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.