Two wildly disparate ideas coalesced to inspire this blog. The first was a criticism from a member of the gang of eight that my ramblings lacked a certain continuity . ” I like stories with a beginning, a middle and an end, ” he said. The second input came from one of America’s truly great writers, Joyce Carol Oates. She observed that it was possible to tell a compelling story using only beginnings. Opinions about writing obviously vary.

My critical friend deserves a challenge. I will write a beginning here and give him three weeks to provide a middle and an end. This fellow loves the novel of international intrigue -spies – hit men etc.- spiced with the occasional detective story. So, with apologies to the brilliant Raymond Chandler, here is the beginning that must be built upon:

He wrestled the coupe onto the interstate and raced down the crotch of the valley toward SevenOaks. The mountains rose sheer on either side and the son was high. nice day, Crake thought. nice for everyone who except Clarence Motley. Motley wouldn’t enjoy it. Motley was dead.

Crake wondered why he was always getting the goofy cases. In twenty years on the force he worked on plenty of weird ones but when he hung up hiss shingle they got worse. He thumbed a deck of Lucky’s and lit up. He tried to get it all organized in his mind. motley was found in his mountain cabin with two .45 slugs in his noodle. A note was pinned on the lapel of his cheap seersucker that read.THE HOLY LEAGUE NEVER FORGETS. Nothing more to go on. No prints, no weapon…no nothing. Motley often rented the cabin in season so the two squashed butts in the ashtray were little help. Motley didn’t smoke and they looked about a hundred years old. If there was on e thing Ben Crake had learned from experience it was the simple fact that women often figured in rich men’s murders. That’s where he’d start.

Crake needed a drink…maybe more. He saw a sign about a quarter mile ahead and dragged the old DeSoto off the highway. Before getting out of the car Crake did his usual inventory:the .38 was snug under his left arm The wallet with his license and permit was ok. The Walker House was your standard watering hole complete with a bartender that looked like a defensive tackle with mitts the size of a good Porterhouse. “Scotch…rocks…a double” produced a highball glass with a light pour spun down on a faded coaster.

No, it didn’t get any easier the more he thought about it . It got worse. Sure, Motley was rich and everybody hates a winner but Motley seemed to share the wealth. He gave money to schools , hosp[itals and orphans and he was clean aas a whistle as far as the law was concerned. No it had to be a dame.

Why Motley ?

OK START WRITING THE MIDDLE AND END HERE: You have three weeks. Have fun.

This morning over coffee I looked up at the digital photo frame my wife got for Christmas to see myself standing with one foot in Palestine and another in Israel. Another photo came up with me standing with one foot in the northern and another in the southern hemisphere. In addition to a host of memories about two great trips, there was a motivation to think about borders, boundaries, demarcations and limits.

Many boundaries are arrived at arbitrarily and others are drenched in blood; some are personal, some societal and many are simply ridiculous. But one thing is common to all boundaries : they are for protection and they are exclusionary. For many they are the dead line in the Stalag they have made of their lives.

We are encouraged to have personal boundaries. What does that mean? Certainly it means that there are things we will and will not do but they also act like a governor on an engine. If we love too much or are too altruistic we will burn out like an engine throwing a rod. For some the ultimate personal boundary is simply saying “no” when that feels right. I wonder if it’s possible to spontaneously combust because of too much caring. Are boundaries about taking care of yourself and maximizing your time in a self defined comfort zone?

Nations create boundaries to protect people that are “like us.” It is the ultimate exclusion and it quickly descends into “othering” entire populations. The United Nations recognizes 44 distinct nations on the European continent and history has shown us that the descent into nationalism with its need to stigmatize leads to atrocity. Suffice it to say that we all seem to need lines of demarcation to be happy and secure but here is the ultimate irony – all of our most serious problems are unbounded…they are universal.

Climate change, spiking violence, cancer, do not give a whit about our personal safe zones but there is good news. Music, Art, Literature and other comments on the human condition travel in the ether of the human soul, a soul that knows no limitation and is unafraid. As Marshall McLuhan once said ” Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment. ”

So cheers to those who give too much, enjoy greatly, travel the world and rise above. Their lives are an inspiration.

Boundless.

These are difficult days. We hold in our hands small machines that warp reality, that spin and prevaricate in a most insidious manner. We are bombarded with lies by those that are supposed to lead and greed has created an anything for profit culture. Many of us in 92128 are literally sick and tired. We are not calm. We are not happy.

It is time to ask ourselves two critical questions: 1) Why do we believe the things we do? 2) Why are we so easily duped?

