Sort of San Francisco Fan Club

Fewest words: Looking for an honest soul

2012-01-25T03:33:00.066+01:00

You have heard of Diogenes, I presume. Just to refresh your memory, he was a Greek philosopher and a founder of the "Cynic" school of thought. Among his beliefs was the notion that virtue is best revealed through action as opposed to theory. He was critical of those elements and people within his society he thought to be corrupt. He begged for food and slept in a tub in the marketplace of Athens. (A bit extreme, do you not think? A love seat for a bed is difficult enough.) He carried a lamp in daytime, explaining that he was searching for one honest man. (Actually, I am doing that, too. But, looking for one honest woman is more my style.) If you wish to know more, do a bit of research on your own time and tell me what you think. This painting reveals Jean-Leon Gerome's vision of Diogenes in his tub surrounded by some of the more honest residents of Athens around 361 BCE. To complete the record, Gerome was a 19th Century French painter and sculptor, who completed this work in 1860. I think this painting is marvelous, and I say that not only as a cynic, but also as a skeptic and a misanthrope. (Or whatever; English majors like flowery language.) I almost forgot. I think we are finished with comments for January 2012. Time is up. Clock has expired. Game is over. Take care.

Fewer words: Looking from the balcony

2012-01-24T03:33:00.036+01:00

This might be big water, but it definitely is not the former love of my life -- Lake Superior. No ice, no snow, too gentle. I am curious to discover if anyone recognizes this view of this water, this beach, this building, this balcony -- so, I will leave comments open for a day or two, but might not respond with more than a general "yes" or "no" answer to anyone who might care to venture an opinion about the location. It has all the earmarks of a tourist site (Does it not?), but looks to be rather barren at the time the photograph was taken. The photo actually was shot about two months ago, toward the end of November. And, no, it is not Kashmir. (Teasing.) By the way, the only reason I have a photo and the songs today is to use them as an excuse to mark the date of my once-upon-a-time enlistment with the U.S. Marine Corps. January 24 is branded into my psyche. Semper Fidelis, until the end of time. So, then, the anniversary has been duly noted for still another year.

Few words: Looking out the window

2012-01-23T03:33:00.044+01:00

It is not unusual for me to mention that the view from the windows of the place in which I dwell is very important to me. Here, in this house, in a general sense, the view is mundane and boring. People who live in suburbia generally are mundane and boring, and their homes and small lawns and inane activities reflect it. But, that is another story. One element of the view from the windows of this particular location is a predictable stream of aircraft, such as this one, departing from the north and heading south and east. Depending upon cloud cover, these departures usually are visible from the living room windows as I sit before my computers and television. At night, lying on my love seat bed and looking through a window, I often will watch the lights of aircraft arriving on their approach from the south. These sights stir the imagination, if not the spirit, and provide a measure of equilibrium. I wonder about the destination of this aircraft. Perhaps, it is bound for Kashmir.

Who makes tomorrow?

It had not been my intention to write more than the words which accompanied my photograph of the aircraft in flight, but after having looked at a number of photographs of the street demonstrations which have been going on in Romania the past several days and earlier in places like the United States and Greece and Britain, I decided to add a few thoughts.

I feel badly about what is happening in Romania and many other countries. I think most people do not understand that what is happening in the world today is the result of leadership decisions made not today, but yesterday .... last year .... a decade ago.

War is a constant element of mankind, and not all fighting is with rifles in fields. Much of it takes place in corporation board rooms, union halls and government offices. Even in republics such as America, fate is determined in elections by people who usually cast their ballots for the prettiest face, or for the promises of the easiest life and the greatest rewards.

I have said before and, undoubtedly, I will say again, more often than not those who rise to power in political parties generally are the most selfish among us and have the greatest thirst for personal power and wealth. They often are the worst and the morally weakest of us -- not the best. It is foolish for men and women to put blind trust in governments and politicians, yet most do just that time after time.

As for young Americans, most of those truly dedicated to freedom and equality are or have been fighting in the actual death zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Although why any of them do this in the current climate which exists in America is beyond me. The weakest and the laziest and the most foolish of young Americans, I think, are blind followers in what they see as a Utopian socialism movement. In actuality, these "occupy" movements are nothing more than organized attempts to bring down the old and to bring in a new hierarchy of greedy, selfish, wanna-be power brokers.

This is why I am like the Ancient Norseman, who when asked in what he believed, replied, "The strength of my own right arm." The only tomorrow with a measure of certainty is the one which you make for yourself, not one which some stranger promises to make for you. Why so many people fail to understand this absolute and fundamental principle of life is a mystery to me.

Just words

2012-01-13T03:33:00.048+01:00

The paintings of Viktor Vasnetsov continue to captivate me. Here is another of his works, this one, completed in 1880, is entitled, "Riding a Flying Carpet." There is a Russian story in which Baba Yaga can supply Ivan Tsarevich, also known as Ivan the Fool, with a flying carpet and other magical gifts like a ball that rolls in front of the hero showing him the way or a towel that can turn into bridge. These gifts help Ivan to find his way "beyond thrice-nine lands, in the thrice-ten kingdom." This particular painting is designed to illustrate Ivan returning home after capturing the Firebird, which he keeps in a cage. Ivan is riding the flying carpet in the early morning mist. I would be happy just to have the magical ball which would "show me the way."

Someday, the last laugh will be on me

When is too late too late?

When does Neverland become Nevermore?

I ordered a print of Viktor Vasnetsov's, "A Knight at the Crossroads," which appeared in my December 31 post. When it arrives, it will be on the wall nearby so I can look up at it and drift off into it.

I suppose it is true of many skilled painters, but Viktor (there is a pun there) captures perfectly the exhaustion in both the man and his mount -- the slumped shoulders and the bowed heads, the weapon barely grasped and pointed downward from the slight weight of the iron point. My affection for this painting grows whenever I look at it. It is an expression which every man, who is honest with himself, realizes and accepts. Life continues, but he does not -- at least not too much further. What direction is most likely the last he will take in his life? Which road?

Without even seeing this man's face, I know which way he will travel. He will take the fork to the right. Better to lose his head, his life, than to lose what is his and what is close to him. He and his horse will pass on to another land, another place, or they will become bones along the side of the roadway like those lying immediately before him. They will live together or die together.

Life and death have been a theme in my life lately, although not my own. January is another of my months of many memories. So many; so close. It competes with October in that regard. So, a few: Happy birthday, mother; happy birthday, Little Light's mother; happy Marine Corps anniversary, Fram; RIP, Rory; RIP R. Henry.

My own life remains what it seems always to have been: A cry for freedom. Probably, it is more accurate to say freedom and searching. Where is the blue lagoon? Where is the endless forest of Mythago Wood? Where is the place across the river and into the trees? Where is the path up and out of Dante Alighieri's descent into hell? Where is Tralfamadore? Where is the lake in which dwells Viviane? Where is the thrice-ten kingdom of Ivan the Fool? Where is where?

Life is nothing if not fascinating. (It has been a while since I used that word.) So, ask me where this post is going. I will answer: Nowhere. Or, should I respond with a name? Noman, as Odysseus answered the Cyclops who asked his name, or should I say Aethon, as he lied to Penelope when he appeared before her as a beggar after twenty years' absence. Odysseus reached continuous and seemingly endless forks on his road, but, at the end, he took the correct turn and returned to where he began. (As long as one does not read Nikos Kazantzakis, who sends him wandering again.) Whatever .... this, I do not wish for me. Returning to my origins, I mean. I wish to go to places where I have never been and never will be again.

To live is to close one's eyes and to jump.

Life is only a road. How wide or how narrow it is depends upon each of us individually. At times, it is bordered by fields or cities; at other times, by vast seas or bottomless chasms. It leads to everywhere and to nowhere, but, sooner or later, it will become a road with no more forks upon which to make a decision about which is best to follow. It will lead only to an inevitable, hollow end.

Or, to borrow the words of Ernest Hemingway that I occasionally like to use: "Life is a cheat, and don't forget it."

It really is fun, though, is it not?

To tease life and to taunt death?

Because even to win is no more than a temporary victory.

So, in a sentence, laugh at life and curse at death, because no matter how lucky you are, sooner or later the road will disappear from beneath you.

And, I will continue to write stuff like this -- mere words, simple words, only words, just words -- until the last laugh is on me.

May 2012 be mellow & calm & serene

2012-01-01T04:44:00.041+01:00

These two post cards were mailed one century ago, on December 27, 1911, as greetings to signify the approaching New Year: 1912. It seems like only yesterday.

A wish for serenity

Perhaps your memory is better than mine, but I have a difficult time remembering what I was doing on some of the New Year's Eves and the New Year's Days in my more distant past. For instance, I barely can recall this night and this day in 1911--1912. That is the year I received these cards, the one on the left from my brother and the one on my right from my sister.

What, you do not believe me? You do not think that I actually received these cards a century ago? Or, possibly, you do not think that I have a brother and a sister? Well, that is your prerogative, but time is real and it drifts and it wanders and sometimes it forms an eddy. All one needs to do is to unleash his perception of today (reality) and he can travel to anywhere and to anyplace that has ever existed at any time.

Of course, it is more enjoyable to have company on these journeys, so close your eyes, play the Deep Purple song and catch hold of the guitar or the organ notes as they float by .... resisting the urge to begin dancing to them except in your mind .... drawing them ever so far inside of you until you feel them flowing with your blood.

If you allow yourself to be truly free from your today, you quickly will find yourself looking outward from within and gliding with me into a moment of serenity -- which, I hope, will be yours to catch hold of throughout the coming year whenever the world seems threatening or overwhelming. I do not like to travel alone, and would be much happier if you would walk alongside of me.

A fork in the road is in sight

2011-12-31T03:33:00.022+01:00

Thanks to a young lady who wrote to me about the concept of the knights errant, I have stumbled upon a painter whose work I had not encountered in the past. Viktor Vasnetsov was among the founders of the folklorist / romantic, modernistic movement in Russian art. His paintings often focused on the mythological and the historical elements of Russian life. This particular oil on canvas is called "A Knight at the Crossroads" or "A Warrior at a Fork in the Road." Vasnetsov painted it twice, first in 1878 and then in 1882. This is the 1882 version. The inscription on the menhir, by the way, is this: "If you ride to the left, you will lose your horse, if you ride to the right, you will lose your head." Such is the life of a knight errant, it would seem, no matter into which century he is born and lives.

The dice just keep rolling

On December 31, 2010, I wrote the following words:

Three ideas are floating through my mind as a new year looms on the horizon:

Buy a house in the southern suburbs of Minneapolis/St. Paul and hang out for a year or two writing and writing. This = safety & security.

Move to Florida, buy a boat and hang out for a year or two diving and diving. This = adventure & long-shot gambling.

Travel by ship (a freighter that accepts a few passengers) from America to Europe and decide what to do next upon arrival. There is a run from Duluth, Minnesota, through the Great Lakes, up the St. Lawrence River, across the Atlantic Ocean, through the North Sea and into the Baltic Sea to Gdansk, Poland. This = learning potential & self-discovery.

So, then. How do those three thoughts rate in terms of rolling the dice? And, while I am thinking of it, how do you spell hiatus?

Well, it is evident that I selected safety and security. In the spring, I bought a house in the suburbs of Minneapolis/St. Paul and moved in on the evening of June 28. I have been here six months. I have been perfectly miserable in most regards ever since.

So, just this week, after some discussion with children and a friend or two, I made the decision to stay here for another six months. Then, I will roll the dice once again. One of these times, I expect to find the treasure at the end of the rainbow or to abruptly discover there is no water at the bottom of the cliff from which I leap.

Memory is life, if only for a moment .... No. 3

2011-12-29T03:33:00.004+01:00

Memory is life, if for only a moment .... No. 2

2011-12-28T03:33:00.009+01:00

Memory is life, if only for a moment .... No. 1

2011-12-27T03:33:00.021+01:00

Religion becomes art & art becomes religion, while Christmas music is what you imagine it

2011-12-23T03:33:00.063+01:00

Jacopo Palma, better known to the world as Palma Vecchio or Jacopo Negretti, was an Italian painter who did a number of interpretations regarding the life of Jesus Christ. Many of them were variations depicting the birth of Christ, one of them, fascinatingly enough, including Mary Magdalene among the onlookers. (Mary of Magdala .... present at birth and at death and at resurrection and, some would say, at the Last Supper. What could be more alluring in the sense of religious mysticism?) Beyond these religious elements, the influence of Titian and Bellini are present in his paintings. This piece, entitled "Adoration of the Shepherds with a Doonor," was painted between 1523-25. Today, it is on display at the Louvre in Paris and, once upon a time, my eyes possessed it there. Religion can be art and art can be religion.

The advantages of being a free thinker

The best thing about believing in nothing or no one is that there is absolutely no reason to be annoyed, upset or angry about what someone else might happen to believe or to profess. Unless, of course, that someone is the zealot, fanatic or do-gooder type who insists that everyone else believe what he believes.

Another way of putting this is to begin by saying I have been pretty much of a life-long agnostic who runs along the border of atheism. There are two types of people who make me want to throttle them whenever I encounter them.

One type is the atheist who cannot or will tolerate a manger scene in front of city hall; or the member of a non-Christian religion who insists there cannot be a Christmas program in the neighborhood elementary school; or the spineless department store manager, who forbids his staff from greeting customers with a "Merry Christmas" as they carry out their shopping and tells them that they must use the generic "Happy Holidays" salutation instead.

The other type is the man who attends church weekly, if not daily, and who frowns and walks away from me when I reply, "No, I only attend church for weddings and funerals;" or the evangelical who notes with a contemptuous smirk that I am destined for hell because I do not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ; or the simple-Simon, indoctrinated fool who is incapable of understanding that mercy, compassion and kindness are not exclusive to religion.

If you are one of the aforementioned types, to you I say, "Bah, humbug. Take a hike to the Ninth Circle."

To the rest of the world, I say, "Merry Christmas, and may whatever you believe give you strength and confidence."

Now, back into my cave for me. I need to sharpen my spear and to repair my club ....

Once more: She said, There is no reason ....

2011-12-05T03:33:00.068+01:00

Anyone who reads here knows that I have a rather narrow view of what constitutes art in terms of painting. The work of Picasso, for instance, is a masterpiece of marketing and a sham in terms of art, in my opinion. He represents money and "me, too" fad, not art. On the other side of the coin is a painter such as Charles Leickert. He was born in Belgium nearly two hundred years ago, and did much of his work in Holland. As one might guess from this particular painting in oil, titled "A Winter Scene," he preferred the season of winter for his work and was fascinated by the changing sky. The structure on the right apparently was a favorite of the artist, as it appears in several of his paintings. Once upon a time, I would have liked to have lived in a building like that. Art is beauty; it is reality and a reflection of reality. It is not convoluted designs and abstract scribbling.

Clarity = escape for a while

A few days ago, I wrote these words to a friend: "The world and the people in it are so damn fascinating, and there is not the time to learn about them all and to marvel at it all. Being sentenced to life on earth for a few decades is a criminal act in itself, I think. It is like holding out a candy bar to a child, then throwing it away before his eyes."

Well, at this moment I feel a bit overwhelmed by the world and all the people in it and all the candy bars life has to offer. In a sentence, I need some time to think and to search for clarity and direction in my personal life. So, I am going to escape from anything I feel distracts me for a couple of weeks -- which includes the sea of blogs. See you back here in time for Christmas.

By the way, I think the stars are approaching an apex for others in addition to me. It is a time for some of us to be making life-altering decisions ....

I've Been This Way Before
by Neil Diamond

I’ve seen the light
And I've seen the flame
And I've been this way before
And I'm sure to be this way again
For I've been refused
And I've been regained
And I've seen your eyes before
And I'm sure to see your eyes again

For I've been released
And I've been regained
And I've sung my song before
And I'm sure to sing my song again

Some people got to laugh
Some people got to cry
Some people got to make it through
By never wondering why

Some people got to sing
Some people got to sigh
Some people never see the light
Until the day they die

But I've been released
And I've been regained
And I've been this way before
And I'm sure to be this way again

One more time again
Just one more time

I think J.S., John, Will & Geoff would like it ... there is no reason and the truth is plain to see

2011-11-28T03:33:00.028+01:00

The original album cover of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" -- know her?

The evolution of a mood in time, space & style

A Whiter Shade of Pale
by Gary Brooker
& Keith Reid
& Matthew Fisher

We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
And the waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, "There is no reason
And the truth is plain to see."
But I wandered through my playing cards
And they would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast
And although my eyes were open wide
They might have just as well been closed

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, "I'm here on a shore leave,"
Though we were miles at sea.
I pointed out this detail
And forced her to agree,
Saying, "You must be the mermaid
Who took King Neptune for a ride."
And she smiled at me so sweetly
That my anger straightway died.

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

If music be the food of love
Then laughter is it's queen
And likewise if behind is in front
Then dirt in truth is clean
My mouth by then like cardboard
Seemed to slip straight through my head
So we crash-dived straightway quickly
And attacked the ocean bed

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

(Note: The last two verses of this song are not included in any of the performances posted here, and it is difficult to find one which presents them. That is a pity, I think, because some of the most vibrant literary and historical allusions of this composition (and there are more than a few) are contained within them. The song, in its entirety, climbs beyond mere art, I think. It was a once in a lifetime achievement for its creators; it is my second favorite piece of contemporary music and; it is absolutely magical to dance to .... try it.)

Civilization vs. Tarzan

2011-11-22T03:33:00.029+01:00

The French Revolution, which lasted from 1789 to 1799, is frequently hailed as the establishment of inalienable rights and democracy in Europe. It also happened to be one of the bloodier and more terroristic revolutions in history, with thousands summarily executed. And, it also more-or-less led to the "creation" of Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor of France in 1804. He is notable for a series of wars, justifiably remembered as the Napoleonic Wars, which led to more years of immeasurable death and destruction. This illustration is of the public "murder" of Marie Antoinette in 1792. Her crime was to be the queen of France, whose extravagant lifestyle proved to be unpopular among the masses of people. She died at age thirty-seven by the guillotine, along with several thousand others whose lives offended the common folk. Such is the way of the world when the "thin veneer of civilization" is stripped away. Is history repeating itself today?

The story of a two-edged sword

About a month ago, I wrote in a post that I had planned to reprint an essay about the "thin veneer of civilization," but I could not locate the book it was in among the several boxes of books I have piled up in this house.

Well, I found the book a few days ago, but decided against reprinting the piece because of its length. It was simply too long. However, today being the forty-eighth anniversary of the assassination of American President John Kennedy and this month being the two-hundred-nineteenth anniversary of the unjustifiable execution of Marie Antoinette, a queen of France, I decided to put down a few thoughts about human nature, civilization and the shallowness of the veneer that shelters us from savagery.

People who enjoy searching for the origins of things have so far determined that the first use of the "thin veneer of civilization" concept was in an 1890 preface to, "The Golden Bough," by Scottish anthropologist Sir James Frazer:

"The truth seems to be that to this day the peasant remains a pagan and savage at heart; his civilization is merely a thin veneer which the hard knocks of life soon abrade, exposing the solid core of paganism and savagery below."

Not surprisingly, I would be carrying around books such as these (two volumes, initially) since they dealt with mythology and religion.

Jack London, one of my favorite writers and one who is among the least appreciated today, used this concept in an essay entitled, "The Somnambulists," on June 13, 1906. This piece was first published in a newspaper, the Oakland (California) World, on July 3, 1906. Remember the location of this newspaper. Among the things London wrote:

"Civilization (which is part of the circle of his imaginings) has spread a veneer over the surface of the softshelled animal known as man. It is a very thin veneer; but so wonderfully is man constituted that he squirms on his bit of achievement and believes he is garbed in armor-plate."

The phrase appeared in a number of the "Tarzan" novels from the mind of the prolific Edgar Rice Burroughs. These novels enjoyed great popularity beginning in the early Twentieth Century. This term was, in fact, part of the cloak often used by Burroughs to describe Tarzan's actions and reactions. Here is one example:

"It was a woman's love which kept Tarzan even to the semblance of civilization -- a condition for which familiarity had bred contempt. He hated the shams and the hypocrisies of it and with the clear vision of an unspoiled mind he had penetrated to the rotten core of the heart of the thing -- the cowardly greed for peace and ease and the safe-guarding of property rights. That the fine things of life -- art, music and literature -- had thriven upon such enervating ideals he strenuously denied, insisting, rather, that they had endured in spite of civilization."

In any event, the absolute tidal waves, coming one after another, of political and social unrest in America and Europe brought the "thin veneer of civilization" concept into my mind again. Actually, concept is not the correct word to use. It is a fact, a reality, an actuality.

Students trash university buildings in California because tuition fees are increased (the epitome of idiocy); in a number of cities around America, participants in the so-called "Occupy Wall Street" movement break laws and clash with police for reasons none of them are able to articulate or clearly define; in Greece and England, rioters burn and loot because of economic problems created by their own greed and selfishness. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and other European nations are on the verge of financial collapse and civil hysteria.

Tunisia, Libya and Egypt are in the midst of struggling to determine if democratic or autocratic, radical religious states emerge. For all practical purposes, civil war exists in Syria. Pakistan has the bomb; Iran wants the bomb.

Back to Oakland, California, the site where Jack London wrote and published his "thin veneer of civilization" piece. This place has arguably experienced the most violent of the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations. The city has spent millions of dollars because of these demonstrations, businesses have lost millions, and people are more divisive than they were before the demonstrations began.

