Category: Musings

“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, or add another hue unto the rainbow, or with taper-light to seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, is wasteful and ridiculous excess.”

When is carnage necessary? When does a tragedy make sense?

Every time a TV or radio newscaster — or, all too often, a spokesman for law enforcement or first responders — says “this senseless tragedy,” it implies that some tragedies occur logically, that some thefts of precious life were necessary.

Melodrama adds to the numbing of America. Mark Twain had little use for excess adjectives, and his wisdom is all the more valid today.

Murder.

Rape.

Abduction.

Abuse.

Of course, senseless.

Of course, unnecessary.

Of course, (choose your hackneyed adjective).

But look at those words. Hear them in your head. Feel the chill, the anger, the sadness. They need no modifying.

The more we sugar- or mud-coat these terms that pierce our hearts, the more we blunt their power to move us.

If we do not move, we do not act. Instead, we think and we pray.

Scientists love to debate how long it takes to form a habit and then break it. Three weeks to make it, three months to unmake it. Five unstructured years to lock it in, five motivated days to abandon it.

What’s clear is, habits based on a daily routine are the hardest to ditch. They become mooring stones, and we attach ourselves to them emotionally as well as physically. They become part of our identity; in fact, they almost have identities of their own.

When they’re broken abruptly, when the activities they involved are taken from us, it’s like a death in the family, and we mourn. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, DABDA and all that.

Continue reading Nuns, monks wear them well

Phobias seem to come in two flavors.

Some are learned, historical: An attack by a dog leads to fear of dogs. And that makes perfect sense. If a possible outcome to a situational experience is already known, you’ll avoid that situation. Lightning can and does strike the same place frequently.

That type of behavioral adaptation could be considered prudent, in fact.

Other phobias, though, seem pre-wired into some of us. It’s possible they’re learned, but I can’t see how.

These are the ones that make you feel all squishy inside, or the way you feel after an electric shock. Tingly, wishing you could shake it off the way a Labrador shakes off water.

These are the ones that make no sense. They lurk in the back of the brain and jump out like a bad Halloween scare. And because they are mostly dormant, you don’t modify anything in your life until they hit you. And then — again — it takes a while to shake them.

Walking too close to a bridge railing gives me the feeling that something will pull me in. Well, maybe not pull me in, but I feel as if something will compel me to go over the side. So I walk — and drive — toward the middle whenever I can.

Yet I have no measurable fear of heights.

Then there’s trypophobia. Items such as lotus pods with little blisters and eyeball-like seeds give me the heebie-jeebies for no discernible reason. They just do.

Phobias such as this can paralyze you, if you opt to be hyper-aware, if you see monsters under the bed. Especially ones with a zillion eyes.

I can’t say I’ve ever been paralyzed by fear of the things, and it didn’t take much effort to avoid them years ago when I worked for the florist. 

Nonetheless, phobias that make no sense can trick you into dwelling on them. And then they win. Ugh.

Some phobias can’t be beaten, only dealt with. An uneasy truce, with a DMZ if you’re lucky. If ever there were a “know thine enemy” situation, it would be fear itself, to coin a phrase.

The greater challenge is knowing yourself, skills and all, fears and all, to ensure that every day you choose to be your best self, and give yourself to a world that needs your contributions.

Why are precious metals precious?

What makes platinum, gold, silver, copper and gemstones valuable?

Darned if I know.

The four big shiny things are marvelous conductors of electricity, in descending order; perhaps in millennia long ago they made their wearers tingle or something. And these days they make our hand-held technology tick, though glass fibers — from relatively common sand — are replacing ductile metal strands in communications.

I don’t buy the rarity argument, either. Komodo dragons are rare in New Jersey, but I wouldn’t emulate the gold-panning Forty-Niners and leave my home in a hunt for them.

Shiny rocks.

I wear two pieces of jewelry, both of them signs of a relationship with my beloved and with the Creator who brought her into my life. A simple wedding band and a pendant with the head of Christ under the crown of thorns. My smartwatch doesn’t count as jewelry; it’s a tool (albeit with more apps than I’ll ever use).

