Resveratrol: The new fountain of youth.

If Morpheus asks you, always pick the red pill if it contains Resveratrol.

Juan Ponce de León had a good idea: Find the Fountain of Youth. Alas, it didn’t work out for poor Ponce. 

But for millions of Baby Boomers, who are looking at a steady degradation of youth, there is a potential window left to reclaim their lost youth. What is the name of this magic substance? Resveratrol. It is a chemical found in red wine, red grape skins, purple grape juice, mulberries, and in smaller amounts - in peanuts. Now you know why the French are such notoriously great lovers, despite their poor diets and chain smoking. It is apparently their regular consumption of wine that has given them, 'joie de vivre!'

The “French Paradox”—the observation that mortality from coronary heart disease is relatively low in France despite relatively high levels of dietary saturated fat and cigarette smoking—led to the idea that regular consumption of red wine might provide additional protection from cardiovascular disease. Red wine contains Resveratrol and even higher levels of flavonoids. These polyphenolic compounds have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and other potentially anti-atherogenic effects (in the test tube studies) and in animal models of atherosclerosis.

Personally, I have marveled at the individuals I’ve met who seemed to be in possession of a youth serum. If I must be French to be Peter Pan, sign me up. And while there are many, especially in Hollywood, and probably in France, who use plastic surgery to make it appear as if they are forever young, their internal organs don’t agree with the prima facie evidence. Because, as we all know, beauty is usually only skin deep. But Resveratrol works from the inside out by turning on the SIRT1 ‘longevity gene.’ http://www.johnsonupdaydowndaydiet.com/html/resveratrol-why-it-works.html

The largest study ever completed of organic food was done in 2007, and the results indicated that organic fruits and vegetables contain 40% more antioxidants than non-organic fruits and vegetables. So organic Resveratrol is better than non-organic Resveratrol. To obtain the potency necessary to turn on the cellular rejuvenation process, it would be necessary to drink about 300 bottles of red wine per day. I don’t know about you, but I can barely get through half a bottle of  Merlot on my own. Knowing the consumption of alcohol has negative side effects, and that no one could drink that much wine, manufacturers such as Reserveage Organics of Gainesville, Florida, put a whopping 250mg of Resveratrol per pill. Take two per day and get the benefits without the hangover.

I don’t want to grow old. Until I found Reservatrol, it seemed I was on the slippery slope of middle age. Having come from a competitive, athletic minded family, I figured I’d outrun Mother Nature. I tried running for a while, but gave it up because of laziness and lack of a running partner. I have played tennis for over thirty years, but at the present time I have no partner. Maybe staying young is all about having a partner. I do a fair amount of cycling. Both Portland and Eugene are bike friendly cities. Cycling has been good for my legs; I haven’t missed driving my car. Swimming would be the best exercise, but because of my allergy to chlorine, swimming would have to be in a saltwater pool, a lake, or the ocean. I also read about the positive boost to testosterone levels that can be achieved by short strenuous workouts. More testosterone means not only better sexual performance, but better health for a man. So I pump iron once a day. Stress is the enemy of good health. Thus, I have been working on being less stressed out. People think I am ten years younger than I am. Maybe by using Resveratrol they’ll think I’m in my early thirties. Or I’ll hover around, like Dick Clark, looking forty-five or fifty at age seventy. How I'll survive financially if I live to be 110, is another question. So obviously, if Resveratrol really works, maybe not everyone should use it. And they won't, because most people don't care about staying healthy. Because staying healthy requires discipline, and most people do not have discipline. But I may be hit by a bus, which is something not even a fountain of youth supplement can prevent.

 My commitment to consuming only organic foods has been strong the last fifteen years, and may be my ticket to living to age ninety. I have only one bad habit, and that is I don’t drink enough water; but finding water that is just water is getting ever more difficult. Tap water is so toxic I avoid it altogether. There are so many bottled waters that have fruit flavors. Bottle water is big business now. Fearing declining soda sales, huge companies like Coke have gone into the water business. Coke makes Vitamin Water, which has a pretty scary list of ingredients. My fear of Bisphenol A makes me paranoid of a lot of plastic bottled water. The fluoride they’ve added to the tap water makes me think of Nazi Germany. Pretty soon I will take up Howard Hugh’s habit of wearing white gloves. 

But I am digressing. Here are the three big benefits of Resveratrol.

• Reduces cardiovascular disease.

• Inhibits the growth of cancerous cells.

• Lengthens the lifespan of animals.

So, by now I hope you are eager to get your hands on this youth serum. And you can; though the price is a bit steep ($40 for a bottle of pills, and $30 for the tonic). But ask yourself if staying young and healthy is worth the investment. I don’t mind being a guinea pig. With Resveratrol, there appears to be no side effects.

http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/resveratrol/

Dancing With Sharks in Portland.

Trust is a main ingredient in dancing, and in life.

My brother invited me to his daughter's Bat-Mitzvah last weekend. I don't speak Hebrew, but it was interesting, though I am not big on religious rituals. I avoid them if at all possible. This is what happens to a lot of ex-Catholics. The ceremony was okay, but the best part was seeing my niece's sincerity and obvious preparation to do a Bat-Mitzvah. 

Catholicism and Judaism are not that different. Yeah, there is the difference of opinion about Jesus. That's a big thing for some people, but not for me. The liturgy, especially in the orthodox Jewish congregations I've been to, remind me of mass. In Temple Beth Israel, in San Francisco, the women wear scarves like in the old Catholic masses, and are seated on the left side of the temple. The men are on the right side, bobbing incessantly. Apparently, men are always on the right side of God. So I guess a woman rabbi is a welcome idea to a lot of women. 

We didn't do much bobbing at St. Mary's; we were genuflectors (kneeling, standing, kneeling, etc.). We had first communion and confirmation, instead of Bar-Mitzvahs and Bat-Mitzvahs. We had the stiff perfunctory prayers to memorize (which I have since forgotten). Now the thought of all that stuff numbs my mind. My kind of religious experience isn't found in a building. It could be helping a stranger push their car. That is God's love in action. Faith in God is, for me, all about being genuine. I talk to God as I ride on buses, or while I peel carrots. I guess I believe in a George Burns sort of God. Maybe that makes me John Denver. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNUUFVLkYII

In Denmark and Germany, my ancestors were probably Jews, Lutherans, and Catholics. Now I am not a member of any denomination. Memberships scare me. I also avoid political party affiliations. I even dropped out of Boy Scouts, but I had my reasons. I witnessed a kid plant a hatchet into his foot while pounding in a tent spike. That cured me of memberships for life.

