Containment

George Kennan, at about
the time of the long telegram 

In 1946, while serving as a diplomat in the Soviet Union, George Kennan wrote his famous "long telegram" to the Secretary of State, proposing what would become known as the "containment policy."

Kennan argued that it was a mistake, at that time, to continue efforts to appease the Soviets.  He suggested that Stalin needed a hostile world in order to legitimize the brutality of his dictatorship at home, and that the basis "of the Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is the traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity."

Kennan predicted that Stalin would continue efforts to expand his nation's influence, a tendency suggested not so much by Communist ideology as by Russia's own nationalistic history of expansionism.  America and the West should act resolutely to oppose any aggressive expansion  Unable to expand, the Soviets' own domestic problems, with no threat of foreign attack to divert attention from those problems, would eventually cause the regime's collapse.

Which is what happened, ultimately.

I recall all of this as I keep my eye on President Trump.  Here is a man with a "neurotic view" of not only world affairs, but of his own relationship with virtually everyone in his own country other than his immediate family.  He is a man beset by insecurity.  His having received fewer votes than Hillary Clinton obviously disturbs him greatly.  He fears, and thus hates, the press, the courts, those states in which Democrats are the majority -- and even the traditional leaders of his own party.

Like Stalin, Trump is an insecure and neurotic man, and one who is ruling a country filled with institutions, officials, and an aroused electoral majority that he fears and cannot control.  Like Stalin, we can expect him to lash out -- as he has done frequently in his first three weeks -- and to make every attempt to arouse the country to fear and hatred of "the other" -- whether that "other" is other nations, foreign terrorists, "disgraceful" courts, or "un-American" opposition leaders here at home.  Like many dictators, including notably Stalin, he will rely on that fear and hatred to unite the country behind his own authoritarian leadership.

Mr. Trump is legitimately the president, pursuant to our constitutional rules.  We will have no military coups.  Unless something unforeseen develops, the Republican Congress will not impeach him.  But, as did America under the Kennan containment doctrine, we can "contain" Mr. Trump.  We can oppose with all our might every attempt he makes to expand his power beyond that traditionally granted to American presidents.  We may still be forced to live with many policies we abhor.  We may see good laws repealed and bad laws adopted.  But those are the expected consequences of losing an election.

But with respect to his grasping for more power, we can contain him.  And that is why the Temporary Restraining Order issued by Seattle's Judge Robart was so  important.  And why the Ninth Circuit's refusal to stay the TRO was even more critical -- more critical, because the Ninth Circuit's per curiam opinion was far more comprehensive than it needed to be, and because it specifically rejected Trump's arguments one after another. 

Trump has, for the moment, in this one small area, been contained.  A small containment, but it's been an important containment, and one that has elicited fury from the president.  Just as assistance to the Greeks against the Soviet-backed rebellion -- our first action pursuant to the containment doctrine -- no doubt enraged Stalin.  We now need to match every future attempt to expand presidential power with an equally strong resistance.  Resistance that will have the effect -- not to be disrespectful -- similar to that of slapping a rolled-up newspaper loudly to the ground every time a dog misbehaves.

Luckily, unlike Kennan and post-war America, we don't need to hope that such containment will cause Mr. Trump to implode or collapse of his own internal contradictions.  (Although such a terminal breakdown at times appears not impossible.)  We merely need to continue the pressure for the next four years.

Four more years.  We must hope that the Democrats then select a more popular nominee in 2020 than they did last year, and that the American people will be so fed up with the oddities and incompetence of the present administration that they will overwhelmingly remove Trump from power.

The mad emperor

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus , known to us by his childhood nickname "Caligula" (meaning "tiny boot"), was emperor of Rome from 37-41 A.D.

As emperor, Caligula began a large number of construction projects, improving infrastructure such as roads, harbors, aqueducts, city walls, and palaces.  He also used public money to build projects for himself, however, apparently unable to distinguish between the empire's welfare and his own..  His spending exhausted the treasury, built up by his predecessor, and the country was seized by a famine.

The young emperor engaged in violent disputes with the Senate.  He "fired" and replaced the sitting consul, and had several senators put to death for treason.  He uncovered more and more conspiracies against his rule, with resulting executions.

Caligula eventually injected religion into his role as emperor.  According to Wikipedia:

Caligula began appearing in public dressed as various gods and demigods such as Hercules, Mercury, Venus and Apollo.   Reportedly, he began referring to himself as a god when meeting with politicians and he was referred to as "Jupiter" on occasion in public documents.

He was the first emperor to claim divinity for himself while still alive.  He asked to be worshipped as Helios Neos, the "New Sun."

Today, we might suggest that he was something of a narcissist.

Contemporary writers described Caligula

as an insane emperor who was self-absorbed, angry, killed on a whim, and indulged in too much spending and sex.  He is accused of sleeping with other men's wives and bragging about it,  killing for mere amusement, deliberately wasting money on his bridge, causing starvation,  and wanting a statue of himself erected in the Temple of Jerusalem for his worship.

Caligula planned to make his horse, Incitatus, a consul.  He died before carrying out this plan, but he actually did appoint Incitatus as a priest.

The contemporary philosopher and writer Seneca

states that Caligula became arrogant, angry and insulting once becoming emperor and [Seneca] uses his personality flaws as examples his readers can learn from.

After nearly four years as emperor, he was assassinated by a number of senators who had seen enough.

