Guy Velgos

Mini-Musing №1: Unnecessary Numbering

I’m a big believer in the written outline. It’s a useful tool, a basic skeleton upon which a story or essay is fleshed out. With its simple hierarchical structure, listing major divisions with upper-case Roman numerals, subdivisions with capital letters, and further slicings with so-called Arabic numerals, then lower-case letters, and so on, the outline is an elegant way to organize ideas into a cohesive, flowing piece of writing that insinuates itself into the reader’s brain like a Ceti eel. Who could have a problem with that?

The answer, I found out, was some of my students. They didn’t object to the organizational method per se, but rather my insistence that a heading of “A” or “1” was acceptable only if it were succeeded somewhere by a “B” or “2.” My explanations sometimes fell upon unbelieving ears, occasionally leading to admittedly creative arguments:

“You can’t slice a pizza into one piece.”

“Well, what if you make a single cut from the center straight to the edge? That’s a slice!”

It didn’t help that a couple of my English teacher colleagues sided with the students on this point. I attributed that to having a mind more attuned to reason and ideas rather than calculations, the left/right brain theory. The atmosphere in the teachers’ lounge was contentious that day.

As time passed, I developed some better arguments, or shall I say explanations, to use with my students. You don’t give something a title of One unless you anticipate that there will be a Two. Imagine, I said, if at a wedding you heard, “Do you take this man to be your first husband?” Likewise, the phrase “World War I” did not exist until the beginning of World War II (this was a new historical fun fact for some in the classroom). If John Smith has no children, he’d be silly to call himself John Smith, Sr. Should the situation change, the name can change as well. Though not anticipated at the beginning, we can find ourselves later referring to a first marriage, a second Bush Administration, a third Godfather movie.

It’s true that an appellation of First can be applied when there is an expectation of more to follow. When this is done by royalty, it lends the air of being at the beginning of a dynasty. In contrast, Pope Francis declines to place a number after his title, perhaps as a show of humility. (His onetime predecessor John Paul I was not so openly modest, and, well, look what happened to him.)

Similarly, printings of books are numbered from the beginning, with the confidence that sales will bring about multiple repetitions. [Gratuitous literary anecdote: bombastic author Alexander Woollcott, receiving a shipment of his latest book fresh from the printer, stated, “Ah, what is so rare as a Woollcott first edition?” “A Woollcott second edition,” quipped his office mate Franklin P. Adams.] A designation of “first” for anything implies that there will be more, and creates a mood of suspense, but also a condition of being incomplete. It’s one thing to admit to murder; it’s a bit more to say you’ve committed your first murder.

[Mood-lightening quip, from my ninth-grade biology teacher Mitchell Cox: “My goal is to make my second million; I’ve given up on my first million.”]

Do numerations unnecessarily complicate our lives? And why is “Second” the most frequently occurring numerical street name? The answer to the latter is that often the first constructed street in a town was called “Main” or “Grand” or some such, with the numbering added only as parallel streets were constructed later. As for the former, the answer is a subjective one, worthy of pondering with both sides of your brain. Your first brain.

Dawn’s Early Enlightenment

My first exposure to Russian storytelling (not counting Peter and the Wolf) arrived by means of the Junior Great Books program. We read the folk tale “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” which contained the standard frightful elements of such stories: young, plucky girl; evil step-relatives; bloodthirsty witch; supernatural assistance (in this case a wooden doll that offers advice after being given food and drink, which is arguably the creepiest aspect of the story). As usual, the villain is the most interesting character. Baba Yaga is a ghastly crone who lives in a “hut on fowl’s legs,” and who is assisted in her chores by a pair of knife-wielding floating hands. Vasilisa has been sent by her proto-mean-girl stepsisters to fetch fire from Baba Yaga, who agrees to supply it only if Vasilisa performs some hugely difficult tasks, such as separating good kernels from bad in a huge sack of corn. The wooden doll somehow does the work for her overnight, the witch is bested by the plucky girl, who returns home with fire in a skull, which then consumes her step-family, reducing them to ashes that the doll will probably clean up after a small dinner. Moral: unrelated women are evil to each other, and men who remarry tend to make terrible choices.

In the years since I first read this story (1972, or perhaps earlier), one phrase has stayed in a corner of my brain. Each night, when Vasilisa tearfully tells the doll about the next impossible thing she must accomplish before breakfast, the doll assures her that all will be well, and sends Vasilisa to bed, with the admonition, “The morning is wiser than the evening.” I subconsciously brooded over this sentence for years, until at last it hatched into an idea I could appreciate: the person I am in the morning is usually wiser than the person I am in the evening.

