Examination of conscience

 I came alone and I go as a stranger.  The instant which has passed in power has left only sorrow behind it.  I have not been the guardian and protector of the Empire.  Life, so valuable, has been squandered in vain.  God was in my heart, but I could not see him.  Life is transient.  The past is gone and there is no hope for the future.  The whole imperial army is like me: bewildered, perturbed, separated from God quaking like quicksilver.  I fear my punishment.  Though I have a firm hope in God's grace, yet for my deeds anxiety ever remains with me.

So wrote Alamgir Aurangzeb (1618-1707) in a letter from his deathbed to his son.  Aurangzeb was the Muslim Emperor who presided over the Mughal Empire as it reached its greatest power and glory, stretching from what is now Afghanistan, over virtually the entire Indian sub-continent, and across Bangladesh.  

Unfortunately, for his peace of mind, he lived long enough to see the Empire be built begin to collapse.  The vast expenditures necessary to subdue southern India drove the Empire to near bankruptcy.

I had been reading once more William Dalrymple's City of Djinns -- one of four Dalrymple books that I have read and discussed on this blog -- when I decided to check and see what else he had written.  I discovered The Anarchy.  It's a highly ambitious work.  I already feel I've been instructed on the full history of the Mughal Empire. but I see on my Kindle that I'm only eleven percent of my way through the book.  What else lies ahead?  I'll find out, but it may take awhile.

I mention the book so prematurely now simply because I'm so impressed by Aurangzeb's deathbed confession.  A man who has finally conquered all  of the world worth conquering, at least from his point of view, views his life's work as probably a form of vanity -- an accomplishment not only threatened by ruin, but, considering its cost in human suffering, perhaps one that should never have been undertaken.

Life, so valuable, has been squandered in vain. ...  I fear my punishment.

My first reaction, perhaps, was to seek analogies in our time.  The Ukrainian war hasn't yet run its course, but regardless of outcome, will Putin someday wonder what he was seeking, and why, and questioning its cost in the human suffering he caused?   Will Trump wonder to himself what it was all about, whether whatever he thought he wanted was worth sacrificing the human joys of friends and family?   Well, probably not, but, as always, Trump is unique.

But then I thought about us common people, those of us with no interest in or pretensions of Imperial Glory.  Don't we nevertheless wonder along with the Mughal Emperor?  Have our precious lives also been "squandered in vain"?   Don't we respond viscerally to the Episcopalian prayer:  "I have left undone those things which I ought to have done; and I have done those things which I ought not to have done; and there is no good in me"?  If we are honest with ourselves, as we near the end of our lives, don't even the best of us feel some response to that pessimistic appraisal of our lives?

By coincidence, I read today my 2020 discussion in this blog of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's historical novel The Leopard (1958), the story of the life of a nineteenth century Sicilian aristocrat.  At the end, as the priest approaches to administer the last rites, he muses about what to confess:

Not that he felt himself innocent; but his whole life was blameworthy, not this or that single act in it; and now he no longer had time to say so.

He tries to recall all the happy times of his life.

I'm seventy-three years old, and all in all I may have lived, really lived a total of two ... three at the most.

I draw no conclusions.  I don't insist that everyone ends his life disappointed at his life's futility.  I don't know that I believe so myself.

But certainly for some people -- people whom we may all envy for their accomplishments -- experiencing such disappointment does seem unavoidable.  Maybe a tendency toward severe self-criticism is genetic?  Maybe some people, outwardly successful, have actual reason to judge themselves harshly?  Aurangzeb himself murdered and executed freely, and ruled his Hindu subjects oppressively.

But at least, he ended his life with humility.

How to change a flat tire

I guess it's just one of those things that happens to everyone now and then.  Yesterday, I hopped in the car with the idea of taking a dirty blanket to the cleaner's -- about five blocks away.  The car made strange noises, and kept pulling to the left.  

On the highway, I would have immediately diagnosed a flat tire.  But the tire hadn't been flat the night before, and I was puzzled.  After getting my blanket checked in, I took a look at the car.  The right front tire was so flat that I'd been driving on the rim.  I slowly drove back to my house, parked in the driveway, and resolved to think about it the next day.    

