Living Questions

This afternoon we were returning from donating bags & boxes of books to the library. We were deep in conversation about these friends we had left behind, as to whether they were not still with us. As we came to a corner at the bottom of a hill, I had to pull over. I had to take in and retain the mystery of the trees, brush, hills and fog that suddenly surrounded us.

I was reminded of some words of Rainer Maria Rilke which I had recently run across somewhere:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.

We can surrender their books, but we must hold fast to their words.

Solstice

I'm checking in with gratitude.

I'm alive and reasonably well. As is my fellow passenger on this space ship. She just peeked in from the doorway before returning to her sleeping compartment. 3rd Unit, seated beside me on the sofa watching the sunrise, has no immediate comment she would share with me: not her custom to do so before her walk. My embrace of gratitude envelops my four sons and their families. Oakland Branch has landed safely in Hawaii, which is as good a thing to do and place to be for a family as I can imagine for the holidays. We are expecting to visit with Long Beach, Pacific Palisades and Pasadena branches on the 24th/25th. As I think of the seven little blessings I have masquerading as grandchildren, I am grateful that I was able to complete my Ethical Will for their critical reading eyes by the time they graduate from high school. (Since it's probably not quite ready for prime time, in fact may never be, I don't expect it to appear in these pages.) As I sit back and stroke 3rd Unit's sleek back, the newly minted sun breaks over my waters and my breaking surf which is still audible despite the awakening freeway behind me. I realize my gratitude covers the safety and health of friends within the reach of my mind, no matter how far and wide they are scattered, geographically.

But I am not checking in with contentment. I am still in the middle of my story.

It's Not What You Take with You When You Go...

It's what you leave behind when you are taken....

Randy Travis:

A farmer and a teacher, a hooker and a preacher,

Ridin' on a midnight bus bound for Mexico.

One's headed for vacation, one for higher education,

An' two of them were searchin' for lost souls.

That driver never ever saw the stop sign.

An' eighteen wheelers can't stop on a dime.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,

Why there's not four of them, Heaven only knows.

I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,

It's what you leave behind you when you go.

That farmer left a harvest, a home and eighty acres,

The faith an' love for growin' things in his young son's heart.

An' that teacher left her wisdom in the minds of lots of children:

Did her best to give 'em all a better start.

An' that preacher whispered: "Can't you see the Promised Land?"

As he laid his blood-stained bible in that hooker's hand.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,

Why there's not four of them, Heaven only knows.

I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,

It's what you leave behind you when you go.

That's the story that our preacher told last Sunday.

As he held that blood-stained bible up,

For all of us to see.

He said: "Bless the farmer, and the teacher, an' the preacher;

"Who gave this Bible to my mamma,

"Who read it to me."

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,

Why there's not four of them, now I guess we know.

It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,

It's what you leave behind you when you go.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway.

Trophy Wife

After the race yesterday, the J-22 skipper toasted me and congratulated both of us for staying tied for 3rd place in the annual High Points trophy (with one race to go). My reaction was instantaneous:

3rd Place? Are you kidding? Isn't that like kissing your sister? I'm not even aware of the standings!

And I wasn't. And I'm not curious enough to going to the Internet looking up the standings. And I am confident that as the J-22 guy looks back into his wake a few years from now, he will feel the same way.

What brims to the top of my trophy cups are the sun, water, wind, waves and sounds of fiberglass rushing through the natural world. It's the clash and competition of those forces that really excite and drive me.

What troubles me is that yesterday I lost it. In the middle of the intense competitive action which draws me in like a moth to light, I lost it. I yelled at Crew. I totally blew it. I cracked.

I need to atone.

Atonement

The Intensity Principal means that I no longer volunteer for activities which bore me, which  I have  found  inevitably lead to boring  results. That imp[lies 95% of all teevee, all ice cream, all buttered toast and salt  crackers. There is no novelty promised in these  wasteful and unhealthy pursuits.

Today I am in  for more dentistry. 90 or more minutes with Roy, a doc whom I love. But no dentist has  caused me more pain  for a solid  hour. I am thinking I must endure his ministrations as a way of  atoning for my careless and lazy attention  to my teeth. I am as lazy with my dental hygiene as I am with my boat maintenance. But  this omission  is personal. I have often said that each hour in the dentist's chair shortens one's life by two hours. He's going to give me laughing  gas while I'm sitting in  the chair of death? That's no laughing matter, Doc. Even if it seems ironically  appropriate.

This will be  an intense morning. I had better attend  to as many affairs as I can. Later, when I'm in the chair, I can mediate and reflect further on my life's path. Assuming I am to be granted the grace of having a path forward.