I’ve touched upon this adage in another essay, but I feel it deserves a spotlight of its own. The clear, simple truth of it made so much sense to me, that I was puzzled when others I shared it with didn’t seem to get it. From a college classmate: “Do you mean, how your judgment seems so much clearer when you wake up to a strange face on the next pillow, or with a pounding hangover and a car full of lawn ornaments stolen from who-knows-where?” Or, from possibly the same source, “Is that the reasoning behind scheduling the goddamn SAT at goddamn eight o’clock on a goddamn Saturday morning?” Some adults I knew with less colorful lives (and language) were a bit closer, suggesting that this is the same sentiment as “sleeping on it,” where “it” is a decision requiring careful, or at least time-consuming, consideration.

What I realized it that it’s not the time required for clear thinking, but the actual sleep. Essential as it is for sentient life, sleep gets only slightly more respect than bodily excretion (though with much nicer attendant furnishings). Little kids speak wide-eyed about a future in which they may stay up as late as they want. Captains of industry credit some of their success to being able to “get by” on only four hours of sleep, with the subtext that anyone who indulges in more than that lacks ambition and grit. In his delightful essay “On Going to Bed,” Christopher Morley portrayed one’s approach to imminent bedtime as tantamount to facing mortality itself, a heroic effort that, at its inevitable conclusion, leaves one “an unsightly object and a disgrace to humanity.” Indeed, Dylan Thomas strengthens the metaphor in the other direction, begging his father not to “go gentle into that good night.” We venerate the night life, the dancing until the wee hours. Nights are for parties, for weddings and celebrations; mornings are for funerals and the goddamn SAT.

Early in life, perhaps not long after meeting Vasilisa, I realized that I am a member of that reviled race, the Morning People. The advantages were many: I could be first to the shared bathroom, first to the cereal box, first to the choice parking space. My productive hours spanned until lunch, and if they waned thereafter, the people attuned to a later time zone were there to pick up the slack. True, it also meant that I frequently walked in a world of zombies, or more often acted in solitude, with no one to share another splendid sunrise. And I found myself avoiding the company of those who tended to schedule dinner within minutes of the time when I was wont to be brushing my teeth and fluffing the pillow.

It was in college that I discovered the evening/morning dichotomy. Many of my friends followed the traditional pattern of pulling all-nighters when studying for big exams (or completing papers due the next day). I tried that once, armed with No-Doz and a legal pad, working on a short story for a class. After scribbling until six and then sleeping until eleven, I looked at my work and found that the quality (for that matter, coherence) plummeted after about midnight. Perhaps that same semester I discovered that if I needed last-minute work in writing, or especially in studying, my best results came from going to bed early and then rising early to do the work. The morning was more clearheaded than the evening.

There is no question that people’s moods and levels of functionality will vary greatly in the course of a day. And it’s also clear that some people are happier, livelier, and even more productive at later hours of the day. Frank Sinatra always scheduled his recording sessions for the evening, when he was more relaxed and feeling in better control of his craft. The specific hours of anyone’s activities are not the point; mornings and evenings are constantly shifting with the turning of the globe. The point is the consequence of sleep, or the lack thereof.

Sleep deprivation is a tried-and-true method of torture; without sleep, people become less inhibited, less guarded, more suggestible. Recent brain studies show that during sleep, the brain is physically repairing damage to the myelin sheathing on nerve cells and connections; a night’s rest is also a night’s reconstruction. It could be said that you truly are a somewhat different person after a few hours’ slumber.

The morning is wiser than the evening. Sure, it’s tempting to try to finish that project before turning in, especially if the deadline looms large. (Old college joke: Rome wasn’t built in a day, but knowing architecture majors, it was designed in one night.) And even in her grave, Dear Abby is wagging a skeletal finger and warning us Not To Go To Bed Angry. And sometimes circumstance does not allow you to choose. But if you can, if you can weigh your options and pick your battles, isn’t it better to do it well-rested? Sleep on it and get back to me.