Yes, rather than immediately tackle the problem, I procrastinated.  And having no car, I walked 45 minutes to reach breakfast this morning. 

If it's not one thing, these days, it's another. Right?  

Although I've had my little Toyota Corolla for twenty years, I'd never had to change a flat tire.  I knew there was a jack and a lug wrench in the trunk.  And under the flimsy floor of the trunk, I discovered the spare tire, sitting in about three inches of water.  Don't ask.  

I rolled up my sleeves, metaphorically, and loosened the lug nuts.  Before jacking the wheel off the ground, I suspected it would be a good idea to first remove the spare from the trunk.  The tire, as is typical, was secured on a center pole, and pinned down in place by a wing nut.  I twisted the wing nut  Ol' Brer Nut, he don't move, he don't say nuthin'.   I tried pounding the wings with various blunt instruments.  No luck.

I had no tool that would move the immobile wing nut.  I reviewed the twenty steps of "How to Change a Flat Tire"¹,  an excellent and exhaustive on-line, step by step manual tackling the title question.  None of the steps addresses the critical issue of how to remove the spare tire from the trunk when the wing nut is stuck in place.

I had seemingly reached an impasse.

At the back of my mind were tragic memories of the day, as a 16-year-old, that I received my drivers license.  To celebrate, I took my younger brother for a spin through the countryside surrounding our home town.  In our dad's Buick.  I quickly, of course, blew out a tire.  While my brother watched with narrowed eyes, I breathed deeply and tried to be calm and competent.  I removed the jack, placed it under the body of the car near the affected wheel, and jacked 'er up.  The jack indeed rose, but the wheel remained, fixed solidly to the ground.  I noticed that I had placed the jack under the soft metal of the fender, which was folding up like an accordion.  

But wait, there's more.  While I was removing the spare from the trunk, I had laid the car keys inside the trunk for safe keeping.  After the jack fiasco, I slammed the trunk in frustration.  

The tire was flat, the keys were in the trunk.   In those days, there was no clever little lever under the seat for opening the trunk.  It was quite a walk to the nearest pay phone to summon parental assistance.  It was not a comfortable conversation.  My brother listened, hanging on every word.  There were no spare keys.  The car had to be towed to a dealer, awaiting for several days arrival of the appropriate key.  

My brother's thirteenth birthday arrived a day or two after the flat tire fiasco.  Unfortunately, our folks had -- for reasons I don't recall -- placed most of his presents in the trunk for safe-keeping.  They weren't available after his birthday dinner, when the cake and ice cream were served.

He gazed at me again, with hooded eyes.

That emotional trauma has always left me uncomfortable contemplating the possibility of flat tires and their consequences.  As I was today.  

But tell us, you plead -- how did you get the spare tire out of the trunk?

I telephoned a professional, of course.  For a mere $169, he was on the scene within an hour, and within minutes had the tire changed, a feat that I suspect most drivers could accomplish themselves with their eyes closed.  By that time -- to me, at least -- it was worth the cost.

Luckily my brother wasn't there to watch.

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¹https://www.bridgestonetire.com/learn/maintenance/how-to-change-a-flat-tire/

Don't mess with the Mouse

"Mickey Mouse" has to come to mean wimpy, soft, weak.  It wasn't always so.  My first acquaintance with the Mouse was in a little compact book entitled "Mickey Mouse, the Mail Pilot."  Published back when private pilots often flew the U.S. Mail, Mickey ran into a gang of bad guys -- very bad guys -- holed up in a dirigible.  Things looked bad for Mickey for a while, but he kicked their butt.

Now Mickey is locked in combat with a smoother villain -- one with degrees from Yale and Harvard, a governor who wants to turn America into a larger version of what he's doing to Florida.  While America begins to turn away from Donald Trump, this fellow hopes to win national office by out-Trumping Trump.  A Trump who speaks in complete sentences.  An ingratiating Mussolini.

I'm not sure how attacking the world of Disney fits into his plans.  I suspect it doesn't.  But like his Trump mentor, this guy has a thin skin, and he can't stand losing.  Rather than lose a fight he himself gratuitously started, he'll kill the goose that lays Florida's golden eggs, and his own goose as well.

