little Harmlings

Gimme that!

It’s mine!

I want it.

It’s mine.

No, mine. 

You can’t have it.

Give it to me.

No, you can’t have it.

Go away.

No. I don’t like you.

It’s mine. 

I don't like you.

Go away.

No, I won't.

Leave me alone.

I can hurt you.

No, you can’t.

Yes, I can.

Stop.

Stop it.

failure to thrive

When infants or children show signs of not growing according to standard projections, "failure to thrive" might be the diagnosis. The cause or causes might be a host of medical, nutritional, biological, genetic, psychosocial, or environmental factors. Sometimes the cause is undetermined. 

In some cases, failure to thrive, or FTT, is attributed to abuse or neglect. 

Some researchers have focused on maternal touch as a contributing factor to FTT. These studies examine mother-infant tactile interactions: their frequency and type (unintentional, intentional, during play, during feeding). In some cases, the mother or child may exhibit an aversion to physical contact.

Failure to thrive.

The term has poetic gravitas, a resonant summons for us to reflect.

In the Age of Coronavirus, will infants, children, adults, including the ill and the elderly, experience failure to thrive? Will our necessary, imposed self-isolations, self-quarantines, add the unintended affliction of FTT? At a minimum, will our severely restricted social interactions, our social distancing, cause human thriving deficit, or HTD?

We are social animals.

I know I am.

I already have a burgeoning case of HTD.

How about you?

And in the bigger picture, from a global standpoint, from a species perspective, how much FTT or HTD can the human race sustain? And for how long?

Oh, the longing for touch, our ardor for human texture, pining for skin and pulse, hungering for hugs and human scent, blood, sweat, and tears, tactile tension and tangible tenderness.

the end of fragrance?

Is it the end of fragrance? Does social distancing stretch the molecular cone of influence that perfumes and allied fragrances emanate? Will future fragrantial formulas need more potency to pierce, ever so gently and invisibly, the social distance bubble? And will new, stronger fragrantical formulations disturb the infinitely delicate harmony that fragrance chords thrive on?

Weighty questions, on International Fragrance Day no less.

And indeed what are the ends of fragrance? Why do we adorn ourselves in such evocative olfactory raiment? To what ends, what purposes?

The coronavirus moment gives us a perfumed pause to ponder answers to these unanswerable questions.

The bride throws the bouquet. The bouquet is caught. The bouquet is portentous, a sign suggesting love and marriage, says the tradition. And what of our personal bouquets, tossed by any one of us at any point on the gender spectrum? What are we to make of our fragrance bouquet?

What do I expect from wearing my signature chords, my inimitable and idiosyncratic bouquet of arranged self scent, sprayed-on or rolled-on eau de parfum or cologne or eau de toilette (typically Tom Ford, if you must know)? Do I expect a compliment, a stranger's jolt of je ne sais quoi, a passport to Dallianceville or amorous abandon? Whatever I have expected or will expect is nuanced by the strictures of social distancing, at least for now.

Picture this: a terminally ill patient in hospice. Her matted hair. His swarthy face, beard growth of five days. Her chipped, unpainted nails. He petitions the volunteer to comb his hair, to shave him. She asks for a perm, gets her nails done. Why? They ain't going nowhere, as Bob Dylan put it. 

It's for dignity. Aesthetics. Pride of ownership. Something incalculable, more solemn or sacred, having no word in our vernacular.

And the same with fragrance.

She puts it on. Wears her favorite, most alluring fragrance. She is quarantined, lives alone, will not leave the house today.

He does the same. He is running low on his favorite fragrance. He applies it anyway, judiciously and jubilantly. Self-isolation permits this. Demands it.

In fragrante delicto.

social distancing vs. social proximating

I have been known to have social distanced. It is not the same as socially distanced. I have known social distancing. I have known social distancing, in its comings and its goings. Have you? Haven't you? The social distancing of snubs and snafus and near-misses. Or near Missus. The social distancing of forays and fumbles, dalliances and disasters. I have known them all. As T.S. Eliot penned it:

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase

I have known social distancing by any other name. Filed under the names of loneliness, alienation, indifference, rebuff, and buffering. Under the banners of taboo, time, and space. The labels of contagion or conjugation. Felt as intimacy or aridity.