Jerry Sandusky Walks his 3rd Mile

At the outset of this, I have to disclose that I am not a fan of professional (NFL) or semi-professional (NCAA) football. At best, I am uninformed about football (of the pointy-shaped ball) and indifferent as to its fortunes. To wit: until this week, I would not have been able to associate the name of Joe Paterno with any industry or profession. As blissful ignorance sometime is, it has been crushed by the tsunami coming out of Penn State. But, as Pennsylvania Sate Police Commissioner Frank Noonan said last week,

This is not a case about football. It's a case about children who have had their innocence stolen from them and the culture that did nothing to stop it.

Jerry Sandusky has 40 charges against him, is currently out on $100,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in court next month for a preliminary hearing. Sandusky stands accused of aggravated sexual abuse of minors under his tutelage in The Second Mile.

In the media, he has been tried and convicted. Everyone expects his "Third Mile" will be a slo-mo trip from Penn State to the State Pen. There he will find a lot of men who will want to 'crack his back'.

But before that Sandusky's case will drag on. It will be very hard and difficult to get one young man to testify in open or closed court. But the stakes are so high that one courageous victim will eventually come forward, and then maybe another and another. It will be very hard on them. But howsoever long it takes, inevitably the law will run its course to a slam-dunk conviction. Assistant football coach Mike McQueary's eye-witness testimony ensures the verdict.

The only open question is how many other people will be hurt as Sandusky walks his 3rd mile. If this monster had half a heart, he would at least think of members of his own family which include six adopted sons. There's only one and best way Jerry can really say he's sorry.

Wherever he is, he should be taken off of suicide watch.

Between Dawn & Dusk on Race Day

Ballou and I were at the beach at day break. The air was cold (by West Coast standards) and restless. A heavy rain storm was forecasted and I couldn't tell if these clouds indicated it had passed us by or that itwas on its way. Regardless they cause me to look forward to today's windy race with trepidation. Dudn't bother Doberwoman, though. She goes in the surf after a stick as often as I throw it for her.

It's not so much about the forecast: I've learned that weather is never as bad as they say it's going to be. The trepidation largely comes from my recent lack of intensity about sailing & racing. I am attracted to ideas, activities and people who energize me with their intensity. Lack of intensity is a dangerous thing, a worrisome and disquieting sensation to which always I try to pay attention. It suggests inattention and carelessness. Onboard & afloat, that's a dangerous mental condition to have.

On the same beach, at the end of the same day, after a very satisfying & well-sailed race, I give thanks into the sunset. This was an intense day. As I approach life after yachting, each of these days figure to become more and more intense.

Life Is Good

A Costly Decision Looms

This is morning, off my front porch when Ballou and I open the door and go down to the street to fetch the day's papers. Every morning it's different. Occasionally I can hear the surf and the seals. Whenever we have a marine layer, I certainly hear the fog horn from the end of the breakwater.

As near as I can orient myself after a dozen years living here, this is facing south across 'my lake' at the Channel Islands. The big island is Santa Cruz, and the low island to the left, more visible to the naked eye than to my camera's lens this morning, is Anacapa. I have sailed between the two a half dozen times on the King Harbor Race (to Redondo Beach). Between the two islands and the beach are the waters I have raced on more than 40 times a year.

Off to the left in the east, through those hefty trees is where sun comes up over East Beach and Fools; Anchorage.

For reasons of aging and declining health, do I feel obligated to move from this priceless vantage point and downsize further than what it took for me to get here in the first place? That is the question. It would be like moving from where my glass is half full to where it is half empty.

On Children

My son included this on a CD he gave us a decade ago. It moved me deeply. I finally found it.

Kahlil Gibran:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

What Steve Jobs Says to Me

These scripts keep reverberating in my head. They are from the late Apple CEO's Commencement Address to the 2005 graduating class at Stanford:

....Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

I never had the patience, the prudence, the courage, and the persistence to work out what it was that I was called to do. You can bet your booty I am energetically pursuing the reasons why not in other pages. But looking back, I can say that my life's track is emblematic of settling for. I never had the courage or the cleverness, or the consciousness to recognize clues as to what my life's work should be. There may have been moments where I glimpsed journalism or the law; perhaps out of cowardice of not wanting to invest two years in my garage, as did Jobs, I quickly moved on and changed the backdrops. Whatever work I did, I never paid my dues, professionally.

So, my life's path shows no great work. All I have to show is great fun. Recreational fun. I do not feel I have exactly man-uped (or manned-up?).

That has to change in my current and future life phase. Jobs tells me,

..... Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ... Stay hungry. Stay foolish.....

