More Surprises Ahead!

              It’s the end of another decade, and it’s taking me back to the first ‘turning of a decade’ in my memory. As I was born in ’54, and not conscious of such things as we entered the sixties, my first such memory was the ending of the 60’s – which to me represented my entire life – and the advent of 1970.

              I still think of the 60’s as a really extraordinary decade, one that outstrips all that have followed for significance, drama, dynamic cultural shifts, etc. Was it really so, or mainly that it was the decade in which I became aware of the world? On a personal level, I might say that the decade I was entering was more significant, or the one that followed, which I entered at 25. But that’s for another post.

              In truth, I don’t remember any specifics about New Year’s Eve 1969 or New Year’s Day 1970. But I remember where I was in my life. I had graduated from New York city’s Joan of Arc Junior High School in June, and I had just finished by first semester at the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. I was still adjusting to that really different environment, and the Christmas-New Year vacation was my first time home. I was getting together with friends who’d scattered to high schools all across Manhattan, the Bronx and the other boroughs.

             One of my few crystal clear memories of the time is of walking outside of our upper West Side apartment building shortly before leaving for Exeter. I remarked to myself that I would never be in that particular life again. I somehow knew – maybe from already having been uprooted from Detroit to New York, and from New York to Berlin and back – that when and if I ever returned to that precise location, it would have changed, and I would have changed so much that it wouldn’t be ‘coming home’ at all. And during that first Christmas holiday back, that was proving true. I'd already encountered so much that was new in my new schoolmates, who were from everywhere except my little corner on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The kids I met who lived closest to me were from Harlem, East Harlem and the Upper East Side, which were like three different worlds. My roommate had grown up in Saudi Arabia - his father an executive with ARAMCO, the huge oil conglomerate.

              Looking ahead from that New Year ’69-’70, as I know I was doing because I’ve done it every year, I knew so little about what lay ahead. I had no idea how miserable and out of place I would feel at Exeter before something shifted and it became a beloved place. No idea of all the novel ideas and perspectives I’d encounter through my classes, and even moreso through my fellow students and the varied communities we formed. I had all of ‘growing up’ ahead of me, the intentional and unintentional detailing of my values and character. How could I have known? Of course, I couldn’t have.

              And naturally, half a century later, the story is the same in many respects, though to different degrees. There’s little more self-detailing to do, but lots more repairing. The new things that come may not create the degree of personal upheaval that discovering sex and love and independence did. The new ideas won’t be quite so revolutionary. But, the huge decrease in the role of sex, and the shifting meanings and expressions of love, and the different ways I use my altered independence have all produced surprising ripples already. And do I really know anymore about what’s ahead than I did back then?

              A dorm mate from that first year at Exeter recently sent me this photo. That's me on the couch with the raised leg. Looking at the bunch of us – 15-18 year olds speeding into adulthood so much more blindly than I think any of us would have acknowledged – makes me smile. The truth is that I’m not much less blind now. I don’t think that many of us are. Though we all have much more detailed and reasoned stories about ourselves and about life than we did then. The last bit may be somewhat unfortunate because we can cling so tightly to these stories that we become doubly blind to the surprises that come. But the surprises, the newness, the unexpected, that which defies expectation, that’s the real richness of every New Year, I think. And of every waking moment.

              May our New Years and New Moments surprise us all, for however long we are granted them!

Solitary After Party

              I love time alone. But being a loner is not an isolated characteristic/dimension, and from a broad perspective, loners aren’t that much different than their opposites, the sociable and gregarious folks. We all inhabit a fairly narrow range on the broad continuum of sociability. And we humans lean more toward the collective end of the spectrum. Vert few of us stay detached from the social web.

             So though I’m a loner, connections with others make up a large part of my day and of my life, and I wouldn’t survive without them – and that’s speaking literally, metaphorically and anthropologically.

              I love my time by myself, but I've noticed that the very best of such times immediately follow connection to loved others: to wife, friend, brother, family or team. I’m experiencing one of those heightened periods of aloneness now, and it flows directly out of the Christmas party we had last night. Ponczka is having a long, deep, recuperative sleep, and I'm slowly restoring order to the quiet house. And I feel wonderful!

              A party is a dense environment. It can feel charged and overloaded, especially as so much of my time these days is spent by myself, between my ears, and on the computer. And parties aren’t easy. They take work. They both stimulate and tire me. And because I also value one-on-one contacts, and like to push them into the personal and the deep, a good party can serve up a whole array of thoughtful, heartfelt, connecting exchanges with people, and leave me depleted.

              Which sets the table for a well-earned, replenishing withdrawal. The space of time right after a gathering, or a meeting with a loved one can feel amazingly liberating and yet leave me with a sense of deep connectedness in my solitude. 

              Sure, it’s the actual time with others that nourishes, that’s the engine and the creative force in the relationship. But afterward, I can savor. Some of the savoring comes through memory and re-living. But its greatest force is in the imprint on my spirit, on my being and even on my body. My experience with meditation has demonstrated that my mental energy impacts my body directly and tangibly. While it’s a leap, I also believe that this effect carries outside of the body: That who or what I think about is touched by me. And whoever thinks of me, also touches me. I think that such connection is always reciprocal to some degree, even when we aren't aware. In a way, it's similar to the fact of taking into myself molecules of whatever I smell, and leaving traces of myself on whoever or whatever I touch. 

              So after interactions with loved ones, I’m filled by their energy and love, in a very tangible and physical way. And they may be similarly touched by me. And that makes these alone times among the richest and most valued of my life.

Telling Truth to Popcorn Eaters

     Last night I re-watched "American History X", a 20-year old film that I saw and thought highly of twenty years ago. I thought well of it this time too. It's a film that condemns the Skinhead / Ultra Right / White Power movement that was on the rise a generation ago. And it applies just as well today as it did then.

     But in watching it a second time, I noticed something I may have missed the first time. Which is: the film rejects this movement for all sorts of reasons that aren't directly related to the essence of the movement. Meanwhile, it gives the espousal of the movement's philosophy full voice, without ever allowing full expression to the logical repudiation of this philosophy.

     I don't criticize the heart or intent of the film. It provides a hard look at a difficult subject, and one that's difficult to fully break down and analyse. I just wish it had tried a bit harder to do so.

