Salty like hot dogs (and tears). Sweet like marmalade (and life).
The fond fantasy of the elderly is to remain independent. Yet networks of interdependence sustain human usefulness and purpose.
~~ William Willimon, Aging: Growing Old in Church
Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.
~~ Malcolm Forbes
The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.
~~Peter Senge
In this labyrinth maze called age
I walk with care
The twists and turns engage? enrage?
No stage seems fair
If I am young I may be strong
In old age wise
Will my next choice be right or wrong?
I agonize
To quickly choose or take my time
Hingeing on what?
Whether I’m young or in my prime
Life’s not clear-cut
This is my response to today JusJoJan prompt: labyrinth. It’s an Irish poetic for called a deachnadh cummaisc:
The photo is my brother walking a labyrinth in Bayeux.
It’s going to sound rather silly, but my dream Scottish vacation would be to go spend anywhere from a week to a month in some small town on the coast of Scotland.
The two things that I want to do are:
May someday, right?
This post is brought to you by the JusJoJan prompt of the day: eavesdropper.
The prompt for today is transmission. I groaned.
Even though I grew up in a science-y medical family, where my first thought should have been disease transmission or something like that, I thought of a car.
I don’t understand cars, specifically car engines.
When I was in high school, I found out I could miss classes one afternoon by taking the ASVAB (Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery) test. It was for kids who were looking to go into the military. I wasn’t looking to go into the military, but I was looking to miss a few classes.
I’ve always been a good test-taker – very logical brain and all that. I was good in English, had taken a year of French, and was taking Latin. I had always been placed in advanced math classes. However, the ASVAB had questions that were so puzzling to me that I was flat-out guessing on.
The question I remember best is “What is the function of a carburetor?” I had no idea.
After the test, I asked one of the boys in my class about carburetors. He immediately answered — because he knew — but I was no better informed on carburetors than I was before the question or the test for that matter.
Over the years, I’ve told that story and asked many people what a carburetor does.
I know the answer, but I really don’t. The answer that I could now correctly choose in a multiple guess situation on a test is that the carburetor mixes air with fuel. The fuel needs air to burn.
To be clear, those are just words that I’m saying. I don’t know what they mean.
When I coached swimming, I would get in the water before giving the swimmers a new drill to do so that I knew what the drill felt. I knew from my own experience what their arm should feel like or how their legs should be kicking.
Carburetors? I don’t know.
Transmissions? I don’t know.
I asked a friend what a car transmission does. He said it changes the gears, or changes the car from park to drive, something like that.
“So it’s like the stick-shift when I had a standard?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “that’s a gear box.”
Clear as mud.
I’m a deep-diver. I want to understand. Something in my brain has to click so it’s more than words I’m saying. I want it to be something I really know.
This is why I watch the god-awful videos of the shootings.
Sometimes the words people say don’t line up with what I’m seeing.
So I watch another video.
And another.
I listen to the explanations from one side.
And then from the other.
I may never understand carburetors or transmissions, but I feel very confident in saying that the victims in Minneapolis are not the Border Patrol agents (as Gregory Bovino says), but are the people who are trying to help their neighbors and are ending up dead.
I really don’t understand how we came to this place as a country. That’s even more of a mystery to me than a carburetor.
Just to be clear, this post has nothing to do with altruism.
Altruism is the prompt for JusJoJan.
True story: I don’t follow American football. Not even a little. Honestly, I’ve never really understood the game. It looks like one people-pile after another. They talk about downs, which are different from people-piles, although it sure does look like a lot of people go down in a people-pile. Then there’s the whole scoring thing: some things earn 6 points, other things earn 3, and still others earn 1, or is it 2. I don’t know.
I coached swimming. The first person to touch the wall won.
My kids played soccer. If they kicked the ball in the goal, they got one point.
Easy and straight-forward, right?
I knew my son and his family were watching some Buffalo Bills game on Saturday night, so I half-watched about 5 minutes of it. Some guy caught the ball, but another guy ripped the ball right out of his arms. The whole thing didn’t look fair. I later told my brother about it, saying (again) that I really don’t understand football and wondered why people watch it.
“You need to watch this,” he said, and he directed me to a video of a guy running back-back-back, pushed by a bunch of guys from the other team, and he throws the ball — a long long pass to a guy waiting in the endzone and they scored.
Running backwards AND throwing accurately impresses me.
All this goes to show that an impressive bit of athleticism impresses me.
Is it altruistic?
No. The fact that I can’t easily find a video that shows this shows how UNaltruistic American sports are.
It’s all about the money, right?
These things happen in a vacuum accesible only to those who sell their souls to something.
I did. I watched some inane advertisement to see that video.
So now the fact remains that I am NOT a football fan, and it has nothing to do with understanding the sport. It has more to do with the $$-wall around the whole thing.
Isn’t impatience beautiful? Isn’t it wonderful? Don’t you just love impatience?
Wait — what? You don’t?
What did Kafka say? Really? He said, “There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.”
Why did he dislike flowers so much?
What?
There’s a difference between impatience and impatiens?
Never mind.
Forget everything I just said.
I just jotted this. Like in less than 5 minutes. The prompt today was “impatience.“
“Haud yer wheesht”
“Yer bum’s oot the windae”
These are my two lines for One-Liner Wednesday. I know, I know — it’s supposed to be only one.
