eyes wide closed

I've been a napper for as long as I can remember. I was a preemie, and my mother says I've always needed more sleep. I invoke that to defend any nap, anytime, all these years later. About twenty years ago, a colleague and I would leave our workplace and drive to Snooze Alley, as my co-worker labeled it. Near a strip mall a mile down the road from our office, we would eat our lunches in our respective cars and then take a little snooze. Chris would go all in, reclining his seat all the way back. I was not that radical. Nevertheless, we never overdid it. Our snoozes never made us late for returning to the office. Close, but not quite. A good 15 or 20 minutes was fine. This was before the term "power nap" came into vogue. Chris and I believed in the restorative benefits of our nearly daily habit. In Japan, sleeping on the job is a sign of diligence. It's called inemuri, "sleeping on duty." It says, in effect, that this person is working so hard they need a break. But it is fraught with cultural distinctions. Men get away with it more readily, as does upper management. No inemuri on the assembly line. The culture also dictates that inemuri practitioners obey unwritten norms regarding form and space. In other words, don't sprawl out under the conference table, or take up half the subway seat or park bench. I suspect drooling is frowned upon. Don't you agree that America could use a healthy dose of inemuri? I do. Along somewhat different lines, the Japanese have traditionally put employees out to pasture in ways that differ from ours. Sometimes an employee regarded as a has-been is assigned to become a window watcher, a member of the “madogiwa zoku,” or the “window seat tribe.” They sit by the window, with nothing to do, and get paid for it. This would not be allowed in our Puritan-work-ethic-driven society. I guess the idea is to force the members of this glum lot to resign. I suppose they could simply sit by the window and snooze, combining the best of inemuri and madogiwa zoku. These practices make me want to go to Japan, or to evangelize such practices in America. America has forgotten the virtue of laziness. People in hot countries enjoy their siestas. They've been around a lot longer than we have. In the long run, they are not lazy. They are sensible and human. This year, France instituted a law that limited after-hours emails. Workers have a right to disconnect. Volkswagen did this with its employees in 2012. Glad I have a 2007 VW Rabbit. Time for a nap. See ya.

apart-meants

The red letters on the flimsy faux-concrete facade declare: "Geddes Plaza Aparts." The tired seventies look is forbidding, a look that says transients, retired with walkers, and fresh-out-of-rehab renters. Nothing against any of them. They could be me or someone I know and cherish. The sign is what arrests me. This complex, featuring balconies with plastic chairs, is reserved for the aparts. Though I see no one stirring inside or outside on the front step, I understand that the aparts apartments are reserved for those who are estranged, distanced, adrift, separated, or coming apart at the seams. Applications are by invitation only. The owner is a mysterious bald-headed, gender-nonspecified seer with golden eyes. No one knows how the invitations are extended or what criteria are used to gain acceptance. And there's no telling how many occupants reside there. Word is, most residents stay temporarily, but not all. Visitors are prohibited, by definition. We can surmise how one leaves the premises: a break from the identity of apartness, be it via conjugal union, some other brand of bonding, enlightenment, or -- let's face it -- the Eternal Apartness. (This is not the place to debate concepts such as the Eternal Apartness vs. the Eternal Oneness, or anything in-between.) One would hope, for the most part, that apartees enter with a frown or a sad visage and leave liberated, lighter, freer, if not with a smile then at least the shadow of one accompanied by optimistic eyebrows and tranquil yet hopeful eyes. No photographic or other visual evidence exists to support this theory. As for myself, I cannot recall if I have ever lived at Geddes Plaza Aparts. Legend has it that amnesia is a common trait of former residents. In any event, I can report having had recurring dreams of television-less living rooms, empty refrigerators, and hot plates instead of stoves. But I haven't had any of those dreams in several years. So, next time you drive by Geddes Plaza Aparts, offer a friendly wave, maybe beep your horn. And tell me if you see anyone coming in or out.

Hard 2 Get

Does abstinence make the heart grow fonder? How about calmer?

As our “devices” own us ever more, we hear talk of digital fasting and abstinence. (It’s curious how in America the primary meaning of “device” is an electrical invention connected to the internet, a meaning that supersedes older denotations such as scheme, trick, plan, rhetorical tool, or signifying mark. It is also instructive that the roots of the word go back to both “discourse” and “division.”)

Don’t be alarmed. This is not a sermon preaching a Luddite message of unplugging, however worthy that be.

This is something else.

Does the less you connect make you that much more coveted? The novelist Thomas Pynchon is legendary for his elusiveness, his absence. Photographs of the author are rare. J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, was famously anonymous, to use an oxymoron, even though he was living in plain sight in Cornish, New Hampshire. Their unreachability presumably made reaching out to them all the more alluring. When we see a sign that warns us to avoid “WET PAINT,” we want to touch it.

I have a friend, who happens to be a writer, who has never had and does not now have a cellphone. That makes him singular in my universe. (Actually, not so: my mom, 101 years old, had a cellphone she never used and does not have one now.)

Does this lack of a device make such people “special”? I have my doubts. From my vantage, such folks surrender such status by relying on other cellphone users to breach the digital divide.

My personal history in this vein is inconclusive. I resisted owning a smartphone because I thought the device would own me. I surrendered in 2015. Although upgrading my phone had little to do with feeling either more or less connected, I couldn’t be special anymore by smugly declaring, “Oh. I don’t own a cell. You kidding? Not me.”