     The way I viewed it, the arguments that the film presents as to why the Ultra Right is to be rejected are:

- it's a movement that stems from anger and that seeks targets for that anger

- it gives its practitioners an 'other' to blame for their hardships

- the practitioners of this creed do horrible things to people

- some of the people 'selling' this creed are self-serving or are cowards

- and that being associated with this life-style puts one into association with crude and violent, anti-social, ignorant freaks.

     Now, all of these are reasons why one might legitimately decline to follow a life-style, or to buy into a creed or social organization. However, none of them in any way undermine the fundamentals of a belief system itself. All of the reasons above can equally apply to followers of particular movements that have grown out of Christianity, Buddhism, Anarchy, Capitalism, Communism, whatever. There are people who follow all of those creeds for the wrong reasons, who do horrible things in its name, and who avoid the painful reality of their lives in doing so. It doesn't make those philosophies wrong.

     The shame of it is, the film does such a great job of showing Derek Vinyard, the protagonist as portrayed by Edward Norton, making very intense and powerful arguments that I'm sure are the very arguments that in fact successfully brought in so many of it's followers. But those in the film who oppose the philosophy either express their views weakly or they are preoccupied with the emotional/social/relational problems of this protagonist. Or worst of all, the character best able to attack the philosophy at its core, by demonstrating its factual and intellectual weaknesses, that being Dr. Sweeney, as portrayed by Avery Brooks, isn't given the opportunity to do so. What a lost opportunity.

     Sweeney is depicted throughout as an intelligent, perceptive, caring, professionally skilled educator. It is he who points out the most potent of the reasons why Derek's clinging to White Power is misguided. But he isn't ever given the screen time to actually enunciate why the arguments of the Far Right are wrong.

     I will be guilty here of committing the same error, in that I'm not going to make that analytical breakdown here. Maybe the film - as I do - presumes that its consumers know the argument. Maybe we're both right. My defense though is that I didn't set out here to break down the Ultra Right, as I believe the film set out to do. My purpose here is to point out how a really good film fell just short of a mark it might easily have reached. And one of the main reasons I make that point here is that it isn't really an isolated fault in popular entertainment.

     "Unforgiven" is an outstanding film that is said to be against violence. But I don't see that it ever really makes an argument about violence being inherently wrong. Instead it shows how being violent has corroded or destroyed the lives of particular individuals. A great argument is made, yes, but without resorting to the direct argument that it might have employed.

     "Django Unchained" is another example. In particular, I recall the scene in which the plantation owner played by DiCaprio makes a case that Blacks demonstrate their inferiority by their failure to rise up when outnumbering their oppressors. That argument leaves out so much of reality. But the counter-arguments are never presented. Instead, the oppressor is simply destroyed in a manner that satisfies the lust for vengeance, but doesn't even bother to address reason.

     That's my rant. Great movies that I wish had been a little greater. Maybe I need to just shut up and make my own movie. Or at least write one. Or a book.

Final Lap of NaNo

     It's been almost four weeks since I started NaNo - National Novel Writing Month. With 3 days left, I've produced 45,578 of the 50K word target, just slightly ahead of pace for finishing on the 30th.
And I'm really liking my novel.

     But beyond simply being happy with the result, I feel I've learned a lot about writing. I feel much more comfortable with the idea of setting deadlines for myself and being able to produce. The reluctance I've had around that in the past has had a lot to do with getting stuck upon encountering problems in the production of a particular piece that I didn't know how to solve.
   
     Barbara, a fellow writer in my first writing group, used to always advise 'writing through' any such problems. And while I thought I understood what she meant, I get it on a much deeper level now. Because each of the problems I've encountered this month, with plot, character development, continuity, eliminating contradictions, what have you, have been solved by writing through them.

     The difference has been that, 1) I've given myself permission to write badly, and 2) the commitment to producing the daily word count of approximately 1,700 words a day has forced me to keep on writing when I'm writing badly. That's amounted to a potent combination because, incredibly and with remarkable consistency, I've learned that I can only write badly for so long before I stumble across something that isn't quite so bad. And that not so bad opens the doorway to something better.

     The result is that, these bad writing days have always generated something that led into a good writing day, which is another way of saying: to a solution to a writing problem that was blocking me.
Writing and writing and writing, however I might feel about it in the moment, has led to me finding solutions to a dozen or so really challenging problems in the development of this novel. And I'm going to finish up with a manuscript that, while short and incomplete, has substantial idea content, a few dynamic characters, and a decent plot.

     There will be lots to do in December, but I'm going to insist to myself that I not let this project drag on for much longer than that. Perhaps I'll set myself other deadlines.

     Many WriMo's come back to it year after year. That was surprising to me when I first heard it, because I thought of this as a kind of quirky, un-serious, bucket-list sort of thing. But I get it now, and can already see myself doing another round next November.

     I'm extremely grateful for what this month has been. My writing Life is certainly reinvigorated. I have so many ideas for books I'd like to write, that at my previous pace were total dream-stuff. Now I see that it isn't inconceivable that I could produce 1st drafts of all of them in one year! I don't think I'll reach that far. I'm going to unchain the editor and let him at it, after all. But things are looking good in Novel Writing Land. Better than ever before!

My NaNoWriMo

      On a sudden inspiration, I decided to do National Novel Writing Month this year. To participate, you set out to complete a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. That makes for a fairly short novel, but a good chunk of work for just about any month. It comes to 1,667 words a day, or about 7 double-spaced, type-written pages.

     I heard about the challenge years ago, and have met a couple of people who tried it. But I'd never considered attempting it myself. Not with work, a fairly eventful personal life, and on-going writing projects that I struggled to make time for. I realized a while back that I was never going to be that writer who gets the job done while holding down a job. It's not that I wouldn't like to be. Just isn't in my character or my skill set.

     Looking back over my writing history, the few times I accomplished forward progress were all periods when I was either un-employed or under-employed. I accepted some time ago that multi-tasking is not my thing. A good writing day for me is anything but efficient. I get it done in chunks ranging from one to three hours long, with equally long chunks of mostly unstructured time between them, during which I might be reading, or walking, or running around doing chores, or not doing chores, or doing crosswords, or catching up on news, or sending emails, or out on my bike, or walking, or visiting with a friend. On just sitting somewhere thinking about things. That's a process that works for me really well.