As London wrote more than one hundred years ago:

"It is the same old animal man, smeared over, it is true, with a veneer, thin and magical, that makes him dream drunken dreams of self-exaltation and to sneer at the flesh and the blood of him beneath the smear. The raw animal crouching within him is like the earthquake monster pent in the crust of the earth. As he persuades himself against the latter till it arouses and shakes down a city, so does he persuade himself against the former until it shakes him out of his dreaming and he stands undisguised, a brute like any other brute."

Or, as the teacher, philosopher and historian extraordinaire, Will Durant, a bit more eloquently wrote:

"Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be
savages again."

From my point of view, America and other parts of the world are on the verge of burning. The most pathetic part is that American politicians of all persuasions are unable or unwilling to act beyond their own, personal interests and liberal politicians actually are urging the upheaval onward in an attempt to ensure their own, personal political survival. The veneer of civilization has already vanished from them, and their desperation is evident to anyone whose eyes are open.

Caught up in love

2011-11-16T03:33:00.012+01:00

For those unaware, while among the human species females tend to be the more decorative of the sexes, in Nature it generally is the male who flaunts the colors while the female blends in with the flora and fauna of her environment to ensure greater safety and security in a predatory world. This is because Nature generally considers the giver of life -- the female -- to be the more valuable of the mates. Form your own conclusions about that among the couples you encounter. As for our pair of quack-quacks here, as I often say, do not judge me on the quality of my photographs: The only purpose these ducks serve is to be a sort of illustration or link for the written words and the music. For instance, it does not require much imagination to visualize our many-splendored drake to be singing the song posted below to his well-camouflaged companion. Love comes in many forms.

Life, death, fate & memory

A few years ago, I spent a month in Knoxville, Tennessee, where one of my daughters was a graduate student at the University of Tennessee. (You did not know that, did you?) I watched her dogs while she and her then-boyfriend went to Yellowstone National Park. (I am particularly skilled at watching dogs; we almost are like cousins .... or something like that.)

I spent a few days canoeing on the Tennessee River and photographing (yes, me, with a Nikon in one hand and a Canon in the other) odds and ends -- mostly in museums and cemeteries.

In a "city cemetery," a number of tombstones caught my eye, but one in particular actually gripped me. It was for a young man. I cannot recall the precise details without checking my notes from the time, and I have moved so often in recent years that I am fortunate to know where I am, much less where my notebooks are located. Beyond that, I do not care where they are.

So, relying on memory for approximate dates, the young man died in 1898 at age twenty from "a fever." A block away from this city cemetery was a military cemetery. I went there next and, eventually, found myself standing beside a tombstone for another young man who had the same last name as the man in the city cemetery. He also had died in 1898, in Cuba, as a member of the American Expeditionary Force during the Spanish-American War. He was twenty-two years of age.

On both tombstones, the names of the parents were carved. The two were brothers, children of the same man and wife. I thought how cruel life must be to some, while it is so kind to others. It had been more than one hundred years since those deaths. I wondered then, while I stood in the cemetery, and I still do at times, if anyone other than me had thought about those two brothers and their parents during the century past.

By the way, both parents were also in the city cemetery, I discovered the next day, dead within another year after their sons. Heartbreak, I think. What else could it have been?

The re-birth of an idiom

Some of you might have read it, some of you might have figured it out, but next to novels, my favorite "objects" in the world are motion pictures. I saw a film the other night, "Maybe It's Love," in which there was an expression I had never heard before.

One character said to another: "Thanks, you're a regular."

I never had heard the expression before: "You're a regular."

It makes sense.

I have decided that my mission in life (well, one of them) will be to reinstate this expression into the idiom of Americana, although I do not think I would like anyone to call me a "regular." It would destroy my image of myself.

Anyway, it is amazing how easy it is to get an expression or a thought or a concept moving. By the way, this film was made in 1935. Watch it sometime. It was terrific.

Less thought & more walk

The four seasons really do influence my mood, greatly. Sometimes, I think that is the way it is supposed to be for everyone. As for me, I tend to work more hours and play less in the summer because the warm, sunny days make me happy. And, I often have said (and written) that I hibernate during January and February, and that if I could eliminate two months from the calendar, it would be those two. Of course, I meant it in the sense of the weather.

I have spent some time thinking (sometimes, I do this too much) about the seasons, and recently decided to try to live them as I did when I was a child. I enjoyed them all in an outdoor sense, actually loved them all in that sense, and pretty much ignored their climatic inconveniences. What child cares how much he sweats in summer's humidity or if he becomes chilled in winter's frigid winds?

Much of my distaste for winter has come from having had to drive in atrocious conditions on the road to a story when I worked as a reporter, or to and from work in town and home in the "outlands" during blizzard and icy conditions. It is amazing I am still alive, in a sense, considering some of my highway "adventures" during snowstorms.

But, it is absolutely fantastic to walk on an ice-covered lake at night in the dead of winter, or to wander through the twinkling snow in woodlands under a full moon. I love moments such as those, so this is where I will concentrate my "adventures" for now.

Less thought and more walk is the moral here .... I guess.

November 10, 1775 -- 2011 .... Happy Birthday

2011-11-10T03:33:00.004+01:00

Who are a little wise, the best fools be

2011-10-31T03:00:00.005+01:00

Jan (Johannes) Vermeer van Delft, a Dutchman, painted this work, "Woman in Blue Reading a Letter," in 1664. (Seems like yesterday.) If he were the Übermensch, he would be observing his 379th birthday today. His favorite colors were blue, followed by yellow, which causes me to like him far beyond his talent with a paint brush. He also created, "Girl With a Pearl Earring," which causes me to like him even still more because of his taste in women. Never mind rolling your eyes; I am only half-serious with my last remark. But, he was a master artist, a title which few painters in this age could claim to be with a straight face. Now, for a moment, look at her; wonder what the words are that she reads; wonder what she thinks .... wonder .... wonder .... wonder ....

October is the cruelest month

In the past, two or three times, I have written a few words here about T.S. Eliot. Once, I specifically concentrated on his poetic masterpiece, "The Waste Land." The first segment of the poem, "The Burial of the Dead," begins with these words: "April is the cruelest month ...."

After those words of his, I have written here that for me the cruelest month is not April. It is October.

October is the cruelest month.

Some would say that this is imagination. Or, that this is coincidence. Or, that this is mere superstition which I have come to delude myself as fact. Call it what you will, but, to me, it is part of my reality. As many bad things happen to me in October as they do during the other eleven months combined. It is a pattern of my life, and has proved to be as real as it is true that the sun rises in the East.

Leaving October behind for the moment, about ten days ago I watched a film on television entitled, "The Exorcism of Emily Rose." It was based on an actual incident. How actual, I have no idea. Emily Rose's initial encounter with "demons" began at precisely 3:00 a.m., when she awoke alone in her room to the scent of something burning. The time, 3:00 a.m., came up a few more times during the movie. As is my habit, I also was on my computer "working" at the same time I was watching the movie. One eye on the film, one on the computer screen, so to speak. Therefore, I did not catch the significance of 3:00 a.m.

That night, I went to sleep on my "love seat" bed. It is not unusual for me to awaken approximately four hours after I go to bed (old, odd habit), so when I woke up in the middle of the night, I thought it probably was about four hours later. I said to myself, literally out loud, "At least it is not three a.m." I rolled over and looked at the clock. It was three a.m. -- exactly, precisely, to the minute. I am not kidding you. A real shudder and a real shiver ran through my body. Then, I laughed, literally out loud, curled up and went back to sleep before I would start thinking about it and scare myself silly.

I later assumed this was my subconscious mind reacting to what I had heard in the film. A bit strange, though, is it not?

In the morning, I did a bit of research to learn what, if any, significance the time 3:00 a.m. had in religious lore. I learned it is called the "devil's hour." There is belief among some that Jesus Christ died at 3:00 p.m., and that the opposite hour on the clock belongs to the devil.

It was a few days after this event that I really began to think about it. This was not a dream. This was not something I had thought about for a single second after the film and before I went to bed that night. Just as a spark might light a literal fire, so, too, might a word light a metaphorical fire.

A few days ago, I wrote these words to a friend: "Mankind wishes to explore the depths of the oceans and outer space, but the greater mysteries, I believe, are inside our minds and probably within fourth, fifth, sixth dimensions that so far are impenetrable."

So, what do a poem by T.S. Eliot, bad experiences during the month of October, a film about an exorcism, the devil's hour and my awakening at 3:00 a.m. have in common? Well, me, of course. I am the common element. At least, the only common element of which I am aware in this set of circumstances.

I guess the bottom line here is while you concentrate on your reality, I concentrate on moving the curtains back from my reality to see what might be behind and beyond them.

I wonder why more people are not trying to do this in their lives.

Forgive my sarcasm, but most of them probably are too busy trying to please someone other than themselves.

On second thought, do not forgive my sarcasm, but, rather, congratulate me for having managed to survive another October. It ends today, but I do not.

"The Triple Fool" by John Donne

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
But where's that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain;
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when 'tis read.
Both are increased by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

After summer, comes October

2011-10-25T00:00:00.025+02:00

Forever Young

Let's dance in style let's dance for a while
Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst
Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?

Let us die young or let us live forever
We don't have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit life is a short trip
The music's for the sad men
Can you imagine when the space is one
As we turn our faces into the sun
Praising our leaders we're getting in tune
The music's played by the mad men

Forever young
I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever and ever

Forever young
I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever, forever young

Some are like water some are like the heat
Some are the melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later they all will be gone
Why don't they stay young?
It's so hard to get old without a cause
I don't want to perish like a fading horse
Youth's like diamonds in the sun
And diamonds are forever
So many adventures couldn't happen today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams waiting out of the blue
We'll let them come true

Forever young
I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever and ever

(Note: This post was not planned, but came about because unexpected things happen and I awoke to one such event Monday morning. Whatever .... this song has been playing in my mind all day. To me, October is the cruelest month, and this music reflects my mood and why I prefer to hibernate in October. Here are "then, now and abstract" versions of the song to suit your own personal moment in time.)

The beauty of being (lost)

2011-10-01T05:55:00.020+02:00

Where there is a valley, there will be a river. Where there is a river, there will be a sandbar. Where there is a sandbar, there will be fish in the river. Where there are fish, there will be boys pursuing them. And, in this way, boys have forever become lost in a moment of adventure and excitement and belief that this Earth was made for them alone. This photograph is a reflection of the way it was Friday afternoon in the Minnesota River Valley. Count the fisherboys. How many do you see? Or think you see?

A river runs through it

If you were to drop me off in the middle of a wilderness, woodland or desert, a few days later I would walk out wearing a smile and weighing few pounds more than I did when you dropped me off. (If you actually decide to do it to me, please, remember that I would prefer woodlands.)

But, if you placed me in the center of a town much larger than two blocks square, I probably would be lost within five or ten minutes.

One is my strength and the other is my weakness. The first was partially learned, but, mostly, it came instinctually. The second is just that way it is for me and I can do nothing about it. In the first, I cannot become lost; in the second, I seemingly have no control over the situation.

You might have heard/read me say/write those words before.

These two characteristics seem to exist in the world of reality, but, in another sense, I can become lost in time anywhere from minutes to years. You probably can, too, in the manner of which I am writing about now. I can get lost in a song or in a number of songs on the radio. I can get lost in a book or in a series of books by a particular author. I can get lost in a job or in a woman or in an avocation or on a river journey in a canoe.

I have gotten lost in a dream, in a woman's eyes, in a storm on a big, big lake. I have gotten lost in Nirvana and while falling breathless in the white tunnel of death.

This week, I began unpacking a few boxes of the books I still tote around with me. It was symbolic of making a decision, I guess, to keep this house as "Firebase Fram" for a while. The reason I initially began unpacking the boxes, however, was because I was looking for a specific book, "The Lessons of History," by Will and Ariel Durant.

I have written at least two posts about that pair, and mentioned them briefly in other posts. They became lost, too, lost in each other and lost in the study of history. What I love most of them, in a romantic sense, is that she was about fifteen and he was about twenty-seven when they married. She roller skated to her wedding. They had some rough years, mostly because she was so very young, but they lasted until old age claimed them both -- they lasted, because they became lost in each other and in a mutual love, the study of history.

My intention had been to entirely reprint one of their enduring chapters of absolute wisdom from that book as a last post before retreating into the woodwork (note, woodwork, not woodlands) for a few weeks. But, although I have two copies of the book, I have not run across either one yet. So, that chapter will wait until another day to be reprinted here. The chapter I planned to use, incidentally, was about the "thin veneer of civilization." Civilization might be on the verge of collapse, I think.

So, instead, I decided to write a few paragraphs with my own words about the "thin veneer of reality." If you doubt that reality is thin, then, in the simplest sense, you have no imagination; or, in an abstract logic, you have lived a very sheltered life and never have accepted the fact that Mythago Wood and Neverland and Somewhere Over the Rainbow actually do exist. Dante Alighieri wrote about the nine circles of hell. Has it occurred to you there might be nine circles of earthly life? Probably not.

And, allow me to simply say here that I hope we all will become lost again and again -- hopefully, lost in the eyes of another. If not that, at least lost in a book or a dream or a vision of a dream yet to become a reality. Life really is wonderful for those who have the ability to become lost in it -- if only for a few hours or a few weeks at a time. Maybe, even just for a moment at a time.

As for myself, I am adrift in a canoe on a river where mist and fog shroud the approaching bend. If I seem to be rambling a bit, that is because it is my nature, too.

So-o-o-o-o, send me a smile, blow me a kiss, wave until I am out of sight .... I am about to become lost again. For a while, anyway. Possibly, never to return to reality. Good. It is about time. See you around. Maybe. If I am able to determine which reality is real.

Perfect endings .... are where you find them

2011-09-25T04:44:00.009+02:00

The British rock band Queen was composed of Brian May, top; Freddie Mercury, bottom; Roger Meddows-Taylor, right; and John Deacon, left. This photograph was not supposed to be here. My words were not suppose to be here. This post was simply going to be two versions of the song, "The Show Must Go On," by Queen. But, as often is the case, my mind began to tumble up and down, back and forth, and then my fingers began to type.

A personal note

The first time I saw the rock band Queen perform on television, I was in a bar with friends. The band members were dressed as women, complete with makeup. After a few words among us, I threw my half-full bottle of beer at the television and scored a perfect hit. A cheer went up in the bar.

The owner of the bar knew me. I was an after-work and sometimes evening regular. He brought me another bottle of beer and said, with his typical smirk a bit wider than usual, "This one will cost you $500." I laughed, took out my wallet and peeled off five $100 dollar bills. Oh, to be a punk kid again.

In any event, the $500 bottle of beer turned out to be worth it in many ways, not the least of which is that the broken television still is mounted on the wall in the bar and bears a sign which reads: "The only perfect pitch ever thrown by Fram." Local myths and legends can live a long time.

Within a few years, the members of Queen were less often seen in their feminine finery and, over time, this band became my favorite among all those which roamed the air waves the next few decades. I will not get into Queen's lead singer, Freddie Mercury's, choice of lifestyles, but I will say the only thing that mattered after a while was his unbelievable talent as a singer, song writer, musician and on-stage presence. That is the way life is supposed to be, I think now, but did not then, a few years earlier in that bar.

Trivial as it might sound, one of my bigger regrets in life is that I never saw the band, with Freddie, live on stage. Now, it is too late.

As for the music posted here, both versions feature "The Show Must Go On" performed by Queen. In the first, a series of still photographs of band members is shown with the song. The second is taken from Maurice Bejart's ballet celebrating the life of Freddie Mercury and ballet dancer Jorge Donn. It was filmed at the Theatre Metropole in Lausanne, Switzerland.

I know as much about ballet and dance as I know about flowers, which is nothing. But, there are times and places in a person's life when you do not need any knowledge, much less any expertise, and all that is required is to look and to listen and, maybe, to let your emotions drift free while being glad that you are where you are at the time you are because you are in the midst of a magic moment. So it has been for me a time or two over the years. I hope for a few more magic moments.

This piece of writing has been ended three times already, but I keep adding onto it and I still want to say this: There exists myth that people are formed as children and remain within that mold their entire lives. I have no doubt that is true of many people, but I call it a myth because I believe experience and education -- as vast and available as they have become -- cause many people to change and to evolve from the "mold of their childhood."

As Hamlet told Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

I have no doubt "the experts" usually are the last to figure this out. They have become so specialized in their fields of expertise that they develop tunnel vision and are incapable of seeing the actual ways of the world or the people who are in it.

If you have no idea what I just said, neither do I. We are even.

The Show Must Go On

Empty spaces - what are we living for
Abandoned places - I guess we know the score
On and on, does anybody know what we are looking for...
Another hero, another mindless crime
Behind the curtain, in the pantomime
Hold the line, does anybody want to take it anymore
The show must go on,
The show must go on
Inside my heart is breaking
My make-up may be flaking
But my smile still stays on.
Whatever happens, I'll leave it all to chance
Another heartache, another failed romance
On and on, does anybody know what we are living for?
I guess I'm learning, I must be warmer now
I'll soon be turning, round the corner now
Outside the dawn is breaking
But inside in the dark I'm aching to be free
The show must go on
The show must go on
Inside my heart is breaking
My make-up may be flaking
But my smile still stays on
My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies
Fairytales of yesterday will grow but never die
I can fly - my friends
The show must go on
The show must go on
I'll face it with a grin
I'm never giving in
On - with the show -
I'll top the bill, I'll overkill
I have to find the will to carry on
On with the -
On with the show -
The show must go on...

The first time .... will not be the last time

2011-09-23T04:44:00.000+02:00

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

The first time ever I saw your face,
I thought the sun rose in your eyes.
And the moon and stars were the gifts you gave,
To the dark and the endless sky, my love.

And the first time ever I kissed your mouth,
I felt the earth move through my hands.
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command.

And the first time ever I lay with you,
I felt your heart so close to mine.
And I know our joy would fill the earth,
And last till the end of time, my love.

The first time ever I saw your face.

(Note: Johnny Cash modified the lyrics
of this song to suit his own taste. These
are not the original words of the song.
Beyond that, you wish to understand
a moment of perfection? Then listen.)

Drifting toward an endless sea

2011-09-20T04:44:00.033+02:00

Since I do not have any recent photographs of myself on a raft (my last one burned in a grass fire when I was around twelve or thirteen), I drafted this 1920 painting by N.C. Wyeth of Robinson Crusoe on his raft to illustrate a dream I had a few nights ago. Of course, the raft of my dream was not laden with supplies and was on a river flowing through a desert, but I think this painting will serve the purpose just fine. The paramount question of all this might be: Who is sitting, unseen in the painting, behind the mound of supplies on the raft?

This time around the horn

I have been experiencing a variety of dreams recently and, although there seems to be few around here who like to comment about possible interpretations, here comes still another one:

I was floating down a river that was neither deep nor wide, and the land all around was desert -- rolling, wave-like, barren hills of sand dunes. I was looking ahead to where the river emptied into a delta with many streams, and then coursed its way into a vast sea beyond. I was dirty and bearded and my clothes were in tatters. (Yes, no doubt it was me; that describes me perfectly.)

Then, the dream shifted to a panoramic view, as though in a film, and I was watching myself on the raft from a great distance as it entered the delta area, drifting on toward an endless sea. Only then did I notice that there was someone else on the raft, too, sitting behind me. The distance was so great I could not tell who the other person was and, abruptly, the dream ended.

Again, since there are few (if any) willing to suggest an interpretation for my dreams, I will offer my own for this one: I have joined with another individual, at least temporarily, on a path. This is represented by the two of us drifting along aboard a raft on a river.

The river is shallow and narrow, meaning either or both of us could leave the raft and wade ashore if we wished to do so. But, the land is empty desert, which offers little incentive to actually do so.

Still the land, empty as it is, is there, and might be the best choice given the vastness of the unknown sea upon which the raft, with the two of us drifting upon it, is about to enter.

So ends the dream and one way of looking at it.

But, with this dream and a rather meaningless sixteen months behind me, I have decided to fall out of the tree and to begin actual plans for an idea I have mentioned here recently but had not previously committed to doing: On December 31, either someone will arrive here -- or I will arrive somewhere else -- to observe the start of 2012.

Ian Fleming wrote: "You Only Live Twice." It was a novel. From my point of view, I am pushing maybe a dozen lives in real time -- and, I am only counting this voyage around the horn.

A signature of America, lost love & no roses

2011-09-16T04:44:00.111+02:00

This gun shop advertising 5,000 firearms in stock, in rural, southern Minnesota, is located by a town with fewer than 1,000 residents. It has been there for decades. Some people, no doubt, shudder at the thought of the right of an individual to own firearms. Some political systems fear the concept. No matter how a person or a state feels about this constitutional guarantee, it is reality in many regions of America and part of life the way it goes on, day-to-day, in this neck of the woods. It is a signature of free people, a signature of America. The photograph, incidentally, marks the first one I have used with a post that was taken with my Blackberry. I did have a "real" camera with me, but I guess I was feeling lazy and I also wanted to email the photo immediately.

A tale of love & revenge

As I have mentioned before, I bought my first camera at age five. Actually, it might have been around the time of my sixth birthday. The money had to have come from somewhere.

From that time on, it was not unusual for me to carry my trusty camera here and there, usually to birthday parties or similar events, to record the momentous events in my life and the embarrassing moments of others.

About now, you might ask, what has this got to do with loves lost or lost loves or whatever. Getting to it. I am getting to it.

During a class trip of sixth graders -- all around age twelve, give or take a few months -- at the close of the school year, I carried my camera to capture the events of our magical adventure.

This group I grew up among, you might recall from previous posts, was made up of small town and country kids from rural, southern Minnesota. Our idea of a hot date at that point in time was sitting side-by-side Saturday night at the local theater, possibly having pop or ice cream after the film, then country kids riding home with their parents while city kids hung out until the town shut down for the night.