I would suggest that the business world and the personal world abide by different social norms regarding digital abstinence, fasting, and promptness — a category similar to fasting, though paucity and duration are different aspects.

As for my own personal world, my data set is a small sample: one person with a limited circle of family, ex-wives and girlfriends, friends, and acquaintances.

I aim for a daily text to my children. Some days I miss. If any of us were to go silent for more than a day, two the most, we would find a need to check in more actively.

What about intimate friends (there’s a euphemism if there ever was one)? What are the 21st century protocols — if any — for response rapidity and frequency? What is the fine line between playing hard to get and crossing over into the phenomenon of ghosting? Is the notion of “hard to get” an ancient artifact of another century?

If I am interested in someone, my obsessive personality makes it nearly impossible to refrain from checking my phone (ahem, device) for any morsel of communication at any hour of day or night or under any circumstance, time, or place.

Is this constant temperature gauging an infinite neurosis, or merely the commonplace anxiety of the modern age?

Send me a text. Now. Don’t leave me waiting.

Cone of Uncertainty

During hurricane season, we hear the term “cone of uncertainty” frequently, accompanied by graphics to show the projected path of a tropical storm or hurricane. The projection indicates the exact location of the storm accompanied by estimated tracking five days hence. The experts get it right roughly two-thirds of the time.

Cone of uncertainty.

We all live within in a cone of uncertainty. More than a cone, it is rather a sphere, bubble, or atmosphere. But the aura of uncertainty is pervasive and palpable.

As for certainty, we know we are born and we die, but the details elude us — especially at the mortality end of the spectrum.  We hold gigantic ice cream cones of uncertainty, either with dollops of sprinkles and syrupy flavorings or rapidly melting soupy disaster.

We inhabit a cone of uncertainty within each moment of each day.

These cones illustrate both practical and transcendent uncertainties.

On the practical side, the cone of uncertainty is applied daily to matters big and small. Will I be late for work? Did I turn off the stove? Have I locked the door? Will I get the report done, pass the test, make the plane, see the soccer game, or make it home in time to start dinner before everyone else gets home?

From the transcendent angle, we might ask: Is there a God? Is there life after death? What is good? Evil? Can I stay clean and sober today, stay off the cigarettes, not lose my temper, zip my mouth shut, safeguard that secret, keep that promise, stay on that diet, or be kind to strangers and loved ones?

If we were to calculate — or have someone or something else calculate — the uncertainties of these daily challenges, would we feel better or worse?

I vote for not knowing the precise uncertainties, or certainties, for that matter. Too torturous.

Besides, the models are not perfect.

Cone of uncertainty originated in cost engineering and project management on the premise that uncertainty decreases as a project moves along and more is known. Credit for the concept is given to the American Association of Cost Engineers in 1958. The weather-related term means virtually the opposite, starting with certainty and becoming more uncertain. Incidentally, officially it’s the National Hurricane Center Track Forecast Cone. Dull. Popular variations include Error Cone, Cone of Probability, and the Cone of Death. Now we’re talking!

I understand that the science of it all yielded the cone image, but what if instead the science took on a different visual vocabulary? Anyone for cornucopia, hand fan, or vagina?

What about the grander scheme of things? Would you want to pore over projections of how much life you have left, with all its probabilities? Someone has already done this for you and me; that’s why the insurance industry, Social Security, lenders, and medical providers have actuarial tables. (Isn’t actuarial a curious name for something not yet actual?) Experts are already estimating your life (or mortality) expectancy.

Are they within or outside of the cone of uncertainty?

There are other ways of looking at this. For tropical storms and hurricanes, a European intergovernmental approach considers 52 distinct forecasts. Lines that resemble strings or strands illustrate this method.

I am tempted to call these threads of uncertainty, with no strings attached. But I’m not sure.

to the eclipse

As I drove down Interstate 81 South, I spotted a hitchhiker in his twenties, either scraggly or merely “roughing it,” with a cardboard sign. His branding tool was of the sort that panhandlers on urban corners employ, with captions such as: “Veteran” or “God bless” or “Anything helps” or “Hungry.” This particular hitchhiker on this particular day sported a sign that read, “TO THE ECLIPSE. 

Good one!

This was 10 days before the predicted solar eclipse of August 21, 2017. Predicted? Yes, it had not occurred yet. Although NASA scientists can forecast precisely when and where the solar eclipse will be, it still has to happen on its own. Cue Little Orphan Annie to sing about the sun coming up tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow… only a day away, etc. 

I attribute my dose of skepticism to the epic letdown of Comet Kohoutek in 1973. Experts hyped it in advance as a spectacular, mind- and soul-blowing cosmic event. It was a dud.
Presumably, the pedestrian pitching for a ride was aiming to get to somewhere like Nashville, near or on the eclipse’s path of totality. But that’s an assumption. Maybe he merely needed a ride down the road to Marathon, New York. Maybe he wanted to hit up a Good Samaritan driver for a few bucks or a pack of cigarettes. I’ll never know — unless by some strange Reverse Kohoutek Effect he reads this and tells me.

