Movie review: "The More the Merrier" (1943)

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“The More the Merrier” is one of those movies that seems very ordinary until it sneaks up on you and bites you on the butt.

It sounds unremarkable in synopsis: Washington DC working woman Jean Arthur decides (for patriotic reasons) to rent out half her apartment, because there’s a housing shortage. She (reluctantly) ends up with grandfatherly wiseguy Charles Coburn as a roommate. He almost instantly rents half of his half-apartment to handsome young Joel McCrea, who’s doing some kind of mysterious government work.

And, as they say, hijinks ensue.

Unpromising, right? But it’s full of delights.

First of all: Jean Arthur. She’s almost forgotten now, but she was a great comedienne with a voice that was husky and squeaky at the same time, and she had terrific comic timing and a very expressive face.

Second: Charles Coburn. He’s sly and sympathetic, and is obviously plotting to get Joel and Jean together from the very outset. (He won an Academy Award for this performance, by the way.)

Third (and not least): Joel McCrea. You know how I feel about him. He’s not traditionally handsome – his nose is a little pointy – but he’s intensely masculine without being threatening or boorish, and he has the best smile.

Some of my favorite scenes:

-         McCrea and Coburn charge around the apartment making choo-choo-train noises, pretending to keep up with Jean Arthur’s ridiculously precise morning schedule.

-         McCrea and Coburn lie on the roof, on their stomachs, reading the Dick Tracy comic strip from the paper, while Jean Arthur watches them with bemusement. (Coburn reads Tracy; McCrea does the voice of the Leopard Lady.)

-         Jean Arthur, in her room, turns on some Latin dance music, and dances to it, all by herself. (She even turns her head to check out her own butt). In the next room over, Joel McCrea (in bathrobe) slowly begins to do the same step, also all by himself. And in the next room over from that, Charles Coburn does a few steps too.

-         Joel McCrea jumps into the shower, removes his bathrobe (after getting it soaking wet!), and proceeds to slap himself all over and bark like a seal, while Jean Arthur listens in astonishment from her bedroom.

-         An astonishing scene in which Jean Arthur describes her engagement to her “fiancé Mr. Pendergast,” while Joel McCrea makes love to her and kisses her. This scene is hotter than Hades, kids! And this is something Joel McCrea does very well; he did a similar scene in “The Palm Beach Story.” The message he communicates is: “I know you think you love someone else. But I love you, and I know you love me too.” It’s a very powerful message, and he communicates it better than any actor I’ve ever seen.

This is a classic movie. It’s small, but perfect in its way. It reminds me of Jane Austen’s remark about carving her “two inches of ivory.”

“The More the Merrier” is two inches of perfectly carved ivory. And (as Jane reminds us) two inches of perfectly-carved ivory can be very lovely.

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DIY religion

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Back during chemotherapy, while I was lounging in my recliner imbibing toxins through a tube in my arm and Partner was watching "Let's Make A Deal" on the retractable TV, a young hospital chaplain named Meredith came around to check on our spiritual needs. We politely let her know that we were all set, thanks very much, but she (like chaplains through the ages) was stubborn enough to chat with us for a while. She complimented us on being such a close couple, and quoted something I'd heard once before about "for better and for worse." She left before she became too obnoxious, so I liked her. "Did you notice," I said to Partner after she left, "that she never quite mentioned any one religion? Very non-committal and non-denominational."

"I like that," Partner said. "I could get behind a religion like that."

"I think," I said," that there is a religion like that."

So, a few weeks later, we both got ourselves ordained as ministers in the Universal Life Church.

Ordination is free; you need only provide name and email address. For a couple of bucks, they will send you gewgaws like a wallet card and an ordination certificate and a press pass (evidently for when I'm interviewing the Metropolitan of Constantinople). After that, you need only follow the church's one dictum, which is "do only that which is right." (They further define that you must peacefully determine what's right in every case; no gunplay and no rassling allowed.)

Partner and I are both obnoxiously pleased about this. We are both in the process of determining the dogmas of our new church. Mine is going to involve wearing a lot of pink and purple. (I determined peacefully that I like both, and why not? Pink and purple are perfectly nice devotional colors; just look at the candles in any Advent wreath.) I will use a lot of multidenominational texts involving silence. (Examples: "Let all the earth keep silence before the Lord," from Habakkuk in the Jewish Bible; "Sky says nothing," from the Analects of Confucius; "The way that can be spoken of is not the true way," from the Tao Te Ching; and maybe also "That which we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence," the last line of Wittgenstein's Tractatus.) My services will begin with maybe a piece of music, the reading of a text like one of the above, and then a kind of community silent meditation, the way the Society of Friends does it.

Also, did I mention the pink and purple?