At the time of his reign, Twitter had not yet been invented.  Fortunately, perhaps, for the people of Rome, Caligula was unable to tweet.

Rainier or bust!

Not all of my posts will appeal to the general public, and this is one of those that may not.  But it will jog the memories of eight of my family members who joined me in a climb of Mt. Rainier in 1996.  I composed this little piece of doggerel about a year before the climb, encouraging and egging on my fellow climbers.

Its meter, rhyme scheme, and certain allusions (e.g., repeating it thrice!) derive from Lewis Carroll's comic epic poem, "The Hunting of the Snark."

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

Nine Characters in Search of a Mountain

 

They attacked it with crampons, they scaled it with ropes,

     They pursued it with a laugh and a frown.

They charged towards its summit with feverish hopes,

     They'd reach it before they came down.

 

They'd planned it for fortnights, they'd been packed for days,

     They'd succeeded in dreams, and ne'er failed.

The peak beckoned above, through the Alpenglow's haze --

     They'd climb if it snowed or it hailed.

 

They came from Seattle, and from sunny Umatilla,

     From Sonoma, and the City of the Stars.

They came to do battle, on a most monstrous hill-a,

     They arrived driving rickshaws and cars.

 

Their leader was ancient, their leader was old,

     His years had reached fifty-five.

His eyes were all rheumy, but his countenance bold,

     He vowed he'd bring 'em back down alive.

 

"I've conquered Mt. Adams (as have many Sirs and Madams),

     Kilimanjaro has fallen prey to my skills,

You joined me on Whitney, but why continue this litany?

     I'm quite familiar with climbing on hills."

 

"We will hoist a friendly beer, on the summit of Mount Rainier!"

     (They welcomed with joy his sage advice.)

"You and I will give a cheer, as we toast atop Rainier,

     (This forecast I've now offered to you twice.)"

 

"We'll be awash in suds and foam, on good old Rainier's dome,

     I know it's true, I'm not just casting dice.

The certainty of my prediction, is a function of my predilection,

     For restating all my wisdom at least thrice."

 

But the days for idle boasting, and verbal riposting,

     Reached an end as such days always must.

The sun shone hot and high, the month was now July,

     They knew it now was "Mountain Top or Bust!"

 

They climbed to Camp Muir, behind their old, demented Führer,

     O'er endless snowfields, with forty-pound packs.

Like dumb and panting mules, loaded down with climbing tools,

     In camp, at last, they fell dead into their sacks.

 

But the tempus still will fugit, awake or asleep,

     Not all your prayers will persuade it to slow.

So at Midnight's appearance, they felt their stomachs leap,

     When they heard, "All right, guys, let's get up and go!"

 

They tightened their crampons, clipped "beeners" to ropes,

     They set out with a sigh and a yawn,

But with eyes turned to summit, each soul surged with hopes,

     As he vowed, "I'll dance there by dawn!"

 

*    *    *

 

You can call it Tahoma, you can call it Rainier,

     You can salute it with prayers or a curse,

But until you have climbed it, and seen the summit draw near,

     You can experience it only through verse.

 

Let it snow!

My iPhone has a built-in app that provides information about the weather.  The app is aptly named "Weather."  After you tell it where you live, it gives you the current temperature and state of precipitation. 

"Weather" also provides a forecast for each hour during the next 24 hours and for every day for the next nine days.  Its report of the current weather is usually fairly accurate.  Its forecast of future conditions tends to be abysmal.  And yet, I constantly rely on "Weather" to decide when and whether to go running or walking.  "The triumph of hope over experience," was how Samuel Johnson described "remarriage."  It applies to my reliance on my "Weather" app as well.

What precipitated (sic) these remarks, you may ask?  Right now, "Weather" tells me that it is snowing outside, has been snowing since 7 p.m., and will continue snowing for the next 24 hours.  (To be fair to my hapless app, the Seattle Times also predicts snow with an accumulation of three to six inches.

And yet, here it is past 9 p.m., and when I look outside, all I see is rain.  [pause for new inspection]  Well, the rain maybe now looks slightly "fatter" than our usual rain.  It doesn't look like snow, but maybe it looks like rain considering the possibility of someday becoming snow.  It looks like something that provides at least a glimmer of hope that snow, real snow, might possibly fall before morning.  But it could also be feeling deceptive.

I'll just have to wait until I wake up after a sound night's sleep, run to the window in my footie pajamas with bunny ears, and check it out. 

Let's face it.  Snow or no snow is merely a curiosity for me now, in my old age.  But I look back on days when a nighttime snowfall, with snow that (hooray!) "stuck," opened up awesome possibilities of -- yes, "no school!"  My brother and I would arise earlier than usual so we could listen to the "school closing" reports on the local radio.  We continuously eyed the quality and quantity of on-going snowfall, and measured the snow -- if there was actually enough to be measurable -- on the ground with a ruler.  We would even -- I blush to admit it -- engage in frenzied "snow dances" in the living room, in the hopes of persuading the snow gods to shower ever increasing loads of snow upon our local school district.

Snow!  O glorious snow!  Its importance to our lives was almost existential.  All our hopes and dreams rode upon it.  Especially, of course, if we had a paper due or an exam scheduled for which we were not totally prepared.

But all that was in my schoolboy past.  Then there were a number of years when I had to at least pretend to be irritated at snow because it made it difficult getting to work.  Secretly, I still loved it, of course.  But one was expected to act adult.  Outwardly, around real adults, despite how one really felt. 