The eclipse’s expected shadow swath through the United States was “kohoutekked” as a destination for a rare and spectacular event. Madras, Oregon. Casper, Wyoming. St. Joseph, Missouri. Nashville, Tennessee. Columbia, South Carolina. Let me pause here for a cranky disclaimer. For years, I’ve heard media reports claim that a notable eclipse, either solar or lunar, would be the last one so intense and dramatic in a designated area for the rest of our lives! And then inevitably the experts conjure up ANOTHER “last-chance-to-see-the-intense-and-dramatic” eclipse. I’ve grown skeptical. Or old. 

Can you actually go to an eclipse? Wouldn’t you have to go to the sun, the moon, and the Earth? Aren’t you just going to see the results of the solar eclipse? At its climax it is two or three minutes of darkness in daytime. Spare me. I’ve had more than two or three minutes of darkness in daytime plenty of times. 

Did the hitchhiker’s TO THE ECLIPSE request mean, “Take me to the path of totality”? Our stranger may have wanted to go where the hottest (figuratively; these days “literally” means “figuratively”) solar-eclipse action was predicted to be.

Path of totality? Don’t even. I’ve been on a path of totality since forever. I don’t know anything short of totality. The path of totality is riddled with casualties. And they want to sell tickets to it?!? Gawd. On my metaphysical Google Maps, the Path of Totality is a highway with two lanes, marked All and None. It has few exits and no speed limits.

Speaking of highways, in retrospect I should have swerved to the shoulder, picked up the hitchhiker, and driven him as far as he wanted to go. I could have asked him about his own path of totality: Did he have one? Was he seeking one? Was he fleeing one? 

Oh, the places we’d go, the stories we’d trade!

plus one

Plus One

The first time I heard the term I was confused. My friend seemed to be using it solely in a business context.

“Would you care to be my plus one at dinner Friday? My company is hosting this ritzy affair,” he asked an attractive female mutual friend. I was overhearing the dialogue, so I did not pay it much mind.

Not having heard of “plus one,” I assumed by the context that it was a sales term. I figured it meant something like this translated into non-drummer, non-sales-quota jargon (which had briefly been my world in the Eighties), “Would you please, please pose as my Number One sales prospect worth $23,500 in potential weekly revenue at dinner Friday? Because most of my prospects in real life are minus one, or minus one to the tenth, but don’t tell my sales manager.”

That explains why my sales career was of brief duration. If the company enforced the draw against advance they claimed I owed, I’d be a shackled indentured servant to this day, decades later.

Plus one.

I took it as code for elite. Like “A Team And Then Some.”

For those of you among the cultural cognoscenti, you already know plus one refers to a friend, date, companion, or, um, escort, that one brings to an event if you are the invited guest. Some sources say it dates to 2004. Don’t upbraid me for living under a cultural rock. I don’t get out all that much.

It comes from the format that guest lists or invitations employ: Jane Doe + 1. It serves a number of social purposes, some of them awkward. It allows a host to invite exactly one half of a couple. Why? Who knows. Reasons abound. The couple may be openly on the verge of fracturing, or in an open relationship. One member of the couple might be serving time in the big house or in rehab or undergoing a transition that is still unacknowledged. In plain English, maybe the inviter(s) just don’t like one member of the couple and never did. This affords an excellent opportunity to prevent the drunken, wild boor from wrecking the event.

Then, of course, there’s the lonelyhearts angle. This demographic would bristle at being a plus one. For them, it would be an embarrassing admission of authenticity, independence, self-gratification, and the inexplicable absence of co-dependent misery, signified by a scarlet letter “S,” for solitude. The shame! Alternatively, others would jump at the chance to be a plus one, roaming socially unfettered at the event in question. Besides, being a guest of a guest might hold the promise of the tables being turned at the next social event requiring invitations.

From a purely monetary or practical standpoint, the role of plus one offers the chance to enjoy a free meal — and more! (as direct-mail advertisements vaguely enthuse). The “and more!” might mean anything from new friends to life partners — or new chances at co-dependence or relationship failure. Seen in this light, the decision to be a plus one, or not, is laden with limitless permutations, a cosmic rolling of the social dice.

One side of you might say: “Go for it!” while your other self says: “Are you freaking crazy?”

Devil or angel.

So now I know. Plus one does not refer to sales tactics, clothing size, fertility methods, supersized drinks, erectile dysfunction solutions, threesomes, or unexplored spiritual dimensions. (Disclaimer: Any reference to any real product, trademark, entity, or proprietary method is purely unintentional and coincidental.)

Happy plus-one-ing!

The Envelope, Please

Awards shows create a dramatic pause by having the emcee intone, “The envelope, please.” Further drama is created by hesitations and teases before the envelope is opened. The award nominees and their entourages nervously await the anticipated announcement. “And the award goes to . . . 

Call it the envelope of tension. The tension envelope.

Years ago, I was arrested by the sight of a sign on a commercial building seen from Interstate 80 near Hackensack-ack-ack-ack, New Jersey. It's on the left as you head toward the George Washington Bridge.

Tension Envelopes, it declares.

It long ago inspired my own inner pause and reflection. Namely: the world does not suffer from a dearth of tension envelopes, does it? Aren’t we enveloped by tensions at work, at home, on the road, and in our hearts? Our inner landscapes are dotted with these tension envelopes, both individually and collectively. They come in all sizes, shapes, and colors.

Is our envelope of tension paper-thin or stretchable and impermeable?  Who affixes postage to it so that we can mail that tension to anyone, near or far? That’s easy. I’m the one in charge of dispatching my very own, specially designed, jittery-filled packages to anyone of my own choosing. Sometimes I send my tension envelopes C.O.D. (collect on delivery; capacity on demand; chew on dis; come, on dude!; change or die).