Please know, this is not a criticism of folks who wear jewelry. I don’t object to it (as I said, I have some).

I just don’t understand the gold etc. thing. Never have; doubt I ever will.

So every time I hear a radio ad for a gold IRA or see a TV commercial for precious metals, I think about investing in hammers and nails. In vaccines to cure Ebola and river blindness.

Well, maybe some copper. As in pipes to bring clean water everywhere it’s needed.

I don’t believe in auras.

(In general, I also don’t believe in starting a post or homily with “I,” but sometimes it’s necessary.)

I know many people are convinced they can see glowing fields of energy around people — all people, usually — and that the auras change color or intensity or both according to the aura’d person’s mood or other factor.

I’m sure my dubious fashion choices would clash with an aura if I had one.

I do believe in people’s energy. It often manifests as inexplicable attractiveness, but it’s far more than that.

Certain people can walk into a room and there’s a Super Trouper-level spotlight surrounding them. In the theater or in show biz, we call it It.

The It Girl. The It Boy. My Lawd, they’ve got It.

You know It. I don’t think It can be measured by a PKE meter or a Geiger counter or anything remotely quantitative, but you definitely can tell when somebody has It and somebody else really has IT.

You can nurture It to its fullest, but It has to be planted early in a person’s life, even at birth. Maybe her It started as raw intelligence; perhaps he was born with a bio-mathematically perfect Denzel face.

Sometimes people come close to fully realizing their It, but fall short, and there’s an incompleteness about them. Their energy is a little off. Maybe that’s what the aura-seers perceive.

The best It People have developed to the max, and then share, humbly, their gifts. Many are leaders; few are bosses. And, yes, they draw a crowd. If the It People are fully actualized, that crowd turns into a group hug.

It’s no secret, far from an elephant in the room, even, that people are more divided than ever.

Whether you attribute the situation to tribalism or a more caustic “ism,” the gaps between us are real, often deep, frequently wide.

Too deep, too wide to cross? That’s a matter of choice. As, of course, is everything when you’re a person who lives and not merely exists, who actively progresses and not passively goes for a ride.

The first choice is to acknowledge that the notion of shared experience is an incredibly flawed one. You can’t experience my life any more than I can be a Blackfoot or a Zulu or a woman.

We can choose to listen and empathize, not as someone else’s hero or savior or scapegoat, but as a fellow traveler.

I want to know who you are, what you’ve experienced through all your senses and through all your emotions and thoughts. Your experiences really can’t be shared, even if we were at the same event side by side, because our previous experiences will shape how we react, internalize, commit to memory.

Your memories, and your interpretation of how your experiences shaped who you are … those, perhaps, you will choose to share with me, so I may know you a bit better.

I hope to accomplish this with humility.

First and foremost, thank you for weekends, whenever they arrive, Sabbath or otherwise. Thank you for coffee and lunch breaks. For OSHA.

Thank you for this holiday.

Working people’s contributions aside, there’s a bigger significance to this weekend. This is back-to-school season, or as retailers have been saying since July 4, BTS.

Having somebody in school means packing lunches or slipping the lunch money into a pouch where asshole bullies can’t find it. Checking homework, first over the student’s shoulder and next via Google or our professorial friends who know we’re mangy at math. Disabling the snooze button, because the schoolbus maintains a tight schedule. Filling shopping carts at Target and Staples, in person or online.

Thank you, FedEx and UPS.

We don’t have anybody in school anymore, PhD candidate notwithstanding. Still, the rhythm of the seasons is guided not by the angle of the sun but by the bell or buzzer or tone for the first class of the day on the first day of the school year. 

As former students, we all feel that tug. We’re conditioned from pre-K into the workaday world to shift gears on Labor Day.

Beaches close. So do carousels and Skee-Ball. Pizza doesn’t taste as good.

Politicians shift into eighth gear for Silly Season.

Of course it’s manufactured. Of course it’s Pavlovian or Skinnerian. The air really isn’t hissing out of the balloon (not with a near-heat wave kicking in).

That doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Because it sure feels real.