Making your younger self happy

In one of his recently published essays,¹ André Aciman recalls a story he first heard from his father while he was still a 13-year-old boy in Egypt.  I'll try to summarize the story briefly.

An artist is hired to paint the story of Christ, from beginning to end.  He begins with the child Jesus, and after much searching he selects a beautiful, angelic-looking boy as his model.  The work continues for years, as, one by one, the painter finds various models for each of the apostles.  Eventually, when the painter is aged and nearing the end of his career, he needs only one more model, someone to pose as the treacherous apostle, Judas.  Finally, outside a bar,

he spots the most debauched, seedy-looking, bedraggled vagabond who is clearly given to drinking, lechery, and thieving, if not worse.

He offers the bum a small amount to pose for him, and the guy agrees -- payment in advance.  Eventually, as the painting proceeds, the bum gets curious and asks who the painting represents.

After hearing the painter's answer, the would-be Judas begins to weep.  "Why are you crying," asks the painter.  "Years ago you painted me as Jesus," says the man.  "Now look and see what's become of me."

Aciman recalls as a boy being stunned upon being told this story.  He took the story personally, feeling that he -- a nice, smart, Jewish boy -- might have buried within himself the potential of ending up as a disgusting, degenerate bum.  Moreover, he feared that his father had told him the story because the father recognized and worried about that potential in his son.  After all, the "boy Jesus" model probably had looked forward to a great future, never dreaming of  how he would turn out.

The adult Aciman then turns to a photo his father took of him when he was 14 (above).  Did that boy realize that some day his adult self would look back on this photo, envying his own youth and the adventures that still lay ahead?  In his introduction to the same book of essays, Aciman also discusses the photo.  As I quoted from that introduction in an earlier post:

When I look at the black-and-white photo, I feel for that boy of almost six decades ago.  What happened to him?  Whatever did he end up becoming? ... "I've been looking for you," he says.  "I'm always looking for you."

The Jesus/Judas model tells himself "I was born to be this, but now I've become that. ...  I could have continued being the boy I once was, but that was not to be.  I can no longer become what I was meant to be."  

This story reminds me of the novel Canada, by Richard Ford, which I wrote about in 2012.  The young teenager Dell lost his parents when, because of a small debt, they decided to rob a bank.  They were quickly apprehended and sent to prison, leaving Dell essentially an orphan.  Looking back, near the end of a successful career as a school teacher, Dell ruminates:

[B]ecause very few people do rob banks, it only makes sense that the few who do it are destined for it, no matter what they believe about themselves or how they were raised. I find it impossible not to think this way, because the sense of tragedy would otherwise be overpowering to me. Though it's an odd thing to believe about your parents -- that all along they've been the kind of people criminals come from. It's like a miracle in reverse.

The two stories examine a similar situation from different perspectives.  The dissolute model knows that he had a choice.  Somewhere along the line, he made a series of disastrous decisions.  He himself was responsible for his descent from innocent schoolboy to worthless bum.  "I  was born to be this, but now I've become that."   Dell, on the other hand, sees his father's plight differently.  He sees his father as having been predestined to criminal behavior.

I've seen this phenomenon in the faces of other men -- homeless men, men sprawled on the pavement ... -- I've seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves. It's a theory of destiny and character I don't like or want to believe in. But it's there in me like a hard understory.

Like Aciman, I often stare at photos of myself as a boy.  Like Aciman, there are things I wish I could tell that handsome young kid.  But unlike Aciman, the boy does not seem a stranger to me.  I've obviously learned much and experienced much that my boyhood self couldn't dream of.  But I can remember -- or, at least, I think I can remember -- how I thought and felt at that age.   I feel a continuity between him and me.  

Aciman wonders how that boy in his photo would have felt had he seen himself as an adult.  Because the Aciman family left Egypt forever, shortly after the photo was taken, he feels that young André had a life to live in Alexandria that was brutally cut short, and that the Egyptian Aciman still wanders about in some other plane, seeking to ground himself in reality.  The dissolute Judas model looked back on his innocent boyhood and wept at realizing the horror the boy would have felt had he foreseen the future that lay ahead for him.

Insofar as my 14-year-old self could have forced himself to conceive of ever being elderly, I suspect that his only surprise would be that I'd had more and better experiences than he would have predicted.  I suspect that, unlike many children -- especially today's -- I hadn't created any grand blueprint for my future life.  My goals were all short-term:  get good grades, get into the college of my choice.  Beyond that, I felt that the future would be more like a ride down a river, steering gently to stay in mid-stream, rather than being a lifetime of strenuous efforts to  construct a canal through which I could force my passage.  In general, I had high hopes in a general sense -- but no real expectations in a specific sense.

And that's how things worked out.  I sometimes worry that the fact that my life has evolved relatively smoothly means that I haven't taken on sufficiently difficult challenges.  And yet, I often did accept challenges -- sometimes successfully, sometimes less so.  I suppose I embraced enough challenge that I feel life has often been exciting.  I probably avoided goals that I correctly evaluated as unrealistic, and as a result, my life's low points have been short-lived and not devastating.