Because beneath Mickey's easy-going facade, the Mouse is a fighter.  A happy warrior.  And a winner. 

As the Mail Pilot book concluded:

"Ya know, Minnie," said Mickey, as they walked happily homeward, "flyin' the mail has taught me a lesson I'll never forget!"

"What's that, Mickey?" asked Minnie.

"Whenever you have a job, no matter how hard it is," he replied, "or how much you hate to do it, just buckle down an' remember, the mail must go through!  Before ya know it, th' job's done -- an' ya feel just swell!"

Hey, I'll lay my money on the Mouse over the Yalie.  Go Mickey! 

Traveling mindfully

A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.

--Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

A typical April walk in Seattle.  Flowers flowering, and buds budding.  A bit colder than the usual April afternoon.  A light breeze against my face.  Dark clouds, threatening rain that never arrived, at least until hours after I arrived home.  

I was half enjoying the sights, and half letting my mind wander -- planning future travels, doing financial planning (not unrelated to those same travels), mulling my own mortality ...

Whoops!  Where did that come from?  An unwelcome intrusion of thoughts, maybe, but it led to some rewarding contemplations.

I breathed in deeply the crisp air, directed my focus to the springtime beauties of the neighborhoods through which I was walking, and realized that a time would inevitably come -- not tomorrow, but sooner that it would have seemed five years ago -- when walks such as this would be only memories.  I might well find my life narrowed and -- at best -- confined to an assisted care facility.

I thought of my mother who lived in such a facility -- a very nice one -- for about three years before her death.  Like me, she had been something of a walker, at least, certaintly, around our home town.  But her walking was now restricted to the quiet, beige halls of her facility -- beige and maybe intentionally bland and non-threatening.  And certainly non-stimulating.  Nature was whatever she could see outside her window.  We took her for a drive one day, and parked overlooking the Columbia river.  "It's beautiful," she exclaimed.  As it was, but not so beautiful that we had ever thought much about it.

Which, I realized, is how I was reacting to the amazingly varied and attractive sights I was striding past today.  Beautiful, sure, but so what?  It's always beautiful, even in the dead of winter.  And I do appreciate that beauty, but I should appreciate it more intently.

"Mindfulness" in today's jargon.  Paying attention to what you see and experience.  Before it's too late.

In three weeks, I'm traveling alone to Italy.  Mainly to the Cinque Terre, with some additional time in Rome and Florence.  And, yes, I plan to return to my practice of keeping a travel journal.  Such a  journal has two purposes: first, to preserve memories for future enjoyment, and second, to encourage yourself to really see what you are looking act, to feel what you are experiencing, to appreciate the uniqueness and complexity of people whom you meet.

A travel journal is not a new concept for me.  I've kept journals during many travels, beginning with scribbled summaries of the day's activities as an undergraduate, and progressing to lengthier reflections on my recorded  activities as I grew older.  I later typed up a number of those travel journals, which I've  never ceased to enjoy re-reading over the years.  

My only regret is that I didn't record my impressions and feelings about every one of the many trips and hikes I've taken.  The journeys that I did journal seem random -- some, not surprisingly, were trips when I was traveling alone, and had more incentive and opportunity to write.  Nothing makes me more at ease when dining alone  than scribbling away in a notebook between courses.  I recently re-read a journal I kept in 1999 of a trip to Central Europe; my entries written during meals in Prague and near Budapest vividly reminded me not only of the surroundings I was observing, but also of my pleasure in writing about it while writing about it  and -- to be truthful -- in being observed writing.  

But I also have written fairly detailed journals on trips where I was traveling with a large number of friends and/or relatives, such as family trips to Italy and canoeing in France.  When I felt like writing, I could always find time, although those journals tended to be more often summaries of what had occurred over the past day or so, lacking the immediacy of thoughts about my surroundings even as they were observed.  While sitting in a Czech café, for example, or while sitting on a boulder staring down at a bubbling creek near Dresden.

In any event, I'll be alone in Italy, with only my hiking shoes and my journal to keep me company.  I hope to be "mindful," hope not to be one of those who have "eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear..."  And, even more, I hope to be reflective.

It's my hope that, once my journal is written, and self-edited, and finally typed up, I'll discover -- as the ancient Chinese poet suggested -- that those two weeks in Italy have, like magic, been lived twice.

