved Timbers won the Major League Soccer title this season?

Oh, yeah. Sorry.

So I've walked around just slightly pleased this entire December because of this, and I just realized why because I watched Rog and Davo talking with the lovely and intelligent Rebecca Lowe on Men in Blazers last night.

Turns out that the Lovely Rebecca is a Crystal Palace supporter (see the little stuffed eagle on Davies' shoulder? That's "Kayla", Palace's eagle mascot). She was talking about the distress that Manchester United fans are feeling this season even though the Scum are within the top half of the Premiership table and in a position that fans of other, more mundane, (read: Palace) clubs would normally consider supremely enviable.

But that for ManU fans this is anything but. The Red Devils have been losing and drawing, not scoring, and generally looking moderately crap for much of the 2015 campaign, and this gives the over-accustomed-to-success-ManU-fans huge, huge sadz.

Lovely Rebecca's observation was that this was because these overprivileged mamzers were, in her words, "forced to face Life", that is, Life as the Rest of Us have to live it; full of disappointments, failures, heartbreak, people we love who like us "as friends", movies starring anyone ever appearing on American Idol, nonalcoholic beer.

And that hit be right between the eyes because the story of a Portland Timbers fan has been failure for nearly 40 years.

The original Timbers came oh-so-close, going to the old NASL "Soccer Bowl" championship match in 1975 but losing to Tampa Bay.

Between that year and last month the closest the Timbers ever came was...close.

We won the old USL in league play - winning the "Commissioner's Cup", the regular season record - in 2009 but proceeded to shit the bed against the damn Vancouver Whitecaps. We won the Western Conference in league play in 2013 but failed to beat Real Salt Lake for the conference playoff.

That's kind of been the "Portland Story"; win regular season games, go to the playoffs, lose.

Until, two years ago...

The Portland Thorns had a fraught season in 2013. Starting the season ripping out five wins and a draw the Thorns were top of the table in the middle of May. But by mid-June the team had slipped down to third of eight. In August the team lost two, drew one, and won one, nearly dropping out of championship contention.

Portland went to Kansas City to play the Blues - who had split the season series 1-1-1 with them including a home defeat in August - and shipped two goals in the first thirty minutes. The team looked beaten and out of ideas.

But some of the players refused to lay down and die. Tobin Heath scored just after the half hour. Christine Sinclair finished a brilliant run dishing to Tiff Weimer who scored just past the hour mark. And Allie Long drove the nail in 18 minutes into overtime.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, impossibly, for the final 210 minutes of the 2,190 minutes the Thorns played in 2013 the team played like...well, champions. They crushed Western New York in the championship match to win the first NWSL title.

The storyline of this Timbers season is freakishly similar.

At the beginning of October the Timbers stood in seventh place in the MLS Western Conference, out of playoff contention having lost a gutting 1-nil home decision to Sporting Kansas City. The team had scored only 31 goals in 31 games.

They were out of the Open Cup. They had finished behind both Vancouver and Seattle in the Cascadia Cup.

It looked like lights out.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, impossibly, the Timbers began to win.

They won their last three regular season matches to finish third in the Western Conference.

They won an insane play-in round match against Kansas City that went to twelve rounds of penalty kicks after 120 minutes.

They comfortable disposed of the Vancouver and Dallas sides that had finished above them in the West.

Then they won the championship match.

Both Portland's professional soccer teams have now won their leagues. Within two years of each other. Both teams will now wear the star above the club crest that forever shines as the sign of a championship season.

I have to confess something here.

I'm not a big fan of "playoffs", in any sport. My feeling has always been you play a sports season to decide who's the best. You win the season, you win all the matches, you win. You're the champion. That's it. No frigging "wild cards", no "play-ins", no gimmicks. Play the games, win, that's it.

But boy friggin' howdy am I glad that the outfits that run American soccer don't think like I do.

Love and other drugs

Dunno why - perhaps being brushed by the leafy wing of the Angel of a Very Sore Pate - but this has been on my mind this morning:

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

~ Andrew Marvell

My sun on this sunless day.

Light Sleeper

The rains have returned.

Not that that's surprising; December in Portland?

Rainy.

A typical December day begins with spitting rain and ends in showers while the temperature never rises above 47 and never falls below 44. The daylight hours pass in a glower of badly-lit drizzle as though you were living inside a poor-quality VHS tape of your life. We endure this part of the year without loving it, the price we pay for our lovely mild spring and summer days.