When you plumb human history for the idea of skepticism you will find a serious philosophical universe that had its beginnings in the Greek tradition and subsequently interested some of our greatest minds including Descartes, Pyrrho, Socrates, Kant, Hume and Russel to name a few. The tension between knowledge and belief is , perhaps, one of the few constants in the human condition.Recently two fine authors have taken on our tendency to be duped. Malcom Gladwell has penned Talking To Strangers and Timothy Levine authored Duped/ Truth Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception. These books-and others- make it clear that we need to examine BELIEVABILITY more than ever before.

Levine and Gladwell both indicate that humans have a “default to truth”.. simply, this means that we want to believe others and will find ourselves duped as a result. Given this propensity, it is time to recruit our old friend DOUBT as an ally in these trying days. Even when we gather as much evidence as possible the reason to believe often eludes us.

What doubt does for us is simple. It gives us the space to suspend judgement. Our old friend Voltaire -as often happens-says it best. “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition but certainty is a ridiculous one.” Certainty is all around us. Some are certain that immigrants are the cause of all crime; others believe that the white race should be masters of the world. They are certain. They are also ridiculous.

Those of us in 92128 have been around a few blocks in our time. We don’t mind the energy it takes to question everything…particularly those things that people want to sell to us. We have become amateur Buddhists. Sidhartha Gautama Shakyamuni- aka Buddha- enjoined us to” doubt everything. Find your own light.” We are on the search.

In the current political maelstrom there is a powerful force that suggests we should simply believe what we are told by people in authority. Should we?

I doubt it.

The number 7713 was tattooed on the wrist of a 15 year old Romanian boy upon his arrival at Auschwitz. This boy would also experience Buchenwald and all of its horrors before he eventually became a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the recipient of 19 honorary doctorates , the Congressional Medal of Freedom,the Congressional Gold Medal and countless other distinctions. Later in life Elie Wiesel wrote these words, ” there may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

Today, I spent a couple of hours squeezing juice from a mountain of Valencia oranges that weighed on a tree in our backyard. As I twisted the fruit on one of those old school glass juicers, my wife and a group of her friends took up their signs and stood on a street corner to protest-and raise awareness- about the evils of human trafficking. These women made their values manifest as Elie Wiesel did on a much larger stage. They all deserve our respect for standing for something.

In the end it is indifference that will cause us to suffer and to become victims. I have often heard the lament that regular people can do so little to curb the powerful and the vicious. The frustration that comes from the power differential is understandable. Yet, it is certain that we need as many small deeds in the cause of right that we can get. So, it is a duty of mine to celebrate acts of resistance to evil whenever I see them. Ladies, this one’s for you.

Beat novelist, Jack Kerouac once wrote that, “indifference is a crime.” A crime that can have as serious a consequence as the Holocaust. Celebrate everyone who puts their ass in the grass for a good cause. That celebration may be exactly what us little people can do. We can vote with our wallets, avoid institutions that underpay and oppress, refuse racism and act in harmony with our best nature. These small things can become a force. What would happen to our society if consumer behavior changed a few percentage points? What happened to British rule in India when a few followed Ghandi? Maybe the “mass ” in massive change is the weight of thousands of small acts of resistance.

Bless the engaged who stood out today as I made orange juice and all the soulful people who stand for something.

You remember your early days when Dr. Seuss was read to you. This from The Lorax: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not. “

Thanks, ladies.

Even the most casual observer of human nature can clearly see that most of us have heros. We may be amazed by their strength and courage or even envious of those qualities but heros help us define who we want to be. They cause us to aspire to a better self.

In literature, the critics have identified six major heroes types that influence us. First is the type of the willing hero, the gung-ho warrior who, possessing both moral and physical courage wades into whatever fray is afoot. Naturally the counterpart is the unwilling hero, who reluctantly enters the arena. More interesting is the tragic hero who makes a terrible error in judgement that leads to destruction. Aristotle is the great definer of the tragic hero. In his Poetics he introduces us to the concepts of hamartia and hubris. These heros do not respect the order of things and their fatally incorrect judgements lead to their destruction.

The classic hero is simply a Gallahad whose personal perfection is beyond question. The epic hero is the stuff of legend. Finally we arrive at the anti-hero who is neither pure nor evil but a churn of complex psychology that is always hard to read. As I thought about the idea of the hero, I realized that I had a few. They were ball players, soldiers, clerics, saints…they came from diverse places.

One of my heros is Eddie Rommel (1897-1970). Eddie was pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics. From 1920 to 1932 the the kid from Baltimore pitched 2,545 and one third innings at the highest level of baseball. In 1920 Eddie won 27 games, a great achievement in any season. In 1932 Rommel pitched 17 innings -in relief- against the Cleveland Indians. He is known as, “the father of the knuckleball” as he added guile to his obvious determination and stamina. Eddie won 171 major league games.

His heroism continued after his Major League career. He did not retire, instead he became an umpire in the New York-Penn league. This led him back to the Majors as an umpire where he braved the tough crowds for 3,364 games. Emerson once observed that, ” the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.” So it was with Eddie and his mix of toughness, loyalty and innovation. He also had the courage to perform in difficult situations.