Dell would have said that I was predestined to be happy.  Aciman would say I made choices that were, for a guy of my temperament, wise choices.  

As for me, I just smile and pour myself another cup of coffee.

--------------------

¹André Aciman, Irrealis, "Unfinished Thoughts on Fernando Pessoa" (2021)

Back to breakfast

My mother's assisted care facility was a modern, attractive, spacious building -- about as non-depressing as such a facility could be.  It was located in the town where I was born and raised, about a two-hour drive from my home in Seattle.  I was able to visit her frequently.

Each time I visited, I saw a lengthy line outside the dining room -- some folks standing, some leaning on walkers, some in wheelchairs -- a line that formed as early as a half hour before the scheduled meal time.  I was always surprised.  The dining room was large, with more than enough tables for everyone.  No one needed to worry about not finding a seat.  While visiting, I'd sometimes join my mother in the dining room for meals.  The food was reasonably good -- several notches above college dormitory food -- but not so good as to create a sense of culinary excitement.

But now -- older and wiser -- I better understand the psychological forces at work, the impetus for that eager line-up.

Since retirement, I'd gotten into the habit of eating one meal a day -- alternating between breakfast and lunch -- at a semi-fast food restaurant a mile or so from my house.  The sort of place where you order at the counter, and then are served at your table.  For a caffeine junkie like me, the restaurant had the added advantage of providing pots of hot coffee from which you could refill your cup as many times as your system could handle the stimulant.

This happy routine came to an abrupt end in mid-March of last year.  All indoor eating in restaurants was ended, because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  I had to develop new routines for feeding myself, including a better thought-out grocery purchase plan.  After a couple months, indoor eating was again permitted, but with no more than 25 percent occupancy.  I blogged in June about my brave effort to enter my favorite restaurant and order a take-out hamburger, at which time I noted a few fearless customers eating inside under the revised restrictions.  But I was freaked out by the noon hour crowds, construction workers standing around the order counter, waiting for take-out. They were talking loudly, and few of them were wearing masks.

I've made no further efforts to purchase restaurant food since then.  But on February 16, I received my second Pfizer shot. Two weeks later on Tuesday, March 2, I plan to celebrate by returning for breakfast.  Carefully, I assure you.  Wearing a mask until my food is before me, and showing up at an hour when crowds will not be present.

But what's interesting is how big a deal this forthcoming breakfast feels to me.  I've been dreaming of it ever since we first learned that vaccines would be available earlier than planned.  Since I had my first shot on January 24, I've been focused on having this first breakfast, like a dog watching a can opener operating on a can of dog food.  And what is this feast I await?  Two fried eggs, a hunk of ham, too many hash browns, a couple pieces of toast.  And coffee.  A standard American breakfast.

But it isn't really the food, just as I suspect it wasn't really the food for my mother's peers in their assisted care facility.  Or any more than it was really the food (at least entirely) for the college kids who would sometimes line up a few minutes early at the dormitory dining room.  (I worked as a meal ticket checker, which sometimes involved my opening the door and bracing myself against the herd of apparently starving cattle.)

I've concluded the hunger was less for food than for a sense of satisfaction at marking the arrival of certain events during the day.  For college students, mealtime was a break from study time; and for the elderly, it was an excuse to leave their rooms and mingle with (although not always talk to)  others of similar age.  And for me, a guy retired from a job in which my time had been carefully structured -- even though I largely structured it myself -- my knowing that each day a meal awaited me at a certain hour afforded me -- absurdly, perhaps -- a certain sense of purpose that I would otherwise have lacked.

And it's been the lack of this sense of purpose that has bothered me so much this past year.  I lost not just a fixed daily mealtime, of course.  I lost planned trips, large and small.  I lost concert dates, film series dates, lecture dates.  Movies.  I lost the ability to just drive out of town for summer day hikes, although I suspect having done so would have been less risky that I feared at the time.

As so many people complain, the pandemic lock-down makes every day the same, every week the same.  "The hours pass too slowly, and the months pass too quickly," as the elderly often fret. Or, as the old soap opera once proclaimed, "Like sands through the hour glass, so pass the days of our lives." 

I've known all along that the return to gatherings in auditoriums or concert halls, or to travel on trains and planes, might still be distant.  But being able to go out for breakfast is a first step, one to which I look forward not for its own sake alone, but as a prelude to a return of many other aspects of my life that I miss.  Aspects of life loved not only for their own sake, but for this mysterious sense of structure they give to my daily existence.

And so I eagerly await Tuesday, for all these symbolic reasons.  And besides -- I love ham and eggs.

Keep the change

Yesterday's New York Times contained an article discussing the relationship -- it wouldn't have occurred to me -- between the present requirement for masking inside restaurants and the practice of tipping.  Apparently, unruly customers have been demanding that female waitpersons pull down their mask and reveal their "pretty" faces -- demands made sometimes humorously, but often made in an angry and domineering manner.