How do you send your tension envelopes? And to whom?

And are they received as “warmly” as mine? [Insert ironic emoji.]

Somewhere in the oceanic, discursive writings of Marcel Proust, I encountered his observation that the human body is a "nervous envelope." In remembrance of such a thing past, I bent the upper corner of a page. I don't know which one. But I can’t argue with Monsieur Proust’s take. We live in this envelope that begs for relief and inner peace. Our nervous envelopes seek serenity or release, distraction or diversion.

If our tension envelopes are empty, what do we fill them with? (They wouldn’t be tension envelopes if they were totally empty; by definition some tension electrons must crackle and roam around or reside there.) The candidate tension-reducers list is familiar to any wanderer of the modern world: sex, drugs, alcohol, food, work, danger, gambling, anger, other people-places-things, you-name-it ad infinitum.   

As I type it, I realize my tension-envelope mitigation (TEM) list is skewed toward the negative. It doesn’t feel complete or whole; it doesn’t possess enough dimensions for the 3-D world.

I can’t seem to connect the dots or check off the right multiple-choice answers. I need your help. Work with me here.

An alternative, or parallel, parade of TEMs might include the following: meditation, mindfulness, prayer, walking, running, painting, sculpting, gardening, woodworking, weightlifting, yoga, pilates, massage, or doing the dishes.

Agree? (Add your own.)

But I have a sheepish confession to make. The second list sounds a tad boring compared to the first. I’m embarrassed to admit this.

Does that make me “less than”? Does it reveal a personality best left kept private?

Or does it merely make me One of Us?

It All Depends

We all have them. We all have those infinitesimal moments when if the event had gone another way, everything in our life — and that means everything — would be different. In his poem “The Red Wheelbarrow,” William Carlos Williams uses the phrase “so much depends.” Although as an English major I had undoubtedly studied the poem, it took on new meaning for me when a friend used the phrase “so much depends.” Her cancer was in remission at the time, or at least was manageable. I had asked her, “Are you in pain?” She answered, “No. So much depends…” and went on to recite the poem word for word. Her point was: whether I am in pain or not matters. So much depends on that. She added that one reading of the poem suggested that it refers to a child hovering between life and death. The poet was a doctor.

So much depends between this and that, between being here or somewhere else, between saying one thing or another, between seeing that oncoming truck before you turn or not.

The King James Version has it as “in the twinkling of an eye.”

So I never forgot my dear friend’s lesson, even though we went our separate ways.

I can readily draw up my own list of personal turning points balanced on the edge of a razor blade. I am told I started life that way, as a preemie. (Today, with advances in medicine and technology my entry into the world would be unremarkable.)

Family lore has me being nearly run over by my father in the backyard when I was five or six. Unbeknownst to my dad as he was backing up, I decided to bolt out of the car. Where did I go? Why? We will never know. My dad assumed the worst. My brother ran up the steps to tell Mom, “Dad ran over Paul!”

I was fine.

Somehow.

Whenever the story was retold at the dinner table, Dad would say, “Took ten years off my life.”

And who is to say otherwise?

Some moments get lost in the tides of time, as if they are less significant with the passage of days, months, and years.

The concussive wind of a Manhattan taxicab zooming by as I daydreamed and nearly drifted off the curb.  

Falling asleep at the wheel only to be awakened by the tires rumbling on a rough surface.

Decades ago, driving drunk and not remembering it.

Which illustrates the interactive nature of this utter powerlessness. In other words, others are inescapably involved in our seemingly random, remote choices.

Turning blue, choking on meat, only to find the Heimlich maneuver my wife of that time employed didn’t work — until she said “stop fighting me.”

In a blog post years ago, I coined an amusing term for this phenomenon:

or - chasm - n. The immeasurable distance between one choice and another.

I labeled it a noun, but these infinite moments fraught with fruition or finality have their own grammar. They are gerunds and participles and most of all infinitives.

They bear the indelible signature of choice and mystery.

These moments are the “Either/Or” of Soren Kierkegaard, "The Road Not Taken" of Robert Frost.

Name these nano-pinpricks as you see fit: choice, destiny, fate, will, coincidence, providence, or Providence.

You have yours; I have mine.

Attention must be paid.

Reading Second Skins

We sat in tiny chairs at tables made for kids. In the school library, the tops of tables and the seats of chairs were closer to the floor than what adults typically experience. We paired off, a dozen adults and a dozen first and second graders. We were reading. We read to each other. The adult would say a word that the child stumbled upon. The child would repeat it.

Some children wrote letters on erasable white boards. One could hear the mysterious soundings-out of letters and their combinations, the gentle coaxings and coachings that shed light and pattern. Sight words, flash cards, stapled pages we called books. Voices blending. Encouragement. Ears yearning.

One boy, an eight-year-old second grader, reached out to touch my gray hair, grown over the ears in wintertime, straight and thinning. The boy, polite and energetic and eager, seemed baffled and amazed at my hair's texture, its novelty. Then he looked at my hand. This was not our first encounter in the school library; this was after a few months or more of reading sessions that were not quite reading yet but were tilled soil for later bloom. He observed the veins in my aging hand, noticing the blue riverine pattern on these hands holding the stapled pamphlets we use as books.