I have socially distanced by one word, one sentence, a single faux pas. 

Haven't you? Have you?

Social distancing.

How about you?

How about us?

I have sung hymns to social distancing.

No one heard them.

Or no one replied.

Social distancing in the key of me, the key of you, the chords of coldness.

We sought the bridge.

They paid the toll.

They crossed the border.

I bridged the gap.

You narrowed the way . . . of distancing's definition, its social cues, its molecular matrix.

And while we're at it, at this safe distance, socially speaking, tell me, what is its opposite?

Social proximating?

As in: "I want to hold your hand . . . if you wash it." Or: "I want to touch your elbow (with my elbow) ..."

Social proximating, as in "Baby, socially proximate with me, babe."

It's a new brave new landscape, a brand-new vernacular.

Hold on.

But keep your distance.

For your good and mine.

For our good. And for the good of others.

promises, promises

We all make promises, don't we? "All" is extreme. Let's say that many of us have made a promise or two at some time or another. In some Christian traditions, we make a promise of faithfulness as infants. The promises are made on our behalf since even in that tradition it is acknowledged that a newborn, an infant, or a toddler is incapable of making any sort of valid promise. When I became an Episcopalian, arising from the birth of my third child ("just bring the baby; we'll baptize it"), I came enamored of a bit of wiggle room in the Rite of Baptism. The presider, such as a priest, asks the baby a series of questions as part of the baptismal covenant, the agreement that incorporates a series of faith-related promises. The congregation answers for the child, saying: "I will, with God's help." Granted, many readers will find the whole enactment surreal, even Monty Python-ish. For others, they proceed with a voluntary dollop of suspended disbelief. (Did you know the phrase comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? He was writing in 1817, advocating for fantastic elements in poetry: "willing suspension of disbelief.") As for our congregants making promises for a child, we might describe their surrogate promises as willing affirmations of belief in an aura of suspended disbelief. Something like that. "I will, with God's help." To me, the vow was refreshingly human. Maybe I'm the only one who heard it this way, but I felt it served as an asterisk that pleaded: "I will, but God, help me, because this is a tall order; I may not be able to keep this vow; in fact, on my own I know I can't. So help me out."

Promises.

The most notable and common promises are the ones that people make when they get married. Traditional marriage vows in Western societies tend to be just that: vows. Promises. We publicly promise to love and cherish each other, whether rich or poor, sick or well, "till death do us part." Civil ceremonies are light on promises and heavy on legal practicality declaring that each party is not still married to someone else and is free to marry.

The divorce rate serves as its own comment regarding marital promises. As time goes on, some of us revisit, revise, or reconsider those promises in the light of living history. The broken promises spectrum can run from violence and abuse to unfaithfulness to mental illness to simple incompatibility. A skeptic or a critic might say a promise is a promise; breaking it comes from making an excuse. Being twice divorced, I recuse myself from further comment. No judgment here.

But you have to wonder: Does a promise carry any weight in this day and age? Has the notion of a promise lost all gravitas?

We assume that politicians of all stripes break their promises. We accept it as a given.

"I promise I'll call you or text you when I get there." Do you believe it?

"I promise I'll be on time." Depending on personal history and personality, you recalculate. I, for one, tend to run late. It's another topic for another time. I'm working on it. I've explored the reasons for it. I'm getting better about it, or think I am. Other people are the judge of that. Knowing this about myself, I don't promise on-time-ness without some seriousness. I don't want to erode the fragile credibility I have, if any, in this arena.

"I'll call you or text you. I promise."

After a first date, any promise from either party is fraught with doubt and healthy skepticism. If "promise" is invoked, it becomes a test.

Promissory notes legally bind one to a promise. You have no choice but to keep the promise, or else you face unavoidable consequences.