     I discovered during my first forays into writing that it's these varied periods of not writing that generate ideas and insights. It's when I stumble into solutions to writing problems. I can then return to my typewriter or computer ready for another hour or two or three, after which I'm spent again and unable to continue. The same sorts of ideas and insights have always come to me while working, and I've jotted down a thousand of them over the decades, and have gotten a start developing dozens. But I've brought very, very few of them to any kind of completion. In fact, the main reason I started this blog was to take on short subjects that I could complete and offer up to readers in a day or two. And it's been wonderful for that.

     But I was never going to develop into any kind of writer with this process. Which brings me to now, to retirement. It's been more wonderful than I can express. For the first time, I'm able to structure my days in a way that facilitates my writing, and not feel that it causes issues in other areas of my life. For the first time, I'm able to live as the writer I want to be, for more than just a month or a few weeks. And I'm loving it. Which brings me to NaNoWriMo.

     Having arrived at this point of freedom, I was still stuck in a slow and ineffective writing pattern. Every substantial piece I've written has been completed over a period of weeks or months. My cynical and over-critical inner editor has become more and more of a tyrant over the years. I have a novel - one I actually think is pretty good - that I've been dusting off and pulling out to work on since 1996! That's so long ago that what was originally intended as a totally contemporary work has become a period piece. I have so many pieces and versions of it on my various computers that; they're like pieces of a fossilized missing link that I'm struggling to piece together. I don't know if I'll ever do anything with it. But what I know is that I must get past the glacially slow production method that produced it.

     So when I came upon a mention of NaNoWriMo in a recent edition of Poets & Writers, it struck me as the perfect thing. I would force my obnoxious inner editor into a month long hiatus, if not outright retirement, and simply write, write, write for a month. And hopefully, by the 30th, I'd have established some flow, some rhythm, and a habit of cranking out several pages every day, regardless of quality. And 12 days and 21,000 words in, I feel that I'm accomplishing just that.

     The non-profit behind NaNoWriMo maintains a website that's full of acknowledgment and encouragement for participants, including chat rooms, and schedules for the meet-ups happening all around the world, for writing together and a bit of socializing. There are veterans there to advise and encourage newbies like myself, and a word counting feature for us to track our progress. I was initially concerned that I was approaching the month with nothing more than an idea that came to me about a year ago, that I'd done nothing at all to outline it. But I've never been a planner anyway, but rather one of those writers who figures it out as I go.

     One of the pleasures of these 12 days had been watching this seed of an idea grow and branch out, session by session, as characters take shape and do things that introduce new elements and considerations. Yes, there's the increasing challenge of holding it all together, and this generates some tension, but only so much as it also generates possibilities.

     I expect that I'll post again as the 30th approaches, and report on how it's gone. I gave myself full permission to write badly, but so far, I kinda like what's taking shape. Another invitation/gift to myself was to try something different. I During my twenties and thirties I read lots of great, classic science fiction, but never gave a serious thought to writing it. But the idea that came to me a year ago, and that I decided to run with, is just that: a sci-fi romp in the tradition of the old masters: Asimov, LeGuin, Delany, Sturgeon, Arthur C. Clarke!...and I'm feeling their influence as I freestyle to my heart's content.

     Thank You NaNoWriMo, for your crazy inspiration!

A Brief but Glorious Sailing Career

Our sailboat came out of the water this week, and it may mark the end of our sailing career.

Bubbles - our First - a Halman 20

Sailing came in to our lives unexpectedly. (The sudden and surprising way is one of my favorite Ponczka stories, but it’ll have to wait for another post – or maybe an entire book; I have so many of them!) We started out with little expectation, except that it would be fun. It has absolutely been that, but it’s also offered a different way of seeing and being in the world.

For one, the laws of nature are different when on a small sailing boat. A scientist might not tell you that, but for anyone who has spent their life moving around on solid earth, the distortion and disorientation is undeniable.

Captain Ponczka in Action!

Early on, it was impossible to get myself or Bubbles – our boat – to move as I intended. To start with, how could a vessel that was powered by the wind move into the wind? And how could such a puny and stationary keel have such an effect on the movement of such a large boat? And how could a movable but even tinier rudder cause the boat to dance and spin so wildly? It took weeks and months to begin to figure out the basics of how to position the sails so as to go where we wanted to go, and that was when the water was calm and the wind fairly steady. Stormy weather made it all that much more complicated. Even moving two or three feet across the deck presented huge problems when that deck was continuously lurching and dropping out from under you.

Captain Ponczka says, "Go Forth!"

We counted ourselves as extremely lucky that Bubbles was designed to respond to heavy weather like a life boat, as so was near impossible to capsize. One of the early lessons we learned – which, thankfully, we never had to put into play – was that, when unmanageable weather struck, and when all else failed, it was advisable to surrender all control, go below deck, and let the boat do what she wanted to do. There are countless anecdotes of boats washing ashore intact after a storm, after their erstwhile masters have been lost at sea.

We had some scary moments before we learned this and other lessons. The worst was probably the first. We went out one sunny afternoon, shortly after learning some of the basics, and wondered why all the other boats we saw were coming in. A storm struck, seemingly out of nowhere. We were bounced around like a kernel in a popcorn popper while our sails were yanked loose and whipped about above us. I, like a fool, crawled to the foredeck, determined to rein them in. And if I had perished then, I’d have no one but myself to blame. No life vest, no secure line to hold onto, and crocs on my feet. And there’s no way Ponczka would’ve been able to steer around to get me if I’d been tossed overboard. Only half jokingly, when we made it back to shore I kissed the ground. Needless to say, since that experience we’ve always checked the forecast before leaving the dock, however glorious the weather seemed from shore.

Trickster - Our Second - a Catalina 27

That difference in perspectives from land to lake was one of the best parts of sailing. From just a few yards out, the land we live on – city and suburb – looks and feels so different. But actually, just going to the marina and sitting on the boat, and experiencing the slight rolling buoyancy of the tethered boat, could convey a sense of getting away, of being insulated from the heaviness of daily life. We soon came to understand why so many boaters hardly moved their boats at all, yet loved the boater’s life.

But there are other reasons for actually going out on the water that we’ll miss. It’s quiet. It’s serene. Sailing is a slow way to get from points A to B, but it’s also effortless and unhurried. And it can feel pretty fast, from a perspective of simply moving through space and over moving water. And there’s something uplifting about knowing that whatever power and speed one manages to harness is courtesy of natural forces in play.