"My hand is a different color," the young fellow stated matter-of-factly.

The way he said those words, their surprise and frankness and tenderness, caught me off-guard. It arrested me. For a few beats, I didn’t know how to respond but feared no response would be a missed opportunity — for what I was not sure.

"Yes, I see that. Isn't it wonderful?" I quickly managed with a blend of his matter-of-factness and my mildly suppressed enthusiasm. We then turned to tackle another pamphlet, a level C or D “book.” The chorus of learning filled the room.

Upon much later reflection, I was grateful to my young reading partner for his honesty, authenticity, and directness. I recalled a moment decades ago in high school. Our teacher, a Catholic priest of the most progressive leanings, was commenting on Jesus’ oft quoted, “Suffer (allow) little children to come unto me and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” The only lesson I can summon some fifty years later is that Father Giuliani underscored and celebrated two qualities of children: simple and direct.   

Simple and direct. Yes indeed.

“My hand is a different color.”

A child’s uncomplicated observation of fact laden with a history unknown to me, just as mine was unknown to him.

Had I missed a deeper and more cogent opportunity? I knew the two of us were not about to engage in a candid discussion of Race in America. And I sought to avoid either preachiness or stilted speech. (Truth be told, I thought none of this. I had no time. Such considerations — and zillions more — rocketed through my brain before I uttered words.)

Those who parse such encounters might take me to task for these musings; they might posit a racial construct in my very questions.

So be it.

It’s what I had at that moment. In a country whose citizens rarely converse across racial lines, one to one, over bread or coffee or wine, it’s all we had.

The poet W.H. Auden wrote, “Love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart.”

It’s all we’ve got.

life, not-so-interrupted

My phone frequently blurts out the following digital notification: “Medium power saving mode turned on  Your battery life has been extended.” The editor in me forgives the missing hyphen between “power” and “saving.” It even shrugs off the missing period after “turned on.” And why not be magnanimous? After all, the smartphone’s notification exudes generosity, hope, and optimism.

Sure, I can pretend to take some credit for the cellphone notification, owing to the settings I clicked on.

The word “notification” is a delicious one for an artisanal, homegrown, non-GMO, gluten-free wordsmith such as myself. If St. Peter is hip and modern enough, he can forgo all that fabled judgmental jazz at the gates of Heaven. He can simply email notifications. I don’t doubt he can find a way to spiritually transmit notifications to every soul. St. Peter, if you are metaphysically listening, may I make a suggestion? Develop an app that has emojis for paradisiacal salvation and for hellish damnation. Then you can save yourself all the time and trouble words take. (Purgatory? I’m not so sure about that one.) You won’t have to have all those interviews at the gate as depicted in cartoons.  

As for “power-saving mode,” don’t you wish we could do the same for ourselves? Don’t you wish that a few taps of your fingers would put you in a state of energy conservation? How handy it would be. Oh. Wait. We have that! My word for that power-saving mode is the English word “nap.” In Spanish, it’s “siesta.”

Why stop there? If we can invoke a personal power-saving mode, we should also be able to apply the same concept to endless varieties of human behavior. I salivate at the prospect of a limitless parade of modes beyond power-saving. A few brief examples include anger-saving, grief-saving, embarrassment-saving, trust-saving, and error-saving.

Logic dictates that this brave new world should stretch beyond the limits of conservation, as it were. Flip the opposite way. Power-enhancing, patience-enhancing, trust-enhancing, esteem-enhancing, virtue enhancing. The list goes on ad infinitum.

I freely admit the existence of logistical hurdles. If it’s not as easy as adjusting settings on your “digital device,” what are we left with? “Conscience” is the smart-aleck reply of the wise ones among us. My answer to that is: since our banishment from the Garden of Eden there has been a deep and wide chasm between what conscience ordains and what human beings actually do. So that’s the tricky part. Getting our behavior to be as automatic as an app on our phone or tablet is hugely problematic. That’s why we have drug and alcohol rehab centers; billions of dollars spent on psychoactive medications; and gazillions of dollars — and hours — invested in weight control and fitness. Not to be a shade too cynical, it’s also the reason we have corrections facilities that strain the credulity of the word “correction.”

As I said at the outset, my phone also declares without equivocation: “Your battery life has been extended.” Would that we could be as certain. Would that our fortunes were bound by such a simple and absolute algorithm.

“Your life has been extended” if you eat right, exercise frequently, wear a seatbelt, and signal before turning. (Extended for how long? one wonders.)

Text St. Peter. Ask him.

Get back to us on that.

Brutal Murder

In news stories, one frequently sees or hears the phrase “brutal murder,” or words to that effect. Although I worked at a newspaper and in publishing, I have never taken a journalism course. My first year of teaching I was forced to teach a journalism course though I lacked any credentials aside from having been an English major and having worked on the school paper in junior high, as it was called then. But if I were to study or teach Journalism 101, “brutal murder” might be a good starting point.

I understand that some murders are more grisly than others. I comprehend that certain methods of violence are more heinous than others, and that the intent of such a phrase is meant to underscore that.  And yet . . .

All murder would qualify as brutal, wouldn’t it? Whether the method is subtle or silent, or explicit and horrific, the result is the same. Nevertheless, the idea of brutal murder is worth pondering. Is a drone operator who is detached from the sounds and smells of execution any less murderous than one more directly involved? When combatants in World War I engaged in combat with soldiers close enough to see their eyes, was the result different? Or did personal proximity raise the remote possibility of peace, at least briefly and on a small scale? There are many accounts of Union and Confederate soldiers engaging in conversation, perhaps exchanging tobacco. But the grim truth is that the ravages of war continued.