Restaurant workers depend on tips for the majority of their income.  They are at the mercy of their customers.  Masking is required by their employers, and usually by the state or city as well.  Besides the humiliation of being asked, in essence, to partially undress, they are caught up in a struggle between the wishes of their employer who pays some of their wages and those of their customer who pays more of their wages through his or her tip.  

The stress of the pandemic and the limitations it puts on us all apparently has driven many restaurant customers a bit crazy.  Or has given them an excuse to release their inherent craziness.  The Times article tells the stories recounted by a number of restaurant employees:  

Once she asked a customer to put on his mask before walking inside to use the bathroom and he grabbed all the items on his table — cups, silverware and a hot dog — and threw them on the ground, then yelled at her to clean it up.

The story was entitled, "Is This the End of Tipping," but the article didn't really address that general question in as much detail as I would have liked.

I've never liked the concept of tipping, at least as it's practiced in America's restaurant industry.  I can see giving an employee a gratuity for giving a service beyond what I'd expect from the nature of his or her job.  Maybe finding my wallet under the table and chasing down the street to return it to me.  But instead, we are essentially required to pay the staff's salary.  And our payment is arbitrary.  I consider twenty percent to be a reasonable tip, but some would never pay more than ten percent and others routinely give 25 percent or more.  Which sort of customer the wait staff gets on any given evening is unpredictable, and yet the income he or she lives on depends on the percentage received.

European restaurants generally add a fixed percentage to the tab as a service fee.  Polite customers add a slight bit more, rounding up, maybe, to the nearest euro.  This removes much of the unpredictability, but income based on a percentage of the checks still depends on how many tables he or she serves, and how much each table orders -- factors beyond the staff's control. 

What about the claim that high tips reward excellent service?  I doubt it, at least not to a large extent.  Most customers tip whatever they consider their standard percentage, regardless of satisfaction.  Unless there's been a major problem, of course.

How did we get to this point?  And it's not just restaurants.  More and more businesses present you with a "tip jar," letting you know that a tip would be "appreciated."  Why don't restaurants, and other businesses, pay whatever they consider to be a decent salary, making customer satisfaction one of the conditions of continued employment?

As one restaurant owner with a no-tip policy notes, tipping gives customers too much power over their servers' lives:  “You’re forcing your workers to depend on the customers to be the human resources department.”  And you're forcing your customer into the position of a master destributing largesse to his humble servants.

The article suggests, unconvincingly, that the problems servers are having with customers during the present Covid-19 crisis may end the practice of tipping.  Maybe for a few restaurants whose owners are willing to take a firm stand.  But tipping seems to be increasingly entrenched, and is spreading to all sorts of businesses.

Several members of my family have been, or are now, in the "hospitality industry."  As employers, they seem to be quite satisfied with tipping -- let the customers pay most of the staff's salaries.  As former employees themselves, their reaction to my arguments is to counter with the proposal that I give larger tips in the future.  

I hate to feel cheap.  Because I'm not.  I just want a system that seems more rational, that gives the staff a more predictable income, and doesn't put the customer (me) in the position of evaluating employee performance and rewarding or punishing -- which I don't do in any event, because I virtually always automatically give the same tip.

After the shots

Going on sixty hours since I had my second Pfizer shot.    Sixty hours of watching myself closely, waiting for the dread onset of "side effects."  So far, I'm happy to report, no side effects.

I've read that if you're going to have side effects, you'll get them in the first day or two.  Other writers say the first day or three.  I will have completed Day Three by tomorrow morning.  I suspect I'm not going to have side effects.  None.  Not even a slight inflammation around the injection site.  

Some would be triumphantly relieved.  And sure, I am, to an extent.  But then I begin wondering, why am I not experiencing side effects?  Was the vaccine deficient?  Is there fraud involved, and did Nurse Placebo smirkingly inject me with mere saline solution?  Back when they gave us kids smallpox vaccinations, they had to check after a few days to make sure the vaccination "took."  Did my vaccination "take"?  Why is no one checking?

And some people actually consider me to be goofy and carefree!  Goofy, maybe.

I've read over and over that I must not be concerned just because I get no side effects, that wonderful things are happening inside me nonetheless.  That some people's bodies just don't get all outwardly hysterical about it.  Except, of course, for that first time I had a typhoid shot.  My God!  I had a class paper due the next day, and I wrote it with a splitting headache and a fever, hardly able to stay awake.  Now those were "side effects"!

Ok, I'm going to assume for the sake of sanity that the Pfizer vaccine "took," that it always "takes," with everyone.  Therefore, according to Pfizer's studies, I'll be 95 percent protected by Tuesday, and will certainly be protected, as recommended by the CDC, by the following Tuesday.  I, of course, will wait for the later date, because that's how I approach danger.  Cautiously.

And then there are the questions of whether I'm part of the unlucky five percent, and whether Pfizer's vaccine will protect me against the dread South Africa "variant."  But I'll worry about all that later.

I'm assuming that by August, I'll be confident of my immunity, nay, of my immortality.  And that the kind of people I hang out with will have similarly fortified themselves against the Covid-19 virus.  