On Lake Ontario

The most surprising and rewarding part of the sailing experience however, has been the community. Every marina is a kind of social club, or more accurately, several overlapping social clubs. Since moving to Hamilton, for various reasons we’ve made our home in three different marinas in just four seasons. But before that, while in Seattle, we belonged to the small Navy League Marina in Ashbridge’s Bay for 9 years, and there we had a wonderful community that we’ll remember for the rest or our lives. It contained only about 30 boats so, unlike the larger versions, was pretty intimate. There was no paid staff and all the work, including Spring Launch and Fall Haul Out, were handled by the boaters. Those two days alone – 8 to twelve hours long – led to a lot of bonding and mutual support among us. There were also meetings and work days when we actively supported our shared interests.

Fair Weather Sailor

During the season, there were lots of visits on one another’s boats, and shared meals at the picnic tables. And best of all, our marina happened to include quite a few musicians, including a pianist who made his living giving lessons, and a well-known professional rock and blues drummer. That bounty led to a number of jam sessions and ‘shows’ over the years. These were wide open affairs, where anyone was free to take the mic to share a song. I, with my also sax, wasn’t nearly the musician that most of my fellows were, but I was always made to feel welcome.

These were such good times! But another of the characteristics of marina communities is that they change every year, as boaters come and go. We had about a three year peak of our musical, communal boater community in Ashbridges Bay. We lost some key members after that, and the character of the community changed, as it inevitably had to. Ponczka and I moved to Hamilton then, and our mobility and distraction with other parts of life has kept us from becoming true members of the communities we’ve encountered here. But they exist, and in all of them, there is some sense of ‘alternate lifestyle’ and the ‘call to adventure’ to be found: always one or two whose entire being is centered around boats and life on the watery part of the world, always a few who live aboard their vessels, during the season or even year-round; always someone contemplating a big sail, down the coast or across the ocean.

Serenity

In 13 years of sailing, I’ve come to know for sure that my place is on solid land. I love the opening, the shift, the freshness that sailing offers. And I’m so grateful that it’s been part of my life. But I’ll never feel ‘at home’ or so totally at ease as I know the true sailors do. We don’t want to sell our current boat, Trickster, which we got about halfway through our career, when we wanted a vessel that was roomier below deck and more maneuverable on the water. Trickster is a 27’ Catalina. you might call it the Honda Civic of the seas, as it’s so user friendly that there are more of them than any other sailboat in North America. We’d love to keep her. 

But the other thing about sailing is that it’s expensive. It costs over $4k per year just to keep her docked in summer and stored in winter. So the year when we managed to get out only half a dozen times, sailing set us back almost a thousand bucks per outing. Which is absurd for folks with our income.

So our years of sailing may be done. And it makes us very sad. It was a wonderful, brief career.

B-I-D-E-N Doesn’t Spell OBAMA

I’m frustrated by the notion that the way to show loyalty to Barack Obama in 2020 is to back his 2008 running mate.

I was an Obama supporter, which doesn’t mean that I back everything he did while in office. While he pushed for and accomplished some positive, progressive measures: health care, LGBT rights, some checks on corporate greed, not only didn’t he go as far as I’d have liked, he didn’t go nearly so far as he himself would have liked.

I was very frustrated at his inability to bring in gun controls, I abhor the huge increase in drone warfare, and I sure wish he’d found another way to turn around the economy after its disastrous implosion in 2008 than to give or loan billions of dollars to the very corporations that caused it. But I recognize that he was even more frustrated than I was, by the organized resistance to change that he encountered in Washington.

Which is why I find it so ridiculous that supporting Joe Biden – a “middle-of-the-road” candidate, if there ever was one – is so often equated with ‘loyalty’ to Obama.

Biden speaks of Obamacare almost as a legacy that needs to be protected. But we mustn’t forget that Obamacare isn’t what Obama wanted at all; it is merely the best compromise he could find – a barely minimal beginning of an overhaul of a corrupted and ineffective health care system. Obama very much wanted a single-payer system, much closer to what Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are calling for, than the system that exists now.

Loyalty in politics shouldn’t mean dusting off policies and platforms from more than a decade ago, and holding them as sacred because of what they represented when they were new. That’s the same kind of reactionary ignorance that has conservatives insisting that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted according to the original intent of its framers in the 18^th Century, rather than by reasonable, philosophical extrapolations. (NO – the 2^nd Amendment does NOT suggest that gun ownership should be completely unchecked by concerns for public safety).

I will surely support Joe Biden if he emerges as the Democratic Party Presidential candidate to oppose Trump. But I hope that the party is bolder and more forward thinking than that.  I believe that the US badly needs leaders who will address global warming, foreign policy and economic inequality in bold ways that challenge the status quo. For now, I’m hoping that Sanders or Warren will succeed.

The notion that Black Americans are mostly falling in line behind Joe, as a standard-bearer of all that Barack represents really irks me. I don’t see it that way at all. And I hope that ALL voters will look and think more deeply than that. Of course, when I look at the idiocy that prevails at the right end of the political spectrum, where so many seemingly intelligent voters abandon truth and integrity in their continued defense of the nightmare that is Trump, I despair.

The old maxim seems to be true: that people get the leaders they deserve.

Coming into the Country

(with acknowledgment and apologies to John McPhee, a great writer)

A friend who lives up the road from here put it this way:
“I like to just go along, to let everything be the way it is. If a tree falls, I figure it was supposed to fall there, so I leave it. Sometimes it gets so quiet, and nothing is really going on. It’s almost like I’m not here.”

How does that strike you. Is it a little chilling. A little scary, this notion of almost…disappearing?

But no. It isn’t that at all. It’s actually very beautiful.

First of all, Dan is always doing something. One day, when he said he hadn’t done anything, he’d chopped down a tree, then spent four hours cutting up and stacking the wood.
Not exactly the same as letting a tree fall and just lay there.

What he means, really, is being in flow with these woods and this wildlife he lives within, so that all sense of being anxious or driven by anything falls away. Rules fall away. Society falls away. He forgets himself for awhile.
If I could say it any better, I’d have said it myself.

Willow on Fawn Lake in Addison, New York

My experience isn’t exactly that. I came here this week determined to make progress with my novel. And I spent lots of time struggling with it, trying to free myself of the eternal editor so that the writer could romp.

And even so, I fell into a rhythm that was as much the sun rising, and the fog gathering over the lake in the night, and the geese with their periodic summonses to one another
as it was my enduring battle with time, to have purpose, to matter, to achieve.

