Behavior Modification CXLII

I discovered that it wasn't quite as late as I thought it was, and that my head didn't hurt quite as much as I thought it did.  Talking to mailboxes will have that effect on one, one what I am not sure at the moment.  Back to the stars.

On the way to Mass at seven Saturday night, we were driving west down the main street of Berea following, like the wise men of old, a very bright Venus.  When we got to the church, I looked for Mars above and to the left of Venus, thought I saw it for a moment, but no.  We were at church early since Mary was the lector (otherwise we get there just as everyone is standing for the first hymn; our less than punctual arrival used to embarrass me, but I have grown accustomed to it, and no one seems to notice anymore, not that there are many there to notice).  Since I still had time before the service, I went back outside to check the very clear sky once more. 

The sky had grown just dark enough in that brief time that Mars had come into view.  How delightful.  I wanted to ask the priest to take everyone outside before Mass because I imagine most people seldom look up and most do not know what is up there when they do.  The Psalm for the service was 147 with the fitting verse: 

He determines the number of the stars, 

    he gives to all of them their names. 

(qui numerat multitudinem stellarum /  

et omnibus eis nomina vocat.) 

The lines look and sound very fine in Latin too. 

Since Mary had to read, she couldn't join me, which was unfortunate since I had been trying to show her Mars for most of my life, it seems.  Either it is not there, or it is too faint, or the sky is cloudy.  Of course I hurried out of church after Mass, but Mars had already set.  Well, there is the rest of the month, one hopes, and the spectacular pairing occurs on the twentieth through the twenty-third of February when Mars passes Venus.  Surely one of those nights will be clear.  "The two planets pass each other on February 21 by less than half a degree," says my Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar.

Ever since the other night when I was outside talking to Mrs. Henderson's mailbox, I have been thinking about the stars and the rich lesson they offer on the theme of appearance and reality.  Some ancients thought they knew what was up there; some knew they didn't really know, and were not so presumptuous to believe they did.  Looking at Jupiter that night and Saturday night too, I thought even then about the Medicean moons, so called, that Galileo saw moving with Jupiter.  I can't see them just standing in the street and looking, but I can see them when I bring my binoculars.  There are, however, we now know, many more moons around Jupiter than just those four.  Not only that, the universe is packed with stars that we can only see through those powerful telescopes like the Hubble, now in space.  The point is that what was hidden that night was so much more in my mind than what I was actually seeing, and what I was seeing was only a small yet brilliant image of what Jupiter looks like from a different perspective, with its hugh mass and swirling red spot, etc.  Given our failure to see and understand what is before us, we ought to exercise humility.  But we don't.  Given the way we behave we should be ashamed, but we aren't.  Given the beauty that daily confronts us, we should be in awe and give thanks.   But no one knows what awe and majesty are anymore.  If we did I suspect we would be constantly overwhelmed when we looked up.

Behavior Modification CXLI

On Fairway Drive:

Mary and I left the somewhat secure confines of our home to follow our street around the bend in the road to the left to where the sky is visible.  Tonight the moon was full and magnificent (a few years ago I might have said the sky was truly awesome, but our culture has rendered that word useless except as a fairly meaningless expression of approval).  The moon was not only magnificent but Jupiter was exactly to the left of the moon making a stunning pairing in the night sky.  We watched them rise over the houses in the subdivision and over the golf course behind them.  The moon appeared to have a golden sheen, as in the image I found, and was stunning!  

On the other side of the sky in the distant WSW Venus was still visible in what was left of the setting sun's glow.  Mars is with Venus, a little higher and toward the south.  I could glimpse Mars from time to time, but primarily it was dim, and then it washed out.  There are, however, spectacular stellar events coming this month as Venus catches up with Mars and then passes the planet, around the end of the month.  On February 20, for example, Mars, Venus, and a sliver of the moon will all be clustered together in the western sky about an hour after sunset.

As I was standing on the road watching the moon and Jupiter, I was talking to Mary about Orion and Sirius which were very faint, thanks to the brilliant moon.  When she didn't say anything for a bit, I turned around to see if everything was all right and discovered that I had been talking to Mrs. Henderson's mailbox.  Mary was one lot down at the end of the cul-de-sac, far enough that she had not heard me holding forth.  I decided that if Mrs. Henderson's mailbox was going to maintain its lonely, Stoic silence, I should too.  And so I will now and take myself to bed.

Oh, sadly, we had to leave Simon, Schuster, Frollie and Dexter home, as there is no real standing quietly and looking up while we are holding on to the guys in the middle of the night in the middle of the road.  We've tried.  Needless to say, they were quite disappointed, but we explained that if the weather cooperated, they would get their walk tomorrow/today.   

Behavior Modification CXL

Schuster

The picture for the October 22, 2014 entry shows Schuster on top of the love seat, riding high.  Three months later, the consequences of his daily and nightly sleep fests have become evident: "The love seat is ruined!"  I am quoting Mary, of course.  Last night, as a matter of fact.  However, there has been a change to the structure of the love seat.  The little dog has spent so much time there that the pillow, which 3 months ago was firm, is now soft, and the little guy sinks down into the sofa between the pillow and the backing.  In fact I looked over once last night and Schuster had mostly disappeared down into, so to speak.  At least the seat is still the firmest seat in the house, probably because we don't sit there much.

More consequences, Angels and the Great Chain of Being

Mary and I still stop whenever we pass Schuster on the love seat to touch him, stroke his furry back, scratch his ear, rub his belly, kiss his head.  Angels, being purely spiritual creatures, cannot do any of that touching; Angels do not have the five senses that we humans do.  I hadn't thought of this for some time, but in Medieval and Renaissance thought, we humans were understood to be the link between the natural and the spiritual world in the great chain of being, the hierarchical order of reality that made up the world we live in.  Human beings are both flesh and spirit; dogs, for example, are purely flesh and blood; angels are pure spirit, as I said a moment ago.  

According to the Pseudo-Dionysius (Ha, I believe the real Dionysis was a first century Christian while the writer of the treatise on angels, the Pseudo-Dionysis, was sixth century), there are nine ranks of angels, each with a specific nature and function.  Edmund Spenser in the Faerie Queene referred to the nine ranks as the "trinal triplicities," a delicious phrase signifying three groups of three:  Let's see, there were the Seraphs, the Cherubs, the Thrones; the Dominations, the Virtues, the Powers; then the Princedoms, the Archangels, and the lowest group in the hierarchy, the Angels.  Love, power, and humility, among other qualities, characterized the orders; the lowest did not envy the highest, for example; the highest did not scorn the lowest.  Power: an angel's touch could unmake a world, or one of us, and the angels, speaking generically, were thought to move the heavenly spheres, of which there were also nine, the lowest being the moon.  Love is the most interesting quality of the angels,  for all of the angels are moved, or move, literally and spiritually, by love.  The purest and most powerful in that regard would be the Seraphim who are closest to God, and undoubtedly the most beautiful, the most magnificent, burning with love for God.  The Biblical sense of angels, I suppose, comes from Isaiah 6, and, I am guessing, Psalm 29.  Angels visit Abraham in Genesis and bring destruction down on Sodom and Gomorrah.  Luke gives us Gabriel St. Paul's letters also contain references, since he understood that we were battling Principalities and spiritual Powers way beyond our comprehension.  The Bible, in fact, is rich with references and images. The cultural climate we have inherited is much diminished, as we have become the great (though there is really nothing great about our imaginations) deniers (as in denying that there is truly a spiritual dimension to reality).  Today, our world view has no place for angels.

I loved teaching Renaissance literature and being immersed in a world-view rich and substantial.  My only regret is that I was constantly aware of how little I really knew and how little time there was to correct that deficiency.  Though I haven't checked, it might be interesting to look up the Pseudo-Dionysis on the internet or the Great Chain of Being.  There were varying arrangements of the angelic orders, and though writers like John Milton knew the medieval sources, he tended to go his own way with their presentation.  His sense of their wonder and magnificence is mostly spot on, as we have learned to say.   Here, for example, is Adam in Book 5 of Paradise Lost calling to Eve to watch the approach of Raphael come down from Heaven to warn them about the presence of Satan in the garden; he comes like a second sunrise:

"Haste hither Eve, and worth thy sight behold

Eastward among those Trees, what glorious shape

Comes this way moving; seems another Morn

Ris'n on mid-noon; som great behest from Heav'n

To us perhaps he brings, and will voutsafe  

This day to be our Guest."  (307-313) 

I love Milton, but I suspect that the change toward modernity and the modern cultural climate is already evident  in Milton's verse, for Milton's angels are much closer to our flesh and blood reality than they might safely be, if we see the story as in any sense moving us toward a concept of reality that is purely physical.  That idea is only clear if you are standing in the twenty-first century looking back.  Dante's Angels reflect the Pseudo-Dionysis understanding; Milton's Angels reflect Milton's more physical grasp of the nature of all reality: Adam asks Raphael whether he can eat with them, and Raphael responds with a lengthy and somewhat pedantic explanation that involves revealing the principles at work in the universe, simply, yes: "For know, whatever was created, needs/To be sustained and fed" (414-415).  Reality in Milton, spiritual reality, is much more tangible than in Dante.  PL was published around 1660; Milton visited Galileo in 1608 (I hope), so he knew about the discoveries.  One of the consequences of that knowledge was to imagine a less clear distinction between the sublunar and the translunar realms, as had existed in Dante's time.  Angels visited Abraham in Genesis and ate; Milton provides an explanation of why that is possible.  In so doing he also, unconsciously or not, embodies the cultural changes taking place in the minds of people in the western world.