One unfortunate effect of the deterioration of my hip-joints has been that I usually need a painkiller to get to sleep. But the PKs have a nasty tendency to wake me up in the early hours of the morning; I'm not sure whether it's a side-effect of the drug or an effect of the drug wearing off and the pain returning.

Whatever the reason it's been consistent, so I've gotten used to getting up around 1:30 or 2 in the morning and spending a hour or so at the computer before trying to get back to sleep.

The world is a stark place when viewed through the pixels of the online news channels. My friend Lisa noted that in reality we live in a vastly safe world, and, when you think on that for a moment, we really do.

The great and terrible wars of the 20th Century have been spared us, our generation. The total number of combat deaths in all of my country's wars over the past decade come to less than the dead men piled up in 76 hours on the island of Betio in November, 1943.

Seventy-six hours!

We have been spared the terrible epidemics of history. The days of the fearsome marauders; the horse nomads, the migrating tribes, have been spared us. For most of us in the West we stand a better chance of being warmly housed, decently fed, and healthily raised than almost any other time and place in human history.

It must be human nature, then, to look around and ahead for things to fear when our here and today are so benign.

Just moments ago my little daughter shuffled out of the dark, rubbing her eyes and yawning. She, like me, is a light sleeper, and the light and sound of my wakefulness often brings her up out of whatever little-girl dreams are carrying her through the rainy night. She never really fully wakes but still feels compelled to go and see what I am doing.

So she totters down the hall, into the front room, and up to my chair and waits, wordlessly, for me to pick her up.

She's getting big, my little orphan child, with a density that betokens strong muscles and bones and which makes her difficult for me to lift. But that lifting is an important part of our night-wakings; I heft her to my shoulder and carry her back down the dark hallway with her smooth, soft, fine hair pressed to my neck. She cuddles in against me with a drowsy sigh, and then snuggles into her welter of soft blankets; thumb into mouth, tattered terrycloth blankie in fist, and in moments she's asleep again.

And as I'm walking back to this desk I realize that we don't need the big frights and the great terrors; every one of us has our own small worries to trouble us.

The flu germ, the inattentive driver, the lost job, the burning house...we all have so many places to be wounded. When we love we give those loves as hostages, knowing that life and Fate in their uncaring profligacy will spare us nothing, knowing that we are granted happiness and peace by the merest of random chances.

We can do all the Right Things; live carefully, love greatly, work fiercely and well, and in the end we may end up with a handful of dust and ashes.

And yet...

How can we not?

I will freely own that I have no great dreams of tomorrow. When I was young I dreamed of greatness; of my name being spoken with love, or dread, or admiration by people I had never met and never would. Of leaving monuments behind me; spires, thrones, and dominations, pyramids of skulls, works of great art and skill that would speak of me long after I was gone.

Now I hope only for small victories; a sound, useful life, a legacy of good work well done, and a part in the raising of a family of good men and women who grow to be themselves intelligent and honorable people. And every day well-lived becomes a victory over those small worries. Every evening that I can hug those small warm bodies to me becomes a triumph, and a challenge.

Because all those dangers and snares await me and mine with the next daybreak.

So I sit, and type, listening to the silent sounds of my bones as they ache and gripe at me, and look out the window at the predawn sky, seeking the faintest traces of the light of the coming day.

Here, There, and Marshmallow Mateys

I suspect I don't have much worthwhile on my mind tonight.

Largely because I've started with a new outfit (my old boss sold our little engineering firm to a much larger company based in Seattle) and I'm having to continue to do my job whilst adapting to the Corporate Engineering Way of Doing Things. Doesn't leave much time for more than work, family, and sleep.

So the glamorous fever of blogging is not on me.But I did have a couple of random things that I wanted to talk about. So.

Remember back in September when I whined about my hip packing it in? Well, in the big picture of physical health suckitude, I have it pretty damn sweet. There are other people who have it much, much worse.

"Fibromyalgia" sounds like Satan's Getaway Weekend.

