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.

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.

flinch

As the rebar comes flying through your windshield, you flinch. You flinch as the ponded puddle at the curb is about to inundate you. An infinitesimal moment before the crash, you flinch. As would I. Similarly, we hunch our shoulders against the wind, rain, or snow. We squint at the blinding light. We brace ourselves for the verbal daggers flying toward us.

Tell me. Does the flinching, hunching, squinting, bracing, wincing, cringing, or shrugging alter the results one iota? And yet we seek these armours, these paltry shields, involuntarily. (Are they ever voluntary?)

Powerlessness 101.

check swing

A player (rookie catcher Andrew Susac, of the San Francisco Giants) checks his swing. He holds back. He has a second thought, within a nanoseconds-limited cage. He reconsiders, and halts the muscular force of an intentional swing. In unintentionally casting his batting fate to Fate, Susac in turn receives a gift from the baseball gods and goddesses: the baseball sails over first base, ricochets off the leg of an umpire, and Susac finds himself on second base. A rally ensues. This is so not Western. In the Western world, will prevails. Will and willpower conspire to conjure results. Or so we are told. But in this instance will was thwarted. Willpower wilted. And the results were better than expected or anticipated.

It Is written, Or Is It?

Two weeks ago last Saturday -- oh, who cares when it was. Does it matter? So, I'm standing by the doorway inside Chipotle (which nearly everyone pronounces as if it were spelled Chipoltee), on Marshall Street, in Syracuse. I'm observing people accessible and visible on the sidewalk, easily seen through the big plate-glass window comprising the store's facade as they busily stream by. I see this bearded fellow walk by, wearing a Boston Red Sox wool cap. Wait. We both catch each other's eye. Wait. Hold it there a sec. There's that expression "double take." Or, as Merriam-Webster.com puts it:

"a delayed reaction to a surprising or significant situation after an initial failure to notice anything unusual"

Merriam-Webster says the first known use in English was in 1930.

In 2012, we both did a double take. Just like on TV or in the movies.

Stopped in our pedestrian, quotidian tracks.

We each did a take, then stopped, then did another take, maybe even a third and a fourth take.

Then I opened the door and advanced outside.

"Dan?"

"Paul?"

"Paul?"

"Dan?"

We laughed. But, knowing Dan, he was not totally surprised. Knowing me, I was not totally surprised. Yes, we were in Syracuse, but Dan lives in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. We see each other maybe once a year, maybe once every few years. We've gone stretches of hardly having any contact for -- what? -- a decade? So, the coolest thing is we were surprised but not surprised. Dan, knowing me, and vice versa, admits of such providential possibilities. And vice versa. (There's an expression: vice versa. Why isn't there an expression "virtue versa"?)

In the movie "Lawrence of Arabia," if I recall correctly, Lawrence says to one of the Arab tribal leaders: "It is written." Wait. Wouldn't it make more sense if someone said it to T.E. Lawrence? "It is written." By whom? And is it? If I remember the movie correctly, Lawrence ends up thinking nothing is written.

For reasons I find hard to explain, the phrase "it is written" resonates with me more readily than "it is God's will" or "God has a plan for us" or "God has a plan for me." And yet. Why? One sounds more mystical? Or mysterious? Or more respectful of free will? Can't explain that.

And yet.

So, was this written? Or pure coincidence?

And does it matter?

Why?

Or why not?

They Are Watching You Watching This

"We never don't know anything about someone."

-- John Nardone, chief executive of [x+1]

resolved to post resolutions

If you recall, I posted my New Year's resolutions back on July 2, 2009.

I really did.

I'd wager that nobody else on the planet beat me to that!

But, alas, there is a touch of irony in all this, since I am not a big fan of new year's resolutions, whether they are uppercase or lowercase or titlecase or small caps.

Free Will Hunting

Scientists are arguing about whether humans possess free will. A recent popular article by Dennis Overbye in the New York Times about this stated the view of cognitive scientists, science philosophers, and bookies (just wanted to see if you were still reading). It said free will is nothing more than an illusion, a monkey riding on a tiger's back.

Well, that conveniently explains the rationale for the phenomenon of spanking the monkey, doesn't it? We can't help it.

Whew.

What a relief.

Why didn't anyone tell me this? Why didn't anyone tell me this, say, in any year from 1965 onward?

So, all you who foolishly made New Year's resolutions: beware.

Give up.

I kid, but the article quoted scientists, philosophers, priests, paupers, sex addicts, neurologists, compulsive eaters, alcoholics, physicists, strippers, cab drivers, ballerinas, and talk-show hosts. (I made up most of that list. But interviewing such folks would undoubtedly have made for a much more interesting and less-snoozy piece.)

What about good?

What about evil?

What about dieting? Or cheating? Or heroism? Or being late for work? What about deciding to do the "right" thing? Or not doing the "wrong" thing? Most of the "experts" quoted said it's all an illusion. You think you are making a decision, but your brain has already decided even before you are aware of it.

Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce. -- Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) Italian poet, critic, novelist, and translator.


We defy augury. There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'Tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.
-- William Shakespeare (1564-1616) British poet and playwright.

We run the full range here, folks, from the silly to the sublime.

Carry on.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

You have no choice.

Or do you?