Springtime drudgery

So.  We're more than three weeks past the vernal equinox.  The Easter Bunny has come and gone.  Passover is past.  As is the Ramadan fast.  But, however you mark the beginning of summer, summer's still a long ways off.

So what comes next?  Ah, yes.  As the earth stirs, and new life springs up, we hear on the horizon the buzzing of the wily lawn mower.  Time for the first mowing of 2023.

My lawn, like my hair, had been getting increasingly shaggy the past couple of weeks.  But I always had a good excuse for not mowing.  Yet.  You simply don't mow while it's raining, and it's been raining or drizzling off and on almost every day since said equinox.

And when it hasn't been raining, the lawn has been drenched and boggy and unsuitable for mowing.  

But yesterday it was sunny.  Not real warm, but sunny.  And today it was a bit warmer, and still no rain.  But my little iPhone weather app predicted rain tomorrow, and off and on for the next week.  Good growing weather for grass.  Once before I kept telling myself that conditions weren't ideal for a first mow.  Let's wait until the grass was thoroughly dry, and until the air was comfortable for outdoorsy activities.  

I finally had to borrow a friend's weed-eater to cut down what had become a virtual hay field, before fine tuning the job with a mower.  Never again, I vowed.

And so, this afternoon -- as the sky remained mostly clear and the lawn dried off,  I did it.  Donned shorts and old tennis shoes.  Warmed up the old gas mower.  And tackled the lawn.  It was still a bit damp and clumpy, but mowing it was hardly a Herculean task.  One of those things you needlessly dread and put off, but find easy once undertaken.  And then kid yourself that this had indeed been a major accomplishment.

Grass lawns are odd.  They are pretty in the spring.  In the summer, around these parts, most of us let them turn dry and brown.  And in the fall, they regain their greenness after the first good rain, but look tired and bedraggled until the following spring.  In most of the country, they are a shameful waste of water, although that's rarely a problem around Seattle.  

But why do we plant a crop that grows rapidly, and then regularly hack it down to its roots?  I at least leave the cuttings to enrich the soil, but most of my neighbors dump their harvest into one of their several recycling bins to be hauled away by the city.

I would love to allow my small allotment of land to grow wild.  Trees and shrubs, growing without plan or discipline, with narrow paths leading into small clearings where I could go and ponder the clouds and nature's abundance and great philosophical issues on a warm summer day (yes, we have such in Seattle, but we don't like to talk about them to non-residents).  Let the blackberries return, offering up their abundant crops.  Make friends with the wandering deer and occasional bear.  (Well, racoons, maybe -- my lot is only 40 feet wide.)

Waldon Pond is my ideal landscape.  Not Versailles. 

Guilt-tipping

On numerous occasions, I've sung the praises of my favorite hamburger et al. franchise in Seattle.  I'll call it "BigBurger," but you locals all know who I mean.  BigBurger's a local chain, but I'm only familiar with the one nearest my house.  Unlike others in the chain, my local outlet isn't a drive-in.  It's a sit-down establishment, although you can also order at the counter, pick your order up at the counter, and take it elsewhere to eat.

Until the pandemic arrived in Seattle in 2020, I was a daily BigBurger customer, showing up each day for either my breakfast or my lunch. Beginning in March 2020, I went through 350 days of torture, fully documented herein, during which I was barred, or barred myself, from eating out.  Not until the 14th day after receiving my second Pfizer immunization did I triumphantly return to BigBurger, and order my favorite breakfast.  That breakfast was immortalized in a blog post in March 2021.

At BigBurger, the food was decent, the prices were reasonable, and I felt comfortable reading at my table while eating.  No one ever tipped.  In fact, before the pandemic, I overheard a manager explaining to an employee that tipping was not encouraged, and that to compensate, the business paid above average wages.

It was too good to last.

During those halcyon days, the person at the register took your order, tapped or swiped your credit card, and the order was complete.  More recently, however, the register began generating a paper receipt that you were required to scrawl your signature on -- contrary to the trend elsewhere of eliminating paper receipts.  These receipts ominously had a line where you could add a tip.