And that's why I've agreed to go on a five-day rafting trip down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in August.  Our raft will be moving fast, and the viruses will be hard pressed to catch up with us.  And we'll be in the Idaho Wilderness.  

So far as I know, this will be my first break out of the self-imposed stay-at-home isolation under which I've suffered for the past 12 months.  (Aside from a little local day hiking I plan to do before then.)   Plans are for five of us to be on the raft (plus a guide who knows what he's doing raft-wise).  So -- some outdoor excitement plus some real honest human beings to talk with. 

I'm looking forward to it.  Begone, Covid-19 viruses.  Begone.

Second shot

Within the past hour, I received my second Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination.  

This is hardly major news, I realize.  It's happening all over America, all around the world.  But for some reason, this upcoming date has been a distraction for me all week.  I counted down the days, as I once might have counted down the days to a major school examination.  I was sent in a tailspin by our big snow storm over the weekend.

"Would the roads be open?  Could I drive?  Would I have to walk the three miles to the hospital in a raging blizzard?"  The answers were yes, yes, and no.  There's still a lot of snow out there, but not on the arterials.  The drive was a breeze.

(I have to say I admire the 90-year-old Seattle woman who walked three miles each way Sunday -- through a foot of snow -- to get her shot.  She did a practice walk two-thirds of the way to the hospital the day before, before the brunt of the snowfall had occurred -- just for practice.  Her daughter, back in Buffalo, New York, remarked, as quoted in the Seattle Times:

“We’re outside people,” she said. “We love being outside. I was out yesterday at Lake Ontario with a wind chill of 6 degrees.

“My mother isn’t going to let a little snow stop her from getting the vaccine,” she continued. “She was willing to walk however many miles there and back to get it. She is a really remarkable person who has the attitude of ‘You don’t let a little adversity get in your way.’

“She’s someone who looks for solutions, not problems.”

We're hardy Scandinavian folks here in Seattle -- plus a few who hail from Buffalo.  We don't let the weather keep us down.) 

No, my concern for today's date with the hospital went beyond the snow.  And I don't know why.  I'm not afraid of shots -- I seem to be getting them for one reason or another all the time.  I'm not looking forward to any side effects that I may experience, but the descriptions I've read of even the most severe side effects still seem manageable.  And I had no side effects at all from the first shot, three weeks ago.

I wasn't looking forward eagerly to another wait of an hour and forty minutes -- standing in line in a poorly ventilated hallway -- as I was for the first shot.  But I survived that super-spreader event without contracting the virus, and I now already had partial immunity from the first shot.

(In the event, I waited ZERO minutes this time -- I walked in and was taken immediately to the vaccination room.)

I guess it was a function of not having enough to occupy my time and brain during this pandemic.  Back in my days of legal practice, I would have had too much to occupy my mind to brood over a shot, and would have just slipped in an hour or so on my calendar to get it.

So, anyway, in a couple of weeks I'll have full immunity, to the extent Pfizer can give it.  Of course, I now have to worry about the "variants" creeping across the Atlantic from Britain and South Africa.  Will my Pfizer immunity block those little buggers?  Or not?   

Total "normality" -- as known in 2019 -- is still an aspiration, not an accomplished fact.  But I feel considerably safer than I did a month ago.

Another February snowfall

Eleven days ago, the Groundhog who holds jurisdiction over Seattle emerged from his burrow, looked around, and said, "Well, no shadow.  Cool.  I wasn't in any mood to go back to sleep anyway.  Let the wild and crazy Springtime begin."

That's what he said to the press.  I suspect he had other thoughts.  Secret plans.

The weatherman warned us.  But once more, like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football, I placed my trust in the wrong person.  Or rodent.  I woke up this morning to a world of whiteness.  I measured eight inches on my back deck, which may or may not be a good place to measure.  By evening, I measured eleven inches.

I'll get back to the Groundhog issue, but let me say that I love snow.  I love it even when it causes inconvenience.  Admittedly, I live in a city that gets only an occasional snowfall.  The confluence of warm, damp air off the Pacific and dry, cold Arctic air masses has to be aligned just perfectly.  Otherwise we get a cold, dry spell, or -- more commonly -- a lot of rain.

This was my cats' first snow.  You can imagine their fear and loathing when they looked out the window to see the view utterly transformed, right?  Ha!  I had barely opened the door, wielding my ruler for a measurement, before they had slipped past me and disappeared in a cloud of dry snow.  They reveled.  They rejoiced.  They chased each other.  Honestly, they're such kids.  (Actually, I calculate their age in cat years as about 13, so their behavior should have been expected.)

They've been in and out the cat door all day, dashing in only long enough to dry off a bit and grab a mug of hot chocolate and an occasional sweet roll.  (I anthropomorphize shamelessly.)

I'm a bit older than thirteen, so I spent the morning drinking coffee, staring out the windows, and fortifying myself with cereals and bagels.  Finally, I pulled on hiking boots and went out for a walk.  Unlike some years, the beauty of  this morning's snow never dissolved in above-freezing daytime temperatures.  The temperature stayed below freezing all day, and the snow just kept piling up.