Back to “brutal murder.” What do we mean by “brutal”? Are we referring to the look or the sound of the perpetrated act? Is it measured by the incalculable pain that is endured? Or the innocence of the victims?

Does war or insurrection get an exemption based on the assumption that war is brutal and murderous by definition?

Extending the notion, what roles do intent and context play? Surgical and precise terminations of life may seem less brutal owing to evidence unseen or unheard.

And what about the phrase “killing with kindness”? What is meant by that? More than a touch of irony emanates from that particular locution. Surely, we will never hear a news reader proclaim, “In other news, police are investigating a kindly murder at Peaceful Heights. The victim’s identity is unknown, but authorities were puzzled by the smile on the victim’s face.”

No, we will never hear or read anything like that at all.

Nor should we.

What’s my point? I am suggesting that words matter. They matter as stand-alone utterances and in combination with other words. The combinations matter, too, as much as the individual words. Implications exist. Legal bindings or loopholes, acts of war or declarations of peace, or life-long covenants hinge on both the mosaic arrangement of words and the very words themselves. Think of that jigsaw puzzle with one missing piece. It matters.

The same with words.

Am I a nut for attuning my ear to a simple and widely understood phrase? Perhaps, but not likely.

Failing to prick up our ears like a dog alert to a dog whistle means we run the risk of becoming deaf to meaning and subtlety. That opens the door to manipulation. To be honest, the door is already open.

Everyone Is Approved Here

As you drive along the busy boulevard, an A-frame sandwich board all but shouts, "Everyone is approved here!!!" It is an unabashed, traditionally American, free-enterprise invitation to buy “pre-owned” automobiles. The sign says, in effect, "No matter what your financial history is, no matter how reckless or foolish or disastrous or triumphantly capitalistic, we can lend you the money to buy a vehicle." (Naturally, such generosity has its own price. That price goes by the code words “interest rate” and “months.”)

Which got me to thinking.

Imagine if "Everyone is approved here!!!" referred to real people. What if actual living humans were approved “here” just as unconditionally and with the élan of three exclamation points as a used-car dealer approves all?

"Everyone is approved here!!!" could be a statement of credit beyond financial history, and instead it could apply to redemption that reverses personal misdeeds and waywardness.

Does unconditional approval get the cold shoulder in our society because of our puritanical past? One can reasonably argue that the reward of virtue and the punishment of transgressions is the right path. It’s wholesome for society. It sets the right balance and the right example.

But is that notion more cultural than theological?

After all, the New Testament offers ample weight and rich testimony for what we will call the Mercy Rule, as opposed to the Justice Rule.

In the early Seventies, when I was a fledgling English teacher, a colleague just as new to the profession announced to his social studies students on the first day of class for that marking period: “You all have A’s. That’s it. You have an A.” This was not contract learning. It involved no quid pro quo. The students were dumbstruck at first. Looking back, I would venture to say the teacher risked disciplinary punishment or job loss for this daring, if not foolhardy, move.

The teacher later trumpeted the success of his gambit. He said no class collectively or individually ever produced more or learned better. They rose to the occasion and justified someone’s belief in them, however dreamy or utopian. All were not merely approved. They were rewarded in advance, unconditionally.

Not being a sociologist, I cannot safely draw any generalized conclusions from this small sample. I cannot go from point A to point B to establish a theory of education or a social construct rooted in unconditional “all are approved here.”

But being a columnist, I can pose leading questions, and draw inferences till the cows come home — home from wherever they wandered to in the first place.

Taking literally the declarative sentence “All are approved here” (with or without accompanying punctuation denoting interjection, surprise, or excitement) yields a multitude of questions, the answers to which will remain speculative.

Could you successfully apply this approach to child-rearing?

What about the justice system? Would the Radical Advance Approval Method cause chaos and imperil public safety? (Incidentally, my former teaching colleague went on to become a top official at the U.S. Department of Labor. I was shocked to see him one evening making a comment on the evening’s national news.)

Speaking of labor and industry, what if supervisors and managers gave employees automatic A’s on annual performance reviews? (I had a manager do that; I loved working for him.) Would quality and production improve?

Consider the implications for the alcohol and substance rehabilitation industry. Would outcomes be better or worse than those produced by current methods?

I’m just a columnist. I get to grade myself with an A no matter what anyway.

Earth Day, Requiescat in Pace

Let’s kill Earth Day.

The kill doesn’t have to be violent. A few means of termination come to mind immediately: a fatal dose of unctuousness with a dollop of messianic fervor; toxic buildup of evangelical environmentalism; or suffocation by smugness.

Let me know if you have some other methods of moral euthanasia you can summon to the cause.

(There. I feel better already now that I’ve exhaled and typed this long-overdue death sentence.)

“Oh,” you protest. “How could you? How can you be so cruel and callous toward Mother Earth? We have no Planet B, you know.”

Spare me.

My coveted role as judge, jury, and executioner has nothing whatsoever to do with Mother Earth, climate change, global warming, denialism, science or anti-science, or political correctness or impolitic incorrectness. And lest you think my words are a sly endorsement of our Not My President (NMP), you can forget that. I condemn and abhor NMP’s choice to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and NMP’s proposed budgetary slashes and rollbacks of environmental initiatives of the last several decades.

