A Note to Young J--

The week before last, I wrote the following sentence in my notebook:  Wounds are going to come most likely, but self-inflicted ones need not return. Coincidentally—and only coincidentally—I heard from your mother that you are feeling stymied by your inability to cease and resist some self-defeating actions. The word stymied may be understatement, but that is my way with words.

My first take was that your threshold for pain had not been breached apparently. Not physical pain, of course, but the emotional or psychic pain that requires healing sometimes and sometimes more than an ounce of prevention. I also went with the old comic riff on self-thwarting: “Doctor it hurts when I do this”. “Then stop doing that.”

Not laugh-out-loud funny, but wry at the very least. Probably as helpful as how we say to another to stop acting or stop feeling or stop thinking in some particular way. Perhaps, though, having some obligatory encouragement sent our way, tenderly or fiercely, does offer to us a wall to bounce our self-awareness against.

Or turn it into a step in a series of steps—yes, a process. Self-awareness of a weakness, a failing, an error, oh Human One, is a self-admission. Sure, we need the discerning eyes of others, especially those on our side as we stumble forward, but self-knowledge needs be and is a powerful tool. No doubt you see me massaging the self-concept gambit. Self. Self. Self.

I could offer up anecdotal evidence of my sojourns in slow-leaner land or examples by the dozens of others as well. Not so sure that is helpful beyond reestablishing that nearly all of us sooner and later rocks their own boat.

Of course, your mother loves you and would wave the magic wand were one available to her, even as she understands it is your wallow. That is not to say there isn’t a magic wand. But then you already knew that, didn’t you?

You are the magic wand.

About Faces

A witty quip or retort keeps an honored place in the trophy room of my mind. I read enough to come down daily with the wish-I-had-said-its. A case in point, Coco Chanel’s observation that “Nature gives you the face you have at 20. Life shapes the face you have at 30. But at 50 you get the face you deserve.”

Think just long enough to say “Ah”, but not so long as to apply the maxim to all faces, your face or the faces of others—friends, family, colleagues, or the famous or the not. I know, just as you do, some folks whose faces belie phrases like hard-living or at peace. Maybe the art of masking has been mastered, I don’t know for sure.

But Chanel scores as clever enough and mostly true enough—well, even Orwell is cited as agreeing that “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves”. Hmmm, Chanel or Orwell, Chanel or Orwell?

On the issue of faces, then and later, some lines from Sylvia Plath’s poem “Mirror” strike me between my ribs—wrong anatomically, but allow my drift: “Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. / In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman / Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish”.

I would gladly claim those lines as mine even as I feel the point’s hook stab me in the psyche. There are mornings as I lift my head after washing away shaving lather that I am caught off guard—that face? Mine? Yes. But mine? What happened to…? Gone.

As for wish-I-had-written-it-itis, a passage from Howard Thurman’s The Inward Journey could claim line honors:

This face is our face, not another’s; it will always be our face exhibiting a countenance that reveals all the laugher and all the tears of our years of living. Whatever a face means in the history of the human race, all the face-meaning which is uniquely ours is ours as utterly as if there were no face on earth except our own. No substitute can be found for it—go where we will, knock at every door, our face remains our face. This is an item of our bill of particulars.

Maybe we deserve, maybe we don’t. But we’ve got it. The only one like it in the history of the world. Might as well face up to it and go with loud and proud.

Coco Chanel (1883-1971)

George Orwell (1903-1950)
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Howard Thurman (1899-1991)

A Dollop of Madison

A slice of a day in the life of….

I no longer research, I rummage about. Something catches my notice when I am reading, and off I go—much more easily now than during the day of library cards, mercifully—following links and notes that lead me about by the who-knows-where. To wit (a first use for me, I am pretty sure), Dolley Madison’s spouse James (1751-1836) proclaiming that “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy”. Interesting.

Or, at least, interesting enough to send me rattling about Madison’s written opinions. His work is easily cherry-picked (I’ll save Washington for another time), and this nugget could find its way into many a current pundit’s verbal grind: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm”. Do tell.

Of course, that may depend on what the definition of enlightened is. Uh-oh.

Says Madison, “Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant”, and let’s just go ahead and exhume him and hope for some voodoo that anchors him in a chatterbox media chair.

This proposition is rich: “Every generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations”. President Eisenhower, care to weigh in? President Eisenhower? President Eisenhower? Anyone? Anyone?

