Remembering Grandma, This Year

Today would have been Grandma's 96th birthday. Instead, she died at quantized age 95 on June 29, 2024. She had her loved ones around her when she exhaled her final breath.

I felt lucky to see Grandma sharp and funny until well into her 90s. On her 90th birthday celebration in an American Legion building in the great north, Grandma spent more time on the dance floor than her own children and grandchildren, never breaking a sweat. On one of my final visits to her home in assisted living, she told my partner with full conviction and clarity, "If he's ever a shit to you, you tell him to, 'Hit the road, Jack!'" In many ways, she reminded me of one of my favorite authors, Brenda Ueland, and vice versa. In the foreword for the Gray Wolf Press release of Ueland's book If You Want to Write, author Andrei Codrescu wrote the following of Ueland:

Simply by living to a very old age with vividness, courage, and no loss of either wits of chutzpah, Brenda Ueland is no mere mortal.

I like to think the same of Grandma.

I was too timid to say anything at Grandpa's funeral(s) in 2014 and 2015, though I did play trumpet with heavy vibrato (involuntary from sadness) at one service. I was too distraught to say anything at my own father's funeral. Well, just like Brenda Ueland taught me how to (really) write, Grandma taught me how to (really) read, and to honor that gift of the written word, I was not going to be a coward again for her funeral service. I wrote and spoke the following words at her funeral service in early July of this year. In this transcription, I performed minor edits to line breaks and to my name (it's Arthur to you, reader). These words are very specific to my life with her, but I hope they remind you of a delightful and/or boisterous family member or mentor who made a big impression on you. Or, as Brenda Ueland would say, I hope you find them microscopically truthful.

My grandma taught me how to adventure.

Around age 4 she pulled me away
    from some idle play
    with action figures to say,
    "Arthur. You are going to learn to read!"

She sat me down with a book
    and pulled word after word
    out of my developing brain and stumbling        voice.

Able to read, I ventured from town to town,
    country to country, planet to planet!
    all from the comfort of an armchair.

Able to read, I pursued the poems
    she shared with me
    to help map out the wilds of my inner self.

"Never let anyone mess with your swing!"
    read a baseball-themed poem from the            book
    101 Poems that Could Save Your Life.

I do wonder how much she worried about me when she gave me that book!

Poems she wrote and collected
    rang clearly like a bell
    at every syllable.

With every book I pulled from her shelf
    I felt a little braver being myself.

And that's what I think my grandma really was:
    a teacher of courage.

Anyone who knew her fiery spirit
    felt warmer and more like themselves           around her.

Around age 12 she pulled me away
    from some idle play
    with video games to say,
    "Arthur. You are going on a hike with me!"

And suddenly, the forests I explored
    were no longer green pixels,
    but living, shaking, breathing things
    to touch and smell.

Her tenacity pulled her way ahead of me
    but I soon learned to walk briskly and daily
    like she did
    for as long as she possibly could.

And so my definition of a "long walk"
    increased from down the street
    to a mile
    to five miles
    to fifteen miles!

Walking with Grandma convinced me that
    no journey was ever too long,
    it was just another step forward.

And so I will carry my grandma with me
    in every word I speak and every step I walk.
I invite you all to carry her with you as well.

Remembering Grandpa, A Decade Later

In the very early morning of October 1, 2014, 10 years ago today, Grandpa died. He had his loved ones around him when he exhaled his final breath.

It wasn't unexpected. He had been in hospice care since early September of that year. A handful of years before that, he had been diagnosed with and suffered from "run of the mill" dementia as well as dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). DLB is not very desirable. Symptoms include fluctuating cognition and alertness, loss of sleep paralysis during REM sleep (physically acting out your dreams), Parkinsonism, and visual hallucinations. The cause of the disease is precisely unknown, but it seems to involve abnormal collections of proteins in the brain that make up Lewy bodies or Lewy neurites, which cause neurons to function less optimally and die, which causes profound dopamine dysfunction. If you have a friend or loved one who is getting older and experiencing dementia-like symptoms, consider helping them get evaluated for possible DLB.