Many héros are remembered for the one great act, like falling on a live grenade or storming the ramparts and Eddie had his moment too. In the forties Eddie was the first umpire to WEAR EYEGLASSES while calling a game. Now that is guts.

It’s good to remember that there are heros all around us who regularly defy the norms that hold us back. Hemmingway resonates here when he notes that, ” as we get older it’s harder to have heros but its sort of necessary.” Eddie will serve the purpose.

How many times did Eddie square his shoulders and carry on while the cry of “four eyes” came raining down upon him?

Eddie is buried in Baltimore.

Caspar, Balthazar and Melchior are said to have arrived at their destination today. They had an epiphany, according to Matthew, when they laid eyes upon the promised Messiah. This is the Twelfth Night, the twelfth day of Christmas and forevermore the Feast of The Epiphany.

It is a fundamental human story that revelation is a thing we must travel to…a progress from one place to another. We must hit the road for the “aha moment.” The word is from the Greek and it means manifestation…a sudden and dramatic insight. We leave our everyday perceptions and suddenly encounter the essence of something. We often use the phrase, “it dawned on me,” to describe the sudden illumination of an epiphany.

It seems that epiphanies occur in literature and history as a person travels. A progress from one place to another …a progress to the bright light of awareness. Epiphanies can be as negative as heartbreak or as uplifting as the experience of the Three Kings. One thing is sure, you must be moving to have one. You must be a seeker.

An epiphany comes when least expected and it comes after a long planned voyage. It is perfectly unscheduled .

An epiphany that changed my life occurred in the sixties when I suddenly KNEW that I was being lied to by the popular culture that stipulated that awareness was the result of altered consciousness. Authors coopted the religious experiences of ancient cultures to argue that God could be found by the use of psychedelics, fasting, or even, loud music. I remember thinking, what if our great gift and our road to the divine was good old everyday consciousness ? What if we were already knee deep in the divinity that was all around us?

A more recent epiphany made it manifest that every turning point in one’s life is epiphanic in nature…it is a light that shines on the road.

It is telling that Shakespeare’s play was described by one critic as, ” an invitation to lighten up.” The Bard gets it.

92128 is a bit of a mystery. It is at once, a very quiet, predictable place and a land of surprises. Our home sits smack in the center of the traditional lands of the Kumeyaay People, more than thirty bands of folks who lived by agriculture in the mountains, valleys and tidelands abutting the Pacific Ocean. Their history has been traced a full 12,000 years but they could not survive the European invasion. Balboa, Serra and others spelled their doom. Finally- in 1878- the surviving Pasqual band of native Americans were expelled outright.

The highpoints in the area’s history include the arrival of English seafarer Joseph Snook who sought and gained a land grant of 17,763 acres from the Mexican Government. In the Mexican War a three day battle was fought in the San Pasqual Valley that was won by Anglo-American forces and the region’s whiteness was assured. In 1848, statehood made the continued whiteness inevitable.

Fast forward to 1943 when the Daley family purchased Rancho San Bernardo, an event that made modern development possible. The development period culminates-for my story- in 1961 when two developers, Harry Summers and W. R. Hawn, got their paperwork together and were approved to create a neighborhood called Seven Oaks. Seven Oaks is the heart of the matter and the home of The Gang of Eight.

The neighborhood is full of stories, myths, flora and fauna that also manifest that mystery of the predictable hard up against the occasional surprise…like a long search for treasure that finally yields a gem or two. Seven Oaks was one of the States first planned communities and that unique status is revealed in many ways. Initially, 500 homes were planned and constructed in a 55 and older community that allows only single story dwellings and has enfranchised an architectural committee that rules on everything from tree height to exterior paint colors. Construction began in 1962 with the opening of a sales office and a plat map.

An aerial view of Seven Oaks establishes the weird fact that there are no gridded streets, indeed, the street lay out resembles a spilled plate of fettuccine… things turn in upon themselves, with cul d sacs and roads that seem to lead nowhere …right angles don’t exist. All service lines are underground and every winding street boasts a sidewalk. Comfortable after a bit of orientation.

My home was built in 1965 and remodeled twice since then. Most homes have been upgraded over the years and most landscapes are rocked and sport a variety of succulents as water is at a premium.

When you follow the adventures of the Gang it might help to know the lay of the land.

One thing is certain, the people that live here are the gems I was talking about. In the words of a famous urban planner, Le Corbusier, “the home should be the treasure chest of living.”

We are there.

In the year 1821 Charles Lamb-aka Elia- wrote an essay for the January edition of the London Magazine in which he asserted that , “New Year’s Day is everyman’s birthday.” As I partied with the 92128 gang on New Year’s Eve, I got stuck on the idea of the new year’s resolution… its history and meaning.