I'm often amazed how MANY people I know, or have met, or see, who are really, seriously emotionally or physically fucked up. I think one of the aspects of modern urban life that is at the same time wonderful and terrible is the change that it has brought to people with awful chronic emotional problems or physical pain.For most of human history these people would have had relatively brief, thoroughly miserable lives. Unable to fend for themselves they would have been at the mercy of overwhelmed families, unscrupulous "caretakers", callous landlords, employers, and neighbors. If lucky they might have been able to exist as almost helpless wards of their families, or the state, or charity cases in crowded religious shelters, or taken to the road to beg or steal.

The combination of things like disability insurance, government "safety-net" programs, better-educated families, and modern medical care can make the lives of these poor people something less than a living hell. But nothing can make that sort of pain bearable. I still can't figure out if that's a good thing...or a great evil.

Good, on the whole, I suspect. But, still...what a shitty deal.

Oddly, while at some remove I understand the wild desire many of these poor bastards have to just have it over, there's still a big part of me that has a deep respect for the ones that keep on going.

I mean, in a case like that there's no real "hope". Sure, there's always the odd miracle, or the freakish medical breakthrough. But for most of the people with stuff like chronic pain or severe depression, they're gonna fight that all the way to the Big Sleep. When you wake up every day in pain you've been dealt a shitty hand. Period.And if you don't choose to suck the shotgun there's no real alternative except to play it, and before you lay down the first card you already know you're going to lose.

But, least to me, there is something in HOW you play out that shitty hand. It may not matter in the Big Picture. But I'd like to know, when I get the cancer that kills me and finally get laid out for my dirt nap, that I fought like a sunuvabitch over every. damn. card.

Even knowing all I was holding was a pair of deuces. I'd like my kids to think of me as someone who never gave up. Never gave in. Toughed it out.

I'd like to think of them coming to put a shot of Talisker and a rose on my headstone, look down, and say; "You done good, numbnuts. Take a break in place. Sorry you went so hard, but we miss you."

Stopped into a late-night gas station on the way back to the shop the other night. It was dark night, well towards midnight. All I wanted was to pick up the tools I needed for the next day and get on home. So I skimmed the nozzle jockey two twenties and went inside looking for something wet.

There's a sameness to those places; racks of cheap, nasty processed food under the hard florescent lights, coolers full of brand colas and beer. A bored man or woman behind the counter. The smell of linoleum and sharp cleaning fluids. I didn't think I could ever be surprised in one of them unless the Virgin of Guadalupe chose to manifest herself to me in the Greeley Avenue Kwik-Mart.

But I have to say that the shave-headed little man managed to surprise me with his choice of late night pick-me-up; "Ma's Mango" flavored Joose, which turns out to be a jacked-up sort of brewed thing whose only virtue appears that, at 12% alcohol by volume, it will get you drunk quickly.This character had two monstrous cans of this awful juice joose and a pack of Menthol Kools, which seemed like a peculiar way to celebrate a random Tuesday night in Oregon City, but, hell, nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus.

-- --

Found out today that my daughter has been turning in her kindergarten "homework" - did you know that kindergarten now comes with "homework? - dutifully every Friday like a good little student.

Only one problem; she never completes any of it.

In fact, she never works on it at all.

Just turns in the blank sheet.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as some extreme form of passively naive obedience to authority or some sort of incredibly devious, extremely complex and subtly subversive anti-authoritarian defiance.

-- --

Stopped off at our local wholesale-retail grocery tonight. Do you know what I'm talking about? Our version is called "WinCo". We also have "CostCo", the national chain, and used to have something called "Cub Foods" which worked on the same principle; buy in huge job lots and sell cheap. This includes a lot of generic brands like the "Marshmallow Mateys"

, Malt-o-meal's knockoff of Lucky Charms with parrots and treasure and swords (at least, that's what the styrofoam-textured sugar lumps advertised as marshmallows are supposed to look like. The only time I ever really scrutinized them I found one that looked a bit like a bell pepper and...well, actually, if you're interested (and God knows why you should be) you can try here, where Rita, the genius behind "Fighting off Frumpy" goes waaaaay further into the whole "Marshmallow Matey" thing that I ever wanted to) in place of the bigger brand's hokey-Irish-leprechaun theme.

Anyway, this isn't really about "Marshmallow Mateys". It's about people-watching at the WinCo.

Because WinCo is, well...downmarket. It's not where you get your groceries if you can afford to get better groceries. So many of the people you meet there are in the subspecies of homo sapiens Americanus vulgaris, the common, or garden, variety of American.