Now?  Now neither the intense joy of youth nor the ersatz irritation of irritable middle age remains.  Life is more equable.  Snow?  It simply gives me pleasure to look out upon a snowy landscape; to crunch along a sidewalk covered with snow; to spot the tracks of dogs, cats and birds; to rejoice in the muffled silence that snow imposes; to return to my house, change into dry clothes and enjoy a hot cup of coffee.

Just snow, damn it!  Tonight!

A cluttered life

While attending three years of law school, I lived in an unfinished basement of a rather squalid house on Brooklyn Avenue, in Seattle's University District.  A friend and I shared the basement the first year.  Without really thinking about what I was doing, I helped demarcate my territory from our common areas by piling each day's newspapers in such a way as to increase my privacy.

After three years, the stacks of newspapers had become enormous.  Moving out required more labor than it did for most university students. 

But this episode in my life was remarkable only for its extremity.  Throughout childhood, I saved all my school papers in dresser drawers.  I remember, as a high school student, looking back with pleasure on my spelling grades from second grade.  My basement today is full of debris, although a significant weeding out occurred in 2009, when my house was taken over for use as a movie set, and again in 2014, when my brother "helped with" (did) some major renovations.

Just visiting my house, you'd never guess I was a hoarder if you didn't see the basement, perhaps.  Perhaps, but -- suspiciously -- all my walls are lined with books, books from every period of my life.  I've occasionally thrown out a guide book or two that was thirty years out of date.  It hurt. 

And let's not even talk about my desk top during my many years in legal practice.  Luckily, I had a series of highly organized secretaries who tried to impose some order on my disorderliness.

All of this came to mind as I read Jan Morris's Manhattan '45, an account and collection of remembrances of what life was like in New York at the conclusion of World War II. 

Morris briefly describes the remarkable Victorian home on Fifth Avenue, near 128th Street, of two brothers, Homer and Langley Collyer.  They had lived in their home in Harlem since 1909, back when it was a fashionable area of town.  Homer had been an admiralty attorney with a degree from Columbia, but had been paralyzed since 1932; he was cared for by his brother Langley, a concert pianist who had performed at Carnegie Hall.

Their story reveals what might have been my fate if I'd continued to live for decades in my Brooklyn Avenue basement.  They gradually filled their home with, well, with debris.  A New York Times story in 2003 states that the house was filled with hundreds of thousands of newspapers.  Morris says that every passage through the house was barricaded with miscellaneous rubbish, with tunnels burrowed through the rubbish through which one had to crawl.  One hundred eighty tons of debris. 

Booby traps had been installed throughout the passages. 

The house had no gas, electric, water, or sewer connections.  But it had fourteen grand pianos and it had an excellent library, specializing in mechanics and the sea.

Homer finally died in 1947.  It took the police two hours to break into the house using axes and crow bars.  No one had any idea what had happened to Langley.  His body was discovered three weeks later, caught in one of his own booby traps, buried under debris, and partially eaten by rats.

Langley was not only paralyzed, but blind.  His brother had saved the newspapers for him to read when he recovered his sight.  The other garbage?  Who knows.  The Times quoted a writer as saying that eccentrics are not necessarily illogical.  They may have their own "very pure" logic.  It's just different.

The Times writer had heard the Collyer story as a child.

To my 7-year-old ears, the cruel twist was deliciously gruesome: Homer and Langley had been killed by the very bulwarks they had raised to keep the world out of their lives.

A cautionary tale, indeed.  And metaphorical.  A story to recall and ponder in these days when our leaders seem obsessed with the desire to build national bulwarks to keep the outside world outside.

Spring cleaning

Just a few more hours (Seattle time) until January comes to an end.  January.  Named after the Latin word ianua, or gate.  But popularly thought to have been named after the god of gates, Janus.

Nasty two-faced Janus.  One face looking backward, in 2017, to a year of political turmoil -- but also a year of stable and competent government.  The other, looking forward to something new under the American sun.  To a "New Political Order" as Stephen Bannon, our new de facto ruler, has declared.  Who knows what it means?  We can only wait and see what the unkempt gentleman has in store for us.

Tomorrow is February.  From the Latin word februum, meaning purification.  Named after the Februa, the Roman rite of purification, held mid-way through the month.  A festival appropriated by the Catholic Church as the Feast of the Purification of the B.V.M., celebrated on America's Groundhog Day, February 2.

The Februa was essentially a two or three day period of spring cleaning.  Apparently everything washable or cleanable was washed and cleaned.  The Romans washed tangible objects.  This year, we need to wash our minds, our dispositions, our souls.  This year, we need a lot of purification.  Unlike the Romans, we do have detergent and chlorine bleach to aid us in our striving for purification.

Originally, the Romans had no January or February.  Those months were yet unformed -- a vast winter wasteland at the end of the year, a stretch of time not yet dignified with names.  You just worked your way through that period each year until you saw March -- the beginning of the Roman year -- hovering ahead of you on the horizon.  The wasteland was subdivided and short platted, if you will, in 713 B.C., with January and February becoming the last two months of the year.  Even then, February was the 97-pound-weakling of the months, a month that sort of petered out at 28 days.  (Except when an "intercalary month" was interposed between Februrary and March, but you don't want to know about all that.)

In about 450 B.C, it became the second month of the year, as it has remained ever more.  Then adoption of the Julian calendar in 45 B.C. offered us the fun idea of leap years.

