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Walt, et.al.
There is an intersection I’ve discovered, and there is an old wooden bench
down on that corner, where the roads of age, relationship, kindness, and
humor meet.
I’ve wondered about the old guys who sit on benches. I assumed they were
just lost souls, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe the bench is Siddhartha’s
river bank for some of them, and the cars, buses, and pedestrians are just so
much water flowing by. I would like to think so.
Moments of reflection seem to me to be like bench-sitting these days. I find
myself in heartwarming realizations when I least expect it, thrust into the
moment (my bench) by surprise. There is a healing in surrender to these
moments. So I sit and savor what youthful judgments once denied me.
I also sit and muse to hear words that want to be written. This is different
than sitting on the bench of nostalgia. When I know I am going to be doing
this, especially at the keyboard, I will turn my baseball cap around backwards
as a signal to Sharon not to disturb my concentration.
She came upon me as I was lost in thought the other day, without my cap or
keyboard, and said, innocently enough, "Your mouth is hanging open."
Nobody likes to be observed in moments of foolishness, and I have been
around young kids long enough to know how silly the open mouthed blank
stare looks, so I had a moment of dismay and a hang-dog sort of expression
on my face. In my youth I would have had a retort.
"That's all right, Dear," she went on, after giving me a peck on the cheek,
"you’re just in a state of Active Wonder."
Well, that put me right smack on the old wooden bench on a splendidly sunny
day. There was a time this little interaction would have had an edge of ill
feeling about it, a teasing, defensiveness, the psychic flak of youthful
relationship.
And I love what she said. It is true I am still a child in some ways. That newly
coined term is now my “excuse” for the times my mind abandons my body
while off on some inner safari. "I'm in Active Wonder." Smiling.
Jim
PS - speaking of coined terms, here are some that came to me through typos.
Jiggerish – the nonsense people speak after a couple of shots of alcohol
Moove – what the cows do after they’ve eaten all the grass in an area.
Noet-all - an expert in the noetic sciences.
.
In Reply to: The Bench posted by Jim H. [879.1238] on September 01, 2004 at 06:59:09:
Hi Jim,
I have to wonder, do you speak Jiggerish when in a state of Active Wonder? If you do, I think it's okay as long as you know when to Moove on from that bench if Noet-alls start to dominate the conversation.
In Reply to: Re: The Bench posted by FW [28.218] on September 01, 2004 at 10:16:35:
Hi Jim,
As long as we are in that state of "active wonder" we are young no matter what our "real" age is. As long as we discover new things about ourselves and the world, we are truly living. We die when we stop wondering and discovering
and become empty shells of bone, muscle and skin. Amuzement, joy, love of living and people around us fill those empty shells and make our lives colorful and worth living. Lehayem! (To life!)
In Reply to: Re: The Bench posted by FW [28.218] on September 01, 2004 at 10:16:35:
I see you like daffynitions F.W. (These are not mine)
Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding a stupid person that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
Karmageddon: It's like when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer
Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.
And the pick of the literature:
Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
In Reply to: Re: The Bench posted by Jim H. [641.340] on September 01, 2004 at 16:24:52:
Hi Jim,
Hey, I've seen these before. They're good, and as much as I'd like to take the time to weave all of them into a single sentence, I'd better not take the time.
However, I have noticed that the Bozone layer is incredibly thick around that republican platform stage in NY.
In Reply to: Re: The Bench posted by FW [28.218] on September 01, 2004 at 16:43:35:
Hey, FW!
I love that last sentence of yours :-)
In Reply to: Re: The Bench posted by FW [28.218] on September 01, 2004 at 16:43:35:
Hi FW,
" I have noticed that the Bozone layer is incredibly thick around that republican platform stage in NY. "
Did you notice that when the cameras were on Kerry during his speech, the audience was not in the close-up shot behind him. I guess they did not want to let the world see all the yawning and fidgitting and lack of expression on those faces.
Did you know that Michael Noore was not booed because of his politics, but because he was hogging all the natchos and cheese?
Ron
In Reply to: Re: The Bench posted by Ron [1540.81] on September 01, 2004 at 21:57:39:
Good one Ron!
D
In Reply to: The Bench posted by Jim H. [879.1238] on September 01, 2004 at 06:59:09:
Hey Jim,
Do you have anything published?
In Reply to: Re: The Bench posted by Jim H. [641.340] on September 01, 2004 at 16:24:52:
Good Ones..
In Reply to: The Bench posted by Jim H. [879.1238] on September 01, 2004 at 06:59:09:
Thanks, Jim.
Eloquence bordering on awe.
Bless you!
Namaste`
Walt
In Reply to: Re: The Bench posted by WOW [1317.457] on September 01, 2004 at 12:11:09:
Thanks WOW,
L'Chiam!
In Reply to: Re: The Bench posted by D [20.1176] on September 01, 2004 at 22:31:06:
Only on the Internet.