Louder on the Inside

A ~~Tune~~ Note I Can’t Get Out of My Head

Here are a few thoughts on my tinnitus:

The word is generally taken to mean a “ringing in the ears,” although it varies from case to case. For me, it’s usually a single high-pitched note, occasionally punctuated with a clicking sound.
I prefer the pronunciation with the first syllable accented, even though that contradicts my usual authority, Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition (1934, my copy is from 1949). The other accepted pronunciation accents the second syllable; I avoid that because it makes it sound like the word ends in -itis, implying an inflammation. This is one of my linguistic quirks, and I stand my ground.
Sources I’ve consulted all point out that tinnitus is not an ailment, but a symptom, usually of hearing loss resulting from exposure to loud noise. Fair enough. Although I might have played some music too loud in the ’70s (not Led Zeppelin, but Mahler and Richard Strauss), I pin the cause on my happy summer afternoons “experimenting” with fireworks. Ah, the days when $1.29 would get you a gross of bottle rockets and several hours’ occupation. Fond memories.
Tinnitus is a condition, like headaches, that is difficult to observe externally through empirical means. Therefore, no one is entirely sure whether animals ever suffer migraines or tinnitus. Paging Dr. Dolittle.
If someone asks me to describe what my condition is like, I tell them to grit their teeth hard so that they can hear a high pitched sound from their jaw muscles. I once heard a radio program where a doctor demonstrated the effect using a tone generator to make extremely high-pitched sounds. The reaction from the show’s host: “Turn it off! Make it stop! Please!”
A common belief over the years is that tinnitus is the sound of blood vessels near the eardrum. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky has a servant girl mention the topic, not realizing that her interlocutor had committed murder the previous day. “It’s the blood.” “Blood! What blood?” “That’s the blood crying in your ears.” I do remember times as a child, sitting in a very quiet room, and hearing the sound in my ears getting louder until some external noise came up.
In all the years that I taught, one constant foible among many students was a real aversion to silence. Some of them seemed uncomfortable by a lack of noise in a room, almost to the point of panic. Some of these same young people played their music so loud that I could hear it from their earbuds across the room, so perhaps they need not worry about dealing with absolute silence before too long.
The volume level of my ear noise is fairly constant, though it does increase at times, particularly if my blood pressure is raised. I have noticed that even if I’m in a room where the ambient sound (e.g. music, machinery) is so loud that conversation is almost impossible, I can still hear my single note in the ear, like a fermata from a heavenly soloist.
Yes, I hear it even in my dreams.
I have made peace with it. There are certainly worse conditions to deal with (such as migraine headaches, which run rampant in my family, including me). I’ve read of some people whose tinnitus is akin to an endless torture, driving them to suicide in some cases. My luck is much better than that (at least so far). The threat level of my condition is somewhere between “nuisance” and “annoyance,” and as such I can live my life with it. And of course it’s not as bad as, say, missing some fingers, which was another possible outcome of my fireworks escapades.
And finally,I’m not sure what musical note my tinnitus is, but it is above 8000 Hz, which makes it at least an octave higher than Key 88 on a piano. If ever I wanted an über-nerdy conversation starter, there it is.

#tinnitus

“I’ll Free You in My Dreams”

jones

The year 1979 marked the beginning of what I later called my Celebrated Blue Period. I was adjusting to a great many changes, the primary one being that I would spend my first summer in Tucson, a place that didn’t yet feel like home to me. It was at once exciting and frightening, a duality that I would experience again and again over the years. I was determined to be an adult, or at least act like one; wasn’t I now twenty years old, an ex-teenager? It was time to put away childish things. I wasn’t sure just which of my things were “childish,” or why I should suddenly divest myself of them. I had abandoned my major in astronomy (a science I had loved for about a decade, and the reason I had ventured to Arizona) after my disastrous grades in physics and differential equations had earned me Academic Probation, this less than two years after graduating in the top twenty of my high school class. I had changed my major to Creative Writing (with my parents’ approval, thankfully), and was going to add a second major in Russian Language. I would find an apartment and take summer classes.

What I didn’t know, and wouldn’t even guess (let alone be diagnosed) for another decade and a half, was that I was clinically depressed.

But this piece isn’t about my illness, or my later treatment. This is about a person whose art provided me with comfort and cushioning in those times when I was wrenchingly sad and didn’t know why.

In the spring of that year, when I was taking my first Russian course, Rickie Lee Jones released her eponymous debut album. I read about it in Newsweek–yes, that’s what I subscribed to–and even bought a copy of Rolling Stone where she was the cover story. I hadn’t actually heard any of her songs, because the radios in my car and Heathkit stereo were only AM, but I was impressed enough from what I read to buy the album one evening. (One of the first things I learned about Tucson was that record shops stayed open late, because if you purchased an LP before sunset, it would likely warp in your car on the way home.)