Religion should be fun. It should be participatory, and it should be meaningful to the people who participate. If they crave mystery, well, life is crammed full of mysteries; meditate on a few of those. And if they crave certainty, there are lots of those too. Just think about them quietly, would you?

Partner has thought about his church too. He wants it to welcome all comers, and he would allow them to worship any god they please, and he intends to forbid proselytizing.

(I hope it also involves hats. Partner and I both look good in hats, and I hope he and I can lead some ecumenical programs down the road, once we've established ourselves as pillars of our respective faiths.)

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For Christmas: Fairuz sings "Jingle Bells" in Arabic

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I wasn’t going to put out a Christmas special this year until I happened upon this: Fairuz, one of the most popular Arabic singers, doing “Jingle Bells.” This version has very sweet subtitles which are mainly pretty good, but are charmingly goofy when they go off the rails.

Who is it, do you suppose, who’s delivering all those dates? And what’s with the bracelet? 

Happy Christmas to all.

Update: twice a week

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I have been fooling around with this blog again, now that my energy is coming back, and have decided that two blogs a week (Sunday and Thursday) are perfectly sufficient for now – for myself (to make myself feel productive) and for all of you readers (so that you don’t have to read too much of my drivel).

Now and then there will be a special post – like this one – but they will almost always be short or topical or informational or seasonally-oriented.

How’s that for a deal?

Happy Christmas from your sleepy little friend . . . .

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Patti Page maple syrup

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It’s time to think about holiday giving. People aren’t getting much from me this year; if I have the strength to bake a few Russian teacakes and put them in cute little containers, that’ll be about the size of it.

But some years I do better. There are always catalog gifts (who doesn’t like a cheese wheel?). And sometimes I come up with something absolutely brilliant, which then falls flat.

One year Partner came up with the best gift ever: bottles of Patti Page maple syrup, straight from New Hampshire. Patti Page was a 1950s singer who, upon retirement, moved north, bought a maple orchard, and started bottling her own syrup. The syrup was okay, but the bottle was incredible.  There was a little light-activated mechanism inside the cap; as soon as you opened the bottle, Patti warbled a little sugary-sweet maple-syrup song.

This was absolutely perfect, I thought. So I bought half-a-dozen bottles, and sent them out, and  -

Almost no response. “Thanks for the syrup,” I got from one or two people.

Then, over the next few years, I started getting little messages from those same people. “Did you know that that bottle of syrup sings a song? We just opened it, and –“

Oh yes. It took some of them two years or so to open my gift.

Merry Christmas!

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Doctors and nurses

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I have not since my birth overnighted in a hospital, until this last November. Then my white-cell count crashed and I became neutropenic (no dirty jokes, thank you), and I had to spend seven nights in a nice local hospital.

It really wasn't so bad. I was often sedated, naturally. The noises at night can be a little unearthly, all kinds of hoots and hollers and cries, but if you think of it as an indoor camping trip, you won't be too far from the mark.

I learned a lot. I learned that morphine makes me see handwriting on the wall where there is none, and faces where there are none. I learned that only a qualified medical professional can tie and untie a hospital johnny from the back.

Most interestingly, I learned a lot about the difference between doctors and nurses.

If you want to continue the camping metaphor, you might think of the nurses as the flowers on the forest floor, and the doctors as the trees. Nurses are far more colorful; they can and do wear whatever colors they like. Doctors are monochrome - usually white. Nurses are everywhere; doctors sprout up only here and there. Nurses tend to be bright and cheerful (with a few exceptions); doctors are a little on the stiff-and-somber side.

Nurses fall silent when doctors enter the room. We all of us, patients and nurses and guests, wait for the eighty-five-dollar-a-word advice to fall, pearl by limpid pearl, from those doctors' lips. Nurses try their best not to impede the grave to-and-fro passage of the doctors from ward to ward, floor to floor, room to room. (Questions are met by: "I know they've begun rounds. I'm sure they'll be here shortly." The nurses try very hard not to get your hopes up; they can do just about everything, but they can't say the magic words that will pronounce you cured and get you into a speeding wheelchair headed for the exit.)

I was lucky, in that about every single one of my nurses and doctors was wonderful (with a few tiny aberrations, which you generally have to chalk up to being human). I did see one doctor come close to telling off a nurse for something - I think for using an alternate drug protocol; to be fair, I knew the nurse and know that she would never do anything to endanger the life of a patient, and the doctor looked young and sniffy and full of inferiority complex, so we will leave it at that. I know who I was rooting for.

At any rate, during my week in the hospital, I learned enough about medicine to pass some kind of premed exam.

Too bad I can't stand the sight of blood 'n guts. Otherwise I'd be a whiz of a doctor.

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Almost better

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Okay.