"I promise I'll pay you back on Tuesday."

"The check is in the mail. I promise."

"I promise you, this won't hurt."

"I promise not to . . . "

"On my way." "OMW." Please. That's a promise to promise to promise to walk out the door, maybe, sort of, pretty soon.

The etymology of the word "promise" offers some wiggle room of its own. If you go back deeply enough to its Latin origins, to its neuter past participle and beyond, the word, more or less, means: to release, let go, send, or throw in front of or before. 

See? Even the word "promise" throws some doubt on its own fulfillment or expectation. It lets go and releases even as it binds.

And yet I can't promise you this isn't a richly embroidered rationalization.

duck duck geese

I paused at the light, ready to turn right on red. I spotted a gaggle of geese attempting to cross the three lanes of Bridge Street, a street so named that fails to bring to mind any sort of bridge whatsoever, except a patch of roadway over a tiny stream. A gaggle of geese. The collective noun derives from the linguistic attempt to imitate the sound the geese make. Just so you know: the geese are not called a gaggle if they are flying. They become a skein if they take flight. These geese were jaunty and persistent in their effort to cross the busy road on a sunny afternoon in July. It seemed they had a leader, perhaps a few leaders. Presumably, the leaders would be the first to perish if the crossing proved fatal. It would remain to be seen whether such tragedy would thwart the efforts of the remaining gaggle. I turned right. In my rear-view mirror, I noticed the geese were making progress. They were getting cars to stop or slow down as they waddled across, more or less a few steps forward, a few in retreat, then another sally forth. The geese were causing risk to the drivers bearing down upon them. A sudden slowdown heightens the chance of a chain-reaction collision. As for my own driving risk, I had to avert my eyes and proceed forward on my own passage. 

We wholesomely respect such matters as "animal rights" in our society. Some places post roadside warnings: GEESE CROSSING or DUCK CROSSING. We do it for deer, too, though such warnings are more a matter of alerting drivers to be cautious with respect to deer gamboling across the road. In our public square, we champion and protect the rights of animals such as geese or ducks. We do so even at the risk to ourselves. After all, most drivers don't see geese or ducks in the road only to step on the accelerator and plow into the gaggle, exploding it into feathers, flesh, and blood. We're not like that. They are poor, innocent creatures. They have no say in their own safety, they had to cross the road for some reason, perhaps for food or water, maybe to go home to a nest. 

Humans? Forget it. We beep the horn. We get angry at a person or persons for being in the road, impeding our progress, especially in the midst of a travel portion, outside of a defined crosswalk. We might give the finger to the "gaggle" (horde? gang? clutch? group? crowd? tribe? remnant? family?) of humans. Add factors such as migration, race, mobility, behavior, size, attire, et al., and you alter the atmosphere and the attitude of some drivers, possibly increasing personal anger or vehicular speed. 

O, to be a skein in human skin!
 

can I have one for free?

At first, I thought the sign said MUG SALE. Then I figured: RUG SALE. Two simple rows of letters were crudely and sloppily painted on some beat-up plywood, on a sandwich board, off to the side of the roadway. It could only have applied to one of the few stores on the other side of the heavily traveled road. I was driving by, so these were fleeting thoughts my brain was rapidly processing. MUGS SALE? Plural? Who'd give a shit about that? "Hey, let me grind to a stop, put my left-turn signal on, and get on over there and buy a car full of mugs!" I don't think so. Rugs? Possibly, but how many do you need, and how often? And you would need a store larger than the ones I saw, to make room for the rugs, unless they were bath mats or welcome carpets. The mind tries to fill in the blanks in order to make a familiar and expected word. 

Aha! That first letter is an H! The topmost first three letters, all caps, sans serif, and SALE below it were in white paint over a yellow background, which partially explained the readability challenges. HUG SALE? Wrong again. The sign painter or painters splashed on an E after HUG, a dark gray-black E, as if the E were an afterthought, or a correction.

Now I get it! 