Apparently the Babylonians of some 4,000 years ago provide the first record of resolutions and they basically were contracts with the gods. The “resolutions” of the time were essentially contractual relationships that promised a big payoff if certain conditions were met i.e If plant my field in soy and donate 20% of my crop to the poor you will increase the fertility of my entire farm. These transactional resolutions have morphed into a modern exercise in goal setting.

Today, our resolutions are often more personal based on a more of this/ less of that dynamic. We wish to be more patient, more understanding, more aware. We want less strife, illness and fear. We feel as Emerson said that “the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” We want to progress and we have hopes for better days and better behaviors. Lamb also said that, “No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.” How right he was.

It is telling that the Romans had a festival for Janus the god of beginnings and endings, a god that has two faces one gazing into the past the other to the future. January is named for this two-faced god and it is our time to weigh, assess and to dream of better days. Ironically resolution setting in itself has two potential interpretations…one hopeful and the other disappointing. If our happiness is directly related to our expectations, are we not creating a mechanism for failure. If you resolve to lose 30 pounds and you only lose 15, have you failed? In an effort to paint the most flattering portrait of yourself have you ruined the canvas?

Avoiding the pitfalls of guilt and disappointment that are inherent in all goal setting, is not the point of the resolution exercise. New Years day is everyman’s birthday, full of possibility and potential wonders. Everything is new. We are new.

The poet Rilke tells us to, “welcome the new year…full of things that have never been before.” We do not want to question if things that have never been before can possibly exist at all, we want to bask in the goal of potential. You can lose the beer belly, stop cursing the bad driver and balance your checkbook and you should resolve to do so. You can thrive.

Happy Birthday !!

Well, we are all going through that chaotic time that we call Christmas. On the one hand it provides a good argument for atheism and the life of a hermit and on the other it fills one with joy and fellow feeling. Being the life-long cynic that I am, I teeter on the brink of bah humbugging the whole mess and within seconds I am renewed in my faith. Henny Youngman decided the whole issue for me when he said, ” I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave it up- they have no holidays.”

So I am back aboard the Christmas ship…like it or not. I returned in large part because of four grandchildren and some truly funny Christmas movies. The little smiling faces and Cousin Eddy explaining the plate in his head have won me over. I also like the incredible absurdities that are so entertaining.

Some of those absurdities include the tear-filled visit to Santa and the strange lack of resistance that overcomes you as you stand before a large display of chia pets and pajamas that turn into blankets. Ornaments that look like cheeseburgers, baseballs, angels and superheroes add to the crazy effect. This kind of silliness needs to be supported.

The food helps. Lemon zest sugar cookies, prime ribs that cost as much as a month’s rent and various gaudy jello molds are dancing in our heads. Uncle Fred will spike the nog and Aunt Jenny will send us colored socks. Suddenly argyle and snow globes have meaning and we will happily lose money and sleep at an alarming rate. Why not.

So Merry Christmas to all my loved ones in the extended family. May all your Christmases be white and may all your Christmases be silly. It is a wonderful time of year.

” In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing , the next best thing is the wrong thing and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” Theodore Roosevelt

I do not agree with Teddy.

Many of us react like Teddy in difficult moments and we cry Bully ! and send our Great White Fleet of aggression and manic energy in a rage for results. Often, nothing is the exact right thing to do. Often the wish for a pause of some duration prior to activity tempers our rage and gives us perspective. The manic push for results can lead us to great results (think Moon Landing and war winning ) but more often our addiction to activity destroys rather than enhances our lives.

It could be that this bottom-line thinking is uniquely American…as was Teddy himself. We are the land of quarterly reports, dividend checks, sports records and celebrity and it shows. We regularly do things in haste and we often do things we don’t understand even as we do them. No time is given to speculation about consequences or effects on others. The check must be cut by today at noon.

To end the suffering that our taste for fevered action causes, we might do well to count to ten …or ten thousand. When we don’t engage with every available input, we seem happier, centered and at peace. That is the right thing to do.

Yet, our culture makes this relaxed, gentle and specific form of engagement virtually impossible. We must enter society armed with “informed opinions” the latest fashion, the expensive education and no room for inaction. Social media increases the range and the velocity of our unconsidered thoughts and dinner must be on the table by six.

Wait.

Stop.

Think.

The amazing writer Samuel Beckett was once asked what he did for amusement. No doubt, the questioner expected some Spartan hyper action was afoot. Beckett replied, ” I like to sit in a comfortable chair, fart and read Dante. ” I get that.

Our culture’s increased interest in mindfulness and meditation seems a cry to be left alone… a plea for the time we need to be human. Our greatest successes going forward may be based on what we have the courage to NOT DO.

Got to go now , I forgot where I left my copy of The Inferno.