Moving on, so President Madison remains resting in peace: “Let me recommend the best medicine in the entire world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages”. Well, I’m up for a mild season in a pleasant country. In fact, I am in a mild season in a pleasant country.

But to return back around at last to the other Madison, Dolley (1768-1849), who revealed, “It is one of my sources of happiness never to desire a knowledge of other people’s business”. Amen, Sister.

Spiritus Monday: No Greater Love

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13

Last Thursday, on another blog, I recounted briefly the story of a 10-year-old girl who pushed two younger companions out the way of an oncoming vehicle and died as a result of her action. I went on to propose that if we were faced by the same circumstance—and beyond the reflexive response—we must push anyone in harm’s way to safety. Anyone.

Two responses came my way. The first tested my principle by naming a current presidential candidate. I’ll leave out the name so that both sides of the aisle can summon up their litmus test—yay or nay—according to personal standards of loathing or love.

I answered “Yes”, unequivocally. Of course, I’m sure the reader was joking. Or not.

The second challenge offered up a terrorist as the person in peril. So?

“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Mark 12:31

The words friends and neighbor could ignite the complaint that I am extending the two ideals beyond their intended boundaries. Maybe I do so, but here’s why: Because I do not know the future.

Perhaps the person at risk will either do something of great value or inspire actions that are transcendent—or an offspring, during the next generation, or the next, or the next. I do not know. The candidate may lead the nation forward in a resoundingly better fashion than expected. The terrorist may commit an act so heinous that people will come together and peace will reign for a thousand years. Perhaps not, of course.

As a counterargument, the line of thinking may be applied to me as well—I might do something of greater merit or inspire the same. I don’t know. Why, then, my life for another’s?

One word, humility.

Let me prop up my thesis from another angle by quoting French theologian Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715): “When I touch a human hand, I touch heaven”.  

So, one last word: Humbled.

Punditry 101

Oh, South Carolina voters in the recent Republican primary, feeling a bit thwarted? Why, how could you? A local senator-wannabe is shocked, shocked I say.

According to the Post & Courier, State Rep. Jenny Horne said [Mark] Sandford's refusal to accept the will of the party's electorate "is a slap in the face to all (emphais mine) the Republican voters in South Carolina who gave him an overwelming victory in our recent primary."

Well, sure enough, Don did take home 50 convention delegates—that’s 50 out of 50. Oh, and that sweep was by gathering 32.5% of the actual vote.

Now maybe it’s just me, but if I were standing in front of a 100 folks in a parking lot asking for their vote and 68 (I’ll spot the torso) said no and got in their cars and drove home, I’m not feeling the word overwhelming. Like I said, probably just me.

Disenfranchisement, however, to my ears rings loudly and clearly. Two-thirds of the voters might as well have run errands. Makes me think of the coin-toss solution in Iowa, but I stray too far from home.

Of course, I understand that national parties want to coalesce around a candidate as soon as possible—saves money, which is not unlimited even as some pundits think $5,000,000,000 and loose change may be spent on this election cycle—and allows a unified siege against the other side to begin. Got it.

But 33% of the vote captures 100% of the delegates? I’ll give you efficient if you will spot me ruthlessly.

With 50 states and the territories all with the right to participate, this kind of winnowing early degrades the choices for those voting later in the process. Media coverage, money, and time will conspire—how democratic? ‘Tis a pity for the folks downstream calendar-wise, but isn’t that always so for folks downstream?

Sure, neither party wants a throw-down at the national convention with the whole world watching. A sort of family feud in the backyard with all the neighbors uploading the donnybrook to YouTube. Fair enough.

To my neighbors who voted and are disappointed and, well, underwhelmed, all I can say is—if I have any sense of how it goes this election—maybe 2016 will be the Year of Holding Noses.

By the way, Sister H won 75% of the Dems’ delegates with 75% of the vote here in South Carolina. However, this formula is a function of the state’s rules and doesn’t undo what I think of the national process. I only mention this result because at least one reader will ignore every word if I don’t address both sides of the aisle. Obviously the Republican slate is more fragmented and so worsens the effect of some primary rules.

Oh, I could go on, but I won’t.

Folks get paid for writing this kind of stuff? And big money? Wow. Please, like and share and follow and tweet—well, maybe not tweet—and whatever else one may do these days.

But as for me, give me—okay, a bit over the top—but as for me, I choose to go all Candide on the process and retreat to cultivating my garden.