Closing Out the First Decade of the Twenty First Century

Whew! Ten years! Gone! Poof!

I was laying a bed this morning and suddenly could not remember what happened this last decade. It went so fast I couldn't remember? It scared me. Yes, it did go fast. And I have more behind me than I have before me. That scared me too. At first. Then I thought, somewhat inapposite to my "glass half empty" nature, that there was an opportunity here, to treasure what was left far more perhaps than I did in the days gone by when I thought I had all the time in the world. Does this make sense?

The time has been a gift and I have been so in the middle of doing and thinking and worrying and wondering that too often I have failed to savor. You know. The moment.

I won't promise that I'll change. I am though recognizing that the window of opportunity is closing and it's up to me, no one else.

And as for the last decade, yes, how could I forget? The big, and the sad, first. The 2000 election that preceded the worst attack on the United States ever on September 11, 2001. A new generation was born after that, and the rest of us have sanitized the event such that we are ripe for another if we aren't vigilant and insistent on American values rather than variable, relative global ones. The 2008 election of the first black president, a landmark proof of the legacy of the American dream, if only we don't deny it.

For me, there were new friends, old friends who moved to new places, a train trip to Chicago, a discovery that Missouri has lovely wineries and beautiful countryside, and that I really could move to the quaint old towns of the South Shore Massachusetts cause it was so beautiful, except for that darn cold weather in winter, that I really could kayak with a bunch of 20 year olds in Hawaii, that it is fun to go home again to the old college radio crowd, and stay in a cool revolutionary home now hotel called the Kittle House, an installation of a new Archbishop in San Francisco and a second trip to Sausalito by ferry, a wedding in the dry Ventura river bed in Ojai, my father's 90th birthday celebration weekend with Sophis and Len, Chris, and Andrew, many movies and dinners with friends. It was also a decade of horrible loss, Fran Bassios, Gerry Markle, Bill Tilden, my father too soon after the celebration of his life, people who were integral to my life in various ways they could never really know.

So, I raise a glass (that photo is really me raising a glass one day at lunch at Cork in downtown LA), to the ten years past, to the people and places that populated my experience of it, to a grateful moment of memory.

Testing. . .Testing. . . .

I made this appointment about a month ago. A few more tests so that my new doctor will have the fullest (internal) picture of me, my heart, and I, as well as to determine whether I am in danger of breaking any bones during those recent games of racketball I have been playing. I am at that age where the level of calcium in the bones determines whether osteoporosis will render me eligible to replace Sally Field as the spokesperson for Boniva. This morning it occurred to me that it might be better to blow off the appointment and remain in blissful ignorance regarding the state of my carotid artery and the transport of oxygen to the brain. I am certain I have before expressed my regret that I compelled my late father to see his doctor about some trouble he was having, when he'd have rather waited. The cure was worse than the disease. My father did not die at 90 of either a heart attack (he had his first at 51) or of the bladder cancer he was diagnosed with (and he had bladder issues his whole mid-life as well), but of sepsis caused by stents to his kidneys for a condition he did not realize he had in the first place. I am not that trusting of doctors or their tests, and so the idea was compelling indeed to save our soon to be extant health system from the cost of this preventative testing.

But they had confirmed my appointment on Friday, so the idea of standing even the technicians up today seemed, untoward. So dutifully I sallied forth. Got my three hour parking courtesy of the City of Beverly Hills for three dollars. Advised the desk staff of my presence and appointment time of 12:15-filled in some paperwork advising that either my insurance would pay or I would. And then, I waited. For over an hour as the first shift in the room became the second. There are 17 doctors in this group and remembering how much of a nudge I sensed I had become at my internist of many years previously, from whom I have removed myself save for his name on the insurance card (I have the ability to go out of network), because I would inquire and then complain about the inevitable wait, I said nothing despite my increasing anger. Seeing Debbie Reynolds coming out after her appointment distracted me for a few moments, and then I sat, and prayed for humility. Watching the interactions of the desk staff and the incoming elderly patients (the doctor is a heart specialist), I saw my father standing there announcing his presence and the time of his appointment to the inevitable indifferent response, "Take a seat". By the way, doctors make out like bandits at this holiday time of year, with shopping bag after shopping bag of gifts pouring in from grateful patients. My pessimistic sense as the girls at the desk (they were all girls; this is not sexism) collected them is that the doctors won't remember the gift givers from the non-gift givers and that the gesture is largely unappreciated given the number of faces and other parts of bodies these people are forced to see over time. But then, I was not feeling festive at this point in my experience of my "new" doctor's office. True, it wouldn't be him I'd be seeing since this was all laboratory like stuff. Could I really blame him? I was considering my next action, more money in the three hour meter, leaving in a huff, leaving silently, when I was finally called to the next waiting room downstairs. Not too long this time and as Janet the technician (whom I liked very much) put goo on my feet and my neck (alternately) to check the old pumping of blood form head to toe, she let it slip that they knew I had been waiting a long time. Why? I had come at the lunch hour (that was when the appointment was made) and they, well, forgot about me. She said this was unusual for them, and the next time, I should wait only about ten minutes and then check at the desk.

It is amazing to me how things that do not usually happen when it comes to the doctoring world, seem to happen to me. Ok. I am being dramatic. Basically, I haven't had much need for doctoring, so I have been pretty blessed. And they got to me finally, and as it turned out, though I was eleven minutes past my three hours, I did not have a ticket!

The hardest of the several tests (the bone density test was merely me being passed in and out of a donut, and apparently also included my heart for good measure), was the echocardiogram stress test. I came in and saw what appeared to be a portion of a bicycle on the examining table. First thought, "I can't climb up there!". Idiot. Of course you lie on the table and spin until you hit the heart rate appropriate for your age and weight (in my case, past middle age and fat). They take a resting echo and then one while you are well, stressed, by the exercise. You do sign a little form just before, just in case. Stroke. Death. But the good news is that along with the technician, there was a physician assistant there watching the computer, and taking the blood pressure regularly. Since my blood pressure when I finally was called to my testing was high, I am guessing that was an issue for my taking the test today and yet, though I do not know the results structurally, (I peeked a little; there was no danger, happily, of ischemic attack, but I do show whatever it is that indicates I have hypertension), I recovered quickly and I felt quite fine. I suppose the approximately month and a half at the gym (which I hope to continue) helped a little bit to prepare me for the pushing I'd have to do at one point). I do know that I have a small window of opportunity to get in better shape before my shape becomes such that it is too late, inside and out. There is a certain irony in the good possibility that what they are testing me for is not what will ultimately kill me. Still, at least I can say I have taken some steps toward my potential longevity. I am kind of a crap shoot, my mother having died at 48 and my father at 90. You do what you can.

Pre-Christmas Reveries

It is precisely two weeks till Christmas Day.

I have been hitting the malls for gift buying, and observing the secular "spirit" of the season, the good, and the not so good. The religious Spirit, the second Person of the Trinity whose birth is the nominal genesis of the secular frenzy, is always hovering around and infusing me, although my ability to receive Him varies. I suppose it varies as well when it comes to the secular "spirit".

About a week ago, I was over at the Grove, and I passed the little Santa Clause house they put up smack in the middle of the centre. I never noticed that there was a window that the passerby could stop at to watch the children as they each sat on Santa's lap and had their pictures taken. I am pretty sure it wasn't there before, or I am certain that I would have stopped before, as I did that weekend. It is as if you are watching an old movie, even Miracle on 34th Street. Some children are delighted. Some are fearful, crying for their mothers before the picture to memorialize the occasion can be taken. Outside of American Girl, a father and his daughter open the package to expose the doll she cannot wait till Christmas to carry.