No, my gripe goes like this: Earth Day is a feckless, feel-good escape, a chance to feel environmentally holy. Sure, many of the priests and priestesses of this secular religion practice their rituals the other 364 days of the year. But the annual cleanup rites typically take place around Earth Day. Earth Day incarnates a branding that has become tired, ungreen, and more harmful than helpful. It’s not, um, sustainable. Earth Day is not unlike waltzing to the soup kitchen on Thanksgiving and handing out turkeys. Good for one day, maybe even a week. What has changed? Not much. But nothing bad happened either, etc.

What about those cleanups? Don’t they make you feel grand? Is it the same feeling of sanctity and squeaky-clean absolution I felt as a teenager after going to Confession, with all my impure thoughts scrubbed off my soul for all eternity?

And what about these armies of the day making the world safe for carbon footprints? Picture legions of students or retirees, civic leaders and teachers, work gloves and trash bags in hand, whisked in from their pristine golf-course-riddled suburbs to save the unwashed urban masses from themselves.

How can we ever thank you? How can we ever thank you enough?

For the record, I hate litter. It is contemptuous of civil order, an act of apparent self-loathing and belligerent degradation. Or maybe littering is simply callous solipsism. I cannot claim to fathom its sociological origins or its embrace of cavalier negligence. I’ll leave that to sociologists. But I have a perverse fantasy. During one of these jaunty, community-spirited Earth Day cleanups, I crave for the volunteers to encounter directly a besmirching of the aforementioned civil order. I want the corps of cleaners to see a pizza box or overpackaged burger and fries go flying out a car window, with an added toss of soda-fountain beverage containers, extra large, with straws, napkins, and plastic bags sailing down the boulevard. I crave for the perps and the enforcers to meet head-on. Have at it, boys and girls. Send me a transcript of your friendly dialogue.

Maybe you’ll have better luck than I do. (I may meet my demise one day via one of these uncivil encounters.)

You say Earth Day is about more than Saturday-morning community service cleanups? True, true. I cannot argue with you on that. You won’t get me to condemn tree or flower plantings, or springtime prunings or fertilizations. I can see such acts as commensurate with tender memorial tree plantings honoring deceased loved ones.

As for the deceased? Add Earth Day to the rolls. Rest in peace.

area of refuge

In the building I just moved into, filled with loft apartments in a former knitting mill, each floor has a designated “Area of Refuge.” These locations are situated near each floor’s entrance to the elevator and on the landings of the four floors, at least one on each end of the building. Residents, especially those with special needs, are instructed to gather in an Area of Refuge. There’s a callbox and a panel where one can “Push for Help.”

 Naturally, as with nearly all signs I encounter, this got me thinking. Don’t we all need an Area of Refuge, at least for part of the day, most days?

 As a grade school student, I once had to deliver something to the teachers’ lounge. The room was billowing with smoke from cigarettes and pipes. I was a messenger visiting a foreign country.  It was shocking. But today I would have to conclude that room was an Area of Refuge for those teachers. They needed a break. They seemed so much more relaxed and jovial. They were remarkably different from their classroom selves. Among them were likely non-smokers as well. It didn’t matter. All were there for a common purpose, despite the health dangers we now proclaim, but did not then.

 If we need Areas of Refuge for work, we need them elsewhere, too: at home, at play, in public, in private.

 Churches and other houses of worship over the centuries have served as sanctuaries, Areas of Refuge. This decade, whole cities, hundreds of them, have offered to be Areas of Refuge for undocumented immigrants.

 We all need a safe harbor now and then, legal or not. People in recovery programs understand the absolute value of radical hospitality when they enter a room where a meeting is held. They depend on it as an Area of Refuge. No questions asked. All are welcome.

 Today, near my new residence, walking to the nearby library, I saw a sign in a window of the elementary school (they used to call it a “magnet school,” but that’s another topic for another time). The sign said “Rescue Window.” I recalled times in my life when I was looking for a Rescue Window anywhere I could find one:  hallucinogens, alcohol, sex, you-name-it. Then I needed a Rescue Window for what I thought was my Rescue Window, because nothing was working.

 What’s your Rescue Window? Food? Yoga? Running? Hiking? Relationships? Quilting?

 The point is, we all need Areas of Refuge and Rescue Windows, even if we think “that’s for someone else.” We tend to think such places — real physical locations or more metaphorical ones — are for those less fortunate, the underprivileged, the hunted. That assumption is wrong.

 We all crave these things. Otherwise, there’d be no need of man caves, social clubs, knitting circles, places of worship, booster clubs, book clubs, flower guilds, PTOs, union halls, or bars.

 The lingering mystery, however, is “what do we do when we get there?” What do we do when we arrive at the Area of Refuge? Tell jokes? Calm nerves? (How?) Hold hands? Meditate? Pray? Sing rock ‘n’ roll oldies together? Tell ghost stories to each other?

 At the Rescue Window, are we reaching in or reaching out?

 The answers to these questions are endless. And I submit the answers don’t matter all that much, not as much as we imagine.

 What matters is being there, arriving at the Area of Refuge or Rescue Window. Together as we can be — awkwardly, fearfully, and hopefully.

how do you spell STOP?