In non-Latin countries, like old England, the month had other names -- the Old English words for "mud month" or sometimes "cabbage month."  But let's remember it as purification month.  We're in need of purification -- not at all of mud or cabbage.  And we'd better get to work purifying fast.

This isn't a leap year.  We have only 28 days to wash the slime of January from our nation's collective body. And psyche.

Two presidents

'

'I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.''
--Lyndon B. Johnson, March 31, 1968

According to a 1988 article in the New York Times, written by LBJ's chief of staff, Johnson had been considering plans to refuse re-election as early as September 1967.  But before his final speech, he commissioned a poll that indicated that he would likely win re-election, thus persuading him that he was not quitting out of fear of failure.

But President Johnson had strong misgivings about the war he was conducting in Vietnam, and about America's chance of conclusively winning that war.  Like President Trump, he felt that the New York Times was "working for the enemy" -- either that, or that the facts provided by U.S. intelligence had been misleading him.  And I suspect he was affected by the massive student demonstrations against the war, which  peaked with the Tet Offensive in early 1968.

Johnson was always in close contact with the military.  He had highly qualified cabinet members heading State and Defense.  He himself had been the Democratic leader in the Senate from 1953 until becoming vice president.  He knew senators of both parties -- how to do them favors and how to call in favors from them.  Whatever one thinks of his presidency, he was a consummate political leader.

Johnson had his fingers on the pulse of the nation, and an instinctive feel for the concerns of Congress.  He heard the cries, "Hey, hey, LBJ.  How many kids have you killed today?"  He sensed that he himself, his personality as well as his decisions, were dividing the nation sharply on the issue of Vietnam.  And so he stood aside.

I remember Johnson as I see the photos of the massive demonstrations against a Trump reign that is only a week old.  I read, and participate in, howls of outrage on social media (admitting that my media contacts largely occupy a liberal, urban bubble).  I read about the ACLU's initial successes in combatting Trump's hastily imposed travel bans.  These events are all encouraging.

But what will they accomplish?  Vietnam demonstrations helped persuade LBJ to resign, because he felt the forces moving the nation.  Trump may have a feeling for one narrow portion of the American public -- what has been described as a rural, mid-continental tribal grouping for whom "America First" is a cry that comes naturally.  But he ignores the rest of the country, or believes, perhaps, that they represent a tiny minority.  He hates the NY Times, but unlike LBJ never wonders if his own sources of information might be faulty.  He acts quickly, bragging about his quickness, and consequently acts sloppily.

And now he has surrounded himself with a cabinet, a national defense team, and a presidential staff who virtually all share some of the most backward thinking in today's America.  And in Congress, he enjoys a Republican majority whose leaders (with a couple of notable exceptions) bend over backwards in their attempts to be obsequious.

In short, we can demonstrate, write letters, and holler on the internet all we want.  We aren't confronting an LBJ, a president in occasional Hamlet mode.  A president who listens and worries.  We are facing a president who knows what he knows and has no interest in knowing anything else.  He is surrounded by white, old men -- mostly incredibly wealthy -- who are determined to buck him up if he shows any signs of faltering.  Trump's not going to resign.  He's not going to back down.  He's not going to learn.

Unless the Republican leadership finally revolts, we're in store for at least four years that will leave us a far different country.  Not the sort of country that LBJ would have wanted.  Not the sort of country that soldiers fought two world wars to preserve.

Enigma Variations

Elgar's "Enigma Variations" is a suite of 14 orchestral variations on an initial theme.  The variations are reflections on aspects of fourteen individuals who were important in the composer's life.

In his new novel, Enigma Variations, André Aciman has concocted something similar.  The novel is divided into five chapters.  In the first, and longest, chapter, the narrator describes an intense emotional and physical attraction to an older man back when he was a 12-year-old boy.  In the later chapters, he discusses his attempts to achieve romantic relationships with a number of potential partners as an adult, and in the process shows how true is the aphorism: "The child is father to the man."

Paolo and his parents spend their summers in their large summer house on the fictitious island of San Giustiniano, off the coast of Sicily.  A local carpenter and cabinet maker, Giovanni ("Nanni"), a young man in his late 20s, does various odd jobs for them.  The summer Paolo was 12, Nanni was engaged in an exquisitely difficult refinishing of an old desk. 

In something of a reprise of Elio's teenaged infatuation with an older graduate student in Aciman's first novel, Call Me By Your Name, ( see my discussion here), Paolo develops an intense crush on Nanni.  For a long time, Paolo can hardly even look openly at Nanni, or speak an entire sentence to him.  The romance occurs entirely within his secret thoughts; he can conceal his passion for Nanni only by speaking vaguely disparagingly of him to his parents, and by seeming to ignore Nanni's visits to his house.  Eventually, he opens up slightly, and begins spending more and more time at Nanni's shop, "helping" him with his carpentry work.

Eventually, Nanni catches Paolo staring at him with longing eyes, and gently tells the boy that it would be better if he not spend so much time visiting the shop.  Paolo runs off to the ruins of a Norman chapel, where he has often spent time lost in thought, sometimes alone, sometimes chatting with his father.  Following the rejection by Nanni, the abandoned chapel

had seen me suffer and cry as I'd never wept before.  I knew every one of its exposed stones, every inch, every weed, every crawling lizard, down to the feel of the chipped stones and pebbles under my bare feet.  I belonged here the way I belonged to this planet and its people, but on one condition: alone, always alone.