This must have been the fall of 1979. I had stayed the summer in an apartment that I remember had awful vinyl-coated furnishings and a neighbor who serenaded the courtyard every morning with “Carry On Wayward Son” at full blast. I was there as a placeholder in a friend-of-a-friend arrangement. (a story for another time). For a two-month stay I didn’t unpack my phonograph. Come August I took residence in a studio apartment about two blocks south of the university. I had no reservations whatever about living by myself.

Being a loner, however, did not preclude occasional times of loneliness. I did have my stereo, and my black-and-white TV, and what seemed at the time to be a lot of books (not even a hundred, as I recall; hardly the library I have now, though a good many are the same ones). I would go to movies, either on campus or at the local art house, which was within walking distance. I’d always go alone, with a book to read before the lights dimmed.

In the evening I might listen to music, often with the lights off. To this day, there are certain pieces that I always associate with late night: Steely Dan’s Aja is one, Rachmaninoff’s Symphony №3 is another. Rickie Lee Jones’ album I’d play at different times of the day. I noticed even then that my mood, or the hour, sometimes greatly affected my perception of one song or another. In one listening, “The Last Chance Texaco” might sound like a silly overextended metaphor, but the next time, it would be downright painful. “Coolsville” could be merely dark, or almost menacing.

I kept trying to make out the stories. “I and Braggart” would appear in songs that otherwise seemed to have no connection. And I wanted to know more about Sal saying goodbye to Angela, Perry and Mario.

“On Saturday Afternoons in 1963,” had not just a great title, but the ability to evoke things in my head that stayed long after the final chord. “After Hours” put me right there in the dark of midnight, assuming I wasn’t there already.

Then there’s “Company,” which provided my essay’s title. I would have denied at the time that I was lonely in that upstairs studio apartment, but this song made me feel every bit of it nonetheless. It was not a painful song; instead, it was a song full of pain. Rather than depress me to hear it, it helped me to sort out what I was already feeling. It’s still one of my favorite songs.

From what I had read, Ms. Jones was having turbulent times herself. I was fortunate enough to see her in concert at the University Main Auditorium (now Centennial Hall) at the time her second album was released. Maybe it was the strain of a tour, but something just didn’t look right with her. During one song, in a quiet moment, she turned to the audience and said, “Come on, people, wake up!” We all had been intently listening; I’m still not sure what else she had expected.

Rickie Lee Jones has continued on in the decades since, her style in continuous evolution. I admire people who can reinvent themselves and their art; maybe a better word is “re-explore.” I’m different in some ways as well, although the Guy from 1979 will remain a part of me, as it must. Without him, part of my inner core would be missing, and the rest of me would be a little hollow.

This is not a love note, or even a fan letter. If anything, it’s an acknowledgment of gratitude for the fact that a certain musician’s creation touched me at a time when it could do a lot of good. Ms. Jones will likely never see this, but I will always think of her as someone who helped me get through some times of confusion and hurt. What more could an artist be asked to do?

#RickieLeeJones #depression

It Took Me Forever to Write This

[This piece is the epitome of a “work in progress” for me. I will almost certainly revisit and revise it in the future, when I can view it with fresh eyes. In the meantime, I post it now to get it out of my head so that I can attend to other writing. As always, comments are welcome.]

It begins. It ends.

There, in four words, stands one of the fundamental pillars of my life. As long as I keep in mind the knowledge that everything, everything has a beginning and an end, I can start to put my problems, my achievements, all aspects of my life in some sort of proportion. I know that some things are large. I know that some things are small. They’re all finite, and I don’t even have to be able to see the beginnings or ends of things to appreciate that. We’re told that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. That’s only half of it; we should also remember that eventually, at some point, a final step will bring the end of that long journey.

To be sure, some measurements will require handling numbers that are big, no matter how one chooses to define the word. How do we do that? In a story by Isaac Asimov that I read long ago, a character states that “The mind cannot conceive of a number greater than five.” The idea is that any larger amount can be represented by a system of numerical notation, and thereby manipulated, calculated, and recorded, but that the mind is not able to “picture” more than a literal handful of fingers. Presumably our ability to abstract far greater numbers is one thing that distinguishes us from other animals, and we treat this ability so casually that we allow flexibility and inexactness just for effect: “There were a million cars on the expressway, and it took ages to get home.” Do you suppose that any other creatures practice hyperbole? For that matter, why would they?