And everything you've read in those dire magazine articles about "American society" you can see right there.

It's the heavy woman with the four kids who is clearly barely maintaining control of the mob; a tired and frightened lion-tamer with a cageful of energetic carnivores who are momentarily cowed only by her size. But you can see in their eyes, and in the slump of her shoulders, that the day is coming and that day, soon, when she will not have whip or chair big enough to defend herself.

It's the couple with the tats and the Orange County Chopper gear that are buying a case of Smirnoff Ice and two frozen dinners.It's...it's mostly just the way we look. Was there really once a time when people in the U.S. wouldn't go out in public without a tie? Or a clean shirt and a dress? Christ, we look terrible, and I include myself in that. We clomp around in saggy pants and tatty shirts, in pajama bottoms and nasty flip-flops. And don't even get me started on the condition of people's feet; damn, guys, if you're gonna go out in public in flips at least cut your nasty nails. Euugh.

Every time I think I'm living in some sort of rarified liberal bastion of effete Portlandness I go shop at WinCo. Cures me every time.

-- --

Speaking of fat, I'm losing some. Yesterday morning I weighed in at 208.4, down from over 235 about a year ago and 225 earlier this summer. I'm still working, though, since I'm hoping to get down to 200 or below.

The frustrating part is that it's not to look better or to troll for chicks (the one I'm trolling for is lying on the couch right now reading some sort of odd sci-fi novel about a woman who talks telepathically to cats, although what the cats would say other than "feed me some of THAT shit" and "lie down so I can sleep on your belly 'cause it's warm and soft" I haven't the vaguest idea) but because my orthopod warned me it was that or off to the hospital to have my entire hip pulled over and replaced with a titanium-and-plastic monstrosity.

The REALLY frustrating part is realizing that almost everything that tastes good is horrifically fattening, while everything that doesn't, isn't. It's not just the losing the weight, it's realizing that keeping it off means never being able to just drop into Saint Cupcake to see what's good on the special shelf.It's having that Moonstruck chocolate bar once a month instead of once a week. It's...well, it's changing the way I have eaten for thirty years. And that kinda sucks.

But then, so does a hip replacement.

-- --

Speaking of things that change - did I mention that the Peep is off "Star Wars"?

Yep. SO over that. And whilst I can't grieve that I don't get to hear George Lucas' awful dialogue every Saturday or three, I find that part of me misses the littler kid who was all about blasters and lightsabers and spaceships.Now? It's all about soldiers. He's all wrapped up in Army games and videos, likes his soldiers (and in a weird reversal, what's left of his SW fandom is about the clone troopers because they're soldiers) and battles and all things war.

I find myself reminding him that real war is not like movies or TV, and that real soldiers don't get up and run away after getting killed like in games.

And I don't think he hears a word.

-- --

And that's all I got. But I have a couple of nice images culled from around the Web - largely, I must say, from the creative folks at "deviantart". If you like, go, check them out - many of the artists there sell their work, and I'm sure they'd appreciate the visit.

So, in no particular order and for no particular reason, here they are.("Biker in Winter" by "rockmylife")(This is the Templo Mayor at Chichen Iza, a photograph taken by my talented and lovely friend, Britt)(simply called "Desert Rain")

A couple of images from this passed Timbers footy season at the old Shed:and a pensive Coach Spencer in the rain:

(Another wonderful image from Britt, this one of the city of Lisbon from the old fortress walls)

Talking about the Peep's journey away from "Star Wars" made me think of this one:

Here's a couple of images of legs and feet that intrigued me.

This one is called, simply, "The Kiss" -(by "jezustin")("Little Miss Homewrecker" by "tjosphoto")Another sexy image, this one by "The Goddess Willendorf" - I think what I love about this one is that she's obviously a big girl, to the point where she would probably be considered "unappealing" in a sexy outfit. But here she is, and every bit the seductress - proving, again, that the most erogenous zone is inside your head...)(This one I've shown before - it's Thomas Voeckler on the podium at this year's Tour, along with one of the "podium girls". I just love the contrasting shoes and contrasting lives...)(And I'll leave you with "Autumn Green" by my own Little Miss!)

Looks like I had a bit of the bloggage in me after all! A candle to Saint Kilda, then, and thanks for stopping by.