This weekend. Even the weather cooperated to create the sense of fa la la, as much as California can do such things. It has finally rained a thorough rain. I could almost believe I were in New York 30 years ago, as the dark cumulous released their wet force. As I wrote, finally, Christmas cards on Thursday night, the drops sounded on the buildig roof, and the warmth of my wall heater and flannell comforted me. Joy, though, has been hard to come by, even with the prayer, the gift buying, the pre-holiday parties. It comes in transient moments. And then it is gone. This is life. This is the suffering, in very small portion, of which we are promised as our portion before the revelation of all. And I resist it. Right now, as I write, I am in between watchin EWTN, the Catholic Network. They are playing something from the 50's, a program in black and white featuring someone most people would never remember, Pat O'Brien, praying the rosary as the then well known Father Peyton used to encourage, as a prelude to tales of the time just before Christ's birth, with people like Raymond Burr, and Emlyn Williams, long dead actors, playing legionnaires and saints to the television orchestral strains of "Ave Maria". It makes me sad, and happy, at the same time, to remember a simpler time, and I do remember it, that has passed us by in favor of the prideful knowledge of man that laughs at a Higher Power.

Oh, well, it is up to us to save our souls or not, by the light that we have been given, however much or little that might be. I leave that to God, for myself and others, and hope that I don't disgrace Him to much and need to spend too much time in the purification of the Purgatory in which I do believe. I had a rosary blessed today, one I bought in a non-religious affiliated store. It is from Italy. It is colorful, artistic and large. I hope that I will use it well in occasional and honest prayer for myself and the world.

Thanksgiving Thoughts

Did you know that George Washington, the first president and father of our country established the Thanksgiving holiday? I didn't until I happened to hear a rerun program of one of my favorite thinkers and talk show hosts, Dennis Prager. Yes, he is a conservative. But he also posits clarity in the service of truth as his mission. Clarity does not mean that "we agree." Some things are whether you and I agree. And, I guess, here's one such opportunity for us to disagree. I am not trying to convince anyone. Only evidence can convince, and frankly, I am not sure, as this society is wending its way toward self-destruction, even evidence is enough. You read. You decide as you will, or as an agenda may require. I imagine a bumper sticker. "George W. was a right winger!" Who are we talking about? I digress.

Thanksgiving isn't just a day or two off and an opportunity to gorge on tryptophan laden turkey topped off by a nap and further gorging on popcorn and beer while football teams run and tackle. The proclamation that established the holiday exhorts the people of the United States, now terrified of any mention of religion or tradition, to give prayerful thanks to-----gulp, God.

Historical reality.

This does not mean that those who do not believe in God have no place in this society. Au contraire. Because of a belief of a founding people in a Divine Will that helped bring about this still young country, which we take for granted, those who prefer to be agnostic, or unbelieving, or of a philosphy or faith which does not include God, share the table of thanks, without restriction. Separation of Church and State means not that the essence of this country's founding, a Judeo-Christian building block, and the God of Abraham, be abolished and unmentioned in some revisionist compulsion, but that there be no established religion that by its nature forbids the freedom of belief of others. The belief in God of these progenitors made possible the pluralistic society under the banner "In God We Trust". The benefit is everyone's alike. It would be lovely if that protective banner of In God We Trust be used as something to celebrate still rather than something to be chiselled off the Halls of the Senate and Congress.

Abandon Hope and All that Jazz

I was over at "The Grove" after Church today. Tonight is to be the tree lighting for what I understand is the second biggest "holiday" (to be politically correct, which agitates me) tree after the one in Rockefeller Center in New York. I did ot realize that when I was looking for elusive parking.

I made my way to Barnes and Noble and picked up some DVD's one a to be present for a friend. I had my lunch at Patsy D'Amore, two slices, and a coke, and read Entertainment Weekly (I am not offended by the adaptation of Sherlock Holmes in the movie to open December 25; I eagerly await it). I ran a few other errands. The elevator coming down to the main level when I arrived, in one of the smaller, I thought, less known banks, had be empty; I hoped for the same going back.

It looked like I was in luck but I had to go to the machine downstairs to see what I owed, which turned out to be nothing. Turning around, the bank was still empty and an elevator was open, a man or two having just gotten in. It was a few feet only and all either man had to do was put his hand in the still fairly wide open door. I yelled "hold the elevator" and met the eye of one of the men. He looked at me steadily and I at him, as he let the door close before I could quite get to it.

My first thought, yes, it was my first, well maybe the second after an expletive. . . .was "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" a well quoted line from Dante's Divine Comedy, specifially the part where there is a tour of hell, where sinners reap the punishment of their less than stellar existences on earth. I try not to feel this way, and for most of the week, I resisted it, but we live in an all but hopeless world and society. Usually you see it in big things, the politics of the day, the loss of the idea of America as a society founded on a premise of Divinely inspired right and responsibility, but when you see it right in your shopping center, in a small uncivil exchange, it becomes surprisingly intolerable.

Not that I am so stellar myself. I have far to go to be a passable human being, but I cannot imagine that if someone was looking me in the eye and asking me to hold an elevator while he or she took a few more steps toward it I would disregard the plea so readily. This chills me almost as much as something that happened to me many years ago, in a supermarket. I had just walked in when I saw a man pulling a cereal box from a bunch of stacked ones. One fell to the ground and he started to walk away without picking it up and replacing it. I happened to notice and when he saw me watching him, he went back to the box and with what a remember as a defiant look in his eye (as opposed to the indifferent one from "elevator guy" today) he kicked the box with an angry fervor. Perhaps he thought I had disapproved of his unwillingness to pick up the box. Perhaps I did. But that my silent remonstration would cause him to act in what was an undisquised moment of violence, fortunately against the inanimate box rather than me, caused the hair to rise on the back of my neck then, and now, in recalling it.

I seem to be feeling apocalyptic today. Oh well, I hope, when the time comes I have not to answer for too many such moments in my life. I realize that it is possible there have been some. I hope not, of course, but we rarely see our own faults, sins, if you will. But, if there have been such moments, I hope one of those friends will tell me. And forgive me.

MJ, You Have a New Fan

My friend, Len, of Len Speaks wrote an entry a week or mor ago about seeing This is It, the compilation of the rehearsals for Michael Jackson's comeback tour, aborted by his untimely death. I hoped to see it, as I have had a long time grudging admiration for the man (grudging because of the well publicized eccentricities and swirling accusations), but I had no sense that I would ever write about it, if I saw it. Taking a few days off, I have interspersed meditative thoughfulness (or what passes for that in my impatience) with shopping, and now movie going. I happened to hit the theatre just before a showing of This is It, yesterday afternoon. So, why not?

It was apparently Mr. Jackson's routine to have his rehearsals documented, to watch later, to mark the preparation of performances. I wonder if he had some prescience also about his early death. Maybe it wasn't prescience, because he knew what abuse he had to know what abuse he was heaping on his body with the obsessive plastic surgery and the drugs. Watching him in rare quiet moments working with the musicians, it was clear he couldn't stay still, his hands moving always. And for the most part, even in a darkened theatre he wore sunglasses. Perhaps his handlers were thinking ahead, just in case, which, as it turned out was the case. He'd never do this tour, but we have its essence now for posterity.

Once he was dancing, you'd never know that he had any impairment. He seemed indestructible. And twice or more the age of probably all of dancers backing him up, he moved with an ease that rivalled theirs. I was mesmerized. I could not take my eyes off him. They were mesmerized, even giddy watching him during their breaks. He could conjure what he wanted the performers and himself to do in tandem with an uncanny precision. His timing was transcendent, where to put a beat, where to hold, where to have silence, when to have a startling note. His life was whole here, while it was in shambles everywhere else. And it was a visual truth projected into the theatre.

All I could think of was, this film is a treasure. Yes, AEG and the Jackson Estate is making money. Their motivations are clearly not altruistic, for if altruistic, they would simply give the documentary to the world without remuneration. But it doesn't matter. It's here. This is not everybody's kind of music, I know, but the spark of genius is visible as much here as I imagine it was in its time for a Mozart. I have this odd feeling that in many ways these men have similarities in their inner lives. All is poured into this one thing. Music. And everything else is effectively damned. It's a drive, like a salmon going upstream. Does it allow for forgiveness of responsibility? Maybe not. But all things being equal, what is left behind, this one true thing, is a pearl of great price.

Confiteor

It is Veteran's Day, and a day off from work for me. Actually, it has generated my taking several more days' off. I have a large number of hours and am about to hit the cap I am allowed to bank. My idea is to take the time, not only to rest from a stressful work interval, but to consider possible future directions. It's unlikely I'll come up with anything, but that's all right, no worries, there is no deadline nor requirement that I do so.