Religious experiences are fine; I am simply not a big fan of the pageantry. Several of my brothers and one sister also attended my niece's Bat-Mitzvah. The rabbi was a woman; I had the impression she was a lesbian. I could be wrong about that. How that fits into Judaism I have no idea. She also seemed short on patience, though she was a great presenter. She reminded me of a stand up comedian. It was the little things she did, the curt way she talked to kids, and how she grabbed the challah from me. Maybe I just notice too much, or expect too much of those in the clergy. I should probably have mentioned my observation to my brother and sister-in-law, but who am I to tear down their temple? It doesn't really matter what I think about their rabbi. And possibly they would have told me more about the rabbi and I would have a different opinion. Maybe I was just looking for sharks that day.

I mention the rabbi because this is what Portland is like. People are hip or they pretend to be. But their dorsal fins are shark-like. After the Bat-Mitzvah ceremony a light lunch was served in the basement. The building is also used by The Church of Christ, so there were postings on the bulletin board about Christian events. I like the idea of a melting pot of faiths. Ultimately, we all could have gotten our beliefs wrong. Maybe we are stooges who swallowed lies. I enjoyed the communion of ideas as I ate lox and bagels, and drank Newman's Own lemonade. I gave my niece a cool CD from the Sounds True Collection, that featured a Jewish couple. One of their songs is 'Shalom,' which is like a meditation length song with only one word to remember: Shalom.  http://www.amazon.com/Shalom/dp/B0040PUKE2

I had time to kill after the ceremony so I hopped off the MAX rail at Pioneer Square, drawn by the sound of live music, where couples were dancing to swing music. I felt the stiffness of the temple ceremony sloughing away. It was balmy for the second day in March, and a few of the men had sweat marks on the backs of their dark shirts. I stood behind the five piece band checking out the dancers and the musicians. There was a man on an upright bass, a trumpet player with a muffle on the end of his horn, the lead singer sat in a chair strumming a mandolin. Brother, they were cookin.' They just needed a fiddle player, but they were doing pretty good with what they had. I didn't even catch the name of the group.

I love watching dancers. What intrigues me about men and women connecting in public is that they are often strangers to one another. This was also the case during my tango years. I am sure there is a voyeuristic element to it; but it isn't necessarily a sexual thing. I am simply amazed by humanity in all its multi-faceted beauty. On the dance floor, there are no political, religious, economic, or ethnicity barriers. You just bring your sense of timing, and ability to connect with your partner, and then you make art or you don't make art. Whenever I get down on humanity I get these doses of humanity's goodness and it really cheers me up. Why do most women love to dance and not so many men do? Women are romantics. This is why my bookcase has more books by women than men. As a man, I feel women have a great deal to teach me. And, who knows? maybe I have some things to teach them about men.

Many of the dancers appeared to know one another, so there is the possibility some of them were from dance clubs. Their steps were too well understood: Jitterbug, Charleston, and other dances of the 1920s and 30s. But wherever they got their knowledge, and chutzpah, they made my day. Some of them were hipsters, because Portland is a hipster-town. When you are walking in most parts of downtown you will quickly realize you are walking on an elaborate stage filled with characters who have made niches for themselves. Their language is cool and understated. Their common bling are tattoos, which rise up from their shirt collars or are displayed next to their rolled up sleeves. It is as if the men got their clothes from the Cherry Popping Daddies outlet store, and the women raided a retro Buffalo Exchange clothing boutique.

The same facade of confidence and showmanship pervades the work environment in downtown. When you go into the suburbs people are less hip. Further out, in the rural towns of the Willamette Valley, and almost all the towns east of the Cascade Mountains you could just as well be in the Midwest. The language is more rural too, sprinkled with the wrong tenses, euphemisms, but among the young - Internet slang is commonplace - as if heralding the demise of country lifestyles.

I was raised in the country, and I miss it. I do not care for the sound of traffic outside my window, or if I am branded uncool because I have no tattoos. I must find a way back to my roots. In the wee hours of the morning I attached a fiction manuscript to an email. It went to the Dundee Book Prize Competition. Dundee is eight hours time difference from Portland, so I only had until five in the morning to enter. I felt the presence of sharks swimming around me as I sat in bed doing the final edits to the manuscript. It had to be anonymous, so there was an element of trust. Sort of like the trust I witnessed in downtown Portland amongst the dancers. And, I suppose from my niece at her Bat-Mitzvah.

My comedic insomnia with 30 Rock.

My cure for insomnia isn’t a calcium-magnesium-zinc pill, or melatonin, or a warm glass of milk at 2AM. It is late night comedy. I have tried science shows about Galapagos iguanas, and the ancient mysteries of lost civilizations, and fallen in love with reruns of 30 Rock. It achieved what Seinfeld, The Office, and other sitcoms never could.

Stress may be at the root of my insomnia. Typically, I manage stress very well; after all I have worked in advertising for over twenty years. You get used to it. I almost never get sick, so my white cell count must be pretty high. I am almost a Vulcan in hiding my emotions. Sometimes, after a glass of wine with friends, I surprise people by my Kenneth Parcell-act-alike behavior. What I need to do is channel my inner Kenneth Parcell (Jack Mcbrayer – 30 Rock) all the time.

If I can keep a cheerful, almost naïve way of seeing the world I will get through whatever I am going through. Or maybe I just need a girlfriend. Nothing wears out a man like a girlfriend, and probably vice versa. Perhaps that is the draw to watching 30 Rock. It is, despite its many tangents, a story about people trying to find themselves and find romance. Who is the central character? Is it Liz Lemon, or all the characters combined? Or could it be that I am like Dennis Duffy, and that is why I identify with the Liz Lemons in my own romantic past. No, probably not. Probably the serious message that appeals to me is that beneath the comedy there is the bedrock that we must find ourselves, and in doing so we will find our soul mates.

