Threads of an Old Life

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep...that have taken hold.

~ Frodo, The Return of the King

Eastern Nazarene College of Quincy, Massachusetts is my alma mater. It was my school - my home - for four and a half years thirty years ago.

I was there yesterday for most of the day.

My wife and I drove down for a regional Bible quizzing tournament in which our youngest son was participating.

May has always been a most pleasant time of the year to be on campus. It usually means very fine weather, the buzz of seniors graduating, the silencing of the educational halls so busy during the year - a time for reflection and rejoicing and the simple appreciation of a beautiful environment in full throes of new birth.

The tournament was held after students and graduating seniors had already vacated the school, so the only denizens were the quizzers and their organizers. Even without the normal complement of college co-eds, the campus was alive with activity for a few days as teenagers from Virginia to Maine gathered for this major event of their competitive year.

When we weren't actually observing the competitions, my wife and I walked around the campus and I pointed out various items of interest. It occurs to me that everything I said was meaningless to her, but I dowsed us both in remembered lore and trivia. She was patient.

I kept looking around for familiar faces from my era that would ignite the whole nostalgia launch; maybe Dave and Karen, Frank or Sherrie - I had seen them all at tournaments in previous years. But they were strangely absent this time around. So I took pictures of buildings and landscapes - pictures I had taken before. I guess maybe I thought I needed more of the same.

We ate lunch with Ed and Kelly, both of whom attended ENC a few years after I graduated. In the course of conversation I asked Ed what he thought about being there, and he gave me a knowing smile and made a few comments about how it was sort of strange. I agreed and said that it was foreign, but familiar.

As I walked through the student center later, past the mailboxes, into the Dugout and Fish Bowl, I could hear the sounds of teenagers hanging out and chatting or watching television as they lounged between quiz meets. But I couldn't hear echoes from the past of the activity I knew when I attended ENC no matter how hard I tried to mentally construct it.

The building faces, with few exceptions, are unchanged over the decades, though the interiors may have been remade to someone else's mad design dreams. But where walking back from work late at night usually brought a quickening at first sight of a hummingly lit student center, now there's only a blank stare.

What I once knew as a community alive with creativity and activity, thrills and heartbreak has become cold and sterile, a museum piece to be observed, even touched, but never ever entered into again, at least not wholly. Maybe this sense would be different were the campus fully populated.

I doubt it, though.

I used to own a space of that school, owned it for four and a half years.

But now, after thirty years, I realize that I was really just borrowing that space the entire time I was there, and what I thought I had owned had really owned me. Then it let me go and moved on leaving me to try and figure out what all those threads used to mean.

I know of two more future visits to the school, one for a reunion and the other for my son's last year of quizzing. Then after that, my time there should be totally done as I see no other reason to return.

Not even for memory's sake.

Surreality

Jim has just been told he has six to eight months to live. Up to a year and a half if he has radiation and chemotherapy.

Jim is my sister's father-in-law.  He had most of a brain tumor removed recently, but the doctors now tell him that it is an aggressive form of cancer and will return.

I've known Jim for a long time now. He is a worker, a craftsman. He has built houses, done furniture repair. He and his family spent a few years in Eritrea on a missions trip; I don't know with what church it was affiliated. That was long before his son met my sister.

I, too, have been diagnosed with cancer. Unlike Jim, though, mine is early stages prostate cancer which is pretty much curable. Even with that knowledge, it still seems strange to say, "I have cancer."  I don't tell many people.

These sort of diagnoses years ago would have prompted questions of why me? and what did I do to deserve this? Or perhaps a bitter wondering of how God could have allowed any of this to happen if He truly loved us.

None of those questions have gone through my mind. Maybe at age 51 I've already seen enough of this sort of thing to make me understand that while there probably is a logical explanation for these occurrences (i.e. lifestyle, genetics, etc), it just seems random enough to not really matter. I've accepted that life is brutal and short - you can't live for a half century or longer without coming to this conclusion. But it's also a wonder and a blessing and should not be lived with nonchalance or apathy.

Now, knowing that the sands of Jim's life are draining away faster than expected, I do have one question -

What should we do with our remaining time?

We should ask that regularly, because the answer should always come from the viewpoint that our sands will run out. We just don't always have the luxury of knowing when.

And all too often, unfortunately, by the time we find out, it's too late.

Take a Load Off

Levon Helm has died from a long battle with throat cancer.

It was recently announced in online newspapers.

Days leading up to his passing had articles basically stating that his end was near. They were sort of like pre-obituaries, I guess.