Slept in, which is always a pleasure for me, but thought that maybe I would go to a daily Mass. The idea of moving from my cocoon apartment, cluttered and comfortable, caused resistance, but I placed the contact lenses and applied quick makeup, sweater and sweat pants and went.

It was pretty empty at the Church. There is never a huge crowd at a daily Mass, but usually a few more people are praying in the pews. It's early though, 20 minutes before the celebration.

This is the former pastor's to celebrate. He is nearly 83 and debiltated by the damage of a benign tumor taken from his spine years ago. Even with a walker, though, he manages to command any space in which he appears, and this, the Church, is his life's stage. This is the thing he will fight to continue, the celebration of the Eucharist. All else he is willing, even content, to forego. Belief gives him the energy, the persistence, the mission and the reason to continue.

Usually, when I come in I can hear him chatting with the server who will assist, but today, there is silence. It is clear he, or some priest is in the sacristy, because the candles are lit. But no one comes out to arrange the altar and it is close to the time to begin. I cannot serve. Yes, in today's society women often act as acolytes. But my former pastor, and my friend, limits such engagement, still believing that the role is a subcategory of priesthood, and priesthood is only for men, as Jesus was a Man, and founded his Church naming 12 males as His apostles. Acolyte is a minor order which is bestowed upon a priest in training. I can hear some reader saying, "Why don't you leave that parish?" because so many women have deeper involvement in other parishes, or "Become an Anglican/Episcopalian" where they allow women priests, let alone other ministries. Here's the thing, my membership in the Catholic Faith is not about the "right" to become a priest, or to have some more intensive minstry, like deacon, or server. It is about the Center, the Eucharist Himself, the Really Present Lord, before me, in my hand as I receive. Although human beings imperfectly guide the Church, they guide it with this Essence at its center, and I will leave it to the Holy Spirit to direct what, if any, ultimate change there is in individual parishes or in the Church at large. Meanwhile, this erstwhile pastor is also my friend and has been good to me, and, has even allowed some inroads into his resistance to a woman on the altar, when there has been a lack of servers. I have stood by him as he receives the "gifts", the bread and wine before the transformative miracle. I have held the book as he reads the gospel. I have told him that the rarity of my being able to do this makes me appreciate it even more.

Nonetheless, knowing that he would be loath to use my help beyond these moments, I went into the sacristy to see what help might be needed since no other server was yet there.

I expected him to be sitting in a chair, given the difficulty he has in standing for any period of time. But when I came in, his back was to me. He was fully robed, and leaning over a platform reading. There was something startling about the figure, with the markings of his role on the back of the vestment, the sign of the Good Shepherd. In that brief moment, I had the the feeling, not just the intellectual comprehension of, In Representio Christi. I almost hated to interrupt him. Seeing me, he said he had been reading the order of the Latin Mass. I had noticed the old lectionary on Sunday. He suggested it would be hard for him to celebrate the Mass in Latin. I noticed the heading of one of the prayers, "Confiteor", "I Confess", the one in which we together profess our sinfulness to our Lord. I asked him if he needed whatever help he would allow. He said, "A woman?" but in that way that has always been a friendly and humorous exchange between us. I said, "Can't do anything about that. But I will do whatever you will allow." He said that it was likely that someone would come at the last minute, but he did want me to place the unconsecrated water and wine, the Book, and the Chalice onto the altar. I had never done that. This is the sacred work of the acolyte. He noted my informal dress but said nothing to inhibit me. I placed each item, sneakers squeaking, one at a time, onto the altar. I wanted to put the key into the Tabernacle but the lock was not obvious to me close up, as often as I have seen it from something more of a distance, so I did not. I placed each item, first bowing to the Tabernacle where He is, and then again as I went for the next item.

I returned to the sacristy to tell him I would be about if he needed me. He did not. A minute or so before Mass the server arrived.

The homily was about transformative moments of two or three saints, the moments before the complete giving over of themselves to God, in which their paths were set. For Martin of Tours, while still a soldier, there was tearing his cloak in two to give half to a cold pauper. For St. Francis of Assisi, it was giving a coin to a man consumed with sores, and then going back to take his hands and kiss them. For Damien, the priest of the lepers at Molokai, it was (he speculated because no one really knows) it might have been the day he discovered the first sore on his body that said he was one of them. What was ours? Will we have one? I wondered. I wonder now. When or will I have a moment of such transformation. Helping today, was that such a moment--when belief becomes something more transcendent? Did the saints mark that moment? Perhaps the essence of the moment is not to be aware of it and to proceed steadfastly on the road, believing and confessing and thanking God for His forgiveness and Grace praying for that moment, but not grasping it as something owed to us.

Thoughts on All Saints' Day

Everyone revels in Halloween. I haven't really liked that holiday much, if holiday it be, since I was a child. I cannot quite get why people want to decorate their lawns with fake graves out of which fake skeleltons protrude. It is quite enough to spend life preparing for the real, and very unglamorous real thing. As for me, in case I haven't mentioned to you, my friends, or written it down somewhere, I would like to be cremated, not buried. The idea of decaying slowly somehow is less appealing than being quickly reduced to quasi-ash. I had not intended to go down this rather gloomy road. In fact, actually, I am not feeling gloomy at all about death today, if only because I have the faith that my body and soul each are in the hands of a loving God. It's the after death part that is the real celebration, of course, assuming the judgment part goes well. I shall not speculate on myself in that regard in these pages.

Today, Christians remember the saints in heaven, the ones in purgatory, and the rest on earth. Our friends and family who have trod the road before us.

We pray for them and for their intervention with the God to whom they are now closer than we. We remember the part they had in our lives for which we are grateful throughout the time that remains to us.

I thought of two of those individuals in my life today. This morning I woke up to the music of the 40s. It seemed odd because I listen to a talk radio station that as far as I know has no music, except for the bumpers between subject segments and commercials. Tommy Dorsey, Ray Anthony, Gene Krupa, the Andrews Sisters. I was familiar with so many of the songs of the Big Bands, not because I was there then. I was about ten to fifteen years away from the heyday. I could remember them from my childhood in the Bronx, watching my parents and aunts and uncles dancing in tiny living rooms at holiday parties. My dad was a particularly good dancer. It turned out that I had hit the FM button sometime in the night and the channel was 88.1, a jazz station, revisiting the decade between 1940 and 1950. I did not stir for forty or more minutes to keep the connection to dad. I have been surprised at how much I miss him. I trusted him with the fullness of my ups and downs that he never failed to try to solve. Ah, yes, friends have seen some of it, and I am grateful for their tolerance, but they would run away screaming if they had complete and untempered exposure. If I could run away from me at those times, I would. And he was my biggest fan, the one who would tape all of my utterings on college radio for as he would would say, perhaps a bit with tongue in cheek, but not much, "posterity". I don't know about any posterity, but it is sometimes nice to see his handwriting on the back of the cassettes he so painstakingly dubbed from his reel to reel. Is he keeping an eye on me? Sometimes I think yes, very strongly. I hope so. Dad, I am not quite getting the message about a couple of things. Was it you who caused me to lock myself out of your old apartment, the one I still have, empty, one year and eight months after you left it for the last time? I thought so, at first, telling me not to spend money for some California Closet renovation right now. He was a bit of a skeptic about religion, even after he joined Catholicism when he was 85. I wonder. What was it like for him to find out that there is someplace after, for real? I wonder. It is my faith that he did, I mean find out that there was someplace after. I would like to hear, somehow, how that has impacted him. But I guess if he could do that, he'd be giving away the fact of faith, and it wouldn't be faith, if I had his unequivocal message confirming it. His name went first on the souls to pray for today, one of the saints. The other was someone I met in my late 30's, a man in whom I trusted the fullness of my thoughts, hopes and fears, and what secrets I have borne about my deepest self. It was a platonic relationship for me of the deepest level-- the best description of which I have only read by a 17th or 18th century writer, DeMontaigne. I was one of many people who had that experience of him I would discover and that in no way diminished it. When he died, the line went out the funeral home in rain to pay respects. I remember one who had not seen him in 20 years and credited him with her choice of career. His daughter said to me that when she has tried to describe him, people did not quite believe her. He was kind, and whole. He made it to the other side of his obstacles and found and gave love. He reveled in his wife and family. He was grateful for every moment he had, which was lucky because he died so young. He would laugh to hear me call him a saint. But he too now has the evidence of whatever is the manifestation of heaven in union with Him of which he, like my father, was skeptical. They were only two of those who were part of my prayers and the prayers of the gathered today on this day of saints. What a celebration to have them with us today!