I went on a long walk down my Montlake avenue, dodging neighbors with dogs and teenagers on cross-country skis, and crossed over into the Arboretum.  I did a long walk through the park, eventually doubling back to my house.  I guess it wasn't all that long a walk, but a slower walk than usual, slogging through ankle-deep snow, even though the snow had been trampled down by other walkers.

The walk was beautiful.  In places, tracks through the Arboretum reminded me of portions of ski trails I'd been on, at least from the perspective of scenic views.  Although the going was slower and more arduous than if I'd been gliding along on skis.

But let me return to the question of the Groundhog.  Two years ago, Mr. Hog also predicted an early spring.  The day after his prediction, we had a snowfall almost identical to this year's.  I commented in this very blog, as the snowpocalypse continued to February 4 and beyond:

And so, at about 10:30 a.m., I laced up my hiking boots, put on an aging ski jacket, slipped on some gloves, and headed out into the chilly (26 degrees) out of doors. One look at my car, a formless white snowball, had already told me that I wouldn't be driving anywhere for lunch, which gave me a ready-made excuse to hike two miles through the snow to University Village.

I could have said the same this year, except that the pandemic means no restaurant lunch, and adding a mask to my wardrobe.

This is the only other explicit betrayal by Mr.Hog of which I have a record.  But I note in my blog posts commemorating equally impressive snowfalls on February 9, 2014, and February 5, 2017.  The post-Hog days of early February seem to invite major snowfalls.  Someone should look into it.

But come when they may, I love the snow.  This year, however, I'm scheduled to receive my long-awaited second dose of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine on Tuesday at 9:10 a.m.  I've been worrying that the streets will still be blocked by snow drifts, but the temperature is predicted to rise into the 40s by Monday, and the snow turn to rain.  I'll be sorry to see the snow disappear so quickly.

But I'd be sorrier to miss getting my shot.   

Aliens on Venus

It could indeed be aliens.  Or it could be nothing at all.

--New York Times

I stood before my sixth grade class, delivering my report on the planet Mars.  Among the many interesting facts about Mars, I intoned, was that it was considered Earth's twin planet.  Mrs. Borgen, my warm-hearted teacher, mildly interrupted.  "I thought that was Venus?" she asked.  "But maybe I'm wrong," she conceded, recognizing my status as the class's planetary expert.

Of course, she was correct.  I don't think my claim was part of my prepared presentation -- I just threw it in, ad libbing a "fact" that sounded vaguely familiar.  In fact, it is Venus that has often been called our twin planet because it is the closest of all other planets to ours in size and mass.  

But Mars has always seemed the most likely to support anything that we Earthlings would consider "life."  The planet is cold -- average temperature minus 81 degrees F.  That's cold, but not impossibly cold, and in places may reach 70 degrees F. in summer.  The surface temperature of Venus is about 800 degrees F.  That's hot, impossibly hot.

But the news media have been all aflutter about the discovery by Welsh astronomers of phosphine (chemical formula PH₃) in the thick Venusian clouds of sulfuric acid, thirty miles above the planet's surface.  This discovery may not sound particularly promising, if one is looking for life, but many scientists feel that one does not find phosphine in the absence of certain forms of anaerobic microbial life.  (It could be explained by gaseous emissions from volcanic eruptions, it's true, but they would have to have been incredibly violent eruptions to produce enough phosphine to be detectible from Earth.)  Proponents of Venusian life theorize that microbes may have evolved on the surface in cooler, pre-climate change days, and now survive, churning out phosphine, high in the atmosphere.

Many scientists are skeptical.  Many, including a University of Washington astronomer,  question even whether phosphine has actually been detected.  Elemental phosphorus, maybe, but not phosphine.  But still, it's worth following up on, and it will be.

But microbes?  Well, that would be something, I guess.  It would be the first life detected anywhere in the universe apart from the Earth.  But I'm not sure I would call the microbes "aliens."

I myself prefer to rely on the personal account by George Adamski of his encounter with a Venusian alien at about 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 20, 1952, in the California desert.  He met the alien being, who emerged from a flying saucer he had been observing.  The alien was about 5'6" in height, 135 pounds in weight.  In earth terms, he appeared to be about 28 years old.  Using sign language, the being indicated that he was from the second planet from the sun.  He repeated Adamski's identification of the planet as Venus, repeating the name, "Venus."  I must quote Adamski's own reaction.

His voice was slightly higher pitched than an adult man's.  Its tonal quality was more that of a young man before his voice completes the change from childhood to maturity.  Although he had spoken but one word, there was music in his voice and I wanted to hear more of it.

Adamski's account was published in his book Leslie & Adamski, Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), which I purchased, pored over, and virtually devoured at the age of 14.  So far as I know, we weren't yet aware that Venus at the surface was 800 degrees F., or that its atmosphere was rich in sulfuric acid.  But all the more wondrous and admirable that the race to which this alien belonged had not only survived, evolving such a gentle demeanor, but had mastered space travel long before us Earthlings.  

Now, when I say "alien," this is what I'm talking about.  Not a microbe.  I'll be watching for further developments.

The God who says "Wow!"