I am almost better. I am no longer in treatment, and they are no longer cooking my throat with radiation, and I can actually tell a difference. Chemotherapy is now also a thing of the past, and the nasty side-effects are subsiding. I am still waiting for some of the lingering stuff to pass: the fatigue, the come-and-go voice (I sound, when I speak, something like Tallulah Bankhead and/or Lucille Ball, with maybe a little mid-career Lindsay Lohan thrown in), the inability to swallow. (The latter is coming back a bit; I managed to sip some water and juice the other day without coughing, and I was very excited.)

Anyway. I am also writing again, so evidently my energy is coming back. I can’t promise a daily blog, but I can promise something once in a while – maybe once a week or so – until I am back to my usual rude vigor.

Aren’t you pleased?

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R words

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Wednesday, December 11, 2013 was the day of my last radiation treatment. I had my final chemotherapy treatment the week before, on Tuesday, December 3.

I am done with treatment. I am now in Recovery.

Recovery would be lovely if it took place in a day, or maybe two. It does not. As one waggish commentator said online: “The radiation doesn’t stop cooking you all at once. It keeps simmering for a while.”

Lovely.

Also, there are the naggingly minor side effects, like the sore throat that makes it almost impossible to swallow, and the bizarrely twisted sense of taste. (I long for real tastes, and for solid food. I was reading the biography of Muriel Spark the other day and found a mention of Muriel having drinks with Edith Sitwell – “iced gin with grapefruit juice” – that almost made me burst into tears.)

My energy is returning, which is not necessarily a good thing. I have lots of get-up-and-go, but very little to do. Christmas is useful, because I can use my time making lists, checking them twice, etc. I can organize books on my bookshelves. I can write little feuilletons like this one, when I can summon up enough brain cells to do so.

And I can day by day think about my improvement. I needed less pain medication today. My throat was less obstructed today. I slept a straight four hours last night!

So much for recovery.

There’s another R word that I don’t even want to think about right now, for fear of jinxing myself: Remission.

Remission is the absence of cancer. My radiation oncologist (who is not normally the soul of Christmas good cheer) tells me, with his gargoyle’s grin, that he cannot see any sign of the original tumor in my throat when he looks down inside. (That is, of course, with the naked eye. He is not Superman and does not have X-ray vision.) This is excellent news, and I will be having several more tests over the next few weeks and months to confirm this. Back in September, when this whole cavalcade began, I had a Stage IV tumor (“roughly the size of a Meyer lemon,” according to another clever little Internet source) under or beside my left tonsil, along with an assortment of nastily swollen lymph nodes. Now – who knows? The whole kit and caboodle appear to be gone.

I say again: they appear to be gone.

We Reassure ourselves with the good cheer of our doctors that the treatments Really Really worked. We don’t ever want to go through that kind of treatment again. (The first month or so was nothing at all. The last few weeks were Repulsive.)

So here’s to the future, and to another day of Recovery.

And you know what? The new season of Ru Paul’s Drag Race begins in a month or so.

So I have something to look forward to after all.

(Also: doesn’t the rhino in the illustration above look like a hippo to you?)

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Chemo brain

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One of my cancer-survivor friends used the expression “chemo brain” in conversation to me very casually a few months ago. “I came back to work one day,” she said, “and I sat through a meeting, but I had chemo brain something fierce, so I just went back to my office and addressed envelopes.”

Now I know what she was talking about.

Kids, it’s not so bad. It’s like a mild harmless form of dementia. It takes my current charming state of forgetfulness and turns it into a comedy routine.

Example: I take a pill and then stare into my hand, wondering if I took the pill or not.

Example: I go blank in the middle of stirring something, come to, and wonder how long I’ve been stirring.

Example: I bought some kosher salt the other day, used it, put it away, and then spent ten minutes looking for it again. It was adorable, like watching your dog (or your grandfather) spin around in the middle of the room, hopelessly confused. I searched the same shelf four times! I even took everything out of a cupboard and put it back together again! (The next morning I suddenly realized that the salt was in the pantry closet, right where it belonged. Smart mommy after all!)

Ah, the sweet bafflement of the elderly, and those of us under chemical control.

Enjoy our antics, kids.

Someday it’ll be you.

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Update, Dec 1 2013

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I started my treatments (simultaneous chemotherapy and radiation) in mid-October; I get chemo every Monday (it takes about 3 hours) and radiation five mornings a week (each session is about ten minutes long). The standard protocol for this kind of cancer is seven weeks’ therapy, which brings us to early/mid December.

Weeks One and Two were easy. I was able to work almost a full schedule, and felt almost no side effects at all. (I did notice that Thursdays were bad days for tiredness, malaise, etc.).