A popular notion for expressing inconceivable time is that of eternity. We sing romantically of eternal love, threaten sinners with eternal damnation, consign the bodies of our dead to eternal rest. It’s a powerful concept. Remember being told in school that any infractions would go onto your permanent record? One pictures a packet of documents in a manila expandable folder, stored safely away but ready to be called up at any moment until the subject’s death, at which point it ends up in St. Peter’s hands.

That pearly segue leads to the concepts of Heaven and Hell, two places where people check in and never check out. Heaven is spacious, relatively cool in temperature (though some northern tribal doctrines paint it as a warm place, for obvious reasons), and blissful, eternally blissful. This seems to go against a tenet of human nature, in which we value more the things we have for only a short time. If you have an unlimited amount of something good, whether it’s money, TV channels, or Paradise, you tend not to appreciate it so much.

That’s why it seems ironic to me that the defining point shared by both Heaven and Hell is their eternal nature. A Heaven that is eternal is unchanging. Something that doesn’t change over time is by definition monotonous, even boring. Whose idea of Heaven is that? More likely, that would describe the concept of Hell, but even there, you arrive at the larger question of purpose. If Hell is so horrendous as the Puritans and Jack Chick tracts claim it to be, why must it be unending? Wouldn’t a century, a single year, or even five minutes of it be enough to punish the sinners? Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov questioned why Hell would exist at all; if one is condemned to Hell for torturing and killing children, he ponders, how does that in any way relieve the suffering of those children? That’s a question for another essay.

Back to Life, which, try as we might to ignore the fact, is finite. This applies to all of it, the good and the bad. Perhaps you’ve heard those other four words on the subject, “This too shall pass.” Supposedly they were spoken as a comfort to some ancient Persian ruler (or to King Solomon, depending on whom you ask). Taken in that sense, it means that the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are temporary, and at some point a more natural state of Good Things will be restored. But isn’t that only one half of the equation? If the bad times are temporary, so are the good ones. The cycle continues, sometimes visibly like a pendulum, sometimes less so like the motion of the hour hand.

Is this depressing? That’s up to you. And maybe those four words carry as much weight as the four that began this essay. The good things and the bad things in life tend to be intertwined. You might not like your job, but it does give you money, and that cute person in the next office does make you smile. Doing laundry is a mind-numbing chore, but Linus was not wrong when he said “Security is a drawer full of warm socks.” Yes, the work day ends, and it begins again tomorrow. Yes, the clothes will get dirty and need to be washed again. But yes, you’ll get paid again, and yes, you’ll have clean clothes again. Whether you concentrate on the bright side or the dark side of things, the empty half or the full half, is largely your choice. The magnitude of the joys, and the enormity of the sorrows, are partly the result of how you choose to measure them.

It begins. It ends. Sometimes those words give me solace. Sometimes those words make me wistful. But they provide a good lens for focusing my sense of balance in life. And if putting the good and bad things into perspective is no one’s idea of Heaven, then lacking that perspective is all the Hell anyone would ever need.

Jekyll and Hyde as a Way of Life

SMART_01

I’ve learned that biology may be destiny, but chemistry shuffles the cards.

When I was young, maybe nine or ten, I had the epiphany that I was the most permanent (and therefore stable) thing in my universe. My reasoning was that other people and things would come and go, but the only one there every single moment of my life was me. Moreover, I had no hard evidence that the entire cosmos didn’t just appear suddenly at the time of my birth, and upon my death wouldn’t fade like a morning dream.

Whether this exhibited some prescient use of empirical reasoning on my part, or simply showed that I was a bit late to board the train of object permanence, it reflected the notion that I would always be myself, and no one else, forever and ever. This notion was affirmed by the nuns at St. John’s, although they reluctantly admitted upon questioning that our various pets, however dear and familial, would not be granted the same privilege.

As years passed my self-concepts evolved, not just in the immortality of my soul but in the existence (or rather, definition) of my soul itself. The body changes constantly, of course, with every swallow, excretion, and haircut. When I donate blood platelets, a warm bag of “me” is then dispatched to some hospital, where it becomes part of someone else I’ll likely never meet. But to what extent am I the person taken to the neonatal ward in Gratiot County Hospital some five decades ago? What is the base model of “me” that enjoys crossword puzzles and symphonic music, but also once thought that sideburns connected to a mustache was a really good look?

