A Traffic Jam on Memory Lane

Tea: Mixed Berry Green

Music: Crimson Jazz Trio, "Three of a Perfect Pair"

Time: Night.

I'm sure it's not an original thought. But for years, I've repeated that the price of a good memory is a lot of bad memories. I don't mean that in the transaction sense. I mean that being able to remember lots of things in great detail has its downside.

I have perfect recall of my father pouncing on a giant cutthroat trout that I took out of Fish Creek in Montana, keeping it from flopping back into the water after it landed on the bank and threw the hook. I also can't erase the image of him pale and groggy in Intensive Care, waiting for open-heart surgery that failed to save his life.

I remember with utter clarity my mother waking me up just before midnight on Friday nights, starting when I was eight, so we could watch old horror movies on a tiny black-and-white television that she brought into my room. And I can't forget trying to make it through the school days, in December of my senior year, knowing she had gone into the hospital for the last time.

I don't have a choice. Everything's filed away in my head. But I do have a choice as to what I take out, dust off and revisit.

I can choose to recall being wiped out, overwhelmed and cranky when I arrived in New York for the first time -- or being revived by a huge, rich, comforting plate of oxtails.

I can make myself flinch, recalling the time I accidentally shut one grandmother's hand in our car door -- or think of the times we picked Concord grapes in her back yard.

I can keep ledgers of wrongs done to me, and scan the pages every day, or focus on the good things -- the better than I deserved things -- others said to me, gave to me, did for me.

Things will come up unbidden, as memories do. And it serves no good to pretend that things didn't happen. But I have a choice as to what I let linger.

Space to Breathe

Tea: Lapsang Souchong

Music: Deep Purple, "Hush"

Time: Night

Forget smelling the roses. We barely stop to breathe these days.

So instead of spending three minutes reading a post, I want you to take three minutes and ... do nothing.

Think of clear winter air. Think of Pachelbel. Think of blue light. Whatever helps you breathe.

And if you go past three minutes, don't sweat it. You obviously needed the time.

Start ... now.

Phrase, Turned

Tea: Mandarin Green

Music: The Rainmakers, "Little Tiny World"

Time: Night.

One thing I've heard from Westerners trying to learn tonal languages is how frustrating it can be to master inflections. Here, a rising note at the end of a syllable changes a statement to a question. In, say, Mandarin Chinese, it could turn a noun into a verb or a greeting into meaningless babble.

On the flip side, think how hard it must be for others to learn how inflection can take English phrases and reverse them.

"Yeah, yeah ..." vs. "Yeah! Yeah!" is the easiest example. Others can be harder to decode.

Take "Bless your heart." Said solicitiously, with "heart" becoming a two-syllable word rising at the end, it's a statement of thanks or commiseration. Put on a honey-sweet tone, and stress the "bless," and it becomes Southern for "Up yours, Jack."

Then there's "You're better than that." The faster and flatter you say it, the less you mean it. Stretch out the "better," and it becomes an exhortation to be better, rather than a slap for not having been better.

And finally, we have "It's up to you." Put the emphasis (and a peaking inflection) on "you," and it's genuine. When "up" is uppermost, any concessions made after that point are likely to be grudging. (See also "Whatever you say.")

So, to all you people who think English is so easy that immigrants should be able to learn it within, say, a few months of arriving here, I reply:

"Uh-huh."

You guess the inflection.

More than Instinct

Tea: Mandarin Green

Music: Brookville, "Golden"

Time: Night.

Bear with me here. I might not get all the way around to anything resembling a point. I'm circling, as a friend says, toward something.

I've been rereading Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses of late. I've also been, as ever, listening to a good deal of music and viewing a huge amount of art (including one installation which combined prints on rice paper with the scent of sixty pounds of loose-leaf jasmine tea, adding another sense to the mix).

And it's got me wondering how much biology has to do with our appreciation of -- and emotional responses to -- art.

The sadness inherent in minor keys, I can comprehend. A friend of mine once observed that life sings in a minor key, and life is a fragile and (physically) finite thing.

I understand the links between red and violent emotion. Your opponent/prey is bleeding, and it's up to you to keep that gusher going until (a) the threat is ended or (b) dinner is served. (There might be more than one "and" in there. I prefer not to think about that too much.)

And I get that the ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump of a blues shuffle echoes the heartbeat.

But is that really all there is to it? Is it only our DNA, some trace race memory encoded in the genome, that makes the heart soar with the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria or causes us to shudder at Munch's The Scream? Why do Buson's haiku slip tiny needles into our memory centers, making us sure we should remember the scenes he describes?

Maybe there is. I'm sure there's a wealth of research on the subject (and on the subjects), all of it beyond my powers of comprehension.