Time humbles me when I let myself be absorbed by it, let it insert space between my molecules and I suddenly breathe to a different rhythm.

Is it true, as Einstein said, that time and space are one?
I’m not so fixed in either from this place. Not so certain or definite at all. Yes, I understand that bit about almost not being here.

Too Dumb to Throw the Ball?

I'm a pretty big sports fan, and a follower of American Football in particular.

The NFL (National Football League) is celebrating its 100^th season with a lot of looking back, at great games, great plays and great players. And as the current season unfolds, the amazing success of black quarterbacks has me looking back, and observing gratefully that a racial barrier seems to finally have been overcome.

For most of the hundred years, including most of the Superbowl Era, which began in the mid 60’s, there were very few black quarterbacks in the sport. For those of you who aren’t fans, the quarterback is by far the most important member of a football team. He is the general of the offense. He controls the ball on every play, and by running with it, handing it off, or throwing it, manages the other ten players as they march down the field. It’s a complex and multi-faceted job, requiring the ability to quickly ‘read’ a defense, change the play at the last moment, make split-second decisions, and to demonstrate poise, judgement and leadership. And long after many Americans insisted that racism was no longer a part of the America’s character, you still hardly ever saw a black man leading a team from the quarterback position. And the reason – whispered, but known to everyone – was that blacks weren’t thought to be intelligent enough to manage the complexities of the position.

I won’t try to recount the long and varied history of the NFL in terms of racial inclusion. But a small number of blacks played in the league in the early decades, until the league segregated in the 30s. In the 40s it began to reintegrate, and by the time the NFL merged with the more integrated AFL in 1970, about 30% of the players were black. (as compared with about 10% of the nation’s population).

Russell Wilson & Patrick Mahomes

But black players were generally slotted into the speed positions, and only rarely did one make it into the league as QB, and when they did, almost always as a back-up. It’s said that though many black QBs excelled at the college level, they were often persuaded to change positions upon coming into the professional league. And there, even when they had success as QBs, it was usually credited to their athleticism and ‘instincts’ rather than their football knowledge and intelligence.

Warren Moon, who’d established his credentials in the Canadian Football League, was the first black QB to experience huge and sustained success when he came into the NFL in the 80’s as a starting QB and a star. Then Doug Williams led the Washington team to an impressive Superbowl victory in ’88. But despite these successes and the stardom of a few others over the years, like Randall Cunningham, Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick, the stigma persisted.

This state of affairs lasted right up to and through the presidency of Barack Obama. In a league in which more than 65% of the players were black in 2014, there were still only 7 or 8 starting black QBs on 32 teams. And very often, even these starting QBs were not highly regarded, sometimes credited mainly for their running ability, rather than as accomplished passers or capable team leaders.

And suddenly – seemingly, almost overnight – something has shifted. When you take a snapshot of the NFL today, you still find that only about one in three teams is led by a black quarterback. But the big change is in how they are regarded. Last year, began with a quartet of firmly established black QBs: Cam Newton, Dak Prescott, Deshaun Watson, and my favorite, Russell Wilson a sure bet to end up in the Hall of Fame, along with a few others fighting to establish themselves. Then, there was the sudden emergence of 2 more, Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes, both new players leading their teams for the first time, and immediately making them much more competitive. Mahomes went on win the year's Most Valuable Player award, going to a black QB for only the third time, following Newton in 2015 and Steve McNair in 2003.

And this development carried over into the current year. Currently, when you look at the QBR – a rating that takes into account all of the different elements of effectiveness – you find black QBs heading the list. In fact 4 of the top 5 on the list are black, and the one exception is replacing the injured Newton. Sports talk shows these days are for the first time regularly mentioning multiple black QBs - Mahomes, Prescott and Wilson - as leading candidates to win the award this year. 

And, these black QBs, instead of being denigrated for their generally more mobile and elusive styles of play, are now having the styles of their teams adjusted to suit them, rather than being constrained to play the more conservative style of decades past.

It’s a positive step, and one that I celebrate. It reflects a shift in thinking that is long overdue. It’s not the end of racial barriers in the league, by any means. There is still an extreme shortage of blacks in coaching, management and ownership positions, the obvious place for veterans of the sport. As in the society-at-large, there is still a tendency for people to want to say a problem has been dealt with when only the most egregious wrongs have been addressed.

And, if only one of the 32 teams would come to its senses and hire Colin Kaepernick, another very talented black QB who was essentially black-listed because he took a knee when the national anthem was played, in order to call attention to the killing of unarmed black men by police.

A Good Racist?

An eighteen-year old photo of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in blackface has led to a furor of shock and self-righteousness, and I really don’t get it. No, I get it that blackface is a banned activity these days, that it has too direct a connection to the time when whites wore it to depict gross caricatures of blacks, as savage, ignorant half apes, or as cartoonish buffoons, either incapable of surviving the world, or deserving of extermination from it.

And, as a Black American born in the 1950’s, I’ve known the sting: a realization that another thinks you beneath humanity and not worth respecting, not because of who you are, but because of something about you. Even if such an experience isn’t followed by an oppressive use of power – physical harm, incarceration, loss of job, home, agency – it still hurts.

But, while I like to think that all forms of ‘isms’ can be overcome by knowledge and by human to human contact, I don’t for a moment expect I’ll ever live in a world where they don’t exist. Should we really make life-long purity in the area of racial expression the minimum standard to remain acceptable in public life?

Racism is bad. But is everyone who is racist a bad person? You might think, from the reaction that gaffes such as Trudeau’s get these days, that the merest ‘racist’ expression makes one as loathsome and beneath contempt as a murderer or a serial pedophile. But, in my opinion, it’s an over-reaction to treat such things as extreme examples of wrong-doing.

No, everyone who has a racist thought isn’t a bad person. Many such people grew up in a culture where isms abound, or were influenced to mistrust and look down on some type of ‘other’, and simply accepted that. Most of us have such flaws, whether the very obvious kind, like being anti-black or anti-woman, or a less observed or well-defined kind, like being anti-young, anti-poor, or anti-uneducated, or maybe anti-the unhygienic (those who never developed the habit of brushing their teeth or changing their underwear as needed. Most of us have a revulsion, an active dislike, or at least a discomfort and wariness about some particular type of 'other' person, which is expressed through an automatic discounting, or worse. Obviously, that’s not good. It’s not even okay. But shall we just dismiss a third, or a half, or ninety percent of all human beings as unredeemable, because of the epidemic of stereotyping and pre-judging? I don’t think so. I’m not willing to write off that many of the flawed yet somehow endearing human beings I know. And I’m grateful for those who have chosen not to write me off, for my insensitivities and worse.