I remember from my days as a university student that the campus health clinic had a sign mentioning treatment of “body, mind, and spirit.” More than once I thought about going inside and asking just what was the difference between the second and third parts of that triad, as they seemed the same to me. (I never did, however, which is fortunate for whichever work-study undergrad might have been on duty at the reception desk.)

Still later, I realized that all three are indeed one (a Healthy Trinity?). My mind is not only housed within my body, but is a manifestation of it. The brain is, after all, considered to be the seat of life: it is not the cessation of breathing or heartbeat, but rather “brain death” that defines time of expiration. Not only does my mind not exist outside of my body (though an engrossing book may make it seem to), but my mind is shaped by my body’s experiences, and even more so, by the body’s health and composition.

I’ve learned that biology may be destiny, but chemistry shuffles the cards. The extent to which my body’s chemistry will affect my thoughts and emotions is more than a little frightening at times. I take markedly different attitudes, and perhaps even different actions, depending on what and how recently I’ve eaten, how much sleep I’ve had, how current I am with my meds, how much exercise I’m getting, how I’m getting along with those close to me, even whether I have a headache. What a difference is made by a nap, a cup of coffee, a candy bar, a vacation. The outside world isn’t altered by these amenities; therefore, the different factor must be me.

My favorite Russian proverb states, The morning is wiser than the evening. (Утро вечера мудренее.) I’ve never understood those people who say, “Don’t go to bed angry.” To me, it would make much more sense to say “don’t drive while angry,” or “don’t sign a trade agreement while sleep-deprived.” Rest and regeneration is the perfect medicine for anger or other emotional afflictions. If I’m in need of sleep, I’m in no position to negotiate anything to a satisfactory end. Those old Russians (as well as torturers down through the ages) were well aware of that.

You hear of people who undergo brain trauma, either physical (such as a stroke) or experiential (e.g. PTSD), and whose families then claim they are “not the same person as before.” That raises a sobering question: in cases like those, where did the “same person” go? Where is that personality that the friends knew, that the spouse married? And, how long will the current person be in residence?

I began this essay with the concept of permanence. That is, of course, a human construct, a relative one; eventually, everything will cease, down to the last smoldering star. But if I consider that the “me” that I am right now could evolve away or totally vanish in the duration of a heartbeat (or a cranial blood clot), well, I could look at it in at least two ways: 1. I’m a transient cloud, dust in the wind, a swing in the pendulum of life; or 2. I’m a unique combination, short-lived and therefore precious.

There’s no reason I can’t be both of those things, or others as well. But I do know that which one I see first will depend on who I am at the time. Thanks a lot, Chemistry.

“What I Have Learned”: An Introduction

Early in my teaching career I bought a poster for my classroom, featuring excerpts from a book called Live and Learn and Pass It On, by H. Jackson Brown. The book contains a list of lessons from life, along with the age of the person who had learned them. For example: “I’ve learned that it’s easier to stay out of trouble than to get out of trouble.—Age 14” “I’ve learned that you can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.—Age 7” “I’ve learned that I don’t feel my age as long as I focus on my dreams instead of my regrets.—Age 83” It seemed to be a good and appropriate thing for students to read, so I put it up. After a year or two, I decided I needed to make up my own list of life lessons. Thus was born Mr. V’s List, which I would update every year on my birthday, and which hung on the classroom wall next to my original poster.

(I also created a second document, entitled Mr. V’s Shadow List, which contained some of my life lessons that are darker, or otherwise not appropriate for the classroom. Only a precious few–not students–got to see that list.)

The list was useful in that it emphasized to my students that learning doesn’t stop when the bell rings, or after graduation; it’s an activity that is literally as lifelong as breathing. “Keep feeding your brain,” is how one freshman put it. What’s more, it showed that life lessons don’t always have to involve deep thought or inspiration, but can arise from even mundane actions: “I’ve learned that it’s best to unload the bottom rack of the dishwasher first.” is an example of the latter.

Instead of simply republishing my original compilation here, I’ve decided to examine some of its contents individually and in more detail. Over time I plan to dip into both my lists, and also include lessons learned since I left the classroom. Maybe I can feed your brain, too.