You might also know, if you have been raised in such an environment, that every class of students had its own group of girls publicly acknowledged as among the most beautiful "women" in the world. Our class had six such princesses of the universe. No boy dared approach any of them unless summoned. Any boy blushed various shades of red should one of these girls notice him looking at her. You get my drift.

Well, as these young majesties lined up for me, the kid with the camera, to take their photograph on this class trip, my creative forces came to a peak. I had them sit down in a line, place arms around one another and lean to one side as far as possible. It looked silly, but everyone loved the idea.

At the last moment, I grabbed the hand of one poor girl who was not among the most beautiful in the galaxy, but who was one I had my eye on, pulled her to the end of the line and placed her among the others. She resisted at first, but I was stronger. I pulled her along. The smile she gave me was radiant. No one among the class lovelies objected. After all, it was my camera. In that manner, Kathleen became a "made member" of the class queens and my first real girl friend.

For the next few weeks, she and I sat side-by-side in the theater on Saturday nights, eating our popcorn and holding hands. I bought her what we called a "friendship ring." Actually, I bought two, when my first purchase turned out to be too large for her finger.

All good things must come to an end.

One Saturday night, while I was sitting with some friends waiting for Kathleen to arrive from the country, her brother tapped me on the shoulder. "Why is Kathleen sitting with Jerry?" he asked with a smirk and a taunting tone to his voice.

I turned and looked. She was. To make this all the worse, Jerry was only a fifth grader.

I shrunk down in my seat.

A minute or two later, Kathleen tapped me on the shoulder. "Here," was her only word as she handed me my two friendship rings. I was humiliated in front of not only the sixth graders in the theater, but also the fifth graders, the seventh graders, the .... well, you get the picture.

Kathleen and Jerry lasted two or three weeks, if I recall correctly. Jerry dumped her like she had dumped me. It took me a few years, but I got my revenge on Jerry. I dated his sister when I was in tenth grade. She was in twelfth grade -- an actual senior. And, by then I had a driver's license, a car and a favorite parking place.

As for Kathleen, I did not need to get revenge. I did not understand then what happened to her next, and I still do not, but she was ejected by the other sixth grade beauty queens from being among their numbers. She was literally shunned by them, virtually ostracized by them, which meant, since these girls ruled the school hallways, everyone who worshipped them also black listed Kathleen.

On the other hand, I was asked by Sharon -- one of the original magnificent creatures -- to sit with her at the next Saturday night movie. This began an "affair" that lasted with us as a couple for nearly the entire seventh grade school year. Our romance ended when her parents -- like so many others -- fled the farmlands for the big city, and took her away from me forever.

After that, I concentrated on football and hunting for two or three years. I had concluded women were too complicated and beauty queens were too expensive.

Don't Come Knocking

You're everything I could want
There's no house you couldn't haunt
You're the key that could keep me in
You're the sense, under the skin

I won't bring you roses
I'll bring myself instead
Time only is time
For what is meant
Not what was said

Don't come knocking don't come knocking
Don't come knocking at my door
Don't come knocking, knock, knock, knocking
Don't come knocking no more

You're a dream I could wake up in
You're a fight I shouldn't try to win
You're the door, I'll always leave open
You're the heart that's always hopin'

Off a tree-lined avenue, in a college made of stone
I'll sit there not dreaming, I would rather live alone

Don't come knocking don't come knocking
Don't come knocking at my door
Don't come knocking, knock, knock, knocking
Don't come knocking no more

All the stars in the sky
They can't light our way, oh no
All the maps, and all the charts
All the dreams…
Dreams …won’t… leave… you…
Home…
Home…

Don't come knocking don't come knocking
Don't come knocking at my door
Don't come knocking don't come knocking
Don't come knocking at my door
Don't come knocking, knock, knock, knocking
Don't come knocking no more

The life of fire & ice

2011-09-10T04:44:00.013+02:00

After a long, hard, strenuous week sitting in front of a television and a computer, eating various chips and drinking assorted beverages, an exhausted White Bear rested under the shade of a tree Friday afternoon, doing what else, but enjoying assorted beverages while playing with his newly acquired buddy, White Puppy. Since White Puppy has not had his photograph appear in a post, the little dickens commanded me to find the camera and to remedy this oversight on my part. So, the oversight is now remedied. With that, the little dictator ordered me to fetch some ice for his drinks, and I gave him a fiery glare. Hence, was born the notion of once again contrasting these two insurmountable and elemental forces of Nature: Fire and Ice.

To return or not, and why

The twists and turns of life are ironic. Last year, in September, I was pleased with my life (if not exactly happy or enthused about it). I had no responsibilities (which probably explain much of my mood back then), I was looking forward to a few events/activities and I was living by a lake watching autumn arrive. This year, these aspects of my life are one-hundred-eighty degrees in the other direction -- and, my mood right now reflects it.

I have a habit of returning to the same poets, the same writers, the same painters, the same musicians, the same battlefields, the same myths and legends, the same concepts of perfection and beauty, the same ideals of fairness and justice -- returning to everything except the same places, the same locations, the same memories drifting in time.

This is because, I believe, a poem or a song or a concept does not change, while a place does change and a memory does fade. I look for things which are constant while I constantly am in motion pursuing a dream which probably does not exist in reality. A paradox.

Someone asked me yesterday who I was. I have no idea, depending upon the concept behind the question. I know where I have been and what these experiences have molded me into, but I am not certain if that is who I am or, merely, a fabrication of random chance events formed by the paths I have walked and the people I have met. I am fire and I am ice. I am an constant unconstant. I am certain she wanted a more definitive and simple explanation (like maybe my actual name), but .... I also am illusive, if nothing else.

So, here again, we return to another constant in my repertoire of poetry: Robert Frost and "Fire and Ice." Here again is Enya, with its own interpretation of fire and ice. Here again is Apocalyptica, not with fire and ice, but, any melancholy music will do today and the magic of the wolf is part of it if you listen closely. When I think about it, the graphics accompanying the piece, "Romance," are reminiscent of fire and ice.

While Frost writes about the end of life in his poem, another poem, an Old Norse epic -- the "Poetic Edda" -- has the creation of life beginning when a drop of water from the ice of Niflheim collides with a flame from the fire of Muspelheim and causes an explosion to create the universe and the Earth, with life upon it. The "big bang" theory has existed since before the dawn of recorded history. Imagine that -- if you are able.

Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Perfect Strangers .... then and now

2011-09-09T04:44:00.050+02:00

Perfect Strangers

Can you remember, remember my name
As I flow through your life
A thousand oceans I have flown
Oh, and cold spirit of ice
All my life
I am the echo of your past

I am returning the echo of a point in time
Distant faces shine
A thousand warriors I have known
And laughing as the spirits appear
All your life
Shadows of another day

And if you hear me talking on the wind
You've got to understand
We must remain
Perfect Strangers

I know I must remain inside this silent well of sorrow
A strand of silver hanging through the sky
Touching more than you see
The voice of ages in your mind
Is aching with the dead of the night
Precious life (your tears are lost in falling rain)

And if you hear me talking on the wind
You've got to understand
We must remain
Perfect Strangers

Love .... it's just a kiss away

2011-09-08T04:44:00.007+02:00

Gimme Shelter

Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shade
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

The floods is threat'ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away

A perfect shot, a perfect novel, a perfect kiss

2011-08-28T00:00:00.007+02:00

A few times in recent weeks, I have mentioned this thought: One man's fantasy is another man's reality. The same concept can be applied in any number of directions, such as: One man's idea of perfection is another man's idea of failure. I do think there is such a thing as perfection, but it is fleeting, just as our lives are fleeting. The definition is filled with variables. Winslow Homer was a Nineteenth Century American illustrator, painter and printmaker. This is his work, "The Sharpshooter on Picket Duty," done in 1862 and showing a Civil War soldier perched in a tree taking aim downfield. Perhaps, it is a perfect painting, depending upon the criteria used to measure it and what variables it reveals in the mind of someone looking at it.

So, you think nothing is perfect?

There are a number of reasons James Dickey has been among my favorite writers for a number of years, and I have posted about him and his fabulous novel, "Deliverance," more than once in the past.

The first piece I read of his was the utterly frightening and fantastic poem, "Falling," in which he describes the thoughts and actions of a stewardess who has fallen from an aircraft and is descending to certain death upon her impact with the earth. I was in graduate school at the time I read it, and had a number of jumps under my belt by that time. Each had involved a device known as a parachute, something not available to the unfortunate stewardess.

Having read and discussed that poem in class created a fear (well, just a little) that persisted powerfully until my next jump and was significantly greater than any fear I had known on any previous jump, including the very first. But, I was barely eighteen on my first, and men that age usually have no fear. (Age and experience give birth to fear.) Just to make things a bit more "poetic" and as a means to conquer fear, I actually read some of the lines from Dickey's "Falling" on that next jump.

But, I am drifting again, in a manner of speaking. Like who cares, hah?

Back to the here and now.

As a (former) hunter, among the elements that appeal to me instinctually in "Deliverance" is Dickey's concept of the Zen in archery. This is to say that the archer travels with, rides with, becomes a part of the arrow as it flies toward the target and, more significantly, upon impact with the target.

I had been an archer and a bow hunter since I was a boy, and Dickey's thought was new to my experience at the time. It expanded my entire perception of hunting and, to put it bluntly, of killing. Not only that, but I expanded my range of thought from Dickey's archery to firearms and the flight of a bullet from the weapon to the target.

No, we are not going there.

My whirling and swirling mind connected these thoughts (abstract dots) with a song sent to me a few nights ago. It was "Nichts ist vollkommen" or, in English, "Nothing is Perfect," from and by Romanian Michael Cretu and Austrian Peter Cornelius, whose musical careers include association with Enigma.

Yes, there is perfection in many things and in many ways, my mind countered as it immediately entered into argumentative mode while listening to the song. I have made a few perfect shots (firearms, not camera) in my life -- once with a handgun at more than a half-mile and once with a rifle at a touch and a breath beyond a mile. (Into the "great beyond," one might say, with a laugh on his lips.)

Of course, this depends entirely on the definition of "perfect." In my illustration, if, at one hundred yards, I placed a rifle bullet into a target the size of an American half-dollar, is that not a perfect shot? But, some would counter, if the target had been considerably smaller -- say the size of an American dime rather than a half-dollar -- and the round was off just enough so it would have missed a dime by the width of a hair while still striking the half-dollar, would the shot still have been perfect?

Although that argument is not silly and worth putting forward, is perfection the difference between a half-dollar and a dime when the target was a half-dollar and not a dime? Once again, define perfect. Is not perfection accomplishing the intended goal in the prescribed manner?

Here, we will depart from Dickey and his Zen of the arrow and mine of the bullet. Maybe, we will discuss it and its ramifications another time. Probably, never -- at least never here. Maybe, in a novel.

In my own opinion, I also have experienced perfection once or twice or three times in stories I wrote as a reporter. They were well written, were factually accurate, with all details and elements covered and had no grammatical or typographical errors. Might someone else have written them better? Could be, but I do not think so. Written them differently and equally effectively, sure, but better? No.

Wandering back to James Dickey for a moment, while his personal life was most imperfect, I think a case could be made that "Deliverance" is a perfect novel. The subject matter puts it into a category which probably does not appeal to a vast audience, but, from my point of view, Dickey captures the "thin veneer of civilization" concept in a most definitive way and lays bare the essence of (or the lack thereof) archetypal, primeval man.

I prefer to think that perfection is like happiness. It comes and it goes. It is momentary. It can and does exist now and then, here and there, once in a while -- then it is gone again.

Do not believe what I have written here, if you so wish. But, I do believe there is such a thing as a perfect shot from a handgun, a perfect story by a writer, a perfect photograph by a man or a woman with a camera, a perfect painting by an artist -- and, most importantly, a perfect kiss emanating between a man and a woman. Who would dare to argue against the last?

Time to let slip the wolf

2011-08-21T05:55:00.029+02:00

Either in 1953 or 1954, depending upon which source one utilizes, John Huston directed and, along with Truman Capote, did the screenwriting for a motion picture entitled, "Beat the Devil." Gina Lollobrigida portrayed Maria Dannreuther, Humphrey Bogart was Billy Dannreuther and Jennifer Jones played Mrs. Gwendolen Chelm as the lead roles. I watched the film a few nights ago for the first time, and fell in love with the story -- a comedy and a parody -- and the characters. I wish I could meet such people in real life -- and, in the meanwhile, find a few more films as special as this one to escape the bonds of reality for a few days.

Julius O'Hara (Peter Lorre) in the film, "Beat the Devil:"

"Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook."

A tale with two purposes

I am not here writing this. What I mean is, White Bear is typing this as he takes dictation from me via cell phone. Obviously, I have no idea if he will publish what I say or, sneaky fellow that he is, he might publish whatever happens to be on his mind at the moment.

I wrote the following to a friend a few days ago: "I stumbled into a film, 'Beat the Devil,' a comedy. I usually do not go for comedies, but I love this one. (It was) Made in 1954 with Humphrey Bogart, Gina Lollobrigida, Jennifer Jones, Peter Lorre, Robert Morley and others."

The story centers around four crooks/con men, their accomplices and people they meet on their way to Africa from Italy, supposedly to sell vacuum cleaners, but actually to swindle the owners of uranium-rich land. I fell out of my chair watching the antics of Ivor Barnard as Major Jack Ross and Mario Perrone as the purser on the SS Nyanga. (It was) Written by John Huston and Truman Capote. I feel like the characters are all people I personally know. The film was sort of designed to be a spoof on the ever-famous, 'The Maltese Falcon'."

Capote was relatively young and relatively unknown when he was asked to drop everything and fly in to the Italian countryside to work on the script on a day-to-shoot basis. One story has it that he would speak to his pet Raven every day on the telephone. One time, the Raven refused to reply to Capote's voice on the telephone, so Capote hopped onto an aircraft and flew to Rome where the Raven was boarded in a hotel so he could visit the bird. Yeh, my kind of people.

Apparently, the film has become a cult classic. I can understand why. It is absolutely marvelous. I enjoyed it so much that I ordered a copy, which is rare for me. I really recommend it to anyone who needs a bit of real, old-fashioned, genuine comedy in his/her life.

But, the primary purpose of this brief post is to say that I have been on the road a few days and, before the journey even had ended, I encountered a personal situation which has demanded my time and my attention. More importantly, it was a mood changer, a destroyer of my patience and a forecaster of the end of the particular trail I happen to be on at the moment. My emotions right now are ranging from anger to depression to frustration to a bit of confusion. I need a few days to read novels, to watch films, to escape long enough for my mind to push aside the fog.

So, please pardon me if I ignore you for a couple of days and fail to comment at any of your blogs until I slip the knots which bind me.

Petersen (Robert Morley) in the film, "Beat the Devil:"

"You mean Mrs. Chelm is an unqualified liar?"

Billy Dannreuther (Humphrey Bogart):

"Well, let's say she uses her imagination rather than her memory."

(For the record, I fell instantly in love with Mrs. Chelm and her imagination. What man would not?)

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

2011-08-16T03:33:00.072+02:00

Those who live near an ocean or a sea sometimes think they have a monopoly on visions of huge waves crashing into shorelines and whatever else happens to be in their way. This photograph, taken by a Lake Superior aficionado, demonstrates the power not uncommon on the greatest of the Great Lakes. Waves ranging to twenty-five feet are not unknown, especially during the gales of November. Beautiful and deadly. Reminds me of some .... never mind ....

I am very flattered, but ....

A few years ago while I was working as the editor of a newspaper, a young lady asked me if I would meet her after work for a drink. She said she had some business to discuss with me.

It seemed natural. She was a professional person who held an important position with county government, and frequently had stories she wished to appear in the newspaper. I always had thought of her as a quintessential career woman. She was, in fact, a friend as well, although not close. We "hung" with the same crowd, and whenever newspaper reporters, photographers and editors congregated at a local saloon, invariably she was among us. So, we met to discuss her business.

After about the third drink, Judy (her actual name) did get down to business. She was unmarried and in her late thirties. She was watching the clock run out on her in several ways. She wanted a child, and she wanted me to be the father. At first, I thought she was joking. After a fourth drink -- or, maybe, the fifth -- I realized she was absolutely serious.

There would be no legal ramifications, she explained. We could draw up a contract with an attorney to ensure I would bear no familial or financial obligations. Other than the two of us and the attorney, no one would ever know.

Did I mention that she was very attractive?

She explained all the reasons why she had selected me from among the men she knew. You can believe I was very much flattered and very much tempted. You can also believe I thought about it very seriously for a few days.

Eventually, I said no. I was married then, and felt I could not enter into such an agreement for that reason. Neither did I think I would be able to watch a child grow up from afar with no contact.

About three years later, Judy adopted a little girl as a single parent.

For me, it was one of the roads not traveled. Judy and I still write to each other and talk on the telephone at times. She is one of the few people I would do literally anything for, simply because once upon a time she made me feel like the most important man in her world.

Beyond that, possibly after reading this piece you have a greater sense of knowing why I admit that I do not understand women.

The way of all men ??

I read somewhere that many men, sometime in their forties when fifty is near, abruptly realize all they have at that very moment is all there really is to life. This is it. No city of gold, no magic girl, no paradise -- earthly or otherwise -- awaiting them. So, they get a divorce, buy a convertible sports car and find a girlfriend twenty years younger than themselves as their consolation prize to life.

Well, I started doing that when I was about twenty-five. Possibly, I merely was precocious. (Yes, I am teasing .... sort of ....) Whatever .... I am still doing it, over and over again. Maybe, the only difference between me and the others is that I cannot accept the notion that this is all there is, and I continue to search. The greatest mystery of life is why we, each of us as an individual, think as we think, believe as we believe and do as we do.

The creation of beauty

Since I was a college boy, my definition of art always has been: Art is the creation of beauty. Subjective it might be; narrow it might be, but do I care? One guess.

For reasons I would not explain even if I could, this also more-or-less is my definition of the perfect woman: A person whose purpose in life is the creation of beauty. Sometimes it is a child, sometimes it is something visual, sometimes it is in the form of sound. You get my drift.

A beautiful face is a beautiful face, no doubt. But, that is an accident of birth and has nothing to do with who or what a person really is -- as are many of the attributes we individually possess.

When I look at a woman (or for a woman), I look for one who strives to create beauty. Chauvinistic as it may sound, this I do believe is the role of a woman on planet Earth. As I pointed out somewhere or other a few days ago, both of my former wives were rather accomplished artists, primarily as painters in oils and watercolors.

This is why two variations of one of the most beautiful compositions on planet Earth are posted here. I have used the song -- Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D -- before on my page, including the first variation here now. I put the first up again because it is mostly women performing it -- creating beauty -- which, in turn, makes them oh so beautiful and perfect to me. I used the second piece because the photographs accompanying it add to the melancholy of my moment.

Some came running

2011-08-13T03:33:00.039+02:00

Since I am not much of a photographer but like to include an illustration with each post if I can come up with something, today we return with a bit of history to accompany another view of the one and only White Bear. I am sure you can easily identify him, but unless you frequented these pages in 2009, you probably have not seen Fram Teddy Bear, pictured here on White Bear's right. This photo was taken about this time of the year when Fram Teddy and I ventured to Lake Superior on a brief excursion. Fram Teddy ran off to Europe in August 2009, and he likes it so much he has never returned. Of course, he does have a girlfriend there.

An hour ago,
the ending of this

post was very different ....

I watched a film on television a few days ago. The name was, "Some Came Running." It was based on a novel by James Jones, whose name I immediately recognized. He was one of the finest novelists of his generation, in the minds of many. Frank Sinatra, whose name I also immediately recognized, had the lead role. He was among the best singers and actors of his generation, in the minds of many. Shirley MacLaine and Dean Martin also had prominent roles. The film was made in 1958, and is considered a bit of a masterpiece today. It was nominated for five Academy Awards. These things I did not know before doing a bit of research.

It is the story of an aspiring, non-conformist writer who returns to his home town after World War II, the two women in his life and the one he eventually chooses. There also are more twists in the story: Conflict between brothers and small-town morality, for instance. In the book, Prince Charming dies at the end. In the film, Cinderella dies at the end. It is what takes place among the characters between the homecoming and the shoot-'em-up ending that is fascinating. (I do not believe I have used that word -- fascinating -- for a long while.)

With the discussion about fantasy, reality, ideals and other esoteric elements surrounding life and living which have taken place on this page recently, I tried to place in context my thoughts with "reality" as depicted in the film.

Siding sideways for a moment, to be honest I have been more interested in European women than in American women the past few years. In theory, anyone who knows me would understand this. Since theory frequently escapes immediate notice, I will elaborate. In the sense of women, period, I have given up on trying to understand them. But, in the sense of curiosity and learning about varied cultures and societies, period, American women have nothing left to offer me. On the other hand, European women, who have grown up, been educated and lived their lives in a setting alien to my experience have so very, very much to teach me in terms of pure knowledge. Not very complicated, actually, but sometimes the obvious is not always obvious to those who are not hunters or professional observers.

It finally dawned on me that in the cocktail of life, there are too many possible ingredients to mix the perfect drink (potion) to suit the taste of everyone. With that determined, I have now concluded that it is better to find love than it is to discover intellectual compatibility. I might be wrong, but, who cares? It will not be the first time. Such is life.

If you do not understand where I am going with this, I would suggest you find the novel or the film, "Some Came Running," and the conclusion to this post should become plain as day. The only difference is that my story has both Prince Charming and Cinderella living happily ever after.

Are we returning to fantasy, reality, ideals and other esoteric elements surrounding life and living? I guess. But, this time the tale might be about two people whose searches have come to a satisfactory conclusion, rather than about a lone individual who seeks a Holy Grail when, in actuality, he knows it (she) does not exist. At least a million years of existence have proven that.