While Grandpa was alive in his twilight, the most outwardly obvious DLB symptoms were Parkinsonism and visual hallucinations. He shook quite a bit, couldn't hold on to hardly anything. And yet, he managed to be a klepto to items that were important to other members of the family, like glasses. When he hallucinated, he tried to describe the beings that only he saw and heard, but he hardly found the words to do it. At one point in this experience, he managed enough sensible words to my cousin to suggest he knew he was seeing things and would rather not be alive. And yet I also remember a pleasant visit with him shortly before he moved into hospice care. We stood before a wide living room window overlooking the green, plush front yard. I didn't say anything and neither did he, equals on the debate stage. We looked at clouds sailing on a pastel blue sky and branches lightly swinging in the wind. It must have lasted no more than 10 minutes, but it felt like one of the moments of "existential time", lasting forever in meaning if not on a chronometer.

When he had his wits about him, when I was still a lad, Grandpa taught me the power of puzzles. Some puzzles were minor investigations into the origins of certain sounds or smells, or perhaps the etymology of some words. Some puzzles were newspaper cutouts from the "games" section. Some were math problems, and I liked that he took me seriously with problems tougher than those assigned in school. When I was young, I had no idea what my grandpa's title "civil engineer" meant, but as I learned from my own engineering practice it's a heck of a lot of math. By far my favorite kind of puzzles to work on with him were puzzle scavenger hunts we created for the family (Mom's side). He created the original puzzle scavenger hunts when I was too young to help, and he recruited my help when I was about 10. We hiked the great northern pine woods near his cabin, charting out viable paths for the family to follow along with interesting wonders and discoverable trinkets along the way. Some example wonders were "ADDE Rock", "Grand Woodchuck Canyon", and "Old Witch #4". We wrote rhyming riddles that led from wonder to wonder, clues often hidden in plain sight. The hunts usually led straight back to the cabin, where gifts for everyone (birthday near or far) lay waiting in a treasure chest that could only be "unlocked" by trinkets and artifacts discovered on the hike. Picture something like the key item system in Ocarina of Time, except the key items were cut out of construction paper, as was the map of the woods. If I have my wits about me in a couple years, I want to create puzzle scavenger hunts like these for the kids of the next generation.

I'm reminded of the daily haiku challenge I created for myself right after he died. I wanted to challenge my brain with word arts to honor his brain (before he had no words). I wrote a haiku for most of the days of the year of the challenge (301/365 = 82.5%, B-). One of the original entries in this challenge was based on the French poem The Cemetery by the Sea (English title obviously), by way of its mention in the 2013 Miyazaki film The Wind Rises. (Incidentally, the main character of The Wind Rises is a brilliant engineer like Grandpa.) The line of the poem that still snares my attention is quoted below.

The wind is rising... We must try to live!

We must. What else is there to do?

When I pass by fields in my mornings walks or runs, I see dewy spider webs on plants in the morning sun and think of Grandpa. He taught me how to pay attention to little details like the dew while we slowly walked in the woods together. In one directly quoted haiku from the daily haiku challenge, I hope you find the courage to seek beauty in every place you look.

"Is all common, base?"/
"Have you seen the morning dew?/
There's no rarer gem"

Spring Poetry Project 2024

I didn't expect this year's spring poetry assignment was going to happen, but it happened and here are the results.

I was just trying to delete a bunch of older online accounts because who needs that shit lying around, y'know? Mundane stuff. I logged in to my old Evernote account to change things up, and while I was there, I found lots of old notes to myself. We're talking the off-the-cuff, "ubiquitous capture" kinds of notes, everything that was happening around me, except the important stuff like pictures of people. Some notes were nicer to myself than others, fewer part-time jobs and more wondering. A note from around this time 11 years ago wanted to capture a scan of a poem I must have written close to a decade before that. The poem is a bit more like prose without paragraphs, and its sayings are just encouragements I'd heard from other people. But what else do we have when we're freshmen in high school?