If I may, Goneril and Regan and Edmund in King Lear embody a similar cultural change.  For these very evil, wicked, vile characters, Reason is not a moral faculty; Reason is a tool for getting what you want, what you desire.  All three understand very well the moral dimension of Reason, but they understand it so the can use it to their advantage.  Of course a son and daughter ought to love and honor their parents, and I do sweet father, until you hand over your estate.  Then it is out into the storm with you! Lear, in a very ignorant manner for such an old man, equates matter with spirit and that is one of his terrible flaws; his foolish pride is another.  (There are more, of course; it is a very great tragedy).  Essentially Lear says, how can you not love me, I gave you everything?   To tie love to matter, to stuff, is to violate the spiritual universe we live in.  Isn't it?  Every parent must learn the disconnect there.  Once again there is a discernible movement in Shakespeare toward the world we have inherited, the world that now contains Auschwitz and gas chambers, atomic bombs and Hiroshima.  Edmund and the girls would not hesitate to kill the Jewish people if it provided a means to the power they desired; again, reason, for them, is only a tool, not a moral faculty.  When Reason fails to perceive spirit, the human race is lost for good.  

Some references for further reading: 

Want real fictional angels?  Try

C. S. Lewis,  The Great Divorce

 His space trilogy: 

Out of the Silent Planet 

Perelandra 

That Hideous Strength 

Dante, Hell-the angel who opens the Gate in Dis for Dante and Virgil!  Magnificent!

Each level of Purgatory has a governing angel, all worth meeting! 

Behavior Modification CXXXIX

Just like that, wiped out!  I know I had two items.  I can't remember either, at the moment.

Oh, having said that, one came back.  I was sitting at the table working on finances, when Mary came bursting in:  "Come see the moon and Venus!"  Well, I had forgotten that too.  I had made a note in my diary to check out the sky after sunset, and I had forgotten.  But Fortunately, Mary was outside and she looks up too.  I went immediately.  The sky was gorgeous.  The center of the beauty was Venus close to the newish moon.  There was only a sliver of the moon lighted by the sun, but the entire disk was illuminated by earthshine.  According to my monthly sky chart, Mercury was below Venus, but not visible to us.  We had to climb Mary's tree house platform to see Venus and the moon, but it was worth the effort.

Above Venus, and slightly to the south,  I could just make out Mars.  From our house the problem with seeing the sky in the west from our yard is the tree line.  The trees mostly block our vision of the western horizon.  While I was looking up, I remembered that when I first met Mary, she too liked the stars and was genuinely interested.  In my early experience, a girl who liked the stars was a rare find.

Mary said the WLEX weather man, Bill Meck, said the comet was visible near the Pleiades which was directly overhead.  We couldn't find the comet, but then my neck doesn't bend that way anymore either.  I also discovered that at night, on uneven ground, under a clear sky, I can hardly stand without falling.  Fortunately Mary kept holding me up.  

In the east, lovely Orion was fully visible and Sirius was just rising.  Jupiter was't above the horizon yet.  I think in a few nights both Jupiter and Venus will be above the horizon together, Jupiter rising and Venus setting, but both visible and certainly worth seeing for a bit.  As I said, the sky is gorgeous now; go out and look up: look to the east and look to the west.  The planets are fascinating, always.

Behavior Modification CXXXVIII

I've had Mary taking photos of Spenser, the proud father, surrounded by a few of his puppies.  Being the last person to get up in the morning, I make the bed, put up the decorative pillows, then arrange Spenser and the puppies (3 labs, 1 dachshund, and 1 Dalmatian, for the moment).  There are still more puppies in the closet and on the nightstand.  Puppy mania.  Of course, having to put them out each morning and remove them each evening may prove just too exhausting to continue.  Besides, Spenser bores easily, and Simon and Schuster have been giving me odd looks lately.

Two days since I posted the Spenser notice, and this morning I am almost out of energy.  The coffee is made; the dishes are done; God's in his Heaven, and all's right with the world!  Browning knew that wasn't true then; we know it is not true now.   

Besides the fundamental question that I have set my grandson (13) thinking about (why is there something rather than nothing), the other poser, as Huck would call it, is the problem of our identity.   We are tossed into the world so quickly, in a sense, that we never really stop to reflect on the oddity of our situation.  

In the first place we all know that something cannot come from nothing, and space is something too, a fairly terrifying something.  Imagine being with Beagle 2 on the surface of Mars (Ha!).  What stands between you and Earth?  Fairly empty space!  I get claustrophobic and have panic attacks just thinking about it.  So.  Once there was nothing?  Absolutely nothing.  Then matter and space just came into existence?  Try to imagine that.  We are living on a logical impossibility.

Of course, as the angel told Abraham and Gabriel told Mary, and Jesus told the disciples, with God all things are possible.   God in that case cannot be a being, like the Greek and Roman and Norse gods; he would have to be the source of being, quite a different pot of beans.  David Bentley Hart is quite good on the nature of God,  The Doors of the Sea, for example, or The Experience of God,  which I may have mentioned before.  Or, just never mind, eh?

Closer to home though, there is the problem of identity; there are just so many of us ("I did not know Death had undone so many!" said Dante in Hell, looking out over what I have forgotten).  Think how many are alive now, think how many have died even before we were born, and yet here we are, blithely teetering toward our own demise, pedestrians, sidestepping oncoming autos, staying out of Malasian airplanes, avoiding Islamic terrorists, rabid skunks, rabbits and bats, falling objects, and oncoming autos driving on the wrong side of the road.  

However we became who we are,  we are connected all the way back to the beginning.  There are no gaps in the chain of contingency, or being.  My mother's mother and father died within days of her birth, and yet, no surprise, she had them, and they had them, and so on all the way back.  

Of all the "insides" there are in the world or ever were or will be in this world, this is the only "inside" I will ever get to know intimately, from birth to death, with only one grandparent, my father's mother who died when I was six years old, Grandma Startzman.  Our minds depend on our brains, our flesh and blood.  So.  How did I land in this physical reality, born to these parents, at this time and day, 8 June 1940?  How? How did this happen that I am me and not some other?  I have no idea!  Having such an identity is uncanny, might lead one to think there is Someone behind it!

And, if this mind and soul depend on this flesh and blood, how can we "go to Heaven" when we die?  As I understand the Gospels and Acts, Jesus disappeared and then reappeared in a somewhat different body, same wounds, recognizable but also different, if I have gotten that right.  "Touch my hand and side, Thomas!" "Peter, a piece of fish, please."  Flesh dies, we are gone.  Buried, we decay, mostly.  Cremated, we disappear, mostly.  Resurrection?  For that to be, God must remember us, intimately know us, in order to resurrect us.  

If you think about that idea in the context of the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, you might understand my hope; you know, these three, faith, love, hope. 

Well, it is now 5 a.m.  I am off to bed regardless.  You might also now understand why I sleep with my arm around Simon, sometimes, or Spenser.  Just snuggling against the dark, and against my ignorance.  I suspect I know only one thing worth knowing: "Jesus Christ is Lord."  Philippians 2: 5-11, especially.  

Behavior Modification CXXXVII

A strange day.  Specifically, everything hurts, and hurts in a different way.  I always find the things happening to my body quite fascinating, even when it hurts.  "Here, mark this pain.  You probably ought to write it down."  So I do, in a little "fat" Mead notebook, five and a half by three and a half, water resistant covers, 200 sheets, college ruled.  Amazon sells them by the bulk.  Everyone should have at least two.  I have at least ten!  

Neuropathy.  Twenty plus years.  I remember the beginning very well.  It's one of my favorite stories.  In my fifties when I could no longer run, I would go to the community pool and swim lengths or laps in the summer, for the deep end of the pool was roped off for such behavior.  I would drive down in my swim suit and canvas shoes, show my pass and enter, hoping and praying that the walrus would not be there swimming laps too. 

The problem with the walrus was that he was, well, large, and not efficient in his stroke.  Instead of bringing his arms up and forward and straight down beside his body, swiftly and efficiently, he would throw them out to the side and around.  If two people were swimming in the same lane, sooner or later their hands and arms would smack one another.  At first I would watch out for him so as to miss, but the walrus seemed oblivious to his blows.  Eventually I got angry and accidentally timed them to inflict as much damage as possible.  Well, I was just a kid then, and now I am somewhat ashamed of my retaliation, when I am not enjoying the memory.  I suppose my enjoyment of some of my sins may account for my present purgatorial suffering.  I have a severe peripheral neuropathy, but I do not have the illness that causes it, diabetes.  Two years of testing twenty some years ago, and the conclusion was that there was no discernible cause for it.  Well, now we all know, don't we.  The Bible says He is like a refiner's fire.  Hoo boy.