Paolo tells us of these events as he returns for a visit  for the first time to San Giustiniano, ten years later.  As a 22-year-old, he finally learns from villagers something that he should have suspected as a 12-year-old:  Nanni and his father had been secret lovers for many years -- not a secret that could be forever hidden in a small town.  The villagers had been tolerant of the highly educated and respected father, but had become openly hostile toward Nanni.  Nanni had left the island and disappeared;  Paolo never saw him in person again.

The remaining four chapters, occupying seventy percent of the book, take place in Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Paolo, now "Paul," has attended college in a small New England school, and holds an important job in the publishing industry.  The four chapters are sequential, but jump from time period to time period, with no real indication of the length of the gaps.  In the second chapter, Paul seems to be in his 20s.  By the last chapter, he is middle aged.

Paul plays tennis for recreation, at least in the second chapter.  Otherwise, he tells us little about his work or his interests.  He has friends, he is invited to parties, he is considered cheerful and open by his peers.  But his entire interior life is centered on a search for a satisfying relationship.  A search for a new Nanni, the Nanni he never had, never could have had, could only dream about with a 12-year-old's imagination.  A dream object who all along belonged to his own father.

We first see him as an adult, involved in a romantic relationship, perhaps already fading, with a woman named Maud.  But the second chapter is all about his infatuation with a man named Manfred, a German who plays tennis at the same Upper West Side courts as himself.  For two years, he is obsessed with the thought of Manfred, but allows himself to do no more than glance at him, to say no more than "good morning."  As an adult, his ability to meet Manfred in any meaningful way is no better developed than it had been as a child with Nanni.  Ultimately, somewhat unbelievably, the two actually do become lovers for a time and then, by the third chapter, close friends -- Manfred emails Paul from Germany, often on a daily basis, trying to help him meet future partners.

Future partners who are all women.  In the third chapter, he is intensely jealous of his then girlfriend's suspected affair with an attractive client -- a jealousy that proves unwarranted when she laughs, after the client has finished his business relationship, that it was Paul, not her, who the client found attractive.  Meanwhile, Paul has spent the third chapter dying a million deaths, imagining the conversations and interactions between the two.  And feeling a secret thrill of attraction for the client.

As Manfred -- the sane voice of reason -- points out by email in later chapters, Paul lives his life in his mind.  He arranges date after date, each of which he imagines beforehand as ending up with his spending a night in the woman's apartment.  We see his date giving every sign of willingness.  Paul sees the same thing we see, but can never believe what he sees -- there must be some secret agenda he knows nothing about, her willingness to bed with him must be merely politeness, a desire not to hurt his feelings, a sign that actually she is bored and wants to go home -- home without Paul.  He has ended up in bed with many women and -- we suspect -- many men, but only in physical relationships.  With the partner he could love -- the adult version of Nanni, the person to whom he could entrust his entire soul without hesitation -- he is too tongue-tied to show her what he wants.

History repeats itself in the final chapter, and with the most obviously attractive candidate for the position as Paul's soul mate.  Manfred sends frantic emails.  "This woman is real.  You are real."   So Paul prepares his lines.  His script.  They have drinks, dinner together.  And then, at the last moment, Paul pulls back, the moment passes.

I tried to find a way to pry open the block between us.  But the more I realized how much I wanted her, the more the idea of her new beau [probably imaginary] began to muddy my thinking, the more her blandishing dearests began to irk me.  Everything I liked about her, everything she wrote and said had the ring of hollow appeasements thrown around to prevent me from drawing closer ... I became guarded and oblique.

  They say goodby on the sidewalk in front of her apartment house.  She walks sadly away.

And then, to confuse matters, in the final pages of the novel, Paul reveals to us that he's already married.  Married to a woman we met in chapter 2.  Married, but not apparently to a soulmate, not to a reincarnation of the never-forgotten Nanni.  Marriage to a woman for whom he'd never expressed much interest.

As in all his novels, Aciman writes of men who live their lives in their imaginations, who cannot step outside themselves at critical times, cannot step into life.  "This woman is real.  You are real."  The woman had been real, as were the happy hours Paul had spent talking with her in small cafes, but she, and those good times he's spent with her, "belonged to another life, a life unlived, a life I knew had turned its back to me and was being nailed to the wall."  This regret for opportunities lost because of hesitation to act or speak at the critical moment is similar to the regret Aciman had the adult Elio express so vividly at the end of his first novel.

As Paul himself at one point tells friends at a dinner party:

We're torn between regret, which is the price to pay for things not done, and remorse, which is the cost for having done them.  Between one and the other, time plays all its cozy little tricks.

Yes, of course, Aciman might say.  But sometimes one simply does what feels right, and worries about the balance between regret and remorse afterwards.  

A whole new ballgame

The prudent sees the evil and hides himself, But the naive go on, and are punished for it.
--Proverbs 22:3

Tomorrow is Inauguration Day. 

At 12:01 p.m., what seems -- at least in retrospect -- to have been a century of sane, rational government comes to an end.  At times, it may have been misguided government -- but fairly rational government by sane men.  Presided over by presidents who -- despite their personal weaknesses and quirks -- were able to guide the nation with reasonable care, without letting their personal peculiarities get too much in the way.

After noon tomorrow, I just don't know.  Donald Trump has done nothing since his election to comfort me, to persuade me that his many weird moments during the campaign were nothing more than campaign strategy.  He has continued speaking and acting no less weirdly in the weeks leading up to the present.  He seems to be a man who judges all things in terms of his own personal satisfaction and his voracious need for attention and for approval.