In Reply to: Re: The Bench posted by Jim H. [879.1238] on September 02, 2004 at 07:12:43:
Hi Jim,
That must be the "Phlegmish pronunciation... :)
Ron
In Reply to: Re: The Bench (Archive.) posted by Walt Stoll [9.8] on September 02, 2004 at 07:08:04:
Thanks Walt, from one old guy to another.
Perhaps it is not an interesting or happy topic for most. Response here and
elsewhere has not been great. Maybe I'm missing the mark, although I have
connected with you.
I've never grown old before, but I have healed my body, and there is
something similar to that in the way the soul is healed by hanging around
long enough. Hard knocks, water on stone, and that sort of thing. Paranoids
have enemies, cliches truth.
So I continue to collect images:
The medicine of aging is a tincture of refinement,
And the embraceable joy of certain failure.
Sweep the welcome mat each morning,
And set an extra place at the table
For this most esteemed guest,
Demise, whose gentle wisdom smiles
Forgiveness and acceptance.
Glorious ages, dreams of eons,
Golden leaves, fallen on temple grounds.
One path now,
Deeply trodden,
Dirt poofs up between the toes.
Past the farmhouse,
Past the fields,
Where stillness walks beneath the clouds
In the invisible company of all humanity.
Pretty big parade!
In Reply to: Healing Happens posted by Jim H. [879.1238] on September 02, 2004 at 07:47:17:
Perhaps it is not an interesting or happy topic for most. Response here and elsewhere has not been great. Maybe I'm missing the mark, although I have connected with you.
Ahh Jim. You're writings touch more souls than you probably realize. I save them all and read them often. Is it a compliment to tell you that some have brought tears to my eyes? Thank you for sharing.
In Reply to: Re: The Bench posted by Jim H. [879.1238] on September 02, 2004 at 07:12:43:
Hi Jim,
You know, I used to write poetry but it was in a different language and at a different time, I have't attempted it since. Learning a new language, getting used to new life and new customs, dealing with disapointents of this new life was sometimes too much but whenever I read your posts, my soul goes back to the old times when everything seemed so easy, happy and beautiful and gives me new hope and new will to enjoy each day to the fullest. I have worked hard to make the best of it and enjoy life in spite of many problems and I fell once or twice and now when I am older I made peace with myself too and pleasures of the soul seem to be more prevalent than those of the flesh so readign something beautiful just pulls string in my heart a little harder and brings images of beauty and peace. Bless you!
In Reply to: Re: Healing Happens posted by ~CT [105.1287] on September 02, 2004 at 09:17:37:
Thank you for saying so, ~CT. Of course it is a compliment! I have moments
of tearfulness while writing some of this stuff myself. It is not from WHAT I
am writing (I can be sentimental, if not downright syrupy), but there is (and I
must apologize to all women here, because I have no clue, but…) a birth-
giving sort of experience when an idea emerges from my fingertips, swaddled
in just the right words, and there is an ecstasy in it that moves me.
But what I am saying is stories of children, family, and animals are what move
people. That is what most can relate to. Aging is, well, not a fun topic for
most. It brings insurance salesmen to mind.
A great trepidation looms behind our various forms of denial and
misunderstandings of the experience of aging...and a lot of nervous humor.
And so it should be. My God, there is life to be lived! Who wants to sit
around and think of growing old! Or worse, to listen to some old fogy “go
on” about it. The good natured humor of kidding about it is good though. It
helps to ease the disappointment of dwindling faculties.
It seems some are bitter about the loss part. Maybe because their lives have
been so much about achievement and “doingness” that they can only see
aging only as a hindrance to their lifestyle. They seem unable to locate the
solace in meaning beyond their ego existence, despite the fundamental truth
is that the body is dismantled, bit by bit, day by day, as surely as the soil is
carried to the sea, making the ego more difficult to sustain and opening the
way for life-altering surrender (not to be confused with failure).
But that is the beautiful part of the process for me. Not the thought of it, but
the experience of it! I don’t care to convince anybody, but I feel I must
express it in my way.
So thank you again ~CT, for your comments, and for giving me the idea to
re-post the very first story I wrote about aging.
Jim
Harlan, Aluminum Foil, and the Cat
Harlan is a rotund, little, old, retired teacher who has been substituting at our
school for as long as I have been teaching there. He is a cheerfully ineffectual
man who cannot really handle a class anymore, but he has bailed us out of
many a jam. Each year the chaos in his classrooms grows a little, just as do
the unshaven patches that he misses on his face each morning, miniature
inverted alien crop designs just below his jaw and around his ears. Mine was
a condescending appreciation of the humor and pathos of Harlan, the
character.
My awakening was of the slack-jawed variety. What fluke was it that drew me
to the mirror with my half-eye reading glasses still on my nose? What was
that earthquake I felt as I tilted my head back and glimpsed beneath the jaw
of what I thought was my cleanly shaven face. What ear-ringing silence
ensued when I gazed upon Harlanesque alien writing upon my very own
face.......hieroglyphics in gray stubble. Was my unconscious, having crash-
landed upon my face, trying to reach me with these desperate signals. What
message in the haphazard neglect of my blade?