Kenneth Parcell is my feel good pill before I crash out. Feel good companies have a gold mine in Jack Mcbrayer. Disney used him for Fix-It Felix in the 2012 Disney animated film Wreck-It Ralph http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Jack_McBrayer But the world is a complicated place. We are not cartoons. We have insecurities like Liz Lemon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ3rPKJBteY we are egotistical loveable nut-jobs like Tracy Jordan, http://www.nbc.com/30-rock/video/memorable-moments-with-tracy-jordan/1334584/ we enjoy power like Jack Donaghy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l0kGIIW66g - and we have all dated someone like Dennis Duffy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GSeVbj_mXg

But what if the world was made up of people like Kenneth Parcell? Would it be too scary – people helping one another with a cheerful, almost too helpful perspective? What is the charm of Kenneth? He seems to be sincere to the point of mania. As Jack Donaghy said of Kenneth, after narrowly beating Kenneth at a game of poker, "In a few years we'll either all be working for him, or be dead by his hand." I lived in Georgia for a few months in 2011. I saw a few Kenneth look-a-likes while I was there. Are all people from Stone Mountain like Kenneth? Or do they do what many men do in America on Friday nights - eat TV dinners and drink beers? Not all of them do Civil War reenactment battles. I saw a Civil War reenactment once, and the Confederate guy did not like my Yankee accent. No, not all the guys in Georgia are like Kenneth Parcell. With the exception of Atlanta, referred to as "The city of suits," by a lady lawyer I met in Decatur, where there seems to be an abundance of New Yorkers, Georgia men are like the men in any other state = straight and macho.

The cynics assume gayness when a man is too nice and too well groomed. Is it Southern culture that fosters this combination of hospitality to the point of being odd? What is wrong with being nice? Am I about to have my Midnight Cowboy moment? I hope not.

When a person’s sexuality is ambiguous it bothers people. Like, two days ago I was grocery shopping and saw a man in a dress. He was not a particularly pretty man. He would have probably called his Japanese schoolgirl dress a kilt. So I am a bigot for even mentioning him. But bigotry is comedic. I once accidentally dated a transgender guy. He fooled me, but $100,000 of surgery could make a lot of guys look like a woman. In this new world you are not supposed to raise an eyebrow when you meet a man in drag or a woman who looks like she just came from a logging camp. It is uncool to be honest. Fifty years ago people would have gotten seriously beaten up for their sexual ambiguity. I behave like Kenneth; I am polite to everyone, no matter how strange their lifestyle. You have to in this world because it is a world full of weirdness.

To further confuse and amuse viewers about Kenneth's sexual leanings, NBC/Tina Fey had Jenna and a homely girl named Hazel try to make Kenneth their boyfriend. They also had him hook up with an Asian gal, but none of Kenneth's hookups went beyond kissing. So Tina Fey was just messing with our heads. Kenneth’s true leanings are unknown, even to Kenneth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uaiv0xzRLaY He could go either way – gay or straight. From Kenneth's POV, everything always works out for the best, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xi5lPn2afA Even when overtly gay guys make a play for him, Kenneth maintains his innocence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP3srtDFYFc From Kenneth’s POV, staff members appear as if they are Muppets. Maybe that is the secret to his boundless joy. I am going to have to watch a lot of Sesame Street to get my brain around being nice like Kenneth Parcell, but gosh, it sure seems swell to try.

Segue

It was quite windy today; I thought I was in a Clint Eastwood movie. Leaves took refuge, like dry skinned orphaned children, in front entrance niches of businesses in downtown. Shopkeepers could not shoo the leaves away; each customer brought in more leaves until small drifts formed on the carpeted and tiled floors. I brought in leaves as I entered a stationary shop in search of letterhead. It was not just any letterhead. It had to have some tooth to it. The letterhead had to announce, “By gad, I am serious about this writing business!”

The mistress of the shop, a discerning middle-aged Hispanic woman with dark brown hair and eyes, listened to my romantic drivel about the paper I was seeking. I was not the usual customer, yet the lack of a poncho and a cigar, or the attire of a conquistador, perplexed her. The tone of my voice was remarkably similar to Eastwood’s, I was surprised by the raspy tone, as if my regular voice had gone on sabbatical and Eastwood was doing a cameo. The mistress smiled when I finished my oratorio and said, “I think I have something to make your day, Mr. Eastwood. Right this way.”

I followed her down a side aisle packed on either side with reams of paper. We perused the reams she had in stock, and quickly determined she didn’t have what I wanted, but she said she could get it by the following day. Her dark eyes flashed as she said thirty-two pound paper was my Holy Grail. Thirty-two pound letterhead is not that common. It used to be used to build ramps for storming castles. It was common when cotton was king, and trees with circumferences of twenty feet were de rigueur. It made dandy picnic plates for Victorian couples. Bamboo is the new goddess from the east. Everything is made of bamboo. It is ten million times stronger than steel. I am smitten with her, but not for letterhead. But as towels, clothes, armored personnel carriers, or flooring, she easily wins the day. But I digress.

The mistress took my order. I said it had to be ivory colored, off-white, the kind of color Dukes and Earls would regularly press their signet rings to. The kind I could precisely fold and slide into Medici style envelopes. The kind that demanded the use of red sealing wax and my cheap brass letter ‘D’ stamp. The kind that implied I was a baron with title and land. Yes, landed gentry letterhead that announced my full intention to attend a gala affair in my 1940s Bentley. The kind of paper that would inspire me to write adlib pithy poems, or dystopian query letters, sent by horseback courier to literary agents, or snooty editors who guffawed at the improper use of apostrophes. I mean the make believe paper made for mystics with Pomeranians on their laps.

The shop mistress looked at me as if I had lost my marbles, and I had of course, writers lose their minds every day they draw breath. Her nubile apprentice, a fetching blonde of forty years, turned and smiled in pity, as if I’d just emerged from the Middle Ages, or thawed from a glacier high in the Alps. As if I were Sideshow Bob, recently released from a passing circus, or a troglodyte that had crawled from beneath a dark slab of prehistoric rock.

The paper arrived in an enchanted carriage, pulled by six white stallions, and steered by two faux rat footmen from the Cinderella story. The box weighed forty pounds, though it was only 250 sheets of paper. I lifted the lid of the gold leaf covered ream. There was the scent of sultry Santa Barbara nights of long ago, when flowering vines on the trellises of Spanish Colonial villas, perched high above the sunset hued harbor, released their seductive perfume to the night. I held a sheet and remembered the embrace of a woman I had tango danced with in lonely nights long ago, when all I lived for was the sound of milonga, and the taste of mangoes..

