Remarkable

We are the hero of our own lives or, at least, the leading actor. It’s our movie and come to think of it, we might also be part anti-hero, fool or victim along the way.

I have never thought of myself as remarkable. To prove it, I googled my name and saw that I barely exist. Other remarkable men with my name take up the first six pages.

I imagine each Norm Levine regards himself as the name brand and all the others as generic equivalents. That would be defined as mentally healthy. 

Remarkable is a remarkable word. Whether I am remarkable is something I leave for others to remark upon. The word itself is really neutral. 

What I know for sure is that life itself is spectacular, miraculous and astonishing. This time granted us is to be revered. The older I get, the word grateful takes on more meaning. And to live with gratitude is to caretake this ecosystem and each other. 

Even while witnessing the wreckage of our once civil society I still celebrate my good fortune not only for this accident of geography that deposited me here and not there, but also for having lived my life being fully met in loving relationships. Love, that is, in its many permutations.

I've now reached the age when that adjective, remarkable, has flipped. After seven test tubes of blood, my lab results have come back and my doctor makes the sweetest pronouncement: unremarkable, a state devoutly to be wished for.

I am in awe of creative people who have widened our perceptions and shared their achievement. At the same time some of us tend to an interior landscape with nurturing and small wisdoms that further contribute to our evolution and do so unnoticed. Both are the measure of our humanity. We are all remarkable.                                   

World Serious

 Even as Western Civilization is burning, Nero and I are fiddling with our respective sports of the day. At least we have progressed from lions and gladiators to men in colored pajamas swatting flying objects with wooden sticks.

Baseball awaits. The World Series nudges the World Seriously for my attention. The outrage and wreckage of breaking news will yield to the poetry, drama and timelessness which baseball offers. It has been my alternative universe since my father took me to my first game at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn in 1939. 

I'll be there taking my position on the couch wearing my game face. No fangs, but I may cheer and jeer sufficient to sublimate my hostility. Fandom is an inexplicable state. Belief in the primacy of the real world is suspended. Childhood is reenacted. It is theater. It is the restoration of law and order. It is civility. It is life.

At 162 games, the regular season is far too long. The postseason adds another dozen or more. Players are hurting and tired. Yet they are also juiced. Heroes will emerge extending the reach of the human body, but none are likely to display the arrogance of their act nor any vilification of the opponent as we see from the President. 

Baseball is a game of failure. It is a humbling experience. After an overdose of audacity, we welcome those moments of humility. 

The outcome of the World Series will change nothing on planet earth. Glaciers will continue to melt while ICE will remain cold and heartless. Perhaps people will note how rules prevail inside the stadium as opposed to the lawlessness of the real world.

This page was written while watching the game. The pace of the game allows for thoughts to compose themselves. Baseball halts the clock and that alone is worth the price of admission.

Kindred Faces

To say that Trump is indulging in a bit of overreach is like saying that Moby Dick was a large hunk of gefilte fish. In fact, we are witnessing nothing less than a coup, the systematic overthrow of our constitutional democracy. 

His nine months in office is a pregnancy which has birthed a newborn monarchy, complete with babbling incoherence and diaper pins stuck in vital organs of the body politic.  

Trump dominates the news cycle with daily tantrums and bullying edicts. It is as if he is throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. The country is covered with toxic ragu which has metastasized to the point where many people are inured to the daily outrage and lethal consequences.

We mock him with inflatables, and he mocks the population with infantile contempt. A normal person might pause and weigh the discontent. Instead, he issues a video of himself dumping excrement over the nation; a Trumpian version of let them eat cake.

Seven to eight million protesters spread out over a thousand cities and towns showed up for this second No Kings Day. The anger on faces seemed to be subsumed by the joy of camaraderie. If the art and poetry of signs fell on deaf ears in the White House, the sheer numbers could not be ignored. 

I would like to know how many in those numbers voted for Trump. How many minds have been changed during the past nine months? How many elected MAGA legislators and jurists have taken notice? And what will it take to grow a spine on Senate and House members before they become fearful of losing their seat in the next election, rigged as it may be? 

Word has it that twelve million is the number to reach critical mass which would move the needle. That represents 3.5% of our population and shall be the goal for future demonstrations.

In the meantime, I play a dirge on my keyboard. Funereal words interrupted by sprouts and glimmers from millions of kindred faces radiated with hope. 

 

The Bridge

The brink, the verge, the plunge

jumping into the deep, the unknown

opening scene for dozens of movies

(Final Destination, Cliffhanger)

usually saved by a bystander,

maybe waiting for an intervention

(Last Train To Lisbon)

maybe not…man leaped from Golden Gate

(Gone In Sixty Seconds)

changed his mind on the way down

then saved by a sea lion. 

(Kevin Hines, five years ago)

The shore is also a bridge, a border,

between this water, this dry land

an edged place of ultimates   

where the Red Sea parted, 

or the troubled West Bank

the shores of Longfellow's Gitchigumee 

we all come to the shore

not just finally but many times

to cross our Rubicon, get ferried 

or else find the pebble at our feet

polished to jewel

like that tree planted by the water

we shall not be moved 

across this moment of great divide

where even Hiroshige's is a bridge too far.

23 Skidoo

One of those phrases common in my early years which meant, better get the hell out of here.... and it did. The expression died and no one seems to have missed it. Its provenance leads me down to many forks.