So, in a way, I am Harlan, and Harlan is me. I thought I had accepted that, the
whole aging thing. Now, poetically, a solitary beachcomber, I find my own
presbyopia, along with age spots, and wrinkles, the flotsam and jetsam of an
ebbing youth. But there is comfort in being philosophical. It happens to all
of us who live this long. As in the I Ching, there is no fault here. As in the
NBA, no harm, no foul. And I can happily adapt and seek fulfillment in the
spiritual. It is the aluminum foil that has me perplexed.
You see, I have learned many things in my years, and one of the least notable
is that after nuking a potato, you can wrap it quickly in aluminum foil so it
will stay warm and even continue to cook while insulated. I did this recently
and without burning my fingers either. But it is not the use of the foil that
struck me, it is what I did after. Standing over the kitchen drawer where such
things are kept, I carefully folded the leftover aluminum foil and placed it
neatly between the unused foil and the plastic wrap.
Gazing down into the open drawer evoked memories of my grandma’s
kitchen drawers. Anything with even the remotest possibility of being useful
was carefully tucked and stacked in drawers by Grandma. In those drawers
one could find foil, wax paper, rubber bands, bottles and lids, paper sacks,
and, of course, many odd looking kitchen tools, which have no use in our
time, except to collect. But that’s another story. It is the stuff used for
wrapping and storing that I remembered, and that I thought of as I looked
down into my own drawer.
And I was a tower of age as I looked down upon my own act. There it was for
me to behold, a folded piece of used foil tucked away for another day. What
force of nature did I act out? Is it a natural behavioral evolution, that at a
certain time of life, we begin to conserve and hoard? Am I the vehicle for
some timeless human instinct expressing itself in the modern world, or has
some latent form of social hypnotism just got its wakeup call. Will I have an
uncontrollable and unconscious urge soon to go out and purchase a coin
purse like Grandpa had?
As I ponder these unknowables at my keyboard, I see my old cat hunkered
down outside on the patio watching a dozen birds at the feeder. She lays in
the shade of a chair, flattened to the cement in an attack posture, but age has
increased the distance between her and the birds on the other side of the
patio to a hopeless expanse. Her body twitches from ageless chemical
impulses of the hunt, and her gaze is steely and intense. But the power of
the feline life force, triggered by the sight of those delicious feathered
morsels that hop provocatively in front of her, misfires when it reaches her
once powerful sinew. Her skin jumps, her tail whips once, and slowly she
lowers her gaze, her eyes soften, and she begins to purr.
It reminds me of how I was at the beach recently, sitting on a planter, fully
clothed, wistfully watching some young guys playing three on three hoops.
The chickie birds, of course, were strolling nearby in typical California bikini
fashion. I just sat there purring, and, well, twitching from time to time if the
truth be known.
Addendum: I have been told there may be danger in using aluminum foil on
a baked potato. It could perhaps contaminate the potato with aluminum
causing brain damage or God knows what. I told Sharon this. She paused to
consider, looking at me with an amused smile and said, “Don’t worry about
it, Hon, already one potato too many.”
In Reply to: Healing Happens posted by Jim H. [879.1238] on September 02, 2004 at 07:47:17:
Thanks, Jim.
Namaste`
Walt
In Reply to: Re: Healing Happens posted by ~CT [105.1287] on September 02, 2004 at 09:17:37:
Hi Jim,
I live across the street from a park with a bench. Typically I pass it by. On occasion, I sit, but not very often. I have to have a certain mind-state or body-state to sit and enjoy it. Mostly, I would rather be moving around. It occurs to me from my experience with this bench that a person needs to have reached a certain age to have appreciation for the park bench and the activity of sitting. I think there is something about having a certain age that makes that activity fulfilling. However, one cannot know it until they are there.
"The cicada, who lives only through the summer, cannot understand the snow." (Chuang Tzu)
Best wishes,
Jan
In Reply to: Re: Healing Happens posted by Jim H. [879.1238] on September 03, 2004 at 05:49:14:
Thanks, Jim.
I hugely enjoyed your first posting of the aging story and enjoyed it all over again today.
Namaste`
Walt
In Reply to: Re: Healing Happens posted by Jim H. [879.1238] on September 03, 2004 at 05:49:14:
Addendum:
I still think the rest of the world deserves, indeed needs, to have access to these wonderful writings of yours.
With everything already on the computer, publishing would be a breeze. Any publishing company, having seen just a few examples, would jump at the honor of publishing them.
Namaste`
Walt
In Reply to: Re: Healing Happens posted by Happygal [2070.350] on September 03, 2004 at 08:02:30:
Thanks HappyGal,
I think you are right about age and park benches. I don't see it quite as
melancholy as Paul Simon in his lyrics though (Old Friends). Maybe I'm
whistling in the dark.
Great quote too, deep truth, but with people there are always the arts to
represent that which may not have been experienced personally. Plus we talk
a lot. :)
Jim
PS I hope you will be able to glimpse the aspen this fall.
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