(Upon reviewing the lists for the first time in a while, I notice that the words “limit” and “perspective” appear prominently. Perhaps the seeds of this website sprouted here; perhaps not. But as Garak the tailor once put it, “I believe in coincidences. I just don’t trust them.”)

#WhatIHaveLearned

Public Imperative

This is one of my favorite (so far) photos that I’ve included in the site, despite–or maybe because of–the mishmash of objects and lines it contains. The location is the south side of the maintenance center for Tucson’s SunLink modern streetcar line. As you can see, the admonition is visible from the Union Pacific rails nearby, for the benefit of those aboard Amtrak’s Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited, as well as 70-or-so freight trains daily. Downtown pedestrians and drivers on Sixth Avenue can also view this message, framed by lovely skies and the Santa Catalina mountains, seen in the upper left here. At night, the message glows in blue.

This sign features prominently in my (as yet uncollected) list of Unintended Life Advice findings. Also included: “Walk With Light,” and “Keep Cool. Do Not Freeze.” which could be found on a jar of mayonnaise.

The Desert Says “Hi”

These two colossi stand sentinel-like at the intersection of First Avenue and Orange Grove Road in Tucson. As I pointed out in this post, they’re not real saguaro cacti, but disguised cell towers. In a hilly (actually, mountainous) area such as this, whenever a spot with clear reception is located, it’s not unusual for two or more companies to lease space in it and set up. One can only imagine the conversation that occurred simultaneously:

“There’s this great location we’ve secured on the north side. Since it’s open desert, we’ll use a saguaro-type housing on our unit, so that we’ll blend right in.”

“Yeah, let some other company put up a plain tower and have the neighbors and tourists call it an ‘eyesore’!”

“Well, they can use the saguaro thing, too, for all we care. There are different models to choose from. They’d be idiots to pick the same one as ours. After all, two identical cactus would stand out, and defeat the whole purpose!”

While I’m on the subject, those of you who are not familiar with the desert Southwest might not know that the saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea), while a common symbol of the Old West, grows only in Arizona, the Mexican state of Sonora, tiny parts of California and New Mexico, and nowhere else in the world. Over the years I’ve become a fan of the Western movie genre, and on numerous occasions I’ve been engrossed in some classic oater set in Wyoming or the Great Plains only to be presented with a saguaro standing tall where it has no business being. (I’ve heard of birdwatchers who have similar tales of movie settings that are spoiled by the sounds of birdsongs coming from species located far from the intended location of the story.)

Granted, the Sonoran Desert has been used as a filming location for close to a century, and it’s no secret that a great many stories are not filmed “on site” for various reasons, usually involving cost. If a few saguaros are in the shot, that’s a bonus; they’re much harder to import than, say, tumbleweed.

Which is not to say that importing is not considered, though, the only practical solution there involves fake specimens. The best example of this is one I remember from an episode of the TV series thirtysomething. (It was back in the ’80s; judge away.) The show was normally set in Philadelphia, but this episode had some characters visiting people in Phoenix. In a scene on a golf course (of which Phoenix has, I don’t know, thousands), the characters tee off on a lush green landscape also populated by the most plastic-looking totally identical similacra of saguaros some faraway art director could find. Moreover, they didn’t even have to bother. Saguaro cacti, because of their relative rarity, are a protected species. It’s a federal crime to mutilate or destroy one; a permit is required for just moving one, even by the owner of the property it stands on. So, golf courses in saguaro country carefully clear out these desert royalty before any other landscaping is begun.

In conclusion, I must add that when I first saw the towers pictured above, my first thought was to notice the identical poses. My second thought was that the image reminded me of something, and after a while it came to me: images These are heads of tobacco companies appearing before Congress in 1994, where they collectively swore they knew nothing about the harmful effects of their product on human health.

And so we have it. Nature imitates villainy. Botanical performance art.

In Praise of the Invisible Hand (and Foot, and Valve, and Junction Box…)

[This piece originally appeared on my Facebook page some 14 months ago, or a couple of eons back in social media time.]

Let’s give some respect to infrastructure.

If we ever hear this word, it’s usually in the context of large-scale funding for roads and bridges. But by its very nature, infrastructure is normally out of the spotlight, often not exposed to much light at all or given attention for years at a time. Infrastructure is every load-bearing wall in your house, every wire and pipe, every nail and setscrew, every seal and switch, every hinge, latch and lock. It’s all of those parts, manufactured in some other place, installed by someone you might have never met (and who may no longer be alive).