An Augustinian Life After Death for Me

I was talking to a friend about a half hour ago. She told me about the interview of a priest on EWTN (a Catholic Religious Network, 370 if you have DirecTV) discussing the nature of our eternal life. This priest, James T. O'Connor, teacher and former theologian at St. Joseph Seminary in Dunwoodie, New York and now a pastor in a parish in Medford, Massachusetts, favors the more realistic idea of life after death, the Augustinian view rather than that of Thomas Aquinas, a more beatific, "bald" as it was described. For this commentator/priest, our time in heaven will be active, and much like the best things of life on earth, with water, trees, sky, land, and animals, with God a consistent part of that eternity, and in a perfection not possible during this sinful life. It is (at least to our humanity limited minds) preferable, perhaps only because we have a frame of reference that we do not have for a more Thomist view, so absorbed in our participation with God that there is nothing else, a kind of quiet and perpetual absorption that shoud be enough indeed, but missing the interactions , seeming for me essential, with the ocean, the shimmering ocean or with others say, in the happy moment of a dinner with wine and conversation. My very preference of the Augustinian view seems incongruous for whatever heaven is, the closeness to God, however it is achieved, will be sufficient, and devoutly to be wished (pardon to Hamlet). But silly though it may seem, I want to see some people again. And if God with whom we are encouraged to have relationship wants us on earth to see Him in relationship with others, I like to think that the Augustinian view makes more sense., although we are assured that either way, we won't be bored.

Anyway, after I spoke with her, I looked on the net for this interview, and found a podcast, to which I am now listening; hence I have some ability to write a little of the above to explain the differences between the Thomist v. Augustinian views of resurrection of the body.

Sillier still, I want my cats, and my little beagle, given back to Bide A Wee, when my mother developed an allergy, to be there with us all. (Therein lies another debate, whether animals have souls and will be with us in heaven; that's my hope!). I went on line and just bought a book, out of print, by this priest, called "Land of the Living" so I can read more about his theory which gives me such immediate comfort. Perhaps it is because today I made my monthly hegira to Long Beach to get my hair dyed and cut and the weather was pristine as well as the water which glimmered and rippled in the sun and that always feels as close to heaven as anything possible on earth.

It's nice to think of heaven. It is getting close to dark, but there is still some warmth and light to garner. I am going to back to my backyard for a few moments on this Saturday in which I shall remain home to nurse an incipient cold, to watch the sun set and the hummingbirds swift by in preparation for their night.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Shambala Redux

Shambala Resident

Reagan Memorial Site

Air Force One

There are some ordinary experiences that are just so pleasing that you want to share them. Which brings me, at least temporarily, out of hiatus status.

Clearly, the Reagan Library and Shambala have nothing in common, except for the pure joy both locations provided to and for me.

I was backing out of my parking space at 6:58 on Friday morning, a not unusual time in and of itself, but for me to be doing anything other than rolling over in my bed, even on a workday. I signed up for a continuing education seminar some month or two ago, in part because while so many continuing education classes are lengthy, and boring, this particular group usually puts on a good one, where the professionals can take something new and useful away for future application. But another reason was where it was being held, the Reagan Library. A couple of years ago I visited the JFK Library in Boston, and it still remains one of the most gratifying locations and tours. A modern edifice right on Massachusetts Bay, the architecture uses light to a most effective degree, such that the inside feels liberating, and increases the sense of nostalgia and history in some way I cannot quite explain. I was curious about this West Coast Republican version not only because I admired and admire Ronald Reagan but because I was hoping for a similar experience, this time smack in the desert of Simi Valley.

The sun was just coming up as I traversed the highway on the still moist air morn. I am given to listening to the radio on car trips, but decided that the sound of my tires and the occasional bird as I watched the bubble like shadow of my car and the changing hills, some smooth, some rocky from the 170 to the 5 to the 118. How is it that I so easily reject this fresh time of the day in favor of sleep? What a fool? Or was I appreciating this cool early sunshine because I so seldom awaken early enough to consume it? The traffic was contstant but not oppressive, and I was at the Library just before 8 a.m. I got out of my car and walked toward the manicured front of the adobe building, typically Californian, so distinct from the East Coast style under which I was introduced to a Presidential Library. As I walked over a little "bridge" of sorts I noticed that the cool air was merging with the warmer air that would soon replace it, and a chime interspersed the greeting of the birds twittering as they darted from tree to tree. The mountains in the distance were all smooth light and darker crevices. I could see a bench overlooking a vista and wished I could stop and sit there rather than go to a room where I would be listening to a cacophany of expert lawyers for six hours-- what I must do before the 4 p.m. tour of this lovely place. Such courses are fairly expensive, even with discounts. I was there. Ethics is my trade, so I dutifully followed the signs. Fortunately, the room turned out to have large windows, several of which were covered to allow for projection if necessary, but still enough of them to allow a relaxed gaze toward the mountains when the need arose, without loss of attention.

The course was all right. I am at an age now, where, while I certainly learn new things to better do my craft, the urgency just is no longer there, or is it the idealism? It matters not. Nothing seemed more perfect than being there, and learning was a good price.

The seats outside the actually well stocked cafeteria overlooked a second vista, and I sat with two colleagues in the umbrella'd shade wishing a lunch hour would not go quite so quickly. The still summer Valley breeze brushed us as we returned to our legal edification, but 4 p.m. was not far off. I noticed the tail of the F-14 on the grounds from my seat. I could not wait to take a look at a real Air Force One, which I knew was a long corridor away, the 707 that was in actual use from 1973 to 2001, as I would later hear. The Library closes at 5 and one of the presenters was about five minutes into the 4 o'clock hour as certainly he was permitted to do as a sitting Judge, but I was eager to bolt.

I did not get to savor as I would have liked, the story of this particular President, as I had when I was in Boston and it was JFK whose history I was exploring. Enough for a taste that will bring me back, perhaps one day soon, for a leisurely stroll in a history I remember well, for I was a young adult during it.

I suspect that I pictured an Air Force One of the 1990's movie with Harrison Ford (was it 1990's?), far larger than ANY plane could possibly be, full of wood and ornament. I have never seen the cockpit of a commercial style jet and seeing the volume of instrumentation was astounding. Happy that this plane, housed in a huge, windowed hanger where one side was entirely squared glass, was not going to take off I had no need for my usual fears about flying. It was, a plane, albeit one that had special sections cordoned off and cultivated with furniture of sorts, more than any plane that I have ever flown in provides, but still as with any plane, a bit claustrophobic. Yet, I'd look at a picture on the wall and the space, like the one where Mr. Reagan or any President during that period had his desk, and a kind of cot that opened out (with seat belts to be placed across the shoulder, the chest and the legs (if you were lying down, as on a gurney), for the President and in the next "room", for the First Lady. Somehow I couldn't imagine Mrs. Reagan taking a long trip and sleeping on such a cot. But she did. And there she was sitting on the closed "couch" in the photo, as I looked at the actual space today, years and years later. There were tables, plastic as in any plane, but significantly larger. A conference room with a big chair, with seatbelts. The one that the President sat in on the way, say to Berlin before the wall came down in 1989. There was something about this walk through history, cramped and small, but massive in the waves of the past.

So many glass cabinets to look at, videos, but i had one other thing to see before the 5 o'clock closing, the memorial site where the President is buried. I remembered still the day of his service, five years ago, nearly, isn't it? The view which the President sees now for eternity, in a sense. There were only a few people there, part of a family, and a guide, a veteran from the Korean War. The marker with a parenthesis of a wall and a favorite quote. I would have liked to sit there, with him, this stranger, but not a stranger. Not today. Another time, Mr. President.