View from the patio

2011-08-10T04:44:00.012+02:00

To sit outdoors throughout a day is very different than to sit indoors. Even if you catch glimpses of the same sights, feeling the heat of the sun and breathing the scent of flowers or freshly cut grass carried along on a soothing, gentle breeze creates a world that can never be duplicated within the four walls of a building. With a break in the heat and the humidity, this is what I saw in a continuous stream during my afternoon hours. Thousands of people, coming and going .... coming from where, going to where?

What if I were to tell you ....

What if I were to tell you that I am not real?

What if I were to tell you that I am an eighty-year-old grandmother of seven?

What if I were to tell you I am a seventeen-year-old boy who lives in Canada?

What if I were to tell you I am an alien who was stranded on Earth when my spacecraft crashed into Lake Superior?

What if I were to tell you I am Fram the First, who lived a thousand years ago and cannot escape this realm of mortals because of a curse placed upon me by Skuld, who was both a Norn and a Valkyrie?

What if I were to tell you I am a prison inmate sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole? (That one made your heart skip a beat, did it not?)

What if I were to tell you I am White Bear and Fram is a figment of my imagination?

What if I were to tell you I am your next door neighbor and I am standing out in my yard waving to you right now?

What if I were to tell you everything you have read about me in my posts is a true and honest depiction of the man I believe myself to be? Take it (me) or leave it (me), this is me.

So, which of these segments do you believe .... or do you believe something else entirely? Maybe, my name actually is Dr. Victor Frankenstein and .... well, let us move on to an entirely different topic.

Someone wrote this to me today:

Maybe I don't even exist, maybe , in a mysterious way

I have already vanished...

It is a virtual space, a place where our personalities

are defined only by the words we say...

We are words...

This internet thing helps us hiding behind

words showing whatever we think we are.

....

The image you project in your mind about me

maybe it's what you want me to be.

This imaginary world is complicated.

We are only words, mixed with our inner feelings, expectations

a lot of wishes and with our great, never-ending, secret Dream.

Wonderful words, thoughts beautifully expressed, are they not? I am jealous.

My reply was a remark to this effect: "You are more than words because it is your nature to express yourself through art, and art cannot vanish, therefore, you cannot vanish."

As for me, I said to the writer of the note: "I am invisible because I do leave only words which can be erased. Add to that, I have no great, never-ending, secret Dream. Instead, I have an emptiness inside of me. I wander aimlessly, hoping to find a place/person to fill it."

And, this is true. This is reality, and I think there really is nothing to do about it other than to continue wandering -- even if it goes on forever.

The Ghost & The Sunrise

2011-08-07T02:22:00.019+02:00

This is not the sandy shoreline and the sun-filled, cloudless sky I write about today, but this is The Lake and these rocks actually are only a few miles from that beach on which I slept. This place is called the Black Rocks, and I have "danced" with my canoe many times amongst them. And, this is The Lake to me. It was Lac de Superior or Nadouessious to the early French explorers -- the superior lake or the lake of the Sioux. This is where many places appear the same now as they did ten thousand years ago, when the last glaciers disappeared into clear, cold, blue water. This is where one version of Neverland exists, from my rather narrow point of view.

I am nervous, so I write

Like many disenchanted humans before me, and, undoubtedly, many after me, upon the dissolution of a relationship, I once opted to secure a pet to console me. My choice was a young, female German Shepherd.

Things went well for about a year, but the time eventually came when I was on the road and could not be accompanied by a German Shepherd. I left her with my parents. I have felt guilty about doing this ever since, although I knew then and believe yet today that her life was much better with them than it would have been with me. In short, she lived her life as a princess, with everything in the world required to keep her happy and healthy.

A few nights ago, I awoke in the proverbial middle of the night, opened my eyes and saw what might have been a wolf, but, what I immediately knew was my German Shepherd sitting next to where I slept. Her face was a foot or, possibly, eighteen inches from my own. It was dark, so there were no distinct features. She was, in fact, black. It was the shape of her head and her ears that made her instantly recognizable to me. She startled me. My heart, I think, skipped a beat. She was there for a few seconds, then faded away over the span of a few more seconds.

When I told a friend about this occurence, I said I was uncertain if the apparition I saw was a wolf or a dog. But, I knew, and had known from the very first glimpse of her. It was Argos, the German Shepherd who was mine for a year and then left behind by me.

This friend, a young lady who is both intelligent and knowledgeable about such matters, told me the spirit of Argos was there because she wished to communicate with me. I would like to think she was there to thank me for having ensured that she had a good life. But, I worry, because having a good life is not always the same as having the life you desire.

There is more to this story than I am telling, but who among us reveals everything?

The most perfect morning

Once upon a time, in a place that served me as Neverland for a few years, I drove my truck along a winding, logging road through deep and dark woodlands to the shore of Lake Superior. I knew the path, and traveled it often, but usually not in the darkness of midnight as was the case this time.

Near the shoreline, I parked, took cigarettes, lighter, a quart of brandy and my sleeping bag, and with them walked along the beach until I found a suitable place to pitch camp. Beneath a clear and starry sky, maybe fifteen feet from the shoreline where foot-high waves gently rolled and rocked and crashed, I began digging down in the sand. The deeper I dug, the warmer the sand became. A foot beneath the surface, the sand was still actually hot from absorbing the rays of the sun throughout the day. (See, you learned something today.)

I dug a place large enough to fit my entire body. It was the perfect bed -- soft, warm sand contoured to my body. I lay down within it, covered myself with my sleeping bag, lit a cigarette, opened the quart of brandy and stared at the twinkling stars in a pitch black sky. I watched a full moon begin to rise over the waters of The Lake. A mile, possibly two, offshore, I saw an iron ore carrier slide slowly across a glistening beam of light which led directly from the moon to me.

Somewhere along the line, I fell asleep.

The sun woke me.

It was the heat of the sun shining on my face as it rose up over The Lake that woke me. I lit a cigarette, uncorked the brandy and watched the sunrise. A few minutes later, I got up, walked back to my truck and pushed this song into the tape player. With all six speakers in the truck blasting to heights unimagined, I sat down with another cigarette in one hand and the bottle of brandy in my other hand, and listened to the words of this song while looking out over the most beautiful body in the world -- the living body of Lake Superior.

The golden sun and the throbbing music and the pure, blue sky joined with The Lake to form what might have been the most perfect morning in my life. I never have been able to duplicate those few moments I experienced that morning -- moments of absolute contentment blended with complete exhilaration from the sensations of being alive -- but, I continue to try.

Sunrise

Sunrise, and the new day's breakin' through

The morning of another day without you
And as the hours roll by
No-one's there to see me cry
Except the sunrise...
The sunrise and you.

Tired eyes drift across the shore
Looking for love and nothing more
But as the sea rolls by
No-one's there to see me cry
Except the sunrise...
The sunrise and you.

Sunrise, - bless my eyes,

Catch my soul - make me whole

- Again.

Sunrise, new day, hear my song

I am tired of fightin' and foolin' around

But from now till who knows when

My sword will be my pen

And I'll love you, love you
For all of my time.

Sunrise, - bless my eyes
Catch my soul and make me whole

- Again.

Katharine Mari, Bloody Marys & Marzyciel

2011-08-04T02:22:00.018+02:00

How much has America changed in the last blink of a cosmic eye? Well, all right, let us define a blink as the past one hundred years. How much has the world changed? Take a look at the people walking down a city street, in school, at church, shopping in the mall. Do any of them look like the pair in this post card? Not just the clothing, but the faces, the expressions. Post cards record visual history in the form of photographs and illustrations, and offer folk art in the sense of portraying us as we once were. I wonder, should these two children be transported to today's America, would they like it or would they choose to return to their own way of life as it existed in 1914. Yes, I wonder.

There once was a young lady who did it twice

A number of years ago, a young lady told me she believed in a theory she called "The Do It Twice Principle." She did not apply it to everything, obviously, but to certain activities she experienced for the first time. It began, she explained, the first time she went off the high board at a swimming pool. She was not sure in her mind if the experience was good or bad, so she waited a few minutes and did it again, but this time trying to sense ever moment of the experience rather than simply "doing it and being petrified," as she described her first leap.

This way, she continued, she could decide more objectively if an experience was worth repeating. In the particular "experience" I was engaged in with her, she was applying her concept to men she dated. In case you are at all interested, she declared her experience with me to be a worthwhile endeavor after our two encounters, and we dated exclusively over the next few months. Eventually, I moved on and she chose to stay in her "home town," close to family, friends and the world as she knew it. Actually, this has happened to me a few times. I move; she does not.

I often have wondered why this particular girl chose not to move at least once, if not twice, so she would have had the opportunity to decide whether it might be a worthwhile experiment. I guess I was not inspirational enough .... or, whatever ....

So, with a flickering memory of Kati Mari, I will utilize her "do it twice" concept to publish a second post card. This one is dated 1914, which would place its origin to the Christmas of nearly ninety seven years ago. I like the number ninety-seven for a variety of reasons, none of which I care to mention today. I will say once again, though, that in my mind the last decades of the Nineteenth Century and the first years of the Twentieth Century -- up to about the time of the first shots of World War I -- comprise the Golden Age of America.

If you will, please, think of this post card as an early 2011 Christmas greeting from me to you. Who knows? I may have journeyed to Neverland by December.

My kingdom for a genuine Bloody Mary

Once upon a time, James Bond (Ian Fleming) had his famous gin and vodka (yes, both, together) Martini "with a large, thin slice of lemon peel," and Ernest Hemingway had his white rum Daiquiri at the El Floridita Bar in Havana, Cuba.

When I go out for a nice meal in a nice establishment with a nice friend, I invariably order a Bloody Mary or two before the meal. Sadly, I have discovered even the classiest joints no longer employ bartenders who know what they are doing, and who would be better suited for employment in a Saturday night beer saloon than in a classy joint.

Everyone, it seems, uses a premixed, factory-bottled, Bloody Mary cocktail of "gooygook" when making the drink these days, rather than prepare their own unique mix of ingredients from scratch. In a word, "yuk." No, it is worse than that, so, "yuk" times two over and over again.

Oh, for a return to the world of bartenders as they existed in the days of Bond and Hemingway.

Our private domain is Neverland

For today's music, White Bear has selected some of Polish composer Jan Kaczmarek's scores from the film, "Finding Neverland." Although a devotee of the American Western film genre, White Bear admits this is his favorite motion picture and music.

For the first ten or twelve nights after arriving in Poland, while staying at The Duval and before moving into an apartment overlooking Castle Square, White Bear kept this music playing all night most nights. That was fine with me. It was a great and memorable experience.

By the way, in case you are not aware: Marzyciel = daydreamer.

And I never was nor ever will be

2011-08-01T07:07:00.041+02:00

This post card fascinates me, entrances me, captivates me. It was only a century and a few months late in arriving. On its back, in pencil, these words are written:

"With best wishes from your loving father in the year 1911."

Voices call to me from the past. Echoes from a thousand years ago still drift on the wind for me to hear. Written words from a century ago mysteriously find their way into my hands, somehow arrive and are visible before my eyes. "Do you remember me?" they demand, they beg, they simply wonder. Yes, I think I do. Yes, I really believe that I do. There is no time behind me or beyond me. I am time. All right. Enough jabbering. With apologies to Lord Krishna, or to whomever wrote the Bhagavad Gita, for being the dialectic opposite of your thought:

My apologies .... well, maybe .... sort of ....

Time?

What is time?

Where is time?

Who is time?

I have all the time in the world;

Nay, all the time in the universe,

For time is but an instant and,

Yet, an eternity.

My life is both

An instant,

An eternity,

Yet, it is neither, for my life is

But a dream,

And I never was nor ever will be,

For I am time, only a wisp of

Imagined memory beyond tomorrow.

Ask me no questions, and I will tell you ....

2011-07-27T03:33:00.019+02:00

Street of Dreams

I heard the sound of voices in the night

Spellbound there was someone calling

I looked around no one was in sight

Pulled down I just kept on falling

I've seen this place before

You were standing by my side

I've seen your face before tonight

Maybe I just see what I want it to be

I know it's a mystery

Do you remember me on a street of dreams

Running through my memory

On the street of dreams

There you stood a distant memory

So good like we never parted

Said to myself I knew you'd set me free

And here we are right back where we started

Something's come over me

And I don't know what to feel

Maybe this fantasy is real

Now I know I see what I want it to be

But it's still a mystery

Do you remember me on the street of dreams

Running through my memory

On the street of dreams

You are on every face I see

On the street of dreams

.... guitars, guitars, guitars ....

Something's come over me
And I don't know what to feel

Maybe this fantasy is real
Now I know I see what I want it to be

But it's still a mystery

Do you remember me on the street of dreams
Running through my memory
On the street of dreams
You are on every face I see
On the street of dreams

Tell me have you always been

On the street of dreams

Will we ever meet again my friend

On the street of dreams
Do you know just what it meant to be

On the street of dreams

Never know just who you'll see do you

On the street of dreams

You can be who you want to be oh yeah

On the street of dreams
I can hear you calling me

I can feel you haunting me

Haunting me

Nobody tells me where to go, baby

2011-07-16T06:36:00.024+02:00

Just to be perfectly honest, I feel compelled to admit that I did not take this photograph, but it portrays the view I see two or three times a week these days. It is the Minneapolis skyline as seen as the land rises from the Minnesota River valley. A bit further down the road, the Minnesota runs into the Mississippi River and is on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. The actual view appears more distant than this, the photo obviously having been taken with a telephoto lens. It was shot a mile or two from where I currently am hanging out .... I mean, where I currently am living.

He was born with a laugh on his lips

I have been on fire in recent days. It began with a melancholy mood and emerged with a sense of enough thinking, enough wondering, enough contemplating -- enough, enough, enough .... it is time for jumping off on another run.

Those (very) few of you who come around here to read my rambling posts know that one of the things I occasionally have bragged/complained about is that I had done everything there was to do in life in basic form and in one way or another by the time I had reached age twenty-five. After that point, it (meaning life) simply has been repetition and variation. Well, whatever you might think, that is Actual Fram.

Anyway, I am beginning to get annoyed with myself. There has to be at least one thing I have missed; one thing forgotten; one thing overlooked. If not something actually new, at least a new variation, a new twist, a new turn in the road. To make a long story a short story or part of a story or .... yes, I hear you .... I am going to drift away from the sea of blogs again for a few weeks or a few months or ....

I might make an appearance at your blog and leave a comment at your post now and then, but I will not be writing any posts here for a while.

If you have a suggestion of what I might do (he says, as did Scaramouche, with a smile on his face and a sense that the world was mad), do not hesitate but to mention it here in a comment. By the way, I have been both to heaven (some might call it nirvana) and to hell, so it is not necessary to suggest either of them as a prospective destination in which you might wish me to arrive. (Nobody tells me where to go, to paraphrase the words R.E.M. once sang.)

Finally, as I commented to the neighbor across the street today, I am not sure it is a good thing or a bad thing to live ten minutes away from an international airport. But, I suppose, time will provide us with something to do and a place to go. It always has and always will. Later ....

Why not ??

Finally .... I (too ??) frequently write about my two former wives in my posts, but I never once have brought up the word "children." Well, as any reasonably intelligent person might assume, two former wives might mean some children. There are, and I cannot help myself but to mention that my youngest daughter made her first jump yesterday. Jump = sky dive. She did it in Colorado, so I did not witness it, which probably is for the best. You might not guess it, but I worry -- a lot -- although never about myself.

Way to go, baby girl ....

Does music follow dreams or ....

White Bear was wandering around our blog the other day and discovered this song accompanying one of our previous posts. "I want to use it again," the little nuisance commanded.

The song -- "What Is and What Should Never Be" -- originally is from what I would label a seventies band, Led Zeppelin, and is played here by Jimmy Page with what I would label a nineties band, the Black Crowes. Page is another of the guitar masters from his generation and a founding member of Led Zeppelin.

In hard rock songs such as this, it often is difficult to understand the lyrics, so, I am doing something I have not done for a long time -- printing them here in their entirety along with the performance piece.

Perhaps, it is needless to say, but these words are part of White Bear's dreams -- and, sometimes, enter my mind, too.

Anyway, we dedicate it to SHE, who knows SHE is SHE ....

"What Is And What Should Never Be"

And if I say to you tomorrow. Take my hand, child, come with me.
It's to a castle I will take you, where what's to be, they say will be.

[Chorus]
Catch the wind, see us spin, sail away, leave today, way up high in the sky.
But the wind won't blow, you really shouldn't go, it only goes to show
That you will be mine, by takin' our time.

And if you say to me tomorrow, oh what fun it all would be.
Then what's to stop us, pretty baby. But What Is And What Should Never Be.

[Chorus]
So if you wake up with the sunrise, and all your dreams are still as new,
And happiness is what you need so bad, girl, the answer lies with you.

[Chorus]
Oh the wind wont blow and we really shouldn't go and it only goes to show.
Catch the wind, we're gonna see it spin, we're gonna...sail, little girl
do do do, bop bop a do-oh, my my my my my my yeah.
Everybody I know seems to know me well
but they're never gonna know that I move like hell

Thoughts from an aimlessly wandering mind

2011-07-10T03:33:00.006+02:00

It has not been unusual for me to include a photograph of my current "work station" with a post. Here we go again. This is my outdoor station, in a screened patio, one of two I am now using. An indoor station, obviously, is the other. I might run a photo of it on another day. There is not much to this station because thunderstorms with high winds and fierce rains are common in Minnesota during the summer months. I would rather not have too much here to pick up and carry as I run for cover should a storm erupt. Anyway, visualize me sitting before the laptop computer, sipping wine, listening to music and typing away, and you might also then be able to imagine all my secrets.

Does art follow life or ....

Not that I ever have been on speaking terms with Oscar Wilde, but one of his "notions" drifted through my mind a few days ago when I was visiting the blog of another. The concept was this: Does art follow life or does life follow art?

For centuries after the classical Greek writers, it generally was accepted that the purpose of art is to serve as a model for such things as truth and beauty. "Mimesis," therefore, became the accepted premise that art would imitate life; art follows life in the pursuit of truth and beauty.

Then, along came Oscar, who declared the opposite was true. Writing in an essay entitled, "The Decay of Lying," Wilde said this: "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life."

Wilde said the self-conscious aim of life is to find expression (certainly an idea with which most of us who are engaged upon the sea of blogs would agree), and art offers a means to express and to realize that expression.

He added that life and the natural world are not actually what we perceive them to be, but what artists have taught us to believe they are -- in effect, sold us, convinced us, to accept what often is opposed to our innate instincts. Poets and painters were the chief architects of this deception. An example: To be in the midst of a raging storm in a dark and threatening forest ordinarily would not be a pleasant experience. However, the artist or the poet could portray the situation to be wonderful and beautiful -- and, convince us that it actually is just that.

Explaining this in my own terms, I have always believed that art is the creation of beauty. (I could be wrong.) And, even accepting reality and acknowledging that different people have different concepts of beauty, I find it difficult, for instance, to comprehend how anyone can see a trace of beauty in a Picasso painting. (You disagree? Oh, well.) For this reason, I accept Wilde and believe that life imitates art, and I wave goodbye to the mimesis of the ancient Greeks.

Oh, yes. Back to speaking terms with Oscar. Quite impossible, you see, as he lived and died nearly a century before my time.

For a long while, too, he could not speak to me from the grave as so many others have through their writing. Wilde, you see, was among those I ignored for a number of years because I despised him as a man. But, in the end, he has been among those who taught me another lesson: You can despise a man for his lifestyle, but still respect him for the power of his intellect.

On the path to infinity

For today, ladies and gentleman, the prince among bears has selected two versions of a combination of two songs by the band Journey: "Feeling That Way" and "Anytime," which were among the pieces to appear on an album called "Infinity" thirty-three years ago.

(When I was in my twenties, I thought I would die at age thirty-three. Since I did not, my assumption now is that I will die at some other double-digit age at some point along the line. [At least, I do not recall dying then. Tell me if I actually did but failed to notice, will you?] Sorry. Getting silly again.)

First, is a version which shows the lyrics -- for those who are interested in music as poetry. Last, is a version which shows the band in a live performance -- for anyone who likes to see the faces behind the music.

The lead singer is Steve Perry, while Gregg Rolie is doing his share of the vocals from behind the keyboards. The guitar work is nice, but nothing to write home about.

I do not know about you, but these two songs bring me to a sort of emotional high whenever I hear them. They form about as powerful a ballad as any performed during an era of magnificent voices singing beautiful expressions of love. White Bear says he thinks it is cool stuff.

To marry or not to marry

2011-07-08T05:55:00.030+02:00

All right. This is it. Home for the next few months. Three bedrooms, one bathroom, kitchen, dining room, living room, full basement and double garage. It is a very typical Minnesota, suburban, ranch-style house built in the early 1970s when common sense still dictated the American housing market. Not the biggest, not the fanciest, but as the old saying goes: At least it is bought and paid for. Now, all that remains to be discovered is how long I can last before I am again off on my wandering ways. So far, so good.

July is the month of anniversaries

Among the things I am good at are remembering dates: Birthdays, anniversaries, historical events of major significance, to name some of the most common. I always have been a detail person, which is why I was a pretty good reporter and policy analyst.

So, it is no surprise to me that I have been thinking about tomorrow's date for the past few weeks. Tomorrow, July 9, is the anniversary of the finalization of my second divorce. The next day, July 10, is the anniversary of the wedding for that same marriage. How many people do you know who were married an exact, precise number of years before their divorce? Not so many years, so many months, so many weeks .... but, only so many years -- period. Only me, I would wager.