Yes, I have to follow my heart. Consult the spark with in me that contains my newly-minted life mission and discriminate in my daily minute-by-minute life between meaningful choices and meaningless defaults.

Integrity.

I Am Blake Hawksworth

Last night the Los Angeles Dodgers clinched a victory in extra innings, scoring 4 runs in the top of the 10th to go ahead of the Arizona D-Backs 5-1. In the bottom of the 10th the D-Backs had their backs on the ground with bases empty and two outs. Arizona was down to its last strike.

Arizona batter Cole Gillespie then hit a bouncing grounder down the first base line. Dodger 1st baseman James Loney pursued it down the line, gloved it, whirled, and threw to first base for the final out. As you can see by clicking on the image, pitcher Blake Hawksworth was not in the play but watching it. He had no confidence that Loney was going to make the play. His carelessness and laziness opened the door to the Dodgers' defeat which agonizingly came minutes later in the form of an Arizona grand slam homer.

Me? I watched the whole thing on teevee, stuffing myself in a feeding binge, which totally obliterated my progress in weight loss for the week.

I am not covering first base.

MKPTA

I am not going to write about my weekend Mankind Project Training Activity.

On Being Right

I've always known - well long known, actually - that being right about something is not the penultimate goal. Nurturing friendships and relationships, especially with one's own sons - adult sons - trumps being right. Always. However, in the Rotisserie emails last night, I threw down my gloves. Eloquently, in my own mind, at least. All the old well-burnished blogging & flaming skills came into play. I pulled no punches.

• Segues? √ 
• Chronology? √ 
• Sarcasm? √
• Victimhood? √ 
• Martyrdom? √ 

All admirably covered. At this point, no reaction from any of my eight recipients, not to mention four of my sons; and not to mention the number one League Commissioner (my son). At this time, I figure I am in a losing position because I invested much more time in this litigating of League rules, poorly crafted as I allege they are, than my son wasted in provoking me. But I stand to lose much more than my relatively successful rotisserie team, which I have threatened in an unveiled manner, to withdraw. (Things should go my way or I would go on my highway.) I might lose some relationship points with my sons. I might lose the totally enjoyable experience of competing with them while we are in remote, geographically speaking, locations. Those will be significant losses. I am right. But I wish I wasn't.

E.L.R. Finally Arrives!

Seven Pounds!
Seven Ounces!
Seventh Grandchild!

August Arrives ...

Towed & Stowed....

Our First Anniversary

In our spiritual journey, finding a church congregation about which we are equally enthusiastic is a novelty and a major source of light, joy and solace. 

Thank you to all who played a part.

A Dream Fragment: Dust in the Wind

I left work yesterday at 3:00 p.m. (went sailing). I come into the office this morning and the big room has been cleared. File cabinets, sample merchandise, furniture -- all gone, except for a few scraps of paper and other detritus. All I see are unfamiliar faces. I don't see my office mates: looking through the locked glass door I don't see Dave and Danny. But our desks are not disturbed. I encounter Charlie, who hired me 10+ years ago. He looks slimmer & younger and much better dressed than ever. He's working for the FBI now. (He was fired 1½ years ago. We acknowledge that we know no one milling around. Finally, some bare acquaintance comes up to me and we whisper together, struggling with the words, talking around but not uttering certain obvious ones ("fired", "terminated", "laid-off"). I struggle to hear what she is saying to me, leaning even closer to her. (Those hearing aids can't come too soon!) Finally, one or the other of us murmurs, "We're dust". But deep inside, I am sensing a strong impulse to be one of the survivors: that old aspiration to be among the last ones standing! Because, when it's over, it's over. Then, a meeting is called in a conference room. My acquaintance and I don't know whether we should go in and sit in the back (of course), or just watch at the door. We have to decide quickly, before the door closes....

The Ocean Is My Only Medication

Arlington West

I participated in this project during the previous presidential administration, when it was held every Sunday. For sometime it has been restricted to one Sunday a month. I've joined the duty roster, and will fit in whenever I can. Been AWOL for too long. The photo on the lower right is that of an old tennis buddy of mine.

MKP

I am re-tooling. I want to be able to tell myself the truth of who I am. I need more sight. More insight. New eyes. It's seeming worth the fear of the unknown to try on some new bifocals. I'm at that point in my life where and when I have to try something new. What makes this a forced challenge is the current invitation. I cannot, a small voice inside tells me, afford to decline it or even postpone it. It feels right. For a long time, "I don't like adventures" has been my slogan. I'm not thinking of 86-ing this habit of mind now; just maybe testing it.