I admire that a younger instance of me wanted to express something, probably in coping with palpitations from unrequited love. It makes me happy that I've been trying to express myself through words for recovery and equanimity for the past two decades.

What I didn't admire was the capture of the poem by that slightly younger version of me (2013). A gruesome fluorescent white from phone camera technology that did not meet its marketing hype. A "ubiquitous capture" system that failed by leveling a desire to feel through the written word with stupid fucking shit like receipts and bad photos of food. Totally inept response, slightly younger me.

So this year for spring as I get all weepy like I always do, I'm responding to the younger, younger me with a new poem. This new poem has a style that a younger, younger me would have never thought to use, but he did always wonder why acrostic poems would indent their second line per stanza. I'm happy to be writing back to the past with an answer.

Presented below is the trite but earnest poem from 2004(?) with a poem from 2024 in response. Enjoy!

A continent doesn’t cry as it crawls
    adrift a boiling red sea
A rift yawns in its wake
Lava is such a passionate wound,
    the blood of the earth spilling over,
        glowing,
            but still made of stuff
                we somehow call mundane

Our mother does not even notice

    our tiny blips of life

She just wishes we were better

The earth also doesn’t know
    she’s going to die until too late
That’ll be long after we’re gone, oh well

So what will you do with this speck of existence?

The best times in the books
    are when new things happen
Good or bad,
    at least there was a story to tell

Shameless Recommendations 2023-03-09

1. Read The Book of Form and Emptiness, especially if you have concerns about the materials and possessions around you and/or you've experienced loss in recent years.
2. If you happen to be in southeast Michigan, visit Westborn Market and pick yourself up some "Real Deal Tater Chips", especially the BBQ flavor. I've talked about how good BBQ Joe Chips are, and I still think they're great. But these chips from Westborn are the "Real Deal". I think their packaging is a little goofy ("Chippy, Chippy, Boom! Boom!") and it doesn't sell how tasty the insides are. The cracked black pepper on top of other BBQ spices makes them a serious contender for "Best BBQ Potato Chips".
3. Play the party card game Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza. It's a seriously silly good time. Be sure to remove hand jewelry and make sure your nails aren't too sharp! Otherwise, you'll quickly learn why I provide this cautionary advice.
4. Check out the music artist on4word. They're currently on Bandcamp and YouTube. They use selections of Nintendo 64 game sound fonts to recompose critically acclaimed "alternative" and "electronic" music, such as Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, and Radiohead. As I'm writing this, I realize these sounds may only appeal to older millennials who enjoy both Nintendo 64 and music they were too young to experience in real time, so YMMV.
5. Read more about Discordianism and, more broadly, apophenia. I learned a lot about myself by giving a name to my mind's tendency to connect unrelated things. Put another way, and related to point #4, "Just 'cause you feel it/ Doesn't mean it's there".
   

Talk to Yourself How You'd Talk to Your Friends

That's right, we're going to flip the Golden Rule on its head for fun and profit. The Golden Rule, remarkably, has its share of criticism. (George Bernard Shaw says, "Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.")

I have developed enough metacognition over the years to realize how harsh my tone has been with myself. Maybe you've found similar awareness. I developed a more compassionate voice to myself after reflecting on my tone in old journal entries ("Why do I even try? This isn't going to work. I'm a wreck.") and thinking more about how language is consciousness and vice versa ergo harsh words are literal psychic damage. 

If, for instance, a friend doesn't meet their running goals for the week, how would you respond to that? Would you tell them they should give up and not try again? Would you say, "Put your damn shoes back on and MOVE!"? Probably not, for one reason or other. Why should you talk to yourself like that?

If a friend isn't feeling motivated to do anything, would you yell at them and call them names until they did something? Probably not.