To make things even stranger (??), the weddings and the finalizations of the divorces for both of my marriages have been in July. Do you understand why I might be a bit superstitious?

Long before I married for the first time, I got the notion in my mind that I was destined to have three wives (not at the same time, mind you), and that the first two marriages would end in divorce. My assumption was that I would die while married to wife No. 3 and leave her a widow. It could be that the events in my marital existence are sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Who can say? I would not argue very strenuously against that being a possibility.

Since my second divorce, I have been contemplating whether or not I should insist on a July wedding with Mrs. Fram No. 3. If so, my next assumption is that I would then die sometime during the month of July, with only the exact date left to be determined. Sort of predestination. Yes, I am being slightly silly, but I enjoy thinking about obscure odds and random chances at times.

Anyway, as a final thought, this means, I guess, today being July 8, anyone who wishes to marry me only has twenty-four days to "win me over" before July 2011 has passed into the history books. Otherwise, the potential bride will have to wait until July 2012 for her next opportunity.

Maybe, it is time for me to return to school and learn something practical to occupy that portion of my brain now occupied by fanciful speculation -- either that, or to start thinking about places for a honeymoon. Teasing .... I am just teasing .... sort of ....

To dream or not to dream

2011-07-07T05:55:00.029+02:00

I was outside working. Honestly. It has been a busy few weeks for me. Then, I made the mistake of walking by White Bear who was up to his usual antics -- lounging about, reading, watching Wild West films, sitting under the shade of our own magical "guardian tree," drinking my liquors and wearing my watches. Well, what can I say? The little rascal told me to take his photograph again. "No one has seen me for weeks!" he exclaimed. "I am sure they miss me. Go get 'our' camera." So, here he is, White Bear, on the evening of July 6, 2011. He picked the music for this post, too. He said although we have used this song with its utterly fantastic guitar work in the past in a live, onstage version, he thought it would blend in with our mood and would fit in with this post and our next one, which are related, although it might not seem that way to a casual observer.

Reoccuring dreams .... one more time

Reoccuring dreams are fascinating, to me, and I sometimes write about mine. Right now is another "sometime."

In my most recent, I am driving my Suburban along a lakeshore. There are familiar landmarks here and there, but, essentially, it seems like a place unknown to me. There are homes along much of the shoreline, but as I round a ninety-degree curve, I arrive at an open area several yards in length. I pull in and park, facing the lake. As I shut off the engine and look out over the lake, I glance in the rear-view mirror and see a blue, pickup truck come round the bend and continue on down the road. There, the dream fades away.

I had this same dream a number of times when, abruptly, several nights ago, the blue, pickup truck turns in beside me and parks. The dream ends. A few nights later, the same thing occurred, but, this time, rather than park next to me, the blue pickup continues on and cautiously proceeds over and down a steep but passable incline, and continues a short distance to the actual waterline of the lake. Here, endeth the dream -- slowly and calmly.

Then, last night, the blue, pickup truck stops to the side and the front of me, blocking my view of the lake. I spend a few moments debating whether or not I should get out of my Suburban and confront the driver of the blue pickup about his rudeness.

You know me. (You do, do you not?) There is no reason for self-debate. I would confront the devil himself if he blocked my view of a lake. I exit my Suburban and walk to the driver's side of the blue, pickup truck. The window is up. All I see is a reflection in the glass as I rap on it. The window stays up. I rap again. Nothing happens. I lean down and move next to the glass so I can see beyond the reflection and into the blue pickup. It is empty. No one is inside of it; no one had been driving it.

This startled me very, very much. I awoke with a literal leap into the air -- shuddering, sweating, wondering where I was at and why no one was with me.

It may be time for a night on the town

2011-07-05T03:33:00.031+02:00

There might not be a Polish restaurant in my new neighborhood, but a bowl of Russian Borscht is only a hop, skip and a jump down the road. I am eager to try the cuisine, but, remember, I do not like to eat out alone. Hint, hint ....

Borscht & homemade vodka

Well, I am safely ensconced in my new digs in metropolitan Minnesota, as the mystical and magical Sherlock Holmes might describe my immediate state of affairs. I will call it Saint Paul when mentioning it here. How long I will be here also relies to a degree on mystical and magical circumstances. Probably, for a few months.

Less than two days after my arrival, I asked a young lady if she knew of any Polish restaurants in the neighborhood. No, she replied, but there is a Russian one just down the road. "If you order a vodka, they give it to you in a water glass filled to the top," she laughed.

Actually, from the reviews I read about "Nina's" after learning of it, most people seem to think of it as a bar that serves food. Here are a few paragraphs from a professional newspaper reviewer:

"The decor is faux garden mixed with low-rent disco, unaffected and guileless. No focus group has been anywhere near the dining room, and we love that. Formerly known as the Russian Tavern, Nina's is still a gathering place for the area's Russian immigrants ....

"Combine tomatoes, pickles, peppers and onions, chop and mix them with a light dressing and you'll have the unusual and pungent Caucasian salad.

"For dinner, the goulash was a clear winner, with big savory chunks of beef in a thick gravy. And the purported favorite of Mikhail Gorbachev, chicken stuffed with pepper jack cheese, was also filling and tasty.

"Peasant-style ravioli is a fabulous baked dish, invented in-house, with cheese and plenty of mushrooms in a cream sauce atop beef ravioli.

"Beef stroganoff, a Russian staple, here is a plate of overcooked meat and mushrooms atop poorly cooked noodles. We ordered the frog's legs, so you don't have to. They have little flavor other than their white wine sauce.

"Borscht should be available once local beets are in the markets, and the pea soup and chicken soup are perfectly good, though we like our soup served hotter."

And, here is a customer comment: "It's a great little neighborhood hole in the wall joint and the food is super cheap and she makes the best Borscht.”

And another: "Best local dive bar ever. Amazing homemade vodka."

And another: "An interesting place with an interesting mix of patrons and decent Russian dishes."

Make you hungry? This sounds like a "dive" with potential to me, and I am eager make a run to Nina's. Want to join me?

Ted might not leave the stage

I have been listenting to so much music by/from Ted Nugent the past week that I decided I would toss another piece into the mix. Like most guitar men of the rock and roll era, Nugent played with a few bands. One was called Damn Yankees and here, in my not so humble opinion, is one of the group's neater songs: "High Enough."

Nugent has a brief guitar solo toward the end of the piece. The vocals are performed by Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades. Drummer Michael Cartellone was the fourth member of the band.

By the way, I just learned today that Nugent and Derek St. Holmes will be performing in the Twin Cities next month. Maybe, dinner at Nina's followed by an evening of rock. Maybe .... and if we would be lucky, Nugent might stay on the stage and keep right on playing after the concert has "officially" ended, as he often has been known to do.

Forever on a caravan trail

2011-06-30T03:33:00.076+02:00

Prolific author James Michener once wrote a novel entitled, "Caravans." The book deals with traveling through Afghanistan immediately after World War II, and reveals the complexities and nuances of life in that country in view of the cultural and social differences between America and that distant nation. It would have been wise for President George Bush and U.S. military commanders to have read that novel before embarking on warfare there, however, it should not have been necessary for the drivers of these vehicles to have done so before embarking with their caravan from southern Minnesota to the Twin Cities. Should it? After all, how many cultural and social differences can there be between rural Minnesota and metropolitan Minnesota? a reader might ask. More than one would suspect, replies the wolf.

No doubt, someone knows

During the past eighteen months, I will have lived in eight locations. How many is too many? When is enough enough?

During this interval, I never have changed my mail address -- nor my primary email address, nor my banks, nor my driver's license, nor my concealed carry permit. I have owned one house (sold it) and four vehicles, one of them twice (sold it, bought it back, sold it again). They have been licensed in three different states.

Do not ask me how or why these things are the way they are. They are -- if you want them to be -- part of living in modern times, in the electronic world, in the age of anonymity. But, this also is living in a world that is unchanged since Day One: It is living as part of a caravan that sometimes pauses, but never stops.

During this time, I have been active at exploring the sea of blogs, yet only one person actually knows my name, my age, my real family history and my background thoroughly. Much of my past regarding education, military experience and marital history is right out front, but how much about the "real me" such data actually reveals is questionable.

My hair color and its length change when the mood strikes; my facial hair comes and goes; sometimes I wear glasses, other times I do not; my lifestyle changes and I blend in with whatever social or ethnic group interests me at the moment.

I suppose I was a bit paranoid about revealing my actual identity the first year or so of drifting upon the sea of blogs, which explains some of this, but mostly it reflects the "chameleon characteristic" born from being a reporter. I have written about it in the past on occasion. Most simply, it means this: Be who you want to be and be who you need to be, but always be in motion so the world never catches up to you.

All this amounts to another nonsensical piece of wandering words and leaves us with the question: What is next; where will the caravan lead? No doubt, someone knows. But, whom?

Freedom, baby .... freedom

For anyone who has not looked at a calendar recently, here is a not-too-subtle reminder that the anniversary of American Independence Day is soon to arrive.

Guitar "legend" and outspoken supporter of the right of any and all Americans to personally own and bear firearms, Ted Nugent, celebrated the Fourth of July with a concert in Deeee-Troit (= Detroit) on Independence Day in 2008. Here is one of the songs performed at that concert.

For anyone not familiar with Nugent, he is main man on the guitar. The singer is Derek St. Holmes.

I sincerely hope any and all Americans will take a few moments on July 4, 2011, to reflect on the magnitude of the act and the courage of the participants on that day in 1776 when 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence to break away from England and to proclaim the then-existing thirteen colonies as independent states.

In this manner, birth was given through forceful words and force of arms to a concept which evolved into a nation with freedom and equality for all -- so far, anyway.

To spin the wheel of fate

2011-06-25T03:33:00.064+02:00

Every June 25, my thoughts drift to the most significant fight in the forty-year history of the American Plains Indian Wars: The battle between the U.S. Army Seventh Calvary under the command of George Armstrong Custer and a band of mostly Sioux Indians whose leaders included Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. The event generally is referred to as Custer's Last Stand, since the five troops (a troop being the cavalry equivalent of an infantry company) under his immediate command were destroyed to the last trooper. The photograph shows Custer and his officers and the ladies of the Seventh Calvary during their days of wine and roses, on a picnic near Fort Abraham Lincoln in North Dakota a year before the battle. Custer, wearing a buckskin jacket, is standing at the center of the photo. His wife, Elizabeth (Libby), is to his right. Ten of the fourteen men in this photo were killed at the Little Big Horn, including two of Custer's brothers and his brother-in-law. A nephew, not present for this photo, also was killed there.

Once upon a time in the West

Have you ever wished you could have been somewhere even if it probably would have been the end of you?

At the risk of being ridiculed for these words (and I have been in the past), I wish I could have been among those riding with the ill-fated expedition of George A. Custer one-hundred-thirty-five years ago today.

Without going into detail about this event, suffice to say not a single one among all those troopers who were under the direct command of Custer lived to see the sunset on June 25, 1876. Neither am I going to turn this into a post about Custer, his life, his demise and all manner of data about the Plains Indian Wars, which lasted from the early 1850s until the battle/massacre at Wounded Knee in South Dakota on December 29, 1890.

For the most part, I respect and admire Custer, and, with exception of the events at the Little Big Horn River in Montana on June 25, I envy the charmed life he led until the very last day of his life. And, I firmly believe that under the circumstances, he made sound judgments that day, too, with one or two exceptions, which may or may not have sealed his fate.

Critics will say his battlefield tactics resulted in a rout and the annihilation of his immediate command. Having studied both the battlefield in person and cavalry tactics of the era via the written word, my own opinion is that, in most instances, his officers and troopers acted appropriately and according to textbook procedures.

His primary mistake was not to run his own Crow Indian scouts far enough ahead of the main body and not to heed the advice for caution given by these scouts, whose eyes and knowledge of the country were superior to Custer's own. How can a few hundred stand against a few thousand and hope to survive -- much less to win? But, fate in many forms converged on the grassy plains of Montana that day, and if any one of a half-dozen elements had varied only slightly, history would have been written differently.

Not having my reference material, which remains packed away in a storage unit, I can only paraphrase the events, and this is one of my favorite recollections of the aftermath. Following the defeat, a court-martial was held to determine if the deceased Custer had disobeyed orders. During the proceedings, a soldier from among those not under Custer's immediate command was asked if "the general" was good at passing information along to the men under his command. The soldier responded to this effect: "No sir. All we generally knew was that somewhere along the line the bugler would blow the order to charge."

That is what Custer did on June 25, and more than two hundred men died as a result of that last charge. Custer's luck ran out.

In any case, I would like to have been there. This is not because I have a death wish, but, rather, because I like to think that while all others perished, that barring just plain bad luck, I would have made it out as the only survivor. Oh, how I would love to have been there and to have spun the wheel of fate.

Most choose to perch, some to fly

A few days ago, I wrote these words in a note to another, and I thought I would post them here to see what, if any, reaction they might draw:

I do not know if you recall, but when I was writing posts in 2009 and sometimes in 2010, too, I would refer to the "incarnations" of my life. For instance, when I was in the Marine Corps, this was an incarnation; when I worked as a journalist, it was an incarnation; when I worked in prison corrections, this was still another incarnation.

Some people say they have a "role in life to fulfill" or a "calling" or a "career they love," or use phrases similar to those to describe how they have found a place in the world to call their own.

Well, I never have found a single place. I have worked at many jobs in many locations; had many varied interests in books and activities and hobbies; have been married twice; and have found temporary happiness and affection in many places and through doing many things.

Sometimes, I am sad because I have no lasting place in the world and no lasting love in my life. But, more often, I am glad that I have had the opportunity to experience so much of what life has to offer, rather than to perch on one branch doing the same work in the midst of the same people for years and years and years. I hope to experience more yet.

Maybe, that is the manner of life that awaits you, too -- a life of many experiences, a life of many "incarnations" -- rather than a single niche, a solitary role.

Thinking, planning, listening ....

2011-06-06T06:11:00.001+02:00

A riddle: What do a photograph of a storm cloud over a harbour, a twenty-two-year-old sort of love song by a British rock band called "Bad Company," a song proclaiming freedom by a Russian rock band and still another song about the "Wind of Change" by a German rock band performed during a concert in Poland have in common?

The month of birthdays concludes

2011-03-31T03:33:00.028+02:00

Being a rough and tough bear -- as well as a wild and crazy guy -- has its benefits in regard to not much caring what the temperature outdoors might be if the day is otherwise pleasant. So, among those benefits is being able to do what many gentlemen of the leisure class might do when the weather cooperates and the day is sunny -- work on his tan. In this case, White Bear found thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit (three degrees Celsius) to be ideal. And, since he was wearing "my" new ring on a chain around his neck, it seemed like the perfect time to take a photograph of it to satisfy a couple of requests to see it. As I have noted in the past, White Bear has a habit of taking over anything and everything I might acquire.

Who, actually, is writing the story?

Gloucester:

I' th' last night's storm I such a fellow saw,
Which made me think a man a worm. My son
Came then into my mind, and yet my mind
Was then scarce friends with him. I have heard more since.

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,
They kill us for their sport.

William Shakespeare: King Lear Act 4, scene 1, 32–37

Destiny: 1 -- Something to which a person or thing is destined; fortune. 2 -- A predetermined course of events often held to be a resistless power or agency. Synonym: Fate.

Fate: 1 -- The principle or determining cause or will by which things in general are supposed to come to be as they are or events to happen as they do; destiny. 2 -- whatever is destined or decreed. 3 -- Final outcome. 4 -- The three goddesses of classical mythology who determine the course of human life. Synonym: Destiny, lot, portion, doom.

These are definitions of "destiny" and "fate" as found in one of the Webster's dictionaries I carry with me. It elaborates a bit by continuing that the word "destiny" often is associated with good results, while "fate" frequently is identified with not so good results.

Now, here are a couple of points that I have occasionally made in the past: One is to the effect that I believe communication is the most difficult task in the world. Part of this is because we do not all carry dictionaries around with us. Mostly, this is because we tend to accept the meanings of words as they have affected us in terms of our individual backgrounds, educations and experiences. This means discussions about words whose meanings actually imply complex concepts, which "destiny" and "fate" are, mean different things to different people.

Next, I have written here that while I believe fate intervenes in our lives intermittently, I do not believe that a particular destiny is inevitable to my life (or to anyone else's life). Put most simply, I do not believe that predestination is a fact of existence, but that chance meetings and random events might greatly influence or even completely change the course of our lives. Lately, however, I have begun to question my position in these matters -- particularly in relation to "destiny."

I no longer am as certain about my concepts of "destiny" and "fate" in an ultimate, predestined sense as I have been in the past. We meet a stranger, for example, and our lives might be changed forever. We experience an accident, for instance, and we have no choice but to leave the path we have been traveling upon and to take another. These were my beliefs in the past, and still are today. Such events are little more than common sense and largely involve matters of "fate."

Increasingly, I am beginning to wonder if we really do have any choices regarding the paths we travel. We think we do. We believe (most of us) in free choice. But, possibly the notion of free choice is a delusion.

I suppose part of this blends in with the concepts of déjà vue and reincarnation, and even with dream interpretation and reaction, but I cannot help but wonder if each of us is nothing more than a character in a script or a play or a novel whose entire life has been plotted out for us by an unknown author.

I am not considering this at all in a religious context or from any point on the compass of logic. I guess that means it is an intuitive feeling recently arisen within me.

Are we writing our own stories, or has someone already written them for us? I am not so sure as I once was, and am beginning to think a specific destiny awaits each of us no matter which pathways in life we choose to follow.

Some random thoughts

March comes to an end for another year today, and the month of birthdays for me concludes. There are five birthdays being observed among my family members and friends today, which seems like a good number. I am not even going to try to count them up for the entire month.

This particular post contains thoughts and feelings and observations and reflections, which is typical for me. I think that now, with the conclusion of "birthday month," I will stop posting things such as these, for a while, at least, and I will not post unless I actually have some "factual news" I wish to pass along.

It is possible I will resume writing here; it is possible I will start a new blog; it is possible I will fade away entirely over the course of a few months. For the present, I intend on following those blogs I currently follow, and to write comments when the mood strikes me.

The month of birthdays concludes .... and, so do I .... for now .... see you around, here and there, wherever ....

The dancers are all gone

2011-03-16T03:33:00.014+01:00

It might not be May Day, but Peter Brueghel the Younger's painting, "St. George's Kermis with the Dance Around the May Pole," seems to fit the occasion of T.S. Eliot's poem today, "East Coker," and the continuation of birthday celebrations during March. The party is almost over, but the sights and the sounds of approaching Spring brighten the days of our lives. Although the temperature was only forty-one degrees Fahrenheit (five degrees Celsius), I took my shirt off, washed my Suburban and sat outside in the sun while I read a newspaper yesterday afternoon -- no need to beware the Ides of March this year, Caesar. The suntan of 2011 is officially under way.

Oh, well .... on with the tale
Part 2 of 2

Not too many literature majors in the crowd, I dare say. It borders somewhere between pathetic and humorous to me. Oh, well. On with the tale ....

I once spent three days and two nights in a tree. I was tied there so I could sleep and not worry about falling.

It was for a reason, but it was not because I was trying to emulate Odin, who spent nine days in a tree as the price for wisdom. At the time of my event, I knew who Odin was, but I had not studied the religion of the Old Norse and was unaware of his travail.

I twice have swum a distance of about twelve miles. The first time was in the darkness of night and in a river I had never been in before that very time. This instance was similar to the occasion spent in a tree. It was for a specific purpose, that is to say; for a specific reason. Throughout much of it, I was not aware of where I was or what I was doing. It was like being asleep and in a dream, and complete, conscious awareness was not present until it was over and done with and the sun had risen.

The second time took place a few years later and was attempted to learn if I actually could do it, which, if accomplished, would mean I actually had done it before, which would mean that it was not a dream and it had been reality. It was a search for actuality -- not sort of, but the real, real thing. In a sense, it was like reading a book or seeing a film twice to discover what you did not notice the first time, but, in this case, actually living the book or the film.

(Off the record for a moment. This second time was with a friend, down the middle of a lake that I knew very well and during daylight. At a point about six miles from where we began was a resort. We stopped there and bought a six-pack of beer. We each drank two cans on the beach, and our third can while we swam back to our point of departure. I laugh to think about it now.)

Last year, I spent part of the day in a dentist's chair in Warsaw, Poland. This, "actually," was not strange, only unusual on the occasion of a birthday.

Yes, these events all took place on my birthdays. I wonder what other people do on their birthdays, if some of them have birthdays more memorable than others, and how other people mark the days of their lives.

Sometimes, I think I have a good thing going. Sometimes, I think I should have been a monk. This time, I think I deserve giving myself a new Rolex watch and, otherwise, will allow the day this year to pass without additional notation or further reflection.

Some final thoughts & random lines (for now) from T.S. Eliot:
"East Coker"
No. 2 of "Four Quartets"

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon ....

The houses are all gone under the sea.
The dancers are all gone under the hill ....

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth ....

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not ....

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter ....

In my end is my beginning.

I think, someday, in another world or another dimension or another life or, possibly, even in a dream within a dream, I will find and I will interview Mr. T.S. Eliot, and I (the chameleon reporter; remember him from past posts?) will induce the gentleman to explain himself and his words, and I will tear loose his apprehensions and gain access to understand his thoughts and his feelings to the bottom of his soul .... or, whatever ....

And, in the meanwhile, I sort of feel sorry for anyone who is not bewitched by his words .... so, listen to them in his own voice and see what you think.