Waking from Dream at Five A.M.

I am following the end of the road north of LaVerne California, into the hills. I have the impression that there was a canyon up in them there hills. However, for all the decades I lived in Claremont, I never had a look-see. Growing up in Colorado, I don't do hills, valleys, mountains so much.

Anyways, in this dream. I park my car, walk past all the warning signs and follow a path down to a lookout precipice. When I get to the end, almost between the toes in my sandals, I can look down upon homes, streets, yards, uncultivated pastures and a meandering stream. Everything appears in distinct swaths of different colors. I could end it here, I think. They would find my body in pieces. If I crumbled away the edge, it could even be construed as an accident. My relatives do not frequent this spot, so their lives would not be afflicted with this haunted location.

I turn away from this perfect destination, wake up, and stagger off to the toilet to relieve my ever-pestering bladder....

Morning Pages

I'm not about to get into Julia Cameron's Morning Pages. She's recommending to her readers and demanding of her students that they spend the day's first cup of coffee and thirty minutes writing three 8x11 pages freehand of whatever thoughts come to them.

For one thing, I hate my handwriting. That's probably a main reason I got so deeply into computer technology in the first place. For another thing, during my first cup of coffee my greatest urgency is getting out of the house early. If I don't give my employer the best and earliest hours of my day, I will end up dozing off at my desk around noon. I cannot afford to be caught with my eyes closed and slack-jawed.

Once I become retired, voluntarily or involuntarily, I will happily institute morning pages, because I believe in Cameron's rationale for them. But even then, I will be pressing keys, not pushing pens.

Saturday Scores: Size Matters

My Doberwoman's catch exceeded that of the fishermen and surfers.

Weight Loss or Lost Waist?

Okay. It's come to this. I have to bear witness to a failing attempt at weight loss. I have tried everything except what everyone tells me works: Weight-Watchers. I just refuse the notion that I have to pay a 3rd party in order to get in a regimen which is healthy for me.

I hate fat people. I think they are the scourge of the health system. They clog our health clinics, insurance rolls and the aisles in commercial aircraft. I despise them, even though I am conscious that some percentage of them are grotesquely corpulent only because of some physical disease. But the vast majority of them, I am convinced, are obese only out of personal, willful, irresponsible negligence. Like smokers.

So what does that say about my self image?

Father's Day

You pre-paid my dues, Dad. 

And after a half century, I am still chasing after you, trying to put down a little more on what I owe you.

Flag Day Is Always Golden

My youngest son and I were born on the day. This day. Put better, he was my most favorite birthday present ever. Today, he is in London. And he sent me this. Hopefully, we will be sailing together this Friday!

Day Pages

Cameron's creative horses are like her real horses: she has to feed them first thing in the morning. Otherwise they will become restless. That's her morning pages.

My creative spark are Dobermen. They would rather run on the beach and surf, swim after tennis balls in the harbor, or catch frisbees in the park, than eat. They have always been happy to be fed twice daily, but only when nothing else is happening. Those are my day pages.

Found My Beach

Note that the theme is anticipatory and contemplative, not consumptive. The bottles have been opened but not tipped. Silent and reflective, folks are drinking in only with their five senses.

As a sailor I would suspend drinking my Corona long enough to gauge the quality of the wind (navigable energy) being wasted for the lack of any sails in the scene. As an old dude, I will ponder the pounding of the surf, the irregular cadence of which marks the linear and immutable march of time. Each wave is unique; no wave will repeat exactly another; each wave is as unrecoverable as the last minute in time.

Before I met Trophy Wife, I was semi-conscious, semi-comatose. Our first date, chaperoned, we went to the harbor with our kids and sailed a rented Lido-14. Among other things, that experience awakened my soul to its true nature. I bought a boat. For three decades we lived a little more than an hour away from the Pacific. Every morning, collecting the day's paper, I took in the morning breeze - its scent and direction - and tried to picture in my mind's eye what its effect would be on the nearby waters and beaches. For the last decade, we have been blessed by living three stoplights from our beach, harbor, and boat. Retrieving today's papers and taking in the morning's breeze, I can now see swatches of my waters as well as hear surf, sea lions, and fog horns.

Priceless.

Notes on Writing

Julia Cameron on Writing:

Guilty Pleasure is what writing is all about. It is about attractions, words you can't resist using to describe things too interesting to pass up. And forget lofty motives.

...unrequited love .... the brain enjoys writing. It enjoys the act of naming things, the processes of association and discernment...

.... left to its own devices, writing is like weather. It has drama, a form, a force to it that shapes the day. Just as a good rain clears the air, good writing clears the psyche.