Well, after I had taken and given as many blows as possible and swam my 50 or 100 laps, I would leave, climb out of the pool, dry off with my towel, put my canvas shoes on and drive home.  One day I was walking out when I discovered that I did not have my car keys.  I looked around and didn't see them.  I always stashed them in my shoe and set the towel on top of them close to where I swam.  I do not remember why, but I decided to check the shoes, and there they were.  I had been walking on my keys and did not know it; I did not feel them.  That got my doctor's attention too.  He sent me to a neurologist in Lexington, who transferred me to another neurologist who specialized in neuropathy, who eventually sent me to a pain clinic.  No known cause.  How interesting to be sick in certain ways.  Hmm. 

The specialist whom I really liked reduced my visits from every three months to every six months since the visits had become perfunctory, merely holding patterns in a vast and cloudy sky.  When that doctor decided to give up his Lexington practice and return to his native Seattle, he and Frasier Crane, we both decided that since the check-ups were mostly routine, they could be handled as easily by my original GP, which is where I am today.  

Dr. Schloemer is sort of command central.  Every time I develop a new affliction, he sends me out to a new specialist: heart, two specialists, the second to put in the pacemaker, the first to check it regularly; I have outlasted two dermatologists (reoccurring rashes! among other things), and just had five precancerous spots frozen off my body; a bone specialist (for various problems, the last being a broken big toe, how humbling); a foot specialist, podiatrist, whom I get to see every three months as well; the latest addition is a very nice rheumatoid arthritis specialist with several new pills.  Command central in Purgatory, and then you die and meet the Boss!  Hoo boy!

Actually, when I started tonight, my main subject was going to be cheese, Sara Lee provolone.  We had been to Meijers in Richmond to stock up, our monthly grocery run.  We do not like it, but that is where the goodies are.  So.  Once or twice a month, sometimes after a movie even, we screw our courage to the sticking place, and go.  They sell half loaves of bread, how handy.  The deli sells Khan's baloney, the best, and Sara Lee provolone.  I bought eight thin slices of Khan's and three quarters of a pound of thin sliced provolone.  I make sandwiches: Klosterman's honey wheat, Kraft's Catalina poured liberally on the turned-up slices of bread, a slice of Sara Lee on top of the bread and Catalina, and Khan's baloney in the middle.  

What could be better than such a sandwich, a big chair to sit in, the evening news on TV with Brian Williams, a little black dachshund beside me, mooching my sandwich, and a refillable mug of that Ocean Spray cran grape (I bought 12 large bottles on this Meijers' run; I worry when the count stocked at home drops below 15). 

(Actually, several weeks ago I was eating such a sandwich in such and such a place while watching said TV show when the middle of the sandwich became unstable and shot out of my hand and stuck on the wall.  All that Catalina makes the middle rather slippery.  I looked for the middle on the floor first, thought Frollie or Dexter had gotten it when I couldn't find it down there, then discovered it stuck on the wall.  On the wall!  Like in a TV sitcom!  Simon helped me consume it though, and from now on I quarter my Catalina baloney provolone sandwiches, even though they still have a tendency to squirt out of the bread.) 

That is how I deal with the shopping: I think of the end result.  This time I unloaded and stored the 12 bottles according to dates.  We have polished off all the August, September, and October dates; this time we had about half and half between November and December, the first December bottles.  I wrestled the 31 pound bag of dog food into the downstairs laundry/storage room, along with two large cases of Bounty towels from Lowes.  I still had two full reusable bags of groceries and a gallon of milk to get up stairs.  Cleverly, I decided to do them all at once and save myself a trip.  I carefully lifted each container up three steps, moved myself up, and repeated the process until I had everything on the top step.  Then I picked up the milk, leaving the two shopping bags sitting on the top step, carried it into the kitchen and put it in the refrigerator.

 Next I started unpacking the 15 cups of Yoplait raspberry yogurt and 5 blueberry yogurt, having completely forgotten about the groceries on the top step.  Mary, in the front room started yelling.  "Where did Frollie get that cheese?"  I saw Frollie wrestling with the plastic package, trying to tear it enough to get the remaining 3 (out of about 15) of that wonderful Sara Lee cheese.  Mary grabbed the package and saved the remaining three slices and a partially gnawed bit of a fourth.  Dag nabit! as some ancient Western hero's sidekick used to say.  I yelled "Frollie!" just to make myself feel better, but hers was the most unkindest cut of all.  I had bought over three quarters of a pound.  Frollie stuck her head in the bag (or bullied Schuster into doing it) and took it out, presumably, since the top of the bag was so conveniently at dog level.  And it was my own stupid fault.  I left the bags and forgot them immediately, something I have a tendency to do, frequently.  

I cannot replace them either, at least not for a while.  I was so upset that after I had filed away the new yogurt containers (always raspberry, as much as the store has; blueberry second, for Mary likes them), I made myself a large BP and C sandwich with 2 mugs of cran grape and Fritos Scoops with half a jar of medium hot salsa.  Dogs!  Dag nabit, Frollie.  

Behavior Modification CXXXVI

Yesterday morning, about 3:30 a.m. I made a slight, well-intentioned miscalculation, at which point all Hell broke lose.

I had just finished the dishes when I noticed a can of cat food on the counter with a spoon sticking out of it.  Mary had apparently forgotten to feed the cat her late night meal before she went to bed.  Well, I thought, amiable husband and pet owner that I am, I can do that. 

Cat food is nasty!  Nevertheless I undertook the save-the-cat mission.  The cat was wide awake on the kitchen island behind me, and whining.  I would rather listen to ice freeze than Pinkie whine.  I got the food; I got Pinkie's food tray; I dutifully scraped a little pile of vile looking stuff into her tray.  She was pacing and whining now.  I set the tray on the island, at which point enter Simon stage left and Schuster stage right.

Okay, I can handle that.  Simon gets to lick the icky can, Schuey gets to lick the icky spoon.  Each performed admirably.  I dropped the cleaner spoon and cleaner can into the left-over dirty dish water. 

As I turned around I saw that Simon and Schuster had gone to the kitchen door to be let out.  At FOUR am.  With Simon who does not always like to go out, it is best to take no chances.  Besides, he barked twice which brought Dumb-ass Dexter into the kitchen, along with not-so-fearsome Frollie.  Mind you, Mary has been sick for a week and asleep for several hours.  Dumb-ass Dexter starts to bellow to be let out (he is a beagle!).  The Vivint alarm had been set.  I got out my clicker to disarm it before an unfolding cacophony could take place.  The clicker light turned red, contact, I threw up the lock bar to get the door open and stop the dog noise, when all Hell really broke lose.  Dexter bellowed, the dachshunds barked, the Vivint alarm decided, apparently, that the door had not been properly disarmed before being opened, so it went off in the most annoying way possible, even though I had sent the correct disarm code into the keypad, on my second attempt.  At which time Mary woke up.  A loud speaker phone voice from the bowels of our house (that's downstairs, by the lower level front door) announced that she was so and so from Vivint (that is way the Hell out in Utah!).  I yelled to the speaker downstairs that I was coming.  She said take your time. (Oh sure.  The cops are just minutes away.) I hobbled down the stairs, gave her my name and the correct password.  She thanked me, told me to have a good day or something, and signed off.  Mischief managed.

Mary emerged from the bedroom: "Are we having fun then?" she pleasantly inquired.  I just glared at her and swore, swore that I would never again feed that darn cat wet food in the middle of the morning.  

By that time the dogs were back in the house, Pinkie had retreated to wherever Pinkie retreats when chaos threatens, and Mary and I wrapped up the situation and went to bed.   

One thing I like about Webster, or Spenser (two esses, like the poet), is that he never desires to lick nasty cat food cans or go out to do his business in the middle of the night!

Oh Lord!  The wind has picked up and I swear something is moving on the balcony one wall away from where I am sitting.  There were two very loud thumps, and footsteps.  Thank God the system is armed, and there are two wired doors between me and big loud Whatever!  And a snappy, alert young lady in Utah!

Behavior Modification CXXXV

I wrote a paragraph Saturday night, sat and looked at it for a while, deleted it and went to bed.  I seem to be following suit tonight.  I have done the dishes, eaten my apple (tonight, a piñata, with salt), looked at the blank white screen for some time.  A number of ideas manifest themselves, but none I feel like developing.  Oh, woe is me.

And now it is Monday night, actually Tuesday morning, the thirtieth, already 5 days past Christmas.  In two days (I have the feeling it will happen before I finish this sentence) 2014 will have ceased to be.

Christmases at my age exist in my mind like a pack of Tarot cards, there are major images and minor images, and I can almost shuffle them mentally.  The images contain children, first one, then two, then three; various later images contain various creatures, almost always a dachshund who loved to rip open paper packages and race mindlessly around the room, always the same room for we have lived in the same house for 42 years.  

Actually looking at the images, the memories, made me realize that the first images had no creatures, for when we moved into the brand new house we had built, we decreed that our two dogs, Biscuit, a long-haired dachshund, and Lancelot, an old English sheepdog, were to stay outside.  Both dogs were messy.  The house was new and beautiful.  We loved them both as much as we have loved any of our dogs, yet we made them stay outside.  Every time I think about that decision I wish we had not made it.  Our third dog, Hollie the Collie, stayed outside too.  I guess it seemed normal by that time.  Now it seems a  deficient decision and brings tears, as well as the realization that the past is or at least seems to be fixed.

