Dream fragments

I remember looking in a mirror and seeing I had three long cuts on my face from shaving carelessly. My reaction was "oh, well." I remember more from another dream that was similar to a previous one. I was with a band getting ready to play a gig. It was time to start and I couldn't find a guitar cable. I finally found one, plugged in and hit a few crunchy power chords that sounded fine. Someone called out the first song- to my surprise it was one I hadn't practiced. The title was something like "the Elusive Butterfly" which is a real song but the band began playing something different. I tentatively tried to play along with the chord changes.

Motivation and lack thereof

Circumstances in my life are ideal for me to work on projects I value, in particular, recording and performing and organizing the family archives that I've inherited. Instead, I find myself working long hours in our yard, progressing from watering the flower pots and blowing debris from the bricks to, most recently, clearing out a jungle of vines and various plants that have grown for years without human interference in the hedges and trees on the border of our lot adjacent to Pat's property. My efforts over several months, cutting vines and tress limbs, often climbing a ladder to pull down tangled masses of vines, have provided healthy exercise, heightened my awareness of my immediate physical environment and resulted in considerable aesthetic improvement. This is good yet I wonder about my difficulty in sustaining effort on those other priorities. I did have one burst of creativity in writing lyrics to a piece of music I've entitled New Life.  

In with the new life/Out with the old life/Farewell to past life and on with the show

First came the sunrise/now comes the sunset/Dusk is the most precious hour that we'll know

Each in its moment/Each in its heyday/Each in its glorious walk through the garden/Each in its full flower/Each as it withers/Time flows on eternally/One song, play on

Dawn brings a new day/As long as the earth spins/And so on and so on and on it must flow

Time is the river/Everything changes/Hold on for the ride before you let go

Taste every color/Feel every motion/Laugh with the dolphins who sing in the ocean

Dance with the dragons/Float with the fireflies/Sharing it all with your friends/Everything must go

In with the new life...

Revisiting Vietnam

I dreamt I was visiting a US military base in Vietnam during the war. It's not clear what I was doing there. I was unaccompanied and free to wander around looking at things. The base was a simple two story structure built of wood at the bottom of a little depression. A road was in the back up an incline while the base faced a gentler incline in front. The location and configuration made no sense from a defensive standpoint.  I chatted with some GIs loitering on the ground level. Then I decided to see what was on the upper level. I went up a set of stairs to find nothing except a bare wooden floor and roof. While I was up looking around a touring party of Army brass including a general's matronly wife wearing fatigues came up the stairs. They ignored me as they passed by and proceeded to a demonstration of an emplacement for a cannon of some kind that could be maneuvered around. Except there wasn't a weapon, just the wooden framework. I decided I should return to ground level but instead of using the stairs, I climbed down the side of the structure. This landed me in a space beneath the floor occupied by a matrix of round fuel tanks. I didn't want to be there in case of an enemy attack so I moved to leave from the back only to encounter metal bars preventing my exit. I then tried the front and saw an opening I could go through easily which I did. An 18 wheeler with a trailer was backing down from the road. Crates were unloaded and opened revealing numerous small bombs labeled "super bomb" in bold lettering. I started excitedly back to tell someone, perhaps the GIs, what I'd just seen.

If life is a classroom, Truth is the teacher.

But if, as I'm asserting, we're all students of Professor Truth, what is the subject we're being taught? I could say truth itself but that's not very helpful since the very concept of truth is abstract and slippery. Some would say it's salvation and achieving the reward of eternal bliss while avoiding a one way trip to Hell. Others might say there is no soul much less eternal reward or punishment and if anything, it's about nothing except surviving the best one can. But we're certainly capable of learning and using the knowledge we acquire. And because we must decide what to do with our knowledge, I say the true subject of the course being taught in the classroom of life is Wisdom. Therefore, I will argue, it is wise at least for some to seek wisdom.

Of course, people seek all kinds of things and what you seeks guides what you learn. I wager if we asked a large random sample of human beings what they are seeking in life and they answered honestly, not many would name wisdom as their goal. Happiness, love, eternal reward, success in a career, wealth, celebrity, power, sex, pleasure, getting high, freedom from oppressive government, escaping my current circumstances and helping to bring about a better society would likely be more popular answers. If we followed up the first response with "What about wisdom?",  we might hear "Oh, sure, that sounds good." But I doubt the answer would convey enthusiasm or passion. 

The reason more people don't think in terms of seeking wisdom is simple: We're not taught to by our human teachers. For one thing, it takes a wise person to teach wisdom, whether explicitly or by example. That's not to say there are no wise teachers, people who teach wisdom overtly or otherwise. I've had a number of them along the way and perhaps you have, too. There are cultures with long traditions of seeking and teaching wisdom, the Sufis of the Islamic world and the Roman Catholic Jesuits being examples. But our development as individuals is long, complicated and iffy. Each of us must learn as we go with numerous powerful and contradictory influences continuously affecting our understanding of what it makes sense for us to believe and do.  We are born into and grow up in cultures that teach us to conform to values that are narcissistic in nature such as national, tribal, family and personal pride, winning the various games people play at the expense of the losers, succeeding in a vocation, becoming famous, accumulating wealth and power and so on. We tend to settle for simple understandings that make everything clear and certain and, as pointed out by H.L Mencken, inevitably fail to do justice to reality.