Week Three began to get interesting. One evening I discovered that my beard hairs were falling out by the dozens, so I shaved the whole thing off.  My sense of taste went wonky – almost everything tasted awful, like cigarette ashes and cardboard. Acidic and spicy foods were literally painful. Ice cream was okay for a while, and marshmallows, but I was eating less and less because the flavors and sensations were so unpleasant.

Week Four: now I was feeling it. I got very dehydrated (my own fault for not getting enough water). My old friend the kidney stone decided he wanted some attention too, so now I was taking pain medication both for my throat and my kidney. Swallowing was now becoming very painful too; I was reduced to eating soup and crackers, and I knew I was losing weight. Still going to work most days, but seldom for more than a few hours; I was generally very tired most of the time.

Weeks Five and Six: finally decided to stay home full-time and rest. Using my feeding tube now – frankly, much easier and efficient than I thought it would be. My daily menu is six cans of Ensure Plus, two each for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus lots of water.

On Friday of Week Five, I got very listless and warm; Partner took me to Miriam Hospital, where they determined that my white blood cell count had crashed over a period of a few days, and I had an opportunistic infection (probably thrush). I spent seven days there, absorbing intravenous antibiotics and waiting for my blood count to get back to normal. (The number in question, my Absolute Neutrophil Count, was around 300 when they checked me in; 1500+ is normal, and anything under 500 is dangerous.)

Anyway, so seven days in the hospital. I was perfectly comfortable, and all of the nurses and doctors were wonderful.  Partner spent time with me mornings and evenings. My voice is terrible – sometimes I can’t speak at all – which made communication with the nurses and nurses’ aides and doctors very interesting sometimes. (I ended up using a “conversation book” – if I wanted to say something more profound than “yes” or “no,” I wrote in my little red notebook and handed it to the person I was talking to.)

I was released on Friday, Nov 29 (ANC count 1000+), and am glad to be home. I’ve already resumed treatments; I have only eight radiation sessions to go, and one (or possibly two) chemo sessions. The completion date is still around December 11.

Good news: everyone agrees that the tumor and the accompanying lymph nodes are shrinking very rapidly. My neck is reddish and looks sunburnt, but everyone thinks the area looks very good. My throat’s painful, of course, and I generate mucus like an opened fire hydrant, but things could be worse. (The header picture was taken this morning a little after 3am. Notice that I have ditched the hospital pajamas. I think I look like Gale Gordon as Mister Mooney, getting ready to reprimand Mrs. Carmichael for something.)

Thanks to all for your kind thoughts and comments. 

Announcement

I've decided to suspend this blog effective tomorrow morning, Tuesday November 26.

Treatment has entered a very intense stage, and I am now frequently uncomfortable and not very often in the mood to sit and write. Normally at times like this I just publish some prewritten stuff, but I thought I might spare you my thoughts about couscous and Turner Classic Movies and the New York Times for a few weeks, whilst my innards sort themselves out.

I will try to post brief occasional updates, just to let you know that I'm still here.

Estimated time of return: Xmas 2013.

Here's hoping for a happy holiday season for everyone, including little me.

Seward's Folly Bookstore

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Back in the 1970s / 1980s, there was a little bookstore on the corner of Transit Street and Brook Street in Providence, called “Seward’s Folly.” It was run by an older couple, Schuyler Seward and his wife Peterkin.

It was a small musty wonderland of a bookstore, and the Sewards were always very kind to me. I went there whenever I could. I wanted a book by Will Cuppy the 1930s / 1940s humorist, and they managed to find it for me, and after that they knew me as “Cuppy,” because who in the 1980s remembered Will Cuppy?

Schuyler had a beard and mustache as I do now, and was very wry and very smart, and one online source claims that he was a speechwriter for the Truman Administration. Peterkin was small and walked with difficulty, but had a wonderful smile. They had two dogs when I knew them: a huge poodle and a huge bulldog – both elderly and tired – who had to be taken upstairs (where the Sewards lived) and showered with cool water from time to time in the summertime, so that they wouldn’t overheat.

The Sewards were lovable people, and very memorable.

I wonder how many people remember them now?

And who will remember me when I’m gone?

This is the very last bit of Thornton Wilder’s “The Bridge of San Luis Rey”:

“But soon we shall die . . . and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” 

Do you get that? We don’t last forever, but we will leave something behind.

The Sewards left me a wonderful legacy – a memory of two intelligent kind friendly people. I hope, when my time comes, that I will leave behind some tiny fraction of the kindly legacy the Sewards bequeathed me.

(Postscript: while researching this blog, I discovered that Peterkin died only a few months  ago – on July 30, 2013 – not far away, in Rumford, Rhode Island. Schuyler evidently predeceased her, though I couldn’t find his obituary. They are survived by their daughter Abbi.)