One path goes to the notion that skidoo is shorthand for  skedaddle which was a term used in the Civil War meaning retreat with haste. Another tale is that the wind currents cause a swirl around the Flatiron Building on 23rd St. in Manhattan causing one to flee. And then there is the claim that racetracks had room for only 22 horses at the starting gate so the 23rd horse had to skidoo from its position in the 2nd row.

When I hear 23rd my mind jumps to the 23rd psalm. From there I wonder about that strange Wordle word, psalm. 

In ancient times it used to be a verb, to pluck as a stringed instrument. A psalm became any song sung to the strings of a harp. If we listen, a certain music can be heard, a rhythm, a pulse to defeat the noise out of which we can create a psalm of our own.

The keyboard is my harp. Words are lyrics cocooned as I am in my imagined green pasture beyond the fray, while preparing a table for distant enemies who have trespassed on the fellowship I have always known, when we once shepherd each other.

We have become a nation in the valley of shadows, skedaddled, turbulent and polarized. Can we turn that word to pole us across the river?

Another well-traveled word is rival which came from river. Originally it meant a person using the same stream as their neighbor and the river was a shared resource. Sadly, the meaning flipped from communal to competitive and the parties became rivals.

The tracing of words foretells the chronicle of man, at least in this 23 skidoo society into which we have devolved. Sit down, rival, have a piece of fruit. May breaking news be the bread between us. Let our rod and staff lead us to still water, cups running over. 

 

Coping

When I’m not gnashing my teeth, I’m girding my loins. Just like you. I’m done bashing the guy. To say his ignorance is only overshadowed by his arrogance only serves to vent my spleen. The case has long since been made and reinforced daily. Yet no instance of stupidity or sadism is enough to rouse his slumbering constituency.

The nagging question is how to cope. I had my turn at the barricades. Resistance at my age precludes marches and rallies. The human potential that has been deported, defunded or suppressed has to be met with acts of the imagination and soulful relationships supporting each other. 

Much can happen over poke bowls or falafel wraps. Kinship is always on the menu.  

The moral violence in words and deeds which seems to accompany breaking news, must be answered with a surge of music, art, dance or poetry. I would also include simple kindness and civil discourse as a creative moment. Our descent into depravity requires nothing less, though everyone will write their own prescription.

The values once regarded as givens in our former democracy are not only under assault but have been replaced by lawlessness, greed and a wanton disregard for human suffering.

So we reach for even small acts of transcendence. Brush on canvas, fingers on the keyboard, communing with nature, sounds from Brahms to Coltrane, transport from artistry on stage or screen; anything which offers a lift serves to restore what has been lost or under siege.

Why just last night......

Words

It’s all true. Every word I've written has been plagiarized ... from the dictionary. I have only rearranged their order. These days, dictionaries have gone the way of encyclopedias and the thesaurus. Even spell check will soon be a relic, to be replaced by the dreaded AI. The world doesn’t hold still for a minute.

Words come and go faster than the last great idea I had. Some are on life support while others are screaming their first breath in the maternity ward.

The sentinels at the gate can’t agree on what to include. The Cambridge Dictionary added over 6,000 new words this year while Merriam-Webster allowed a mere 370. I think the lexicographers ought to have a softball game and settle the matter or shout each other under the table.

Words are wondrous things. I can’t say enough about them. A few squiggles on the page or on the lips can be life-changing. The marriage vow: I do or Hell, no, I won't go.  

There was a time when the well-turned phrase would get you re-invited to the next dinner party. Ask Henry James. I doubt if he ever ate at home.

Up until WWI, speechifying was conflated with intellect. During that crime against humanity, soldiers lost limbs and long-winded phrases died in the trenches. A generation was lost along with polysyllabic words; staccato jazz translated to clipped sentences. 

Concision entered poetry. Literature became stripped of frippery the same way the Bauhaus School brought unornamented Modernism to architecture. The old standard of florid sentences in which the subject was separated from the predicate by pages of commas and semicolons was no longer considered a thing of beauty.

Even if Faulkner didn't get the memo, Hemingway made brevity the new standard. It doesn’t get any shorter than his short story: Baby shoes for sale; never used.

When did minimalism become such a virtue? Are we a lazy people or just in a hurry on our way to nowhere? Is this payback for long-winded bloviating; those orators in the halls of Congress or men of the cloth intoning everything God has to say?

Now the pendulum has swung and some fine words are hanging by their thumbs. LOL. The internet has us writing in fluent acronyms. IMHO, this is a small step for man and a giant step on the wrong road for mankind. We may end up conversing in shrugs, nods and grunts.

On the other hand, nothing is more democratic than language. Each word is an agreed-upon utterance rising organically by popular consent. Words morph from other words and also die from exhaustion. Awe used to be my religion. Now it has become limp from overuse; an awesome shame. 

Brevity has shortened our perceptual span. Linguists believe that language precedes thought. Fewer words limit ideas. A broad vocabulary trains the mind to think in more nuanced ways. In less than a year our native tongue has been demeaned by simplistic terms and name-calling. Deceit leads to debasement. 

T.S. Eliot described poetry as a raid on the inarticulate. We are all poets and we struggle to capture those feelings for which words fail us. Let us find ways to express our vehemence against this tide, even as we revivify language to support and find soulful connections with one another.