Shall I be naïve or prudent?

The naïve side of my personality tells me that, once he swears the oath, Trump will be awed by his new responsibilities.  That, although still self-centered, his self-centeredness will be made to work for the nation's good:  that he will seek to burnish history's judgment on his career by acting the part of a wise leader, a compassionate soul, a man who seeks the maximum good for the greatest number of our citizens.

The prudent side of my personality tells me to hide myself, to flee for the hills (or for Canada).  Or at the very least to lie low, to keep my mouth shut and my pen unused, to hunker down and ride out a perilous four years.

Which will it be?  Along with the entire world, I await tomorrow's inauguration speech -- preparing to take note of both its language and its tone.  And perhaps, more than with any other new president, to watch carefully the eyes and the body language of the man before the TV cameras.

As I remind all my friends -- only partly joking -- I live only one and a half hours from the Canadian border.

Requiem for a tradition

But where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns
Quick, send in the clowns.
--Stephen Sondheim

In the small town where I grew up -- in the early years, before we had television -- we looked forward to two major entertainments every year.  The Carnival and the Circus.

I remember carnivals best, because we were active and excitable kids, and could hardly wait to climb on all the rides.  The circus was a slower, more contemplative form of entertainment.

Both were touring shows that came to town, setting up shop for a few days on any available piece of empty property, usually close to the center of town.  The carnival was almost always owned by Douglas Greater Shows, which -- in my child's mind -- ran together into a single word: ''douglasgradershows." 

The circus, which is today's topic, was either Ringling Bros., or Barnum & Bailey.  I suspect both companies came to town at various times, but I can't distinguish between the two at present.  I feel confident that at least once, before the circus tents were set up, I saw a circus parade march down the main street -- elephants, tigers in cages, trapeze artists in glittery suits, clowns -- always clowns.  But then I wonder -- do I really remember that, or do I just remember seeing circus parades in books and movies?  Hmmm.  I think I'll go with their actually happening before my dazzled little eyes.

When you went to the circus, the most noticeable structure was the "big tent," of course.  But before the big show, you wandered about the grounds looking at the other sights.  The animals were in cages, or otherwise confined, giving you a zoo-like experience.  But better than a zoo, from a kid's point of view, because these animals, which you made faces at and taunted, were about to perform for your benefit inside the big tent.  There were also a number of concessions -- greasy food and cotton candy, fortune tellers, and a number of "sideshows." Sideshows, in smaller tents of their own, presented such wonders as displays of "freaks" (fat ladies, two-headed cows, tattooed man) and the original "geeks" (guys doing nauseating things like biting a chicken's head off).  Parents tended to divert our attention from some of these more unseemly or disturbing acts.)

But the big show itself was G-rated.  Animal acts (lion tamers, elephant performances, monkeys dressed in uniforms), trapeze and high wire acts, tumblers, jugglers, ladies standing on the backs of galloping horses.  The acts in a good circus, were going on -- often simultaneously -- in three performance "rings" -- hence, a "three-ring circus." 

And clowns.  The clowns were everywhere.  They kept you amused between formal acts.  They diverted you when something went wrong.  They pantomimed commentary on their colleagues' performances.  They had their own acts, as well.  I remember seeing one of those "a thousand clowns" acts, where an impossible number of clowns emerged from an old automobile.   I never thought of circus clowns as being scary --  they were funny, and sometimes sad.  Slightly scary clowns -- because they tended to pounce on you -- came along later, as you sat watching a parade, such as that at Portland's Rose Festival.

Anyway, a circus was a great event.  You came home high-strung, exhausted, and your belly full of junk food.  My brother and I would discuss everything we'd seen for a day or two afterwards.

But no more.  Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (the two great rivals had eventually merged) announced yesterday that the big tent would be stricken for the last time in May, ending a run that began when Ulysses S. Grant was president, 146 years ago.  Kids have other things to amuse themselves with nowadays.  Even when I was an older kid, my dad was far more fascinated by televised circus acts than were any of us kids.  "Hey kids, come look at this!"  "Oh, yeah, amazing. [yawn]."

I haven't been to a circus since I was a teenager.  And now I never will again. 

Send home the clowns.

Walking through Westmorland

Westmorland County.  I guess it must be my favorite English county -- at least I keep returning.  I hiked through it, west to east, two years ago, as I walked the first half of the Coast to Coast path.  Then, last year, I started off in Westmorland, before immediately hiking up over the Pennines and through Yorkshire, ending up at the North Sea.

Before hiking those two segments, I read Jane Gardam's classic story of rural Westmorland life, The Hollow Land, which takes place near Kirkby Stephen -- the town where the first segment of the C2C (as we veterans like to call it) ended, and the second segment began.  As a result of all these exposures, literary and pedestrian, love somehow blossomed.

Not bad for a county that hasn't officially existed since 1974, when Westmorland and Cumberland, and a few odd bits of other adjoining counties, were combined into a rather large Cumbria county.  But Westmorland lives on in literature, and in the hearts and minds of those who love it -- including me.

And so I return at the end of May to walk another hike -- this time entirely within Westmorland county.  Reversing the direction of my other two visits, I'll strike out westward from Appleby, the former "county town" (county seat), located about 12 miles down the Eden river from Kirkby Stephen.  I'll hike westward for three days until I hit the northern end of a long, narrow lake called Ullswater.  Another day's hike will take me to Patterdale, at the south end of the lake.  I stayed overnight in Patterdale two years ago, enjoying the lakeshore, before hiking eastward by a different route.