As much as I hate what Trump stands for, I’ll even defend something he said and was blasted for, when he commented that there were ‘good people’ on both sides of the Civil War monuments protest in Charleston in 2017. Though he may have intended to equate the virtue of the two sides, it wasn’t what I heard. And I think it was absolutely true – and fair to point out – that there were essentially good people supporting the presence of those confederate statues.

Most people who don’t carry and display an active prejudice have probably worked long and hard to overcome one. And most of them probably know that such aversions have their roots in fear. And they’ve probably learned not to be so afraid.

People. That’s what we are. And racism is like a low IQ, or a genetic defect, or really bad breath. It infects quite a lot of us without removing us entirely from the category ‘Good Person’. What makes it so much worse than those other sins, of course, is that a single racist outlook, shared by a large number of people, as in the US, or which is encoded into the very blueprint of a nation, historically and over time – again, as in the US – can oppress and even destroy an entire people. This is the form of racism that most demands our attention: the institutional, law-encoded kind, that's often so integrated into the social fabric that it's near invisible.

But must vigilance go to the point of bringing down every individual who cannot prove that they’ve never offended a people, even out of ignorance? I find this current state of hyper-vigilance both sad and disturbing. Is there anyone who wouldn’t fail such a test? I know I’d fail it, and if what people tell me is to be believed, I’m a pretty decent guy who doesn’t intentionally hurt or hate anyone, even racists.

Even intentional racism isn’t the incurable disease we often treat it as. I could tell you about a few good racists I’ve known. But I’ll hold it to one. Bud was the father of a white woman I loved and lived with. He wasn’t happy about her associating with the likes of me. Of course he didn’t know me, and this wasn’t about me, after all. Stoned racist.

He wouldn’t allow me to stay in their home for a particular Christmastime visit, but he allowed me into the house when I came to pick up his daughter and his grand-daughter, who was not my biological child, though I always wished she was. He studied me, cross-examined and debated me for half an hour, and politely shook my hand when I left. But still he did not approve.

A few years on, I met Bud again at a graduation for his grand-daughter. He apologized to me for his previous behavior, and thanked me for the role I’d played in his daughter’s and grand-daughter’s lives. Good racist.

As least by my account, by my experience. So yeah, it took him coming around. He hadn’t always been good. But when he started to take me in as just another human being, apart from the fixed ideas and categories in his head (something I must have managed too, though my own are harder to see and not at all fun to acknowledge), ultimately, our lives were lived in love-connected support of one another.

I’m glad I didn’t write Bud off. Nor he, me. But if you judged either of us by things we’d said, done or thought, five or ten or eighteen years earlier, writing us off might have been the only option. Trudeau is my no means a faultless politician or public figure. But judging by what he has attempted to accomplish, and his efforts to humanize government and political discourse, I’ll give him a pass on the blackface.

Leaping Without Looking

              How careful should we be as we live Life?

              When I look back on my life as I’ve lived it so far, I’m pretty convinced that I’ve played it too safe. There are just so, so many things I didn’t explore or try because there was too much of a chance that they’d turn out badly, or because I just didn’t know what would happen. They include:

- putting myself forward for a challenging job

- travelling to other countries / walking through certain neighborhoods

- telling someone what I really thought

- investing time/money/effort into appealing longshots

- risking violence or confrontation in defense of a person or a value

- declaring my attraction to a person

- putting forward an idea or creation for exploration and judgement

              There are times I have done such things, and I feel good about almost all of them. Yes, I’ve been embarrassed now and then, I’ve been rejected and I’ve failed. But these defeats were hardly ever as bad as I might have feared on those alternate occasions when I didn’t take my shot. I can’t say that I’ve ever suffered a really serious hurt or loss. And, there’s always been the compensation of having tried.

              Besides which, there’ve been the times I’ve succeeded, which have sometimes been life-changing. I once spoke to an attractive woman in a store, based on an instant’s eye contact and a feeling, and she became the love of my life and has shared the last seventeen years with me.

              On the flip side, there have been a handful of times when taking chances, or being careless (is it the same thing?) nearly led to disaster, or could have:

- remaining a passenger in a car with an obviously incompetent driver

- driving a stretch of highway during a snow storm, having decided to ignore alerts

- trying to carry a small amount of pot back onto a cruise ship in Jamaica

              I recall an occasion when I took a bath while a radio that was plugged into an electrical outlet rested on the edge of the tub. It was only much later that I realized what I’d done, and the memory still causes me to cringe.

              Looking over what I’ve written so far, what sticks out is that these near disasters were all over very trivial matters, where the benefit was a matter of a simple pleasure or convenience. I like to think that I’ve learned to do without such risks, but I couldn’t swear that that’s the case. I now recall a time when I ran to the aide of a lone man being attacked by about 5 others. That might have gone badly but didn’t: the group dispersed after a few seconds and I was only a bit bruised – and the victim was very grateful. I’m glad that not all my dangerous risk-taking was over nonsense.

              But when it comes to the big things – love, friendship, values, meaningful achievement – I hope that I might still learn to be bolder. I hope to become freer of fears and doubt of all kinds. Because I truly believe that when we move forward with confidence and with heart and mind focused on good outcomes, we make them more likely, and we make the negative outcomes we would fear less so.

And I don’t think that this is simple optimism. Our outlook orients us, aligns our vision and our energies to respond to what we anticipate. When we expect, or even simply prepare ourselves for what we fear, we are more likely to see it, and to miss everything else. And similarly, if we expect what we desire and are prepared for it, we are positioned to respond to its merest manifestation, and to ignore the seedlings of disaster that may be just as present.

I’m not suggesting that anyone abandon reasonable forethought and planning. But in a world where every moment brings with it almost limitless possibility, it’s so easy to be stalled, discouraged or stopped by all the things that may go wrong, that we can’t possibly prepare for. I’m not literally advocating Leaping without Looking. But I am advocating – for myself anyway – the avoidance of the kind of over-preparation that seeks to eliminate risk by having a remedy for every concern. Better to go forward with confidence and hope and know that these same moments will likely offer unforeseen possibilities as well. I like to think, and I choose to believe, that there are always as many doors opening as there are closing. And in Life, I think that every journey will carry us to a place we cannot fully imagine.