I’m getting ready for my third Burns-ish celebration that I do with the seniors where I work. I’ve got the bagpiper set, haggis in the fridge, and cooking to do this weekend.
These two lines are Scottish. I have yet to go to Scotland, but I love reading about, watching movies set there, listening to the accent, etc.
Wheesht alone means hush, like talking to a child. But Haud yer weesht is a wee bit stronger, like Be Quiet!
Yer bum’s oot the windae means You’re talking rubbish.
I chose those two Scottish lines because I’ve been thinking about one of my countrymen who HAS traveled to Scotland, may even own property there in the form of a golf course or two, who may be abroad right now, who really needs to learn to wheesht because his bum’s oot the windae, if you know what I mean.
I have some regular visitors to my office. I rather like that. I watch them peek around the door to see if someone else is in my office.
“Is the coast clear?” or “Can I come in?” or “Is it all right if I say hi?”
Of course, I invite them in. It’s the best part of my day.
These days, I have a frequent flyer. I’ll call him Stan.
He’s a can-I-come-in kind of guy. “How are you, young lady?” he always asks.
Between you and me, I hate being called “young lady.” I’m not young. I may not even be much of a lady. And he’s younger than I am. Whatever.
“So what did you have for dinner last night?” He always asks that. I tell him. Even when it’s peanut butter and jelly. I think he’s looking for dinner ideas.
When I was cooking for my tribe, the hardest part was the idea.
If someone told me that tonight was meatloaf night, I would make a meatloaf. But coming up with the idea for meatloaf was something that taxed my brain.
So I started writing out a monthly menu.
Seriously.
My very first blog — 20-some years ago — included a page that was “What’s for dinner tonight.” I had a friend that told me that’s what she always went to first. For the idea.
I don’t even remember the name of that blog.
Sad, but true.
Why am I telling you all this? Oh, yeah. Stan in my office.
Stan comes in to talk. About this and that. About nothing, really.
And yet about everything.
“I love talking to you,” he said today. “You’re very honest.”
I don’t know how to be anything but.
“You’re strong,” he said.
I might beg to differ, but what good would it do?
“What are you having for dinner tonight?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, honestly, weakly. I really don’t.
I think there’s something unspoken in all these conversations.
I’m not 100% sure what it is, but I think it’s the honesty.
I’m not looking to BS anyone. My life is my life — full of mis-steps and mistakes.
Come into my office and I’ll tell you all about it.
And listen to you talk about your less-than-perfect life.
The coast is clear.
You can come in.
It’s okay if you want to say hi.
I started a post on baking cinnamon rolls and how the baker develops a recognition of the consistency of the dough as it’s being kneaded. Yes, this yeast is alive and doing the thing it’s supposed to do.
But then I second-guessed myself. Few people will relate to that, I thought.
My fallback is to find a quote using the prompt. I forgot to mention that today’s prompt was consistency.
Consistency quotes are, well, pretty consistent. Encouragement to stick with a thing.
“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” ~~ Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
“Consistency is the mother of mastery.” ~~ author unknown
“The secret to winning is constant, consistent management.” ~~ Tom Landry
“Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity.” ~~ Bruce Lee
“Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.” ~~ John C. Maxwell
You get the idea, right?
And it’s great advice; it really is!
But then I read Oscar Wilde’s quote on consistency.
He always was a rebel.
And I really appreciate that.
One of the ways that I organize my thoughts each morning is reading. It sets me on the right path for today.
Then, I copy a quote or two into my journal. Writing out the words, I believe, helps them stick in my brain.
This weekend, I am not at home. I could have sworn that I brought a pen with me, but it is nowhere to be found. It’s probably with my glasses.
I’m at an inn, not a chain hotel. If I were in a hotel room, I’m sure there would be a pen or two, a pad of paper or two, and far less charm than where I’m staying.
So, this morning, here is where I will copy the quote that struck me.
I’m reading a book called Aging: Growing Old in Church by Will Willimon. For the past several years, I have focused on one author each year. This year, I chose William Willimon, who somewhere between his first book, Between Two Advents, an early book of his, and this one, he shortened his name to Will instead of William. I’m curious about that.
I also wrote a letter to him, yet to be printed and mailed, asking if I could meet him toward the end of the year. When you read a lot of books by an author, you feel like you know him. My authors have all been deceased by the time I’m bingeing on them. Will(iam) Willimon is very much alive. Maybe I’ll get brave enough to send that letter.
Anyway, today’s quote:
The poet T.S. Eliot lists three ills of aging: ills of the body, ills of the world, and ills of the past… Some older persons are consumed with remorse due to life paths taken and not taken, fractured relationships, and regrettable life choices…. Nearly every Sunday the pastor invites us to ‘confess our sins to Almighty God,’ an invitation for everyone to unburden and leave their regrets at the altar. Jesus commanded us to forgive our enemies, and sometimes our greatest enemy is our vain attempt to live our lives without mistakes and regrets.
I believe that a fundamental secret of successful aging is learning to affirm the lives God gives us in the face of regret that God didn’t give us the lives we thought we needed to live happily.
This post is brought to you by the JusJoJan prompt: organ. What a great word! When I read it, organize immediately came to mind. Organ could also refer to your liver or kidney, or a musical instrument. Then there’s organic chemistry. And organisms. Even a word like ‘organization’ can go in different directions! So thank you, Kaye, for a great prompt!
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 