The paper was slightly cream colored, like the Warren Lustro Dull I once had a thing for in the heyday of my advertising career. Then I was a graphic guru, a pasha of printed works, of textures and treatments for esoteric papers with which to pad my portfolio. I was no stranger to foils, fancy die cuts, embossing, and finishes. Fonts were my fortissimo then, but not now. Impressing people wasn’t my raison d’etre any longer. Now I was enamored with film and the use of words to tell a story. I had thrown off the gregarious narcissism of advertising for the solitary confinement of the ivory tower. There was only the sound of one hand clapping, and it was my own.

Words are not like dry autumn leaves that find sanctuary in the doorways of shops on windy days. They are limber and green, subtle and sultry. They easily describe pale orange leaves that once were attached to young maples in our hometowns and in the forests outside Moscow. They tell tales of the leaves as being like garments that wrapped themselves around a young couple whose love was forbidden. Hidden there by the words whose leafy disguise made the couple's love possible, the couple kissed for the first time. Stars fell from their places; meteorites plummeted with the touch of the couple's lips.  Words of love poured like the runoff from the rock laden streams. Aspen and spruce trees bent by winter snows listened to the words. Words, like leaves whipped by errant winds, turned chameleon colors of flame and rust and took their rest upon my secret manuscripts. Like spirits, they haunted my observations and dreams. They assembled when I was cogent and rational, and they spread in disarray when ideas came fast and furious, late at night and in the wee hours of the morning when testosterone ran hot and heavy, and soul and flesh ached for love and passion.

And so I found my paper; my muse. My fingertips rested upon it in the night when words, like rain, tapped upon the windows of my soul and would not let me sleep. While the world settled into dreams, late when the wolves roamed and owls glided with silent wings, I was up writing queries to editors and agents. I knew my writing was flawed but it was mine. I consoled my doubts by reminding myself that all writers are flawed or they would not be writers. Best to keep a meat cleaver handy because no story is complete without endless hacking and rewrites. I knew editors make writers digestible, and would add sprigs of herbs to my works. Literary agents would one day reach with outstretched arms for my diamonds in the rough. I recalled an editor, who liked one of my novels, writing of my bad habits that were like the telltale clues left by a homicidal murderer. Mistakes that would hang me and identify me to an editor with a detective's eye, and a jury of my peers. My flaws, in my view, were endearing speech impediments or limps. I reasoned someone with a love of the archaic ways, a literary agent or editor with the sensibilities of a 32 pound paper, would show empathy for a leper-like writer in need of healing. Would I be marooned indefinitely on Molokai? Would my magic realism and film noir tales never see the light of day? My characters came to me in the night and begged for help but I could not console them.

People in the publishing industry tend to overlook impediments if the content is intriguing, and the author can make them lots of money, or the author is related to George Clooney. It is like a racing aficionado looking at the thigh muscle of a middle-aged horse and realizing the horse could still win the Triple Crown. It would be like a recruiter for Nike taking a look at my frame and having the epiphany that with six months of training I could win the Boston Marathon. But myopia is commonplace in the publishing world. Why do I inflict this pain upon myself? Have I forgotten that rejection is the Mother of All Sorrows? Have I forgotten Brautigan? A literary life can lead to an untimely demise. Would paper, regardless of its weight, its tooth - make any difference in a world of electronic rejection? What good were wax seals? I was Van Gogh with a loaded revolver ready to blow my brains out. If I could imagine flinging my characters off the Golden Gate Bridge then what other dark things lay within my soul? Dare I expect the world to marvel at my bravery to keep going when all my organs failed but my runner's heart? Who did I think I was with my melodramatic pauses and florid descriptions? Would the world want my ceviche when it could have a cheeseburger from Micky D's? I was cut of ancient cloth, out of step with the modern age. I was the unwilling jester of the Creator of the Universe.

When your true love comes for you in the night, leave your door ajar. Let her come softly into your chamber in her blue diaphanous gown, her breasts and hips moving like ripe fruit beneath the gown's silky folds. Study her limpid eyes and pouty mouth, wet as the Sea of Cortes in moonlight. Let her lie down with you in your bed and rise up in the morning when the words are fresh in your mind, spilling through the windows like California sunshine, demanding to be written. The words will be obtuse, mystical, magical, and strange. Exhibit A. I saw a van today that had the following words emblazoned in red paint on its side: Rice furniture and appliances. Now, I know next to nothing about either offering, but if they are made of rice I might hesitate in  my purchase. If your name was Rice, would you have used it in this way to advertise your business? I have heard of bean bag chairs, but, rice bag chairs? Really? The world is full of lampoons; you need only open your eyes to see the comedy unfold.

Yesterday I emailed three queries to the same agent in Canada. There is something kinder in Canada. Maybe they know something about the literary merits of dry leaves gathering in doorways. Perhaps they remember their humble roots. Or possibly the long winters have shown them something of the need to pull together and not tear asunder, as is the American way. They are in touch with their mortality and thus, in their despair and darkness have found comfort and communion with their maker. All hail Canada, the birthplace of John Candy, and Celine Dion! All hail this Canadian literary agent, to whom I have entrusted some of my works.

You can tell a great deal from an image. Some Native Americans once believed photos stole a part of their souls. This is true. Photos are snapshots of our souls at a point in time. They show the state of our joy, or lack thereof. I settled upon the face of an agent whose face told me she was a genuine person. She hailed from England, the mother of America. She was eagerly seeking new talented writers. I suspect she is fond of the old sensibilities, the use of wax seals on quality 32 pound paper, the observations of details, and the beauty of the words. Rain still streaks my windows in the night, like the fingertips of lost children, as I lay sleeping and dreaming of better days. In the daytime the sky offers hues of gray, broken by pale blue gaps that fade towards the horizon. Clouds can change to many different colors in one day, so can fortunes. Wind drives the clouds across the sky in a never-ending dance. Words, driven by the wind like curled, pale orange leaves, find sanctuary in the doorway of your mind.

Time for everything under the sun.

My grandfather's pocket watch, still stuck in time.