In my end is my beginning

2011-03-11T07:07:00.030+01:00

T.S. Eliot -- poet, playwright, teacher / 1888 -- 1965
Robert Frost -- poet, journalist, farmer / 1874 -- 1963

What is life, other than repetition?
Part 1 of 2

There are things in our lives that seem to have happened before. These events are called "déjà vue," and they are common and well known.

There are things and events in our lives that are similar, but different. Like the sense of meeting someone and feeling like he or she is an old friend, like encountering someone known somewhere, but where or when? Like running into someone we are completely comfortable with and at home with and relaxed with and who we have known absolutely forever.

There are rings or watches that we buy which feel like they have been on our fingers or on our wrists forever, that we look at and have seen there forever -- but, that we know are only recently acquired in our lives and cannot have been from our current lives, from our contemporary pasts.

What about places? Have you ever been somewhere new to you -- in a building or in a piece of woodlands -- and known where to walk because the rooms or the grounds, strangely, were familiar?

I have felt this with a place, with a person with a piece of jewelry and -- probably unfamiliar to most -- with a particular handgun in my grasp.

It not only is mine now, it has been mine in the past -- not necessarily in ownership -- but, in the sense of affection or love or simple knowledge. Everything in and about life is transitory. Whether we accept that notion or not, it is as true as the air we breathe.

Some religions express the thought that beginning and end are the same. It might be a simple matter of definition. Maybe, there is no such thing as beginning and end, and time has always been -- sort of an atheistic "first cause" argument. Whatever ....

In a world of repetitive motions & thoughts

I am not an ardent fan of poetry, particularly that which passes for poetry since the early years of the Twentieth Century. In other words, T.S. Eliot barely passes the test in a chronological sense, but otherwise, he is among my favorites. Despite my admiration, his words have appeared in my posts only once or twice, as I recall.

The poetry of Robert Frost, who sits atop Mount Olympus, in my mind, and whose life and work span a portion of two absolutely amazing centuries during a period which claims possession of the "golden years" of America, has been mentioned a number of times on my pages.

Today, I want to take "a string" from Frost and a "loose end" from Eliot and tie them together.

First, Robert Frost. I have posted this poem before:

"The Road Not Taken"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Now, some random lines from a work by T.S. Eliot:

"Burnt Norton"
(The first of "Four Quartets")

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know ....

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered ....

Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after ....

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now ....

Tie the knot between these pieces, if you have the inclination to do so -- and, if you have a restless, searching soul.

Time on my wrists, mirrors & tears

2011-03-05T05:55:00.039+01:00

Now, you have the opportunity to see my birthday present to myself, modeled on the left arm by none other than the world-renowned White Bear. My gift to me is a Rolex Submariner. The name and the style seemed appropriate for some reason. White Bear might well wear it most of the time. We selected one with a blue dial and bezel. Blue is our color .... like the sky and the sea and our dreams and the shade of all our tomorrows. Incidentally, for his birthday, White Bear selected a watch specifically meant for deep-water diving and is wearing it on his right arm. He is ambidextrous, you know.

Look in the mirror, and what do you see?

In a comment on one of my posts a few days ago, Anita wrote this: "Many people steal and want to destroy those old things .... don't know really why .... it must be the enemy within themselves that wants to destroy beautiful things." She was referring to old, sea-going boats in Bergen, Norway, where she lives.

It is not unusual to encounter people who are self-destructive, usually in the form of alcohol or drug abuse. It is not unusual to encounter people who choose to find ways to abuse other people, physically or emotionally, or who actually engage in vandalism to satiate their inner demons.

In this day and age, it is not unusual to encounter people who have some sort of almost inbred sense of entitlement. It might be entitlement for a free education, to live in a house they cannot afford, for free medical care, to be liked and accepted no matter how rude and ill-mannered they might be to others.

My own sense of being is that I have no use for people in any of these categories.

Shifting gears now for a moment, when I returned from Poland last Spring, within about two weeks I had purchased a Chevrolet Suburban. I had sold my previous one back in July 2008, and I missed driving it. During the interim, I had been primarily driving my Audi.

Before actually getting the new Suburban, I had driven a Lincoln Navigator for a day and toyed with the idea of buying it. For those who are unaware, in this neck of the woods a Navigator is considered a luxury vehicle, while a Suburban is more of a working man's vehicle.

When the Navigator salesman gave me the proverbial sales pitch, "What's it gonna take to get you into this baby?” my reply was this: "Sorry, but it is not me. Not interested. Sorry."

With that, I kept on shopping for a Suburban, and I found one a week or so later. Most simply explained, I could not (still cannot) visualize myself driving a Lincoln Navigator. Self-identity is everything; pretentiousness is weakness, and I felt that, for me, driving a Navigator would be pretentious.

Next, I recently bought a Rolex watch. This came about for three reasons. First, I had one when I was in the Marine Corps. It was part of the "image" for those in the particular unit to which I was attached. It was stolen, and I never replaced it. (Someday, I might explain that in more detail, but I am certain few would appreciate or understand the event, so why bother.)

After that, some years later and considerably much more recently, a young lady asked me if the watch I was wearing was a Rolex. I said, no, and almost felt a bit ashamed and embarrassed because it was not. Anyway, the thought of buying another has been lurking in my mind almost daily since then.

And, now, finally, the last reason: It is my birthday in a few days. And, although it is not my custom, I thought that I might as well buy a neat present for myself. The time had arrived, in a sentence, when I could visualize myself wearing a Rolex again and not feel pretentious about doing so. The thought of a Rolex has become the reality of a Rolex.

But, I will add, it is a middle-of-the-road Rolex, one I would describe as a "working man's" Rolex. Not much gold. Mostly steel.

So, then, how are these elements tied together?

I am not certain if the world is becoming a meaner place. It is hard to accept that it could be worse than it has been in the past, but it seems selfishness -- which is a root of ordinary meanness, I think -- is spiking at the moment no matter what corner of the world one cares to point out.

To repeat two things about my self-image which I often have told others in the past and have written about here a few times, as well: What you see is what you get. Sometimes, I might sound a bit pretentious, but I do not believe that I am. Self-confident to the point of arrogance? Sure, but not at the expense of others.

What you give is what you receive with me. I often describe myself as a mirror. Show me anger, you will receive it in return. Give me respect, it will come back to you. Lie to me, your words will not be heard and you will be ignored. Offer me friendship, it will be there for you if you wish it be. Walk away from me .... bye, bye.

The question then becomes, who do you see when you look in a mirror? In relation to you, as others see you. In relation to you, as you see yourself. Who are you?

What I am saying is I believe that I honestly know myself pretty well. I wonder how many other people can say the same of themselves.

Music of the Night, et al

As for the music, make of it what you will. Allow your imagination to transport you within it. Stay up late this night, step out into the darkness of the night and see where it takes you. It puts me on my knees, brings tears to my eyes, and makes me wonder which is greater, music or the night? Mankind or Nature? Or, are they one and the same?

I wish you an endlessly curious mind, one much beyond everyday life, and to wonder what comes next .... here and there .... and to care about it ....

Another birthday & Mary vs. Johnny

2011-03-01T03:33:00.010+01:00

This painting of U.S. Marines, some in the ship's rigging firing their muskets and some on the ship's rail preparing board another vessel, hangs in the Marine Corps Museum at Quantico, Virginia. I do not know the artist or even what war it represents, presumably the Revolutionary War or, possibly, the War of 1812, but I like the piece and it seemed appropriate to include as an illustration with my birthday wish for a member of the Corps.

Semper Fidelis, birthday boy

March is an especially active birthday month in my life, for me, personally, and for a number of family members and friends. (Makes you wonder -- me, anyway -- what it is that causes people to be so "busy" in June.)

In any case, following a birthday thought about my grandfather on Sunday, here is a March 1 birthday salute for a U.S. Marine who currently is spending a bit of time at Camp Pendleton in California before moving on to Pensacola, Florida. Happy Birthday, Jeremy, and Semper Fi.

Two variations on love, baby

Some days ago, I wrote a pretty long piece to fill this space today, but I changed my mind about publishing it on the spur of the moment and, at least, for the moment. I probably will run it in a few days, but I began thinking about the two songs I have here, and they distracted me and got me wondering. I have posted them before, both of them, but not together.

The meaning of Mary Chapin Carpenter's music in "Passionate Kisses" is anticipatory and in expectation of love. Actually, the lyrics are almost demanding not only love, but a good life and sweet times.

The words -- the sentiment -- struck me, because the post I pulled from this space tonight mentions how many people today and how often people today walk around with some twisted sense of entitlement. Mary seems to be echoing that in her words.

She wants a "full house and a rock and roll band." She requires "pens that won't run out of ink and cool quiet and time to think."

"Is it too much to ask .... Is it too much to demand .... Shouldn't I have this .... all of this?" Mary asks in her song. Mostly, she wants "passionate kisses."

"Give me what I deserve, 'cause it's my right," Mary concludes.

In a sense, yes, I suppose she should have such things. It is not unreasonable to ask for and to hope for those things mentioned in her lyrics. But, at no cost to herself? With no work? With no effort? Does she expect love to walk through the door and to pick her up and to carry her off to a castle in the clouds?

In contrast, Johnny Cash almost seems to be chastising his companion for falling out of love in his rendition of "One." This is because she apparently is a Mary Chapin Carpenter-type, and she obviously does not understand that love is a two-way street and not a magic carpet ride twenty-four hours a day. Johnny sings:

"One love
One life
When it's one need
In the night
One love
We get to share it
Leaves you baby if you
Don't care for it ...."

Whatever, it was interesting (to me, anyway) to contemplate these varying thoughts about love. This was on my mind, so we can blend rock and country from a couple of neat songs and reflect on love for a while.

Later, baby ....

Whenever February comes around

2011-02-27T03:33:00.018+01:00

Since this post is about my grandfather and since he once told me that he sometimes dreamed he was a cowboy in the Old West, it seemed appropriate to use a painting by Montana cowboy and artist, Charles M. Russell, to illustrate the piece. This particular painting is entitled, "Lassoing a Steer," and was painted by old Charlie in 1897. Ride 'em, Grandpa!

Every year, about this time

Like many American children, I grew up without the presence of a father in my life.

My parents were divorced before I was aware of him -- the father figure. I saw him three times during my entire life, once when he had been drinking, before I was in school, probably about age four; once when he had been drinking, when I was about age eleven or twelve. Once, when I was twenty-one. That time was the first and the only time I spent a day talking with him -- none of the time privately, and, as it turned out, not a word of which served an real purpose.

I did have a step-father from about the time I was becoming a teenager, and our relationship deteriorated the older and more rebellious I became until, three days after I graduated from high school, I said, "Hasta la vista, baby," (or something like that) and left my parental home forever.

Actually, this piece has nothing to do with my father or my step-father. Rather, it is a notation that today is the birthday of my mother's father -- my grandfather. He quit observing his birthdays several years ago, I might add. He is long in his grave.

Since my parents were divorced, again I will mention that I was in another typical American situation. My mother and I lived with her parents for a number of years. Therefore, I came to know my grandfather very well.

What can I say about him? Well, he drank too much. But, he labored like a superman until he was well into his sixties. He worked for the Great Northern Railroad forty years in an ancient job. He was a section hand, which is to say, he repaired and replaced rails and did similar chores in the heat and humidity of Minnesota summers and in the blizzards and frigid temperatures of Minnesota winters.

More than once, I can recall him called out in the middle of the night to help repair a bridge that had been damaged in a flash flood or to help shovel out a train that had become snowbound in a blizzard. He was a real man among men, from my perspective.

I can remember him coming home once so frozen and exhausted he could not remove his own clothing, and my grandmother stripped him naked and helped him into a tub of hot water and bathed him. They did not see me standing nearby, watching; for a few minutes, nothing else existed in the world other than themselves. I envy them for those minutes. He was full-blooded German, by the way, and she was full-blooded Norwegian. That sort of twain did meet.

My grandmother, together with her sisters and brothers, had a farm as their inheritance. It was not unusual for my grandfather to help with the work there on weekends. Before my time, when my grandfather and his identical twin brother were in their twenties and thirties, they raised horses on the farm. The twin once saved a drowning man by riding his horse far out into a lake to reach him -- just like in the motion pictures.

What I mostly remember about my grandfather are his books and his constant reading. He seldom watched television. He like to listen to music on his radio and to read. He sat outside in a chair under the shade of a tree and read all day on Sundays during the summer months, no matter what the heat and the humidity. He read whenever he was not working or gardening. He must have enjoyed gardening, too, because he spent hours at it.

By now, you might have guessed that he rarely spoke. What I know of him, I know because I watched him and saw what he did. By the way, his twin brother died when I was somewhere between two and three years of age. Strange as it might sound, I remember this identical twin brother from one occasion, and I remember I knew who was which.

The last time I saw my grandfather, I was twenty-three and he was sixty-nine. I invited him to a bar in a bowling alley in suburban Minneapolis, and we had a couple of beers. I cannot remember what we talked about other than he really liked my new wife because her black hair and darker complexion reminded him of his sisters when they were young. He, himself, had wavy, black hair and perfect eyesight to the day he died. Must have been all the beer he drank ....

He was happy and laughing that day. A couple of months later, he sent me a Christmas gift. He did, I mean, by himself, not with my grandmother. A couple of months after that, he was dead from a heart attack.

The only purpose of this post is to mention that I carry him with me, and think of him often, especially this time of the year when his birthday arrives, and I visualize him, mostly with a book in one hand and a glass of lemonade in the other hand -- sitting in a rocking chair under the shade of a tree on a hot, summer day, reading and reading and reading.

These memories are true and good, and give me strength and a reason to smile at times. I miss him.

A musical footnote to this post

For a touch of music to accompany these words, here are three pieces by German composers featuring the violin. As I mentioned before, this grandfather was full-blooded German. As I did not mention, he and his twin brother took violin lessons as children, and continued to play into adulthood.

Only a few years after I came into the world, my grandfather's twin died, and I never heard them play together. On occasion, however, after a stein of beer or two or three, my grandfather would become nostalgic and bring out his violin to discover what his hands and fingers remembered from his childhood.

By then, he was no longer an accomplished musician, by any means, but, for me, it was enjoyable to experience and a childhood treasure to remember now.

A simple matter of priorities

2011-02-22T03:33:00.020+01:00

If you do not recognize this fellow, you are beyond help ....

So, what else is new?

I suppose I could lie and write here that I took a hop, a skip and a jump way up north a few days ago to the shores of Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and then had taken this photograph.

But, anyone who has read me here during the past two-plus years knows that I am not a fan of the politics or the policies of Barack Obama, and I would have to be paid to attend an event in which he was speaking. It would have been evident that I was lying.

(It is possible I might have voted for Hilary, though, had the circumstances been different.)

And, anyone who has read me here during the past two years might recall that I dropped out of the tedious world of journalism in May 2009, so I had absolutely no reason to put in an appearance there as a newsman. Once again, it would have been evident that I was lying.

(Who knows? I might decide to give journalism another whirl around the dance floor. After all, I have come from it and gone back to it a few times in the past. Mostly for money, not for love, I hope you understand.)

So, no. I was not present at the Obama event to take the photograph you see here today.

(Not too shabby a shot, though, hah? Excellent work, Tommy .... hmmmm .... Tommy? Yeh, well, ok ..... a professional is a professional is a professional -- from beginning to end.)

The fact of the matter, to talk like a politician talks, is that there remains one other surviving member of the Michigan version of the "wild bunch" in addition to me, and our photo today was taken by the other. He sent it to me to taunt me. He is a liberal, you see, while I am .... well .... sort of a conservative. By the way, the photo is copyrighted, so please, treat it appropriately.

Anyway, had I been in town when the President was there, undoubtedly, I would have spent the day in a canoe on The Lake rather than listening to his endless, empty chatter. It simply is a matter of selecting one's priorities. With that, we shall adjourn to the next item on the agenda.

Notes from the land of snow

My posts are becoming infrequent, intentionally, I might add, so that I spend more time working on other projects. Yes, this means establishing priorities. Sort of the here today, gone tomorrow concept. So, with that in mind, here are a couple of things I have mentioned in comments, but not in an actual post:

I will be staying in this townhouse in March and April and, probably, May. I received a message from the owner last week stating I could stay as long as I wished. He gave no explanation, and, simply, I do not care what the reason. My assumption is that this will make the next few months a bit easier for me.

Next, I am in the process of securing a house in suburban St. Paul. It is about twenty miles from the downtown Minneapolis/St. Paul area. I anticipate moving in toward the end of May, no later than June 1.

This house will become my "fire base," as it were, for the next year or two or three. I probably will rent out either the upstairs or the basement next autumn, depending on the circumstances, and use one or the other as a place to store my own personal possessions and to "camp out" when I am in and around Minnesota.

Sometime in the autumn, most like late September or early October, I will take to the road again, in a manner of speaking. If I remain in America during the Winter months, it will be in a location where the sun shines and the temperature is considerably warmer than it is here-abouts and ice only exists in refrigerators. I think I would look good with a year-round tan.

Anyway, that is the way life is shaping up for me at this moment. With hindsight, I should have left this region last November and returned in March to do the business required of me here, but, at least, I will have accomplished a few things by remaining here during this long, cold, snowy Winter. To this, we can add about a foot of snow just fallen during the past thirty-six hours. Uff da.

Finally, do you have an hour to spare? Whatever .... if you do not recognize this rock opera, you are beyond help ....

A Valentine's Day note for you -- and only you

2011-02-14T04:44:00.014+01:00

"The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis" was painted in 1818 by Jacques Louis David. While not as well known as Cupid and Psyche or as Romeo and Juliet or as Paris and Helen of Troy, these absolute lovers also were forced to part. Eucharis was a daughter of the sea nymph Calypso, while Telemachus was the son of an ancient Greek mortal who is among the three or four most remembered today. If you do not know who that man might be, perhaps your curiosity will be stirred enough after reading this to do a bit of research. I might add that my initial thought for an illustration for this post was another painting by David (Paris and Helen of Troy), but, when I saw this piece, the woman's hairstyle and the presence of the man's second faithful companion won me over in an instant.

Happiness is being an absolute beginner

There probably have been five or six variations of this song I have posted since I entered this realm of mostly invisible individuals more than two years ago. This probably is the fourth or fifth time I have posted this particular version. I absolutely love it.

This song, without a doubt, is on my list of the five best songs ever in the era of rock and roll. I love the melody. I love the lyrics. I love the smiles and the happiness and the hopefulness that emanates from the music. I love the casual movements of the performers in this version that can only be accomplished by absolute professionals at their crafts.

Have you ever noticed that? The difference between amateurs and professionals, I mean? Experience has nothing to do with it. Age has nothing to do with it. Education has nothing to do with it. It is a god-given gift -- innate, inborn, instinctual -- which is a natural movement whether melodic or violent, whether known or unknown, whether artful or crass.

It is evident on a battlefield. Some people cannot die, and a few even realize that at some point along the way. Others know from the very beginning they cannot survive warfare no matter what they do or where they hide. It is visible on a stage. Some performers struggle and work their hearts out, but while they might achieve momentary popularity, genuine art is beyond their reach. Others open their mouths and voice of an angel emerges and their bodies move like a river flowing to the rhythm of Nature itself.

Psychiatrists might gaze within the minds of men, but they cannot understand them. Writers might describe events which have occurred, but they can only blindly speculate about what will happen tomorrow. Everyone knows that vanity is a sin, but knowing is not realization and does not slow it down.

Whether you see my point or not, or, if you do, whether you agree with me or not, is of no importance. Whether you read this or not does matter. Maybe, to you. For sure, to me.

There is a cliché to the effect that nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. It is not correct. There are a few things which are certain, like the absolute love Paris had for Helen; like the absolute perfection of Michelangelo's Pieta or David; even like the haunting, absolute truth of a rock and roll song like "Absolute Beginners."

I noticed the other day that at the site of one of David Bowie's songs, someone had written: "David Bowie is an alien." I think that possibly could be right. I think there might be a few others among us, too, but most of us are blind to their presence and are inclined to worship the momentary rather than to build upon the lasting.

Moses knew the score. And, when you have given up on mankind as I did long ago, there remains the consistency and the beauty of Nature in which to find a semblance of absolute truth.

Better luck next time

2011-01-31T04:44:00.022+01:00

What'cha think? Too big? Too small? The boat, I mean. I could not decide which photograph best served my purpose for illustration, so I am running both of them. I checked out this baby on Sunday afternoon. It is larger than I have been considering, mainly because I want to be able to transport whatever boat I buy (if I buy) from here to there and back again, rather than keep it docked at one marina. By transport, I mean pull it behind my Suburban, which is parked next to the boat. You can judge for yourself if this plan would be feasible. Time will tell, as it always does ....

To love him or to hate him

My mind is whirling with a million thoughts tonight.

One is that I finally realized I never have understood women. Among all the acquaintances, friends, lovers and wives who have been part of my life -- I do not believe I knew a single one of them. Of course, I am aware of the many similarities they cannot escape because of unadorned biology, and I recognized the "men are from Mars and women are from Venus" concept long before anyone wrote a book about it -- but, women remain an enigma.

I suppose I might say the same of men, because I have met very few I truly can identify with in terms of viewing the fundamentals of life. Sure, there are those men who enjoy the same books, films and music that I do; others who seek out the same manner of work; many who can and do hunt like I once did; some with the same hobbies I pursue; but I have found very few who I could love as a brother. This does not have as much to do with similar interests as it does to indefinable instincts about the purpose of life and the goals mankind should have in common.

Perhaps, that is why after a work grievance filed against me some years ago by someone I supervised, the investigator made this comment as her closing remark: "Everyone either loves him or hates him; there is no in between."

My response was this: "Do you think I care?"