You see the signs adorning quiet corners: STOP MEANS STOP. The declaration serves as an addendum, a gloss, on the larger sign on the same metal post sporting the familiar white on red octagon commanding drivers to halt.

This codicil strikes me as a suburban phenomenon, reflecting a hyperattentive concern for propriety and rectitude. It’s hard to imagine seeing these persnickety postscripts on the boulevards and avenues of a major city. The thousands of add-ons would cost too much. Besides, who would have time to read them? Move along, people. Nothing to see here.

The ubiquitous STOP is a verb, not a noun announcing the type of action required at the junction. STOP MEANS STOP presumably means drivers who are supposed to be stopping are merely pausing. Or not stopping at all. If we are going to parse propriety, let's go further. Perhaps the editorial sign commenting on STOP should instead say: “'Stop' means stop, not the simulation or approximation of the cessation of forward movement. Now please leave our perfect patch of Paradise.”

What does the law say? What is the required duration of the driver’s pause? It’s not really a matter of duration. The answer varies for each state, but typically it means a complete or full stop, meaning no forward momentum, the needle on the speedometer at 0. (Speedometers don’t have needles any more; call it Digital Zero.) It means, your car wheels can’t be moving. The popularly believed 3 seconds required for a stop seems more myth than reality. (“Full stop.” That’s how our British friends refer to the end punctuation we call a period. Try using that phrase in your next argument. See if it puts a full stop to the debate.)

The notion of a proper duration at a stop sign invites the question: Can you stop for too long, say, the duration of one lap around the rosary beads or malas reciting your mantra?

Can you be prosecuted for indulging in the full metaphysical fruits of your quotidian caesura?

And what about pedestrians? At the octagonal red and white sign, must pedestrians take a deep bow and exhale? It might be the one pause in your day that refreshes.

Buddhists talk of the value of stopping, the reward of pausing to gaze at the interconnectedness of all manner of things.

Is this what we are called upon to practice when we see STOP MEANS STOP?

The problem with STOP MEANS STOP is that it risks sending the opposite of its intended message. You would never post such a message unless the word "stop" were being routinely ignored. So, how does replicating the word, repeating it, strengthen its force? Does it not weaken the word "stop"? Does it mimic the situation of a parent remonstrating a child, perhaps loudly, as the child clearly knows the word carries no force if not enforced?

This invites comparisons with other reduplicative expressions, some of a more serious nature. “No means no” surely delivers an unequivocal expression regarding the lack of sexual consent. What about broader, societal applications of this syntactic formula? We can explore endless variations.

Peace means peace. War means war. Love means love. Hate means hate.

Stop this already means stop this already!

watch your head

You’ve heard it, often. “Watch your head.” Someone is caring, urging caution to protect you from injury or pain. Parents say it to children, spouses to each other, friends and coworkers, too. “Watch your head.” Long ago, as a cheeky wiseguy, I chirped, “You can’t watch your head. Not literally. Your eyes can only do that partially. You can watch your nose, part of it. Oh sure, you can watch a reflection of your head. But that’s different.”

Not that funny then and not that funny now.

Despite the challenges of literally watching your head — and only a fussbudget would notice this — we know what the person who says it means. We understand we are being told to proceed with attentiveness. We are are being warned to slow dowm. Does it work? Does proceeding in such a manner guarantee less chance of injury? I’m not sure. An athlete or warrior in the heat of battle might interpret it to be “Be alert.” But you wouldn’t necessarily slow down. On the other hand, I have personally found the dictum “the faster the slower,” from UCLA basketball great John Wooden, valuable when I am tempted to anger or quick to say the wrong thing.

From another perspective, “watch your head” proffers a different aspect of wisdom. If the phrase is telling us to practice introspection, some rewarding results might be forthcoming. If it means, “as a person thinks, so they will act,” then it’s a good reminder. Recovery programs talk about a “thinking disease,” meaning that addicts and others fall off the beam long before a substance is ingested or otherwise taken. It’s the addictive or alcoholic thinking that precedes the action, they are told. So, “watching one’s head” in that context would presumably signal awareness and vigilance.

In my youth, Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick sang “feed your head” repeatedly with fervor at the conclusion of the hit 1967 single “White Rabbit.” The lyrics were considered one of pop music’s early instances of a drug reference, albeit oblique. But the song is filled with characters from Lewis Carroll’s  “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” and on that level alone it is delightful. I have long admired the Airplane’s unbridled evangelism for expanding one’s mental and spiriual horizons. They put it out there, without apologies. And why not? I’m not belittling the serious risks of the misuse of pharmaceuticals, legal or otherwise, but I salute the song for being consistent and honest and unabashedly provocative.

I am mildly surprised that booksellers or educators haven’t seized on this notion of “feed your head.” Perhaps they have. Granted, feeding and watching your head are two different concepts. (Notice how I’ve drifted slightly. That’s how my mind operates.) But they go hand in hand. If you watch what you are feeding your head you can reap the most benefits. 

Somehow that doesn’t ring true. It signals a cautionary manner that might stifle curiosity. Can these two notions — watch your head and feed your head — coexist within one person? I suspect they can. I’d go so far as to say they must. They represent a dynamic that plays out in all of us: temperance vs. abandon, safety vs. risk, prudence vs. recklessness. So watch your head, but be sure to feed it, too.

Now excuse me as I take my chances out there, bruises and all.