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For Sunday: the Steve Miller Band plays "The Joker" (1973)

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My friend Cathleen and I talked about this song the other day. Then I listened to it again, and man, it’s too much. I need to admit also that Cathleen remembered the lyrics more accurately than I did.

But we were so young in those days!

“I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker . . . “

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Vermont versus New Hampshire

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New England is made up of six smallish states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

The territory is small, but the terrain varies greatly, and the weather varies from state to state: Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine get snow in October and November sometimes.

There are other subtle differences too.  I swear, when Partner and I drive over the border from Rhode Island into Connecticut, I can see a difference: Connecticut is more rural, and woodsier, and wetter. What happened? Did Rhode Island farmers do something that Connecticut farmers didn’t do? Or is it just my colorful imagination?

Maine is different from the rest of the New England states too. Portland aspires to be a hipster / cosmopolitan destination, but the state itself is – as Parter said recently – “Tennessee North.” It’s visibly poor and rural. No wonder it elects Republican senators to Congress.

And then there are Vermont and New Hampshire.

Vermont feels liberal and free. I love it there. I love the breeziness of Burlington, and the wind off Lake Champlain. I loved the time we spent in Bennington. I loved Rutland.

New Hampshire? Meh. It’s dull and conservative.

When you drive north into Vermont, it feels as if you’ve entered a different country. (It was a different country, for a couple of years there.) When you pass from Massachusetts to New Hampshire, it feels like – hmm – like you’ve never left Massachusetts. You really haven’t gone anywhere.

Vermont is different. Vermont is independent. It’s strange, and funny, and determined to be so.

New Hampshire is dull and New Englandish. It’s got all the things you expect it to have.

Vermont is independent and hippyish. It wants to be different. It has all the things that New Hampshire has – mountains and lakes and forests – but they’re more interesting, somehow.

Kids: if you have a choice between New Hampshire and Vermont, visit Vermont. Eat some ice cream. Have some cheese.

And tell the Vermonters that I sent you.

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I resemble a fictional character

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Partner and I ride the Providence trolley to work in the morning. He takes the trolley all the way to his office; I get off before him, on Wickenden Street, and walk about 15 minutes to my office.

But we’re almost always together on the trolley. The drivers and the other passengers know us as a duo, and are always confused when they see us once in a while by ourselves, one without the other.

A while back, Partner was riding by himself one morning when another passenger leaned forward and asked in a whisper where I was. “He’s at the doctor,” Partner said.

“I just wondered,” she said. “You know, I’ve been reading this book – ‘Joyland,’ by Stephen King – and it’s just amazing how much he looks like one of the characters.”

So Partner comes home and repeats this story to me, and I’m glowing with excitement. I’m someone’s idea of a literary character! Here, let me think: a nice kindly older man, with a sweet expression!

I sent for a copy of “Joyland,” and read it with some interest.

Well, kids, let me disabuse you first of all: this book is not Stephen King’s best work. It’s a murder mystery, with a supernatural overlay (of course). There’s a murder, and an obvious suspect. Naturally the murderer is not the obvious suspect.

But I didn’t care so much about the plot. I only wanted to find the character Trolley Passenger thinks I resemble.

I certainly don’t remind her of the narrator; he’s twenty-one years old, six feet four, and never really described physically. Nor am I his friend Tom, who’s the same age and described as “stocky.” Reader, I am not stocky.

Here are the only two physical descriptions that might fit:

Description One: “Out in front stood a tightly-muscled guy in faded jeans, balding suede boots splotched with grease, and a strap-style tee shirt. He wore a derby hat tilted on his coal-black hair. A filterless cigarette was parked behind one ear. He looked like a cartoon carnival barker from an old-time newspaper strip.”

Description Two: “He was tall and amazingly thin, dressed in a black suit that made him look more like an undertaker than a man who owned an amusement park. His face was long, pale, covered with bumps and moles. Shaving must have been a torture for him, but he had a clean one. Ebony hair that had surely come out of a bottle was swept back from his deeply lined brow.”

I’m assuming (because I’m thin, and wear a trilby)  that I remind her of Description One. How flattering! Especially since (spoiler alert!) I turn out to be the killer!

Unless she thinks I look like Description Two. In which case, to hell with her.

But I’m flattered.

(But really? Coal-black hair? Tightly-muscled? She needs to get a life.)

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Costa Concordia

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Apollonia, that sweet elfin little thing, was complaining about some situation in her life the other day. “You know what it’s like?” she said. “The Costa Concordia.”

“The cruise ship?”