This is the outlook that I will be actively cultivating in myself.

Learning to be a Writer

     It’s what I’ve always wanted to be. I probably started saying so in Junior High, around age 12 or 13. But I probably felt it even before then, from the time my love affair with books and reading began, by age eight if not earlier.

     But I wasn’t ever the kid who wrote actually wrote stories, or who made them up to entertain my friends. Rather, it was something I thought about and imagined. I did well enough with school essays to be complimented on my writing. But, with very few exceptions, and all of them school-related, I don’t recall that I did any actual creative writing until I was an adult.

     So, where did this profession of ambition come from, anyway? Why have I always held to this desire, even while I did so little to realize it? The inquiry is deepened by the fact that I find writing hard, taxing, full of difficulty, and I generally procrastinate and avoid having to do it. Writer’s block to me suggests the always necessary breaking down of mental and emotional walls before I’m even able to start composing a piece. I don’t even feel that I have a particularly good imagination.

     The only thing I can think of, that actually operated in my life to get me writing, to be passionate about it, and to feel driven to it, is communication via letters. And that must have started in earnest with letters to my mother. I corresponded with her from about age 11, a couple of years after my parents’ marriage dissolved, and the time that my living with her ended forever. Aside from my brother, she’s the person I was closest to. And she’s someone who in many respects I was very much like. It’s from her that I inherited my love of books, stories, mythology, and my curiosity about how things work and why things happen. Maybe most of all, a fascination with things I couldn’t figure out, did not understand. What I most remember of the years living with her was our continuous, ongoing conversation, about everything. So, when Mom and I were suddenly and irrevocably apart, letters began to take the place of those conversations, and I began to learn to pour my heart onto a page.

     After my mother, it was girlfriends, and sometimes male friends, to whom I learned to express myself through writing, able to say with time and thought what I never could in person or in the moment. Letters to girlfriends became a way to say the unsayable, to uncork my pent up mind, and to release at least some of that torrent of wondering and feeling and speculation that alternately flows, swirls and erupts as bonds proliferate and strengthen, or erode and wither.

     And then, it was journals. I started keeping a journal just as I turned twenty, and I kept at it for well over thirty years. So while I wasn’t writing stories and submitting them, as I assume other developing writers were, I was sending letters to others, and composing letters to myself in my journal. And while I never thought much about plot, since that was mostly supplied by life, I was much concerned with emotional truth, and how to find and make it plain.

     Here I am now, in my sixties, with all of a half dozen, very minor publishing credits to my name, short stories and essays for which I’ve been compensated a total of maybe six hundred dollars. I still want to be a writer, even if I can’t say exactly why. I know it has something to do with conveying emotional truths, as I struggled to as a teenager. And it has to do with understanding how people connect and making relationships work, as I’ve tried to do throughout the rest of my life. But all that seems almost given, and also almost unrelated to the process of being a writer in the working world.

     Now, I have to learn (and put into practice) much, much more about a business that sells entertainment, experiences and edification. I have to learn to funnel my thought and energy into blocks of constructive time that have little (or at least less) to do with my personally lived life. I must learn about editing and shaping a manuscript, and about addressing a paying audience: agents, publishers and book-sellers as well as readers. And I must learn to make my own, private passions and obsessions shareable, so that others will find a place for them in their own lives.

     And I know that all of this is only just the naïve, outer skin of my own imagined life as writer, as I take the first steps toward actualizing it. There’s so much still that I don’t understand. But I aim to begin. And to succeed.

Reckoning My Days

I love this transition I’m experiencing. Retirement is part of it, but only a part. It’s very substantial in that it has given me time, by taking that time out of pursuits I’d grown tired of, in which I could no longer meaningfully invest myself, and from which I could draw little inspiration.

I’m trying to re-create myself, as a former client described his path after finally acquiring decent housing after fourteen years on the street. My transformation may not be that drastic, but then again, it may.

The old has fallen away quickly and easily. I don’t ‘miss’ any of it. Not yet, anyway. The other morning, I awoke at 6:00 am, and lying in bed, I recalled that just a few weeks ago this was my standard, and a necessary one. Whenever I deviated from it by sleeping in, I paid for it by having to working late.

These days, I’m routinely sleeping until 10 and staying up past 2, and it causes no stress. I start my days according to how I work myself into them, and there’s only a very loose structure. But the main thing I’m finding is simply that there is time. If I get to a particular task two hours later than I’d intended, it doesn’t much matter. There is still time to get to it and to everything else I choose to take on in a given day.

I’m very grateful that I had a practice retirement a bit more than a year before commencing the real thing. It made me aware of this very fundamental difference in the structure and pacing of my days, so that I haven’t been disoriented.

One of the things I did during my practice retirement, that I’m duplicating this time around, is a fitness regimen. Both then and now, I went to the gym on my very first day off, and I’ve made it a point to have a good, thorough work out every other day, supplemented by walks and bike rides. And, as I did then, I’m feeling so much fitter and energized for it. There just wasn’t time to persist in this once I went back to work.

Something I thought I needed last time around, but never managed to put in place is a schedule. And lacking that, though I managed to be active, I never felt that my activity was as regular and focused as I needed it to be.

This time around, I’ve approached it from a different angle. Instead of aiming at structure, I’m focusing on awareness, by documenting my time every day. And the simple act of keeping track of time spent writing, meditating, exercising, watching television, reading and walking, as well as tasks to do and done, and contacts made, has created as much structure as I appear to need. Looking over what I did yesterday and the day before immediately generates motivation to be active again today.

Motivation also comes from the accumulation of results. I’ve gotten through about three books in these three weeks. I’ve lost close to ten pounds, and I’ve bridged one of the biggest gaps in my novel manuscript. And lots of little things around the house and throughout my life are slowly coming into order. This time has been a beautiful confirmation of the “One Day at a Time” approach.

I have such a sense of gratitude.  It's quite a gift to wake up each day and to feel totally empowered to participate in Life on my own terms. I wish that everyone could experience this.

The Master and Margarita

In conversation with a colleague recently, I was asked what The Master and Margarita is about, and when I did, she suggested I blog about books I love. So here it is…

…The Greatest Novel Ever Told.