September 1, 1939

The first cool tendrils of autumn thread into the late summer air in Portland.

I'm reminded again, in the turning of the season, of the turning of Man's seasons by this wonderful post by the gracious and beautiful Lisa, who reminds me that for all my frantic striving, and impatience, and anger, and lust, and desire and ambition, my rushing only speeds me faster towards the final night. And that the only real meaning is not the end - as she says; we're ALL dying - but in the meeting of it.

So perhaps the best thing for me - for all of us - is to just stop. Stop trying to find reasons to divide us each one from the other. Stop finding reasons to profit from another's weakness, failings, or pain. As the Bible says; for every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under Heaven. Perhaps the time is here to love each other as we would be loved.

And I find myself full of love; as I age I find that I am more foolishly fond than ever. I find myself wondering that I ever gloried in the thunder of the captains and the shouting - that now seems the nadir of foolishness, when the simple pleasures of friendship, love and loving run so deep. What price glory when tenderness comes for the asking?

This loving comes in the most unlooked for places and times. The other day I found myself thinking of a person; not a lover, or a love at all but a friend, and not even a close friend but just a casual sort of friend, one I don't know particularly well but found that I wished I did better. And in that I realized that I wanted just to immerse myself in her as I would a hidden pool of still water. I wanted to sit next to her, talk with her. To look into her eyes and see the play of quick wit there, to know what she was thinking at that very moment; to see the sunlight shining coolly on her hair and look to find the gray among the original satin, all the dearer for what it told of her life and the living of it. To feel the warm pulse under the quiet skin at her wrist and ankle, and to admire the vaulting tracery of strong bone and tendon in her shoulders and feet; etched more starkly now that the last of the soft fat of youth has been burned away by time but all the more lovely for that.

And I was amazed, because this was not the passion of lust, the desire for intimate possession - I know those, have felt them before, do, and, I hope, always will, for the woman who sleeps with our little man (Tuesday is the Peeper's "sleeping with Mommy" night) in the bed in the next room. I think what I felt was just the desire to really know this person, know her down to the blood and bone, to feel like I could really comprehend the full quality of this person for the really decent, honorable, smart, vital person she is, to enjoy and celebrate her not for what she did, or what she could do, or be, for me and to the world but purely for herself, for the wonder that the combination of biochemistry, synaptic energy and musculoskeletal architecture created in a single, unique woman.

Every one of us holds a universe within us. We are capable of the greatest good, the greatest passion, the greatest understanding...and yet we spend so much of our days finding ways to tear all of that apart. Why? What darkness sates us so, that we rend each other for our own libertarian needs; lupus semper est homo homini?

Seventy years ago we started the balefire that should have burned into our souls that the lie of Authority is to teach us to turn away from that love we should feel for each other; the love of the friend for friend, the tenderness of lovers, the protective love of parent and child, the love for all of those around us. For without that love is the fire and the night.

"For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die."

from W.H. Auden's "September 1, 1939"

Regrettable Incident

This is my version of my Wednesday "stuff that interests me" post, only it's Thursday. OK, I'm off by a day. It has been a hard week and that not over yet. Cut me some slack!

Anyway, I ran across this little website while reading about "Operation August Storm", the Soviet flattening of Japan's Kwantung Army that occured sixty-three years ago this summer in what is now the Manchurian part of the People's Republic of China.

The site is well worth a visit, if only to remark on the wonderful and strange way people experience what life visits upon them.Our narrator, Kiuchi Nobuo, was a - I'm guessing - private soldier in the Kwantung Army in 1945 when he went into the bag with about 600,000 other Japanese, many of them just kid conscripts. Transported to Siberia, Nobuo and the other prisoners found everything from hardship and death, sickness, work, play...even friendship and, as difficult as it may be to understand, love.Even long after the young man returned to Japan he seems to have treasured this time, and his memories of it. While I know that the combination of grinding work, bad food, careless Soviet bureaucracy and the apalling weather must have made Nobuo's life a misery, the cartoons he draws to memorialize his captivity are...well, happy. Almost cute, with a fine eye for the combination of tragedies, indignities and comedies that accumulate in life at the far edge of human decency.So I don't want to editorialize about this; I have no deep thoughts or serious intents about it. I simply enjoyed the author's loving memories of a time long ago, and I hope you take a moment and visit his site, because I think you will, too.