Shuffle the deck and see the children change size and shape and the dogs move inside, Fritz and generic Buster, the runt of his litter.  I think the Brunners paid us to take him!  Then Mary's big cream colored Labrador, Max.  (I used to call him "Fathead"; he should have bitten me; instead he came happily; he was a good dog, and I loved him too.)    

When the children were small but growing, I am frequently on the floor clumsily assembling things we had gotten them for Christmas, like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.  I was as excited as they were.  We had He-Man's Castle down there one year too, and I watched the TV show with them after school from time to time.  Well She-Ra was hot!  Goodness.  I never get away with anything!

Sometimes part of Christmas would involve carting presents to northern Ohio where our parents lived in Tiffin.  The last Christmas celebrated in Ohio was the year my mother was in the hospital and very sick with cancer.  Johanna was just over a year old but she could walk, and I remember her walking across the hospital floor to my mother's bed.  My mother died in a nursing home a month later.  Her funeral took place at the end of January in a terrible northern Ohio blizzard.  After that, my father always came down to Berea to be with us here for Christmas, and he becomes a delightful part of the images, for a while.  He died in 1989.  Oddly, I remember Mary's mother being here frequently, but I can't see whether she was ever here for Christmas.  Surely she was, though I can't tell for certain.   

Forty some years of Christmases.  I can look back; it never occurred to me to try to look forward, with good reason, I think.  The second I try now I see only someone missing, primarily myself, which suggests that that is an ignorant thing to do.  This year, after all, was delightful, almost perfect.  We were eight adults and two (grand) children; we all had a good time together, enjoying one another's company; moreover, I got the best presents ever.

My eldest son and his wife bought me a facsimile edition of the traveling, hand-made St. John's Bible, Gospels and Acts. A copy of the original has been at the Berea College library this year, and the book is impressive.  J-D and his wife, Erin, came early to give it to me before the frenzy started, and that was just the right thing to do.  I have been reading a chapter or two each evening before going to bed; the print and the illustrations are exquisite; being able to read it while realizing how it was made is quite moving.  

I also received two enormous boxes of my favorite snack food, Welch's fruit snacks, 40 packs per box.  Oh my.  I had three packs earlier, and since Simon was sitting with me at the time, I had to share; he seems to like them as much as I do.  If I don't give him one from time to time, he gives me the stink eye, which coming from a dachshund is not pleasant.  

The third gift was a trilogy, William Shakespeare's Star Wars by Ian Doescher, illustrated.   

Han:  A chance for new beginnings we have made, 

          Directing hearts unto the rebels' cause. 

          These are the star wars we have fought and won--

           For now our battles and our scenes are done. 

Prithee, I say, tis an odd and humorous thing, quite entertaining. Or, "--Beep, meep." as R2-D2 frequently says.

Some might find my wife's present, my last, a strange gift to give to a grown man, and an old, but no matter how old I get, there is something in me that delights in stuffed animals.  Perhaps it is my unrealized feminine side, or my inner child.  In any case I have a number of small stuffed puppies.  Some are next to my bed, about five or six there, and the rest are looking down at me from my closet shelf, another eight or ten.  They are too cute for words, almost. I have two dachshunds, three labs, cream, chocolate, and black, a beagle, a golden retriever, a Dalmatian , etc. etc.  I got most of my pound puppies from Cracker Barrel, one at a time.  My wife has frequently given me "the look" for getting yet another one, however.  However, this Christmas she saw one at T. J. Maxx and could not resist. Oh joy! She bought me a stuffed animal, the best stuffed animal ever.  I had her take a picture of him before I started tonight, and that is the image that goes with this entry.  I love him.  I tried to name him Wagner, but Wagner kept coming out Webster, so Webster he is.  He looks like a Webster.  (Or maybe a Spenser, 2 esses, like the poet?)

Webster also looks real; he sits on my pillow most of the day, usually.  Schuster was back in the bedroom two days ago barking at him.  Every time I come into the bedroom, Webster startles me for a moment into thinking he is a real dog.  Well, he is real, no doubt about that.  And now, best Christmas ever: books and fruit snacks and Webster from my wife!  Who would have thought it?  

Behavior Modification: CXXXIV

Christmas 2014.

I found another potent quotable that fits the day perfectly, at least I think it does.  After all Christmas is a Christian holiday, sacred day.  The passage I came across is in an article in First Things, a Catholic journal, entitled "Strangers in a Strange Land" by Charles J. Chaput, archbishop of Philadelphia.  Responding to his discovery that in Canada "In just fifty years since Quebec's 'Quiet Revolution' of the 1960s, an entire Catholic culture has collapsed," the archbishop clearly states his theme:  "In the developed world, more and more people of faith, people for whom God is the anchor of their lives, people who once felt rooted in their communities, now feel like strangers, out of place in the land of their birth."

The first thing he does is clearly define "the purpose of our lives" as "the privilege of knowing, loving, and being loved by God; of serving his people and being his witnesses.  That's the real story of the world, the narrative we belong to.  Only God is God, and God is good.  And God's goodness invites us to remember three things.

One:  We're  a people of worship first, and action second. That doesn't excuse retreating from the world, nor is it an alibi for quietism.  But for Catholics, there's no real Christian political action, no genuinely Christian social service, unless it flows out of the adoration of God. [wow!]  Romano Guardini said that adoration is humanity's instrument of truth.  It's the safeguard of our mental health and integrity.  Adoration breeds humility, and humility is the beginning of sanity.  Adoration grounds our whole being in the real reality: the fact that God is God, and man is his creation.

Two:  There  are no unhappy saints.  Pope Francis says, 'A Christian without joy is not a Christian.'  Joy is the mark of a person who has truly found God.  Chesterton [one of my heroes] wrote that joy is the 'gigantic secret' of the believer.  He said, 'Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.'

Three:  We're in the world but not of the world.  We forget that at our peril.  Henri de Lubac wrote many years ago that when the world worms its way into the life of the Church, the Church becomes not just a caricature of the world, but even worse than the world in her mediocrity and ugliness."  (January 2015, pg. 26)

Fundamental human things: adoration, joy, and in the world but not of the world, like Christ. 

Christmas 2014

Behavior Modification CXXXIII

Quite a string of letters for 133.  

Well, I got to page 151 in Hart and nodded off several times, decided to quit, have an apple, do the dishes, and go to bed.  I tend to buy 5 or 6 of the dependable kinds, gala or golden delicious, for example, then I buy 3 of kinds I don't know, like piñata, honey crisp, ambrosia, etc.  I like choices.  Since we did Meijers two or three days ago, I am well stocked.  Yesterday I had a honey crisp (excellent); today I am all out for a golden delicious, though I discovered that it needed salt.  I love putting apples on salt though my doctor might frown.  

My problem with eating a big apple at 4:30 a.m.  is that I started reflecting on my day.  Why is there something rather than nothing?  Why did Schuey poop on the stairway rather than in the yard before our walk today?  He got excited, they all did, I immediately took him out, he number oned immediately and ran back onto the deck. I called him to me off the deck five times; each time he would run to the front where I was, turn around, run back to the door.  I gave up and let him in.  Big, and I mean big, glistening, stinky mistake.  I was downstairs struggling to zip up my jacket (everything is contrary in my universe, especially buttons and zippers, knives and forks, spoons, soap.  The list grows.). I looked up.  "Sh..t" I said or yelled.  It was.  An ontological surprise of a different order.

In any case the apple led me here, to the iPad.  I forget why, exactly.  In any case here I am.  Before we left the house today> haircut, bank, flower shop< I had showered and was getting dressed.  Pants were on, long-sleeved T-shirt was on, went for the socks.  Besides color coding, I have two categories: thin in places but wearable, and, nice.  I picked out a pair of nice charcoal gray socks.  I noticed a dry leaf on the floor and something else.  Ever mindful of mess, I picked it up and whatever the other bit of detritus was.  Took it to the bathroom waste basket, went back to the bedroom to put on my socks.  No socks.  I checked the bed which is where they should have been.  No socks.  I went back to the dresser, opened the drawer again, no socks.  I went to the dining room just in case I had gone there for something, and forgot.  No socks.  I checked both baths. No etc. etc. etc.  I began to panic.  I went to the closet next to the dresser to check my laundry basket just in case I had really lost it, them, whatever.  I bent over to search the dirty laundry and my socks swung down and hit the right side of my face!  They had been on my shoulder the whole time!  Good night sweet prince!  May flights of angels carry me to my rest, for now. Memory, how I miss Thee!

Not having an editor on these statements, I notice that I overlook things.  For instance, I just noticed that I was "struggling downstairs," which made it sound as though I was struggling to get downstairs which I do sometimes; this time, however, I was downstairs struggling to get my jacket zippered.

The good thing about this kind of writing is that I struggle, Ha, to get things said clearly and precisely the first (or second) time.  One of the biggest problems is pronouns.  Our tendency is to sprinkle them liberally throughout a text.  When I am writing about this, or that, I know that I am writing about this, or that; God only knows whether a reader will, unless the referent is clear: this dachshund, or that dachshund, Simon, or possibly, Schuster, the little stinker.

Well, it is Christmas Eve.  I hope everyone has a blessed evening, a blessed night, a joyous day tomorrow, and a delightful and blessed year to come.