I scrawled a version of my signature, ignored the tip line, exchanged greetings with the employee, and walked to my table.  As did -- so far as I could tell -- most customers.

Then, a week or so ago, the nightmare began.  BigBurger installed iPads, facing the customer, connected to a pad where the customer taps his own card.  Tapping your own card arguably makes the transaction faster.  But the iPad?

The iPad is a large screen, with large buttons identifying the percentage of tip you "choose" to leave.  The lowest figure on such a button is ten percent.  I think the highest percentage on a button is 25 percent, but I've been too stunned by the entire concept to look closely.  There is another button with which you can "customize" the size of your tip.  And a tiny button with tiny letters spelling out "No Tip."

These infernal machines have been in place now for a week or two.  Until today, I've relied on good hand-eye coordination to hit the tiny button.  Today, I gave in -- promising myself this was an exceptional day -- and hit the ten percent.  But I was not happy.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm a decent, although not extravagant, tipper.  When I attend a full service, sit-down restaurant, I routinely leave a twenty percent tip -- whether the service has been good or mediocre.  I refuse to use tipping to somehow offer a performance evaluation of the restaurant's staff.  That's their management's job.  I tip because I know that the wages of not only the server but of many of the unseen persons in the kitchen have been scaled down, to take into account the tips they anticipate from their customers.

Tipping is a terrible way to compensate staff, and I hate it.  When eating out in Europe, I happily pay the same amount as a mandatory service charge, although even there I wonder why the restaurant doesn't just up the prices, say 15 percent, rather than tacking on a 15 percent service charge.  Probably because the competition does not do it, and they assume that prospective customers pick their restaurants based on menu price, and are, moreover, unaware that a service charge will also be forthcoming.  A questionable assumption.

Minimum wage in Seattle is $18.69/hour (or $16.50/hour, if tips are sufficient to raise the total above $18.69)..  At least historically, BigBurger has paid above minimum wage.  I'd be happy to see their employees make more money.  I'd be happy -- well, accepting -- of higher menu prices to pay for those higher wages.  

But I'm not happy to be asked to make a voluntary, individual donation -- under a certain amount of psychological duress -- to achieve that goal, in effect subsidizing the meals of those sitting around me who refuse to do so.   

I'm irritated enough that I've found myself asking myself why I don't just stay home more often and make my own sandwiches. 

Carmina Burana

Many years ago, I attended -- in four consecutive nights -- Wagner's entire Ring Cycle.  Looking back, I admire my stamina -- practicing law by day, and watching lengthy operas each evening past my usual bedtime.  

I obviously enjoyed it, because the very next year I repeated the experience. 

The four operas contain beautiful arias and stirring orchestral music.  They also contain unusually long stretches of recitative, which is a sort of sung or chanted conversation.  I knew, of course, the basic plot of each opera, and had read portions of the lengthy librettos.  But even so, it was difficult to know exactly what the singer was singing during each aria, and impossible during the recitative.

My youthful period of attending operas regularly was short-lived, but I later realized that many opera houses had begun projecting the English translation of the libretto over the stage, analogous to the showing of subtitles during foreign movies.  My first experience with such "supertitles" was at a performance of Wagner's Tannhäuser by the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2015.  It was a revelation.

A similar revelation was last Saturday's performance of Carmina Burana by the Seattle Symphony, joined by the Seattle Symphony Chorale and the Northwest Boychoir.  I was quite familiar with the music, having heard it frequently both on radio and from my own LP.  It was ok, I felt.  It did go on and on, although the music was interestingly different, at least on first hearing -- a twentieth century take on music discovered in manuscripts from the high middle ages.  I wasn't really excited about hearing it again -- but I had a season's ticket.  Rather than waste it, I went.

The choral singing -- in Latin, Old French, and Middle High German, according to the program notes -- was translated and displayed in superscripts.  And the superscripts made all the difference in the world.  The music made sense, once I understood what was being sung, and considered the context.  The performance is an hour in length, but it was never boring.  

Credit also to the excellent singing by the two choruses, and to the singing -- and acting ability -- of the three soloists.  After listening to the Swan's solo lament at being roasted and served at a banquet, I'm not sure whether I will ever feel comfortable eating turkey again at Thanksgiving!