But at heart (and call this blind faith if you will), I don't believe it's purely physical. I believe we're made -- fashioned -- with a spiritual bent toward beauty, toward harmony -- and yes, toward joy.

Art doesn't have to include all or even any of those elements, obviously. Sometimes, for the sake of a greater good, we must be shown what upsets, even repels us. A Modest Proposal is hardly beautiful, joyful or harmonious. Neither is Guernica. But our response to them -- horror at the effects of modern warfare, shocked compassion for starving children -- reinforce our humanity.

We are our DNA, yes. But we're more than that. We're body, mind, spirit, each resonating to its own frequency. And when those frequencies harmonize ... that's where art lives.

Driven to Reflection

Tea: Vanilla Jasmine

Music: Jim Croce, "I Got a Name"

Time: Almost midnight.

Sorry I've been away for a while. I'm still sorting the new site and re-sorting out life with daily deadlines. (I used to have them as a journalist. I can get used to it again -- and before long, I will rediscover the benefits of writing several days' worth of work in advance so I don't have to freak out as evening rolls in and I don't have the next day's post written.

I meant to be back last night, but my car had other plans. It died. (I don't think it meant to. It just did.)

The battery worked. The ignition didn't -- not even a click. This had me speaking fluent ARGH, a language composed entirely of those four letters (always capitalized) in varying sequences. To wit: "ARGH! GHRAHHH! RRRRAGHAAAH!" translates roughly as, "Why won't this car start? The batttery's working! Please start, car! I have to pick my son up at the high school ten minutes ago!"

This threw me for several loops. Picture third grade, cursive practice, learning to write the letter "l" in lower case, and you have an idea of the number of loops.

I had places I had to be tonight. The kids had to get to school this morning, and wanted to get to a church activity this evening.

And the car was dead.

If we lived somewhere with decent public transportation, this wouldn't be a problem. But this is the suburbs. It's car country. The buses run in the morning and the evening.

And the car -- the only functional car -- was dead.

I've been trying to cultivate equanimity, to breathe and count my blessings when faced with this sort of thing. And I failed ... miserably.

I let myself be wrung out by circumstances, to the point where I had no energy left for anything but dragging myself to bed.

And you know what?

It wasn't as bad as it seemed.

The kids got where they needed to go. The problem turned out to be a blown fuse, not a dead starter. Help came from several directions.

And the car is no longer dead.

There's a lesson in here for me, if I'm smart enough to learn it. If I claim to believe that my daily needs (and those of my family) will be provided for, then I'd better start acting like it.

Reconstitutional, Part I

Tea: Vanilla Lapsang

Music: The Rainmakers, "Small Circles"

Time: Night.

I've never been able to wear a wristwatch. Not that I don't like knowing what time it is, but I can't stand having anything around my wrist while I type -- which is pretty much all the time for me.

But on my left wrist, there's a makeshift bracelet of red cord, flecked with black and yellow. It's knotted in such a way that I can adjust the fit with a simple tug, but that's not why I've been wearing it since December the 30th.

The bracelets were given to all the adult sponsors at the two-state church youth conference I attended just before the turn of the year. The idea was to differentiate us from the teenagers -- not so much a problem for me, I know, but some of the sponsors were in their early 20s and looked younger.

The theme of the conference was "Goodbye Ordinary." The guiding principle: that risks must be taken and patterns broken if spiritual progress is to be made. I have much progress to make, spiritually and otherwise (although the "spiritually" should, ideally, drive the "otherwise." So I'm leaving the bracelet on not as any outward sign -- it doesn't proclaim that "Jesus is My Homeboy" or even ask "What Would Jesus Do?" -- but as a reminder.

That bright red bit of cord reminds me that I am nowhere near any kind of There -- and that I won't ever reach it if I don't take the steps to get there.

Finally ...

Tea: Christmas

Music: Yes, "Hearts"

Time: Night

Got a new Internet provider today. Apparently Blogspot likes it better than it liked my last one. I'll give it a go for a couple of days, see how things go. I'd love to not have to export the archives to another host, y'know?

Anyway ... I've got some catching up to do. I'm not even going to attempt to reconstitute my days since the last post, but I'll do my best in subsequent days to recapture whatever insights came to me over that span.

Today, I got word that a former sports editor of my hometown paper -- a job I also held for a while -- died last weekend of cancer. He was my first real writing mentor, and beyond that he was (although we didn't always get along) my friend.

It's knocked a lot out of my head, save one thought that stays with me:

When I die, will anyone remember me as a mentor -- and of what?

Too much for me to think about now. I'm going to take a deep sniff of something that smells really good, just to remind myself how good it feels to be alive and have all my senses.

The catching-up starts tomorrow, God and Blogspot willing.