I don't have a lot to say about this. I liked The Band's music, and much of it is memorable for me due to where I was at the given time I latched onto it.  I know they recorded from the late 60s into the mid-70s, but I will always associate them with my Army time in the south which would be from 84-86. Now whenever I hear Up on Cripple Creek, the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia springs into my mind. Other songs from their catalogue evoke certain southern images to me as well.

Little by little, the icons of our younger days are fading from view. It shouldn't be of any concern, but somehow it is. I don't want to say it's like losing an old friend because of the obvious inane sentimentality behind these nonrelationships, or maybe I should say non-reciprocal relationships. But something is lost even though the works of these artists remain. It's a little odd to watch re-runs of MASH today knowing that a few of the characters passed away a long time ago.

At least it seems odd to me.

I know that if I mention Levon's passing to the three other people who work in the same office as I, they would just stare at me with blank faces until I told them who he was. Even then, they most likely don't know of him or The Band. Such is the way of generational differences, though technically, we aren't of different generations, just distant ends of a generational spectrum. Yet a lot of cultural sensibilities can change in the course of fifteen to twenty years, so it really isn't much of a surprise.

I can find people my age on Facebook, though, who can remember and empathize with the "R.I.P. Levin Helm" post I made. And perhaps, that's the real indicator of relevance. Our age.

R.I.P. Levon Helm. Your music was and is most appreciated by me and my friends who used to sing along with,

Take a load off, Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off, Fanny
And put the load right on me

Two Great Tastes that Don't Taste Great Together

I pulled into McDonald's this morning on my way to work to purchase an apple and cinnamon oatmeal. Of the two variations, the apple/cinnamon and fruit/maple, I prefer the former. The cinnamon touch is a nice one. I don't mix in the small packet of walnuts; I just eat them separately.
 
The young lady attending the window told me that I got the very last of the apple and cinnamon oatmeal, that it was seasonal and is being replaced by banana, blueberry and walnut.
 
My first response to her was, "That sounds horrible."
 
She told me that it is actually quite good, and I should give it a try.
 
As I drove away with my very last apple and cinnamon oatmeal of the season, I thought about my response to her. I like blueberries. I like walnuts. I even like bananas.
 
But I don't like banana-flavored anything. A banana split is nice, but banana-flavored ice cream not so much, though I have to say that Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey is pretty good. I hate Circus Peanuts. They're like eating banana-flavored paste. 
 
This led me to think about other flavors where I like the original, but don't like it as a flavor base for other things. Peanut butter is one. I'm not a fan of peanut butter cookies or peanut butter ice cream, but Reese's peanut butter cups are quite good. 
 
I like most nuts, but I don't like them in anything. If there's a cookie or a brownie with nuts in it, I usually won't eat it. But give me a can of smoked almonds and I'll tear right through it.
 
The same holds true for raisins. Raisins in oatmeal, in cookies, in ice cream make me gag. I'm good with them by themselves or in Raisin Bran, though.
 
Mint-flavored items are something I avoid as well. Tea, mint chocolate chip ice cream, thin mints - I can live without all these. On the other hand, I'll chew peppermint gum all day long.
 
I have no idea why my tastes work this way. My wife loves nuts used in various foods and usually puts them in despite my request she doesn't. There's something about savoring the dense cakey chocolate of a brownie and hitting a burst of the woody walnut taste that really turns me off. 
 
I guess I'm just a food redneck.

By the way, the fruit/maple oatmeal from McDonald's - it has raisins in it.

Saw it once, was impressed. Saw it twice, became suspicious. Saw it three times, turned it off.

For those who have known me for a period of time, this will come as no surprise. I have become a cynical old cuss.

This isn't really new information. I donned the cynical mantle years ago, and it has become heavier with age. The majority of my cynicism has to do with human behavior. I have a degree in psychology, but I don't think that has had any real effect on my ongoing judgments of what people say and do. Had I majored in basket-weaving, I'm sure I'd still be a cynic.

For what it's worth, the school I attended did not have a basket-weaving major.

Anyway, I find that Facebook really feeds my cynicism. I spend way too much time actually reading through the newsfeed I receive from over 1500 'friends'. The one benefit to this is that it is easier to pick up patterns of behavior. Then comment on them in this blog.

Recently, a YouTube video has been making the rounds with many posting it and commenting. It is a segment from Britain's Got Talent, with Jonathon Antoine and Charlotte Jaconelli singing.
 
Jonathan is a fairly obese young man. Charlotte is a somewhat attractive young lady. I don't know their ages. They, of course, are pretty good singers as it turns out. I say "of course" because that is this show's shtick. Here is a response I made to someone who posted the video.