“Yeah. Think about it. You’re sailing along, enjoying yourself. People are waving at you from shore, so you bring the ship in a little closer to say hello. It’s a nice sunny day, and everyone’s happy. Ciao! Ciao! And then –“ She clapped her hands. “Boom! On the rocks. And the ship tips over on its side. All hands lost.”

We both brooded on this for a while. “Well, it’s not as if they couldn’t have done something about it,” I said. “The captain knew he was too close to shore. He was tempting fate.”

“That just makes it worse. You know you’re tempting fate, but for a long time nothing bad happens. You convince yourself that nothing bad can happen, or it would have happened already, right?”

I hate to admit it, but Apollonia has stumbled on something profound here.

We bumble through life like the idiot captain of the Costa Concordia, steering our ship without a care in the world, as if nothing terrible could ever happen to us. Ciao! Ciao! And then BOOM!

Look at this stupid cancer. It’s probably been growing inside me for a year or more; I only just noticed the problem in May or June, as a sore throat that didn’t get better. I thought nothing of it. I steered right toward the rocks without seeing them.

Not to be a fatalist, kids, but life is full of nasty surprises. Be watchful, be wary.

And don’t sail too close to shore if you can help it.

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Sub specie aeternitatis

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Being ill (to paraphrase Samuel Johnson) concentrates the mind wonderfully. You find yourself thinking about all kinds of things very differently.

Priorities, for example. What’s important? Is my job important? Earning a salary, yes of course it’s important to me, I need food and lodging and all kinds of incidentals. But am I making a difference in the world, or bettering the human race, by working at my job? Hmm. Probably not.

How about the things I do every day? The little tasks I undertake in my job (which can be very petty). The back-and-forth at home: clean this, put that away, arrange this. Important? No. But I do them anyway.

I am reluctant to waste time, but now I have time on my hands, and it makes me thoughtful about all kinds of things. History is suddenly very appealing to me. So is children’s literature, which seems to me to be more immediate and more important than sober grown-up literature (except for poetry).  And suddenly I’m listening to music again, and it’s very satisfying.

Maybe just thinking is important. Maybe just writing this stupid blog is important. Maybe talking to people is important.  Maybe love is important.

I have lived in Providence for over thirty-five years, and I love every dreary block and corner of it. But I looked up at the skyline the other day, and thought: it’s just a city. There have been hundreds of thousands of cities in the history of the world; most of them have tumbled into dust and are forgotten now. This one will be forgotten too, someday.

Sub specie aeternitatis means “under the aspect of eternity.” It indicates looking at something from outside of time, without regard to the present moment or its little difficulties.

As Partner and I are fond of quoting to one another in moments of acceptance: “In a hundred years, all new people.”

And in a thousand years, probably mostly new cities and mostly new national borders and probably also some pretty wild new seacoasts.

In ten thousand years, all new countries, and possibly people with gills and flippers.

Makes you a little vertiginous, doesn’t it?

Here’s one of my favorite quotes about the advance of time in a single person’s life, from the end of the last book of Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past”:

This is a very long quote, but a very good one. Please bear with me.

There came over me a feeling of profound fatigue at the realization that all this long stretch of time not only had been uninterruptedly lived, thought, secreted by me, that it was my life, my very self, but also that I must, every minute of my life, keep it closely by me, that it upheld me, that I was perched on its dizzying summit, that I could not move without carrying it about with me.

I now understood why it was that the Duc de Guermantes, whom, as I looked at him sitting in a chair, I marveled to find him shewing his age so little, although he had so many more years than I beneath him, as soon as he rose and tried to stand erect, had tottered on trembling limbs  . . . and had wavered as he made his way across the difficult summit of his eighty-three years, as if men were perched on giant stilts, sometimes taller than church spires, constantly growing and finally rendering their progress so difficult and perilous that they suddenly fall. I was alarmed that mine were already so tall beneath my feet; it did not seem as if I should have the strength to carry much longer attached to me that past which already extended so far down and which I was bearing so painfully within me! . . . .

We are all on stilts, which grow higher and higher, “sometimes taller than church spires. “

We might fall suddenly.

But the view is spectacular.

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Tremor and confusion

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My right hand has been shaking a lot lately. I took some of my student employees out for lunch recently – at a very nice restaurant! – and halfway through the appetizer, the fork flew right out of my right hand. “It’s fine,” I told them. “”See? If we get thrown out of here, it’ll be my fault, not yours.”

I made light of it for their sake, but it keeps happening. It happened twice last week: things just flew out of my right hand.

Naturally, my thoughts take the gloomiest possible courses. Now that I actually have something serious, I think of the most horrible things. . Multiple sclerosis? It usually happens to younger people. Parkinson’s disease? Oh yes: I’m in the age group, and I drool, and I tremble. (One of the other symptoms of Parkinson’s is “confusion,” which sounds very funny, but which is very sobering to me, because I’m far more confused now than I used to be.) Essential tremor? Maybe. It does happen when I’m stressed or tired. But sometimes it happens whenever it wants to happen.