Actually, I do/did care, but only in the sense of understanding why. I want to learn and learn and learn. I am mostly an observer, which is neither good nor bad, but merely means I possess the capacity to remain neutral and independent. I want to know everything, and it frustrates me that I cannot. This trait of mine sometimes also frustrates others around me in both professional and personal life.

Circling back to women, all I need in life is one woman who smiles for me and to me and at me and walks side by side with me -- and, watches my back if I might need cover. This, I often think, is an unattainable objective.

Not to sidetrack too much (although I did warn you that my mind is whirling, bouncing, meandering all over the place this evening), but there was a fascinating book which sort of revolves around this characteristic of non-committal impartiality. It is, "The Hunter," by Donald Westlake, published in 1962. There have been three film versions of it, of which I will mention only two: "Point Blank," in 1967, with Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, and "Payback," in 1999, with Mel Gibson and Maria Bello.

It is one of those strange instances where the novel and each film version vary considerably and yet remain absolutely excellent. It also is a story of a man who, after having been betrayed by a woman, finds another who is uniquely fitted for his lifestyle and personality.

Expand your horizons. Go to a movie tonight. Teasing .... sort of .... and, if you did not understand a word I was writing, better luck next time.

A couple of announcements

I am moving again. It is like it was at the Lake House. I tried to hold out until the last minute before deciding whether I would go or stay in this townhouse another month, and someone else stepped in and volunteered to sign a long-term lease. So, I will leave here at the end of February. And, since I am not ready to entirely commit to a Spring/Summer plan yet, this will be still another temporary situation. Almost laughable. Oh, well .... such is life.

Next, one more attempt: I have been writing since shortly after arriving here at this townhouse, and just rolled over 100,000 words on a novel. Who knows? I have tried and failed before, but you never can be certain if you are not persistent and keep on trying -- once, or twice or three times or ....

Finally, endless variables: I might have found a boat, but I am not sure yet. There are a lot of variables to this deal. I also think I might have found a house, but there, once again, I am not sure yet because there are many variables in this deal, too.

And, I also think the cornerstone for a summer plan has been set, although it is too soon to finalize the details. This makes me smile and smile and smile. The ever-present variables are, of course, in play here, as well. Variables never are in short supply, it would seem, and I have a tendency to wait until the last minute when it comes to commitments.

Another moment to absorb .... or not

2011-01-27T04:44:00.017+01:00

I love it ....

Almost as a follow-up ( that is a newspaper term, for those who are unaware, for a story or stories published a day or two or three after the original story) to my post from a few days ago, here is a rendition of George Harrison's song, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."

This is from a tribute medley to him at his second induction (all the Beatles were selected as a group in 1987) into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. Harrison died from cancer in 2001 at the age of fifty-eight.

The two singing this near-perfect song are Tom Petty (the Heartbreakers) and Jeff Lynne (ELO), who, once upon a time, along with Harrison, were members of the Traveling Wilburys. Replacing Harrison in the group on this night was his son, Danny. Also absent was Roy Orbison, who had a good excuse. He was dead, too, back in 1988 at the age of fifty-two from a heart attack.

Another from the Wilburys, Bob Dylan, did not participate, and should be whipped for his absence. (Yes, I mean that. I am as hard core as they come, but there are such things as honor, duty, respect, friendship and love in this world.) Dylan probably as off somewhere trying to spawn another child or two. (He is from Minnesota, so it hurts a bit to write that, although while some of his music was great, he really was/is a lousy singer.)

For those who are (again) unaware or who have short memories, one of my previous incarnations included playing the role of a newspaper arts critic, which (while I did it) centered on books, stage plays and films, but also included all manner of music, operas, paintings/prints, photography and you name it.

I love rock and roll and the Beatles (where real modern music began, in my mind), and the Rolling Stones, and Boston, and the Scorpions, and The Who, and Derek and the Dominos, and Metallica, and Styx, and Dokken, and Heart, and a hundred others.

This song is truly wondrous, to my way of thinking. I love the way a couple of the Traveling Wilbury's, Petty and Lynne, sing it. I love the way Harrison's son loses it during the performance. I love it even though Prince, another guy from Minnesota (You never knew so much talent came from Minnesota, did you?), hams it up as he plays sort of a guitar solo toward the end. Harrison's son obviously loves it, too, which is the most important element here.

I love the way Prince throws his guitar away as the song comes to its close. Never again will he play it. The moment has come and gone -- forever. What is life other than a series of moments, come and gone -- forever? Never mind. I do not really care any longer. Too many moments -- or whatever.

Mainly, I love this song and this performance, I think, because when I was about the age of Harrison's son I was carrying a rifle instead of a guitar. Luck of the draw, I guess. I love it because, although I envy George and Danny Harrison, I am happy for them for living life as they wanted it.

We all have to be someplace doing something, and I never have been sorry about where I was at any given point in time or what I was doing then because it was where I wanted to be and what I wanted to be doing at that particular stage. Sometimes, like right now for me, there is a bridge that seems to be taking a long, long time to cross, but it is part of the road which has been mapped out in advance of the journey. Hindsight is for the weak ....

Some years ago, I read a line: "Where there is beauty, so shall I be."

I cannot recall where or when or what this line was from, but I remember the moment it was on paper before my eyes and I was reading it.

What the hell. It could be I did not read it; possibly, I wrote it.

Time to run .... there is music to enjoy and another moment to absorb .... or not.

Good luck, bad luck, no luck

2011-01-24T04:44:00.017+01:00

Once upon a time in the chronicles of the Marine Corps while aboard a Navy vessel .... the young and the restless and the "fast boats" .... this photograph was one of two originally titled, "The morning after" .... yes, really it was ....

A month is a month is (only) a month

A few months ago, in October to be exact, after noting the poet T.S. Eliot had proclaimed in his masterpiece, "The Wasteland," that "April is the cruelest month," I wrote these words:

"But, just for the sake of argument, I vote for October or January as the cruelest month …. Both these months have foreshadowed sledge-hammer hard blows to my psyche. Each year, I hold my breath waiting for each October to pass. Some years, they are (thankfully) uneventful. Some years, they slam me in their opening moments. Other years, they ambush me at the last possible second.

"So, you ask me, how can a month (October for now; we will wait on January) with such beautiful colors and such stunning sunsets be cruel?"

Well, October came and went with a touch of bad luck for me, but nothing catastrophic, and now we are in the midst of January. My designation for these two months is a numbers game in a sense. October has struck me many times, while January has struck me only one time, but with the hardest and the cruelest of any blow in my life.

There are only three people, possibly four, still around today who are aware of that blow, and I think it is best to be kept that way. The only day I fear in January (so far, anyway) is the seventeenth. And, it passed by me quietly this year. If I could, I would prefer to have someone nearby to hold my hand for a while when that date comes around on the calendar each year.

The other major event of January in my life happened on this day -- the twenty-fourth -- when I joined the Marine Corps. Probably no one who has not been in the Corps recognizes or realizes the significance of the enlistment anniversary date to those who have been there. It is a bond and a commitment and a pledge in blood -- actually -- and, something earned, not given.

In my case, I consider this day neither a good day nor a bad day, but still one of the most relevant ones in my life.

The only other "unique" month in my life is July. I have been married twice -- both weddings in July -- and, in each case, the divorce also was finalized in July. I am not certain these events have anything to do with luck, but it does seem a bit strange. Do you not think so? Whether or not July marriages and weddings are written in the stars for me, if you propose to me, I want a July wedding. Some things are meant to be.

I wish there were a month that was super beneficial to/for me and would bring me to the pinnacle of good luck again and again -- but, so far, no such luck.

Baby, you're adorable (you know I mean it)

No cowboy songs tonight. A couple of thoughts about this music:

The first piece is one of the last songs recorded by Roy Orbison before he went bye-bye. While that comment might sound a bit irreverent, I will add that I believe Roy Boy had the greatest voice in the original era of rock music. This, by the way, in the parlance of FramHistory, existed from about 1955 to approximately 1990, when, for all practical purposes, rock began to go to hell (i.e., the path of political correctness).

Whatever .... by luck of the draw (meaning the god-given gift of a voice like no other), Orbison was the best of the best, and everyone doing music at the time knew it.

The visuals in both these videos are technically of very poor quality, but, perhaps, that will encourage some to concentrate on the music itself and to think about the lyrics. By the way (again), the Orbison song once had special meaning for me. Live and learn. What is that saying? Fool me once ....

The second piece is by the Traveling Wilburys, of which Roy Boy was a member. If you do not recognize the other members, shame on you. I will say this much, however, which should offer you a clue: I did not realize what a neat voice George Harrison had until he hooked up with the Wilburys.

Anyway, such is the way of music around these parts tonight. If you like it -- or not -- tell me.

The Song of MidWinter

2011-01-16T06:06:00.005+01:00

The good times are coming

It is a time to rejoice.

It is January 16.

Midwinter has arrived.

It is all downhill from here.

Somewhere along the line a number of years ago, I began to think of November 1 as the first day of "FramWinter" and March 31 as the final day. Around here, way up North, those dates coincide with actual winter weather much closer than do the dates on the calendar.

While it is true that I have witnessed snow on Labor Day and blizzards in October, by-in-large November 1 is around the time of the year cold and snow begin to set in for keeps. The same is true in the springtime. I have experienced horrendous blizzards in April and measurable snowfall even during the last week of May, but warm air and green fields are on the way by the time March draws to its conclusion.

Therefore, while it is not mathematically precise in terms of days, hours and minutes, January 16 is two and one-half months into Winter and two and one-half months remain for it to exist.

So, be of good cheer, Spring is near and this "FramWinter" soon will be history and we can all go outside again and play.

Speaking of playing & incidental notes

Item 1: Remember my December 31 post? These were among the words in context of three things that were possibilities for my future: "Move to Florida, buy a boat and hang out for a year or two diving and diving."

I spent a few hours on Saturday at the 41st Annual Sportsmen's Boat, Camping and Vacation Show in St. Paul. I was not looking at sleeping bags, either. Next weekend is the Minneapolis Boat Show, which I also plan to attend. There also is a smaller, local boat show going on almost next door to me. That is on my mid-week agenda.

I probably will be elaborating on this in the weeks ahead.

Incidental to the point, I have an old friend who is diving beneath the ice on Lake Superior this weekend. I taught him how to dive, but now he surpasses anything I have done. Now, he could be the teacher and I the student. This makes me smile.

As if fate were keeping one eye on me at all times, I also have made a new acquaintance who was with the Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT) in the U.S. Navy. In other words, he was a professional diver, both hard-helmet and scuba. Constant readers here might recall that I went through the three-week Navy scuba school myself at approximately the dawn of time. He and I are talking about trying some dives next Summer if things would work out.

Item 2: I began reading Raymond Khoury's 2005 best-selling novel, "The Last Templar." I like it -- so far -- and might mention it in the future -- another book review that is not a book review, or whatever.

I am curious. Has anyone read it?

Another cowboy song breaks free

It must the desolation of the landscape, covered with snow blown by a bitterly cold wind, but I am in the mood for cowboy music and cowboy films.

Mama Cass Elliot sang, "The Good Times are Coming," the theme song from the original motion picture version of "Monte Walsh." The cast was led Lee Marvin and Jack Palance -- two men born to portray cowboys on the silver screen -- and Jeanne Moreau -- beauty incarnate. The story centers about the end of the Western Frontier and the demise of open range cowboys whose lives flourished in a mixture of reality and myth.

Many, including myself, consider this movie to be a Western Classic and as tragic a tale as any written by William Shakespeare. What happens to the cowboy when the Old West vanishes into the mists of time?

A television remake of the 1970 film was done in 2003 with Tom Selleck and Isabella Rossellini playing the lead roles. While the original version is archetypal, the television version is sort of routine, bland entertainment. And, while Selleck manages to handle parts as a private detective or a police officer relatively well, in my opinion he comes off as a cartoon caricature when he dons the duds of a cowboy.

Anyway, the song was absolutely perfect for the original film and was sung absolutely beautifully by Mama Cass -- and, that is why it is here tonight.

The Mood of Winter

2011-01-14T07:07:00.005+01:00

Time for a cowboy song

There is no news to report.

I have no thoughts of relevance.

My opinions are well known.

Therefore, there is nothing for me to write.

So, I simply will post two versions of a cowboy song I like, "Four Strong Winds."

The first version is performed by Neil Young and "friends." The only two "friends" I recognize are Young's wife, Pegi, on his right, and singer Emmylou Harris, on his left.

The second version is by the writer of the song, Ian Tyson, and his once-upon-a-time wife, Sylvia. (I sort of like both their first names for some reason.) Late in the rendition, they are joined by some fellow I do not recognize, by Judy Collins, Gordon Lightfoot and, once again, Emmylou Harris. She gets around, it seems.

Anyway, as you probably suspect, this song fits my Winter Mood.

A new year is waiting, so roll the dice

2010-12-31T03:33:00.012+01:00

This is an illustration purported to be Achilles and Ajax playing a game with dice. The vessel bearing the image dates to 540 BCE and (obviously) is of Greek origins. Since Achilles was slain by Paris during the sack of Troy and Ajax committed suicide in the aftermath of the Trojan War, apparently both men could have avoided dying by staying at home and being content with simply rolling the "die" in a friendly game of chance for a talent or two of silver or gold.

Another game & another number

I was fifteen the first time I won money gambling with adult males of the species. It was in a card game in a pool hall during the summer in the small, rural Minnesota town where I grew up. The game was pinochle. I was playing with three farmers who had been rained out from working in their fields. I had been asked if I knew how to play because all the other adults present were involved in their own games of cards or pool -- or, were too engaged with drinking beer and discussing philosophy, religion and the great issues of the day. Well, that might be exaggerating their discussions just a bit.

I lied, sort of, anyway. I said sure, I knew how to play pinochle. In fact, I had never played in my life, but I had watched the men play for a few weeks and was reasonably certain I could get by if just a bit of luck accompanied me into the game. My partner and I won that game in just two hands, which was literally unheard of with the rules under which we were playing. Long before summer ended, virtually every man who entered the pool hall to play cards wanted me as his partner for pinochle and buckeuchre (Buck Euchre), and my nickname was "Lucky" among the farmers.

Just for the record, I no slouch at pool, either, or at tossing dice for drinks. Rules were rules, which meant young men my age could not drink beer, only pop. But, the rules (at least, the local customs) did not prevent young men from shaking the cup of dice to see who would pay for a round of drinks at the card table.

I worked on a farm that summer, as many "town boys" did, and it was a rainy summer. The days in the pool hall frequently were more profitable than the days on the farm. The same proved to be true the next summer, when I worked in a supermarket, and the next summer, when I worked in a lumber yard.

A few years later, I concentrated more on Poker (in which I have had no luck at all -- neither good nor bad) and continued "handling the bones," with a considerable amount of time spent shooting Craps. This, as you might imagine, mostly took place in the Marine Corps and included one absolutely fabulous night at a back room Craps game in Reno.

A crapshooter's mantra sometimes is "seven come eleven." If you hit either of those numbers on the first roll of the dice, you are an automatic winner. Simply because of that, I adopted seven and eleven as my lucky numbers. I usually won at Craps, often by rolling those numbers, so it seemed very natural to stick with them in all matters.

Do you see where this is going? Fanciful mind that I sometimes display, I am convinced 2011 will be a lucky year for me. In the meanwhile, all I have to do is figure out what the 20 signifies and to look around for a seven. Just teasing .... sort of ....

All-in-all, 2010 was a good year for me and to me. It was fascinating in many ways, offering new experiences. It was profitable in some ways and, possibly, the beginning of a stroll along a new, long-lasting pathway. The past twelve months have taught me a few lessons, and I believe I see the world a bit more clearly now than I have in recent times, although I still have no clue what my role is in it -- or, if I even have an actual role in it. Whatever ....

Three ideas are floating through my mind as a new year looms on the horizon:

Buy a house in the southern suburbs of Minneapolis/St. Paul and hang out for a year or two writing and writing. This = safety & security.

Move to Florida, buy a boat and hang out for a year or two diving and diving. This = adventure & long-shot gambling.

Travel by ship (a freighter that accepts a few passengers) from America to Europe and decide what to do next upon arrival. There is a run from Duluth, Minnesota, through the Great Lakes, up the St. Lawrence River, across the Atlantic Ocean, through the North Sea and into the Baltic Sea to Gdansk, Poland. This = learning & potential self-discovery.

So, then. How do those three thoughts rate in terms of rolling the dice? And, while I am thinking of it, how do you spell hiatus?

"Beautiful Loser"
The opening lines of the song lyrics
by Bob Seger

He wants to dream like a young man
With the wisdom of an old man
He wants his home and security
He wants to live like a sailor at sea

Beautiful loser
Where you gonna fall?
When you realize
You just can't have it all

Passion, an unfollowed road & competition

2010-12-28T04:44:00.011+01:00

It should be obvious this photograph is not one of mine. The quality is too good to be mine. But, since the setting for the post I have written this evening is Marquette, Michigan, it seemed appropriate to include an illustration from there. In case someone does not recognize the sight, it is the Aurora Borealis -- the Northern Lights -- as they appear over a frozen Lake Superior. It has been a long time since I have seen The Lights, and I am lonesome for them. I suppose I also am lonesome for The Lake.

How do you argue with a great kisser?

One of the long-time-ago three best friends who I occasionally write about here, the woman, and I had an ongoing argument. At times, the argument rose to the level of shouting at each other.

This was the same woman, by the way, I once mentioned in a post in the context of shock and awe. In case you missed that post, our shock and awe was not in the nature of a military sweep by infantry troops or a barrage of bombs and missiles. It was this:

A few times, after a few drinks in a saloon where we were not well known, we would begin making out while sitting on stools at the bar. In a matter of moments, she would be on my lap and our hands would be as frantic as our lips. After a minute or two of this, we would abruptly stop, look around the barroom with startled expressions on our faces, grab our belongings and literally run for the door. There, we would stop, grapple for another moment or two or three, then rush out the door.

The origin of this had been one evening when it was not an act, not a performance, but, actually a spontaneous and genuine "fit of passion." We were both married at the time, and we collected our thoughts and controlled our emotions at some point along the dash between the bar and the car. Perhaps, that is why we remained friends.

In actuality, I was the cooler head, the calmer mind. She also wanted us to "run off" together and to begin another life together. I persuaded her that was not to be our destiny = not to be a road traveled.

Back to the original story. Our argument was this: I maintained that the only person worth competing against was oneself. My point might be illustrated by running. If I could run a mile in six minutes and my competitor could run a mile in five minutes, I should not be concerned about reducing my time in order to beat him, but simply should want to better my own time in the sense of bettering my own self.

My friend spoke passionately that she would be No. 2 to no one in any manner of undertaking without trying anything and everything to win. She was a hard competitor, and did not believe in being second best.

My next point in our debate was that no one can be the best at everything. So what if my competitor could run the mile faster than I could do it? Undoubtedly, there would be other competitive feats and ordinary tasks in which I could come out the winner.

No, she would say, you have to try to beat everyone at everything.

Neither of us would relent in our positions. We never did, but I do miss the arguments -- as well as our barroom improvisations. You see, her insistence at being the best at everything included being the best at kissing.

"Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known"
The first and the original last stanzas
by William Wordsworth

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover’s ear alone,
What once to me befell.

I told her this: her laughter light
Is ringing in my ears:
And when I think upon that night
My eyes are dim with tears.

What would life be like without windows?

2010-12-26T04:44:00.004+01:00

All right. One of these days I actually will run a photograph of something other than the view from my front window, but -- in the meanwhile -- here it is once again as an illustration of life as it has been around this neck of the woods for the past few weeks. Life = snow plus snow and more snow. Those hints of red showing toward the middle, lower portion of the photo reveal an automobile which has been parked in the same location for several days. Do you suppose someone is inside it? Probably not. By the way, that is the Sun and not the Moon peering down through the trees at me.

Let me go to the window

I know a doctor who believes everyone needs a window to the outside world no matter where he lives or where he works. I mean a literal window. Although the doctor is a surgeon rather than a psychiatrist, he is offering this opinion from a psychological point of view.

To demonstrate the depth of feeling behind his statement, upon moving into a newly-constructed clinic building and assigned to an office without a window, he paid with his own money to have a hole knocked in the outer brick wall and to have a window installed where there had been only solid mass before.

"I need to see the sky and the rain and the grass to keep from going crazy," he told me.

His viewpoint is not particularly unique. Where do you think the term "cabin fever" or, more appropriate yet, "stir crazy" originated? True, those concepts have to do with a bit more than a windowless room, but they are treading down the same roadway.

The townhouse in which I lived last summer was pretty much identical to the one I am in now except for the view provided from the window. Last summer, from the front window, I saw only another row of townhouses a few yards away across a narrow street.

Now, compare that to the window in this townhouse. While not offering a look at the most picturesque landscape imaginable, it reveals a glimpse of river bottomland filled with trees which is typical of the southern Minnesota countryside and provides occasional sightings of a variety of wildlife.

Like my doctor friend, I agree than any window is better than no window, but I would argue that the real value for having one to look through rests upon what is to be seen beyond the glass and in its value/meaning to the beholder.

To serve a real purpose, I believe that a window must offer a vision which not only draws the person toward it -- no matter if it is drawing one outside or inside -- but into it, and even beyond it, to who knows where.

Perhaps, now would be a good time to renew a friendship with Alice, to discover if the window really is a window or, actually, is a mirror and, possibly, to follow her "Through the Looking-Glass."

At a Window
by Carl Sandburg

Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.