Behavior Modification CXXXII

"...the fleeting shock of 'ontological surprise'": when "One realizes that everything about the world that seems so unexceptional and drearily predictable is in fact charged with an immense and imponderable mystery" ( pgs. 89 & 88 in my kindle edition).

I am currently reading David Bentley Hart's excellent philosophical and theological work called The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss.  Sitting outside J. C. Penney's last night, waiting for Herself, allowed me time to read for an hour.  Hart, an Orthodox Christian, is dealing with the problem of being, the mystery: why is there something rather than nothing, especially in the face of the "world's absolute contingency."

"The question of existence...How is it that any reality so obviously fortuitous--so lacking in any mark of inherent necessity or explanatory self-sufficiency--can exist at all?" (90)

I thought I would let someone else talk today.  His book is not really an easy book; I am on my second time through which I can tell by all the highlighted passages.  If one is willing to read slowly, attentively, and carefully, one will find it immensely worthwhile.  His discussion of the meaning of "God" is alone worth the price ten times over.

Back to the mystery: further to illustrate the idea Hart refers to another writer:  "The American philosopher Richard Taylor once illustrated this mystery, famously and fetchingly, with the image of a man out for a stroll in the forest unaccountably coming upon a very large translucent sphere.  Naturally, he would immediately be taken aback by the sheer strangeness of the thing, and would wonder how it should happen to be there.  More to the point, he would certainly never be able to believe that it just happened to be there without any cause, or without any possibility of further explanation; the very idea would be absurd.  But, adds Taylor, what that man has not noticed is that he might ask the same question equally well about any other thing in the woods too, a rock or a tree [or a Carolina wren] no less than this outlandish sphere, and fails to do so only because it rarely occurs to us to interrogate the ontological pedigrees of the things to which we are accustomed.  What would provoke our curiosity about the sphere would be that it was so obviously out of place; but, as far as existence is concerned, everything is in a sense out of place.  As Taylor goes on to say, the question would be no less intelligible or pertinent if we were to imagine the sphere either as expanded to the size of the universe or as contracted to the size of a grain of sand, either as existing from everlasting to everlasting or as existing for only a few seconds.  It is the sheer unexpected 'thereness' of the thing, devoid of any transparent rationale for the fact, that prompts our desire to understand it in terms not simply of its nature, but of it's very existence." [91; the reference points to Richard Taylor, Metaphysics, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1992), pp. 100-103.  Hart's book was published by The Yale University Press, 1913.]. I highly recommend Hart's book, though it does require care and close attention.  Hart has another excellent book on the nature of evil, following the destructive tsunami  of 2004 that took "a quarter of a million lives":  The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? a much shorter work but quite profound.  His title comes from Job 38: 8-11.  Any thinking person might want to read Hart's wise consideration, his theodicy.

"...the highest vocation of reason and of the will is to seek to know the ultimate source of that mystery..."   (151, The Experience of God...)

Behavior Modification CXXXI

In the photo of the Galt House restaurant, the tables are set with the heavy, white square plates, and the folded black rectangles, well, you probably guessed, those are the linen napkins, almost big enough to use as bath towels.  That was a "before I forget entry," before I forgot.  And there it is:

Association produces unexpected results.  4:30 a.m.  I started to make this morning's coffee 3 different times.  3 different times I didn't finish.  I cleaned the old grounds and rinsed the pot; I left the top of the maker up and did something else, I have forgotten what; later, I saw the top up, managed to get a filter down this time, found it later with the filter down and got the coffee measured and in; wandered off on another mission and, Of Course, was surprised to find the coffee in, the top up, and no water in the machine.  Four attempts.  Memory slog.  Association.

Before I started the dishes, I wanted to put some music on.  I opened my iPad and decided to check the Webshots photo of the day which arrives early.  The photo had beautiful horses apparently conversing at their fence rail.  I checked the email, got caught in a time loop there because I tapped the mail icon instead of mail menu.  Let's just say someone will be surprised to find me answering messages that I probably answered once or twice before.  Escaping the time loop, I went to the kitchen and started the dishes.  Of Course I forgot the music.

While doing the dishes, I started thinking about the photo.  The horses reminded me of the Houyhnhnms (Winums, two syllables), the race of rational horses that Gulliver encounters in the fourth book of his travels.  From the perspective of the sink, I also immediately thought of King Lear (1601), who wouldn't, Shakespeare's incredibly rich and profound tragedy about an old king who does not understand real love and who misuses his reason in an attempt to get what he wants, that is, his children to love him.

Gulliver (1730) epitomizes the radical change in human thinking and perspective that took place from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century.  In the fourth book of the Travels, Gulliver encounters two races, the Houyhnhnms, the rational talking horses, and the Yahoos, a race of disgusting creatures who have human bodies but are driven only by their passions.  In a sense, these two races are an externalization of a conflict that has been present in Gulliver since book one, what T. S. Eliot once called a dissociation of sensibility.  

Actually, the same dilemma is present in Lear too, but Lear inhabits a tragedy; the tragic hero has the capacity to learn through the action in his world.  Gulliver inhabits a brilliant satire; unfortunately characters in satires tend to get stuck in their enormous flaws. 

Associative jump! 

A contemporary example.  Mary has been watching Frasier on Netflix.  She is on season 7, Heaven help us. I thought the writing in the first two seasons of Frasier was extremely good.  The problem for me is that the writers seem not to respect the intelligence of their character or of their actor, Kelsey Grammer, or they rely on him to do all the work.  In season one, Frasier would meet a lovely woman, and being incredibly full of himself (flawed humanity, pompous, egotistical, but invariably funny), by the end of the episode you could bet that the woman would discover the flaw through Frasier's own behavior, and banish him from her life forever.  In season seven the exact same plot action is still taking place.  This beautiful woman was a lawyer who had handled Nile's (Frasier's brother) divorce from his second wife, not the never seen but always felt, intolerably demanding Maris (as in horse?), but Mel, the demanding new wife of 3 days.  The lawyer's bill was very high; Frasier sent her an unpleasant email, unpleasantly demanding an accounting; Frasier, of course, regretted the email as that evening the circumstances of the bill became clearer and her clothes became fewer; never mind, he got to her computer having told her his email was a love letter; he pretended to be reading it to her, he accidentally deleted it, nudge nudge, all was well.  If you think so you have not been watching.  Frasier had bumbled it, not really deleted it; she read it.  Goodbye Frasier, out of her life forever!  Seven seasons: the same plot and Frasier is the same pompous blowhard who is also still funny, though much less frequently.  We are in the world of satire here too.  Mary still loves the show. I think the writers got lazy and that they did not really respect their character; I find most of the episodes too painful to watch.  The character is not the only one stuck in his flaws.

Associative jump!  (I had to complain to someone; water off a duck's back to someone here; she likes what she likes!) 

Returning to the worlds of the earlier literature,  the radical changes in thinking that took place between Shakespeare's time and Swift's time obviously involved numerous elements, among them the rise of science as we know it today, the discovery of new worlds, literally, the invention of the telescope and the microscope, new ways of thinking about the human predicament.  The forces at work were incredibly complex, and I cite the above three simply to suggest the symbolic way the turmoil at the center of human life entered its most brilliant literature.  Change was underway in 1600; change had been solidified in a significant way by 1730.  Tragedy became the dominant literary form in the age of Shakespeare when the changes, I would suggest, were first felt: Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, Othello; Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, etc.  By the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason, the world had changed forever in a profound way.  If you think about the first two books of the Travels, and step back a bit, what you see is a very big man in the midst of very little people where his bigness is a cause for both exhilaration and humiliation; in the second book the perspective is reversed and you see a very little man in the midst of very big people who horribly abuse his sensibilities.  In another words  as they like to say in our age, "Everything is relative."  Not true.  Not true then and not true now, and that is at the heart of the Travels brilliance.  Some things are relative, obviously; however, something isn't and the text, by the fourth book, reveals exactly what that absolute is, though, of course, Gulliver being a hero of sorts in a satire never sees it which is why, back in England, he is out sleeping with his horses in the stable (Ha!) rather in bed sleeping with his wife in the end.  

Perspectives from the sink.  As I said else where, having a head full of literature lets me think about it even when the texts are not before me.  Tragedy/satire sort of jumped into my head this morning (I crawled into bed at 7), Lear and Gulliver.  In Lear you can see what is danger of being lost and exactly how, the two wicked daughters.  Is their wickedness really relative?  With Gulliver the absolute seems to have vanished out of his world; no one sees it, almost.  Or there is a new absolute.  Logicians to the rescue!  Yet it is the nature of the absolute that it is eternal and unchanging, no matter how many say it ain't so.  Check Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, among other things.

One last thought: if you want to see what the universe looked like for one moment when the world was perfectly centered, read the Divine Comedy (1300).  Lear (1601) reflects the danger of losing that fixed and profound perspective; Milton's Paradise Lost (1660) for an in some ways unsuccessful attempt to hold on to it, Gulliver (1730), a world where it has vanished almost completely.  For a modern perspective on that loss, Eliot's Wasteland (1920) or The Four Quartets.  (All the dates are approximate, depending upon my increasingly faulty memory.  Lear may have been a bit later.  Well, I know the centuries are accurate!)