I have a regular non-cancer-related doctor’s appointment in December. I’m sure he’s tired of hearing me whine about all of the things I think I might have, but this he’s gonna hear about.

When I was in the Peace Corps, I had a friend who had MS. She went into tremors occasionally, but she was funny about it. “I’m demyelinating!” she’d yell, and sit and tremble for a while.

Long story short: she got better. Her MS (thank god) got better, as sometimes happens.

What do I have? Possibly nothing.

But probably I need to be tested.

At my advanced age, you never know.

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The heresy test

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Once upon a time, when the Internet was young – approximately 1996 – I had a funny little website which drew no traffic at all. (Almost like today!) It was mostly a nice way for me to practice writing HTML. I posted jokes, and had a family-history section.

I also had a nice heresy test.

It was very simple: five questions, multiple-choice. You were expected to answer from the dogmatically established Roman Catholic point of view. Otherwise, the test threw you out. You were a heretic and bound to burn in hell unless you renounced your heretical beliefs.

Here’s a sample question:

The Blessed Virgin Mary was the mother of Jesus. Jesus was, of course, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, which means he was God. If you follow this line of thinking, you will probably realize that this makes Mary (a human being) the mother of God (who is eternal).


How can a mother be younger than her own son?


A: Oh, to hell with logic. Mary is the Mother of God. Period. End of story.

B: Mary was the mother of the human part of Jesus. She's not the mother of God; that wouldn't be logical.

C: Mary is the mother of Jesus in some sense of the word, but not in every sense of the word. We shouldn't try to define these things too precisely.


The correct answer is A. This was established (with some strife) at two Church councils: the “robber’s council” of Ephesus in 449, which claimed B to be correct, and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (only two years later!) which reversed Ephesus and laid the Church’s path to the present day.


Did you get the question right?


I didn’t think so.


Burn in hell, heretic.

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For Sunday: "O Fortuna," from Karl Orff's "Carmina Burana"

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If you have a reasonable knowledge of serious music, or movie music, this will make you laugh (and even if you’ve seen this video before; it makes me laugh every time I see it).

The lyrics are in medieval Latin. But people have been puzzling over them ever since Karl Orff set them to music sixty years ago.

Well, now you know what they’re really saying.

Gopher tuna!

Bring more tuna!

Statue of big dog with fleas!

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Book review: “How to Train a Wild Elephant (& Other Adventures in Mindfulness)” by Jan Chozen Bays

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I have been a wannabe Buddhist for decades now. I love its core ideas, and I accept the Four Noble Truths, but I find it difficult to practice any of the devotions or the meditations. My mind is just too busy and clouded with samsara.

So I was pleasantly attracted by the title of this book.

The human mind – your mind, my mind – is the “wild elephant” of the title. It runs in all directions at once. How do we tame it? This book offers suggestions.

I’ve found some of them very useful.

Examples:

Take three deep breaths. I close my eyes while doing this. Here’s the thing: don’t think. Slowly: inhale/exhale, inhale/exhale, inhale/exhale. Now open your eyes.

This is not just a calm-down exercise, or a “Serenity Now!” mantra. Just think about yourself, and your breathing, for a few seconds.

It works.

Whenever you see someone during the day, think: “This may be the last time I ever see him/her.” It reminds you of mortality. It keeps you from treating them slightingly or badly. And who knows? Once in a while it may be true.

Notice the color blue. This sounds stupid, but it’s very effective. Blue is the sky color, but it’s also everywhere. Take a moment and notice all the bits and pieces of blue around you. You’ll be astounded.

And the most difficult of all: When you’re eating, just eat. Take a bite, chew it, and swallow it. Do not take another bite until you’ve completely chewed and swallowed the first one. Make yourself aware of the taste of the food. Don’t read, or watch TV, or talk. Just eat, slowly and with appreciation.

Slowly, step by step, breath by breath, bite by bite, we may actually achieve nirvana.

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Studying calculus at an advanced age

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A friend of mine on Facebook mentioned Coursera recently. I respect his opinions, so I went to check it out.

It's for real. It’s a website where you can find college-level courses offered for free. Really.

Okay. So I never took calculus in high school or college, and I saw that that Coursera was offering “Calculus 101.”

What could it hurt? It’s an online course. It must be very gentle, right?

Brother, was I wrong.

This is a complete thorough-going college-level course in calculus, with lectures, and homework, and quizzes, and a textbook (all free).

I’m barely through with the first week, and I’m already terrified.

I haven’t felt this way since high school.