I hear and see people I know advocating very intense self-discipline, to the point where I worry about them. As if their own inner parent were very strict with their schedule, their diet, their house rules. If you've got enough structure in your life to support your basic needs, why continue to push discipline? Who is it really benefiting? Maybe you could convert that punishment into nurturing guidance?

I think one reason for harsh self-talk is that it's hidden to others. No one else can hear and then judge this self-talk, and so it can devolve into verbal abuse. If you verbally abused a friend you'd see their confused and horrified face and maybe anger and retaliation. You don't see such negative feedback when rudely addressing yourself in your head. So here I am offering that negative feedback: cut it out.

Maybe this is too Barney & Friends to be taken seriously, but wouldn't you like to be your own friend? I think you're worth it, and I'm not even trying to take your money.

Maybe I'm too firmly rooted in idleness movements for today's hustling and bustling society, but I firmly believe you should cut yourself some slack. You'd do this for others. Why not do the same for yourself? You're worth it.

Sassafras Roots

I recently started reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. There are plenty of articles and interviews to read about the book and the author, so I won't bore you with details you can find better written elsewhere. I do want to share a recent self discovery as it relates to the book's material. 

I have lived by the following quote for what seems like about the past ten years: "Time you enjoy is never wasted." I forget where I heard that quote first. At this point, I may have said it so many times that a historian may credit me with creating the phrase. I think it's still relevant to my outlook today. Thanks to the message I'm picking up from Four Thousand Weeks, I'd offer an even simpler take: "Time is never wasted." 

Time is never "wasted", at all, because it can't ever really be "spent" as if it's a currency that you can have more or less of at any given instant. (How would it even be possible to "have" time in an instant?) Time is it. That is, your experience, any given moment in which you can exist, is time. The accumulation of moments appears to be a unidirectional and linear flow of time for how we "pass through it". Really, instead of thinking of time as some currency, it's more like an integral from calculus. 

All the moments you've experienced, in "deep time" as some call it, make up your life, sum into this integral. No measure of years, months, days, minutes, seconds, or smaller, can accurately and consistently describe this accrual. If, for instance, you spent a year grieving, you'd probably accrue many fewer moments to remember because of being in a lower energy state, but you'd "have" plenty of time to reflect on past moments. That year will not have gone any faster or slower by scientific measures. It may feel a lot slower from the lack of punctuated events in life. But it'd be ample time to review the story told so far, a fine activity in this lower energy state. (All this, I should add, requires ample rest. No need to force oneself into accruing more memories. There's no room for that in this state.) 

Don't worry too much about "being fully in the moment" or "being here now". You're always now, and you're always here. There's no way to do it "right" or "wrong". You might remember some moments better. Those are the ones to reflect on and appreciate anyway. 

Thank you for "spending" your time to read this blog post. Maybe it bored you or scared you in thinking about time an unconventional way. Maybe you had an enjoyable moment.

I Wish There Were Fewer Manifestos

Anyone else feel like there are too many manifestos out there? I'm not even talking about the horrid kind left behind by mass murderers, I'm also talking about manifestos of corporations, non-profit organizations, books in your book clubs, and political movements.

One of the greatest things there is is to not know. To live with wonder about an infinite universe is humbling and calming. There is so, so much that each one of us doesn't know anything about. Why prize what we claim to believe or find "true" when it's not even a sizable fraction of what's left unknown?

A manifesto demands adherence, some shared set of beliefs. The thing is, no one ever really fully buys into a statement of shared beliefs. Some statements we can tolerate being around even if we don't agree. Some we really don't agree with. Some things we accept in disagreement out of convenience or exhaustion. More often than not it's the idea of someone who's really bought in, and the rest follow along thinking they'll maybe get something out of it. If not everyone's bought in, why use language like "we" in your statements?

The next time you're reading a manifesto, ask yourself, "Do I really believe that?" Maybe you'll find out you don't. I encourage your independent discovery.