Infrastructure is, by design, highly functional while at the same time hidden from sight, or at least disguised as something less, well, utilitarian. Look at the photo above. What you are seeing are two cellular transmission towers that are camouflaged, more or less convincingly, as saguaro cacti.

It’s not only people who require infrastructure. A tree depends for its very life on suitable soil, reliable water, regular doses of sunlight, and perhaps a symbiotic relationship with some other life form, be it bird, insect or microbe. And of course, on air and gravity. Come to think of it, people rely on almost all of those things as well, including the microbes.

Now let’s zoom out. The infrastructure of a community is as important (and undercelebrated) as any other. Language and customs keep a community thriving, as do forms of commerce, law, and religious and other social institutions. Systems of public health and education literally assist a community (family, tribe, nation, etc.) in surviving from one generation to another.

But’s it’s not all technical. There is aesthetic infrastructure. Pictures on a wall, libraries, landscaping, architecture, and venues for entertainment (including sports) are all parts of the infrastructure which help a community define itself as distinct from others in the animal kingdom. Or, from that community on the other side of the hill.

And this brings me to a major point. People not only require infrastructure, but are part of it themselves. Public utilities are designed, operated, monitored and repaired by people. They do their job which we might not even think about when we flip a switch, change a channel, set an alarm, visit a website. There are people on the job for this at literally all hours, and on weekends, and on holidays, in inclement weather, during the big game, or when seemingly the whole world is taking a break. Someone somewhere is on the job, solving problems, or steering us all past the jagged rocks.

It’s tempting to make a value judgment, to say that we have not so much a dependence on our infrastructure as an addiction. We can live without many of these things because we have done so in the past: 40 years ago we had no internet, 400 years ago no electricity, 4000 years ago no paved roads, and so on. But that’s not the point. We provide these things for ourselves because we are an interdependent community, living “on the grid” because we ourselves are the structure of that grid. To shift a figure of speech, we are not just passengers on this voyage; we are all crew members.

You might feel that you are replaceable, that someone else could take over your job tomorrow. But look at it this way: more than likely your job is irreplaceable (or nearly so), and benefits the whole in a way that might not be celebrated, or well-rewarded, but would make a difference if it ceased to exist. We are not all George Bailey, who saved people’s lives; most of us instead are the scriptwriters, film developers and projectionists who made George Bailey come to life. We don’t always notice the thread, but everyone notices the hole. The thread is the substance that keeps itself together and is useful and valuable. The thread is us.

#infrastructure

Nevermore?

This story comes from May, 2015, when I worked as a service technician for an alarm service company.

I went to a home where the alarm system had been installed just the previous day; it needed a little tuning up, probably because the installer had been in a hurry. The customer was a woman about my age, whose husband had recently died, and she lived alone in this house well north of town. She wasn’t quite alone; also in residence were two or three dogs, and a multitude of caged birds. (“But no cats,” she told me. “I’m allergic to cats.”) She made some apology for the noise, which I assured her was unnecessary, though it was impressively loud.

As I worked, checking on batteries and system programming, I was serenaded by a variety of sounds–not just barks and squawks, but also random voice mimicry from some of the birds with that talent. I heard a few voices, one of them clearly an imitation of my customer, as well as remarkable renditions of other sounds, such as power tools and car horns.

At one point there came the very clear sound of a stern male voice shouting “Quiet!” The birds continued their banter, but I froze for a moment when I realized what I was probably hearing. This happened two or three more times while I was there.

When I was finishing up, I asked the customer if she had some neighbors next door who were working in their garage, because their seemed to be voices in conversation nearby. “No, that’s all birds,” she said. Sometimes you hear my husband’s voice.” I said nothing. “It’s odd,” she continued, “but they don’t imitate him when I’m alone, but only when other people are here.”

“Maybe that’s their way of offering you protection,” I said, immediately wondering whether I shouldn’t have done so. There was no reply.

As I drove away a few minutes later, I pondered the idea of hearing the voice of a departed loved one echoed in a pet bird. Some people put up photos of those they’ve lost, maybe as a way of keeping some sort of presence going during the hard transition. Would that bird serve a similar purpose? How long would it keep evoking her late husband’s voice? Some of those birds can live for decades. Would she get accustomed to it, maybe even tune it out, or would she eventually find that she must part with the bird and silence that voice forever?