gesundheit

Achooooooo, my body roared onomatopoetically. I was driving. The notion that you can't keep your eyes open while sneezing haunted me. (I have since learned that some people can do it, keep their eyes open during this natural-reflex blast that can reach 200 mph. I'm not one of them.) I could tell I was in for one of my violent sneezing jags. An allergy thing. Comes out of nowhere, then stops when it wants to, no matter what I do: blow my nose, throw cold water on my face, change direction or position, or locale, pray, grovel, beg. I can sneeze 15 or 20 times like this. maybe more. It's exhausting. Does your heart really stop when you sneeze? Is that why people wish divine blessings upon the afflicted? Or the alternative safe and secular cry of "health!" in German? These days, even that is controversial, for god's or God's or gods' or goddess's or goddesses' sake. As if one became an atheist or agnostic apostate by exclaiming "God bless you!" Gawd. Achooooooo again. The lake on the right, where a year or two ago a woman driving slid or wandered off the roadway and went into the lake and drowned in water only several feet deep. I tried. I did. I tried to open my eyes. And, no, forget about the popular nonsense that your eyeballs can pop out if left open while sneezing. I had never heard of that silliness until I did some fake research for this fake article. Acheeeeeeeeeew! Here we go. Ahhhhhhhchaw! I can't pull over. There's the abutment, the wall, holding up the train tracks, the 10' 9" overpass, tragically hit so many times by inattentive truck or bus drivers. Open eyes come in handy in this stretch. Why these sneezes? Reach in back for the tissue box. Blow nose. Twice. While driving. Throw tissues on the floor. Gross. But I have to drive. Achooooo! When will this stop? Is it humanly possible for me to exert more effort, more concentrated focus and control, to keep my eyes open. I'd settle for keeping one eye open, to drive; the one eye of the drunk trying to drive but here I was stone-cold sober withstanding a sneeze attack, a sodden gale-force ambush. And what about ACHOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHA willpower? A try-harder, try-some-more, exert-more-will society expects the will to reign supreme; believes The Will (der Wille), Willpower (die Willenskraft), can prevent or conquer woeful habits, addictions, or like-minded disorders. Really? Try it for a sneeze, cough, or diarrhea. Try willpower for an incontinent bladder, projectile vomiting, or the slip of the tongue you really did not want to vocalize. Try willpower to abstain from the last potato chip in the bag, the first chocolate, the just-one-more binge episode tonight on Netflix. Willpower is overrated. Back to driving, navigating the lake parkway at dusk. Achoooooiiieeeeee! When will this end? Exit the parkway. Onto the boulevard. Ah. Breathing. Ah. Easier. A creeping invasion of calm. Home. Sneezeless.

#punctuationmatters

The day after Mother's Day, as I was driving, I spotted a sign outside a church. The sign declared:

MOTHERS ARE GODS

ANGELS ON EARTH

Being a sometime editor, I quickly perceived what I thought was an error of diction and wanted to rejigger the movable letters to say:

MOTHERS ARE GODDESSES

thinking, "Wow, that's a pretty progressive church, going all New Age on us with gods or goddesses." And then I read the next line and realized the misperception that the missing apostrophe in "GODS" had wrought in one reader. See, punctuation matters. In heaven and on earth.

Incidentally, theologically speaking, I don't get all Thomas Kinkade-warm-and-gauzy over that angel thing. Back in the Sixties, in high school, Father Giuliani used to say we've got to be human before anything else. We're humans. No disrespect to angelic entities, wherever they may be, if anywhere, but we humans need not aspire to that ontological leap. (Is it even a leap, Kierkegaardian or otherwise? Now don't go ruffling your gossamers.)

The State of New York State Route 17

As the road ribbons before me and behind me, the hills rising and greening, the setting sun reflects ferocious light on metal or stream, contrasting with quiet shadows from pines, aspens, maples. Not one fly fisherman in the famous trout spots near Roscoe, not on this evening of Mother's Day. Why do the hills remind me of Japan, where I have never been? Just after Roscoe, the sign says, if I recall rightly, REST STOP 19 MILES. It is a long, long 19 miles if you have to pee. This time, I am not afflicted with that need. The 19 miles unwind if not rapidly at least not painfully. The rest stop for me is more of a stretch stop. It feels great to move. How many times have I made this trip? 89 times? Maybe more. Back in college, it wasn't even a real highway. You would think I could drive it blind. No radio on, no CD playing. My 2007 VW Rabbit makes some disturbing sounds. Alignment? Tires? Brakes? Worst of all, transmission? I keep rolling. Very soon after the Route 17 West rest stop, on the right, a commercial concern offers mulch and other wood products. It also displays a BRIDGE FOR SALE sign. And as I pass by rapidly, I see a bridge really is for sale, not the fabled Brooklyn Bridge for sale as offered by fast-tawkin' hucksters, but what seems to be a real-life rusted bridge, on a platform, maybe a platform truck, a bridge for your back yard or creek or temporary stream or wetland or movie set. Bridge for Sale. After all is said and done, we all need bridges. Pontifex and pontiff, they mean "bridge," did you know that? The next exit is Exit 89, Fishs Eddy, with the same missing apostrophe that Wegmans is missing, Fishs Eddy, a name appropriated by NYC interests. I keep rolling.