On the way back, the sun was behind me again, going down. I watched another shadow bubble of my car and considered a day well spent. The next day, I travelled much the same road, but this time the 170 to the 5 to the 14 and Acton, California, and a second visit to Shambala, the Preserve started by Tippi Hedren to house, care for and love big cats, Tigers, Lions, Servals, and a Liger, improperly traded and mistreated sometimes, by people who foolishly buy them and keep them, or use them for things like small circuses. They cannot be released into the wild, so they live out their days there, protected. Saturday was an afternoon Membership Party, with raffles and sales of Big Cat related items, and a silent auction, and a buffet lunch amid the little lake and the long grass and the spacious enclosures of the friendly looking but insistently carnivorous residents. People say that Hedren is "not nice". For me, it is an irrelevancy, since I can appreciate what she has done for these creatures, including getting legislation passed that protects others of their kind, and I have no personal relationship to worry about. She is serving a purpose on this earth that many of us can properly envy. I hope I can one day join it, or one like it, when I take down my shingle. I left with contentment at the preservation of these animals, some nearly 20 years old, as well as my membership hat and tee, and some other parting gifts. I'll be back sooner than later. There is something to be said for a life less urban. And respites of the kind I experienced this Friday and Saturday, that like music itself, soothe the savage breast.

On Hiatus

Those of you born in the pre-digital age will be familiar with the test pattern from the early color television days. I have decided to take a hiatus from these pages for an undetermined period of time. It could be hours. It could be days. It could be a winter hibernation. It could be longer. No worries. I am taking time to reflect and perhaps to keep more my own counsel. Bleu, the cat, is meowing at me for a bit of a pet. Good night. Speak to you, anon.

To Tell the Truth

A short entry about an extensive subject. If I say that I am obsessed with the truth, I'd only be saying what is probably the case with lots of people, and most assuredly, the great thinkers, of which I am not one. I have a friend who says that she "always" tells the truth. Me, I go along with Dr. Gregory House, and the idea that "everybody lies". We have many times heard that it is better to tell a "white lie" in order to preserve someone's self-esteem rather than to burst the bubble by confirming a worst fear. "Do I look fat in this dress?" You know what your answer would be, right? Me, too. And has been to innumeralbe similar questions in my life. Here's another question to which the answer I suspect if more than half the time, a lie, "How are you doing?" "Fine" I say. Really? And if you're not, come one, no one really wants THAT answer.

I can only speak about my obsession, not anyone else's. And it has really disturbed me of late that I cannot tell the complete truth, if I want to live to the next day, or have any people to talk to. Of course, that raises another question, and I haven't got the energy, "What is the truth?" More and more I have this experience of two immediate levels, what I am saying, that is always cached and careful no matter how quickly I might speak, and what I am actually thinking, sometimes withholding, mostly because I don't want to start a fight or hear, the inevitable disagreeing response. And there is the what shall I call it, the "false presentation" of self (the false self is the well written term by the psychological and religious writing set). So last night, when a friend called, it was in the reaction and emoting part of the black hole I found myself in triggered by all sort of ordinary life events and he got the full rendition of it, though I had promised myself to keep silent. But again, he asked a question, something like, "What's happening?" and I started to make the untruthful response, all the more so had I said it, because the opposite was so excruciatingly true in my head, "nothing". But then I changed my mind. I told the truth. I went on and on like something was pouring out of a psychic jug. And I regretted it immediately. Keep your own counsel, even if by omission, you lie. It's better for everyone else. Then I went to see a movie, "The Invention of Lying", sometimes cute, several guffaws, but ultimately somewhat disappointing, the theme, a modern world in which no one had before lied gets lying introduced by one man in some split moment. It made me wonder whether really, these days, we have to reinvent the truth, because it is so illusive. Today, my cousin called and I said nothing of the events which had been plaguing me, talking about family and our elderly aunt. Well, I guess there was truth in there because I told her that I had never really liked this aunt, not ever. This makes it hard to be doing right by her but also because, frankly, I think the truth and my aunt have not had recent acquaintance, but as in all things, can't prove it. I went to Church and was "normal", none of the rage I felt the day before, now taking a nap within. But I knew I needed to have as little human commerce as possible, and so I spent the afternoon eating eggs at the Grove with a Mimosa, and then walking back here to do laundry and feel the first of a non-summer day, cool enough to turn off the fan that endlessly runs in my bedroom. Better to avoid talking rather than to trend toward that lie. I called a friend that I cancelled hanging with today with no explanation and left her a message explaining the dark mood and not wanting to inflict on her, thinking of course, that I already had, but you draw a line where you can. This is an appetizer kind of entry. Gives you a peek into what has been rattling around the brain, but makes me realize that I am out of my depth, at least tonight, in trying to address it. Perhaps a vow of silence would solve my truth problem. If I didn't speak, I couldn't lie. That'd work well at the job. My verbal job as a lawyer. Well, the ambien I just took to get me a full night sleep seems to be taking hold, and will shut down this line of thought, or any line of thought as that seems to be what largely keeps me awake. Thought upon thought. Not brilliant ones necessarily, but persistent ones. So I leave the issue of truth generally and mine, specifically to the night. So, be honest, what do you think of this entry? Will I want the truth. I do think perhaps I cannot handle it, as some guy said to another guy in that movie. Pretty sure in fact. Now, that's a truth.

Gnarly Genocides and Other Things Overheard at the Hairdresser

Saturday was my monthly, in this case, a bit over monthly, jaunt to Second Street in Long Beach to dye and trim my hair. The trip is a mini-vacation particularly as I hit Ocean Avenue and the sprawling water. The sun, water and air each and all are liberating. I park on Nieto, nearly always finding the perfect spot and grab my Long Beach Grunnion, a cup of Starbuck's Joe, put on the smock, and begin my two hour reading of every tabloid I can lay my hands on, and listening to the gathered quasi-private conversations of other customers with their stylists.

It is always fascinating. One time, after I had my salivary gland and concomitant calcified stone removed due to an infection (through the neck!) I came into the place and saw a man with a bandage in the exact same spot, except on the other side of the neck from my own. I had never heard of the surgery until I had it, and there we were comparing notes on the peculiarity of having a stone grow in your neck and the nerves that surround the locale of the surgery, lingual and facial, as well as the closeness of the carotid artery.

This Saturday, despite the economy, it was pretty crowded. Usually, the customers tend toward the middle aged, like myself, or older, but this day, there was a fair spate of the younger set. I never really have been one to ogle young men, not even when I was young enough myself to have them reciprocate, but one tall incredibly handsome fellow came in and I listened intently to him and his even younger stylist as she reduced the length of his straight thick hair. He was in his last year of college at Long Beach, and he was telling her his plans, to go to the East Coast for Grad school, as close as he could get to New York, where he'd stay (his certainty and optimism seemed so pure) for ten years and then maybe he'd come back to Los Angeles. She was a year younger than him, and to the best of my estimation, she wasn't in school, but she had done some interesting things, one of them to work for a few months (I wasn't quite sure of the time frame) in Rwanda. Apparently in rehabilitation areas, people of different backgrounds, would go and stay for a while and teach women who had been horribly brutalized, while they were being counselled, to learn a trade, one trade being a hair stylist. She had found it to be a startling, and satisfying experience, though hard. I was impressed as the two of them seemed to have a meaningful working knowledge of that place and a sensitivity to the complexities and indecencies of man against man, or in this case man against women and children. Typical of the "older generation" I thought to myself, maybe all is not lost with "young people." And I was perhaps a little ashamed that I have never done something quite so dramatic whether to help others or not. The thing though that was cognitively dissonant, though, was two words that she used to sum up the tragedy to which she had offered her kindness and care by offering the teaching of her talent. They have had a "gnarly genocide" she sort of summed it all up. That description sort of jarred me. I've heard a wave described as "gnarly" by a surfer, meaning extreme. Or a person described as a "gnarly dude". The adjective is for the extremely good and the extremely bad. I suppose then, she was right, genocide was an extreme, a despicable, inexplicable extreme. But that this casual urban lingo was attached to these acts of cruelty by mankind----as wonderful as this kid had been to do what she did, go there, help, I could not stop myself from feeling that the phrase trivialized the evil. But I haven't gone to the ends of the earth to save humanity, who thus am I to complain about her expression. I am not complaining, just observing, and marvelling at the variety of other experiences, some enigmatic, or interesting, or exotic or altruistic, and others, like mine, a bit of a straight line, from birth to grammar school, to (the same) high school, to college a mile from there, to law school, to LA, to the same apartment and job for 28 and 23 years respectively with nary a digression. I guess maybe I am complaining, yet again, but then, a bit about my choices, not about the universe in which I made them. That's an improvement at least!