Christmas is what we want it to be

2010-12-24T11:11:00.000+01:00

We got mittens, too

To be a child is to relish each and every season

I have been told I am drawn to high-pitched voices

And, speaking of high-pitched voices

These guys actually are pretty good

I suppose this makes sense in a way

Approaching the Zone at Twilight

2010-12-20T03:33:00.028+01:00

Have you ever held the Moon? Even touched it? This tree did, as twilight turned to dusk -- or dusk turned to twilight. Which is it?

The merry-go-round is life itself

It is no secret that I think cable television is ninety percent garbage television and an excellent example of how big government and big business form a monopolistic partnership to rip off the so-called huddled masses.

But, one of the few saving graces of cable television is that it serves as a time tunnel of sorts to programs and films from the past. Some of them -- many of them, come to think of it -- are excellent and, often, are beneficial, worthwhile entertainment which never would be seen today if it were not for cable television.

I guess you know where this is leading. A few nights ago, I watched an episode of "Twilight Zone" from 1959. It was the first year this show was on television, and the episode -- "Walking Distance" -- was among those written by the show's creator, Rod Serling. Here is an excerpt of the dialogue:

Robert Sloan: Martin.

Martin Sloan: Yes, Pop.

Robert Sloan: You have to leave here. There's no room, there's no place. Do you understand that?

Martin Sloan: I see that now, but I don't understand. Why not?

Robert Sloan: I guess because we only get one chance. Maybe there's only one summer to every customer. That little boy, the one I know -- the one who belongs here -- this is his summer, just as it was yours once. Don't make him share it.

Martin Sloan: Alright.

Robert Sloan: Martin, is it so bad where you're from?

Martin Sloan: I thought so, Pop. I've been living on a dead run and I was tired. And one day I knew I had to come back here. I had to get on the merry-go-round and listen to a band concert. I had to stop and breathe, and close my eyes and smell, and listen.

Robert Sloan: I guess we all want that. Maybe when you go back, Martin, you'll find that there are merry-go-rounds and band concerts where you are. Maybe you haven't been looking in the right place. You've been looking behind you, Martin. Try looking ahead.

So, now that you have read the dialogue, here is some background information about this episode. A middle-aged man, Martin Sloan, is driving cross-country when he stops his car at a gas station. He is worn-out, burned-out, depressed, disgusted and disgruntled. His thoughts are on the carefree days of his boyhood.

At the gas station, Martin is told by the attendant that his hometown, Homewood, is within "Walking Distance." He decides to go there and, when he arrives, Martin finds Homewood appears exactly as it existed when he was a boy.

As a note aside, I will mention that the actor portraying Martin is Gig Young, who was born and grew up in Minnesota. His usual role in films during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s was that of a supporting character, frequently playing the best friend of the leading man. He was a much better actor than he is generally credited as having been and, I think, his performance in "Walking Distance" demonstrates that fact.

Martin eventually encounters himself as a boy, and following him home, meets his parents. Trying to convince his parents that he is their son from the future, he succeeds only in seemingly demonstrating his insanity. Martin is asked to leave by his parents.

Martin finds his childhood self on a carousel and tries to warn his younger self to enjoy his childhood before it is too late. His advances scare young Martin, who falls off the merry-go-round and injures his leg. This causes the adult Martin to begin walking with a limp.

Martin is then confronted by his father, who now believes his story about being his middle-aged son. His father advises him that everyone has their time, and that he should look to the future rather than to the past. Martin finds himself back in his own time, walking with a new limp.

Returning to the here and now: Sometimes obvious answers to dilemmas are found in the damnedest places. It could be that after having read the background regarding the story, you might wish to read the dialogue once again and, possibly, to think about it for a minute or two or three. Or, even watch the entire show and form your own opinion of it and its message ....

Man vs. Ubermensch

2010-12-17T03:33:00.017+01:00

David Cornwell, who writes under the pen name of John le Carre, and Ian Fleming actually had a background in the world of spooks, spies and international espionage before they began writing novels. Le Carre's fictional George Smiley, who "came in from the cold," and Fleming's James Bond, with his 007 "license to kill," are known to millions through books and films. Unlike those two authors, Vince Flynn has no such real-life experience, but has created a "master assassin" in the world of make believe: Mitch Rapp, who is claiming a place at center stage in the genre.

When is a book review not a book review?

It has been a few years since I wrote a book review, and I am not going to do it now, but I noted a few days ago that I would "report back" regarding my first encounter with Mitch Rapp -- the protagonist of something like eleven novels by Minnesota writer Vince Flynn. (That was a long sentence.)

I never have been a fierce fan of spy/crime fighter/detective/soldier of fortune novels per se, but I have read some along the way. Alistair MacLean and Frederick Forsyth are a couple of examples of authors I particularly like in this domain. Under the category of a series of books with a long, ongoing character/hero, Ian Fleming, (James Bond), John le Carre (George Smiley), Clive Cussler (Dirk Pitt), Lester Dent (Doc Savage) and Tom Clancy (Jack Ryan) are novelists whose fictional characters are among those with whom I am reasonably well versed at reciting their exploits.

But, to illustrate that I am not an actual fan of the genre, Vince Flynn and his Mitch Rapp have been dominating best-seller lists for more than a decade and I do not recall running across them to the degree that I actually remembered them until a month or so ago.

In a few words, the novel which introduced me to Flynn and Rapp is the much acclaimed "American Assassin." It is the story of Rapp, a twenty-three-year-old recent college graduate who is recruited into an "off-the-books," contract group of assassins formed and operated by a few individuals within the CIA. These individuals believe America's campaign against terrorism has been soft and ineffective, so they launch their own "terminate with extreme prejudice" operations.

Rapp's wife-to-be was a passenger aboard Pan Am Flight 103 that was downed by a terrorist bomb over Scotland in 1988, and the setting for the novel is roughly twenty years ago. Rapp is determined to wreak vengeance (i.e., justice), is highly intelligent and an extraordinarily gifted athlete -- factors which combine to make him an ideal weapon in the war against terror.

Since this is not a review, I will only briefly state that the novel does present an accurate and concise description of the world that was in the 1980s and early 1990s in the Near East, and American involvement as it existed in places like Beirut, Lebanon, during that era. It also provides an accurate and concise picture of the intrigue and games played by intelligence and counter-intelligence officers during Cold War years. In a sense, it is an actual recital of history.

I found no faults with the book other than it ended too abruptly for my taste. It could have been (and should have been, I think) another fifty pages in length to provide more description, detail and character study/reaction to the final events as they unfolded: To put more meat on the bones of this tale and its central characters, in a manner of speaking.

A fascinating (to me, anyway) element to the story is that Rapp, like Fleming's James Bond and unlike le Carre's George Smiley or Clancy's Jack Ryan, is considerably more than a bit of a sociopath. In a sentence, Rapp could well be the next evolutionary step in "good guy" killers, succeeding Bond.

Conversely, Rapp lacks the intellectual and the emotional qualities of the "good guy" killers in le Carre's or Clancy's worlds -- men who understand love rather than simply experience sex, and who are capable of feeling remorse and guilt for their actions -- which makes him "less real," less believable and, certainly, less literary. (Another very long sentence. So, shoot me with a Walther PPK. Do I care?)

In essence, there is not much difference between the bad guys and the good guys in their actions and reactions except that the bad guys are after wealth and power while the good guys are after justice and, ultimately, peace on earth.

A candidate for a master's degree or a doctorate could do worse than to prepare a thesis/dissertation examining the evolution of spies, assassins and soldiers of fortune in literature over the span of the last generation or two. (Longer, if Dent's creation, Doc Savage, were to be included, since most of these books were written during the 1930s.)

I have read a synopsis of Flynn's other novels about Rapp and, frankly, the story line in all of them seems a bit too far-fetched to interest me, so I doubt I will pick up another unless someone gives it a great recommendation. The fly in the ointment of the Mitch Rapp series is that our young "Ubermensch" seems to me to be presented as an individual only one step away from donning a cape and flying to the rescue. I prefer fictional (as well as real-life) characters, including assassins, to have both feet on earth.

Two years of this & that

2010-12-14T04:44:00.009+01:00

Rivers of ice have replaced driveways and streets in this neck of the woods since the fourth winter storm of the autumn -- in this instance, a full-fledged blizzard -- arrived on Saturday. Although the calendar still maintains it is autumn, FramWinter officially begins on November 1 each year. That is ice, not water, glistening in the sun on the driveway and in the street. Freezing rain fell for a few hours before another foot of snow began to cascade from the sky. Consequently, even when the snow has been pushed aside, a quarter-inch of solid ice covers the roadways. In times like this, having a Suburban to drive makes life much more comfortable and significantly safer.

Adrift on the sea of blogs

It was in August 2008 when I first arrived on the sea of blogs. I was "following" a young lady I had met and who had asked me to read her posts.

In early January 2009, I began wandering around -- reading and looking. A few days later, I began my own blog. Two weeks later, I began a second blog. About two weeks later, I decided to run with just the second and dropped the first.

During the intervening two years, the most puzzling element of life on the blogs has been how many of those who were active when I began have since become very sporadic at posting or, in some cases, have gone away entirely.

It is disappointing in a sense, but not surprising. It basically proves that most bloggers are more interested in expressing themselves than in communicating with other people -- which is only natural.

What is most disappointing, following this line of thought, is that most people demonstrate this aspect not only by ceasing to write and/or to display photographs, but they also cease visiting others who, for one reason or another, they chose to follow.

In a sentence, I think this provides one more demonstration of how impersonal and shallow internet communications are when compared to real-world communications.

The circle lasts a lifetime

In the news business, something I was associated with for a few years, there is a custom of doing "roundup" stories at the end of the year under such categories as top ten news events of the year; top ten news makers of the year; ten best photographs of the year; ten worst natural disasters of the year. On and on.

This year, I am inventing a deviation to this concept and measuring my life in certain aspects experienced to this point. Here are some of the things I have been listing:

Foreign nations visited (either in the military, for business reasons, or as a tourist): Four in the Far East, two in the Near East, five European, four in Africa, three in south or middle America; one north of the U.S. American border (yes, I know there only is one there); and, and, and .... I guess that is it.

States lived in as a resident: Four; states lived in as a civilian non-resident: Two; states simply visited or traveled through or underwent military training in: Twenty-one, plus the District of Columbia

Seventeen cars or trucks owned; seventy-seven pistols, rifles or shotguns owned; two wives who owned me .... well, that seems like a good place to stop.

Now, the reason for this exercise: It is part of an attempt to look for some variations, some new experiences for the months ahead. It is obvious a person could travel forever and still never see everything. It is also likely there is no pot of gold or "magic person" at the end of the rainbow. So, why bother to look?

After a while, life seems to be nothing more than walking around in a circle. So, if I seem to be jaded, it is only because I am truly bored -- especially with snow and cold = winter.

Whatever you do, do not tell me

2010-12-07T00:12:00.012+01:00

The segment of woodland across the road from this townhouse has a number of "wild" residents and occasional visitors. This fellow, a hawk of some size, undoubtedly was hoping a rabbit or a squirrel or, possibly, even a pheasant, would come wandering past and provide a Sunday dinner. Since it is not a game bird, I am poorly versed in the family of hawks, falcons and similar birds of prey. But, I suspect this is a Redtail Hawk simply because I can see traces of red among his feathers and because they are found in southern Minnesota. The photographs were taken from my window. I went outside to try for a closer approach, but, by the time I arrived, all that was to be seen were my neighbors slamming car doors and yelling at each other across the top of their car -- and, sadly, no longer a hawk in a tree. Neighbors be damned.

As you might imagine

In America, even today, sixty-nine years after the fact, the Japanese attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor still is observed and remembered. Yesterday's enemies are today's friends and allies, something I will never understand -- but, such is life, and there are many things I do not understand about life.

But, of more significance to me, December 7, is the anniversary of the argument my second wife and I experienced which eventually and directly led to our divorce. Perhaps, at this point in time, of even more importance to me on the calendar is December 10. That day will mark the thirteenth anniversary of my departure from the world of smoking.

If you have not heard this tale, here is the abbreviated version. I decided back then that the time had come for me to quit smoking. My habit during that era of my life included three or more packs of cigarettes a day (Salems and Camel straights), one or two cigars and an occasional pipe load.

Being a man of sound fiscal habits, I smoked the last of my cigars and pipe tobacco, and began work on the remaining cigarettes in the final carton I had purchased. As fate would have it, at approximately 2:00 p.m. on December 10, 1997, I lit the last cigarette in the last pack from the last carton I had and I smoked it.

I never looked back, but ....

As you might imagine ....

Probably every two or three months, I will tell someone that I miss smoking and that I am thinking about resuming the habit again. Maybe, just with cigars, I always am sure to add, because a good cigar literally makes my mouth water the way some food does, simply at the thought of them. But, so far, I have not done so.

Mind over matter. Not so tough if you really want something. Anything you really want, in terms of yourself, I believe, you can have if you really, actually do want it. Anyway, that has been my experience.

I do not think I would like him

There is not a great deal I wish to say about the band, Night Ranger, whose music I have posted here today, but I will make two remarks.

I think the band is greatly under-rated for its musical talent. It had a number of major, heavy-duty, rock songs, and the guitar work verges on the spectacular at times. Just watch and listen, if you do not believe me.

Then, too, is the stamina and the energy displayed during performances. Try dancing in your living room to this song, for instance, at the pace the music demands, and see if you make it to the end. I would bet you do not.

This is just one more band I regret never having seen live on stage. Like many things, it is my own fault that I did not attend a concert, because I probably could have made it to one. But, a person does not have time to go everywhere and to do everything. Life is just too damn brief, and there are not enough of them (lives, I mean) to make me happy. If there is a god, I do not think I would like him simply because of his design flaws when planning our existence.

Some things last; some things do not

2010-12-04T02:22:00.003+01:00

Whoever wrote the song, "The Boys are Back in Town," was not thinking of White Bear and I at the time. Our lives are rather sedentary these days, as is evidenced by the photograph. Here we are, seated in our respective chairs, working on our respective computers, watching our respective television programs and drinking our respective beverages of choice while working on our respective books. Mine is a tale of fantasy and science fiction. White Bear is attempting to assemble out of the disjointed, fragmentary and mutually contradictory human disciplines a single, logically integrated research framework for the psychological, social, and behavioral sciences -- a framework that not only incorporates the evolutionary sciences on a full and equal basis, but that systematically works out all of the revisions in existing belief and research practice that such a synthesis requires. Yes, I know .... I know.

Perhaps it is the fault of James

"Anyone who occasionally stops by here (and actually takes the time to read what has been written here) probably knows that I" -- sound familiar ?? I just copied those words from a post that I wrote a few days ago, but here begins new words -- seldom read a book that has not been around for a decade or two or three or more.

The reason is simple. I believe most books published today are literally not worth the paper they are printed on, and probably will have disappeared from the shelves of bookstores and libraries even before you have the opportunity to log in at eBay looking for a bargain price.

A book that has been in publication (and remains so) for a generation or two has proven its worth simply by still being in existence. Enough people continue to buy the book to justify a publisher re-issuing it even when it goes out of print. These are the books for me -- books that have proven themselves to be of enduring value.

All right. Now, to the point.

I picked up a copy of "American Assassin" by Vince Flynn a few days ago. I did so after watching a few James Bond films and listening to a few motion picture themes from the Bond series. This novel has been to the top of the New York Times best seller list for fiction and I have heard it mentioned by a few on television, so my curiosity got the better of me. Just to be real, I thought this book might be fun (even educational ??), and I hoped to discover how a new master at his espionage tradecraft might compare with the old grandmaster.

I will report back on my findings at a later date.

Diamonds never lie to me

Playing the "You Only Live Twice" music here a few days ago started me listening to more compositions from the James Bond films.

Shirley Bassey sang four of the Bond movie themes, more than anyone else, and, probably, the most recognizable ones. So, here are two from Ms. Bassey: "Diamonds are Forever" and "Goldfinger" -- songs and motion pictures by the same names. I assume there are many women in the world who would agree with the lyrics in the "diamonds" piece:

Unlike men, the diamonds linger;
Men are mere mortals who
Are not worth going to your grave for.
I don't need love,
For what good will love do me?
Diamonds never lie to me,
For when love's gone,
They'll lustre on.
Diamonds are forever, forever, forever.

During this listening period, I realized how little I knew about Ms. Bassey, so I took a look at her biography. She is British, Welsh, to be precise and, much to my surprise, she will be seventy-four years old next month.

The videos I have included here were made when she was sixty-three. She is a bit of a "showboat" with her gestures and her voice is not so smooth as it once was, but she sounds great, I think, and it is fun to see how much she is enjoying herself during these performances.

A personal note to close

Well, I signed on for an extra month in this townhouse, which means I am here until the end of January. It was not a difficult decision for a couple of reasons: Who wants to move on New Year's Eve (??) and I really have no immediate plans other than taking care of the family situation that will reach at least into January. In other words, since I am stuck here anyway, why change addresses in the middle of the situation?

In the meanwhile, another seven or eight inches of snow are expected between Friday and Saturday, which absolutely thrills me to pieces. Now, if I lived in the country, I might not mind it so much.

Embassies, dreams & living twice

2010-11-30T03:33:00.003+01:00

A few blogs to the right and straight on till morning, in the world of Kaya, who originated in Vilnius in Lithuania, there has been an ongoing story about her journey from there to here -- here being America. Part of this adventure was going to the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, to obtain a visa for entry into the U.S. So, for the fun of it and by request, here is a photograph of the American legation building in Warsaw for Kaya, taken last March or April (I am too lazy to check the precise date) by your friendly, neighborhood misanthrope (meaning me). The fence surrounding the building had a sign which forbid photographs, but, as any American citizen knows, public streets are public streets, even in Poland, and until fascism has replaced the republic, cameras are permitted in public places.

You only live .... how many times ??

Anyone who occasionally stops by here (and actually takes the time to read what has been written here) probably knows that I keep one or two televisions on by my computers from sunrise (more-or-less) until sunset (give-or-take eight or nine hours).

A few days ago, a series of James Bond films was being shown on the Science Fiction channel around here. (Do not ask me why the Science Fiction channel chose to do this; the early Bond movies were completely within the realm of plausibility and bore absolutely no resemblance to the genre.) Anyway, one motion picture in the series was, "You Only Live Twice."

The music captured me. The melody is nice, but it was the words which really caught my attention. Here are some of them:

You only live twice or so it seems
One life for yourself and one for your dreams

You drift through the years and life seems tame
Till one dream appears and love is its name

And love is a stranger who'll beckon you on
Don't think of the danger or the stranger is gone

This dream is for you, so pay the price
Make one dream come true, you only live twice

John Barry and Leslie Bricusse, two well-known songwriters in the world of motion pictures, wrote the piece. The film-version singer was Nancy Sinatra. She is the daughter of Frank. Her career was not as long or so great as was his, but, I think I like the words of this song better than those of any Frank ever sang.

And, for your edification (if you even care), here is an attempt at composing a haiku by "James Bond" (meaning, of course, by Ian Fleming, the novelist who wrote the Bond books). It is entitled, "You Only Live Twice," and it is from this poem which the title of the book, the subsequent film and the movie's theme song all originate. In an epigraph to the novel, Fleming wrote that Bond's haiku was done in the style of Seventeenth Century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho.

"You Only Live Twice"
by James Bond

You only live twice:
Once when you're born
And once when you look death in the face.

The year of many choices & residences

2010-11-27T03:33:00.005+01:00

Summer leaves on a sheltered, wooden deck.
Nothing else need be said.
Winter rules.

Nature is not so cruel as mankind

"As You Like It"
Act II, Scene 7
by William Shakespeare

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember'd not.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

A year to be remembered

There seems to be little doubt that 2010 will be remembered by me as one of the more unusual and, perhaps, more unique years of my life.

For nearly four months, I lived in another country as a civilian, rather than as a tourist simply passing through for a few days or as a man wearing a military uniform. I have lived in seven locations altogether. I have been in love. I sold a house. I bought a Chevrolet Suburban, sold an Audi A4 and, earlier this week re-bought the Ford Mustang that I sold last year. I might add that I bought and sold a few firearms, but that actually is pretty typical every year for me.

The year began hopeful and as one I was looking forward to experiencing. It is ending with more questions than answers, and with my road forward being one murky, muddy and a bit of a mystery. As I noted a few days ago, a situation has arisen which will require my time and attention at least well into January and, possibly, longer.

My point is that it seems I am in the midst of one of the periodic life changes we all go through from time to time -- all of us, that is, except those who spend forty or fifty years living in the same house and going to the same job day in and day out and never questioning their role or purpose in life.

The ideas I am considering pursuing when this obligation of a few months has been completed are all over the map, both figuratively and literally. I am thinking about looking for a newspaper job again; I am thinking about living in Minneapolis/St. Paul again (can you believe that, after my woodland and water diatribe?); I am thinking about returning to Warsaw or heading out to live for a time in some other European capital city; I am thinking about building a house again, on land I have in South Dakota or, maybe, somewhere along the North Shore of Lake Superior; I am thinking about moving to Florida, at least for a while. This is but a sampling of the thoughts that have been going through my mind the past five or six days.

I also am considering leasing a house or a townhouse right here, where I am, for five or six months, and writing, writing, writing without distraction.

So often, people feel trapped by the lives they are living -- jobs they do not like or marriages that are unhappy probably are the primary causes of these situations. I have no such problems. My dilemma is just the opposite. I have too much freedom and too many choices, and my nickname at this point in time might well be "Mr. Indecisive."

I do have a tendency to procrastinate, but, somewhere along the line, lightning will strike and a course will be set and all that will be visible is a cloud of dust in the direction I have gone.

I wonder if I would do better -- if any of us would do better -- if we could live our lives, say, three consecutive times with full knowledge of the first two when we arrived at the third.

Yes, I wonder .... do you?