They let me teach these things for over 50 years!  I started in graduate school (I apologize to those students, though I always did the best I knew, which wasn't really very much, actually then or now, even that morning when I went to my Freshman Comp class terribly hung over, I was probably 24, I can still remember the headache) when I was just 23.  Well, once in 51 years can't be that bad, can it?   Or was it twice?  Hmm.  

Amazing!  When I went to the sink very early this morning, 3a.m. perhaps, I had no idea that this essay of sorts would eventually pour out.   Associative dissonance?

Behavior Modification CXXX

Odds and Ends, or Beginnings

I stood at the dining room window yesterday morning watching the white-throated sparrows scratching and digging and hopping madly down the boardwalk.  They seem to be single minded in their pursuit of food, little fluffs of feathers flitting to and fro. Then one took off, flew across the rose garden and through the fence gap on the far side, an opening of no more than 2 to 2 and a half inches.  Just flew right through the fence.   He was, at least, a certainly sober sparrow, unless he was a certainly sober wren.

The Carolina wren, you see, was also busy among the bushes and on the feeders yesterday morning.  Unlike the sparrows there is never more than one or two wrens around the deck, but there is always at least one.  I think of them as clues now, though I can't say that I am getting very far.  Still, they are delightful to watch in their flitting from bush to bush to feeder and sometimes onto the deck itself, sitting on tables, pots and jugs. The thing about the Carolina wren is that it seems so economically designed, every part distinct, starting with the white eyebrow streak, the angled tail feathers, and especially the soft, reddish-brown down on the underside of the bird.

One hard winter many years ago we had flocks of purple finches and evening grosbeaks.  Mary was putting food on the balcony just out side the sliding glass door in the dining room, where we could stand off to the side and watch.  The birds would flock to the seed, and since there were so many of them, and our presence did not seem to spook them, Mary tried sliding the glass door open a bit and putting her hand out filled with seed.  Of course at first they flew off but there were so many that they soon came back, and eventually they took the seed from her hand.  And from my hand too.  We took turns for a bit.  We still have some purple finches but we haven't seen evening grosbeaks in a long time.  Upon reflection you might say that we had a Saint Francis moment once in our lives.

Behavior Modification CXXIX

My first year in graduate school my enthusiasm knew no bounds.  Every course I took was a literature course; all the requirements were in the world of literature; all the students in the classes we took loved the texts we were studying, and some of them even loved playing murder on the weekends.  Across from the Ohio University campus was a bookstore, Logan's, where I had an account for the first time in my life and I could charge books.  The manager knew my name.  There were two movie theaters, numerous restaurants, and, of course, bars.  It seemed like Paradise in some respects.  I was 22.

I not only loved literature, I also loved literary criticism.  One text in particular I found that first year was Northrup Frye's Anatomy of Criticism.  Frye was an archetypal critic who, it seemed had not only read every work ever written but understood how to think about them.  It was an exciting text that provided the inspiration for a number of the many papers I wrote that first year, including my master's paper on Shakespeare's The Tempest. The passage that inspired me, seemed to suggest that literature had some kind of spiritual center that might actually be discovered:

"As a result of expressing the inner forms of drama with increasing force and intensity, Shakespeare arrived in his last period at the bedrock of drama, the romantic spectacle out of which all the more specialized forms of drama, such as tragedy and social comedy, have come, and to which they recurrently return.  In the greatest moments of Dante and Shakespeare, in, say The Tempest or the climax of the Purgatorio, we have a feeling of converging significance, the feeling that here we are close to seeing what our whole literary experience has been about, the feeling that we have moved into the still center of the order of words.  Criticism as knowledge, the criticism which is compelled to keep on talking about the subject, recognizes the fact that there is a center of the order of words."  (117-118) 

As I have recently said, there are no accidents.  At the time I hadn't read the Purgatorio and now it too is one of my favorite works of literature.  While I have come to reject the archetypal way of looking at texts, nevertheless, Frye was, for a time, an important teacher and influence, and as Charles Williams said somewhere, one should always acknowledge his or her derivations.

From this passage I was inspired to choose The Tempest as the topic for my Proseminar paper for my master's degree.  At the time, 1963, a student could chose one of two route's for the master's: write a thesis or do the two semester Proseminar.  The author for the course was Shakespeare.  The first semester we studied 6 or 7 plays.    Every two weeks we read a different play wherein the professor would pose a problem for us and we students would attempt to solve it in a paper.  One such problem had us analyzing the differing stage directions in, I think, the first quarto edition of Richard 2 and the first folio edition. We thought we had been killed.  Then the professor introduced us to the Arden editions of Shakespeare's texts (I, of course, now own all of them) where such information might be gleaned.  I can't remember what I discovered at the time, but I know it didn't rock the world of academe.  In fact I may even have received one of the lowest grades I ever got in grad school, a B+.  It turned out that the teacher was singularly unimpressed with all our papers; it should be noted that we had all been in grad school for two weeks now; one young man immediately dropped out.  These teachers meant business, we noted.  Stage directions?  

This professor, Dr. Robert McDonnell, was a really good person and an excellent teacher.  The problems he presented for the other 5 plays were interesting; the only one I more or less remember was on The Tempest and had to do with the storm imagery in the play.  I think the sixth or seventh play was Macbeth wherein we were to define a problem and answer it in 15 pages, more or less.  It turned out that the purpose of the first semester study was to lead us to the second semester's work: a thesis length paper on one of the plays.   We were to meet as a class for the first two or three weeks, then individually with the teacher the rest of the semester.  I felt like Br'er Rabbit flying toward the briar patch!

I chose The Tempest and went at it from the perspective of Frye's archetypal criticism; I was going to discover what that quote really meant: "the still center of the order of words."   Having read both Frye and The Tempest carefully, I saw immediately that The Tempest contained Frye's four literary types: romance, comedy, irony or satire, and tragedy.  The problem was to understand how Shakespeare, at the end of his career, had applied his incredible imagination to the romance genre to achieve this magnificent play.  The professor approved, we met various times, I wrote a truly magnificent paper (okay, a little irony of my own there, perhaps; tell the truth but tell it slant after all).  At this point I hear a literary voice in my head saying that here is where the story turns sad, but I don't think it is too sad.  (Ah, I know whose voice it is: Sammy in Updike's short story, "A & P").  I did write an excellent paper; this was the precomputer era; we typed our papers (pounded them out, so to speak, on hard to correct typewriters).  We xeroxed a copy.  I did.  The teacher truly praised my paper.  In fact he told me to let him have the xeroxed copy, as well as the one for the archives so that he could comment and return it for possible publication.  My idea about Prospero was that good and new.  I was elated.  The teacher whom we all loved and trusted at this point was also offered a superior position at a graduate school elsewhere.  He left that summer.  I never got the paper back, edited or unedited.

So, I wrote a brilliant paper, no doubt in my mind; 51 years later it exists only in my mind and the mind of God.  I would have given anything for a while to be able to read its fifty some pages again, primarily just to see how I understood what Shakespeare's mighty accomplishment was then.  There are no accidents.  The next year in grad school I met a marvellous teacher who transformed the way I looked at and understood literature, Eric Thompson.  In a sense I ditched Frye for Thompson and archetypal criticism for an ontological criticism that puts us inside the text to see the text from its own perspective, so to speak. Remember Frost's "Stopping by woods"?  What does it mean to see the text through the eyes of the man in the sleigh?  How is the "betweenness" in the poem an expression of the  narrator's ontological dilemma?  How is the storm at the beginning of The Tempest an expression of the dilemma operating throughout the play until the action of the play transforms it?  Last year I thought I had finally understood that, but I didn't take notes and once again I do not know, which makes every reading or viewing an exciting challenge and experience.

As for Professor McDonnell, I have come to understand that he was actually an angel sent by God to direct us (all of us in the class, even the one who ran for the hills of southern Ohio) into a proper delight for the study of literature, Shakespeare in particular; I see him as a literary John the Baptist preparing the way for Professor Thompson (dead at 72!), everything matters, or nothing.   My best friend in that course, and in graduate school, Bill Elkins, is also dead (age 62).  

Behavior Modification CXXVIII

Mary and I went on an outing yesterday.  Our in-laws, Erin's parents, kindly invited us to attend a meal with them at the Galt House, a hotel with revolving restaurant on the top floor (25th) in Louisville, Kentucky (see image).  We had done this adventure successfully once before and thus readily agreed.  We were also driven to it, so to speak, by our son, J-D and his wife Erin.  I do not eat much any more for various reasons, but that was about to change for this meal, an all you can eat feast.

One reason why I no longer eat much is the neuropathy.  I can't feel the silver ware; I tend to drop them and generally make a mess.  I drop knives, forks, spoons, napkins, oh yes, and, of course, food.  I try to be very careful, but the gods do not smile kindly on me at table; actually, I think that is because they are too busy laughing hysterically.  "There goes his fork!"  "Hahaha!"  "Watch him try to pick it up!"  "Oops!"  "Now he's banged his head on the table, trying to get out from under!"  "Hohoho!"  Saints in Heaven.  I even suspect my guardian angel of having the day off to participate in the festivities at my expense.  Of course there's laughter in Heaven, I just hope it is not always at my expense.  