Among my possessions is my grandfather's gold pocket watch. It is permanently stuck at three-fifty in the afternoon. I do not know the year it stopped working. It may have stopped the day my grandfather had a heart attack, in the winter of 1969. He had just trudged through two feet of snow to get the mail from the mailbox at the top of his long, steep driveway. When he came in the door he was holding his chest. He did not say a word to my grandmother, who was slicing her trademarked burnt crust bread. She said she knew he was dead before he hit the kitchen floor. She finished slicing bread before she phoned anyone. She was a rather cold and logical person. The bread needed sliced; grandfather's ticker had stopped, and there was nothing to be done but finish slicing the bread. So she sliced.

I had a similar experience when my ex-wife had a minor heart attack, as a result of her taking synthetic estrogen. She collapsed on the kitchen floor. I was not slicing bread at the time. I phoned 911. We should have sued the company, but a visit from six handsome paramedics was sufficient for my ex-wife's recovery. It was a reminder of the transitory nature of life. Each day is a work of art, unique, and transient. Each day passes by and it is never the same as the day before, or the day after it, or any day in our lifetimes. This day will be gone forever, from our point of view, and it will never pass this way again. Time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for (us). But don't we all wish this were not true? Don't we all wish for the film version of Groundhog Day, where we learn a lifetime of lessons, and knowledge, in the repetition of one day?

Time has been on the minds of human beings from the beginning. We marvel at those ancient peoples who built megalithic structures to measure, honor, and order it. We have created deities to oversee it. Long ago our forebears made stone calendars that predicted the future. We want to go Back to the Future. We have an insatiable appetite for knowing what was and what will be. Aficionados of the zodiac, and many other mystical practices and beliefs, are evidence of our insecurity with not knowing. Reincarnation is the hope that we will get more time to get life right.  But time, like sand through the hourglass, keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future.

Human beings do ridiculous things with the time we have been given. We waste time all the time, forgetting or ignoring that we do not get one second of it back. Some people are good time managers, and use their time well, to help people. But others, like comedians, lampoon it. Writers write novels and screenplays with time as the centerpiece. Beverly Hills surgeons derive good livings from their clients insatiable needs to look young forever. Millions attempt to thwart the effects of time on their bodies by the use of cosmetics, diets, and exercise routines. It didn’t work for Ponce de Leon; there is no Fountain of Youth. Why   is going the speed of light so worthy of a goal? The faster you go, the more you slow down time. Look up at the stars; many of them are no longer there. You are looking back millions of years in time. The only thing left of them might be the light they emitted long ago.

Time marches on, and marches to a different drummer. Philosophers analyzed it, mathematicians and physicists tried to quantify it. But the wisest of the wise still die. Escapists, who know life is finite, and being unhappy with their lives often turn to drugs, alcohol, and careers to numb life until it passes by like the evening train. To some, putting off thinking about what comes after this life, when our time runs out, is too scary. Will life end or will something new begin when we die? Will there be more time awaiting us on the other side? Spiritual teachers have made comfortable livings promising a blissful eternity, figuring no one will ever come back to prove them wrong. Those who have near death experiences tell tales of traveling in tunnels with a white light at the other end, and arriving in a place where there is love, and time enough for doing whatever we ever dreamt of doing.

One of the things I do with my time is speak to the Creator of the Universe. Some would call it praying. Lily Tomlin, the now ancient comedienne from yesteryears, once was quoted as saying, "When we talk to God, we're praying, but when God talks to us - we're schizophrenic." So true. When I do it I try to be sincere. Sometimes I rant a bit. I rarely joke around with God. It is enough that humanity is a joke. I do my God-talking in private: while walking with bags of groceries, while eating breakfast, as I bend to tie my shoe, while strumming my guitar, showering, writing, and driving. From the point of view of God, Earth emits a continual cacophony of prayers, like a sound of the air escaping from a balloon into the emptiness of space. I suspect atheists secretly pray. But why do we pray? To whom should we pray? We pray to fill up the void, because God often seems absent from our lives. Pascal once said we all have a vacuum inside ourselves that can only be filled with God. I suppose this also applies to vacuum cleaner salesmen. But God seems to be on a sabbatical when Africa is rotting away. Where does God go on vacation? Naples, Florida? We are stuck in time; while the Creator waltzes around the universe and beyond, with nothing but time and dark matter on its hands. And rather large flip-flops on its feet.

Being unstuck in time is a daily experience for me. I expect to see God on one of my mental  journeys. It will be hard to recognize God because God is a chameleon. God and his or her or its little helpers, (aka: angels), can take the form of anything and anyone. God is a shape shifter. God is permanently unstuck outside time. There, in the space where there is no space, the Creator watches and keeps the hands of time ticking right along. Life here is an illusion of light, color, sight, and sound. It is fraught without purpose or meaning, and beneath it all there is the ubiquitous ticking of Father Time's clock.

We are lonely beings without a Creator to remind us of what life is about and what we should be doing with it. I have decided that whenever God presents an opportunity to help someone, I will. I will drop everything and help; that is my calling. Some people would call this unusual, or heroic, or even stupid. Random acts of kindness do not fill our bank accounts. Yet they are what I called my “little opportunities” from God. The English would call me a 'loony.' My job, from my overly optimistic viewpoint, is to smile when God presents a situation where someone needs help. From my POV, it is as if God has custom designed this situation for me, as if God were saying, "Look here, what will you do with this?" Another one happened on a bus yesterday. God took the form of a homeless sixty-year-old Native American woman. She did not have the money to ride the bus, and the driver was telling her she had to take her two big backpacks and get off the bus. So I got up and paid her fare. She sat next to me and asked if I was the one who had paid her fare. I said I was. She handed me back one of the bus tokens I'd given her, but I should have refused it. She would be riding again, maybe not in the form of a Native American. The woman smiled at me and it was as if God were smiling at me behind her lined and weary face. A face that said, "I am tired of this; I do not want to go on with this charade." God had asked me: "Will you or won’t you participate? Will you make time for this act of kindness? Will you say yes when most refuse?" I did accept the opportunity, and it felt good. It felt like time stood still and the universe watched for a moment to see the outcome. God stopped and watched. Because one day I will come permanently unstuck in time. And so will you, and the only things that will matter will be what we have done for our fellow human beings, and for the other creatures with whom we share our little blue ball.

Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks), in the film version of Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse Five, is becoming unstuck in time. Pilgrim is a gentle soul; naïve, kind, thoughtful, seemingly the polar opposite to Kurt Vonnegut, the novel's author. Everything in Pilgrim’s life has a sense of irony: he becomes a prisoner of war during World War II, and he and a large number of American soldiers are put on a train and transported to a former slaughterhouse in the city of Dresden, where they are made to manufacture a nutritional malt syrup. Pilgrim's German captors lampoon him and make him wear a woman's coat. Pilgrim does not object to anything that is going sideways in his life. This was when Pilgrim first begins randomly  jumping back and forth in time. He has no control over what part of his life he will experience. 

Billy and a small group of fellow prisoners survive the allies' firebombing of Dresden in an air-tight bunker. The war ends soon thereafter, and Russians overrun the city. Pilgrim goes home to America and continues his studies in optometry at the Illium School of Optometry, in Illium, New York. He marries Valencia Merble, the obese but attractive daughter of the school's founder, Valencia Merble. He uses a diamond he found, in the lining of the woman's coat the German's gave him, for Valencia's wedding ring. For a number of years afterwards, Pilgrim lives a life of quietude and financial success. As he grows older he becomes more unstuck in time. His time tripping attracts an alien race from the planet, Tralfalmador. The Tralfamadorians, who live in the fourth dimension,  have made a glass geodesic dome zoo for Pilgrim to live in with a former porn star named Montana Wildhack.  After Pilgrim survives an airplane crash, that takes the life of his father-in-law, his wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning while driving pell-mell to the hospital. 

Pilgrim and his dog, Spot, go with the Tralfamadorians to live on Tralfalmador with Montana Wildhack, (Valerie Perrine). Billy and Montana fall in love and have a child, to the delight of the Tralfalmadorians. It is a strange reenactment of the Garden of Eden, where time no longer mattered.

Vonnegut sought to remind us of that irrefutable fact. Because, if you believe there is a God, then you also accept that God must live outside time, which means God is thinking of us and everything else all at once. There is no past, present, or future. God sees like a Tralfalmadorian. Human beings, seen from this viewpoint have an accordion shape. No one actually dies except at one point in their lives. Time is no longer our master.

While we are trapped in the present, we have the capacity to remember the past, and make plans for the future. The future is still unknown, except to our future selves. Thus, there is a point in the future where we know exactly what happened to us. And that future me remembers what I did, and what I might have done, just as the future you knows all about you. Since this is the case, shouldn’t we be praying to ourselves from time to time? Who could advise us better than ourselves? God, yes, certainly, if you believe in God. But even if you do believe in God, the sad fact is, God does not send emails or speak to us like in olden times. Mostly. I personally do believe in God. I have actually heard God speak to me, though I cannot prove that. It was either God or the Tralfamadorians. It was not an audible voice I recorded. It was a voice in my head. I am not schizophrenic. The experience affirmed to me that God does exist. I do not have a history of schizophrenia. I don’t think it had anything to do with my having more spiritual worthiness. It was random as snow in June. It was a Billy Pilgrim experience.

This is how it happened. I was stuck in traffic near the Beltline overpass in Eugene, Oregon, in April of 2005. There were at least fifty cars lined up, and most likely all of the people in the cars near me were looking straight ahead. For whatever reason, I saw movement to my left and turned in time to see three young people, two women and a man, crossing a Beltline Highway entrance ramp. I turned in time to see a heavyset woman step off a curb and a wallet fall from her back pocket onto the road. At that moment the light changed and the cars moved forward. I was unable to get out of my lane for a quarter of a mile, and by the time I turned around the threesome were gone. I drove to the freeway entrance and stopped to pick up the wallet. Because I was committed to entering the freeway, I then had to drive four miles round trip before I could return to where I’d been. I drove for another mile in the same direction I’d been going in, and since I didn’t see the threesome, I pulled into a mall to take a look at the wallet. The wallet belonged to a twenty-one year old woman named Melissa. It contained a five-dollar bill, a student I.D., driver’s license, social security card, and two credit cards. Losing the wallet would make Melissa’s life rather complicated.

So I said, aloud, to God, “God, you know where Melissa is. Will you help me find her?” Instantly, I heard a voice in my head say, ‘She’s in there.’ And ‘there’ was the store I was looking at, which was a Fred Meyer. I laughed, because I had never heard a voice before, and I realized it had to be God who was speaking to me. I said, “Okay, but it is a big store. She could be anywhere. You will have to give me a sign about where she is or I might not find her.” I heard no voice, but I had the feeling that this stipulation had been heard, so I got out of my car and I walked into Fred Meyer.

This store was laid out with the Electronics and Jewelry areas on the left, and the Ladies Clothing area on the right, for about a hundred-fifty feet, before the entrance hall opened into the very large open area that contained a number of departments. At the place where the two areas met was a row of twenty check-stands and a customer service area.

When I came to the end of the entrance hall, as soon as I caught sight of the registers, I saw Melissa. She had just dropped a bottle of beer and was staring at the puddle of beer and glass around her feet. I smiled. There could not have been a more perfect sign to find Melissa. I walked up to her, held out the wallet, and said, “Melissa, you dropped your wallet back at the Beltline Overpass.” Melissa straightened up, her eyes agog, and took the wallet. “How did you do that?” she asked.

“Heaven Knows,” I replied, and then I turned and walked away. It was a rather cryptic reply, but I didn’t feel like explaining how I had found her. Later, it occurred to me that this small thing could be a very big thing to Melissa. It might have even changed her life. Why I was chosen to be the tool of the Almighty I do not know. But I was.

In the future I will know the importance of that act. I will know the impact of my good deeds and my bad deeds. I hope the good outweighs the bad, if that is how it works, to get into Heaven, assuming Heaven does exist. Most people do not think what we do matters. We are here for a heartbeat and then we are gone. I don’t think that is true. For us it is true, but to God we have always been here, and we will always be here, and we are being born, dying, and living our lives forever and ever. All at the same time.

When God looks at us, and everything else in this universe and every other universe, it is always in the present. But we will always be stuck in time while we are here. Later on, we may not be. Physicists theorize that there are other versions of ourself in other dimensions. I hope this is not true. I don't want to know that my life is the bad version of myself. I always want to think of my life as having potential for improvements on all levels. In the future we may be able to move through time, and visit ourselves, or prevent our births, which is a contradiction of course. There may even be no more need for time, or the sensation of the passage of time. Time will no longer exist. We will be nothing more than particles of light. Photons with awareness.