From Patterdale, I'll hike south to Grasmere (of Wordsworth fame), duplicating (but in the opposite direction) my route of two years ago.  After Grasmere, there will be no further duplication as I hike basically southward for three days, through Windermere, and ending up on an inlet of the Irish Sea.

Once I reach Ullswater, I'll be well into the Lake District.  Although I will not be crossing the high fells as I did in 2015, I anticipate beautiful lakeside scenery and historical interest.

I tell myself that I also anticipate rain -- but I was so lucky with respect to weather in 2015 and 2016 that I'm probably subconsciously too complacent.  But yes, I will take rain gear.

The gathering storm

It's another beautiful, sunny day in Seattle.  Freezing the past few nights, but the temperature works up into the middle or upper 30s by each mid-day.  The air is crisp and cold.  A long walk on such a day, which I'm about to take in an hour, is always a pleasure.

Almost like static or white noise, in the background of daily life, do we hear and read the odd stories from Washington, D.C. and from New York. 

Of scowling old men being appointed to the President's cabinet, to supervise departments they have long advocated abolishing or crippling. 

Of plans to immediately revoke the health care plan that has provided coverage to so many millions of people who otherwise could not afford it -- revoked, because wealthy people don't like seeing their insurance premiums raised. 

Of plans to do away with a wide variety of environmental protections. 

Of an in-coming president who refuses to share his tax returns, who refuses to separate in a meaningful fashion his life as a multi-billionaire businessman from his duties as president, who spends his nighttime hours pouring out petty, childish diatribes against all those who he feels have slighted or offended him.

Of a new kind of president -- unlike the Roosevelts, Eisenhowers, Kennedys, Reagans, and Bushes of our past.  Not to mention Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln.

Of a young, whining adolescent -- a kid who's always had his way -- in an old man's body. A spoiled adolescent who has been chosen as President of the United States, and Leader of the Free World.  

In just eight more days.

Most disturbing are the reports of an on-going campaign to weaken any confidence of the American people in their free and independent press.  A press conference, allegedly called to set forth the new president's agenda, that devolves into a jeremiad against major newspapers and news channels.  A president who sees the Press as a last restriction on his ability to do virtually anything he wants.  A blustering bully completely out of control -- or, alternatively and more frighteningly -- who carefully seems out of control in order to better bully and intimidate the Press.

And yet, the day is beautiful.  Unlike in the movies, impending disaster is not foreshadowed by threatening clouds and wind storms.  I suppose that many of the great tyrannies of history were born on calm, sunny days in summer, while the populace was out swimming and picnicking. 

I'm going for my walk.  With the collar pulled up.  I may shiver, but not all my shivering will be from the cold.

Cruising

I've never sailed on a cruise; I've never even yearned for that experience.  By a cruise, you know what I mean.  One of those giant white hotels that head out to sea, filled with people having "fun."  By "cruise," I don't mean sailing along the Turkish coast with 12 or 13 fellow travelers in a "gulet"; I've done that and would joyously do it again.

I do confess to standing on the Elliot Bay dock, staring up at cruise ships that sail between Seattle and Alaska, watching the tourists board, and envying them as they step out onto their little balconies and look down on me -- both literally and metaphorically.  But then I look carefully at their faces, and decide -- nope, not for me.  Maybe when I'm older and more decrepit, and can't get around on my own?

Or maybe if someone (like Harper's magazine) paid all my expenses, and asked me only to write about my experiences.  Which is how David Foster Wallace found  himself boarding the m.v. Zenith (which he re-christens the "Nadir") at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in March 1994.  Did he have fun?  The title of his article was "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," so draw your own conclusions. 

The article -- the essay, as it appears in his collection of essays by the same name, may be an expanded version of the original article -- is Wallace at his satirical and grumpily depressed best.  Who are all these awful people, and are they really enjoying themselves? -- a basic question he asks himself throughout the essay.  The cruise does have its pleasant aspects, but more often (to him) its horrors -- as he makes clear from the first page:

I have seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue.  I have seen an all-red leisure suit with flared lapels.

An experience that is, to many, the high point of their lives, comes to fill him with existential dread:

I have felt as bleak as I've felt since puberty, and have filled almost three Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or just Me.

For seven days, Wallace wanders about the ship, listening in on conversations.  He eats meals in assigned seating.  He stays aboard during shore visits, because, he claims, he suffers from mild agoraphobia.  He uses room service, more and more frequently, to avoid assigned seating at meals.  He measures his room obsessively.  He suspects constant surveillance as the only way maids can clean his room so unobtrusively every time he's briefly absent.  Out of a sense of duty to his publisher, he spends one day participating in a number of organized activities, including skeet shooting and ping pong.  He is not amused.

Wallace is obsessed by the aging nature of -- other than himself -- the guests. 

Most of the exposed bodies to be seen all over the daytime Nadir were in various stages of disintegration.

He sees uninvited coercion in the brochures advertising the cruise, and inescapable coercion in his treatment on board.

The promise is not that you can experience great pleasure, but that you will.  That they'll make certain of it.  That they'll micromanage every iota of every pleasure-option so that not even the dreadful corrosive action of your adult consciousness and agency and dread can [ruin] your fun. ...  The ads promise that you will be able -- finally, for once -- truly to relax and have a good time, because you will have no choice but to have a good time.