Our societies developed as they have for reasons and all of our popular pursuits have value for the individual and the society. But if we look around at the world we've created, it's clear that narcissistic competition between individuals and groups has not led to the actions of our species, whose official scientific name Homo sapiens means "wise man", being characterized by wisdom. Alarmingly, the sincere efforts of thoughtful, sincere, intelligent and charismatic people from the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad on through Karl Marx, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King to lead us away from crude selfishness and toward wise and just societies have not produced impressive outcomes on the level of societies and have in many cases gotten the teachers persecuted or killed outright. 

Nevertheless, our accomplishments in science and technology are quite remarkable. Despite the ongoing short-sightedness and widespread corruption of our political leaders around the world and the entrenched psychological, cultural and social forces stubbornly obstructing change that could benefit the human herd, opportunities exist for many of us to live productive and creative lives under conditions far better than those of the past. Perhaps our species is making progress toward an enlightened global utopia of universal freedom, health, justice and prosperity reflecting the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of our thousands of years of human civilization, perhaps not. Time will tell. Meanwhile, the pursuit of knowledge, truth and wisdom is quite possible for you as an individual; and, those who make progress in finding wisdom can have a beneficial influence on the rest of us, an impact that balances against the dysfunctional actions of their opposite numbers. 

So, are we wise to pursue wisdom? The answer would appear to be "Duh!" i.e., an obvious yes. But it's not quite so simple. I once opened a fortune cookie and found this message: "Depart not from the path Fate has assigned you." Fate doesn't assign everyone to the path of wisdom. There's no guarantee that if you seek wisdom as an intentional goal, you will find it, even if you are so fortunate as to study under the best of human teachers. If you believe you've achieved wisdom, there's a good chance you're fooling yourself. 

I'm writing this little book to share as much as I can put into words what I've learned about wisdom from seeking it over most of my 69 years of life. And, given the above cautionary notes, who am I to embark on such an audacious enterprise as if I know something worth imparting to the reader, something that will prove valuable if applied to your journey through the course? Well, that question brings us to the first lesson in the course, the one that determines if you make the initial cut and have a chance of earning a passing grade from Professor Truth. The lesson is this: Wisdom begins with humility.

Post-vaccination road trip (Part 1)

I left on Friday April 23 driving to Georgia for a 10 day visit, returning Sunday May 2. Despite having one useless eye, I made good time both ways and felt comfortable hitting speeds up to 100 mph in my nearly paid for 2017 Porsche Macan. I usually stop 4 or 5 times on this drive but somehow kept it down to two going over. I started with a full tank  of gas and packed multiple light snacks to graze on. One bathroom break and one refueling stop got me through.

My first stop was in Clarkesville where old friend Teresa Elrod Anderson invited me to stay with her and husband Reggie at their charming home just outside if town. Reggie is in his late 70s and suffers from the early stages of Alzheimers. Both he and Teresa survived a bout of covid last year. Teresa had a mild case but has residual diminished taste and smell. Reggie seems physically fine after a more serious case but the virus may well have accelerated his dementia. In any case, Reggie has a pleasant disposition and still maintains a sense of humor. For example, he calls their fluffy old cat "a good dog." That's intentional humor,  not a symptom. Reggie is totally dependent on Teresa now, following her around like a puppy dog. "I used to do everything," he told me. "Do you miss it?" I asked? "No but it hurts, " he said. She copes with his condition  philosophically but it undoubtedly wears on her.

It rained hard on Saturday so we stayed in and watched an Australian movie "The Sapphires" about an indigenous girl group who got a gig playing for the troops during the Vietnam War based on the experiences of the writer/director's mother. Sunday the weather was good and we went over to Clayton. GA for the Rabun County Arts Festival. A large crowd was in attendance. I suppose there are people of color in Rabun County but I never saw any. Most people, maybe 75%, were maskless, as well, unsurprising given this being Trump country. Ironically,  the first people we encountered were a small group of Rabun County Democrats in blue t-shirts operating from a table at the edge of the downtown festival. One older lady saw my white Athens High School baseball cap and asked if I were an alum. She, Paulette Williams, was Class of '64. It hadn't occurred to me that in north Georgia I was likely to run into fellow AHS grads. I kicked in $20 for one of their t-shirts and posed with them for a photo.

Back at Teresa and Reggie's we watched "Bad Trip," a ridiculous but quite funny US comedy film following the misadventures of two black friends from Miami. The movie was filmed in such a way as to subject random bystanders who happened to be around to crazy and disgusting pranks. 

On Monday I proceeded to Athens where I'd arranged to spend 3 nights with Fran and Bobby Daniel. Bobby handed me a frozen Margarita when I walked in the door around 2pm. This was followed by wine until Bobby passed out at 10pm or so. In the interim we spoke to old musical associate and good friend Rick Peckham on speaker phone and invited him to drop by the next afternoon. This he did bringing his girlfriend, Cindy. Much reminiscing and catching up took place including a call to another old friend, Chip Condon, who has lived in California for many years. 

That evening, Bobby. Fran, and I went to dinner at the Last Resort with Dayle Freeman Burns, Kathy Betts and Kathy's recently discovered black half-sister. Elizabeth "Bea" Platt and husband Frank, who are in Bobby's extended family. We decided to keep this a secret because of a get together scheduled for Wednesday at Roy and Debbie Bell's new country home out in Oglethorpe County. Roy is at high risk should he contact covid-19 and he and Debbie excluded Dayle because she hadn't received her second vaccine shot as the rest of the invitees had. The Tuesday group felt we were safe with Dayle but didn't know how Roy would react to us dining with her the night before their party. We all agreed to lie about it if the subject came up with Roy or Debbie and I coordinated the cover story with Fran, Bobby and Kathy.