Echo of a Heart

Note: This entry was accidentally placed on "Legacy of a Courtly Curmudgeon" the more infrequent blog that features stories about and stories by my father. I could not for some reason cut and paste, so days later, it is retyped here and deleted there.

I have a new cardiologist. I had an old one because my father had his first heart attack at 51, at least two others after that and a quadruple by pass in 1989. Despite the fact that it wasn't his heart that killed him, or the diagnosed bladder cancer, but a sepsis that I attribute to the lack of proper care by his doctors, I haven't ignored my family history of heart disease, particularly since I also have had high cholesterol and blood pressure.

My old cardiologist was also my primary care physician, the one who dishes out who I am allowed to go to for insurance purposes if I want it all paid for. Those who know me well know gthat for the last five or six years, I have felt less than attended to by my attending physician. A few years ago, a regular swelling of my salivary gland resulted in an infection severe enough to warrant removing a stone from my neck. I had raised the penultimate episode with my doctor, and he had said, "if it happens again, go the hospital". I did. They referred me to someone who was actually helpful. But my internist, on the eve of my surgery when my mouth was literally so swollen I could not articulate without a lisp, tried to convince me to put it off and see his reference. Still I stayed with him. But when I called to tell him I was lightheaded, and the front desk did all the diagnosing, and a call back was not forthcoming, that small episode was the one that did it. Two friends have been suggesting their respective doctors. I picked one who was also a cardiologist, and he has seen me, and accepted me as a patient, but he isn't an internist requiring me to keep my old internist, as internist. We had a heart to heart before I decided to do just that, in which I allowed him to chalk up our breakdown in relationship entirely to my "perception". I also allowed him the cognitive dissonant insistence that he always calls people back except on rare occasions. I guess the failure is only with me then. But he'd disagree, back to perception again. He also let me know that while my new doctor was a good one, if I call in an emergency, he won't be the one to answer, unless he is on call. I did not, again, biting my agitated tongue point out that my emergency needs were not met by him, when purportedly he was always available. I did not remind him of his "go to the hospital" in emergency exhortations. I did not, therefore, say that his availability was a fiction. He also said, with that dual edge of the back handed compliment, that my new doctor "did a lot of tests." Hmmmmmm. That can't be goo, right? He finally said that some of my new doctor's patients had been unhappy with him and had fled (the "fled" is my word) to my ersatz internist. I allowed that I suppose it was possible that I might not be happy, but I'd like to try. I didn't foreclose anything. So, today, me, my heart and my perceptions took their first echocardiogram, at the new guy's office, a test that is designed to more fully examine the heart using ultrasound.

As I write I still have goop on my chest that is used I suppose to conduct the waves. And I don't have the results, although I do know from the chest x-ray taken previously, that as is consistent with a person with high blood pressure, the wall of one side of my heart is thicker than in a person without that condition. There is something surreal about watching your own heart and hearing its beat. This is all that is keeping me conscious. I found myself surprisingly relaxed while watching the red and blue colors, the manifestation of the electric energy, flashing the flow to and from the muscle. It occurred to me that no matter what I do, however careful or ill conceived my behavior toward my heart, in a span of time, no more than 30 or so years, if I am lucky, it will simply stop.

When I was a teenager, I recalled, right after my dad's first heart attack, the reality of the organ's paradoxical strength, and concomitant fragility triggered a year of hypochondria in me. I was convinced I was having a heart attack, all the time. I was heart aware. Every beat, slow or fast. I drove my family crazy. I drove myself crazy. Listening to the echo of my heart in whatever fluid it floats in, that relaxation was a passing acceptance of what will come. It made me a bit ashamed that today, again, I was angry at virtually everything, right up to the man who was delaying me in putting my money in the communal parking meter. I raged and cursed in my head. Lying sideways on a crumpled paper atop the exam table, I thought, yet again, I have got to stop that, before my heart stops and its echo dies with me.

Moody Day

I woke up this morning, and realized I was in a mood. A shower. I feel better. The outdoor cats scramble for water and food, and I talk to them with my usual fondness before I hop into my car. I always check for my office key card. It is really a bummer to have to give my identification to the guard who knows me when I forget it, and then to stop in yet a second place to get a temporary one for getting in and out of "employee only" office spaces. Oh, and I haven't put on my lipstick, both of these in my cavernous bag. I find the badge immediately, but the lipstick is elusive. My hand pushes item away from item. No lipstick. Those who know me, know, that reapplying lipstick is an obsession for me. Applying it for the very first time of the day is downright urgent. "I hate this bag!" I shout I to the seat on which it lays. Before though I go into a complete rage, I find the little cannister and swipe the color on. Deep breath. I'm ok. Really.

A morning meeting is rather enjoyable in addition to being useful, and I am laughing with the members of my unit. But as morning becomes afternoon, I begin reviewing a file in which the issues are not only tedious, but convoluted, and several interruptions find me developing a hard to control irritation, that I know can lead to an eruption. A staff person who needs to update me on an absence calls when I am having a particular struggle to apprehend some factual details of my file. I am annoyed that I am having to review this file and unforgiving toward those who, in my self-righteous view, who forwarded this file without giving it a thoughtful screening. I answer the phone with an unviting pronouncement of my name startling the caller, who is apologetic for having disturbed me, when she has done nothing wrong. I had been doing some "spiritual reading" last night and promising to be a more faithful disciple, and in a flash, promise was dashed, as human nature seems to ordain it. I meant to call her back later, and I forgot. Great.

Even now, as I write, with my reading glasses in the living room so that I am having a wee bit of trouble navigating making this entry, a bubbling anger rises, seemingly out of nowhere. Like this small inconvenience requires retribution. Against who? Against what?

I had yet another tussle with my purse on the way home via the supermarket, looking for something, and emptied it out onto the seat in an effort to avoid a superagitation. Though it was late, there was unusual traffic on all the streets, and the lollygagging of some drivers, indecisive moves, unexplained delays found me suddenly hitting the inside door with my hand, as if my hand were not the servant of the rest of my body. I prayed for a patience and calm that I have only intermittently. When I experience it, I think, "Ok, now, He's giving me the Grace. I can take it from here." And then I don't, and I feel like Tantalus reaching for precious food, though I know that if i am prevented I am preventing myself. I'd rather blame someone.

I'd like to attribute this internal cacophony to the fact I have had trouble sleeping for some time now. Hormonal trouble, suggest some women friends. Maybe. I'd agree if I did not know that I have had these moods, these eruptions, all my life. Some might say, ah, she's bipolar, sudden eruptions of irritation, with periods of high mood (hypomania or mania, depending I guess on who is viewing it). I don't know that it matters what it is and what causes it. I think it's something to be dealt with and conquered, as part of a moral evolution. Some days I just do better than others. And I do know this, when I have those moments of equanimity, of passing joy, even better, I am very grateful.

Looking Down the Road

The air, last night, was cool enough to deserve a sweater after days of swelter. I savored it, and the last of our attendances at the Bowl celebrating, joyously, the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein. The voices of the late and great echoed through the hills, accompanied by a live orchestra that captured every nuance of the strings and woodwinds and horns. Gordon McCrae, Shirley Jones, Dick Haymes, Julie Andrews, Nancy Kwan. I cried at "If I Loved You" as if hearing it for the first time. The moon was full. And a lighted cross oversaw us all, punctuating the preciousness of this moment of our lives.

I thought a lot about "the Cross" yesterday, even before we shared our last hurrah at one of the wonderful sites in Los Angeles at summer's unofficial end of the summer. Some Christians call it "The Royal Road of the Cross". Many of us, of all faiths, and no faith, simply do not accept its reality, as if our subjective denial negates fact.

Julie Andrews' whose pristine tones animated audience after audience lost her voice to a surgery some 15 or 20 years ago. Gordon McCrae, young, strong, virile, on the screen forever, has been dead for many years. I seem to remember very public struggles that corroded the talent. They, as we, have walked down that road, struggling with each day, finding moments of connection, losing them again, watching the very physicality they, and we, take for granted, dissipate.