The rain began about ten minutes after I began my walk this afternoon, ten minutes after I had consulted my iPhone's weather app and had received assurance that there would be no rain today.  The rain continued for the entire hour and 45 minutes of my walk -- not pouring but not just drizzling either.  

Once I became saturated and stopped worrying about it, I realized that I was comfortable and not cold,  I enjoyed walking in the rain, and noticed signs all about me that the Groundhog had been correct and that we were to have an early spring -- flowers popping out in places, and buds emerging on shrubbery and forming on smaller trees.  The damp air just felt like spring

I'm not usually inclined toward theological introspections as I walk, but I began wondering about God and how he felt about spring, or, more precisely, how he felt about the way we humans -- at least in northern climes -- react to spring's arrival.  The feelings of joy and relief we experience, almost worshipping the earth and its bounty. 

I recalled a pastoral letter I'd once read.  Our then pastor, Father John, was a fine writer, and he emailed us a letter each week with his thoughts.  I saved most of them from the time I transferred into his parish until he began a sabbatical last summer.  I searched back, and located the letter I remembered, from November 2018.

Fr. John had been on retreat in central Oregon: camping, and walking through the woods, along the Metolius river, "taking photos and thinking of the Trinity."  (Well, you know, it was his profession.)  And he'd been thinking along the same lines as I was today -- does God enjoy the beauties of his Creation, as we do?  How does an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God, as theologians describe him -- one who knew, from the "outset," everything that ever occured or will occur, from the Big Bang to the Final Event -- perceive our petty loves and hatreds, our joys and sorrows?  Knowing it all from the first moment of time, as we reckon time, does he cast a cold eye on it all, like an author re-reading a book he has just finished writing?  

God is unchangeable, according to theologians.  But Fr. John writes:

Anyone who has stood by a bedside of a dying parent, knowing that they must pass, and then experienced the moment they do, understands what I am saying.  Do we think God never has that experience?  The idea that God was not changed by the death of Jesus, by his suffering and loss, seems untenable to me.  And in the same way, that God does not feel wonder and joy at the experience -- which transcends mere knowledge -- of the light hitting the leaf, seems to me equally absurd.   

He admits, with humor, that some have called him heretical, but he comes right out with it.  He is obviously anthropomorphizing, but doesn't God's becoming human in the Incarnation encourage us to do just that?

I realize that for me, on this cold and beautiful morning, all the theological conceptions feel a bit sterile and meaningless.  I think I am tired of the God of the theologians, the “omni” God who has all those characteristics taken from Greek philosophy: e.g., omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence. This God, frozen in the amber of theological perfection, seems nothing like the God of this forest, or of this river, or of the Jesus I have come to know; for this “perfect” God is never surprised or awed. This God never feels the anguish of a loss or the wonder of something beautiful being born. This perfect, unchanging God never, it seems, says “Wow!” Walking here, beneath the trees and beside the river, watching the water jump up in a flash against a log, I am not sure I can believe in a God who does not say, “Wow!”

I don't think Fr. John was saying that traditional theology is "wrong," merely that it's inadequate.  The philosophy of Aristotle, on which it's based, is fine as far as it goes, but our human brains are unable to fully comprehend reality as God himself views it -- any more than the chessmen in a chess game understand that the next move has been delayed because the players have paused the game for lunch.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord.

Isaiah 55:8. 

We lack humility when we try to pin God down to our human descriptions, using our human languages.  John Calvin was an excellent thinker, but in my opinion made this error when he latched on to the concepts of God's omnipotence and omniscience, and ended up with a monstrous but coldly logical theology that seems to have very little to do with the spirit of the Gospels.  

Fr. John, a highly educated Jesuit, concludes  that God is

Not the "omni" God at all, but the God who weeps and laughs; the God who says "Wow!"

As I'm sure he would be the first to admit, he is only guessing, thinking with his intuition, with his heart.  But a God who seeks to save men and women from their own stupidity by sending his Son to live and die as an example for them seems less likely to be an abstract and remote principle of perfection, and more likely to be a God who does, at least on occasion, say "Wow!"

Asking for whom the bell tolls

At first it made no impression.  A distant church bell ringing, while I walked through the Madrona neighborhood yesterday afternoon.  But only a single toll of the bell, every fifteen or twenty seconds.  Once I began to notice the peculiar spacing of the tolls, and their seemingly endless succession, my blood froze.  I  jumped to a not totally absurd conclusion -- President Biden had been assassinated!

On a similarly gloomy morning in November 1963, I noticed an unusual number of radios turned on as I left the UW dorm for a chemistry class.  Waiting at an intersection, half way to class, I found myself surrounded by students holding those new-fangled transistor radios up to their ears.  "What's going on?" I asked.  President Kennedy had been shot, someone told me.  "It sounds serious."

In class, before the professor arrived, someone walked up to the blackboard and wrote that Kennedy had died.  The professor soon walked into class, saw the blackboard, and asked it it was true.  "I don't feel like talking about chemistry," he said, and walked out.  I left the building, looked up the quad toward the center of campus, and saw the flagpole.