Planet-Lagged

This New Year's Day has me feeling jet-lagged, planetarily lopsided -- and this is without any consumption of alcoholic beverages!

How did I ever manage it when I did?

Lawdy! Lawdy!

(Be sure to keep that apostrophe for New Year's Day, eh?)

The Stuff of Loss

So I go to Wegmans [whose eponymous letters of ownership are missing the would-be apostrophe, that impotent and almost-forgotten icon of possession] and in a huff buy stuff for Sunday's supper and the week's lunches, grumbling this chore could have been performed at any one of several days earlier in the preceding week. Fueled by both hunger and anger, I lose focus. I use my debit card. I ask for twenty dollars in cash back, over and above the $30.18 for the groceries. I dutifully pack everything into the Wegmans fabric reusable bag. I get home, unpack in a storm of activity, cook supper in a maelstrom. One lingering problem: one big pebble in the shoe of my evening: where's that twenty-dollar bill? It's not in my pocket. Only the receipt is. Did my cash fall out, mocking my self-righteous indignation and get-things-done pose? I check all my pockets, in my pants, in my pullover San Francisco Giants sweatshirt worn on Willie Mays's birthday. I go back to the car, running my hands along cracks, crevices, corners, cushions, any other C word you want to throw in there. I retrace my steps and search my pockets, fingering the tired lint of obsession. Twice. Thrice. Whatever-the-word-is-for-fourths. I call Wegmans. I drive back there, and leave my name. I retrace my steps again. I check pockets. Again. Everything again. I even mention this to Mom, 90, as if she needs to hear a grown man whine about this. We talk about praying to Saint Anthony. I don't. Or do I? It's a whirr. I am crazed. I look upstairs. I look in places, such as other pants, where the twenty-dollar bill could not possibly be. I grimly tell myself, You cannot find this. Let it go. It will drive you crazy. It's only twenty dollars. I feel accusatory. Who did this to me? On the phone, as I feign breezy self-control, my mother mentions a story of a clerk once shorting her, only to have the clerk ultimately admit to the error. Did my clerk actually hand me the twenty? I'd say, yes, because I believe I also had a five in my pocket from earlier in the day. That's gone too. Somewhere. In the same place where missing socks from the dryer go. Or missing panties (into the pockets of pervs or guys like me and Leopold Bloom). It'll turn up, I figure. Or not. One thing I know, I must give up. I must let it go. I cannot conjure it from its hidden metaphysical or physical place. It will turn up? By magic? My hope is I will turn the page of a book or sort the old newspapers or look under a chair (did that) and find the money some long-lost day. Or not. Give it up, you phony would-be Buddhist. Detachment? You can't even practice this tiny bit of letting go, you sanctimonious, possessed possessor. Let it go. Besides, there's no choice.

The next day, at work, for a brief moment I irrationally think of looking for the missing moulah there, in my desk drawer, for example, and chuckle at the grand absurdity of it. Later that day, at suppertime, with the television news on (I despise having the idiot box on during meals, but what the hey; not much fight left in me), ABC shows footage of the devastation left by the tornado in Greensburg, Kansas. One woman, I'm not sure of her name (Kathy Kelly?), says, "It's just stuff." She says it almost merrily, but not crazily, not post-traumatic-stressedly. She's maybe in her fifties (as if I know how to discern ages). She's sifting through rubble. The remains of her day, and her life, are missing in inaction. The shards of a splintered life surround her: ghosts of old photos, old recipes ("Recipes? I can get recipes, new recipes from someone else," she says, or words to that effect), surrealistic configurations of former furniture, silverware, sweaters, echoes of a life as recent as last week and forever ago. Stuff. The stuff of a life. And yet. And yet she gives ample evidence of being truly grateful, to be alive, whole, presumably surrounded by others just as alive. She does not say these words I've just written. She merely states, "It's just stuff," and declares it calmly, as a statement of Midwestern stubborn fact and acceptance, like acceptance of ordinary daylight.

"It's just stuff," she says

as breezily as a Willie Mays homer

sailing into the sun-drenched bleachers in left-field

at the old Seals Stadium

on a Tuesday afternoon

in May 1958.

Just stuff.