This is a long essay, and Wallace has much to say about his day to day activities, discoveries, and avoidance of certain contacts with others.  But at its end, Wallace comes face to face with who he really is, and who he really is proves to be not much different from those about him.  The pampering by the crew, the insistence that he experience pleasure -- at first embarrassing and guilt-inducing -- soon becomes the new norm.  Over-indulgence of his every whim is no longer enough.

[T]he Infantile part of me is insatiable -- in fact its whole essence or dasein or whatever lies in its a priori insatiability.  In response to any environment of extraordinary gratification and pampering, the Insatiable Infant part of me will simply adjust its desires upward until it once again levels out at its homeostasis of terrible dissatisfaction.

By the end of the cruise, he is outraged by the bar's delay in serving him a Mr. Pibb:

and then you have to sign for it right there at the table, and they charge you -- and they don't even have Mr. Pibb; they foist Dr. Pepper on you with a maddeningly unapologetic shrug when any fool knows Dr. Pepper is no substitute for Mr. Pibb, and it's an absolute goddamned travesty, or at any rate extremely dissatisfying indeed.

As we by now appreciate, David Foster Wallace is a very funny writer, as well as an introspective writer, a perceptive writer, and, perhaps, a somewhat disturbed writer.

But we love him, and wish we were traveling with him.

Which is why news of his suicide fourteen years later is upsetting.  But not totally surprising.

Angelic liturgies

I attended one of the Seattle Symphony's three performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony last night at Benaroya Hall.  The Ninth is one of classical music's "Top Hits," obviously, and the Saturday night performance was sold out. 

The "warm-up" act, and its composer, on the other hand, were new to me and I suspect to many in attendance --  the Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine, by Olivier Messiaen.  Messiaen was a French composer who was held as a prisoner of war by the Germans early in World War II, but who continued composing while a prisoner, and for many years following his release.  He was a devout Catholic, and his strong faith was evidenced in the choral libretto of last night's composition.  According to written materials -- which I'm not qualified to discuss intelligently -- his works generally are complex melodically and harmonically.  Certainly, the performance last night didn't contain tunes that one whistled as he walked out to intermission.

The Trois petites liturgies was written for female chorus, orchestra and piano.  The Seattle Symphony's director, Ludovic Morlot, explained in opening remarks that he substituted a boys' choir for the female chorus, because of the "angelic purity" of their voices. The choir was accompanied by piano and a pared down portion of the full orchestra.

Morlot's choice for the singers -- a choice obvious to Seattleites -- was the Northwest Boychoir.  Their performance -- and thus the overall performance of the Messiaen work -- was stunning.  I had attended performances by the Northwest Boychoir a couple of times in the past -- both times for an annual Seattle Christmas event called "Festival of Lessons and Carols," a beautiful seasonal offering typical of Anglican services in large British cathedrals.  Highly enjoyable, but the kind of singing I expect to hear from any well-trained boys chorus.  Nothing prepared me for the performance last night.

The boys, a group of 35 to 40 pre-adolescents -- sang continuously for about 35 minutes.  They sang, not supported by the orchestra so much as in cooperation with it.  The score varied rapidly from moment to moment in both tempo and dynamics.  Unlike the case with hymns or Christmas carols, the singers could not rely on a predictable progression up and down a standard scale -- the score jumped all over the soprano range, and each singer needed to hit unerringly the correct pitch with each sung note.

The poetic lyrics, written by the composer himself, together with their translation filled nearly three full pages of the concert program. The boys sang in French.

Anyone who has tried to get five or more 10 to 12-year-olds to focus on a single task is well aware that the chore is like herding cats.  These kids showed both innate talent and a learned self-discipline that amazed me.

I have no idea how many alumni of Northwest Boychoir go on to professional singing careers.  Most, I suspect, don't.  But Seattle is fortunate to have this source of local talent from which to draw.

Miracle

Over a month ago, my printer stopped working.  Despite all my shaking of the machine and my shoving of paper into it, the paper still wouldn't thread.

Almost exactly a month ago, my PC's internet connection became partially disabled.  Each time I tried to open a page, the monitor screen told me that my Ethernet was improperly configured with respect to my IP number.  Strangely, I was nevertheless permitted to open certain often-used pages: Facebook, this blog, my Comcast on-line mail, Google, Yahoo (but without photos) and Wikipedia.  Nothing else.

On-line guidance was of no help.  So, while procrastinating about how to handle the situation, I began relying solely on my iPhone.  And stopped printing.

Two weeks ago, I broke my iPhone, and, after its being sent to a laboratory for repairs, was told that it was unrepairable.

Desperate, two days ago I bought a new iPhone.  I spent the evening adding apps for all the websites -- especially those involving banking, credit cards, and investing -- that I could no longer reach on my PC.

Yesterday -- I discovered my PC working perfectly.  Spontaneously.  Without my doing anything.

Within an hour of that dazzling discovery, I made one more attempt to use my printer.  It worked.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; Blessed be the name of the Lord!

--Job 1:21

Or -- in my case -- in inverse order.  Whether I have been brushed by the hand of an amused Supreme Deity or -- as is more likely -- the hands of the malicious elves of Cyberspace, or even by Lord Bill Gates himself, all I can do is bow my head and offer up thanks. 

And reflect on how small I am, and how great are the inscrutable Powers that direct and guide my tiny life.