HUGE SALE.

Incidentally, I noticed after a subsequent drive-by that the E was painted over a white background, which seemed to indicate that the E indeed was a correction. Omigod, what could the earlier version possibly have been? HUGG? How many ways can you misspell HUGE anyway?

So, they're having a huge sale over there. We don't know if the hugeness refers to the size of the items for sale (bulldozers? semi-tractor-trailers? railroad freight cars? aircraft carriers?) or the quantity of items, be they large or tiny, or the amount of alleged discount. 

Either way, it did not interest me in the least, not enough to swerve left.

HUG SALE would interest me. Wouldn't it interest you? Maybe not. Some people shy away from direct physical contact. They want their private space. They just happen to be like that. No law against it. Such individuals would keep driving. But some people undoubtedly would turn left for a HUG SALE, especially if the store had tawdry and gaudy neon lights, evoking an aura of illicit activity. On the other hand, the hug emporium could just as easily be family-friendly, in fact radically friendly, welcoming one and all, no matter your race, ethnicity, gender, social status, education, age, history, talent, background, mental state, physical condition, health, political persuasion, religious or secular beliefs, marital status, mobility, legality, sobriety, cordiality or hostility. (Did I leave anything out?)

HUG SALE.

How much would a hug cost? After all, no hug is truly free. Both the giver and the receiver invest immeasurable doses of time, vulnerability, physical exertion, emotional risk, social capital, and spiritual energy in the act of hugging. Oh. You were thinking in monetary terms. I suppose you can let the market determine that. (Is hug even the right word? Is a hug the same as an embrace? The sign had no room for that longer word, which invites its own misreadings.)  

Who would be the huggers and who would be the huggees? Couldn't the roles be reversed?

What would be the optimum duration of each hug?

I would limit it to one hug per visit, then get back in line if you're that hug-hungry.

What would be the appropriate firmness of the hug? Both arms? Slapping on back?  

No words exchanged?

Hug Monitors (HMs) would be able to sort out these practical matters, right?

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.

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.

hugs anonymous

I bought the Friday $3 lunch special at Wegmans (with its absent apostrophe). Hot dog, soda, chips (Fritos). The cost for lunch goes to the United Way. It was sweltering outside. Heavy, dense, the wet heat a blanket. I went inside the cafe area to eat. Cooler. After a few bites, ketchup dripping off, I noticed, almost felt, a figure come toward me from my right, just beyond and then into my peripheral vision. Before my mind could calculate, I'm being jostled, hugged, but not harshly, playfully not violently. Almost the way someone would administer a noogie but this was around the upper body, my chest, my neck. It was a heavyset young man, late teens or early twenties. It scared me until it didn't. Before I knew it, he was walking away. A caregiver was upset. "Don't do that. Stop. You can't do that." The caregiver, a tall young man, apologized to me. I waved it off. I ruminated for a few seconds on semantics. No, we didn't use phrases like "developmentally delayed" as I was growing up. The designations were harsher. And yet in today's culture, America's current environment, let's be thankful I was not armed and quick-triggered, paranoiac, quick to defend, protect, and save myself and all others from all harm or threat.

The Almost Jaywalker

She stood at the corner of West Genesee and Avery, by the Rite-Aid. She had gray hair and was in her late fifties or early sixties. She was in a hurry, or impatient. And confused, as if she was unfamiliar with how to cross a street, when to do it, with the light red, or the light green. She pressed the button on the pole, the button to change the light. She slammed it repeatedly, the way we do that while waiting for an elevator, with no speed-up of results. She was angry at the delay. Slam slam slam. She frowned. She seemed to be taking the whole challenge personally, an affront to her freedom of movement, impeding her progress, hindering her day. The light changed. I crossed the road. I saw her crossing in my rear-view mirror. I traveled south, now looking forward through my windshield, lessening the chance of a collision.

This is America today.

fear the beard?

Is there a difference between growing a beard and simply not shaving?