I don’t think it is too far-fetched to imagine that we may even be in the same room with ourselves; hearing our own prayers; petitioning God on our own behalf. It is a strange thought, but it is a rational, logical deduction. However crazy the world is, underlying it is an enormous but simple mathematical equation. Should we pray to our future selves? They know more than we do. Maybe they can help us navigate time with good decisions.

Last night I dreamt about my father. My father and mother became unstuck in time in 2006. I have been dreaming of he and my mother since they died. I wonder sometimes if they are trying to speak to me, and if they are, what they are saying. My son needs to understand this mystical truth. In thirty years he will be fifty years old. He may be holding his great grandfather's gold pocket watch in his hand when I die. I will be looking down on him and my daughter, trying to advise them through the veil that lies between us. I hope they think about me too, while there is time.

Mother's Day Wishes.

Wishing all sons and daughters peace on Mother's Day.

I cut three iris blossoms this afternoon, in honor of my mother, whose name was Agnes. She had a fondness for flowers; her yards always had roses, violets, and irises in well-tended beds. When my parents died, in 2006, just weeks apart, I often found solace in long walks in the rose garden of what had been my hometown for over twenty years. You can meet all sorts of people in a rose garden. In the Owen Rose Garden in Eugene, Oregon, they have a variety of hybrid roses as well as old fashioned roses. The older roses, perhaps because they have not been muddled with, are more fragrant than the hybrids.

Last night, in preparation for today, Mother’s Day, I watched the commemorative DVD’s the funeral home made for my parents. The two DVD’s overlap in imagery, and this seems fitting because my parents were married for over 60 years. At that point they overlapped to the extent that when my father died my mother said she felt like half a person. Some people are simply meant to be together forever, and my parents were like that. They were polar opposites in some ways, and yet they made their marriage work.

I have two female friends who are mothers. Rebekah lives in California, and is single because of divorce, and Irene lives in Australia, and is a recent widow. Each have children; both were women I once dated. Rebekah has had a bad year; her first grandchild, Lily, died at six months of age, due to being premature. Rebekah sent an email two days ago to let me know her mother had just passed away. Rebekah's Mother’s Day was spent planning her mother’s funeral. Irene rarely writes, and this is because she is always busy with work, her home stay guests, and her two daughters. I don’t know how Irene's Mother’s Day went; most likely she spent it with her parents. I spent the day alone; some days are better spent alone, especially when one’s mother is no longer living.

Daddy Day Care was on TV this afternoon. It is a film about making choices about what is important in life. Eddie Murphy and his two friends have dropped out of the corporate world and its financial rewards, and found that running a day care is a better investment of their time. Seeing the children they watch over blossom outweighs anything the corporate world has to offer. This morning, a similar message was conveyed by Charles Stanley, a minister I once listened to as I drove to work in the late 1980s and 1990s.  Stanley’s message this morning had to do with inheritance. Normally, when we think of inheritance we think of monetary rewards, but Stanley said the spiritual and emotional things we impart to our children may last a lifetime, unlike riches which are often squandered. These unseen things can also be passed down to our children's children.

This past week I mailed my daughter, who lives in a suburb of Paris, an early birthday package. Among the things I sent was a Little Orphan Annie book, which was published in 1925. She loved it. This is the sort of thing that will stay with her. The book may be thrown away, but the thought will continue. I tuned into who she is. This past Easter I was en route to home when I realized I had a marvelous opportunity to make a strong memory for my son. So I took a detour and went into a Trader Joe’s and bought him Easter dinner supplies, which included a nice round of ham without preservatives. No amount of gold or cash would communicate as well as these gestures, to say “I love you.”

My mother did not ever know me well, and my father knew me even less well. This sort of thing happens in a big family. They did the best they could. They could have done more, and the things they could have done had nothing to do with money. As a parent, I need to remind myself of this fact. I have to be at peace with the emotional shortcomings of my mother and father. I can’t blame anyone for who I am but me. Where I am at now, emotionally and financially are a result of a lot of big and little choices over a period of years. The year will soon be half over. Father’s Day will soon be here. My children often forget Father’s Day. They often do not send birthday cards. But today I am at peace with just being a father. And whatever issues I still have with their mother, are not relevant. For their sakes I have to let that go.

I don’t know that I like iris better than roses. I prefer the scent of certain lilies to roses. I don’t know why the lotus blossom is a symbol of peace to most of Asia. But I do understand peace, and what it means to be at peace with oneself. Some things you cannot change, and so you must resign yourself to changing what you can, and the thing that I need to change is me, and when I do get there the world will seem a much better place only because I will be seeing it with new eyes.

Apogee and Perigee of Bengal Tigers.

Here is my petite femme, my Bengal tiger, making tiger prints in Paris.

We are all on journeys, but sometimes we forget where we are going, and often we fear we do not have control over where and how our journeys will end. Enjoying the ride of life is a worthy goal. Ideally, if we grow old gracefully, wisdom envelopes us with the attributes of being at peace with ourselves, despite our failures in life.  From that vantage point we better understand the artifices society has invented, and the rituals we have incorporated into our lives to help us assuage our fears, and to shed light on the mystical path we are walking towards fullness of being. And likewise, this learned wisdom, will show in our joie de vivre. The light of our raison d'être will inevitably inspire others to find their way. Esprit de corps is contagious. When we emulate others, we ourselves become lights to those who follow after us. We become mentors, and leave footprints for others to follow, or paw prints, as it were, of Bengal Tigers.

The moon will be at perigee tomorrow, the closest it will come in 2012, in its irregular orbit around Mother Earth. In the jungles of India, tigers will gaze with yellow eyes at the huge full moon and think thoughts about their lives and where they are going as they prowl in the night. In cities around the world, human beings, who are often Bengal Tigers in need of epiphanies, will look with weary but noble eyes at the moon and wish for greater things for themselves. The huge moon will certainly facilitate a more festive Cinco de Mayo. There are no Bengal Tigers in Mexico, though I am sure that had there been, Montezuma would have had one or two in his zoo. But both Montezuma and Cortes were Bengal Tigers, in their zest for life, and indomitable personalities. They were the dangerous types of tigers that do exist in the world, from whom we must we wary.