These shows really play up the 'gotcha' moment, when Plain Jane (Susan Boyle) or Plain Joe (Paul Potts) come out to judges' smirks and mildly veiled scorn in their voices, then proceed to blow everyone away with their angelic voices. I find it all to be too staged. But then again, it is "reality" television.

I watched the video, stopped it after a few seconds because it had gone the way I thought it would and the song they were singing didn't really interest me. But I wasn't blown away by their singing ability - I expected it.
 
Here are some of the comments about the video I pulled off Facebook:

Wow, absolutely unbelievable. This is one of those rare 'must watch' videos.


A good lesson on not judging people before you get to know who they are!! Amazing talent!!!


You need to watch Simon's face.....amazing!


That was beyond awesome.....I actually cried!!!!!

While it's true that we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, the comments make me think that is exactly what these people are doing. They look at big fat Jonathan and immediately assume that nothing good can come of this because fat people have always been stereotyped as clowns - maybe humorous ones or tragic ones. But clowns, nonetheless. Then here comes this fellow who can sing in quite an accomplished operatic style.
 
Like I said earlier, I expected it. 
 
Television producers leave little to chance when it comes to determining what content will air because they are ratings-driven. Good ratings means the show will make money. Pure and simple.
 
And these 'reality' shows are always looking for the heart-tugging stories that will make people discuss them for days after the show. It makes good business sense.
 
I'm surprised more people don't seem to understand this.
 
But, then again... I'm just a cynical old cuss.

Will-o'-the-Wisp Thoughts

I do all my best writing at night when I'm lying in bed and I've just turned out the light.

Then my brain wanders down paths searching for the elusive sleep germ to infect me. In its travels it often writes soaring and eloquent narratives, pointed and intelligent commentary, richly imaged poetry.

And I think to myself that I really should write some of this down or else I'll forget it.

Of course, in doing so, I will have to turn on the light, get up and go find some paper and pen. I could keep them by the bed so as to not have to arise. But either way, the process of seeking slumber will have to be interrupted and restarted.

I used to do this several years ago. I was younger then, and the whole process seemed easier. It also seemed necessary. Maybe urgent.

Now, not so much.

It's possible I've grown lazy about such things. Or, perhaps, apathetic.

I know sleeping can be an issue. Sometimes getting to sleep is a struggle as is staying asleep.

There have been many times when I did get up, write a few notes down or some lines with the expectation of being able to recraft it later. Then in view of the next day's morning light I looked at what I wrote the night before and came to the conclusion that it was really gibberish after all.

Or whatever made it seem so lovely when drifting off didn't translate well to the reality and sensibility of day time.

Some writings have worked out okay.

But the beauty experienced in the world in between wakefulness and sleep is near impossible to re-create.

So I guess, I'll just forget about disturbing the process in order to record it and deal with the disappointment of not being able to remember the next day.

It'll be my little ephemeral library.

I think I'm okay with dying; it's getting older which really drives me nuts.

I hate becoming that guy I used to look at thirty years ago and think, ‘well, he’s just old.’ In my early 50s, I’m not considered old by many standards, but I may as well be in my 80s according to today’s youth. I understand the thinking. I really do, because when I look at pictures of my peers on Facebook, my initial thought is usually, ‘well, they’re just old.’

It’s a strange conundrum. There is some sort of perceptual dissynchronization taking place. Or perhaps I should say that a certain perceptual synchronization has yet to take place. That would probably be more accurate.

It doesn’t seem right that people I graduated with now have their own graduates, some from college. There are even folks my age who are now grandparents. Oh, the horror! How does this happen?

Don’t answer that in any sort of logical or biological way. I know those answers.

No, I think it’s more of an existential question than anything else. Maybe it’s time to get out the old philosophy text books. If I can remember where they are. Come to think of it, I don’t think I held on to any of them which makes sense because I didn’t enjoy studying philosophy in school.But now I spend a lot of time philosophizing. Go figure.

You know, I think one of the worst things about getting older is that it’s not just an illness that will get better. This condition is terminal and I’ve yet to see anyone improve from aging... physically, I mean.

I’m not trying to make this out to be a terrible thing. After all, every day I live is a day for which I am grateful. I’ve seen too many friends’ lives cut short by disease or accident. But it's easy to start viewing life as an inexorable conveyor belt and start feeling a sense of helplessness because of it.

I guess we should do as much as we can with the time God has given us. This includes doing for others as much, if not more, as for ourselves. We should rejoice in the little things in life that provide beauty and pleasure as examples of God's handiwork. We should relax and sense the day.

We should do all this regularly because one day we won't.

Then all that will remain is emptiness.

Or fulfillment. Your choice.