I have been attending the same Church for over 25 years. For much of that time, I have lectored, and as lector, I sit in the sanctuary during the service. Year upon year, someone sits in the same pew, giving to me the impression of invulnerability. And then, gone. Sometimes it has been sudden. Other times, their illnesses have been palpable, as they struggled to walk the aisle to their usual seats. Their names go on the sick prayer list. I wonder if that fact alerts them to the fact that they may never come off the list and move to the prayers for the dead.

In some ways, this process from robust and new to frail and old which, if we live long enough, is the inevitable for all of us, has been, for me, emphasized, by watching the brave decline of my former pastor. I remember how he used to glide down the middle aisle, straight and strong in his black cassock, stopping at the side of his elderly mother, in her regular pew, third from the front, to greet her, to kiss her on the head. She has been gone since 1999, well into her 90s. He is only in his 80s, but a medical ailment of many years passed has worked itself fully into his being, and for some time he has used a walker. But he has steadfastly continued to celebrate Mass, truly as if his life depends on it. I think perhaps it does. Back to service from his latest medical crisis and hospitalization, he struggled even more assiduously, with assistance, to the altar, where, by permission of the hierarchy, he is allowed to sit to celebrate. I want him to be there, doing that, for as long as is possible, even as I know what is possible is likely limited. For his struggle is mine. I am watching a version of myself, if I should make those years. He labors under the watchful eye of the crucified Christ, literally, as a large Cross hangs above his head. I look out into the gathered, and I remember many of those gone long before, Charles Gremillion, Paco DeLa Rosa, my own father, Ed Sullivan (not THE Ed Sullivan, but an individual who should not be forgotten just the same), the Ricardo Montalban, the Vincent Price, the Audrey Meadows, the Danny Thomas, Sonney Ottey, Eleanor, whose last name I cannot spell, Rosalie, the pastor's mother, Chris Hewitt, Ed and Ernie---I remember how their heels would click as they came into the Church. Faces fade and others replace them. In time, my face, sitting in the sanctuary will fade and hopefully, it will remain in someone's mind's eye. We are all experiencing the Cross. And joining in the suffering which leads to Resurrection. It may not be proper theology but I believe that we join in that suffering, to our spiritual benefit, whether we are in full communion with a particular faith or not. The phrase, "No one comes to the Father, except through Me" is about God's power, not our puny efforts at belief or our reluctance to do so.

I am looking down that road now, closer and closer to the kind of suffering I fear and resist, that which so many before me have already experienced. All I can do is ask the Progenitor, the Second Person who suffered in a way I hope He spares me, to keep me in His Care, and good enough, as neither prayer nor piety comes easily to me, to hear, "Well done, my good and faithful servant!"

Slightly Slothful Saturday

As I begin this entry, I have just gotten out of the shower in preparation for an evening sojourn at the Hollywood Bowl, the penultimate of my season. Essentially, my day is starting now. I have engaged in deliberate dawdling during the previous hours. Sort of, deliberate. The morning began about 10 with a call from my New York aunt to check on the Los Angelean me surrounded by the smoke of a now determined to be arson fire, the biggest ever on record in this state, and to talk about my aunt in Hawaii who needs more serious physical care than the place she is now in can provide. We talked well over an hour. And by that time, I couldn't actually decide what I wanted to do with the day. So I apparently decided not to decide. I puttered. I ironed, something which I usually put off until I have run out of everyday clothes. I sat outside on a first fairly clear day since the fires began and journalled, while Elwood and Parker, two of three backyard cats, competed for petting attention. I watched several marathon episodes of "House".

Excuse me for now, while I go to put on make up and dry my hair and pop in the contact lenses. Len Speaks, Mr. Anonymous, and a visiting friend from Texas will be here ever so shortly to pick me up.

And so, 12 a.m. of the next day, I am returned to the bosom of my little apartment.

It was "John Williams and the Music of the Movies". Mostly it was his movies. Which was fine except the selections were uneven and seemed to be taken from the most remote of scores. One was from the 1970's "Dracula" with Frank Langella. Not only did Langella then have hair, but it was 70's slicked back. The clip was dated and not because it was in black and white. And, my dear, while I am a big "Harry Potter" fan, having the entire first half of the show devoted to endless selections from the various movies was enough to drive one to become a Deatheater. I was rooting for the show to pick up when Mr. Williams returned with a medley from Warner Brothers, Casablanca, Exodus, The Pink Panther, Magnificent Seven, and, bringing out the light sabers for the first time, Star Wars. But then there was the series of jazz themed pieces from "Catch Me If You Can" which I would have been happy listening to at a dimly lit bar over a cosmo rather than under the full moon at the Bowl. It was pretty, but the momentum from medley was lost. The audience was politely receptive. I was taking a nap. More Star Wars brought out the light sabers, this time, moving in unison to whatever was played. Blue, red, green, pretty much all held by adults well past 30. I am not criticizing, cause truth be told, I wish I had had one and I am well, well past 50. Da Da Da DadaDA dadaDA! One woman, neglecting to bring her saber, waved her cell phone in time with the music. We waited for Indiana Jones, but he never came, musically speaking, as it was 11 p.m. and the ordinance imposed required end of all Bowl presentations. If I seem to be complaining, it isn't my intent, for as I frequently say, here or elsewhere, is that I almost don't care what I see at the Bowl, or whether it is precisely my cup of tea. Mr. Williams has a right to play what he wishes. More power to him. And let's face it, the man is a prodigious musician, and I am just one of 17,000 in the bleachers. Besides dinner at the roof top Patina restaurant before the show, as the sun set over the Hollywood Hills was enough to overcome any deficiencies, real or imagined. That tomorrow is our last foray into the E, K, or M Sections for the 2009 season (Rodgers and Hammerstein) is cause for a tad of sadness. But for now. . . .

It is now a cool summer night in Los Angeles, specifically, the Fairfax District, and my lazy day is just about concluded. It was quite the quiet joy.

Hot, Humid and Pyrocloudy!

I got home tonight, just before the sun set, with the hope of catching its uncharacteristic redness as it hung for the last moments in a web of ash haze. But just as I grabbed my cell phone camera, it was gone. Los Angeles. The City. And the fires are all around us.

I think this is the worse fire season I can remember. As someone who lives in the flatlands near the groovy Grove, I am not in any danger. At least I don't think I am, unless an earthquake hits, a passing concern I did have today given the heat and the Blade Runner like feel of the day. Still, aside from knowing people whose homes are in the endangered areas, and watching the around the clock coverage on the local news, the ubiquity of the Station Fire and the others of less well known nomenclature, was pronounced even for me. The sickly sweet smell of smoke has greeted every morning. Today, when I opened my car door ash flew around me. On Saturday, I saw this beautiful mushroom like cloud that I have come to know as pyrocumulus rising with agitation from behind every hill that surrounds us.

This beautiful Los Angeles landscape so readily transformed into a kind of overhanging day darkness and a pervasive sense, at least to me, of doom. Apocalyptic, comes to mind. Today I could not help but remember a rather dire bibilical promise from You Know Who involving the end of the world. But, no. Not yet, I thought. Ok, Lord, really, not now. I was distracted from the idea of earthly cataclysm by the high school students practicing in full regalia on a field and wondering whose brilliant idea was it to have kids exercising with particulate matter all around them. Was it my imagination or were the drivers particularly bad today? Californians apparently cannot drive in rain, or ash. All right, it wasn't that bad, the ash, not the driving. Me, the woman who loves summer found myself wishing for a coolish fall day to give reprieve.

They say that by the end of the week or early next week, the firefighters, those brilliant brave souls, will have a handle on it, having lost two of their own to save houses and lives, in the middle of brush where houses probably were never meant to be.

Tonight, I give them my thoughts and prayers, and thanks. And hope that tomorrow will be a safer California day.

Secularly Spiritual

Riverside is not a place I normally go to. It is about an hour and a half away. You have to go through Roubidoux, as Steinbeck or Faulkner seedy as can be, with nearly falling wooden homes and dust all about. Today I had to go. I did not want to. But I had to, in connection with my work. That part is really irrelevant, except for the part I HAD to go.