The flag was already at half-mast.

Until then, to me at least, assassination of a president -- of any governmental officer -- was unthinkable.  The sort of thing that happened in olden times to presidents like McKinley and Garfield.  Why would anyone kill Jack Kennedy?

Back then, Republicans and Democrats seemed like opposite sides of the same coin.  Democrats were more inclined to solve problems by government action, Republicans were infatuated by the efficiency of the laws of supply and demand.  Arguments -- certainly among students -- were good natured.  We all had the same fundamental objectives; our dispute was over ways and means.  Almost everyone was white, we thought, and everyone was middle class (or on their way to becoming middle class).  America wasn't tribal.  If we had irrational thoughts at times, we tried to overcome them.  Democrats and Republicans alike agreed that facts were facts, and reality was reality.  

I had heard rumors that there was a different sort of political animal in Texas, a certain breed of folks who were quicker to anger, speedier to take offense, politically more sensitive to being subjected to governmental coercion.  But Texans were Texans, and probably just upset about no longer being the largest state in the union.  I had no particular desire to visit Dallas, but certainly would never have been held back by any fear of danger.

But that day of the booming radios -- November 22, 1963 -- brought certain underlying currents of violent discontent among certain Americans to the surface, disturbing our genial middle class complacency.  As one friend told me, a few years later, the day Kennedy was assassinated was the date when America, for him, stopped making sense.  I knew exactly what he meant.

And so yesterday's slow tolling bell of Epiphany Episcopal Church brought barely submerged worries immediately to the surface.  "It's happening again," had been my immediate, reflexive thought.  "They've killed another one of our heroes."

In today's world, of course, I carried an iPhone.  It took me only seconds of checking two or three news sources to see that no one was upset.  The headlines remained all about the future Congressional career, or lack thereof, of Marjorie Taylor Greene.  As I continued walking, my normal Madrona route soon took me right past Epiphany, where the bell was still tolling, once every fifteen or twenty seconds.  People were standing in front of the chapel, dressed in suits and dresses, talking solemnly to each other.

There had been a funeral, all right.  But not a presidential funeral.  The bell, as I later discovered on-line, was a traditional way of commemorating the deceased.  A ritual not so common nowadays, but not totally obsolete.

Back when we all lived within sight of a parish church, bells rang on three occasions to mark a person's death: the "passing bell" to warn of impending death; the "death knell" as soon as the death occurred; and the funeral toll.  It was the last of these, with the bell being rung very slowly, with a "significant gap between strikes" (Wikipedia) that had freaked me out yesterday.

I'm sorry for the deceased Epiphany parishioner and his or her mourners, appreciative of having learned something I hadn't known before about funeral customs, and overjoyed that the president remains in active good health in Washington, D.C.

False summit

I guess I don't try to justify climbing or defend it, because I can't. I see climbing as a compulsion that, at its best, is no worse than many other compulsions - golf or stamp collecting or growing world-record pumpkins.

--Jon Krakauer

 

In 1980, Rosie Ruiz won the female division of the Boston Marathon -- the most prestigious marathon race in America, with a time of 2:31:56 -- the third fastest time by any female contestant in any marathon. Unfortunately, no one recalled seeing her during the race, and she appeared in none of the photos or films taken of the race. Her resting heart rate was measured at 76, rather than in the 50s as with most marathon runners.

She was disqualified. She's perhaps the most famous of marathon cheaters, but by far not the only one. According to a trainer, Jonathon Cane, the New York Marathon probably has "a couple dozen cheaters" every year.

Why do they do it? Who knows. Amateur foot racing isn't really a money sport. You run for your self-satisfaction. Although, especially among the top contenders, a spirit of competition exists, most runners are competing against themselves -- measuring their own improvement in speed and stamina over their efforts in prior runs.

It's like climbing mountains. The rewards are very personal, and are independent of what others do or don't do. As the famous climber and author Jon Krakauer describes the experience of risking one's life on a mountain slope:

Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence — the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes — all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand.

Climbing and running both have a certain purity -- in my mind, at least -- not shared by many other sports.  And that's why I was disturbed this morning to read about two Indian climbers who claimed to summit Mount Everest in 2016 -- even presenting doctored photographic evidence of themselves at the top -- when they had not.  Local sherpas and other climbers had questioned the claim at the time, and a Nepalese government investigation has now found that the climbers had climbed to about 27,000 feet, some 2,000 feet short of the summit.  They were in the "death zone" and in bad shape, and had actually been rescued with depleted supplies of oxygen.  

Their summiting certificates should not have been granted.  

The two climbers were found out when they tried to claim valuable awards from the Indian government given to Indians who summit Everest, but their initial motivation for climbing Everest seems not to have been financial.  And, according to the New York Times story describing the matter, "the number of people faking Everest climbs has sharply increased, from a few a decade ago to dozens every year."  Why would a climber, a climber good enough to reach 27,000 feet on Everest, fake the climb?  How has the climber's competition against himself, his testing of his own daring and strength, become a search instead for celebrity, for self-promotion?  How has the humility of the original Everest summit climber, Sir Edmund Hillary, been transformed into a glorified exaggeration of the average tourist's quest for the perfect selfie for his Instagram account? 