I suspect they have a great time when I take a shower.  "How many times has he dropped the soap today?"  Why must they make it so slippery?  I remember that when I was young, some relative gave me a bar of soap on a rope.  I thought it was funny!  Why would soap makers do such a thing?  Well, where is a Dove on a rope when you need one?  And it would have to be Dove, for I have delicate skin, of course, ready to turn red and itch at any inopportune moment.   

Well, let the gods and angels do their best, I was determined to enjoy the feast, and the first item on the menu was an omelet; we had passed the waffle and omelet station on the way to our table, where "they" even let me eat with the adults.  Our personal waiter, Steven Jr., took our drink order, coffee for me, since I could only have one cup before we left home for the long drive to Louisville; anything over twenty minutes is long for me and Louisville is at least ten hours or less; maybe under two hours in all fairness.  It always just seems like ten about twenty minutes into it.  "Are we there yet, Erin?"

Drink order in, I struggled out of my chair to go for a plate.   I do mean struggled, for I have to push up from the chair with one hand and steady myself on the table with the other, all while trying to move the chair back.  Fortunately J-D who had just come over from the other table rescued me and pulled the chair back.  Together we went to the plate table, where he handed me the heaviest plate I had ever felt.  Good grief!  It felt as though it was made of lead.  Fortunately, J-D rescued me again, took my plate as well as his (I didn't notice him struggling; he must be working out again), and we made our way to the Omelet Station.  I chose onions, tomatoes and both cheeses.  The onions and tomatoes were sautéed immediately, the prepared egg mixture was put into another pan and cooked; then it was all dumped expertly onto the egg, folded over and dumped again onto my plate.  J-D carried my plate to the table while his was cooking, and I was ready to lay into the first course, mostly.  At this point the damn fork turned rebellious and absolutely would not turn over so that I could use it.  So I grappled with the knife (no problem there), then grabbed the fork while it was looking elsewhere, I guess.  Not taking any more chances with the silverware, I mumbled my thanks to the Almighty and I tucked in to the food while I had the silverware in my grasp!  The omelet was delicious; the onion was sweet and sautéed perfectly.  I love cheese.

Meanwhile I had no sooner started on the omelet than Mary showed up with a smaller plate of fruit and blu cheese.  I love fruit, and blu cheese.  What a woman.  She, like Eve, or maybe not, had given me ripe pineapple, fresh raspberries, and melon slices of several varieties.  While I usually eat one food item at a time, this time I mixed them up.  A bite of omelet, a taste of pineapple, a chunk of blu cheese, a raspberry or two, and soon everything was gone.  

Now I needed more coffee and the plates cleared, but Steven Jr. was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile Mary had left her fruit and whatever plate (there was something dark there down under everything else that looked as though it had crawled up out of the bowels of the earth, or out of an H. P. Lovecraft story at least.  And on top of her plate but just under her cantaloupe slices was a piece of ripe pineapple.  Oh my.  Sarah, Erin's mother was sitting past Mary to my right; Ann, her husband's sister, was sitting to my left.  They acted like two angels, one good and one a little better.  Take it Gene, Mary won't remember; well, she will probably remember since there is only one.  I listened to Sarah and took it.  How sweet it was.  Mary returned.  Sarah tried to cover for me, but Ann of course gave it away. I just confessed and told her I was off to get more fruit and that I would pay her back.  You see, I had noticed the smaller plate and thought to my self, I can handle that.

I ventured off on my own amidst this ocean of people and tables and food.  First, of course, the gods were giggling again.  "Hide the small plates!"  They hid the small plates.  I could not find a stack of them anywhere, until I came to the waffle/omelet station.  Ah Ha!  Not so smart after all.  I grabbed a small plate and noticed the waffles I had slighted the first time.  They looked good.  I picked a waffle up (with my fingers) and found the fruit sauce, a blueberry, strawberry, and blackberry sauce.  I sloshed it on my waffle, and more powered suger than I am ever allowed at home.  Oh joy!  Take that table gods.

That left the fruit table.  There was enough room on my small plate for more pineapple and raspberries.  I picked up the metal tongs and immediately heard distant laughter; I ignored it.  I shouldn't have.  If forks turn in my hands, you should see what happens to metal tongs that you need to grasp intelligently and squeeze.  I missed the first piece of succulent pineapple; I tried again.  The tongs turned.  I missed.  There was a row of pineapple sitting like dominoes turned sideways.  I had the tongs, I slipped them into the pineapple and squeezed just enough to pick them up and drop them on my plate.  Not knowing when to quit, I went back for more.  The tongs slipped again, again I missed.  To hell with it I thought, I'll just pick the piece up; no one else was there.  I tried.  Fingers didn't work either.  I was beginning to sweat.  I slid the piece of pineapple across the tray and off the edge onto my plate.  That worked so well, I tried it again, Mary's piece.  Hers fell on the table.  I tried to pick it up but it squirted out of my hand onto the floor.  OMG!  I kicked it under the table and slid another one onto my plate, which worked, and I quickly hurried away and back to the safety of our table.  "Where's my piece?"  Right there, sweetheart.

This first waffle with fruit sauce was so good that I quickly devoured it, and went back for two more.  We hunter gatherers stay busy, work up appetites.  I had already had more than I usually eat in three days.  Never mind that.  I tried to tong a waffle (everyone makes up verbs nowadays); that didn't work, the cook wasn't looking, I snatched one from the freshly cooked group with my hand, then a second.  Plenty of room for sauce.  I attacked the sauce.  I suddenly had a vision of everyone standing over the bowl and spooning the fruit sauce onto their waffles.  I'll probably end up with Ebola, I thought, and spooned on another helping, then went for the powdered suger.  I considered stealing the large bowl of sugar, but there was no way I could carry it and my loaded plate.  Besides greed was sending me back to the pineapple.  I heaped up the powdered sugar, went to the fruit, didn't waste time with the tongs, just grabbed four pieces and layered them on top of the fruit soup.  If it were heated to a high enough temperature a new form of life might emerge.

When I returned to the table, people were gobsmacked by the sheer quantity I had managed to get onto my small plate.  I think they cheered but I might have misheard the acclamation.  In any case, I ate once again.  The pineapple had turned brown from the sugar and sauce, the waffles had soaked up enough of the sauce to turn them purple.  I made magic with my knife and spoon this time and shoveled in the food.  What a time I was having!  

The gods were hysterical, the angels were dancing, and I, for once, was full. 

Behavior Modification CXXVII

I spend more time sitting at the table thinking about things than I do writing.  Our dog walk today (yesterday now) was nearly disastrous for Dexter and Frollie, for example.  There was the perspective offered in an email I received, "stats to note."  Tonight and tomorrow night the Geminid meteor shower is taking place.  I remember that Annie Dillard had an interesting perspective on meteor showers in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, though I read that a long time ago too.  After I read it I never failed to pick up any penny I found.  Well, I picked them up before I read her book, but it was more fun after.  The observed behavior of white-throated sparrows on our board walk is worth noting.  Dexter takes thyroid pills every morning, with cheese; remember Wallace and Gromit?  Everyone likes cheese, especially Kraft's American cheese slices, into which I fold his pills.  Of course everyone shows up for cheese.  The list grows.  But my neck hurts and it is 4:39 am.  Still, there is one more thing to say about The Tempest too (and my inability to deal effectively with italics for titles; see?).  Ah, later note: I have learned the double tap on the words I need to italicize.  Technology, ain't it grand?

More later, whenever later is. 

We have a lot of bird feeders just outside the back of our house, beside the enclosed deck, and nicely placed on the other side of an L-shaped boardwalk, and visible from our dining room window.  We feed birds and watch them.   Always in the back of my mind is the idea (from C. S. Lewis) that everything is a clue and that if properly followed will lead back to its source.  I'm not sure where I read that, which of his many works, but I will try to find it as I liked it well enough to copy and stick on the wall next to my desk downstairs.  Though I do not use that desk anymore I suspect the quote is still there.  Later: it isn't there.  I sort of remember (Ha, everything, sort of) taking it down to use somewhere.  It is probably stuck in a book now.

In any case, this particular day I was watching white-throated sparrows whose numbers were significant.  They are ground feeders: scratch scratch nibble nibble run.  The running takes place on the boardwalk, the scratching on the ground around it.  Their behavior was funny.  These little fluffy brown balls of feathers would scratch and eat and suddenly hop up on the boardwalk and race down it for three to five feet before hopping off and digging some more.  Their behavior was such that they looked like windup toys, and they were that fast. Their running was actually hopping at something approaching light speed, for they were so fast that their little legs and feet seemed to disappear in a blur.  Quick little dashes, and not just one of the sparrows, but all of them, sooner or later dashing, and at different angles to one another.  White-throated sparrows.

Growing up in Ohio, all I remember are English sparrows and lots of them.  Nuisance birds along with starlings, my parents called them.  When I got married and moved to Athens, Ohio, I now had a wife who liked birds too, and a bird book.  And we had six or seven varieties of sparrows, all distinct, just as the white-throated sparrow is distinct from the English sparrow, the song sparrow, and the fox sparrow.  I seem to remember that there is also a sparrow with a red head.  Here I cannot reconcile intellect and emotion.  Intellect says variation accounts for the separate species; I counted fish scales in a workshop on evolution one summer for a general studies course I taught during the school year.  Variation occurs: 41 scales on this fish, 46 on the next one.  However, the different kinds of sparrows are distinct, to say nothing of the fish, and each mates with its own kind, presumably.  Emotionally, the idea of variation does not feel right as a way to account for (I have forgotten the correct terms for species, etc. though I had to memorize them in college long ago) the different kinds of sparrows, and wrens, and finches, purple and gold, and hawks, red-tailed and otherwise.  On one end of my spectrum I have variation within the species, leading to a new species; on the other end I see distinct species without any apparent connecting links.  I am not trying to prove or disprove anything here, simply present what seems to me to be a fascinating and complex mystery.  Oh, and if I were to follow one of the winged wonders as clue, it would be the Carolina wren; they are lovely in so many ways.