.... amateur is from the Latin "amare" = to love

....writing is about the importance of a sense of direction. Writing is about getting something down as opposed to thinking something up.

.... the former renders a sense of direction, not a sense of strain.

.... Writing rights things .... taking time in out lives gives us the time of out lives. As we describe our environments, we begin to savor them and even the most rushed and pell-mell life begins to take on the patina of being cherished.

Writing is like laying track...mapping your interior and enjoying the sights... what we want to write wants to be written ... my job, then, is to show up on the poage, and let that something move through me....what wants to be written is none of my business.

Valuing our experienceis not narcissism. It is not endless self involvment. It is, rather, the act of paying active witness to ourselves and to our world. Such a witness is an act of dignity, and act that recognizes that life is essentially a sacred transaction of which we know only the shadow, not the shape. As we attune ourselves more and more closely to the value of passing moments, we learn that we are something of moment ourselves.

The Quiet Animal
...
The blood remembers
What the mind forgets.
The soul is a quiet animal.
Given less to thought than memory,
More to dreams than plan,
The soul owes more to half-remembered God
Than waking life as man.

Very often work dries up because it was going so well. We have simply overfished our inner resevoir without having taken the time and care to consciously restock our storehouse of images.

David's Day

We had a lot of fun on & off the water, David.



And, as usual, your presence and love was critically important to our fun.

Ring the Bells that Still Can Ring

Credo

More from Forrest Church:

The courage to bear up under pain
The grace to take our successes lightly
The liberation that comes with forgiveness
The energy to address tasks that await our doing
The joy to be gained even in the smallest endeavor
The meaning to be found in giving ourselves to others
The patience to surmount things that are dragging us down
The wonder that lies between the sacred moments of our birth and death

I call this thoughtful wishing -- wishing for what is ours, here and now, to have, do, and be.

Neat.

Opus

Playwright, Villanova University Professor and sometime-violist Michael Hollinger, says of his 2006 play which has had already more than 30 productions:

Most people work in some combination of small groups, even if they’re part of a huge corporation. I think people respond immediately to the idea that we’re trying to accomplish something, and we need to get past, over, through the idiosyncrasies of our individual temperaments.

..... Leadership has to be in flux. That can be thrilling, or disorienting. I love an environment of equals trying to work something out together. Because of this, I sometimes get in trouble in my university life, where hierarchy and seniority are particularly valued.

..... On a deeper level, I think the play is about legacy and the value of the work you leave behind. Because it’s ephemeral, performance of any kind is a good, poignant metaphor of our temporary natures as living things. Just as the note dies, we do, too. Therefore, the question becomes: What do we make of it when it’s passing through us, and what resonates after it’s gone? The play strives to hint at this without beating the audience over the head.

What a treat it was to see it yesterday with a couple of old sailing buddies!

Waking from Dream at Three A.M.

To me, dreams are meaningless and arbitrary puzzles.

My brother died in May of my sophomore year in high school. He was a year and a half younger. The circumstances of his death ... well I'll just say they were traumatic.

But this morning's dream is contemporary.

Tommy is being memorialized. There is a park with vast fields of green lawns. On this sea of green are occasional embedded stone markers abstractly resembling 20-ft sailboats. Well-worn paths go by each of them. So the implication is that they are dedicated memorials to the deceased. There is one large stone the path to which only approaches from one direction. I ask Trophy Wife to look at it closely and evaluate it as a marker for Tommy.

Next, I am in a large sanctuary. I am seated in the center of a large circle of all of our friends. An unseen pastoral voice is reading a reverential poem I was familiar with as a child but which I cannot identify now. I am anticipating rising and speaking. I will say that in expressing my remorse for, and forgiveness of, my brother's suicide, I am also expressing remorse and asking forgiveness for my own sins, failures, inadequacies and shortcomings.

Suddenly, I am distracted as my youngest son appears and takes a seat near to me. All the stress within me immediately recedes. He completes the circle of solace around me.

Soon, I am cupped in a small light keel boat, buoyant on a morning breeze.

As it Is in Heaven

Thank you, Netflix!

Så som i himmelen was a box office hit in Sweden in 2004 and nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Hollywood Academy Awards.

In this 2 hour-plus film, Daniel Dareus is a small-town boy who escaped his tiny village to become a famous, if highly stressed conductor. A heart attack sends him back home in search of a fresh start. Because he returns only with his stage name, He is not recognized by the locals. He returns pretty much the way he left, as a loner. Sooner rather than later he is asked for suggestions for the local church's choir and inevitably ends up leading as cantor.