Calculus turns out to be demanding and difficult, which is not good for my ossifying over-fifty brain.

Every evening I resolve to quit the course, and every evening I try again.

Now: can someone tell me: how do you multiply square roots? I’ve forgotten.

And I need to know by next Friday’s quiz.

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A long career and a happy one

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Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times solicits questions from her readers. She posts them, asks her readers to send in responses, and then weaves the whole thing into a column two weeks later. 

A recent question went something like this: “I’m around thirty, and I’m very happy with what I’m doing. All my friends are looking for newer, higher-level positions, and are telling me that I’m crazy for wanting to stay put. Question: am I doing the wrong thing?”

This is an excellent question to put to someone like me, who’s been with his current employer since 1987, and has held his current position since 1999.

Answer: why not stay in your current job, if you’re happy?

But this is what will really happen if (like me) you stick with one job for the long haul:

For a while, while you’re new, you’ll see your contemporaries come and go. Some will stick around, but most will move on. (I’m assuming you’re under forty. If you’re over forty and starting a new job, probably you have different ideas. But read on.)

After about ten years, you’ll become part of the wallpaper: no one will notice you. You’re now a drone. No one will worry too much about offending you, because – why would they? You’re not gonna quit. (This can be a difficult phase. You will have the sense that people are looking down on you. And you know what? Some of them will look down on you. You are now, to use another Lucy Kellaway term, a “bumbler.”)

Then, around twenty years into your tenure, you will begin to notice that people are giving you a kind of peculiar respect. You’ve been there since forever, and everyone knows that. You can make things happen. You know who to talk to, and whom to call. You have faced a variety of crises, and not a single one of them came close to killing you.

Your personal appearance will be a little weathered, probably. But you will go on and on. Sto lat, as they say on your birthday in Poland: “a hundred years.”

And now, the last verse of a poem by Elinor Wylie (d. 1929):

In masks outrageous and austere

The years go by in single file;

But none has merited my fear,

And none has quite escaped my smile.

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Beard

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Well, we have our first cancer-related casualty: my poor little beard.

It was such a helpless little thing, like a baby possum clinging to my face. Regardez:

My radiation oncologist warned me that my beard would probably go thin on one side, given that they’d be pumping all kinds of protons and neutrons and gamma radiation into my left tonsil. “Probably,:” he said,” you should shave your beard off now. It’ll look irregular after a little while.”

Pooh, I though.

Then, last week, I was stroking my beard while watching TV, and I looked down, and found that I’d yanked five or six white hairs right out of my chin without even trying.

Dearie me!

Beard loss speeded up after that. I could pull out a few dozen hairs at a time by the weekend. The beard looked okay on the right-hand side of my chin, but on the left, it was sort of a hair archipelago, like a map of Polynesia.

Finally, on Tuesday morning, I looked in the mirror and covered the right side of my chin with my hand. “No beard,” I said. Then I covered the left-hand side. “Beard,” I said. I continued this (idiotically) for about ten seconds, swapping sides. “Beard. No beard. Beard. No beard. Beard . . . “

No Beard won the contest. I attacked my chin with a regular razor and finished up with my rotary. And now I look something like this:

Am I not striking?

Only three-and-a-half weeks of radiation therapy to go.

And, frankly, if that’s the worst of it, I’m a lucky lucky boy.

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Everything is equally important

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We had a two-day office retreat / meeting a few weeks ago. We listened to presentations, and lunched together (twice). I got to know some of my co-workers better. Most of them I respect more than I did before; one or two, not so much.

One exercise, however, was odd.

In a morning session, we were asked to come up with things that might improve our departmental performance. These were condensed (by a team in the back of the room, over the course of a few hours)  to twenty-four suggestions. At 3:00 pm that afternoon, we were given little electronic voting devices with five keys labeled “A” through “E,”  and asked to vote on the importance of each. “A” was very important; “E” was very unimportant.

We were supposed to be going home by 4pm.

By 3:15pm, we’d only gone through a few of them. So the moderators of the session speeded up the voting.

Result: almost everything got voted “very important” or “important.” Only one or two things rated “medium.” On the plus side: we were done by 3:55pm.

What does this mean?

One interpretation: everything’s important.

Another interpretation: the voting didn't mean anything. People were tired, or pushing whatever button they felt like.

Another interpretation: people were afraid to undervalue things, so they always voted high.

Yet another interpretation: most of the suggestions were pretty vague, or pretty universal – “We need better communication!”, for example – and how can you vote “Not very important” on something like that?

And one more: people wanted out of there, so they were voting high, with the unconscious assumption that if they liked everything, things would move more quickly.

How important do you think this exercise was?

Yes, I agree with you. It was very important.

But for a different reason than the planners of the retreat had intended.

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