I knew the state of the moon because I am a moon child. I know about the lunar cycles by experience. I do not need to glance out my window to know if the moon is full. I feel it. The tides are high inside me, and I know a new beach will be revealed soon.

On this beach there will be time to walk, and perhaps find new things have washed up in the night and early morning hours, when the tide was low. There may be paw prints of a Bengal Tiger there. And perhaps when I turn I will see the prints are mine own. For we all can have the spirit of the tiger inside us, and often we must have it in order to excel.

Today, on Burnside Street in Portland, I stood near a homeless older man, his stringy white hair and beard framing a face that has seen many struggles. He had a dirty yellow blanket wrapped around himself, his oversized glasses were stained and hung low over his weathered nose. His material possessions were contained within a shopping cart, that was topped with two small umbrellas. It was raining in Portland, and this man was hunkered down in a bus stop, until the rain subsided. As I often do with strangers, I struck up a conversation with the man. I commented on his need for two umbrella's, and that segued into the man espousing his life view that we are all the same, and the fabric that binds us is our common need to survive. He did not say it in an eloquent way, but there was gritty truth to his words. We cannot know the impact we have on those we meet. One kind word may be enough to help them get through one more day. One full, oversized moon may be enough to inspire them to the fact that despite all the hurt and hopelessness in the world, there is also great beauty, that walk together like strange companions.

One of things that occur to me today, on this, my strange journey, this moon dance, this beach, is that job interviews are not unlike the knowledge that when we enter a room to be interviewed there is a certain apprehension about whether there will be a Bengal Tiger waiting for us inside, or a friendly farm dog or cat, the former seeking to eat us alive, and the latter to make us feel at home. We step into the unknown, the night, our feet seeking to land on solid ground. We are apprehensive of our interviewer's will accept us or reject us. We go hoping we will find a new home.

But where is home, exactly? I am not sure where my home is anymore. I have made my home in many places, and yet the thought keeps returning to me that I must return, like a spawning salmon, to the countryside, where my head and heart will be at peace, and my hands will till the earth and in the quiet evenings there will be only the sound of crickets and the musical scrapes of wind bowed wild grasses caressing one other in the night. You can take a man out of the country, but you cannot take the country out of the man. Rural life has deep roots in me, and like a tree's roots that sense water in the earth, so mine do as well when I see a wild tract of land where my future house might stand.

My daughter lives in a suburb of Paris. She is an urbanite, a brave soul, small in stature but hugely resolute in her belief that in the madness of life she can find her way as an artist. I have taken this same journey, and as her father I have offered layers of advice and gentle encouragement. A father should be required to carry pompoms and know a certain number of basic cheers to encourage his children. And not only his children, but everyone who he meets in random and planned places. My daughter attends École des Beaux-Arts, where the archaic art forms and methodologies still thrive. She emails photos of her artful life, and shares her fears and hopes. She took a leap of faith in going with her French boyfriend to Paris, after her graduation from a good east coast college. It was a leap of love, which is often the best motivation for action. When we leap, we extend our feet and hearts in expectation of a solid landing on a new place where all we have worked for will come to fruition. We leap into the unknown, like tigers. We leap because we must leap, or see our dreams diminish.

What have I worked for? I thought to myself as I readied my portfolio for my interview. We are all still a bit lost, but some of us have good maps that we hold in our trembling hands. The trembling is due to two things: our fear of failure, and our fear that all our altruistic hopes for ourselves will come true. I am holding that map in my hands now. I often get it out to examine it and think, no, visualize that new me, in that new land.

We each have within us, the enormous capacity for goodness. Some, more than others. In the night, when I sit up in my bed and play my guitar, or write, I have a sensation of warmth that wells up from deep inside my heart. The heart is a much wiser organ than the brain. The heart believes things the brain resists believing. It is a sense of knowing that fills me now, as I prepare to enter a room where a Bengal tiger may be waiting. But one can be at peace even when stared at by a Bengal tiger. For even tigers can sense a person's self-confidence, and courage.

I mailed my daughter two CD's of my original music a week ago. In the package I also enclosed a 1925 edition of Little Orphan Annie. The comic, created by Harold Gray, has a number of endearing qualities. I read the comic while in an antique store in Hillsboro, Oregon. Mr. Gray knew something about life.  He understood the difference between genuine and disingenuous people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Orphan_Annie
We could all learn something from that cartoon. We have all been Little Orphan Annie's in our aloneness.

I am sitting in a cafe called The Side Door, in southeast Portland, writing this blog. A young man was in the parking area of the cafe, dumpster diving. As I sit here I think of the old man wrapped in a filthy yellow blanket. I think of the old man Phil Connors (Bill Murray) helps in the film, Groundhog Day. There are many lessons to be learned from that comic film. Given enough time, even the worse of us can become better people.

As I sit here in this old but revamped cafe, admiring the high bare brick walls, watching the friendly barrister interact with customers, the Indie music on the stereo, the comfortable and well used seating whose crinkled faux leather fabrics testify to meals shared, I remember that we are all the same. It is possible that Bengal Tigers can become friendly farm cats and dogs if we present ourselves in a non-threatening manner. This is Portland, the land of Portlandia, where Bengal Tigers await their transformation into loving and successful human beings while lingering over well-made soups in cafes, or hunkered down in bus stops on a rainy day, mulling over their homelessness and how they will resurrect their dreams.

My daughter works in a children's shoe store to augment her bank account while she attends school. Paris is not unlike Portland in many ways. Bigger, of course, but it is raining there too, and though they speak French, and have ways of doing things that seem far different than the way things are done in Oregon, we are kindred spirits. We live at the same latitude, we cultivate similar wines. We love our families and offer words of encouragement to homeless strangers in bus stops, in much the same manner, and for the same reasons. We interview for jobs we need and leave jobs we do not need.  We aspire to be better people, to reach our goals, and mentor others along the way. I am going to Paris this year to see my daughter, and her boyfriend, Gregoire, who is a cinematographer on his own artistic journey. I have no proof of this, but I feel it, as I feel the appearance of a full moon.

It occurs to me now that my daughter, when faced with a Bengal Tiger in a room, became a tiger, and any fear she had: that she could not become fluent in French in two months; that she could not become a skilled artist; that she could not make her love affair with Gregoire last; that she would starve for lack of money; were conquered, and now she is realizing she can do anything. I am waving my pompoms for her.