A look in the mirror presents the unkempt appearance of an unshaven social misfit, though that sounds unduly harsh. (Can you be harsh, but not unduly harsh?)

Unkempt. The second syllable sounds so German, and it is by way of Old English, we are told by etymologists (not entomologists; stop bugging me!).

Uncombed.

Can you comb a beard, when you come right down to it?

So, you can be kept kempt, Kokonuts.

Carry on.

Laugh, or else.

Random(ly) House(d) Observations, Berliner Edition

Sometimes even I am amazed by my own recall. I just knew "Travel Is So Broadening" is the title of a work by the too-often-ignored Sinclair Lewis, but I had not read it in decades. I further recall this work (was it an essay or a short story? Sinclair Lewis experts are invited to chime in) was scathingly ironic, lampooning the small-mindedness of American provincials. It is an oft-repeated phrase, and it turns out travel typically broadens in ways we least expect it. So, here are some observations posted by a jet-lagged chronicler of the sundry and the not-quite-sun-dried (it was often cloudy and rainy in Berlin):

• If you are at a crosswalk in Berlin and the light for pedestrians is red, you wait. You wait until it is green. You might even do this if it is 1:30 a.m. (0130 hours) and there are no cars, trams, or other people passing by.
  
• Berlin is awash in, or littered by, or trashed by, or enlivened by graffiti. Take your pick as to how you describe it. The kindly and intelligent man who drove me in a taxi to Tegel airport attributed such wall writings to "the Americans." I doubt it. I'll take the blame for my countrymen for some of it, but there must be lots of copycats galore. Plus, I believe the Berlin Wall had graffiti on it almost from the start.
  
• I have a balancing act going on in my brain. Berlin the orderly versus Berlin the anarchic. And maybe both elements need each other.
• In Berlin there is no east or west. Isn't there an Easter hymn that goes something like that? (The link gives you a sample of the tune.)
  
• At rush hour people do not rush nearly as madly as they do in New York; they barely rush at all. In fact, during my taxi from the airport to Friedrichschain I wanted to scream, "Step on it, mach shnell, fraulein!"
• Smoking cigarettes is in, nearly everywhere. It didn't bother me nearly as much as I felt it might. I wanted to smoke a Cuban cigar. Never got around to it.
• It was hard for me to measure the weight of history or how it was viewed by those around me. For example, when I related to the taxi driver how I remembered when the Wall when up, and how I was afraid, and thought it was World War III, he glibly said something like, "That's what the Russians said." Hmmm. He might've been my age. He said he had lived in Berlin since 1960, I recall; born maybe 100 meters north of Berlin. I do not know how to read these verbal tea leaves. I liked him and shook his hand with both my hands when I departed. Yes, I tipped him.
  
• The unemployment rate there, he said, is 18%; my research supports him. It did not strike me as a depressed city economically but rather as a vibrant and creative hub.
• The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is compelling: blocky, harsh, somber, engaging, textural. At first, I was alarmed and rather horrified to see young people (ostensibly tourists in their teens or twenties) playing what resembled a casual game of "hide and seek" among its gravestone-like pillars. Were they being disrespectful? My gut feeling was, yes. I was tempted to lecture them, but how, and exactly why? Besides, maybe they would've declared that their response demonstrated a triumph of life. (Most likely, they hadn't thought that far.) To be honest, I don't know what they thought or felt. It was not a place of total silence or solemnity, but it was an eerie refuge amidst an urban din. You were drawn to it. A dark sense of place is evoked.
  
• Passing through the Brandenburg Gate was like passing through a time warp, though a Times Square atmosphere prevailed. It was cool.
• On the plane, in the toilet, a sign said "Toilet Paper Only." Man, I had to keep my legs crossed for nine hours! That was rough. I guess I took that "following the rules" bit a bit too literally for my own good.

"Lost in Translation" was one of the movies for the flight back. Perfect.

Laugh. Or....
Else!

p.s. As the day ends, my search of a fellow blogger's site summons me to find the luminous amidst the gore on this feast day of John the Baptist.