I got there. I did my job. And I was hungry. And in Riverside, there is one place I knew to go, The Mission Inn. It's been seven plus years, probably since I was last there, with a good friend, now residing in Missouri (the friend that is), to redeem a brunch I had won, for two. I still recall that afternoon, a lazy afternoon, having lunch in an outdoor patio with a European flair, and one of those figures actually move around. I don't know much about the Inn except that it took years to build and it was in the 19th century, positively old for California

I made a B line for the outside patio restaurant. It was nearly empty and I figured I had missed lunch time service. I hadn't and I picked among the many empty tables for the place I could best observe the bouganvilla, the birds, the fountain, the stone walls and balconies. The few that had been there left and I was alone. I could imagine this was my home, my courtyard in which I was having this leisurely salad lunch and lemonade, feeding the birds crumbs of bread and comfortable in a space of utter suspension from responsibility and trouble.

There are a few other places I have felt this exquisite peace. I believe, perhaps it is silly, but I do, that it is God showing us a little bit of what Paradise is like. One is in the Bronx. Really. It is called the Cloisters and is just on the edge of the Hudson. It is an art museum but it is styled after a monastery. In fact, art and actual pieces of a monastery that Thomas Merton used to visit, when it was in France, is now there. It is not a religious space, per se, but it feels ethereal. In Joshua Tree, some years ago, I was in the middle of the National Park sitting on a smooth large boulder and I felt it. A complete sense of safety, as if nothing bad could happen. As if I was touching Something of God. Certainly, in some ways, I am touching His Creation, in these moments, even if the stone was laid by man, man himself is a creation of His Hand.

So, I may have resisted today's hegira to Riverside, but it provided a priceless opportunity. I did not have to try to be meditative. I was, by the very act of sitting in that space, having that lunch, being meditative. I said I was reading the work of this monk, named McNamara. He talks of the Earthy Mystic. I don't know that this is a bit of what I experienced, but it's nice to think so.

"You Better Not Ask for Seltzer!"

As I returned to LA city proper after a sojourn in Costa Mesa today to give a lecture to incoming law students, it was well after 4 p.m. and I decided it made no sense to go to the office. I hadn't had lunch, and I was hungry and figured I'd hit The Farmer's Market on Third. It was a nice respite. It always is. Me. My food. My entertainment magazine (there really IS nothing much coming out I want to see this Fall).

On the way out of one of the gates walking back to my car I passed the usual tourists wending their way to the gastronomical stalls, and a short, balding man with an unmistakable borough of New York accent (sounded more Bronx than Brooklyn) was exhorting his wife, presumably about the beverage she could choose to accompany her feast---and he seemed very insistent--"You Better Not Ask for Seltzer!" I could have followed to hear the full context for the husbandly remonstration, but I didn't. I was going one way. They, the other. But as I continued on, I wondered why she was prohibited to ask for seltzer. I thought about the things that families make important, almost make moral imperatives, that really are not. I could imagine him saying, "You always ask for seltzer, Mona, (don't know if that is her name, but it fits the image of the two of them), don't you get tired of seltzer; I get tired of your asking for seltzer. Get a coke." Or maybe he really had a moral adjacent reason, maybe seltzer makes her unwell. I say unwell, but I mean that maybe it makes her, you know, burp, uncomfortably. For her. For everyone else. Maybe he worries that it will unsettle her stomach and ill affect their week vacation. I know what his words reminded me of, things that a parent said to a kid when I was young. "You betta not go into the water, you just ate" which meant that if you go into the water to swim after you eat, you'll drown. Not true, but I believed it till I was 40. Ok. I'm kidding. Or, "you betta go the the bathroom before we leave".

I don't know. Something about that flash of an exchange made me smile. There was an innocence about it. I bet she asked for Seltzer.

Finding a Direction

This weekend I saw the movie "Julie and Julia". I liked it. I liked both halves which merged to me into a happy whole. I would like to say that the movie inspired me to cook. It did not. I need no inspiration to eat, alas. But it did inspire otherwise. You see, Julie, the 2002 woman who cooks her way through Julia Child's famous book on French fare, decides to blog about each recipe and the day in which the recipe bloomed.

I have not been entirely happy with this blog. It has lacked direction, a center around which all the entries revolve. Last night, reading a book by the hermit monk William McNamara, The Human Adventure, I realized that much of my daily concern is taken up with trying to take steps to be in a good spiritual place when my time comes to shuffle off this mortal coil. Let me offer this image as an example of how I think about it. I don't want the last thing I do on this earth to be say, yelling at somebody on the highway who cut me off, or using one of my regrettably favorite curse words. I have heard, and I may have even written here at some point in the past, that the last word that people often say before they die is "Sh--!" Nope. I don't want that. And without a lot of work, it is a real danger.

So it occurred to me that my daily struggle is worth writing about, at least for me, and maybe for the odd reader. It's not going to be a holy blog. I am just not holy. I'd like to be. And that's the essence of the change of direction in this blog. Trying to be holy and failing more often than not. Trying to be holy doesn't mean boring. I promise. Well, I'll try not to be boring while I am trying to be holy. But this approach will help me in my writing. Yeah, just like there are a million pundits about politics, I know there are a million sites focusing on religion or some version of spiritual growth. And I am no spiritual guide, that's true. Maybe that's what will be different, who knows? That I am just this djinn from the Bronx, long dwelling in Los Angeles, who just like a whole lot of people is trying to find meaning, just mine happens to be as a practicing Catholic aiming toward the saint's friendship with God.

If today was any measure, it is indeed going to be a long and bumpy dark night of the soul. But then things of value do tend to come at a high price!

Tuesday's Tune

As my large white cat attacks the Hollywood Bowl schedule with his front paws, I stop to consider the idea of a secular withdrawal from the world, which if I were to get very lucky, and touched by an enormous wad of Divine Grace (that's what it would take) would lead me into some form of religious monastic lifestyle. I wonder if I could bring my cats?

Note to KC if you happen to read this----I am NOT depressed. Been there, done that. But not now. This is something else. . . .well, time finally to figure where I fit in before it's too late stuff.

Perhaps it is the result of finally selling my dad's condo--what a late education I have gotten in the world of real property! About to give the keys to a stranger, through his realtor, also a stranger, I close the door, literally and figuratively, on my father's passing, and leave his life, and thus part of mine. A little twinge twist in my chest accompanies my writing this.

Simplicity. That's it. No debates, professional or private. I intrude on no one's thoughts or opinions. They do not intrude on mine. Then I begin to see that proverbial "big picture" and I walk toward it and become part of it, leaving behind all things that buzz technological, and the babel that is generated by our societal self obsession, to which, alas I contribute, frequently in likely misperceived self-defense.

You have no idea what I am talking about. That's ok. No need. Maybe I'd continue with the Legacy blog about my dad. But all else would fade into unimportance.

A Biel Surprise

As my friend, Len Speaks, points out, this Hollywood Bowl season has been wildly uneven. I never care, as long as I have the setting sun, the breeze, the mountains in view, followed by the twinkling stars. But it is nice, beyond wonderful, when the show is good. I had high expectations that a "Guys and Dolls" with Scott Bakula and Brian Stokes Mitchell would be good. I have seen both these actors, cum singers, in other presentations and I know that they have singing, theatric skills. I did, however, wonder whether Jessica Biel, the young woman formerly of Seventh Heaven and fodder for ever tabloid based upon her current dating habits, could compete witht those performers. I am a bit ashamed to admit my bias, that is, I thought she could not, and that she probably been allowed to join the cast in some Hollywood low brow deal, and took quickie voice lessons so that she would not be entirely embarrassed.

Perhaps the extreme pleasure of the evening was that she is a singer, one that could match Stokes Mitchell well and truly. In fact, I could have sworn, by how the two of them intermixed on stage that they actually liked each other, in character. Funny how this young woman I do not know, never will know, I found myself proud of as if I were her very mother. Look what Jessica can do! She's not just a TV actress, or a bit of fluff. She has entertainment substance.

I was smiling at the stage and the big screen every time she came on stage. I wish her the best, and the fullest career. Of course that means she'll make lots more money than me, and she'll be the object of love and interest, and I won't. But even though that is the case, good for her!