Ah, I just read Wordsmith for today, well Sunday, and truly there are no accidents.  There is an interesting "thought for the day" quote from physicist Freeman Dyson; he is using all the terms: species, genus, class, phylum.  Apparently, it takes a million years to evolve a new species, if he is correct.  That is what the nineteenth-century scientists gained from the fossil record for evolution to be a viable theory: time.  

For another perspective on the importance of time here (again?) is the quote from Dante's Purgatory in the circle of Sloth: "Quick, quick!  Let not the precious time be lost for lack of Love."  

Behavior Modification CXXVI

I seem to be caught in some kind of time loop.  Instead of writing here I simply reread the last entry, make tiny changes here and there, save them, look at this blank white space, close it and go back to Schuster, Mary, and the half-eaten mouse.  Once again, I have made the coffee, cleaned the kitchen, and here I am.  I have knocked down my late night mug of cran-grape, eaten 3 treats from our neighbor Gin's Christmas gift (thank you; some of them are individually wrapped and oh so good, not that all of them are not oh so good, but those are special; I haven't mentioned them to Mary for obvious reasons), and two small bags of Welch's fruit snacks from the box of 40 my daughter gave me several days ago (thank you).  

At this point in the entry I am beginning to feel like Tristram Shandy, out of an eighteenth century novel of the same name.  I read it three times one year in graduate school.  Stream of consciousness was a technique newly discovered in fiction (Sterne may have gotten the idea from Locke).  Tristram is trying to write his autobiography; I can't remember why, but the novel is very funny.  Since the last time I read it was in 1963 or 4, many of the details have disappeared.  I remember that he has an Uncle Toby who is trying to woo the widow next door.  I also remember that it takes Tristram about 300 pages to get to the moment of his birth.  I remember that Uncle Toby is making a huge topographical map of a battle in which he received a groin wound.  

There's a lovely scene between the passionate widow and Uncle Toby wherein he offers to show the widow the place where he was wounded, he meaning his huge map, she thinking his body.  I remember too that Uncle Toby had taken the metal weights out of the window cords for controlling the windows so that they would stay up when raised.  Tristram's circumcision occurred when as a little child he was peeing out of one of the same windows and of course it came crashing down, apparently removing the unsuspecting flesh.  Well, I have convinced myself that I need to reread this novel at least once more before I depart this vale of tears.  I have a list of such things: the Renaissance translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.  (There is a ring of invisibility in the story and a moon voyage on a hippogriff, I think.  There are also knights and battles and lovers etc.). Spenser's Faerie Queene is another, especially books 2 through 6.  Book 3 is the story of Britomart, a female knight (this is 1593-99) with a magic lance.  In Spenser's allegory she represents, among other things, Chastity.  People then were certainly not any more chaste than now, as far as I can tell, but they understood that Chastity was a real virtue.  Look how often it plays a role in Shakespeare's plays, especially the comedies.  One of the central plays in that regard is Measure for Measure; for the purest vision of the virtue and it's significance though, read The Tempest, look what is at stake in the love between Ferdinand and Miranda if they give in to their love and their desire for each other before they return to Naples and can be properly married.  Look what Milton did with the idea of Chastity in Comus.

Another digression and then I'll go to bed.  I discovered The Tempest in high school English, thanks to Miss Ruthie Dietsel (I am sure the spelling is wrong).  We were doing reports on plays (snooze, eh?).  She said, if we did contemporary plays we must do two of them; however, if we chose a Shakespeare play we need do only one.  Hey, I could count!  I looked through a volume of Shakespeare and came upon The Tempest, and my imagination was transformed for ever.  Are our lives governed simply by accident and chance or is there an underlying pattern, purpose and reality at work?  I could not even have understood the question then or taken it seriously, but when I look back I see pattern, thanks to Miss D and 3 English teachers at Heidelberg along the way who shifted my goal and changed my direction to graduate school in English (and Ohio University) and all that happened as a consequence of that choice.

And The Tempest?  I wrote my Master's thesis on it, and it is still my favorite Shakespeare play, and the most meaningful, though I am sure I always just miss the real meaning.   

Well, my left eye just slammed shut, so I guess I truly must go to bed.  I'll edit it later, so to speak. 

Behavior Modification CXXV

Speaking of Schuster, I shall again.  Continuing.  I went to bed at 3, then was rudely awakened at 4:20, the red digital light on my radio said.  Mary was hysterical.  When Mary is hysterical, I know not to rush into things since her notion of a crisis is different from mine, and, I suppose, most everyone else's.  I did not understand what she was saying, but I could tell it had to do with Schuster.  What doesn't these days?  

Well, I stumbled out of bed, tried to stand up, started to slide down to the floor, caught myself on the side of the bed and focused.  She was still hysterical, screeching excitedly about Schuster eating something.  Apparently he had been eating a dead mouse, at least it was dead now from what I could gather. Mary is a carnivore from way back, but there is a significant gap in her mind and imagination between what the meat on her plate was, where it came from, and how it looks on her plate now.   Schuster eats his mice like steak tartare, raw.  When she settled down a bit, I gathered that whatever Schuster had was in our hall bath; Mary was holding Schuster on our bed, trying to keep him from licking her since his tongue had recently, she shuddered, touched the creature.  He licked her anyway and crawled over to me.  I let him lick my hand, and when he rolled over I gave him a super belly rub and told him he was a good boy.

Then I tried to get off the bed again, managed that without too much trouble, and walked down the hall to the bathroom.  And there it was, fully displayed on the floor, with a paper towel under it.  It was impossible to tell what it had been, though mouse was probably the best guess, for it was now red and raw and stringy and thoroughly disgusting.  I got two more paper towels and a plastic bag, wrapped the remains in the towels, put those in the plastic bag, stuffed the plastic bag inside an empty coffee bag, and stuffed the whole business down in the trash to be dealt with later.

When I returned to the bedroom, Mary was now under the covers, Schuster was on top of the covers looking pleased with himself, if not slightly bewildered.  I gave him another short belly rub, crawled under the covers on my side of the bed and immediately fell back asleep.  End of story, crisis averted, mischief managed. 

It occurred to me as I was about to lose consciousness, however, that we were fortunate that Simon had not bestirred himself and found the remains while we were all in the bedroom, for we would have been up the rest of the night trying to catch him and pry it out of his mouth.  I was also rather proud of Mary for having managed to get the thing away from Schuey.  One risks serious finger damage or loss trying to remove meat from cute, savage dachshunds.  I still haven't asked her how she did it.  And, she will be asleep again tonight by the time I do the dishes and get back there.  By morning I will have forgotten again.  Alas. 

Behavior Modification CXXIV

I buy Schwan's raspberry/white chocolate scones; they are delicious.  For a while I would bake 2 of them at 350 for 25 minutes before I went to bed, then bag and refrigerate them so that I could have one for breakfast in the next two mornings.  That's the kind of food that gets me out of bed in the morning.  

Two nights ago I put two in the oven, set the timer on the oven, set the timer on the microwave and went back to a PBS documentary on 3 Italian cities: Florence, Rome, and Venice.  Fascinating, so fascinating, in fact, that I did not hear either timer, which is really bad since the one on the oven never shuts off.  Since the PBS show was part of their fund raising campaign, I had to fast-forward the show, which meant there was late night silence in the house, which meant I could hear the timer!  I rose up off my chair like Neptune from the sea and hustled to the kitchen.  The scones looked dark, very dark.  I put on my large red oven mitts and hauled them out.  Whoa!  The Israelites could have used those things as bricks when building the Egyptian pyramids.  Hard, very hard.  I wrapped them in the aluminum foil I had on the baking tray and dumped them in the trash, once their temperature had dropped below that of the surface of the sun.  Rats, as Snoopy might say.

Not to be foiled (nudge nudge), once the tray had truly cooled, I put another piece of foil down, sprayed it with Pam or something, put two more frozen scones on the tray and placed them into the oven.  This time I turned off the TV and sat at the dining room table where I could look into the kitchen and hear the timers, both of them.  They, the scones, not the timers, came out perfect, and the one I ate 5 hours later was delicious.  I know there is a lesson in this mishap, but at the moment I am too tired to think about what it might be.   

And I just noticed that 30 minutes have passed since the last time I glanced at the wall clock in the kitchen.  Since the coffee is made and I also did the dishes before I sat down, I think I shall close the iPad and go to bed.  Actually, upon further reflection I remember that I had glanced at the digital clock at the top of the page, not the kitchen clock.  I think someone's messing with me.  Schuster, the little dickens!  It has to be!

The Mansion #4

My mind's an ample mansion,

Filled with many rooms; 

By far the most important is

Where I keep the brooms.