Jon Krakauer, together with many other climbers, has decried the growing demand by unqualified or marginally qualified climbers -- with plenty of money -- for permits to climb Everest.  Climbing Everest under any circumstances is an heroic struggle, but these trophy climbers, the ones who "succeed," are often virtually dragged to the top by their Sherpa guides, guides who have already set fixed ropes and made the path upward as manageable as possible.  As Krakauer remarks:

The way Everest is guided is very different from the way other mountains are guided, and it flies in the face of values I hold dear: self-reliance, taking responsibility for what you do, making your own decisions, trusting your judgment - the kind of judgment that comes only through paying your dues, through experience.

Marginally qualified climbers who desperately want to summit Everest, without the bother of gaining the necessary years of experience on lower mountains, seek the rewards of the summit without first "paying your dues."  It's not "cheating" in the same sense as the two Indian climbers were cheaters.  But they similarly ignore the values and ideals of climbing, as Krakauer describes them, in exchange for rewards.  Whether those rewards are financial -- as with the Indian climbers -- or for bragging rights back home, as with many well-to-do Americans.

Such climbers aren't much different from the runner who "runs" much of a marathon on the subway.

PS-- No, I've personally never dreamed of climbing Everest. 

My own private Memories of Things Past

As I languished at home last night, while the rain beat against the windows and the clouds of viruses swirled about the house, I distracted myself by reading a couple of old journals kept during family vacations long past.  

The first was of a two-week family stay in Umbria (Italy) in 2001.  We lived in a large stone farmhouse at the top of a hill, about half-way between Perugia and Cortona.  We had 14 participants, coming and going at various times.  After the end of our rental, six of us took the train south and spent a third week in Sicily.  The other vacation was a canoeing tour in 2006, limited to our family group, in the Dordogne region of France.  Our group of eight met organizers and began and ended the tour at the train station in Brive-la-Gaillarde.  We spent days on our own before and after the tour in Paris.  (On my own, I left Paris by train for a few days in Madrid, after the others had returned home, but that feels like almost a separate vacation.)

Both trips included a few family friends in addition to relatives, but the sort of friends who had long been used to our family dynamics and peculiarities and to our odd, collective sense of humor.  The sort of friends who don't expect you to be polite at 7 in the morning (although we almost always were).

Nostalgia waxed as I read page by page.  First, because they reminded me of a pre-pandemic world in which one's ability to travel was limited only by his free time and budget -- not by the fear of contagion and death.  And I was just as nostalgic for the days when the younger members of my family were still unmarried and unburdened by kids and family obligations of their own.  

Not that I regret their marriages and children, which provide me new satisfactions, but their new responsibilities do greatly limit spontaneity.  In Umbria, my nephews and nieces ranged in age from 17 to 35, only one of whom was married and none of whom had children.  The youngest member of our group was Pascal, the son of family friends, who was 14.  It was on that trip that Pascal and I bonded to the extent that we took six overseas mountain treks together over the following ten years.  I still think of him as a kid, but he's now married with a two-year-old son.

On the canoe trip, only two of my nephews were with us, ages 30 and 22, both unmarried.  We also were joined by Pascal's older sister and their mother, and by a friend who one of my nephews and I had met ten years earlier on a trek in Peru.   

I live alone in Seattle.  I love the city, and can't imagine living elsewhere, but I live alone.  Family members occasionally visit, but the Northwest Corner is a somewhat isolated corner, and I more commonly visit others where they live.  On these two vacations, I loved spending weeks with family and close friends, seeing them daily, all day, from bleary-eyed breakfasts to exuberant restaurant dinners.  Family closeness made up half the appeal of these two trips.

The other half was the locales themselves.  In Umbria, the two-mile gravel road up the hill to our villa from the village below, through fields and woods, our car often chased by a farmer's friendly dog.  Looking out from our veranda at the fields of sunflowers, their yellow faces turned toward us with apparent curiosity.  Home-cooked dinners at a long, outdoor table, watching darkness fall and the fireflies emerge.  Our day trips by train to Rome and Florence, and by car to Perugia and other smaller Umbrian towns.  

In France, the easy paddling of canoes down quietly flowing rivers -- the Vézère, the Célé, and the Dordogne.  The castles and chateaux lining the rivers, looming  up ahead at each bend.  The French people out boating and swimming as we canoed past.  The caves we toured, with their beautiful paleolithic cave paintings.  The dinners and lunches: the French food and wine.  The hikes, at times when we weren't canoeing.  The small French towns, with winding streets, in which we stayed at night.  The place names:  I would have loved St-Cirq Lapopie just for its name, even if it hadn't been the ideal French town.  The Marcilhac hemp festival: what can I say?

I greatly regret my present inability -- I hope temporary -- to meet with family, and to meet with them in foreign countries.  I am incredibly grateful for the memories of past years when such gatherings were possible.

Vive le vaccin!  And let's hope the menace of the South African mutation can be soon overcome..