Satan comes to Moscow for a Ball of the Damned. His preparations are carried out by a retinue that includes a trickster, a demon and a huge black cat that is both. Hilarity and mayhem ensue. Parallel to all this is the story of an insane author and the devoted mistress who attempts to save him, as well as a third story, linked to both of the others, but contained in the pages of the author’s rejected and destroyed book.

But, what’s it about? I’m not sure how to say. It’s about so much, too much to wrap up into a paragraph. In fact, I don’t really know what it’s about or what it means, despite having read it half a dozen times, in three translations. But, like the novels Invisible Man, or Life: A User’s Manual, or the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the fact that it can’t be fully and finally comprehended is part of what makes me love it and continue to explore it.

The Greatest novel? Really? Well, it’s is certainly among the greatest. It is definitely one of the most fun. And, as a combination of side-splitting humor and thought-provoking substance, it has few rivals.

And why do I write ‘told’? Merely in recognition of the way it unfolds, much of it through conversation, through story-telling, as well as through the chapters of the novel within the novel.

I’ve been told, since the time I first loved it in 1973, that it’s a satire of the early Soviet regime that persecuted its author, Mikhail Bulgakov and which kept this novel underground for the first 26 years of its existence, until it was finally published in 1966.

Sure, I can recognize the caricature of political society within The Master and Margarita’s pages. But I know so little about the soviet system that if it depended on such knowledge to have punch, it wouldn’t work very well. Like Orwell’s Animal Farm, what this novel draws out about humans foibles is pretty universal, and can be recognized anywhere.

It is also a book about cowardice, guilt and redemption. And it’s about creative obsession that latches onto you and won’t let loose. And, it’s about devotion and betrayal. It’s even about the existence of God, and about “that power which wills forever evil, yet does forever good.” Let that be enough to get you started, and you will encounter riches. 

The sexist and paternalistic overtones of the title were a little off-putting even in the 70's, but while these tropes pop into view in spots, they are ultimately transcended by a novel that goes beyond expectations at every turn. The writing itself is brilliant, and employs two very different literary styles, maybe three. It’s one of the absolutely funniest and satisfying things I’ve ever read. And it’s also philosophical, touching and poignant. There is no other novel quite like it. 

My First Day of Independence (Retirement)

… is today.

So interesting to wake this morning with the understanding that, though it’s a weekday, I’m not late for anything. I don’t have to go anywhere. My time is mine, to fill as I choose. And though I have definite plans, there remains so much choosing to do. 35 hours a week is a lot of extra time to fill.

And this isn’t like a vacation or leave. If it were I’d be leaning toward indulgences, like staying up late, travelling, eating desserts and spending money I normally wouldn’t allow myself. This is potentially a permanent situation I’ve landed in. So my approach to it needs to be of a different nature. I’m looking to establish a new way to live. But my focus doesn’t have to be primarily on earning a living, because I’ve already done that part, and I’ll continue to get paid. Not nearly as much as before, but enough.

What a concept this retirement deal is! Whoever thought of it should get a Nobel prize!

It’s a sweet feeling, with only the merest tinge of bitterness. And that little, tangy bit has almost entirely to do with what was not done, ventured, accomplished, rather than what was lived. Such is the nature of regret, I continue to learn. Much more about what didn’t happen than about what did.

I will allow myself as gradual and as stress-free a progression into retirement as possible. But I’m determined that from this very first day, my time reflects my goals, values and priorities. I’ll be writing today. I’ll be ordering my space. I’ll be going to the gym for the first time in awhile. I’ll consciously reflect on things I’m grateful for. I’ll meditate. I’ll spend good time with my Bardzo. And I will limit my screen time!

It’s almost pure chance that my first day of retirement is Independence day. I guess it’s merely for bookkeeping purposes that the City recommends that one’s final day be the last in a month. I chose the end of June. Then, since I also decided to save all my vacation time, and to be paid for it, I realized that I’d might as well tack it on after that last day, to extend my benefits another month. Having 4 weeks coming, my last day would become the end of July. But when I went to HR to finalize arrangements, the consultant pointed out that I fell two days short. I would have to work 2 days into the new month for it to balance out.

The 1^st of July was Canada’s national holiday, so an automatic day off. So, my two days would fall on the 2^nd and 3^rd. Which meant that – TA-DA! – my first day of liberation fell on the 4^th of July! Independence Day! Today!

I love the coincidence and the symbolism of that. It strikes me as a great omen, confirming for me that I’m making the right Life move at the right time.

Not that such signs always hold, I remind myself. When I married the first time, I put together the numbers representing our birthdays, the days we met and married, etc. to devise a set of numbers for playing the Lotto. And we won cash money each of the FIRST THREE TIMES we played those numbers! Surely a sign that our impulsive, hormone-fueled decision to marry, and for me to relocate to Toronto from Seattle, was a decision endorsed by the Universe.

But it didn’t prove so. We laughed and fought through ten tumultuous years, but it all came to an end. And looking back, it’s apparent that there was another aspect of those winning tickets that I ought to have paid attention to. Namely, that each win was for about half the money of the previous win. Maybe the signs were true enough, and I just didn’t examine them closely enough.

But I ran with the wonderful metaphor on this 1^st Independent Day, and I made the most of it. Years ago Ponczka got me to observe what I guess is a Polish tradition or bit of folk wisdom. On the first day of the New Year, it’s important to include all those things one wants the year to be full of, and to be sure not to do the things one wants none of. So crucial to have sex, but no arguments.

And today, I acted accordingly. I ate well, I did some reading. I went to the gym, I rode my bike. I meditated. I spent time with Ponczka. And I wrote! And yes, I even limited my television viewing. It’s bound to be a most excellent year.

Another thing that stands out for me is that, just as yesterday represented a kind of goodbye to Toronto, because after more than twenty-five years, I’ll no longer spend the bulk of my waking life there, today represents the start of getting to know the Hammer.

We’ve lived here for three and a half years, and I’m very fond of this smallish City. But I haven’t gotten to experience it fully. A new connection has begun to develop already. Walking through Jackson Square in the afternoon, and biking through the downtown and the near eastside, I definitely felt connected in a way I rarely have before. I was taking my time, free of any pressure to do any particular thing by any particular when. Wow! Yes, this retirement business is going to suit me just fine!